As a kid, Brian Williams grew up in a CBS household. Dinner didn't start until Cronkite was done. He didn't think journalism was attainable, but his work ethic and blue blazer opened doors. From White House intern to young television reporter, Williams eventually found his way back to New York. On the job, Williams keeps his opinions quiet. Off the clock, Williams still enjoys vestiges of his youth: NASCAR and Spam.
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This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. If you watched the NBC Nightly News with anchor Brian Williams during Hurricane Katrina, you saw a newsman both composed and compassionate. People are dying inside the city of New Orleans today and that city has descended further into chaos tonight. It was his first year on the job, and Williams was the only network news anchor to report on Katrina and its impact from inside the super Dome. The Brian family was sitting in the stands with thousands of others, sound asleep when the noise started. It sounded like a New York City subway train. Others said they thought it was thunder or someone hammering, and in a way it was. It was Katrina hammering away at the roof trying to get in. NBC Nightly News has more viewers than any other news program in the country, and average of ten million people tune in every day to watch Brian Williams and his team report on the day's top stories. Williams has to be ready for anything. His briefcase always holds a laptop, a passport, and a flashlight because he can't predict when or where he'll be called upon to follow a story. On the evening of August thirty one, he was in the hospital as a visitor. I lost a very good friend to Agent Orange related cancer. I was in the hospital room with him. It was a Saturday night. I had just done weekend nightly news. My pager in those days went off, Diana carr accident Paris. I called the office. They said, you'd better get in here. And I had no idea that I would be announcing to what was then. I mean, they plugged us into cable all over Europe. I have people wherever I go to this day say I was with you the one an a dte Yes. So I was what's that like for someone in your position where you have that kind of experience like Crown Kite with JFK and you've got the breaking story that goes all the way around the world and it's you. I'm a very emotional guy, and I often get a catch in my voice. I'm a very patriotic guy. I kind of have a little schmaltz in me, I guess, And so when I announced that I have to kind of get ready and dig my heel into my ankle under the desk and try to be tough. My director, longtime director Brett Holey of Nightly News, often knows to go to voiceover. He he will take a picture rather than showing me on camera when I'm in a sad place. The night of Newtown, I found it highly difficult to get through the broadcast nine eleven. My country had been shaken. So I have the same emotions as everybody else, and there's no time to practice. You're going to say you're making up the verbage as you go. Obviously, when you do that job, I'm assuming you've got to have people around you you trust. You know, there's people who have done that job and have not succeeded, And I wonder is that they don't succeed because they don't have the right team with them. Well, the first thing I did was get the blessing of Tom Brokaw, and this has been extraordinary in a business where bodies are stacked out back normally and you pass all the dead would be future anchors in the hallway of a network. I had a situation with a guy who went out and got me. We had a meeting one night in a New York Hotel. I was on local news in New York and Tom said that he was nearing the age when he had to think about who was going to take over and what I consider it. Why do you think he said that, I don't know. I went around the corner, and in those days we use those massive toaster oven sized motor Rola cell phones. I called my wife and I said, either I'm getting played or Tom Brokaw wants me to in line to take over for him. I don't know. There are dozens of perfectly or better qualified people in this world. I am probably the most unremarkable holder of my job ever, and certainly educationally the least prepared. So uh, I just shows ratings have been very strong during the time you've done it. I try to make it personal. It's taken me a long time. I kept Tom's staff. I inherited the number one newscast in America. They were doing nothing wrong and everything right. So if you worked for Tom, you worked for me. I brought no one in. I was his understudy for eight years, a terrific position. I learned from the master. Everything I enjoy in life today is attributable to the fact that he made sure I was where I needed to be at every given time. When it was time to become chief White House correspondent, he said, go south, young man, and on and on and on with the years were your chief White House course? What was that? The shank of the Clinton administration, the very middle, including the mid term, the Gingish ascension. That's right, I was on the flight that did in New Gingrich. He complained that he didn't have a meeting with Bill Clinton. Were coming home from the Rabine funeral. I chose to stay up all night, and I saw the President come into the conference room directly in front of my seat. I saw a meeting per se take place. It was an extraordinary airplane flight. I will occasionally do weird things like decide everyone else in the press corps is asleep, why don't I be the one to stay up all night and see what I can see? Because I'll never be on a flight like this again. But what was your take on Clinton? Uh? Wide ranging, insatiable. Uh A a very disciplined man with an obvious and palpable lack of mental discipline. In other areas, It's an honor to cover any presidency. To fly on that plane. Did he deal with the press. Uh. He knew that I was a fellow night owl and some of the best conversations I had. He would walk around the aircraft people were zunked coming back from you know, Kiev on an overnight flight. He would see what movies were playing in which cabins, and these presidents when you cover them into this day and my job, there are off the record opportunities lunches, dinners that you have so they can explain themselves more easily to you. You can get in their head a little bit. Never to offer advice, obviously, just to listen. Both sides democratic, absolutely, And so when you leave in where do you go? I go to found a new network in Secaucus, New Jersey called MSNBC. A couple of days into that effort, a flight crashed in the Atlantic off East Moriwitch's Long Island, t w A. Three nights into the birth of this network, we are handed a huge breaking news story. Our graphics department was off the clock, and I had someone go out and get a Rand McNally road atlas out of their trunk, and I had to hold up a map of Long Island and point with my finger to where the jet had gone in the water again. With the absent of any graphics, all we have to go on is a a rather crude uh Rand McNally map showing New York's Long Island uh. When asked to report on his own life, Williams describes his early years as a grindingly middle class upbringing. I did not know vegetables came fresh. I thought they were frozen bricks in the field. Salad was one eighth of a head of iceberg let us sliced with a steak knife, with a spoonful dollop of mayonnaise on the top. My mother's ghoulash was one can spaghettios and one quarter pound ground beef. We had spam. We had what everybody else had. You grew up in New Jersey. Right was in Ridgewood, New Jersey. Born in Ridgewood, New Jersey. We moved for the first eight or nine years of my life to Elmira, New York, and then most of my life was spent in Middletown, New Jersey, on the Jersey Shore, which your dad in the television business. My dad uh former manager of John Wannamaker department store in Philly. He took a job with Corning Glass and Corning, New York. We lived in adjacent Elmira. Got fired with a slew of executives in a purge of Corning, and then really bounced from job to job. Had a tough time heart attack at fifty that sent us back to the Jersey Shore where he could at least find work in New York City. But we had some rough financial times after that. And when you were growing up, what was the your relationship to the news and to media where you a news junkie when you were a kid. Dinner could not start in our household until Walter Cronkite said, that's the way it is. We watched it as a communal event. My father would bring home from the train the Jersey Shoreline. Obviously at times, the Post, the Daily News. He had women's wear daily because he worked in the trade. There was just stuff around. I started reading the New York Times when I got my working papers at the age of fourteen and haven't stopped. And when you went to school, you went to school was in an eye toured going into broadcasting and going into journalism. I didn't think it was attainable. I had May she Rest in peace, A and a bulliant Irish Catholic mother who was the corpse at every funeral and the bride at every wedding and was a an amateur little theater actress, always believed in her baby boy, Brian. I remember when Channel four in New York hired some new reporters. I remember it distinctly, was living in New Jersey. And she pointed to the set at one of them, still in the business. By the way, I'm not gonna say, and said, you can do better than you know. I see, okay, I just know you can do better than him. Chuck won't mind if you say that. We're here with Alec Baldwin. And she said that she believed that, and I think that stayed with me, and against all odds, I pursued this in just crazy dream that I couldn't share with anybody because it was outlandish. I mean, I'm a volunteer fireman in Jersey. I can't sit around with those guys saying, fellas, here's what you don't know about me in the future, here's what I intend to do. It just wouldn't have made any sense. None of this makes any sense. How does it begin. I went to a Catholic high school. I went to the local community college. I was a towny. I had applied for a civil service job as the nighttime Mammath County Police fire dispatcher out of Freehold. But my life took a turn. A buddy of mine took me to Washington, d c. Tony Loveglia. Everybody has a Tony Loveglia. My buddy Tony said, I'm seeing a girl down there. She goes to Catholic University. I'll fill my van with beverages, will play loud music, come with me for the weekend. And I Washington opened my eyes to prosperous, earnest young people in khakis and blazers, walking swiftly with places to go, and discussing government. Absolutely earnest at the way Greg and Carter put it in the old spy magazine May at Rest in Peace, earnest former student council president's driving Honda accords. That was his way of summing up Washington. And I was intoxicated by it. What was the first, first first job you had? Uh? Well, fast forward. I'm at Catholic University, having transferred my meager credits. Guy named Rocco comes into our dorm and says does anybody want my internship in the White House. I raised my hand because I had a blue blazer from my job at Sears in Middletown, New Jersey. I interviewed for it and got it. Jimmy Carter was president. Obviously it was a non political position. I made copies, I got shirts at the cleaners. I I made coffee, but I also wrote constituent letters, and I I got into it. I got a job as a clerk typist at the broadcasting Lobby, the n a B National Association of Broadcasters. I confide my secret in my boss that someday I had been my editorial page editor of my high school paper. I had worked on my uh community college paper. After all, someday my hope was to try television journalism. He said, well, there's a guy coming into town. Bill Bankston runs k o A, MTV and Pittsburgh without the h Kansas. It's the hundred and twenty first television market in the country. He runs a small shop. It's in the middle of a field, but he just might if you take him to dinner. I took him to the restaurants sevent nine in Georgetown. I had no I have no business buying dinner. I had no money. He said, you have to pay your way to come out and let us look at you on camera. I had a Dodge Dart. I put all my belongings in the back seat. I brought my dog Charlie out there. They thought I was crazy. She believed in my ability. But this move to the middle of the country, leaving all I knew and what was the station was like going in the Marine Corps ko A m TV. And I went back there and revisited the place when the tornadoes hit Choplin. And good evening from Joplin, Missouri. And this is of course now more than any community anywhere should ever be forced to endure. In just the space of the last hour, we have been through where where you want it hit. I was with my two kids in the house. How is it You're alive? Faith in God? He's the only way. Oh my god? How many people made it in here? How did you hear? Abody on this block is okay? What do you do tomorrow? Row on the next day, figure it out when it comes, I guess. And can you believe Mother Nature are doing this right now? It's hard to believe she hitting middle or drop that was the adjoining town where my efficiency apartment was. Not to brag, you know, I was. I was a working poor I'm on television in this market in Kansas, going home and making an art form of slicing. And if you've ever done this, you know, you take one can of spam, if you fry an egg in that pan, you can make a spam steak in a frying pan, and you can get four or five slices out of one can of spam. With some toast. It's a meal at night. You can also, as my friends and I would do back then when we were we were working actors and I was doing a soap opera. There was a moment when my friend leaned over and took an egg out of the refrigerator and dropped it into some noodle ramen and showed us that you could put an egg in ramen and have egg drop ramen. And when we made egg dropped rama for the first time, it was like, don't don't bump, bump, bump. We went insane to this day. I like ramin, I do. I like ramin. Is too much sodium and pronational hot dogs and spaghettios. My big three who would the because I was in you were there, you left Washington? What year? Oh, I guess this is what were you in? D eighty one? So Carter's out, Carter's out. I'm working at but you were there when when Carter was there? What year to the end of Carter? Yes, last year, very end. So it's eighty the election. He's losing Iron Hostage, Internship over Goodnight everybody? And who were the big three on the networks then? Rather, well, this would have been rather I guess Brokaw or Chancellor and either some combination of Jennings, Max Robinson, Dean Reynolds not Dean Reynolds CNN. Yet that was kind of dawning in eighty Yes, well that was was that Iron Hostage? No, I guess that was dawning in eight? That was dawning in eight. Were you watching those show as pretty regularly as well? A preference? But you're CBS man up in a CBS household kite people approximately our age. You can say what household were you and people will answer it that way. With a network. Yeah, there's a style to that job that's changed. That old Voice of God school, you know, Crown, Kite and chance There was very humbly in Brinkley. You went to them because they had something you wanted. And I venture to say that that guy who had that kind of imperious, snooty voice of God kind of demeanor on the air, those guys their days are gone well and now the people are authoritative. I mean, what I'm leading up to is the reason you work and the reason you've been successful is you are commanding, and you're bright, and you're all the things you need to be and you're not pompous. I have no right to be. But but but what I'm saying is I think that people's attitude towards the news has changed. Where there's a kind there's a style of anchor of the evening news that those days are over. Now you have to be more accessible, you have to be more accessible. But you should know, we still select our lead story and our story order like it was the old days, because we have to. That's our process. And uh, the night we happened to be sitting here having this conversation in New York, we always say, like SNL, like any other live show, we don't go on the air because it's ready. We go on the air because it's time to go on the air tonight. I was writing one section ahead of where I was. I was writing lead ins for the second segment while we were in the first segment in real time on the air, so we would go into a reporter piece and I'm on the keyboard, sitting on the set because I got behind because of some Rock Center business I had to attend to. I don't like it, but I'm wired for it. It's what I do. And if I don't write those words, form those words, edit those words, it won't sound like me. I won't own it. There won't be trans mauretcy, there won't be familiarity, and it's insincere. When does the day begin to write that day's show writing, I knuckle, I really buckle down. At around five I start writing and I write from the bottom up. Usually I write the that is NBC Nightly News for this Wednesday night. I write that first, and the last thing I write before I go out is the first thing I say, good evening, uh and uh. So it's freshest in my mind. I have to I have to stick that. I have to nail that. It should be a very fresh and genuine thoughts, so genuine that the teleprompter can be a guide. If other words occur to me on the fly, I'll do that. I'm not wedded to the words I have just written on that electronic screen. The people you work with, you have the license to do whatever you want to do. You write it, yes, but I'm the managing editor of it. But I also work with great professional adults who have license ability and often call me out. I don't think you got the tone right on this page. I I don't. I I read your rightem on the video that was produced by the North Korean government. I think we're missing something here. And they do that all the time we were collaboratively. These are all really good friends of mine. I love the whole room full of them. We've been a battle together, so we're really close. And it's a very funny. You should hear our newsroom in the hour before air stuff flies across the room. It's wild and it's just the way I like it. Now. I want to go back and you're at MSNBC. How long does that last? Six years commuting to cau Caucus, New Jersey, and what was in the dart No, by then I could afford a chevallet. Yeah, Um, this was a Hearts Mountain warehouse. It is today the home of MLB Network for baseball fans. So six years commuting to Caucus, Yeah, I screwed up my time line I left. I was still in Kansas when we left off. I ran out of money. I drove on a space saver hard rubber spare on my dodged art for eight months. They recommend never going over fifty and just using it for a few days. I shredded that puppy, and I drove back to Washington, where I knew I could find work again. I bought a copy of the Washington Post again, I circled a classified ad Chiron operator ten PM newscast w t t G, the Metromedia owned now Fox Channel five. I walked in the door, asked the first woman I found, uh is the news director in and can I see him? And she said, you're meeting with her right now, late great woman named Betty Endicott. She hired me to type in the letters on the screen. She did this ed asner thing with me. I would go into her office as her lowly typer of letters on the screen, and I'd watched the newscast with her every night and we hit it off, and she said to me, didn't you do on air work in Kansas? Do you have any tapes? And I said, Betty, those have been taken to a licensed landfill facility long ago, and she I did find one. She put me on the air in Washington, d C. On a whim the last gut call in television. Yeah, I was on the ten o'clock news. Months later, she says, I'm hiring a young woman to be an executive producer. I think you're gonna like her. And we've been married for twenty six years. Yeah, Jane's daddard love at First Sight control room. Hearts flying little guys with arrows. I went into my friend Bernie's office and said that afternoon, I'm done off the market. It's a matter of Oh my god, the FBI what the earpiece called f B. I was close. Yeah, I have listened to a woman's voice in her ear Oh wow. And now my little, our little girl, who's twenty four, one of our two children. I think we had just have the two. I'd see her on David Letterman's chair next to Dave, and I see my wife at around the same age we met, and it just blows your mind and hard. We're going to get your daughter. But anyway, I'm on Channel five ten o'clock news, and it was a great job. And sooner or later it's like triple a ball. Your your pitch improves. Scouts come around. I got hired by CBS for their stations division. We went to Philadelphia. Jane got a job at the local PBS station, and Jane, oh yeah, yeah, we got married while living in Philadelphia. I worked at the CBS station in Philadelphia. I was called up to CBS in New York and I did five years at Channel two w CBS. I was the noon anchor again you'll forgive me bragging with Carol Martin, and for a while I was the chief correspondent at eleven o'clock. I covered the Dinkins years and the Cotch years on the streets of this city. That was a real experience, real experience. What do you think about politicians and how they've changed in their relationship to the media. You hear people always complaining about, you know, you know, the the press to cozy relationship with political leaders and so forth. What's your take on that. I was never a big socializer. I've come to know, no like have a meal or two with one or two politicians. For you. Um, I'm always wary of the third rail of coziness. It's much tougher to take a swing at a friend as it is a political figure whose name you know, you know. One of the most eye opening experiences in life was sitting down with President George W. Bush over lunch at the White House. These presidents, it it turns out, are all quality hangs. They're all really good people. They're all extraordinary people who have the ego to stand in from of a mirror at some point in their life and say, yeah, you I want you to run the free world. You've got it. You're gonna do this job. That's it. That's unbelievable in some of the cases, is literally unbelievable. I mean in a world of anchors and actors that you and I know, we know egos, we know narcissism when we see it, and that requires a lot. And it's been fascinating. I love American history. It's been a fascinating ride to have met every one of them. Going back to I don't know Reagan, I became pen pals with Jerry Ford during his retirement I've gotten to know Nancy Reagan in the last five years. Something. If you told my mom that her little baby boy, Brian would some day get to know or shake hands with any of these people. There was a time when I walked through the Northwest Gate as a White House intern, having no business there, and then later as a chief White House correspondent walking through that Northwest Gate every day, and it's been an incredible life. Coming up in a minute, Brian Williams talks about his daughter Alison's current success on the hit show Girls, his love of Nascar actually anything going around a circle fast, and his surprisingly difficult decision to host Saturday Night Live. Lauren gave me a great locker room speech between dress rehearsal and the live show. Mr Williams, I think you said you went to a Catholic high school that correct. Did you have a talent night with say, the parish priest wearing a coconut bra, just making a fool of himself wearing a coconut bra? I said, well, we didn't have an actual coconut bra like Bloody Mary and South Pacific, but we had a night like that. Yes, Lauren, I need you to be that priest. I need you to show these people you're willing to make a fool out of yourself and be a good sport. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing Today with Brian Williams. Although loud personalities with extreme views gobble up more airtime, television news is an industry that still rewards unbiased, thoughtful and direct reporting. My work has been so cleansed as I see it, as I've tried of political opinions over twenty seven years. How do you do it? Uh? Do you have political opinions? I sometimes don't know. I have the same disappointments in my patriotism as a great man once said, I yield to no one. I love this country, I love the American idea. I have profound disappointments in in my country. I feel we ought to be in space. I feel the dismantling of the Man space program. Why should we be in space because it meant so much to us? You mean just symbolically, No, technologically, there were more advance you know. I sometimes think Postwar America, post Vietnam America has kind of become exhausted. I have another theory that the growth of self. All things self has taken away our spirit of community. We can do this cohesion american ness. When an average American citizen has followers, I know you have your own history with social media. You take a citizen who works in a restaurant, they now have the preoccupation of followers. There is now someone who cares. And this applies to all of us about our random thoughts, utterances, and that is a growth of self that we haven't cataloged yet. We haven't gotten our arms around it. The celebration of what you mean. Go back in the black and white movies you love from the forties fifties. Listen to the language. Listen to how first person is never used. And now it's how we lead, how we beget every sentence we have. We have individual press conferences all day long. We've changed. I tell you what I'm up to, yes, and then when I pause, you tell me what you're up to. All of our media begins with a letter I, which is why I kind of like to use the letter I. I kind of like my job. I get to do that part of my media life. Old school. No one needs another blowhard yelling Adam. No one gives a rats petuity about my opinion in so that's nice that I don't have to share it. I'd have to form one first on half of these issues and people, and I can try to call it down the middle and try to be fair about it and do adjust the facts with a little fun around the margins. But why do you think? Why do you think you were different? And so far as when I would watch Rather, I could sense very much that Rather had his opinions, and I think it sends very much that could sense very much the Rather was was straining mightily to contain those opinions in the framework. Broke caw as well does Brian Williams lay in bed at night with his wife and that's when those opinions come flying out. Your feelings about or do you you keep all of that private? Or if you found and you because you because you don't exude that at all on the air. Well, I mean, I've been married for twenty six years. Jane and I talk about the people we can't stand either on television in Washington. What frustrates us? Uh daughter's boyfriend? Yeah, sure, yeah, we like the guy. He's a good guy. Yeah, But is it something you consciously have worked to do your predecessors Chronkite probably know, and I know we don't need always go Conkite Cronkite, but but he's got But many people in your business you could feel little belches and little fissures of their opinions coming through, or a sense of that, And with you there's none. Is it something you consciously have tried to comb out of your delivery? Yes, I try to keep it down the middle. I just don't think anyone needs that from me a broadcast. You think there's a shortage of opinionated media out there these days, and I think people are longing to hear what makes your program so successful. That's why I watch it. I don't I don't want anything on it is give me. I want the news now. I have this populist streak. And you know, tonight we had an item that I ended up killing for Time about Australian schools banning birthday cakes with candles because of the blowing of germs over the surface of the cake, and they're recommending parents bring only a single cupcake. And I said at our editorial meeting this afternoon, well, the world had a good run. You know, we're done. We're over. We're done. Just put a candle on us, because we're over. When that kind of stuff happens, I go ahead and I usually we have a portion of the broadcast where I can I can have more liberties. You know, I do a little I borrow from Seth Myers a little bit, a little bit, a little bit right there in the middle of NBC Nightly damn News in a studio famous for the young actor who acted in the Doctor's soap office in the studio where we do nightly news and Young Alec three's and uh, you know, a night about a year ago, I said that they had a problem in a school cafeteria in Lexington, Kentucky. Uh something, somebody was stealing food. They set up a webcam. The good news is they caught an adult male squirrel living in the school kitchen. The bad news is those weren't raisins in the rice pudding. Um, and whoever got it, got it, whoever didn't. We went by quick. We had a moment of fun. It's a serious world. It's a crushing worm someday. Good night, everybody, take care of your Bartenderson waitress now, you know, you know when you do that do you sometimes sit there and say, when Leno's done, I want that job. No, I'm at I'm a dilettante. I get it out of my system. I call these offices, yeah, I call them the extracurriculars. I have managed it and me alone. I've never been asked to appear on one of these other shows I have done. I think eighteen David Letterman John Stewart has had me on a slew of times. We have a blast and what it has done, it has not been a concerted effort. There's no white board with a strategy. I turn more down than I accept. Jimmy Fallon has been very kind to me. The roots have been very kind to me. Um In the construct of a twenty two minute newscast, especially in the post nine eleven, very serious era, you would never know who I was. My daughter will tell you if the guy who anchors nightly news is no one she knows at all. And when Lauren in Oh seven invited me to do SNL, I did this talmudic six month, I just it would crushed me. This decision. I worried that I was gonna flush twenty five years of all I knew credibility down the toilet and I finally I had never met Chevy Chase, and he was in the hallway, along with the cursory to lamas a show girl and whatever is in the hallway upstairs at SNL, I was headed to my final meeting with Lauren. I had pulled everyone in my life should I host Saturday Night Live? And it was a It was a resounding yes. Everyone was a cautious yes. And I asked Chevy after I shook my hand and introduced myself. His answer was fascinating. He said, I watched Dan Rather for twenty years, and the day he retired, I was no closer to knowing who he was than he was the day he started. I think you should do it, And so Chevy, in a way he does not yet know, decided that. And that was a big That was a big damn to break in my life. The courage that required that is not my trade. I don't know what you do for a living, and I don't know how you do it for a living. I sit home and I want you with my family, with Martin Short doing, Tony Bennett and his unknown little brother, honest to God, being constipated like sitting on a bag of tangerines. Come on, he is he Well, first of all, it's it's that's very kind of you to say. But the the the I think what you since from what you've been doing is is it is just how much fun it is. You know, so much of this it's not fun. It's not it's not horrible. I mean like when I would make movies, movie making, when you when you would do look if you're gonna do Lincoln, when you're going to have and I was offered, you were offered Lincoln. Everyone knows business, Tony Kushner and Spielberg and Daniel day Lewis, and you were at the apex of the whole game and everything comes together to feed virtuosic acting great. I mean I I did not have those kinds of experiences. So it's funny how your broadcasting career is not that different from my filmmaking career, where there was another thing I had to go do to go have fun. But think of what it's like. I get to walk in as the closer. I get to work with people for whom it's their life's work and be Joe talk show, comedy dilettante. I get to work with the cast of Saturday Night. I get to sit next to David Letterman and engage him and make Jon Stewart laugh or die trying. It doesn't matter how you get there. It matters what you did and what you leave. But it's like walking into the middle of the best school assembly ever, the creative kids. And it's fun for me. But it's dilettanti is um, it's uh, it's just another side of me and the viewers. This is an important point. They know, they know the difference. We had some harrumpas executives. We had some executives who got all sweaty. Yeah, how will we How will they know that they separate? Well, guess what they know access Hollywood from Nightly News, the show that comes on after us. They make that clean break, and they're gonna know if I'm not behind the set on nightly News, if I'm coming out from behind Dave's curtain, or dressed as a farmer on SNL, or dressed as a lottery winner. Um, they're gonna understand that's the other Brian, Oh, that guy who does the news. They don't have to like it. Uh, they can watch Diane or Scott Pelley. Uh, they can watch Justin Bieber host SNL. But it's um, I get an enormous kick out of it. People have very very kind of now when you do those things what you call the extracurriculus, and you do have a very important job in media. Whose idea was rock Center? And why did you put that on your shoulders? It was the idea of Steve Burke, our new CEO came in when Comcast bought the majority share of NBC. He Uh, the first meeting he had with me said I think you're underutilized. That was a very flattering quote, but that was the quote. And so was he trying to take in your mind? Was he trying to take some of the charm what you invest in other things you're doing. Did you want to make this the extracurricular Yeah? I think he wanted to get in some more of my interests, not not the kind of take my wife, please, but do try prime time, try longer form, cross talk with some of the correspondence, just back from the stories, do something else. The viewership has been fluctua waiting. We've been bounced around for five time slots were now Friday's at ten PM and towards once a week to stay. Yeah, and an hour of television is some weeks an absolute second job. And what's been the biggest lesson for you about doing Rock Center? Ah, that prime time is different. It's not for the faint of heart. A lot of very good people have died trying a lot of gallant projects have died trying. And you have to find a way of doing very good television news pieces, interesting television news pieces without giving in to an entertainment format. You could easily say it's Friday night at ten o'clock. You know, people are, they're tired from the week. Give them a break. Do poppies? Do starlets? Do starlets who have had bad photo exposures on red carpets? And we're not going to do that because we you know, we'll keep doing what we do and hopefully it will find an audience. Look, I did six years at MSNBC when I could have walked down any major city street and got just talking loudly, had a larger audience. In the early days, we were literally in like something like twenty cable homes. That didn't matter to me. I was doing something. I was writing an hour long primetime newscast every night. I was getting better, you know, in the in the words of John Cougar Mellencamp, we were young and we were improving. What do you think about the media online? I mean, I'm assuming you have your menu of what you know? You read the Times, and do you read everything online? Or you a paper person? I read a lot. I saw Tina Brown recently admit read online online or coy I wake up. I have a paper copy of the New York Post. I'll admit it. Paper copy of the New York Times, which I I do the New York thing. I stick sections in my briefcase and they attract silverfish over the last couple of years. No, I'm kidding, but I get to them when I can. And uh, I read. I'm always aware of what's on the Times website. You read the Post? Why do you read the Post? I read the Post, the daily News. I've been you just read all the New York papers. Yeah, this is a habit. Yeah, you'd be you'd beat the Brooklyn Eagle if it was still coming out. Yeah, but you know I I I read page six like everybody, and like everybody who doesn't admit reading page six, and I read the sports section. If it's around, I don't necessarily go get it. Yeah, but do you have any history with the New York Post? With none, I've been I've been really lucky. I've laid low. You know. I like reading the New York Tabs sports section after the Super Bowl and you know, wondering who post has a great sports section? Yeah, who was going to hit Jim Nance over the head first. It's just I don't know. It's part of living here. But I'm always aware of what's on the Time's website, dirty guilty, huffing the posts. Yes, not as much as I used to that. I don't click through. I get angry at the headlines. I get I wonder what she's done there. I mean, obviously she's passed it. Yeah, I just I didn't. I didn't want to see the uh, you know, pictures of and we're gonna get to this later. It could be your daughter next where it's like Silobe. Everything is like a shot of Kate Hudson, this one, that one popping out of their dress, wardrobe malfunction, my pleasure, Bryant um. But but the uh, well, let's get to that subject, which is um, your daughter is gorgeous, thank you, and she's talented. I say thank you like and she's gorgeous than you, and she's talented, thank you. She's a great and but at the same time, at the same time, she's a young woman who is speaking to on that show. I mean that's not just the purpose of the show is to be entertaining and funny, but they do speak in a language that is the contemporary young woman. Do you sometimes watch that show with your wife and like you grab each other by the forum and go, oh my god, don't we watched the whole bunch of us? Uh? Do you have an HBO is sometimes nice enough to share a cluster of the next episodes, And when her brother's home from college, we watch the thing is she came out of the womb doing there's no she just we always yeah, she's my mom long enough to see this. But she's my mom, so uh. And she's also my wife, and she's she's so many things. She's also a kid who flew through Yale. She's a kid as good at improv, can do an improv musical. If you yell out one word, she'll compose it, sing it, write the plot as she performs while you watch. I thought her first talent that the public saw was gonna be singing. She has a voice like a bird, like an angel, and so she's she having a good time. She's having a blast. And she's been given this material by Lena, by Jenny Connor and Judd, but mostly Lena's vision. And the people who come up to me now and say, I'm a Marnie, I'm I'm such a Arnie And I love watching Allison and it's it's it's overwhelming. What does she does? She? I mean that that show obviously won't last forever. I mean, what does she want to do? Is she gonna go out there La, She's gonna make films, She's gonna think she would love of future in feature films. But recognizes this for everything. It is a fantastic platform. As my people, the Irish Catholics say, I'm felling all the time. I was doing a film once and Rob Briner, although this doesn't relate to TV as much, but there's a there's a a comparison to be made. And Rob Briner said to me, he said, I had to do a speech, a very long courtroom of speech. And this movie goes to Mississippi that I did with him about the Med Grevers murder trial, and in his inimitable New York accident, he said, do you mind doing it again? I want to go again. I know it's a long speech, it's like three pages long, but I want to put a camera in the back of the court whom and shoot you doing the speech again. Just one take will just burn, you know, one take, maybe two. It's been a long day. We've covered it from every angle. We'll just do one more. I go, I don't mind, I said, it would be Greating goes. Yeah, I understand how you feeling. How you feel, he said, You've got a good piece of material. You want to do it, You do it all day. You don't care, he said, because you know your next movie, you're you're gonna have one line all day, and the line's gonna be get down, Everyone, get down as you're firing the gun in the parking structure. And the same is true in that comparison and contrast between film and television, which is you want to go into film, if you want to go into film, and you want to make movies, but they're not all Spielberg and Lincoln and Tony Kushner, what about you? Do you I'm addicted to kind of projecting my own psychological machinations on other people. And I look at you and I think you're gonna do this job until you're dead. Is it is like it is indefinite to you when you just do it indefinitely. You're young. I'm fifty th and younger. Thank you. Like you, I'm trying to take care of myself. Um, I'll be doing something. I do have a deal with my wife that when it's time, she's going to tap on her right forearm as a baseball manager would asking for someone from the bullpen, and we're gonna go, and I'm gonna go and kind of not come back and leave it walk away. You know, there is such a thing. It's as staying too long at the fair. And um, I can also be happy editing a town blog somewhere, as long as I'm around things that are happening, reading news on the web, able to write something. The siren in the back of my head is we have a little place on the Jersey shore. And it's all I ever really wanted from a life that's been beyond a dream sequence in a movie was to go back and plant a flag in the sand of the Jersey shore. And that's kind of where I see happy days, you know, when you have a happy place to go and a and a nice loving situation at home and now a daughter to watch. And my son's gonna come rocketing out of college. He's looking forward. What's doing. He wants to do sports journalism on television. And he's really good, and he's got a He's a great kid with a ton of personality. You know, sometimes I say, could you guys have chosen like insurance or something, could you get your own line of work? But you know, Alison could not have done anything. Well, she's a fine human. Your son, he's going to be finished when Douglas Williams, the male heir to the Williams fortune, is finished. In late May. He just came home from college for a week, did his first round a job, interviews, entry level stuff, looking for night shifts, day shifts, writing for breasts, shooting his own stuff. That's our poor children, because my wife's trajectory is a like mine. They've had this work ethic speech like one of your films. Oh my god, I know their life, am I not me too? So they're just doomed, I said, I said, my daughter, my ex wife and I. I mean, we laid it on him and you you I would out Tom Joad, Tom Joad, we're talking about it. I'm like, do you understand what life was like for me when I was your age growing up in massive Piqua. My mother made me wash my own football uniform. Well, a lot of it is just cultural and how much things have changed and how much kids know. I was in adulthood before I knew what the Ivy League was, before I knew what a prep school was. Again, before I knew there were fresh vegetables. It's just it's it was my worldview. I was working. I thought I was always just going to be working. I've always worked. I've always had as many jobs as I could have. And that's what you do. You work, you die, And if you're really lucky to spend some summers on the Jersey Shore, your wife's going to be the one that's gonna tap. Yeah, Well, I think we'll know. I mean, there's a lot of living. I and we want to do a lot of places we want to go. Do you and she liked to do? Were your European travelers travels of any kind. That sounds very Parillo have your bags out at nine am now, But my parents used to go on Perillo tours. Just not our cup of team. Um no, we just I mean like we went out to Utah for four days and just sat there and just did nothing. Because it's the anchor of the NBC Nightly News and your view, you view European travelers kind of snobbish. No, no, no, we never have the time. You have time, but would you would you like to have time? Yes, we'd love to have time, and that's part of our figuring. You know, there's a lot I want to do. I want to take an insanely fast car across the Bonneville Salt Flats before I Don't you do love this Nascar thing? Oh yeah, why I just I've My dad took me to the Shaman County speed Drone in in Horseheads, New York when I was a little kid Moriday night races to watch the Bodine Brothers race. I'll watch anything go around on a circle too. Fan. What's the name of the place near aal Myra, Chamun County speed Rome? It was called I think it's now just the fair ground, is it an amazing that. The thing I'm going to take away in this interview, I when I look at you, you you have You're a very very very important person to me. Be a news jucky. You're you know, it's like pitching for the Yankees. I'm not chattered. I'm just sitting there thinking. Brian Williams, the anchor of the NBC Nightly News, when his wife indicates it it's time to retire. They're not going to Rome, They're not going to Madrid. They're going to the Chimunk County Motor Speedway. Yeah, oh yeah, that's all we have time for Tonight. I recommend Walled Township Speedway on the Jersey Shore for a great Friday night. I'm gonna take your word for it. One third of a mile paved oval, great action under the lights. I'm telling you for your admission charge, there's no more a great night of energy. You know what I want to do one day? I'm gonna say this right now. Will you come with me? If I thought I was going to have dinner with you and your wife, I would have thought the Four Seasons restaurant, and we go see something at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. I get an suv with a bunch of bodyguards. We go out to Bam. But no, we're going to the what the Wall trip? What's it called? Right? First of all, you'll get an suv, I drive a Chevy Yukon and you'll have dinner, maybe on our deck in Jersey, or we'll take you to a favorite place. But then we'll cap off the evening. Around dusk they start the first heat races and then the main races. After dark, we'll go to the Wall Township Speedway Route thirty four. This is family racing. I raised my kids going to small tracks, saying never criticize a driver because there's a very good chance their parents, a family member, a friend is sitting in front of us or behind us at a small track. It's absolutely heaven. You really haven't lost touch with your roots, have you? Well, no, it's my kid from Ridgewood is for me. I completely sold out. My idea this summer is to be on a boat and try to find, like, have a meal with Plimpton or someone I wanted to do with some kind of the Other thing that's changed in the time you and I have been in the game is haters. The rise of haters being as close as a send button. Comments on the Internet are the cheapest currency there is. The most hurtful thing is someone thinking you're a fake populist when you're a rich guy. And at route, I'm a populist who's had to fake being a rich guy who has I'm surrounded by fancy people and people wanting to sell me very nice clothing and all that. But I you know, this week I got a phone call from a guy who was my lieutenant at the Old Village Fire Company in Middletown. Firehouse needs a new generator. We're wondering if you donate one post Sandy. And I say to Mike Lee, like, twenty years haven't passed. You can't get that money out of the township still as we used to go door to door and solicit money for our our engine company. And he said, no, it's unbelievable. Can you believe it? And you know, I'm so happy to be able to donate a jenny to my old fire But I can go back like that much easier than I can walk into certain social circles here in New York or any fancy I've never I feel the same way I've I think one thing that you and I haven't come and that is it's a decision you make. It's it's like, literally to me, it's always the same image. And then as I'm in a ski shoot, I'm in the shoot of a ski run, of a black diamond ski run, of a very very tough ski run, and I say to myself, there's only one way down, and I get a sense that you're the same way, which is that we you know, we as much as we're like, pinch me, pinch me, pinch me. One of the ways we succeeded was we just jumped out of the plane and we pulled the ripcord and we just took it one step at a time, and we turn around the next you know. Yeah, there's I got this syndrome, I guess, I do say to myself and to others, Yes, I can. I've got this. And I don't know where that unbridled confidence came from. And I've done some ridiculously stupid things under that banner, like being in a helicopter. I have no business being in in Iraq with rounds coming into the airframe. But I don't think you would die briefly. Sure, there have been probably hand, But can you tell yourself that's the job? Oh? Absolutely, you have still job and not go and sense and cover and feel these dual wars that we have asked these millions of terrific Americans to go fight and they've raised their ends and volunteered for the honor of it would be uh malprac this. But on an average night, when the red light comes on, two things happen. Our announcer is Michael Douglas. You know this is NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. And I hear that, and a part of me every night of my life says, wow, that's funny. This podcast is anchored by someone with my name, because they sure as hell and the light comes on, I'm on, and then the I've got this gene kicks in, host of the NBC Nightly News and Rock Center. You know where to find Brian Williams on the weekend. So I'm gonna come see the speed right, I would love it. I will host you Township Speedway Route thirty four in Wall Township, New Jersey off the Garden State Parkway. How do we sign up again? I hope to see you right back here tomorrow night. This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing