“Better Things” co-creator, star, writer and director Pamela Adlon “had already seen some s–t” in this business by the time she was 19, which is the current real age of Mikey Madison, the actress playing her eldest TV daughter.
Now the 53-year-old Adlon, who began working in entertainment at age nine, is “trying to make a model for a kinder, gentler work place,” she told reporters Monday at FX’s Television Critics Association press tour.
She doesn’t want Madison or other FX daughters Hannah Alligood and Olivia Edward to go through what she has.
“I think I was 15-years-old and I did an independent movie and a director asked me to drop my towel, and that it would be so funny to see my butt — and I was like a little girl,” she told TV critics at the Pasadena media event. “So, I like now, that I’m in a place that I hire people and I make a safe space.”
Adlon has seen some “ugly air,” as she put it, in Hollywood and throughout other businesses: “Abuse of power, people being rude… mismanaging, wasting people’s time, hurting people psychologically and emotionally,” she rattled off.
And it’s not only men who can let a high-level position to go their head, Adlon warned, nor is such abuse always sexually motivated. Season 3 of “Better Things” will tackle exactly these issues — it premieres Thursday, Feb. 28 at 10/9c on FX.