Kathleen Turner

OF ‘THE KOMINSKY METHOD’

How was it working with Michael Douglas again on “The Kominsky Method”? It was his idea that cast you in Season 3, correct?

I think so. I know that he and (creator and executive producer) Chuck Lorre discussed it. You know, one of the things that I understand is quite unusual though I don’t have much experience or any experience really doing series and Chuck Lorre wrote every episode and evidently that isn’t (usually) the case. But I’m very, very glad he did. Michael and I just seem to have a natural connection of some kind. It just falls right in, you know?

You first met when you did “Romancing the Stone” in 1983?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was producing as well as starring in it and so we had a meeting. He asked me out to lunch and we talked about it and I think I had to go in and do a film test to prove that I could be the wallflower that (her character, romance novelist Joan Wilder) is at the beginning, the insecure woman. And so I went in without any makeup and in tattered kind of clothes and stumbled over furniture. And he laughed and then said, “Yeah, OK.”

One of the iconic scenes from “Romancing” was the mudslide in the Columbian rainforest but there were actual mudslides during filming. How was it dealing with that?

Oh honey (laughs), it rained so much that we started calling it “Douglasland” because every morning at 4 a.m., he’d have gravel trucks going in to try and lay down the road again. Oh, it was just a mess. It was absolutely a mess – but fun (laughs).