SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 13 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ EE E11
TELEVISIONALYSON ALIANO FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTSUZANNE TENNER/FXage, Adlon’s eyes darted between
the screen and her iPhone. There
were emails about some of the
projects she’s hoping to step into,
including an adaptation of Ra-
chel Stavis’s book “Sister of Dark-
ness,” and an animated project
she and Judge are developing
with rock icon Joan Jett. Some-
thing was going on with her girls
and she told Rocky she’d be home
early for dinner.
The episode on Eifrig’s screen
spoke to one of the challenges
Adlon overcame to make the final
season of “Better Things.” It was
shot entirely in London. That’s
where her TV mother, played by
Celia Imrie, lives. Imrie, 69, can-
not fly because of a health issue.
In the past, she took the Queen
Mary 2 to the States. With covid,
there were no cruises. After con-
sidering other options, including
Zoom-directing her scenes, Adlon
decided to take Sam and the en-
tire family to Imrie. That led to a
dramatic plot twist that will be
revealed when the episode airs on
April 18.
“I couldn’t believe it,” says Im-
rie of Adlon’s decision to film in
England. “But you know, she is a
perfectionist.”
Adlon has been thinking about
this a lot. When she started “Bet-
ter Things,” she didn’t realize
what it would become. It was an
opportunity and a job. “I just
needed to keep working,” she
says.
Before long, Adlon realized the
show had become something spe-
cial.
“That window opened, which I
barely squeaked through, and if I
didn’t do my show then, it never
would have happened,” she says.
“The window would have shut.”
The decision to end “Better
Things,” she says, was mutual:
“They weren’t forcing me to stop
and I wasn’t demanding to stop. It
just felt like a really good place to
end this chapter for both of us.”
She contemplates maybe com-
ing back in a few years, revisiting
Sam Fox and her daughters, but
for now, she’s eager to do some-
thing new.
Life has changed and not
changed. She hears it all the time
now. When somebody pitches a
show, they say it’s going to be like
another “Better Things.” And yet,
as she tries to launch her next
thing — directing an adaptation
of Ariel Leve’s memoir, “An Abbre-
viated Life” — she is told that the
money won’t come until she can
secure the two leads. Suddenly,
it’s as if she’s back to square one.
“If you want me to be the actor
whisperer, let me do that,” Adlon
says, her arms raised now and her
voice at its raspiest. “It’s the old
joke. We’re looking for a ‘Better
Things’ type. Okay. I’m right here.
Let’s go! Let’s go!”and comedian Sarah Silverman,
another close friend of the co-
median, were experiencing a kind
of reverse #MeToo’ing.
“We’re having to answer for
these men as opposed to talking
about our lives and ourselves,”
Adlon said.
As time passed, the questions
faded. Without C.K., she hired
four writers and went back to
work. Off camera, she also set the
tone for “Better Things.” She is a
natural mentor, says Erica Sterne
McGhee, who started as a post -
producer and today is director of
development for Adlon’s produc-
tion company, Slam Book Inc.
Just over half of the 248 people
working on the final season of
“Better Things” were women.
Monica Corbin, who spent time
with Adlon as part of a mentor-
ship program, remembers visit-
ing a shoot at a supermarket last
year. Corbin was standing in the
front of the store when she heard,
from somewhere, Adlon scream-
ing out, “Monica, where are you?”
As soon as Corbin found her in
an aisle, Adlon waved her over.
“Come over here to stand next
to me so you can see what I’m
doing,” Corbin remembers being
told. “So I was literally sitting over
her shoulder watching her di-
rect.”On a recent weekday, Adlon
and Annie Eifrig, the
show’s supervising editor,
were in front of the monitors
working through Episode 9.
As Eifrig clicked through foot-ter Things” alone.
“They were a creative partner-
ship that worked really, really
well together and had for a long
time, but I never saw him once
when we were shooting Season 2,”
says Pollak.
“We were like, ‘You did it al-
ready and you’ve got to keep go-
ing, you’ve got to keep telling
these stories,’ ” says Susie Bala-
ban, a longtime friend who has
worked as an assistant director in
television. “In a way, I think it was
a kind of blessing.”Season 3 opened with Sam
Fox in front of a mirror try-
ing on clothes. Nothing fit.
The idea came from Adlon’s actu-
al weight gain between seasons.
This is what people often call
brave, a term she dislikes. It
wasn’t brave, she says; it was real.
And funny.
“I was in my closet trying on my
clothes and I was like, ‘This just fit
me; I literally just wore this,’ ” she
says. “And I couldn’t believe it. I
had a big pile of clothes to give to
Goodwill and I said, no, I’m keep-
ing these and I’m going to do this
on my show.”
She pauses and recounts the
motto of “Better Things”: “Bad for
my life, good for my show.”
It was during Season 3 that
Adlon faced the collateral dam-
age from the C.K. scandal. On an
excruciating episode of NPR’s
“Fresh Air” meant to promote the
new season, host Terry Gross
pressed repeatedly about C.K. un-
til Adlon politely noted that she“Do you want to buy her the
earrings?” Sam asked the onlook-
er. “ ’Cause that’s why she’s crying.
Because of six-dollar earrings.
She has them at home already.
But she wants them right now so... y ou should go right into that
store and buy them for her, ’cause
I’m not doing it.... O r stop look-
ing.”
“For somebody watching the
show, you find that universality in
the specificity,” says Stacey Sher,
who has produced films with
Quentin Tarantino and Steven So-
derbergh and is working with
Adlon to adapt a limited series for
FX about Addyi, the “female Via-
gra” drug. “These are the things
you usually don’t see. The flaws,
the mistakes, the triumphs. And
she can do all of that while being
funny.”
There was a moment, midway
through the show’s run, when
Adlon wasn’t quite so sure of that.
It came in 2017, as the final two
episodes of Season 2 were airing,
when C.K. confirmed reports of
sexual misconduct. Suddenly, the
man who had given Adlon her big
break, who was her co-creator
and co-writer for the first two
seasons of “Better Things,” was
thrust into the spotlight as a
radioactive predator.
Adlon cut ties with C.K. She
also decided to kill her show.
What other choice did she have?
Wouldn’t everybody think of
C.K.’s misdeeds whenever they
watched? Landgraf and others
urged her to reconsider. They
knew that Adlon could run “Bet-
would proclaim Julia Louis -
Dreyfus “not hot” enough, no
woman was going to get a chance
to create, direct, write and star in
her own show.
It was a man who would give
Adlon her big break — and not
just any man, but the comedian
Louis C.K. In 2006, he was creat-
ing a show for HBO and needed
somebody to play his wife. “Lucky
Louie” lasted just a season, but it
led to Adlon getting a regular part
on “Californication.” During
C.K.’s five-season run of his next
project, “Louie” on FX, Adlon
became a consulting producer
and co-wrote seven episodes. In
2015, C.K. told FX president John
Landgraf that he needed to give
Adlon her own show.
“The longer I do this, the more
I’ve come to believe that all of the
traditional methodologies that
we use to identify, groom and
promote talented artists are effec-
tive, but limited and flawed,” says
Landgraf. “Because to think that
Pamela managed to get to 51 years
old without ever directing a frame
of television, I just don’t believe
that would have happened to a
man of Pamela’s talent.”
A
dlon’s obsessive attention
would define “Better
Things.” When the show
was launching, she wanted John
Lennon’s 1970 recording of
“Mother” for the title credits. A
song like that should be out of
reach for a new series with a
limited budget. But Adlon wrote a
heartfelt letter to Yoko Ono, Len-
non’s widow. The song, she wrote,
“embodies everything that my life
is about as well as my show.”
“My daughters have been lis-
tening to the song for the past
year,” she continued. “They adore
it. It has deep, cathartic meaning
for them. Which is what I’m hop-
ing ‘Better Things’ can be for
many people. It’s pro-women,
pro-aging and pro-equality on all
levels. It can also be bitingly fun-
ny and a little bit naughty.”
“It was expensive,” Landgraf
says of the Lennon song. “And it
was essential.”
The show’s title came from a
favorite Kinks song. The art in
Sam Fox’s house came from Ad-
lon’s own home. She had Sam
wear a wrist brace, mirroring her
own battles with tendinitis. And
then there were her TV daugh-
ters. Max and Frankie, the older
ones, were independent, creative,
emotional and, more than occa-
sionally, downright abusive to
their mother. Duke, the baby,
opened the show’s pilot standing
next to Sam in a mall, crying a big,
fake cry as Sam punched out a
message on her phone and a
woman stared.
ADLON FROM E10
After five seasons, time to ‘ end this chapter’TOP: Pamela Adlon in
Los Angeles this month.
The 1 0-episode fifth
season of her show
“Better Things,”
premiering Feb. 28, will
be the show’s finale.
BELOW: In real life,
Adlon’s mother, Marina,
lives next door to her.
She would re-create that
with her TV mother,
Phil, played by Celia
Imrie in “Better Things.”