‘Before' Co-Star Judith Light Talks Teaming Up With Long Time Friend Billy Crystal For Apple TV+ Psychological Thriller

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Written by Sarah Thorp, Apple TV+'s latest psychological thriller Before follows Eli (Billy Crystal), a child psychiatrist who, after recently losing his wife, Lynn (Judith Light), is charged to take care of a troubled young boy who has a mysterious and haunting connection to Eli's past. While struggling to make sense of the connection, Eli also begins experiencing intense hallucinations involving Lynn's death, which might not be as clear-cut as it seems. Eli digs deeper into the hidden life of the wife he thought he knew, only to find that Lynn is haunting him from beyond the grave.
Here, Light speaks to Deadline about mindfulness, reincarnation and working with her cast and crew to bring this spine-tingling dynamic to life.
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DEADLINE: Once upon a time, you played a real-life murderer, Audrey Marie Hilley, inalongside David Ogden Stiers. And lately, you've been in other spooky things like , and the upcoming . I'm wondering what your personal taste is. Are you a horror fan when it comes to picking roles?
JUDITH LIGHT: I've never thought about it put together like that. I personally have trouble watching horror. I don't necessarily watch it, but I choose it for the character; I don't choose it for the genre. When Ryan Murphy asked me to do American Horror, it was a really interesting character, so I wanted to take on that role. The AMC Ridley Scott piece is an extraordinary character, like nothing I've ever played before. So, for me, I'm always looking for what the character is. And yes, I did that with David Ogden Stiers; God rest his soul, such a dear, dear man. He was amazing. And The Menu was me being able to work with Mark Mylod, Ralph Fiennes and the rest of that incredible cast.
DEADLINE: Is there anything inspiring you right now? Or anything you wish you could have starred in?
LIGHT: I would say Adolescence, that piece that was just extraordinary. I would've loved to have been in that, that's for sure. And my friend Noah Wyle, who is doing The Pitt, is pretty spectacular. I would have also loved to do the Ewan McGregor show A Gentleman in Moscow; I am always in awe of him. Of course, he did that Ryan Murphy piece, Halston, as well. I appreciate the way he chooses his work. It's the same thing for most of us actors. You choose for the character and who you're going to be working with. That's the barometer for some of us who choose in a particular way.
DEADLINE: So, what was it about ? There's a lot going on with supernatural elements, topics of mental health and reincarnation. When you received this script, what made you say yes?
LIGHT: I didn't get a script. Billy [Crystal] called me and said, will you come over and meet with me and [creator, showrunner] Sarah Thorp? So, I went over, and we talked about exactly what you pointed out. You can certainly call the show spooky to one degree. There's this little boy Noah [Jacobi Jupe] who was scratching at his door, crawling through the dog door, to get connected to him, and you don't know why. Then you're dealing with someone who has mental issues. But the real context of this whole piece was reincarnation. And I've always been interested in that, and Billy, Sarah and I talked about that. At the time, she had written some things, but I hadn't seen anything just yet. I just knew sometime, someplace, somewhere, I was going to work with Billy. When the time came, I was in and wanted to be part of the production.
And the two characters that we play, Eli and Lynn, you don't really understand the relationship between the two of them, which so much of the show hinges on, which is the intimacy and the love that they have carried with them through centuries. And that's what I found incredibly compelling.
DEADLINE: And briefly on the mental health topic of it all. You've been in the business for a long time. How do you keep yourself mentally healthy?
LIGHT: I don't have self-care days, but I do have self-care. I do meditation. I do yoga. There's always a workout every morning. There's always exercises, like Tai Chi or Qigong. I'm always looking to see if I'm staying conscious. There's always a part of me that's always aware of whether or not I'm operating from the 5% frontal part of my frontal lobe. Or am I operating from the past in the back of my brain? There's a lot of studies that have been done about this that most of us drag around our lives from our old history that didn't actually even come from us. But am I staying present to who I am, the way I'm being in the world, how I'm connecting with people? That there's always an awareness of that. And when I find myself taken out in some way, which I often am, I mean to whatever degree we all are, because life presents so many different issues for us to deal with, that I sort of pull myself back to center as best as I can.
So, I meditate twice a day. And that really makes a difference; that really helps. And I believe that we all have … there's something else, there's another energy that we can call on. I don't know, some people call it God or a universal connection. There's always something about that for me, because I feel energy so strongly, I do have to take care of myself. When you're doing your work, you have to be present. When you're in a scene with somebody, you have to be present. If you're in a relationship with somebody, you'd better be present. You'd better not be dragging a whole bunch of stuff around with you, or that complicates the relationship.
DEADLINE: Are you one of those actors that takes your role home with you? Or are you pretty good about clocking in and clocking out?
LIGHT: I'm pretty good about clocking in and clocking out. Again, it goes back to mindfulness. It's like, am I operating from the energy that I just came from, or am I operating right now in the present? How present am I being? And when you're present, a lot of that can stop. I like to listen to people like Anthony Hopkins. He talks about when you go in for the work, you do the work, you know the script, absolutely cold, because then you have the freedom to operate. And it's the same thing with leaving your work. It's like you leave the work and then you come present elsewhere. Sometimes, it requires more effort, attention, awareness and mindfulness than in other times. But I do my best to really just stop because I don't want to bring it home to my husband. Then I'm not being present with him.
DEADLINE: Now, back to the Billy Crystal of it all, you both have this tight friendship off-screen. But on-screen, Eli and Lynn don't share that much time together. How did you lean on your dynamic to make these characters work? Especially because the show really does hinge on Lynn.
LIGHT: It's so interesting that you point that out. When I went to talk to Billy and Sarah, they said the same thing, that Lynn is the linchpin to all those other relationships. And it's like, how do you play up a person who's dead? Well, you don't think of them as dead. You think of them as alive. Sarah, [writer] Joe Sousa and Billy were aware of that. By the way, Billy was also the producer on this show. How he did this is remarkable to me, and what he did in this role is just so outstanding and stunning. I mean, I would watch him on set, and I would ask him, 'How are you producing and acting in this?' He said basically that he takes one piece at a time, and he delegates and lets other people do the stuff he doesn't need to do. He's really good like that, an extraordinary person, kind and generous.
And just an aside here: a lot of people don't think about Billy in terms of the dramatic. When Billy was talking about this project, and Sarah had come to him with this idea about how to make the show work, Billy wanted to play this part. That's his commitment and depth. People don't always think of him in that way. They don't hold in that way, but he's an extraordinary dramatic actor, and, of course, he's an incredibly talented comedian and a great comic actor. However, this drew a beautiful light around him in a way, and his intuition was really guiding him to do this. So, we talked a lot about reincarnation, and it was one of the funny things. It was like I always knew… I would see Billy and say, 'I know him.' You know how it is when you meet somebody and you say, 'I know you.' I just think it's really fascinating. But anyway, Billy was remarkable to be in a scene with, incredible on the set with everyone. The crew adored him, and we were shooting this in the middle of the writer's strike, and then we had to stop, and then we had to come back. So, when they were talking to me about the show and how it would look, it also mattered about the camera work and what the AD was doing. But Billy and I have a connection, so we can always feel that connection. But you really don't get it until the last two episodes of the series where you start to understand what actually happened between them.
There was this sense, sensitivity and sensibility of not holding yourself as a ghost, but that you appear because you're needed to appear, to serve where this character, where Billy's character, Eli, is going. And so, we talked a lot about that, and how the presence of Lynn needed to be weighted, substantive, and not sort of woo-woo and ghost-like. So, we did talk a lot about that, and that's what I think makes the show cohesive for him because we did have that dynamic between the two of us.
[This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]
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