The Four Seasons’ Kerri Kenney-Silver has been nominated for four primetime Emmy Awards and has been a successful working actor for four decades, but starring in Netflix’s new comedy series from Tina Fey is hitting differently for the 55-year-old.
“I keep waiting for someone to knock on my hotel room door and say, ‘Madam, we did not mean for you to be here,’” Kenney-Silver says over Zoom after the show’s LA premiere the night before. “I mean, I couldn’t believe I was getting the chance to audition. I remember rereading the email a couple of times, thinking, This must be a guest role.”
Hardly. If anything, Kenney-Silver is the reason to watch The Four Seasons. She might not be the household name that Fey, Steve Carell, Colman Domingo, and Will Forte are, but her portrayal of Anne, a 50-something wife, mother, and artist who finds her life turned upside down when her husband, Nick (Carell), wants a divorce, is the juiciest, most scene-stealing role of all.
Kenney-Silver credits the writing team of Fey, Lang Fisher, and Tracey Wigfield, but the secret sauce lies in the Reno 911 alum’s rich portrayal. Whether she’s trying to lift her lithe and statuesque body back onto a boat or having a complete meltdown over the new life she didn’t ask for, you can’t help but sympathize, empathize, and laugh with Anne.
In many ways it has been a role some 40 years in the making. Kenney-Silver says she’s seen the 1981 Alan Alda film version that the TV series is based on about 30 times, starting at the age of 11. “One summer it was on all the time, and for some reason I was fascinated by it,” she says. “Obviously, I was a huge fan of Alan Alda and Carol Burnett, but I remember being so enthralled and wanting to be part of that world. Now, to get to all these years later and work with Alan Alda, who is an actual friend of mine from when we shot Wanderlust together years ago…well, it’s an absolute dream.”
More so, it’s a role that Kenney-Silver just didn’t think she’d ever get the chance to play. Although she studied at New York University and created the comedy group The State while in college, she never allowed herself to even dream that she’d get to do something so dramatic until her mid-50s.
Now, of course, she’s proof that it’s never too late to get those chances. Here, in a wide-ranging conversation, Kenney-Silver talks about the freedom that comes from leaning into her fears, aging on screen, and much more.
Glamour: You said that in your three decades as an actor, you always wanted a chance to do something like this show, but nobody really could see you in this way. Tell me about that.
Kerri Kenney-Silver: Casting director Sherry Thomas took a chance on me. Especially, as a woman in this business, I would say even 8 to 10 years ago, the reality would have been that my best hope for the level that I was at in my career would be to show up as the wacky neighbor once every five episodes or the persnickety secretary or the disapproving mother-in-law and sort of come into a scene and wag my finger at people, pull a funny face, and be out the door. But there have been so many more opportunities for women in comedy and drama that are meaty parts within the last 10 years. I mean, Tina Fey reviving this story about this group of friends in their mid-50s, I don’t think would’ve flown 10 years ago. People would say, “Well, why would somebody want to watch that?”
But there are important stories to be told there. There’s a whole generation of people that would love to see their stories be told, and I’m so grateful that she revived this. So, Sherry Thomas taking a chance on me, and Tina allowing her to have me come in for this, kudos to her, because she had no basis for believing that I could do a role like this.
Why do you think that is?
She’s seen me dancing around in wacky wigs for 35 years. I suspected that I could [do this]. I dreamed that I would get the opportunity. To just get the audition felt like the award, but actually getting to film with these legends and to say these words and to bring the story back to life that Alan Alda so beautifully crafted, it’s all a dream. It’s all a dream that I can’t believe is real.
And yet as wonderful as this entire cast is, your storyline, your scenes, are the ones I gravitated toward most. You’re the reason to watch.
I should say thank you first as a cordial human adult, but I have to immediately jump in after that and say, 99.999% of it is the words on the page. When there’s a script like this script, all you have to do is show up, say the words, and say them honestly, and your performance is done. If there’s any credit due to me, it’s in getting my nerves down enough to be able to just be present and say the words that were already there for me.
I will never forget on the first day we were shooting a scene with all of us around the table. I had just met everyone, but it was like, Now you’re supposed to be friends of 30 years, putting hands on each other and being physically comfortable, laughing at each other’s jokes. I had to say a line, and in the script it said, “Everyone chuckles at what Anne just said.” Well, in that moment, I remember being completely out of my body and instead of saying the line, I just vomited out the phrase, “I’m really nervous, you guys!”
Haha, good for you.
I think that’s something about being in my 50s. I just tell the truth now. I am not worried about trying to hold up the appearance all the time, that I know what I’m doing or that I’m comfortable in every situation, because in my head, I’m still just Kerri. Whether I’m 25 or 55, it’s the same Kerri, and she’s uncomfortable at times and doesn’t know what she’s doing a lot of the time.
So what happened when you said, “I’m really nervous”?
The whole room let out a sigh of relief. Tina said, “Oh, I’m so glad you just said something! Because I’m just remembering, like, what do people do with their hands when they talk?” And Steve and Will both said, “Yeah, I do the same thing.” Right when I’m starting a new show or a new movie, I am like, Do I know how to do this? Do I remember how to do this? It’s universal in this business, at least with this group of actors, and if this group of actors is feeling it, I would suspect almost all actors are feeling it.
But everybody’s nervous, and that just made me feel like, Okay, if everybody’s feeling this way, I can do this. We were off and running right from then, day one, just off and running and comfortable. In one of our press junket interviews, I heard Tina say, “I just wanted to do a show where middle-aged people are sitting around wearing comfortable sweaters and flat shoes and just see if the world would be interested [in watching that].” The whole show, that’s what it really felt like. It was just comfort on every level.
As I said, I love the character of Anne. How did you personally relate to her?
Of all the characters in the show, if I could have chosen to play a character, it would be Anne. Of course, I just worshipped Sandy Dennis in the original film. But the journey that Tina, Tracey Wigfield, and Lang Fisher wrote for this Anne in the series is an actor’s dream. At the beginning, we meet Anne at a point where she thinks she is sort of in the coasting portion of her life. She’s in a long-term marriage, and she and her husband have successfully gotten their daughter off to college. Their house is paid off; they have a beautiful life. She has her crafts around her, and she’s ready to settle in.
But then her entire life is completely upended. Everything she’s ever known has been pulled out from under her. You start to see it unravel even more when she thinks she’s losing her chosen family, her friends. She’s already lost her husband and might possibly be losing her daughter to this new family scenario. My favorite part as an actress is to play the unraveling, which is where the line of comedy-drama becomes blurred. And then, to see her scratch back and try to make some semblance of a life—and then the possibilities for future of a path she never saw coming—I mean, what a gift to get to play that arc as an actor.
What did this experience teach you about yourself?
So many things. On a pure surface level, something interesting happened to me when I got the link to watch all eight episodes. Originally I thought, I’m not going to watch this, because I knew I was going to judge my performance. But I wanted so much to see the scenes that I was not there for of these other brilliant actors. I didn’t want to deprive myself of that, but I intended to skip my parts.
Instead, I didn’t. And when I finished watching all eight episodes, I felt a sense of relief. Not about the performance, but about how I was physically presenting in the world. Aging in this business as a woman is not for the faint of heart. But strangely, seeing that I just was a real person having real emotion and looking how I looked, no apologies, no excuses, I felt so much more relaxed in my real life.
That’s because I used to see photos of myself on a press line or just with friends at a birthday party and go, “Oh, gosh! Sit up straight. What are you doing with your mouth? I didn’t know my hair looked like that. My ears are bigger than I thought they were.” But after having seen this and realizing that I do look human and authentic and real, and I have jowls and I have lines…I have all of the things. And strangely, through Anne, I was able to give myself more of a break because I felt for her. I loved her, I understood her, and I could give her a break. That, in turn, allowed me to just…I just don’t worry as much. It’s such a bizarre thing that has happened, but I don’t fret about my appearance or, “Oh, I said the wrong thing,” or, “Oh, I didn’t send the thing at the right time.” I’m giving myself more permission to be human after having been Anne.
That’s the most beautiful sentiment. And as you said, it’s so nice to see somebody that does look human. Our beauty standards are so warped these days that it is so nice to see somebody that I consider a beautiful, normal human being. We don’t see that enough now.
And listen, I love an airbrush moment. I love looking at a picture and going, “Ooh, I look good there. I don’t look like myself, but look at my jawline.’ I’m good with that. I’m not saying that I am evolved enough to want to whiskers and all, and I do have them until I shave them with my little lady lip shaver. I’m not saying that I’m so evolved that I want to let it all hang out. I’m not there, but playing Anne and then watching Anne has given me permission to not be as hard on Kerri.
Same. I want to look good and feel good, and that means bleaching my upper lip and my arms and wearing makeup.
I’m all about knowing the next laser. If I had endless buckets of money, I’d probably be doing all the things. It’s more, for me, about feeling less judgmental of not how I look or how I act, but whatever my choices are going to be, if that makes sense. If my choice is going to be, “Next, I’m going to do red hair color,” and it looks ridiculous, then to also give grace to that person of, “Well, that didn’t work out.” I think giving grace, showing grace to all the foibles, to all the hits and misses, giving kudos to myself…getting to play Anne softened my heart for Kerri.
The post Kerri Kenney-Silver Is the Best Reason to Watch The Four Seasons appeared first on Glamour.
