The Emmy-winning actor, writer and director Pamela Adlon recently participated in an episode of the PBS series “Finding Your Roots,” which unearthed some intense stories based on her genealogy. And like so much else in her life, that experience has been incorporated (albeit slightly fictionalized) into the newest season of her show “Better Things” on FX, recreated right down to the “please turn the page” invocation that has become almost a catchphrase for “Finding Your Roots.”
How did that decision come about? “Early in the pandemic, (the producers of “Finding Your Roots”) contacted me and said that they hit a wall and it wasn’t going to go any further, and I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? Even my roots, even my DNA is being rejected right now?’ I felt so sad. But then they had a crack in the case! This wasn’t even a year ago, but it was right around when I was starting the writers room and I was like, I have to do this. This has to go in.”
Adlon is the creator of “Better Things,” which wraps after this season, and it has been a high point in a career that also includes voicing Bobby Hill on “King of the Hill,” as well as numerous other roles, including the brash, filthy-mouthed Marcy Runkle on “Californication.”
