Exclusive Into The Woods Interview with Meryl Streep, Tracey Ullman & Christine Baranski

You could feel both energy and a sense of nervousness in the room while we waited for Meryl Streep, Tracey Ullman & Christine Baranski to arrive for their Into The Woods Interview with us. After all, we were interviewing Meryl Streep, a Hollywood legend AND she was only there that day to interview with us…What an honor!



Once they arrived, we greeted them with applause and as I watched them all walk to their seats I couldn’t help but observe that…



Meryl Streep is well put together, confident yet humble, soft spoken with a strong presence.



Christine Baranski is sophisticated and well poised.



Tracey Ullman is the life of the party! Need proof? She walked in the room saying that she can smell the estrogen in the room (3 actresses and 26 female bloggers explains that statement, LOL)

After seeing the chemistry between Meryl Streep, Tracey Ullman & Christine Baranski the night before, we were all wondering how their friendships began. Guess what? I got to ask just that! I was able to start the interview off with asking about it! (No pressure)



Here’s what they had to say about their friendship, life, motherhood and their careers

About their Friendships

Q: So, it’s completely obvious you guys are friends. I love the chemistry. Can you tell us how that friendship came to be? And any funny stories you want to share with us?

Christine Baranski: [LAUGHTER] Where do we begin? Well, Tracy and Meryl are old friends, so you can start there. That’s an old friendship.

Meryl Streep: Well, I’m way older friend than Tracy.

Tracey Ullman: Yes.

Meryl Streep: I met her when she was 21. We did a movie called Plenty. I was 31. And I thought I’d just met my new best friend…

Tracey Ullman: I was a pop star.

Meryl Streep: She was a pop star in England.

Tracey Ullman: I was a one-hit wonder here and an MTV vee-jay. Yeah, we got on great. We ended up in Tunisia, we broke down in the desert, and we flew back together and the engine went and we thought we were going to die. So we went through these dramatic moments.

Meryl Streep: Over the Mediterranean.

Tracey Ullman: It was bad. It was bad.

Meryl Streep: It was amazing. But, we stayed together in spite of it all. Had kids the same age.

Meryl Streep: And Christine and I…

Christine Baranski: We were dynamos in Greece together, on Mama Mia. So we had to do research by being friends, so we just hung out all the time, doing “research,” so we had a lot of fun with all of that research

Meryl Streep: But we’d known each other a hundred years.

Christine Baranski: We have. We have, because we’re theater babes, and we’re Connecticut moms, and our kids are roughly the same age, and all three of us had long marriages, and shared parallel experiences.

Christine Baranski: Yes. But then I met Tracy, and it was like, “Oh, wow…”

Tracey Ullman: Yeah. Dying to meet you. [LAUGHTER]
Christine Baranski: We didn’t spend nearly enough time together on this movie, because, you know, you have different scenes and plot lines, but we did have one wonderful, long dinner one night in London. And that was great to have.

Tracey Ullman: And we had one elongated scene where we were all in it-

Christine Baranski: Yes, that’s true.

Tracey Ullman: …where I got to shout at the giant, and we all had that and it took like, three days, and we all got really silly, and we were talking a lot. You were in your big platform shoes, and kept falling over. It was great. It was good fun.

Greatest Achievements

Christine Baranski: It’s a trick, being an actress, and wife, and mother, and having that longevity. That’s a real achievement, in my opinion. That’s the greatest achievement, not just in career, but holding your life together.

Meryl Streep: It’s a tribute to our husbands.

Tracey Ullman: Yes. Fantastic fathers.

Motherhood

Q : Your characters are all like exaggerated versions of parenting methods gone wrong. Did any of you feel or even more interesting, did any of your kids feel or see some similarities of you and your characters?

Meryl Streep: Yeah. [LAUGHTER]
Christine Baranski: I hold the girls a little too closely. Yes, perhaps.

Tracey Ullman: [LAUGHTER] [SINGS] Stay with me…

Q: What advice do you have mothers? What do you do to survive?

Meryl Streep: Well, I really feel like so much has changed. Raising little kids now is so different from when our children were little kids. I think that’s part of why this film…speaks to this time when it’s harder and harder to keep the world out.

Fairy Tales

Q: Which fairy tales did you love when you were children and wanted to share to your kids when they were little? Which ones stayed with you the most?

Meryl Streep: I remember being really marked by Bluebeard, by this idea of a man who would take serial wives, one after another, and kill them in the castle. And I was terrified by that. It’s probably why I just stayed married [LAUGHTER]
Christine Baranski: I was always telling my kids, as I read to them, that there was such a thing as the world of the imagination. I said, “You’re safe. If you’re in the world of the imagination, you can go anywhere, and you all come back from that, so you’re safe. We will read this book, and it’ll take you places, but don’t worry. You will come back. There is that world.”

Taking a Role

Christine Baranski: I think more to the point is the project that you’re in if you feel like it’s contributing, especially being actresses who have an opportunity in our work to maybe move the culture forward, and show women in a deeper, more complicated way. I love that I’m playing somebody on television who is well-educated, she runs a law firm, she actually has a relationship. She’s not the butt of a joke. She’s not an old crone.

You know, there’s never a mention of menopause or any of these clichéd things that we have put on things after a certain age. I love that these are just non-issues, and she’s a woman who is in the world, dealing with a complicated moral topography in her personal and professional life…I think that this movie is transformative, and contributes good to the world.

Meryl Streep: Increasingly, that’s what I think about. I have, I guess, for a long time, thought, each thing as “is this helping? Or this hurting? What’s this doing?” Because everything makes a mark on the culture. Every actress has a choice. Even if you’re supporting a lot of kids, by yourself, you still have a choice, what you’re putting out into the world, and I think it matters.

Christine Baranski: Yeah. Are you reinforcing clichés, or are you breaking boundaries with the work?

Meryl Streep: Yeah.

Favorite Roles/Characters

Q: You’ve played a variety of drama, comedy, wicker roles…What is your favorite role to play?

Meryl Streep: I don’t know if I think about it that way. I think each particular person you play deserves their own voice, and deserves their own place in the world, and they’re all about 5’6″ and a half, and they’re all about my weight and age that I play. I feel like there are so many different women. So many different stories and they each deserve their voice, their particular neuroses and needs and passions. So, I don’t make a distinction.