Holland Taylor’s turn in ‘Brothers’ is just another notch in her sexy, scene-stealing career

“The most seductive thing you can do,” says Holland Taylor, “is simply look at a person. That’s quite sufficient.”

She is looking at me when she says this, her consonants crisp and her blue eyes calm as she considers a question about how she manages to bring a sense of sexual vitality to every role she has played, up to and including Matthew McConaughey’s mother in the Apple TV meta-comedy “Brothers,” which ends its first season on Wednesday.

Taylor is known for playing commanding women — erect, articulate and immaculately put together. But beneath all that inevitably roil forces other than authority. Humor certainly — Taylor is queen of the raised eyebrow — and something more. Straight or gay, comedy or drama, as mother, boss, judge or next door neighbor, her characters are radiantly sexual beings.

David E. Kelley saw it in “One Fine Day,” in which Taylor plays Michelle Pfeiffer’s mother; after watching Taylor, then 52, interact with co-star George Clooney, he cast her in “The Practice.” With her combination of judicial competence and frank sexuality, Judge Roberta Kittleson allowed Taylor to do what she does best — steal every scene she’s in, and, in 1999, win a supporting actress Emmy over two of her co-stars.

A few years later, her turn as the billionaire “I was a lesbian in 1974” Peggy Peabody in “The L Word” became instantly iconic. In “Two and a Half Men,” Charlie (Charlie Sheen) and Alan (Jon Cryer) may have referenced the exploits of their perfectly coiffed mother Evelyn (Taylor) for cringe-laughs, but Evelyn was never bothered.

Long before Hollywood finally began to accept that women over the age of 30 (or 40, 50, 60 and 70) could be considered, to use industry parlance, “f—able”, Taylor, with her patrician accent and invariably well-groomed mien, was blazing the trail.

Sex is not the predominant theme of her characters and her performances are never coy and rarely flirtatious; she does not vamp or sidle up suggestively. But it’s always there, a subtle, often cheeky awareness. Not an invitation so much as a reflection of a woman who understands, and is comfortable with, the physical side of the human condition.

All of which had been mentioned as part of the original question.

“When I’m playing, I don’t think of being sexy. Ever,” she says initially. “In life either. Sarah said something to me like, ‘You don’t even know what you’re doing.’ I said, ‘I’m not doing anything.’ And she said, ‘Maybe that’s the point.’” (Sarah being Sarah Paulson, Taylor’s partner for more than a decade.)

Now, Taylor continues to look at me and say nothing. She isn’t trying to prove what she has just said; she is simply considering. Still, the back of my neck grows quite warm; Paulson clearly knows of which she speaks.

“So much of acting is listening,” Taylor finally continues. “And when you are listening, you are able to receive what the other actor is doing. My performance is in the other actor’s hands. You will respond to them and they will respond to you.”

As will the audience.

After more than a half-century in the business, Taylor remains one of those performers everyone is always happy to see, whether as former Texas Gov. Ann Richards in the one-woman show “Ann” (which Taylor also wrote and produced), fast-talking talent agent Ellen Kincaid in “Hollywood;” or Cybil Richards, the hard-ass network executive in “The Morning Show.”

“When I’m playing, I don’t think of being sexy. Ever,” says Taylor about her acting roles. Though, she says Sarah Paulson has told her, “‘You don’t even know what you’re doing.’”

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

Or in “Brothers,” as the bracelet-rattling, preternaturally tan and proud Texan Ma Mac, whose sexual history provides the linchpin of the series.

“Brothers” revolves around the possibility that McConaughey (played by himself) and Woody Harrelson (also played by himself) are not just “True Detective” co-stars and wacky best friends but, by dint of a brief and previously unmentioned relationship between Harrelson’s father and Ma Mac, also half-brothers.

Born of a rumor that McConaughey’s real-life mother, Mary Kathleen McCabe, began, “Brothers” provides a fictional answer to what may or may not be a legitimate question; however, it does offer one piece of irrefutable truth: Taylor, at 83, can rock white jeans, zebra prints and a fringed jacket while also stealing any scene she’s in, even those grounded by actors as secure and nimble as Harrelson and McConaughey.

Her Ma Mac still enjoys men, Jack Daniel’s and the occasional hit off a bong, and she is as comfortable with a shotgun as she is with a one-liner: “I remember when men used to do things,” she says as the two attempt to prove they could start a band. “I mean substantial things.”

She is also a loyal and loving mother, who, as she proves in the season finale, understands the power of clear-eyed assessment and a really good chili.

Taylor loved playing the many sides of Ma Mac, though she chose not to meet McConaughey’s actual mother. “That’s the last thing I want to do,” she says. “I’m playing a character and I know the kind of woman she is. I know the kind of disrupter she is. There is nothing she can’t do. I think a lot of people, when they get to be old ladies, they’re liberated,” she adds. “They just don’t care.”

As an older woman herself, Taylor can relate. “When I think of things I used to care about, like going out and looking sharp — I don’t have to look sharp. It takes a while for me to look sharp, and when I want to look sharp, I look very sharp. But sometimes I want to relax.”

At 83, Taylor can rock white jeans, zebra prints and a fringed jacket while also stealing any scene she’s in.

(Ryan Green/Apple TV)

Working with Harrelson and McConaughey, she says, opened a new window into the acting process for her (a remarkable statement considering her vast experience, which began under the tutelage of Stella Adler).

”There’s a meta thing to this show — they’re playing themselves and I’m not,” she says. “Playing a scene with Woody, he’s in the scene with me and very responsive and then he steps back and assesses which take works best. Same with Matthew. First the actor, then the craftsman and they are able to do it while in the scene.”

The experience was not perfect, however. “Brothers” was well into production when Apple TV switched creative direction. Lee Eisenberg took over as showrunner from David West Read, and Taylor says, “a ton of film” was scrapped. As Eisenberg patched together old plot with new, she says, “they had to leave out a lot of stuff I did with Woody and that was upsetting because it was so fun to shoot.”

Also, she adds, “I was in Texas a long time and I’m too old to have my work not count.”

“Old” may be an accurate term — 83 has not become the new anything yet — but as with her performances, Taylor in conversation seems timeless. Yes, she recently had a shoulder replacement and is eager to share tips on heart-healthy exercises — ”you have to pay attention to your calves; they’re the second pump” — but she will also confess to going down Instagram rabbit holes to feed her love of archaeology, and she seems more interested in discussing politics and the state of journalism than her remarkably long and illustrious life as an actor.

After working in New York in theater and on soap operas, she came out to L.A. hoping to use television to increase her name recognition in theater. She landed the role of Ruth Dunbar, the ad executive who hires two young men played by Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari in 1980’s “Bosom Buddies.” It ran for two years, after which Taylor worked almost continually in television and film. She stepped back a bit to write and star in “Ann,” which premiered in Chicago in 2011 and went to Broadway in 2013. Since then, she’s appeared in, among many other things, “Billions,” “Mr. Mercedes,” “The Chair” and now “Brothers.”

And yet, she says, she has never given much thought to her career.

“I don’t think I ever took my career seriously,” she says. “Sarah is very ambitious in the best way — she wants to play in the best playground with the best and the best material. And she also is remarkably gifted at friendship. I’m not like that. I never really thought of myself as having a career as an entity. Things happen, I get jobs, things come my way,” she says, adding with a laugh, “I never know what anyone’s doing, including myself.”

That she and Paulson are a couple, never mind a Hollywood “It” couple, continues to astound her. Taylor never came out because she was never really “in”; if people asked if she was gay, she said yes, but until she began dating Paulson, it rarely came up.

“I’m not a very public person,” she says, “I’m not out getting photographed. I do with Sarah because she does, so we’ll be on the occasional red carpet together.”

She isn’t so sure about the “It Couple” label.

“A lot of people have judgment because of the [32-year] age difference,” she says. “I have judgment. Sometimes I look at her and think, ‘What are you doing? Are you nuts?’ ”

Though she considers herself lucky to have a relationship “with someone who is so keen and so alive and so plugged into today,” an age gap “can be a challenge to any relationship. All your references are different and you don’t have the same energy. And then there’s that whole nasty thing of mortality. She shouldn’t be thinking about it, but I should.”

Not any time soon, however. Apple TV has not yet ordered a second season of “Brothers,” but Taylor very much hopes they will: “Lee Eisenberg would have a clean slate then and Apple would be crazy not to continue with Woody and Matthew.” And she recently finished filming for the second season of “Scarpetta,” which stars Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis.

What she brings to these, and all her characters, Taylor says, is “a stand-your-ground quality. I’m quite peaceful, but don’t be pushing me. Don’t shove me and don’t make me do f— all. And don’t speak to me disrespectfully, or any one around me. I’m not walking around with the sheriff’s badge but my ire can be raised by cruelty.”

Totally sexy.

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