Lily Tomlin Reflects on Jennifer Aniston’s 9 to 5 Remake: ‘The Working World Has Changed’ (Exclusive)

Lily Tomlin. Photo: Photo © Frederick Brown/Getty Images

The chemistry between its three stars is as memorable as that bumping, throbbing theme song. 9 to 5 is an iconic movie, as much about friendship as work, as much a lesson about feminism as a masterclass in comedy.

The film starred Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, and since it's premiere in 1980 has inspired a Broadway show, documentary and, just a few years ago, talk of a sequel with Parton, Fonda and Tomlin reprising their roles.

"We had one official crack at the script," Tomlin says. "The draft just didn't work for us. We couldn't really see the work world today [in the pages]. People work from home. They take gig work. They don't even know their boss. They're at home!" The trio ended up passing, with Parton telling Entertainment Tonight that the women had “dropped that whole idea.”

Jennifer Aniston to Produce 9 to 5 Reimagining with a Script from Juno Writer Diablo Cody

“I don’t think we’re going to do the sequel,” she said at the time. “We never could get the script where it was enough different than the first one, and that one turned out so good.”

Last month, news broke that Jennifer Aniston will be producing a reimagining of 9 to 5, with a script by Oscar-winner Diablo Cody.

When she heard, Tomlin says, "I felt sort of the same way I felt about the musical. You know, part of you feels rejected. You think that character's yours always. And you could reembody it."

Tomlin chuckles. With how much the workplace has changed in the last 44 years, "It's going to be tough to make [the movie] happen. My sympathies are with Jennifer and her writer Diablo, who is a good writer." (Cody is best known for winning an Oscar for 2007's Juno. She has also written movies like Jennifer's Body (2009), and her most recent film, Lisa Frankenstein, debuted in February.)

Tomlin's brand of comedy has always been about “understanding people,” she says. But growing up, she says she didn’t really see herself, or her type of humor, on television especially. “When I was a child, [female] comedians only talked about their husbands or their children or shopping.”

Starting out as a stand-up in her native Detroit and then getting her big break on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In in 1969, Tomlin, now 84, invented iconic characters — from Ernestine, an impertinent telephone operator, to Edith Ann, a precocious 5-year-old — both absurd and sweet but undeniably human. 

“I wanted to create a world that made more sense,” she explains. Over the years the Emmy, Grammy and Tony winner has brought her indelible performances to life on the big screen (Big Business), the small screen (Grace and Frankie) and the stage, like her 1977 Broadway one-woman show Appearing Nitely, which she wrote with her longtime personal and professional partner Jane Wagner.

“No one makes me laugh harder,” Tomlin says of Wagner, whom she married in 2013. 

Lily Tomlin on Her 45-Year Relationship with Jane Wagner: 'A Lot of Good Things Happen'

Next month Tomlin appears in Netflix’s Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution, a documentary that examines how she and other LGBTQ+ comedians sharpened their wit amid the struggle for equality, turning pain into humor and laughter into change.

Participating in the doc made Tomlin reflect on her own trailblazing work and that of her peers, many of whom never got the opportunity to break into the mainstream. 

“The world has opened up in being able to relate to gay people,” she says. “I feel [proud] I was a part of that. I just can’t think there are more people unlike us than there are people like us. And I don’t mean gay — I mean human.”