Kathy Najimy: How old was she when she died? 80 something, right? 87. Wow. I’ve been in her apartment in Los Angeles. Have you guys been there? No. Oh, you should go just to the building. Yeah. It’s called. It’s in East L.A.. It’s called the Something. It’s a famous. Yes, the Ravenswood. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, That was a line in the play, but I don’t remember anything. It’s. It’s amazing. And her. I’m sure you have videos of her apartment. Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah, I guess. Well, let’s just start with what you remember about when you first learned about Mae West.
Kathy Najimy: You know, I was a little bit older when I first I knew about Mae West, and I heard the name, of course, and I’d seen some black and white films, but I didn’t really know know her until about a year before I did the Broadway play. But my impression of her as when I was a child and growing up and seeing her movies, was that she was funny. And I really appreciated that she was really sexy and normal sized. She was a normal sized person, which was really different for us at that time, especially in the sixties and the seventies, when of course, she was still way alive and kicking and filming. It was rare to see somebody who was portrayed as the arms, you know, although she really wasn’t an engineer. She was the lead woman in the film, but someone who had sexuality and liked how she looked. That wasn’t, you know, an £80 person.
Interviewer: Yeah. I think it was unusual in the thirties also.
Kathy Najimy: Yeah. Yeah, it was really unusual. And also usually women in theater and film, not that these are their organic personalities, but they’re usually farmed out to two different sections. One is funny and looks the way society doesn’t think a leading lady should look and the other is not funny and looks how culture thinks the leading lady should look. And she really, really blurred the lines. It’s like she almost took a hatchet and hit down those walls and landed somewhere in between. And on her own terms, like without having to get permission.
Interviewer: Do you think there’s something threatening about a beautiful woman who’s funny?
Kathy Najimy: Yeah, I think there’s something threatening for a certain part of the population about a beautiful woman who’s funny. I think there’s something threatening about a funny woman for a lot of people, because honey suggests a little insight and smart, and that might be threatening also. You know, you have to have a pretty big uterus. People say balls, but, you know, to to lead with your funny and to not be asked to join the conversation, but to just say what you think. And I think that’s what a lot of women comedians do, is they just see what they think without being asked. And that also is unusual. Not so much today, of course, things are really changing, especially this year, thank goodness, both ways. Changing good and changing that. But yeah, I think men say they get afraid of funny women, which I don’t know if I was a man, I would most be attracted to someone with a really great personality. But yeah, I’m sure, especially to the studio heads and maybe the other actors. She was this force and you couldn’t deny her sexiness and the way that she shook hands with her femininity. So she wasn’t what they expected her to think she was. She was who she was.
Interviewer: That’s great. Mm hmm. Um, well, how would you describe the Mae West persona?
Kathy Najimy: Well, I think there’s two Mae West personas. I think that, like, there is for many of us in the business, the business of show. I think, you know, I don’t know what she was like personally, so I can’t really even comment on that. But I’m sure that she created the idea of the character of both the person and the actress of Mae West to, you know, break down some walls, to open some doors to give herself, as it probably was, just way more fun than some of the stuff that she’d been considered for or people told her she was appropriate for. She probably thought, well, that’s fucking boring. You know what I mean? I want to be the lady at the desk or I don’t want to be somebody’s mom. And so she literally created a niche. Thank goodness for a lot of us in show business and out to redefine sexy and funny and smart.
Interviewer: Great. What did you take on the role of her? Like, what about her appealed to you for your new idea? As much as you know you know about her.
Kathy Najimy: I got offered to do the second half of the run of a Broadway play called Dirty Blond, that Claudia Schiffer with James Lipton created. And I was a fan of both of them. And I was living in Los Angeles at the time. So the thought of moving my entire family with my four year old daughter at Christmas time in the freezing snow of December, January was not appealing until I read that it was Mae West. And I read the play and I thought, Well, there’s no way I could ever say no to this. It was literally still was a chance of a lifetime and a role of a lifetime. I mean, what was not to love? I loved that. I loved what she did behind the scenes in the business. I loved that she demanded equal pay, if not more. I mean, how many years ago was that? And we’re still talking about that, in fact. And we’ve moved backwards. We’re still fighting about that today. I mean, so that she demanded to be paid her worth, that she didn’t want to change her demeanor, that she knew what was funny, that she knew that there was there were going to be enough people who really appreciated it and dug it. And so I really wanted to do the play. I loved the premise of the play. I it didn’t ever make her play small. It only celebrated every single bold thing about her. And I got to sing and dance and play Mae. I played Mae at 18 years old, 35, 50 and 85 years old in one play, simultaneously playing a 35 year old fan of hers. So the premise is that my character meets a guy at her grave because they go there every day. They see each other on the subway and then they see each other at the grave and and they kind of fall in love. And through their courtship, Mae comes out and you see her life turns out at the end, even more. 2018, 2019. He happens to be a cross-dresser who dresses like me for fun. So it was a really very, very competitive play. And every single thing I mean, you know, if it had like, tarts and flan, it couldn’t have been better for me. I mean, it was just chock full of great humor and create feminism and really is the story of a great woman and then also a love story that is actually real.
Interviewer: Do you think and you describe Mae as a feminist?
Kathy Najimy: Yes. Mae West was the first feminist, not the first feminist alive, but Mae West was the first feminist in show business that we could actually point to and identify, and one that also wasn’t a secret, closeted feminist. She came out guns blazing with her feminism. I mean, someone who says, I’m going to write this. I don’t care what you think, I’m going to star in it, I’m going to edit it. And it’s what I think is funny and important, and I’ll even go to jail for it. And at the same time, you must pay me equally, if not more than the same men who are doing what I’m doing. That I mean, the definition of a feminist is someone who is equally regarded equal rights and equally regarded in society. Equality for both sexes. That it’s a simple thought that she was all that she was all that and not a limited description of what we might think that is. She was all that with like, oozing much, much more.
Interviewer: Great. Well, let’s talk about the the arrest and the trial.
Kathy Najimy: Okay.
Interviewer: So I don’t know how much of this. In the play. But. So she’s arrested for the plate. Sex? Mm hmm. Set that.
Kathy Najimy: Up. So it’s 1927, and she writes this play, and of course, she puts on herself, so. Oh, it’s so the story of my life. It’s like no one will do it. Do it in your backyard. So she puts this play on, and she wrote and starred in. Did she write it? Yeah, she wrote and starred in this play. And it was her and some other women. And it was about sex and it was funny. And they I think they closed it down that night. And she went to jail for ten days. And part of me thinks she loved it. It was a great publicity. And it also was a great statement about what she thought her rights should be as a performer, as a as an artist. I love it. And it seems like she didn’t care a wink, just like I’m doing my play. You can come or you can put me in jail. It’s going to be fantastic either way.
Interviewer: And then she comes back with a play about drag queens.
Kathy Najimy: Right. She came back with the play about drag queens, which is this was a success.
Interviewer: Yeah, that plays that play is just amazing to me in terms of there were other sort of gay plays on the on the boards then, you know, that sort of went that deep.
Kathy Najimy: No, I think that there were gay plays at that time that existed, that showed that showed our cultures limited view of what they thought it was to be a tortured homosexual. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to say 98% of the gay people I know are the most joyous free people I’ve ever met. So she was one of the first ones to offer us that. I mean, there you know, there was the Shakespeare stuff, but that wasn’t that was just cross-dressing, which is welcome as well.
Interviewer: Right. Um, how progressive was it to write plays like males in the 1920s, I think.
Kathy Najimy: Well, I think the most progressive thing about Mayes plays was that she wrote them that, that it was a woman writing them. And also her content seemed like there was no edit button in her body or her brain if she thought it was sexy, if she thought it was funny and important, then she wrote it. And those even now, are the best pieces of art, the most exciting pieces of art where you you can’t feel the writer worried about what this person or this group is going to say or think, but something they think is wildly fantastic.
Interviewer: I love that. So she’s she’s playing with power dynamics. She’s trying to sort of take men down a peg. But you mentioned that she’s also opening doors from if you talk about that a little.
Kathy Najimy: Bit, I’m not sure if she was trying to open doors for other women. I know for sure she was making sure doors were open for her. I’m sure it was just a great pat on the back that she was doing this very at the time and still is very politically aggressive thing. But sometimes I think you have to be to be such a sometimes I think to break down such barriers, you have to be kind of selfish. And I think she saw herself in this trajectory and she wanted this for her. And in doing that, which is often the way with people, with, you know, people who break barriers, is that while she did it, she broke them down for the rest of us. But I think she just really wanted to be in a movie and look how she wanted to look and say what she wanted to say and be funny and bold. And that’s why she did it.
Interviewer: And when she gets to the movies, she keeps her accent. Mm hmm. She keeps all sort of working class aspects of her. Mm hmm. That seems like it was pretty unusual, especially for the time.
Kathy Najimy: Yeah, I don’t know much about that. I mean, I know she did keep her accent, but, you know, I think she also. She was so smart. I think she knew that it was funny. It was funny and it was herself and it was organic. And I think she was all about not trying to taught herself to be what somebody else’s idea of her life should be. And and maybe her voice was it was one of the most authentic things about her. So why change that? You know, if you’re not going to change your body, if you’re going to dress how you want to dress and have your hair and makeup that you want and say the lines that you want to say, then you might as well keep your voice the same.
Interviewer: You know, we have an audio interview of her and she sounds just like that.
Kathy Najimy: She does? Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: Her personal life.
Kathy Najimy: It was also the time when women where were being groomed to look and sound a very specific way. So maybe she A didn’t like it or B couldn’t do it. And it was very difficult to do that. You know. You know, Charlie, I’m in the back yard and I da da da and I couldn’t be more helpless. And I so she, you know, just did her thing.
Interviewer: I mean, why do you think she had such a big following again?
Kathy Najimy: Oh, well, she had a following of gay men. Yeah. I mean, isn’t she sort of like Gaiman’s answer to it? Wet dream. I mean, she is all about being authentic and hilarious and make up and gowns and wigs and hair and saying, I don’t care what popular culture thinks. I don’t care what society is making me be. I mean, that all is why I mean, if you look at the traditional femme fatales that the gay community is a fan of, it’s all women who have broken the rules, either how they look, what they’re doing emotionally. You know, like Judy Garland was very emotionally available and very talented and broke a lot of rules and all the way to Barbra Streisand, Cher, you know, Kathy Najimy. Oh, you know, all I think if you are part of an oppressed group, then the lack of oppression is everything. So exciting. She wasn’t oppressed. She designed her own thing.
Interviewer: It’s like they were the most desired women in the world. And before she comes in, there’s 5 minutes of all the men talk about her. She’s the most ever seen. What do you think of that? So good. I think it’s so.
Kathy Najimy: Great that she wrote. They have been waiting for her to come into a room to see the most desirable, sexy woman in the world. I mean, I would write that for myself, wouldn’t you? It’s genius. You know, again, I think she was saying. TV and was there.
Interviewer: TV that.
Kathy Najimy: Just there wasn’t for like.
Interviewer: TV was.
Kathy Najimy: 40 something to say 20 years later. So I assume and we all know historically that film then was very strict about what a pretty desirable woman was. And we know that’s not reflected in the real world. We see beautiful women who look all different ways everyday being desired, but somehow and especially films really reduce women to one look, one size, one personality. So I loved that she took her, which was like so full of fireworks and great makeup and clothes that, you know, she loved and wore on or off screen and had people talking about the sexiest woman in the world about to come in. And they all wanted her. It’s the real thing. It’s the way it should be. If she were to lie about high five or so hard.
Interviewer: But it’s the same thing in the movies when she’s in her eighties.
Kathy Najimy: Mm. Yes. Although that, that made me, I don’t know I what I wished for her in her eighties because she was so wed to being authentic. I wish she gave herself a tiny break from this character that was both the character and her and just got to relax a little bit on camera and, you know, like around 80. I thought, Wow, how long did that take and how how hard was it to put on those nylons in those heels at that time? So I think but I think we all do that. I think we we agreed to an image of ourselves, the one that made us popular, the one that a lot of us designed ourselves. And then you feel like you must stay in that. I’ve experienced that, and I know a lot of people who have men and women. It’s like, Oh, I started out being really authentic and I stayed with it. But then sometimes you want to change what is authentic. You want to change how you talk and how you dress and how you move through the world. So I wished for her in those last years to not have to be what she thought she had to be because she created the first one, she could easily slide into whatever else she wanted.
Interviewer: It’s so true.
Kathy Najimy: Yeah.
Interviewer: So going out to Hollywood at 38 to start her movie career, because that happened today.
Kathy Najimy: I think. Today. Today. Just today. Today. When’s this film coming out? 2020 or 20? 20. I mean, that’s going to be an interesting different today. 2020 is a very important year. I do think that the business is opening up to women of all different ages. I really do. I mean, I’m 61 and a lot of my friends, you know, are just starting out, had another career and now restarting. 35 and 40. And whether it’s in in entertainment or is running your own business. I think we’re in a bit of a backlash now. And so I think when that happens, sometimes the floodgates open up and there’s so much unity and camaraderie with women now and so much support that I think people are feeling more comfortable at any age. It’s age is interesting to my whole life. And again, especially in the entertainment industry, I’ve noticed that women feel like and in every industry, they need to lie about their age to be taken seriously. They must lie about it. They must somehow break into Wikipedia and change it from 40 to 25. And it’s so interesting to me because age isn’t anything you can change. You can’t. You can change how you look. There’s not one thing you can do if you have $1,000,000,000 and the best scientists in the world. Your age is your age. So women are being made women more than men, sometimes men, but women more than men predominantly are being made to feel bad about their age, which is something they cannot change. So you’re always at odds with the fact that you’re somehow wrong, but there’s nothing you can do to change it. And I don’t think it’s an accident. I think making women being they’re not not making, but I think imploring women to be really, really self-conscious about how they look, what their weight is, what their how lifted their faces, whatever, and their age is not by accident. I think it’s a way to make women concentrate on something else so we don’t get on with the task of living our lives and changing the world. I think if we’re constantly thinking we’re not this enough, we’re not thin enough, we’re not young enough, we’re not rich enough, we’re not pretty enough that life passes us by and a whole nother group of people are running this world. Okay, different documentary. But I do feel like.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kathy Najimy: Cold water. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m of the age where yeah, it’s like people always I make this joke that women go and go, how old are you? And they go like 20 years old, and I want to go stop doing that. Take your hand away from your face. Stop mumbling and say I’m 40 years old. Be proud you’re still alive. And it’s we have to change how we think of it in order for the culture to change how they react to it. If we’re not ashamed of being 61, then pretty soon it’s going to seep into the zeitgeist and we aren’t meant to always be 20. There’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t change your age. It’s impossible. You can change your looks, you can change your self-esteem, but you can’t. You can’t change your age. And it’s really a crazy treadmill. I see people on, you know, like and especially in the business showbusiness man, boy, oh my gosh, They are all lying and lying and lying and lying. And it, it, it it eats at you because the core of who you are becomes your enemy. Men don’t have that.
Interviewer: And the questions we sent you, we had asked, do you think they were somebody who was appreciated more by men or by women who had said both for different reasons?
Kathy Najimy: Yeah.
Interviewer: Can you elaborate on that?
Kathy Najimy: I mean, it’s hard for me to assume what men think because I’m not one. I can guess that men appreciated her because she was sexy and women appreciated her because she was unapologetically sexy.
Interviewer: So this is also sort of a speculation, but her line where she says, All my life I’ve been put on the.
Kathy Najimy: I don’t know what that means. All my life I’ve been a put on. I mean, I guess it takes a lot of real energy and a lot of artificial energy sometimes to be the person that you’re not allowed to be in order to have enough strength and chutzpah to put that out into the world in such a big way, you know, in a way where you’re getting paid thousands and thousands and thousands of hundreds of thousands of dollars. So it’s not nothing. It’s something it takes its toll. And you have to be the character. You created a lot, you know, but there are much harder jobs.
Interviewer: So she’s still playing a sexpot well into her eighties. Mm hmm. What’s your opinion of that?
Kathy Najimy: I think she’s playing her idea of a sex power went into the eighties, you know, And I think sometimes if you find something that is successful and people respond to, you’re terrified. Especially as a woman, it seems that men can move more freely from image to image. Right. We accept. George Clooney as a leading man, is a really smart guy. And at a college, we as a doctor, as an Army guy. But I think especially then and I think the society didn’t pigeonhole her. I think she did. I think she crafted really smartly crafted that character of Mae West. So probably the thought of letting go of it, you know, was scary.
Interviewer: You think that character became a sort of prison?
Kathy Najimy: I don’t know if it became a the character became a prison because she really must have known the great success she had and felt how she changed the look of women in film. You know, everything is not perfect and it doesn’t last forever.
Interviewer: So what does it say about our society that we have such a negative reaction to female sexuality over 50 years? Is that a barrier that you think is ever going to be broken?
Kathy Najimy: I think we have a negative reaction to the prototype that men who were in charge and still are. When you weigh power, it’s changing but still are in charge. When they decide what is sexy, what your worth is, what is sexy, what is desirable. That’s just something someone made up. Somebody made up Thin is pretty. It’s been all different ways throughout the years, and especially globally, very different. But somebody in this society made a made up what the color of the skin should be, what your size should be and your personality should be to be sexy. And it’s not innate because we see that, you know, many, many years ago it wasn’t that. And all of the world, it’s completely different. So what happens is you have a whole society of women who are told from birth that their worth is how they look and how they look is defined by something other than that. Then you spend your whole life pedaling, pedaling, pedaling to be that. So I think one of the things that Mae West did and Bette Midler and I mean so many women, so many women, Viola Davis now, you know, so many women are saying your idea of what sexy is, does it actually first of all, it’s not. Right. And second of all, it doesn’t fit. So I’m going to throw out another example. And because most of us don’t look like that, most of us look like real humans, the different color skin and different shaped bodies. And we also express ourselves sexually. So the idea that, you know, there is a way that you should look that is attractive is unfounded, It’s ridiculous. It’s. It doesn’t exist.
Interviewer: Mm hmm. We get different. Every single person that we asked this question, we got a different answer. Really curious what you think. Who do you think is the closest descendent today of Mae West?
Kathy Najimy: What have some people said? Amy Schumer. Sarah Silverman. I would say Bette Midler. I would say, you know, there are some brave components of Lena Dunham that remind me, like, I don’t give a shit. This is what I think is important and I’m not here to please everybody. And that was very May, although she ended up sort of being very, very, very, very, very popular. And boy, I think I did I write some down, I wrote some down and sent them to somebody on panel.
Interviewer: Do you have. So I can pull them up.
Kathy Najimy: Yeah. Trying to think of how I wrote down. Could I write down Hannah?
Interviewer: Sorry.
Kathy Najimy: I’m trying to think I had some good ones. Did you get that email? I said yes. Oh, good. Okay.
Interviewer: People say Madonna.
Kathy Najimy: Oh, yeah. I could see Madonna. Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah. And we got Melissa McCarthy.
Kathy Najimy: Somebody mentioned just like made designed a treasure chest of material that is their treasure chest of material. But they’re very, very, very much in control and have designed those personas. And now because it’s so far away from what they are, but, you know, it’s not for nothing. It’s not an accident. You know, great, talented, important women like Chelsea Handler and Sarah Silverman and Amy Schumer, Madonna, in a way. And, you know, Lena Dunham, I think and I think are descendants of Mae’s imagination and determination, maybe not have the same character that she has and don’t maybe lead with sexuality, but they certainly own whatever sexuality they respond to and make something of it, make a statement of it. And it feels real and it feels organic and it feels like women. Jennifer Coolidge because she does this sexy character that’s a little bit daffy that, you know, is not really her, but it’s hilarious. And, you know, she’s in on the joke. Who’s in on the joke? Who’s in on the joke? Yeah, Jennifer Coolidge is great. So smart, so funny, so beautiful.
Interviewer: So it sounds like you don’t. But do you think women today have to choose between being funny and sexy, that that, like, society makes it impossible to do?
Kathy Najimy: I absolutely think women need to choose between being funny and sexy. I think funny women should just stay funny. And our idea of frumpy and ugly and sexy women should have tons and tons of facelifts and liposuction and feel really bad about themselves. But it’s some idea that men have designed of what is sexy. No, I. I agree. And, you know, wear clothes that reflect your age and size, for God’s sake. Well, decide society can try to make women do anything, but women have the ultimate choice and how they express themselves sexually or being successful and sick and sexual. And if they feel like being sexy or not sexy isn’t for everybody, it’s obviously a choice. And if somehow, which I think is impossible, but if somehow if we can block all the images that come to us about every 10 seconds from magazines and models and billboards and Instagram and television and film and really block those and respond to the things that we organically respond to, what we’re drawn to, what we’re attracted to, what clothes we want to wear, and how we think we should look. I mean, I think it’s a fantasy for me to say that that’s 100% possible because we’re all just products of our culture. But I think the the, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is when women can sit in their true sexuality and express it what feels really comfortable and exciting and sexy to them, which are a billion different choices because we’re a billion different women.
Interviewer: Great. Perfect. Um, why, um, what’s. What’s Mae West legacy? Why is she somebody whose story needs to be told?
Kathy Najimy: Well, I love the fact that my story is being told. I mean, I think some people reduce her to a line or a look or something. They heard about her over a few minutes in a film, but she was I mean, I know it’s an overused word, but she was a trailblazer. She was the original of the original of the original of the wild revolutionary feminist, hilarious, truly sexy. And I believe she thought she was sexy. Um, artist and producer and director and writer. And that is a life well lived. Free.
Interviewer: So this film is for American masters?
Kathy Najimy: Yes.
Interviewer: What? What? What was made a master of what did she master?
Kathy Najimy: Mae West was the master of taking comedy and sexuality and magically making it accessible.
Interviewer: And so a moment when I sort of sort of had a few questions from reading more about sex with a drag influence in May’s performance.
Kathy Najimy: I wonder if I see a drag influence in Mae’s performance, or if I see a Mayes influence in drag performers, which came first? Certainly there were drag queens before Mae West, but I really think she was like a I mean, I think she was like a present, a wrapped up present to the drag community. That’s great. Yeah, I think they were influenced by her and I think she she would influence them. They influenced her. You know, the drag community was actually some of the very first radical activists ever, ever. Unfortunately, it ended in a lot of death, but they were they’re really bold. I’ll tell you a story that you won’t use. But, you know, I’ve been a feminist and a gay rights activist since 1976, and that’s my major job as an activist and then an actor and all the other things. But I a couple of years ago, maybe ten years ago, somebody said, come see this drag show. And I said, Oh, God, Brian, I don’t want to go. I feel like drag queens aren’t my feeling sometimes because their portrayal of women is like catty sometimes and mean and over the top and not normal and all that makeup and all that. And he said, Cathy, for you, who is a gay activist and a historian, you should know that the very first activists who lost their lives were the drag queens who came out of Stonewall and got killed and beaten by the authorities. And they literally hundreds of thousands of them gave their lives so that we could have the will and grace gays that we have now. You know what I mean? So I really have been I’ve taken a different opinion of that.
Interviewer: But you sang me song. A guy. What takes his time? Mm hmm. What do you think of that song about?
Kathy Najimy: I think a guy who took this time of the time and the misery of a man who lives in slow. Oh, I think in that song, she was really doing an homage to really great sex and telling.
Interviewer: Men to take their time.
Kathy Najimy: It was almost like an instruction manual.
Interviewer: Right?
Kathy Najimy: How I got into Mae everyday when I had to do it was like I would say one word. I would just go, Oh, that was it. Oh. And then I would find her. From that.
Interviewer: We find ourselves impersonating her all.
Kathy Najimy: The time. Yeah, it’s hard because you don’t want to go over eight and you don’t want to go under six. You know, you can overdo with the Mae, you know, like people go, Oh, come up and see me sometime. I think that’s not it. That’s not it. But she was good. I liked her singing, actually. She sang as she danced. I had to do all of that.
Interviewer: Something else in the show that we haven’t really had anybody talk about yet is the fact that Mae didn’t really hang out with the Hollywood crowd. She hung out with gay men, she hung out with black people, she hung out with boxers. And that a little bit.
Kathy Najimy: Well, I don’t again, I don’t know for sure because I’m not a mae historian, but I would guess that Fringe finds friends and artists, fine artists and freedom seekers find freedom seekers. So the fact that she hung out with people of color and the gay community and drag queens, it makes complete sense to me.
Interviewer: Having done the Vegas Muscle Man show in Dirty Blond.
Kathy Najimy: Mm hmm. Oh, right. Yes.
Interviewer: I mean, that is, you know, there’s very few people alive who can claim that. What do you think of that show?
Kathy Najimy: I don’t remember it. I remember the guys being on stage doing it. Didn’t she date or flirt with one of them? I felt like she dated one of them.
Interviewer: Yeah, she took one of them back to L.A. with her and lived with her for the rest of her life.
Kathy Najimy: Yes. Yeah.
Interviewer: That’s not a bad way to.
Kathy Najimy: End your life, is to take a really cute guy that you feel sexually attracted to from and take him back to Los Angeles and live with them. In fact, I got to say, you know, another thing, I think that she broke so many barriers. It was really mind boggling. And we know the obvious ones. But the thing about like having to be married and monogamy and and for women, for every man, but one man for every woman, she just broke that down and enjoyed and lived her life and wrote new rules like in blood. Like, I’m not going to, like, be somebody’s wife forever. Not that there’s anything wrong with that if it’s a choice, if it is your choice. But we don’t really know that yet. But that she just was like, whoever I’m attracted to or if I fall in love with however long that lasts, that like love is fluid. We talk about fluid. That is a woman who really chose a fluid, romantic and sexual life.
Interviewer: And yet at the end of all her movies, they make her get married.
Kathy Najimy: Do they really? Yeah. I wonder why she didn’t use the same muscle that she did to get these movies made and to get paid as much and to keep that character to change the endings. But maybe she liked that at the end that her characters got married. I mean, there’s not 100% of anything in any of us that could have been a good 30% of, Oh, this is the way it should be.
Interviewer: The idea of the one thing that she lacked was vulnerability.
Kathy Najimy: And I disagree. I disagreed. And then I think I said that if you think that she’s vulnerable, that she’s not vulnerable. I mean, I. I don’t know that any of us could comment on her vulnerability unless we really spent a good five years with her, because you’re not going to be her characters maybe weren’t vulnerable. But I don’t know why that’s a requirement, because she’s a woman to be vulnerable. It’s a really great many characters that aren’t vulnerable, and I don’t miss it. Maybe she just thought that was important, wasn’t exciting, wasn’t attractive, wasn’t funny. So I didn’t miss it. In her characters or her films, I thought, And who knows how she was in real life? Wouldn’t it be great if we could have met her?
Interviewer: Well, you know, it’s interesting. We’ve interviewed a handful of friends of hers that are still alive, and it seems like they only knew her so well also.
Kathy Najimy: Oh, really?
Interviewer: Yes, it was always there.
Kathy Najimy: So she wasn’t just me. Was sitting around having a beer being normal?
Interviewer: No. I mean, they they all commented on her being very maternal. Oh, but yeah, very in control.
Kathy Najimy: I mean, we all might also be under the misconception that in order to be one kind of a person or a person who really changes the rules in the world and enjoys themselves and has a big success, especially a woman might be missing something if they don’t have the things we think they should have. Everybody doesn’t have everything. You know, I mean, like I’m sure that there are moments where she was lonely. I’m sure that there are moments when she was vulnerable or whatever. But no, life has equal parts of everything. No, no. Human life is completely balanced in the circle of their life. So I don’t require her to have been anything than what she was, which was awesome.
Interviewer: The thing that I find so interesting about that is the sort of the reversal of gender roles. Mm hmm. If you see it that way of sort of you could speak to it a little bit.
Kathy Najimy: I mean, I think her being sexually aggressive isn’t a reversal of gender roles. I think it’s actually authentically in both genders. She was just brave enough to present herself the way that she felt. So women are not weaker and shyer necessarily, like some humans are more than others. But certainly there are women who are sexually aggressive organically just from birth until they learn that they shouldn’t be. That somebody else with the penis is the one who should be. So I don’t think that she was breaking any any really sort of authentic feelings she had. I think she was breaking barriers just by succinctly being her self. No, because I mean, she that’s, you know, some women who are sexually aggressive. Right. And just if they feel like it, one moment, you’re not everything, every moment of your life, but some moments you feel a little shy or in some moments you don’t. So I think she was just exploring the notion that that is what that’s what reality is. Reality is you aren’t always the shy receiver. Sometimes you are the assertive giver and it doesn’t matter what your genitals are. It matters what’s in your head and your confidence in your heart and your loins. That’s all that matters. It doesn’t matter what sex you are. It matters how you feel. And women feel like male characters all the time. It just matters whether they think they’re allowed to. And it doesn’t have to be a 100% proposition. I’m sure she wasn’t sexually assertive 24 hours a day. That’d be exhausting. Plus it’d be a lot of showers. But it you know, it never bowled me over. I just thought, oh, that’s a person who’s being a person. I see a really smart, funny, beautiful human who’s telling the truth and writing really good lines. And I’m sure she wrote that line for herself. She wrote that whole piece. And it’s just not what we’re used to seeing. I really do just think like, Yeah, I’ve been like that. You’ve been like that. It’s not the whole day or your whole life, but it’s moments. But we’re just not. Don’t see them on TV. We don’t see them in films. We don’t get to see a lot of characters like this, especially at that time. Specifically at that time, we didn’t get to see a lot of women taking standing, sitting in their body and responding to what they think about sexually or for her telling him, Because I’m smarter than you, You know, it’s real. It’s so cool because you almost see her childhood and everything she’s learned flash before your eyes when you see scenes like that where she’s telling him, every man I met tries to protect me. I mean, I’m sure she had a half a lifetime. She did, actually, of trying to figure out what her role was and having people tell her that they were going to tell her what to do and take care of her. So finally she gets a chance looking exactly how she wants to look in a movie saying to these men exactly what she thinks, which is, you think you’re going to kill me? Good luck with that. It’s great. Some people go to therapy for years to be able to realize that. And she got to put it in the movies and she got to say it. And people get paid her foot for it, paid her a lot of dough to do it. It’s fantastic.
