University of Evansville alum Matt Williams created Roseanne
After decades of producing and storytelling across multiple generations, Evansville-born writer Matt Williams is returning home to read excerpts of his new book, “Glimpses.”
The Saturday night event at Shanklin Theatre is a benefit for the John David Lutz Theatre Lab, which is being built in the University of Evansville’s theatre school. It is scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m.
“When I look back over this 50-year arc, it was always about storytelling,” Williams told the Courier & Press.
Williams, 71, graduated from Reitz High School. He said his high school drama teacher, Eva Kinnaird-Kattau, saw something in him and started casting him in plays and teaching him how to direct.
He attended the University of Evansville as a theatre major under John David Lutz. After graduating in 1973, he attended the University of New Orleans for post-graduate work before stepping into professional acting scene.
His 50-year career has brought him notable shows, such as starring on CBN’s “Another Life,” creating and producing “Home Improvement,” writing and producing for “The Cosby Show” and “A Different World”. He’s most well-known for co-creating “Roseanne.” He’s also worked on films such as “Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken,” “Walker Payne,” and “Where the Heart Is.”
Williams currenty is an adjunct film professor at Columbia University in New York.
He’s been married to his wife, Broadway actor and Cherry Lane Theatre Company founder Angelina Fiordellisi for 36 years. They have two children.
The Courier & Press spoke with Williams as he prepares for the upcoming book event and recounts different parts of his book that will be included in the book.
Tell us about your book. Where did the idea come from?
This is my first book. After 35 years in Hollywood with Wind Dancer films, doing TV and creating TV shows, and producing and directing films, I decided I had had enough. It’s time I closed up shop, and I moved back to New York. And then I thought, “Okay, I’m not done telling stories.” And so I had never written a book, and I was a little intimidated by it. But I thought, I’m going to give it a shot. Because all these stories that have lived inside me for all these years that I wasn’t able to tell on television, or through a play, I could put onto the page.
“Glimpses” is about finding little glimpses of God in your daily life. And by God, I’m talking about spirit, goodness and kindness, and moments of grace, because so many of my friends and family members kept saying and looking at the worst in life. And I kept thinking, “I really don’t believe that.”
I believe if we take the time to look around, there’s still a lot of goodness around us. So that kind of was the catalyst for writing this, and it ended up becoming a memoir. And it’s a collection of personal essays and what I’m calling spiritual musings with three story threads: my career, my family, and my spiritual journey. And the subtitle to glimpses is “A comedy writer’s take on life, love, and all that spiritual stuff.”
So that kind of tells you what the tone of the book is.
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Why did you choose UE to host this event?
I graduated from UE in 1973 and as soon as they said the name John David Lutz, I said, “I want to help.” (Lutz) was a major influence in my life; he taught me, trained me, and guided my early career. He stayed in touch with me through the years; The first play I ever wrote, he came to New York and directed, and he has been the guiding force in shaping me as a theatre artist.
How did growing up in Evansville shape your career?
Well, work ethic. That’s the bottom line: you don’t get something for nothing. You’ve got to work for it. I’ve worked every summer. I worked as a hot carrier, mixing mud and carrying bricks as a carpenter’s assistant. I worked construction and then later in doing summer stock, I would act in the plays and was the transport captain. I was in charge of transporting the sets up to New Harmony.
At UE, you work all the time. You weren’t allowed to just be an actor or a director. You had to build the sets, hang the lights, sew the costumes, act and direct. So that work ethic was just instilled in me because of where I lived and how I grew up. But also it was inculcated into my being at the University of Evansville, the play was the thing youdedicated every moment of your life to. So I carried it to New York when I was doing plays, I carried it into television and film, and when I was running my production company.
So I think it’s more than a desire to work, it’s truly a love of work. If you love what you’re doing, as the cliche goes, you’ll never work a day in your life. Well, if you really love what you’re doing, you want to work all the time. And when people ask me, what was the secret to your success? I said I simply outworked everyone. It’s not that I was that much more talented or smarter. I just outworked them.
How did you write “Roseanne?”
Well, I was on “The Cosby Show,” and had been working on “The Cosby Show” for three years as a writer and then writer-producer. I had, with John Marcus and Carmen Finestra, developed “A Different World.” And I knew if I stayed on “The Cosby Show,” I wouldn’t improve as a writer because I had the same team of people around me all the time. And I wanted to break out on my own. So I went to Tom Warner and Marcy Carsey and said, I have an idea for a series. It’s about three women that work in a factory in the Midwest, one is married with kids, one is divorced with a kid, and one is single, and I want to write about that. Because that was the world I grew up in.
My father worked on the assembly line of Whirlpool. My mother was a waitress, and later a hairdresser. So I knew that world, and I wanted to see that represented on TV. And they said to me, we have a stand-up comedian that we think would work as the married woman in the series. Well, once I met Roseanne (Barr), we started building the series around Roseanne. And then when John Goodman was cast, it was pretty obvious that was the series. Now all three women were still part of the series, but the focus shifted to the married couple.
And so I wrote the pilot, consulting with Roseanne, Tom and Marcy, and tried to create with as much verisimilitude as possible the world I grew up in and right working-class people as human beings and not as caricatures. People who work and save their pennies and sit at the kitchen table with their checkbooks and pay their bills − I wanted to see that on television … real people represented in a funny way.
How did Evansville shape the “Roseanne” characters?
Well, Dan is inspired by almost all of my uncles, they were independent contractors. So I made Dan Conner an independent contractor. The house I used as an exterior is the house in Evansville. I flew the production designer to Evansville to take pictures of my grandmother’s house.
So the louvered windows above the sink, the captain on the back of the couch, all of that comes directly from Grandma Brown’s house. And we recreated that. And having worked a couple of summers on the assembly line,I was always astonished that how the women support each other. That was really something that intrigued me. They would babysit each other’s kids or take the kids to the park, so the mother could take a nap. And I thought, “Oh, I want to I want to investigate that part of the world” because it’s usually from a male point of view.
But Roseanne brought a strong feminist point of view to the show, so that matched. So it was really exploring what is it to be a woman and specifically a wife, mother, sister, and blue-collar woman at the time in today’s world, and that was in the ’80s.
Why did it interest you to write about working-class folks?
Because that’s what I knew and that’s what I lived. The very first play I wrote, “Between Daylight and Boonville,” was inspired because driving back from Madison, Wisconsin, one winter, after directing a play. I looked up into the hills in Pennsylvania, because all the leaves were off the trees, it was icy and cold.
And there was a cluster of trailers up there and I got so intrigued with who lived in those trailers. What do they do all day? All these questions started bubbling up. How do they spend their time? Where do they go grocery shopping? And then what evolved was, this is a makeshift community where the coal miners have set up this cluster of trip trailers.
And these women are raising kids in these kinds of thrown-together compounds. And then I started questioning myself. And I don’t know why. I don’t know why I was drawn to exploring women. But how do they live? How do they love? How do they feed their kids? How do they stretch money and make ends meet?
So out of that grew an exploration of this small community. And out of that came this working-class play that, in hindsight, was kind of a precursor to “Roseanne.” Think about it: the play is about three women, well there are four women, but it’s basically about three women and how do they live? Work? How do they function in a working-class world? So that just kind of organically grew out of my personal experience and my own curiosity.
What got you interested in the theatre world?
I was a narcissist. I needed attention, that’s what we all do at first. I discovered plays in high school and I was a football player who tried out for a play. And I went, “Wow, I kind of like this.”
But when I started at the university, I was an English major and a PE minor with the idea that I was going to be an English teacher and football coach. And that lasted about a semester. Because once John David Lutz got a hold of me, and once I got into those theater classes, I went I love this and became a theater major.
And the deeper I got into my studies, the more I learned (that) it’s not about being seen but really about storytelling. And then I thought not only telling a story by acting but directing. So when I moved to New York, I was supporting myself as an actor, but I really wanted to direct. In order to direct I needed scripts, and I couldn’t afford royalties. So I thought, well, I’ll just start writing plays that I can direct. So the writing grew out of that.
It was always about telling a story, whether it’s on a stage, on a small screen, or the big screen or telling the story as an actor, director, or writer, but I just fell in love and to this day, I’m still in love with storytelling.
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What was it like going from small-town Evansville to the Big Easy?
Well, I went to the Big Easy on purpose, because I knew I wasn’t ready for the Big Apple. I left Evansville and thought, “I’m not ready to go to LA or New York.” I didn’t have the confidence. So I kind of hid out in graduate school in New Orleans for three years and that was the perfect transition. I had the big city vibe, still honing my craft and I was still learning to be a storyteller.
So by the time I left and moved to New York, I really felt like I had “packed my bag” with the skill sets from the University of Evansville and the University of New Orleans, I had enough craft and I was confident I could carve out some kind of career. When I got to New York, I had that buffer of graduate school, which kind of prepared me mentally, emotionally and spiritually for the challenges of being a working professional in New York City.
Who had the biggest impact on your career? Was there anyone you looked up to?
Depends on what phase of my life: Early on, without a doubt, it was John David Lutz. While a big influence but not my hero, working on “The Cosby Show” and with Bill Cosby, and learning how to do TV and comedy by watching and writing for him and being on the floor with him.
That was my first job in television. So, all the foundation for the other television shows I created, that foundation was poured and concretized while working on “The Cosby Show.” And I learned much by watching him.
What are you most proud of and any advice would you give anyone breaking into the field?
“Home Improvement” was by far the highlight and the most fun, working with Tim Allen and the crew and cast. As far as films go, I’m proud of how successful both “What Women Want” and “Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken” were.
My 50 years of experience boils down to basically one simple statement of advice: Live your life with intention. Build your career with intention. What specifically do you want to do? What do you want to do? Why do you want to do it? And how will you do it?
IF YOU GO
Glimpses: An Evening with Matt Williams
7:30 p.m., Shanklin Theatre, 1800 Lincoln Ave. Tickets are $75 (includes a seat at the event and a post-show reception with Williams), and $25 for Livestream tickets to the reading.
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