Editor’s Note: Lily Tomlin presented at the 2008 Tony Awards on June 15th and brought wOw along for the ride. Click here to take a look. The following post is Lily’s response to some of the questions about the Tony experience that came in from the wowOwow community.

I thought I’d sent this sooner and just now ran across it on my desktop. Thanks to Serena and everyone who has written about the Tonys. Sometimes it is weird to have people calling your name, but here’s a tip: The people calling out, in my case, are usually photographers trying to get me to look their way so they can do their job and make a buck. So hearing your name called out by a gang of people is seldom abject adoration except in the cases of Madonna or Kathy Griffin. BUT after so many years, it seems to me that fans and people in the streets who wave or say "Hi" are like your neighbors or some extended family. And it’s the same with other actors.

The nature of what an actor does or wants to do connects us to the audience and to each other. I remember the first time I went to the Golden Globes and there were so many stars there from so many decades and I felt a familial connection sweep over me. I felt the event was some kind of family reunion and you knew some of your relatives better than others or you felt closer and more identified with some than with others but they were all your "blood."

I saw Eileen Heckart in the lobby and I have never forgotten her performance in "The Bad Seed" when I was 16, and I was enamored of the reactions she evoked in me; that may have been one of the moments when I was inspired to one day make that kind of connection with an audience, to transport and to be transported. And Eileen was growing older then and, for me, imbued with such artistry and depth of pain and "knowing" and I had just become popular from "Laugh-In" and, yet, I wanted to sense my own future in her — the artist. But I confess I was nothing if not eclectic in my taste.

That night, I also ran across the floor of the ballroom to find Dorothy Malone because, in my teen years, Malone was the sexy bad girl ("Written on the Wind"). I wanted that role, too. And that role and that role. I wanted and still want to show all of you what’s remarkable or funny or tender or vain or foolish or noble about all of us — and to feel that connection, that validation of how much I am like you. How much we are alike. And to capture the fragility within each of us.