HARRIET SANSOM HARRIS ‘LICORICE PIZZA,’ TALENT AGENT MARY GRADY

In the 1970s San Fernando Valley, in the middle of a love story of sorts between Alana and Gary, two young people who can’t stop challenging each other, Alana tells Gary the world doesn’t revolve around him. Fine, but it may very well revolve around Mary Grady, the agent who makes an unmistakable mark on Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza” in one scene. As played by Harriet Sansom Harris, Mary is magnetic and repellent at once. Her mouth has a mind of its own, alternately pursing and widening into an ominous smile. Simply watching her on a phone call, where she says no three times, in three wildly different ways, while completely ignoring Alana and Gary, is to take a trip into her weird world. “Every actor has been in their agent’s office when a more important call comes through,” Harris notes of the scene.

Harris took a trip of her own to take on the role. In those early pandemic days of August 2020, she was living in woodsy Massachusetts. “I thought, ‘Am I out of my mind, why in the world would I get on a plane and fly to L.A.?’ ” she says on a call, safely back in the Berkshires again. “I hadn’t seen another human being in three weeks.” But she had worked with Anderson previously on “Phantom Thread” and couldn’t resist. “I really love Paul. I thought, I’d be out of my mind not to do it.” So she took the leap, and the flight. She, Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman rehearsed their scene for a day and shot it the next. “It was massively delightful,” she says. “Paul gives you this perfect little jewel, and presents it to you knowing it’s something wonderful. A confection.”

Harris, known for her role as another agent, Bebe, in “Frasier,” and Felicia in “Desperate Housewives,” loves playing such gleeful monsters as Mary. “They’re such a release from being oh-so-good and trying to fulfill everybody’s expectations and obligations.”