Pete Davidson, 27, and Glenn Close, 73, may not be besties material on the surface, but they sure do have a lot to talk about. The Saturday Night Live star and living legend hit it off during a Variety’s Actors on Actors chat, with Close saying she’d been nervous to talk to him “because you just seem so cool.”
POODLE
Davidson is quarantining in his mom’s basement in Long Island, while Close is in Montana, with her Havanese dog Pip.
Davidson got a new pup himself: “I’m allergic to all dogs, but except for a poodle. And we got a little poodle, and it s***s all over the house. I’ve never been able to have a dog, and it’s been the greatest experience ever.”
BRIT?
Davidson thought Close was from the UK. He said of her Connecticut roots: “You’re so elegant and wonderful, I always thought you were British. And then I looked it up, and I was like, ‘Oh, my goodness. She’s from an hour-and-a-half away."”
WEEKEND PREFERENCES
Davidson doesn’t like skits as much as the Weekend Update: “The worst is sometimes you’re only in one thing, and you’ll be dressed up like a clock, or I had to dress up as Count Chocula, which is a cereal mascot. You’re stuck in the outfit for four hours in your dressing room, just looking at yourself in the mirror.”
FAVORITE CHARACTERS
Close, meanwhile, is partial to her signature villain, Cruella de Vil. She said: “I asked to get some of the original dialogue from the animated feature because she said, ‘Chloroform them! Drown them!’ It’s really horrible stuff. I realized the meaner she was, the better she was. I loved that character
HEARBREAK
She was incredibly distressed by the ending of Fatal Attraction, in which she attempts to murder Dan (Michael Douglas).
She said: “I was on a totally different level with that character. I wasn’t playing an evil person. I was playing a person in distress who had no help — and I loved her. And when they came back and we had to change the ending and made her into basically a psychopath with a knife in her hand, it was profoundly difficult for me to do that.”
But Close agreed to play it to the hilt: “But I learned a very important lesson is how important catharsis is for an audience,” Close adds. “They had been so deeply upset by her that the only way they could feel that the world would come back to any semblance of order was if she was totally wiped away, even though in the original ending she killed herself. Somehow it wasn’t enough of a punishment. It was a fascinating, painful thing to learn.”
OSCARS
No Oscar, no problem. With seven nominations, she said: “Is it better to be wheeled out in a wheelchair and get the lifetime achievement award? You don’t have to make a speech. It’s beyond me. I don’t know what to say about that. I just have to keep doing what’s good. You’re fulfilled by your work, and that’s the process to me. It’s what feeds my soul, but it really is nice when other people like it. It might be cool to never get one. I wouldn’t mind being wheeled out when I’m old and drooling, and I have a gray wig to cover my bald head.”