Actor Laura Dern shares stories of working with mom Diane Ladd

The mother-daughter duo have always shared a profession. But when Ladd was diagnosed with lung disease, the two started sharing so much more. Ladd died Nov. 3. Originally broadcast June 26, 2023.

Transcript

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. Actress Diane Ladd died Monday at the age of 89. Her most famous film roles include Martin Scorsese's "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," in which she played the foul-mouthed Southern waitress Flo. Here she is telling customers to leave the other waitress alone.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE")

DIANE LADD: (As Flo) Everybody can see she's got big [expletive] on her but hands off. Let the girl do her work. If there's going to be any grab-***ing around here, grab mine, Steve. You can look, but don't you touch.

BIANCULLI: In David Lynch's "Wild At Heart," in which she played a former beauty queen who hires a hitman to kill her daughter's boyfriend. The boyfriend is played by Nicolas Cage. Here he is calling the house to talk to her daughter.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "WILD AT HEART")

NICOLAS CAGE: (As Sailor) Can I talk to Lula?

LADD: (As Marietta Fortune, laughter) There's no way in hell that you're going to talk to her. If you even think about seeing Lula, you're dead.

CAGE: (As Sailor) What?

LADD: (As Marietta Fortune) You heard me. And don't you ever call here again.

BIANCULLI: Ladd's real-life daughter, Laura Dern, played her daughter in the film. They worked together again in mother-daughter roles in the film "Rambling Rose," and both were nominated for Academy Awards. They continued in that pairing in the HBO series "Enlightened." In 2023, Terry Gross spoke with Laura Dern. The actress had just written a book about conversations with her mother. It grew out of her mother's diagnosis of lung disease when the doctor had given her six months to live. He suggested that walks might help increase her lung capacity, so Dern began taking her mother on 15-minute walks every day.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

TERRY GROSS: What is something that you asked her on these walks that you don't think you otherwise might've asked her that was important for you to hear about?

LAURA DERN: Well, my mom says, we both thought I was dying, so we spilled the beans.

GROSS: (Laughter).

DERN: And most of us, within our own family particularly, don't spill the beans, or we wait till it's too late and say, oh, I wish I'd asked them this or that. And what shocked me as I would start to engage her in topics is how little I had asked this only child, single mother who raised me, an only child. And yet I hadn't asked her, why did you, from this tiny town in Mississippi, think, I'm going to be an actor, that's what I want to do? What was the first movie that inspired you? Who were the actors you fell in love with?

Given that I became an actor as well and we worked together, as you mentioned, a number of times, wouldn't that be a natural conversation? It never came up. Things as seemingly mundane as favorite foods, favorite colors, favorite flowers that were just to pass the time, it moved me so much how little the people in our most intimate relationships, how little we ask. And I know her emotionally, but I never asked where those feelings stemmed from.

GROSS: Yeah. I want to play a scene you did with your mother in the HBO series "Enlightened." I'm not going to set up the whole story. I will just say that you had basically a ragey (ph) nervous breakdown at work. And you go off to rehab in Hawaii where you learn to meditate, and you return home changed by it. You've learned to meditate to calm the rage and anger and to center yourself and focus. And you come home with an exercise that you're supposed to write a letter to somebody who you have difficulty communicating with. So you come home and your mother - who's played by your mother, Diane Ladd - is there. And here's the scene where you start reading her the letter that you were told to write in rehab.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "ENLIGHTENED")

DERN: (As Amy Jellicoe, reading) Mother, they have asked me to write a letter to the person I have the most difficulty communicating with. It was not hard for me to decide who that person is.

LADD: (As Helen Jellicoe) How long is this going to take?

DERN: (As Amy Jellicoe) Do you have somewhere to be?

LADD: (As Helen Jellicoe) No, I just want to know how long this is going to take.

DERN: (As Amy Jellicoe) Not long. I've just got to read you what's on these papers.

LADD: (As Helen Jellicoe) Well, I can read, honey.

DERN: (As Amy Jellicoe) But I'm supposed to read it to you, Mom. That's the point.

LADD: (As Helen Jellicoe) OK, Amy.

DERN: (As Amy Jellicoe, reading) You and I have been through a lot. Dad's death, all of Bethany's issues, my divorce, money problems. You name it, we have dealt with it. I know I have disappointed you in many ways, and yes, there have been times that you've disappointed me. But I want to change that. And I truly believe that we can change. And if we can change, anything is possible. If we can change, the whole world can change for the better.

LADD: (As Helen Jellicoe) I don't know what that means, honey.

DERN: (As Amy Jellicoe) Mom, can you just let me finish and we'll talk after?

LADD: (As Helen Jellicoe) Is this what they asked you to do up there?

DERN: (As Amy Jellicoe) One of the things, yeah.

LADD: (As Helen Jellicoe) And what medications did they give you?

DERN: (As Amy Jellicoe) Mom, nothing. I'm off my medication.

LADD: (As Helen Jellicoe) Well, why on Earth?

DERN: (As Amy Jellicoe) Mom, I don't want to talk about my medications. I'm here reading you a letter.

LADD: (As Helen Jellicoe) I just want to be sure that you are OK.

DERN: (As Amy Jellicoe) OK. I just...

LADD: (As Helen Jellicoe) Look. Don't get irritated with me because I just want what's best for you. That is all I have ever wanted.

DERN: (Laughter).

GROSS: Such a beautiful scene about miscommunication and not understanding each other and having, like, a different approach to expressing things.

DERN: Yeah.

GROSS: When you work with your mother, as you've done several times, does it make you self-conscious because you know each other so well? It's not like a professional relationship because you have, you know, the deepest personal relationship anybody has.

DERN: Well, first of all, thank you for playing that scene. I'm just smiling and cracking up over here as I'm listening to it because it is the extraordinary writing of Mike White, who, you know, just...

GROSS: He's great, yes.

DERN: Navigated...

GROSS: Yeah.

DERN: ...The complexity of that dynamic, as you mentioned. And, you know, in the book, in our conversations, my mom talked about the joy she had remembering the first time we worked together on "Wild At Heart," the first film we did together. And we had to do this very emotional scene. And she remembered me preparing for the scene at one end of the set and her at the other - both doing our work, both having trained separately as professionals, you know, not engaged in that together - and then coming together to do this very emotional scene.

And the camera rolls and David Lynch called action. And it's very emotional, and I'm crying in her arms, and he said cut. And Mom describes us pulling away and her looking in my eyes and realizing that she knew exactly what had brought up the emotion in me. And I looked at her and felt I knew the emotion and the pain she was expressing in the scene. Both very personal, both never discussed, but we just know each other so well.

And so at that moment, we started laughing hysterically right after this big crying scene. And Mom describes the whole crew looking at us as if we were nuts. But it was such a personal, intimate, beautiful thing to share, the kind of knowing and bringing it into this professional space - but also the boundaries of that professional space, that it's sort of this unspoken language or art.

GROSS: So you wouldn't ask your mother, what were you thinking of when you made that scene?

DERN: Exactly.

GROSS: Yeah.

DERN: And yet we knew.

GROSS: You knew, yeah.

DERN: And yet we knew and never discussed it. Yeah.

BIANCULLI: Laura Dern speaking with Terry Gross in 2023. Her mother, Diane Ladd, died Monday at the age of 89. Coming up, I review "Pluribus," the new Apple TV+ series from Vince Gilligan, creator of "Breaking Bad." This is FRESH AIR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.