Sally Struthers Continues to Find Joy in Performing

In 1971, Sally Struthers shot to fame playing Gloria Bunker — the feminist daughter of "lovable bigot" Archie and ditzy Edith — in the massively successful CBS series "All in the Family." Although she's appeared in numerous television shows in the years since — including her own "All in the Family" spin-off, "Gloria"; a sitcom, "9 to 5," based on the hit film; and more recently, the critically acclaimed dramedy "Gilmore Girls" — much of her work over the past 30 years has been in live theater. 

Now, at 77, Struthers is returning to the small screen in the heartwarming new Netflix series "A Man on the Inside." Created by Michael Schur ("The Good Place"), the show follows Charles (Ted Danson), a lonely widower who is hired by a private investigator to move into a retirement home for a month in order to find the culprit of a theft. As he embeds himself in the community and meets its various residents — including Struthers' overly flirtatious Virginia — he forges friendships and develops a new lease on life.

Loosely based on the 2020 documentary "The Mole Agent," the show features an incredible roster of veteran talent, including Lori Tan Chinn ("Orange is the New Black"), Susan Ruttan ("L.A. Law"), and Veronica Cartwright ("Alien"). And as Struthers tells Next Avenue, she's overjoyed to be a part of it.

"It is a fantastic show, thanks to the writer-producers," she says. "Mike Schur and Morgan Sackett took that Chilean documentary and turned it into the most wonderful series. I couldn't believe that I got to be part of the supporting cast!"

Struthers recently spoke to Next Avenue about getting the role, the challenges of being an older actor and her memories of "All in the Family."

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Next Avenue: Congratulations on "A Man on the Inside." How did the role of Virginia first come to you?

Sally Struthers: Well, I would like to give some heady answer, but I'll give you the truth. I was asked to do the Emmy Awards in January of this year. Norman Lear had just died, so they asked Rob Reiner and me to come on and be on stage in this little reenactment of the Bunker family house and talk about those who had passed. I came home from that and was told that I had an audition the next morning at Universal Studios to read for a TV series that was going to be done for Netflix with Ted Danson.

I barely had any sleep from doing the Emmy Awards, and then I was up and at Universal at 9 a.m. to meet these darling people. And of course, I went on the audition, the first audition I'd had in years. I mean, you get to the point where you don't even get to meet people in real life anymore. If they want to see you, they have you self-tape at home on your phone and then send this to some obscure casting person. You never meet anybody. But I got to walk into an office and meet all the people and read for them.

A day or two later, I got a phone call that I had landed the role of Virginia. And a couple weeks later, we started. It was so exciting because I hadn't done anything since "Gilmore Girls," which had been 20 years earlier.

Hollywood has a tendency to write off characters of a certain age, but in this show we see older adults who are drinking, smoking pot, flirting and developing crushes. How does this role differ from those that have come to you in the past?

Well, first of all, it came to me. I mean, it's hard to get arrested if you're a woman over 40 years old in the industry. So that any job was there for the auditioning and landing was amazing. I would have been happy to play a crack whore. [Laughs]

Yes, in general, people over 50 get written off. We live in a country that has no respect for its elders. Go anywhere around the world — pick a country — and they revere and respect their elders, take good care of them. Usually, they get to live at home with their family. They don't get shuttled off to some institution. So this was a wonderful chance to show the resilience of people who are now living to 100 and older and showing that they're interesting and lively and fun. Because people in North America just tend to dismiss them as, 'They can't be interesting. They're not beautiful anymore physically, and I'm not interested in their lives, so I'm just gonna hang out with young people.' This was the chance to say, 'Hello! We're here!'

The show's cast is phenomenal. Ted Danson is the lead, but you have a lot of really great scenes with Margaret Avery, who plays Florence.

And I fell madly in love with Margaret Avery! I'd never met her before. Of course, she was nominated for an Academy Award for the original "Color Purple," for playing the character of Shug, and there I was having her as my best friend. She's the most amazing woman, and we have stayed in constant touch. And now that I've come home from working for three months in Kansas in a brand-new play ["An Old-Fashioned Family Murder"] that was written for me, I'm going to get the chance to finally see Margaret.

Had you worked with any of the other actors before?

Yes! Clyde Kusatsu [who plays Grant Yokohama in "A Man on the Inside"] played the minister on "All in the Family" that married Mike and Gloria. I've known him for over 50 years. And then on this TV series that I did with Jami Gertz called "Still Standing," he played my husband. So here it is, 25 years later, and we're together again.

I wanted to ask you about "All in the Family," because you were not widely known when you got cast as Gloria. And that show, of course, went on to become one of the most groundbreaking series in television history. When you think back on that time of your life, what comes to mind?

A naivete, an innocence, a lack of knowledge of what this was going to do to my life, and being constantly surprised how everything changed. I think two big things happened to me from "All in the Family." The first one is the most positive: I became a face and a name that became so well known that I think that's why I work constantly. I've been doing nothing but theater for the last 35 years, besides "Gilmore Girls" and now this Netflix thing.

I think that producers of theater all over the country realize that my name puts certain people's bodies in seats in the theater, so I'm never not working. I work all the time, so that's great. The bad thing about what happened from "All in the Family" is I lost my privacy. And you don't know what that's like until you lose it. I mourn for my privacy.

You worked with such incredible talent on that show. Was there anything you learned about comedy or acting during that period that you've continued to use throughout your career?

I guess I — over all of these years, not just from that show — have honed my comic ability. But if my mother was still with us, she would tell you I was that way since I was two years old. I lived and breathed at two years old to make my family and my neighbors and my preschool teachers laugh. I've always said there are people going down the street with little things in their ears listening to music as they jog or walk. Music is not my music; music is laughter to me. If I can elicit laughter from a person or a group of people, I'm in heaven. And my mother was a brilliant woman, but she would speak English incorrectly to describe me to people. She was being interviewed by a magazine back in the day, in the '70s, about me. They wanted to know about me as a child, and my mother said, "Sally was born with funny." And so I've always been that way.

You couldn't teach me about being funny, but over the years, working with all the greats, you pick up a little thing here and a little thing there, and the next thing you know, it's in your own kettle of tricks.

You mentioned that you've worked consistently, particularly in theater. What motivates you? What do you enjoy most about your work?

I enjoy that I get work. I enjoy that it's there for me, because I have friends that are much more talented than I am, but they're women, and they don't get any work because they're in their 70s and 80s and they've been forgotten. And what motivates me? To pay my bills. I mean, I'm not married. I don't have a husband or a partner. I'm in charge of keeping the house. I live in a 103-year-old house, and something's breaking down every third day, and I have to pay my bills. So even though I'm tired, I keep going. And I do believe in the adage, 'You rest, you rust.'

How many people do you know who say, 'I can't wait to retire! I'm so looking forward to my retirement.' And then when they retire, they sit down in a chair, and they're gone in a year because they rust. So I'm glad that this work that I have to do to pay my bills keeps me going, because I'm pretty spry for somebody who's 77.

Is there anything you haven't done yet — a specific role, a project, working with a specific person — that you'd like to achieve?

You know, I can't say there's something I haven't done. I've played every kind of part. I've done commercials, musicals, voiceovers, books on tape. I did, during COVID, my first horror film. I've done it all, and I'm ready to do it all again.

Sandra Ebejer lives in upstate New York with her husband, son and two cats who haven't figured out how to get along. Her work has been published in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Real Simple, Writer's Digest, Shondaland and others. Read more at sandraebejer.com or find her on Twitter @sebejer. 

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