Laura Dern refuses to confirm or deny those Baby Yoda rumors to Stephen Colbert
Appearing on the Friday Late Show, Laura Dern explained how she’s essentially been adopted by one of the most celebrated couples in modern filmmaking. And, sure, technically, Dern’s already part of one such Hollywood family, in that her actual mom and dad are Diane Ladd and Bruce Dern. But, currently appearing in both Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story and Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, Dern has now spent enough time with that filmmaking power couple to probably qualify as a dependent. Telling Stephen Colbert about her mutually rewarding experiences working with both halves of the Gerwig-Baumbach household over the past year, the ever-enthusiastic Dern also noted how she inserted herself into yet another illustrious family while working on Little Women in Louisa May Alcott’s Concord, Massachusetts.
Dern explained that, while working with Little Women co-star Meryl Streep for the second time this year (big year for the Dern), remained an honor beyond reckoning, it was the next door neighbor the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin who Dern turned to for advice on playing the film’s Marmee March. Perhaps indicating that any proximity to Laura Dern means Laura Dern automatically turns up at all future holiday dinners, the actress admitted that, yes, the noted historian and her son made her “one of the family.”
And while high-toned literary adaptations and Golden Globe-winning dramas are fine, Colbert had to conclude the segment with the question on everyone’s mind, “What’s with supposedly hanging out with Baby Yoda at a basketball game?” Dern, playing it coy, admitted that, yes, she did say on the Gotham Awards’ red carpet that she and the new worldwide superstar/fad/tiny puppet monster had run into each other from time to time. And while their age difference may shock some people, the 50-year-old “baby” is actually only a skosh younger than Dern herself, so nobody can accuse her of interstellar cradle-robbing. Plus, as she told Colbert, at 5'10", she’s used to being the tall one in any relationship. Plus, those eyes. (As to the Star Wars timeline, her Vice Admiral Holdo probably couldn’t have met Baby Yoda as a baby, but, hey, there’s gotta be a spinoff movie in there somewhere.) She’s probably kidding, but, since it’s Laura Dern, we can all be allowed to dream.