Unofficial Stockard Channing Corner: Bravo Profiles

Huge thanks to Amanda for her hard-work in transcribing this for the site. If you would like to use it, please ask for permission first.

NOTE: Quotes are listed in the order in which they appeared in the preview segment, the show, and the credits. Bold quotes appeared on screen. Credentials of those interviewed are listed in endnotes.

I have a lot of balancing acts in my life, you know. I go from theater to film and back again.

Stockard is extremely intelligent and extremely vulnerable. And that’s what she projects on stage.

There are very few people whose heart comes out through their work – and who are as smart as she is – without it getting in their way.

The first thing that I think about when I think of her is energy – positive, high, quick-witted energy. And I think that’s very sexy.

And I hear her go, “I don’t wanna say all this crap.” And I…my neck hair just bristled. I thought, “Oh, no no no no no. That’s not the way you’re gonna talk to me.”

I’ll write a script and…uh…she’ll come to the office and talk to me about this one particular moment…uh…uh…for a long time.

She asked a lot of questions and a lot of like making sure that I knew what I was talking about, that I had a clear vision for the piece.

She knows what she wants and she’s not…She doesn’t shy away from getting that. She’s very confident. And I don’t think it’s really tough. I think it’s just self-assured.

I play it as it lays. I deal…I play the hand that’s dealt me. I’m pretty pragmatic. I’ve learned that. I think it’s the best way to be.

She’s so intelligent and yet, unlike a lot of very intelligent actors, I think she works mostly on instinct – and not on rule and not on technique – but on pure instinct which, I think, ultimately only extremely intelligent and secure people are able to do.

There I was playing Rizzo. And I felt a bit confused by it but I couldn’t turn the job down ‘cause, frankly, I couldn’t afford not to. I didn’t get paid very much money [for it]. So I figured, you know, “This is a strange gig but why don’t you just approach it like you would anything else?”

Well, I don’t know if Stockard knew this but everyone – all the guys – just thought she was the sexiest thing. She always wore these tight black skirts and everyday there was a different kind of tight sweater. And the way that she walked. And everyone was behind her back like google eyed, you know, and they would imitate her walk and say, “How does she do it?”

Well, I just pretended I was her [Rizzo]. I made her up, you know. I thought of her as just the person. And also, obviously, it’s got a lot of silly musical comedy turns to it and attitude and all that stuff and I knew how to do that.

There’s some comedy in the scene she does just before she starts the song “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee.” And you can see her timing in that. And she’s playing cards and chewing gum and joking around with the girls – and the comedy’s very good there. The timing’s just right and that was just something she came up with.

It’s very interesting to watch her work ‘cause she lays out, you see her laying out the blueprint of her performance. Within that blueprint, like a jazz singer, she will make lots of variations within it. But she has set out that blueprint for herself very carefully in rehearsal.

She’s able to don any sort of character without being concerned with what it looks like. So if a character’s interesting to her or not necessarily that likable, she can find something in that person that she understands.

I remember very clearly having a big tug-of-war with Alan [Carr] over the ballad [“There Are Worse Things I Could Do”]. He wanted to take it out. I felt so strongly about it. I said, “I think it’s such a wonderful song and it gives her a little soul.” And he said, “Okay. I’ll shoot it – but I’m not guaranteeing it’s gonna stay in the movie.” And I remember at the screening the first time I saw it and I was really grateful that he kept it in because I think it gave a little weight, a little bass note, to that character.

All during the day, we stayed in character. So nobody ever called me Didi. I was always Frenchy. And the same thing with Rizzo, you know. She wasn’t Stockard. She was Rizzo. What was interesting was that the Pink Ladies all stayed together, except for Stockard, [except] for Rizzo. She would be around us but never with us, you know. We were always wondering, “Is she gonna join us? Can we talk to her? Should we talk to her?” Which was exactly the character – she was someone who was very independent, fiercely independent.

After the film [“Grease”] came out and it was such a huge success, it really didn’t do much for my career. It actually worked against it because it was an aberrant role for me. I really didn’t want to have a career in comedy and, you know, even musical comedy. My background had been in sort of alternative theater.

When they initially were doing the movie [“Grease”], she told me that it was not considered an important film, you know, or anything that might help anyone’s career.

I mean, I really didn’t want to have this be the headline in my obituary, you know. Now, granted, it may still be the headline in my obituary, you know: “Rizzo dead at 94.” Or, you know, if I’m lucky. But I hope not. I’m hoping that’s not the case because it’s not that I’m not pleased with the result, it just was a…I felt it was a very small fraction of what I was able to achieve.

There’s a phrase my mother would say – that you shouldn’t put yourself forward. It was very much about being ladylike. And so being an actress is very much putting yourself forward.

I did have that little gene – that’s the kid that tells the funny stories and therefore gets out of cleaning the bathroom that night. I was a bit of a performer but within the family confines.

“I was supposed to be well-educated, you know, Mrs. Venture Capitalist.”

It was as if my intellect and my emotion and a certain kind of instinct that I didn’t know I had came into play. And it was irresistible because I think when you find something in life that is that engrossing, it’s very hard to walk away from it. And I never had experienced anything that sort of got me going on all cylinders.

I think I first saw Stockard Channing, actually, in a Shakespeare play, but in a very subversive production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She played Puck, which was unusual then because Puck was always played by a male actor. She was almost naked and covered in gold paint.

We weren’t like doing Bye Bye Birdy – let’s put it this way. We were so young and so innocent and we…didn’t know about auditioning and deals and agents.

I came in and sang the song, “Since I Fell for You.” And John [Guare] popped up and said, “Oh, that was wonderful, that was wonderful. Sing that song again.” (her voice quavers a bit) And I was very excited because I thought big things were gonna come from this.

We said, “You know, there’s nothing for you in this show, but you’re terrific. The lead parts are all cast.” And she said, “Well, there’s the chorus, isn’t there?”

And there I was in the chorus of Two Gentlemen of Verona sort of feeling like a failure…[But] then I went into the national company and it really was the sort of launching pad, if you will, for my professional career.

The fact that the film [“The Fortune”] itself didn’t succeed at the box office kind of didn’t bother me at the time because I, first of all, was not aware of the consequences of this event. I was only aware that people were saying wonderful things about me. I had this great sense of, “Wow! This is all gonna be fine,” (laughs) even though about a year-and-a-half later I couldn’t really get myself arrested…Since then I’ve learned that the tide goes in and the tide goes out and that’s the way it works. But at the time, I found it very, very puzzling, disorienting, and scary.

I was faced with…one of those sort of crossroads. And at the crossroads, instead of going back to California and trying to get on a bandwagon that I really didn’t want to be on to begin with, I ended up going back to theater.

I had kind of given up this notion of being in films or television. I was perfectly happy doing the odd thing, but I was focused on the stage and sort of, well, that’s where my life was going to remain.

John [Guare] had called me because the original person playing the part had dropped out and I had closed out of town in a show, which was its own drama. And he called me and said, “Would you come back?” And I said, “John, I have to make money. I can’t do this. I never want to get on the stage again [because] I was so disappointed by the closing of the show.” He said, “Just come and read it with the company.” And I got on the plane with my dog – so I think maybe I knew I was gonna do this, the fact that I brought the dog. And I walked in and there were all these people sitting around staring at me – the rest of the cast. So we sat down and we read through the piece and they all were staring at me. And I sort of said to myself, “Well, it’s only gonna be six weeks.” (laughs) And it was four years.

I have to say, frankly, the opposite. I had spent most of my life rebelling against that kind of life, feeling very uncomfortable in that kind of life. I had to stop myself from falling into a big trap of playing that character – which is to comment on the character negatively, to make her in any way a caricature. There she was…with her little Lagerfeld suit and her la-de-da ways. But she was a truth-teller and she was telling it as it was and she was an innocent. And when I found that out about her, I realized that I’d been selling her short.

~Stockard Channing (on the assumption that, due to her upbringing, playing Ouisa Kittredge was easy)

She has the ability to evoke – seemingly out of nowhere – great pools of feeling that go through the veneer that is Stockard and the veneer that was that character.

Did I like the role of Ouisa? (laughs) Uh, yes, I certainly did. The reason I’m laughing is that it was one of the most fascinating times of my life. I mean, I’ve been in many successes in my life, fortunately, on stage. But there was such a tremendous groundswell behind that piece. And people still come up to me and talk about that play and what it meant to them.

It seemed to be deeply, emotionally affecting. And it was always something different everytime you saw it. So I went back to see it a fourth time and then I thought, “Now, hang on a second. I really like this. And even though it’s incredibly unusually presented onstage, maybe I should be thinking about it as a film.

I know the way the world works. I said, “John, you’re one of my best friends. I do not want to have this wreck our friendship – that you have to suddenly come to me one day and say, ‘Um, gosh, I don’t know how to say this, but, you know, so-and-so wants to do this.’” I said, “I’m not gonna stand in the way of you making your film – because this is your baby.

What works on stage isn’t going to necessarily work on film…The scale at which you have to perform on stage, you know, clearly is much larger than the scale you have to perform on film. And so the difficulty is in bringing the performance to a level that it will still seem to have the life and freshness that it has on stage, but really work on film. It’s quite a fact – a known fact, rather – that Stockard used to think I was making her boring.

And I said to Fred [that] it was kind of sometimes like putting toothpaste back in the tube. It was kind of mind blowing. And other times I said, “Fred, you can’t get mad at me if it seems like I’m resisting what you’re saying. Because I’m not. It’s just like I’m a trapeze artist. I’ve left one trapeze and I haven’t been caught by the other guy yet, so I’m in mid-air. So you’ll have to wait ‘til I come in for a landing. And when I’m in for a landing, it may take me five second, it may take me five minutes. But until I’m caught, you know, then I’m ready to do [it] the way…you know, then I understand what you want me to do.

Most film people will say to you, “Don’t do phone scenes.” Most studio executives will almost force you to cut them out. Without Stockard and without Will [Smith], you’d never have been able to do that scene…And it’s what’s going on on her face. The thoughts, the memories. You are also seeing her reliving it all and wanting it back and wanting the pleasure of those moments back. Beautiful acting.

I thought I’d be very sad every time we finished a scene, especially some of the more important ones. And I said, “What’s that gonna be like, saying goodbye, you know, to that?” And, instead, I had a tremendous sense of closure – to use that word we use too much – but it was positive closure because it was like “Ah! That’s done.” And even a sense of for better or worse. It exists. It exists on film. And it was like, “Ah! That’s done. And that’s done.” And that stayed with me through all the months of filmmaking.

There’s a certain glory that, I have to admit, I’m a sucker for as much as anybody else. I’d be massively uncomfortable to have that at the price of my privacy [and] the privacy of people in my life.

She allowed me to call her Susan. That’s her real name. And I’m one of the only people in the world who’s allowed to call her that. And she calls me Ramon, which is my real name.

I certainly do remember being just amazed at how alive she was and how new the solutions were. Towards the end of the shoot and towards the end of the film, the parents go to the place where Matthew Shepard was beaten and left for dead. And we were supposed to drive up in a car. And I got out of the car and walked towards the spot. And then I heard the sound of the door opening and turned back and Stockard was getting out of the car. And this mask of grief got out of the car. (his voice breaks slightly) And it was very moving, just to see how moved she was…She’s very, very good at this.

A lot of this film [“The Business of Strangers”] is about relationships and power issues and stuff like that. And she has that ability to suddenly be on top of the situation – being strong, being the one who is administering power, and being in charge – to suddenly [be] weak, vulnerable, indecisive, what is she gonna do, cornered. And that’s really kind of interesting – that ability to be both.

To go from a sort of mass market film to something that was someone’s very, very specific vision of the world, a character study in this sort of out there kind of way – that was kind of refreshing, as well.

Stockard and I had talked a lot about the scene [in “The Business of Strangers”] with Fred [Weller] where the Julie character writes all over the man’s back and body and so forth. And it’s a very dark scene and this is a very dark part of Julie’s character. And it gets to a place where Stockard just really has to let it all out and just go.

She didn’t even want to rehearse it because she knew that it’s such a visceral thing that it just depends on what happens on that day, as opposed to trying to map everything out. I was just fascinated watching her because that’s a really hard thing for an actor to do. And I was taking mental notes furiously.

~Julia Stiles (on filming the climactic scene in “The Business of Strangers”)

When I started the show, I didn’t envision a First Lady at all. It wasn’t until maybe the fifth or sixth episode that I decided the show’s gonna be around a little while – we’re gonna need to see the President’s wife. So I wrote the First Lady into the episode [“The State Dinner”] early on. [But] she actually didn’t have much to do.

I was in Toronto doing a film. And I got into the hotel room and I was unpacking my bags. And I turned on the television set and on came this program [“The West Wing”]. And I ended up watching it ‘cause the room service hamburger arrived and the suitcase was being unpacked. And I thought, “Man, this is really good. This’ll never last.”

“People ask me, ‘Why do you work all the time?’ – like I shouldn’t!”

Aaron [Sorkin] and I had lunch and he said, “Well, what do you think?” And I said, “Well, I don’t know.” And he said, “Well, I think maybe you should be a doctor. Do you want to be a doctor?” (laughs) And I said, “I like that.” And he said, “And then you could be his doctor. And then you could have this secret because I’m thinking maybe he should have something wrong with him, like MS”

She beats me up. She beats me up physically. She hits me, um, uh, but that's all right, you know. She hits me. She smacks me around. (laughs and shakes his head) Stockard makes us laugh.

We run the lines quite often, work on the scenes, talk about what we’re trying to achieve in the scene and how comfortable or uncomfortable we are. And we really try to be there for each other.

So in the course of two years he [Aaron Sorkin], with sort of fits and starts, developed this character. And I’ve never been in a situation like this before and it’s really…it’s great because it’s working, she’s taken root, she’s taken hold – but it started from really nothing.

It’s like making the world’s longest movie because it goes on and on and there is this strange factor of time, of continuation, in the public’s mind.

I like this rhythm and I like the fact that I don't have to walk around with armed guards around me. I don't mind that I'm occasionally famous. When people are nice to me and say, “I saw this and I saw that and it really meant something to me” – that is very, very gratifying to me. And I would hate to be that famous that I had to be insulated from the world. I think that would be very – I don’t even think, I know – that would be very, very difficult for me. Because having had little tastes of it in my life, and knowing people who have had big tastes of it, I realize I’m probably leading the life I should be leading.

Actually, right now is one of the best times of my life – which, of course, probably means it’s all gonna completely fall apart! (laughs)

One part that she did in a play [most likely Woman in Mind in 1987-88]…she was going crazy. And I got actually frightened because it was so real that I thought, “I hope she’s okay.” I mean, it was like she went over the edge.

She and I and John Spencer recorded it [the song “Wonderful Christmastime”] last year for an album of Christmas songs by people in television.[xii] And we did it down here at Columbia in Hollywood. And I got to sing at Frank Sinatra’s microphone. And she was very jealous. (grins)

[i] Martin Sheen -- Actor and co-star, “The West Wing.”

[ii] Lee Rose -- Writer, director, and producer. LR has worked with SC on “An Unexpected Family,” “An Unexpected Life,” “The Truth About Jane,” and “A Girl Thing.”

[iii] Andre Bishop -- Artistic Director of the Lincoln Center Theatre in New York City. SC has performed in numerous productions at Lincoln Center, including The House of Blue Leaves, Six Degrees of Separation, Four Baboons Adoring the Sun, Hapgood, and The Little Foxes.

[iv] Sam Waterston -- Actor and frequent co-star. SW has worked with SC on “Sweet Revenge,” “The Upstairs Room,” “David’s Mother,” and “The Matthew Shepard Story.”

[v] Aaron Sorkin -- Writer and Executive Producer of “The West Wing.”

[vi] Patrick Stettner -- Writer and Director of “The Business of Strangers.”

[vii] Julia Stiles -- Actor and co-star, “The Business of Strangers.”

[viii] Didi Conn -- Actor and co-star in “Grease.”

[ix] Randal Kleiser -- Director of “Grease.”

[x] John Guare -- Playwright and close friend. SC has appeared in numerous Guare productions, including Two Gentlemen of Verona, The House of Blue Leaves, Six Degrees of Separation (stage and film versions), and Four Baboons Adoring the Sun.

[xi] Fred Schepisi -- Director of the film version of “Six Degrees of Separation.”

[xii] The album is called Celebrity Christmas. (To listen to Stockard, Martin, and John singing together click here. *approx 1.5mb*)