Transcript Lillian Martin Screen Test
Transcript:
Lillian Martin Screen Test for The Midnight Show
Lillian: Hello, all you strangers sitting around in the dark. My name is Lillian Faye Martin, and…
[Off-screen voice unintelligible]
[Lillian drinks from a glass of water.]
Lillian: Should I go? Is it—Are we on? Just talk? [Giggling] Tell me what to do.
Off-screen voice: Did you prepare—
Lillian: Hi, no, yes, just tell me anything. Call it out.
Off-screen voice: Do you mean character work?
Lillian: Sure! Yes.
Sally Schumacher (off-screen): An old Icelandic woman.
Lillian: How old?
Sally (off-screen): Ancient.
[Lillian bends at the waist, spine contorted into a lopsided hump, eyes squinting, chin jutted out, mouth curled with cartoonish delight.]
Lillian: Come inside, sticka-sticka. I have shermalen cooking on the pit fire. You drink it, glug-glug, it will warm your bintas and make hair grow down on your bjernins!
[Off-screen laughter]
Lillian: You want to know how I keep my girly-girly figure at my age? You come close, I tell you my secret. My papa was that old rascal Odin. My mother did the hanky-panky with Odin, this is why I live to four hundred and seven. Now drink the shermalen, go on—
Sally (off-screen): Have you ever met an Icelandic person?
Lillian: Absolutely not. Why do you ask?
Aaron (off-screen): Seemed Icelandic to me.
Sally (off-screen): There’s a Nordic vibe, I’ll buy it.
Lillian: Do you want another?
Off-screen voice: A Deep South…schoolteacher. Who’s afraid of children.
Aaron (off-screen): You know Deep South, Sally.
Sally (off-screen): Sure do, all too well.
[Lillian’s body becomes upright, buoyant, kinetic with perky anxiety.]
Lillian: Well, good mornin’, sunshines. Ooh, not too close, not too close!
Take your seats. Billy Steve, why are you approaching my desk?
! I don’t want that apple, Billy Steve, you’ve got your germs on that, you just take it right back with you, bless your lil’ heart.
Now, today, sweet babies, we’re gonna do a duck and cover drill, because you know those Russians are tryin’ every day to steal our freedoms away with their nuclear bombs!
So go on ahead and get under—that’s right, under those desks, where I can’t even see you.
So much better. Good boys and girls. And I’ll stand here and breathe real slow and try not to cry, ’cause that’s part of the drill too—
Sally (laughing, off-screen): Accurate. Anybody else got…?
Off-screen voice: Ronald Reagan.
Lillian: Just Ronald Reagan?
Off-screen voice: “Just” Ronald Reagan, she says—
Sally (off-screen): Reagan baking cupcakes.
[Lillian stands rigidly, head wobbling, hands in two stiff lines. It’s an uncanny imitation.]
Lillian: My fellow Americans. I come to you today with a new proposition.
We’re gonna restore the greatness of our cakes.
End the tyranny of Big Cake, and instead, do you see what I’m making here?
Little cakes! Cake of the cup, bit of icing on top, red, white, and…
yes, here we have a lovely vibrant blue.
Gosh, I’m hungry, but I don’t think—Nancy, am I allowed to eat? Nancy says no.
Off-screen voice: She sounds like him.
Sally (off-screen): The cakes are now drugged.
Lillian: Okay, folks, just going to take a little bite. Chef’s rights: You make it, you eat it. No handouts. [Mimes eating] Whoo boy, have a nibble, Trigger. Giddyup, ol’ boy. Who’s a pretty, pretty pony? And the lights are shining all over America—
[Off-screen laughter]
Aaron: That’s great, Lillian. Thanks.
[Lillian leaves the studio.]
Aaron: Definitely different.
Sally: Yeah. Her I like. Plenty to work with there.