Margo Martindale has all bases covered

Since winning the Emmy for playing shot-calling criminal matriarch Mags Bennett on “Justified,” Margo Martindale has been doing impressive work across the spectrum. TV critics have singled out her performance opposite Will Arnett and Beau Bridges on the new CBS sitcom “The Millers,” while film critics are buzzing about her tour-de-force supporting turn in “August: Osage County,” the darkly comic drama, a Christmas release, in which she plays busybody Aunt Mattie Fae, who’s keeping a secret that will tear the house asunder. “The director, John Wells, said to me, ‘She’s a force of nature,’ so that’s how I played it,” Martindale says. “When she comes into the house, it’s sort of like a bulldozer.”

You have a powerful scene in “August” with Julia Roberts’ character, Barb, when you tell her “there’s more to me” than what she can see. What does Mattie Fae mean by that?

That she was a good-looking, sexual, wonderful person that others were interested in, and I think she still sees herself as that. When I first worked on it, I’d break on that line, I’d get emotional — but that was self-pity, and that felt inappropriate to Mattie Fae. She’s armored; she fends off emotion. So it comes out as pride, anger, even scorn for others.

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In the arc of your character, did you see that scene as the crescendo?

I thought it would be, but it fell right after the scene where Chris Cooper [as her husband] tells me off. To be on the receiving end of that was — it gives me chills just thinking about it. Chris and I have known each other since we were young. I felt married to him and it felt real, what happened. I felt altered by it, and I had to carry that into the next scene, where I tell the truth about [their son] little Charles. That whole ensemble was really special. How someone looked at you, your history — everything played onto something else.

All of you were on location for nine weeks in Bartlesville, Okla. What was that like?

Very luxurious — it’s all about the work, and you never want to leave and break the continuity of being in that head space. It’s a beautiful, gorgeous, interesting small town; there are Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, a lot of money. It was an oil town. The landscape, which you see in the movie, is beautiful in a very sparse, poetic way. It’s isolating, but I love it. It inspires me.

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You grew up in a small town, in Jacksonville, Texas. What were you exposed to that led you to pursue acting?

We had Lon Morris College there, a tiny Methodist school that happened to have a fabulous drama department. Kids from Houston and Dallas would come to study with a teacher called Zula Pearson. I’d see the plays they put on, and they were magical. I was a cheerleader, and one day the guy who ran the choir, Mr. Templeton, said, “Why don’t you come audition for the high school musical? You’ve got a loud voice.” I got the lead and it was done. I think it was because I’d been crippled, and in a funny way that kind of expanded my personality.

How were you crippled?

I had severe scoliosis. I was in a brace up through about grade 10 — leather, with a steel bar up the front and two up the back. And it’s almost as if I became more extroverted because I didn’t want people to only see the brace.

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You’re doing your first sitcom lead now, in “The Millers” on CBS. How’s that going?

The pace is incredibly fast because it’s multi-camera, in front of a live audience. What you do in a play in three weeks we do in three days. But we have James Burrows directing, and he is a total, complete pro. Whatever he tells me to do, I’ll do. So it’s fun. I’m finally starting to feel like I’m inside the character.

What’s your goal going forward?

I’d love to do a beautiful movie once a year, when it fits into my schedule. That would be in April, May, June. Compared to comedy, [whispers] drama is easy. I can switch. Put the word out.

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