Christine Baranski has specialized in playing a certain class of characters: sophisticated (such as Maryann Thorpe in the sitcom "Cybill"), very smart (her Diane Lockhart in "The Good Fight"), and sage (money Agnes Van Rijn). "in" The Gilded Age").
Correspondent Mo Roca asked Baranski, "Why do you feel that you are so often cast as intellectual, sophisticated, high-level characters?"
"Because I'm sophisticated and intellectual!" She laughed. "I don't know! It makes me laugh, because when, you know, people actually watch, you know, Buffalo and the Buffalo Bills, and where do I come from?"
Yes, Baranski is a proud buffalo, the daughter of Virginia and Lucien Baranski, who grew up in her family's Polish culture.
"My first memory of going to see live performers was when my father took me to see a Polish choir and dance troupe. And they were named Shlonsk. I would have been seven years old. And at the call of the screen, I suddenly heard my father shouting, 'Applause!' And he was actually crying and screaming. This is my fondest memory of my father.
"And I think that could be the beginning of my feeling, wow, performing arts, artist. Like, it's a really special thing to be an artist."
When Baransky was eight years old, his father died suddenly of an aortic aneurysm. On a visit to her grandparents' house on Friday night, she found comfort: "While they were playing bingo, I was upstairs in my grandmother's bedroom playing every single role in 'South Pacific.' I could play any role and anyone. I can sing too." "I can do Ezio Pinza as well as Marie Martin! I can do Juanita Hall! 'Bali Hai.' I can do it all. 'I have a dream in my heart.' 'I'm soft like Kansas.' I know them all.
"Sometimes my grandfather would come up and say, 'The chandelier is trembling. You know, you can stop?'"
"Because you were attending a Broadway show and you were just one person!" Rokka said.
"No, not a person. There was a statue of the Virgin Mary, 'cause my grandmother was very religious. So, I played with the Virgin Mary."
A very forgiving viewer!
Life is centered around family and faith. "I went to Catholic school for 12 years—eight years of grammar school, and then four years to an all-girls Catholic high school," Baransky said.
"What did going to an all girls school do for you?"
"I look back on it and I think it was great that I did it. I was actually the president of my class for four years in a row. I did things that I would be ashamed to do if I were in a school. Would have guys. And then, of course, once I started doing plays, I majored in these plays. And then my senior class play was 'Ma'am'. You can imagine!"
"And you played?"
"I played ma'am!"
And in 1970, Baranski applied to the prestigious Juilliard School in New York City to study drama.
Rocca asked, "I'm curious, how did teenage, ex-Juliard Christine Baransky sound?"
"I looked like a girl from the Midwest," she replied. "I had hard bucks, which they said I had to get rid of my hard bucks. I had a sibilant S, which is why they wait-listed me. Because, see, these teeth? One between my teeth." The place was there."
"A Lauren Hutton?"
"Yeah, I had a Lauren Hutton gap. But I didn't look as pretty as Lauren Hutton, but I had that gap!"
To get rid of his sibilant prints (and trust us, it's not that easy), Baransky clenched his teeth and worked with a speech therapist before auditioning again.
The first person Baranski reported that she came to Juilliard was her mother: "I still remember meeting my mother and telling her the news. And we went to the Algonquin Hotel and had a Southern Comfort Manhattan with Cherry. Each of us I had two Manhattans and it was the only time I had a drink with my mother. That was a really extraordinary moment.
"And I was so happy that he shared in that moment," Baransky said. "Yeah, sorry, it still makes me so emotional."
Before graduating, Baranski was being cast in the theater and was getting good reviews. But her hopes and dreams weren't limited to the stage: "I remember coming back home, going to visit my mom and paternal grandfather. And I remember going to my high school, and There was a grotto with a statue of the Virgin Mary. And I remember a prayer, my prayer was that I should meet someone with whom to have children and get married."
Within a day, she received a call about an Off-Broadway role with actor Matthew Cowles, best known for playing pimp Billy Clyde Tugle in the soap opera "All My Children".
"One night he asked me if I wanted to go home on his motorcycle," Baransky said. "And I'm not even comfortable in cars. But he was such a charming character. He was different than anyone I'd ever met, with shaggy blonde hair and unfiltered Mexican cigarettes and his weird way of talking. And anyway, I sat on the back of that bike."
"were you scared?" asked Rokka.
"Yeah, I was scared. And I remember saying to him, 'Matthew, I'm scared.' And he said, 'So am I!'"
When the two got married in 1983, that motorcycle named Lucifer was present. "He drove me away from the little church where we were married, and I was sitting on Lucifer in my long wedding gown. And there was a little motorcycle. - There was a black spot, so I never cleaned the gown. Didn't, 'cause I wanted to keep that black spot."
The next year proved that George Orwell had done wrong; 1984 was a great year for Baranski. She was expecting the first of her two daughters with Cowles, and won her first of two Tony Awards (for "The Real Thing"). "That whole year was just... oh, who has a year like that? It was James Lapin, it was Mike Nichols, it was Tom Stoppard, it was Stephen Sondheim. What an embarrassment of riches, huh?"
And nearly 40 years later, the great parts haven't stopped coming. Baranski will next appear as Agnes Van Rijn in "The Gilded Age," created by Julian Fellowes of "Downton Abbey" fame.
"I am very happy to have got that role," he said. "I thought, 'Corset, wig, quote coaching session.' And the role, of course, is that majestic enough. Nothing beats playing a snob, written by Julian Fellowes. What could be better at this point?"
"You are bigger than ever -" said Rocca.
"Did you say big?"
"Yeah. Not physically!"
Baransky said, "I don't know if I'm big, but I'm busy." "It's amazing. It's amazing. I want to give hope. It wasn't until I was in my 50s that I found a leading lady in music. Then in my mid-50s I got 'The Good Wife' And now to my surprise I'm on 'The Good Fight' and 'The Gilded Age.' And I'm about to turn 70!"
She is also the grandmother of three boys, the first born shortly before the death of Matthew Cowles in 2014.
It remains a prosperous life on and off stage for Christine Baranski. "There's a lot to be said for being clear about what you want," she said. "It's not like I have a formula. I don't want to preach and say I know how to do it; I don't. But I've had a lot of prayers in my life answered."