Veteran comedian Renée Taylor reminisces about her life in entertainment, the many famous friends she’s made and her eternal battle with weight in “My Life on a Diet,” her solo show Her autobiographical feature opens at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on April 5.
Written by her late husband of 53 years and frequent collaborator, Joseph Bologna, who passed away in August 2017, the show was an off-Broadway success in 2018. The magazine took a chance. watch a recording of one of those performances before a phone conversation with Taylor.
The 80-year-old actress is known for her role as Fran Drescher’s mother, Sylvia Fine, in “The Nanny” and for appearing in “The Productions,” Adam Sandler’s “The Do-Over,” and “How I Met Your Mother.” ” and “How to Be a Latin Lover,” collaborating on 22 projects with Bologna, including plays, TV series and movies, and four screenplays, the most notable of which is “ Lovers and Other Strangers” was nominated for an Oscar.
“Joe thought it would be helpful and inspiring for people to share my experiences as a young actress and all the diets I did,” Taylor said. “I dedicate this show to him.”
Bologna is heavily present in Taylor’s stories and images are projected behind her throughout the show. She also frequently spoke fondly of her mother, Frieda Wexler. “I know my mom is funny,” Taylor said. “She wants to be an actress. I offered her a role in [the 1971 film] ‘Made for Each Other.’”
Taylor began writing essays about her “eccentric family” in middle school and made her professional theater debut at age 15 as a slave girl in a Purim pageant at Madison Square Garden. “I got $5 for dancing on stage,” she said. “Mevyn Douglas plays the king.”
“Taylor made her professional stage debut at age 15 as a slave girl in a Purim pageant at Madison Square Garden. “’I get $5 for dancing on stage.’”
Other famous names tell her story, including Jerry Lewis, who cast her in her first film, 1961’s “The Errand Boy,” Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe and the women who became friends her relatives, Barbra Streisand, Lainie Kazan and Drescher. Like them, she was known for playing funny Jewish women, especially “very pushy” mothers. Playing Drescher’s bushy-haired, gluttonous mother “was my favorite,” Taylor says.
On the dramatic side, she was offered the role of Golda Meir in the Broadway play “Golda’s Balcony” and regretted not accepting the role. But she later wrote her own show about Israel’s first female prime minister and continued performing it for Jewish organizations and synagogues.
Taylor feels deeply connected to her Jewish identity. “It’s a very strong part of me,” she said. Of Russian ancestry, she grew up in the Bronx, N.Y., in a Reform Jewish home and was a member of the Los Angeles Temple for the Creative Arts for many years. “Joe and I often get up and say the prayers on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. We are very active in the synagogue,” she said. She has been to Israel twice, first for her son Gabe’s bar mitzvah.
Now a writer and filmmaker, Gabe Bologna directed his parents in the comedy “Tango Shalom,” which will soon screen at film festivals. “Joe plays a priest and I play an Orthodox Jewish mother,” Taylor said, adding that Gabe is also a Holocaust scholar. “He wrote a movie about the Holocaust called ‘Brundibar’ that will be shot in the Czech Republic,” she added.
Taylor is working on a couple of her own scripts, one about Mae West and another called “The Book of Joe,” about her husband and their life together. “We love each other and respect each other,” she said. “We had a lot of fun and had a lot of laughs. All of our successes and failures are an adventure. For me, the purpose of life is to grow and be happy. People ask me, ‘Why don’t you retire?’ I say, ‘I’m having too much fun.’”
Taylor has always been deeply interested in psychology and behavior “and why people do the things they do. I probably would have become a psychotherapist if I wasn’t a writer and an actress,” she said. “I also love fashion and I don’t think there are such things as looking or dressing according to your age. You just have to dress to express yourself and how you feel.”
She is excited to be back on stage, making people laugh and sharing her stories. “I love communicating directly with the audience and getting feedback from them. I love when people go backstageloving yourself and keeping your sense of humor. You can’t take yourself seriously.”
