Janine Melnitz in Ghostbusters.
Mary Jo Shively in Designing Women.
Meemaw in Young Sheldon.
From an early age, it was clear that Franklin, Kentucky’s own Annie Potts was destined not only to perform in the spotlight but to thrive.
“Our parents sent us to summer camp with a drama program when we were kids, and then Kentucky started up an arts program in the Franklin and Bowling Green area, so we had a real director and performed,” Potts explained. “The bug bit me so hard. I was obsessed from the get-go, and I entertained myself by reading literally every play they had in the library. I went to college and got my degree in theater, and I was off.”
Potts has stood out in star-making roles during every phase of her 50-plus-year career since starting out in community theater in her teens. So it’s almost impossible to think that a terrifying twist of fate almost derailed her career—and her life—back in 1973.
“I was in a horrific car accident,” Potts explained. “Drunk drivers hit me while drag racing down the wrong side of the highway at high speeds, and I broke [nearly] every bone below my waist. It destroyed me, and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s it; my career’s over.’ ”
Despite suffering permanent damage from the accident (she lost her right heel and walks with a limp to this day, while co-passenger and then-husband Steven Hartley lost his left leg), fate once again intervened.
“I was recovering for a long time in New Mexico, and I saw an ad in the local paper that California Institute of the Arts was going to be auditioning for their graduate program in Santa Fe in the spring,” Potts recalled. “There wasn’t a lot to do in Santa Fe, because I had broken both my legs and was using a walker. As they say, I didn’t have a leg to stand on.
“I went there and auditioned for California Institute of the Arts with my walker. I did a monologue from The Glass Menagerie, and they accepted me on the spot. They told me that school started in September and asked if I’d be OK by then. Of course, I wasn’t sure, so I simply said, ‘I think so,’ and that’s how I got to California.”
Kentucky as Foundation
From there, Annie’s career was off and running, but it may never have taken shape without the principles and life lessons she had learned growing up in the Bluegrass State—even if she didn’t appreciate them at the time.
“When I was growing up, I thought, ‘Poor me, we’re such hicks here, and I’m completely underexposed to culture, art, ballet, theater—all of that.’ But that’s what took me to the library to read all those plays,” she explained. “Living on a farm out in beautiful nature with 200 acres to roam and have my imagination as my closest companion, it fed me in a way that I couldn’t even understand then. Once I matured, I could be nothing but grateful for that background.
“Kentucky was my foundation, and I do think there’s something valuable about the land you come from, which for me was the land right underneath me in that little farm where I grew up,” she said, smiling. “That little town gave me substance and purpose, so I am grateful for it. I have spent most of my career playing Southern women, and my Kentucky upbringing gave me a real cast of characters to draw from. That has been the foundation of the work I’ve done, and it pays the rent to boot.”
That Kentucky upbringing, combined with Annie’s one-of-a-kind talent, has led to a career full of memorable roles that stand the test of time with multiple generations of fans. Case in point: Ghostbusters, a 1984 comedy classic that placed her right in the center of bona fide comedic geniuses Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis.
“Danny and Harold were great scriptwriters, so the movie was already funny as all get out, but I arrived on set and people were just making stuff up,” she chuckled. “I was like, ‘Wait a minute. The script is good, and I memorized the scene, but now I don’t know what to say!’ It was a bit of a learning curve for me, and that itself shaped the character in a way, because I think I was always just trying to let the boys finish whatever nutty thoughts that they had … Somehow, it all worked for what we were doing.”
In 1986, Annie broke out in an even bigger way by joining the cast of what would become one of TV’s greatest ensemble comedies ever—Designing Women.
“I’d been studying Southern women my entire life, and I recognized all those iconic characters,” she said. “We had a very, very gifted writer who was also Southern, and the writing was so good and so funny. We were planting our flag as smart professional women who were feminine and feminist and holding our own in a man’s world, and we’d never seen women like that on TV comedies before.”
More Small-Screen Success
Fueled by a lifelong passion for her craft, Potts happily took on a role in The Big Bang Theory spinoff Young Sheldon that would catapult her to fame for a new generation as Meemaw.
“I knew her very well,” Potts said with a smile. “She’s kind of a composite of my mother and my sisters and aunts and all the Southern women I knew—very feminine. But they all walk like they just got off a horse. I don’t know what it is, but it’s some kind of attitude that is very particular to Southern women. My mother walked like that, and she was gorgeous and super feminine, so I thought, ‘Oh, that will be fun to play that role.’
“I also loved the idea of being the grandparent in a family where they have a super-special kid. I think everybody can relate to that, and it’s easy to go, ‘My God, what’s wrong with you?’ But it is a lot harder to go, ‘I want to nurture you. You’re special.’ And I love that about the show.”
Now 73, Potts is leaping right back into TV with a new hour-long “dramedy” for Fox called Best Medicine, and she’s hoping for yet another hit.
“The show is based on a British series called Doc Martin, which was a huge hit internationally, and I loved it,” she said. “It’s about the kind of town where I grew up in Kentucky, a little town where everybody knows everybody and takes care of each other, and here comes a new doctor who spent his summers as a child there and has been a top surgeon in Boston. He retreats to the little town of his youth, where things are just a little gentler. I don’t want to jinx it, but I feel about it the same way I felt about those other things in my life that turned out to be successful, because I think we’re all looking for a gentler place and a reminder of who we ought to be.”
On the Stage
From early success stories in TV and film to debuting on Broadway at 57, Potts is truly a favorite, an inspiration and even a “Meemaw” to us all. She dared to dream big. It’s paid off, and she isn’t done yet.
“I’ve been working for a couple of years now and developing a one-woman show—a theater piece that’s about race—and I love it,” she said. “As a Southerner, I’ve always been drawn to that subject matter, so I’m really hoping to do that, because if we don’t figure out how to love each other—no matter what color we are, no matter what God we worship—we won’t last.”
She’s still here; she’s still working; and she’s still bringing her talent, her passion and her heart into our living rooms.
“I love it so much, but I’m working 14 hours a day. It’s like, ‘Listen, do you guys know how old I am? You’re killing me!’ ” she said with a laugh. “But hey, I’m still working. I can still memorize lines. It’s like, ‘Is your mother still driving?’ It’s like, ‘Yeah, your mother can still remember lines.’ So far so good.”