Julia Duffy spent seven years portraying the self-involved, rich maid Stephanie Vanderkellen on Bob Newhart’s hit sitcom, "Newhart." Duffy was hilarious in the part and the critics knew it. She earned Emmy Award nominations for her entire run on the show.
But there’s much more to Duffy than her work on "Newhart." She’s worked with fellow Minnesotans, the Coen Brothers, as well as Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key. She also played Allison Sugarbaker on "Designing Women," and has performed in more than 20 plays on and off Broadway.
She’s also the author of "Bad Auditions." Duffy wrote the book to help her fellow actors know what to do, and what not to do, when they audition for a part.
She joined Wisconsin Pubilc Radio's "BETA" from her home in Los Angeles. We talked about her iconic roles and how she landed the parts.
"Well, it was a guest role and I was asked to read for it," Duffy said about her role as Stephanie. "And I was a little nervous because I had just done a guest role on 'Cheers' and the synopsis of the story sounded so much like the one I'd done on 'Cheers.'"
"And I thought, is that a weird thing to do, to do the same thing in the same season? Of course, I realized it was a very different character. And as I was worrying about that — because I worry about everything — my husband said, 'You adore Bob Newhart. Are you crazy?'"
Duffy realized that the "Newhart" character was very different from the character she had played on 'Cheers.' She did not read with Newhart during the audition for his show.
"I knew his work so well. I knew what made him funnier. I knew what worked with him to get a reaction from him," she said.
There were a lot of changes made to Duffy's character when she joined the cast of "Newhart." She said she took opportunities to offer input into the development of Stephanie Vanderkellen, making suggestions to the show's writers, who Duffy said were "the best writers possible."
"I didn't know why anybody would think she was funny if she was just a snooty snob," Duffy said of Stephanie. "I felt that she had to be in some way unaware of her own actions. You had to free up the audience to laugh."
There was such great chemistry between Duffy's character and Peter Scolari as Michael Harris. Duffy said that's all Scolari.
"I have to say that I think everybody who ever worked with Peter had chemistry with him," she said. "Peter brings the chemistry. He always did. And I can't imagine anyone ever felt any other way when they worked with him. It was instant as far as I was concerned.
"We were very different people. And yet we barely had to discuss anything. We heard the joke the same way. We were completely in tune from the start. Our comedy sensibility was identical."
The final episode of "Newhart" aired on May 21, 1990, and made TV history with what is considered by many to be one of the best series finales in TV history. In the episode Bob Newhart's character is knocked out by a golf ball and wakes up to find himself back in a previous television series. The entire "Newhart" show was just a dream. Newhart's wife Ginny came up with the idea for the ending.
"I thought it was a brilliant idea," Duffy said. "I thought it was hilarious and perfect. It was such an outrageous meta kind of thing to do. Nobody had seen that on a network TV show before. To me, it just made it even hipper and funnier and groundbreaking."
'Bad Auditions' and 'Mrs. American Pie'
In 2018, Duffy wrote the book, "Bad Auditions."
"I have spent all these years going to auditions. I should spread what I've learned," Duffy said. "And I thought, but there's so many actors who have written books about acting and getting in the business and auditioning. And then it occurred to me, I should just write about the bad ones because something was learned every time. And I knew that I had a message to pass on, and I really wanted to pass it on. So I started writing it."
Duffy noted the book feels a bit out of date now because in-person auditions aren't as common as they once were.
One of Duffy's most recent projects is an Apple TV+ series called "Mrs. American Pie." It's based on the 2018 novel of the same name by Juliet McDaniel, with "Palm Beach Society ladies" played by Kristen Wiig, Allison Janney, Laura Dern and Carol Burnett.
"Kristen (playing main character Maxine Simmons) is somebody who wants to get into Palm Beach Society. 1969 is when it takes place, right before the world changes. But they are very much doing things the way they always have been," Duffy said of the series. "They're a throwback. Ricky Martin is in it, and he is the pool boy. It's a very lavish show. It's so beautiful to look at and it's so funny."