Connect with us

Entertainment

Versatile and self-aware, Betty Gilpin moves with ease onscreen and onstage

Published

on

Versatile and self-aware, Betty Gilpin moves with ease onscreen and onstage

Betty Gilpin is not one to complain.

She spent seven months in New Mexico making “American Primeval,” a gory western set in the treacherous Utah Territory in 1857. She filmed in the elements, often at night, with the most volatile co-stars of all: horses. The long shoot was nearing completion when Hollywood went on strike in mid-2023, shutting down “American Primeval” for months. By the time the production resumed in early 2024, Gilpin was six months pregnant with her second child and no longer in a condition to mount a horse. So producers got her a robotic steed.

“It wasn’t the most easy,” is all she’ll grant. But by any reasonable measure, making “American Primeval” was an ordeal. Thankfully, Gilpin had her husband, Cosmo Pfeil, and their daughter, Mary, now 4, with her on location.

“That was my grand equalizer,” she says. “I would spend my days screaming bloody murder in a petticoat on a horse, then get home and hunch over in a candy cane position and do bath and bedtime. Being a mom in an Airbnb is way harder than filming on top of a ski mountain in below zero degrees.”

On a rainy morning in December, Gilpin has just arrived at a cafe in New York City’s Clinton Hill neighborhood. In a beet red sweater adorned with a diagram of the uterus, she has already squeezed in a session at the gym and tended to her daughters, including the youngest, now 7 months old.

Advertisement

Motherhood, she says, “gives you permanent access, whether you want it or not, to a darker, more rooted self.”

That served her well in “American Primeval,” in which she plays Sara Rowell, a woman with a mysterious past trying to start a new life on the frontier with her son, Devin (Preston Mota). With bounty hunters hot on her trail, Sara hires a taciturn stranger named Isaac (Taylor Kitsch) to guide them to safety, which proves elusive in a region where the Army, Native Americans, Mormon militiamen and other settlers are locked in a battle for control.

In “American Primeval,” Gilpin plays Sara Rowell, a woman traveling westward with her young son, Devin (Preston Mota), left, who is assisted by Isaac (Taylor Kitsch) on the perilous journey.

(Matt Kennedy / Netflix )

Advertisement

From writer-creator Mark L. Smith (“The Revenant”), director Peter Berg (“Lone Survivor”) and executive producer Eric Newman (“Narcos”), “American Primeval” offers an unrelentingly violent take on the history of westward expansion, one that is likely to stoke controversy, particularly in its portrayal of the early Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Later this month, Gilpin will make her Broadway debut as Mary Todd Lincoln in “Oh, Mary!,” taking over for Cole Escola in the bawdy hit that reimagines the doleful first lady as a batty aspiring cabaret star. In a strange coincidence of casting, she recently finished shooting the Netflix drama “Death by Lightning,” in which she portrays Lucretia Garfield, the wife of another doomed 19th century president.

But there’s more to Gilpin — much, much more — than bonnets and hoopskirts.

Since her breakthrough role as a soap star-turned-professional wrestler in the dearly departed Netflix series “GLOW,” Gilpin has displayed a remarkable range, not only from role to role but also within individual performances. (Not to be confined to one art form, she also published “All the Women in My Brain and Other Concerns,” a collection of essays, in 2022.) She moves among genres and time periods with ease and she gravitates to layered roles that showcase her versatility: In the inventive sci-fi comedy “Mrs. Davis,” she plays a time-traveling nun fighting a sentient form of artificial intelligence. In the recent “Three Women,” based on Lisa Taddeo’s book of the same name, she portrays Lina, a neglected Indiana housewife struggling with chronic pain and unmet desire.

This has resulted in a level of notoriety for Gilpin that is captured by an interaction she had earlier at the gym. “I could tell a woman was looking at me like she thought we went to high school together — just squinting at me, trying to place me in her yearbook. Then she realized, ‘Oh, I recognize that person from an ensemble miniseries.’”

Advertisement

It’s a comfortable place to be, she says. “I always roll my eyes when I read interviews with actors who talk about how happy they are with their level of nonfame. So you’re doing this public interview?”

Gilpin is quick-witted and highly quotable, with a gift for conjuring evocative imagery on the fly, all of which makes for a lively interview. But she’s also savvy and self-aware enough to anticipate how anything she says might be taken out of context in a media environment where, as she puts it, “We’re all scrolling our phones seeing the most horrifying things, and then our algorithms are feeding us little bits of candy to distract us from the horror.”

“Too many times I’ve done an interview where I say something with my eyes crossed, in a weird demented joke accent, and it’s the headline, sounding totally sincere,” she says. “I can’t control where in one’s toilet scrolling one is finding my interview about neuroses and vulnerability, right?”

A woman in a blue sweater and patterned pants lies  back on a blue couch.

The actor is savvy and self-aware enough to anticipate how anything she says might be taken out of context: “We’re all scrolling our phones seeing the most horrifying things, and then our algorithms are feeding us little bits of candy to distract us from the horror.”

(Victoria Will / For The Times)

Advertisement

Acting was “always sort of destined,” says Gilpin, whose parents, Jack Gilpin and Ann McDonough, though not household names, have worked steadily in film, TV and theater for decades. (Her dad plays Church the Butler on HBO’s “The Gilded Age.”)

Raised in New York and Connecticut, she attended Fordham University, where she studied acting with a Jesuit priest, Father George Drance, who encouraged her to use visual metaphors. “It just took me out of my own head, and made it a magic process, rather than a math equation: ‘Is this right or wrong?’” she says. “Thinking about it in an abstract way helps me shimmy my feathers for the coins.”

She then spent roughly a decade working off-Broadway and cycling through small roles in indie movies and TV procedurals. (Perhaps you saw her as a teacher who had sex with her student in “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”?)

A guest stint on “Nurse Jackie,” where she befriended writers Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, led to “GLOW.” Her performance in the nostalgic ’80s dramedy was notable for its intense physicality — she body-slammed like a pro — and the way Gilpin’s character Debbie Eagan channeled her personal anguish into her wrestling persona, an all-American bombshell known as Liberty Belle.

The part earned Gilpin three Emmy nominations and a legion of new fans, including comedian Matt Rogers.

Advertisement

“I just couldn’t ignore the fact that it was one of the best performances I have probably seen, ever — just the sheer versatility of it,” says Rogers, who co-hosts the podcast “Las Culturistas” with Bowen Yang. “As an audience member, whether you’re reading the book she wrote or watching her onscreen, you are well fed.” Gilpin has become a frequent guest on the show, where she and Rogers have bonded over their shared “theater kid” sensibility and the complications of being creative people in a commercial industry.

“When you become viable in an industry way, but you have to reconcile that with the fact that you have this artist’s spirit that wants to roll around on the ground and do theater games,” Rogers says. Gilpin, now a friend, “happens to be trapped in the body of this ingenue leading lady, but she is a real pelvic-floor-of-doom theater person,” he adds. “She feels it in her guts.”

Production on Season 4 of “GLOW” was underway when the onset of COVID-19 shut it down in March 2020; Netflix abruptly canceled the show later that year. “Three Women,” a rare premium drama exploring sexuality from a female perspective, was sold by Showtime during a reorganization at Paramount Global and premiered on Starz in September.

A woman in a pink leotard with ruffled sleeves holds her arms out in a wrestling ring.

Gilpin as Debbie “Liberty Belle” Eagan in “Glow.” (Erica Parise/Netflix)

A woman in purple jacket smiling.

Gilpin as Lina in Starz’s “Three Women.” (JOJO WHILDEN/JoJo Whilden/SHOWTIME)

Advertisement

Gilpin probably has the right to gripe about how industry turmoil affected these projects but, again, that’s not her style. “I feel very proud and confused at my luck in the business. I’m certainly not shaking my fist about any weird disappointments or corporations making decisions that have nothing to do with me,” she says. “Maybe it comes from starting in the theater, where all that existed was the moment you were making something.”

While some roles can feel fleeting or elusive, with Lina, the unhappy housewife who embarks on a passionate affair with her high school boyfriend in “Three Women,” there was “an eerie clarity” the whole time, Gilpin says. “It’s probably the most connected I’ve ever been to a character.” It helped to have Taddeo’s book at the ready, because of how “she focuses on the moments that we don’t tell each other about — the things we’d edit out of our journals, if we knew they were going to be read,” Gilpin says. “We think those things are ours alone … when actually those moments in our lives where we are yearning for something forbidden or mourning something inexplicable, those are the shared DNA that connects us.”

Shailene Woodley, who plays author Gia in “Three Women” — a stand-in for Taddeo — was impressed by how Gilpin gave agency to Lina, who could easily have come across as a doormat. “I think a lot of actors would have easily followed the simple road of playing Lina with extreme intimacy and vulnerability. What Betty did was give her an electric force of hope and willpower… Where most actors, including myself, would have turned left, Betty turns right, and she finds colors and layers that other people would miss.”

Advertisement

She brings similarly unexpected colors to Sara in “American Primeval,” whom she likens to “a Brontë character who is suddenly forced to play death-rugby in Hades.”

A frightened woman holding a hand in front of her as she stands in a snowy wooded field.

Gilpin likens Sara in “American Primeval” to “a Brontë character who is suddenly forced to play death-rugby in Hades.”

( Netflix )

“As wild as this series is, I did recognize a lot of the things that Sara struggled with as a mom, especially having my first daughter in 2020. I had a lot of catastrophic thinking and was very afraid all the time,” she says.

Berg, who has directed intense action movies like “Deepwater Horizon” — filmed on an oil rig — says “American Primeval” was “the most brutal thing I’ve ever done.” When he found out that Gilpin would be returning from the strike six months pregnant, he thought they might have to drastically rewrite the remainder of the series. Instead, “She was leading the charge every day, up and down that mountain, pregnant, with a smile on her face,” he says, adding, with only a trace of hyperbole, “Betty Gilpin is a true American legend.”

Advertisement

The director, who often encourages improvisation on set, says Gilpin found ways to bring much-needed humor and sweetness to the grim material.

“She would look at me every once in a while and say, ‘You know, it’s not going to kill any of us to laugh a little bit with this show. It can’t be all scalpings, shootings, bear attacks and drownings. We should be able to find some moments to laugh and to feel love,’” Berg recalls. “She found both of those.”

A smiling woman with shoulder length blond hair in a light blue sweater.

“I keep waking up in the middle of the night, thinking, ‘What am I doing?’” says Gilpin, who will take over as Mary Todd Lincoln from Cole Escola, creator of “Oh, Mary!”

(Victoria Will / For The Times)

Kitsch recalls how Gilpin improvised a tender scene in which Sara gently teases Isaac for having a discernible heartbeat. “I won’t tell anyone,” she says. He praises Gilpin as an instinctual performer whose meticulous preparation — including working with a dramaturg who creates a syllabus of readings to help her get into a character’s mindset — enables her “to just let go and not worry about a bad take or repercussions. She just swings,” he says. “She was always game on, just super focused on the work and trying to get the best out of the day.”

Advertisement

For now, Gilpin is focused on donning Lincoln’s bratty curls and putting her mark on the role that has made Escola the toast of Broadway. “I keep waking up in the middle of the night, thinking, ‘What am I doing?’” she says. (These bouts of panic are often cut short by her 4-year-old, who’s been getting up twice a night lately.)

In an email, Escola remembers being immediately struck by Gilpin in “GLOW.” “She has that mix of toughness and vulnerability that I typically associate with Old Hollywood broads,” they said. The nonbinary playwright and actor is also a fan of a character that Gilpin occasionally portrays on her private Instagram account, whom she describes as “a delusional, out of touch regional theater actress who is in her dressing room a half hour before curtain.” When Escola began to think about a replacement, Gilpin seemed like an obvious choice: “Betty is a capital-A actress with her own unique palette as an artist. I don’t know how [the character] will change yet but it will. She understands comedy and cares deeply about the heart of this character, that’s all that matters.”

“Oh, Mary!” captures the fact that “we are all overlooked, unique geniuses and delusional mediocre idiots at the same time,” Gilpin says. “I will probably be both in the show.”

Gilpin finds comfort knowing that, coincidentally, both her close friend Cristin Milioti and her father made their Broadway debuts on the stage where she’ll make hers. A few weeks ago, she went to the theater for a fitting, and the sensory experience — the crackle of the speaker backstage, the scrape of the hangers being moved across a costume rack — made her tear up.

“It feels like a return to the reason I’m on this earth, honestly,” she says. “Not to sound too insanely out of touch.”

Advertisement

Entertainment

Pat Finn, comedy actor known for roles in ‘The Middle’ and ‘Seinfeld,’ dies at 60

Published

on

Pat Finn, comedy actor known for roles in ‘The Middle’ and ‘Seinfeld,’ dies at 60

Pat Finn, a veteran comedy actor known for playing the Heck family’s friendly neighbor Bill Norwood on “The Middle,” died Monday, reportedly following a three-year battle with cancer. He was 60.

“After a beautiful life filled with laughter, love, family, and friends, we share the heartbreaking news of the death of Pat Finn,” Finn’s family said in a statement to multiple outlets. Finn’s manager, Andrea Pett-Joseph, who described the actor as “the kindest, most joyful person in any room, told Deadline that he died surrounded by his family and friends. His death was first reported by TMZ.

Finn broke into show business in the 1990s, appearing in various sitcoms. His first major role was on “The George Wendt Show,” where he played Dan Coleman, the brother of Wendt’s character, George Coleman. He also had a recurring role on “Murphy Brown” as Phil Jr., the son of the original owner and bartender of Phil’s Bar (portrayed by Pat Corley) who took over the establishment in later seasons.

”Seinfeld” fans might remember Finn from his role as Joe Mayo in “The Reverse Peephole” episode. He also portrayed alternate-universe Monica’s boyfriend Dr. Roger in a couple of episodes of “Friends.” Finn’s credits also included roles on “The Drew Carey Show,” “3rd Rock From the Sun,” “That ’70s Show,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “The Bernie Mac Show,” “2 Broke Girls” and “The Goldbergs.” His most recent credits included the films “Unexpected” (2023) and “Diamond in the Rough” (2022).

Born in Evanston, Ill., Finn attended Marquette University in the 1980s, where he met his future wife, Donna, and Chris Farley, with whom he became friends. After graduating, Finn, along with Farley, joined Chicago’s Second City to hone his comedy chops.

Advertisement

In a 2022 interview published on Phoenix.org, Finn said he’d always gravitated toward comedy.

“My mom and I watched ‘The Carol Burnett Show’ and ‘The Odd Couple,’” he said. “I really liked the idea of sitcoms. Growing up in Chicago, nobody said they wanted to be an actor. They wanted to be firefighters or in sales. … A career in comedy didn’t become a reality until I was picked up by The Second City and then the main stage.”

According to a statement provided to the New York Post, Finn was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2022. Although he went into remission, the cancer later returned and metastasized.

A lifelong Bears fan, Finn “often showed the biggest signs when the Bears scored a touchdown” in his final days, the statement from the actor’s family said. “No pressure Bears — just saying — do it for Pat.”

Finn is survived by wife Donna and their three children, Cassidy, Caitlin and Ryan.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Movie Reviews

Film Reviews: New releases for Dec. 24 – 26

Published

on

Film Reviews: New releases for Dec. 24 – 26

Cover-Up **1/2

One should generally try to avoid the critics’ trap of “here’s the movie they should have made,” but it’s hard not to consider what a missed opportunity this documentary biography turns out to be. Certainly veteran investigative journalist Seymour M. “Sy” Hersh has had a monumental professional career—breaking stories over the course of 50 years from the My Lai massacre to torture at Abu Ghraib—of the kind that deserves praise, and the profile offered up by Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus gets just enough of his grudging participation to show why his irascibility might have been one of the keys to his success. But that “grudging” part results in a film that goes heavy on archival footage about these various scandals that has to assume any give viewer knows nothing about them, resulting in a lot of throat-clearing that misses the focus on what Hersh in particular was able to uncover, and why, as a journalist committed to shoe-leather reporting and curiosity rather than credulous access-currying regurgitation of official statements. And, since it’s clear from the outset that Hersh has no interest in opening up about himself beyond bare-bones biographical details, there’s nothing here that allows for insight regarding what might have turned this guy into such a bulldog for holding power to account. In one anecdote Hersh offers about his mother, he remembers her describing him as “always going where nobody wants you.” The filmmakers here don’t seem to think that’s their job, too. Available Dec. 26 via Netflix. (NR)

Goodbye June **1/2

Family dysfunction drama tends to work best when it’s narrowly focused, so it’s not surprising that one of the main problems with this one is that it tries to juggle too many characters with too many issues all rushing towards one cathartic deadline. That moment is provided by the imminent death of June Cheshire (Helen Mirren), whose cancer returns aggressively in the two weeks before Christmas, forcing everyone else—her four children Julia (Kate Winslet), Molly (Andrea Riesborough), Helen (Toni Collette) and Connor (Johnny Flynn), and husband Bernie (Timothy Spall)—to unpack all of their baggage. Winslet also directs in her feature debut, from a script by her son Joe Anders, and there’s a lot of frisky humor around the edges, particularly in the first hour as the characters’ stresses express themselves in wildly different ways. Unfortunately, the scenes where a bunch of people swirl chaotically around June’s hospital room becomes a metaphor for the overstuffed nature of this narrative, which could have used at least one fewer Cheshire sibling—and I’d quickly nominate Collette’s broad parody of a yoga-teaching/sage-smudging/crystal toting earth mama. And considering there are years’ worth of issues being addressed here, some of them get resolved in improbably short conversations. As a holiday tear-jerker, it does effectively jerk some tears—and maybe a long the way it could have jerked a character or two out of the second-to-last draft. Available Dec. 24 via Netflix. (R)

Marty Supreme ****

Advertisement

The Adam Sandler “This is how I win” meme from 2019’s Uncut Gems might be the Rosetta Stone for understanding the protagonists of Josh Safdie’s movies, including those with brother Benny: hustlers and on-the-make guys convinced that they’re smarter and more destined for victory than the rest of the world sees in them. That’s certainly true of Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet), a Jewish youth in early 1950s New York convinced that his skills as a table-tennis prodigy will lead him to the big time—if only he can get out of his own arrogant way. Safdie and regular Safdie brothers writing collaborator Ronald Bronstein craft another blood-pressure-raising episodic narrative out of Marty’s misadventures, particularly once he’s forced to track down a ridiculous amount of money in order to make it to the world championships in Tokyo, and it’s a magnificent mix of existential danger and absurdist hilarity. And Chalamet’s performance may be his best ever, exuding enough hyper-confident charisma to make it plausible that he could woo a retired Hollywood actress (Gwyneth Paltrow) and pull so many people into his schemes. Safdie even wrangles a great supporting performance out of Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary, even if the role of an asshole millionaire isn’t much of a stretch. Topped off by a wonderfully anachronistic score of ’80s synth-pop, Marty Supreme builds to a weirdly emotional climax in which a Safdie hero finally has a different perspective on what it means to “win,” even if he probably still hasn’t. Available Dec. 25
in theaters.
(R)

Song Sung Blue **1/2

Real lives are messy and not easily shapeable into narratives, which is why sometimes a fictionalized adaptation of a documentary probably should have remained a documentary. Greg Kohs’ 2008 non-fiction feature becomes writer/director Craig Brewer’s interpretation of the story of Mike Sardina (Hugh Jackman) and Claire Stengl (Kate Hudson), a pair of Milwaukee-area part-time musicians circa 1996 who fall in love and form a creative partnership as “Lightning and Thunder” performing a Neil Diamond “experience” tribute act. Brewer sets the stage for the challenging lives that make us want to root for these dreamers—Mike a recovering-alcoholic Vietnam veteran, Claire a single mom with a history of depression—and he certainly finds crowd-pleasing moments in the way Mike and Claire come alive while on stage interpreting Diamond’s classics, and in their biggest improbable wins intermingled with one big life-changing tragedy. Hudson also turns in a particularly wonderful performance, mastering her Wisconsin twang and both extremes in Claire’s personality. The story, unfortunately, doesn’t have the same juice when the songs aren’t playing, and oversimplifies the timeline of the main characters’ lives in order to provide a tidier, more heartstring-tugging conclusion. The many real-life threads it needs to incorporate distract from the idea of working-class folks finding purpose in their avocation—a thematic idea that might have been easier to convey if this weren’t an adaptation of a documentary. Available Dec. 25 in theaters. (PG-13)

Continue Reading

Entertainment

Commentary: Drop the bomb or save humanity? ‘Pluribus’ and its misanthrope’s dilemma

Published

on

Commentary: Drop the bomb or save humanity? ‘Pluribus’ and its misanthrope’s dilemma

This article contains spoilers for the Season 1 finale of Apple TV’s “Pluribus.”

Fellow misanthropes, Season 1 of “Pluribus” is done. Now what do we do, other than lean into our usual harsh judgment and mistrust of others?

Our spirit series left us wondering who or what will put the final nail in humanity’s collective coffin: an alien virus or a malcontent with an atomic bomb. As for saving everyone? Cranky protagonist Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn) struggled to find ways to preserve the human race for much of the series, but by the finale, she was fairly convinced that the planet would be better off without us.

For those of you who haven’t kept up with the best show on television this year, Carol’s among 13 people left on Earth who are immune to an alien virus that’s otherwise fused all of humanity’s consciousness together into one blissful hive mind. Now everyone thinks alike and has the same knowledge base, which means TGI Fridays waiters can pilot passenger planes and children can perform surgeries. No one is an individual anymore. They simply occupy the body formerly known as Tom or Sally or whomever. “Us” is their chosen pronoun.

This army of smiling, empty vessels just wants to please Carol — until they can turn her into one of them. Joining them will make her happy, she’s told. It’s a beautiful thing, having your mind wiped. But the terminally dissatisfied Carol would rather stew in her own low-grade depression and angst that forfeit her free will. Plus, her ire and rage is kryptonite against those who’ve been “joined.” When confronted with her anger, they physically seize up and stop functioning. Their paralyzing fear of Carol’s ire is empowering, pathetic and hilarious. The world literally comes to a standstill when she snaps. No wonder she’s my hero.

Advertisement

“Pluribus” comes from Vince Gilligan, the same brilliant mind behind “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul.” The Apple TV series is nothing like his previous successes except that it’s set in Albuquerque, stars Seehorn and is singularly brilliant. And like those other seminal dramas, it plumbs deeper questions about how we see ourselves, who we really are and who we strive to be.

To be fair, Carol was irritated by the human race long before the alien virus converted them into worker bees. She was convinced most people were sheep — including those who loved the flowery writing and cheesy romance plots of her novels. But the the total loss of a free-thinking community isn’t all that satisfying, either.

In the finale, she connects with Manousos Oviedo (Carlos-Manuel Vesga), a fellow survivor who’s also immune to the virus. He wants nothing to do with the afflicted, no matter how peace-loving they appear. In the before times, it appears he was a self-sufficient loner. Postapocalypse, he travels all the way from Paraguay to meet Carol after he receives a video message from her. He drives most of the way before arriving at the treacherous Darién Gap, where he’s sidelined after falling into a thorny tree — but “they” save him, much to his chagrin. He eventually continues the journey, via ambulance.

Now saving the human race is up to two people who never had much love for it in the first place. They converse through a language translation app, which makes their arduous task all the more complicated — and hilarious.

Multiple theories have sprung up around what “Pluribus” is really about. One prevailing thought is that “the joining” is a metaphor for AI creating a world where all individual thought and creativity are synthesized into a single, amenable voice. Surrender your critical thinking for easy answers, or in the case of “Pluribus,” an easy life where you’ll never have to make a decision on your own again. Most humans would rather be a doormat than a battering ram, regardless of the urgency or circumstance.

Advertisement

Optimists might say, “Why pick one extreme or the other? There’s surely a place in the middle, where we can all live in harmony while holding onto our opinions and sense of self.” That’s sweet. Carol and I heartily disagree given the arc of history and all.

Just how my favorite new antihero will deal with her disdain for the Others is yet to be seen. Save the world or destroy it? We’ll all have to wait until next season to find out. Until then, “Pluribus” just needs some space.

Continue Reading

Trending