“Ask Mimi Kennedy”
The Viewer (Viewers for
Quality Television’s newsletter), number 58, Jan. 1993
Mimi Kennedy portrays Ruth Sloan on ABC’s Homefront, now on hiatus until spring. Mimi appeared at VQT’s Meet ’n Greet as part of its Convention last September and recently enthusiastically agreed to respond to some questions. Because of Mimi’s thoughtful, interesting and informative answers, we chose to run it virtually unedited. We are confident that, once you read it, you will understand why we have run it in its entirety.
VQT: How did you get the role of Ruth Sloan (especially since you’re playing a character older than you really are)?
KENNEDY: I got the role of Ruth Sloan for two reasons: the first is that I knew the producers. I was working with them as story editor on Knots Landing during the 90-91 season while they were writing Homefront’s pilot (then called The View from Kirtland Hill). They knew I’d been an actress before coming to Knots, and they asked me to read for the pilot – as Anne Metcalf. I’d prepared the audition, though I thought I’d be much better as Mrs. Sloan than Anne Metcalf. My reading was good enough to make them want me on the project – but they, too, saw that I was suited to play Mrs. Sloan, and that was the role I auditioned for at the network level. At first, everyone envisioned Mrs. Sloan as older, but my reading convinced them she should be Anne Metcalf’s age – but they already knew they wanted Anne to be a vital woman, though she was the mother of grown children. So, the second reason I got the role, I’m happy to report, is my acting ability.
At the network audition, the question of my age came up again: “She’s too young,” ABC worried. Lynn Latham rushed to my defense in a way peculiar for winning Hollywood roles: “Oh, she’s really old,” she assured them. ‘I’ve worked with her in an office all year and I know how old she really is. And have you seen the way she photographs sometimes! She can look really terrible.” She was determined I should get the role at all costs: I’m forever grateful to her.
VQT: How difficult was it to convince the producers that you could portray a mean-spirited character?
KENNEDY: All I had to do was say the lines in the pilot – such as, “You must be my new Italian,” with the condescension implied, to convince the producers that I could say hateful things with utter conviction. If they thought of Ruth as mean-spirited in the pilot – and she was due to be written out in the first season – their thinking evolved when they saw she could be a well-meaning woman whose prejudices allowed her to do terrible things in good conscience. Also, they knew I’d done a lot of comedy work, but they’d recently seen a TV movie in which I played a woman who died tragically of cancer – so they were secure that I could play anything.
VQT: Ruth Sloan is basically a non-sympathetic character, one who values possessions – but she is also capable of kindness and gentleness, and her vulnerability must be brought forth. Which scenes do you prefer – Ruth being nasty or Ruth showing a more vulnerable side?
KENNEDY: Once I become Ruth Sloan, and learn my lines, I can play any aspect of her and enjoy myself. There’s no way she’ll ever be a role model; she’s not a character to inspire public intimacy and affection, regardless of how vulnerable she becomes in any one show. When Ruth showed a more vulnerable side, I was thrilled, as an actress, to portray it. But it’s the mix which makes her interesting – the best role I’ve had.
VQT: Did you create a backstory for Ruth? Did you research the character? How did you develop her?
KENNEDY: When I was writing for Lynn [Latham] and Bernard [Lechowick], they used to say, “Don’t let Mimi do any backstory!” because I tended to reduce everything to a character’s traumatic childhood. However, I did send them, half-jokingly, storylines for Ruth written up in the old Knots story-editor style, and one of the lines from that document has recently appeared in a script: Ruth tells Mike she can’t believe she stopped dating Edsel Ford in order to go out with him. ‘I could have married real money!” I’ve always assumed she was a debutante with brilliant expectations, as they say, and that Mike was probably a self-made man – not one of the pale WASP-y escorts for whom her parents intended her. Their marriage was one of passion and love. That’s why his affair of the heart and her threat of divorce are interesting: these are people who are hurt, in a marriage that is still alive. What did people do before marriage counseling? Especially with so much money and property and social standing at stake? I believe plenty of people threw it all away for love – or to get back at a love who hurt them, a spouse who betrayed them. People weren’t much good then at talking things out, that I recall.
My “research” has been childhood emotional memory and looking at historical datelines for ’45-’47. She “developed” as I read the scripts and gave myself up to whatever the writers envisioned – it was intuitive, which is the most kind of fun for the actor.
VQT: How do you feel about having to wear the hair styles and clothing of that era? What are the pros and cons of doing a period piece?
KENNEDY: At first, the red lips and upswept hair made me feel unattractive: I come from the hippie-era – long hair and natural lips. But it was liberating – I wasn’t trying to make people like me or be attracted to me; I had become Someone Else. In that sense, I prefer period pieces because they allow that transformation to take place so totally. Stella Adler once ripped into me with devastating criticism: “You’re the kind of actress who plays the costume!” I was crushed at the time. Now, God rest her soul, I’d like to tell her, “Yes, I am, and I love it!” Maybe it was that I had a “mature face” since high school – I always had to play the older character parts, and learned to do it well, with that talcum powder in my hair, a quiver in the voice. But Ruth taps into that old sense of playing at being someone else, combined with a mature actor’s sense that this must come from somewhere real inside me. I’ve always wanted to play pilgrims and pioneers – I like the costumes!
VQT: Last year Homefront seemed to be more of a true ensemble piece. This year the emphasis has been on the younger generation. How do you feel about that? Was it necessary due to budget cuts, ratings, demographic information?
KENNEDY: The emphasis on the younger characters was partly network-inspired, partly producer-initiated to make use of our attractive young cast. The main cause was that people trying to catch onto the show without being with it from the beginning found that fourteen characters to follow in one show was too many: so the producers agreed to develop storylines more sequentially, giving the younger characters more activity at first this year to define their characters clearly and involve them more deeply with each other. Older characters tend to come with more inherent complexities and complete backstories (married for many years, rich, poor, identities established) which can make their stories develop faster. When they take action, more is at stake – their whole lives have been built up around who they are.
Our erratic scheduling, with constant pre-emptions, sabotaged this reasonable approach, making it seem like the older characters were being neglected, drawing out a storyline over many weeks that would have resolved faster if the show had been on consistently.
VQT: What in particular do you like about doing an ensemble show? What don’t you like about it?
KENNEDY: Ensemble pieces give the actors more time at home to learn their lines, balance their energy, and come in to work in tip-top shape. It also encourages us to WATCH the show as the audience does – we have to see how our fellow actors work out their storylines, which we don’t see them shoot. We become “fans” of each other’s characters just as the audience does, and this goes a long way toward erasing feelings of jealousy and competitiveness which mar other shows. When we do get a scene with another character, we feel we’ve stepped into a new reality, just as you would if you “met” Anne Metcalf or Gloria Davis. It’s intoxicating. What I don’t like, of course, is when the storylines get too crowded, and I don’t work for several days, or for a whole script, and Ruth Sloan seems like a dim memory next time I walk into the dressing room and see her clothes standing there, ready for Mimi Kennedy to get in them and transform.
VQT: How would you like to see your character grow? How will Ruth Sloan further develop?
KENNEDY: I’d like to see Ruth grow as America did – full of confidence and energy, also full of denial and false ideas. I’d love to show the damage some of the mistakes of our society made then did to our country: I’d also like to show that, rich or poor, we are all human. The class system has had its day, and however we find ourselves re-organizing, we might well question assumptions about some people being better than others. I’d also like to show the limitations on rich women of her day: how their expectations of themselves and their ‘perfect” lives did them harm as well as good. And I love the nostalgia of showing the good times that everyone remembers fondly – dancing, being in love, looking wonderful – despite everything. How Ruth further develops, however, is the writers’ decision with every new script.
VQT: Previously, you were a writer for Knots Landing. Which offers you more creative expression, writing or acting? Which offers you more freedom?
KENNEDY: Writing and acting are so different: in writing, control is complete, you imagine a situation and manifest it down to the smallest word and action. Of course, an actor may not always play it that way, so control is gone once it’s in the actor’s hands. As an actor, I’ve learned to bow to the writer’s will. I used to want to change scenes to “fit” me, but I’ve seen the error of my ways, mostly by watching the results of other actors trying to do the same. Whatever comfort they’ve gained for themselves while shooting the scene is far outweighed by the alarm of the writers when they watch the dailies and see a scene different from the one they wrote. I’ve watched whole scenes that actors rearranged on the set get cut out of the final show because it didn’t fit as intended into the story. Actors are given lots of improvisation in their training, and told that truth “in the moment” is the paramount thing. Great movies have been made with directors and improvising actors collaborating to make memorable scenes that reap acting awards. Actors are raised on this stuff: but when they work in weekly television and try to fly solo, the director can’t cover them, and fellow actors are thrown off; an expensive crew doesn’t recognize the scene they read in the script and doesn’t know where to light, or put the boom microphone. It’s a big, public, embarrassing mistake that I myself, I’m afraid, have made. The story’s in the script; you get inside that or you don’t belong. A good script is a fabulous place to live: a bad script is something you do your best with, collect the money, and go home.
VQT: Is it difficult going from having the control of a writer to being an actor reading other people’s words?
KENNEDY: When you write, you can usually convince yourself you’re writing something great. When you act, you know it’s not great. Writing has a more heady reward during the process, I think: but the recognition you get from being onscreen is an intoxication that nothing can replace. Still, there was a secrecy to being a writer – knowing you could affect people without using your identity, worrying about how you looked – that was very dignified and adult, to me.
VQT: Can you and do you offer suggestions to the writers of Homefront?
KENNEDY: I do offer suggestions to Homefront’s writers. All the actors do. The door is open. Just don’t do it from the set, with a highly-paid crew standing idle while you dicker. I think I’m proudest of suggesting the storyline for Ruth’s involvement with Gina’s newborn baby: forbidding Gina to breastfeed, telling her modern ways of childrearing were better, that the Sloan grandchild deserved “the best.” It all came from two sources: one was my reading in child development (everything Ruth believed has since been pretty much debunked as harmful – Don’t pick up a crying child. Don’t play with a child, it’ll spoil her. Feed according to an unvarying schedule. Let the baby cry, it develops the lungs. She’s only crying to manipulate you.) And the second was an ad in a 1948 LIFE magazine picturing a gorgeous sketch of sleeping mother and child nestled in each other’s arms. Nursing my children to sleep, and cuddling them in bed when they sought comfort, were some of the sweetest times of their infancy, but here was this caption reading: “ARE YOU A DANGER-MOTHER?” It warned of the dangers of obeying natural impulses like letting your baby sleep next to you -(suffocation!) And went on, of course, to suggesting a brand of baby formula. I wanted to show how people believe things that go against their intuition, and the natural instruction of their bodies, and how, when they do so, it can bring a whole society harm, which I believe the denial of the body’s natural intelligence always does.
VQT: Several years ago you did a sitcom called The Two of Us. How does doing a half hour sitcom compare with doing an hour drama?
KENNEDY: Half hour is fun, fast, a little more concentrated on the actor’s real life personality, even when “hidden” behind a character. It’s a popularity contest. You’re delivering your lines to generate laughs from a live audience. They have to like you, feel comfortable with you, “get” your thoughts and expressions. It’s powerful, the ability to make people laugh. But the fun stops when the jokes don’t jibe with the actor’s sense of humor. Timing can work wonders, but the laughter is forced. We’ve all seen it. In comedy, I think the writers and actors struggle more – it’s legendary that the writers on staff work ’til three o’clock in the morning, changing jokes that don’t work. If I returned to it, I’d like to think my writing experience would make me a more appreciative actress. I still feel very capable of doing it. But right now, I enjoy the escape into another character and the relief of knowing I don’t have to check to see if the audience is with me. I’m part of a story; they’ll get it when they see it; at the moment, however, the character overtakes me and the only one I have to answer to is Ruth Sloan and her situation with the other characters. The fourth wall (unseen barrier between actors and audience) is up. In half-hour sitcom, filmed or taped live, that wall’s down; the audience is right there with you, it’s a party, you’re the one with the lampshade on, and there’s a fine line between being entertaining and being tiresome.
VQT: Since Homefront has a large ensemble cast, is there an actor or actress on your show that you wish you could work with more often? Who?
KENNEDY: I like working with Wendy Phillips [Anne Metcalf]. The encounters between Anne and Ruth, women of different classes in a society that doesn’t think it polite to acknowledge class differences, intrigued me. I’m very grateful to work so much with Hattie Winston, Dick Anthony Williams and Ken Jenkins because those are the folks who know exactly what they’re doing. The younger actors are very good for our egos, because they’re always saying what a jot it is to work with us. It’s experience – there’s no substitute. We’ve felt the pain of being unemployed, playing lousy roles, being rejected for minor roles, much more than the young actors have. We know our roles on Homefront are pure joy; we’re like kids playing a seamless game of pretend. You don’t have to argue with your friend about where the “kitchen” is and who gets to play the mom; everything’s worked through. We just play.
VQT: What do you like most about being on Homefront?
KENNEDY: I like the writing. I’ve never had the pleasure of playing such a distinctive voice; Ruth’s speech is elegant and flowing, her reactions logical, even when impassioned. The situations are easy to believe. I like going back into my mother’s time; both my parents died recently and left a real hole in my life and my heart. Replaying their time has helped so much in grieving for that loss by bringing their youth back to life, so to speak.
VQT: If you knew Ruth Sloan in real life, would you hang out with her? Why or why not?
KENNEDY: I wouldn’t hang out with Ruth Sloan. She’s too controlling and judgmental; she’d make me nervous. I don’t like to hang out with that part of myself who’s like her!
VQT: Who do you feel has primary “ownership” of your character – you or the writers?
KENNEDY: The writers have “ownership” of my character. Ruth Sloan only exists in those stories: she only exists in those stories because they thought her up. I admit to having brought her to life more richly than they might have originally hoped.
VQT: What to you is most frustrating about the upcoming hiatus of Homefront?
KENNEDY: The most frustrating aspect of this hiatus is that we lose any vestiges of habitual viewing that we’d managed to hold onto despite three schedule shifts. The show’s treatment has been determined by financial decisions on the part of the network. Syndication rules recently changed: now a network can participate in developing and producing a show, and reap the syndication money of any show that is on long enough to produce a syndication package (four years minimum, usually). Homefront is not under the new rule. It is not a golden goose for ABC and never will be the way some of their new offerings might be. The networks can play kingmaker, with good time slots and reasonably good shows. Why should they turn someone else’s moneymaker into a hit when they could do the same for their own?
It can be argued that Homefront had a good chance. And it did pretty well until the pre-emptions. Its fate is still unwritten. As a cash cow, it stands to produce some money for somebody. As entertainment, as a history lesson going down with a spoonful of sugar, it’s recognized as being one of the best hour dramas to come along. But the networks aren’t in the business, they argue, of spoonfeeding good shows that don’t get ratings. The broadcast airwaves of the networks – free television – belong to the public, actually. The networks are our managers. But if we haven’t tried to make those behemoths run with a positive cash flow, it’s hard to criticize. Still – we’re the public. We should have a say.
“It’s sad to see the networks – one of our last meeting places where we can all get the same story on the same night – give up on a show with potential mass appeal, particularly one that addresses our history.”
The frustrating thing is that Homefront should be a growing hit, with an impact, eventually, like Dallas or Knots. Maybe the networks got sick of seeing independent producers become rich on those shows while the network got publicity, ratings, and watched it all fade away when the show did. Who knows? I still think the value of the nation uniting to watch particular TV shows with fervor, and discussing them over the phone afterwards, or at the office the next day, is an important part of our national glue. Stories are important to a culture; and mass audiences aren’t that easy to come by. It’s sad to see the networks – one of our last meeting places where we can all get the same story on the same night – give up on a show with potential mass appeal, particularly one that addresses our history.
VQT: How do you think its absence might impact upon its ratings once it returns?
KENNEDY: Unless we come back with lots of publicity, either for ourselves or our lead-in, or behind a popular lead-in, I don’t know how people can find our show in time to arrange their schedules to watch or even tape it. This leads me to my biggest meditation on the state of television: it’s not the box itself, or the shows, or the business, that kills TV. It’s the complexity of modern life. We love to be entertained, we NEED to be entertained as a distraction from time to time, and we’re used to having that box offer us something free on a regular basis – all we need to do is learn the schedule for the distraction we choose. But when it’s changed, and we don’t know – it’s a disruption that’s hard to catch up with. Not too many of us are willing to change set weekly schedules of our other duties – involving the lives of neighbors and colleagues! – in order to make a shift with a TV show. Not too many of us have unlimited open weeknights for distraction. A hit – the kind the networks can build if they want to – actually can have that kind of loyalty. EVERYBODY shifted with Dallas eventually. But habits take time, and there’s less for everything. We have to let favorite shows go, like dear friends who move away and we can’t keep up with.
What the financial benefits are to the network to have a stable of dear friends the public adores, and knows where to find, versus having an exciting bunch of new acquaintances to view and judge every six months, maybe never to see again, I don’t know. Maybe the benefits to the network are one and the same – and changing shows is more exciting to network staffers than keeping on the old ones, since delivering the old ones weekly only keeps producers busy and leaves the networks feeling marginalized and unimportant.
And the impact of television on society still reverberates enough that the networks assume the audiences are affected by all this activity. The truth is, the audience is made up of people with their own businesses to attend to: at a certain point, the television habit is too much work. Easier distractions, over which the family has more personal control – reading, talking, playing video games – replace network television, and many of these activities are lauded, not maligned, as television watching has been. The public might follow schedule shifts like they follow the stock market: but it doesn’t mean they’ll watch revamped schedules any more than they’d change their investments daily. A small portion might – like professional investors. Which brings me to the idea of professional television watchers. I believe families can’t help but be aware of themselves as such once they know they are being monitored for any length of time by the Nielsen ratings system. Professionals at anything behave differently than amateurs do, and I have trouble believing Nielsen families awareness of their box doesn’t affect their habits during the time the box is there. It’s not a typical situation for a television watcher, to be sampling, judging and voting, constantly aware that it matters in a statistically meaningful way. Remember when Howard Hunt affected the price of silver, all by himself?
It could be argued, with the false “test” of the “typicality” of the ratings system, that the networks have squandered the power of the public airwaves – mismanaged them, fractured them, let them lose their power to unite us. And we are rather in need of ways to unity. I think it’s too bad.
The truth is, it’s advertising that made broadcasting free: and advertisers see what the networks deny: that people are not “reading” TV ads as well as they are in magazines, on radio. So the advertising dollar is moving away from supporting mass audiences, too. What’s the public to do about its airwaves, in this case? Do we want to be brought together by entertainment, still? Do we believe it’s always been a bad habit, and want it to die a slow death? We saw in the last election that people finally up and realized it was their vote that counted. It’s possible they realize it’s up to them to find out how it can work for them, and for the networks. VQT deserves our gratitude for initiating this effort and for being the standard bearer for quality.
VQT: What haven’t we asked that you would like to answer?
KENNEDY: You’ve asked wonderful questions. I think I’d like to ask you – how much time and passion can you devote to television you really love and get something good from before the return diminishes, even if the programs stay on? Can you begin to tell the network executives about your lives, and the importance of habit to brand loyalty, of shows and of products? How the school year and the TV year go together in most families’ minds – and how confused scheduling doesn’t take that into account?
VQT: I’d like to answer you here, Mimi, but I will offer your questions to the general membership of VQT, challenge them to respond and print replies in our March issue. Do you have any final thoughts for us?
KENNEDY: My final thought is on the Nielsen families again: when you know your habits are being monitored, do they stay the same as if they are not being monitored? When I am given a “voter’s” responsibility, I react differently to things: I like things I ordinarily might not like, just because I appreciate the work that went into them. Or I judge more rapidly, knowing someone awaits the outcome of my judgment: I wouldn’t want them to think me indecisive. Or I use my influence to “vote” for things I know I’m supposed to like but don’t really pay attention to. Or I try everything, knowing my opinion matters: if my opinion were private, I might stick with one thing and let the others go, if the one thing I’d chosen seemed good enough. I feel loyal to things I’ve voted for: I don’t want to think I’ve been mistaken. And when we feel responsible for other people, we behave differently – for better or worse – than we do when we are pleasing ourselves. I keep thinking that this must affect the TV viewing of the Nielsen families. But I know as little as the rest of the nation about how many there are, how often they change. Now that my livelihood is once again affected, with all sorts of conjecture as to why a show fails and how it can be saved – I once again consider the power of the Nielsen ratings, and wonder if the sophisticated psychological thought that has illuminated so many other aspects of our work and family has anything to contribute to considering the efficacy – or distortion – of this system which so affects our public discourse.