Elizabeth Perkins Reflects on ’80s Fame, Her Bond With Elizabeth Taylor and New Projects (EXCLUSIVE)
Plus, the star shares why all she wants to do is play the characters that people love to hate
Throughout her four-decade career, Elizabeth Perkins has been a scene stealer in everything from ’80s classics like About Last Night and Big to ’90s blockbusters like The Flintstones to ’00s TV favorites like Weeds. The veteran actress, who’s just as great at playing devious schemers as she is the girl next door, was most recently in the cast of shows like The Afterparty and Minx, and she’ll next be seen playing Blake Lively’s mom in the much-anticipated sequel to the 2018 thriller A Simple Favor, Another Simple Favor, streaming on Amazon Prime Video on May 1.
Ahead of Another Simple Favor’s premiere, Perkins sat down with Woman’s World to discuss the joy of shooting her new film, her early days as an ’80s starlet, the delightful bond she shared with Elizabeth Taylor and much more.
Woman’s World: What was it like to come into ‘Another Simple Favor’ when you weren’t in the original film?
Elizabeth Perkins: In the original, Blake’s mom was played by Jean Smart, and you can’t replace her. She’s the queen of the universe, and the only reason she wasn’t doing it was because she was shooting Hacks. I didn’t feel alone coming into the sequel, because Allison Janney and I are sort of a two-hander in this one. We’ve known each other for a long time, and we’re good friends. She actually had a small part in the Miracle on 34th Street remake I was in in 1994, but we weren’t onscreen together.
When I got the call for Another Simple Favor, it was like, “Do you want to come to Rome and shoot a movie with all these amazing people?” I’ve known Paul Feig for 30 years, and when somebody calls you and asks you that, of course you say yes. It was a no-brainer. We all hung out and went to restaurants, and Paul is a great lover of fashion and food and wine, and he’s the nicest man you could ever work for. He believes in shooting eight-hour days and then we all go home. It was like one big happy family, and it was one of the best experiences of my life.
There were such great clothes. It’s really elevated, because we’re in Capri. It’s all silk and bright colors and blue skies, and we had an amazing costume designer, Renee Kalfus, who’s so smart and really gets it. I think I gained six pounds on the movie. We were eating a lot of amazing food. My part isn’t very large, so I was working maybe three days a week, and then would have six days off and hop on a train to go to Florence—I mean, come on! I feel really blessed. There were no divas or people being singled out, and everybody got paid the same and had the same accommodations. I just adored everyone.
WW: You started your career in beloved ’80s movies like ‘About Last Night,’ with Demi Moore and Rob Lowe, and ‘Big,’ with Tom Hanks. Do you have nostalgia for that era?
EP: There’s a deep sentimentality, not just for the group of actors and the filmmakers that we were working with, but for that time when we were still shooting on film. What I miss about that was, because we were shooting on film and it was so expensive, there was a preciousness about every take that you did. If you screwed it up, you were costing people a lot of money. Every department brought their A-game.
I’ve noticed that since we’ve gotten into digital, and even when we started shooting on video, we lost some of that preciousness and importance where everybody showed up 100%. To me, things got a little lackadaisical once you could keep shooting and shooting and shooting. It can feel like throwing things against the wall instead of the filmmaker having a real vision, and everybody being aware of that vision and committing to it. There’s a nostalgia for the way we made films, and I know a lot of people from my generation miss the same things.
When I was in my 20s, we were looking back at the ’70s thinking we missed the Golden Age, because that era had so many great independent films, but now I’m looking back at the ’80s going, “I don’t know, man, we actually did some pretty good films then!” A lot of the comedies still really hold up today, and Big is a classic. I’m very proud of that movie, and so is Tom. It was also great to see Demi have such a moment recently. It’s been incredible, and she’s so kind and filled with love, so watching her enjoy her moment was really heartwarming for me.
WW: In the ’90s, you starred as Wilma in ‘The Flintstones,’ and Elizabeth Taylor played your mom, in her final theatrical film appearance. What was it like working with such an iconic star?
EP: It was huge. I think a lot of people forget that she was in that movie. It was like rolling out the red carpet for the queen. Literally, there was a violet carpet leading to her trailer, and when I got to work she sent me a bouquet of violet roses with a note saying, “It’s an honor to work with you. Love, your mother, Elizabeth.” I still have that note.
I remember she grabbed me by the arm and said, “We’re having lunch together at the commissary today,” and every day we would sit there, and she would tell me stories about all of her husbands, her movies and her work with AIDS research and funding, and I was completely slack-jawed—I wasn’t even asking, she was just volunteering all this historic detail. People would walk by with their trays and look at her like, “Oh my God.” I got to know her and it was a really important time in my life, being able to spend that creative time with her. She was absolutely lovely, and she also had the wickedest sense of humor and a real potty mouth, which I loved.
She was so interested in the movie’s production design, and at the time, she was very close with Michael Jackson, and she said, “Do you think I should invite Michael to come to the set? I think he would really like to see all of this.” I said yes, and the next day, Michael came. There was this moment where I thought, “Okay, I’m walking around a Universal soundstage, I’m Wilma Flintstone, and I’m giving a tour to Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor.” As a young girl from nowheresville, Massachusetts, it was otherworldly. It was a moment, and I couldn’t have asked for a better experience than being Wilma Flintstone.
WW: One of your most popular roles was in ‘Weeds,’ as a character fans loved to hate. What draws you to that type of part?
EP: All I want to do is play the characters that people love to hate! It’s so much more fun than being the lead, because you can get away with stuff that the leading lady might not be able to. I think at the time I had just been playing nice girls and moms and characters who ask the lead guy, “Well, how do you feel?” It landed in my lap, and I was very surprised, because it wasn’t the kind of role that I thought somebody would consider me for. I credit Brian Dannelly, who was the director of the pilot, and Jenji Kohan, the creator, for seeing me in that role.
My character went from being a bad woman to an atrocious woman, and I was filled with glee to be able to play her. It got a little weird around season four and five, where I felt like they didn’t know what they were doing with her anymore, and they kind of admitted it, and I wasn’t on the show after season five. I think it was the perfect time to leave. Personally, I wish they had killed me off in a really dramatic way. I had such a great time working with Mary-Louise Parker. She’s one of our best actresses, and she never failed to inspire and put me in a place of awe. She would make choices that I never saw coming.
WW: You’ve been open about being diagnosed with a form of type 1 diabetes in your 40s. What advice do you have for other women who might be navigating similar health issues?
EP: Type 1 diabetes is really misunderstood. If you say you have diabetes, automatically people are like, “You can cure that with diet and exercise,” but type 1 is an autoimmune disease, and once you acquire it, you have it until you die. It took them three-and-a-half years to diagnose me with what should have just been a simple blood test.
I went through a lot of doctors, and it showed me that the struggle for women to be taken seriously in Western medicine is real. I had two separate doctors who wanted to put me on antidepressants, and I was continually being told that there was nothing wrong with me and that maybe it was all in my head. There’s been such a rise in autoimmune disorders among women, and to know that a lot of the time we’re not taken seriously is very frustrating.
I went to my OB-GYN, and he said, “Okay, I’ll run some blood work,” and he came back and said I had to go straight to the hospital. I was close to dying when they diagnosed me, and I was even questioning myself, like, “Am I having a nervous breakdown?” But no, I was sick, so that was a huge lesson. I’d had a lot of blood work, but nobody ever bothered to check my glucose levels, so it really taught me that you have to be your own advocate. I live with diabetes every day. It’s a struggle. There’s a lot of maintenance, but I do have a strong type 1 community, and I’m grateful for that.
WW: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
EP: I had an amazing acting teacher, Dr. Bella Itkin, and she gave me advice about going into the business and told me, “I want you to remember something: Nobody cares.” What she meant by that was nobody’s walking around going, “What’s Elizabeth doing with her career today?”
Everybody is on their own journey, so you should do what you want, because nobody’s watching you, nobody’s judging you, nobody’s thinking about you. No one’s going like, “Hey, why did she make that really bad movie?” or “Why did she make those life decisions?” Nobody cares, and that always stays with me and gives me a sense of freedom to do what is intrinsic and personal without feeling the pressures of society or judgment as a woman. It gave me a feeling of freedom knowing that.
When she first said it to me, I was like, “What does that mean?” but it’s really held me through a lot of times. If you’re walking down the street and you’re looking around, everybody’s just doing their own thing, and nobody really cares about what you’re doing, so you might as well just do what you want. That’s something that’s always stuck with me.
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