By: Degen Pener
Source: More Magazine (US)
Date: October 2003
Submitted by: Becc | site

What are the chances of finding two big TV stars under one roof? Ask Jane Kaczmarek and Bradley Whitford.

She plays the hilariously stressed-out mother on Fox's "Malcolm in the Middle." He's the wonky deputy chief of staff on NBC's "The West Wing." Together, they're living proof that Hollywood success is attainable later in life. For years, Jane Kaczmarek, 47, and Bradley Whitford, 44, were just your average working actors - respected, but far from famous. They became overnight stars during the 1999-2000 season, when "Malcolm" and "The West Wing" premiered to popular acclaim. The couple, who met on a blind date in 1989, have three children: Frances, five, George, three, and Mary, born just last December. As More discovered, parenthood has only enhanced what is clearly a feisty and fulfilling relationship.

BRAD: "What makes our relationship work is..."

JANE: [cutting him off] "We talk all the time."

BRAD:"Nothing freaks Jane out more than a silent meal."

JANE: "Yeah, we're both big talkers. I just talk louder."

BRAD: "You have two basically Midwestern people from radically different backgrounds who first and foremost want to have a traditional family life. At the same time, we happen to be these weird, extroverted freaks who had this interest - acting - that we followed."

JANE: "We went to school forever. We both went to drama school. We both did theater for a tremendous amount of time. You get to a point where you think... well, it's hard to make a living. I'm older than Brad."

BRAD: "You've got that right! I always say that we were very lucky, in retrospect, to have bounced around without significant success. The metaphor I use is that if you walk around the prison yard long enough, the spotlight will hit you. We're classic examples of that."

JANE: "We were working close to twenty years. And then we landed on these hit shows the same year, May of 1999. I didn't want to work anymore; I had already taken a year off to have our daughter, and I couldn't believe how much I enjoyed not pursuing show business. So, I was anticipating having more luxury of unemployment."

BRAD: "She didn't want to pursue it anymore."

JANE: "They said, 'Read the script for Malcolm,' and I said, 'I don't want to work.' But we were renovating a house, and we said to ourselves, 'Look, the money we make from doing the pilots will pay for the new bathroom.' But I didn't think this would go to series. The phone rang on Tuesday that 'The West Wing' was picked up and the phone rang on Thursday that 'Malcolm' was picked up, and the phone rang on Friday that I was pregnant again. And we looked at each other like, 'Oh, my gosh.' Just when you really give up and say it's not a pastime you're interested in pursuing anymore, the heavens open up."

BRAD: "Her success was a tacky Zen lesson. These have been very intense years... and it's going to end. But the fruits of this work are going to give us freedom with our family that you could only dream of. Still, you have to be very careful about balance."

JANE: "You know what we've started doing? We've been going to church, which is unusual, because we don't really believe in God."

BRAD: [speaking as if he can just see the headline] "More Magazine: 'Jane Kaczmarek does not believe in God.' Liberal. Godless liberal."

JANE: [ignoring him] "There's this wonderful Episcopol church in Pasadena, All Saints Church. It's a very liberal, very stimulating environment. It's filled with rich people from Pasadena, same-sex marriages, people like us, people of color. I want our kids to see what the world looks like."

BRAD: "I was raised Quaker, and Jane was raised Catholic. She needs bells and smells."

JANE: "Religion is about what you are actively doing to make this world a better place. But you know, I often worry that people don't know he's kidding. He will say things that are outrageous."

BRAD: "It's a problem in my life. I confuse people."

JANE: "He did a movie with Clint Eastwood, A Perfect World. Brad went up to him and said, 'That gay thing you're doing with the character is so good! It's so subtle.'"

BRAD: "I set it up a lot more than that... because he's a macho guy."

JANE: "Well, Clint burst out laughing. I couldn't imagine too many young unknown actors who would mess around with Clint Eastwood!"

BRAD: "He was the nicest Republican I'd ever met."

JANE: "Brad really likes to keep abreast of what the Republicans are saying. Politics in general take up so much time for us."

BRAD: "I just want to say that George Bush destroyed our sex life."

JANE: "We lie in bed at night and read editorials and e-mails to each other. Then we're so exhausted that we just go to sleep."

BRAD: "I've always been interested in politics. Suddenly, through "The West Wing" - and all the idiot glare of being on TV - there's this tremendous access. For me, it's kind of been a perfect storm; all these opportunities to be involved in what we care about, along with professional opportunities. Look, we're lucky."

JANE: "I am lucky in that I was never one of those glamour-puss girls in the movies. The roles I've always played are hardy, normal women. I was never the ingenue. So, I'm playing the same roles now that I was playing twenty years ago. I never worried that my looks were leaving me."

BRAD: "Which is a refreshing, healthy place to be, because women whose identities are wrapped up in being an ingenue on-camera go through psychological trauma as they get older, trying to hold onto it. There's such a narrow aesthetic in TV when it comes to women. With men, it's all over the place. I think I am probably better off the older I get."

JANE: "Yeah!"

BRAD: "It's a really horrible thing, and I'm glad you didn't have to do that."

JANE: "I weigh one hundred forty-five and am five-feet-seven inches. The first Emmy nomination I got, I thought, 'Oh, my God!' I weighed one hundred seventy-five pounds, had varicose veins and was wearing these heavy support stockings, because I was pregnant the first season of 'Malcolm.' All those years of being an actress, you push up your bra and try to look like, you know, an attractive girl. And here I was getting all this amazing adulation being eight months pregnant. It was a wonderful relief."

BRAD: "Jane has always been the beautiful, real one. And she's been lucky, because she has made her professional mark."

JANE: [smiling] "Brad has always made me feel really, really safe. We had a big fight the first year we were married. We went to Yosemite for Valentine's Day."

BRAD: "Yeah, yeah, yeah, sex camp."

JANE: [laughing] "We didn't go to sex camp."

BRAD: "Yeah, but that's what we called it."

JANE: "It was a getaway. But we got in this big fight. And I said something like, 'Oh, well, you've obviously married the wrong person, Brad. You made a big mistake.' And he said, 'You're not allowed to say that. We're married. We're staying married. No one is leaving this marriage.' I always know that he just adores me. You know, I never doubt that, when he's late or..."

BRAD: "Or making out with Mary-Louise Parker at work."

JANE: "I love her. She's a hot little girl. I'm glad he gets to kiss her. He enjoys that, I think."

BRAD: "No comment."

JANE: "I'm sure he does."

BRAD: [mouths the word "yes"]

JANE: "We have a running thing about breast implants. Whenever we see someone with a great chest, we say, 'Real or implants?' It allows him not to feel so guilty about looking at women's chests."

BRAD: "Why would I feel guilty? It's all part of God's creation. Except for the implant part."

JANE: "Men are always going to look at other women."

BRAD: "On one of our early dates, I remember thinking, 'This is a woman I can look at other women's asses with.' She wasn't jealous at all."

JANE: "We really don't have a lot of professional jealousy, either, especially since the two shows happened at the same time. The thing we both know is that you have to put your spouse first. You also have to go by the adage that if one of you thinks there's a problem, there's a problem."

BRAD: "I think that communication..."

JANE: [cutting him off] "Brad is much more the feminine counterpart in our relationship."

BRAD: "I'm the girl. I'm like, 'What the hell's going on? We need to talk.'"

JANE: "That's Brad."

BRAD: "That's me."

JANE: "You know, I deal pretty much with house stuff, noticing what's getting shabby, when the rain gutters need to be cleaned. I'm much more kind of a custodian."

BRAD: [snorting] "The Girl and the Custodian: The Story of Jane and Brad."

JANE: "What's funny, too, is that I've always been told Kaczmarek means 'custodian' in Polish."

BRAD: "I thought it meant loudmouth."

JANE: "Loudmouth! I always thought it came from the word 'innkeeper' - but more janitorial than an innkeeper."

BRAD: "I'm sort of Oprah and she's sort of Mussolini. The geometry of our relationship is that I'm here to calm her down and she's here to wake me up."

JANE: "I never thought of that!"

BRAD: "She's extraordinarily energetic."

JANE: "I'm here to get him to the airport on time. He's here to keep me from yelling at the stewardesses."

BRAD: "That's true. I also think that the interesting thing with us was, we had the same reaction to each other: You're the one, and you're not at all what I expected. Neither of us was the type of person we'd previously dated over and over."

JANE: "I had, like, a zillion boyfriends. He had, like, three girlfriends."

BRAD: "That's not true."

JANE: "Relationships?"

BRAD: "Oh, I thought you meant sex."

JANE: "No, you had enough sex. We got married late, too. I was thirty-six. He was thirty-three. So you know we'd both been in New York in the Eighties."

BRAD: "Yeah. Actors. New York. In the Eighties.

JANE: "We'd kick up our heels a lot."

BRAD: "Literally."

JANE: "But we were ready to get married. We were doing one thing, and then met the right person. We stayed married for a while before we had kids - and then it was a little late for me. And then it turned out that I had everything in the book wrong with me to have a baby. So we did years of infertility treatment. By the grace of God, it worked - and I had my first baby at forty-one."

BRAD: "If I was Henry VIII, she would have been executed."

JANE: "I was as barren as a stone. It's amazing what medicine can do now. The last one was born a month before my forty-seventh birthday. So, I'm gonna be sixty-four when our baby graduates from high school. Of course, the single most important thing about having kids is finding the right person to raise them with. Brad is very hands-on. He participates so much in child rearing. It's our eleventh anniversary this year."

BRAD: "August fifteenth, Elvis' death day."

JANE: "No, Elvis died on the sixteenth."

BRAD: "You sure? I thought we were married on Elvis' death day. I thought that was the point of our marriage."

JANE: "No, we were married on the Feast of the Assumption. The day the Virgin Mary was raised into heaven. When I said it was the day of the assumption, Brad said, 'Who assumed what?' "

So... many... thanks to Becc for the article!