Judy Greer is currently starring in Eric Larue, Michael Shannon’s directorial debut, also starring Alexander Skarsgård, Alison Pill and Tracy Letts, which is out now in theaters. Judy was most recently seen on television starring in Reboot, alongside Keegan Michael Key, Johnny Knoxville, and Paul Reiser, and in the HBO limited series White House Plumbers opposite Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux. Her additional feature credits include Halloween, Halloween Kills, Jurassic World, Ant-Man, 13 Going on 30, the Academy Award winning The Descendants directed by Alexander Payne, Richard Linklater’s Where’d You Go Bernadette opposite Cate Blanchett, and the cult classic hit Jawbreaker. She previously starred opposite Jim Carrey and Catherine Keener on Kidding, voiced the role of Cheryl on the Emmy-winning animated comedy Archer for 14 seasons and played Kitty Sanchez on Arrested Development, one of her most notable characters. In 2018, Judy made her feature film directorial debut with A Happening of Monumental Proportions, starring Common, Bradley Whiteford, Allison Janney, Jennifer Garner, Anders Holm, Katie Holmes, Rob Riggle and Storm Reid.
Three Great Things is Talkhouse’s series in which artists tell us about three things they absolutely love. To mark the release this Friday of the new drama Eric LaRue, directed by Michael Shannon and starring Judy Greer, Alexander Skarsgard, Alison Pill and Tracy Letts, fan-favorite actor Greer shared some of the things that bring her joy in life. — N.D.
Walking
I love walking. For a short, beautiful time in my life, I ran, and I loved running. I wish I could still run. My knee doctor says I can, but I don’t think he’s right. It was hard to give up running, but my choice was that I could run and be in pain, or I could not run and not be in pain. I travel so much for work, so I’m always in different places. Before, when I would get to my hotel room, I’d put on my running shoes and go for a long run. I’ve kept that up, but now with walking, instead of running. You don’t get to go as far as quickly, obviously, but it’s such a great way to see a city, see a neighborhood, meet people, make eye contact with people, say hi to people. I’ll often listen to music or podcasts or audiobooks, but sometimes I don’t listen to anything and just walk.
I also walk with my dog a lot. She’s so little and I can’t even believe she can walk seven miles, but she will just walk and walk and walk, which she started doing during the pandemic. It probably sounds boring, but I think people forget to slow down and just take a walk, as it forces you to come in contact with your neighbors and your community in ways that we don’t always when we’re constantly in our cars. I like to walk around my neighborhood. I really think that walking around and being outside is so important. It doesn’t even need to be in nature.
I live in Los Angeles, so people don’t really walk around here. There’s no shortage of interesting houses and shops and stuff to look at in my neighborhood, so I like to pick a coffee shop (because I love coffee so much!) a couple miles away and just head out there. I like an out-and-back, I like a destination walk, and that will be my walk that day. Having a destination makes me feel like I have a little bit of structure to my walk, so then I can space out. A good walk is really all about spacing out.
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
I’m an avid reader and about a year ago I read Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. It’s not like I’m the only person who read that book, because it won the Pulitzer and everyone‘s read it, but it was pretty mind-expanding for me. I loved a look into the world and the community of the book, and it made me really understand a group of people and an addiction that I didn’t truly understand before. It created a lot of compassion and empathy in me, and I just got so much from it.
I’m always reading something, but that book really gripped me. Sometimes I just don’t want to read what everyone else is reading, but then sometimes I’ll realize, Everyone’s reading it because it’s so good! It was the same thing with another Barbara Kingsolver book, The Poisonwood Bible, which I remember vividly that I resisted when it came out, also because everyone was reading it. But because I loved Demon Copperhead so much, I borrowed The Poisonwood Bible from a girlfriend and, of course, was totally blown away by it. My husband says that after you read certain books, you see things differently. A great piece of art – a book, a movie, a TV show – can make that little shift in the gears that helps you to see some things that you took for granted or just adjust your general view of a situation. That’s definitely what Demon Copperhead and The Poisonwood Bible did for me.
Reading is a great way to go on a little brain vacation, if you want to escape. If I have a book that I love, I’ll just tear through it. I can’t stop. I can’t do anything until I finish it. The one thing I do to keep myself sane is save the end of it for a moment when I can finish the book and sit with it, because I don’t want to finish reading it on the train or late at night when I have a big day tomorrow. I like to savor the very ending of a book.
The Pitt
Right now, I’m really obsessed with The Pitt on Max. I was so excited that Noah Wyle was doing a medical drama, because I grew up watching him on E.R., but I had no idea how sucked in I would get. I love it. And I love that I cannot binge it! I have to wait every week for a new episode.
I just didn’t know how much I needed this show, although I’m not a medical drama junkie. I definitely liked Grey’s Anatomy – those first three seasons wrecked me – but I didn’t keep up with it, because I got lazy about watching TV in general. The Pitt is just different, though. I don’t know what it is about it, but it’s just really good. Maybe it speaks to this particular time in my life. I like that it follows the entirety of one emergency department shift, so it’s like there’s no passage of time. It’s so present and immediate with everything that’s happening. The stories are good, there’s enough medical procedure (sometimes I can’t watch, because they really get in there with the surgeries!), but there’s great character development. I also think I’m having a natural reaction to the news cycle right now, so The Pitt is a TV show I can escape into, which is something I don’t often allow myself or have time for.
My mom was a nurse, but she says she can’t watch The Pitt because it’s too triggering. It’s funny, then, that the show is escapism for me! During the pandemic, I watched an episode of Schitt’s Creek every night before I went to bed so that I didn’t have nightmares. But that’s very different from The Pitt! Schitt’s Creek was like a cozy hug. I think it’s maybe that there’s enough E.R. DNA in The Pitt that it returns me to my childhood of sitting on the couch with my mom and watching E.R., which she could watch and seemed to really love. Maybe it’s some kind of subliminal nostalgia that’s giving me cozy, safe childhood vibes!
