Well, it's interesting 'cause when I...
I knew that bonnie and Terry turner
were doing this show
and that john was involved, but...
I didn't know any more than that.
And I'm very friendly with bonnie and Terry,
and I had worked with them on "the coneheads" movie.
And bonnie and I would have these...
bicoastal, lengthy conversations on the phone at night,
generally with a glass of wine in hand.
And she called one night
in, I think, January, late January one year,
and it was 30 below zero at my house.
It was very cold.
She was out in California,
and she was telling me what a beautiful day it was.
I said, "how's the show going?"
And she said, "well,
that's why I'm calling.
We had to rewrite
the part of the love interest
for the high commander,
and I was wondering if you would do it."
I didn't know anything about the part,
and I knew very little about the show,
except for the people who were involved in it.
And the premise-- I knew a little bit
about the premise but not very much.
And without blinking, I said,
"well, of course I would."
And for me, basically, it's not what the show is about,
but it's who's involved.
And if it has
the potential for being fun,
then I'll be there.
If it's going to be a chore,
and if it's going to be sort of angst-riddled,
um, hmm, no, I won't do it.
But this has proved to be
more fun than I could ever imagine.
And the character of Mary Albright
has evolved into this...
really fun person to play.
So it's worked out tremendously for me.
The filming is--
it's sort of the cake.
And you get to have the cake
after you've prepared it.
And the preparation
is a very creative process.
And because of the nature of this studio,
the fact that it's a very open...
comfortable place to be,
you don't feel inhibited
when you come to rehearsals.
You feel as though, if you get an idea,
you can just sort of fly with it
until someone says, "that's really stupid."
Oh, okay. I was just thinking maybe that would work.
It is a wonderful feeling
because we are all creative people.
We all have ideas running through our minds,
and some shouldn't come out
and... some should,
and it is always accepted.
When someone feels the need to say something,
you stop, you listen, and then you go on.
Whether you incorporate it or not
depends on whether it's going to be
of any benefit to that particular scene.
But there is that atmosphere of openness
so that you can speak your mind.
I think that's the only reason she's with Dick.
Yes, she recognizes the fact that he does have idiosyncrasies,
but she is so messed up
that, you know, no one could possibly be
as screwed up as she is,
but she hides it very well. She represses everything.
Because he pays attention to her.
Mary's desperate for love.
Mary is-- you've met her parents,
and they're difficult.
And she, basically, is looking for love
in any place.
She doesn't care where it is.
She's just a desperate, pathetic woman.
She's lonely, very lonely.
It's farce,
and there are a whole bunch
of very dignified people walking around
getting pies shoved in their face,
and that can be understood in any language.
We're not trying to change the world,
nor are we trying to have a very special episode.
Our basic purpose is
to make people laugh
and to do it in a way that's intelligent
and, um... and fun,
and I think we succeed tremendously in doing that.
There are some heady subjects that we--
I mean, there was a wonderful--
a line that john had
when john Cleese was on the show
and john was, um...
trying to make physics more interesting.
So he does this scene
where he's at a school fair,
and he tries to lure the kids in
with the girls of physics,
and they're all swimsuit models
on posters as the girls of physics.
Then once he has the students' attention,
he starts talking about
how physics makes everything work,
and officer Don comes in and shows his gun.
And so,
Dick Solomon is trying to explain
how physics makes all of this possible.
And at the end, he says,
"guns don't kill people. Physics kills people."
Which is just a wonderful construct
to end up there
and deal with gun control
and all of those issues.