Thirty-five years after teaming up for the classic comedy film “9 to 5,” Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda are together again in the funny and poignant new Netflix series “Grace and Frankie.” The 13-episode season begins streaming in its entirety on Friday.  In the show, from “Friends” co-creator Marta Kauffman and Howard J. Morris, Fonda plays uptight Grace, a former beauty products executive who is invested in appearances and propriety. Tomlin plays free-spirited painter Frankie, who leans toward the holistic, smokes pot, and offers art therapy to ex-convicts. The two women, spouses of law partners played by Sam Waterston and Martin Sheen, have barely tolerated each other over the last 40 years. But they are forced to forge an odd-couple alliance when their husbands announce that they are leaving them. For each other.  We caught up with Fonda and Tomlin by phone from New York recently, and they were in fine comic form, riffing off each other and finishing each other’s sentences.  Q. It seems like you are both having a lot of fun with the new show.  Fonda and Tomlin: We are!  Q. Lily, Frankie reminds me a bit of your character from “Flirting With Disaster” and more recently on “Malibu Country” — women who smoke pot, are into natural remedies, and are existential. So it seems like that is a type that interests you.  Tomlin: Yeah, to some degree.  Fonda: She’s definitely totally existential.  Tomlin: I don’t get loaded every day or anything like that. But I do have a big bunch of crystals in my house, not that I collected them, they just sort of come into my life from fans. It’s probably what kept me . . .  Q. So you feel like you were cast in the right roles since some of their traits mirror your own?  Tomlin: Compared to Fonda, yes I am.  Fonda: I played a character like Frankie once in a move called “Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding.” But I am by nature, I’m afraid to say, a little bit more like Grace. I identify with a lot in Grace, like being abandoned. I’m not like her anymore but I used to be like her. I very much took my identity from how I looked and from the exteriors and who I was married to, and if I wasn’t married to an alpha guy I felt like I wasn’t worth anything. So I kind of understand her. But, fortunately, if we can do more seasons, Grace will grow, I hope.  Q. In one scene in the first episode, within 30 seconds you pivot from one of the funniest lines to one of the most heartbreaking. Was that balance of comedy and drama part of what appealed to you?  Tomlin: Oh yes, I think being able to express that kind of variety in our performance — we wanted it to be as real as possible and we wanted to leave room for the comedy. That’s always been a kind of a hallmark of the kind of comedy I’ve done, generally speaking. I could do a piece that would be moving or totally farcical and crazy and it all appealed to me. I had that kind of eclectic taste as a child even.  Fonda: I like works that are comedy but serious underneath.  Q. Was there any sort of improvisation on this? For instance there’s a moment, Jane, where you’re wiggling your butt against a chair that has Ryan Gosling’s face on the seat.  Fonda: I don’t think there was any improv, was there?  Tomlin: Sometimes if we were doing something physical. Did the script actually say you wiggle your behind on Ryan Gosling’s face?  Fonda: It didn’t say I wiggled, but the line was written, “I think I just peed on Ryan Gosling.” I’m waiting for him to contact me.  Q. Have you a heard about a second season pickup yet?  Fonda: Hopefully, we’ll hear next week, and we have lots of ideas for season two.  Tomlin: Jane has embraced this field of study and exploration for quite some time. She wrote a lot about aging in her book “Prime Time.”  Fonda: Yeah, I listed the best kind of [a certain sex toy]. And in a future episode, [Grace has] a lover and [Frankie] offers me her homemade lube that she makes out of yams, and I’m horrified because I’ve been putting it on my toast.  Q. Are you OK with the Netflix approach, releasing all episodes at once?  Tomlin: Oh yeah, we’re very big bingers.  Fonda: And we tend to like the same shows. I wish we binged together, but we don’t. Lily and I both, we’ve binged “House of Cards,” “Orange Is the New Black,” “Homeland” . . .  Tomlin: “Masters of Sex” and “Empire” is big on our list.  Fonda: And you can watch our whole season in 6½ hours. So, there’s no excuse.  Tomlin: You could watch it several times if you like.
Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin chat about their new Netflix comedy “Grace and Frankie,” which  begins streaming Friday.