SOURCE: Wasserstein, Wendy, and Esther Cohen. “Uncommon Woman: An Interview with Wendy Wasserstein.” Women's Studies 15, nos. 1-3 (1988): 257-70.

[In the following interview, originally conducted in August 1987, Wasserstein discusses the impetus behind her career, the inspirations for her comedy, the importance of humor in her dramas, and the gendered differences of her critical reception and popular appeal.]

Challenged by my esteemed editor to write a printable article on women writers and humor in theatre (try to imagine a scene from The Front Page, only in an Indian restaurant—“Esther, get me that article, and pass the poori!”), I decided that I had nothing to say that one such writer couldn't say for herself. Thus, with the lure of a bottle of Diet Coke and the promise of being quoted in an academic journal, Wendy Wasserstein agreed to be interviewed for this article. I met Wendy, the noted playwright, author of Uncommon Women and Others, Isn't It Romantic and Miami, and a contributing editor to New York Woman, while working as a stage manager on Isn't It Romantic, and I knew her to be a witty, straightforward and eminently quotable woman. Eager to hear her views on humor, in both her work and her life, I met with Wendy on a sweltering afternoon in August, 1987.

[Cohen]: I guess my first question is, when did you decide you liked to write? When did writing become something that you liked to do?

[Wasserstein]: I remember as a child thinking that my family was very funny. I think this was because my mother was somewhat eccentric. And I do remember watching shows like Make Room for Daddy and thinking that those kids were pretty boring. And I actually thought, like Rusty Hammer and Angela Cartwright, they are such good kids, and I thought “no one's family is really like this.” And actually I thought our family was far more entertaining than that. So I think partially from that, though I didn't really write those things.

I wrote in high school. I went to school in New York City at Calhoun, and I figured out that one of the ways I could get out of gym was if I wrote something called the Mother-Daughter Fashion Show. I know very little about fashion, but they used to have this Mother-Daughter Fashion Show once a year at the Plaza Hotel, and you got to leave school to go to the fashion show. But if you wrote it you didn't have to go to gym for like two or three weeks, it was fantastic. So, I started writing those.

So you were always an observer of people—watching your family, watching your friends.

Yeah, I think so. I think that's true.

What did you write in these fashion shows?

I don't know. I remember writing some song to “King of the Road” about “Miss Misunderstood.” I don't know what I wrote.

So did you write in college?

Uh huh. I went to Holyoke and one of my best friends told me—I was taking a course to go become a Congressional intern, and I used to read the Congressional Digest at the Holyoke library and fall asleep, I just couldn't do it—and then she said to me “Well why don't you come to Smith and take playwriting with me, and then we could shop.” So she said the magic word and the duck came down, and I said “Yes, I'll go shop.” So we went up to Smith and I had a wonderful teacher. I started writing plays for him, really. And that's how that all happened. But I grew up going to the theatre and I used to dance, I used to go to dancing school at the June Taylor School of the Dance. It was never somewhat intellectual theatre, never had that sort of bent.

But was it always funny, was it always comedy?

Yeah, it always was sort of comic. It's kind of interesting. I think what happened to me, the real bend in the road for me, was that after my senior year in college I went to California with some friends of mine to Long Beach State to a summer dance program, which is really crazy of me to have done, and we had odd jobs. I mean one of my friends worked at a Union 76 station, and I had some job in some sweet shop. It was crazy. But I had thought that I would maybe stay in California and try to write television. And instead, I hated California so much—I think it was because I couldn't drive; I just loathed it—that I came home back to New York and applied to drama school. And I think I'd be a very different writer, very different person, if I had stayed in California.

Do you think living in New York itself has affected the kind of writing you do?

Yes I think so. Because when I dream or think, I think in terms of the rhythm of theatrical comedy. It's not—I mean it's certain kinds of theatrical comedy because it's what you're around. I mean as a kid I used to go to those Neil Simon plays. By the time I got to drama school, those Albert Innaurato/Chris Durang plays. So it depends, what comes into your brain.

Do you find, as you're writing, that your humor comes more out of the situation that you're writing about, or are the characters themselves funny?

Sometimes the characters are funny. I mean, sometimes I like to do bright colors, and then they can be quite funny. Sometimes, you know—I haven't learned to use a computer, so I still type, and it's such a pain in the neck—sometimes I just retype scenes and start putting in things. I couldn't believe it—I'm writing a play right now about twenty years of peoples' lives, and this girl is telling this boy how unhappy she is, and for some reason I started writing Yasser Arafat jokes. For no reason. Because it's so boring retyping this stupid thing. But, you know sometimes it's funny to see. I think for myself, I'm slightly shy actually, and sometimes it's fun for me to write some character that's larger than life. That would say things I would never say but I know they're funny. And I like to do that a lot. And I also think, to get further into humor and women, that a lot of comedy is a deflection. If you look at Isn't It Romantic, Janie Blumberg is always funny, so as not to say what she feels. And so, I think you use it—you use it to get a laugh, but you use it deliberately too. I mean, the best is when you use it deliberately.

Do you think that your women characters are more prone to doing it that way—using their humor as a deflection?

Sometimes, yes, the women use it more as a defense, I think.

Do you think that—among your friends, people you know—do women use their humor in different ways than the men do?

Yes, I think they do. I think sometimes, men sometimes top each other. Women don't do that. Women know how to lay back and have a good time, you know, and the gossip is great. Great!

The best. The best.

The best! Exactly! I mean, that's delightful. Nothing could be better. And I love it when it's people you absolutely don't know, whom I don't know a thing about. I mean, people call here and tell me about John Updike's personal life. I don't know him!

But you know more about him than he does.

I'm sure I know more about him than he would ever know about me! But I think that that—so that's kind of different too. And I don't mean it in a bitchy way, it's just different. It's kind of like sitting around.

I think that—certainly in my relationships with my women friends—life is just funny between us, and we share those sort of humorous moments. We're not always telling each other jokes.

No, and I don't even know how to tell a joke. But, you know, if you come home from a bad date, or something's happened, you know, and you've been fired—you know, you've just lost your job to some 21 year old girl who's blond and can't do anything, but the boss … You know that if you go home and tell your story to somebody, you will make it funny. And it will release the pain from you of whatever it is. Because you can't take that nonsense seriously.

Do you try to incorporate that way of reacting to people in your plays? In Uncommon Women I thought the characters really reacted naturally to each other, and in Isn't It Romantic they had real relationships, and that humor sort of showed.

It's a little different than the one I'm doing now, but I think that's part of them, it's part of the relationship. People who are funny—I mean, one of my very best friends ever is Chris Durang, and there's nothing like a conversation with Christopher, because he's so funny! He's just wonderful. And when he's funny, he's hilarious. Just hilarious. And that's a wonderful thing. I mean, that's like a riff, almost. It's a great comfort. So, it's hard. But there are different kinds of humors, too. I don't like mean humor very much. I find nastiness is difficult for me, a little bit.

In the plays that you've written, do you think of them as being “women's” plays or written from a “women's” perspective? Or are they more written from your perspective?

I guess it's from my perspective, although sometimes I do think those stories have to be told. And if they're not, if I don't tell them, I mean someone else will tell them, that's for sure. But sometimes I look at these girls and I think I want to put them on the stage. I used to have great pleasure when I would see the audiences come to Isn't It Romantic sometimes. Like you'd see five women together going out, and I thought that's great. There should be something for them. There really should be. And I think the thing is the women I write about are kind of middle class, upper middle class people, who have good jobs and they're good looking, and there's no problem. I mean, they're not Philip Barry people, but they're not sort of working class. So they're not the people one would tend to dramatize. Because there's nothing tragic there. And there's nothing romantic there. So I think that's why they're interesting to write about.

Because you can relate to them.

Because you can relate to them. It's like someone you knew in college. And I think that to make those people theatrical is interesting. I hope.

How do you choose what to write about?

It depends. I think that writing a play is such a long and arduous task that it has to be something you care about pretty much, that's going to interest you longer than twenty pages. They're long, plays, they're like 90 pages, and it's a lot of typing!

And you have to live with them while they're running, too, for two years or …

Yeah, you do, so I think it's got to be something that interests you enough. There are different things that interest you in different times. The play I'm writing right now is very personal. I have an idea for a musical after this that's based on a 19th century American play, just because I'd like to lose myself in something that's foreign to me.

It depends on where you're at at that particular moment. You haven't just written plays. You've written articles and TV screenplays. Is it different writing for the different media?

Very different. Sure it is. It's like one time I adapted a Cheever story for television that was called The Sorrows of Gin, and the climax was the child realized the adult world was tattered like a piece of burlap. Well, you can't, like in a play, have the kid pick up the burlap and say “Gee Dad, tattered like the adult world.” I mean, what you do is bring the camera in on the kid. Just like in a play you can't have people drive along—you know, you can't do it. Television is a closeup medium. You go in for the face, and they don't have to talk. I just wrote a TV movie that's going to be done in the fall about Teri Garr learning to drive, because I just learned to drive.

And you always pictured yourself as being Teri Garr.

Exactly, exactly. We're very similar. But anyway, at the end—she's this terrible driver, terrible terrible driver, and she finally passes her test by dressing up as Catherine Bach in The Dukes of Hazzard. When she passes her test, she's like the millionth person in her town to pass the test. There's this high school band that comes out and starts playing The Little Old Lady from Pasadena, because she passed, I mean it's crazy. But see, you could never do that on the stage. I mean, there's no way you could go to Playwrights Horizons and say “And now I'd like a high school band.”

On an Equity salary.

What's nice about plays is they're about words, and they can get long, and they can be your feelings, and I think that's wonderful. It's very joyous.

How about writing for a nonperformance medium? Like articles. Do you have a different emotional reaction to writing those than to writing something that's being performed?

I've been writing some for a magazine called New York Woman recently. And it's fun. It's different though. You know what it is? I remember as a kid someone once told me that I had to learn to postpone gratification. And the thing about magazine things is it gets published pretty quickly. I mean, a play you can write and two years from then maybe you'll work it out. And I think magazine, because it's a shorter form, you can get—like I just wrote an article about manicures. I'd never write a play, a two hour play about manicures unless, you could do it quite artistically I guess with dancing fingers and stuff.

And Tommy Tune …

And Tommy Tune, right, right. So that was fun to do for the magazine. I mean, I like that, I find it a release. You know why? Because I think of myself as a playwright, so I hold that very important to me. And when something's that important to you, you get scared of it. Whereas magazine writing doesn't scare me that much, because what's the worst they'll say? Wendy, you're not a magazine writer. And I'll say, that's right. But actually, I've enjoyed this magazine writing.

Does your humor translate the same way in each of these different media?

It depends. I mean, the magazine I wrote for sent me off to meet Philipe de Montebello at the Met. It was pretty funny. But in these magazine things I always use “I”, first person, and there's a persona that I elect to use. You know, there's an “I” that's always talking about how I wish I wore leather miniskirts and I hate pantyhose and things like that. I don't do that so much in the plays. I mean, what's fun about plays is you can divide yourself into a lot of characters and hide yourself in different places.

But you really consider yourself a playwright. That's really what you enjoy.

I think so. Yeah, I mean I hope so.

Even though you're not on the stage, do you enjoy that audience feedback?

I do. I mean, when it works, it's great. When a production goes wrong, it is hell. It's really hell, it's so painful. That's the other thing. I mean, so you write an article and people don't like it. Or you write an article and they never call you again and they don't publish it. It's not the same pain, it's really not. From the word go, from the no actors are available to the director doesn't show up, to the show doesn't work and no one's laughing, to you pick up some terrible review—I mean, all of that is devastating. It's just terrible. It's enough to give you a sense of humor. I mean, it's really awful! I'm writing this play here and I can't even think about all that stuff. It's just too awful.

Well, it's such a process.

It's a real process. And you don't know what's going to happen. You just don't know.

It's true, it's not just your input that will make it in the end. There are so many other factors and people involved.

Exactly.

Is that intimidating, that there are so many other people who influence?

When it works, like with Gerry Gutierrez [director of] Isn't It Romantic, it's fantastic. Because, there you were giving birth to something alone in your room and then you've got a partner. And when that happens, it's great, because they … I mean, I'm not a director, I have no sense of visuals, nothing! I'll do anything to tell a joke. There's this story about Isn't It Romantic. There was something about, there was some joke about three hundred running Hasidic Jews, or something, that Gerry Gutierrez kept telling me to cut because I should stay on the through line of the play. And I cut things like someone's mother being the last white woman to shop at Klein's—jokes like that. And I kept cutting them. But the running Hasidic Jews I really didn't want to cut. And so finally, I lit a cigarette and I turned to Gerry and I said “do you know, Gerry, it's not just the joke. It's the zeitgeist of the play. When the hubris of the character …” I don't know what the hell I was talking about. All I wanted to do was keep my joke. So I thought if I can talk to this man in the most high-faluting terms I can possibly pull out … I was talking about anecnorisises of the audience, I didn't know what I was saying. But I just wanted to keep my joke. But I think that, when you have someone with you who's on the same line as you are, and can take you further, that's a thrill. If you're an artist, you want someone to challenge you, and extend you. But you can also simultaneously have somebody who cripples you. And that's hard, it's so painful. It's just terrible.

Is it the same in film?

I think film is different, because film—I think the pain is up front. Just cutting the deal is painful. And then you know it's a director's medium. And it belongs to the producer. Unless you're going to direct your film or produce it, it's not the same thing. It's not your baby, it's their's. You're like a hired hand. You know, they can hire six different writers to do one of these things.

Do you consider yourself funny?

I can't tell a joke. And I am shy. I mean I can go to a meal and not say anything. I have that unique capability of, if I'm scared of someone, I won't say anything. But sometimes I can be funny. I can be funny with a girlfriend. I can be very sarcastic. So yes, I have that ability to make people laugh, I always have. I know how to make friends and get on with people because I could be funny. Not funny in like stick my tongue out with food on it, but sort of funny in a nonthreatening, likable way.

Were you always funny? Were you funny as a child, do you think?

I think I was, yeah. Or pleasing, in a way. There's a line about Janie in Isn't It Romantic. I think Harriet says “That's the thing about Janie, she's not threatening to anybody. That's her gift.” I think that's somewhat similar with me.

You said your family was funny. How were they funny?

Well, my mother's very eccentric. She's like the woman in Isn't It Romantic. Her name is Lola, she goes to dancing classes six hours a day, she's—I won't say her age—but she's a very eccentric woman. She's very lively, very colorful. She's quite amusing, actually.

Did you have to compete with that as a child?

She's kind of an Auntie Mame figure. I think as a child you think it's very colorful. Then when you get sort of shy, you know, when you get to sixth grade and everyone's mother is showing up in a suit, and they've got a station wagon, and your mother pulls in with a Carmen Miranda hat, you've got to think, “Oh God.” I think that's a little difficult.

You've said before that you have humor with your friends and that a friend like Chris Durang is very funny. Do you think Chris is the funniest person you know? Who do you think is?

He's a pretty funny guy. Yeah. Actually, he might be the funniest person I know. Although you can meet Chris, you know you can have dinner with Chris and he can decide not to talk, too. So you know, you can have a lovely meal with both of us and we could both not talk. But actually I do think he's very funny. You know who's terrible funny too? Paul Rudnick. He wrote a novel called Social Disease. He's a dear friend of mine, and he is hilarious. The other day I was chatting up a friend and she was telling us about some man who was reading Boswell's Life of Johnson, and Paul Rudnick said “Of Don Johnson?” Which I thought was so funny. Terribly funny. He's quite witty. I mean, Christopher is so brilliant and imaginative that he just gets, you know, large, it's just wonderful. Yes, I would say they were the funniest people I knew.

I know Chris and he is brilliant and imaginative. But he's also sly.

Yes, he's very sly. He's witty. I mean, I don't like sort of locker room jockey humor. I've absolutely no interest in it. And I don't like sort of sex jokes either. Actually, because I don't get them.

Would you say humor is important in your relationship with people?

Yeah, very. Very. I think it's sort of how I get by. I giggle a little too much. But yes I think so, because one it makes one entertaining, two it deflects, and also it's a way of commenting on things. So yeah, I think it's very important to me.

It's a point of view on life.

It is a point of view. It really is. And it sort of pricks a hole in things, too, keeps things in line. And then also it helps you deal with things which are overwhelmingly tragic, which are undealable with. I mean the bad things are just horrendous. They're not funny at all, so you might as well make fun of everything else.

When you're writing, whether you're writing a screenplay or a play or an article, do you think about the audience that it's aimed for?

I don't think about the audience. You do think of the rhythm of the things and people laughing. You don't think about the audience per se. I mean, sometimes you think about, you don't want to—I don't like to be offensive, really. I know some people don't mind that at all.

In fact, aim for it.

Aim for it, right. But it depends. No, I don't mind offending peoples', you know, moral grounds. Fuck 'em. But you wouldn't want to write a character as offensive that you didn't want to be offensive. That's what I meant. But do I think about the audience that it's for? Not really. Not really. Sometimes.

Does it sometimes surprise you who ends up being the audience for your play? Or the reader?

Yes. I just saw Isn't It Romantic in Tokyo. You know, that's a play that I can't get done in London, no one has wanted to do it. But for some reason that show really worked in Japan. So, yes, that's a shocker.

Why do you think that was? Did they relate to the family-ness of it?

I think they related to the family-ness of it, and also, in Japan a woman who's over 25 who isn't married is known as a wedding cake after Christmas. Actually it was very interesting because this play worked almost as a political play. So that was quite interesting. But in terms of, one is always shocked who likes their plays and who doesn't. The person that you think will most like your play doesn't like it, and then someone else will like it. It's usually some maniac, some mass murderer; David Berkowitz will say “oh you're my favourite playwright.”

Have you gotten reactions from your plays that surprised you? Interpretations that blew you over?

Sometimes, or you see a bad production that doesn't make any sense.

Do you have a specific emotional reaction to your plays? I mean, do you feel differently about Uncommon Women say, than Isn't It Romantic?

Yes you do. Well, yeah you do. Because you're so close to them that you do. I … It's funny, I have a real love I think for Uncommon Women. I really, I find it very dear. I think because whoever wrote it really cared a lot. There's a lot of raw emotion there. That monologue of Holly's is very raw, and dear. I admire Isn't It Romantic because it's better crafted. It's very clean, that play. Sometimes I thought that people didn't take that play as seriously as I would have liked them to. Because I thought there were very serious things being slyly discussed there. That's what was interesting about Japan. The director told me that he did my play because he was a revolutionary. That's like saying you did Barefoot in the Park because you're a revolutionary. But I found that very moving. I wrote this musical Miami that's not finished that I have to finish. And because it went through a difficult workshop production, I have a difficult relationship with it. So it all depends. What's nice about writing a new play is we don't know each other that well yet. So you do have different feelings about things.

This is a question I wanted to ask you. Do you think the 1980's are funny?

No. I was just writing about them. I really don't like the 1980's very much. I don't. It's all sort of retro-'50 or retro-'60. You know what it is? It's commenting. Or as Gerry Gutierrez would say, indicating. I do think they're funny. I mean Ronald Reagan and “I can't remember” is hilarious. I mean, someone must do something with that. What, you can't remember? I mean things like that are outrageous. So, a man can't become president because he slept with a model, but you can start your own CIA and become a hero? That's nuts!

But maybe not inherently amusing.

But not amusing. No, I don't find it funny. Do you find it funny?

Well, I asked this only because a friend of mine and I were discussing political humor the other day. And saying how it seemed the 1980's were ripe for political humor, except that it was all so awful that the humor is sort of different. It's not like '60's humor.

It's true. You know what's sort of funny? When I was in London, all these people said to me, “How come you people don't write anything about the government? I mean, about Ronald Reagan. Why are there no plays about this? I mean, look at him.” And in some ways, Mrs. Thatcher is funnier. Because she's so fucking dour and has no sense of humor that you want to lance her right away. I mean you just look at her and you want her to put her panty hose on her head. I mean she's just, she's horrible. Ronald Reagan is slightly different.

Well, George Carlin once said “If a stupid person goes senile, how can you tell the difference?” Your plays are not topical humor plays, but some of your pieces obviously in newspapers must treat topical matters. How do you approach that differently than in a play?

Well it's different with a play because the newspaper thing gets published right away so you can reflect off of the topicality of it. In a play I try to go more through the character of it. If I'm writing now about Reagan it would be as filtered through the characters who lived through that period. Uncommon Women is in a way about feminism. It's just as filtered through the people who were participating in it at that time.

Do you find that women have a different reaction to your writing than men?

Sometimes. It can go either way. They can either take me more seriously and see what's there, and have connection to it, or—you know, everybody has an opinion, and you know the opinion of “well, we know all of this already, and we've moved beyond this.” So you get a little bit of that too. You know, one time I was at a bar in Westport, Connecticut, waiting for the train, which was late, and some little girl with brown curly hair and glasses, and looked sort of sad, came up to me and recognized me, and said she loved my play, and I thought “she is the saddest girl in the room. Of course she loves my plays! Anywhere you go, you look for the saddest girl with the brown curly hair and they're the ones who like my play!” I thought, “I bet Beth Henley gets like good looking blonde girls, nice and thin, coming up to her and saying they liked her play. They don't have those sad eyes.”

Do you think that men always get it when they see your pieces?

I think sometimes they do. I think sometimes they don't. I mean, sometimes they might think they're trivial, I think. But no, I don't think that much, really. I don't think so. I hope not.

Do you think that, when you say trivial, do you think that smaller things are more important to women?

No, but I also don't think that women write plays like “Fuck you, fuck me, fuck you, fuck you, fuck the duck, fuck the dog, fuck a this, fuck a that. Goodbye.” I mean you don't, that's not how you hear it. And if that's what's good and taut, well then, I don't write good or taut. You know, I think there's room for everything. Because there are women who can write like that, too. I don't, but there are people who do, and do it well, and do it brilliantly. I mean, Caryl Churchill's new play is wonderful. It's a tough piece of work, you know. But it's, it's good.

Do you find it's a small community of women writers? Or is it just a small community of known women writers?

I think maybe known. It's funny, I was on the NEA [National Endowment for the Arts] panel the other year, playwriting panel, and we gave grants. I think the grants went to 60٪ women writers. I think there are more and more women writers. Definitely more and more. And wonderful writers, too. And when you think about Marsha Norman and Beth Henley, all those people, they're terrific.

Do you think it's hard for women to get started? To get funding, to get …

You know what's hard? It's hard to keep one's confidence. It's hard to keep yourself in the middle, not to be a nice girl and not to be a tough girl, you know, but somehow to be yourself. That's hard. And as soon as you start playacting in your writing or in your life, there's trouble, a little bit. Especially in your writing. Because what works is going to be whatever's honest to you. So I think in that way, yes, there's somewhat of a problem. But, I mean, I think the most important thing is that decent women write and get those plays out. I think that's very important.

But you see more women now, I mean, nobody goes into shock when a Marsha Norman play is done.

No. I don't think any play does not get done because [it's by] a woman. I mean, I'm a product of the O'Neill and Playwrights Horizons, Yale Drama School; these aren't specifically women's institutions. When you write plays and you're a woman writer, you get these questions like, are you a feminist? She's a dear writer. She's a tough writer. You don't get this stuff when you're a man.

He's just a writer.

He's a writer, right, it's not he's tough, he's dear, he's a feminist, she's a sweetie. I mean, what is this? You know? She's got balls? The men, they all have balls. They don't have this problem! So, I mean, that's sort of, that's hard.

Is it hard to take emotionally?

Yeah, I think that is hard, a little bit. Yeah, I do.

You say you're not a joke teller, but do you have a favorite joke?

I don't. I can't tell a joke. I can't, I don't know any jokes. I forget them. People tell me them and I can't remember. I can't remember topical jokes like Chernobyl jokes about Chicken Kiev, I can't remember them. I just don't. I don't know how to write one, or tell one. There was even a joke character, I mean a comedian in Miami and I had a hard time telling his jokes. Because the comedy for me comes out of character. If I had to write, not somebody who's a comedian but someone, if it came out of their character, I could do that. But that's different jokes. And I always think whoever makes up those jokes that get spread around so quickly must be terribly bright.

What makes you laugh?

I don't know. Rubber chickens. It depends, there's a variety of things. I think when Ricky Ricardo shows up and Lucy has a baby and he's dressed in his voodoo outfit for the Club Tropicana—I think that is so funny. I have a bit of a whimsical sense of humor. I like puncturing things, though. I think that that's quite funny. And verbal play, too, I think is very funny. I don't like slapstick very much. But I think other people do, I just don't care for it very much. Although some things I think are very funny. I know there's a Woody Allen movie, is it Take the Money and Run where his parents are both wearing Groucho glasses? That's very funny. Very funny. You know why? Sometimes funny things are almost like the fantasy, and then it comes real.

It's sort of like trying to find the fine line between the completely absurd and the everyday.

That's right, that's right. Or seeing it. Seeing the completely absurd in the everyday.

It's sort of the description of my life.

Yes, it's true. Mine too. So, Esther … ?

So darling. Well thank you, darling, very much.

Oh, darling, a pleasure.