Martha Plimpton has never played a character quite like Megan on HBO Max’s Genera+ion. As a highly organized mother obsessed with success her performance is a departure from her recent work, and there is a confused loneliness to her performance. The world is changing around her, and Megan can’t quite grasp the notion of a young person being proud of a different sexuality or gender identity. Plimpton doesn’t make her a stock villain–she is a woman who is starting to feel more and more adrift.
In her first scene, Plimpton’s Megan is organizing her family’s schedule on a massive, wipe board that plans the events of everyone’s day. She can tell that her children, Nathan and Naomi, don’t think very much of her, and she makes a small speech about how she is an upstanding person with many friends and she doesn’t deserve their teenage ire. There is pain in her face that she quickly hides.
In the hands of a lesser performer, Megan could’ve been a woman you don’t care about at all. Her rigidity suggest a character unworthy of redemption, but Plimpton delivers such a nuanced portrayal that you long for her to see the light and change her ways.
Awards Daily: How important is it to you be part of queer stories?
Martha Plimpton: It actually is very important, and if the script is good, I want to help tell those stories. It’s essential, and with this, to hear Zelda [Barnz] describe seeing coming out stories about queer people struggling, I wanted to be part that. Even though it’s not the character I play. The tables are turned here since I am the one who has the problem.
AD: Is getting into Megan’s perspective a driving force for you then?
MP: Yes, in a way. I didn’t necessarily identify with her, but the way she is written she is just as complex and multi-layered as anyone else in the show. She wasn’t a rubber stamp kind of bigot and she is going through things that have nothing to do with her children. The relationships with her husband and the relationship with her god made me want to explore the mindset of someone like her. There are a lot of people like her in the United States and around the world.
AD: Yeah…
MP: If they end up watching this show, which I hope they do, they will see something familiar–whether they like it or not. I do hope at least some parents of queer kids will see some things they may recognize.
AD: She is a character that doesn’t maybe understand everything about different identities.
MP: But her kids, even though they are still at home, they have left her. She has done nothing but be their mother. To have them reach adolescence and reject her, that’s something a lot of parents can relate to. She sees the world leaving her behind and I think that’s a common experience for a lot of people. They feel like they have become irrelevant and the way they think and believe is out of fashion. They resent it and they’re afraid. There are parts they don’t understand because it means everything they’ve believe their entire lives has been a lie.
AD: Yeah.
MP: That’s how they see it. In her marriage, there is stuff happening there, and it’s the most important relationship in her life. Her bond with God is what she uses to make sense of the world. She uses those ideals to help her understand. Clinging to that is very important to her. We’ll see where she ends up with all that.
AD: Do you think there is anything Megan can learn from Nathan and Naomi?
MP: She could learn a lot, but that doesn’t mean she’s doing it.
AD: Very true.
MP: She’s resisting it anyway. I don’t think Megan thinks her kids are there to teach her, which is the polar opposite of what I think of parents. Her job is to guide them towards a successful life. Her religious beliefs are very tied into that success and she’s not ashamed of sex. As long as you’re straight and married. Do you know what I mean?
AD: Yeah.
MP: I don’t think she will learn from her kids, but she might from their friend. She’s not very maternal–she’s more of a manager. With their friends she can allow herself to be more maternal because it’s safer. They’re not her kids.
AD: A lot of parents don’t have to deal with the fallout of the advice that they can dole out to their kid’s friends.
MP: Exactly.
AD: Tell me about Megan’s loneliness. She will gab on and on and wait for a response from someone and she doesn’t get it. For instance, she tells people how much she spent on her daughter’s wedding.
MP: That’s very astute. I think she is a lonely person. She doesn’t have real intimacy in her life because it’s really terrifying to her. When you’re skating through, you’re trying to keep your head above water while telling everyone they’re wrong. When it catches her, she does her best to get away from it.
AD: There is a mixture of the fear of the unknown to Megan in that scene where she goes off at the PTA meeting.
MP: Thank you. That scene is so well written and it’s incredible funny. I don’t care who you are having to pay attention to all these new things can be frustrating. Now everyone is celiac? All of a sudden, after thousands of years, everyone is allergic to gluten? I don’t think she expects an argument.
AD: And she lets that other mother have it.
MP: I don’t think many people will argue with Megan. She might leave that conversation feeling vaguely ill and not know why, but I don’t think she ever expects to be wrong. It’s probably good that other mother had a response. Megan left that meeting feeling something isn’t right and she can’t identify that feeling is.
Genera+ion is streaming on HBO Max.