Staying Fit
Kyra Sedgwick, 57, has been busy in the director’s chair, but she returns to acting in Season 2 of Prime Video’s The Summer I Turned Pretty. “It’s cool to do TV now. It wasn’t cool when I did it,” she says of transitioning from movie roles to TV for her memorable run as deputy police chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on TNT’s The Closer. The show ran for seven seasons and earned Sedgwick a Golden Globe and an Emmy. She shares whether she thinks a Closer reboot is in the cards, who inspired her to start directing and how she keeps the spark alive with longtime husband Kevin Bacon.
Note: This interview was conducted before the SAG-AFTRA strike was announced on July 14.
The Summer I Turned Pretty is based on a young adult (YA) book series. What’s your view on the YA genre?
The first movie I directed was a young adult novel [Story of a Girl] that I read in 2007 and I couldn’t get it out of my head because I felt like it got being a teenage girl so right. What Jenny’s [Jenny Han, author of The Summer I Turned Pretty series] really been able to touch into with this show across generations is just that nostalgia for that moment … when you become aware that you are interesting to someone who interests you in that same way. Suddenly you’re like, Oh, I’m a different version of myself. That’s a moment that the show, even in the title, really touches on in such a fascinating way.
You play the aunt who has a little edge to her — maybe a bit of evil. Is that fun?
Of course. I mean, you want to be the one that’s going to get in there and agitate and shake things up a little bit. I wouldn’t go so far as saying she’s evil. [She has] a little chip on her shoulder. I think she feels hurt. It’s really not her wanting to sell the house that makes her, in my mind, someone who acts out. It’s really the ways in which she is so unforgiving of herself and others that I find to be something that softens and changes during the show in a really great way.
Sedgwick plays the role of Aunt Julia in Prime Video’s “The Summer I Turned Pretty.”
Courtesy of Prime Video
If you could cast yourself in a rom-com, who would be your dream costar?
Oliver Platt. I’ve always thought that even before his Bear resurrection [Hulu series The Bear]. … He’s so tall. I just think we could have a sexy mind thing as well as a physical thing. So witty, so fast.
What’s your favorite rom-com of all time?
It might be [The] Philadelphia Story. … That was such a seminal thing for me. It was like, Wow, they’re yelling at each other, but they really like each other. Oh, they’re bickering. Oh, they must like it. That was just fun and cool.
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You’ve been married to Kevin [Bacon] for 35 years. How do you keep the spark?
Bringing new things into the relationship, new points of view or just ways of seeing the world. We’re both growing and learning new things all the time and bringing them in. Also having new experiences. Having experiences outside of the marriage — not the way that sounds! — but going on a trip or doing something outside of my comfort zone is always fun and interesting to bring back into the relationship.
