All About Joan Simon's Emotional Hospital Scene with Gwen Verdon
Aya Cash is still in denial about the end of You're the Worst. For five seasons she starred in the dark romantic comedy as Gretchen Cutler, an enormously compelling, self-destructive publicist living with clinical depression.
"I don't know when it's going to hit me. I just still don't quite believe it," she says. "It's been such a big part of my life for so many years, and everyone from the show is still in my life, so it doesn't feel like that's gone. But it's very confusing."
Cash's schedule hasn't given her much time to contemplate life post-Sunday Fundays. Less than one week after You're the Worst's series finale, she appeared in the premiere of Fosse / Verdon, FX's new miniseries about the often-turbulent partnership between Broadway legends Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon.
She plays Joan Simon, the first wife of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Neil Simon, and Verdon's closest confidant. Her character operates as a foil to her best friend, offering an alternative woman-behind-the-great-man story.
Below, Cash opens up to Town & Country about working with Michelle Williams, their emotional hospital scene together, and her character's excellent bow-adorned wig.
I think for a lot of fans of You're the Worst, your role in Fosse will come as a bit of a surprise. What interested you about the part of Joan?
The project was super interesting to me. Obviously, it's about theater royalty, and I come from the theater world. It was also created by Steven Levenson-I had done his short plays at Ars Nova 10 years ago-and directed by Tommy Kail who I had just worked with at the Public Theater. And Lin-Manuel was involved, who I've stalked for years. So, it felt like there were a lot of things drawing me to it. And then Joan is not someone who I knew much about.
We all know about Neil Simon, but I didn't know much about his first wife, so it was interesting to learn as I went. It was very hard to do much research on her before I auditioned because there's just not that much out there about her besides in his autobiography and his obituary-it's all in relation to Neil. But, I was excited to play someone who was clearly a strong, funny, interesting woman in her own right.
Did you enjoy doing a period piece?
Oh, I loved it. I love to play dress up. I was so excited to have a wig. I loved the clothes and it's fun to look different. I mean, I used to shave my head or bleach my hair. I've always liked, in my own life, playing with what I look like, and it's really fun to do that with characters as well. And the sets are so gorgeous, I mean, it's really fun to just be immersed in a completely different world.
Gosh, that wig is so good. I feel like you see a lot of bad wigs on TV and your wig is excellent.
I know. My wig is going to battle Julianna Margulies's wig from The Good Wife in a best-of battle.
Most of your scenes are with Michelle Williams, who plays Joan's best friend, Gwen Verdon. What was it like working with her?
It was wonderful. She's enormously talented, but she's also very warm and generous and welcomed me with opened arms. Even for a four-time Oscar nominee, Michelle was just as nervous and excited to do justice to Gwen as anyone would be. It was so lovely that she also was warm and welcoming when she has so much to focus on and think about with this really meaty role. You know, I'd really like to think you can only be like attractive, or talented, or kind, and when it's all three, it just makes me feel like a lesser human.
Your character Joan and Michelle's character Gwen have an emotional conversation in the hospital where Joan is on her death bed. Tell me about filming that scene.
You know sometimes you get to talk and sometimes you get to act, and it's always fun to get to act. Joan was ill, but she wasn't. She was sharp 'til the end, and that is also freeing. I didn't have to play sick because she didn't present as super sick even though she was. In fact, they said to play against that. So, it was just like playing any other scene, but I'm in a hospital bed and in a fabulous gown, if I remember correctly.
We all need boundaries and constraints in our life. We all need schedule or else sort of everything goes to shit. So, I always find anything restrictive is often an opportunity that breeds creativity.
And Nicole Fosse was there. And she was there in the hospital room, too, at one point as a kid, so it's pretty moving to be able to do that scene and to have her say that we did it justice.
It's unusual in biopics to have someone so close to the subjects who's there to weigh in. What was it like working with Nicole?
Anytime there was a question, you could ask Nicole, and she was super open to sharing her knowledge. One of the things she says is Joan never didn't have the bow in her hair. So that was such a good little note that we maybe never would have known. You know, there's only a few pictures of her online and she has the bow in her hair, but you don't think like, oh, that was every day. But she's somebody who had a uniform in that way, and I appreciated getting to know. Even that little piece said a lot about her.
When you're watching the scene in the hospital and Joan says that she worries about Nicole, you think she's going to tell Gwen to take care of her daughter Nancy. But she tells Gwen, "Take care of your daughter, Nicole." Why do you think she says that?
I think she knows her daughter is going to be taken care of. Gwen and Bob were stars in many ways, and I don't want to say self-absorbed, but they had a lot of stuff going on both in their careers and in their marriage. Joan is being the best possible friend to Gwen in that moment. Even on her deathbed, she's saying, "Make sure that you take care of your daughter, make sure you value what's important."
This show is centered around telling the story of the woman behind a great man, of Gwen Verdon and Fosse, but that's also an accurate way of describing Joan and Neil Simon's relationship. It's an interesting parallel.
I think Joan and Gwen are very different. Joan does not feel the loss of stepping away from the limelight. Gwen does. They're just two different kinds of women and neither is better than the other. But Joan can be content in her choices to step away, and Gwen will probably never be. As Joan says, "But I wasn't Gwen Verdon."
You sort of know things in yourself, and Joan knew that she was really damn good, but was never going to be the kind of great that a person like Gwen Verdon is. So Joan's kind of like, "Yeah, you know I was fine to leave."
There's a world in which we judge the Joans now, in our experience now as women in the 21st century. We think, well, she stepped away from her career, and that's a bad thing. But, there are many different types of women and feminism is about choice, and I do feel like Joan's choice seems like a strong one that was right for her.
In another season of television, this could be a show about Joan and Neil's creative partnership.
Completely. Let's do it.
Let's make it happen.
I didn't get to work with my friend, Nate Corddry [who plays Neil Simon], at all. We were in one party scene together. We don't even talk, and I would love to do a show with Nate sometime. We've been friends for years, so I was so excited when we got cast opposite each other and then we never worked together.
Speaking of that, will we see Joan again in the series?
Yeah, you'll see a little pop of her. You won't see much, but you'll see a little pop of her come back because we are time jumping. Joan is gone, but her presence will be there again in the series.
Fosse / Verdon airs Tuesday nights at 10 p.m. on FX.
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