She loves to call people “bro” and has the energy of a hyperactive teen-ager, but she also has a tendency to lumber about, brows furrowed. The cast broke for lunch, and she retreated to her chamber of solitude.Īdlon, who is five feet one inch, hunches constantly. After a take, Adlon, who likes to describe her show as “handmade,” darted behind the director’s monitor to review the footage. Adlon’s character, Sam Fox, is hanging out with her brother and a couple of friends, cooking a meal.
One afternoon in September, during the filming of the show’s third season, Adlon was directing a scene in which her character’s increasingly absent-minded mother, Phyllis, who lives next door (as Adlon’s mother does in real life), barges into her kitchen. This makeshift sensory-deprivation room is often the only opportunity she has to generate new ideas. Adlon is a single mother of three daughters, as well as one of the few showrunners who direct, produce, write, and star in their own series. She turns off the lights, shuts down her phone, removes her pants and her bra, and lies face down on a couch. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.Įach day, on the set of her show “Better Things,” the director and actor Pamela Adlon retreats to a small room while the cast and crew eat lunch.
