If, instead of becoming an actor, Allison Tolman had become a nurse, you would have wanted her to be your nurse. As Alex on NBC’s new hit mockumentary sitcom “St. Denis Medical,” the Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated performer plays a dedicated and conscience-driven health care worker. And in real life, she’s equally firm in her convictions and confident in her skill.
In the wake of her breakout role as Molly in “Fargo” a decade ago, Tolman — with her quick comic timing and down-to-earth persona — could have slid into a reliable supporting role career. Instead, she met the moment with confidence. “I knew coming off ‘Fargo’ that I was never going to be closer than that to being like, ‘I’m a leading lady, and you should treat me a leading lady,'” Tolman recalled during our recent “Salon Talks” conversation. Ten years on — and after starring in acclaimed series like “Downward Dog,” “Why Women Kill” and “Emergence,” Tolman still holds firm on what she wants and how she works.
“If they mention the character’s body type,” she says, “I pass immediately. It’s lazy and weird.” And on the set of “St. Denis,” even though she and her colleagues, like David Alan Grier and Wendi McLendon-Covey, are sketch comedy and improv veterans, “We’re pretty disciplined,” she says. “As funny as the cast is and as varied as their backgrounds are, we don’t improvise off-subject and waste everyone’s time.” No wonder then, that Tolman seems uniquely suited to lead a show that gently pokes fun at one of the nation’s most frustrating, body-shaming, time-wasting industries. “There’s very little snark,” Tolman says, “Every episode is funny, but it also has these tender, sweet human moments.”
Watch my “Salon Talks” episode with Tolman here, or read the conversation below, to hear more about how her father’s illness impacted her decision to do “St. Denis,” the Cher quote she lives by, and why she has a soft spot for holiday horror movies.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Can you introduce us to “St. Denis Medical” and the character you play?
St. Denis Medical is a safety net hospital in a medium-sized town in Oregon. I play Alex, who has recently been promoted to be the head nurse in the ER department, which she’s excited about. It’s a tiny, tiny pay bump, but she likes responsibility, and she thinks she does things right all the time. She’s happy to be able to teach other people how to do things her way.
That’s the world that we live in, by the nature of the fact that it’s a hospital that’s really underfunded. The patients coming in are from all different walks of life. It’s a little bit like the island of misfit toys. Everyone who’s in there and everyone who works there has made the choice that this is where they want to spend their time and spend their career.
You’re up-front about being choosy with new projects. What was it about this show and Alex that attracted you to it?
It’s funny because I have been so choosy about the things that I do. I also never pictured myself on a network sitcom at all. I feel like I’ve been chasing “Fargo” and working towards more prestige television. I want to get another Emmy nomination. I want to fire a gun, and be cool, and run around.
I did not see myself on a network sitcom, but the script came along, [and] I’ve always wanted to do a mockumentary. I love mockumentaries. My father had been sick the year before, so I had spent more time in the medical industrial complex than I ever had. I was feeling close to the subject matter.
“You can spend hours on a set watching two people improvise at each other and thinking, ‘This will never make it into anything.'”
Also, while my father was sick, my mom would come home from spending all day in the hospital visiting him, and all she could do was watch a sitcom. All she could really stomach was half-hour comedy. Nothing scary, nothing sad. So I’d been watching a lot of sitcoms when this came across my desk, and I was really like, “Actually, this is what I want to do,” which I could not have been more surprised by.
I ended up in the dreamiest job. It was close to home. It was the happiest set. This was picked up during the writer strike, and we started shooting the rest of the season as soon as the actor strike ended. We were one of the only shows working in town. It ended up being this really special dreamy job for me.
You said you’re a fan of mockumentaries. What’s your favorite?
“Waiting for Guffman” is my favorite, because I did community theater. I was always a little community theater gal when I was younger. All the Christopher Guest movies are master classes, but “Guffman” is my favorite, just because of the subject matter.
You come from Second City and sketch comedy, and you’re working with other people who come from improv and the sketch world. How does that inform the relationships and dynamics that you have with this cast?
It’s a funny cast. I studied theater and then moved into sketch comedy, Kahyun [Kim] went to Juilliard, so there’s this mishmash of where people come from. It’s such a funny show and it’s such a funny set, but we have a disciplined cast. As funny as the cast is and as varied as their backgrounds are, we don’t improvise off-subject and waste everyone’s time when it’s time to go to lunch. We’re pretty disciplined about, “What if I said this this way?” It’s an extra 15 seconds, the end. Which is awesome, because you can spend hours on a set watching two people improvise at each other and thinking, “This will never make it into anything. Why are you wasting everyone’s time?” We don’t have that problem on this show.
On top of that, it’s just a joyous set, because this crew has been together, a lot of them, since “Superstore.” Justin [Spitzer] and Eric [Ledgin] are really good showrunners, and they keep people around, so the crew loves each other. They’re like a well-oiled machine, and we just laugh a lot.
The show is a hit, it’s been critically acclaimed and the ratings are great. It premiered one week after the presidential election. Do you think there is something about this moment we are living through that this story and these characters speak to us?
My castmates and I talked about it ahead of time. We felt like no matter what happened with the outcome of the election, it had been such a stressful time in America that we thought, “No matter what happens, people are going to be ready to laugh.” One of the lovely things about our show is that there’s almost no edge to it. There’s very little snark. It’s just earnest and lovely. Every episode is funny, but it also has these tender, sweet human moments, which I know is what I feel like watching.
I restarted “Parks and Recreation” the night of the election from the beginning. I was like, “I want something yummy, and I know how I’m going to feel afterward. It’s going to be sweet, and it’s going to make me laugh.” It was nerve-racking to see what would happen because one week right after this intense election cycle is a lot of pressure. Now that we’re on the other side, I think, “Well, of course people were ready to watch that. Of course, people were ready to laugh and feel good.”
Some of your decision to do this show was informed by your own experiences with your family in and out of the health care system. Were there nurses you wanted to base Alex a little bit on?
I didn’t spend as much time with my dad’s nurses when he was in the hospital because I went every so often to sit with him while my mom had errands to run or just to see him for a little bit. For me, the medical professional that I was just blown away by was his surgeon in Houston. Surgeons have a reputation of being like [trauma surgeon] Bruce [played by Josh Lawson] on the show, having a God complex, and being full of themselves. That could not have been further from my experience with my dad’s surgeon, who was so kind, who answered every question that each one of my dad’s children had, who came to visit my father, reassured him, and made him feel better when he was scared and worried about what was going to happen.
My entry point at that time was these medical professionals who have so much influence over how a person is feeling and doing during often the worst times of their lives, on the worst days of their lives. But I didn’t spend as much time with his nurses, because my mom was there every day, all day with him and his nurses. That’s what made my dad feel better, to have my mom there.
I want to go back 10 years. Everything changes for you very quickly because of “Fargo.” What is it like for you as a woman who maybe thought she was going to have a different kind of professional career as an actor?
I think about this a lot, and I always say that this was not my goal ever. I didn’t have my aims on being a television actress. I would’ve taken a role in something if they offered me something, but I was never thinking that it was going to be my full-time job. I just wanted to make commercials, and do improv and theater, and have a day job so that I could have health insurance. That’s what I thought I was going to do. I was in Chicago. I loved Chicago, and it wasn’t even on my radar that this could be my future.
“Women in this industry are already doing complicated math in our brains all the time to see if we’re good enough.”
Now, we’re in year 10 since “Fargo” and year 10 of me living in Los Angeles. I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting back on that this year. I know you can only get struck by lightning if you stay in the storm, but I still feel like I was so lucky. I was so lucky that “Fargo” came along, that they opened up the casting to the Midwest, that my agent got me to tape something. The odds are just astronomical that that would’ve happened to someone who was not hustling, who was not trying to get on television, who was not in Los Angeles trying to get into that business. It’s just insane that that is how it worked out for me.
There’s a moment when someone has a breakthrough, where I imagine everybody wants a piece of you. Maybe you want to get in that big blockbuster and be the wife, the best friend. You said, “I don’t want to do that.”
No, because I’ve always been a character actress. In college, character actresses are cast as the 60-year-olds, even though you’re 22 like everyone else. And so I was like, “I don’t want to do this version of that.” I knew coming off “Fargo” that I was never going to be closer to being like, “I’m a leading lady, and you should treat me a leading lady.” But it would only work if I treated myself like a leading lady and said, “No. I want my own show. I can run a show now. I can anchor a show. I should be the one who has a romantic interest. I should be the one who’s getting to do these things.”
The huge benefit to me was that I had had a day job up until the day I was cast in “Fargo.” So I was like, “My resume is still current. I’ll be OK. If this was the end of this ride, what a crazy ride. I’ll take it, but I’m not going to get desperate now and go backward. I’d rather just wait.” That was hugely beneficial. I was also older. I just had a little bit more steadfastness than a lot of people when they break young.
Even now, when you’re looking at a script or you get offered something, what is something that makes you go, “Hard pass. Absolutely no”?
If they mention the character’s body type, I pass immediately. It’s lazy and weird to [write], “She’s a little overweight.” I’m like, “Oh, go f**k yourself.” That’s how I feel. It makes me insane. It’s lazy. Also, sometimes, I think they add that in like, “Oh, Allison’s reading this. Let’s make sure she knows we’re describing her.” I’m like, “Well, I actually don’t use that word for myself. So you’ve really, really missed the mark here.” I just hate it. I think it’s a bummer.
I’ve actually expanded that now to, I don’t like when scripts call out anybody’s physical The star also reflects on changing from character actor to leading lady and how NOT to write women’s roles. “There’s three nurses. One of them’s the skinny nurse, and one of them’s the nurse with glasses.” This is deeply, deeply weird. And they do it mostly with female characters. To describe people’s characters with body attributes is so bizarre. It’s bizarre for the casting process. It’s super bizarre when you get the role, and then that’s what it says on your trailer, like, “Fat woman in theater.” Don’t do that to people.
Give them names, and if you can’t name them, say that she has blonde hair. Say that she’s dressed loudly. Figure something else out. I just think it’s lazy. Sorry, writers, but you should stop doing that.
“I don’t need to get married, and I don’t need to have someone take care of me. I take care of myself.”
I actually bring this to most of the writers that I work with when I see it. I’m like, “Hey. Can you not do this? I really don’t like it. For the following reasons, it’s really upsetting and hard for actresses to read these things about themselves or about other characters. If she’s the skinny nurse, then I’m not skinny enough. Because she was cast as the skinny nurse. So what am I?”
Women in this industry are already doing complicated math in our brains all the time to see if we’re good enough, and if we’re aging alright, and if enough people want to have sex with us that we’ll be able to book roles in the future, which is basically what it comes down to. I just think that writers can be kind and take some of that off our plate by not pitting us against each other and comparing us in those ways, inadvertently, but that’s what happens.
I love that you are very upfront about describing yourself as a “cat lady and rich man.” I assume that’s a Cher reference.
That’s a Cher reference, yes.
Why is it important for you, especially right now at this moment, politically, socially, economically, patriarchally, to put that out there and have people who approach you through your social media know that, “This is who I am”?
It’s such a massive part of who I am, and as I’ve gotten older, I just don’t feel ashamed about it at all. I feel much more like people who don’t understand that concept should be ashamed. I’m not really very aggressive, especially on social media, I don’t engage in a super pointed way, but that’s the truth. I don’t need to get married and I don’t need to have someone take care of me. I take care of myself. Part of it is just funny, and part of it is just really true.
You don’t do a lot of films, but you were in the film “Krampus.”
‘Tis the season.
You’ve described yourself as a horror fan. What is it about Christmas that lends itself so well to this genre?
Christmas is the most propped up, idealized time of how beautiful it is, family’s all together, the decorations are gorgeous, we’re in an Amblin movie. So when you take that and you add a slasher into it, or a creature, or a monster, and things fall apart, that’s just inherently funny. It’s just ironically very funny to have a beautiful Christmas dinner be ruined by a chainsaw. The juxtaposition is just really yummy.
Watch more
“Salon Talks” with TV actors