First came Bill Cosby. Then Roseanne Barr Arnold. Now Miriam Margolyes. When producers Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner spot a larger-than-life
personality, they immediately create a customized sitcom.
Cosby and Arnold were comedians who could entertain roomfuls with their routines. Margolyes, a little-known British actress who has never done standup, is much better one-on-one. Give her an appreciative breakfast companion, and she will entertain non-stop with wild stories from her life, told in a dozen accents.
”I like talking,” she says. But suggest giving her a microphone and she says, ”I don`t want to have a one-person show. I`m not interested in lonely eminence. I like being with a crowd.”
Thus, here she is in ”Frannie`s Turn,” premiering Sunday on CBS and then settling into a regular 7 p.m. Saturday slot on Sept. 19.
”It`s an amazing surprise to me,” Margolyes says of landing a series.
”I`ve come to America and I`m having a go. That doesn`t often happen in your 50s. When people say `the change of life` to me, it`s more than menopause.”
New to most Americans, Margolyes has starred in the award-winning six-hour film of Charles Dickens` ”Little Dorrit.” Carsey and Werner first noticed her playing Kevin Kline`s Italian-American mother in ”I Love You to Death.”
Once noticed, Margolyes is not easily forgotten, especially when she is wearing shorts, as she is for this interview. She is barely 5 feet 2 inches and weighs about 170 pounds.
After a lifetime of being heavy-”From when I was little I was always a rather weighty, middle-aged looking person”-she has learned to deal with comments about her appearance. She usually heads them off at the pass, telling humorous stories about how people have made fun of her and what she said to shut them up.
She disparages herself. ”I`m very greedy regarding food and just about anything,” she says. ”If I see something, I want it. I always give in to temptation.”
Actually, that`s not true. Margolyes has chosen to do the interview at a Santa Monica delicatessen, but she orders only tomato juice. ”I`ve come through the problems of my life,” she says. ”I`m much steadier now.”
Perhaps she will be able to teach her character Frannie a few things. As conceived for the series, Frannie is a New York seamstress who is tired of being taken for granted by her boss (Taylor Negron), her Cuban-American husband (Tomas Milian), her children (Phoebe Augustine and Stivi Paskoski) and her mother-in-law (Alice Drummond). So she mounts a campaign to assert herself.
In the first episode, Frannie rebels against the old-world male chauvinism of her husband and advises her daughter on combatting the same from her prospective husband. ”It`s harder for Frannie than it is for me,”
Margolyes says. ”She`s having to dig deep. She`s so sweet and innately good.”
Margolyes is sympathetic to Frannie`s problems and insists that, ”In some particular ways we are alike. We both find it difficult to express anger. Either we`re strident or hysterical or silly. I know I seem to be very bold, but when I`m confronted with a real situation I`m wishy-washy. I find it hard, for instance, to take something back to a shop.”
On the other hand, when two London workmen recently made unpleasant remarks about her weight as she and her 93-year-old father, a retired doctor, walked past them, ”I was instantly enraged,” she recalls. ”I became a yob
(a lout).” She slips into a rough working-class accent and begins berating some imaginary clods in not-too-delicate language.
”I changed personalities,” she continues, using her own more refined tones. ”My father was deeply shocked. He said, `Miriam, pull yourself together. What`s the matter with you, using language like that!` But that was the only way I could handle the situation.”
Margolyes is skilled at handling awkward situations. Ask her about the time she recorded a pornographic audio tape for $500, no residuals, and she says, ”That was about 15 years ago, before I had my consciousness raised. It was kind of harmless, and I thought it was funny.
”The sad thing was that I`d never be asked to be in a visual one because I`m not pretty enough to excite anyone. When I went into a sex shop to see if it was selling well and introduced myself as Sexy Sonia, they said, `Shhh,` in case I inhibited sales.”
That was one of the few low points in Margolyes` career. Another came after she graduated from Cambridge University with amajor in English literature and found herself selling encyclopedias door-to-door.
”I thought it was mean to try and extract money from people,” she recalls. ”So I wrote to a director who had seen me at Cambridge and asked him to help me get an audition.”
Margolyes had had an outstanding amateur theatrical career at college, appearing in 20 productions, but remembers thinking, `Actresses are glamorous and have svelte figures and long necks and a kind of gamine delight. It`s no good my saying, `But really, I`m a little darting thing,` because people will say to you, `Oh, no. I`ve got news for you.` ”
In 1965, she joined the BBC Radio Drama Repertory Company, and she has worked ever since.
”I didn`t have a career, really,” she says. ”It was more like a series of bumps. I`d thought of giving it up, but what could I do? I can`t make change, so I couldn`t work in shops or be a waitress.”
Margolyes stuck with acting and eventually won a substantial role in
”Little Dorrit.”
”I knew I had a body of work to show, so I hired a New York publicist and got new clothes and a new hairdo. I tried to make myself presentable, which usually I`m not. Then I rang the film company and said, `I know you`ve got no one to promote the film in America. I`ll pay to come if you pay for three nights in a smart hotel.` From that I got on Johnny Carson and got an American agent.”
Suddenly Margolyes has found a new home. ”I look so strange to an English audience that it`s hard for me to get cast there,” she says, ”but in America, I could be anybody.”
