The actor Michael Sheen has nicknamed his penis, and the full title he has chosen is The Great Christine Baranski. With absolutely no offence meant to Baranski, 66 now and at the very peak of a four-decade career, this is a perfect name for a penis. It is a perfect name for a penis because it suggests poise, elegance, stamina and, importantly, a rare and steely strength.
Baranski in person is regal; I am presented to her in a London hotel suite like a sex worker meeting an oligarch. I almost … curtsy? Perhaps it’s the air conditioning, but to approach her seat, where she vibrates, blow-dried and fabulous in the tightest dress and ocelot-spotted heels, feels like arriving in the rarified air of a mountaintop. The characters she has played – from Maryann, the best friend in Cybill (“Did I ever tell you I superglued his penis to his thigh?”), a clear precursor to Sex and the City’s Samantha; to Tanya, the best friend in Mamma Mia!; and Diane Lockhart, the lawyer in The Good Wife and The Good Fight – have shared this haughty, impenetrable power. Although impenetrable is perhaps the wrong word when you consider too their fruity horniness. In the Mamma Mia! sequel, one of the first things Tanya says, lowering her sunglasses upon catching sight of the dashing hotel manager ready to host another party where the slightest mention of “dancing” or “winner” triggers a leaping orgy of Abba, is “be still my beating vagina”.
As a student in New York, Baranski received $1,000 for living expenses, awarded because she was “the most hard-working economically needy student” in her Juilliard class. She promptly took herself off on a tour of Europe’s cheapest hotels. On her return, she debuted on Broadway, later winning an Emmy for Cybill and beginning a thriving career in deadpan Mae West-isms. Yet, as she once pointed out, she seems in a perpetual state of being “discovered”.
In fact, it is only recently, with two daughters, two grandsons, and mourning the death of her husband in 2014, that Baranski has graduated from her traditional supporting character status to, in The Good Fight, the weighty leading role she deserves. The Good Fight is a darkly comedic legal drama that is so prescient, so close to the headlines, it feels as if viewers are watching it live. “How does the law keep up with a world that just seems to be sliding away, like an email dissolving on the screen?” she asks, quite grandly. “Press delete, press delete.”
The show, a (superior) sequel to The Good Wife, was written with the assumption that Hillary Clinton was going to be president. The pilot was being filmed on election night, including a scene where Diane announces her retirement to her colleagues by saying: “There are no more glass ceilings to break.” That line was cut. It opens with her watching Trump’s inauguration with growing horror – “Robert King [the show’s co-creator] told me to open my mouth wider. Then, a little wider, and then a little wider still” – and the two seasons continue through her “existential crisis”, with stories so close to reality that with every episode the viewer suffers small existential crises, too.
It is as angry as it is delightful, and its glue is Diane. She strides through these politics that are destroying her in very high heels, best legs in showbiz, at one point wearing a blouse that appears to be made of liquid gold. She is the most compelling character on TV today. And while we are here to talk about Mamma Mia!, the filming of which was “Oh, too much fun!”, all paths of conversation lead back to The Good Fight, and onwards through its liberal politics, which Baranski shares, noisily.
But first, Cher. As a treat to future-me, my brain had chosen to forget that Cher is in the new Mamma Mia!, so when she appeared on screen towards the end, I actually screamed. On set, Baranski, Julie Walters, Meryl Streep and Cher enjoyed “schmoozing and girl talk”. Another delighted little scream rose in my throat at the image, but I managed to swallow it. “It’s shocking how un-movie star-like they are in person,” she insists. “These women are incredibly intelligent. They’re committed to social causes, they have insight, they have a terrific perspective of the business and about the world in which they live. I think people have an inflated idea about movie stars, that they live in some ... stratosphere.” Would she mind terribly, though, if her fans continued to think of Baranski in that way? “You may,” she says generously.
It is hard to pinpoint exactly where Christine ends and Diane begins. Partly because the two appear to be navigating similar anxieties. “So much of what we need to do now is recover from setbacks – psychological, moral setbacks. It’s giving us all whiplash,” she says. “I feel like the culture, the world finally caught up with Diane Lockhart,” especially looking at movements like #MeToo. Has she contributed her own stories? “I certainly have stories,” she says. “But I don’t tell my stories.” And then she tells them: “Early in my student days I had to live with a family paying room and board. And I was assaulted. I got out of it without any physical harm but I lived in fear because I was around the man in question. What strikes me is that women accept that somehow this is the way of the world. In my case, I didn’t speak of it for fear of hurting the wife. A lot of women don’t speak out to protect other women. Understanding that is a big step.”
Baranski has spent the past two summers in the UK, taking courses at Oxford University. “Yes, the first was in TE Lawrence [of Arabia] and last summer I did Oscar Wilde,” she says, casually. But she spends most of her time in a lake house in Connecticut, where she enjoys naked swims, and peace. Staying calm is a part-time job. Noticing moments of goodness is another. “One of the nicest things that ever happened to me was at the Emmy awards. A law professor came up to me and said she used Diane Lockhart as an example to her young students. Isn’t that just great? Because sometimes I’ve wondered, are we really moving things forward by being in the entertainment industry? By continuing to mesmerise and stupefy people with entertainment? And yet, the power of television is that it can inspire people and move the culture forward.” She takes a deep breath. “I would like to think that Diane Lockhart is seen as an example of a female character that will not compromise. That led the way. We never made that character a victim. Never made her the older woman who’s the nasty boss, the bitch, the older woman who didn’t have children or married so went home and drank herself to sleep. We didn’t fall into cliches.”
In 2002, at a dinner thrown by Anna Wintour to celebrate the release of the film Chicago (in which Baranski played a role typically given to a drag queen), she found herself seated next to Trump. “He didn’t pay any attention to me. I wasn’t a star,” she says, lifting her chin. Yet today, she feels she is paying an inordinate amount of attention to him, watching the news almost obsessively. “The whole system is in some kind of freefall. And we don’t know how to process it. It’s exhausting. I have a doctor who says many of his patients are coming in just wanting to know how to cope.” What does she think the answer is? “Well, certainly not yelling, because it only polarises the other side.”
Isn’t it tempting to scream? “It is. But we’re at a pretty low point if you have the F word and the C word being used on the air. I think it only makes people angrier. I don’t plan to go there. Getting out and exercising one’s franchise in a democracy will be the answer. It’s a slower process, and requires organisation, vigilance, money. It requires that people articulate and be rational during an irrational moment in history. But mainly I think,” and she leans forward, that silky grace rumpling for just a second, “mainly I think that we have to stay awake.”
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is in cinemas now
