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Holland Taylor Reflects on Her Scene-Stealing Turns in The Chair, Hollywood, and To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You
Netflix Staff
Entertainment
18 August 2021
Global
Following memorable turns in Ryan Murphy's period drama Hollywood and the teen rom-com To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You, Holland Taylor is a scene-stealer in the upcoming comedy The Chair, a six-episode series set in the complicated world of academia that debuts Friday, Aug. 20. Created by Amanda Peet and Annie Julia Wyman, the show stars Sandra Oh as Dr. Ji-Yoon Kim, the first woman to be named chair of the English department at the prestigious Pembroke University and one of the few people of color on staff at the university.
Taylor portrays Dr. Joan Hambling, a distinguished professor and friend of Ji-Yoon who has been in the department for decades but now finds herself struggling to earn the respect she deserves from her peers in the department as well as her students. We recently caught up with Taylor to chat about The Chair and Joan's struggles to be seen and heard. Plus, she reflects on having her own version of Hollywood's Ellen Kincaid and what it was like to play a fan-favorite character in To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You.
What was it about The Chair and the role of Joan that drew you in?
First of all, Joan is an older character and those parts are rare. Fortunately for me, I seem to get them; Ive worked steadily playing older, older, and older characters. Shes also well written, she's a real person. The elder situation in America is such that there is sort of a cliche old lady people write - youd have to shoot me to make me take a role like that. To see a real person who was a valid, lively, interesting person of integrity, who was depicted very accurately-and who is in her late 70s - that is really interesting to me. It makes me feel very alive as an actress to play somebody who is fully drawn.
The show is very funny but it tackles serious topics, including sexism and ageism. Have you ever had to fight in your own career the way Joan has to fight the academic establishment here?
The fight is much less direct. You dont know if youre not getting a part because of some sexist or ageist issue. You dont really know the machinery that governs your career. Occasionally youll have an agent say, "We couldnt get you in on this. They just didnt want an older person to play it." Sometimes you get something direct like that. But unless youre a very big star where the machinery of your working and getting work is much more apparent to you, there is nothing that you can do. You dont have an invitation to the fight. So, I was just lucky in this instance I was offered this role. Amanda Peet is, of course, a great actress, but shes written a couple of plays that I saw in New York, and shes a really good writer. I didnt have to even see a script. I knew that Amanda would not create a character that wasnt worth playing. So it was a no-brainer.
What was your favorite part about bringing this story to life?
Joan is, according to Amanda, a woman who at her point in life has become somewhat unedited. That means she delivers as a teacher, she conducts herself as an authority to school, she has a social arrangement and agreement with all of the other professors, and relationships with her students. She mostly behaves as she always does, but she has moments where shes hit a wall, where she might say or do anything. She breaks the norms of how shes supposed to speak, even in the middle of class. So shes a little bit of a loose cannon in that regard. I really enjoyed that liminal state of not quite being in control. I did it when I was acting as a performer too. I said, "I dont know how I might play this. I might do something quite unexpected at this moment." I wanted to feel that kind of almost off-balance, trembling state that you can see a person get into when theyre really just pushed too far, and Joan is pushed too far.
Did you pull from anyone in your own life to play Joan?
I dont know that I did. I have my own understanding of getting older that was very lively in me that I could bring to Joans struggle with regards to people not even paying attention to her, not even acknowledging when she spoke, not listening to her point of view, not hearing what her problems are and just sort of making assumptions before they even talked about something with her. This is a very typical thing that happens to anyone whos older. And Joan is a professor at the college! At one point she was probably a star professor. Shes published in a field that demands unbelievable scholarship. To be a medievalist is the most demanding scholar of all. You have to speak about five languages fluently, for starters. So shes an esteemed scholar, and to go from being an esteemed scholar to just this old lady whos bumped out of her office and put in some kind of dreadful basement office without even a nod to why its happening, its a bomb going off in her life. So these things were very real to me. I have a real understanding of them. Ive seen them do that to others around me and in my own generation. So it was actually very, very fulfilling to play those scenes.
Of course, The Chair isn't your first outing on Netflix. On Hollywood, you played Ellen Kincaid, a mentor to aspiring actors. Did you have someone like Ellen in your life?
I did in a way: Stella Adler, who was my teacher. I came to her as a student when I was already not mature as an actress, but Id been working for 15 years already in New York. I worked quite a bit in theater in those days. I heard about her and early in my life I went to see if I could be a student of hers, and her registrar so intimidated me that I backed off. Years later a great actress said to me, "I cannot believe youre not a Stella Adler student, you and she would be p
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