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Mary Steenburgen left her mark on the coveted Oscars stage after picking up the award for Best Supporting Actress in 1981 for her role in Jonathan Demme’s comedy-drama, Melvin and Howard.
In conversation with her husband Ted Danson on his Where Everyone Knows Your Name podcast, Steenburgen explained that she’d just given birth to her daughter Lilly and was still breastfeeding then.
“I was so blessed I won. At the end of the Oscars, everybody that had won was supposed to come out on stage,” she remembered on the November 11 episode. “And so, Bo Goldman, who wrote that beautiful script that we were talking about — we came out together, and I had just had Lilly.
“Suddenly, Lilly needed to be fed,” the Book Club lead continued. “And I could feel the whole brunt of myself. You know, my milk came in. How can I say it other than that?
“And it was all taking way longer than I thought it was going to,” Steenburgen said of having to be on stage with the winners. “I was freaking out.”
Suddenly, it wasn’t emotion pouring out of her but breast milk. “I said, ‘Bo, oh my God. Look.’ There was a little bit of… a puddle.”
Taken aback, Goldman asked Steenburgen if she’d just peed. “He thought, ‘Jesus. Why did she wet her pants?’ He goes, ‘Why are you so scared? You already won.’I said, ‘I’m not scared. I need to go feed my daughter,’” Steenburgen remembered.
According to the Back to the Future Part III actor, there’s no evidence of her breast milk spill on the stage in the photo she and the other 1981 Oscar winners took together.
Steenburgen shares her now 43-year-old daughter Lily with her ex-husband Malcolm McDowell. Before the pair split in 1990, they also welcomed their son Charlie, who’s now 41. Danson and Steenburgen have been married since 1995.
The Academy Award winner has appeared in several notable comedies from 1998’s Parenthood to 2008’s Step Brothers.
While speaking with her husband on the recent podcast recording, Steenburgen credited Jack Nicholson for taking a chance on her when he cast her as the co-lead in Goin’ South, the 1978 Western comedy.
“He had to fight for me because Paramount said, ‘Yeah, that’s the best screen test, but you’ve got to pick your second choice because she’s never done anything, she has a weird last name, you pick number two, all of whom are huge stars,’” Steenburgen told Danson.
“And he fought for me. He said, ‘Then we don’t do the movie.’ And the movie was shut down for a few days until they relented. He was my mentor and I owe every single thing to him,” she said.
