I feel that the thing about film and particularly about TV, actually, is it's being created now. We're living in the best time so far because there are many more women writing and women directing, women producing, and people are finally catching on to the fact that women want to go and buy tickets to see female characters and more than one in a film. So I actually think it's a very fertile time to be a woman over 40.

I'm fairly out of the loop when it comes to pop culture.

When Nancy Reagan was presented with people who she really felt like weren't going to judge her, there was such a floodgate of affection and warmth and physical affection that, most of the time, was kept at bay because, "Oh, someone's going to say something." I think that because of so many things that happened to her in her childhood, but also in the press.

I understood more what Nancy Reagan and Ronald Reagan, what they were coming from. Kind of the horrors of their childhoods that they were coming from. When you experience such pain early on, some people really interface with that pain and try and unpack it, and some people just take it and squelch it down and try and be as successful as they can. And, you know, encourage everybody, "Don't dwell on the negative! Come on, buck up!"

I think Nancy Reagan felt so judged all the time and she felt so unlovable.

I was a huge Della Reese fan, when Della Reese was on. I idolized all the panelists. I was in love with Kitty Carlisle. Nipsey Russell, Bill Cullen, Peggy Cass, Gene Rayburn.

Nancy Reagan sort of downplayed that, you know - but she was quite successful. At the time she married Ronald Reagan, I think she was keenly aware that [Reagan's first wife] Jane Wyman's career had eclipsed Ronald Reagan's, so she was very determined not to have that happen.