. good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. tonight a conversation with jane kaczmarek. she made millions laugh as lois in malcom in the middle but she has a serious side when it comes to politic. she joins us to tell us how she is handling trump's first 100 days and talk about the dramatic role in o'neill's pulitzer prize winning master piece. we will be joined with jane kaczmarek in just a moment. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ contributions to your pbs stations from viewers like you. thank you. jane kaczmarek best known for his portrayal of lois on malcom in the middle. she is now reviving a dramatic role she first performed at yale school of drama. mary tyrone in the classic long days journey into night. here now a sampling of her latest turn for l.a.'s play house. >> oh, there's nothing wrong with your hair, mary. oh the fatter and healthier you

get, the veiner you become. pretty soon you will spend half the day primping into front of the maror. >> i really need glasses, james. my eyes have gotten so bad. >> oh, there is nothing wrong with your eyes. they are still beautiful. >> oh right in front of jamie. >> jamie knows all the talk of hair and eyes. just fishing for compliments. right, jamie? >> yes, momma. >> oh, go along with both of you. but i truly had beautiful hair at one point. >> yes. >> a reddish brown that hung so low, below my knees. you ought to remember it too jamie. it wasn't until after edwin was born that i had a single gray hair, then white. >> that made it prettier than ever. >> what do you make of that? >> well i remember this is before we opened and i caught myself say a couple lines incorrectly. >> ahhh -- you weren't supposed

to tell. none of us would have known. >> now they have been corrected. i think that's the good thing about classically trained as an actress you still keep working on it even though the play is open. >> i like you already because you are transparent honest open -- from the midwest tavis. >> me too, indian. >> milwaukee. >> madison. i have to give a shot out to badger pals, tracy and marcy and david and tom. and friends of yours. >> busy you were during this campaign and we have family members that don't see this the way we see it. >> i refer to my family milwaukee as my favorite basket of deplorables. and you know, i think the gluovs have come off and the thought of not hurting someone else's feelings, i find this president has so hurt the feelings of every human being in this

country and the civil rights that he is trampling on. so i'm not too worried about hurting the feelings of him or the people who support him. and i know we're not supposed to do that. and in school you tell children you have to find common ground. sorry, no common ground. >> how do you reconcile yourself to where we are. not in terms of accepting it or going along with it but in terms of how you process this day-to-day? i saw the other day, a joke something like i'm just waiting for some day when i wake up and it scares the heck out of me. i'm trying to clean it up for pbs. but how are you navigating everyday? >> well, "saturday night live" has been a great elixir. that's a real rallying cry for us to say this something we never thought we would see in our lifetime. i have two daughters who i'm

very proud of. francis north carolina school of art a ballerina dancer. she went to hillary and she has been in protests. my mary louisa, 14 in pasadena, liberal k liberal-minded human rights blessed women in pasadena. and they have been very, very active about it p and you just realize, i turned 60. i'm 61 now. but i thought rest of my days after president obama was going to be, you know, we are now living in that country -- >> we turned the corner. >> yeah, yeah, yeah. and i never thought my next 20, 30 years would be hopefully, not hopefully, we will, get back to where we are supposed to be as hum human beings and moral character in this world. >> to your point about your daughter being in the arts program i had so many conversations over the course of the last couple months, since

you've been in office with these in your program, let me take it there now, which is how then do you see perhaps differently than before, i don't know, your role as an artist, citizen artist at this moment. does that make sense? >> yes. and it is scary thought because i think we get, we are often as artists thought of as being the receivers. if you got the job. if they ask you to be on a show. that you are the person who hopefully gets the call. and hamilton, as well as miranda has done to shake us up, wake us up, you know, i always say from the pitch that he was going to write a rap musical about founding fathers opini. there wasn't going to be a

single star. and look what that guy did. and children everywhere, my kids have the sound track. have it memorized back and forth. plus what they learned about history from it. that i think of what miranda did to all of us to say, to stand up. stand up, speak out. you do have a right to say this is what i want to show you as an actor on stage. this is what i would like you to think about and listen to. i can't tell you how moving it is to do this play and have people write me e-mail and say a this is what i want to say when i go to a play. i want to think about my life and the people i love. i want to think about what i'm doing with my life and i think as an actress, story telling is what i always love. i remember seeing our town with judith light as emily. at milwaukee rep. and our town is all about what is really important, you know.

momma's butternut tree. smell of coffee. clocks ticking. right after she died. those small beautiful, the sacred ordinary they call it. that's is what is really really important if life. and i think as artists if we can shake people up to even wake them up to realize that that sacred ordinary is la they need to applaud, appreciate and get everyone on board with, we are doing our job. >> you mentioned miranda, who has done a remarkable job and written himself into the history books of broadway play success and beyond. i wait to see what more he has in store for us. >> immigrants who got the job done. >> that's right. >> he made his contribution and will do a great deal more. and in this moment i'm happy to see august wilson getting respect he deserves thanks to veil and viola and wonderful run on broadway and in the theater

fences. every time i see denzel, he says, eugene o'neill, he works his way up to august wilson. but he always starts with eugene o'neill. why and what do you make of the brilliance of eugene o'neill? >> his language was so beautiful. and you know, there is something about long day's journey that you find in august wilson and grate playwrights. >> tennessee williams. >> the language is so beautiful. i have a quote about don't live in a linguistic slum. there aresome brilliant ways of describing a situation or what you are talking about that now everything comes down to, you know, the same -- we know what it is going to be. you listen to the language of and celebration of life that those playwrights had. the story telling technique is

just amazing. it is why memorizing it, is t is a long play, but it was much easier to memorize than a lot of modern plays. because the story continues. you know if you start here talking about when you were in the convent hoping to be a nun when you were young and many of my friends laugh in the audience. i don't know why they are surprised. but you are really telling a story. you know, when i was at yale, boy richard was the dean, i was in his first class there. and apple foodguard came and did master harold and great play answers august wilson came and was there forever. i remember seeing courtney vance on broadway playing the con, which when see him in oj and everything he has done and

angela bassett and we were all in school together and it is magnificent to see this and the beauty of that life and those words. and in a movie like "fences." because the broadway production was pretty amazing with james earl jones. >> so speaking of yale, you did this play when you were at yale in your 20s. >> 26. >> 26. >> and this year, that year when you know everything. >> yeah, yeah, yeah. >> i wanted to ask you, i take nothing aby from your journey. what did you know about loss at 26? and here you are now freezing. you know, for this character. >> you know, actresses tend to be dwramatic. [ laughter ] >> befo&e iñiñi hadñrç

had such -- oh, they were what you wanted to do. >> yes. >> then have you kids. understand what that pain is really about. and a big difference between the imagination of thinking what that might be like and i can bring that to the stage as to being this age and having experienced certainly not a lot of pain and also compared to a lot of people in this country but in my own way, my merit, my husband was everything to me. and for anyone who has been through a divorce, it is such a loss of children, everything you've had. and it is very easy in this play it tap into that. the great actor grew up when he was young, used a sense memory. if you have to think about someone dying, think of your dog dying or grandpa and substitute it. when he was older, he wrote, you

just have to use given circumstances. once you are a certain age you just have to say the line about having loved and it's over and you're right there. you just know right where that is. >> i want to ask a question at the risk of you slapping me, so i will lean back when i ask. >> this isn't lois any more. >> i know, but actresses to be dramatic. let's not get slapped. let me ask you, so, i don't know how this will go over and i will do it anyway. i think he is a wonderful actor, been a guest on this program a couple of time over the years. so when you talk about divorce and what pops in my head, i wondered, based on what i have read, to what extent if at all you blame art. your craft. ? in part. if you don't want it answer, i will move on. but how as an artist you have to assess blame on the thing that

both of you chose as your career. >> yes, it does. >> aim out of bounds? >> no, no. but there is a big difference between art and show business. bradley and i were both from wisconsin. we met in new york. he was doing a shakespeare at lincoln center with my great friend, kate. and you know, we met and add very, very happy many, many years. he had gone to juliart. i went to yale. we add very similar idea of what we wanted to do with our craft and lives. and there is no internet. you would get together in the evening and talk and read and have a cocktail. it was a very different time. i had a hard time trying to have

a baby. then francis was born. nbc called and the next day malcom picked up. the next day, the doctor called, i was pregnant again. i said to bradley, wow, i wonder if our lives will change. >> that's too funny. >> i was pregnant the first season of malcom. the great thing about it is both sets were so celebrated that we wept to all of the award shows together. our careers were so similar in the acclaim we were getting from the show. >> couldn't avoid the two of you. if we wanted to. we love you both. >> but i, bradley worthked more than i do. that show is incredible. i would insist i was home at a certain time because i have children to feed and nurse and et cetera. and you know, i was doing a show

with bryan cranston, it was wonderful. but the rest were kids. i didn't want to hang around. no offense to anyone. woech on the west wing, with really fascinating people, and it was a different experience. but it was so time consuming. and you know, bradley worked during hiatus. i wanted to go to connecticut our home and do nothing. and i think we add vehad a very different idea of how to ultimately spend the day. and i have really enjoyed being home. and raising my kids and being involved in my community. i'm on the board of the educational foundation on the schools in pasadena. my community is very, very important to me and my children are, not that they are not to brad and he is a wonderful father but he likes to take exciting work and kbo awgo awayo

do it. i like to stay home. >> let me circle back.go away t it. i like to stay home. >> let me circle back. what do you not in retrospect make of the three phone calls changing your life forever. >> you know, what is the -- be careful what you wish for. wow. financially it was incredible. when i talk about staying home and choosing work i want to do, i'm able to do that because i'm polish and i -- [ laughter ] >> cook food, polish sausage. >> clemmens' fresh polish. bring it back every time. >> and i also was so lucky with malcom that i got a lot of acclaim from it. and felt, oh well, now i did that. wow. people think this. what do i want to do now?

because i knew i didn't want to do a tv show again. it's too time consuming. life is too short. i'm that point in my life now where you really have to think and your days are numbered. what do you really want to do now? alfred malina -- >> your stage husband. >> stage husband. >> four times now. >> four p.m. we a. we are looking for our next show. i refer to us as the lunt fontanskis. which is great. this is one of the things when you realize you are older, a certain population who know who that is. like collin whittle and steven grush, who play the sons kind of like -- >> yeah. >> don't quite get it. >> so since you raised his name and i'm glad you did, there is the journey have you been on, junior that bradley whitford has

been on. and you mentioned bryan cranston. he was here not too, too long ago. i had the chance to say to him and i think he received it and appreciated it, i had the chance to say it him just how giddy i have about having interviewed him so many years ago. he has come back shown the. unlike some stars that get so big they won't come back any more. bryan came back on the show. it is so good to come through the catalog of shows with him. >> and hair styles. wow, what was i thinking? >> but just to watch how his career has just exploded. but you were with him every kay back in the day. so like what you make of seeing your frepd? >> you know, he was -- he has one child, taylor, a wonderful actress in her own right. who i admire to greatly because she took her mother's maden name as her stage name so people wouldn't automatically think she is bryan's daughter. which is terrific. she is a wonderful actress.

bryan, this is the best part to me about bryan, i went to college, then to yale. i got an agent when i was at yale. i came to l.a. got the first job first audition i ever had. i have had a really -- bryan has worked his [ bleep ] off. he was going to community college. to be a policeman. took an acting class. then went through, he sent pictures and resumes. putting them under agent's doors. having showcases. trying to get someone to pay attention. when people like that who have that talent and that perseverance, make it, the world is a good place. i couldn't admire him more. and he is, like i was interviewed for a new york magazine. new york was doing an interview on him -- about him. and the fellow said to me, i can't get anybody to say anything bad about this guy.

but what was -- i thought, i think everybody cannot wait to talk about what a great time they had with bryan. you know, one of the things that really, that the kid who played duey, little hamter kid with the ears, an only child, his mom and dad in boston, his mother stayed with him in the apartments. bryan had one daughter, taylor. bryan would take duey, say to the another, go home to your husband in boston. i'll take duey eric was his name. and give eric the opportunity to be at home with a dug and kid and play basketball and i think eric would enjoy a family situation here as opposed to the oak wood. i thought, i like those kids as much as any tv mom. i'm not going to take one home. bryan did that. bryan thought of that. he also knows the lyrics to

every song ever. when you're sitting around on the set for hours and hours, with bryan entertaining you -- >> you have to do something. >> i like that about him doing a musical. he has fabulous voice. he is -- he was in milwaukee doing his book tour. and my basket of deplorables went to see him. and he had them back stage. he filmed with my mom coming out of the men's room as a joke. she is 889. it was funny. just go in there. then you see evelyn kaczmarek walking out. you know, he referred to us as the gaverski girls. treated them -- >> like family. >> like family, yes. yes, he is a remarkable guy. >> you were talking about tv and a lot of stuff to memorize. this short play, it is a lot of material. >> yeah. >> to get through every night.

>> you know what, this cast is so well suited. one of the things we have tried do with long day's journey, which i have seen many productions of it and i've never seen this, is that fred and i, alfred, really wanted to play, that these two, were absolutely crazy about each other, and that she gave up the ecstasy of religion hoping to be a nun and good to the convert school for the ecstasy of the flesh when she married this guy. and it turned out to be a bargain she wasn't ready to take on because that led to children to the obviously, that is where babies come from if you didn't know that. as my mother refers to it, the marital embrace. very catholic. >> but it is this desire to get back what that love was when you were young and first met.

and when you start here, and see a family that really what is might have been wonderful and we see it disintegrate, it is a great journey to go on. you start this play with everyone miserable and hating each other. it is a long three hours. people say it goes by pretty quickly and not just because i talk fast. but it is an interesting way of telling the story that i've never seen. also mary tyler is from the midwest. she is often played by very athey'ral women, the fog. but james tyrone says in the fourth act when he was talking about her, she was full of mi mischief. she loved loving. your mother could never have given up the flesh to be a nun. and i thought, she is like me. not like the youathey'ral womeno portray her. so i tried to put in the

catholic girl, me, with a lot of midwestern energy who becomes a morphine addict in 1920. >> and there you have it. long diay's journey. >> through march 18th. it is of course a eugene o'neill classic. that is, i have enjoyed this immensely. you have to come back again. >> i will. let's do this. we can talk about theater in l.a. and virginia o'neill. >> good to have you. thanks for watching. and as always, keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley on pbs.org. >> join me next time for a conversation with violinist nicholas bennadetti. that's next time. see you then.

by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪

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