The Emmy-winning actor, writer and director Pamela Adlon recently participated in an episode of the PBS series “Finding Your Roots,” which unearthed some intense stories based on her genealogy. And like so much else in her life, that experience has been incorporated (albeit slightly fictionalized) into the newest season of her show “Better Things” on FX, recreated right down to the “please turn the page” invocation that has become almost a catchphrase for “Finding Your Roots.”
How did that decision come about? “Early in the pandemic, (the producers of “Finding Your Roots”) contacted me and said that they hit a wall and it wasn’t going to go any further, and I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? Even my roots, even my DNA is being rejected right now?’ I felt so sad. But then they had a crack in the case! This wasn’t even a year ago, but it was right around when I was starting the writers room and I was like, I have to do this. This has to go in.”
Adlon is the creator of “Better Things,” which wraps after this season, and it has been a high point in a career that also includes voicing Bobby Hill on “King of the Hill,” as well as numerous other roles, including the brash, filthy-mouthed Marcy Runkle on “Californication.”
As an actor, she’s aces when it comes to portraying cringey moments. In real life, she’s had her fair share, as well. “Which time being fired should I talk about?” she joked. But it was another story entirely that she decided to share.
My worst moment …
“So there was the time I was doing a TV show in Canada, this is probably the late '80s. No, it was later than that. It was called ‘The Heights’ (IMDb lists her episode from 1992) and I was playing a girl in this show and it made me super uncomfortable because I was really playing a girl. It just felt like I was crossing over in my career from just playing tough, boy, masculine roles to suddenly playing this girl who was a waitress in a bar. I had a scene where I hook up with a guy and I have to say ‘Do you have a condom?’ I was embarrassed and I felt so sorry for the guy. Like, this is the girl he gets.
“The people my character was dealing with, and the guy she hooks up with, they come into the bar, that’s the scene. And I remember the director was a man, and I’m holding the tray with the drinks on it with one arm, if you can picture it. And he points at my armpit and he goes, ‘What the (expletive) is that?’ It was obviously sweat. And my stomach dropped. So I said, ‘I spilled water.’ But it was a pit stain on my shirt and I thought I was going to die.
“I was a guest star, it was just a one-off. And when you’re a guest on somebody’s set, it’s very nerve-wracking. So I was probably having shpilkes and flop-sweating like Albert Brooks in ‘Broadcast News.’
“It’s so funny because now I’ve lived so much life and I’ve worked with actors who sweat and it’s not a big deal. But when you’re 21, or however old I was, you’re just mortified. It was the worst thing that could happen. And every time I would go to a fitting after that for whatever job, I would say, ‘Don’t put me in silk.’
“But I was also really shy about kissing the guy I had to kiss. I hadn’t really done anything like that before. So the whole thing was embarrassing. And then when the director pointed at my armpit (laughs) and went ‘What the (expletive) is that?’ of course I was all in my head about it. Hearing something like that is not conducive, but you just go on and do the scene. I think they used a blow dryer on my shirt. And you just move on.”
Why does this moment in particular stand out?
“I think it formed me a lot because it made me think: Oh, this isn’t going to kill me. This — the humiliation — didn’t destroy me. And I had to keep working. I think I pushed it out of my mind until, time travel, I’m a woman in my 40s and 50s and remembering it when people are talking to me about being a young actor in the business and weird stuff that happened at work. That’s when these stories come back to you.
“Like, I remember going to an audition and there were two scenes on offer, and they said, ‘You choose which scene you want to read.’ One of them was a regular scene in a cafe and the other was a sex scene and the woman is supposed to be having an orgasm. So I go in and it’s just me and this man. And he said, ‘OK, we’re going to do the sex scene.’ And I said, ‘I have the other one prepared.’ But he wanted me to do the sex scene and make those noises in front of him. Somehow, there was some strength in me that I said, ‘I don’t feel comfortable doing that scene.’
“These are the moments that taught me, especially now as a director. I think that things have changed a lot, thank God, but still, I’m a woman and I’m running my show and I come up against all kinds of sexist, weird (stuff) all the time. Still.
“So I’m very sensitive to my actors and my crew. Like, being shouted direction across the room and across the heads of other crew and the cast — which is the most messed up thing you can do — I don’t do that. I’m not going to say anything, let’s see where they go first. And then I’ll say, ‘I have something for you,’ and I’ll just take them aside. And that’s private. That’s an extremely sacred moment between an actor and a director and it’s important for an actor feeling safe.
“I did a play years ago where I tried to tell an actor to move it along, and he got so mad at me he picked up a chair and threw it at me and said, ‘No one tells me how to act!’ And I was like, I will never tell an actor anything again. And then, boom, I’m a director and I’m like, oh (shoot), now I have to do that.”
The takeaway …
“Just own it if somebody says something like, ‘Oh, look at that,’ ya know? It’s not a reflection on you. Was the director being insensitive or just trying to get through the day? You have no idea. So for me, it’s about not letting a moment kill you.
“I wrote this on my board one day at my writers room: ‘Why do I let my feet get taken out from under me?’ That’s one of the things that I’ve always fought my whole life. Don’t let things knock you off your feet. I know, as the showrunner, I can keep going. But when I was young, things like that used to mess me up.”
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