No. I’m just out of it.
Switching gears to Murphy Brown. I watched a lot of it in real time. Although I didn’t always understand what I saw on TV, I remember its cultural impact vividly. Is it true that after your fifth Emmy win, you declined future nominations for the role?
Yeah. I could feel it in the house when I won for the fifth time. I could feel the audience going.… I sort of felt them pulling back and I thought, This is enough.
I read after the show wrapped that CBS offered you an actual job as a journalist?
Well, I had a meeting with Don Hewitt, who conceived and produced 60 Minutes, and he wanted to talk to me about possibly being a correspondent. So I did a sort of test piece, which was tragic. But I was intrigued. I said, “Could I still do movies too?” And he said, “No, you can’t do that. You have to commit to one thing.” And I said, “Well, I don’t think I can do that.”
What an odd conflation of art and life.
I would’ve been savaged. So I saved myself from that.
The character was groundbreaking in many ways, including the fact that she was in Alcoholics Anonymous and chose to become a single mother in her 40s. Apparently the network wasn’t on board with these choices?
They weren’t on board with me being the character. They wanted Heather Locklear.
Why?
It was a gentler approach that would’ve garnered a bigger audience and wouldn’t have been as much to deal with. Murphy was a complicated character, and she behaved badly often. But she was funny and smart and tough and very good at her job.
After Murphy Brown, your comedic skills led you to supporting roles in what some people might call rom-coms, which technically they are, but they’re also cultural touchstones—Miss Congeniality, Sweet Home Alabama, Bride Wars. After Murphy wrapped in the late ’90s, what was your thought process for picking the work that followed?
Oh, there was no process. They were roles that were offered to me. I wanted to work and I earned a living. If they looked appealing in any way, I said yes. I liked working with Reese [Witherspoon]. I liked working with Sarah Jessica [Parker], and I thought it was interesting how each of those women had taken charge of their lives. Also, Sandra Bullock.
Throughout the course of your career, was there ever a role you really wanted and didn’t get?
Oh, God. Are you kidding? Tons. I don’t remember any [at this moment], but I remember when Sigourney [Weaver] played [primatologist and conservationist] Diane Fosse [in 1988’s Gorillas in the Mist], I thought that would’ve been a neat role to do. Love to have been involved in that. But she was great.
You’re active on social media, and your art is very charming. Do you wake up and feel the need to post? Or is it something that you do in your own time?
