by P.D. Lesko
“PLEASE, CALL ME Lily,” says the woman on the phone, with a warmth that doesn’t betray the obvious fact that she has extended the same invitation to scores of interviewers. She was born in Detroit, Michigan on September 1, 1939 and named Mary Jean Tomlin. Lily was her mother’s name. On June 15th, Lily Tomlin will appear at the Power Center in Ann Arbor under the auspices of the Ann Arbor Summer Festival. Her appearance is one of the 40-50 live performances the comedienne still does each year at venues across the country.
Her parents migrated to Detroit from Paducha, Kentucky during the Great Depression and not surprising to someone brought up by a Georgia Peach, Lily exudes the sensibilities of a southerner, starting with the fact that she dislikes rude, in-your-face humor. Chris Rock’s racially-charged rants about sex, politics and drugs are not her cup of tea.
“That kind of material gets old fast,” explains Tomlin. “But my humor is political,” she says when challenged. “I do social commentary reflecting human behavior. Ernestine (one of the most popular characters she has created) does political humor. She has always played both sides of the political street. I have no compunctions about criticizing politicians.”
She goes on to relate a story about George Bush and his 2006 “intelligence leak.” She laughs and says, “I couldn’t wait to use that line.”
As you might imagine, Tomlin is a self-professed supporter of liberal causes and progressive politicians.
At the beginning of our conversation she is a bit hesitant, but quickly warms up as the questions become less about her and more about what she thinks about politics, performing and social commentary.
She reminisces about a 1973 interview with Johnny Carson.
“Carson said to me, ‘You’re not married, are you?’ And I said, ‘No.’ And he said, ‘Don’t you want to have any children?’ You could hear the audience stop dead. Because as a female, even to say you didn’t necessarily want to have a child or act out the traditional role of any kind was heavy. And the audience was like — a pin could drop. And I said, ‘No, I don’t want to have any children’ or something like that. Then I said, ‘I like children but I don’t really want to have any children and raise them.’ There was kind of a tense moment there, so I said to Carson, ‘Who has custody of yours?’”
She tells about the editors of Time magazine who offered her the cover in 1975 if she would come out of the closet. She refused and Billie Jean King grabbed that honor in 1981.
I ask if she regrets not having admitted the truth about her sexuality in 1975, just three years after the passage of Title IX (renamed the Patsy Mink Equal Opportunity Act in 2002). Title IX threw open the door to female athletes on all levels and has been used to attack the scourge of sexual violence against women on college campuses, including a current investigation at the University of Michigan.
“No,” she says, “I wanted to be recognized for my work, not who I was. My sexuality was an open secret. I got the cover two years later.”
Lily Tomlin is entertaining and a pragmatist.
The March 28, 1977 Time cover story titled “The New Queen of Comedy,” told readers that Tomlin lived alone. At that point, however, she had been with partner Jane Wagner for six years.
Tomlin was uncomfortable being referred to as the Queen of Comedy. She pointedly corrected an interviewer in the mid-80s: “I’m not the Queen of Comedy. Lucille Ball is the Queen of Comedy.” Lucille Ball died in 1989 and Lily has in some ways become the Queen Mum of Comedy.
She is generous with her praise of the talent and smarts of her younger comedic colleagues such as Tina Fey and Ellen DeGeneres. Fey, like Tomlin, is known for her comedic alter-egos: Liz Lemon of the sit-com “30 Rock,” and of course her wildly successful impersonation of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Like Tomlin, both DeGeneres and Fey broke ground for women in comedy. Like Tomlin, both DeGeneres and Fey offer up social commentary, sly comedy that’s in your head as opposed to in your face.
For over 40 years, Lily Tomlin has been fielding interview questions. However, that fact only becomes obvious during our hour-long conversation when I make the mistake of asking an obvious question.
Tomlin is stumped when I asked her to name the movie she has most recently watched. She asks her assistant and then remembers: “‘Treasure of Sierra Madre’” and ‘Stromboli’ with Ingrid Bergman. I remember when Ingrid came back to the Academy. She was black-listed, you know.”
Ingrid. Johnny. Jane. (And not local pols Shelton, Hieftje or Lumm.)
The Jane is Jane Fonda. Tomlin and her “good friend” Fonda are reuniting on screen in “Grace And Frankie,” Netflix’s next original series. The 13-episode half-hour comedy is about long-time nemeses Grace (Fonda) and Frankie (Tomlin) who are facing the last chapter of their lives.
“We portray opposites; it’s like an ‘Odd Couple’ scenario,” explains Tomlin.
When their husbands announce they are in love with each other and plan to get married, Grace and Frankie find their lives both turned upside down and to their dismay, permanently intertwined. Eventually, to their surprise, they find they have each other.
“I love ‘House of Cards,’” she says, referring to the Netflix orginal series starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright about a murderous, scheming Washington power couple. The comedienne prefers television shows about serious drama and politics.
Television is where Lily Tomlin was able to create characters that have endured for decades: Edith Ann is a precocious five-and-a-half year old girl; Mrs. Judith Beasley, a housewife and mother who is often chosen for television commercials and offers “good consumer advice”; Tess/Trudy, a homeless bag lady who accosts theater-goers and various passers-by with her offbeat observations and tales of communications with extraterrestrials. Tomlin was also one of the first female comediennes to break out in male drag with her characters Tommy Velour and Rick.
“I love performing and making up stuff,” says Tomlin. When asked if, perhaps, making up characters was a way to hide in plain sight, to distract her audience from who she was in real life—a gay woman—Lily Tomlin pauses for several seconds before answering: “I think that’s a valid observation,” she says, “I put on a show; the characters allowed me to be another person. Yes.”
In her interviews over the past dozen years, she has mentioned that believing in a doctrine or a philosophy is important. Tomlin often says that her doctrine is feminism.
When I mention doctrine, she replies, surprised: “I’ve really said that? Well, feminism motivates me in part. Existentialism motivates me, as well. In my communal heart I want things to have meaning. I would want to live my life to affirm, to have hope. I want to have hope.”
Part of what gives the Queen of Comedy hope is the change she has seen in her industry with respect to the opportunities for comediennes, as well as the profound social change she has seen since 1975, when the editors of Time couldn’t persuade her to be the first major female star to come out of the closet.
“So much has changed!” she says. “I always talked about (partner) Jane openly in my interviews. However, if the press had regard for you, they protected you. It’s different today thanks, in part, to Ellen (DeGeneres), though it’s important to remember that even Ellen had problems right after she came out.”
In December 2013, Tomlin and her partner of 42 years, award-winning writer Jane Wagner, married.
I have to ask: How does it feel being a newlywed?
“Not terribly different. We did it because it was something we could do. Jane and I, our sensibilities are so alike,” says Tomlin. It occurs to me that being legally married allows the women to finally be able to protect each other financially through tax and inheritance laws.
The women posted photos from the day they married to their joint Facebook page and Tweeted about the event, but Lily Tomlin never formally came out to the media, as have numerous others in her industry. Perhaps that would be too obvious.
“I don’t judge those who haven’t come out,” she says.
As the conversation ends, I thank her for her time and she says she’s looking forward to seeing how all of her answers will be stitched together in the finished piece. When I confess that I’d spent a good deal of time preparing because I didn’t want to ask her the same questions she has been asked by the likes of Joan Rivers, Larry King and reporters from major newspapers from coast-to-coast, her southern upbringing peeks through again: “Oh, you didn’t.”
Of course I did.
She adds: “This was one of the most interesting interviews I’ve done.”
A shameless flatterer. A very funny and thoughtful woman: Lily.