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By Krista

Interview with Martha Plimpton of "Raising Hope" on FOX 9/28/12

She is always fun to talk to. I enjoy talking to her because she is fun, laid-back, and has a great sense of humor.

Final Transcript
FBC PUBLICITY: The Raising Hope Conference Call
September 28, 2012/10:30 a.m. PST

SPEAKERS
Hayley Hindinger
Martha Plimpton

PRESENTATION

Moderator Ladies and gentleman, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Raising Hope Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. Instructions will be given at that time. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the call over to our host, Miss Hayley Hindinger. Please go ahead.

H. Hindinger Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining our conference call today with Martha Plimpton, who plays Virginia on Raising Hope, and is celebrating a recent Emmy win. Raising Hope premieres its third season next Tuesday, October 2, at 8:00 p.m., and the premiere episode will feature guest stars, Melanie Griffith and Tippi Hedren. Now, I will turn it over to you for questions.

Moderator One moment for the first question. We now go to the line of Ann Daily. Can you please state your media outlet? Please go ahead.

A. Daily Yes, it’s …. Hello, Martha.

M. Plimpton Hi.

A. Daily I am a big fan. I’m a goonie. I’ve been a goonie since the 80’s. You’ve done a big variety of roles, and I was wondering whether you preferred drama or comedy?

M. Plimpton I like them both. I like being able to explore whatever avenues I’m permitted to explore. As an actor, I think variety is the spice of life, so I like doing it all.

A. Daily Cool. I was also was wondering what guest stars we have coming up this season?

M. Plimpton Well, as you know, Melanie Griffith and her mom, Tippi Hedren, are on our premiere episode. Then coming up, who else do we have? We have a bunch of people. We have Jenny Slate coming on, who was an SNL alumn.

M. Plimpton Oh, of course, Wilmer Valderrama, what am I even thinking? He is on a bunch of episodes coming up. Chris Klein, who is hilarious. Then I’m not sure who is coming up after. We have a little bit of a break right now, so I don’t know who is coming up after that.

A. Daily Alright. Well, cool, thanks for answering my question.

M. Plimpton Sure.

Moderator We now go to the line of Thomas Hart. Please state your media outlet,
and go ahead, sir.

T. Hart TVSource Magazine online. Hi, Martha.

M. Plimpton Hi.

T. Hart I’m a big fan of you; 27 years, ever since The Goonies. Congratulations on your Emmy win, by the way.

M. Plimpton Well, thank you so much. Thank you.

T. Hart What was it like working with Michael J. Fox again after all these years, because you did an episode … guys. You played the runaway girl.

M. Plimpton Exactly. I played the little orphan girl, who tries to shoplift from Mallory’s Boutique in the mall. It was awesome. I love Michael. He is a fantastically funny person, incredibly smart, incredibly generous actor, and I just adore him. The sweetest thing about him was that he actually pretended to remember working with me all those years ago, and I thought that just could not have classier of him considering how many people he worked with when he did that show. I just love him. I think he is terrific, and I would kill to do it again.

T. Hart Well, thank you so much. One more question: you work with Melanie Griffith and Tippi Hedren this season. What was that like, and have you worked with them previously?

M. Plimpton No. I had never worked with them before, and they were both lovely.

T. Hart Well, thank you so much.

M. Plimpton Sure, thank you.

Moderator We now go to the line of Monique Jones. Please state you media outlet, and go ahead.

M. Jones TVEquals.com. Hi, Martha.

M. Plimpton Hi.

M. Jones What can you tell us about this season of Raising Hope.

M. Plimpton Well, gee, where do I begin? We are going to be branching out a little bit, meeting more of Sabrina’s family, and seeing a little bit more of the outside world. There is a risk that maw maw could be removed from the home, and we have to rescue her from a state-run nursing home. We sort of pull off a little Mission Impossible thing there. What else? Just more of the same, hilarious hijinks.

M. Jones With the show going on to this third season, how do you feel about the longevity of the show? What do you think about the show makes it resonate with fans so much?

M. Plimpton Well, I think it’s really well written. I think people are surprised when they watch it at how well written it is. I think people are surprised by the sort of underlying sophistication of the show, and I think that as nutty and as crazy as it gets, it has a sort of underlying core of honesty and authenticity. These are people who love each other and it’s not cynical.

They’re not mean to each other. They’re all in it together. There are a lot of families out there in this county, who are living with multiple generations under one roof, and they can relate to the sort of ridiculous things that happen when you’re living with that many people in a home. Stuff like that I think.

M. Jones Thank you.

Moderator We now go to the line of Ryan Fertig. Please state you media outlet and,
go ahead.

R. Fertig TV Week. Martha, I’ve seen Cloris Leachman on a number of TCA panels and she tends to be pretty rambunctious. What’s it like to work with her on set on a daily basis? Is that kind of behavior manifest itself on the job as well?

M. Plimpton She’s hilarious, she is fearless, she doesn’t care what anybody thinks, and she is very, very funny. If I have that much energy when I’m 86, I will consider myself quite lucky.

R. Fertig Thank you.

Moderator We now go to the line of Tobey Jeffery-Greer. Please state your media outlet. Go ahead.

T. Jeffery-Greer Hi, TheVoiceofTV.com. One of my favorite things about Virginia is her use of malapropisms. I have to thank you, first of all, for being integral in my son’s education, because that came up in his English class last week. He said, “Mom, I don’t know what this is?” and I said, “It’s what Jimmy’s mom does on Raising Hope.”

M. Plimpton See, we are educational, too.

T. Jeffery-Greer I know, it’s great. I was wondering how much of that is you, and how much of that is the writers?

M. Plimpton That’s all the writers, but to be honest, we did incorporate something that a friend of my father’s says a lot in an upcoming episode about a real estate mongrel. I feel proud to be able to have contributed to at least one malaprop, and I think I may have contributed one or two others last season; although, I don’t know if I remember which ones they were. No, that’s the writers. The writers are brilliant.

T. Jeffery-Greer Cool, okay, so educational and inclusive of family and friends.

M. Plimpton That’s right.

T. Jeffery-Greer Perfect. Thank you very much.

Moderator We now go to the line of Thomas Hart. Please state you media outlet. Go ahead, sir.

T. Hart Hi, this is Thomas from TVSource Magazine online. Martha, the show is doing a contest this season, The Raising Hope Clean Sweep. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

M. Plimpton Well, last May, during the up fronts, I pitched an idea for a contest that I wanted to do to engage the fans more and give thanks to them, because I was so excited about getting a third season. I suggested to the people over at Fox that we have a contest in which Raising Hope’s biggest fans win a chance for me to come fly anywhere in the country and clean their house.

T. Hart Do you know what you’re getting yourself into?

M. Plimpton Absolutely. I always do. I was amazed that they thought it was a good idea, and that they wanted to do it. So here we are, and we somehow managed to hoodwink Garret into it as well. He is going to be coming with me and cutting lawns or cleaning pools, whichever is more appropriate.

T. Hart Also, do you have a favorite episode of Raising Hope?

M. Plimpton Oh my goodness. I have a lot of them.

T. Hart There is so many.

M. Plimpton There is so many good ones. From Season 1, I love the hoarders episode; the Jenga episode. I love that episode, but there are so many of them. Oh my gosh, that’s a really, really hard one. There’s a Halloween episode coming up that I haven’t seen yet, but I loved shooting it. I thought it was really, really fun to film. Then there is another one coming up this season where we all participate in a 1K race to benefit angry bowel syndrome. That was really, really fun to shoot. I think that’s going to be a good one. There is too many to list really.

T. Hart Yes. Well, thank you so much.

M. Plimpton Sure. Thank you.

Moderator We now go to the line of Martha Krista. Please state your media outlet, and go ahead. Miss Krista, your line is open.

M. Krista I’m sorry. TV Megasite. I was just wondering if you could tell me anything about, other than the two guest stars that we have already mentioned, Melanie Griffith and Tippi Hedren, if you could tell me of any other upcoming guest stars?

M. Plimpton Well, we mentioned a few of them earlier in the call: Wilmer Valderrama and Chris Klein are coming up, and they are both hilarious and great.

M. Krista Okay, I’m sorry, my phone must be cutting out. I’m not able to hear you.

M. Plimpton Oh, okay, I’m sorry. Can you hear me now?

M. Krista I can.

M. Plimpton Okay, so we have Wilmer Valderrama and Chris Klein and Jenny Slate, who is an SNL alumn. We always have a lot of really fantastic actors willing to come and work on our show. It’s great.

M. Krista Is there anyone that you haven’t worked with that you would like the chance to work with in the future?

M. Plimpton Wow, that’s a good question. There are so many actors. Gee whiz. There are a lot of friends I’d love to have come on the show. I would love to have Sarah Silverman on the show. I don’t know if she would ever do it. I’d love to have any number of people. I wouldn’t know where to begin. There is too many to list.

M. Krista Okay. Well, great. Thanks for talking to us today, and good luck on this season.

M. Plimpton Thank you.

Moderator We now go to the line of Stacy Roberts. Please state your media outlet, and go ahead please.

S. Roberts SeriouslyOMG.com. I absolutely loved the season premiere.

M. Plimpton Oh, good. Thank you.

S. Roberts You’re welcome. Thank you for it. Now that the twins are older, are they easier or harder to work with?

M. Plimpton Oh that’s funny. First of all, they’re so smart, they’re so sweet, and they’re so fun that they’re never hard to work with, ever. Now that they’re getting a little older, it’s harder to get them to do things if they don’t want to do them. It’s easier when they are babies. You can just prop them in a chair, and they’re just adorable, you know what I mean? The girls are learning the concept “no.”

The truth is they are so sweet, and their mom is so great with them, and they love coming on set. They like everybody there. They have a good time. We try to keep it fun for them. It’s actually been really easy.

S. Roberts Oh, that’s great. So you haven’t vacuumed them up or anything recently?

M. Plimpton Sorry?

S. Roberts You haven’t vacuumed them recently, like in the hoarder’s episode?

M. Plimpton No. We have not vacuumed them recently, no.

S. Roberts Since you have a mother and daughter on the show this year, any chance of your father coming on the show?

M. Plimpton Okay. I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s a good question. We’ll see. That’s up to the writers. I don’t know.

S. Roberts Cool. Thank you very much.

M. Plimpton Sure.

Moderator We go to the line of Thomas Hart. Please state you media outlet, and go ahead, sir.

T. Hart Hi. TVSource Magazine online. Martha, you and Garret have amazing chemistry. Where does that come from? You all are just so natural together.

M. Plimpton Well, chemistry is chemistry. I don’t really know. We both really like each other, and we are good friends. Even though we had never worked together before we started the show, we both had met, and we both had worked with a lot of the same people. We both always wanted to work together, so when it came time for us to go to network together and test, I think it just felt like a good fit.

T. Hart Is he like his character at all?

M. Plimpton No, not at all. Not at all.

T. Hart Alright, well, thank you so much.

M. Plimpton You bet.

Moderator We now go to the line of Megan Johnson. Please state your media outlet, and go ahead.

M. Johnson Hollywood.com. Hi. Thank you for joining us today, Martha, and congratulations on your Emmy win.

M. Plimpton Thank you very much.

M. Johnson Now, my question is: we know now that Jimmy and Sabrina get engaged in the premiere episode, does this mean that we can see a wedding sometime in the near future?

M. Plimpton Well, that’s usually what follows an engagement, but remains to be seen. We’ll see. I don’t know.

M. Johnson Oh, okay. Sometime in the upcoming episode, if there were to be a wedding, how do you think your character will handle that situation?

M. Plimpton Well, I imagine it will be somewhat ridiculous. I’m not sure. I don’t know. I really don’t know. It’s up to the writers. Virginia didn’t have much of a wedding herself, so she might be really excited.

M. Johnson Okay. Thank you.

Moderator Speakers, there are no more questions in queue. Please go ahead.

H. Hindinger Thank you everybody for joining today. Thank you Martha, and everyone tune in next Tuesday.

M. Plimpton Okay, bye.

H. Hindinger Bye.

Moderator Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today.
Thank you for your participation and using the AT&T Executive TeleConference. You may now disconnect. Speakers please hold.

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