Kelly Bishop (Emily Gilmore on Gilmore Girls) stars in the Second Stage production of Gina Gionfriddo’s play, Becky Shaw, which will be running off Broadway until March 15th. In Becky Shaw, Kelly Bishop plays a widow with MS who is dating a much younger man (read more here).
Reviews called Kelly Bishop “devastatingly funny” in Becky Shaw and Kelly recently spoke with Broadway.com about the production. Kelly Bishop, who won a Tony Award for her role in A Chorus Line, is no stranger to theater or to playing strong women (hello, Emily Gilmore!). Just like with Gilmore Girls, Kelly Bishop’s role in Becky Shaw is described as “walking the line between outright mean and outright funny.”
Kelly Bishop says she was fascinated by Becky Shaw, drawn to the character and the play because they were a “little off,” with her character Susan “not terribly worried about being kind to people, and funny. I mean really, deeply funny.” Kelly says it’s a joy to play a character who is so “out there” and honest. That said, she admits the characters she’s drawn to are not people she’d be friends with!
“I like the nasty ones because I don’t particularly like women like that in real life, so in playing them I get to show them for what they really are. We all see them in the high-end department stores, and sometimes I think, ‘I can hardly wait to get my hands on you so I can play you!’”
Kelly Bishop talks about working on projects such as Gilmore Girls as a way not to lock herself into musical comedy.
“When Gilmore Girls came along, I remember looking at the size of the script and thinking, “What is this?” A sitcom script is a certain thickness, a drama is thicker, but that? There was so much dialogue and it was so funny, so much better than usual.”
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