Maureen Stapleton: Basic Human
"I'm basic human, and I think that most people are basically pretty decent. Show up, stick around, and don't be a shit."
Maureen Stapleton was not one for flowery language, and compliments embarrassed her. After I related to her some praise from friends and colleagues about her "angelic kindness," her "patience of a saint," and her "emotional superiority," she had had it with me.
"I think this is such bullshit," she said. "I don't mean that I don't love those people. I do. But I have no idea what they're talking about. I don't know what I'm doing or what I'm going to do. I don't have principles or a code, and if I had a philosophy it would be simple: Show up. Stay. Return.
"I grew up in a time when you stood by people," she continued. "I was almost always around stand-up people who wanted to help and who got it that the world was better--not the just the fucking play or the movie--if you lifted everyone up. How is this complicated? Is the world falling apart so fast that I haven't noticed a new shipment of shits that have come in? There have always been shits in the world, and another job I have is to be someone you can come sit with when the shits get to be too much.
"I'm no angel though," she concluded. "I'm basic human, and I think that most people are basically pretty decent. Show up, stick around, and don't be a shit."--Maureen Stapleton/Interview with James Grissom/Lenox, Massachusetts, 1991.
Photograph of Maureen, from 1979, via NBC.