Emmy Winner & Ripcord Star Holland Taylor Discusses Her Relationship with a Woman: 'It's the Most Wonderful, Extraordinary Thing'

Stage and screen favorite Holland Taylor currently stars in Ripcord off-Broadway, and in a recent interview with WNYC, the Emmy winner opened up playing an assisted living resident, losing her mother and learning to discuss her relationship with a younger woman.

“The first weeks of rehearsal were very difficult because I was often very teary,” Taylor said; her mother spent her last few years in a setting not unlike the one in Ripcord. She explained that at the time of her mother’s death, she realized, “I was not very self-aware and I had not had wonderful relationships. I had not made them to be wonderful or let them be wonderful…I had stayed very solo. And I made a judgment about that, that that was impoverishing.”

She is now in a relationship with a woman, and she calls it “the most wonderful, extraordinary thing that could have ever possibly happened in my life.”

“I’ve been really wrestling with this lately,” admitted Taylor, “because most of my relationships have been with women, and I don’t like talking about them because I don’t like talking about the politics of it all, because I’m not political about it.” She added, “I’d like to be able to just say that, without having to stop and say, ‘So have you come out?’ No, I haven’t come out because I am out. I live out.”

Taylor shared that she was currently dating a younger woman, and while she chose not to discuss her personally, she did say that the two have been candid with each other about the age gap. “I’m sure [it] shocks a lot of people, and it startles me. But you know…as they say, ‘If she dies, she dies.’”

Taylor received a Tony nod in 2013 for her performance in the solo show Ann (which she also wrote). She won an Emmy for The Practice and earned four nominations for her role on Two and a Half Men. Her additional credits include Murder Among Friends and Butley on Broadway and Legally Blonde, The Lot and The L Word on screen.

Ripcord, a Manhattan Theatre Club production, plays City Center Stage I through December 6. Taylor will reprise her role as Ann Richards in Ann in Austin, Texas next year.