Susan
Sarandon has a great eye for projects, including the
recent HBO movie Bernard and Doris, in
which she played the late, great Doris Duke in an
Emmy-nominated performance. The legend --Sarandon,
that is -- spoke to us as she geared up for the Emmys
on September 21.
Nominated for 10
Emmy Awards, Bernard and Doris is the little
HBO film that could. The $500,000 production imagines
a loving, albeit platonic, six-year relationship between
late billionaire Doris Duke (an Emmy-nominated Susan
Sarandon) and her gay Irish butler, Bernard
Lafferty (Ralph Fiennes, Emmy-nominated for his role
as well). We caught up with the always outspoken,
politically aware Sarandon, who lives in the Chelsea
neighborhood of New York City with partner Tim
Robbins.
Are you excited about the Emmy nominations?
All excited! It’s just been something so
unforeseen, and the whole spirit in which we undertook
the film really was lovely and brave on the part of so
many friends who got involved and made such a big difference
to make it what it was. For all who took this
Kierkegaardian leap of faith and worked for nothing,
to have these Emmy nominations come out of nowhere is
so sweet, and we’re all so happy. To be able to say
at least they got an Emmy nod means a lot to me. My
only disappointment is my friend Frankie Diago, who
did the sets, didn’t get one. It seemed like a place
these people actually lived, and she did a great job
with nothing.
You’ve played quite a few real-life people now.
Would you like to play Hillary Clinton in the movie of
her life?
No. I’ve been around her and don’t
find her… At this point, to say after
what’s happened to her campaign and how they
squandered all that money and all the different
reasons her campaign fell apart, to blame it on
sexism, I find so destructive to every young girl who dreams
about making a difference through government. Instead
of saying, "Look how far I’ve gotten and you
can do it too," and all the positive things she could
have done, she’s turned into such a blamer and
whiner, as if that was the reason, when clearly she
wouldn’t have been in the position she was in
if she hadn’t been a woman. If she hadn’t been
married to that man and hadn’t had the
Democratic machine behind her. To now turn around and
say it was sexism I find so dishonorable and really
destructive to women all over, young women all over.
So I don’t really respect her enough to want to
play her, and I find it sad and disappointing.
Can Obama actually win?
Why wouldn’t he be able to win?
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Ferber’s writing has appeared in Entertainment
Weekly, New York, and Time Out New York.