Ever since John Wayne dropped in on “I Love Lucy” 72 years ago, TV content makers have understood the power of unexpected guest performances. Disrupters in the best sense of the word, movie stars, Broadway divas and soon-to-be-famous up-and-comers come on board ready to make their mark.
The Envelope spoke with four such guest stars — three who have been Oscar-recognized and one teenager — about their approaches for delivering high-impact performances in a short amount of time.
Taraji P. Henson
Vanetta, “Abbott Elementary”
Emmy and Oscar nominee Taraji P. Henson has played everyone from gangster diva Cookie Lyons on “Empire” to NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson in “Hidden Figures.” She also does a wicked impression of rapper Cardi B as seen on Jimmy Fallon’s “That’s My Jam” game show. That’s where she met “Abbott Elementary” creator-star Quinta Brunson, who plays teacher Janine Teagues on the Emmy-winning sitcom.
Henson recalls, “We were both backstage and I told Quinta how proud I am of her. The show’s smart and witty, and I have a fondness for teachers because I worked as a substitute teacher before my career took off. So I just put it out there and said, ‘You know, girl, any time you need me I would love to be on ‘Abbott Elementary.’”
A few months later, Brunson’s office invited Henson to guest-star as Janine’s mother, Vanetta. “I said, ‘Wait. I’m her mother?’ Henson laughs in mock shock. “But they gave me the breakdown, and it sounded like fun, so I said, ‘I’m down.’”
Henson traveled to L.A. from Atlanta, where she’d been working on “The Color Purple” musical, and filmed her star turn in one day. “I’m a no-nonsense type of person,” Henson notes. “I am paid to hit my marks, find my light and make people feel the lines that are coming out of my mouth. That’s my job.”
In Season 2’s “Mom” episode, Henson’s brash Vanetta character shows up unannounced at Janine’s school sporting pink pants, a green fake fur coat (“I don’t do fur,” Henson clarifies), big hair and long nails. Vanetta wants to reconnect with her daughter. Also, she’s broke and needs help. Henson says she knows the type. “When I became a young mother myself, I was pretty responsible, but I knew other young mothers who were in the clubs shaking their ass when they should have been at home helping their kids with their homework. Just hearing how Janine talks about her mother on the show, you realize that basically Janine is the mother and the mother is the kid.”
Henson savored her brief immersion in “Abbott Elementary” land. “Quinta’s a great sparring partner,” she says. “In her eyes, I could see a little bit of the shame and embarrassment Janine feels about her mother. I didn’t want to just play the funny bits, because any character I play, you’re going to see a fully realized human.”
Adrien Brody
Sterling Frost Jr., “Poker Face”
Adrien Brody loved playing a con man in Rian Johnson’s 2009 dark comedy “The Brothers Bloom,” so when the writer-director invited him to guest star as a shifty casino manager in his “Poker Face” series, the actor went all in. “We’ve kept in touch, and when Rian pitched this ongoing mystery following a lonesome detective-esque character, I thought it was a great idea.”
In the show’s premiere episode, “Poker Face” star Natasha Lyonne plays the wise-cracking Charlie Cale, whose innate lie-detecting abilities trip up Brody’s shady Sterling Frost Jr. “Natasha keeps you on your toes,” Brody says. “She has this mischievous quality where you don’t know what’s coming next necessarily. There’s a real dance to it, which feels great when you’re playing scenes with an actor of her caliber.”
With Lyonne providing most of the comedic undertones, Brody focused on the drama. He says, “I needed to delve beyond the impulse to go for the gag and connect more to the frailty of this man who’s trying to convey a sense of ease and power and self-assuredness. But the reality is that he has this sense of inadequacy living under the shadow of his powerful father. I saw Sterling very much like Fredo in ‘The Godfather’ — somebody who’s compelled to f— up and make mistakes time and time again and who ultimately pays the price for those failures.”
Brody filmed his “Poker Face” episode over 10 days in upstate New York not far from his home but chose not to commute. “I holed up there [on location] because when you have a lot of dialogue and the writing is so intricate, there’s no time to do much else,” he says. After filming, “I’d go back to my room and study and eat a box of food, go to work the next day then go back to the room and eat a box of food and study some more. If you want the dialogue to trip off the tongue, you need it to be deeply ingrained.”
Since winning his 2003 Oscar for “The Pianist,” Brody has interspersed movie projects with guest star appearances in TV shows like “Succession” and “Peaky Blinders.” He says, “I always come in very prepared, same as if you’re doing a lead role, except that you have a shorter period of time to make your mark.”
Shirley MacLaine
Leonora Folger, “Only Murders in the Building”
Seven decades into her storied career, Oscar-winning singer-dancer-author-actor Shirley MacLaine was sequestered in her Santa Fe home during COVID when the phone rang. On the line: her old friend John Hoffman, now the showrunner for “Only Murders in the Building,” with an offer to portray the formidable Leonora Folger opposite Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez. “It was very enticing,” MacLaine says. “It meant going to New York, and I liked that. The part was well written, so I liked that. And mostly, I liked Marty and Steven. I’ve known them for years, so I knew this would be like old home week.”
MacLaine flew to New York for about two weeks and collaborated early on with costume designer Dana Covarrubias to visualize her character’s elegant outfits. “Aren’t they wonderful?” MacLaine exclaims. “I went through different ideas and colors with the wardrobe lady, but it’s the black and white thing that got me because of my hair.”
Hair?
“Whatever would go with my white hair, which nobody knows I have.”
Unpredictable as she is bossy, Mrs. Folger sniffs the amateur sleuths at close range after making her grand entrance as the artist-mother of murder victim Bunny Folger by asking the room at large, “Where the f— is my painting?” MacLaine reveled in her character’s weirdly specific behaviors. “We did a lot of improvising and then it went to page,” she says. Eschewing real-life role models as inspiration, “I just did what I felt like doing.”
MacLaine, who recently celebrated her 89th birthday, plans to shoot a new movie called “People Not Places” in September. She’s also up for more streamer gigs, if only she can figure out how to keep track of all the content. “The problem is, I don’t know who the people are, and I never know what time a show’s coming on, so that’s a problem at my age,” MacLaine says. “I haven’t really delved into the streaming, but we’ll see what I do about that, because I’m not interested in quitting. I still have a lot of energy, and I love acting.”
Storm Reid
Riley, “The Last of Us”
“As soon as I started reading the pages, she just screamed ‘radical!’” That’s 19-year-old actress Storm Reid, describing her character, Riley, in “The Last of Us.” The video game adaptation casts Reid as the best friend of hero Ellie, portrayed by Bella Ramsey, as they navigate life in a postapocalyptic “Quarantined Zone.” Reid says, “Besides Riley’s spunkiness and sass, I loved the care she has for Ellie.”
Reid is not a gamer, but she is a seasoned professional with credits ranging from “12 Years a Slave” and “A Wrinkle in Time” to “Euphoria.” That track record earned her a call from “The Last of Us” showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann. “They walked me through the world and gave me as much backstory as I needed so I was familiar with the story when I got on set,” Reid says.
Soon after, and in the middle of a Canadian winter, Reid began a month-long residency with the production. “Other than my eyelashes freezing when I went outside, I had a really good time,” Reid says.
Reid and Ramsey’s characters needed to be convincing as lifelong friends even though the actors had only a few days to bond before shooting began. “We have the same interests, because we’re the same age, and that helped,” Reid says. “There were a lot of jokes and fun things happening so, thankfully, it didn’t take long for us to find our groove.”
Reid’s Riley, who’s run away from a military school to join the “Fireflies” resistance, visits her former roommate with adventure in mind. The girls sneak into an abandoned mall and enjoy the innocent relics of a pre-contagion past. The show’s production team refurbished an empty mall with period-specific accouterments. “To see all the vintage arcade games, the old food places — it felt like we jumped into a world that felt very genuine.”
Inside the privacy of the deserted mall, Riley and Ellie share a kiss. “I think they’d been feeling these feelings for a while, and now they’ve built up the courage,” Reid says. “It was delicate, beautiful, friendly, loving, surprising, all these things. It makes me super happy to look back at that moment, because I think we did it right.”
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