Holland Taylor is always a welcome addition on the small screen (“The Practice” won her an Emmy in 1999 and she’s been nominated six times since), and she’s back at it again—this time on the Audience Network with the gritty cat-and-mouse thriller “Mr. Mercedes,” an adaptation of Stephen King’s 2014 novel of the same name. She plays Ida Silver, neighbor to Brendan Gleeson’s Bill Hodges, a retired detective. Taylor recently spoke with Backstage about the role, her process, and the advice she’d give her younger self, joking that Backstage has “been around for as long as I have!” Season 2 of “Mr. Mercedes” premieres on Aug. 22.
What has playing Ida on “Mr. Mercedes” added to your acting skills?
Well, your acting skills are very much affected by who you’re acting with, and most of my work in “Mr. Mercedes” is with Brendan Gleeson, who is one of the great actors I’ve ever encountered and certainly worked with. He has a presence that is so persuasive and an attention that’s so acute that you really just interact with him and your job is done. He is just one of those actors who lifts your game tremendously.
I’m sure that energy is contagious. You can’t help but give that back when you’re receiving it.
Also, his truth-telling. He’s really present in the scene. He doesn’t gild the lily; he doesn’t add any muscle to it. He’s just alive in a situation, which is actually a very good descriptor for acting—and Stella Adler, who was my great teacher, would second that. You want to be sensitive to the moment and within the context of what your character wants and also the situation and the style of the thing you’re in, which very much affects how you do it. You can be in a comedy and acting is a different animal there than if you’re in the kind of gritty almost kitchen-sink film that this is, which is a very, very realistic style of acting. So it’s just an awareness of the moment and what the quality of living is in that context.
What about Ida really excited you when first met with the prospect of playing her?
Well, David E. Kelley actually conceived of this character. I guess the Stephen King novel is one animal and the film is another animal, and I think when they transferred ‘Mercedes’ to film world, where you would really see the cold and hard surfaces of this world that this retired and lost detective lives in, I think it became too dark, and they needed the presence of someone off to the side to care about him who’s someone the audience would trust. So knowing that David created this character engaged me immediately because I’ve worked with Mr. Kelley before and I’ve seen countless projects of his. He is just at such a high level of intelligence and understanding that that’s reason enough right there.
How did get your Equity card?
My Equity card, I thought I had earned it when I worked in summer stock at a small little theater where I was then living. I was living in Pennsylvania, and it was a little summer stock theater nearby. It was a very modest little theater, but it was an Equity theater and I would come and do shows there. I sort of volunteered myself. I was 16, I think, and I worked there for two summers. I’d do little parts, and I was supposed to get my Equity card out of that, and of course I never did. But when I came to New York, in those days, you heard about these open auditions, I went to an open audition for “The Devils,” which starred Anne Bancroft and Jason Robards, and they needed a whole mess of nuns—like, 15 nuns. And I thought, Here’s my chance! So I went to an open call for that and was hired by the director, Michael Cacoyannis, which was sort of amazing, and I was offered a role on an Equity contract, which gave me my Equity card. I don’t think anything like that happens to you today. The numbers of people are simply too great. That was a long time ago—that was 1965. It was a tremendous break for me, meant to be. And also, being in a production with Anne Bancroft and Jason Robards was quite inspiring. What a lift-off for me!
READ: Holland Taylor on Impersonation Versus Interpretation
What special skills do you have listed on your résumé?
I don’t think I ever had any special skills! I’m really very limited in my extra abilities. I don’t play a sport; I don’t speak a language well enough. I just am me myself and I! That’s as far as that goes.
And do you remember what your first headshot looked like?
All too well. It was just so long ago, I think I used a shot that was taken by a photography student at the college I went to when I was a senior. And it was entirely inappropriate. It was almost a profile shot. It was kind of arty. And I was kind of plump and freckled and I looked like a girl standing on a college campus, which is what I was.
What’s one thing you would tell your younger self?
It took me a long time to know what I know pretty solidly now, and what I certainly always tell actors. I’ve taught from time to time, and when I do, I think the most important thing I can impart is psychological self-management in the audition process. I still have to audition occasionally, but more rarely, of course. But back in the day, I had to audition for every job I ever got, and they are hard, there’s no question about it. They are a test of your nerves. I always took them much too personally; we’re much too frightened of them, much too unsteady, much too sort of tormented by them so you do self-destructive things like not prepare adequately or be late because you have so much turmoil flowing around. This is really unfortunate because the fact is, you can’t go get a job, you don’t have that power. And it’s the illusion that you have power that actually gets you in trouble. All you are in charge for is showing up and knowing the material as well as you can, having some thoughts about it, and trying to be—even as you are in acting—just open to the situation. You don’t want to try and give a finished performance. You don’t want to be off-book and give something that you’re not really ready to do. You want to be open to the moment and understand that they may be looking for something very different from you. You can’t suddenly be blonde if that’s what they want. You have to be who you are, and if you fall into what they want, you will be given the job. But you can’t make them do it. People go to auditions [saying], “I’ve gotta go get this job!” No you don’t. You have to go and be there for them to feel that you are the one that they want to give it to. You’re powerless in that regard. And when people don’t get jobs, the pain that people go through—and I did, too—is really quite awful. It’s our job to try to remember that it is not a personal rejection at all. That’s one of the hardest things about my first 10 years in the business, was dealing with the stresses.
How do you typically prepare for an audition?
Preparing for the audition, you really do have to know the material as well as you can. Sometimes you don’t even know the material and you get there—you know, I can remember any number of situations where I got handed the sides when I got there. You just have to stay alert to whatever degree you have the material, you want to know it as well as you can given the circumstances. But the main thing is to stay alive to the moment and responsive to the people you’re around. Be who you are. They’re hiring a person they want to work with…. It’s desperately important to remember to release yourself of the burden of going out there and by god getting that job! That isn’t the assignment. The assignment is to show up.
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