Holland Taylor is well aware of the privilege of being healthy, housed and employed in the age of COVID. But she feels people shouldn’t forget that this has been a trying
period. “I think it's very depriving in ways that sound like we're whining, but not really,” she says from quarantine at home in Los Angeles. “We're very used to having the support of a society around us, as wonderful as it is that we can talk on the phone and do the Zoom things and FaceTime stuff. It does make a difference. Just imagine living through the influenza of 1918 where nobody had anything.”
Taylor certainly isn’t isolated from the world or her creativity. She just received an Emmy nomination for her role in Netflix's Hollywood and will appear in Bill & Ted Face the Music on August 28. And this season, PBS’s Great Performances aired her Tony-nominated one-woman show Ann, about the life of the beloved Texas Governor Ann Richards. Below, Taylor talks to ELLE.com about how art can fuel protest and the future of Broadway after shutdown.
I talked to the cast of Hollywood in early March, and a week later, everything was closed and the outlook of the world had changed. Did the show accomplish what you wanted, knowing everybody would be watching it in a very different situation than intended?
I'm basically a hired hand on that show—just what an actor usually is. We don't always have a sense of the big picture, and nobody, when they're in a show, can really know how it's going to be received. But what the show has is our signature sentiment from Ryan Murphy. He has enormous goodwill within the industry, he wants to give opportunities to people, and he thrives on making possibilities come true. There's no way of actually knowing, but the fact that it should unfold during a time of global contraction in fear has something to do with its enormous success. Because I have never in my career had such responses to anything in terms of sheer numbers of people. Kids from high school, people from my whole life have written or responded on social media or written an email.
When so many people are so concerned about Broadway and live theater, new ways of innovating and getting people engaged are so important. How do you feel about Ann coming to a wider audience with Great Performances?
First of all, there's no way any theater piece can have the audience size, even over time, that a broadcast on Great Performances on PBS would give it. I was very much involved in the shooting and editing of this play; the whole aim of the movie is to preserve the one-on-one live theater experience as best as possible. I have to say, I am pretty confident that Ann Richards herself would be very pleased that a warts-and-all story about her, that was truly told, would be on free television. Free in every television set in the country. I think that would move her very much. She was such a force for good and also a deeply inspiring person. A person who inspired others to do better [and] do more. I felt in service, too. As they say, I serve at the pleasure of the governor.
Do you think that the play will mean something different in today's political environment, compared to the way audiences read it when it originally ran during the Obama administration?
It's funny. The last performance, in Austin, was two years ago. People said, "Oh, you did some good updating and rewriting." And I said, "There's not a word different from the original production." There's no need to ever update this because her point of view would be eternally her policy. She was for fair play. She was for the common good. I think what has actually changed is people's hearing—not what she was saying. She will always say the same kinds of things about the common good and how to achieve it, and how important it is that everyone has a voice, and how important it is that everyone be represented in government. She felt strongly that everyone can govern and should.
Her message doesn't change, but we as listeners change. This is a time of great openness. We're open because we're scared, we're open because we're startled. We're open because we're shocked at events. And we say, "goodness, this cannot go on like this." I think people are really shaken into an alertness and also a humility. For instance, the Black Lives Matter issue. I think white people are beginning to feel, Tell me what you need. I'll shut up. Teach me, let me learn. The whole white savior image is so repellent. We can never fully understand, but we can deeply understand. We can deeply commit ourselves to understanding all the voices that are crying out in our society.
Of course in the case of Black Lives Matter they are hardly ignored; they're beaten up and thrown in jail and killed. This has reached a point where it absolutely cannot go on like this. I think people are terribly alert, and waking up, and needing to know, and to understand. I experience by osmosis a real goodwill, a real desire for good that is happening in society now and because I believe in the progress of man. I believe goodwill will win the day. Anybody who wishes to be an ally, the strongest thing to do is to listen and learn and study. There's plenty of sources, there's plenty of places to go to learn and understand. Then when you know something, and contribute, and participate, [you] take guidance in how to do that.
"Art is how people express what they must say to the world."
What role do you think art and creativity can play in this?
The great messages and teaching are usually from art. Even this marvelous project The New York Times published, Nikole Hannah-Jones's 1619 Project, that was one of the most impactful things I've ever read or listened to. Big articles in The New York Times about slavery and the foundations of Black life in America and what Black lives have meant to us that we don't even know in our culture. There are extraordinary books and plays. Jeremy O. Harris's Slave Play. Art is how people express what they must say to the world, to the universe. Without art, we really don't have our society moving forward. Art is what moves us forward.
How do you think live performances can innovate to survive during this time? How do we keep Broadway and the spirit of theater alive?
Boy, I don't know. That is the real question. The talking, the way we do in these Zoom meetings and Zoom performances, are better than nothing, but obviously this is for a period of time—we don't know how long. When we are back to a more normal life, perhaps we will treasure the reality of live performances so much more. Because having the agency to actually be at something—it's not even worth arguing, there's simply no question about it. To be live in the presence of a performance is quite far way from seeing it on film.
How are you spending your time in quarantine?
I firmly think anybody would do very well to find a project that is sufficiently interesting that they'll stick to, where you have to do it two hours a day because it's a very stabilizing thing to do in a time of anxiety. Something wholesome, something nourishing, something that a year later you could say, "Well, this is what I did during that whole time, and how glad I am that I did it."