In Memory: The Wit and Wisdom of Kathryn Joosten - Ed Martin

From the White House to Wisteria Lane, Kathryn Joosten was the Most Beloved Recurring Player on Television

Few actors have touched the hearts of so many people as Kathryn Joosten, who first became known to television audiences for her portrayal of Dolores Landingham, the outspoken secretary to the President of the United States on "The West Wing." She would later achieve even greater success as cranky neighbor Karen McCluskey on "Desperate Housewives," a role that brought her two Emmy Awards. That iconic ABC series ended its eight year run just three weeks ago, and in one of its final storylines Karen lost her long-term battle with lung cancer. Joosten, a long-term lung cancer survivor herself, passed away on Saturday at the age of 72. I interviewed her six years ago about her remarkable accomplishments in an industry that values youth above all else. The interview remains as inspirational today as it was then.

Without intending to do so, Kathryn Joosten has during the last decade quietly defied virtually every preconceived notion about success in Hollywood. She moved to Los Angeles to pursue her interest in acting while in her mid-50s and quickly made her mark, first as Dolores Landingham, the executive secretary to President Josiah Bartlet on The West Wing, then as God Herself on the critically acclaimed Joan of Arcadia, and currently in her Emmy Award-winning role as Karen McCluskey, the masterfully meddlesome neighbor on the smash hit Desperate Housewives. Further, Joosten has become one of the most recognizable and beloved actors on television without having been a full time cast member on a series. Rather, she has been a recurring player on these shows and others, including Dharma & Greg and General Hospital. She says she enjoys and prefers maintaining recurring status because it allows her time to pursue other jobs and interests.

These are busy days for Joosten. In addition to her work on Housewives she is also shooting a commercial and guest starring in the first episode of a new midseason comedy for ABC titled In Case of Emergency…. She is also working as an advocate for lung cancer awareness and research.

Joosten recently talked with MediaBizBloggers' Ed Martin about her television career and other matters -- including the bizarre fact that many of the characters she has portrayed have been killed off at the height of their popularity. An edited transcript of their conversation follows.

Ed Martin: I know you are sworn to secrecy, but is there anything you can tell me about your future appearances on Desperate Housewives? Will you be front and center in any of them?

Kathryn Joosten: I'll never be front and center because of course I'm not one of the regulars. I'm recurring and that's a whole different ballgame. I get my little moments here and there. The one thing about the show in general is we're going to find out some things about people on the street that we didn't know.

EM: New information about other residents on Wisteria Lane?

KJ: Yeah. It's gonna shake up the street a good bit.

EM: And that would include Mrs. McCluskey?

KJ: Oh, yeah. She's right in the thick of it.

EM: She's probably the reason everyone is going to find out this new information.

KJ: She certainly does push it along a little bit. She's one of those neighbors that make sure everybody knows about everything.

EM: There was a character like that in the show's first season. Mrs. Huber. But they killed her off pretty early on.

KJ: Well, I kind of have a promise from [executive producer] Marc [Cherry] that he won't kill me off this season. I've been killed off so many shows it's almost gotten to be a guarantee for good ratings. Hire Joosten! Kill her off!

EM: You began on Housewives during its first season and you only did a couple of episodes. Was Mrs. McCluskey originally intended to be a one shot or a recurring character?

KJ: I think she was originally intended to be occasionally there and it kind of developed from that. There was a wonderfully written arc about the [neighbor] kids and me being a bitch and then showing a softer side. The writers and the audience enjoyed the character.

EM: How would you describe Mrs. McCluskey? Obviously we don't know everything there is to know about her … yet.

KJ: [Laughs] I don't know everything there is to know about her. I think she's a lady who had a very active life, who was married, whose husband is now for whatever reason no longer there. She has perhaps gotten a little more formidable in her older years, a little more aggressive because she's lonely. She handles her neediness by demanding of others. I've known people like that. We all have.

EM: Are you drawing on any people you know?

KJ: Sure, people I knew back in the town I lived in, Lake Forest, Illinois. There was always one or two like that in the community. They were always kind of in your life or in your way or in your face or something.

EM: What would you like to have happen with Mrs. McCluskey?

KJ: I'd like to find out what her past relationships have been. It would be fun to have her be fleshed out a little bit, but there are an awful lot of characters on the show and it's kind of hard to flesh everybody out.

EM: You seem to be especially busy these days with Housewives and your other work.

KJ: And of course all this happens right at Thanksgiving, right? I have gone a year without having another gig. And now it's like, "boom-ditty-boom, well, okay."

EM: So your life is no different from anyone else's. Everything happens at once.

KJ: Yes, everything happens at once and then the dog gets sick.

EM: Oh, no!

KJ: [Laughs] No, not really. But I had to put my cat down two weeks ago. I had him for 20 years. I have another one who's 17.

EM: Wow. What's your secret?

KJ: Cat food that's good for their kidneys. Low PH.

EM: I understand you started acting a bit later in life than most.

KJ: Yes, about 22 years ago when I was in my 40s. I began doing community theatre in Lake Forest.

EM: When did you make the big move to Los Angeles?

KJ: In '95.

EM: It seems you were very busy right from the start.

KJ: I got very, very lucky. I got into a very good system right away here, getting myself noticed by casting directors, and then I got some jobs and got an agent and started to go from there. I did a lot of self-promoting. Not publicity self-promoting, but good business practices in terms of getting myself out to the things you should get to and meeting the people you need to meet.

EM: And you were in your 50s at that time.

KJ: Oh, yeah. I was 56.

EM: I'm sure you know that this goes completely against the norm in Hollywood, starting a career at that age.

KJ: I know that. I had a son living here so I had a couch to sleep on. I kid you not, I even did one of those, "I'll just try it for six months and see what happens." [laughs] If it didn't work, so what? I had a house in Florida. I could go back there. I had a good cater-waiter job. I could always do that again. But it worked!

EM: That's very inspiring to an awful lot of people.

KJ: I understand that it is. It was never meant to be inspiring. It was never meant to be anything other than an attempt. But I wasn't afraid to fail at the attempt. I wasn't identifying myself as the attempt. If I didn't make it I would have gone on with the rest of my life.

EM: What was your first job in L.A.?

KJ: It was on the show Family Matters. Do you remember Urkel? I played the clerk in a grocery store that somebody tried to rob and Urkel inadvertently foiled the robbery. I think I had one line. "Eek" or something like that. [laughs]

EM: It's quite a leap from Urkel to The West Wing.

KJ: I know. There were some nice jobs in between. ER, and some comedies, and Roseanne, and a bunch of other stuff.

EM: You're probably best known for playing Mrs. Landingham.

KJ: Absolutely … and I plan on making Karen McCluskey just as well known!

EM: Are you surprised at her enduring popularity, even though she was killed off at the end of the show's second season?

KJ: I have people who still come up to me and say, "Oh my God, I cried." The first thing many people say to me is, "Mrs. Landingham!" I am surprised. Apparently she struck a chord in a lot of people. She was the grandparent that everybody kinda wanted, friendly and affable but with a steel rod up her spine and not afraid to tell the truth.

EM: The Christmas episode of The West Wing in which we learned that Mrs. Landingham had lost two sons was one of the most moving hours of television ever.

KJ: It was beautifully written. I have two sons. I lived through the Vietnam War. My sons weren't there, but having had the experience of knowing what Vietnam felt like over here and the experience of having sons made it rather easy to talk about and basically be the person who did have sons that died there, as people have sons that are dying now in Iraq. After Vietnam a whole generation came up that didn't know what that felt like.

EM: Were you shocked when they told you they were going to kill her off?

KJ: Yes and no. It was presented to me in a way that indicated that I would have many more appearances after her death and that she would be back to be in the president's memory or for him to have conversations with her. Of course that never happened and, you know, that's the way it comes down sometimes. That was a good lesson in how Hollywood works. I learned that lesson and I was better for having learned it.

EM: You must have been struck by the outpouring of emotion at the time of her death.

KJ: It was not I that was struck by it so much as, frankly, the people involved with the show. I think they miscalculated on that one.

EM: It must have felt nice to know your work had meant so much to so many people.

KJ: It was a wonderful validation. In many ways it was probably more a validation than the Emmy was. You know, that's what an actor wants to do. An actor wants to strike a chord.

EM: You played God on Joan of Arcadia.

KJ: I played Old Lady God. That was the name of the character. There were several Gods. There were two or three of us who repeated over the seasons. Old Lady God was the one who many times set an obscure chore that Joan was to attempt …

[The sound of a doorbell interrupts the call. It's a delivery of some kind. Joosten pauses to answer, returning to the phone moments later.]

KJ: Well, isn't that interesting. That was my dead cat's ashes. I put the cat down here at home. Part of that service is the vet that comes to the home puts down the animal and then takes it to a crematory. Then they send you a little bill and once you pay the bill you get the animal's ashes in a box. Now I've got to figure out what the heck you do with cat ashes in a box.

EM: You could put them in your garden.

KJ: Yes, I could do that. Or I could just put him in a thing and say, there's the cat. [laughs] Getting back to Old Lady God, she would kind of point Joan toward whatever the moral of the storyline was.

EM: Not very many people get to play God.

KJ: Isn't it fun?

EM: How did you prepare for that?

KJ: I filled up the pool and walked across it. [laughs] No, I'm just kidding!

EM: I remember seeing you on Scrubs.

KJ: Yeah. That's again where I died.

EM: They killed you on General Hospital, too.

KJ: They hung me! That was great fun. Here's the thing about that. They hung me because I was supposed to be a witness about some other murder that was being investigated. But my murder was never investigated! It just sort of went by the board.

EM: Is there anything else you're working on?

KJ: This is National Lung Cancer Awareness month and I'm a lung cancer survivor. This is my fifth year of survival. I'm working with a group called the National Lung Cancer Partnership that is devoted to research on the differences between men and women's lung cancers, which are significant. I was trying to figure out a way to publicize that and then I discovered that there are no lung cancer survivor networks in Hollywood because nobody will admit to ever having had it, apparently. So I decided to form my own Hollywood lung cancer awareness survivor group.

EM: When did you start your group?

KJ: About a month ago. I'm the only member. I have meetings with myself at local restaurants. It is possible to survive! It is something that can be done.