Q&A with Ashely Phipps, author of the new, definitive Laverne & Shirley book: The Belles of Bottle Capping
1. If your book could permanently retire one tired story people keep repeating about Laverne & Shirley, which would you choose, and what would you want people to understand instead?
“Too bad Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams hated each other in real life.” Nothing could be further from the truth. While they, like all friends and co-workers, sometimes had their creative differences and disagreements (especially as the final season approached), they were very much friends and remained so for life.
2. What’s something you learned during an interview that made you think, “I’ll never watch that scene the same way again”?
There are so many, but one that stands out is “Squiggy in Love.” I’ve always known it was Penny’s directorial debut, but learning that it was done while she was also playing hardball with Paramount to get a well-deserved tripling of her salary (which Cindy also received due to their favored nations clause) is such excellent foreshadowing for her incredible second act as Hollywood’s top female director.
3. What did Laverne & Shirley get right about women’s lives that gets overlooked when people focus only on the slapstick?
There are so many! One is the power of friendship. Everyone wants that one ride or die who they can be wholly and authentically themselves around, and know that even when they fight, it’s going to be okay in the end.
Another is the condition of the blue-collar worker. So many women working in jobs that require manual labor are able to see themselves in these two ladies.
A third is that it showed the amount of pressure society puts on women to get married and have children. There is nothing wrong with that, IF that is genuinely something you want, and those two characters did want that. They also showed us that you could still be totally happy while you waited for Mr. Right and motherhood. I think it even shows women who did not follow that path that their lives are still complete.
4. You got into the show at twelve and started the fan club in 2020. When did your love of Laverne & Shirley begin to feel like a responsibility to preserve its history?
When I started the fan club, it really kicked things into gear for me. We had already lost Penny, and that was followed by David, then Eddie, and then Cindy. I started the book before Cindy’s passing, but afterward, it took on a new sense of urgency for me.
They so desperately deserved a book that not only celebrated their legacy, but that told their story and cleared up a lot of misconceptions. No one else had done it, and I began to understand that was because, apparently, I was supposed to have been the one to do it all along.
5. What did Penny and Cindy make look so easy that people don’t realize how difficult it actually was?
Their physical comedy is absolutely extraordinary. They did all of their own stunt work, and almost always in one take. When you watch how expertly done it is and realize that they aren’t doing multiple takes, it is absolutely fascinating.
The Murphy bed bit, the storm that has them blowing everywhere at Raoul’s by the Bay, the two of them up on the rooftop with plungers… week after week, they performed the most incredible stunt work. If you look closely at episodes, you will almost always see bruises on them from the stunts. They were absolutely fearless.
6. What was it like to have people you’d grown up watching trust you to tell their story?
It was the greatest honor of my life. I never expected people to be so open and so willing to talk. Having the trust and support of the cast’s children also meant a great deal to me.
7. What did audiences understand about Laverne & Shirley that its critics missed?
Everything. They never got any real respect in the industry because their specialty was physical comedy. The critics favored the shows that tackled more serious topics at the time. It was dismissed as silly. Audiences didn’t feel that way. They saw these two hilarious women backed by an extraordinary supporting cast and loved it. It was pure joy and escapism.
8. How much of Laverne and Shirley’s personalities came from Penny and Cindy themselves?
There is definitely a lot of Penny and Cindy in their characters. Laverne’s excelling at sports and drinking milk and Pepsi are absolutely Penny. Shirley’s neatness and pluckiness are very much Cindy.
9. You’ve spent years celebrating a show about friendship. What friendships has the show brought into your own life?
There are so many people I’ve met not just through The Ultimate Laverne & Shirley Fan Club, but on message boards as long ago as 1998. I lovingly refer to the gals from ’98 as my L&S summer of ’98 ladies. The show has brought me friendships that have been in place for 70% of my life.
I have to give a special shout-out to all of those women, but especially to my best friend, Jamie. She is one of this eclectic group, and we are such good friends that I was even a bridesmaid in her wedding. A show about friendships spawning so many lifelong friendships is so special.
10. When someone finishes your book and watches the show again, what do you hope they’ll see that they hadn’t seen before?
Just how unbelievably talented these two women (and this entire cast, really) were. Their timing, their chemistry, their telepathy… I’ve just never seen anything like it. I don’t think we will again. They were truly lightning in a bottle and we are so lucky to have had them.