Alfred L. Martin Jr. and Taylor Cole Miller eds., "The Golden Girls: Tales from the Lanai" (Rutgers UP, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: New Books Network —

Episode: Alfred L. Martin Jr. & Taylor Cole Miller, The Golden Girls: Tales from the Lanai (Rutgers UP, 2025)
Date: September 10, 2025
Host: Pete Kunze
Guests: Alfred L. Martin, Jr. & Taylor Cole Miller

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Overview

This episode of New Books and Media features Alfred L. Martin, Jr. (University of Miami) and Taylor Cole Miller (University of Wisconsin–La Crosse), co-editors of The Golden Girls: Tales from the Lanai (Rutgers UP, 2025). Host Pete Kunze (who also contributed a chapter) explores with the editors the process, aims, and scholarly significance of their new multi-contributor volume—a book that treats the iconic sitcom The Golden Girls as a serious object of media and cultural studies, bridging academic rigor and accessible fan scholarship.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins and Personal Connections ([01:34]–[09:31])

• Both Martin and Miller’s academic journeys started outside media studies (ballet, journalism, design, etc.). Both became interested in the ways media shapes—and is shaped by—culture and power.

• They met at the University of Texas graduate program and bonded early over a shared love for The Golden Girls.

• The idea for a serious academic book on the series took years to gain traction; publishers were at first skeptical about its relevance. They persisted, citing the show's enduring popularity and unique cultural significance.

  “There’s something really important about it... this show is a perennial sitcom that has never been off television since it stopped producing new episodes.”
  — Alfred L. Martin, Jr. [05:40]

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2. Why The Golden Girls Still Resonates ([07:19]–[13:09])

• Miller described how the show formed a cornerstone for many LGBTQ+ viewers, especially in rural America, offering comfort and community where representation was rare.

• The editors point to the show’s rare focus on older women, aging, and economic hardship—a “treatise on the unaffordability of America”—and social issues like medical gaslighting, sexual harassment, and queer discrimination.

  “These are women… who had whole careers, and in their retirement years, they cannot… afford to live on their own in Miami in the 1980s. There’s something fascinating about the multiple things this show does…”
  — Alfred L. Martin, Jr. [10:53]

  “Its jokes are perennial… the comedy is timeless.”
  — Taylor Cole Miller [12:03]

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3. The Show as a Product of Its Cultural Moment ([13:09]–[19:03])

• The Golden Girls is described as the culmination of earlier television experiments (from Norman Lear to Susan Harris’s Soap and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman), brought to life by a powerhouse cast.

• Despite initial network resistance to feminist icon Bea Arthur, the show “caught lightning in a bottle,” thriving even when NBC didn’t know what to pair it with.

  “There is nothing that NBC can find to put it alongside… [so] they throw it on in the graveyard of Saturday night TV… and yet The Golden Girls still manages… to be a top five Nielsen show.”
  — Alfred L. Martin, Jr. [15:14]

  “They did NOT want Bea Arthur… worried about her being too much of a feminist icon, a feminist problem, basically.”
  — Taylor Cole Miller [16:45]

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4. The Book’s Intervention: A Circuit of Culture Approach ([20:27]–[29:43])

• Miller explains that most previous books are limited, either only textual analysis or fan coffee-table books.

• This volume employs a “circuit of culture” (or “circuit of media”) approach, structuring chapters around industry/history, text, and audience—while encouraging contributors to address all three.

• The book aims to be methodologically rich and accessible to both scholars and fans, including features like interviews with behind-the-scenes figures and performers of the theme song.

  “We’re not necessarily interested in the Golden Girls as much as we are interested in these broader things. My chapter is about television flow and how that actually builds and hails an audience…”
  — Alfred L. Martin, Jr. [22:06]

  “The other gimmick in the book is that we have interstitial interviews with various producers and writers, and even the theme song singer, Cindy Fee…”
  — Taylor Cole Miller [25:13]

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5. Clarifying Key Terms: 'Circuit of Culture' & 'Flow' ([27:07]–[32:31])

• Circuit of Culture: An approach emphasizing production, text, and audiences as interconnected nodes for analysis, giving a fuller picture of a media object.

  “If you triangulate the text in the middle… you get a much more captivating, much richer analysis of a media object.”
  — Taylor Cole Miller [28:59]

• Flow: The way networks structure programming and advertising to “call” particular audiences, making the experience of watching TV a blend of content, commercials, and schedule.

  “Flow… is thinking through the ways that everything about the half hour we spend in front of our television is interconnected.”
  — Alfred L. Martin, Jr. [29:49]

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6. Assembly and Organization of the Volume ([32:31]–[37:22])

• The collection grew out of scholarly friendship and shared intellectual community—“thank you for being a friend.”

• Contributors were selected for expertise, but also for their unique perspectives. The collection is also “a kind of generational capsule,” incorporating both academic and nontraditional scholars, as well as interviews from fan conventions.

  “There is no one in this essay that we did not previously know in some way…”
  — Alfred L. Martin, Jr. [34:12]

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7. Section-by-Section Tour of the Book ([37:22]–[54:33])

INDUSTRY AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT ([37:22]–[41:38])

• Chapters: Cover the show’s enduring popularity, the historical/industrial context (including its launch at Disney), syndication anxieties around gender, and “narrative complexity” in sitcom form.

• Jessica Hoover’s chapter notably challenges the idea that sitcoms lack narrative complexity.

  “She’s pushing back against this idea that a 30-minute… sitcom cannot be narratively complex…”
  — Alfred L. Martin, Jr. [41:38]

TEXT ([43:00]–[50:37])

• Chapters: Analyze topics like tabloid culture, diet and body image (cheesecake!), AIDS and queer issues, sexuality in older women, and motherhood.

• Many authors are not traditional academics, showing varied but rigorous approaches.

  “These chapters are absolutely about the text, but they’re also not about the text. They’re about the other stuff that helps… the text mean something.”
  — Alfred L. Martin, Jr. [47:07]

• The show’s “textual” section still outputs methodological diversity; each chapter foregrounds a node within the circuit of culture.

  “It’s definitely favored nation—like there are episodes… where it’s kind of a Rose episode, kind of a Blanche episode, but all still feature all the characters as leads.”
  — Taylor Cole Miller [50:37]

AUDIENCES AND RECEPTION ([54:33]–[63:00])

• Martin’s chapter focuses on Black women’s enduring fandom, challenging notions of the show’s intended audience.

• Ken Pfeil discusses camp and the sex joke’s function.

• Nora Patterson covers queer audiences, and her interview with the late drag performer Hecklina (Dorothy in San Francisco’s iconic Golden Girls drag productions) is the last published interview before Hecklina’s passing.

  “What this section proves is that audiences matter… when we’re ever talking about why representation matters, we’re really talking about audiences.”
  — Taylor Cole Miller [61:03]

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8. Interviews and Production Stories ([63:00]–[71:32])

• Interstices between essays feature interviews with:

  • Cindy Fee (theme song)
  • Wayne Williams (photographer; provided many previously unseen images)
  • Isabel Elmero (dialogue coach and “laugh spread” wizard)
  • Marcia Posner Williams (co-producer, Susan Harris’s right hand from Soap to Golden Girls)
  • Mark Sotkin (showrunner, seasons 5-6)

• Anecdotes—from Bea Arthur and Betty White’s legendary tension to pragmatic production details—enrich the scholarship with lore and humanity.

  “She talks in sitcom quips. It’s amazing.”
  — Taylor Cole Miller, about Marcia Posner Williams [68:18]

  “You get the book, you should immediately go to page 204…” [readers will find a legendary “apocryphal” prank story involving Bea Arthur and Betty White]. — Taylor Cole Miller [71:20]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “If somebody hates the Golden Girls, please email me because I want to understand what is wrong with you.”
  — Alfred L. Martin, Jr. [23:42]

• “It’s still a relevant show because a lot of the issues that it actually addressed are still relevant issues… the comedy is timeless.” — Taylor Cole Miller [11:55]

• “We’re interested in thinking about not necessarily the show—even though I would argue that all of the authors love the show—but the show is tertiary…”
  — Alfred L. Martin, Jr. [23:12]

• “We love lore.” — Taylor Cole Miller [71:33]

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Structure of the Book (Timestamps)

• [37:22] — Section 1: Industry & Historical Context
• [43:00] — Section 2: Text
• [54:33] — Section 3: Audiences & Reception
• [63:00] — Interviews & Behind-the-Scenes Stories

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Tone and Takeaways

The conversation is rich, academic yet playful, marked by deep affection for the show and for community within the discipline. The editors hope Tales from the Lanai serves as a model for “circuit of culture” studies—showing that rigorous, intersectional media criticism can be lively and accessible, bridging gaps between scholars, students, and dedicated fans.

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Further Information

• Book: The Golden Girls: Tales from the Lanai (Rutgers University Press, 2025)
• Editors: Alfred L. Martin, Jr., Taylor Cole Miller
• Available: Now from the publisher and other booksellers.

Episode hosted by Pete Kunze for New Books and Media (New Books Network).

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Transcript

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[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

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[Pete Kunze]

Welcome to New Books and Media, a podcast series on the New Books Network. I'm your host, Pete Kunze. My guest today is Alfred L. Martin, Jr. Associate professor of Media Studies and Department Chair of Cinematic Arts at the University of Miami, and Taylor Cole Miller, Assistant professor of Media Studies at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse. They are the editors of the Golden Tales from the Lanai. The book was published by Rutgers University Press in 2025. Good afternoon, Taylor and Al. How are you doing today?

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

I am doing well. Thank you so much for having us.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

And this is Taylor. I'm doing great as well. Thank you for having us.

[Pete Kunze]

It's a pleasure to have you here to talk about this book. I should acknowledge at the outset that we all know each other from scms and media studies circles, and I wrote a chapter in this collection. But I'm going to be playing ignorant and learning from you both about the process of putting together this collection. Before we dive in, I'm hoping you both could talk a little bit about your background and your training. Al, do you want to go first?

[Taylor Cole Miller]

Sure.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

So I am. I'm a sort of wild card in some ways in media studies. I started, I had a career, a short career as a ballet dancer, and then I did a degree in journalism with a minor in marketing. Then I did a sociology master's degree before coming to media studies. And so there is a way that I might suggest that I am kind of a social scientist who does humanistic work. And I think that is probably the best way to encapsulate what I believe is at least my approach to media studies.

[Pete Kunze]

How about you, Taylor?

[Taylor Cole Miller]

I told this story before, but I was working as a graphic designer and a reporter for the local news after I graduated, and I wanted to go to grad school, but I wasn't sure what for. And I stumbled upon a TV studies Wikipedia page. And one of the listed scholars was Jason Mattel. And so I reached out to him and I said, how do I do what you do? And he said, you I didn't need to go to the University of Texas at Austin or the University of Wisconsin at Madison. And so I went to both. And there I became a media and cultural studies scholar and really fell in love with thinking through issues of power in media. And I just never looked back.

[Pete Kunze]

Great. So my next question is, what brought you two together and what brought you to this project?

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

So what brought us together in some ways is the University of Texas. And that is to say that in probably, I want to say it was March, February, or March ish of 2010, Taylor and I had both been accepted into the University of Texas's graduate programs. I into the PhD program, Taylor into the master's program. And we were in a room where, like, they had sort of put everybody. And Taylor and I were actually having a conversation with a professor or a person who was there at the university as a professor at the time. Jennifer Fuller.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

Shout out to Jennifer Fuller.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

Yeah, shout out to Jennifer Fuller. And somehow the three of us started talking about the Golden Girls and discovered through the process that we all love the Golden Girls. And Taylor and I, I don't know if it was perhaps if it was in that moment, but Taylor and I sort of through the years, kept talking about we should actually write a book on the Golden Girls, because there's something really important about it. And interestingly, when we kind of started embarking on the process of thinking about it, and I want to say it was maybe in 2015, 2016, we talked to a couple of presses, and both of the acquisitions editors looked at us as if we were absolutely bonkers. And in fact, I think one of them may have even asked us specifically, why would anybody want to read a book on the Golden Girls? And so, on one hand, it is the pro, or it is we need to concede that we didn't actually do a good job of explaining it to the actors editor if they ask that question. But we also were just like, well, it's important because it is and this show is a perennial sitcom that is one of the, one of the oldest sitcoms that has never been off television since it stopped producing new episodes. And so there's something that is extraordinarily important about a 30 minute sitcom that not only circulates and recirculates within the United States, but as we know about sitcoms, sitcoms are typically the televisual unit that travels internationally and sort of tells in some ways, other cultures what a, at least mediated US Culture is like. And the idea that so few of these 80s TV shows continue to be worth their weight in salt once it's, you know, 1992. And so that was kind of part of how this, this idea started because this show felt so important. It was also, I should also add, it was also a show that I used to watch before I went to bed, reruns on Lifetime Television as well. So it was also somewhat personal to me as well.

[Pete Kunze]

What does Golden Girls meant for you, Taylor?

[Taylor Cole Miller]

Well, it's been a lot of parts of my firsts. So my very first seminar paper was about the Golden Girls. My very first conference presentation was about the Golden Girls. I was trying to figure out why is it that all these gay men who grew up in rural America who didn't have access maybe to put their finger on the pulse of whatever we would call gay culture, they were all kind of finding the show because when I was in college, people were like, oh, you have to watch the Golden Girls or you're a bad gay. And I think that, you know, there's a there, there to borrow from Gertrude, like the idea is there for why this particular show and, you know, a form of television itself might reach a specific kind of audience. And then, you know, I, I, I wrote my dissertation about syndicated television. And so I've always been thinking about audiences that were not well attended to by our field. Audiences of reruns, audiences of daytime talk shows, audiences and fans of things that, you know, we're not talking about often in our field. I mean, if you write a book about Mad Men or the Wire or the Bear even, there's going to be very little question about its relevancy. But a show that has been, as Al said, on the air uninterrupted for 40 years and has continued to find new audiences who tuck themselves into bed with it every night, it not having the same place in the field or the same interest or intrigue really felt like a big hole. I mean, we can even think about the show with new audiences. A syndicated Text that is constantly finding new audiences. And with our ability to use social media and to see the ways in which people engage with and interact with reruns or. Or syndicated shows in general that we didn't have at the time of the Golden Girls. It's a really fertile period for thinking about the show in relationship to audiences in a different way than we ever have before.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

And one of the things I'd like to sort of pick up and draw out that Taylor brought up is really that the way that the field develops is really to think about these alleged quality programs. And so, you know, there was. Listen, we. We lived through a whole period when everybody was like, we finna do Buffy studies and like. And nobody like. And there was. There was a whole Josh Wheeldon society that was devoted to his work. But, like, there was something very specific about the notion of. We should add on one hand, the notion of the sitcom. The notion of a sitcom featuring. Starring, rather, four women. A sitcom starring four women who are older in a period where we were understanding that women were garbage after a certain age, after their reproductive years, that women were garbage. And instead, what something like the Golden Girls does. And we can sort of argue about whether or not it's actually a feminist text. And I'm not sure that I even care. But what the Golden Girls does is it shows you that just because your grandmother is your grandmother doesn't mean your grandmother doesn't want to get her groove back like Stella. And so there's this really lovely thing that I think that the Golden Girls offers. It offers us an opportunity to think about aging in America. And listen, the elephant in the room, quite frankly, around the Golden Girls is that the Golden Girls partly is also a treatise on the unaffordability of America. These are women, four women who had whole careers, and they. In their retirement years, they cannot, like, they don't necessarily move in together because they're like, hey, like, I love you. Let's live together. They move in together because they cannot afford to live on their own in Miami in the 1980s. And so there's something really fascinating about the multiple things that this show does and can do that gets discarded because it is a sitcom featuring four women who are old.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

And I would add onto that, you know, people always ask, why the Golden Girls? Why is this still a relevant show? And unfortunately, picking up on what Al said, it's still a relevant show because a lot of the issues that it actually addressed are still relevant issues. Seniors still face a lot of financial insecurity. Older women face Medical gaslighting and trouble accessing healthcare. Women still face sexual harassment in the workplace. Older women still face issues with getting careers. Gay people, queer people in general still face the issue of discrimination. So a lot of the things that it picks up as its topics of the week are still unfortunately, pretty relevant ones. But also, I would say, you know, to be more positive, not quite such a Debbie Downer. Part of the reason why it does last is because it's funny. At a time when the Bear is supposedly supposed to be our comedy, the Golden Girls is still really, really, really funny. Its jokes are perennial. It has, you know, maybe the chunky earrings and the shoulder pads are dated, but the comedy is timeless.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

Absolutely.

[Pete Kunze]

I'm wondering if we can put on our TV studies hats for a second.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

Right.

[Pete Kunze]

Cause I think you both have done a good job of talking about how the show continues to resonate today. But one of the things that also kind of strikes me, particularly in the way that it navigates between goofiness or great one liners, but also kind of a social consciousness is very evocative of the moment in which it comes out of.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

Right.

[Pete Kunze]

I mean, Newcomb and Hirsch's Cultural Forum and this idea of television serving as this kind of place for engaging ideas. What ways do you see the Golden Girls as very much of its moment, in addition to being a show that kind of continues to affect audiences in such strong ways today?

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

Well, I mean, one of the first things that I. That I feel is necessary to say is that in some ways the Golden Girls, we might argue at least that the Golden Girls is sort of what rises from a bunch of different tries to do something like this. So we think about, for example, you know, Susan Harris's work on Soap, for example, which was, we could argue, is groundbreaking and is whatever, but like, soap actually comes out of, in some ways, Mary Hartman. Mary Hartman, which comes out of the Norman Lear stuff. And so there's a way that I think part of why the Golden Girls works is because in some ways we had this team of people who were working together in earlier iterations, like figuring it out. And then I think that there is a way that they actually figured it out by the time they had Golden Girls. And we cannot discount that they had the comedy giant Bea Arthur, who had become famous for Maude. Among other things. We had the honorary mayor of Hollywood, Bette Midler, Betty White. I don't know why Bette Midler sort of came into my head, but Betty.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

White, that's all she likes to do.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

We had Rue McClanahan who had built a really strong career as a kind of a reliably funny second fiddle on things like Ahmaud, as well as Mama's Family. And then we had newcomer Estelle Getty. And so there's a way that we get this kind of lightning in a bottle. But also we get to come back to what Taylor was saying earlier. We get these writers who have been sharpening their pencils on these other shows, and by the time they get to the Golden Girls in the 1980s, in a period when nothing about the Golden Girls makes sense in terms of a show and the idea that the Golden Girls make so little sense that there is nothing that NBC can find to put it alongside, if we're talking about flow and putting it on our television studies, hat there's nothing they can find to put it with except for they throw it on in the graveyard of Saturday night TV with a bunch of black shows. And yet the Golden Girls still manages, I think, in its first year, to be the top five Nielsen show, because it is just that good.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

I would also say you asked about thinking about it in its present moment. I think nothing iconicizes that better than that they did not want Bea Arthur. If you're familiar with the development of the show. One thing, of course, that makes this show very emblematic of its moment is that it is not produced or owned by the network that airs it, but the network that airs it thus utilizes a lot of its own influence to control the show. In the 70s, you know, with the. With the stable of Norman Lear, a lot of the shows were really trying to do very progressive, very groundbreaking things. Like that was their goal. In the 80s when we kind of swung back in the other direction because of the Reagan administration, the network executives were worried about Bea Arthur being too much of a quote, unquote, feminist icon, a feminist emblem, a feminist problem, basically, that they didn't want her. And so it took a lot of convincing on Susan Harris's part in order just to give her the role. There's a really great moment in Elaine Stritch's one woman show where she talks about fucking up the audition for the Golden Girls because she went in and swore at Susan Harris. And Susan Harris was like, you know what? I'm actually not going to do this show if what I get is Elaine Stritch. And so what makes the show really emblematic is like, is. Is the fact that Bea Arthur is there. I think they eventually relent. A big part of the problem with Bea Arthur is that when they tried to sell mod in syndication. None of the little station managers wanted to buy it because they told Norman, I don't want that ball buster on my channel. So the fact of the Golden Girls being independently produced for a network and ultimately utilizing this actor who may have possibly been a liability, but nevertheless landing on one of the most successful shows in television history, I think could only happen at this beautiful moment that was the 1980s. This episode is brought to you by KPMG. Making an impact is how KPMG Helps.

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Now of course this isn't the first book on the Golden Girls. There have been others. What do you guys see as the novelty or the intervention you were hoping to make with this into what we might call Golden Girl studies, or at least tips on the Golden Girls? How are you kind of putting together a volume that is departing from what's been done in other books on the Golden Girls to date?

[Taylor Cole Miller]

I would say the chief difference is that this isn't just about the Golden Girls. It's utilizing the Golden Girls as a case study, an academic foray into thinking about how a circuit of culture approach to a television show can be scalable. So all of the chapters in this book are roughly separated into three sections, industry, text and audience, even though all of them are doing all three. The idea behind that is to give students, researchers, and just interested viewers of the show an idea of various different media methodological approaches to studying one television text. And, you know, there are some Golden Girls books. There was one academic anthology, I think. No, it wasn't an anthology. There was one academic book that came before this, and there is another one that's coming out at the same time, I think, in October. But most of everything that had been written on the Golden Girls was not in a scholarly arena.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

What I would also add to Taylor's really good mapping of what this project does is that it is interested in thinking about the difference between media studies and studies of media. That is to suggest that what we are. We are not necessarily interested in the Golden Girls as much as we are interested in these broader things. So, like, for example, my chapter is broadly interested in television flow and how that actually builds and heals an audience that presumably was not an audience, and in this instance, the black audience and the black female audience that was not imagined as part of the audience for the show initially. And so there is a way that in that chapter, I think I talk about some episodes, but I very well might not talk about the episodes because I'm actually interested in. In the discourse about the show and not the show, because it's not my diary. I don't want to tell people what I think an episode Golden Girls means because that's like, that. I'll save that for my diary. And instead what I actually want to do is I want to think about. I want to think about bigger, broader questions. So in some ways, my chapter is thinking about, like, how do we hail audiences when we are. Or secondarily hail audiences when they are not the primary focus? There are chapters that are interested in thinking about what does it mean when the Golden Girls is on NBC, but what does it mean when it's on Logo? And then what does it mean when it's on Lifetime? And then what does it mean, like if it were ever on bet? And so the ways. So we're thinking. We're interested in thinking about not necessarily the show. And even though I would argue that all of the authors love the show in one way, shape or form, but the show is tertiary, we're interested in thinking about these bigger, broader questions. And oftentimes a lot of the work that studies of media do is they are so invested in the text that the text becomes the only thing that matters. And so Even if somebody actually hates the Golden Girls, and like, quite frankly, like, if somebody hates the Golden Girls, please email me because I want to understand what is wrong with you. But if someone hates the Golden Girls, they could still pick up this book as a way to think about how can I approach the thing that I love or that I am interested in that doesn't rely so heavily on an analysis of, of the text that is running on my screen?

[Taylor Cole Miller]

Or even if they don't like the show, how. How can a show still have so much cultural import importance? I mean, I would think that would be fascinating. The other gimmick in the book is that we have interstitial interviews in between chapters with various producers and writers from the show. And even the theme song, singer Cindy Feek, which I learned while I was interviewing her that she was also the Hoover Nobody. I was like, oh my gosh, that is you. If I like in my head I hear that song, I'm like, that is her. So those actually, they're fun. They're definitely for the crossover appeal of the book, which is what we were really trying to do, crossover between an academic and an everyday audience. But they also provide primary source material for those who maybe want to use the book to do a Golden Girls essay, but also need to have primary source material as well.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

Yeah. And the last thing that I will also say with respect to the interviews that we have in there and the sort of the notion of the crossover appeal of the book. My husband, who is not an academic, is actually currently reading the book and I think he's on. I think he's already on chapter six, so.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

Oh, wow.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

Yeah, so he is actually like breezing through the book. So it is presumably at least accessible for a non academic audience.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

Yeah, I mean, I think there's. Everyone has. Everyone who's a fan of this show has a sense of humor and you will see that sense of humor throughout each of the chapters. So it's still definitely academic in nature, but it's also really enjoyable to read. I loved editing this book.

[Pete Kunze]

Before we go further, I just wanted to kind of do my host duty and ask you two to parse terms that you used. Taylor, first, I'm hoping you can explain the circuit of culture, the circuit of media, to listeners who may not have come across that term before.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

Sure. So we were, when we were writing this book, you know, we were trained in a media and cultural studies approach, critical cultural studies scholars. And so, you know, we were trained by people like Janet Steiger, for instance, and we were thinking about How a lot of books dedicated to one particular show will only approach it from just like, the textual side of things, like, they're thinking about the text, they're analyzing episodes. But what makes the show fascinating to think about is the really rich industrial background and context from the show that you actually provide in your chapter. Thinking about how the show is such an industry success and in the production culture of the show is as fascinating as the text. But also in chapters like Al's, you have these really fascinating portraits of audiences, new audiences, old audiences, people who've been watching the show for a long time, but people who have just discovered the show and reruns. And how much richer is a study of a media text if we think about it in a triangulated way. So we use a simplified circular culture approach, which just means that for the case study that we're using here, it's the Golden Girls. We're thinking about the production and the historical context. We're thinking about the text itself, which, you know, is a term that Jonathan Gray always hates. He hates it when people say the text itself. But the idea behind the text itself in those chapters is often, well, let's actually look at specific episodes. Let's think through how the writers are producing or architecting an infrastructure that the show can hang on for several seasons. And then we're thinking about audiences. And if you triangulate the text in the middle of those three areas, industry, production, text and audience, you get a much more captivating, much richer analysis of a media object. And so the book then becomes an example of that kind of approach, following up on, you know, the work of Julie Dachi and something like her Cagney and Lacy work.

[Pete Kunze]

And then, Al, I was hoping you could explain to listeners the idea of flow and what that means for television scholars.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

Okay, so flow, broadly construed, is a concept that is interested and invested in understanding tv not as. As the. What we are, have been calling as the text, but is thinking through the ways that everything about the half hour we spend in front of our television is interconnected. That is to say that on the Golden Girls on, let's say the Golden Girls on Lifetime, syndicated on Lifetime Television, Lifetime is obviously not going to show the episode without interruption. And so what matters is, is certainly the text of the show that, let's say, Marcia Posner Williams has written, that certainly matters. But what also matters is what happens in between. So because in this example, the Golden Girls is on Lifetime, as a general rule, what we're not going to see in a commercial is a commercial for a Corvette with a woman in a bikini draped over it. Because that sort of hyper masculine male is not the audience for that show. And so the commercials in some ways will reflect who's supposed to be watching the text. And then if we extend that broader beyond, say, Golden Girls, presumably the idea in a pre. A pre time shifting, pre remote control world is that we create an evening in which we hold you captive on your couch. So for me, like the trifecta, for me growing up in 1985, 86, or actually probably more like 86, 87 was Saturday nights at 8 o' clock begin with 2, 2, 7. Then it was amen. No, no, I think it was amen then 227. And then the golden Girls. And so, like, so I parked my carcass on NBC on Saturday nights. And the flow of those programs, presumably the commercials, as well as the texts themselves, were, quote, unquote, calling me or hailing me into the text and into NBC Saturday night.

[Pete Kunze]

Excellent. So now that we've gotten some background on what brought you two to this project, I'm hoping you could talk a little bit about how you kind of assembled your contributors and then organized it into this kind of coherent vision of what it means to take Golden Girls seriously, not only as an object within popular culture, but an object warranting academic study.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

So I will start by saying that it started with a concept that we actually use to name the introduction, which is thank you for being a friend, which is fan. Oh, is it fan? Yeah. Do you say fan? Oh, listen, my eyes don't work all the time. So anyway, so listen, so then I'm gonna actually go back to the show and say it is thank you for being a friend. And what I mean by that is that in terms of thinking through the organization, we broadly conceptualized the project as one that we were very clear. We did not want to be a series of essays where authors were like, you know, I really like the Henny Penny episode. And so I'm gonna write about how great, like, the Henny Penny episode is, and I'm gonna write about the Golden Girls and its use of musical forms or whatever. Instead, what we wanted it to be was this bigger, broader project. So as we started to think about the areas that we wanted to cover, we also started thinking about people we wanted to actually work with.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

Yeah, yeah.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

And thinking about where we could fit those folks's expertise into the project. So there is certainly a way that this project, I would argue, remains and retains a rigorous approach to media studies. It provides a method for thinking about Julie Dacci's circuit of media study. It does all of that. And it is also, in some ways, I would argue, is also a kind of. A kind of generational capsule of some scholars who are working and growing up together and are in community together as well. And certainly there are some outliers in the sense that there are not all scholarly essays, but they are all people. Like, there is no one in this essay that we did not previously know in some way, shape or form. A couple of folks Taylor actually met through going to Golden Con, which is the Golden Girls fan convention. And so we were thinking very, of course, broadly about how we pull these things in, but we were thinking about how we pull all these things in and how we actually work with a bunch of people who we adore and we respect and who would. Who were all invested in moving this project to the finish line.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

It might surprise you to learn that we end up talking about the Golden Girls with colleagues kind of a lot. And a lot of what we did is we just discovered, oh, my God, you just said something really smart. I'm just going to put that in my pocket and think about that later. Because, you know, of course, this has really just been. You know, we did this project in two and a half years, but really we've been thinking about this project for at least 10 years. And over the course of that period, every time we've talked to someone and we thought, wow, you really have an interesting contribution or idea that could really go somewhere. And I think my favorite meeting that Al and I had together when we were thinking about this project is just wizarding together the jigsaw puzzle that were all of these contributions, thinking about, ooh, who goes in this section? Who goes in that section? And then once we got done, it actually went really fast. And once we got done, we were like, holy shit. I think that we've done. I think that we've actually done something incredible here. And, you know, it just incentivizes me to continue talking about the show. And now I have something to talk about.

[Pete Kunze]

So I'm hoping now we can kind of go section by section and you both can do kind of a brief overview. And it might be useful to start with Taylor and talking about the industry and historical context section, since your own scholarly contribution is in that portion. So can you tell us a little bit about the aims here?

[Taylor Cole Miller]

Yes. So the very first chapter that we start with has to do with the. This is Kate Fort Mueller's chapter, and it has to do with the enduring popularity of the show, especially during the pandemic, we thought originally about going chronologically, which means we would have started with your chapter about the production background with Disney and this sort of being the launching ship of Disney's. What do you call it? The Disney Revolution.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

Renaissance.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

Renaissance, that's it. Oh, that's so much better than revolution. The Disney Renaissance.

[Pete Kunze]

Less bloody.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

Yeah, yeah, I don't know about that. Renaissance is pretty bloody. I just got back from Florence and we stayed out. Anyway, it doesn't matter. So we were thinking through how do we start this book. And what's really captivating is that, you know, we, in 2015, we did a. Maybe we did a bad job, maybe talking to presses, but also it didn't have this resurgent popularity that I have seen with the show in the last six years. I would say something happened. I don't know what it was, whether it was the pandemic. But you know, we have, we have Golden Girls cruise ships, we have Golden Girls fan conventions, a long list of Golden Golden Girls merch, a lot of Golden Girls costumes you can buy at Target. So there's a there, there. Something happened and that made the show become even more beloved just in the last few years. And so we wanted to start with that. Let's start with what's the there there. And how did this show become so popular in the 2000s? We then kind of hop back. Cause, you know, it's that thing of. Well, let me back up. That Al loves to say, which is my favorite whenever he does a Let me back up. It's like a picture it story for me. Well, let me back up because I'm about to contextualize, which is so important for understanding the show. So you get that background because the book tends to not be a lot about the history, but you get a really strong grounding of that history in both your and my chapter where we're kind of understanding the popularity of the show but moving beyond its, its identity just on the network. And so as you move through that first section, industry and historical context, you get it from multiple angles. You get the enduring popularity of the show as a syndicated text. You get what led to the creation, development of the show originally and what made it part of this renaissance. Then you get to learn about the syndication aspect of the show. Again, like I mentioned earlier, MOD was not going to sell well. People thought that there was like a Bea Arthur shaped problem with syndicating the Golden Girls. And so in my chapter, I talk a lot about how, you know, they had to think a lot about gender because they were so terrified of selling the show in syndication. They. They came up with 500 pages of research on why the show would succeed with station managers. And so gender has been a big part of how they continuously sell the show. And I talk a lot about that. And then the last chapter that closes out that section, it does a nice job contextualizing what will be the next section, which is about text. And Jessica Hoover in that section is thinking about how the show responds to the idea that it's not, quote, unquote, narratively complex by looking at flashback episodes in the Golden Girls. And so it is talking about the text, but it's still really talking about an industry approach to creating a show in the 80s. How do we approach architecting this thing from a writerly perspective? And so in that section, we're thinking about the industry, we're thinking about the production of the show, we're thinking about the writing of the show, and we're also thinking about all of the added labor that goes into continuously making a show successful in syndication.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

Yeah. And I mean, the thing I would add that I really like about Jessica Hoover's chapter on this sort of narrative complexity is that she. And part of the reason that it is in the industry, historical versus the textual chapter, is because she's actually partly pushing back against this idea that a 30 minute laugh track sitcom cannot be narratively complex. Yeah. And she sort of pushes against that by saying, for all of the frivolity of sort of the quote, unquote, normal presentist episodes, these flashback episodes are really great for us understanding, like, you know, why did Dorothy marry Stan? Oh, like we actually, in a flashback, we see when Dorothy actually comes home and has to tell Sal and Sophia that she's pregnant. And so. And so it's really about sort of the way that industrially, this thing that gets discarded as like, oh, it's a clip show, like, nobody cares is like, oh, we're doing flashbacks so that you understand these characters in the present better.

[Pete Kunze]

And so the next section is also the largest section. So maybe you two want to kind of volley on this one. But the text, how did you organize and select chapters that would cover the textuality of the Golden Girls? Because how many episodes were there? I mean, there were over 175, right?

[Taylor Cole Miller]

180.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

Yeah.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

Let's see.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

And then if we add the 20.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

Very close.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

If we. I mean, if we add the 22ish for Golden palace, which is often sold in the syndicated package the Golden Girls.

[Pete Kunze]

Televisual universe, if you will.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

Yeah.

[Pete Kunze]

So, yeah, let's talk about the text chapters and some of the topics that kind of organize the analyses therein.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

We have a couple. Oh, so go ahead.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

So I think that on the one hand, it was mostly about those scholars slash scholar friends who were more textualists in their. In their orientation to the work. But I think, also think as much as I am a person who. And anyone who is listening who knows me knows I hate a textual analysis of like the show or the movie. But I think it's also really important, particularly in a book like this, to sort of do that industry historical context, but then say, okay, let's actually dig in and let's understand what this show is doing. And so there's a way that even in Claire Sewell's chapter, in talking about the Golden Girls and tabloid culture, even in sort of talking about the ways that she talks about the text, in that she's actually also sort of talking about the discourse that develops around, in some ways, workplaces, and particularly workplaces that are comprised of women. Because we always hear about, like, when there's a show with a bunch of women, listen, we have been inundated with that stuff with Sex and the City slash and just like that, just like us. But whenever there are more than, like, more than one woman on the set, we are always going to get those stories about how they are fighting with each other. And we never, by the by, get those stories about men on the set. And we listen and we all know that men have some knockdown drag outs. And so there's a way that in thinking about the text. And I think Claire really nicely demonstrates that, like, even when you're looking at the text, there's all this other stuff that actually helps it to have meaning.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

Yeah, I would say that is. I mean, that's the underlying theme of that section too, because. So the next chapter is about diet culture. I need a cheesecake. There's another chapter, AIDS is not a bad person's disease. Rose. That's obviously about the way that the show actually tackled that topic. Sex and the biddy.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

72 hours is the episode.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

Yes. Sex and the Bitty is about, you know, being an older woman who's still a sexual person. And thank you for being a mom. That's a chapter about motherhood and the Golden Girl. So each of these, again, like we said at the beginning, each of these are more text forward, but each of them are all still really demonstrating that triangulated approach, thinking about the show and its Collision with actor.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

And even that last chapter, thank you for Being a Mom, is a chapter. And where I don't know that the author, Beth, would, Beth Boser, would necessarily agree with this and I would not necessarily accuse her of doing this either. But there's a way that this one also feels a little autoethnographic in the sense that she's also partly working through her own motherhood or becoming a mother, rather. And so, and so there's a way that, again, these, these chapters are absolutely about the text, but they're also not about the text. Right. They're about the other stuff that helps. Because, listen, if, if we, if we at least subscribe to my, my sort of broad area of, of thought, which is not necessarily my own, it is just the thought, the school of thought to which I belong to is that the text doesn't actually mean anything. It only means something when we give it meaning. And so, and so part of what this section demonstrates is that yes, the Golden Girls episode means something, but it means something because it sits within a, within a, a discourse or a set of discourses.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

This section also, interestingly has, I think we talked at the beginning that, you know, this is a very broad mix of scholarly voices. And this, this section actually has three people who are not traditional scholars. So the Claire Sewell chapter, the Ashley Clark and the Jared Clayton Brown chapters, they're not traditional scholars, but I think all of them have. They've done, you know, grad school, but they are not working as working professors. And so their approaches also give us the opportunity to think about the show in a scholarly way. That's too, you know, in the Tower and Andy, I think Andrew Owens is training, is in film. Is that right?

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

No, no, he's, he's mostly a TV historian.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

Okay, TV historian. And then Beth L. Bossier is primarily a rhetorician. So even though the first and third chapters are, you know, straight up media and cultural studies folks, part of what makes the text section interesting and wild and kind of fun is seeing all of these very different approaches to the show that are also still really thinking about a circuit of culture approach to studying it from very different directions.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

I mean, and the thing I will add before we move on to the last section is what's really, I think the way to perhaps think about reading this book is to think about it as, as all of the chapters are in one way shape or form a circuit of media chapter. It's really just about which, which node on the circuit is forward. So it is really, in some ways it's like we have a dice or, you know, a dice, and we're just sort of twisting the dice around and we're just like. So it's like, oh, we're gonna put, you know, we're gonna put history first. And then it's like, well, like, if we just turned it one more time, like, the text would be first. And so it's like, okay, well, in the next section we're gonna put the text first. Yeah. And like, and your history is just right around the corner. And audiences are around the corner from that. And so I think that that's what, at least for me, makes the book really exciting.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

It's definitely favored nation. So just like there are episodes of the Golden Girls that it's kind of a rose episode where it's kind of a blanche episode. They all still feature all the characters as leads, and each of those areas is still definitely a lead in each chapter.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

Yeah.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

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[Pete Kunze]

I think that this section did a really good job too for me as a reader in driving home the relevance of the Golden Girls for scholars of feminist and queer studies. And I think it's pretty well accepted among many people that these are shows that mean a lot to women viewers, mean a lot to queer viewers, but that the show itself was doing work, cultural work, in terms of being driven by a feminist ethos, being driven by this sense of comedy can be engaged in these kinds of conversations and can speak to its moment and that it's not just distraction and diversion, but in some ways it can be kind of shaping the thinking and drawing attention and underscoring this kind of communitarianism and this kind of kinship and this kind of rethinking and revaluing of those who've been pushed to the margins. Right. Not only these. These older women, but also communities they find themselves interacting with and at times having to rethink how they engage with these communities. Right. Like Blanche really struggling with what to do about Clayton, her gay brother, who comes out to her, or Rose really wrestling with, you know, the possibility that she may have received. She may have contracted HIV through a transfusion. Yeah. And really, the way that even Rose, the sweet simpleton, you know, I had a very kind of. I wanted Betty White to be my grandmother growing up because I didn't have a grandmother. So I had this kind of parasocial relationship with Rose. But I think, you know, even seeing this character who everyone loved and was usually this kind of voice of reason, even through her kind of Amelia Bedelia simplicity, really wrestling with reducing HIV AIDS to a moral crisis and then having to unthink that thinking and seeing that work taking place within that kind of sitcom structure.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

Right.

[Pete Kunze]

I think this section is really useful for reminding us of the value of textual analysis, particularly when it's done in a historicist way and motivated by a critical concern. Speaking of my own affected relationship, let's talk about audiences and receptions. I mean, I had a professor used to say, all research is me. Search. So I appreciate Beth for drawing attention to that kind of feminist charge to embrace situated knowledge. But the third section tackles that more directly by thinking about the audience's and the reception practices around the Golden Girls. So, Al, do you want to take the lead there, since your own chapter is included herein? Yeah.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

So obviously, because in the sort of circuit of media, I think I generally tend to put audiences first in the circuit. And I'm. I didn't say this at the beginning, but I'm fairly certain that because I. Because when I went to grad school the first time for a degree in sociology, I was going for. I wanted to be a consumer market researcher, and I wanted to sort of think about doing audience or consumer kinds of research. So in some ways, I think that even as I've sort of, kind of, sort of drifted away. That's really central. And so this section was obviously really important for me to be able to include in the show. And what I love about this chapter also is that in thinking about its audiences, we're actually not thinking about like white women or we're not thinking about white men, we're actually thinking about black women and we're thinking about queers. Or I guess queers are technically still white men, but like straight white men. And so the three chapters in here, this section starts with my chapter in which I talk about black women's enduring fandom for the show and the ways that. What I am suggesting is that there is a. Because of Flo. There was always a sort of a black residue in some ways that traveled with the show. And it sort of always had that imprint of like, hey, black people, come on. And so there's a way that the sort of older black folks in this study talk about the Golden Girls as being something that perhaps they may have engaged with as. As children, but like it was part of a ritual where they went over to their grandmother's house on Saturday night, they watched the Golden Girls and they went to sleep and then they all went to church in the. Or whether or not one woman said that she actually came to it in college and was like flipping channels and like hit upon it and was like, oh, I wonder what this thing is? And she finds the Golden Girls that way. And so I really wanted to sort of piece through. And it's also, in some ways it's an extension of a chapter in my own book, my own solo authored book, Fandom for Us by Us, that talks about black women and their fandom for the show. And I in that book talk about it as providing them a sense of comfort that on the one hand, the show is not going to change. Even as we. To pick up an earlier example, even as we understand that Rose may be infected with blood that has HIV antibodies, we know that Rose isn't gonna die from aids. We know that although Dorothy presumably has chronic fatigue syndrome, that it's not going to. It's not going to ultimately kill her or at least within the context of the show. And so part of what I wanted to do in that chapter is talk about, on the one hand, flow. But on the other hand, I also wanted to talk about these audiences that have taken up and continue to take up the Golden Girls, particularly when the show was never meant for them. And so I think that that's part of what this section does so Ken, actually, Ken Pfeil, who is a comedy scholar or comedy media studies scholarly, doubles down on thinking about camp and in particular is talking about smut and the way that the sex joke sort of functions within the Golden Girls. And then lastly, Nora Patterson, fortunately, extended some of the work that, at least for me, is the first scholarly work on the Golden Girls that I picked up and read and said, this is actually useful for my own work and for work that is not about the Golden Girls. And so she gives us a chapter, and we should also say, and I, oh, my God. And I am actually going to forget the queen's name. So I'm gonna look it up, and then I'm gonna.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

Hecklina.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

Hecklina. Thank you very much.

[Pete Kunze]

Rest in peace, Heklina. Yes.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

Yes. It's the last interview with Hekalina before she or the last published interview with Hecklina before his untimely passing, but talks to Hecklina as the Dorothy of a drag troupe in San Francisco's performances of the Golden Girls, the Christmas episodes. And I should also add that, having read Nora Patterson's earlier piece on the Golden Girls is how I even knew that drag Golden Girls performances were happening in San Francisco. And so for, like, three years straight, my hubby and I would go out to San Francisco and take. Take advantage of seeing Golden Girls, the Christmas episodes. So that is that section. Thinking about audiences and thinking through queer audiences, thinking through camp, thinking through black female audiences for the series.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

I just want to add to that that if you know Al well, as many of us do, if someone says representation matters, he's gonna send up one of his eyebrows. He's gonna be like, I don't know. And I think what this section proves is that audiences matter. I think what is. When. Wherever we're ever. When we are ever talking about why representation matters, we're really talking about audiences. And what I love about this section is I wrote a piece, a seminar paper about Logo picking up the Golden Girl. So Logo Chan is a cable channel that was primarily targeted to LGBTQ viewers. And when they first started, they put out a whole bunch of shows that were directed at gay and lesbian audiences, shows that were specifically explicitly about gay and lesbian audiences. And what they realized is, no, actually, gay and lesbian audiences would rather watch the Golden Girls and Bewitched and Roseanne or whatever. Why The Golden Girls had a gay character in the pilot, which you write about in a lot of detail.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

Pete, Rip Coco.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

Yes, rest in peace, Coco, and Charles Levin. But when you think about the show, it actually becomes a lot Queerer after his departure, in my opinion. And so I think that section really does a nice job of contextualizing Al's. I'm speaking for you. I hope that's okay. He's in the room of contextualizing Al's issues with that notion of representation mattering and how what we're really thinking about, or should be thinking about more is audiences mattering.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

Yeah, I make that point somewhere in something I've written. I should actually. Yeah. But anywho. But thank you for signal boosting that.

[Pete Kunze]

So I also want to underscore as we head into the home stretch here, that this is not just a book of academic essays. It's also a book that features a lot of interstitial material, as Taylor mentioned earlier, including interviews with folks who were on the set and producing and writing and helping to otherwise make the show. And so I was hoping you could kind of talk about connecting with those folks, interviewing them and what it brings to this book.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

So on the one hand, what I will say is that, you know, partly for me at least, like, trying to talk to the people involved in the production process is central to my work. And, um, I was fortunate in. Well, I was randomly. Ah, this is what happened. So when I was working on my chapter, I was searching. Or when I was thinking about my chapter, I was searching the JET Magazine archives because I wanted to sort of figure out if. If the Golden Girls had ever done, like, any advertising or anything in JET magazine. I did not find an ad for the show, but what I did find was the wedding announcement of Winifred Hervey, who was the only black writer on the series for, I believe, its first three seasons. And so I, through, actually the fantastic Jim Colucci, was able to reach Winifred Hervey and was able to interview her for my chapter, as I was thinking through blackness and the series. And so I'm gonna actually hand it over to Taylor because while I participated in many of the interviews, Taylor was actually the architect of bringing together those other writers who were part of these interstitial interviews.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

So just to list them out, Isabel Elmero is the production associate, the first interview. And she was essentially the dialogue coach for the Golden Girls for the girls themselves. So every day they would go over lines, and she also did something called Laugh Spread, where she had to estimate how long the audience laughter would last in order for them to cut the show to a specific length so that they wouldn't have to actually make very many edits. Which sounds like wizardry to me.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

I mean, that conversation was so fascinating to listen to her talk about like, and like being on the show. And she's like, oh, yeah, like I got to a point where I would know, like, oh, like this choke is gonna, this joke is gonna get this much laughter and that one's gonna get this one. And like, and so I'd be like, oh, we need to cut this. It was fascinating.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

Yes. Cindy Fee is the main titles performer. And so I learned, you know, in the book we talk about how she. And then she went home and she cashed a check for the rest of her life. She went in, she performed it once. They were like, good, do it again. And she said, really? I already did it. Because, you know, at that point it wasn't the special thing we know today. It was just another TV pilot. Wayne Williams was the photographer for the show for Whit Thomas Harris specifically, not for NBC. They knew that NBC would control too much of the production material. So the studio wanted to shoot its own. And he was brought in because he was really good with Bea. Because Bea Arthur hated a photo shoot. She did not want to put on makeup, she did not want to put on shoes. She just wanted to smoke and drink in her house and sit in the dark. So he, he became very useful for actually creating a way in which they could actually get those promo shots without pissing off Bea.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

We should also give a shout out to Wayne as well because. Yes, thank you to him because he gave us access to use so many of the amazing photos that are throughout this book.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

This is a four color book, y'. All.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

Yeah, it's so pretty. It's really.

[Pete Kunze]

It is a pretty book. And I have to say, and I.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

Do not just say that as like the parent of the book. Like, it is a pretty book.

[Pete Kunze]

Yeah. I mean the images in here that I had never seen before are amazing. And I have to figure out a way to get in touch with Wayne because I really want a copy of that image where they're all in their respective chairs with their names on the back. I mean, there's some real treats in here. In fact, I find it very difficult to read this book from beginning to end. And I think that's a good thing. Right. You can kind of move from different areas of it and whatever piques your interest. And you also talked with some of the producers, right? So I mean, you have some of those below the line folks who are so crucial, but also some of those folks who actually were involved in those big meetings with the network and with the production company and Disney, no doubt about the direction of the show and what's happening. So can you talk a little bit about that as well?

[Taylor Cole Miller]

Yes. Marcia Posner Williams is the co producer. Whenever you look at a TV show, you're gonna see a whole list of producers, and those typically tend to be the writers in the writers room. Usually there is one person who's kind of the person in charge of the budget and the person who kind of oversees that will get that title of co producer. She's not directly writing any of the episodes, her Marcia, but she is kind of overseeing all aspects of the show. She comes, she came with Susan directly from Soap, and so a lot of her section, she talks about the beloved development she had there. And she's also one of the funniest people I have ever talked to. Like, she talks in sitcom quips. It's amazing. And I really love her a lot. And then the other one was the showrunner for the show's fifth and sixth seasons, Mark Sotkin. And he came in having done Laverne and Shirley. He came in to be the executive producer of the show, to be the showrunner of the show after the first four seasons. And so there's a little bit of a tonal shift and a lot of people behind the scenes talk about how different it is. I was really surprised to learn that because it feels like a very consistent show to me. I mean, you can watch any episode and it doesn't feel like, oh, it's one of those second season episodes. Like, it just feels like an episode. But he talks about the very intentional differences he made when he came into the show as someone who was actually not a fan of the show. It's not that he wasn't a fan, it's just that he didn't really watch it. And how he came in and the very first thing he was like, we're not going to do a picture it, or we're not going to do a St. Olaf story. And the people that he was working with were like, yeah, actually we are. We are going to do those things because that's what the audience loves. And he, you know, he navigates. And whenever we talk to him, he's talking about navigating being the new person on set, but also being the boss in charge. But he also tells a really great story on page 204, you get the book you should read. You should just immediately go to page 204, because what he says in that chapter or in that section is he's talking about one of his producers comes to him and they said, you know, someone is going into Betty White's dressing room every day and taking a dump in her toilet. And the rumor is, is that it's Bea Arthur, because, of course, everyone knows that Bea Arthur and Betty White were not the best of friends. And I wish I could share the audio from this interview. We told him we wouldn't share it, but I wish I could share the audio from this interview where he does an impression of someone else doing an impression of Bea Arthur gifting Betty White a present every day in her. In her trailer or in her dressing room, where she's like, how's that one, darling? And then someone making the joke, oh, I just saw Bea Arthur loading up on bran muffins. Be aware, at the end, he does say that he thinks it was just a prank, but in my head, I live for the idea that it was not.

[Pete Kunze]

We love an apocryphal story.

[Taylor Cole Miller]

We love lore.

[Pete Kunze]

Give us lore that might be Carol Channing's. But anyway, gentlemen, I think. I don't know if we can come back from that. I think that's a good place for us to ramp it up.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

That feels like. That feels like.

[Pete Kunze]

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for your time today. Alan Taylor, it's been a pleasure speaking with you about this book. The book is the Golden Tales from the Lanai, available now from Rutgers University Press and other online booksellers. This is Pete Kunze, and this has been New Books and Media on the New Books Network. Thank you for listening, and we hope you'll join us again next time.

[Alfred L. Martin, Jr.]

Sam.