Jimmie Tramel
Tulsa World Scene Reporter
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The midpoint of “The Lowdown” is a high point for Jeanne Tripplehorn’s character.
Tripplehorn plays Betty Jo Washberg, a widowed member of a powerful Oklahoma family, in Sterlin Harjo’s shot-in-Tulsa noir.
Betty Jo has appeared in each of the episodes so far, but she takes center stage in the next episode, scheduled to arrive Tuesday, Oct. 7 on FX. It’s the fourth episode of the series’ eight-episode inaugural season.
Said Tripplehorn: “Sterlin kept saying, ‘Wait till episode four, wait till episode four.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, I’m going to die. Betty Jo is going to be shot in episode four.’”
Good news: Betty Jo was shot only by those operating cameras on set.
Tripplehorn received the script for her big episode and began reading the contents before checking out the cover page. In a Zoom interview with the Tulsa World, she called the script “a gift on so many levels.”
“Then I got to the end, and I thought, ‘Who wrote this?’ And I go back to the cover page, and I know it’s like a group writer effort, but Duffy Boudreau wrote it.”
Tripplehorn was born and raised in Tulsa. Boudreau also is from Tulsa. He’s a 1997 graduate of Cascia Hall, where he was an All-State soccer player.
Small world? Tripplehorn recalled seeing Boudreau play soccer when he was a kid. She had a friend whose child (Sam Nicholls) was one of Boudreau’s teammates.
“So to see Duffy’s name on (the script) — it was the shock, the awe, the joy, the nostalgia,” Tripplehorn said. “I just couldn’t believe it was Duffy who gave me that gift, along with Sterlin. That whole episode, for any actor, was a gift, but to have it from Sterlin and Duffy — I’m not going to end this in tears — but it was a gift.”
From a hangout to the writer’s room
Harjo is a Tulsa-based filmmaker whose previous venture for FX was the critically acclaimed and award-winning shot-in-Oklahoma series “Reservation Dogs.”
Tripplehorn’s shout-out of Boudreau, who collaborated with former Cascia Hall classmate Bill Hader on HBO’s award-winning series “Barry,” led the Tulsa World to ask FX to arrange an interview with the writer.
During a Tuesday phone interview, Boudreau was told about Tripplehorn saying she used to watch him play soccer. It must have been the soccer game where everyone wins — in life — because Boudreau said another of his teammates, Sonny Dalesandro, is the person who introduced him to Harjo a couple of years ago.
Boudreau, a fan of “Reservation Dogs,” said he really wanted to meet Harjo “because not only did I love the show, but I also couldn’t believe that he did three seasons of television in Tulsa. When I was growing up, that’s not something that was possible. And he built this big community of people. He gave all these people jobs. It was incredible.”
Dalesandro, a local restaurateur and co-owner of the Tulsa Athletic soccer team, arranged for Boudreau and Harjo to meet. Boudreau said they had dinner and talked movies, and it turned into a massive hangout. That was the first time Boudreau heard anything about “The Lowdown,” though the project didn’t have a title yet. Boudreau said Harjo told him he loved the movie “The Long Goodbye” and Harjo talked about how he wanted to do something like that in Tulsa. Boudreau loves “The Long Goodbye” enough to own a copy of the 1973 Robert Altman film.
Boudreau said he and Harjo became friends. A few months after the introductory encounter, Harjo sent Boudreau a script for the pilot episode of “The Lowdown.” Got any thoughts on this?
“I was really excited about it,” Boudreau said. “I was like, ‘Wow, this is awesome. I can’t wait to see what you guys do.’”
The pilot got green-lighted. Boudreau said Harjo told him they were putting together a writer’s room. Hey, can you recommend any writers?
“Can I recommend myself?” Boudreau responded, assuring Harjo that he was, in fact, available.
Eight writers (Harjo wrote the pilot and co-wrote the final episode) are credited as writers of season one episodes. Boudreau said the writers “work on this stuff together” while thinking of the season’s big picture.
“And then you kind of break it up into little chapters, which become the episodes,” Boudreau said. “And then you just kind of get assigned scripts, and there is never, like, a math to it. It’s more like, well, this person might be good for this and has the schedule for this. This person has this availability to write this, because you have to kind of go away from the room for a week and sit at your computer and write the first draft of it to bring back to show everyone. It’s kind of like you’re in charge of that episode.”
Boudreau said Harjo called to tell him he would be writing the the fourth episode, titled “Short on Cowboys.”
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“And I was just very excited about it because I knew that was the episode where Betty Jo kind of steps into the light,” Boudreau said.
‘We couldn’t ask for better actors’
Ethan Hawke stars as citizen journalist and self-proclaimed “truthstorian” Lee Raybon in “The Lowdown.”
Raybon’s most recent exposé is a deep dive into a powerful Oklahoma family. Shortly after the story is published, one of the members of the family (played by Tim Blake Nelson) commits suicide, albeit under suspicious circumstances. His death leaves Betty Jo a widow.
In the pilot, Raybon shows up at an estate sale for the deceased. Betty Jo demands he leave. In a subsequent episode, Raybon shows up at the funeral. Meanwhile, Betty Jo’s brother-in-law (played by Kyle MacLachlan) is a gubernatorial candidate who hires a private investigator (played by Keith David) to keep tabs on Raybon.
The next episode is a meaty one for Betty Jo — and therefore Tripplehorn.
Despite the soccer connection, Boudreau said he never met Tripplehorn until “The Lowdown.” He grew up knowing Tripplehorn “was in all these huge movies,” and he thought it was incredible someone from Tulsa could be up there on the big screen. (Boudreau also talked about long ago seeing Tulsa actor Gary Busey eating breakfast at Charlie Mitchell’s. Boudreau loved “The Buddy Holly Story” when he was a kid and couldn’t believe someone from Tulsa — Busey — was responsible for that performance.)
Boudreau said he was always in awe of Tripplehorn, calling her “amazing” and a “great actor.”
“When Sterlin said she was doing the show, I was actually very, very nervous to meet her,” Boudreau said. “And then when he told me I was basically going to write the episode that kind of spotlights Betty Jo, I thought, ‘Oh my God. I better get this right.’ It was a big opportunity.”
Boudreau said he and Tripplehorn were going to meet for the first time at a table read for the episode. He recalled walking up stairs to the office and thinking “Well, let’s find out if she likes it or not.”
Said Boudreau: “She looked at me, and she gave me a big hug. And I just felt a huge sense of relief. It was a pretty special moment.”
Boudreau volunteered that Tripplehorn and Hawke had input in the story.
“It wasn’t, like, perfect in that first form,” he said. “You keep working on it. And those two, they’re so great to work with. They’re willing to sit down with you and talk through stuff. I mean, we couldn’t ask for better actors in terms of just how hungry they are to make the best possible thing. If I sound like I’m just gushing about this thing, honestly, I guess I’m still kind of shocked that I even got to do it, and that it turned out the way it did, because it’s just something I never thought would happen. It was just a really big deal for me personally to do that — make a show about Tulsa with all these people.”
History with Hader
In 1997, Boudreau made news in the Tulsa World because he and friends from a couple of high schools premiered “Generation Stewy,” a mock documentary shot on 8mm videotape, at Holland Hall’s Walter Arts Center.
Hader — director, co-writer and lead actor — told the newspaper the fledgling filmmakers got a standing ovation.
“We’d done other little film projects before, but since most of us are going off to college this year to study filmmaking, we just decided to get together this summer and make a movie together,” Hader said.
The Tulsa World story said “Generation Stewy” was patterned after mockumentaries such as “This is Spinal Tap!” and “Waiting for Guffman.”
The cast and crew included Jeremy Lamberton, producer and director of photography; Dan Neal, actor and co-writer; Joey Sexauer, producer; and John Powers, producer. Hader and Boudreau were co-writers.
“That was kind of the first big thing we worked on together,” Boudreau said, adding that it is really cool he and Hader ended up working with each other later in life. Boudreau won Writers Guild of America Awards and was Emmy-nominated for his work on “Barry.” He and Hader are still collaborating.
“Duffy has been my best friend since we were 15,” Hader, in a 2019 Tulsa World interview, said of Boudreau, whose career went from writing comic books to joining the creative team for Hader’s IFC Channel show “Documentary Now!”
“He would come to (Los Angeles) to visit, and he would come up with all these great ideas,” Hader said. “We’ve got a small writers room on ‘Barry,’ and Duffy is a good guy to have around to say, ‘Bill, that’s a dumb idea.’ Because I can get anxious when I feel like people don’t do that. Duffy has no problem telling me what I may not want to hear. Like when I have an idea, and he’ll say, ‘No, three different shows did that last year.’”
Now Boudreau is part of a show that he said is “so Tulsa.” If “The Lowdown” had debuted when he was a kid, he suspects he would be pausing every frame to look at everything in the background so he could “figure out what all that stuff was.”
Said Boudreau: “Every day driving to the set, it was just like ‘I cannot believe I’m here and we’re making this thing,’ and it’s so personal. And with Sterlin, too. It’s just like he’s created a community and a group of people. They had worked for three seasons on Rez Dogs. So, when I stepped in, I was the new guy, and it felt just like a giant family. And it was really one of the best experiences I had in my life. I could not believe my luck.”
jimmie.tramel@tulsaworld.com
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Jimmie Tramel
Tulsa World Scene Reporter
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