Mary Pat Gleason

Mary:(On using humor to talk about painful experiences) One of the people I began working with was Michael Patrick King, who wrote [many episodes of]Sex and the City. Michael has been a dear friend of mine since I was 21 or 22 years old. Michael and [director] Lonny Price have got to be two of the funniest people on this planet. Whenever I would start to tell a story that was scary, or depressing or frightening, Michael would literally scream at me, "Don't scare me!" And I said, "Michael, there are people out there that are scary." And he said, "I don't want to hear about them from you... you can make me laugh.That's what I need. There's no point for you to go onstage and scare me, but not many people can walk onstage and make us laugh." Both Michael and I and Lonny and I agree that Norman Cousins is right. If you can laugh at something, it loses its power over you. If you can laugh about it and talk about it, you can heal.

Mary:(About her "The Middleman" co-star Matt Keeslar) I think he is happy and he's a delight to work with. He is one of the hardest working actors that I've ever met and he is on it all the time. He takes beautiful care of himself, he's fit and he eats well and he's not a spoiled actor at all. He's always funny and prepared. Both Natalie and Matt have their lines down and they know what they are doing and that makes it so easy for everyone around them, because it's so easy for a lot of actors to develop bad work habits.

Mary:(About the physical aspects of her role on "The Middleman") The give me stuff to do and I have to make myself limber in two weeks sometimes! I don't know if there is another group of writers that think that a woman over forty can move and can speak foreign tongues and do the stuff that I get to do. I'm sure I'll have lots of friends that will be calling me and telling me I am so lucky because of what I get to do.