Mary Pat Gleason plays the Middleman’s cranky android assistant on ABC Family’s The Middleman.  Ida is patty cranky because somehow her morphing appearance abilities have malfunctioned and she’s stuck in the form of a middle aged school marm.  The only link to the Middlemen who have gone before, Ida is not convinced that Wendy Watson (Natalie Morales) is there for the right reasons, and rides her on a regular basis.

Mary Pat is a veteran of numerous TV shows and movies, including Friends, Will & Grace, and Desperate Housewives, Steel Magnolia’s, I now pronounce you Chuck & Larry.  She also has a past in both soap operas and on the stage.  She won a Daytime Emmy for her writing work on Guiding Light in 1986, and just recently wrapped a one woman show in New York, Stopping Traffic, which is a semi-auto-biographical look at her struggles with bi-polar disorder.

Mary Pat recently stopped by TV Talk to discuss her role on ABC Family’s series, as well as the many other projects that she has done.

Shaun>  What did you think when they came to you about playing this part?  “Here’s a robot who’s a school marm- what the hell is this?”

Mary Pat> Exactly!  I tell you, when I first read it, I thought, “Oh my God, would this ever be fun to do!”  They’re such good writers and write such great stuff for her to do.  And I have to say, when you’re a middle aged actress in Hollywood, not that many great things come up for us to do.  There are wonderful films, with little parts, and not necessarily anything very interesting.  And I’m thrilled because they keep coming up with these wild things I get to do, and it’s been fun. 

Shaun>  And the dialogue is so fast paced, and so critical, like “What is she smoking?”  I grew up listening to this stuff from my grandma.  How do you keep a straight face, especially with some of the lines you say?

Mary Pat> Well, I tell you, we do laugh.  There have been takes where we laugh and we have to go back again.  Javi, and the team of writers that he has collected, are all hilarious.  And they know the genre like nobody I’ve ever met.  They’re all kind of TV buffs, and they have incredible recall.  They can move pretty fast, and in my land they can make things up.  They can make up things they want me to quote, and there having a good time.  Sometimes when we do the read through, they’ll just sit in the room and howl, because it takes a little while to wrap your lips around this dialogue. 

Shaun>  I can imagine, especially in the last episode.  It seemed like you had a lot of techno babble.  How do you get your head around these words?

Mary Pat> Exactly.  They have me doing some wild stuff in the episode tonight.  You’re going to love this episode tonight.

Kenn>   So this is the trout zombie episode right?

Mary Pat> Right.  When I read it, I just thought it was so hilarious.  They’re just geniuses, they’re so funny.  If this is something that you enjoy, I just think Javi is dishing out something that people haven’t seen before.  Of course it references all sorts of other things like Doctor Who and stuff, but it’s got it’s own spin and it’s own timing.  Matt is fabulous, and Natalie is fabulous, and they built these gorgeous sets.  And they do this stuff so fast.  The first time I looked at the script, when I read the pilot, I thought, “Oh my God.” This looks like a film script, and we should have a month to shoot it.”  Then when I found out they were going to try to shoot this in seven days, I thought, “Oh my God, how are they going to do it?”  It takes a really dedicated team, and we have an incredible crew, and our art department is just knocking themselves out.  Everybody just thinks we’re working on something special, and everybody is just really working hard. 

Shaun>  It is a special show.  It kind of reminds of Police Squad in that it doesn’t insult the audience and expects you to keep up with the pace of the dialogue.  It’s a smart show, right?

Mary Pat> I think it’s very smart.  I’ve had friends who’ve said to me, Mary Pat, I have to tape that damn show because I can’t follow it.  It goes too fast for me.  So they go back and go a little slower, and they laugh even harder, because they realize that the writers are so quick and that they throw in so many references.  Yet sometimes you don’t catch them the first time through.  They reference things I don’t know too.  Every once in awhile, I’ll ask what is this, and find out it’s from the episode of yada yada, from 26 years ago, when so and so said….

Kenn>  I have that same feeling.  There are so many things going by, and I know it’s all a reference to something else that I should understand, but I know I’m missing half of it. 

Mary Pat> Exactly, exactly!  I think that’s so much fun.  It’s like a puzzle master.  There are several levels that you can watch this at.  You can just watch the show and enjoy it.  Or you watch the show and see what else they are doing underneath it, and that’s really fun. 

Kenn>  You’ve played so many fun characters of the years that I’ve loved, for instance the Will & Grace character was hilarious.  For you, how does Ida fit in with having had so many great and wonderful parts?

Mary Pat> Thank you for that, that’s very kind of you.  Thank you so much.  I just feel like I hit the mother load with this part.  Really, they are allowing me to do so many things that I’ve only touched on in other parts.  I feel like this is something that is challenging.  When you come into this show, they say, “Anything that you know how to do, or any special skills that you’ve got, we want to know it all!”  They’re serious.  If you can do anything they want you to do it.  For example, a whistle-off scene.  You have to be careful what you do around there, or they’ll have you doing it on screen.

Shaun>  What about those crazy outfits they have you wear?  I guess you’d say housecoats.  When my mother walks by and sees them she says, “She must have gotten those from Mill Ellie.”  I don’t know if you ever watched Dallas but Miss Ellie wore some of those.

Mary Pat> I did.

Shaun>  Do you do any research to play a robot?

Mary Pat> One of the great things about getting to do a series is you get to keep talking about it.  So we keep talking about things that Ida can do.  What can she do, and what can’t she do.  And we wanted her to be unique from other robots that people have seen.  And Javi had this image in his mind that Ida can turn herself into anything.  She has the ability to morph into anything she needs to be, but somehow, something went wrong with her programming and she got stuck at middle aged school marm and that she’s cranky.  I think that’s hilarious.  She’s just stuck in this one place.  When they came up with this costume I went, “Oh my God, that looks like 70’s laugh in.”  Then the funny hair do and all  of that, and I thought this couldn’t be more fun to play.  We’re in comic book land, but we can mix up.  We have no barriers as to what we can do.  These guys have such regard and love and heart for comics and for sci fi and all of that.  They’re just nuts about it.  To make an original contribution to the genre is something that would thrill them.  They really come up with great stuff.

Shaun>  We actually have a call for Mary Pat, Marq from Montana, go ahead.

Caller>  I was actually looking at your credits, and you have an extensive amount of credits, but usually only one or two episodes.  What’s it like to be on an actual series.

Mary Pat> That is truly a great pleasure; I’ve not had this experience before.  It’s really like having a home again.  It’s like doing theatre where you all come into the same theatre and over time, you really get to know one another and you get to do fun things and interesting things.  I’m at a position now in this show where I finally get to do a thing like that, and it’s brand new to me.  It couldn’t be more fun.

Caller>  Do you have any favorites among all the shows you did?

Mary Pat> One of the things that I think was most fun was doing Will & Grace.  I really, dearly, loved that.  And I did an episode of Sex In The City that still is one of my great favorites.

Caller>  Is there anybody that you would love to work with?

Mary Pat> Well, I guess I feel so lucky with the people I have worked with, and I find that every actor that you do get to work with, there is always something really fabulous and fun and new that you get to do with them.  So I feel like there isn’t anybody in particular out there right now, because I’d probably enjoy anybody I did work with. 

Caller>  Do you like doing comedy or drama better?

Mary Pat> I think I like doing comedy better.  It’s the most fun I think. 

Shaun>  He was right about everything you’ve been in, but he skipped over one of my favorites, Mamma’s Family.

MP.That’s right, that was one of the first jobs I had when I came to California.  It was really a fun thing and I had a friend, who had been doing soap operas, who was writing that. 

Shaun>  Can you talk about your one woman show?  Are still doing it?  Are you going to do it again?

Mary Pat> I’m doing a benefit performance for a group called Fountain House in New York on September 22, and right now I’m working with a Doctor at the Mayo Clinic, trying to make contact to do a presentation for the Guthrie theatre in Minnesota, and see if we can maybe arrange to do a couple of weeks of the show there, and open it up to people who have an interest in this particular subject matter.  So that would be really thrilling for me.  So it’s in my back pocket, and people call and talk to me about it, and pitch ideas to me.  So along the way I think it’s going to morph into other things.  I think I’m going to end up doing other things with I then I originally thought I would.  I thought I’d do those few weeks of it in New York, but it hasn’t been.  There’s been more interest in it then that.

Shaun>  The show deals with bi-polar disorder, right?  And depression?

Mary Pat> Exactly.  Well, of course that’s a huge part of bi-polar disorder.  Bi-polar disorder is the mania, where you live at a very high speed life, and the opposite of that is that you then frequently sink into depressions and have to cope with that too.  I happen to be enormously lucky.  I had a diagnosis at the age of 34, and I had the disease manifesting in me for about 20 years, and it was during key years of my career.  So I had complications with insurance over it, and all sorts of things that went on around it.  That’s what the show’s about is me being able to find a way through all that complication.  And it’s funny and fun and it’s full of stories.  It certainly speaks of the community I was in and how supportive they were and how terrific people were on my behalf.  I think it’s significant, not because it was me or my story but because I’ve done so well.  I’m on a very, very low dose of medication and I have a full beautiful life and I’ve not had any kind of episode in over 9 years.  That’s hard for people to come by that kind of recovery.  I’m kind of hoping that there may be something that I can say from a stage, or something that I might be able to impart that would help somebody else get what I’ve got?

Shaun>  Have we, as a country, finally turned the corner on mental illness?  Are we recognizing that it’s real and not some hocus-pocus by some quack and that it really exists?

Mary Pat> Right.  It’s so great that you care about that because it’s the truth.  When I first was diagnosed with this, everybody, my family, the doctors, my agents, said don’t ever tell anybody that you’ve got this.  It was like the best kept secret in the world and it was loaded with shame.  It was the first time in my life that I ever had somebody say something to me that made me feel like I had to go into hiding.  That in it’s own way was debilitating.  So in just doing the show I’ve had so many people come up to me and say, I’ve never heard anybody say this out loud and to say it from the stage.  I thought maybe what I’m saying isn’t as significant as the fact that I’m standing here saying it-  that I’m ok, that I’ve had this good life.  There are a lot of people out there that don’t know about it, or that are not allowed to talk about it.  It’s this dirty little secret in the family.  And also, there are people who have tremendous tragedies around this illness- people who have taken their own lives.  That’s hard on families, and it becomes something they don’t want to talk about.  I’m just trying to open up the conversation. 

Kenn>   How much of a challenge is it with doing this as a one woman show, especially about something so personal?  Does that make it more of a challenge?

Mary Pat> Well, it was.  It was a little staggering for awhile.  But I have to say, by the time I got to New York, I felt like I was standing squarely in the middle of a miracle.  The theatre that I did it at, the Vineyard theatre is one of the loveliest theatres in New York.  It’s sweet and it’s small, and they have a staff that couldn’t have been more interested or more caring or more attentive to anything I needed.  They brought in absolutely beautiful designers, and my director, Lonnie Price is one of the most compassionate, kind human beings on the planet.  And I felt so taken care of there, it was not difficult.  I thought I’d be paralyzed, and I wasn’t at all.  I wasn’t tired or exhausted, and I remember one night back stage burst into tears because I wasn’t scared!  I thought I’d be terrified of that experience.  I thought well, this is just really a miracle, and it’s because people are standing there with such open hearts that they loan you their strength. 

Shaun>  Does Ida know who’s in charge?

Mary Pat> She probably does, but she’s not telling. 

Kenn>  Everybody does so many over the top things in this show.  Do you have a favorite that you’ve done yet?

Mary Pat> Actually I do, but I don’t want to tell you about it because it’s coming up and I think it will spoil things if I do.  But there’s this wild thing that they have me do, that’s one of the most fun things I’ve ever been asked to do on any show I’ve ever done. 

Kenn>  Can you at least tell us what episode so we’ll know to watch for it?

Mary Pat> It will be in the next two. This is really mean, huh?  I’m one of those people who when I’ve seen a movie, I can never tell you anything about it.  I think people should have their own experience, that’s the fun of it.  And I know some people think the fun is to know in advance, but I’m not one of them.

Shaun>  How do you feel about the state of television? Is it doing well, or kind of shaky?

Mary Pat> I think television is doing well, but I just need to put in a pitch for ABC family.  They’re so adventuresome, and they’ve got a lot of great writers out there.  They’re taking chances on actors that people sometime don’t take a chance on, and I think it’s going to pay off because they are writing great television.  I do think that all of the networks have some great shows on but I think some of the reality TV shows are things that I’m not particularly interested in.  I think our show is interesting and entertaining because these are very smart writers.  I feel good about it.  These groups that do blogs on computers and go after stuff are changing the face of TV.  They’re demanding that they get to see the things that they want to see, and I think it’s great.  It’s the first time the public has had this kind of influence on what they’re watching.

Shaun>  Somebody was telling me that it’s the golden age for cable.  All the good stuff’s on cable, and we get all the reality shows on the networks.  Do you agree with that?

Mary Pat> I do think that’s true.  I think there’s a lot of money to be made with reality television, and that’s what they found out.  Cable stations are just exactly what happened with film.  When the film industry became $55 to $70 million dollars to do a film, we lost a lot of the writers coming up, that no one would give them that kind of money to shoot a film on their first script.  So they created Sundance, with all these Indy films.  That’s what I think cable television is that- the Indy film of the film industry.  It’s the place where all the pioneer people are in there, and trying to pitch all the things that are new or innovative or risky.  Some of the best scripts that I’ve read in the last 10 years have been some of the independent films that people had absolutely no budget on, but they got terrific actors because they came in with parts that are irresistible.  Actors love story, and  a good actor will even play a small part and gratefully in a well written script.  We all just want to be a part of telling a great story.

These cable kids are smart.  Just with my character alone, to give a woman that’s middle aged in Los Angeles, at this time, an opportunity to do the same kind of work that the Middleman Wendy do is extraordinary, that I’m not just coming in and serving them tea, or giving them a pat on the back kills me.  To be able to really be a character that has a life, and is fun and has stuff going on, you don’t know what to expect from her, and you don’t have her down in the first episode is really creative writing.