Last year, Glenn Close was on Broadway as Norma Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard,” reprising a role she had originally played in 1993. Since 1974, when she made her début on Broadway, she has won three Tony Awards and three Emmys, and has been nominated six times for an Oscar. Like Desmond, many of Glenn Close’s characters could be described as “difficult”: sometimes scary and possibly insane, but, above all, just complicated. But Close bridles at the notion that any of them—even Alex Forrest, the unhinged lover she played unforgettably in “Fatal Attraction”— villains. “I don’t think of them as evil,” Close said to The New Yorker staff writer Michael Schulman, at the New Yorker Festival in 2017. “The only evil character I’ve ever played was Cruella!”
No persons identified in this episode.
This episode hasn't been transcribed yet
Help us prioritize this episode for transcription by upvoting it.
Popular episodes get transcribed faster
Other episodes from The New Yorker Radio Hour
Transcribed and ready to explore now
How the Trump Administration Made Higher Education a Target
17 Oct 2025
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Brian Eno Knows “What Art Does”
03 Jun 2025
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
27 May 2025
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Cécile McLorin Salvant Performs Live In-Studio
23 May 2025
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From “On the Media” ’s “Divided Dial”: “Fishing in the Night”
20 May 2025
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson on President Joe Biden’s Decline, and Its Cover-Up
16 May 2025
The New Yorker Radio Hour