Tracey Takes On... is an American sketch comedy series starring Tracey Ullman. The show ran for four seasons on HBO and was commissioned following the success of the 1993 comedy special Tracey Ullman Takes on New York. Each episode focuses on a specific subject which Ullman and her cast of characters take on through a series of sketches and monologues.
Unlike her previous Fox show, Tracey Takes On... was filmed using a single-camera setup on location without a studio audience. The show also features a steady rotation of nearly twenty characters—unlike The Tracey Ullman Show, which featured upwards of one hundred, the majority of whom appeared only once.
In 1998, a book based on the series, Tracey Takes On, was released. The character Ruby Romaine was spun off into the HBO television special Tracey Ullman in the Trailer Tales in 2003.
Premise Tracey Ullman and her cast of characters tackle a different subject in each episode.
Production Conception and development
In 1990, Ullman's husband, Allan McKeown, a founding member of the Meridian Broadcasting consortium, placed a bid for the ITV television franchise in South East England. Along with the bid, he included a potential programming lineup which featured a Tracey Ullman special. Ullman, who had just ended four seasons of The Tracey Ullman Show, had just given birth to her second child and was quite content staying at home. In September 1991, McKeown was elated when he was informed that his bid was successful; he was subsequently responsible for all of Meridian's comedy programming. Ullman dreaded the idea of doing another show. "I was really not prepared to do TV again. I had an extraordinary run at Fox in the late '80s with the Tracey Ullman Show, and couldn't imagine putting forth that amount of energy again. [...] The type of makeups I liked to disguise myself under had not been conducive to a live show [...] Once I inhaled so much remover that I passed out on the makeup room floor. I was resuscitated and went out to give a terrific performance, even though I can't remember being there." She had a year to deliver the show. The 1993 special Tracey Ullman: A Class Act, a satire about the British class system, was shot entirely on location and co-starred actor Michael Palin. The show's success led to the American cable television network HBO becoming interested in having Ullman do a special for them. The only caveat was that she take on a more "American" subject. She chose New York City. That special, Tracey Ullman Takes on New York, was an award-winning success. HBO then broached the idea of a "Takes on" series.
Ullman was unsure if she could do it without the help of her "mentor", James L. Brooks, who helped launch her American career with The Tracey Ullman Show. "Last year, I was 35 years old, and I thought, 'It's time to do it myself really. I thought, 'I know the premise, I know what I want to do...' I sat at the head of the table and made myself a boss."
Production on the first season of Tracey Takes On... took place in Los Angeles in 1995. Characters created for her previous two HBO comedy specials were carried over for the series: gay airline steward Trevor Ayliss, British Conservative MP wife Virginia Bugge, British magazine editor Janie Pillsworth, Long Island housewife Fern Rosenthal, and faded Hollywood actress Linda Granger.
Ullman was thrilled with the artistic freedom working in cable television allotted her, specifically HBO. "If we did the story line with me and [Julie Kavner] as gay golfers on network TV, Johnson & Johnson would pull their advertising, then there'd be a big piece in USA Today, and it would be a headache. HBO let us have fun with it, and when Julie and I come out at the end, it's in the most wonderful way. Our Romance show may be a bit sappy, but it's more of a battle theme, something that will get people talking."
Writing and filming
Production on a new season of Tracey Takes On... began each year in February with a staff retreat. Three months would then be spent writing the scripts. Pre-production would follow in July and August, with filming commencing in September and wrapping in November. The completed season would "ideally" be delivered to HBO by December.
Format A typical episode consists of two or three long sketches with interstitial character monologues, all focusing on the episode's subject. However, every season featured one or two episodes that deviated from the show's regular format in favor of a single storyline (e.g., "Vegas", "Hollywood", "Road Rage", and "The End of the World").
Opening title sequence and theme song Each episode of Season 1 opens with Ullman asleep in bed, musing about the topic she will be taking on for that particular episode. This is her only appearance out of character in the show. This eventually became an issue, as many viewers were unaware that Ullman was playing every character. The theme song was an original song performed by Ullman, describing the show's characters as "company in between [her] ears".
A new opening was conceived for Season 2 in which she opens the show with an anecdote or monologue in relation to the episode's subject. The show's theme song was also changed to her 1983 cover version of the Kirsty MacColl song "They Don't Know", with Ullman and her characters lip-syncing and dancing to it.
In February 1998, Ullman revealed that some viewers were still unaware that she was playing all the characters: "We still get letters asking, 'Can I have a picture of Tracey and the rest of the cast?'"
Ending The series came to a close after a four-season run in 1999. Ullman began conceiving a new show in which she'd play only one or two characters with minimal makeup. "This time I'll play one or two characters [instead of all the characters]. I just don't want to put all that rubber on my face. That began to get really tedious. I've got to make it easier on myself, and it'll be easier if I don't have to spend ten hours in makeup."
Episodes
Character origins and development
All of the characters in Tracey Takes On... are original creations. Ullman shied away from doing straight-up impersonations of celebrities believing it was Saturday Night Live territory. She instead chose to do amalgamations of many real-life everyday people, and in some instances, famous ones.
Kay Clark was the only character to return from The Tracey Ullman Show, as Ullman was the character's sole creator and Fox owned the rights to all the other characters that appeared on that show. "I love Kay; I'm very fond of her," Ullman said. "This little British spinster—she's so courageous. To think she's sort of on national television in America is rather thrilling to me, especially when I used to witness her in the local bank in my village. She'd say, 'Hello, Miss Ullman. How's Hollywood?' And to think she's on American television and—she doesn't know!"
Ruby Romaine, whom Ullman has described as "pure Hollywood white trash", was based on many of the Hollywood union makeup artists sent to make her up over the years. Ruby's look and surname were based on Romaine Greene, a hairstylist who worked on many of Woody Allen's films. Meanwhile, her voice was inspired by Florence Aadland—mother of actress Beverly Aadland, who at 15 had an affair with the then-48-year-old actor Errol Flynn. Ullman previously played Florence in the one-woman Broadway show The Big Love, preparing for the role by listening to hours of audio recordings of Florence dictating her life story to writer Tedd Thomey for the book of the same name. Because of this, there are strong parallels between Ruby Romaine's fictional early days in Hollywood and the real-life experiences of Beverly Aadland.
The characters Fern and Harry Rosenthal and Linda Granger were created for Tracey Ullman Takes on New York. Fern and Harry were based on Betty and Fred Valk of Baldwin, New York—the parents of Ullman's friend, Katie Valk. Ullman met the couple after she flew to New York to act as a guest VJ on MTV. She toyed with the idea of giving Fern her own show but found that playing the character left her feeling like a "limp rag" and that her husband "avoided her like the plague." She described Fern as "loud, emotional, with 'I'm from the suburbs' written all over her. She sat behind me at matinees of Cats and Les Misérables, not too shy to shout out to the performers, 'Speak up, darling, we can't hear you!'" When asked who had inspired washed-up Hollywood actress Linda Granger, Ullman responded: Loni Anderson and actresses who ended up guest-starring in episodes of Murder, She Wrote—"the kind of women that Ruby Romaine made up."
The characters Trevor Ayliss, Virginia and Timothy Bugge, and Janie Pillsworth, along with her mother Jackie, were originally created for the 1993 special Tracey Ullman: A Class Act. Trevor was based on a real British Airways steward; Ullman noticed that the gay crewmen on her flights would "butch up" the minute they left the galley, a detail she used for her performance. "I love Trevor. I've always wanted to do one of those gay air stewards because they're always so lovely to me. As Linda [Granger] says... 'I have a wonderful homosexual fan base, and I love them!'" Ullman said in a 1996 interview. Since playing the character, every male steward Ullman encountered was convinced that she based it on him. "And I always say I did. I go, 'You're right, I based it on you,' because that way I get free caviar." Fashion magazine editor Janie Pillsworth was an amalgamation of British editors Tina Brown and Anna Wintour.
Feeling that it would have been passé to play a talent agent, Ullman opted instead to play an attorney, Sydney Kross, apropos in the wake of the O. J. Simpson trial and Court TV. Critics immediately took note of the character’s uncanny resemblance to real-life attorney Leslie Abramson, who defended Lyle and Erik Menendez. Ullman noted, "She has a fascinating look [...] I think she'll recognize herself physically but not her personality [...] I've got some things physically which [aren't her]. I've [had] some teeth [made] that look like sharks. I had the glasses, the suit, but then I put these teeth in, and it made me move my mouth in a certain way. And I filed my nails square. Women in L.A. have these square white nails, really square..." When it came to Sydney's personality, Ullman found inspiration in an agent she had in Los Angeles named Holly "who was insane". Always wanting to find some redeeming quality in all her characters, she found herself stuck at first when it came to Sydney. "[I]t seemed she had no redeeming features: she's horrid, cold, impersonal." But then she found a "humanizing trait": loneliness. "She's so aggressive, and so ugly! She's got adult acne, and her teeth are terrible! [...] She became sort of appealing to me. All of my characters have a sadness or inadequacy about them."
Her Royal Highness is a combination of Queen Elizabeth's voice, Princess Margaret's lifestyle, the Duchess of Kent's hats, and Princess Anne's teeth. Ullman sent a copy of the show's "Royalty" episode to Princess Diana, feeling that she could use a laugh; Diana, through her lady-in-waiting, expressed that she had enjoyed it.