According to Lily Tomlin, the role in her latest film, Grandma, was one she felt so naturally connected with that she couldn't turn it down.

At a press conference in Los Angeles, the Oscar nominee and Tony Award winner opened up on her role in the flick where she plays Elle--a feisty acid-tongued senior citizen dealing with the recent break-up from her same-sex partner while struggling financially. Things get hectic when her granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner) appears, needing money for an abortion in just a matter of hours. So Elle and Sage take a trip around town to see all the people they know to scrape together enough cash for the procedure.

While the film centers around a controversial subject, it's packed with plenty of humor and wit (also the abortion isn't really the crucial situation happening, but more the McGuffin that gives Tomlin and Sage a reason for their journey). The film explores secrets, complicated relationships and the fact that there is always more to learn no matter what age someone is.

Despite decades of experience in movies, this is Tomlin's first leading role in a movie in years. She dished on the similarities she finds between herself and her character, as well as what it is that her character learns so unexpectedly.

Enstars: Do you find yourself to be a lot like your character?
Lily Tomlin: I think [writer/director] Paul [Weitz] really did write it with me in mind. Looking at it from the outside I wouldn't have said that I was like Elle, but I think I must be a great deal like Elle. Because it was so easy, it was so fluid, it was so natural. I mean, there are things you have to transpose yourself from something or some experience or some memory or some other person. But it was terribly natural to me and that was a blessing.

Is it more freeing being in a more indie movie as opposed to larger studio production?
There'd be a lot of emphasis in a big studio movie, getting the moment, getting the joke, getting the humor or something. It'd be too contrived. And this was much more freeing. It was so freeing that I didn't realize how funny it was until I saw it with an audience.

This is your first time playing a gay woman in a really long time. What was it like for you?
I remember saying in an interview that I've played so many different kinds of characters I guess it was good that I turned to playing myself or someone like myself. In The Search [For Signs of Intelligent Life In the Universe], I played [a gay woman]. But yes, this character is very much like me in every way in terms of her youthfulness and her body. She's not stunted in any way from the years she's lived. And I drove my own car and I wore my own clothes so it was quite a bit close to me.

I must say...if Paul hadn't been able to cast so many good actors, none of us would've looked so good. But because every role is just so well-wrought and well-acted it's just a blessing. It's one of those lucky things that happens in your career. You don't plan for it at all.

After playing so many different roles over the years, do you find yourselves to have a stronger and emotional connection to your characters?
It happens so incrementally I don't know that you're even conscious of it or aware of it. I got nominated for my first role Nashville. I've never been nominated since and that was my first movie. So all the movies I've seen [co-star] Sam [Elliott] in when he was younger and so on. I think the instinct is there in most actors, but it has to be on the page.

What was it like working with Julia Garner?
I just fell in love with Julia, we became great friends and right away we bonded. When Paul brought her to my office she was in town and I didn't want her to feel like because she's coming to meet me that I was going to say, "I don't think I like her that much." I said, "Make sure she knows she's got the role." Because I didn't want her in any way to feel discounted or second guessed or anything like that. I knew she was wonderful. And when I saw pictures of her in other small movies she's done, she's just a natural.

What do you think the biggest lesson is that your character learns in this film?
I think when people live long enough and when they have enough sensitivity they're so aware of their own mortality that they still have lights of anger and whatever, but it's mostly against inequity or injustice unless they're not aware of their mortality and that it might still be ego driven. I think you want to make things easier for yourself and for everybody else in some way.

Grandma hits theaters this weekend.

Tags
Movies, Lily Tomlin