New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
MARGO MARTINDALE
QUARANTINED EMMY-WINNER TAKES PART IN HOMETOWN KENT ZOOM CHAT SERIES.
Emmy-winner Margo Martindale remembers exactly when she and her husband, Bill Boals, fell in love with Kent, where they’ve had a home for five years. They discovered the quaint Litchfield County spot after taking their daughter, Maggie, to a YMCA camp in the area.
“We drove back through this town called Kent and had lunch at The Villager and we both got through and said, ‘If we ever get to buy a house, this is where we would like it to be,’ because we both come from very small towns in Texas and it somehow oddly reminded us of home.
“Our residence is in New York — on the same block on the upper West Side forever — but Kent is just where we love to be whenever we can,” said the actress, who’s been in films, and on television and stage, and was nominated for a Tony Award for her role as Big Mama in the Broadway revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” She’s also “character actor Margo Martindale” in the Netflix series “BoJack Horseman.”
“This town is extremely welcoming,” she said. “The Fife ’n Drum (another local restaurant) is so embracing. ... We’ve met so many people through there.”
Kent is also where she and her family have quarantined since production shut down on her latest project. “That was in New Orleans in March, a show called ‘Your Honor.’ All the shows shut down on Friday the 13th, oddly.”
Martindale lives on two acres, which she greatly enjoys.
“I have as many gardens as I can here. Mostly I’m sitting outside on the porch or back deck. I’m embracing the beauty of this place and all the incredible nature. I think there are more animals now than I’ve ever seen . ... My goodness, there were three little bears and a mother, too... Just a lot of bears and fox. It’s been wild!” she said.
“I’ve also done more cooking than I’ve done in years, and more drinking,” she said, laughing. “And lots and lots of gardening.” White wine is her go-to beverage; hydrangeas are her favorite flowers. “My gardens are truly beautiful, but let me just say I have a great gardener, Adam Jenkins; he does the hard work and what I do is, when he leaves, I do more.”
Martindale is so appreciative of her life here, she wanted to be part of Kent Library’s new Masters of Kent Summer Series. It features live online events with some of the town’s uniquely talented residents. The events are free on Zoom; it’s the library’s way of thanking folks for their support during the pandemic. Her event, “With Time Comes Appreciation: A Visit with Margo Martindale,” runs Wednesday, July 15, at 7 p.m.
Performing for more than four decades, Martindale has played characters from activist Bella Abzug (in Hulu’s “Mrs. America”) to tough-asnails brothel owner Enid Devlin, in Amazon Prime’s 2019 offbeat thriller, “Blow the Man Down.” On July 15 she’ll be interviewed by theater professor/author Ron Marasco.
Kent Library said listeners will “hear about the life, love and learning that has, over time, made Martindale both a world-class talent and a joy to bump into at the IGA.” She says no one is shy about saying hello when she’s out and about, and she likes it that way.
The library also calls her “one of the busiest, best loved and most artistically skillful actresses working today” as well as “a very fun person to spend time with.” “Sometimes my family might not say that’s true, but I think the people that I work with do say that’s true,” she says, laughing again.
As for her Zoom event, Marasco is “gonna ask me a lot of questions about how I came to acting — sometimes it’s a mysterious thing. He wrote a book on acting; it’s quite good. It’s about how your life and the experiences you go through influence your work.” (Marasco is also a speaker in the series, but later in the summer.)
Martindale has lots of projects coming up, but says with the pandemic changing things all the time, it remains to be seen if she’ll get to do them. For now, she says, “I feel safe here. You’re not safe anywhere, you know, but I’m not afraid here because it’s easy to be away from people. But it’s also lonely after a while when it goes for months.”
While the series is free, you must register to receive the Zoom links. Visit kentmemoriallibrary.org or call call 860-927-3761.