Tracey Ullman back to check the State of the Union

On Sunday, April 12, Tracey Ullman will return to Showtime with season 2 of her show State of the Union.

At today's TCA, Ullman appeared with her fellow executive producer -- and husband of 25 years -- Allan McKeown and talked about the process of playing so many different characters.  Ullman and her crew shot season 2 last fall -- 7 new episodes in 3 weeks -- adding an extra challenge to playing Arianna Huffington because the presidential election hadn't yet been decided.  As a result, Ullman and her fellow writer Bruce Wagner came up with alternate endings -- an Obama and a McCain -- for those sketches.  "There was very low enthusiasm [when we were filming] the McCain endings," McKeown remembered.

Also in the political vein, Tracey -- who recently became a U.S. citizen after 25 years living here -- now "takes on" (to use a phrase from her earlier HBO show) Laura Bush.  "I was just obsessed with Laura Bush," she admitted.  "I know that by the time the show goes on, she'll be back in Crawford and it'll be 115 degrees," surrounded by her "objets d'art and trying to fit in."

Among her favorites from State of the Union's first season, Huffington will be back, as will singing pharmacist Padma and her spot-on take on a squinting Renee Zellweger.  And she'll be adding plenty more.  This year, Tracey impersonates Jonah Hill.  ("I'm never keen seeing Tracey dressed up like a guy.  She always tries to kiss me and it upsets me," McKeown admits.)  She's always watching odd people, she says, getting ideas.  And listening to NPR.  Then, it's time to write.

"Bruce Wagner and I sit and throw out ideas all day together, and you write.  To impersonate actual people is something I started to do [only] on State Of The Union.  I hadn't done that before -- I always thought it was SNL's domain.  But i thought if i'm going to do a trip across America, I should do some celebrities to add flavor to the show.  But I'm not Rich Little.  I didn't want to be Sarah Palin, which i think Tina Fey nailed and was a genius thing.  I wanted to be that lesbian Sarah Palin talked about who was her best friend for years.  Where was she -- Juneau?"  

In the resulting show, tied together with a voice-over narration by Peter Strauss, Tracey plays a plethora of characters as they live and breathe one day in America dawn to dusk, in pieces lasting no longer than two minutes.  The show has a lot of similarities to Little Britain -- and particularly to HBO's current Little Britain, USA, which is also set on a trip thru the States.  But a format framed by voice-over is nothing new, Tracey says of the similarity.  Plus, McKeown points out, whereas Little Britain is all sketch comedy, State of the Union has Tracey playing the truth in realistic American characters first, with punchlines coming second.

I asked Tracey if characters her fans (like me) love from her earlier series -- like Francesca, being raised by two gay dads on The Tracey Ullman Show, or Fern Rosenthal, the Jewish Florida matron from Tracey Takes On -- might ever pop up on this newest show.  Fern, she realized, thinking quickly, would be perfect:  she's undoubtedly a Bernie Madoff victim.  So although all of this season's episodes are already in the can, don't be surprised to see Fern kvelling on Showtime should there be a Season 3.

But there are other things about her older shows Tracey is happy to leave behind.  Watching Tracey Takes On now, she says, she's struck by how each character scene seems to go on forever.  Now, she says, doing these quickie bits of characters is much more in fitting with the times, with our "youtube mentality."

And, of course, it also offers her the chance to cram in so many more personalities.  "I can't do a show where I play just one character," she admitted.  "Even if I love playing a character and have a great time, at the end of the day I say 'What are we going to do tomorrow?'  I just have that energy.  And until I get too old, that's what i'm going to do.  Then I can do Murder She Wrote where I live in Cornwall and solve mysteries."

Tracey Ullman's State of the Union

Season 2 Premiere

Sunday, April 12

Take it from Ellen -- Please vote NO on Prop 8!

Today on her national talk show, Ellen DeGeneres wisely took to task Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin, and Palin's avowed support for a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Take a look:



Way to go, Ellen! And of course I agree: I don't see how your relationship with Portia -- or mine with Frank -- has any affect at all on the "institution" of marriage, or any individual straight couple's union. Does my getting married here in NYC suddenly make some Iowa couple's marriage certificate burst into flames?

The Constitution of the United States is a sacred document. It's right up there with the Bible in the short list of the greatest works of God or Mankind. So far, apart from that dalliance we had with Prohibition in the '20s, it has remained unsullied, an ideal for civilizations across the globe in providing and maintaining our inalienable freedoms.

What the Constitution is not is a blank canvas to be sprayed with hate graffiti. We as a nation and as a species cannot support any politician who advocates writing hate speech, writing discrimination, into this sacred text. Or, for that matter, scapegoating any particular group in order to secure power; have we learned nothing since WWII? Remember, if today it's the gays losing their rights, who's next? It could be you, via whatever ethnic or religious group to which you belong by accident of birth, or via whatever sexual identity or handicap you were assigned, as even the right-wingers who hate gays would have to admit, by God.

Forty-some years ago, the ignorant among Americans expressed concern -- or did worse -- to suppress another supposed marital sin, "miscegenation." Today, those people are the villains in our history books and in our hearts. This election season, the state of California, which recently by state supreme court decree legalized gay unions, faces a new challenge: ballot referendum "Proposition 8," which aims to override that decision, and roll back the rights of so many citizens. To those Californians inclined to support the hateful Prop 8, I implore you: don't repeat the mistakes of the past. Save your future self the shame of this misplaced suspicion and hate. Save yourself the apologies you'll have to make, to your country, to your friends, and to the scared gay members of your own family, in this generation and the next.

Sarah Palin has gone to great lengths to put forth that she has a lesbian friend -- a best friend, she says. And yet, even as she professes her love and support for her friend, Palin is ready to strip away her rights, and make her a permanent second-class citizen in the highest rule of law in the land. Professing loyalty while all the while betraying; isn't this just what Judas did? Sarah Palin is at the very least a bad friend. Let's not make her a bad VP or, God forbid, president.

But Palin aside, we must realize we are living in historic times. And for better or worse, Proposition 8 will be part of that history. We Americans -- and you in California in particular -- have the chance on November 4 to stand up for freedom, and to set this country and by example the world on the course to true peace. Please, California -- vote No on Proposition 8, and show the world why we Americans deserve to call our country the Home of the Free and the Brave.

17 Years In The Life

Last night, at a cocktail gala at the Neue Gallerie on Manhattan's Upper East Side, the groundbreaking PBS gay and lesbian newsmagazine In The Life celebrated the start of its 17th season.

The affair raised $110K for In The Life -- a show which, ITL Media Executive Director Michelle Kristel explained, receives no funding for its production from the government or from PBS. But last night's tally is enough, she said, to pay for two episodes of the informative -- and for gay and lesbian teens, sometimes quite literally life-saving -- program.

In other ITL news, Kristel also announced that the show will once again return to a half-hour format, partly in order to accommodate changing media habits, such as viewing many of the show's reports individually online. And, even more noteworthy, this year, the show will produce new episodes each month, leading up to the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in June 2009.

No more endless repeats, Kristel promised -- and that was good news for the night's honoree Kate Clinton, the legendary lesbian comic and author who was the program's first host when it debuted in 1992. "I've been on LOGO more times than The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," she joked at the podium as she accepted In The Life's first annual Pioneer Award.

In her short but incredibly funny speech, Clinton -- who continues this month on her nationwide, political-themed "Hilarity Clinton" tour -- joked about the banking bailout, where "the only thing left to my bank was the free pen." "People said that gay marriage would end the world," Clinton teased. "But we didn't do this!"

But Clinton turned serious and incisive when it came to stressing the importance of In The Life and the effect the show has already had on the U.S. and the world. After last week's shameful Vice Presidential debate, when both Joe Biden and (unsurprisingly) Sarah Palin took such cowardly stands, polls in California showed a four point increase in support for that state's anti-gay marriage Proposition 8. When such hatred is "legitimized" from the top, Clinton noted, voters feel more comfortable taking bigoted stands themselves. But luckily, she enthused, there is In The Life, which has produced several videos in support of gay marriage, which in the age of the internet will spread virally and hopefully help defeat the hateful ballot measure.

Clinton's remarks were cheered by the well-heeled New York crowd, which included former ITL host Katherine Linton and the show's newest (adorable!) face, that of Sirius' OutQ's own Michael Billy (pictured with partner Matthew Argenti.) Michael makes for an amazing host both on air, and as she showed last night in emceeing the proceedings, off as well. I look forward to many more seasons of Michael and the very enlightening Life!

Nathan Petrelli for President

On tonight's episode of Heroes, oddly titled "I Am Become Death," we learned that four years into the future, Nathan Petrelli is the President of the United States -- despite having less experience even than Sarah Palin.

The elder Petrelli brother started his career as a district attorney and then a Congressional Representative from either New York's 14th district (see the show's fun fake "Vote Petrelli" web site.) Now, Nathan (Adrian Pasdar) has begun Heroes' third season with an appointment to become the junior Senator from New York. (Sorry, Hillary, but the man's got your job.) In this season's premiere episodes, New York Governor Malden (Bruce Boxleitner) spotted a news report about Nathan's miraculous recovery from his gunshot wound and subsequent pseudo-religious babble, and dispatched Tracy Strauss (Ali Larter) to woo Nathan into replacing the late Gerald Dickinson.

My question is this: how many years do we think were left on Dickinson's 6-year Senate term? Is Nathan starting near the beginning -- meaning that, in order to be president 4 years from now, he obviously eventually New Yorkers flat to pursue his political ambitions? And gets elected, despite his bizarre past, and only a few years of experience in politics? (See, Sarah? Sadly, there's hope for you yet!) Or did Dickinson have just a short while left -- again meaning that Nathan runs for Prez without having done too much time in DC.

Of course, maybe the national electorate was truly smart enough to see through Nathan's plans -- only to have the voting machines manipulated by that whiny little machine whisperer, Micah (Noah Gray-Cabey).

After all, voting machine fraud is unfortunately probably not just the stuff of science fiction.



Heroes
Season 3
Mondays at 9 PM Eastern
NBC