 photo by Carlo Allegri, Getty Images. January 2005, Park City, Utah |
My gay friends knew I was playing Gladys before I did. Actually, this is a true story—people knew I was playing Gladys before I knew because someone told me, "Oh, congratulations." And I said, "I don't know what you're talking about." I didn't even know they were making a Bewitched movie, and then someone else said, "I've read that you're playing Gladys," and I was like, "No, I'm not." And then two weeks after I heard all of that they offered me the part. (Tony's Note: I'm one of the people that Amy is talking about here. I asked her about her role in Bewitched when I was on the set of the Strangers With Candy movie, and she didn't know anything about it.)
I think gays are attracted to misfits, and Gladys is a misfit. You know what I mean? She's such a character. I went for her when I was [a kid]—she is for kids and homos, basically. The first actress who played Gladys [Alice Pearce] had teeth growing out of the side of her head. I loved that. I looked at an old picture, and I thought, Oh, my God. It was from the black-and-white version, and her teeth were crooked and kind of icky, and I was like, "Oh, man, that's such a great Gladys."
I wanted to be more like the original Gladys because of her almost freakish look, but Nora [Ephron, the director] was friends with the later Gladys—the one with the squeaky voice who wore her hair on top of her head [Sandra Gould]. So Nora wanted me to think of Sandra a little bit but not imitate her.
Wardrobe made my dress. I always love it when I work on a project and wardrobe makes my dress. They put me in a printed housedress, and my hair was all curled up—I looked like a lady who wants to get into the country club but can't. My makeup was all colors that weren't really Gladys's colors—bright and cheery but didn't really fit her personality. I didn't do anything with my teeth.
[Like Gladys,] I have been a nosy neighbor. I used to live across from this girl, one of those awful girls who wore scrunchies, and I could see her having sex with her boyfriend. When they had sex on the couch they would have the TV on. I couldn't get enough of them. But I always thought of them as the Peeping Toms—not me. I had all this breakaway china in my apartment, and I would stage fights just for fun, thinking they've got to see it. But they never did react. It turned out that I was the Peeping Tom.
At first, part of me was like, I can't play Gladys. My first instinct [when I get a script] is always to say, "No, I can't do this. There are too many lines." So this was perfect because it was a little something, and Nora was a really, really good director. She would say, "Don't be so loud this time." She helped me a lot. She gave us room to play around—me and Richard Kind, who is perfect as Gladys's husband, Abner.
I liked the role because it was literally me yelling, "Abner, Abner!" If I had said any more, they would have realized I didn't have the character down. -- As told to Christine Champagne
© June 2005 OUT Magazine
I was born in '61, and my sister Lisa had the Bewitched Samantha doll, and I loved playing with it. I remember the doll had beautiful hair, and it had a pointy hat. The hat was kind of stiff and had glitter on it. I played with that Bewitched doll for a long time. And I watched the show. I loved Endora. I loved how an episode would open with Ben Franklin bending over plugging in a lamp, and then Aunt Clara just forgot the rest of the spell, so she couldn't send him back to his time.
photo by George Pimentel, wireimage.com(Tony's Note: I was sitting right behind Amy at
Sundance when this picture was taken and I asked
her to mug for the camera. January 24, 2005.)
