Interview: For Judith Light, ‘Shining Vale’ and ‘Julia’ are Two Sides of Her Own Versatile Coin

Fresh off her first Primetime Emmy win for Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for Poker Face, Judith Light re-enters this year’s Emmys conversation with a pair of scene-stealing guest roles that showcase her wide range and extraordinary attention to detail. 

On the comedy side, Light gives us the wonderfully glamazonian Joan in Shining Vale, the critically acclaimed comedy-horror Starz original that was sadly not renewed for a third season. Joan is the vibrant, flighty, formerly institutionalized mother of Courteney Cox’s character Pat, who may not always say the right thing but will always show up for her struggling daughter (and yes, your assumptions are correct: Joan does own baby sharks).  

On the drama side, Light embodies Julia Childs’ steely, reserved, and historically unsung book publisher Blanche Knopf in the sumptuous Max show Julia (also confoundingly not renewed for a third season). While Joan is filterless and bold, Blanche is a stiff cigarette held between two curled fingers. She is precision, power, sadness. 

While on the surface these women feel worlds apart in tone and texture, both emerge as remarkable examples of Light’s unrivaled knack for conveying conflicting emotions, incredible specificity, and deep humanity in her characters. 

I spoke to Light about the joys and challenges of Joan and Blanche, the responsibility of portraying mental illness through a comedic lens, and the current TV landscape where good shows are struggling more than ever to breathe and blossom. 

And, in a slight betrayal of my training as a super profesh neutral journalist, I spoke to Light from the salmon-walled sunroom in my house, which my husband and I turned into a bar early in the pandemic. We call it Judith Bar, not just because we have some lovely Judith Light art on the walls, but because, like Light’s many wonderful roles over the years, it’s a safe place for us to go when the world feels too unwieldy. 

John Loos: Hey, Judith. How are you doing?

Judith Light: I’m good. How are you?

John Loos: Very, very good. Thanks for chatting with me today.

Judith Light: Oh, I’m so grateful to talk to you. This is so great of you. Thanks.

John Loos: I want to let you know that we’re doing this interview in, actually, a very special place. This room in my house is our sunroom, and during the pandemic, my husband and I turned it into our bar area, and we named it the Judith Bar. So you’re over there, your picture is over there in the corner.

Judith Light: Oh my God, I see it! Listen, people have named their dogs after me. They write me and tell me they have dogs named Judith. So this is really… And I love dogs, I must say, but this is another aspect of my life that I am very appreciative of… It looks great. I love the color. Is that peach?

John Loos: Thanks. It’s like a peach salmon-y color. My husband picked it out.

Judith Light: Love it. God, what a good husband. Good to have a husband with good taste.

John Loos: He’s got a good eye for art.

Judith Light: And for you.

John Loos: And for me.

Judith Light: How long have you been married?

John Loos: Oh, it’ll be eight years in about a week.

Judith Light: Wonderful. Happy anniversary.

John Loos: Thank you so much. Thank you.

Judith Light: Glad you’re married. We don’t want to lose these benefits that have been created over time. We can see how things can get rolled away and rolled back. So, good for you.

John Loos: Thank you so much. And again, thank you for taking the time to sit and chat. First off, congrats on the Emmy win last season. I know it’s been a few months, but so well-deserved. 

Judith Light: Thanks.

John Loos: [Joan and Blanche] are really very different roles, but also…I found some similarities as I watched them, and I’d love to chat with you about it.

Judith Light: That’s very interesting. I don’t know if anybody has said anything about that, and I’m really… My getting that Emmy, I think, had something to do with you all. A lot of the stuff that you all do really supports us. And I have to say, you’ve been very supportive. I want to acknowledge that.

But also, it’s interesting that these two shows have not been picked up, and I always think about people saying, “Oh, well, we don’t vote for her because the show isn’t getting picked up.” But the truth is, we need to be paying attention to those shows that have not been picked up and some of the work that has been done, so that’s why I say I’m very grateful.

John Loos: Oh, absolutely. And both shows, I think, had such a great reception and did such great things that even if they only ended at two seasons, they’re still, I think, valuable things to talk about. Let’s start with Shining Vale.

Judith Light: Sure.

John Loos: Joan is a…dream role, for me, for you to play.

Judith Light: For me, too. It was.

John Loos: What were you excited about getting to explore in the second season with her?

Judith Light: Well, before I start, I just want to know, was there anything in particular that sparked for you where you said, “I love this role for you?”

John Loos: Oh…

Judith Light: Was it the out-there stuff?

John Loos: The outfits, the filterlessness…

Judith Light: Perfectly filterless, yes.

John Loos: And also the way she shows her love I think is so fascinating, because she loves her daughter, but she has these sideways comments, and these cutting comments, but she still deeply has a love for her. And I just love how you found that balance.

And I wonder what was important to you in that, playing a character that had mental illness, but also is this outlandish character. How did you find that balance?

Judith Light: Well, it’s in the writing. Jeff Astrof and the team, and also getting to play it with Courtney, who is just extraordinary in this role, I think. I don’t know that people ever saw her in this way, and it was just really stunning. So, for me, I just adored working with her and the way they wrote it’s like you articulated it perfectly, this filterless kind of, “Why would anybody have a feeling about a comment that I made that they looked terrible? I don’t understand that.” So that humor is something that I really relish, and I really relish getting to do.

And so, when I was getting to play that, when you see the scripts and things like this, you really get to get in there. And the second season when I go to pick her up at the asylum is, and having been in the asylum myself, there is this love and understanding between these two women that they understand what their mental illness is and can speak to each other in any way that they would choose to speak to each other, because they know at the bottom line they love each other.

So, there was that repartee humor, intricate humanity, that played between the two of them, but also remembering that this was a show that brought to us horror, and comedy, and drama, women, and mental illness, which we have not seen done in this format in this way before. And that’s one of the sadnesses for me about the fact that it got canceled, is that it has that immense, broad expanse of quality and information.

John Loos: I love that. And I agree. For me, it’s a perfect vehicle to discuss mental illness, because I have some mental illness issues, and to see the hilarity of it, the sadness of it, the subtlety of it all plays out in your relationship with Pat, with Joan’s relationship with Pat, that was really impactful for me.

Judith Light: I want to acknowledge something. You just did something that very few people do, and very few people talk about, and this show had the ability to do that. You said, “I have some mental illness issues of my own.” People do not come out about that. People do not talk about it. That’s why our country, there’s so much pathology in our country, and we never, not never, we rarely talk about it. And it was the thing that Tipper Gore was trying to talk about when she was the second lady.

There is this wash, and everybody talks about guns, and mental illness, all that. It’s like there is real work to be done, but if people don’t come out about it, it’s just like the LGBTQIA+ community. Once you come out, you have the ability to talk about it. But that’s what this show is doing. And so, I want to acknowledge you for saying something, and think it was helpful for other people as well.

John Loos: Thank you. And I totally agree. I think we get a one-sided view of what mental illness is in this country. It’s staring out the rainy window and the sad music over a pharmaceutical commercial, but what I loved about Joan and what I loved about her relationship with Pat is that it is so multifaceted, it’s so colorful, it’s so up, down, there’s sharks involved. There’s…

Judith Light (laughs): We were on the floor with, we were just like, “Come on, are you kidding? Really?” That’s Jeff Astrof. He is just, that’s genius.

But you’re talking about the multifaceted, and when you have that multifaceted level of relating, all of a sudden there are things that are really funny. It’s not this staring out the window and, “That pharmaceutical am I going to take today?” It’s like Joan would mix it all up. It was like, “Oh, I’ll take a little bit of that pill and a little bit of that pill. You’ll be fine. It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”

John Loos: Even though she’s larger than life, and like I said, filterless, like that’s still, I think, a very authentic way to handle the issues that she’s handled. And I think that’s a testament to your portrayal of her is that she can say those things. She can be passive-aggressive, or out there, but she’s still grounded in this real experience that definitely shaped her life.

Judith Light: And in the first season, that’s right, and in the first season, she tells her granddaughter when Pat put her in the asylum. And there is real sorrow and grief about that experience. And when you ground a character in what’s real for them, they can do the most outlandish things, because they are always real for people.

And that’s the depth, and gravity, and substance of this writing. It’s like you have some good days, and everybody does, you have some good days, and you have some bad days, but if you’re grounded in what you’ve experienced of that character from the beginning, somehow you always hold it to that. You always hold to that.

John Loos: Absolutely. And then also the abortion scene I think was one of my favorite moments of season two, not just because of the leopard print outfit, but just how so much is complicated. You just… The jokes, just the subtle looks, the way so much of your relationship is conveyed there, the love there, the honesty. What sticks out to you in that scene, that to me was one of the cornerstone scenes of your character’s relationship with Pat, but what about that scene was impactful for you?

Judith Light: That her mother takes her. That her mother takes her, and that she cares enough and shares her own experiences with her daughter. That, again, it goes back to all of what you’ve been saying about their relating and who they are to each other. It’s like, “Of course a good mother would do this” in Joan’s mind. It’s like, “Of course you would take your daughter. You didn’t take your daughter.? My mother didn’t take me. You should be grateful to me.”

So, it’s taking something that looks like it’s a normal reaction to something and turning it on its head, and that’s what these writers were able to do. That’s what I love so much about it.

And those sideways looks that Courtney gives me are just like, they’re so like, “Did you really, Ma? Did you just really just say that?”

And that it was the two of us, and that we got to do that together, I really did love that. Director on that was really great, too.

John Loos: I love that scene. There’s just so much history conveyed, I think, just between the two of you.

So pivoting to Julia for a moment. Blanche again, I think there are some parallels. They’re very different, which again is I think a testament to your incredible range and specificity when you create your characters. But Blanche, she’s so precise, and she’s so… She picks every word very carefully. She’s very turned inward, and then she’s…

Judith Light: Retracted.

John Loos: And I love her arc in season two of just trying to… Her relationship with her husband and trying to get the acknowledgement that she deserves for all her hard work. I think I saw parallels in the two of them in that they have both been through a lot, they have both, in their own minds, done a lot for the people around them, and they’re not appreciated maybe in the way that they should be.

What about that experience for Blanche, the sense that she’s been putting in all this work she’s not been seen, she’s been in this industry for such a long time, what resonated for you when you created her, or got to explore her in season two?

Judith Light: Oh, that’s such an interesting perspective. I would never have held it like that. It’s that very… What you said really resonates, that two women are not acknowledged for who they are, or all the work, all of what they’ve been through, and all the things that they have done for people.

Blanche Knopf, when she married Alfred, he said to her, “We will do this publishing company and we will do it together.” Alfred took all the credit, and Blanche got none of it, and she was the leading publisher and also an editor at the time, which was unheard of for a woman to do that. She flew over to Europe, and she was the one who got all of these extraordinary writers to be on their roster. Albert Camus, and Willa Cather, she brought everybody in, and Alfred took all the credit, and they had a devastatingly difficult relationship.

So just like Joan, her relationships with men were also very convoluted, and complicated, and challenging. So, in season two, the need, the underlying need to be, as she’s going blind, which is the most, ironically, if you wrote it in a movie, people would say, “Oh, it’s too on the nose. You can’t have a person who makes their living reading, and that’s their devotion, you can’t have them go blind.”

And so, to express that need to come out about that need. And she says it at the board meeting. She says, “I’m going blind. We all know I’m going blind.” And the underlying need to know that with that aspect of what’s happening to her, that the recognition… There’s this wonderful, amazing line in Death of a Salesman where Linda, Willy Loman’s wife, says to her sons, “Attention must be paid.” And that’s what kept ringing in my head when I thought about Blanche in the second season and the way they wrote it.

Is that ‘You will not acknowledge me,’ but Judith Jones, who is the editor of these cookbooks that I never wanted to have anything to do with, well, actually, and was actually the thing that was helping to make the money for Knopf Publishing, you are my lifeline. You, Judith Jones, you are my lifeline.” And Blanche didn’t want to be dependent on anyone, but she knew somewhere that she could with Judith.

So, it was all the underlying feelings, all those underlying feelings that actually played into that. Those scenes are the way the scripts were written, I had a really beautiful relationship with Fiona Glasgow who played Judith Jones, quite stunningly. And there was just this… There’s all this other stuff that’s bubbling underneath someone, even if they’re contracted. And like you said, very pulled in.

Joan is out there with no filter and Blanche is withheld and contracted, but underneath both of them, there is something that’s bubbling, boiling, and the needs become so great that what you’re seeing, I think, as an audience member is you’re seeing the feeling of what’s happening. You’re not just watching it, you feel something in a way that is almost inexplicable. It’s just your own personal experience.

John Loos: That scene in the last episode where [Judith] gets up to the microphone, and finally gives Blanche her due, and Blanche gets that amazing reception. There’s so much that gets conveyed, I think, just from your reaction in those scenes. I feel like as an audience member, seeing that character that you’ve watched get ignored, and get dismissed, or not fully seen, get that moment of fully seen, that’s so gratifying as a viewer.

Shooting that scene, knowing that you had minimal dialogue, no dialogue at all, what was important to convey in that reaction?

Judith Light: The feeling level, this is a great question. A lot of times people say, “Oh, I don’t have a lot to say here. I should say something.” It’s like, no, this is the feeling. It was the elephant in the room that was being revealed. It was the outing of how she had been treated and the speaking to the… It was that that was what was going on. It’s like, “You saw, you knew, and it took someone else to get up there to say it. Not my effing husband, but you. You spoke to the elephant in the room that everybody knew in that company, and nobody had the gumption or the balls to say, ‘This is who did everything. This is who it is.'”

And the gratification, and almost embarrassment, of having it said out loud when it had been in the closet, so to speak, for so long, that there were a multitude of feelings and a myriad of feelings and thoughts that were running through, and there was nothing to say. It was said in a later scene in the boardroom. It’s like, “There is no one I love except for Judith. It is she who has acknowledged me. You have never.” And so it was in a way, it was a two-part for me. It was like here was the event, and the acknowledgement, and then there was the saying of something, because Alfred in the second scene starts to get up, and I say, “I have something to say.” And she says it out loud for herself in that scene. So that was a bunch of what was happening.

John Loos: I love that. We talked about these shows, unfortunately, they’re fantastic shows, I think, and your characters are rich and layered and they haven’t been picked up, but what are you going to take with you from the experiences of either Julia or Shining Vale, Joan, and Blanche?

Judith Light: What a great question. The people, the creativity, the great writing, the great producing. These people have become my friends. I was friends with Chris Kaiser. I’ve got to know Daniel Goldfarb, who’s also a wonderful playwright on Julia, Fiona Glasscott, David Hyde Pierce was always a friend. We didn’t get to do anything together, which I wish we had. The intelligence of it all and the generosity of it all, and Jeff Astrof, who is this really extraordinary writer also on Shining Vale, and Courtney and the rest of the team that was there.

There’s this … in both shows it was the generosity, and the grace, and the creativity, and the openness, and their flexibility to include me in the process and in the working. And, “How does this resonate?” And always checking in with each other. And those are the things that I will take with me. Each of these characters is very precious to me, and I really do trust that people will get to see them and get to know them, and not just because the shows have not been picked up, that they will follow the history of Blanche Knopf and who she was, and that they will understand mental illness in another way than they ever have had maybe compassion or understanding for it before.

So those are many of those aspects that I still carry with me to this day. And the joy of getting to talk to you about it, and the intelligence of your questions, and your generosity is… Really, I appreciate it so very much.

John Loos: Well, thank you. And thank you for taking the time, the intelligence and generosity of your responses in this conversation has been wonderful. So, so great to meet you. Thank you so much.

Judith Light: Thanks. Have a drink on me, kiddo.

John Loos: I will. Thank you so much. Enjoyed talking to you and excited to see what you do next.

Judith Light: Thanks so much. I really appreciate it. We’ll talk again, I’m sure.

You can catch Judith Light on season two of Shining Vale, currently available to stream on STARZ, and on the second season of Julia, currently available to stream on MAX.