Unboxing Betty: An Interview with Betty Aberlin

By Antony Teofilo

Contrary to what you might think, she's been around.

Early on, she strutted the boards in dagger-sharp satirical reviews at New York's Upstairs at the Downstairs with the likes of Madeline Kahn. Her life may have been a little different if she had not turned down the lead in a movie called NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD...then again, maybe not. And if you don't blink, you'll catch her in the Prospect Park zoot-suit scene in Spike Lee's MALCOLM X.

Engage her in conversation, and you'll see just why it is so important not to confuse an individual with their screen persona. She's sharp, she's utterly well-read...but more enthralling is her ability to make a worldly writer-type blush during an impromptu performance of one of her sultry self-written monologues.

Odds are, you grew up with her. Every afternoon she took her place among one of the few non-rogues galleries on children's television. No explosions or heavy-handed marketing here, just a bevy of comforting characters who sounded oddly similar. Her voice always lilted with understanding and patience as she explained the cruel ways of the world to a sensitive striped tiger. His name was Daniel, and he inhabited a clock tower in a land one could only reach via a small red trolley whose engine was apparently powered by a piano.

After three decades, is there life outside The Neighborhood?

Antony Teofilo: What are your duties on JERSEY GIRL?

Betty Aberlin: I am playing the teacher at St. Maria Goretti grade school. [Not-so-fun Fact: The story of St. Maria Goretti's rather horrific martyrdom made a big impression on a young Kevin Smith in Catholic grade school, hence the inclusion of her name in the script].

AT: Tell me a little about working with Kevin Smith. How did you meet?

BA: Pittsburgh is where Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood has been made for all the years I've been with it. Someone told me that Kevin was shooting DOGMA in Pittsburgh, and I was able to get an audition, though I didn't know what it was for. As I was leaving that audition [where she was asked her to as if she had just been stabbed with a hockey stick], I [told] Kevin that if I wasn't right for the movie, I would love to be part of his repertory company. I went back to New York, and when I got back home there was a message on my answering machine saying that they were actually considering me for the part of the nun at the beginning of DOGMA. I was so thrilled that he asked me back to be part of JERSEY GIRL.

AT: The first time I saw DOGMA, I knew your face, but I could not place it. Later that night, I realized that I had grown up with you. Every afternoon it was a tray table, a bowl of soup, sandwiches cut in quarters, and Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Yet here you were in DOGMA, a fairly controversial film. The role you played wasn't exactly earth shattering in its irreverence, but it was a character that had a streak of satire running through it. Was it a challenge taking a role like that? Did you worry it might hurt your other body of work?

BA: I read DOGMA, and I thought it was a brilliant script. I was very upset that the Catholic League chose to attack it. I believe that it's absolutely a faithful work of profound comedy. To be part of it in any way was a total pleasure.

AT: Considering your background as a performer in children's television, was there any kind of backlash, personally or professionally, when you chose to do the role?

BA: When you're anonymous, there's no backlash. Because of the way things happen on Mr. Rogers', people don't expect to see me on the street. If they do, they're used to seeing me about four inches tall, and wonder how I'm going to get back inside the TV set. I have heard children telling their parents, 'That's Lady Aberlin!' and the parent takes one look at me and says, 'No, it isn't.'

[With DOGMA] There was just the ordinary divergence of opinions about a work of art. I fell about eight hundred percent on the 'I Love Dogma' side. If there were people I thought misunderstood it, I knew I wasn't going to change their minds. So there was no backlash.

AT: I hadn't seen you in a long time. It was nice to see you in a new role.

BA: Thanks to Kevin. That is the unfortunate essence of typecasting. Fred used the names of the actors who worked for him. Joe Negri became Handyman Negri, Don Brockett became Chef Brockett, and I became Lady Aberlin. Because of my name being used, people confused me with that character. The actor colors the action of the character, but in my case, there was a melding. There is much more to me than Lady Aberlin. I am grateful to be inconspicuous in terms of celebrity, so that I can hope to do other work. I don't think I'm compromising Fred Rogers and his ideals. After thirty-three years in The Neighborhood, I'm extremely glad to be in Jersey today. [Laughs]

AT: What made you want to get into being a children's television performer?

BA: [As a performer] I had a life in theater before I found Mr. Rogers'. I did a lot of musical theater. Early on, people wondered 'Why are you working on a children's show in Pittsburgh?' That was hard to justify at times, and ended up being sort of a sidetrack as far as the [entertainment] business is concerned. But my mother and sister are teachers, so the idea of being part of something that could possibly be good for children appealed to me. Except for the operas, which were wonderful (we've done thirteen children's operas), [Mr. Rogers'] was not exactly a chance to stretch out and strut one's stuff. Child development was the goal, not performance.

AT: There are teachers in your family, and now you're playing a teacher. Why did you become a performer instead of an educator in the traditional sense?

BA: There are many stories of broken homes among showfolk...growing up was like that. My mother was the first divorcee on the block. Musical theater was my first love. The question of whether some of us in this work are looking to please the absent father or get approval from the audience over and over again is one that I have pondered.

AT: Are you still friends with Fred Rogers?

BA: Yes.

AT: He's a minister...

BA: He's a Presbyterian minister.

AT: Are you active in any aspect of religious ministry?

BA: No. I think those of us who have been with Fred for so long consider ourselves to be part of his ministry. When the Isrealites were wandering in the desert and asked God for manna, he'd only give them enough for the day. My faith is not part of any organized hierarchy, I just hope to have enough for my day.

AT: Have you ever developed any of your own material?

BA: I've always written. I wrote a little piece called STOP ME BEFORE I LOVE AGAIN. It's kind of dark humor. People who expect me to be Lady Aberlin may be shocked by the nature of my own sense of humor, which is not a...white Anglo-Saxon protestant minister's sensibility.

Fred is a genius, and I think Kevin is too. In my lifetime I'm very lucky to have gotten to work with two such disperate talents. But my own nature is not Lady Aberlin. After thirty-three years, I'm just trying now to separate myself from the character. In the days when I smoked, I'd have to stub that cigarette out right quick if a four-year old came over and hope that I could live up to the perfection of [Lady Aberlin].

AT: You've already successfully performed darker humor in DOGMA. Where would you like to go from here? Do you think you'd ever self-produce any of your material?

BA: It's possible. You have to go on having positive experiences to keep your chops and your belief in yourself up. Now that I can't trade on youth and looks anymore, I'm in a different dimension [as an artist].

AT: You interact with the online community through the message boards at ViewAskew.com. How do you feel about that experience?

BA: I'm just a newbie on the computer so I was very fearful of interacting on Kevin's website. I never expected to be put in red for a minute. [Offical ViewAskew personnel and cast members' names appear in red, while regular posters names appear in black.] I was just trying to find a name that the machine wouldn't reject. I finally settled on Babka [a polish word for a sweet coffee cake]. Then I was put in red. On top of not knowing anything about a computer and constantly posting things twice and not knowing so many of the references of the so-hip kids that gather around Kevin's site, I'm sort of embarrassed by being a 'red', but it's sort of appropriate. When I was ten, I was in my first show called 'Sandhog', which was at the height of the McCarthy period. It was written by Earl Robinson, who wrote THE HOUSE I LIVE IN and Waldo Salt who was one of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten. [Salt also] wrote MIDNIGHT COWBOY when he was finally allowed to write again under his own name. I was a communist by association at age ten, so when I became red on ViewAskew, I thought, 'Well, here we go again!'

AT: Do the regular posters on the boards ever give you any guff?

BA: They've been pretty swell, and quite forgiving. I can't be hip, but they suffer through a poem or something that I'll post. I tend to be dreamier or a little more stream of consciousness than a lot of the more incisive wits on the ViewAskew boards.

AT: What other sorts of roles would you like to perform down the road?

BA: Typecasting causes the viewer to expect a certain performance from a certain actor. Women over forty tend to get teachers, and nuns, and prison matrons [Laughs]. Anything Kevin would use me for, anything anyone would see me for [I would play]. I don't have to be sweetness and light. We actresses of a certain age are competing for the same parts. And I don't even compete right now...if Sally Fields wants a part, I'm going to have an even more difficult time changing someone's mind about who I am because I'm known as a children's performer. If I can just begin to do more character work and not embarrass myself and the people who hire me, I'll be very happy. It's wonderful to get to strut some comedy in JERSEY GIRL. Profound comedy is my cup of tea entirely. When I say profound, I mean comedy that has a dimension that can move you as well as amuse you, and that's where Kevin's writing is.

I think many actors [in my position] don't think they'll ever work again. Then the casting woman called and said, 'I just wanted to let you know that Kevin's thinking of you for the part of the teacher.' For a week after that, I was thinking, 'Wow...Kevin's thinking of me.' I imagined Farah Fawcett coming in and getting the part, because Kevin was thinking of me, but surely someone else would get it. It took forever for me to believe that it was true.

AT: Now that you've finished filming JERSEY GIRL, do you have any reflections on the experience?

BA: Working with Kevin is sheer bliss. He bears a tremendous burden of gratitude from me at all times. I think G.K. Chesterton said that gratitude is happiness with a component of wonder added to it, and that really describes how I feel about being part of JERSEY GIRL.

Here's hoping the future opens its mind and its arms to Ms. Aberlin...and some casting agents, too.