“We can’t both have the same thing!” Lisa Ann Walter commanded, sitting next to me on a restaurant banquette, perching my glasses on her nose to peruse the menu. “Let’s share.”
From the moment she strutted in, in a wasp-waisted suit and heels, her signature red tresses bouncing, I knew to follow her lead. A veteran actress, Walter has earned fans across the pop culture decades with a mixture of warmth and tell-it-like-it-is brashness, most recently seen in Melissa Schemmenti, the sharp second-grade teacher she plays on the ABC hit “Abbott Elementary.” Both character and actress have Sicilian roots, a powerhouse attitude and flair in the kitchen. At home, Walter treasures an ancient accordion file stuffed with recipes for a neighbor’s brisket, an aunt’s Easter pie. Onstage, in her first stand-up special, out Friday on Hulu, she jokes about the desirability of “nonna arms.”
For our lunch at Mark’s Off Madison recently, she picked a fat slice of lasagna and a Reuben sandwich — “like my children, Jewish and Italian,” she said, settling in for a juicy gabfest.
Before her success onscreen, she was a road comic for years, and there is little she won’t riff on: money; politics; A-list co-stars; sex; her nips, tucks, hair extensions and boob jobs (her 2011 memoir includes the names of her doctors). “If I think something is funny, I’ll say it, even if maybe I shouldn’t,” she said. Appearing on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” last month, she toted a giant tray of that homemade Easter pie, pizzagaina, and delivered a masturbation joke while wearing a bustier and feathers.
Sherri Shepherd, the talk-show host and actress, who met Walter on the stand-up circuit in the ’90s, called her fearless.
“She just gets on the stage, and she can command it,” Shepherd said. “I’m the girl that hides behind her arm, like peeking over her shoulder, going, ‘Yeah, what she said!’ And she gets respect from any kind of crowd.”
Walter, 62, is a mother of four — and how that came to be is partly the subject of her special, titled (spoiler alert?) “It Was an Accident.” Filmed at a club in Philadelphia — where “Abbott” is set — and produced by her friend and series co-star Sheryl Lee Ralph, it’s another notch in Walter’s recent career Renaissance, which includes a stint on the “Celebrity Jeopardy!” semifinals this week, after winning in 2024. She is also making her Off Broadway debut in “Heathers: The Musical,” playing dual roles, a mom and a spunky teacher (through June 22).
But Walter also had an early-flourishing career: On the heels of her first popularity as a stand-up, she developed and starred in two sitcoms in the mid-90s, and later, a dance-fitness reality show (“Dance Your Ass Off”). For many millennial die-hards, she will always be Chessy, the nanny to a twinned Lindsay Lohan in the 1998 version of “The Parent Trap.” With her cuffed denim and accepting vibes, Chessy was especially meaningful to anybody with a secret, like that era’s L.G.B.T.Q. kids.
When a fan approached our table, shaking and saying, “My sister and I, you are a part of our life,” Walter knew where his emotion came from. (She radiated reassurance — “I’m just a mom,” she said soothingly — and posed for his selfie.)
For Nancy Meyers, the director and a writer of “The Parent Trap,” Chessy’s appeal didn’t come from the page. “I think Lisa is why Chessy has been so fondly remembered all these years,” she wrote in an email. “Her warmth and humor and the way she connected” with the cast.
Back then, and for many years after, Walter was what she called “celebrity-esque,” with, as she puts it in her memoir, “one foot on the red carpet and the other at Costco.”
Not much has changed: she’s now a regular at awards shows, thanks to “Abbott,” and at the end of our lunch, she still doggy-bagged not only the remainder of our entrees, but also the untouched bread basket.
And the butter. Without apology.
Her genuineness translates; her confidence, too.
“She’s this big, bold, brassy babe, and she is still living her life and enjoying it; people of any age want to see that,” said Ralph, who plays the prim kindergarten teacher Barbara Howard. She caught Walter’s comedy act twice and urged her to make it a special, stepping up to produce it herself and pitching it to Hulu. “I don’t like it when we sit on the sidelines of our own lives and potential — I don’t want it for myself, and I didn’t want it for her,” said Ralph, who could double as a mellifluous life coach.
“Everything she said, I did,” Walter said.
Their friendship is all TCM marathons and accessorizing.
Walter: “We’re always watching something in black-and-white with each other.”
Ralph: “We love a good shoe shop. See the jewels on your feet, and feel the comfort.”
In a gold jacket designed by Ralph’s dressmaker, Walter delivers an hourlong set that is full of straightforward zingers (any teachers in the audience? “I don’t have a joke for you: That’s what your salary is for”), observations about generational differences, and bits about the joys and indignities of being female, especially in this moment. A Skims bodysuit may or may not be sacrificed.
Her material comes from, as she put it, “the insanity of being a grown-ass woman with [expletive] to say.” Then she corrected herself: “It’s not even insanity. It is the boldness of having zero [expletive] left in life.”
“There’s always been women truth-tellers, rageful,” she added. “We’ve always been there, just back in the day, they used to burn us as witches.”
An early Ms. magazine subscriber, Walter grew up politically active in Silver Spring, Md., with a NASA physicist father and a schoolteacher mother. After they divorced, she taught herself to cook, a lasting pleasure. “She can give you combos of food that will make you lose weight and gain weight at the same time,” Shepherd said, laughing.
She studied theater at Catholic University in Washington, and moonlit as an Arthur Murray dance instructor. Her comedy spark came from hearing a Bill Cosby quip about childbirth: What did he know about it? Off she went to the clubs, building a routine about being a young working mother. She had a son and daughter early on with her first husband; they met acting in a Washington production of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” More than a decade into their marriage, she realized that “we had too much in common — he also liked men.”
Now, they are great friends. “We hang out at least once a week,” she said. “We watch ‘90 Day Fiancé’ together. He’s a doll.”
A second marriage produced identical twin boys, now 25; that ex-husband is no reality TV bestie, and Walter doesn’t mince words about him. For starters, she said, he told her: “Stand-up’s not feminine; you shouldn’t do it.”
Still, she didn’t consciously choose to leave it behind, even though female comics were a rarity when she started out. “I never saw any that had children until Roseanne” Barr, she said. “I never saw any that were in your face. Or loud, or cursed.”
Bookers also commented on her fashion choices. “I would dress like Nikki Glaser dresses now,” she said, and was told to cover up. “I’m like, no, sex is part of the power package. What’s wrong with you? I’m not hiding my sexuality.”
But for a while, other jobs materialized — opposite Tom Cruise in Steven Spielberg’s 2005 “War of the Worlds,” and rhumba’ing with Richard Gere under J. Lo’s watch (“Shall We Dance?” in 2004) — until she was around 50, when the work started drying up. She contemplated moving from Los Angeles to Atlanta for a cheaper life; family members suggested it was maybe time to get her real estate license.
The best friend and sidekick roles that were her bread and butter had started to go to actors of color, Shepherd said. “She was never resentful,” Shepherd added. “She’d be like, ‘It’s your time, right?’ I love that about my friend.”
After Walter’s second marriage ended, Shepherd helped pull her into open mics. “Once she got on the stage, I was so proud of her because it was like, she’s back. And she’s got so much more to say because she’s got life and pain up under her.”
Then came “Abbott Elementary,” which has resonated, especially with educators. “Nothing makes us feel better,” Walter said. “The week that we did the pilot, I said, if only teachers watch us, we’re a monster hit.”
Three of her co-stars (Tyler James Williams, Chris Perfetti and William Stanford Davis) filled a row at “Heathers” this week, where she holds her own in song and kills it with crowd work, even getting an Eagles chant in.
Walter’s work ethic never waned, but now her ambition is revved. “I’d like to think that I went from being a cautionary tale to an inspiration,” she said. She was bubbling over with plans — for a cookbook, an animated show, more comedy.
“I want to have fun, I want to do everything there is to do,” she said, “because as my depressing Sicilian great-grandparents used to say, you spend a long time in a box.”