Meryl Streep was interviewed by Katie Couric on the Today Show in order to promote
her television series "Angels in America", talking about the film, its screenwriter Tony Kushner and how easy
it was to play a man.
When Tony Kushner's play "Angels in America" opened on Broadway 10 years ago, one critic hailed it as "the most thrilling American Play in years." Kushner would earn a Pulitzer Prize for his work, which was set at the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. Well now Angels in America has been adapted into a 6 hour, $60 million film for HBO, and the stellar cast includes the always-stellar Meryl Streep. Streep plays not one, but four characters, including that of Ethel Rosenberg, the real-life American executed 50 years ago, convicted of spying for the Soviet Union. I sat down to talk with Meryl Streep about Angels a few days ago.
KC: Meryl, Good morning, nice to see you!
MS: Nice to see you!
KC: So, boy, we have plenty to talk about when it comes to Angels in America. First of all, I know you've done two made-for-TV movies, Holocaust, many years ago,
MS: Yes,. . .
KC: And then . . First Do No Harm, 6 years ago. . .
MS: Yes. . .
KC: So it must take something really terrific to bring you back to the small screen.
MS: Ah, yes, well, an offer.
{They both laugh}
KC: It's as simple as that?
MS: {Still laughing} That's about it!
KC: But clearly this was something that was incredibly tantalizing . . .
MS: It was very, very tantalizing because I got to play 3 parts at once. Actually I got to play 4, but I was hired for 3 (and paid for 3).
KC: That's nice!
MS: No tension about that. . . .So yeah, it was an amazing, amazing, huge, epic sort of six hour story. It was unlike anything I'd ever read before for television, or film, or anything.
KC: How would you describe it Meryl? When people say, "Meryl, what's Angels in America all about?" In fifteen seconds or less. . . I mean, how do you describe what this work encompasses?
MS: I couldn't even begin to try. . . I've been reading some things other people have written about it now, and no one really tries to do that. I guess you could say it's about Roy Cohn, and two Mormon women, and a drag queen and Ethel Rosenberg and a log cabin Republican and a few other people, and how they all get together and interact.
KC: But it really is about AIDS in America in the mid-1980s and sort of politically and societally how AIDS sort of affected so many people. People coming to terms with homosexuality. Fifteen plus years later, will it feel dated? Most critics have said that the characters seem more relevant than ever.
MS: Yeah. It doesn't feel dated, I think, because, well for one thing, it's not, I mean, as we know, AIDS is still a problem, a growing problem, throughout the world. But I think that that crisis is a jumping-off point for Tony Kushner, the writer, to talk about a lot of things in the human condition that have nothing to do with AIDS or being gay or being straight . . . or anything.
KC: Let's talk about your three characters. First of all, you play an old rabbi.
MS: Yes.
KC: We couldn't get a clip of that because. . .
MS: Good.
KC: Because I think people want to see that for themselves. And what a rabbi you are, Meryl!
MS: {In a great NY accent} . . .and I'm available. . .
KC: You do weddings and bar mitzvahs? I mean you did a great job.
{Both laughing}
KC: That must have been a lot of fun.
MS: Yes, yes it was. It was the first time I've played a man (which was sooo shockingly easy). No, that was the part that Mike Nichols offered me last. I was supposed to play an angel principality in the end, and Ethel Rosenberg, and I'm the Mormon mother. And then at the last minute he threw this into the mix.
[ a clip is shown of Hannah Pitt trying to get to Brooklyn]
KC: Hannah Pitt is certainly the meatiest of the three roles.
MS: Mmm.
KC: You play a Mormon, from Salt Lake City, who has a son who is grappling with his own sexuality,
MS: Mmm hmmm.
KC: You come to New York, you undergo an incredible transformation physically and emotionally.
MS: Yeah. I guess you could say everybody in this piece goes through, takes a big journey. . . you know, starts out one place, you make you decisions about that person, you sort of put them in their finite box, and then they surprise you in the end.
KC: You have said that you'll never have a role or roles quite like this again. . .
MS: No. Unless Tony writes me something. . .
KC: So Tony, if you're listening. . . Obviously you're very proud of this piece, when you say to people, what you'd like them to take from it, is there something you'd like people to get out of this?
MS: Oh. . . gosh, I think everybody is going to take a very different thing. It's a smorgasboard of ideas, and feelings and the thing about talking about it as if it's just a story about AIDS, or just a story about what it's like to be homosexual or Jewish or Mormon or whatever the designation of the person in the piece is, it's reductive because I think that the thing, the story, is so compassionate and it opens out to include all of us in America. And so, I hope people open the door, and find themselves in this story, because I think we're all there.
KC: Well it's wonderful, and you're wonderful in it.
MS: Thank you.
KC: And I hope you have a great holiday,
MS: Thank you. You too!
KC: And a joyous one.
Official Website courtesy MSNBC
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