Adlon mined own ‘invisibility’ to create comedy
‘Better Things’ creator captured realities of motherhood, aging over five seasons
Pamela Adlon has been prepping for the end since the beginning. The “Better Things” creator, star, showrunner, director and producer never assumed her loosely autobiographical comedy about a single mom and working actor raising three kids in the wilds of Los Angeles would charm critics, win a Peabody Award and last five seasons, making her character, Sam Fox, a patron saint of unconventional parenting and symbol of fierce love.
“I ended every season as if it was the last anyway because I never knew if my show was going to get picked up or not,” said Adlon, whose series really did end recently on FX. “That’s just my mentality: Nothing is ever promised.”
Life is a fly-by-the-seatof-your pants odyssey with Adlon, a former child actor whose credits include “The Facts of Life,” “Grease 2” and “Californication.” (She also won an Emmy for voicing Bobby Hill in Mike Judge’s animated series “King of the Hill.”)
Like Adlon, Sam is a force. She moves through the world with a terminal curiosity and often forgets her inside voice, much to the embarrassment of her eldest daughter, Max (Mikey Madison), the disdain of her middle child, Frankie (Hannah Riley), and the admiration of her baby girl, Duke (Olivia Edward). She defiantly defends the selfish behavior of her British mother/ next-door neighbor, Phil (Celia Imrie), and has come to terms with her uptight accountant brother, Marion (Kevin Pollak).
This interview with Aldon has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: Was making the final episode of “Better Things” like sending your last kid to college? A:
That’s a good analogy. Everybody keeps asking, “Are you sad?” But I have been through this massive transition before because two of my kids are out of the house already. When I was in the U.K. finishing the season, I wrote to all my kids and said, “I dreamt that you guys were all babies again.” So that mournful thing that you go through as a parent, it’s real.
Q: One thing I’ll miss about “Better Things” is how it captured the bone-tired, often thankless realities of motherhood alongside the beauty and intimacy of raising kids and nurturing extended family and friends. The show wasn’t centered on a conflict between family and career. Sam wasn’t desperate for a martini at the end of every episode. A:
That was the opposite of what this show was going to be. I remember when (FX marketing executive) Stephanie Gibbons pitched the key art campaign ... she’s like, “So we know about the exhausted mom with the pencil behind her ear and she’s (Adlon messes her hair then blows it out of her face with an exasperated huff ) … That’s not you. This is you,” and took out the (mock-up) of Sam facedown on the bed, with her legs on the wall. The pitch of my show wasn’t like she’s a single mom who’s trying to get away to have sex and this and that. None of that’s realistic. My friends and I could rob a bank and nobody would notice. It’s that invisibility.
Q: Aging is another theme tackled with brutal honesty throughout the series. A:
Nobody ever tells you about menopause. I sent out an email to my friends … I was like, “Do you guys have any stories about
menopause? Tell me about your experience.” My friends would write me back and say, “I’ll talk to you, but you can’t use my name. I don’t want anybody to know what I went through.” The shame. I was like, “Jesus, well, I want to know how to keep my bones strong and to keep from growing a beard and do I need to do more sit-ups?” I was able to illustrate the evolution that we go through physically from our 40s into our 50s.
Q: What makes season five feel like the end? A:
I leaned into it a little bit harder, a lot of tipping the hat and things like that. It was fun to kind of put a little punctuation mark on all the characters.
Q: Did your real-life parenting experiences influence storylines in the show, or vice versa? A:
Both. Like when Sam comes home from Chicago after she was on a plane that caught fire, there’s like (a party in the house). She goes upstairs, and Frankie’s there. She’s asks, “Why are you here? There’s like 40 people downstairs,” and Frankie’s like, “I have to read a play.” When Sam asks how much of it she’s read already, Frankie says, “Nothing.” So Sam’s like, “Jesus. I can’t even begin to tell you about my day. The plane I was on ...” But then Sam stops and says, “OK, how about I read a chapter, you read a chapter?” And they read “A Raisin in the Sun” back and forth. And that was the end of the episode.
Q: And that came from your real life?
A: Yes. It was late at night and my middle daughter, Odessa, hadn’t read “A Raisin in the Sun.” And I thought, “What if I don’t complain? What if I don’t push back because I could have been on a burning plane that day, which is the metaphor for being a parent. Being a single parent of three girls, the relentlessness ... What if I just sucked it up?” And I did that night with Odessa. Instead of letting it debilitate me, I turned it around and just started getting into the prose of “A Raisin in the Sun.” It’s now one of the great memories for me and my daughter, and I was able to put that in the show and to share that with people.
Q: How do you follow up “Better Things”? A:
I want to make more television, but I can’t talk
about projects I’m working on now because they’re not official. Two years ago, I started my production company, so I have like five different series that
I’m developing right now. I’m going to be directing a movie in the fall, which I’m not allowed to talk about, but I just did. I’m adapting my friend’s memoir to direct, and I’m using this time for what it’s meant to be. These are, hopefully, my golden working years.
Q: In the future, I think “Better Things” will be considered an influential series that’s changed television’s depictions of family and motherhood. A:
Oh, this is like the “Eulogy” episode. I like when Sam goes, “No, I want it now!” But yeah, that’s fine. Go ahead, enjoy our coattails.