Martha Plimpton is Raising Hope
Actress Martha Plimpton has pulled off the perfect trifecta. Her unique style shines through film, on television, and stage. Everyone fell in love with her in “The Goonies”, and her performances in “The Mosquito Coast”, “Running on Empty”, “Parenthood” and many more films have cemented her role as a great film actress. Her long list of stage and television performances are also oustanding, and now she’s getting great reviews on FOX’s “Raising Hope”. She came by the SiriusXM studios to talk with Ron Bennington about “Raising Hope”, and her career. Excerpts from the interview appear below.
Ron Bennington: I think everyone in America falls in love with Martha Plimpton and all at different stages of your life.
Martha Plimpton: Oh that’s nice to hear.
Ron Bennington: You’ve started acting as a really young person. Since you were 8 years old and throughout this, movies, TV, Broadway. No one gets to do all these things. (Martha laughs) A matter of fact, I don’t think a lot of people can make the transition, because it’s kind of like 3 different jobs right?
Martha Plimpton: Well, they’re 3 different skill sets I guess. Not so much between TV and movies although it all depends on the writing in that sense. Yeah, it’s a different set of things you have to know how to do on stage. But I actually think theater actors, if you come from the theater I think you have a much wider range. I think you’re a lot more flexible as an actor if you come from the theater. You’re used to not being the center of attention so you’re used to contributing to an ensemble. In a way, when you’ve only ever done movies and can be a little, you know, self-absorbed ( laughs).also feed what I want to do. Feed my skill or my craft or my art or whatever the word is you want to use.
Ron Bennington: Well you’ve got a TV show that renewed again and it’s still happening and the thing is it seems like the writing has stayed with the show which is the hardest thing in the world for television.
Martha Plimpton: And that’s the key. Television is the writer’s medium. And if the writing is not sharp and smart and funny and consistent, you’re absolutely right, you lose touch with your viewers that way. So we’re extremely lucky because Greg Garcia is just a phenomenal showrunner. He’s our creator. He’s obviously our head writer. And he just has a really clear idea of what he wants the show to be.
Ron Bennington: Yeah, he’s kept it very consistent where some joke doesn’t end up changing the style, the way the family treats each other.
Martha Plimpton: Exactly. Yes, exactly.
Ron Bennington: Growing up in New York, at what point did you say to yourself this childhood, this isn’t the way most people…this isn’t the type of characters most people get to meet?
Martha Plimpton: It’s funny. I guess I didn’t really understand that until I was a teenager and I started working with other kids outside New York and meeting other kids outside New York. I guess so. I guess not until I was about maybe 15 or 16.
Ron Bennington: Now you would just say “Oh remember when this used to happen?” And everyone was like “No”. (Martha laughs) Things like that didn’t go down.
Martha Plimpton: Right.
Ron Bennington: But seeing your family around that, that did for you as a kid. I mean you weren’t so much as a gypsy as just knowing that this is it.
Martha Plimpton: Right. I mean my mother was an actress. My mother worked in avant-garde in downtown theater in town. She was in the original company of “Hair”. And all of our friends were in the theater. That was our world. Those were the circles we traveled in. That sort of downtown theater scene and the Public Theater and Top of the Gate and places like that. So that’s the world that I was born into, that’s the environment I was raised in and so it made perfect sense that I would do that for fun. Like that was the way to have fun. Instead of going to camp, we didn’t have money for camp and besides I hated camp. I went to sleepaway camp once. It was horrible. Vowed never to go back. Awful. I had no understanding why I was being made to wake up at 5am to play leapfrog. It was ridiculous. No, I much preferred…
Ron Bennington: Going to sleep at 5am.
Martha Plimpton: That’s right. Much preferred that. Yes. Yes.
Ron Bennington: But that also I guess set you on that path where you couldn’t go back and settle on what a lot of people would consider a Hollywood career, right? I mean I guess even early on you’re like some of this stuff that people like is kind of bullshit.
Martha Plimpton: I think so. I think so. Just my tastes informed a lot of the things that I wanted to do or didn’t want to do. That’s true. That’s absolutely true. And I think as a teenager, you have to be careful because you start getting typecast and I was getting kind of bored in the roles that I was looking at in movies when I was in my late teens and early 20’s. It was all sort of like sassy sidekick, you know what I mean? Either that or I was like a pregnant junkie. I was just kind of over it. I was like is there nothing else that I can, do you know what I mean? So I did. I kind of took some time away from making movies because there just wasn’t anything there that seemed exciting for me to do. Just from my perspective. And I did get a little too picky. And for a while there it was like “Well, you know, if you’re too good for us…”
Ron Bennington: Right. It doesn’t take long, right? Before everyone’s…
Martha Plimpton: …it doesn’t take long. And so that was why I was so grateful for having this history in the theater and that I could do that where in the theater the options for women are exponentially more varied.
Ron Bennington: Why do you think that is?
Martha Plimpton: I don’t know why it is. I mean there are a million reasons and we could talk about it for hours, but for my money anyway the theater is a place in which people are exploring stories and ideas that are maybe not familiar all the time. And it’s an intellectual pursuit in a way that sometimes movies don’t have to be. Because it’s a purely, because it’s such a visual thing. Theater has a long history of exploration of women and movies have only been getting made for about a 100 years, so…
Ron Bennington: You think they’ll catch up? Because they seem to be sliding.
Martha Plimpton: I’d like to think that they would catch up. Yes, I would. I would like to think that they will catch up.
Ron Bennington: It seems to be sliding into more and more comic books as far as I can tell.
Martha Plimpton: But on the other hand you have these great writers like Lena Dunham and a lot of other women writers. Nicole Holofcener. And I would like to see them get bigger budgets and get more responsibility and all of that. It’s the nature of business and movies and these are things that we can’t, you know, we bang our head against the wall and get frustrated.
Ron Bennington: And now here you are on TV which at one point people would have thought was almost like a dead end, but TV seems to be doing more stuff than any.
Martha Plimpton: I actually– and I’m not just saying this because I’m on TV right now– I think TV is in like a second golden age right now. I mean the number of channels obviously increases the need for content. The need for content increases the willingness to take risks. The risks that get taken by writers push the envelope in terms of what actors are able to do on television and it just creates this enormous glut. This fantastic number of things for people to watch and soon the competition is high which makes the quality of the work higher. I think it’s a terrific time to be on television and there’s no, thank goodness, there’s no stigma about doing television anymore for actors. It’s like you can go from one to the other and back again without this like “Well, she sold out” or “He’s not making it in movies, so he’s got to do TV”. That doesn’t exist anymore, which is actually great. That’s the way it is in England and it’s the way it should be here.
Ron Bennington: You’re movie career, there’s certain films that for me always stick out, but I think Running on Empty is one of those films.
Martha Plimpton: Oh, thank you.
Ron Bennington: I don’t even know if I could sit down and watch that all the way through again because it’s one of the most heartbreaking films I’ve ever seen in my life.
Martha Plimpton: Oh, I know.
Ron Bennington: And by the end of it, I’m like I’m spent.
Martha Plimpton: I know. A blubbering mess.
Ron Bennington: But you do have films like that in your past that kind of go on to live on their own. And at the time when you’re getting these films, do you have any idea of that or is this stuff that just happens?
Martha Plimpton: Well at the time that I was doing Running on Empty, I did feel like I was involved in something very special. First of all, I was working with Sidney Lumet who is of course one of America’s greatest directors and one of the most iconic and important directors we’ve had. And I felt very strongly about the script that it was truly a beautiful work of writing, a beautiful piece of writing by Naomi Foner. And of course, the cast. I knew who everybody in the cast was. I respected all of them enormously. I did feel very much that on that movie I was a part of something very special. And I felt that way the whole way through from the way we shot it to the way we rehearsed it, I mean all of it. It was an unusual experience. Working with Sidney is an unusual experience or was, rest in peace. So there are movies like that that I knew at the time like “Parenthood” was the same way. I knew that it was a special thing. I looked around at the people I was working with and I was just in awe. Ron Howard obviously was already a hugely successful director when we made that movie. That was good fortune to be in that company.
Ron Bennington: And now in your television show what I really like about it is the fact that the people in the show actually like each other. And I think that comes across because there’s so many family situation comedies where the dad gets all the heat and he’s the jerk. He has to hide if he wants to do something.
Martha Plimpton: Right. And the mother is this mean bitchy harridan who stands over him, wags her finger and is always bored and rolling her eyes.
Ron Bennington: And sounds like a Catskill writer is just feeding her cruel Don Rickles lines.
Martha Plimpton: Right. Exactly. (laughing)
Ron Bennington: But the people in this show, they really are a family. And not doing things correctly, but to really be a family I think you just have to care about each other.
Martha Plimpton: I think that’s absolutely true. The thing about the show is regardless of the conflicts that go one within the family or whether we may argue or not or we may do things, want to do things differently than another character wants to do things, the essential heart of the show is that we love each other. That we are in the same boat. That we’re on the same team. That we’re devoted to each other and there’s no cynicism in the writing or in the show. There’s something about Greg Garcia, I don’t know how he manages it because he’s not exactly a pollyanna in any sense of the word. I mean Greg has got some very dark stuff going on in that mind of his. But somehow it never goes to a place of bitterness. It never goes to a place of cynicism. And that is really an accomplishment. That’s very unusual today. That’s very unusual right now.
Ron Bennington: Well I think because normally we’re suppose to stand so far above the characters and look down on them.
Martha Plimpton: Yes. That’s exactly right.
Ron Bennington: Where here I think when you watch your show you’re like yeah, you don’t really know how to be a parent properly, you don’t know how to be a child properly. No one really knows how to pull these things off. And if there’s any place of regret in your life, normally those roles are the ones you most regret.
Martha Plimpton: That’s exactly right and I think you make an excellent point about not looking down on our characters. We’re not in judgement of them. We’re playing them. Yes. I agree with you.
Ron Bennington: And when you got that role and here you are as young as you are playing a grandmother that did not seem like the casting made sense at all at first.
Martha Plimpton: Well, that was the joke. I read the script and I went, I did call up Greg before I came out to test for the network and do all that stuff. And I said well I’m a little nervous about, you know I was 39 at the time and I was like I’m not sure ready for people to see me as a grandmother. And he was like “Well they won’t”. Because that is the joke. The joke is that you were too young to have your son and now you’re too young to have a grandkid and you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. (laughing) And I was like hmmm, well that I can do.
Ron Bennington: Right. And then when they show the early 90’s flashback stuff, you guys are young enough that you can play that without it looking too ridiculous.
Martha Plimpton: (laughing) We did make a joke about it on an episode not too long ago. About how like we didn’t age at all until we were like 19 or 20 and then we stopped aging from 20 and now…I don’t know, I can’t remember the joke, but we did try to like, because sometimes we had these other 2 actors playing us when we were teenagers and then sometimes we play ourselves. We do it ourselves. So we had to kind of make a joke about that to make people aware that we were aware that we were messing with the timeline a little bit.
Ron Bennington: Well it’s “Raising Hope”. It’s Tuesdays at 8 O’Clock Eastern on FOX. It’s so great to have you stop by. Because you really have done so much great work and I’m so glad that this is a project that you like. See you next time through.
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