Working on In The Loop was one of the best things that’s ever happened in my acting career. Armando is a frigging genius in my opinion. The entire cast of (ok, we Americans said “Brits” - is that rude?) was brilliant beyond belief. And Gandolfini - what can I say? The way I was taught to act, he is the epitome. Real. The first day we met, first rehearsal in NY (hey, we heard sirens and wondered what was happening- turned out to be Dick Cheney arriving to give a speech in the hotel ballroom downstairs. Interesting) I was feeling all take-Karen-seriously and said I did not think necessarily that the General and Ihad been lovers, that this was the sort of thing which wasn’t necessary for a good man-woman friendship (my real-life experience.) By the end of the shoot, there I was improvising, “I’ll talk about your balls all you want because I remember when they worked.” Maybe this was because by then I felt so strongly that Karen, being from my generation, still remembered - and perhaps as a younger woman,practiced - Make Love, Not War. Maybe it was because on the day we shot the Georgetown cocktail party, I had to get James’ attention somehow, discreetly, for our tete-a-tete, and he said “goose me or something” and I gave him a polite tap and he said, “you have to really get my attention” and I dove in there deep, which is the take you see in the film.




Like I said. He is the epitome of how I was taught to act (thank you Curt Dempster): real.




I loved the British cast. Peter Capaldi is the nicest, sweetest man.Tom Hollander is a chick magnet and I see why. Humor and a brain. Idon’t think I ever succeeded in keeping a straight facethrough the line where he tells me and the General that he’s a “fakehawk.” Chris Addison is gorgeous and smart and funny and I loved his expressionfor good comedy acting “All killer no filler.” At least I think he was talking about comedy acting. Gina, Olivia, Alex, Jamies Smith, Paul Harris, Steve Coogan, Joanna Scanlon- brilliant. And Enzo, (Bob Adriano) was really British doing brilliant American - I think he’s the only one of us who crossed over.




Anna Chlumsky was sooo bright and pretty and emotionally honest - shebrought back vividly to me how it felt when I was a young temporarysecretary (before I got acting jobs) in the early days of feminism,when women bosses felt they had to be ballsy but also assumed you would pickup their dry cleaning and keep them on their diets. Zak Woods ishilariously deadpan. He and I went out to dinner almost the firstnight we were in London. It was late - we were way off time, and jet-lagged, but hungry — and I wanted to see the Thames, so we ended up bythe window of some expensive high-rise restaurant and I remember being alarmedas he tilted across the table, sort of nodding out while trying to be polite. David Rasche - do you believe the dead-on characterization HE achieved?!!That preening macho….nailed it. And the kid in the White House - I didn’t meetthe actor. But I’ve seen the alarmingly-youthful power brokers he’s based on, in Washington.




Is gud to laff at these events as fiction. The real ones they recall seem — almost — safely past. We are still at war, however. Those that led us into it are mostly gone (disappeared over the cliff?)and our laughter, in my opinion, is the pent-up relief of traumatized lemmings who are alive and snapping out of it.




We could spread the relief by ending war altogether!




Or, at least once we’ve laughed our asses off at this insanity writ large, we can - nexttime it ratchets up a request based on stuff ordinary citizens are too innocent andsheltered to understand — deny it a license to kill.




Yeah. Make love not war -still a good alternative. As long as you, you know, use protection.