![]() ![]() They taught me all my politics, and they really adhered.”Īs a family drama, “The City of Conversation” will likely resonate with anybody from a mixed-party clan. Both my stepfathers were very liberal and active. My first stepfather worked for the Hollywood Nine, or the Hollywood Seven, or the Hollywood 10, however many there were. “My mother spoke at the March on Washington. Your mother was part of Women in Hollywood, wasn’t she?” she asks Baxter. ![]() “I’ve been part of women’s advocacy groups in the business for a long time, but the women who were there before me, they need to get credit for all that they did to begin speaking up and to risk the retaliation. It burns her up that her daughter-in-law has so much more access, just because the doors were open that she helped open but didn’t necessarily get to walk through herself. “Hester would have made a great congressperson, but she came along too early. “They very seldom had the agency of elected office, so they had to use their power in different ways,” she says. “But they didn’t see the need.”īack in the 1970s, Lawrence notes, women weren’t welcomed into politics. “Clinton was saying, ‘Go out there and get political. Baxter canvassed for Hilary Clinton and found the political ennui of younger women surprising. Like the characters they play, Baxter and Lawrence are liberal. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times ) As the generations’ political differences deepen over the following decades, they struggle to stay together as a family. Hester and Jean, both passionate Democrats, are stunned when the grownup Colin comes home with a pro-Reagan fiancée and a new conservative outlook. Baxter plays Hester’s older sister, Jean, who always has taken care of everything Hester is too busy to handle, including her son, Colin. Lawrence is Hester Ferris, a socialite (inspired by real-life movers and shakers Pamela Harriman and Perle Mesta) whose legendary Georgetown dinner parties help lubricate congressional impasses. Anthony Giardina’s play traces the partisan split in America across three decades, from 1979 to 2009, as it’s played out in one family in Washington, D.C. Mutual admiration aside, the actresses’ latest project is a serious piece of political theater in a pointedly political time. “See what I mean?” Lawrence asks the reporter. Sorry, I just realized I was doing that.” It’s really amazing how you hold the stage in a way that - I don’t mean to compare everything to me. How would I do that?’ And I come up with some things, but the truth is, I can’t do that. Then it’s Baxter’s turn again, addressing her costar: “I watch you on the stage, and the actor in me says, ‘I think I could do that. “And she has one of the greatest boot collections I’ve ever seen in my life,” says Lawrence, peeking under the table. “I think I just get a lot of points for coming out on the ‘Today’ show, which is like setting yourself on fire on national television,” says Baxter, who had three husbands before marrying her partner Nancy Locke in 2013. “Whenever I talk about doing this play with you, the response is so universal - just how much people admire you. The movie marks the fourth project Baxter-Birney has done with producer Andrea Baynes.“Yes, you!” Lawrence says. (The drama was shot in Vancouver, British Columbia.) The setting is a small town in Carroll County, Md., and an unnamed college where Peter Hollinger teaches. Sunday, in Burning Bridges, she’ll play Hollinger, who is involved in a steamy, obsessive liaison that unravels her marriage and personality. For the same reason I wouldn’t play another retarded woman, at least not right away, but that’s not to escape the Winnie image-it’s just that I did that.” I don’t do my jobs comparing one to another. The same way I was so relieved never to hear Bridget Loves Bernie ever brought up again. ![]() “I want to reach the point where no one says anymore, ‘Are you doing this to get away from Elyse Keaton?’ I do a job, a job that attracts me. In 1987 the Birneys co-starred in The Long Journey Home, a CBS movie about a Vietnam vet about to be declared legally dead by his wife.īut in February 1989 the couple filed for divorce. And for seven seasons, she played Elyse Keaton, mother of four children, on NBC’s Family Ties. She won an Emmy nomination for her portrayal as a retarded woman in Winnie. In 1976 she appeared in the theatrical film All the President’s Men, then spent four years on ABC’s long-running Family playing daughter Nancy Lawrence Maitland.
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