Allison Tolman is thrilled to be working in Los Angeles, on a critically acclaimed half-hour show that has aired 18 episodes. She also feels a little guilty. “The side effect is survivor’s remorse,” says the star of NBC’s St. Denis Medical. “It’s odd to be getting good news when no one else in town is. You feel like you can’t talk about work.” But Tolman did talk about work over Zoom in May, revealing how her new gig as workaholic nurse Alex is a career first, the lessons of her Fargo success and why she’s still not sure Hollywood knows what to do with her.
In the decade since you broke out with Fargo, what’s surprised you about what followed — in good ways and in bad ways?
St. Denis Medical is now, next to Fargo, the most successful project that I’ve done. In all that time in between, I was really careful about the projects that I took. I was pleased to get the work — even though I wasn’t finding something that hit again. I was doing anthologies. I was doing films. I was doing shows that only went for one season. St. Denis is my first pickup.
That’s nuts.
Isn’t that crazy? And I’ve been working very steadily for the past 10 years, and this is a first. Yesterday, I went to go check on the writers and bring them treats and say hi. Driving back on the lot, I was like, “Oh, this is what this business is supposed to feel like.” Also, after Fargo, I thought that more of those prestige projects would come easier to me. But I still think people are not quite sure where to put me.
That’s a question I ask of a lot of people, whether they think Hollywood knows what to do with them.
I keep elbowing my way into things, but I feel like it’s a failure of imagination to think, “Could this woman be this? Could she be the bad guy? Could she be the dumb slut?”
I rewatched Krampus over the holidays and just thought, “Why can’t Allison Tolman play a bitch more often?”
Right? Let her be a bitch. Let her be insufferable. I tend to be very nice — a lot of blue-collar jobs. Cops and moms and nurses, with a few exceptions. In Why Women Kill, I was a murderer, so that was a wonderful departure.
A big narrative in your press around the show’s launch was about your decision to pass on roles that mention a character’s weight. How many of those scripts were you getting?
A lot. I think people think they’re being heroic for saying, “This person is fat, but she’s just like everyone else.” OK, good job. Way to go. I don’t even know if that’s the version of the script they send to everyone. But I’ve gotten a lot of scripts where they’re like, “She’s chubby, she’s kind of dumpy. She’s a bit overweight …”
One perk of Allison Tolman’s new gig on St. Denis Medical? Wearing scrubs to work: “Not only is it comfy, it’s one less thing to think about.”
Ron Batzdorff/NBC
“Dumpy” seems especially wild.
It’s crazy, the things that writers write — even just in descriptions of people. It’s like they haven’t thought far enough down the road to think, “A casting director has to put out a casting notice for the fat woman at the movie theater.” That’s the name of the character!
This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.