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This interview discusses the events of the finale ofThe Chair.Be aware!
Things get more complicated once Ji-Yoon becomes the chair of their department, however.
First of all, youre playing an expert in Chaucer.
How familiar were you with Chaucer before going into the role?Not at all.
I did nothing with medieval studies when I was in school.
Just trying to read passages from Chaucer was challenging.
Well, not to me!
I had to memorize that too!
It was one of our requirements when I was an English major.
I guess its 18 lines and everybody had to learn it.
Not everybody can retain it.
Do you have it retained?
I never really got a good handle on it at all.
But I am an actress, remember, so.
I doubt that anybody from the academic world will fault much about this show.
Theres also the sociological feel of what the professors are like together.
Theyre put aside, like, we should take care of grandma and grandpa.
But some of the greatest intellectuals were teeming with intellectual vitality well into their 80s.
Other cultures do not feel that way.
So its very sad.
It nails what a lot of medieval-literature professors are like.
They love the raunchiness.Its trying to get away from the idea that its just romantic and airy.
Its a fleshy, evocative representation of life.
Its messages from 500 years ago, and what social life was like, what communication was like.
How did you think about playing Joans dynamic with Sandra Ohs character Ji-Yoon?
Have you seen the whole thing?
In a sense, shes rather equipped to be chair.
It also gives her agency.
She knows how to do all that other shit!
I consider it imprudent in show business to daydream ahead into anything.
But it was a very deft thing for Amanda to write.
Amanda as a writer is really extraordinary.
I know her other writing.
Ive seen a couple of her plays and read one rather closely.
And the thing thats remarkable about her writing is that it sometimes seems like a transcription of real life.
Its like overheard conversations.
When I read the scripts, I just thought, Oh, I cant wait to do this.
Did she approach you for the part?
What was it like to film it in Pittsburgh?
Very frightening, to me anyway.
So I had to get food from the restaurants that were open.
You were scuttling along in the dark, huddling against freezing buildings to get takeout dinners.
It was a very weird experience.
It took me away from the larger grotesquerie of what we were going through.
I think people will probably see you playing a professor and think aboutyour law professor inLegally Blonde.
It is not the same thing at all.
TheLegally Blondeprofessor is like a giant standing on a mountain, and Joan is like a butterfly.
Theres a certain delicacy and frailty and vulnerability to her.
Amanda gave me a key in saying that Joans less and less edited.
She has no fucks left to give.
Shes lost so much, and is jumping from stone to stone in a roaring brook.
She knows shes vulnerable, and shes just moving ahead, as we all have to do.
Do you have any memories of that?Very few.
It was right after I did this fantastic show for Norman Lear calledPowers That Be.
It was a wonderful satire.
It wasnt that I didnt want to do it.
I didnt have much psychological connection with it.
It was a teen show.
I couldnt have been in a teen show when I was a teen.
I dont have the vibe.
