The trailer for Grace and Frankie, a new Netflix original program debuting on May 8th, was released today. I watched it and can’t wait to see the 13. I have a feeling this binge will be fast and furious and over in a flash. When I love a show (like Orange is the New Black, like The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), I just can’t stop.

Not only do you have Jane Fonda, who plays Grace, and Lily Tomlin, who plays Frankie – I know, I could stop there and you’d be happy with these two acting goddesses- but now I find you have Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston, who play their husbands who reveal they are gay and love each other. They’re both nearing 70 and are faced with an uncertain future and a new definition of “family” and the results look hilarious and heart-numbing at the same time.

Then you have executive producer Marta Kauffman from Friends, and her partner and Howard J. Morris from Home Improvement.

Need I say more?

Disclosure: I’m a member of the #StreamTeam and receive complimentary Netflix service but all opinions are my own.

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I’m a sucker for Jewish stories that revolve around women, partcicularly going back to Biblical times. Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent was such story story that took the route and appeared on Lifetime a few years ago. It wasn’t the best adaptation but I give the network credit for even trying to tackle such a complicated, brave story (particularly as a former Lifetime staffer).

CBS is bringing another feminist, Biblical tale to the screen as a 4-hour mini-series callled The Dovekeepers (based on a book by Alice Hoffman). It premieres on Tuesday, March 31 and Wednesday, April 1, 2015 (9:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT).

Just in time for Passover, the story is about a group of women whose lives intersected during the siege of Masada. The film is based on true events at Masada in 70 C.E. when Jews were forced out of their homes in Jerusalem by the Romans and then ensconced in a fortress at Masada, a mountain in the Judean desert. Besieged at Masada, the Jews held out for months against the vast Roman armies.

Of the 900 Jews who were captive in the fortress at Masada, holding out for months against the vast Roman armies, it is alleged that only two women and five children were said to have survived the siege. And as this story goes, it was Shirah, a powerful mystic and healer who was trained by Egyptian priestesses to be a faith healer and reader of omens who helps them escape through a system of subterranean cisterns.

For the first time in history, this story is being told from the female perspective. The women at Masada worked together as dovekeepers and shared a bond, all withholding deep secrets. We see flashbacks and hear stories about their mothers, their childhoods, what brought them to this point in history. While the film is a melodrama full of tension, violence and sex (perhaps a bit too much), it’s refreshing to see a major network bring a Jewish, feminist tale to the screen.

This story is a story of survival. It brings to mind the anti-Semitism that exists today and the fights that are ongoing in France and around the world. The main character tells us, “I’m not a woman. I’m a warrior.” It’s this kind of fierce ambition that will push us forward. And it comes from a woman.

Here’s a clip:

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post. I’m working with the folks at Role Mommy but all opinions are my own.

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When Lena Dunham met Hilary Knight, famous for his Eloise drawings, she called it a very visceral, chill-inducing experience. She was meeting someone who’s work had had a profound on her growing up. He, in turn, felt he had known her all his life. They bonded over their creative sparks and collection.  He tells her that Eloise, “this little thing in this little dress” is himself and she feels Eloise is in his DNA.

In the upcoming HBO documentary, It’s Me, Hilary: The Man Who Drew Eloise, Dunham spends time with Knight at his home and hears his life story and how he came to be Kay Thompson’s illustrator of a series that made history. She’s genuinely intrigued by him and the “curated world” he lives in. They share a certain eccentricity and uniqueness unlike many. He shows her his belongings, films, art, really giving her complete access. She talks to his

I read the Eloise books to my daughter and I remember loving them. We watched her DVD’s and I loved her independence, her quirkiness. So did Dunham who tells us, “I remember having an awareness of Eloise and and feeling very strongly that is was mine. I now realize it’s a pretty universal feeling. Eloise does what she wants, when she wants it and she doesn’t brush her hair, she doesn’t care that her stomach hangs over her skirt. So there’s a lot to relate to when you’re a slightly weird child. She has a sense of place and a sense that she deserves to be where she is.”

Dunham and her writing and producing partner, Jenni Konner, do a marvelous job looking at the impact of Eloise on their peers from Fran Lebowitz, Tevi Gavonson and Mindy Kaling, as well as the impact Hilary had himself on family members. Their love for his work is sincere and genuine. They also tell us Knight’s story well, starting when he was a child when fantasy was “probably the most important drive in my life.”

Knight’s relationship with Thompson, an actress who lived on the 13th floor of the Plaza, was real and massive. It completely changed his life.  They worked on three sequels and then she lost interest in the series, which caused a lot of resentment until her death in 1988.

Knight has continued to live a creative life and walk to his own beat ever since. I think that the uber-creative Dunham can relate to him. She says, “I think, in many ways, Hilary does not want to live in the world as we know it. He wants to live in a curated world that he’s created.”

The documentary is a look at an unusually interesting man and his similarities with Dunham (they both share a tattoo and like to have dinner at 6pm) and it’s fascinating. Watch it tomorrow night on HBO at 9pm EST.

Disclosure: I’m a member of HBO’s Documentary Diplomats and was sent a review copy of It’s Me, Hilary: The Man Who Drew Eloise in advance of its premiere to screen. All opinions are my own.

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The week before last, I attended a private screening for Netflix’s new show, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt at the Tribeca Grand Hotel in NYC. I drove myself into the city on a cold winter night for this special event. I had already screened the first episode and was intrigued by the show’s premise about a young girl who escapes after spending  15 years as part of a cult and heads to NYC.

NBC initially passed on this new comedy, co-created by the fabulous Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, and I can’t figure out their rationale.

The event was so very Netflix and perfect for a TV junkie like me. We were welcomed by a room packed with monitors playing ads for their original programming and iPads streaming episodes of one of my favorite shows ever, Friends, clearly an inspiration to the writers of the show. The bar was decorated with pillows and artwork with Netflix logo colors. They served Netflix cocktails and had a candy table that included Twizzlers, Snickers, Twix, and M&Ms, presumably to give the event a Bat Mitzvah-like feel for the stars of the show, also in attendance.

Then we watched the first two episodes of the show, and I can honestly say I was laughing out loud. There is so much to love about this show. For one thing, it’s written and created by the team from 30 Rock so you have a little Liz Lemon, a lot of NYC and much snark. Then you have Ellie Kemper. You might remember her from The Office and Bridesmaids. She plays the role with the right amount of innocence and chearm. She’s reminds me a lot of Marlo Thomas from That Girl - you can’t help but fall in love with her. Then you have Titus Burgess, who plays her roommate. Fresh off the Broadway stage, I feel like he was born to play the part of a struggling actor in NYC. The role must come pretty natural to him. There’s also Jane Krakowski, who plays Kemper’s nanny employer so perfectly. I keep expecting her to break out in song and dance one of these days.

Then came the icing on the cake: an interview and meeting with the three stars. The three were gracious, forthcoming and thrilled with their new show. I’m pictured above with Kemper and Burgess, who I promised I would promote the heck out of the show to! Look for an upcoming post on BlogHer with further bits from the interview.

So, please watch it – it debuts tonight at midnight PST/3am EST on NETFLIX.

Disclosure: I’m a member of the Netflix stream team and receive complimentary Netflix to facilitate my review but all opinions are my own.

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My daughter turned 11 this year and her TV viewing habits and desires certainly changed. As a matter of fact, they started catching up to what I like to watch and her viewing patterns became my viewing patterns. What she watched, I watched. We must have binged several shows for hours and hours, not only on the TV but on the iPad and computer.

Netflix changed the landscape of television for all of us and gave us the ability to watch whatever we want, whenever we want. My daughter and I curled up many the night in my bed with the iPad and binged several episodes of a show at once.  I’m still excited about the shows that await us, but I have to say it takes a long time to get through seven seasons of The Gilmore Girls! We’re on Season five right now.

Other shows that charmed us this year include The New Girl, Freaks & Geeks and Gossip Girl, but no shows charmed us much as The Fosters and Switched at Birth (as well as Chasing Life, not yet on Netflix). ABC Family seems to be the master at producing shows for tweens – shows with real issues that are having the most impact in 2014 – from coming out as a tween to transgender issues to special needs and disabilities to single motherhood. I salute ABC Family for giving me so much to watch and talk about with my tween.

So while I love Netflix for bringing shows into my world like Orange is the New Black and Breaking Bad, two shows with a social conscious, and a slew of movies I couldn’t live without, I also love it for bringing these awesome shows into our lives and I can’t wait to see what shows they get in 2015.

Netflix has not only brought us closer together this year, but it’s also provided an outlet to teach her about pop culture and introduce her to what I love most in life: good TV shows that teach us about social issues, advocacy and difference.

Disclosure: I’m a member of the Netflix Streamteam and receive complimentary Netflix. However, all opinions are my own and I was a fan before I became a part of this amazing group.

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Netflix has films for kids of all ages that dissect friendships, from sibling bonds to classmates. Here are a few suggestions:

Stand By Me

Based on the Stephen King short story The Body, Rob Reiner’s film is about a quartet of boys, inseparable friends all, set out in search of a dead body that one of the boys overhears his brother talking about. It had a slate of actors I followed in the 1980s including the late River Phoenix.

The film teaches kids to support each other, no matter what, and stand by each other.

My Girl

This coming-of-age charmer follows a summer in the life of an 11-year-old girl who learns about love and loss as she grapples with profound changes. It was about a close friendship that grappled with loss and the disillusionment of adolescence. It had some great supporting roles including Dan Aykroid, Griffin Dunne and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Ferris convinces his entire school he’s at death’s door, then hits the streets of Chicago with his girlfriend and best friend for a day of fun. I loved Matthew Broderick as Ferris Bueller, the best friend anyone could have. He’ll show kids what BFF’s are made of.

Charlotte’s Web

When Wilbur the pig discovers he’s destined for the dinner table, kindly spider Charlotte hatches a plan to keep him around. The story, based on the book by EB White, teaches kids the true meaning of friendship, especially when they are having trouble defining the true meaning.

Disclosure: I’m a member of the Netflix Stream Team and post monthly.

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I have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Gilmore Girls on Netflix for a few reasons. For one thing, I selfishly wanted to revisit Stars Hollow, the fictional town in Connecticut in which the show was based. I missed its eccentric residents and I certainly missed Loralai and Rory. From Miss Patty’s Dance School to Luke’s Diner to Kim’s Antiques to Weston’s Bakery, I was eager to revisit parts of the show that remain etched in my memory. I have often wondered how I would perceive these characters and places today, as a mother and resident of a place not that dissimilar. I live in a small town in Westchester, New York – not that far from the border of Connecticut, where we have our own slate of unique places, characters and circumstances.

Since the show aired (2000-2007), my life has changed considerably, and I am now married and the mother of a tween just a few years younger than Rory was when the show started. She and I have recently taken to watching shows together, mostly on ABC Family, and I have always wanted to watch GG with her. She is usually resistant to watching my old favorites, even though she has enjoyed all of the John Hughes films I’ve introduced her (thank god!), too, so I have yet to understand her hesitation. This time I told her to give the show a chance, secretly knowing and hoping she would love it as much as me. She insisted on multi-tasking through the first episode but that has decreased considerably since episode two, so we are on a roll.

To be honest, watching it again as a more “mature” (oy vey) adult, I’m able to keep up with the girls’ banter, which I’ve always loved, better than ever before. There are so many nuances and references to pop culture history that I probably get now, and may not have then. While we were watching the pilot, I found myself explaining things to her that I’m quite sure I didn’t understand then. Or perhaps I didn’t watch the show as intensely, and that’s a skill that’s come with age. Whatever the case, it’s making the experience all the more enjoyable.

As a mother, watching Loraai and Rory’s bond is also more meaningful to me now that it was back then. Then I watched it comparing myself to my own relationship with my mother, which has always been close, but it wasn’t as similar. By that point, I was in college, living away from home, and much of what transgressed between the young mother and teenage daughter was unrelatable.

But now I have a 11 year-old daughter and though I was double Loralai’s age when I had her, I have the same ambitions for her. Loralai wants Rory to go to Harvard. She wants her to do the things she was unable to do in life. She wants her not to fall into the same traps that may have held her back and stopped her from becoming more successful. I’m already a good ten years older than Loralai on the show but I feel the same way in many respects. I’m sure that every mother sees her daughter as her “what if I’d done that/what if I’d done this” – it’s hard not to. It was their significant mother-daughter relationship that helped Rory navigate the waters and not feel pressured. She truly wanted to go to Harvard, and Loralai was skillful at not making her feel obligated to fulfill her lost dreams for herself.

There is so much for me to learn about raising a tween from this show.

Disclosure: I’m a member of the #StreamTeam and receive complimentary Netflix as a member, yet all opinions are my own.

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A few weeks ago, my 11 year-old stumbled into a show on Netflix called The Fosters. I’d heard of it before but had never really paid attention. We eased our way into the first episode and by its end, we were completely and utterly hooked. Hence began a week of a total binge fest in our house. My husband was away on business, so we watched two episodes a night.

If you haven’t watched it yet, you should know that the show follows the lives of two two foster mothers (partners) that share a home with their biological son, adopted twins, and two new foster children. It follows the blended families’ ups and downs and romantic entanglements, not to mention touching on serious and controversial topics. I really appreciate watching a show that introduces my daughter to topics that other shows don’t even go near. Here are some of those topics:

– Adoption

– Foster homes

– Gay marriage (the first same-sex marriage post-DOMA on television)

– Transgender identity

– Juvenile prison

– Homophobia

– Gender stereotypes

– Racial issues

I feel so good that my daughter’s being challenged and is finally watching a piece of reality with me. We’re up to episode 12 and Rosie O’Donnell has just been introduced. She’s a source of comfort for me – someone I’ve been following most of my life. After watching the first 10 episodes on Netflix, we have been faced with having to download episodes elsewhere, finally finding them on Amazon. The second season is coming back on ABC Family and we want to be caught up.

Have you watched The Fosters? Thoughts?

Disclosure: I’m a member of the #Netflix #Streamteam and write one post a month about my experience with Netflix but I choose my own topics and all opinions are my own.

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Tonight I find myself alone in the house. My husband and kids are away. I could be out on the town, at the movies, at a play. I could go dancing and stay up all night (yeah, right, I haven’t done that in YEARS!). But the truth is all I want to do is sit on the couch with my Netflix remote, go into my list of saved features and watch TV all night long.

I didn’t realize it before today but I think I fell in love with Netflix. Well, my husband realized it before I did.  Every night I swoon at the offerings as I slowly put one another into my list. As I view one, I scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on recommended features and add them. Then I take note of the actors and go into their listings and slowly add their old films. I’m literally amazed by the quantity of films I’ve never seen before – I thought I was a film buff! Little did I know.

Right now I have on Top of the Lake with Mad Men’s Elizabeth Moss doing a seriously better than I thought New Zealand accent and the one and only Holly Hunter (I hardly recognized her!). I have to admit, I knew very little about this show before turning on. I’m a lifelong fan of Jane Campion and I was so eager to see her back in action, in a show made for the Sundance Channel. Right now I’m on the second episode.  In the first one, a young girl left her home, wound her way along a forest road to the shore of a lake, and waded in, fully dressed, up to her neck. We soon find out she’s 12 and pregnant only she won’t reveal who impregnated her. In steps Moss, who plays a detective. So far it’s kind of confusing, but the family’s not here so I can stay up late binging.

I’ve got movies like Broadcast News, Thelma & Louise, Lovers on a Bridge, The Concert, The Nasty Girl, Children of a Lesser God, East is East, Swimming Pool, Brassed Off, Up on the Villa, The Dead, Camilla, Sweet Revenge, Gentleman’s Agreement and so many other fabulous movies and obscure films that I just can’t wait to watch. Then there’s House of Cards. I’m only one episode into season two but all I can say is REALLY? If you’ve seen it, you know what I mean. That Kevin Spacey is one mean bastard. And I can’t wait to see what happens next.

So, here’s the thing. I really don’t sit in front of Netflix all the time.  I’m a mom, I have responsibilities. By the time the kids go to bed, it’s later than it used to be. It’s usually 10pm and I’m zonked. But I’ve got this amazing list of movies and TV shows waiting for me, and given the opportunity to go out on the town tonight, I chose Netflix. Okay, now I’m worried.

Disclosure: I’m a member of the #Netflix #Streamteam and write one post a month about my experience with Netflix but I choose my own topics and all opinions are my own.

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The Culture Mom: Why the Mary Tyler Moore Show as the focus of your book?

JKA: Well, I’ve always been a fan, since I was a little girl. But when I wrote for Entertainment Weekly, I covered a lot of women in comedy — particularly the rise of Tina Fey. She and many others cite the show and Mary as huge inspirations, which makes sense — in the ‘70s, this show was the first to feature a really independent heroine in a show that was truly great. In any case, once I noticed that, I started doing some research, and found out that the show was also the first to hire several women as writers. That seemed like a story worth telling, and it also reflects nicely on modern times, when we’re finally seeing so many more comedies written by and starring women.

TCM: The book deals with the women’s movement as a result of the show hiring so many female writers. Is that because of your own interest in feminism? What were some of the most interesting stories you heard about this time period and how far do you think we have come in 2014?

JKA: Certainly some of that reflects my own interest in feminism, as well as just the fact that this was a huge social force at the time, and I’m always interested in the social forces that shape the pop culture of the time. It’s hard to separate a groundbreaking show about a single, working woman from feminism. And pretty much every female writer on the show identifies as feminist and was going to women’s movement meetings at the time. I love those stories; there’s something really romantic and exciting about them to me. It seems like such a hopeful time to be a woman — suddenly they felt like they could have careers, be independent, have premarital sex without guilt. Of course, we know that things weren’t all perfect then, and certainly things would be bumpier in the future than these women probably envisioned. And even their personal lives were still difficult — many of them spoke about the difficulties of finding a male partner as a woman who’d succeeded so much on her own. In some ways, we haven’t come that far at all since then: It’s still a struggle to get a reasonable number of women onto comedy writing staffs. And look at the public stink everyone had to make to get SNL to hire some women of color! On the other hand, if you watch, say, Girls in comparison with The Mary Tyler Moore Show, you see we’ve made some pretty significant strides since a time when Mary taking the pill was a big deal.

TCM: The Mary Tyler Moore Show depicted a woman’s work life, so it’s not too surprising that Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted does the same. The workplace that emerged was a revelation: with men recognizing the value of women’s stories and actively seeking women for the writing staff; with women writers mining their own lives for material and producing scripts that incorporate the everyday experiences of women, which were- at that time- seldom represented on TV. Why was the show so revolutionary?

JKA: That’s exactly why. I think it felt real, and of its time. Most comedy before that was very schticky. I Love Lucy was great, but it was so great that no one could see any other way to do things for a few decades afterwards. Mary started with great characters, two of whom happened to be single, independent women, and worked from there. So everything carried an extra layer of meaningfulness, because we cared about the characters. From there, we could go anywhere with the characters, whether that meant Mary still calling her boss “Mr. Grant” despite other markers of liberation, or Mary staying out all night, or Rhoda entering and winning a beauty contest.

TCM: What was it about The Mary Tyler Moore Show that captured American viewers?

JKA: I do think it was the characters. We could all see ourselves in at least one of the characters, or maybe even a few of them. We all knew or wanted to know a Lou, a Ted, a Murray, a Mary, a Rhoda, a Phyllis. We felt everything that happened to them.

TCM: How did it impact the TV landscape?

JKA: Besides its impact on the depiction of women, it had more artistic effects as well. It made sitcoms more character-driven and pushed them closer to having serialized story arcs. You never used to see characters change and grow over time on sitcoms; every episode had to be self-contained, almost like a cartoon. On Mary, we saw Lou go through a divorce, and even saw his ex remarry. We saw Rhoda leave town and Betty White’s Sue Ann Nivens join the gang. We saw Mary grow from a nervous secretary to a confident executive. We saw Ted go from a shallow womanizer to a married father.

TCM: Which characters did most women relate to? And you?

JKA: I think the Mary-or-Rhoda dichotomy is a real one: We all feel more like one than the other, and we all aspire to qualities of one or both. The women on the show had a joke that Mary was the one we all wanted to be and Rhoda was the one we all were. I disagree, at least from a 2014 perspective. I grew up a Mary — a people-pleasing perfectionist — but always loved Rhoda because I aspired to her humor and no-nonsense attitude. I think I’m a Rhoda now, and I couldn’t be happier.

TCM: Tell us about the writing process. I felt like I was on the set of the show and truly in the know during its entire run – how did you do that?

JKA: God, I have no idea sometimes. Every time I start a new book I wonder, “How does this go again?” But I can say that it’s mainly about reporting. I wish it could be done some other magical way, but it’s just about getting as much of the details as possible via interviews and research and assembling them into a story. I know what I like from a story, so as I write I just go after the information I need. I also interviewed something like 30-40 people, and worked pretty closely with a few of them — particularly the female writers, like Treva Silverman, whose life stories I was basically telling. I would be writing, say, Treva’s story, and was lucky enough to be able to email her with weird questions like: Were you an awkward outcast as a kid, or were you pretty put-together? What did you usually wear when you were working? Was there pot smoking? (That was key, obviously, in the ‘70s.)

TCM: Everyone you interviewed seemed very forth coming – was that the case?

JKA: For the most part, yes. Some people were certainly chattier than others. I think most of the time, in cases like this, if people agree to be interviewed, they’ll be pretty forthcoming. If they don’t want to be forthcoming, they simply ignore my interview requests!

TCM: You talk a lot about emotional attachments between actors and characters in your book. Did you develop one to the people you were writing about? How did you connect with them?

JKA: Definitely! It was such a treat because I worshipped these people since I was a kid watching. The actors, obviously. It was one of the great moments of my life to interview Rhoda — that is, Valerie Harper, who couldn’t have been sweeter. It was surreal to be sitting across from Ed Asner at his home while he re-enacted the “You’ve got spunk!” line for me. And I developed genuine friendships with a few of the female writers, like Treva Silverman and Gloria Banta. I felt like they were my very own “characters” because they were the part of the story people were less likely to know; they felt like mine and only mine more than the others.

TCM: Brooks had once expressed his belief that there was a world of comedy trapped inside his wife’s purse, which he could neither access nor entirely understand. But he was wise enough to recognize that limitation and bring in a team of mostly untrained female writers for Mary Tyler Moore who could. What was he like and how did he know whom to hire?

JKA: He was such a thrill for me to talk to, too, just because I knew his name from so many movies I loved. He strikes me as brilliant, obviously, and very in the moment. He knows what he needs to make good work, and goes after it. He was big on research from the beginning of his career. So it makes sense that he’d just think, “Hmm, I don’t know what it’s like to be a young woman in the ‘70s, so I’ll go get some young women in the ‘70s to tell me.” He and Allan Burns, who created the show together, both have this very practical view of the whole thing. They don’t see themselves as feminists or anything. They just see it as doing what needed to be done. I still think that makes them heroes, because other men at the time would’ve just hired the same old guys and gone about telling us what they thought it meant to be a woman in the ‘70s. And they mentored lots of rather inexperienced writers in the process, which is extraordinary.

TCM: How did you find Joe Rainone, the show’s biggest fan?

JKA: Joe is one of my favorite things about my book. Both Jim and Allan had mentioned him during interviews, but they mis-remembered his last name, so every time I’d tried to find him, I came up with nothing. Finally, during my final revision of my manuscript, I went to look up some particularly obscure fact online, and whatever I’d Googled ended up unearthing a very old blog post before we called them that — one of those primitive ‘90s sites — where a guy had written this elaborate account of having written letters to The Mary Tyler Moore Show and eventually getting to visit the set. As soon as I saw his name, I knew it was the guy. I looked him up under the right name spelling and had his address within seconds. Given that he wrote weekly letters to the show, you can imagine that he responded well to my sending him a card in the mail and asking to interview him.

TCM: What is your single favorite episode of the show?

JKA: When forced to decide, I usually choose “Rhoda the Beautiful.” First of all, I’m a Rhoda girl, like I said. And this episode was written by Treva Silverman, who told me a wonderful story about it; I can’t separate my research from my feelings about episodes anymore. This episode also happens to be very funny and poignant and interesting from a feminist perspective. In it, Rhoda, who has major body image issues, is coerced into entering a beauty contest at the department store where she works. She complains the whole episode because she’s so sure she’ll be humiliated. But she’s also recently lost a bunch of weight on a Weight Watchers type program. (I also love that she’s doing it with Murray, the unusual choice of a man trying to lose some weight, too. Fun fact: Valerie and Gavin, who plays Murray, were doing Weight Watchers together in real life.) In any case, she wins, but can’t tell Mary at first because it’s all so uncomfortable for her. She finally does, and they celebrate. The story Treva told me was that she’d written that about her own body image issues, as well as those of many of her girlfriends. She watched Val accept her Emmy that year, for that episode, while she was at a weight-loss spa and cried as Val thanked her by name. So much sisterhood there!

TCM: Who did you enjoy talking to the most?

JKA: Probably Valerie, just because she was such an idol of mine. But I have intense affection for the female writers who became such wonderful role models to me as well.

Mary and Lou and Rhoda Ted was published by Simon & Schuster and is available at all traditional and online booksellers.

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