Few actors can deliver a withering one-liner like Christine Baranski. Her crisp diction and icy stare are used to great effect in the third season of The Gilded Age as she looses zingers like this: “Society is not known for its logic, especially where women are concerned.” Baranski’s Agnes Van Rhijn has relinquished her status as head of household to her newly-endowed sister Ada (Cynthia Nixon)—but she isn’t fading into the background.
Neither is Victoria, the other wounded rich lady Baranski plays this summer. The stylish, secretive guest can be found on season two of Nine Perfect Strangers, engaging in some unorthodox wellness therapy in the Alps alongside her estranged daughter Imogen (Annie Murphy). Like Agnes, Victoria’s got a way with words: “Everything is optional, darling. Life is optional,” she tells Imogen. Later, she compares the Vatican to the Golden Globes: “Darling, they’re both just money laundering schemes with fabulous wardrobes.”
Who doesn’t love to watch a wealthy woman behaving badly? But that’s not the only card in Baranski’s deck. “I’ve been around for a long time—and always ever-evolving,” says the Emmy and two-time Tony-winning actor, recently dubbed “America’s treasure” by Stephen Colbert. The Juilliard-trained performer, who turned 73 in May, once told Vanity Fair that her greatest regret is that she “can’t remember every detail of what has been a wonderful life.” Below, Baranski shares a few lasting memories from a four-decade career on stage and screen.
Vanity Fair: You typically play sophisticated, wealthy, sometimes emotionally distant characters—and yet people still feel connected to them and you as a performer. How do you pull that off?
Christine Baranski: People with great strength still have vulnerabilities. Sometimes a very strong exterior or a forceful personality can hide a lot of pain. So when I’m exploring a character, I look for as many deep secrets as I can to explore—not just their strengths, but some of the not so obvious things. A lot of the characters I play are women who out in the world have to present themselves in a powerful way.
Given your reputation for playing elegant women, what would you say is the most déclassé or down-to-earth thing about you?
Oh my goodness. Most people don’t know I’m a very loud Buffalo Bills fan.
I’m from Kansas City, so I hope you won’t hold that against me.
Oh no, the Chiefs! It does amuse me that I’m from a blue-collar neighborhood in Buffalo, New York. We’re a sports town. I now have four grandsons, and I’m the loud person cheering for them on the sidelines at their games. I think people would be surprised that a woman who puts herself together like this and loves opera is actually a rather loud sports fan, particularly football.
What was it like to return to The Gilded Age when the show’s third season wasn’t guaranteed?
I know, we were rather on tenterhooks. But at the end of season two, my character has lost all her money. And suddenly Ada, my sister, loses her husband, which is tragic. But she then inherits all this money, which saves the household. We’re overjoyed that we’ll be able to maintain the lifestyle that we have, but the final moment [of the season] is Ada realizing that she holds the purse strings and going to be calling the shots in the household. And we just thought we’ve got to have a season three, because it would be so fun to see these two women in this upended power dynamic.
I imagine it’s also incredibly painful for Agnes. So much of her life was informed by this marriage that she entered into for financial security—and even that sacrifice wasn’t enough.
It’s true. Agnes did make a choice to enter into a loveless marriage; for women at that time, marriage was their salvation. And if they didn’t get married by a certain point in their lives, they might wind up not being okay economically. The fact that I made that decision and then was able to take care of my sister, there’s a feeling of, “Well, you owe me.” So that weighs heavily in the dynamic with Ada when she presumes to take over the household. It’s my house, by virtue of the sacrifices that I feel I made to get that house.
There are some thematic parallels between your other show, Nine Perfect Strangers, and The White Lotus, which recently starred your Gilded Age co-star Carrie Coon. Did you two compare notes?
The only thing I spoke to Carrie about is pragmatic—when she was deciding whether or not to do the show, and wondering how she would manage her family life. As someone who raised two daughters and had my career as well, I always try and be supportive of other actresses who are walking that walk. It’s very hard, especially when your career is in the ascendancy as hers is. But she’s got little kids, so we talked about that. And then when she came back, we talked about how hot it was in Thailand and how challenging getting on flights and crossing the globe just to see her kids was. I don’t see Carrie a lot on the set because our plot lines don’t interchange very often, which is our loss. I think people would love to see those two women have tea one day.
The popularity of Gilded Age, White Lotus, and Nine Perfect Strangers suggest we really like to watch rich people behaving badly. Why do you think that is?
Well, first of all, wealthy people will take you into a world that you would like to inhabit. So there’s a kind of wishful thinking there. But I also think people take comfort from the fact that just because you have a great deal of money doesn’t necessarily make you happy. In fact, it can contribute to your unhappiness. So money being a problem as well as a blessing is always interesting. And certainly Julian Fellowes knows how to write that better than anyone.
Most of your scenes in Nine Perfect Strangers are opposite Annie Murphy. Did any of your own experiences of motherhood come to bear on their complex relationship?
Absolutely. I raised two daughters and I have close relationships with both of them, but the mother-daughter relationship is fraught. Often you’re searching for a way to communicate. And in Nine Perfect Strangers, you have a mother-daughter who have lost the ability to find a common ground. And Annie as an actress has so much power and sharpness and intellect that was wonderful to play off of. Victoria is almost intimidated by her daughter, she’s so fierce. And yet Imogen is captivated by her mother, and wishes she could be a woman as easygoing or as charming as her. So it’s wonderful, over the course of eight episodes, to go from being at such a standoff to where it ends. At heart it’s a very loving, very tender relationship with a very shared and scarred traumatic past.
Is it true that you and your Nine Perfect Strangers co-star King Princess are now theatergoing buddies?
We’ve become pals. She lives in Brooklyn, I live on the Upper East Side. We had wonderful dinners when we were in Germany on location. She’s just one of the fiercest, brightest young actors I’ve ever met. I think she’s going to have a huge future. We hit it off. We have gone to the theater several times. We have our own little niche place—a French restaurant in the theater district where we have our steaks and schmooze. She’s just a marvelous human being.
This is your second time playing a character who delves into the world of micro-dosing, something Diane Lockhart also did on The Good Fight. What is your view on the benefits of psychedelics?
I don’t do psychedelics, and I can’t say I did any heavy research by playing women who were trying it. If psilocybin is something that helps people with post-traumatic stress, then I think that’s great. I am a little wary of people just using this stuff recreationally. I think you have to be careful with it. That’s all. We were careful on The Good Fight not to even talk about ketamine by name; we gave it a different name. But the use of ketamine too, you’ve got to be very careful about it. Going to a spa just to take a lot of psychedelics and drugs is not my idea of a wellness spa.
It feels like a miracle that The Good Fight even existed. Right now, the entertainment industry seems afraid to address Trump in the way that series did.
We were head-on critical and used what was happening as plotlines, and even sometimes the writers were ahead of the times in terms of how we portrayed where America was going—with the Civil War, and surveillance ,and not adhering to the rule of law. What happens when facts don’t matter. What happens when people simply choose not to obey a subpoena or show up in court. We’re seeing a level of lawlessness now that’s kind of foretold in The Good Fight.
Do you think that that show could still exist today? There was a lot of protest art during the first Trump presidency. Now, things may have gone in the other direction.
I don’t know. I think we mustn’t be afraid to speak out. Look at the late night shows: every night, they’re out there railing about it. They turn it into comic material, but the fact is, they’re addressing it. I’m not even sure how you would go about writing about what we’re living through now and characterize it in a comedic or satiric way. There’s part of me that wishes we did have writers who were willing to just move right into it and portray this period. Because believe me, The Good Fight will be a record of what we were living through in the first Trump administration. Whether or not there will be a show anywhere near that in these next four years, it is indeed a very interesting question.
Given your previous performances at the Kennedy Center, I have to ask your reaction to Trump’s takeover of that institution.
Well, it remains to be seen what will become of it. I think it was shocking. It was ruthless. And what was always great about the Kennedy Center was it was really not partisan. I fear that ridding the institution of anyone who was put in there by former Democratic presidents is a statement of partisanship. I have many, many happy memories of having worked at the Kennedy Center. I can only hope that the people who have chosen to remain uphold its standards as an institution. Because it’s not just Donald Trump or the people who are at the very head—it’s the people who make the institution run on a weekly, monthly, yearly basis. I hope that people will continue to support the arts in this country. And now more than ever, we need to step up and give our private support to cultural institutions, because the federal government is pulling money away.
You have been a part of so many incredible movie musicals—Chicago, Into the Woods, Mamma Mia. It’s a notoriously difficult genre to pull off. What does it take to get one right?
You need, of course, a great score and a great book, but you need a great director who can pull it all together. It’s different from doing a stage version. I’m constantly stopped and people ask me, “When’s Mamma Mia three?” It just lives on as something that’s made so many people happy.
And this is when I’m contractually obligated to ask what’s happening with Mamma Mia three.
I know—people want to know, and I’m afraid to speak up. Because the last time I said something about having drinks with [producer] Judy Kramer and how she very much wants to do another Mamma Mia, it just went viral as though it were going to happen. In fact, there’s a lot of talk and a lot of desire to do it again, but nothing has happened that says there’s a greenlight. It’s all aspirational at this point.
You are not publicly on social media, but are you aware when something captures the internet’s imagination, like the fanfare around Mamma Mia’s cast parties?
This was before cell phones became really ubiquitous, but people had their little phones and they were taking pictures. So there’s a lot out there about that one party on a Greek island where Benny Anderson [of ABBA] played for all of us, and we all just stood up like it was karaoke night and sang our songs. It was quite something.
There’s also the “Ladies Who Lunch” video that you made for Sondheim’s birthday, also featuring Meryl Streep and Audra McDonald. The image of you drinking in your robe is still everywhere. How does it make you feel to see yourself as a meme?
That was such a surprise. We were living through COVID. I just knew I always wanted to sing that song, “Ladies Who Lunch,” but I didn’t want to sing it alone. So I suggested that we get Meryl and Audra, and we all filmed it separately. It was in my office at my home in Connecticut, just doing take after take, swilling the red wine and singing. And then Meryl was in her, I don’t know, office or her bedroom somewhere in LA, and Audra was off somewhere where her country house is, and somehow it all pulled together. It was shocking that it went so viral. But hey, as viral things go, I’m happy to be up there with Meryl Streep and Audra McDonald.
Is there a project that people approach you about most on the street?
It’s great if you’re in Christmas films. The Grinch [Who Stole Christmas], A Bad Moms Christmas, Dolly Parton’s Christmas in the Square, Eloise at Christmastime—they just get done again and again and again. At that time of year, I can be sure that I’ll be stopped. My grandsons didn’t know that I was Martha May [in the Grinch]. They were watching a Jim Carrey movie and I said, “I worked with him.” They said, “What do you mean?” And I said, “Well, I was in the Grinch. That’s me—Martha May.” My stock went up as a grandma.
When asked your motto during a 2013 Vanity Fair Proust Questionnaire, you said: “Wake up expecting things.” What are you expecting next?
I’ve lived thinking wonderful things were going to happen to me. And they did. I’m sitting in a gorgeous hotel in midtown Manhattan, promoting two major projects that millions of people around the globe will be seeing. I started my career doing kind of avant-garde plays when I was still in high school, and the year was 1968. I’ve been around for a long time—and always ever-evolving. I love the roles I play. I’ve loved the people I’ve met. I’ve had the privilege of working with Robin Williams and Meryl Streep, singing and dancing. I’ve been lucky. So I just expect more good things.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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The post Christine Baranski Has the Range: On Psychedelics, Trump Resistance, and, Yes, Mamma Mia! 3 appeared first on Vanity Fair.
