Linda Lavin on her ‘no boundaries’ TV series
Linda Lavin says she began reading the script for a new show called “9JKL” and halfway through she knew she was going to have a good time.
At this stage of her career, the veteran entertainer says having fun is the big deciding factor. When she reads a script she loves, she has to say “yes.”
“That’s what I’m really all about now: Am I gonna have a good time? Otherwise, I ain’t doing it!,” Lavin said.
Lavin is betting viewers have a good time along with her when “9JKL” airs at 8:30 p.m. Mondays on CBS.
In a recent interview, she can barely contain herself describing its premise: How a middle-aged man — an actor suddenly down on his luck and recently divorced — moves back to New York after years in Los Angeles and takes an apartment sandwiched between his loving, meddling parents on one side and his brother, sisterin-law and their new baby on the other.
Series star Mark Feuerstein plays the son.
“He’s a grown man and he has come home,” says Lavin, noting, “This is real life today! Just when you thought it was safe to turn the kids’ room into a guest room or a workshop, they can’t find a job or a partner or an apartment. They’re baaaack.”
The parents on “9JKL”: Elliott Gould and Lavin.
“I play his mother, who is absolutely besotted with him, so happy with him next door! And his father constantly wants to spend time with him. Therein lies the problem. I think it’s called ‘boundaries’ — nobody’s got any.
“Everybody’s offensive. Everyone says what they think — no filter. But it’s an identifiable family. These are characters who reach through the screen to the audience, which then says, ‘Oh, I know who THAT is! That’s ME, that’s MY family!’
“It’s not mean-spirited,” Lavin goes on, “and it’s not at the expense of one person or another. It’s not diminishing to women, as a lot of comedies can be, or to women of a certain age, which is something I just won’t participate in — as a woman of a certain age.”
Lavin’s certain age will be 80 in two weeks, though neither her looks nor her crackling energy would betray her as an octogenarian. She says, “I have a wonderful life. I have a husband (Steve Bakunas, an actor/ carpenter/director/musician/ painter and thus her partner in many ways). A little dog. A great house. I have financial security. Friends. I love to cook. I love to travel. I love to sit.
“But I don’t sit too well. And when I read a script that I love, I have to be there. ‘Cause it’s what I do. It’s very much who I am. I want to be in the room where it happens.
“I want people to know I’m still alive and kicking!”