Last month, Marisa Tomei took part in one of the most magical live TV events in recent memory—a revival of two of Norman Lear’s most beloved sitcoms, All in the Family and The Jeffersons. The show aired on ABC, with a brief introduction from Lear and Jimmy Kimmel. And from her first moments onscreen as Edith Bunker, Tomei was the night’s runaway star.

The event opened with Tomei sitting next to Woody Harrelson, who stepped into the role of Carroll O’Connor’s iconic curmudgeon, Archie Bunker, in a restaging of All in the Family’s season four episode “Henry’s Farewell.” As Edith, Tomei brought all of the attributes that made Jean Stapleton the beating heart of the original series: joy, lovable innocence, and a quiet dignity that counteracts the harsh insults her husband constantly throws her way. Although it was a quick, one-time turn, Tomei’s virtuosic performance was borderline miraculous to watch—and as such, quickly inspired casual chatter, as viewers wondered aloud if this could be the turn that wins Tomei her first Emmy.

When Tomei sat down for an interview on this week’s Little Gold Men podcast, though, more than anything, her pervading sentiment was one of gratitude. Ahead, a transcript of the podcast interview—plus, the one burning question about Avengers: Endgame Tomei could answer. You can also listen to this week’s Little Gold Men below.

Vanity Fair: I’m here with Marisa Tomei to talk about the revival, the live revival of Norman Lear’s All in the Family and The Jeffersons. Marisa starred in the All in the Family revival as Edith Bunker, originally played by Jean Stapleton. The first thing I’m wondering is was Jean Stapleton and influential figure for you growing up or in your early days as a performer? You just captured her energy as Edith so well.

Marisa Tomei: Well who doesn’t love Jean Stapleton? I mean she’s so deeply, deeply beloved. When I was little watching All in the Family, I didn’t really relate to Edith. I was looking at Gloria and I was looking at her hair and looking at her shoes and who was coming to the door. I wasn’t as aware of the fabric of the family dynamics as much as the events and, oh, they were going to do a flashback to when Mike and Gloria got married. So I was looking at different things. But yes, she’s someone who is an incredible performer, a theater actress as well, and in many mediums has done incredible work. Once I revisited this and we started talking about Edith, I was all over again blown away by all her choices and how she constructed this along with the writers.

She was such a crucial part in the show, just sort of as its heart and soul. I’m wondering how do you prepare to take on that role and to become Jean Stapleton and by extension Edith?

Well, I had a little talk with Jean above, and then I didn’t really want to look at her or kind of commune with her until I felt solid that I understood Edith. Even though she’s the conduit for Edith and she created Edith along with the writers. In a show that long, we know that they’re doing that hand in hand. Well, first I asked what’s the mandate? You know, what are we doing here? Is this an homage? Is it more of an SNL impersonation kind of situation? What’s the endgame too? I thought it was just a one-night-only thing then at one point it seemed like maybe there was going to be, are we angling to revive the whole show? I wasn’t really sure. There were a lot of rumors going around. So I spoke to Brent [Miller], who’s Norman Lear’s producer and asked him and really he came back saying, Norman says the actors should really, as if they got this script and it hadn’t ever been cast before, what would you do with it? I found that really daunting. It was not exactly what I wanted to hear.

I imagine that would be intimidating, to sort of taking on a role and being told no, just treat it like a new script when somebody else did this role for, like you said, so long. How do you think through doing that, but then also keeping it in at least the spirit that she did it in?

Of course, because we love that spirit and that’s why we want to see it again. We want to be with those characters as they were created, and also listen to them anew in this time. So that was exactly the question. How, how do we do that? And I think each of us as performers answered that for ourselves differently because Norman, after he left us with that, there wasn’t anything else to do. Cause Jimmy Burrows came on the final the week, we only had, we rehearsed for five days and he was there for that week, but he wasn’t available before. And I started before because I was so freaked out that I had committed to this project. And as you, we were talking earlier how, how much we love this show and how much it meant to us growing up and, and what a national treasure Norman Lear is, and all of those things that are, that are, fill our hearts with so much love that that was why I had to say yes, even though I thought as soon as I said yes, I thought, what have I done?

I reached out to Woody Harrelson to ask him, are you, are you going? What kind of, what, what, let’s figure this out together because you know, that’s kind of what we’re doing here. So I asked Woody and he said, hey, I’m working on the accent. We did this via text and then we didn’t, that was really it. I didn’t really know if he was going to go full Archie, what he was going to do with his hair or his body. And those were questions that I ultimately had to answer for myself with the incredible team that they had assembled. So one thing that I asked for early on was a singing coach and a wig. So I thought, I just need to have those in a contract so that I know that those will be there.

Solid requests.

So that created what Norman wanted, which was go back to it. And what would the history of these characters really be? And he had put them in, put it in there. So that was some of the beginning, the beginning of it. But then you have to go back to Edith herself and what Jean was doing because, because we want Jean, we want an essence of Jean. It has to be, that’s what we love. And the lines, the intonation, which I, I tried not to do exactly, but just to get the spirit of what was behind it and basically her spirit, which was such a beautiful, beautiful place to be is that she is nonjudgmental, she doesn’t lie, and her credo is everybody is somebody when you love them. So I just put myself into this stream of love that Jean created via Edith and tried to see everything, everything through her eyes. Because it’s hard to think about what Archie says to her sometimes now as women, women and men looking at it now. I was like, Oh? How’s this going fly?

That is actually a thing I was wondering is just, to me from the outside, the hardest thing about this role would be capturing Edith’s dignity. Archie was always, like we said, so harsh with her, but the cleverness of the writing was that she would always drop these great, kind of innocent zingers that gave her a power of her own. I’m wondering whether that was a concern for you, sort of making sure that she didn’t come across as a doormat and sort of bringing that strength that she had out.

Yeah. Yes, but not, it was a concern, but nothing I could do, consciously. Oh, we’re going to change this so that it reads stronger. And of course, we weren’t going to change the lines. But I think that what I was just talking about, about the power of that, that the enormous heart that she has, is the strength. So once that’s aligned, it just naturally has its own power. When you were asking me about how did I relate to Edith, I actually, it took quite a few beats and then I thought—Oh my, Gracie Allen. Because I could relate more to Gracie Allen initially probably because of maybe her glamour or the relationship that she has with her husband. So it was kind of a way in that I realized, Oh, Edith is in a long line of hilarious dingbats, but that have also certain brilliance to them.

How do you work to build rapport with Woody Harrelson so quickly? It was striking how transportive it was immediately to watch you two singing behind the piano. And that seems to me like something that would be very difficult to achieve with five days to prepare.

That was one of the first questions I asked: “Are we doing the song?” Half-hoping and half-fearing. It was built into the schedule. And then maybe by day two or three Jimmy Burrows thought, No, let’s do the song live as well. That just sent the next level of pressure and chills and adrenaline through my body. I had had a really bad experience in high school where I was supposed to sing a song from Pippin and I got laryngitis. So I always have felt like I can’t sing in public. Not to that level, even though the song is, you have so much leeway obviously. Jean was a really great singer, which was another really interesting thing. When you see the shows, she talks about Kay Kyser and Deanna Durbin. And when you look at those performers, Oh, that’s the vein of this kind of singing she’s trying to emulate. So I could really get to the root of what that was and the joy of how she aspired to be them in her own little girl fantasies. And uh, so over the course of the next three days, Jimmy Burrows would say, I’m just going to ask you every day and we can just practice every day. And hopefully when it’s time to do it, you’ll do it live. And Woody was very encouraging. He has a really good voice. Then we did it the night before with an audience so that we could—so on Tuesday night we did it taped in case anything should happen to the live show, they’d have something to put up. And it also gave us a chance to practice with an audience. So that day I felt safe because it was taped to do it. And that really broke the ice for me. And I thought, Okay, well just take another risk. It’s, it’s fun.

Were there any aspects of doing this live on that night that you just hadn’t expected? Was there anything just different about it? From what you had thought it would be?

Well, it was different from the taped show for sure because I think the audience was also very heightened. Their adrenaline was in it with us on the Wednesday night. So the laughs were kind of heartier or more prolonged or more, there was more surprise and delight. And then just the sheer joy of everyone revisiting this beloved show together. There was a lot of emotion. I would love to do this every week. It was just, it was so exciting and so terrifying and such an incredible format because you’re, it’s like, it’s like a play, but it’s short, but everyone gets to see it, and you’ve done it. So in terms of like actual work hours and stuff, it’s really great.

That makes sense. I feel like I would kick myself if I didn’t ask just what was it like working on this with Norman Lear?

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Well, he is the fountain of depth and humor and vision that we know him to be. He’s very easy going with it. But he came to every day, whether it was a run-through or just a short rehearsal, he was there to see at least the run-through, give feedback—he didn’t give it really directly to us, he’d give it through Jimmy. But his eyes were on it. And the grace that he carried, because it’s intimidating. He just was there to keep an eye on these beloved characters, the pacing, and how it was all coming together, but also he was a great support. He believed in us. And so there wasn’t a tense atmosphere at all. It was very welcoming. He called me. That’s how I got involved, actually. I don’t know how he got my cell number.

He’s Norman Lear, he has ways.

Yeah. He said, Marisa, remember we met 30 years ago. I told you I’d call you 30 years ago. I’m calling you now!

Did you remember this?

Oh yeah, I did. That’s what was amazing about it, that was an actual encounter we had had and he said he’d call.

When Norman Lear says he’s going to call you, I imagine that is a thing that you remember forever until you get the call.

I kind of feel like I was discovered by him, through this, in a way.

And what’s it been like just to see the responses to it? There was so much, I mean joy and particularly I think for your performance in the way that you captured that character.

The joy, we all felt that joy. As soon as I stepped on the set, I cried. I’m sure every one of those performers did as well. It’s also so trippy, like you think you’re going through the TV into this fantasy. Who in their wildest dreams would think I’m going to be part of All in the Family and stand on that set and say any of those lines. It’s just one of life’s surprises. I was feeling like, eh, what’s going on? What is there? And then life just kind of brought this incredible surprise in. And so that there was that joy, and also the conversation around how topical that the episodes are and all the right, how solid the writing is, how the writing more than holds up is just, is so, so robust.

It’s borderline eerie.

It can be sad if you think about it a lot. But the country had lived through 1968 at that time and that family was processing all those changes and just like we’re processing so many changes in the country now.

Over the years and even recently you have taken on just such a wide variety of roles in the sense of you’ve been in this sitcom revival, you were in Avengers: Endgame, a very big franchise film, and obviously the Spider-Man universe, you had a cameo in Handmaid’s Tale relatively recently, last season. It just strikes me how again, varied these roles are. I’m wondering what kinds of parts are you seeking out right now? Is there a characteristic that you look for?

Part of it’s what comes along and uh, and then of course who else is involved. I’m excited that this is a bit of a comedy cycle for me, it’s really so it’s so much fun. So, you know, it’s wonderful when it has relevance either to my personal world or to the world at large, which obviously All in the Family was something that was, was part of it. So like relating almost thematically in a certain ways is always something I actually look for, or just that it resonates that way.

And I do have one question about Avengers: Endgame. I was reading that the cast for the funeral scene toward the end had been told that it was a wedding that they were filming.

Yeah.

I was wondering, were you told that? Did you go in that day expecting to shoot a wedding?

Yes, we were told it was a wedding. But you know, when the costume designer is putting you in black…

So you had sort of picked up that something might be amiss?

Yeah, it was in the ethers.

I think we’re about ready to sign off, but, uh, is there anything that I haven’t asked you about that you’d like to talk about?

Oh, well when you had asked me earlier about Jean and Edith, one of the most wonderful discoveries was to see the depth and breadth of her craft. We were looking at, for example, the costumes, and she wore a lot of green and she wore like a lavender color. And sometimes she wore coral. But of course it’s like, that’s what maybe suited Jean and maybe suited her skin tone. And maybe that was just what was around at that time. But then when I got to look at the costumes with Keri [Smith], our costume designer, we tried on a bunch of things, things that I thought, well maybe this would be a better color for me or maybe this would be more comedic. No, Jean had figured it out that the blues and the greens looked perfect, and that kind of pattern, on that set. So it was this full cycle of understanding that a lot of thought went into this and this choice and this choice. And after going through that long process of understanding Edith, the character and some of Jean’s choices. On that final day is when I went back to Jean because I said, I’m going to not talk to you for a while, and not think about you. And that’s when I lit a candle to her and had a conversation with her—I’m sorry, I’m emotional—and thanked her. Because I really understood that not only what she did as a thespian, but also where her heart was. And because a lot of her is in that.

I mean, your connection is so evident and it really came through. So thank you again so much for taking the time to speak with me.

Thanks, Jean.

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