Alex Eala Receives HUGE Reward After Italy’s President Watches Her at Italian Open! 

The president of Italy walked into the Forro Italico with a message and a reward that no one saw coming. Sergio Materella, who has witnessed countless defining sporting moments, World Cups, Olympic games, and the triumphs and heartbreaks of Italian athletes across every discipline, was present in Rome that afternoon for something entirely different.

 On this occasion, the 84year-old head of state was not there to watch an Italian player. Instead, he was there to see Alex Ela. The Filipina sensation, still recovering from the ankle injury that had ended her tournament run, was seated in the royal box when the president approached her. Cameras immediately zoomed in. The stadium seemed to collectively hold its breath, and when Materella made his announcement, even the statues of ancient Roman athletes surrounding the arena felt like they were leaning in to listen. Rome, Italy, May 10th, 2026. The

Forro Italico’s central stadium was at the heart of the Italian Open’s most anticipated weekend. The semi-finals were underway and the iconic venue framed by marble figures of classical athletes was packed to capacity. The crowd formed a sea of Italian flags broken only by pockets of Belgian yellow and French blue as anticipation rippled through the stands for what was already becoming a historic afternoon.

Tournament royalty filled the Royal Box. Former champions, tournament officials, and dignitaries from across Europe all gathered above the court. But the most distinguished guest had arrived that morning without fanfare. Sergio Materella, the 84year-old head of state of the Italian Republic, had accepted an invitation from Italy’s victorious Davis Cup and Billy Jean King Cup teams to attend a match at the tournament.

 Just days earlier, he had met Italy’s top players at the Quirin Palace, including Jan Nixin and other national stars. During that meeting, Materella had been careful to downplay any symbolic role he might represent. I don’t want to be seen as some kind of talisman because I’m not one at all, he had said.

 But the value of our tennis players, both women and men, allows us to look forward to the Italian Open with renewed and consolidated confidence. Now he sat in the front row of the royal box, flanked by security personnel and Federation officials, watching the match with the quiet intensity of a man who has seen history unfold across eight decades.

 The atmosphere was focused, almost ceremonial as the tournament moved through its decisive stages. Then during a changeover, something drew his attention. In the opposite section of the royal box, partially obscured by a marble pillar, sat a young woman with her left ankle wrapped in a compression bandage.

 She was not on any stadium screen. Her name was not being announced, but the flags around her told their own story, red, white, and blue, not Italian. They were Philippine flags. Alex Ela Materella leaned slightly toward the nearest tournament official. “Who is that?” he asked. The official leaned in closer. That senior presidente is Alex Ela.

 He said she is from the Philippines. She was forced to withdraw from the tournament after injuring her ankle. Sergio Materella nodded slowly. He had heard of her. In fact, the entire country had heard of her not because she was Italian, but because her presence had changed the atmosphere of the Forro Italico.

 Philippine flags had appeared across Rome in numbers rarely seen for a visiting athlete. Chance of her name echoed through the stands, bouncing off ancient marble statues and filling the stadium with a kind of energy the city was not used today. 20-year-old player far from home had turned a foreign tournament into something that felt like a homecoming that I would like to meet her, the president said quietly.

 Then without further discussion, the president of Italy rose from his seat. The royal box immediately fell into a restrained silence as officials noticed the movement. It was subtle, almost unremarkable at first, but in that environment, every gesture carried weight. Mozella did not announce his intention.

 He did not wait for ceremony or protocol to catch up. And yet, in that moment, something shifted. The attention of the entire box began to follow him. Alex Ela had no idea he was coming. His security detail immediately tensed. Tournament officials exchanged uneasy glances on the broadcast feed. Cameras that had been locked on the baseline rally suddenly panned upward toward the royal box.

 Sergio Materella had begun to move that he walked past the VIP seating area, past Federation officials, and past the bronze busts of Italian sporting legends that line the Royal Box corridor. Step by step, he moved toward the back section where a young woman sat partially hidden behind a marble pillar, her left ankle wrapped in a compression bandage.

 Alexa looked up. Her eyes widened as she realized who was approaching. Around the stadium, the scattered Philippine flags carried by traveling fans who had followed her journey through victories and heartbreaks seemed to shift in energy as if the entire crowd had sensed the moment was changing. The chance that had defined her presence in Rome began again, softly at first, then building in volume, rolling through the forroalico.

Materella stopped in front of her and extended his hand. Senior Reena Ela, he said, “It is an honor to meet you.” Still processing what was happening, she reached out and took his hand. “The honor is mine, Senior Presidente,” she replied. The moment carried an unusual weight. Even commentators struggled to continue their broadcast as silence spread across the coverage.

 The match on court continued in the background, but attention had shifted entirely away from the baseline at another time. Even figures like Pope Francis had spoken warmly about the spirit and devotion of Filipino communities during his pastoral visits abroad. But here in Rome, it was the president of Italy himself standing in front of their emerging sporting icon.

 And for a brief moment, the tournament, the crowd, and even the city seemed to pause around them that I have been watching you, Sergio Materella said calmly. Not just today, but throughout this tournament. The way your people show up for you, it is remarkable. It is moving that he paused for a moment, his gaze steady.

 Italy is proud to have hosted you. We hope you will return. The president of Italy had crossed the royal box, stepped away from protocol, and shaken the hand of Alex Ela. He had acknowledged her presence, her journey, and the emotional wave she had brought with her supporters into the Forro Italico.

 Then, without warning, he made an announcement that no one in the stadium had anticipated. There was no prepared statement, no visible consultation with advisers, just a measured voice speaking in full view of the cameras. The Italian Republic recognizes exceptional contributions to sport, to culture, and to the bridge between nations, he said.

 It is rare that a single athlete can embody all three. He turned slightly toward the broadcast cameras. The stadium, still vibrating with distant crowd noise, began to feel suspended in silence. Even the commentators stopped speaking. “The tennis match continues,” he added. But today, something more important is being recognized.

 Then he continued, “His voice steady but definitive.” “Alex Ela has brought something special to Rome this week. Not just her tennis which has been extraordinary but her spirit, her resilience, the way her people have shown up for her and the way she has shown up for them. Dot. A brief pause followed the kind that stretches time. Therefore, he concluded, “I am pleased to announce that Alexandra Ela will receive the Order of the Star of Italy, the highest honor the Italian Republic can bestow upon a foreign national,” the stadium gasped. The announcement landed

not like a routine honor, but like something far larger, something the foro Italico had never quite witnessed in a tennis context before. Alexa stood still, visibly trying to process what she had just heard. The order of the star of Italy is not given lightly. It is not given often, and it has never been associated with a tennis player in this way before.

 To understand the weight of the moment, it is important to understand what the honor represents. The Order of the Star of Italy is one of the most significant civilian distinctions awarded by the Italian Republic. It sits just below the highest order of merit and is reserved for individuals who have strengthened Italy’s relationships with the rest of the world.

 That it was originally established in 1947 as the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity, created in the aftermath of World War II to recognize those who helped rebuild Italy and support its recovery. In 2011, it was reformed under President Georgio Napolitano, shifting its focus from post-war reconstruction to something more contemporary.

 The promotion of Italy’s cultural presence, international relationships, and global prestige in its modern form. The award is conferred personally by the President of the Republic after consultation with the Council of the Order. It recognizes foreign nationals who have made exceptional contributions to strengthening ties between Italy and other countries and that is why the moment carried such weight.

 Alex Ela had not achieved this through diplomacy or politics but through something far more universal sport. Through competition, resilience and presence, she had become a bridge between cultures. Her matches had drawn some of the largest non-Italian crowds the Italian Open had seen in years, transforming sections of the stadium into a sea of Philippine flags and international energy.

 It was not just popularity, it was visibility, it was connection. And in that sense, the president’s words reframed everything happening inside the Forro Italico, not as a simple tennis story, but as something closer to cultural exchange unfolding in real time. Within hours of Sergio Materella’s announcement, the story had spread far beyond the 40 italico in the Philippines.

 It broke like a national moment. Television networks interrupted regular programming. News tickers lit up across every major outlet with a single repeating headline. Alexa receives Italy’s highest civilian honored on social media. The reaction was immediate and overwhelming messages of pride, disbelief, and emotional celebration flooding timelines across the country.

For many, it wasn’t just about sport anymore. It was about identity, visibility, and recognition on a global stage. From Manila to Rome, one post read, “From a scholarship at the Rafa Nadal Academy to an honor from the president of Italy, she is proof that dreams have no borders.” Alex Ela had not won the tournament, and she had not even completed it due to injury.

 But in the eyes of many supporters, something larger had happened. She had changed the atmosphere of Rome itself, and in doing so reshaped how Italy saw the Philippines, even if only for a moment. The Philippine Embassy in Rome issued an official statement expressing gratitude for the recognition.

 The Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila followed with a formal message thanking both President Materella and the Italian people for what it described as an extraordinary gesture of friendship between nations. Back in Rome, journalists turned their attention to the emotional aftermath. Cameras eventually found her family in the stands.

 Her mother, Ria, who had been seated beside her when the president approached, was asked how she felt. She paused for a long moment, still visibly overwhelmed that I don’t have words, she said quietly, tears still on her face. I’m just a mother. I just wanted my daughter to be happy. I never imagined anything like this. Alex Ela did not speak to the press immediately after the announcement.

 She was still processing what had unfolded. The bracelet given by Roger Federer remained on her wrist, a quiet reminder of how far her journey had already taken her. The words of Sergio Materella still echoed in her mind, repeating in fragments she could not yet fully organize. Later that evening, she finally posted a single image on her Instagram story, a photo of the Roman sky taken from her hotel window.

 Beneath it, a simple caption appeared that I came to Rome to play tennis. I leave with something I never could have imagined. Graatier, Italy, Mahal Ko, thank you Italy. I love you. There was no press conference, no extended statement, just that. And in the hours that followed, the meaning of what had happened began to settle across two nations and far beyond them.

 Materella had not awarded the Order of the Star of Italy because she had won the tournament. She had not. Her run had ended prematurely in the third round. her ankle wrapped in compression, her progress halted by injury. In purely sporting terms, her campaign had stopped short of the final stages. But the award was never about the result sheet at it was about what she represented.

 She represented the possibility of connection across borders, across cultures, and across languages. She represented sport not just as competition, but as a shared human language capable of carrying emotion further than nationality. She represented the Filipino diaspora. Millions of people living and working far from home, often unseen, often unheard, but still carrying their identity with them. I in Rome.

 For a brief, but unforgettable stretch of time, they were seen. The Philippine flags that filled the Forro Italico were not just symbols of fandom. They were signals of presence. The chance of Leen Alex echoed off marble statues of ancient athletes, collapsing centuries of history into a single modern moment. And somewhere in that convergence, the president of Italy took notice not of a victory but of an impact.

 Italy is proud to have hosted you. We hope you will return, Materella had said. But the truth, as many came to understand afterward, ran deeper than that. Italy was not only proud to have hosted her. It was in its own way changed by her and the order of the star of Italy rare, formal and deeply symbolic, was not a reward for winning matches.

 It was a recognition of something less measurable but far more enduring. The ability of one athlete to turn a tournament into a bridge between nations no player in the history of the Italian Open winner or loser, champion or journeyman has ever made the kind of impact that Alex Ela made in just one week on the red clay of Rome.

 The question now is simple, but it carries weight. Will she return to Rome next year as a competitor? Or will she return as something larger than that, something symbolic, a living bridge between nations separated by more than 11,000 km, yet momentarily united by the presence of a 20-year-old with a racket, a dream, and a following that transformed an entire stadium.

 Drop your thoughts in the comments and subscribe to Court Legacy for more stories that go beyond the scoreboard. The moment itself has already entered Italian open history, Sergio Materella made a surprise appearance at the tournament, walking across the Royal Box to personally greet Alex. The 84year-old head of state had only days earlier met Italy’s victorious Davis Cup and Billy Jean King Cup teams at the Quirin Palace, yet chose this moment on a clay court stage to make a different kind of statement. He announced that the

Filipina sensation would receive the Order of the Star of Italy, the second highest civilian honor the Italian Republic can confer upon a foreign national. Established in its modern form in 2011, the award recognizes individuals who strengthen Italy’s international relationships and cultural ties across borders.

 In doing so, Elila became the first tennis player ever to receive the honor. The announcement came after her tournament ended in disappointment. A grade two ankle sprain forced her withdrawal from her third round match against world number two Elena Ryikina. But the recognition was never about the result on the scoreboard.

 That it was about something far less measurable and far more lasting. That it was about the sea of Philippine flags that filled the 40 italico. It was about the chance that echoed between marble statues of ancient athletes. It was about how a single player turned a tennis tournament into a shared emotional space between two nations.

 And ultimately it was about this sport at its best is not only competition that it is connection.

I got up there and I said what I said. You like me. You really like me. This is my boy that I took on Steel Magnolia who said that’s why I’m gay because he was going there all the time. Bert Reynolds called me wanted me to look at the script. He said it’s really awful. He said don’t worry about the script.

 We’ll make it up as we go along. It was just wonderful, wonderful fun. Mrs. Dowfire Robin was such a diamond of a of a soul. You just adored him. I adored him. He’d also drive you mad because he wouldn’t stop and and we’d have to do the scene. We did the scene exactly how it was. It was wonderful. It was done.

 We did take one and take two, take three. Fabulous. Except Robin would want to do take four and take five and take six and seven and eight and nine and 10 11 12. Daniel. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. The whole time. The whole time you were the whole time. When I was doing Mrs. outfire. My my real father uh who had been ill and I’d been I had put him in a nursing home.

He’d had a massive stroke at one point and I got a call in while I was in the trailer or whatever you call it on the street at the courthouse where the divorce is happening and this is the scene we’re shooting the divorce and uh I got a call from the doctor that my father had had another massive stroke. I said, “Is he?” He said, “No, it’s a massive, massive stroke again, and his brain is not really functioning.

 Um, we could keep his heart going.” And I said, “No.” Um, but please lean down and tell him that Sally says goodbye. And then I went out onto the set and I’m like, “Oh my god.” you know, this was on me and I my father and we hadn’t been that close, but he was still my father and I was responsible for him.

 And I went on the set and we’re doing the scene about the kids being taken away from the father. It was what happened to my father. I was the divorced child. And I’m doing the scene. I’m doing the scene. And Robin at one point pulled me over to the side. He said, “Sally,” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Are you all right?” I said, “Yeah, why?” He said, “I don’t know. I don’t know.

 I just wanted to ask. And I started to cry. I said that um my father just died. You know, I just And I was the one to say, you know, go ahead, let him die. And I started to cry. And Robin turned around and said, “That’s it for the day, guys. We’re just wrapped here. We’re done for the day. You can get a few shots of the kids and one maybe one of the staff, but Miss Field’s going home.

” And um he walked me out and uh that was Robin. The first time I won for Norma Ray, it was so unexpected. I had so come out of nowhere to land here. If I joined up with you, would I lose my job? No way. I was never a very good Girl Scout. I was so numb when I won. I don’t remember walking up on the stage.

 I didn’t know how to do any of it, but there I was. Meaning, I didn’t know how to do the Hollywood stuff. I knew how to do that. I knew how to do this. I knew how to do the work, but I didn’t know how to get the dress and the thing and how do I It was not what I felt comfortable with. And at that time, there was only one place where there was a party, and that was the original Spago on Hollywood, and that was it.

 I as I went into the old Spago, somebody stood up in the corner and said, “No, come here. Come here, Sally.” You know, here. And I I couldn’t see what who it quite was. He was sort of backlit because you had Sunset Boulevard like right behind him. And he stood a big table with people. And I went, “Okay, good. I’m going to go sit there. Fine, good.

” And I went over and it was Carrie Grant. And I was to sit down at this table and I sat down between Carrie Grant and Audrey Hepern. I was just like, “Ah, I don’t think I said one single word. I think I just sat there like Yeah. Yeah. Except I had my my little award. And the winner is Sally Field in Places in the Heart.

And then the second one I won for Places in the Heart. I got up there and I think what I felt is that since the first one I I gave away because I was so numb that I couldn’t feel it that I had to have a moment of allowing myself to feel that I had done something that I had conquered something that was so hard for me to do.

It doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t continue to need to be conquered on a daily basis uh to for the work to keep on getting better to keep understanding it in a different level. And I was like, “Oh my god, oh my god.” I don’t know that I had anything really planned to say because I feel that sort of bad luck. And so I said what I said.

The first time I didn’t feel it, but this time I feel it. And I can’t deny the fact that you like me right now. You like me. The way it’s been completely misqued is that the leadup to it is that I say how hard it was for me to be here. um and how hard it was for me to see that I that I was here.

 And so right now, I wanted to take this moment and see it and own it for myself that for this one minute in time, maybe never again, you like me. You really like me. And that’s what I said. And it became this whole, you know, blow it out of whatever you need to blow it out of. But um the reality was is that I was talking to myself.

This is my brother Rick and that’s me. And this is kind of looks like our childhood just totally. This was probably in Pasadena. I grew up in my grandmother’s house when I was really little um in Aladena. Um and my brother was my everything. He was my protector and my tormentor. And he went on to be an elemental particle physicist.

 Try saying that 55 times in a row. All of this with my brother at my grandmother’s house was my happy spot. I was very safe at at my grandmother’s house, with my um my aunt Glattis, my great-g grandandmother Mimi, um my grandmother Joy, um and and my mother and of course my brother. So this was um sort of diamond part of my childhood.

This is Gig. I was probably 18 here and that was the beginning of my career. I think like Gidget like like the all-American girl is what Gidget was supposed to be. There was also darkness in there. There just was especially because those little girls were raised in the 50s and they were very repressed times for women for little girls.

 You couldn’t do that. You couldn’t wear this. You had to sit this way. You had to walk that way. Even my grandmother who was a very independent woman in her way um but she’d been an illegitimate child uh from her mother and she had to eventually go into an orphanage with her oldest sister and sort of grew up in that orphanage in the deep south.

 So there was a toughness to her but she very much was you know women you couldn’t do this and you couldn’t do that and if I had any emotion if I was crying if I certainly if I was angry her response to me was don’t be ugly. So there was a part of me that was very much like Git. I knew how to make people laugh.

 Uh, I was a clown, but there was a darkness that was yet to be explored. Obviously, I can’t just walk up to him and offer him a second chance. Why not? I do it all the time. At 18 and certainly 19, I became a celebrity. And just instantly, I was no longer part of the human race. You look at people differently because you’re aware that they’re either recognizing you or they’re not recognizing you.

 And either way, it it it takes you out of just being another human at the market looking for the right uh artichoke to pick up. So, I learned that early on and I learned to have some part of me wary of it. Um I was always kind of a recluse. I never was a person that had a whole lot of friends and was the you know the real heart of the party and you know hung out with a lot of people.

 I had one friend and was lucky to have that. But I think what it did to me is it made it it it validated the part of me that would just as soon be alone. I didn’t I didn’t trust them. I didn’t like them. Get away from me. But what I did like was the actors. I liked being in that family. I liked being with the crew. I was accepted. I was them.

They were my friends. The Flying Nun. A notoriously tough period. Yeah. I had just turned 19. I didn’t want to be a nun. I I I I wanted I wanted to finally be a girl in the world and I wanted to date. I’d never really dated except my high school sweetheart. Um with one person. I I I hadn’t gone to college.

 I didn’t have any of that experience. And so I did not want to be a nun. And I said no. I said no. I said no. And then my stepfather had come to my new apartment because I had just moved out and said to me that if I didn’t do it, I might never work again. Which was a really crappy thing to say. Um and it scared me.

 And so I called Harry Acriman, the producer, and said, “Okay, I’ll do it.” And I didn’t know they were already shooting with somebody else. And then that, welcome to Showbiz. Then that poor uh young woman was fired. And I went into these this three years. It was, yes, incredibly difficult for me because it was depressing.

 It wasn’t real. There was no real scenes to do. I had come from the Birmingham drama department. I knew how to be an actor. This wasn’t it. But the good news is um at the end of the first year when I had probably gained 400 lb in 2 hours, the woman who played Mother Superior, Meline Sherwood, came to me and said after work on Thursday, you’re to meet me here.

 She handed the address to me and said, “You’re going to be there.” And I was sort of frightened of her anyway. I thought, “Oh, okay.” And she said, “It’s the actress studio. Have you ever heard of it?” Which I hadn’t. I I I’d barely ever been out of the state. Um so I said, “Okay.” And I showed up and it was um certainly it changed my life because it’s where I met Lee Strawber and began to work with him and began to learn how to be the actor I wanted to be.

I had gotten married to my high school sweetheart, not even because I wanted to, but because he said if he if I didn’t, he would leave and I would have no one. It was like, you know, I learned eventually to not listen to this stuff and to stand up for what I really wanted. I was in the third year of the nun, beginning the third year of the nun, and I was pregnant.

 So I did that season, that entire season pregnant, which was hard, but okay, it was always hard. But at least I had this bubble of in of excitement happening inside of me. Something was changing. Uh, and it was Peter, this little guy. Peter also, this little baby, certainly saved my life because I said to myself, if I could take care of him, I could take care of me and I needed to find my legs and he helped.

And then this little guy, Eli, came along a few years later in 1972. At that time, if you had done situation comedy television, and this was the late 60s and early 70s, I couldn’t get in a room. So, I it wasn’t that I was on auditions, I couldn’t get in the room to audition. and I couldn’t get on the list.

 They they thought they already knew what I was. So I no thanks. We don’t we don’t want any of that. Thanks. Uh so I I had to say to myself that if I wasn’t where I wanted to be, I had to get better. That I couldn’t say that it was their fault. They wouldn’t let me in the room. This was the industry. It was rotten.

It was unfair. uh it had to be that it was on me to make it different. So, I began to work at the actor studio with Lee um constantly, as much as I possibly could. And I remember Jack Nicholson was there a lot.

And Jack had said to a casting person that he knew and ultimately to Bob Riflson that there was an actor he had seen working there that was wellknown and an undiscovered talent and it was my it was me and that the casting lady Diane Kittton heard him say that and called me in on a meeting. It was the very first meeting

uh interview I’d ever been on. It was the first interview I’d had since Gidget and it was for a film called Stay Hungry that Bob Rolson was directing with Jeff Bridges and Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was his first movie. So in some weird way my theory was right. I worked at the actor studio for so long and I so hard that Jack had seen it in the and the word spread and ultimately got that little role which was the beginning of the change.

There was so much in this. It was a very pivotal time. And Reynolds called me and now I knew who he was, but I didn’t know anybody in the business really uh unless I had worked with them. I knew Jeff now. I knew Jeff, wonderful Jeff Bridges. Um, and Bert called me and wanted me to look at this script.

 He said, “It’s really awful. The script is awful, but we’ll we’re going to fix all of that because we’ll just make it up as we go along.” He and I said to him,”Well, why me?” And he said, “Because he’d seen me in Gig,” which I found a little hard to believe that he would like go, “Okay, Gig. Yeah, this is perfect.

 I want that’s the girl I want, but okay.” And um I had met him um and he said, “Don’t worry about the script. We will we will we will throw it out the window and we’ll we’ll make it up as we go along.” So I went to Atlanta and you know then of course he and I met and began whatever it was that we began. Do you think we have anything in common? I mean besides being chased around the country in that car.

It was a very complicated relationship. There were parts of birth that were so wonderful and and lovable and then there were parts that were really frightening. And he was very much like my stepfather. It doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a part of me that loved Bert to pieces, but then I loved my stepfather, too.

 That’s the complication of what loving a very complicated person is, especially when you’re a child, because my stepfather was both wonderful and evil. So, he taught me that love is wonderful and dangerous. So, he was me exercising my stepfather out of my brain because I eventually could stand up to Bert and I could eventually walk away because Bert wanted um to control my work.

 He could hurt me. He could, you know, humiliate me, but don’t mess with my work because it meant more to me than work. It was my language with myself and it had always been that. So it it was it was the beginning of me pulling away when he uh didn’t want me to do Norma Ray, you know, called her a because she had some sexual past.

And he threw he threw the script at me because I was standing up. He said, “Boy, you are really letting you’re letting this get the better of you.” And I said, “This is the better of me.” And I went and I did meet with Marty Rid. I did the film, but it was the beginning of me finding my legs.

And I really think the roles that I was that I’ve been lucky enough to have where I got to do the work that I knew how to do, that I took a long time to know how to do, that I’m still learning how to do. Um, they changed me.

 They affected me. They changed who I am. And being Norma at that time was exactly what I needed because to learn how to stand in her shoes. I could feel my own legs. I could feel my body getting stronger because I was having to portray how she grew up. I started to grow up. I eventually just wouldn’t be manipulated and humiliated like that.

And um ultimately I left. Well, this is Still Magnolia’s just a wonderful, wonderful experience. Just we loved each other, all of us. We all just completely adored each other and we would go shopping on the weekends all together. Um, even Dolly sometimes we’d go to the market, we played games, we’d all we’d get together at one somebody’s house.

 There’s a picture that I have hanging in my little office. It’s of Shirley and Julia and Dolly and we’re looking off because it was the rap party and there was a big band. So, it’s all of our tight head shots and on my chest is my little son Sam because he was six months old and I’m holding his head because I’m trying to save his ears because it was loud.

 He was on the set all the time and my friends took care of him. Sam has always said that that’s probably why he’s gay. This is my wonderful Sam. I never have and I don’t think I ever will do this part of it very happily. It’s not my strong suit. Um but he gets it and he helps me through it. The fact that he knows so much more about this contemporary world than I do, you know, telling me who people are, that’s so that is really Oh, great. Thanks.

 I do the acting. I don’t I don’t do the other part. Brothers and sisters was already shot as a pilot and they wanted to keep some of the concepts but they brought in two new characters and that was they changed the mother which was now going to be me and they brought in Matthew Ree and it just emerged a as what it needed to be and the Matthew Ree character really rose up mostly because Matthew was so gosh darn good.

 And at that time they were never really ever exploring the relationship of a gay man and his mother and his family. I didn’t want anyone to know. I knew I knew you were gay. I think I always knew. They started to let me write my character because none of them were an older woman. I was. And none of them had children.

 I did. And grown-up children, me. So they allowed me to write her her story and and what she said and how she how she said it. These children, each one of them, he’s Peter is right there. He’s a magnificent writer and showrunner. He’s now showrunning a limited series that he wrote all of. Eli is a writer director.

He is directing something right now with Nick Jonas that’s up in Canada. and Sam is also a writer, has several pieces out in the marketplace. They are my support, but I think I’m kind of theirs as well. Everybody always talks about um being a grandparent uh is this joy you didn’t know existed. I say that’s not true.

 It was really hard. Really hard. I wasn’t prepared to have uh grandchildren so young. Sam was still young when Peter had his first children. Um, and but I do know this that parenting and grandparenting is not about this year or next year or the year after that. It’s the longterm relationship that you have, that you never leave, that you’re flawed, that you screw up, and that you’re still there, and that you’re still invested, and that you reinvest yourself.

 I’m hugely close to my my grandchildren. How did this even happen? Brian Unlas and Peter Craig uh were starting their company. Brian Unlas was given this in galleys, I believe. Then Peter Brian said, “Maybe give this to your mom. Maybe she would like this.” I read about three chapters and said yes and and then gave it to my manager who is anonymous.

 Anonymous picked it up for them and we began developing it. It’s a lovely little book about healing, about family, and an homage to seed creatures. So, it’s very unique and small in its in its way in and large in other ways. And we, you know, worked a long time to make it what it eventually became. What the hell? Go ahead. He won’t hurt you.

Overarchingly, how do you feel about your career as you look back? or arching. I don’t know. I have no idea. It’s still going. It’s still ongoing. Ask me that five years from now. I had can’t stand at a distance to see. Um, it is what I do. I’m supposed to go into rehearsals for a play in at the end of the at the end of summer.

Hopefully that happens or it doesn’t happen. So, I’m still I still have my head down and I’m always hoping to get better.