Markie Post Is Back on TV and Loving Toluca Lake

I didn’t know Markie Post was a Toluca Lake neighbor when I sat down to have dinner with her. I just knew she was the actress I grew up watching on TV’s Night Court and Hearts Afire and movies like There’s Something About Mary. Before the appetizers, she mentioned the home she built in Toluca Lake, so I realized we had more in common than just Harry Anderson’s courtroom.

We met at a dinner party for the Television Critics Association, an event held to drum up publicity for the new Hallmark Movie Channel. For the occasion, Hallmark rented the Tournament House in Pasadena, and set up an outdoor dining area under a tent. At each table, a different star of one of its upcoming films was seated, leaving the critics to choose who they wanted to mingle with over filet mignon, swordfish and molten chocolate cake. Post stars in Backyard Wedding, which will air on Saturday.

In our interview, we talked about the new movie, her experience in Toluca Lake and her time on Night Court.

First of two parts:

PATCH: What can we expect from Backyard Wedding?

MARKIE POST: It’s one of those fun, family [oriented] … I call it like a romance novel. I could try to sell it to men, but I don't think I can do that, so I’m going to be honest with you and say this is a woman’s movie. It was a clever script. I play a sassy aunt of the girl who’s getting married, played by Alicia Witt, who is such a brilliant talent. She’s just adorable and wonderful and really understated and really real. Frances Fisher, who played her mother, has become my friend. The primary reason I did it was because I knew she was going to be in it. It was just a blast to do. I had never done a Hallmark movie before and I kind of went, "Uh, I don’t really want to go—blah, blah, blah—I’m a spoiled brat." Read the script and went, “I’ve got to do this.” And found out who was in it.

PATCH: Where did you shoot it?

MP: We shot it around town, actually way into the Valley. It’s a very wealthy enclave, and I couldn’t understand why these people would have us in their house. It was so muddy, rainy, hideous. It was supposed to be a backyard wedding in the summertime, right? We managed to get it done, but we tromped a lot of mud through that house.

PATCH: Where in the Valley?

MP: Going up towards Palmdale. You don’t go all the way to Palmdale but kind of around in there.

PATCH: Were you able to go home every night instead of staying on location?

MP: Yes, you go home every night, but it’s a long drive.

PATCH: Was it time to start playing sassy aunts after you’ve been so many leading ladies?

MP: Honestly, that’s sort of why I grabbed it, because I thought this is an opportunity to play somebody a little bit less rule-following. I’m always following the rules. I’m always the one who’s the voice of reason. On Night Court I was the audience. Everybody around me was crazy. I had to sort of cope with it. So people can do that through me, and that’s generally what I’ve done. So this one I just got to be sort of irreverent, and I like that.

PATCH: Is your character the female Bull then?

MP: No, Bull had no brains. No, there’s no Night Court equivalent. I was more like Marsha Warfield, maybe. Not like that. You’ll see it and you’ll go, “What does she mean by that?” But sort of irreverent. Not as irreverent as I would have liked to have been. This is Hallmark.

PATCH: Was it tough to get Hollywood to consider you in a different light?

MP: You kind of have to. I can’t play the ingénue. It would not be interesting. I’m not an ingénue anymore. Playing the mom in a lot of contexts, unless it’s fun and well written, is very thankless. So generally I don’t do that anymore. So if I’m not going to do that anymore, then I have to find things that I will do. I’m not saying I won’t do it but it’s just not gratifying. You want to be part of the story. You want to at least be part of the characterization of the family. If I’m in a position to be able to choose, you start to choose those things. Those things will more come your way. It’s almost like turning the Queen Mary. You’ve got to turn it slowly. But I read for a pilot, and it got down to me and somebody else where I was playing this irreverent Southern aunt who just spoke the truth, a chain smoker, sleeping with guys with Viagra,  up all night. Oh my gosh, it was so much fun and I was this close. They chose somebody else who is completely another type to me, but I just love that I got to do that. I just love that they thought of me that way, and I know that those people who are in that room who are laughing at what I was doing and had no idea. They’ll think of me differently. That’s how it happens.

PATCH: I’ve never heard of that. Is that show actually on?

MP: Not yet. It’s an ABC Family Channel movie. It’s going to be with Raven Symone.

PATCH: What kind of wedding did you have?

MP: I had a very small wedding at my friend’s house, actually, and then we had a reception someplace else. So I had an understated wedding, which I think now maybe I would do differently. I watch Say Yes to the Dress and, dammit, I want that big old blooming ball gown. I didn’t have that. I had a vintage, kind of understated, classy thing. No, it was a wonderful wedding.

PATCH: Where would we find you out and about in Toluca Lake?

MP: Well, everywhere in Toluca Lake. It’s a great little town to live in, but I love 's. Have you seen SweetSalt? I think the chef was somebody who was one of the Top Chef competitors and maybe won. It’s the neatest little sandwich shop. It’s beautiful. I think really haute cuisine is coming to Toluca Lake. There are some great clothing stores there, and it’s just a neighborhood where it’s got sidewalks. It’s getting to be more young celebrities living there, but it’s not a celebrity neighborhood. Miley Cyrus lives there, so we sort of live with a lot of vans on our street, speeding off as soon as she got her license, poor thing. She couldn’t have a lemonade stand. That’s just plain wrong.

PATCH: Did you see her try to have a lemonade stand?

MP: Her sisters had a lemonade stand, and she went to buy some, and then the paparazzi found her and she said, “That’s OK, that’s OK.” She was a good sport.

PATCH: How long have you lived there?

MP: I’ve lived there 20-some years. We lived in one house on Forman [Avenue] and then we moved. We built a house, we loved it there so much.

PATCH: How did you first discover the area?

MP: We were looking for a house, my husband and I. We’d only been married about a year and I said, “I don’t want to live in the Valley; I just don’t want to live in the Valley.” Because, I was a Valley snob. There was such a thing then. We were living in Hancock Park, so I wanted to live on that side. And the real estate agent said, “Just the edge, over the hill to Toluca Lake. It’s just right. It’s not really, it’s just like the beginning of, the Valley.” And I fell in love with it. So never say never. I usually do exactly what I say I’m not going to do. And now I love the Valley. Except that was before we had our own area code. I felt so excluded when we got our own area code and it became like, “Oh, you’re 818.”

PATCH: What was it like raising kids in Toluca Lake?

MP: It was wonderful raising kids in Toluca Lake because of the sidewalks, because of the neighbors, because of all the children. The thing is, though, it wasn’t a ride-your-bike-anywhere, go down the street. We just have lost that, I think, in Los Angeles. I grew up in that kind of [environment]. I had a horse when I grew up in Walnut Creek, California, which is up north near San Francisco. I had a horse in my backyard. I had a bicycle. We were out all day long. No worries, no cell phones, nobody’s going to kidnap us, nobody’s going to hit us with a car. They might’ve, but we weren’t worried about it then. Even though Toluca Lake is so safe and wonderful, I never feel comfortable just letting them go on their own. Now I regret it because they could’ve. That’s the kind of place Toluca Lake is. So we would walk a lot, walk into town. They remember it as being a very good childhood.

PATCH: When did you build your own home?

MP: We went and looked around the deeper Valley. We looked at Encino. We looked at all these places, and I was at the height of Night Court, so we had this money we could use. We could buy our dream house and we just couldn’t find it anywhere. We actually put a down payment on this hillside property to hold it, that would involve pylons, that had this great view. I’m thinking, “I’m pregnant with a child. We have this great view and this tiny little road leading up to it,” and I had nightmares. I thought, “Give up the money, we cannot be there, I don’t want to leave Toluca Lake.” So we looked around Toluca Lake and found this corner lot. It was an acre—a big lot in Toluca Lake. And it had this falling-down house on it. We took down the house and we built a Southern style: verandas, porch, everything. We love it. It’s buried by trees and hedges now. It was a year-and-a-half of building, which was such a great experience. People talk about how awful and how it tries your marriage. We had a blast because we were living in a house. We could bicycle to this. It was five blocks away. We could bicycle to where we were building and just watch it go up, and make decisions and have the luxury of the funds to be able to do what we wanted to do. It was a wonderful experience. We’re living in it now.

PATCH: What neighborhood is it in?

MP: It’s down the street from Bob Hope, by the golf course. It’s on a corner. Bob Hope lived on Ledge, the corner of Ledge and Moorpark. We live down the street from him. We live near Miley Cyrus. So if you know where she lives, we live around there. But it’s a corner lot, and it rises because it’s on a knoll, so this house we built was two stories and it had an underground basement you could drive down into. The people in the neighborhood were so angry at us because we were building this blooming huge house. Oh my gosh, they just went, “Who do they think they are?” But we built hedges around it. There’s this huge oak tree that’s 200 years old in front of us. It’s completely buried now. Everybody now goes, “Oh wow, you raised our property value.” So everybody’s happy now, but I remember being really embarrassed: “What do we think we’re doing building this enormous house?”

Next: Looking back at Night Court.