My brother-in-law's mother is actress Frances Sternhagen and for years it's been fun to watch the recognition from friends when they don't quite know the name but suddenly light up when they remember one of her indelible TV roles. She played Cliff's mom on Cheers, Kyle MacLachlan's possessive mother Bunny MacDougal on Sex & the City and is now mother to Kyra Sedgwick on The Closer. The two-time Tony winner and stage veteran ( this year marks 55 years on the stage ) is also an accomplished screen actress. Her debut in 1967's Up the Down Staircase, just out on DVD, as the frustrated school librarian is brief but memorable. She's had great roles in the little-seen but fascinating Fedora, Outland, Starting Over, Misery, Raising Cain, and The Laramie Project, among others. Now Sternhagen ( who is called 'Frannie' by family and friends ) has a large supporting part in The Mist, the long-waited adaptation of the Stephen King horror novella. We recently chatted about that, her part on Sex & the City and the filming of The Laramie Project, the play and HBO movie that examined the emotional impact of the murder of gay hero Matthew Shepard on the townspeople where he was killed.
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Pictured: Frances Sternhagen with writer Richard Knight, Jr. ( left ) and his partner Jim Bailey.
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Highlights from our conversation:
WINDY CITY TIMES: The Laramie Project was obviously something that was very, very special. Can you talk about your involvement with it?
FRANCES STERNHAGEN: Yes, Moisés Kaufman was so attentive and careful about how to portray people's prejudice without making them look ridiculous or point it up. What he wanted to do and what I think he succeeded in doing was showing how these really ordinary and loving people—people who had no idea that they had any prejudice—were unaware as to how this could happen.
WCT: I sense that it must have been an emotionally draining project all around.
FS: Yes. I met through one of these students the woman who I played because she'd warmed up to these students. She was the mother of the sheriff of the woman ( played by Amy Madigan ) who had to be in quarantine because she had handled without gloves the boy who had HIV. They discovered this after they had taken him down from where he'd been tied up in that hill. One of the young actors who had originally gone there with Moisés introduced me to the mother and we all had dinner together. It was really quite touching.
WCT: Having worked and lived in an urban/liberal environment for so many years, wasn't that just mind-blowing that those attitudes existed?
FS: Well, yes, but I think it would have been a lot more mind-blowing if they all had not been prepared by these students a couple of years before—whenever the play came out. Coming from New York your first tendency is to play the stereotype. When the actor playing the student who first comes to interview me Moisés had to bring me there—having much more of a kind of prejudice against the boy and against being asked any questions. My tendency was to be more sympathetic and Moisés wanted to show that in the beginning these people were not that welcoming.
WCT: As they would not be.
FS: Exactly and it took a long time for this woman that I was playing to warm up to the point toward the end of the movie where she was telling the boy about what had happened to her daughter.
WCT: Did you feel that the people there had also made that emotional journey?
FS: Yes. Definitely.
WCT: That's good to know that some tolerance got through. Boy, that's a really powerful piece. Hard to watch.
FS: I know; I'm getting choked up just thinking about it.
WCT: Okay, so we're going to move to something a bit lighter.
FS: ( brightens ) Okay, I'm ready.
WCT: Sex in the City—you've done so many series—Cheers, ER, now you're on The Closer, but you've said that you've never had as much recognition as you have for playing Bunny MacDougal.
FS: It was such a breakthrough or an eye opener for me about how the right character at the right time can really have such an impact. I'm very curious as to how the movie is going to go. Of course, I'm not in the movie but the four girls are. With all the DVDs out I almost have a feeling of, 'Isn't that enough?' ( laughs ) .
WCT: Well, maybe they'll put Bunny in a sequel if it gets that far. Okay, now let's talk about Stephen King's The Mist.
FS: I'm curious to see it because when I read it I thought, 'Well, this is nothing I'm going to pay to see.' It's so full of horror and spooky things and not anything I'd go to see! ( laughs ) It's so funny, my neighbors who are in their 80s are so excited and keep saying to me, 'Oh, Frannie, when is it coming out!?' and I keep saying, 'You're not going to want to see it.' ( laughs ) They're going to spend the entire time with their eyes closed. It's amazing what they can do and did do with the green screen and these hideous creatures that they made up on the second floor of the studio in Shreveport where we shot.
WCT: I'm a little nervous for that reason.
FS: Me too. I don't see scary movies. I do not see them but here I am in one. When I got there, unfortunately, the two things that I was supposed to do with that darling little boy, Nathan Gamble who was in Babel got taken away. For the first one the centipede was too big. They couldn't make it work and the other rescue I was supposed to do also got taken away. They had Thomas Jane not get attacked by this particular bug that I was supposed to get off him. So, the only thing I really do is a spider in the pharmacy. We go over there to get some medication for the people who have been attacked in the super market. I felt bad because there was nothing leading up to my killing the spider and also when Nathan said, 'You're my favorite because you rescue me.' I actually no longer did so how could I still be his favorite? ( laughs )
WCT: What's next for you?
FS: Well, there are two back-to-back episodes of The Closer on Dec. 3 which is fun and this is a good double episode about Christmas. It's funny but it's also at times very touching and then in February I'm going to India for two weeks and then, we'll see.
