Actress, writer, director, and all-around frolicsome gal pal Amanda Bearse, 53, is back in the spotlight following her efficacious tenure both in front of and behind the camera on longstanding television shows All My Children, Married … with Children, Reba, The Big Gay Sketch Show, and other popular societal staples.
We recently chatted with the Atlanta-native about her passion for World AIDS Day 2011, her fifth-banana character on the show that put her on the map, revolving storylines surrounding Susan Lucci, and taking the leap into the darkness to find the light when you least expect it.
Windy City Times: Many of your fans recall your success on Married … with Children. Tell us a little bit about that experience.
Amanda Bearse: That was a great job. It really, really was … and it afforded me a second career behind the camera. I had done daytime television and started my career professionally on a soap [ All My Children ] . My character's name was Amanda Cousins. My background was actually in theater—I studied with Sandy Meisner in New York. Then I moved out to L.A., which was either a smart move because more of the business is there, or it was a stupid move because I left a paying job on All My Children. I took a chance and it did work itself out and, after a couple of films, I ended up on Married … with Children.
At the time we were all like, "What's Fox?" I mean, this was 25 years ago December when we made the pilot for Married … with Children. So, you can kind of rewind the industry. The television industry has changed so rapidly in the last two-and-a-half decades. It's a whole different deal. There were basically three channels and CNN, Turner Broadcasting and MTV were just breaking out so they said there would never be a fourth network. So when this pilot script for this show Married … with Children came my way through my agent, which is the usual course, we were like, "What's Fox? What's that?" Actually, at the time they called it "FBC" because there was "ABC", "CBS", "NBC" and "FBC".
WCT: You took a leap and accepted it!
AB: I read it [ the script ] and kind of had my mouth open the whole time because there were characters speaking more in the way people really talked to one another or had attitudes about each other that was more than what was currently being reflected on Primetime. This was the time of The Cosby Show and Family Ties. The creators of Married … with Children called it the anti-Cosby and it really was just that! Nowadays, that show would be pretty benign. It's still on the air, which is unfathomable to me. We had no idea it was going to be this little renegade show that could.
WCT: It was probably a Godsend being that work in the industry for an actor is very few and far between.
AB: As you do with every series, you take things one or two years at a time. Nobody really thought that it would have the run that it did, but it was a 10-year run. It's what I am most known for as an actor and it really launched my career as a director because I directed starting in the fifth season of the show. By the end of the run I was directing a good many episodes of each season. I was very fortunate.
WCT: Going back for a moment to All My Children …
AB: It just went off the air!
WCT: Yes, it just went off the air! Were you a viewer?
AB: Not really, I mean, I'd tune in every now and then. Some of the people that I'd worked with … well, obviously, Susan Lucci is still on the show, but our storylines didn't really interconnect … I'd tune in to see some of their work. When I first auditioned for that show, I was going for the part of Liza Colby, which was a big character on the show for years and years. That storyline with Tad Martin was one that held on. I left All My Children to try to have this career, where, really … you could stay with one show if you want to and live and die on one show. It was such a great first job.
WCT: Tell us about your theater background.
AB: I grew up doing theater. I studied in New York primarily under a theatrical kind of setting. My career as a young person was primarily directed towards the stage. Broadway was a penultimate for any actor in New York. I was not a triple threat, though, I was primarily an actor. The difference between acting for the stage and acting for the screen is that the camera is much more intimate so you don't have to be as animated or project as much outwardly. You can have real subtlety in a performance. As far as I'm concerned, it's not the technique that changes with the medium—it stays the same—it's whether or not you "dial it up". For me, it's harder to actually "dial it down" because I am a very animated person.
WCT: In addition to the small screen and the stage, you wore the director hat on episodes of popular television shows, such as: Reba, Dharma & Greg, Veronica's Closet, Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place, Jesse, and others.
AB: It's kind of a full-circle experience for me. I started my experience behind the scenes in school performances—I loved the tech! Maybe it's because I am just that kind of a dyke. I loved being stage manager and working behind the scenes. I really wasn't focused on acting, but my director in high school at the time really wanted to put me in this particular show so I agreed to do it and then got bitten by the acting bug. It was really fun and I was having a really good time. That was how I got swept up in acting and here I came full circle through my experience [ directing ] on Married … with Children.
Now [ my character ] Marcie's role in that show was only going to be kind of what it was—fifth banana. I'd come into the scene, get humiliated, start a storyline off, and she was not really the anchor of the show, but I knew I was going to go down with the ship because I had such a good time playing that part. So given that, I had the thought of, "Where else can I expand my career?" and that's when I decided to study so that when they [ the producers ] deemed me ready to have my first episode [ directing ] that I'd negotiated for—I'd be prepared for it. Directing has been a really comfortable place for me to be.
I like the anonymity behind the camera and it's been 20 years now. I've directed hundreds of different episodes of sitcoms. Then I decided to move into sketch comedy and directed in and around six years of Mad TV. That was a great place to hang out.
WCT: Can you tell us about your time there on Logo?
AB: It was really around the time of the transition into reality television. I'm a scripted director so I didn't really want to go over into that world. So the work got less and less. I was very fortunate that Logo decided to become a network and I really wanted to find a way to be a part of that because it was historic. I heard that Rosie [ O'Donnell ] was putting together a sketch comedy show called The Big Gay Sketch Show so I came in as part of that team. I was a good fit for the show and the show was a good fit for me and that network. We shot three seasons of The Big Gay Sketch Show and I was very proud of it.
The unfortunate thing was that Logo was just starting up and not really navigating our show very well and, even though I wasn't totally surprised that we didn't go beyond the three seasons, I was disappointed. I felt that we were reflecting our community. Our goal on the show was to have at least one sketch or one character of our lesbian community, because it's so vast. We're all different kinds of people—in all different races and religions. I thought we were really making great strides and making people laugh. Now, as with any comedy, it's subjective. You may not laugh at every sketch, but if we could find some way in our show to make you laugh then we felt like we were succeeding.
I was very proud of that show and very disappointed in Logo. Logo is not my network. I haven't found anything on Logo that I want to watch and I feel that I am not reflected as a lesbian woman on that channel. It's just not there. Everything is all about RuPaul's Drag Race and The A List. I'll put down my bitter and jaded pill right now.
WCT: World AIDS Day is fast approaching. How has HIV/AIDS affected you personally?
AB: I was in New York in 1981 when the "gay men's cancer" [ HIV/AIDS as it was first known ] came into our existence. Throughout the past 30 years, I have been witness to the loss of close, personal friends and acquaintances. It propelled me to advocate for HIV/AIDS awareness. I am on the board of the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Cleve [ Jones ] founded "The Quilt"—as we always called it. It's been quite a journey—and not always a happy one. I became more involved a couple of years ago because it's important for us to never forget. The celebratory aspect of World AIDS Day is that we have so many people today who are alive and living longer and more productive lives. At the same time, we have to look towards the future and remember how fragile we can be to this disease. We have not found a way to prevent it or to cure it.
There was such courage and conviction that the gay community lived through and it became, in the early years of this epidemic, a unity. Before this disease, gay men and lesbian women did not have as much common ground and you'd think there would've been given the fact that they were all homosexual, but there was this coming together that happened as HIV/AIDS occurred. We united under this duress. Women are normally the caretakers so we naturally stepped into that role as our gay brothers were becoming ill and dying. We nurtured, nursed and cared for our friends. One of the first things I did when I moved to LA in 1984 was become a volunteer with Project Angel Food.
Having lived through the last 30 years of HIV/AIDS, it was a remarkable thing to witness and be a part of in my small way.
More than 56,000 people in the United States become infected with HIV each year. Currently, there are more than 1.1 million Americans living with HIV. Moreover, almost half of all Americans know someone living with HIV.
Amanda Bearse will be honoring World AIDS Day 2011 in Seattle this year in an effort to bring awareness to how far we have come and how long we still have to go in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
