Lisa Ann Walter on Mother’s Day, Her ‘Abbott Elementary’ Relationship with Sheryl Lee Ralph, and That Bette Midler Idea

Did you feel differently filming this episode, given the reversal in your dynamic and your connection to the loss of your mother?

Quinta knows that I always have feelings. In any scene where I cry easily, I can reach it. When writing this article, they knew that if they had to act out the scene where they both lost their mother, it would be a tearful battle for the network. I don’t need to play that game all the time. [Laughs] So they gave it to Sheryl, and of course I could feel her emotions, but my character couldn’t feel it. Melissa made a point of noticing what was going on and said, “I understand what’s going on and you need to step back for a moment. You are hurt.”

Do you feel more comfortable making suggestions for your character now that you’re in season three and have more of a dynamic with Quinta and the writers? How did that develop?

Always, from the beginning, it was like working with a great performance company. When I started out as an actor, doing Greeks and Shakespeare plays, I thought I would become a stage actor. I thought I would go work at Arena Stage or go to New York and do off-Broadway. That’s what I thought I would do my whole life. I have never watched TV in it. This [is] like the best performing company I’ve ever been in and played with, every episode was beyond my wildest dreams. With Tyler [James Williams], who plays Gregory, he and I did some things together where we felt—we knew what each other was doing and we would just look at each other like, Yeah, let’s do that again. It’s about finding it at work. Sometimes it’s just that, or sometimes you say to the writer on set, or Quinta, “Hey, can I do this?” Sometimes she will say yes. Sometimes she’ll say, “Oh, no, because you don’t know, but in two episodes, X thing will happen.”

But you know the character; you are living inside that person’s skin. I come from a Sicilian family. I know how they behave. And the more I live in that world, the more writers understand that—that we are extremely pessimistic people. [Laughs] We believed the worst was to come because we had been invaded by every country in Europe and Africa for 1,000 years.

While watching the “Mother’s Day” episode, I thought about you rattling off the very specific names of many of Melissa’s siblings. The audience received information about Melissa in the best, most chaotic way.

That’s a really good example. They have names—and I know the point of the joke—but I said to someone, “We’re not going to name two people in our family as Anthony. In the same family, you would have 18 Anthonys, but it would be Anthony, Tony, Big Red. Everyone will have their own name.” [Laughs] So I’ve adjusted the name a bit to make it easier to understand.