-Our first guest tonight is an
Oscar- and Tony-nominated and Emmy-winning actress you
know from shows such as "John Adams" and "The Big C" and films like "The Truman Show"
and "Love Actually." She stars in
the final season of "Ozark," which is available now
on Netflix. Let's take a look. -Let me be exceedingly clear. I don't want to
work for you anymore. -Mm... I don't think you would have
grabbed on to my coattails if you didn't think
I was going somewhere. You've worked
your whole life for this. -I... I could have been killed. -But you weren't. -Please welcome to the show,
Laura Linney, everybody. [ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪ Welcome to the show, Laura! -Yay!
-I'm so glad you're here. -I'm so happy to be here. -This is -- It must be
a little sad for you to say goodbye to
the character of Wendy. -Yeah, it is.
-I mean, what a juicy role. -Oh, she was so fun.
-Yeah. -Oh, she was just out there
and badly behaved. -Yeah.
-It was just delicious. -So it is true, what we always
hear actors say, which is, it's really fun
to play terrible people. -It is. It is.
-Yeah. Yeah. -It gives you permission to
just slide all over the place, and just, like,
ethically and emotionally, just be just sort of chaos. -And, so -- And I'm assuming
you never brought any of Wendy home to
your regular life. -Never. -Yeah, very easy to
leave her on set? -My husband's so happy
with me right now. -Well, right,
because now he has, like -- There's actual visual proof
of how bad you can be if given the opportunity. -And now I'm missing her,
so every once in a while, maybe I just, like,
slip it on a little bit, just, like, really -- And it's
our anniversary tonight, so maybe just, you know... -Yeah.
-Yeah. [ Cheers and applause ] -Happy anniversary. So, I would imagine
it was also -- You shot the show in Georgia. -In Atlanta, yeah. -And they must be
a little sad, as well, like, the fact that you guys
went down there and created this great show that -- -I hope so, but there's
so much going on in Atlanta. I mean, it's a
really exciting place to be. My whole family's
from the state of Georgia, so although I was born up here, I have a lot of
history in Georgia. So I loved being there,
and it's so exciting to see that city explode
in the way that it is. -Yeah, that's really cool.
-Yeah. -You mentioned you have
family from Georgia. You have an 8-year-old son.
-I do. -Are you trying to impress Georgia sports,
Georgia football on him? -Well, we have a connection to
the University of Georgia, so, Bulldogs. -Congratulations.
-Thank you very much. Thank you. And my great friend
Willow Sparks, who's basically family,
is indoctrinating him fiercely. -That's a good age. I think 8 is a good time to
start drilling it in, yeah. -Oh, yeah, he's right in. -So, I didn't realize
you have a connection to my home state of New Hampshire and the New Hampshire
theater scene. -I do. I do. -So, what made you
first start going up there? -Well, my father, in 1953,
was an apprentice at the New London Barn Playhouse
in New London, New Hampshire. [ Crowd chants cheers ]
Yes, hooray. And then, when I was a teenager,
I spent my -- My parents split
when I was an infant. I would spend the summers
with my father. And, you know,
you don't really want to hang out with
your parents all the time. And so I begged him
to let me work at the theater. I begged him. So he took me there,
and they said to, you know, the guy who ran
the theater like, "Just let her work
for a few hours. She'll come home." And I was there 15 hours a day,
every day. I broke every
child-labor law known to man. I loved it. And I was 11, 12, and 13
when I worked there. And then I also worked at the Keene Summer Theatre
in Keene. So I love New Hampshire. -Now, tell me, when you were 11,
did you already love theater or did you fall in love with it
by doing that? -I already loved it.
-You already loved it, yeah. -It was like the mother ship.
It just called me. -Yeah. That's so nice to -- -I was running lights at 11. It was ridiculous.
It was insane. -It's a very libertarian state,
so I'm sure when it comes to labor laws,
they're like, "Who's going to come? Who's going to check?" -I was so happy. I was around all these
older actors, who must have been
freshmen in college, probably. So they were like the, you know,
Mount Olympus. Like, these gods would walk -- They did "Anything Goes"
and they did "Oliver," and, oh, God, I was in heaven. -That's wonderful.
-Yeah, it was great. -So, you know, a show like this,
a show like "Ozark," which I feel like, you know,
people loved before the pandemic,
and then it was a show that I feel like anybody
who hadn't started it found it. -Yeah, yeah. -And so everybody has
this relationship with it, and, obviously, it's sort of -- I think to describe it as
a thrill ride is fair. You're also a producer on it. How much thought did
you guys put into the ending and how important it would be
to a show like this? -Well, the ending --
I let the writers and our magnificent showrunner,
Chris Mundy, like, handle that. You know, when someone has
created a full four-season arc, like, the architect
of something like that, you want them to be able to tell
the story they want to tell. So I just said,
"Yes, thank you." And, you know, they were just
amazing for four seasons. Like, every season had something
special for all of us to do. It was an amazing ensemble, and, you know,
we loved doing it and we're so happy
that people seem to like it. And, you know, it was
really a real privilege. -Do you think about --
When you think about what you're going to do next,
do you try to go as far afield from a character
like Wendy as possible? -No, it's going to be hard. I'm actually -- I'm leaving soon
to go do a movie in Ireland, and I've actually
thought about, like, "I've got to get certain
cadences out of my mind. I have to --" You know, it'll be
interesting to see if I'm -- Because I've never played
anyone for that long, so I don't know
how haunted I will be. -Yeah. Well, that's going to be
a fun thing to find out. -I'm sure people
will let me know. -You're going to close,
like, you know, the medicine cabinet
in the bathroom and just be looking back at
yourself, being like, "Wendy's still here." -I know.
-Yeah. -I'm gonna rip something
off a wall. -Hey, I'm want to pitch
a show for everybody who's done with "Ozark"
and is like -- I love the miniseries
"John Adams" so much. -Oh, thank you. -And, see,
that was a very nice person. You got to play
a nice person in that one. -Yes, I did. I sure did. Yeah. -And I feel like
there was just something -- I rewatched it again
during the pandemic, and because it is
people who, like, believe in
what's good about America, it's a really nice thing
to watch again. -Isn't it?
-Yeah. -It was a
wonderful series to do, and I learned so much
about our country. You know,
it was just shameful that, you know, at least
when I was in high school, like, American history
was pretty light. You didn't really learn stuff. And you should sort of learn it
again as a more mature adult... -Yeah, when you
have perspective on it. -...to learn how
our country came together, how these people, these flawed,
wonderful human beings, created this system that tried
and some things failed and some things succeeded. And then just
the human commonality that we still have with
the people then and there. -It is also -- It's a really
wonderful show about a marriage. Like, I think the selling point
is about American history, and then you watch it again --
I also have the perspective of being married
the second time, and I was like, "Oh, this part's way more interesting
than America, yeah." Or certainly more complicated.
-Sure. Yeah, well, it makes --
And you realize there are certain things
that just span time. Like, they -- I always loved
the moment where she went -- where they went to Europe and they came back
and she was famous. And, all of a sudden,
you realize, like, her behavior really shifted
because she became famous. She could feel
the power of fame. This very together, sort of modest woman,
all of a sudden, had a little blood
in her mouth for power. And I thought that was like, "Oh, I've seen other people
go through that, as well. That's not an uncommon story." -So it turns out it's not just Hollywood where that happens. -It's not. Nope, nope.
-So, again, 8-year-old son. I would imagine
"Ozark" is not on the table yet. -No, no.
None of it's on the table. -Nothing.
Yeah, I was trying to think. Do you have anything --
No real entry point, yeah. -No, not yet. Teenage -- -Does he even believe
you're an actor? -He doesn't quite get it.
-Yeah. -He knows that, like, I have
a lot of friends on the street. -Yeah.
-Like, people want to say "hi." They're very friendly,
and people are nice. They come up and they say "hi." And every once in a while, he'll
be like, "How do they know you?" I'm like, "Oh, you know,
I show up at work." But, you know...
-That's a cool thing. It's a cool thing
to be able to explain. -I got a lot of friends.
I have a lot of friends. -You just go,
"Yeah, I have a lot of friends. As soon as you go to bed,
I'm out on the town." -That's right.
-Thanks so much for being here. Congrats on an incredible run
on the show. Thank you so much.
-Thank you, thank you. -You guys, that's Laura Linney. The final season of "Ozark" is
streaming now on Netflix.
