Christine Ebersole took a later flight into Atlanta than originally planned, so my original interview time with her was in jeopardy. Still, as easygoing as she had been about our arrangements thus far, I knew she would make the interview happen. After all, this hard-working, Tony-award winning actress and singer does not let moss grow under her feet.

True to form, a few hours later, the gorgeous star of stage, screen, television and the recording studio sat across from me in my dining room. That’s right: Not only had Christine Ebersole made time for our interview, she came to my house. It didn’t hurt that a mutual friend was the gracious angel making this connection work, but I can tell you that consenting to take-out rotisserie chicken at a stranger’s house is the kind of classy move that typifies this great lady’s style.

So, we talked politics, compared Web sites, discussed Ebersole’s cabaret performance scheduled for the next night…and noshed. Then, we got down to business over dessert—four of us sharing a plate of cheesecake, key lime pie and a brownie. For the record, the incredibly fit fifty-one-year-old actress and singer does eat dessert. Well, one bite of each selection, anyway.

Of course, she may have just picked at dessert because she was anxious to talk about the evening’s stated assignment. And, happily, she approaches everything with a bold frankness. “My life was touched by [HIV/AIDS] personally with the death of my friend Eddie, who I grew up with,” she tells me. “He was the kid down the block. I knew him since I was seven. He was a year younger than I was. We…came to New York together and worked together on Broadway. He died on the first World AIDS Day, December 1, 1988.”

Ebersole’s recounting is obviously difficult, as she pauses several times during her story. But, more brightly, she tells me that her friend’s death on World AIDS Day has numerological significance in more ways than one.

“Three months after he died, a friend called me. She had rescued a [lost] dog from the Farmer’s Market. [Ultimately], Coconut came home with me,” she says. “I love animals and most of mine are…not pure bred. But this little Chihuahua was AKC [American Kennel Club] bred, so it had papers. And, you guessed it—her birthday was December 1. She was born the day Eddie died. That made the fact that she had come into our home all the more ‘right.’”

The usually fast talker slowed again, clearly choosing her words carefully. “I was just thinking about that on the way down here [to Atlanta, from New York],” Ebersole says at last, now speaking very deliberately. “I had a lot of separation anxiety leaving home this time because Coconut will be turning sixteen on December 1, and I’m afraid it’s her time…she’s been having some [health] problems. It’s hard to believe it’s been sixteen years since my friend Eddie…has been gone.”

While the memory of the loss of a dear friend is undoubtedly tough, it’s obvious my exceptionally bright dinner guest is framing the larger issue. “There was that time in the eighties when so many of my friends died of AIDS,” she says. “Thinking about Eddie evokes that for me…. The really other significant [loss] for me was [actor] Richard Ryder, who died in 1995. With both Eddie and Richard, I was able to be with them in their last days.”

It’s gratifying to have the focused attention of a lady whose Broadway credits span twenty-five years. (Ebersole’s 2001 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical was for her portrayal of Dorothy Brock in the revival of 42nd Street. The part seems made for her—as evidenced by the prestigious award.) But right now she is no diva. She wants to stay the course with our conversation about the Modern Plague.

“Especially with Richard…I was very privileged to be with him when he was dying…to experience the power of that,” she says, occasionally reflecting on her cup of decaf. “I think I was, in a way, an officiate for him…and I know he really helped me…being able to be with him when he died really helped me when my father died. I was there alone with my father in the room when he died. I was there to assist him, like a midwife. I could do that because of my experience with Richard.”

Pausing only occasionally for more coffee or water, or for a quip about the hot flashes that have her alternately removing and replacing her jacket, the radiant Winnetka, Illinois, native concentrates on our topic. “I have friends living with AIDS…very close friends,” she says, “some of whom have lived with it for twenty years. Somehow, they were able to get the drugs [the pharmaceutical “cocktails”] at the right time…to be able to not succumb.”

Ironically, it was the failure of a Broadway show, Harrigan n’ Hart, which closed after a three-day run, that propelled Ebersole to Hollywood to pursue a film and television career that has kept her in front of audiences remarkably consistently for many years. She lived in Los Angeles for some fifteen years, returning to the New York area just in time to dance onto the stage in 42nd Street.

Her feature film credits include properties ranging from Amadeus to Tootsie, Richie Rich, and My Favorite Martian. And you don’t own a television if you have not seen Ebersole on the small screen. She was a cast member of Saturday Night Live (1981-82), received an Emmy Award nomination during her one-year stint on One Life to Live, and has had star turns on everything from The Cavanaughs, Rachel Gunn, R.N., and Valerie to Ink, Will & Grace, Ally McBeal, and Crossing Jordan. Not to mention television movies and specials.

Ebersole was in Atlanta for a staging of her cabaret act, which she has done sporadically through the years. This particular show was to be a benefit for an Atlanta-based national AIDS service organization, The Names Project, which is the keeper of The AIDS Memorial Quilt (www.aidsquilt.org ).

In recent years, Ebersole’s cabaret act has included her 42nd Street co-star, Billy Stritch. November 16, a CD, In Your Dreams, Christine Ebersole with Billy Stritch (Ghostlight Records) was released. It joins a previous cabaret-act CD, Live at The Cinegrill (Footlight Records), which was released in 1998.

As I knew from these recordings, Ebersole’s cabaret show is powerful, varied, touching and funny; what I found attending the Atlanta show the night after our interview was that the show also is very political. “I don’t mind talking about politics at all. I tend to be extremely political,” she tells me. “People tend to know what my feelings are…and that includes my feelings on politics. The guy who drove me to my hotel from the airport knows my [political] positions!”

As our time together fell just before the Presidential election, our dinner-table talk did slide into the political occasionally, but we always found our way back. “I think right now it is harder to be aware that we are still in an epidemic,” Ebersole says. “In the eighties it was so much more obvious. Now, thank God, with the drugs, people are able to live relatively normal lives.”

She pauses, shakes her head and looks particularly soulful, as if this plight physically hurts her. “Still, it’s not going away and it’s not going to go away anytime soon,” she says. “I think we have to be careful that we don’t fall back in a place of denial and go back to the pre-AIDS days, having sex without protection and that sort of thing.”

“I think it is important to [realize] that sometimes people seem to have a naïve sense of what AIDS is,” she says. “[The attitude] ‘If I get AIDS I’ll just take a pill and I will be fine,’ and, of course, it is not like that. I think it is important to have awareness about it, and know that it is an epidemic. And know that it is still a problem…not a problem solved.”

She knows this firsthand, not only having directly assisted her friends whose lives the disease claimed, but also giving her time to specific AIDS organizations, from Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS (natch) to AIDS Project Los Angeles. Of the latter, Ebersole shares that, “we would go over there and bag groceries and take them to shut-ins houses. Hands-on, you really see who is affected and how.”

I ask my dinner guest how, as a Mom, she thinks we need to talk to kids about HIV/AIDS? “I think it is always important to be open and honest and see sex as something that is a beautiful thing and that with it comes responsibility,” she says easily. This is obviously a subject to which she has given thought. “It’s important to tell kids there’s a responsibility to the person you are having sex with. First and foremost, a responsibility to yourself…including a good self-image.”

Another one of those pauses; especially when it comes to kids, Ebersole chooses her words carefully. “If you are not realistic about the dangers and don’t use condoms …if you are not realistic about it… if you have shame about sex and don’t put it in perspective…if you think it will go away if you don’t talk about it…there are consequences that are very real,” she continues. “I think the most important thing is to create a positive self-image for our children, to let them know that sex is not terrible…but also let them know the facts and the responsibilities that come with sex.”

“You don’t want to diminish the value of what sex is,” she says authoritatively, “it has value…treat it accordingly. You can have sex without love, but it has more spiritual value when you have sex with love. That’s my message.”

We stay on one of Ebersole’s favorite topics for a while: Kids. In the past year or so she has been at home more than for the previous few years and obviously revels in it. “It has been great during this time,” Ebersole says, “to help the kids with their homework, cook for them and help them with their hair in the morning and get enough sleep so I am not a complete zombie and really be there for them…not just coming in for the twenty minutes I can be there a day.”

She talks enthusiastically about adoption, as she also does in her cabaret act, noting that her three cherubs are adopted. “In my case, it is certainly obvious because they are [visibly] different…we’re the United Colors of Benetton,” she says, laughing. Then the serious adoption advocate pops back in. “There is an evolution in adoption…socially…in terms of a greater understanding of it nowadays.”

In the old days, Ebersole says, “there was a value judgment placed on adoption. There was shame placed on it. Everybody in the village would know Johnny is adopted…’but don’t tell Johnny.’ I don’t think that is the case anymore. Adoption is something to celebrate. If somebody says my children are adopted…isn’t that great? If I can promote adoption…and have people see it in the positive light that it is…that’s a great thing. God knows there are so many human beings already on this planet that need loving homes. If I in some way affect someone in a positive manner to open their eyes to that…then tell everybody: My kids are adopted!”

I note that it would be nice if less of a value judgment was placed on people with HIV/AIDS, to which Ebersole quickly says, “I hear you. Yes. That’s what we want to work on!”

We continue talking about family—a source of pride and strength for Ebersole – because I ask about her niece [by marriage], actress Janel Moloney, who stars as the feisty Donnatella “Donna” Moss on NBC’s The West Wing. “We are really close,” Ebersole tells me, “and share at least two important connections: We’re both Moloneys, but also share the common love of acting.”

She goes on to tell me that her husband Bill actually comes from a showbiz family. “I don’t know how to say this, but to just say it,” she says, giggling, and playing with the hem of her jacket. “My mother-in-law was a stripper. I guess you could say ‘exotic dancer,’ but stripper just says it better. It was in those days when you had a gimmick. It was ‘back in the day’…when it was art. She knew Gypsy Rose Lee and all the ‘greats’ of that era.”

Bill Moloney’s dad worked in and around the burlesque houses too. “He was the guy who announced the acts,” Ebersole tells me. “He was known as ‘Johnny Moloney, the Prince of Personality.’ He was the guy who introduced and sang things like, ‘Bring on the beautiful girls….’”

Ebersole herself played a stripper a few years ago when Bette Midler brought the show Gypsy, about the life of Gypsy Rose Lee, back to life as a television movie. As the tacky stripper-with-a-heart, Tessie Tura, she got to act, dance, sing and showcase her remarkable comic timing, all the while also paying homage to her in-laws. (Scenes for that production of Gypsy were filmed at an old theater in Los Angeles, adjacent to the former location of the Follies, in which the Moloneys performed.)

After the revelation about the family stripper, we began to wrap things up. After all, I’ve gotten an audience with my interviewee for far longer than I could have hoped for. We drift into conversation of her upcoming projects. Ebersole tells me that she and Stritch will tour their cabaret act a bit in support of the new CD, including a stint on r family vacations’ 2005 cruise (r family was founded by Rosie O'Donnell and two partners). This is a repeat performance, as Ebersole and Stritch made the 2004 voyage with r family.

Being the consummate performer, it seems my guest has saved the biggest news for last. (Or maybe the holdback is just because she is so delightfully humble about her many talents and exciting projects.) “Just today I agreed to join the cast of a new Broadway show,” she tells me. “I was offered the part of M’Lynn in Steel Magnolias. In February we start rehearsals. It is just in the very beginning stages now. It’s for the 2005 Tony season.”

And this new staging of the play, which is perhaps best known for the 1989 movie adaptation (in which Sally Field played M’Lynn), may just win a Tony. You see, it is being directed by Jason Moore, who directed Avenue Q, the 2004 Best-Musical Tony winner. That show also garnered Moore a Tony nomination. “I was so thrilled when they [Avenue Q] won the Tony,” Ebersole says enthusiastically. “It was so unexpected…because it was not the big corporate-driven show that some of them can be.” She pauses and, well, beams. “I can’t wait to start rehearsals!”

We part by talking again of her Atlanta performance. “Having these kinds of [AIDS fundraising] benefits is very important…for awareness, especially [in order] to help people remember how far we’ve come and how far we have to go…toward ending this terrible disease.”

Then, just as this star might do an encore after a stage or cabaret show, she offers a final salvo—right there in my kitchen. “I think it is important to stay vigilant [regarding HIV/AIDS],” she says. “We all have to be aware of the realities of the devastation that this disease brings to human lives. To all of us.”

The actress and singer has made it clear: We all have a part to play in the fight against AIDS, and she intends to continue playing a role.

Special thanks to the inimitable Holly Fryman for making this interview possible.

To keep up with Christine Ebersole:  www.christineebersole.com .

B. Andrew Plant is an Atlanta-based freelance writer and is Editor at Large of A&U. He interviewed Doug Wilson for the November issue.

February 2005