Austinist Interviews Rue McClanahan

Oh, how wonderful.

Well, you know, short stories aren’t really the vogue right now, so it’s kind of a hard sell, but I think if I get a lot of notoriety from this first book, I’ll have a much better chance at getting it published. So I’ll be working on the musical, trying to get it on the boards, and I’ll be working on the book, trying to get it published, and I’m doing at the end of the summer a TV show on a new cable subscription channel called Here TV – it’s a gay channel – and so they are doing a story about a young boy – a 15-year-old guy named Ryan – it’s called Ryan’s Life. I play his grandmother who is the only one in the family he can talk to because she’s a freewheeling kind of Auntie Mame, flamboyant character and she’s non-judgmental, which his family is not, and she’s the only one he can confide in. It’s a comedy and it’s a really marvelously written script. We’re going to do about six of those at the end of the summer. And that’s what I have planned…and I’m sure by then I won’t have the musical on the boards yet, and I might not have this new book accepted by somebody – so that’s going to be, I think, stretching into next year and then who knows how far beyond.

I don’t want to do anymore Broadway musicals. I don’t want to do any things with shallow content. If I get a really good play to do, with penetrating character analyses…. I’m not wed to Broadway – I love Off Broadway as well – and I would be very interested in a role of that caliber. But I’m sort of hoping that I have time to get these next three projects – the musical and the TV show and the book – realized, before I have to leave and go off to do another stage characterization. I love acting, but I don’t love it any more than I love writing.

About the role in Wicked: I confess I have not seen the musical – I’ve only read the book – but the character is not very nice to animals in the book….

She’s not very nice to anybody!

Was that a struggle for you?

No, she’s such a wicked, wicked wonderfully wicked person, and so aggressive and so devious, that I enjoyed playing her. She is really Madame Morrible which rhymes with horrible, and because I got to work with Ben Vereen as the Wizard it was a very good experience in that way, artistically, because Ben and I got together and said, ‘Okay, let’s figure out the back story, the underbelly of all this that isn’t in the musical, that isn’t in the book either.’ She’s the driving force that creates the Wizard of Oz, and he’s a sham and she’s a sham, but she needs somebody that she can make the public think is full of magic, and can influence them and get them to do what she wants because she wants to rule the world. So we created this. Not that any of it necessarily was obvious to the audience, but it was obvious to us, which informed our performances.

Can I ask you a few questions about The Golden Girls? One of the things I’ve always wondered is – well there’s two things. One is, did you and Betty White ever talk about the way Blanche Devereaux takes a page from Sue Anne Nivens?

No, we didn’t talk about it after the first few days because…Betty was supposed to play Blanche and I was supposed to play Rose….

Oh really? I didn’t know that.

Oh yeah, they had her all figured out to play Blanche when they called me, and I had to go in and read for Rose, and I didn’t have any connection with Rose. But I had a strong connection with Blanche and the director said, “Would you mind reading Blanche for me?” and I said, “Well no, not if you insist,” because that’s the role I really wanted to play. And after he heard me read it, the next thing I know he’s called Betty and me in on another day, and he asks us to read together but he asks her to read Rose, which surprised her to pieces, and she was wide-eyed because she thought she was pretty well set for Blanche, and so she read Rose cold, and read it very funny – pretty much the way she played it.

She was wonderful in that role, and you were so well suited for Blanche.

Yes, that’s the way it should have been, and God Almighty it turned out well.

The other thing I’ve wondered about you and Betty White is, were you both animal rights activists when you started to work together, or did one of you influence the other?

Betty White has never been an animal rights activist, and made that clear all the time. She does not do any kind of activism. She’s not into that. She is on the board of the LA Zoo and she sells dog food and she adopts seeing-eye dogs when they’re too old to work anymore – you know, one at a time – and she’s an animal lover. But she’s not an animal activist. No, I was always an activist long before I got into Golden Girls.

Another area of your activism that I wanted to mention…. I wanted to tell you how meaningful your work with breast cancer survivors has been. I just want to say that I'm so impressed and touched by the work you've done supporting breast cancer survivors. My mother is a 16-year survivor, and people like you who tell your stories are really angels. I think it’s really fabulous.

Thank you.

Kind of related to that, I saw you once here in Austin at Casa de Luz, which is kind of a macrobiotic oasis in the center of town. Do you still eat a macrobiotic diet?

No, I gave up macrobiotic eating, but I have maintained a vegetarian diet, and I work with a nutritionist, and I’m into that, but I’m not a macrobiotic person anymore.

Let’s talk about the book a bit to wrap things up. I’m curious… what is your biggest piece of advice to women to finding a good man? You’ve been married to your current husband for quite awhile, and I wonder how you think you can spot a real keeper.

I think there’s a spiritual aspect to this. I think if you get yourself done, you get yourself settled, you get yourself healthy, you get yourself through enough therapy to be sure you’re a complete person, then another complete person will come along into your life and be attracted to you. You can’t attract the right person when you’re incomplete. You’re going to attract people who are needy like you are. But once you’re no longer needy, you’re going to attract the right person. It might take years. I was eight years between my fifth divorce and my meeting Morrow. I wasn’t lonesome anymore. I didn’t feel like I had to have a man in my life. I was very happy…very happy. And feeling very complete. Of course I wanted to meet someone, but I used to think, ‘My God, who could possibly fit into my lifestyle?' I mean, what kind of a person would it take to put up with what I have to present? My celebrity, my busy-ness, my acting…. And I met someone who was as varied and as amazing and as absolutely complex and fascinating as you could ever hope for.

I read that your current husband is “much younger” than you?

He’s six years younger.

I was wondering if you had any comments about the so-called May/December relationship?

I don’t think that makes a difference, you know? I don’t think that’s important. My younger sister is about to get married to a man nine years younger than she, and they don’t care a flip about the difference.

Morrow doesn’t feel that he’s younger than I am, and I’ve gotten over it too since we’ve been together for so long. I’ve come to realize that six years really isn’t that big a difference. He’s the same age as my sister, and she and I have always been more or less the same age. We still have all the same references. He knows all of the wonderful composers of the 30’s. He’s into old movies, as I am. We have a lot of pursuits that are not in common, but we also have a lot of pursuits that are in common, and we make the same references. So I don’t feel that he doesn’t understand what I am about and what I remember.

You know, during the Second World War we were six years apart…that made a big difference. He wasn’t born ‘til 1940, and by then I was six years old. And so when the war was over, I was a teenager, but he was only nine years old. But then as you grow up, by the time he was 17, he left home and came to Columbia to go to college, and I didn’t dare come to New York ‘til I was 23, so it was about the same time that I came to New York. But we didn’t meet, and it wouldn’t have helped if we had met then, because we weren’t the same people that we grew to be by the time we did meet.

He looked so much younger than I when I met him, I thought, ‘Oh my God, he’s way too young for me…he’s just so adorable.” And then he started talking about the Second World War, and I thought, ‘Oh well he must be at least such-n-such an age if he was around during the Second World War….” And then I did find out how old he was and I thought, ‘Well. That’s not so bad.’ (Austinist laughs.) I was 63 and he was 57 and I thought, ‘That I can live with,’ although he looks 47.’

Well, do you have any questions for me about Austin?

No because I know Austin pretty well. I’ve been coming down there for a number of years. The fact is, I have to go on television tonight, and I’ve got to go and get dolled up.

Rue McClanahan
Book Signing at Book People
Friday, April 27 at 7pm

Live Appearance at Zach Scott Theatre
Sunday April 29 at 2pm
[tickets]

Book cover photo (c) Jean-Marc Vlaminck.
As Madame Morrible in Wicked (c) Joan Marcus, from Playbill.com.