An appreciation of Conchata Ferrell: She was the queen of not taking any crap whom you wanted to watch in anything

Los Angeles Times

"When I read that Conchata Ferrell had died, I was suddenly, deeply and surprisingly sad," Mary McNamara says of the Two and a Half Men star, who died Monday at age 77. McNamara adds: "She was best known, as the many obits have noted, for her portrayal of Berta, the brash unflappable housekeeper in Two and a Half Men, and certainly she was my favorite part of that show, which I never warmed to and watched only sporadically. Berta, however, is not what I thought of when I learned of Ferrell’s death. Nor was any other particular role — not Susan Bloom, all cigarettes and crazy statement jewelry in L.A. Law, not Mystic Pizza’s Leona, with her kerchiefs and secret spices....It was none of those roles, and all of them, and more. It was the relief I felt when I saw that unmistakable silhouette move into view on any screen and waited for what would happen next because I knew it would be good. That electric zip of anticipation when a situation called for her to speak because I knew she would nail whatever bit of exposition, character development or comic relief she had been given firmly to the floor, so that everyone around her could continue their dance with ease. Ferrell was a character actor, the old-fashioned kind, who with her large and small roles in countless television series — from Maude to Grace and Frankie — and the occasional film, burrowed deep into my cultural psyche. I loved Ferrell first and foremost because she looked and sounded like my people — red-haired and rotund, but worldly-wise and dry rather than jolly. Her brand of comfort came in the form of a narrow appraising look and a flat-voiced but piercing retort that, as the best one-liners do, played more like disinterested observation." ALSO: Two and a Half Men vets Marin Hinkle, Melanie Lynskey and Yvette Nicole Brown pay tribute to Ferrell.