Frankie and Grace Drawing Art With Red Line in Roberts Den

Considering that she's the co-creator of Netflix's "Grace and Frankie," which offers a portrait of aging as full of adventures, it's not as well surprising that Marta Kauffman was arrested a couple of months agone in Washington, D.C. — as part of the rotating cast of friends joining the 82-year-erstwhile Jane Fonda in her weekly climate crisis protests.

"It was powerful and intense ... and v hours of being in zippie handcuffs," says Kauffman, 63, noting she was arrested alongside the "Grace and Frankie" writing staff and a few dozen others. "I experience like I put myself on the line for something that I believe in. It has changed my perspective on what I do personally. And the change I tin can do."

There are no arrests in the new season of "Grace and Frankie," which boasts Fonda and Lily Tomlin as besties, only the hijinks are still aplenty.

The sixth flavour, at present streaming, follows Grace (Fonda) as she tries to settle into marriage and a new home with her younger husband, played by Peter Gallagher, 64 — much to the disappointment of Frankie (Tomlin), who is finding means to adjust to Grace'south absence. A new business organization idea, another product for older people, helps pull them back together again. Meanwhile, Robert (Martin Sheen) and Sol (Sam Waterston) are confronted with health and money bug.

"There'due south a lot of uncomfortable changes for the characters," says Kauffman, who describes herself every bit a bit of both Grace and Frankie. "I have long grey hair similar Frankie; I tend to clothes more like Frankie. Merely I also have some of Grace's stricter qualities. I definitely similar control."

Information technology's mid-December and Kauffman is sitting in her Paramount Studios office — where a large framed French moving-picture show poster of "To Kill a Mockingbird" hangs to a higher place her desk and a stationary bike is situated not far from her in-office bar. She begins the conversation with an apology: In a few minutes, she'll need to check in on the "Grace and Frankie" writers' room beyond the hall as piece of work on the 7th and final season gets underway.

(Melissa Moseley / Netflix)

When it wraps, "Grace and Frankie" volition earn the stardom as the longest-running original TV show in Netflix's history, with 94 episodes in all. ("Orangish Is the New Black" ended with 91 episodes.) Kauffman describes the conclusion to end the show equally non entirely a artistic one.

"Information technology was a combination of things," she says, feet resting atop her coffee table. "Netflix isn't doing long-term serial anymore. And nosotros are actually lucky that we got the seventh flavour. I recollect when we started, we imagined vii seasons. But, actually, this is the kind of conclusion that comes from Netflix. Just as sad as I am that it's ending, in that location's something that makes sense about information technology."

Kauffman is well aware that fans of the show want Grace and Frankie to ultimately be together in the end. She's as well aware at that place's a faction of fans that ship the duo as a couple.

"The style people invested in their human relationship is something you ever hope is going to happen," Kauffman says. "The show is about these two women. I think it'due south no surprise that the audience wants them to exist together, ultimately. I think making them a [romantic] couple is disingenuous. But they are a dissimilar kind of couple. They are all-time friends. They vest together. And I think there is something wonderful about finding that person who yous want to be with in life."

The series is meaningful to Kauffman for a number of reasons. For i: Every bit a woman of a certain age working in an manufacture fixated on youth, she has confronted and shifted her own views on crumbling past dismantling of some of its stereotypes.

"I learned to take my age, to embrace it," she says. "I learned you could always start your life over. I was very resentful of gravity. Gravity pisses me off... [Only] the changes that will happen to my body and to my heed are things that I but have to accept and say, 'Yes, this is the new phase. This is the new stage.' I used to exist afraid of dying, and at present I'm no longer agape."

"Grace and Frankie" showrunner Marta Kauffman was a co-creator of "Friends."

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

"Grace and Frankie" also helped her run across that her all-time work wasn't necessarily behind her — even if that work included co-creating an enduring pop culture phenomenon: "Friends." Convincing herself and others that she could practise other things afterwards 10 seasons of the NBC one-act took a little longer than she hoped.

Before "Grace and Frankie" came along, Kauffman hadn't spearheaded a TV series since "Friends" concluded in 2004, though, she spent fourth dimension writing and producing in the intervening period. In 2015, the same year "Grace and Frankie" launched, Kauffman co-founded the female-led production visitor Okay Goodnight, which is behind projects like the Gloria Allred documentary, "Seeing Allred."

"I've learned that I tin balance a lot, that I tin can keep all the assurance in the air," Kauffman says. "And I've learned I actually similar to lead. ... I love the collaboration amid the writers, with the actors, with people from our crew who accept great ideas. I find that I simply want to do the stuff I absolutely honey doing and that there's still so much ahead."

The "Friends": Matthew Perry, Courtney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston.

(NBC)

Kauffman was born in 1956 in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Her father worked as a plumbing and heating supply distributor, while her mother was a professional dancer who owned a dance school, which she gave up when she became significant with Kauffman. ("During the Low, she was 16 years erstwhile and supported her family unit dancing in a mafia-owned nightclub," Kauffman says.)

A career in entertainment was non something Kauffman'south parents initially supported.

"My mother kept telling people that I was going to teach people with mental disabilities," she says. "She held onto that for a long time."

While studying theater at Brandeis University, Kauffman met her longtime collaborator (and fellow "Friends" co-creator) David Crane. The 2 were cast in a student product of Tennessee Williams' "Camino Existent." ("He played a street urchin, and I played a whore," she says with a laugh.) The pair soon established a writing and producing relationship that, in those early on years, included writing off-Broadway musicals and children'due south theater. Her major source of income during that time, she says, was writing questions for a game show called "The Knowledge Bowl." ("It was a nightmare to study math," she says.)

Her agent at the fourth dimension suggested Kauffman and Crane consider doing television. So they did. The pair developed shows such as HBO'due south award-winning "Dream On" (1990), "The Powers that Be" (1992) and "Family unit Album" (1993) before "Friends,"catapulted into the Tv set stratosphere in 1994.

Marta Kauffman co-founded the female-led production company Okay Goodnight.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

When information technology comes to the grip on pop culture that "Friends," almost half-dozen 20-something New Yorkers, manages to maintain more a decade after its end, Kauffman has had some time to reflect on information technology. Last year marked the bear witness's 25th anniversary, prompting a flurry of celebratory events and tributes.

"Information technology's pretty hard to procedure," she says. "I hateful, we've been reliving it because of the 25th. And part of me finds it completely overwhelming, and the other part of me is just tickled. Information technology's crazy that a generation is finding the bear witness. That'due south so thrilling, considering yous do TV and you think it has a lifespan. Only it's gone on much longer than nosotros certainly expected. We went to the pop-upwardly in New York, and they told us a story. They've all these photo ops, and there was one where you put the turkey on your caput and they said ii guys proposed to their girlfriends with the turkeys on their heads. I hateful, come on. I've fabricated it."

Information technology was reported in November that the "Friends" cast and creators were in early talks for a reunion special to exist featured on HBO Max. Kevin Reilly, the platform's chief content officer, acknowledged at this week'south Television Critics Assn. press tour in Pasadena that the unscripted event, which would not be a revival of the show, was all the same in the "perhaps" stage.

"I take no update on that," Kauffman says. "It has to be correct to do it. I don't know. I have no skilful status update on it. It'due south a very challenging prospect. I know anybody wants it to happen then much. We don't desire to exercise anything disappointing."

But what'south the content Kauffman craves? Her Tv diet leans heavily toward dramas because "one-act feels like piece of work." She'southward enjoyed "Watchmen," "The Handmaid'southward Tale," "Servant," "Unbelievable," and "The Act." When the conversation turns to the electric current state of television, from the rapid changes to the monsoon of content, Kauffman has two minds about information technology.

"I worry nigh the bubble bursting," she says. "Simply information technology'southward notwithstanding exciting. In that location's so many opportunities for good work to be done. And the way we're watching has changed then much since we did 'Friends.' Fifty-fifty making it is different. When you lot're going straight to making 13 episodes, [like with "Grace and Frankie"], information technology's a very different learning curve, which is both frustrating and heady."

But she did information technology. She's doing it — production on the final season of "Grace and Frankie" starts subsequently this month. And equally she readies herself to recall about what'southward next, Okay Goodnight is starting to await at a number of unlike projects information technology tin get made soon.

"It's only doing things I'm passionate almost," Kauffman says. "We work also difficult non to do stuff nosotros love."

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Source: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2020-01-16/grace-and-frankie-marta-kauffman