Cheryl Hines looks more diminutive in person than she does in her spacious Los Angeles home berating TV hubbie Larry David on HBO’s award winning comedy, “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”   For her portrayal of Cheryl David, Hines has become a two-time Emmy nominee and has successfully crossed over into feature films (“RV”, “Keeping Up With the Steins”), due to the success of her TV show. 

Today, Cheryl breezes into the room wearing a dainty black silk blouse, with dainty black and gold earrings, offsetting a very large round diamond ring and simple white gold wedding band.  She’s here to talk about her latest big screen role of Becky in writer/director/actress Adrienne Shelly’s last picture, “Waitress”.   Sadly, Shelly was murdered in her New York City apartment before she was able to see the rave reviews her film received in Sundance or the critical praise it is now receiving.
The movie serves up a sweet, sassy and delicious slice of life, revealing the power of friendship, motherhood and the willingness to take a chance.  Set in a small Southern town, Becky is a brassy, quick-tongued waitress who helps serve up Jenna’s homemade pies in the diner where everyone congregates.  

With names like “I Don’t Want Earl’s Pie” and “Kick in the Pants Pie”, what would your pie be called?

Life’s a Joke.

And in it would be?

Got to be chocolate and maybe some hot sauce to throw people off.  Spicy.

Is that how you live life?
Spicy? 

Yeah.  It depends.  I think you can’t take everything too seriously or you’ll make yourself crazy.  So yeah, there are aspects of that.

Is the Southern accent something of your own creation or something Adrienne coached you or someone who thought it should be a thick, southern accent?
 
Well, I grew up in Tallahassee, Florida.  And my mom calls me and says (in a Southern drawl), `Cheryl, it’s your mama.’  And I go `I know’.  I grew up in the South and Adrienne and I had a discussion about it and she goes `it’s perfect’. 

Your character was basically the comic relief.  Was that something you wanted to do?

Well, Adrienne wrote the script and it really didn’t change much from the time I read it to when we shot so this character was written that way.  And Adrienne, when we were shooting it, was pretty liberal about letting me do what I thought the character should do.  We worked together that way.

Were you able to improvise any lines – there is one I thought might have been yours?

Ha, ha, that’s interesting.  I don’t think I did improvise any lines, but I’m curious to hear about the one you thought…

About the 5 minute condom.

No, it wasn’t.  I’d like to take credit for that, but… 

What was it like working with Andy Griffith?

He’s amazing.  We were shooting this little independent film in the middle of nowhere in this diner and in comes Andy Griffith.  He was just so great in what he did and watching that scene he did with Keri Russell was really mesmerizing.  I was just standing there thinking Oh, I’m watching a legend now.  It was pretty amazing. 

We heard the film was shot on a low budget in 20 days.  So was it a financial decision, an emotional decision on why you took the role?

(leans in toward the mic).  It was not a financial decision.  It was an emotional decision.  I read the script and loved the role that Adrienne had created.  And I thought she did such a good job not only creating these characters but capturing the complexity of life and the choices that we make.  The idea that life isn’t black and white; sometimes you make the wrong decision but you might be having the time of your life while doing it (laugh) and then is that wrong?  I thought it captured very interesting concepts?

How was she to work with her as a director? 

She was great.  She was a very funny, intelligent, intense, passionate person.  And she knew what she wanted and at the same time, she was somebody you wanted to hang out with at the end of the day.  So it was great.

Do you think it was “Curb” that led to all this movie work for you? 

Absolutely.  Curb has been my introduction to the world.  I mean, if I wasn’t on Curb, would I be getting a role on RV with Robin Williams? 

Probably not.  It would be who’s Cheryl Hines?  It’s been a great opportunity for me to be on a great show, to be a part of it, and be associated with it.

Will you be sad to see it end?

Oh you don’t even know…I’ll be so sad.  I was just telling Larry that it can’t be over.  Maybe I’m in denial but I don’t think it will be over.

Do you think you’re finally in the driver’s seat in terms of your career now, as opposed to people telling you what you should do? 
 
Yeah.  That’s a good question.  I don’t know if an actor ever feels like they’re in the driver’s seat (laugh) but I am at a point where I can read something and say you know what, I don’t love it and I probably don’t want to do it.  Listen, as an actor, to say no to anything is so hard because for so many years you’ve lived in an apartment without a refrigerator cause you couldn’t get arrested.  My husband makes fun of me all the time.  I will read a script and it might not be very good at all, and I might say `the movie’s not that good, the part’s not that good but she has that one line’….  My husband is like, Cheryl, pass.  It’s so hard for me to pass on anything, but now it’s getting easier for me because there are more scripts that are coming in.  Now that I’m very fortunate to work with people like Larry David, Robin Williams, and Barry Sonnenfeld, Adrienne Shelly and the cast of Waitress, you start working with these people so that you want to keep moving in that direction.  What was the question?  So am I in the driver’s seat?  Well, OK, yes.

So you don’t think this will be the last year of Curb?

Well, listen, don’t tell Larry that I said that.  He said he’s 99% sure this is the last season, so I’m just hanging on to that 1%.  Can’t blame me for that, right?  And I think I’m in a little bit of denial too because I can’t possibly imagine my life without Curb Your Enthusiasm?

Would you have a sense of closure if it is that 99% chance? 
Well, not really.  You have to understand that every season that I shot this show, Larry has said this is the last season, from season one.  So every season when we end the show, I have this pleading process…well, the first few seasons, and after awhile, OK, I’ll probably see you next year.  But we never really have any tearful good-byes or anything like that.  Larry is a friend of mine so I’ll see him.  But yeah, there’s never really a sense of closure with it. 

Has improv sort of entered a new phase because NBC is doing their show `Thank God You’re Here’ and it seems a lot more people understand that concept now.
Well, they do seem to understand more now.  You know you have shows like `Whose Line Is It’ which really introduced people to improv and the success of something like Borat, and Reno 911 is improvised and Curb is improvised so people are understanding it more.  People really like the feel of it because it seems real to people as opposed to scripted shows sometimes. 

So when Curb starts up again, are we going to see anything different happening?
Um, yeah.  It is a bit of a different season.  You’ll see some things that you haven’t seen before.  That’s all I can say.

With your character?
Quite possibly.

Does it pick up from Larry’s near-death experience, or does it begin at a new point?
Well, it’s pretty much starting from a new point.  You would have thought that would have changed Larry some, but it really didn’t.

Do you give him suggestions or ideas?
Yeah, a lot.  The episode when my family comes and they make a manger scene out of cookies and he eats the baby Jesus - that came from when I went back to Florida.  I was staying with my family, they made a manger scene of cookies and they’re walking around the house saying nobody eat baby Jesus.  I called Larry and said, OK, if you were here, you’d eat the Jesus cookie and my family would be out of their minds mad at you.  Then we just stayed on the phone and talked for hours until we got to the point where I was like Yeah, they have live nativity scenes and he’s like What??  Yeah, people dress up like Joseph and stand on the lawn and he’s like WHAT??  Actually in this upcoming season, there’s a storyline that comes from me.

If you have one thing to say about Waitress, what would you say about this movie?
I think this is a movie that everybody should see because they will be truly transported into another world.  At the very least, they will be entertained by it.  And at the most, it will leave them thinking about life, who they are and who they want to be. 

Do you think we’ve been missing some of that pure entertainment from movies these days?
 Yeah.  I do.  I know I’m in a good movie when I’m not looking at my watch seeing how much longer I have to sit there.  And with this movie, all of my friends have told me when they watched it, they didn’t want it to end.  They wanted to keep watching these characters and see what they were going to do next.  And I think those kind of movies are rare.

If Adrienne Shelly was here right now what would you want to tell her about working with her and the outcome of the film?
I would just tell her that I am extremely proud of her and I feel very grateful that I had the chance to work with her and the cast.