Photo: Courtesy of Megan Mullally
Emmy-winning actress Megan Mullally will perform at Provincetown Town Hall on November 1 to benefit Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit dedicated to preventing gun violence. Mullally, best-known for her role as Karen Walker on Will & Grace, which earned her two Emmys, among numerous other accolades, will appear with host comedian Judy Gold, also an Emmy winner. Provincetown Magazine spoke with Mullally about the show, the intersections of acting and other kinds of performance, and the legacy of Karen Walker.
Provincetown Magazine: What can the audience expect from the show?
Megan Mullally: I had never even met Judy Gold until we did our last show, which was Labor Day, and we just immediately hit it off. I just think she’s so lovely, and we had such a great time. She’s a great interviewer. We had a lot of laughs. She’s so funny, and her questions were so thoughtful, and it was really fun, a lot of levity. So I think you can expect that.
PM: As a multifaceted performer, do you find a common thread of expression in the varied media you use, from acting to music to live performance? Do they all come from the same place, or different places?
MM: I don’t know. I’ve always been very spooky about all of that kind of stuff. I’m an only child, and I would go downstairs where my parents had their record player, and I would pick a record, and they had two records that were instrumental theme songs from movies, like from 1902. I, too, had a record player, and I would get a bee in my bonnet about one song or another, and I would have my favorite at the moment, and I would put it on and I would stand in front of the mirror, and I would make up these wild dances at the end of which my character invariably went mad and then died. And then I would have my mom come in to see it, and she would always, without fail, tell me that I was a genius.
So I would say that nothing much has really changed. I still feel like I’m, you know, coming up with something in the privacy of my bedroom, and then, rather than just showing it to my mom, I’m showing it to more people than my mom. And I think with acting, I get an idea, and it’s like, it’s my first instinct. It’s like, even when I’m just reading the script cold, I will feel like I know what the character is. And then, unfortunately, I can’t really vary from that particularly well; once I feel like I know what the character is, which is immediately, then I’m like, ‘Well, if somebody doesn’t like it, then I guess that’s too bad.’
And then live performance. I hate saying this, but it’s a little more fun to do live performances. Like, right now, I’m doing some shows with my band, Nancy and Beth, and we haven’t played in six-and-a-half years, and it’s just so fun. I just feel like I’m a different person than I was when I started working on the show, you know, two months ago.
PM: With your iconic portrayal of Karen Walker on Will & Grace, was it an objective of yours to present a different kind of feminine sexuality than had been seen on television up to that point, and how do you think about that character’s legacy?
MM: I feel like it was just kind of an instinctive thing. Again—I’m a very instinctive performer, and I’m not sorry in any way about that. I’m just kind of following my instincts. And I think that because the character was on paper so unlikable or kind of unpleasant, that I wanted her to have a childlike joy, just having the time of her life. And then I think her sexuality is coming from a similar place where, you know, she was always jumping up and down and clapping her hands, and she was very pleased with herself, and also just oblivious as to when she might have just shattered someone with one of her barbed comments.
Was I presenting a different kind of feminine sexuality? Yeah, I don’t want to use any naughty words, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the usual blonde, sexy, you know, kitten-ish stereotype. So I think that a lot of the original sexuality came from this sexual relationship between Jack and Karen, whether or not they actually ever got it on or not, it’s completely irrelevant, because they might as well have. Maybe they did.
The way that the character was written in the pilot, which I’ve said before, was not particularly interesting, in my opinion. I felt like, at that point, she was more the sassy sidekick that we’d seen in the past. And so I wanted to try to bring things into rehearsal and to the first few tapings that would puta different spin on things. And the writers were so great, and they really wrote everything that I brought in. I feel like her sexuality was a part of it, and I felt like it was also fun. It’s fun to have a childlike joy, and it’s also fun to, you know, embrace your sexuality and just be like, pretty much ready to jump the bones of anyone, depending on your mood.
PM: Do you have any interesting projects on the near horizon?
MM: My band, Nancy and Beth, is gonna do a little brief tour next year. And then I am doing an original musical that I’ve been doing workshops of for 11 years. Doing the band again and doing this musical were like the two things that I really, really wanted to do before my imminent demise.
The musical is called Ice Boy! And we have this amazing producer, Barbara Whitman, and she got us this great thing: The first time the musical will have a full production will be at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago next summer. It’s their 100th anniversary, and we’re going to be the musical, I guess, of the season.
It’s about Vera Vim, the greatest star of the 1930s Broadway, played by me. And explorers have discovered a boy frozen in a block of ice in the Antarctic, and they’ve brought him back to New York, where an auction is held, and my character buys him, thinking it’s a great party trick, and puts him in her living room. Of course, the ice melts, and he comes to life, and things happen. I’m really excited about it. I’m dying to do a really funny, weird musical. And I feel like there aren’t enough funny, weird musicals or funny, weird anything.
Megan Mullaly will perform with Judy Gold on Saturday, November 1, 8:30 p.m. at Provincetown Town Hall, 260 Commercial St. The evening will be raising funds for Sandy Hook Promise. For tickets ($50-$150) and information visit ptowntownhall.com.
— G.W. Mercure
