Compiled Transcripts
Kent Romero: A lot of us had. Me, Sam, Gina. Bobby, obviously. The memorial felt a little like a high school reunion.
Madeline: There’s some gossip surrounding you and Bobby—
Kent Romero: It’s not gossip, it’s the truth.
I punched him in the face. Twice. The old one-two.
Is that what you’re getting at? He got up and gave the most meandering, self-centered, martyr-drenched eulogy I’d ever heard in my life.
Lillian was nowhere in it. Just Bobby. Which wasn’t surprising.
I was prepared to let that go. I’d gone into the whole thing mentally ready, wanting to be respectful to Lillian, and also show up for Gina, who’d put a shitload of work into the event.
Gina Ross, among the greatest friends I’ve ever had, has many laudable qualities, but self-effacement is not one of them.
That afternoon in Sheep Meadow was a massive exception.
The understated way she went about organizing the day, opening it up to the public, offering space for loved ones, and even fans, to speak about Lillian, without ever seeking credit, it said a lot about how much this meant to her.
So when Bobby comes down from that stage, sidles up to Gina, and says, I shit you not, in this undertone he obviously thought I couldn’t hear, “How you feeling today, Gina? Is all this making the guilt go away?” Well.
I reacted how I reacted and won’t apologize for that.
And the major upside of the altercation, as we like to call it, is that Bobby doesn’t come to reunions anymore, which means I can show up and not worry about seeing his lying face in person ever again.
Bobby Everett: It’s quite unfortunate that Kent chose to turn a day that was supposed to be all about Lillian into one focused on him and his jealousy of me.
But even he couldn’t fully ruin such a beautiful afternoon for such a beautiful soul.
I walked away feeling healed to some extent.
And gosh, the other things that have helped to heal me over the years have been one: the unfaltering dedication of my spiritual guide, Robin Westing, who deserves a world of recognition and without whom I would be lost. Two: my work, going on character journeys and processing my own trauma through those experiences.
And three: the incredible amount of public support I’ve received.
Even now, all these decades later, I’ll be out to dinner and someone will come up and say how much they loved Lillian.
It means so much. It really does. You know, I go to her grave every year on her birthday.
Doesn’t matter if I’m filming abroad; everybody on set knows we’re going to have to pause for that.
I don’t miss it. And I see so many fans there, every single year.
Some the same, year after year, devoted.
That’s why there are so many photos out there of these gatherings.
The press has picked up on it too. It’s very affirming.
Brooke Balsinger: I was surprised when Gina put together this big, like, funeral for someone who hadn’t even been legally declared dead?
I wondered what was in it for her, but then I realized that the investigation was still ongoing, right?
Pretty smart way to throw the cops off the scent of her as a suspect.
Who throws a massive memorial service for the person they murdered, am I right?
Madeline: You…I mean, are you directly accusing Gina of murder here?
Brooke Balsinger: I’m throwing out hypotheticals, Mabel. Either way, Gina came out looking great, right? Everybody still at The Midnight Show was, like, kneeling before her and Kent and Sam, like thank you so much for hanging out with us again for a few days. Totally pathetic.
Madeline: I did want to ask about the sudden decision to throw a memorial service before the body was discovered.
Gina Ross: Well, Cohen, seeing as it had been over a year and the case had gone all but cold and it was becoming pretty fucking obvious with each passing week that Lillian wasn’t waltzing back into One Astor ever again, I wouldn’t necessarily call it a sudden decision.
Felt inevitable. Mandatory. Everyone needed closure, a time and space to grieve.
I got the idea in my head around the one-year mark.
That February. By that time, most of the first class had already left the show.
We were on year-to-year contracts, and if any of us had been on the fence about staying, Lillian’s death made the decision for us.
Kent signaled that he was stepping away first, let everybody know he’d be leaving at the end of season three, which was like a starting gun.
I thought, you know what, screw this; the only thing keeping me here at this point is Sally, and most couples don’t share a workplace, for a multitude of reasons.
We’d pair up professionally again later, but at that point, considering everything, it felt like time for a change.
And then Sam put in his notice, for personal reasons: On top of the movie offers he’d started getting, his fiancée was from California and wanted to go back west and be closer to her family.
Sam Petrosian: All those years I was friends with Lillian, I think there was a fraction of my stubborn brain that was holding on to the hope of a romantic future with her.
I think that’s why I became such a slut, to be honest. I’d earned the worst reputation of all of us by the beginning of 1983, if you can believe it.
Kent likes to pretend he’s some unfeeling playboy, but the truth is, he’s a serial monogamist at heart, and he’s stayed friends with almost everyone he’s ever slept with.
I was the true revolving door. One-night stands only, and I’d pretend not to know them when I saw them out again.
I know, I know, what a jerk. [Hides his face.
] But with Susan I could finally let go of that little voice in my head saying every relationship was a placeholder.
I saw her for the gem she was, put my wild single days behind me, moved out west with her, and married her the next year.
Almost forty great years—ups and downs, sure, but a life well worth living, two beautiful children, three grandkids who are more hilarious than I could ever hope to be.
Susan and I divorced last year, but we’re still good friends, talk all the time.
I think Lillian would be pleased. I really do.
Kent Romero: My filmography speaks for itself, I’d say.
I’m semiretired now, settled into my ranch here, where I can enjoy a blessed amount of solitude.
Ironic, huh? Returning to my roots. I’m thinking of putting it on the market, but that’s another story.
The show? Well, I’ve done reunion specials, like I said.
But I never hosted. There’s always been an open invitation for me to come back.
It’s just too wrapped up in memories of Lillian for me.
My heart hardened toward that place, toward everything, really, after she died.
It had to. It was how I kept going. And hey, maybe that’s why I have this reputation now as a heartless bastard.
I hope, Madeline, that after all our chats, you can see that that’s not the whole truth.
But if you can’t? [He grins.] I don’t actually give a shit.
Stevie Doyle: I stayed. Got bumped up to cast member that next season, but it only lasted a year. I found I liked staying behind the scenes after all.
Sally Schumacher: Aaron and I finally caved to Stevie’s requests, and guess what? My initial impression of Stevie was still accurate. He was dead weight on-screen. I guess it took the experience of flopping live every week for him to finally see it for himself.
Stevie Doyle: I kept writing for the show until ’96, when there was a big shake-up and I was basically booted.
Sam threw me some work, I did some spec scripts, but my kind of comedy had become passé and my heart wasn’t in it anymore.
There’s been a dry period since, not gonna lie.
But, you know, the party can’t last forever.
Brooke Balsinger: I moved on to a sitcom where I played the long-suffering wife.
Then a couple stepmom and neighbor gigs.
I know we’re all supposed to be so grateful to be working at all in such a tough industry, but…
let’s just say when the best offers I was getting were for bowel-regulating-yogurt commercials, I knew it was finally time to gracefully retire.
Madeline: But…you did do those commercials. They’re still airing, right?
Brooke Balsinger: I mean, I still need paychecks! Don’t get all high-and-mighty with me, Macie. Gotta put those grandkids through private school. Stepgrandkids, but you know what I mean.
Sally Schumacher: I probably stayed longer than I should have.
Gina was begging me to walk away, to go with her to LA.
We were writing screenplays the whole time—this was before we sank our teeth into TV.
I was selling specs on my own, but the show…
it felt ungrateful for me to abandon Aaron.
I needed to ease my way out. Or so I thought.
Truth was, Aaron hired new writers and new cast members, got a new set of yes-men in place, and didn’t even notice when I stopped showing up to writers’ meetings.
Brooke went after season five, and then Nolan left mid-season to develop a one-man show on Broadway, which raked up all the awards—it was fantastic—but then closed abruptly for what we now know were health reasons.
He kept his illness a secret until the end, until that Village Voice interview, four days before AIDS got him.
Even Gina didn’t know he was sick. When he left, it felt like the true end of an era, and at that point I was ready to say goodbye.
Aaron Adler: If The Midnight Show is about anything, it’s about constant reinvention.
It’s current, it’s now, it’s ever-evolving.
Season three was a crucible, an enormous trial for us all, but we got through it.
We brought in new performers who were really exciting, always recalibrating and finding the right mix for this moment. And as you can see—
[He grandly motions around him at the long studio hallway, lined with photos of four decades of TMS stills.]
We continue to thrive today.
Vera Ivanov (TMS cast member, 1995–2005): You can’t overstate Lillian Martin’s influence on young women growing up in the ’80s.
TMS is why I got into comedy, why I hung on to the show as long as I did.
I’d be camped out in front of my family’s little box, watching Lillian and Gina week after week, and then later, Amy Shuller, Rosie McNicols, and the like.
But Martin was the gold standard. Her comedy style was so sincere, so wacky, fresh, off-the-cuff.
I consider her a mentor in the greatest sense, even though we obviously never had a chance to meet.
Amara Johnson (TMS cast member, 2019–present): Those ’80s women—they had balls!
Wait, correction: ovaries of steel. I’m not saying today’s funny girls don’t face roadblocks, misogyny.
Even in fucking 2023, we still hear “Women aren’t funny,” right?
But before those founding mothers of TMS, there was no road.
They had to pave it, brick by brick. So I salute you, Lady Lillian. Hope you’re still laughing somewhere.
Gina Ross: Sometimes I still reflect back on that dinner we had at Spago, summer of ’82, when Lillian splurged on that absurdly overpriced champagne.
Her words to the waiter still haunt me: “Your future daughters are going to idolize Gina Ross.” That waiter’s daughters should have grown up watching Lillian. Generations, scores, of daughters.
Lillian had so much more to do. And a helluva lot more to say.