It’s never been a better time to be Carla Gugino. The actress, who’s popped up in some of the buzziest genre fare of the past decade – see Mike Flanagan’s multiple Netflix horror hits, the female-fronted action thriller Gunpowder Milkshake, and Diablo Cody’s Lisa Frankenstein – is chowing down on the kind of meaty, deliciously complex roles women over the age of 40 in Hollywood are rarely afforded.
Metaphorical harbingers of doom, tortured mothers haunting the halls of cursed mansions, deadly librarians, Gugino is a bit of a shapeshifter, able to effortlessly inhabit worlds not her own. Something she does again in Max’s latest political drama, The Girls on the Bus.
Based on New York Times journalist Amy Chozick’s memoir, Chasing Hillary, the show follows four female correspondents from wildly different backgrounds, all charting the presidential hopes of a group of flawed and forgettable candidates. Gugino’s Grace is a long-hauler, a celebrated writer with a knack for sniffing out scoops who sometimes takes her younger peers under her wing … and sometimes pushes them out of the nest before they’ve learned to fly.
Uproxx chatted with Gugino about the cutthroat world of political journalism, the feminist themes of the show, and her desire to mentor young women in her own industry – albeit in a gentler way than her on-screen counterpart.
I think if you were to ask anyone how they felt about politics at the moment, they’d probably say they’re sick of it, and yet you chose to do this show. Why?
[laughs] Why? Why?! I wasn’t raised in a political family so I actually didn’t choose this for the political backdrop of it. What I do think is really interesting in the wild circus of politics and journalism is that we have these four different women from completely different backgrounds, different ideologies, different political perspectives, different generations, and they have been thrust into this very close-quartered, intimate sort of journey in which they find their way.
We’re in a world right now that is so agitated. People are required to be reactive and take sides, and it ends up being really divisive and it’s not conducive to communication or conversation. So what I love is that these women, even in the moments when they disagree with each other about certain things, what comes first is being there for your friend, connecting about something. That is what I believe in in the world. If you can do that in a way that’s not preachy and that has humor in it and reveals some sort of things for us to think about — that’s what drew me to the show.
What a wild introduction to the world of political journalism. What did you learn?
I know journalists follow candidates on the campaign trail, but in terms of the day-to-day and the fact that it’s a very formidable job, it’s not a glamorous job. There’s a lot of drinking, and a lot of wearing the same clothes for three days in a row … you’re seeing the good, the bad, and the ugly. That was sort of informative to me.
One of my favorite things about acting is that it allows me to see into worlds that I didn’t know before. That’s the reason I choose parts oftentimes. I get to then do research and sort of understand things from a different perspective. The reason that I decided to act when I was very young, 13, was that I really thought, ‘Oh, this is a way both for myself to find empathy and to give the world empathy because you can see things through different people’s eyes.’
I do think that that is the magic of storytelling. The other thing that I didn’t quite know was the urgency in terms of the pace at which you have to get the truth out there. It’s an unpopular profession in the sense that it’s a little bit like a detective where you’re getting information about people that they don’t really want to give, and then your job is to get it out to the world with as much accuracy and speed as possible, and I didn’t really understand how quickly that needed to happen.
Where does your character fit into the group?
I think she’s seen these cycles, political cycles, but also human cycles, right? How we are continuing to have the same conversations, the same resistances, the same dynamics. So I think she is like, ‘Yeah, I’ve seen this before. It’s going to pass.’ I think realistic is probably the right word more than jaded.
She doesn’t suffer fools, she speaks very bluntly, she’s incredibly articulate, she does have very strong opinions. What was really important to me, was that she remained curious. That is what has made her a very good journalist, what helped her remain passionate and hungry about her profession. That’s why she ultimately does give Lola [Natasha Benham] the time of day. Her belief is, ‘This is not real journalism, it’s on TikTok.’ Right? That’s Grace’s perspective. But she starts to hang out with this young journalist and she’s like, ‘This girl has got the goods.’ And so I think her mind can be changed, and I think that was really key.
She’s kind of the veteran of the four, and you’re one of the more experienced leading cast members on the show. How does that translate on and off-screen?
I wasn’t really interested in Grace just being sort of salty. All of that can be there, and she does have some amazing one-liners, but it was key to me that the two things can coexist. I said to Amy, ‘The female mentors that you’ve had in your career and female mentors I’ve had, it may not come to you sweetly, but there is generosity of heart and that’s why they become a mentor because they actually want to help you and they actually want to usher you [forward].’
When I was a young actress in a couple of different productions, older women were really mean to me. And of course that’s representative of their insecurities and all of those things. But I just remember at a very young age going, ‘I will never do that to a young actress. I will only be there to help them learn.” Grace is probably a little bit more jaded than I am and definitely less of a hippie than I am, but I do think that under there, she actually really cares.
Now I’m curious, who did you look to as a mentor coming up in the business?
I’ve gotten to work with some extraordinary women like Blythe Danner, Sigourney Weaver, Ellen Burstyn. Angela Lansbury I got to work with on a movie with Jim Carrey, that was extraordinary. She said something to me that was kind of amazing. I think I was in my early 40’s. We were working together and I said, ‘At the point at which they don’t want me to play leading ladies anymore, I just want to go produce and do theater until I can play the really rad old woman.’ And she looked at me and she said, ‘But you’re such a baby!’ She said, ‘I didn’t even start my Murder She Wrote till I was 50.’ She just couldn’t conceive of it.
It was wonderful because it wasn’t advice, it was just shock that I could even feel that way. She was in her 80’s and thriving. So I think that it’s been by example.