Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/754215
SAG-AFTRA President Gabrielle Carteris sat down with Life Achievement Award honoree Lily Tomlin to discuss Tomlin's characters, her start in showbiz and her mom. ACTOR to ACTOR Gabrielle Carteris: The characters that you created are iconic, memorable characters. When I was a little girl, and you came to my hometown in Northern California and you did, "My name is Edith Ann. And my mom said …" It was, honest to God, life-changing for me. How did you even create your characters? Lily Tomlin: If I knew, I would have made 100 more. But I would mostly get an idea for something I wanted to do or a culture type. And with Edith, I just wanted to do a child as a contrast to everything else I did, and I knew that on being on Laugh In, I could say things as Edith that other people couldn't say. GC: What was your favorite character? LT: That's like asking Mrs. Duggar which of her 19 children she likes the best. I like them all for different reasons. GC: So, you've been a member of our legacy unions and now SAG-AFTRA overall for 50 years. You have been a leader. You have stood in the strike line with members. LT: It wasn't like I was politically driven to really make a change. I just wanted us to be what we should be. GC: You first got your card in AFTRA — is that right — and then you got it in SAG? LT: I got it in SAG on Nashville. I got my AFTRA card on probably The Garry Moore Show. GC: Do you remember what it was like when you first got your card? LT: No, but I changed my name. GC: Did you really? What was your name? LT: My name was Mary Jean. My mother's name is Lily. GC: Your mother must have loved that you took her name. LT: Oh, she did. She'd say, "Oh, I don't have to wait in the beauty parlor anymore." Listen, at my first Broadway show, my mother comes to the show and she stood in the aisle. And my mother is very unassuming, very sweet, and has a wonderful way about her. Oh, I wish she were here now. But she stood in the aisle, and she shook everybody's hand, and thanked them for coming. She said, "Oh, thank you for coming to Lily's show." And she didn't identify herself. She didn't say, "I'm Lily's mother." GC: How fabulous. LT: She just was so heartfelt about it. And same thing when I played the Kennedy Center. I did a Mother's Day show with a bunch of other people, and I cried on the show because my mother was so moved. She was the only real mother on the show. The other mothers were kind of like show business mothers. And she said [in an interview], "Oh, she just broke my heart. She moved out of the house when she was 16." I said, "Momma!" I didn't know she was going to start sharing all this stuff with the people, and I got tears in my eyes. I said, "Momma, but I came back for supper, didn't I?"