The legendary Patty Duke guest stars tonight at 9p on Lifetime’s Drop Dead Diva as a woman who needs Jane to defend her. Duke plays Rita, a woman who was fired from her job and loses her pension after she took down a shoplifter. At first Jane thinks it is an open and shut case, but this wasn’t her first or tenth wrongdoing at the store. The manager supplies video of her telling customers the products there are basically crap, so Jane feels that her case is lost. Will Jane be able to get Rita her pension back or will she lose the case? Tune in for this funny episode that shows a different side of Miss Patty Duke.
Earlier this week I was lucky enough and honored to be on a conference call with one of the greatest actresses of our time and she talked to us about her role on Drop Dead Diva and what’s next for her.
Miss Duke told us she loves to work and she especially loved working on the show. She said, “I tell you, I had not had that kind of fun on a set in I don’t know, maybe 40 years. I mean, the people were so just gracious and kind first of all and Brooke, on my lord, the first day that we worked she had about six single-spaced pages to say and I was the defendant and I was sitting there on my hands doing nothing while this woman is struggling to get through six pages. She’s brilliant. She’s very loving and honest to God, I was just thrilled to have the opportunity. You know, at my age we don’t work all that often and I’m a workaholic so I’ve been in withdrawal for quite some time now.”
When she was asked how much she is like her spunky character on the dramedy she said, “I think there’s quite a bit. I was going to say not much at all but I just realized that yes, there’s a lot of me in Rita. I don’t know that I would be as bold as Rita under the same circumstances. I had to go way inside and find that kind of brass.”
Duke is not the only legend on the show tonight, Rhoda’s Valerie Harper plays a judge on the show also tonight. I had to know from her what it was like to have two such wonderful actresses in one episode. She said, “It was such fun. You know, we were never together. She was on the bench and I was at the events table but at the coffee table, we had a ball but I really felt the mile marker that we were at least in the same space doing what we do. She was so funny.” Both of them are so funny on this episode, that you have to tune in to see them acting together.
And she told us, there is a funny role she is dying to play, “I would like to – truthfully – I would feel that I’d died and went to heaven if I could get the part of Memaw on The Big Bang Theory.” So let’s get her that role.
Whether she gets that role or not, she has another one lined up. She let us know she is going back to the stage in a role she has wait forever to play. She revealed to us, “The timing is only perfect. All my life I have wanted to play Mary Lincoln. I have missed every production that was done because somebody else did it. I am now a year away or a year in the process of getting ready to play Mrs. Abraham Lincoln. First we’ll play it in the museum in Illinois and then – are you ready for this – at the Ford Theater.”
So now we know how much fun she has on DDD, how much fun she would have playing on TBBT and how excited she is for her next role. This was my favorite thing she told us on the call, “I’m a giggler, I’m a giggler, yes.” So be prepared to giggle like her when you watch her on Drop Dead Diva tonight.
