Staying Fit
Linda Lavin says that to thrive, “you have to connect.” In her latest role as Norma, a resident at the retirement home at the center of the TV comedy B Positive (CBS, Season 2 premieres Oct. 14, 9:30 p.m. ET), Lavin is eager to make that connection with the show’s audience. “We are telling a story that is very real about people who no longer live at home but have formed a community in a new home, and how that feels and what that looks like,” the Emmy nominee and Tony winner says. “We hope the audience is connecting with us the way Alice [her groundbreaking 1976-85 TV series] connected with us. That, to me, is what it’s all about.”
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Lavin tells AARP how connecting — in both your personal and professional life — keeps you engaging and evolving through your 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and beyond. Turning 84 the day after her show’s second season begins, she offers up her 16 best tips to make it happen.
Be positive
Michael Yarish/Warner Bros. Entertainment
Age: 84 on Oct. 15
Hometown: Portland, Maine
Current Project: B Positive, Thursdays, starting Oct. 14, 9:30 p.m. ET, CBS
In the works: Being the Ricardos, an Aaron Sorkin film that follows the I Love Lucy cast [including Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball and Javier Bardem as Desi Arnaz] as they go from table read through audience filming for a single episode. Lavin will play the role of television writer Madelyn Pugh, who wrote for I Love Lucy and later, under her married name Madelyn Davis, for Alice as well.
TV greatest hits: Santa Clarita Diet; The Good Wife; Conrad Bloom; Room for Two; Alice [Emmy nominee, best lead actress in a comedy series, 1979]; Barney Miller; The Doctors.
Theater greatest hits: Broadway Bound [1987 Tony winner for best actress]; received five other Tony nominations for The Lyons, 2012; Collected Stories, 2010; The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, 2001; The Diary of Anne Frank, 1998; Last of The Red Hot Lovers, 1970.
Binge list: Ted Lasso; Scenes From a Marriage; Godfather of Harlem; Call Your Agent; CSI: Crime Scene Investigation; Law & Order: SVU; Mare of Easttown; Broadchurch.
Guilty pleasure: “I watch a lot of junk [TV] late at night. I watch a lot of Real Housewives — just the horror of watching people behave badly. It’s entertainment. It’s short-lived ... but it’s something to talk about with my show business friends.
Norma is struggling with aging, as I am. Aging is challenging. We’re not the person we used to be. In many ways I identify with her: She has a great sense of humor. She’s bright. She is a woman of substance and irony. She has a perspective of reality that I admire and that is inspiring. I love playing her because she has a self-deprecating sense of humor as well.
Be resilient
Norma has a sense of being abandoned, and that is identifiable with a lot of us. As we grow older, we become more vulnerable. I’m excited to be part of the show and to play a character with whom millions of people will identify, because she is making the best of a situation that has taken her out of her comfort zone — out of her independence.
Be active
My husband, Steve Bakunas, and I have been vital and alive and active together as a team, revitalizing neighborhoods, building a theater out of an auto garage in North Carolina. And now Steve has designed and built a five-suite inn near Hudson, New York. Because of the pandemic, we’ve been living in it.
Be adaptable
When our kids tell us that we have to stop driving, it’s a terrible day in the life of an adult parent because it’s the end of that independence. I know that happened with my father, [so] you make adjustments. My life is about readjustments, one after another. Every one of those readjustments for me is an adventure. How lucky am I to be able to say that?
Be fearless
I faced my fear [shooting last season’s B Positive during the pre-vaccine phase of the COVID-19 pandemic]. I walked through it as I do with many issues in my life. I prepared my own food for the flight. I sat by myself. I wore a mask and a shield. I washed my hands every two seconds. I did everything the CDC told us to do.
Be busy
I had been living in New York City for the first six months of the pandemic, where the epicenter was. I was giving concerts in my apartment with my friend and musical director Billy Stritch. It was kind of a way for me to give back, to participate in connecting again. We did it live on Facebook. I did thirteen concerts; then I did 13 episodes of a little sitcom with my friend, jazz violinist — I have a nightclub act — Aaron Weinstein. It turns out he’s also a comedy writer. He created a character for me [Yvette Slosch], and we did a pandemic sitcom.
