Her daughters yell back that she’s mean and insane. In the first episode of the new season, Sam walks around a house party looking for one of her three girls, and when asked to clarify which one, she says, “the shitty one.” In a later episode, Sam attempts to leave the house for the weekend and tells her daughters she doesn’t care if they run away while she’s gone. The show portrays familial intimacy as one characterized as much by love as by anger and annoyance. I’m struck by this-her ability to go immediately from sharp-tongued dismissal to turning a careful and nurturing eye toward me-but I shouldn’t be, as this particular dual tone defines Better Things. But in her largely autobiographical portrayal of Sam, Adlon, at the age of 51, has created a role of her career, one that puts not just her face, but her life on screen. On FX’s Louie, she plays Pamela, whose brutally honest friendship with Louie occasionally turns into a brutally honest romance. She’s moved in front of the camera for recurring roles in The Facts of Life, The Redd Foxx Show, and Californication. She’s a prolific voice-over actor best known as Bobby Hill on the animated series King of the Hill, which ran for thirteen seasons. Adlon has spent four decades working in television, but it’s possible that you’d recognize her voice before her face. “I’m so tired,” she explains with a smile. As she crosses the lawn toward me, Adlon apologizes for being momentarily of a split mind in addition to acting in, co-writing, and directing every episode of the second season of Better Things, the first episode of which airs tonight, she’s also-as is her Sam on the show-a single mother raising three daughters. Her day is far from over as, later that afternoon, she’ll move in front of the camera to portray Sam Fox, the starring role for which she’s received her first major acting Emmy nomination. “The day version of midnight”-it’s kind of poetic, even. But as with the show itself, there’s something bewitching about Adlon’s state of disarray. She’s admittedly a little frazzled, having directed a scene all morning in this house for her critically acclaimed FX series Better Things. She looks surprised, briefly, by the bright sun overhead and says to me, “Is it really the day version of midnight already?” She is searching for the word “noon” but can’t find it immediately. Pamela Adlon appears in the doorway of a house in Altadena, California.
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