Edie Falco: Don't Hold the Door for Me

Published Apr 28, 2015, 4:00 AM

Edie Falco says she is nothing like Carmela Soprano. Nor does she have much in common with Nurse Jackie. But Falco made these characters two of the most identifiable and human women in television history. She has an armful of Emmys, Golden Globes, and Screen Actors Guild Awards—and a cadre of dedicated fans—to prove it. Along the way, she's battled cancer, raised two children on her own, and is a recovering alcoholic. But Falco doesn't want your sympathy; she tells host Alec Baldwin that her greatest professional accomplishment is creating a fun, respectful atmosphere on-set. She credits her multiple successes to good luck, great mentors, and says there's no predicting which way her career could have gone—or will go yet.  

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This is Alec Baldwin you were listening to. Here's the thing. Edie Falco played Carmelo, soprano on the groundbreaking HBO show about an Italian American mob family from New Jersey. You know what I didn't understand Tony? What does she have that I don't have? The late great James Gandolfini played her husband, Tony. It wasn't Eadie's big break before The Sopranos. Eadie worked with Tom Fontana on the HBO series OZ, but it's safe to say the role of Carmela made her career. TV Guide named The Sopranos the best television show in history. I didn't have any sense of the gravity of what we were doing, and might might have just been because I was dumb. I didn't realize what, you know, the the larger themes that play there. But I just enjoyed it. And it was still a novel TV working on something that was good, that people enjoyed, that seemed to be well received. Yeah, that was the excitement of being on something good was still very new, And I wonder when you did the show was it fun and pleasant? Was it really tough? Was it work? Now? It was fun? And pleasant because it was there was a lighthearted atmosphere. The writing was funny. There was a lot of really funny stuff, and it was a lot of these sort of goombag guys that were just felt like family to me and very easy to be with. Did you participate in the writing of the did you just turn that all over? You never got involved? Not at all. I was not at all interested. I had so much trust in certainly David Chase, but in all the staff that he carefully chosen, hand picked. I felt like they knew what they were doing. They had much better overview of what the story was about, as opposed to what would Carmela do want here? You know, I just thought it was a huge relief to know that I could just let them do their thing and I would do what I was hired to do. I felt completely comfortable with that. Did they put things about you and the characters? They got me? Tina Fey When I did thirty Rock with someone who the moment you told a story it was an embarrassing anecdote. It was in the show. Absolutely. Jim said that all the times, like I can't talk to anybody about anything. It's gonna be in the next episode. But I didn't notice it so much from my life. There was nothing going on in my life that was all that interesting, so I didn't see a lot of it in the scripts. But I know they, like I guess, every show, to some extent, they start writing for the actors that have been hired, like, um, I eat his character right. A Tour that who played his sister was supposed to be a very different thing. It was supposed to be more like the mom, sort of cold and calculating and unkind. And because I A Tour was doing it, it's sort of morphed into this whole other, like Parvody, that phase that she went through where she was sort of like an earth child. And so yeah, I'm sure they were writing based on what they perceived me to be, but I was I was not entirely cognizant of myth. They hired you for that part because you said I read an interview where you talked about how you went and you just relaxed and said, Hey, if this happens, it happens, which we all go through when you sometimes sit there and go, I can't stress about another interviews. What do you think they hired you for I couldn't begin to tell you. I think, I think probably because of that, because I was completely non stressed. It was a script that had been bouncing around for a while, but I was doing odds at the time, and I was working a lot, and I kind of was all caught up in that, and it came along and it was called Sopranos, and I thought, it's about singers or something, and it's a you know, Italian American American woman wife, and I thought that I never get cast as that I know who's going to get cast I figured it's you know, Annabella Shore or Marissa Tomay or some of these women who had played parts that sort of felt similar to that. There's no better place to be and when you walk into an audition than knowing you're not going to get it and not caring. So uh, you know, I really just sort of enjoyed myself and thought, it's just another audition and if you're in a good head, you can never not learn something from an audition. So I just went in and had fun. And you inadvertently you present your best self when you're doing that, and I guess, I don't know. I was relaxed, and I enjoyed myself. So I guess that's what they So I don't know. And when you got the job, was that something that was just floored you? Were you ecstatic about getting the job? Well, remember so you just just a pilot you get cast for, you know, So at that point it was whatever. It was two weeks of work, and it was a sum of money I had never seen before, which now seems not all that shocking, but back in the day it meant I could pay off my student loan. And so I was able to with that one check completely pay off my student loan. It was huge. It was a huge occurrence. But again, two weeks of work and then onto the next panic thing, you know, about what to do next. So soon after the pilot was shot, I think it was a year you told, so you waited a year to be told this was going to move forward. And David Chase called me and said, I just won't let you know this has been picked up. This is after we shot the pilot. And he said, well, nobody's gonna watch this thing, but I'm proud of what we made or whatever. And David was also apparently he put his head in his hand and said, oh, no, when he found out it was picked up because I don't think he had intended to have to tell more about these people. I think he was trying to get a movie made and this was almost like a spec script or something. I don't think he had anticipated this going on like this, So he was had his head in his hands. Jimmy's like, what am I doing? And I'm like, I can pay my student alone. And you know, here at his four thousand years later, and it just goes to show you. You wake up every day. I have no idea what anything is going to turn into. So well, two things that come to mind for me. One I probably told you this before and when I would run into you. But one was I never watched TV. I just didn't have time, and I hit this period toward the last probably four seasons, definitely maybe five. I don't want to say obsession, but my fondness for you and your character. Remember I watched him go, oh my god, I've got to be married to that kind of Woman's good by me through thick and thin and smart choices, and she's a good partner. Did you sense that when you were doing it? I loved it for that reason, because it was everything that I was not, you know, I mean it was, you know, I was a single woman living in New York, didn't have kids, and here I was ensconced in this life that I saw my grandparents live, you know, married with kids, deeply entrenched in a community of people. Family gatherings were huge, you know, everything that and even with Jim feeling like I was attached to a big man who would take care of stuff. It was a tremendously um invigorating place to inhabit while I was working. It was completely diametrically opposed to what I lived when I left the set, And for that reason, I absolutely what did you live when you left the set? The life of a single actress in Manhattan? You know, I had a relatively small apartment, I had my dog, I had my dates. But it was not you know, at all what a lot other women my age, let's say, in the Midwest, are certainly in my family back number of generations. And was your boyfriend it was when I dated other guys on the side, Yes, exactly was it was, and I was thrilled for it, thrilled for it. I loved it. When you grew up, what town do you grew up in I grew up on the South Shore and Bay Shore and West Icelip and then we moved to Northport when I was in high school. And when you were growing up, what was your relationship to Broadway? Uh, Television, film? Watching TV? How did you absorb culture and media when you were a child. A lot of TV, but you know, Brady Bunch and Partridge Family really all the same. Whatever time those shows were on, we would sit around and watch them and Match Games seventy four, which is totally uh dating me, but after school, Um, I was addicted to Match Games. Yeah, me too, with what's his name Richard Dawson with that crazy an antenna. He said, Lorie likes to blank blank and I love that show me too, me too. So yes, I watched a TV like all kids my age, but it seemed like something far far away from my experience. It was, you know, I mean as far as participating in any way other than being an observer. So it's very crazy. I don't know what happened that I am in Broadway Theater? Were you jumping on the bus and school trips to come to new works? Like when I was a kid, same background trips to Broadway and watching people do it live. Oh my god, how did they do that? Yeah? Yeah, there were courage a couple of those bus trips from from Long Island for sure. That was thrilling. Like Sweeney Todd, was one of the first things I saw where I thought, oh, I got it. I don't know how, but I got it. You did feel that way, Oh my god, that one show. How old were you when you first had a sense that you wanted to do that for a living? Seriously, do it for a living? Well, I didn't know that I could ever do it for a living. I think until I was able to do it for a living, I thought I would just do it as after my waitressing gig. You know. The idea that I could support myself with it was sort of prop ostris um. But my mom was an actress. She did stuff at arena players in Farmingdale and broad Hollow Theater and Huntingtons all around Long Island. But she had a job, and she would do her plays in the weekends and at night, and I sort of thought of your job many different jobs. But she was a She was a DJ W g L. I was a station on Long Island. She was a copywriter, and she did a million different things. She decided she wanted a job and she would get it, but then at night she'd do her plays. And I thought, that's what you do when you want to be an actor. I've got an older brother, younger brother, and a younger sister, four of us all told, and were any of them also interested in the theater, not at all, even though your mother was an actress and your father was a patriot artist and he would musician for when he was younger, but then he went on to do sculpture and painting. And your parents got divorced in your hold, I have no idea, because they got divorced and then they remarried each other two other times, so it's a very complicated childhood with that. They reed each other, yeah, and then dovorris and remarried divorce. I don't even know what because because I want to make a movie at it as I want to play this. They got divorced. And when they would get divorced, how long were they apart before they were united? A matter of months, no longer it was for the first time was a number of years, And you know, they kind of the kids were pitted against each other at the right against And then we found out the parents were sort of hanging out with each other again. It was, you know, horrifying for the kids that they would sendthly get together again. Then they would have a ceremony, we would witness their what it was, I don't know led to some psychological issues and I'm working on as we speak, but get to that. And none of your siblings had the bug, not at all, not, I mean the opposite. And so did this become formal for you only when you go to Purchase or had you done plays before you went to school? Community theater plays nothing to and school plays, you know, but nothing very serious. Um. And then I went to Purchase first as a liberal arts person, and uh, I saw my some actor friends had gone into Purchase in the program, and I thought I wanted to be there. And that program had grown, yes, and has become this very estimable program on the East Coast big time. So I auditioned and went the next year as an acting student. And did you graduate? Did you finish? I did? I did? And then when you finished, what did you do? Well? Remember the league auditions that whole thing. So we had the league auditions, and from those auditions I got a part in a movie where I had to be on set the day after I graduated, and I thought, you know, what's everybody talking about? This is so easy. I just kind of glided my way into this career. I didn't do anything for five plus years after that, but did a movie called Sweet Lorraine that was done up in The Cats Skills with the guy's name is Steve Gohmer, the director. Anyway, who else was in the movie with you? Evan Handler, John Carlo Esposito, Todd Graff, Maureen Stapleton, Almorado, like a bunch of people here, Evan Handler? Who was in I Hate Hamlet? Yes, the legendary perfession of hate. Yes, that's right. And that was your first gig? Was that from first gig? Yeah? How did that go? It was did well, it was I couldn't believe it was on a movie set, you know, it was a huge thing and I just graduated from school and it was crazily exciting, you know what the heck were we like eight weeks up in the Cats Skills I think it was, and kind of fell in love with all the boys in the show. You know, it was being a sleep away camp. And I remember when my agents said, I hope you're sitting down. You booked that movie, and you're gonna get paid more money than you have ever seen in your life. They're going to pay you two thousand dollars a week, which was more money than I had ever seen and had been waitressing not yet, I uh no, except on Long Island. I hadn't really happ how to purchase you got the movie. So it was after the movie the waitressing. Yes, to try to keep up that weekends. The Rainbow Room was a champagne, thinking it would be consistent. Yes, but now where did you waitress? Oh? Gosh, a million places, but formerly Joe's in the West Village just gone. When you leave those places, you left because you got a job. Oftentimes, Yeah, I'm trying to remember. I mean one waitressing job I was fired from because my had a bad attitude. I was told he didn't know the half of it. But um, I guess, yeah, I guess I got a job or I don't know, not really, I mean, not terribly long. I was miserably unhappy. I really tried so hard. I was a good waitress in so far as how many tables I could handle, but if I had to make eye contact with anybody, I would fall apart. Was so hard. I just they were mean and people would, you know, they take their order and they wouldn't look at me, and they're be like, you know, just rude and here's no connection, nothing, And I just it was awful. It was awful. I just felt, you know, it was gross. And I had, you know, Margarita juice all over my clothes most of them. It was just disgusting. Why is any waiter hate being a waiter? I mean, and for the people who like it, God bless him, But um, I was not one of them. What was the job for you that did that? Like? When did you get a job and then you never went back again? You only made a living as an actress. I was waitressing at a place called Canyon Road on seventy seven and first it was the last waitressing job I had. I worked there with Paul Scholzy, my friend who has actually been on a bunch of my shows with me, my great actor friend, and he was bartending and I went off to do a thing called cost of Living, a little budget independent thing, and I left and I was about to come back to the restaurant job, and I just had one of those sort of grace moments where I so, no, I'm not going to come back. I don't know how this is going to work, but I'm not gonna waitress anymore. I really was one. It was a total leap of faith. I just I'm gonna live in a washing machine box, which set the box preferable to taking another order at that restaurant. So we lovely restaurant, but just I couldn't do it anymore. Um So yeah, and at that I don't know, I guess um oz happened shortly after maybe, So what was the experience like working with fontana? Um? You know Tom Right, I love him. He was one of those angel guys, you know. Because I had done a movie called Laws of Gravity with a bunch of people from Purchase and it got some attention and played the sort of sundance and the the festival circuit. Tom saw it and decided he wanted to use me for stuff, and so he put me in UM series called Firehouse about e MT workers and fire people or whatever. Dean Winters was my husband in that show, and um then he cast me in Homicide or maybe it was the other way around. He just we kept putting me and stuff when I wasn't really working much. And then he said, I'm doing the series about a prison. I have two parts. You can play the nun or you can play the correction officer. Which part do you want to play? So I'll be the correction officer. And that was, you know, and he just decided he was going to take care of me. And he did, and he did for many years and I was in his troop. Yeah, and I was just digital of yeah, gosh, you know, I have no idea actually, come to think of it, more than a couple, yeah, maybe three? Or did you rape anybody? Didn't you rape? Didn't you like sexual abuse people? You know what? I would think i'd remember that, But you didn't you weren't you? Weren't you weren't you weren't a bad person. It was not a bad person. I was like, there's somebody else's job. Maybe there was another woman who was who was a matron there in the cup. I always remember the great actress who I worked with, one Shirley Stole. Do you remember Shirley Stole? Shirley Stoller, who was an opera singer, she was a very large woman. She played the prison matron on like One Life to Live. She was on the step and she'd been like getting that cell, sayin this cagnet getting a sound now, say, but you were not from the Shirley Stolar school of prison matron. I was not. I was ineffectual, I think because I was, I was sort of quiet and I wasn't mean enough, and I was I didn't I think there was no work to be had, and like totally, it was just so crazy grateful for the work. And I remember it was before cellphones. I remember Terry Kinney was on the show with me, and he was the first person I ever knew who had his own phone. I just thought he was the coolest, coolest thing going. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. It was fun, It was really really fun, and it was great to have a steady gig. And after that, what did you do? How long between that and the Sopranos? Not long? I was doing you know, I was doing uh that that was during Sopranos. I think that was during two seasons of Sopranos. But I was doing odds and then I was doing Sideman play that I did for a very long time, and I was doing odds at night and Sideman during the day, and then sopranos came in, and so I was doing There was a period of time where I was doing sort of all three of them, and I thought because they were so great, and I couldn't say no to anything. But I was very unhappy because I was exhausted and sick most of the time, screaming my voice out, and it was an embarrassment of riches. But I might have done better to say no to one of them. But be that as it may, it was at a time when I couldn't imagine not doing any of those jobs. After all, before Donny acrylic nails for Carmela, Edie Falcon made money in some memorable ways. She dressed up as Cookie Monster and beckoned people onto the dance floorid weddings. Take a listen to other actresses like Kathleen Turner. In our archives, Kathleen told me what she thought about working in television. I just hated the commitment. I hated the idea of being that tied down. I thought, if I had to do the same character year after year, I would definitely slip my throat To hear more from Kathleen Turner go to Here's the Thing dot org. M my guest today. Edie Falco plays Jackie Peyton, an emergency room nurse, mother and an addict on Showtimes. Nurse Jackie all Right, you know what I would have done in the past, lied, Sweetie. I have a sponsor, I am going to meetings. I am okay, and I'm going to keep on being okay because i have too much to lose. Long before she played a nurse, Edie Falco was a patient during her tenure at the Sopranos. She found a lump in her breast, got a biopsy, and then the news they said, yeah, no, there's you have cancer. And I think when those when someone said those words to me, like every cell in your body changes shape for a second, and you will never really be the same. You know, they're they're certainly growing up on Long Island or maybe anybody in our generation growing up anywhere when you heard those words, the next thing you were doing was buying an outfit for the funeral. He walks out of a doctor. He's like, oh god, oh god, you He's like, can they tell me it's a brain tumor? And he's walking on the treet I'm gonna die. Oh god, you just stay aside his death. That was it though. That was reality, So I mean it's not anymore, thank god. But yeah, it was terrified. Were without getting into any detail the treatment and such. Was it something that was prolonged? Did it interfere with the show? Nobody knew about it except for Eileen Landrus, the producer of the show. I had to tell her because they were trying to schedule around my chemo because it did, you know, knocks you out. So it came over how long, you know what. It's so funny about traumatic things. I remember them weirdly. The whole thing took I guess about a year between surgery, chemo, and radiation. I think it took about a year. I think that's right. Year. Yeah, and it affected the schedule the show. That show was how many months out of the year it varied, you know, it went from it started forward, that's right. It started as like eight days an episode. By the end it was like thirty days. And Peo would always say that to me, how does that sopranos workday? Said that, no one. Yeah, I ended up getting paid like five bucks an hour towards the end, but during that time no nobody knew about it. They showed I didn't. You're very privates. I'm very privates. You are very private. Also, I don't do private about your private I don't do well when people are like, that's how you feeling, you know, I don't. I was. The truth is we were working such crazy hours that everybody on set looked worse than I did. They were just exhausted. Nobody was sleeping. I looked like I get to lie down, taking care of me and wiping my far. Is there a part of you that that that from your childhood or something, because you seem very tough. Yeah, and you don't want anybody to you're You're like, you don't want a lot of sympathy, not good with you don't need a lot of attention. You tend to play into it, you know, they're like, yeah, you're right, I don't really feel so good if people don't know anything's wrong, I can behave as if things are okay. And did you think it was important? Do you feel it was a part of view your recovery and your overview of health? Not defeed in twit is not for everybody. People go through this stuff very differently. But this is what worked for me, to keep it private and only my closest friends knew. And so when I went to work, I didn't people who were like are doing and going about their business. And that is absolutely what worked for me. Kept me going, kept me busy, and I I don't know I did if I needed to be taken care of a little better, I saw to it that I was. You know, I would go home earlier. Whatever I was taking care of myself, I was taking care of you at the time. Friends, my dear friends were married. No, you've never been married, never been married, having close a couple of times. And I did you get rid of all those men in your life who were in love with you because they wanted to hold the door for you to get your hands off me? Dude, give me my bag, man, I can carry it back. What did I tell you about opening that door? Thing? Not much? I hate that? Oh no, what can I see the key to getting like? You were my little brother? And then I'm like, exactly that yourself? What do you think I am? What you that that lemon is not gonna walk itself over? Bring it over here? You wanted a long island you wanted a guy from back home, but for you, family becomes a chapter. If you don't mind my asking how a bunch of relationships started. We're serious, and there was a lot of talk of kids in marriage, and then the relationship would fall apart for various reasons, and the kid things started to grow its own kind of roots in me. Cancer happens, I realize I'm not going to die, I kind of come out of the stupor and realize I want kids, and I don't think I'm gonna try to find the right man first, and then I just this feels more prescient. The kid thing also not to mention that, and I hear about this all the time about women Dayton, and very early on, they want to know, is this the guy who's going to give me my family that I want. It seemed like a preposterous way to go about things. So I began the adoption process with my kids on my own once I realized that I was healthy, and that's how my family started. I adopted my son and then three years later I adopted my daughter. So it was relatively smooth. I mean, it was completely smooth compared to stories I've heard. Was it a difficult thing, did you say, Because as a woman, as you said, had dated men and contemplated that kind of traditional family and those relationships ended for whatever reason. And God knows you're successful. I mean, you're one of the most successful actresses in the history of television. And I'm sure you had no shortage of callers. I was but when you but I'm not trying to pry, but I'm saying it was like, at what point do you sit there and go, Okay, I'm not going to wait for that. That was the boom. I'm going to go make this thing happen on my own, wen do it for me. When I think it wasn't tough. Like any decision, You're very self reliant. Any any decision I make, I I it means it's gone through whatever it's had to go through to kind of come to the you know, the the the unequivocal answer, which was get the paper and start filling them out. That's what you gotta do. And once I made the decision, it just kind of the whole thing unraveled on its own. And another thing also was as a child of divorce, and as there are so few successful marriages I can count on one hand, you know, in my life what I would consider a successful marriage. Uh. You know, as I was watching friends go through divorce and the sharing of the kids, and the fights in front of the kids, and the holidays split between the family, it just I desperately didn't want to give that to my kids. I wanted to know. And now that you've raised a family this far, yes, ten and six, ten and seven, ten and seven, are you at this point? I mean maybe it's just being glad, but you at this point and now you were like, you know, who needs a man? One? Quite the opposite. Actually, now I realized I've got this whole thing up and running. My kids are secure in my love for them, in family that I've created, which is very unconventional, and that's good. And now I'm like I can sit back and like, all right, so where and where am I? Now? What do I What am I about? And what do I need? So I'm you know, back in this other chapter again. But it's not about the kids. It's not about trying to create a family. Whatever it turns into, it turns into. But what I have right now is really quite workable. I'm proud of it. And yes it's complicated. It's not going to hold the door open for you. I've gotten much better many many years of therapy, and I have the Italian anti Oakley antok from I am. I can't help it. It's the way I was raised, very self reliant, but it has been you know, the death of me at times. Um. Hello, Well, I'm I'm trying to think how to say this. I'm going to write a book. I'm writing a memoir that's coming out in a year. And in the book, I've got some interesting things I talked about, and one of which was I sell a bring to my thirtie anniversary. In February this year, I went out to Los Angeles, which was the scene of the crime from that right, Uh, and can we talk about that? How are you on the record about that? I was wondering what that, how that affected your career. Well, I got sober twenty three years ago, and there was really not much of anything going on at the time. And I'm grateful for that also because you know the access people have to your life nowadays. Um, I'm just glad that none of that was going on. Nobody was interested back when I was a mess. Um, so I was able to get kind of squared with a lot of that stuff before you stepped into Yeah, before anything big was happening in my life, I was very very grateful for the timing of all that. When you walk into a room in a a there's not a lot of people who have twenty five years. Yeah, that's right. People make it that far. Yeah, they might be when they do the hand raising thing. I'm in a room the other day in l A where there was three people and they might have been like six or eight of them that had over twenty years. Yeah, time or right, where the time is right, it's still a part of your left. I go on my anniversary which was the last week, and just to announce it and h now I'm I'm I'm a Buddhist, which is where what I what I do now? Yeah, I spend a great deal time at the Buddhist Center in New York, where has given my life a tremendous amount of when because you have the first person I know who has supplanted sobriety interesting twelve steps sobriety with Buddhism or Buddhist a lot of crossovers. I see a lot of people that I know from both places so I see, yeah, uh, like twenty something years ago, I inadvertently ran into a meditation class and it was this teacher and then I kind of wandered away, and then I kind of went back and it was the same teacher. I thought I was going to some other thing. This happened a number of times, and then a good five or six years ago I went back again, and here's the same darned teacher in a different place. And I've been going consistently for I don't know, four or five years as much as I can. It feeds me and huge way. So what do you get out of it? Well, it's not just sort of mumbo jumbo spiritual kind of it's also it's like a science of the mind really that was established years ago. And so they've got they've got history on their side. And I see the people who spend a good deal of time there, and the teacher there. They have what I want, you know, the stick with the winners thing that I love a but you know, there there are a lot of cuckoos in there, you know, and I love them because I understand them. But to be in a place where there's somebody who really has something that I want. It's very meaningful to me. It becomes harder and harder to find that. That's huge and and and for you, what I'm wondering, what did it give you? What did it help you deal with? Or manager? Well, single parenting is not for this faint of heart. Uh, shall I say? You know, you live for forty years where you're the center of your universe. You know, when you want to get a massage, you go get one, and as you know that, kids enter the picture and it just turns your whole life. I mean, there's nothing recognizable about it. And it was real a crash course in in uh, not being the center of my universe anymore so. And I didn't always handle it great. Spent a fair amount of time just not being okay with the fact that I couldn't control my environment. So a lot of it is about remaining calm, about being patient, about remembering what's important about patients is I think the biggest part of it. I am. I have. I have a short temper that people may not believe, but you know, in in my human environment, yeah, it's not pretty. So it has helped me immeasurably with that. Describe your son cute blonde. He's uh spectacularly amazing kid, and he's been through a lot, and uh he has some learning stuff and uh also a d D D H D and all those acronyms, um, which you know, single parenting under the best of circumstances is difficult. But when you have a kid who's bouncing off the wall calls, and then a kid who's not who's getting beat up by the kid who's bounce off the wall, it's complicated and it's difficult. Yeah, she's the sort of the survivor, yes, yes, so, but you know she's a tough kid. She can take care of herself. Over here. Let's play sword fights. Yeah no, no, you're the sword. And he's constantly beaten the crap at ever and you know she's learned to, uh, she's learned to kind of make the make the best of it. But the fact that she has to what is a drag so um. But you know, we all had our stuff growing up in the middle child and you know, everybody we all have some order in which we were born and the difficulties we had and being the first one or the last one or whatever. And my kids challenges are not that unusual. But you know, I say that my daughter, my older daughter, I said to her recently. I said to her, you know, to me, a god or the presence of some kind of force like that in your life manifests itself in the instincts that you have. And I said to her, the minute you get into trouble in this life, in my experience, is when you stopped listening to your instincts. That's all we can do is try to get them to listen to that voice in them, because in the end, they're gonna do what they're gonna do. We can't make them do what we want to do. It's painful. It's shocking too. I mean, especially in this industry, we have so many people running around, you know, telling you how great you are, and you know, making sure that every your every need is taken care of. And then you go home and your kids just couldn't care less what you're asking. But they do. But I think they think everybody's parents have some kind of life like this. I don't know, they exceedingly unimpressed, but you know, just to hang up the damn coat, you know what I mean. It just couldn't possibly care less the way I want the how's the look? And you know, all that stuff that used to be so important that I'm learning slowly to let go of. Do you see yourself doing this for the rest of your life. I have no idea. I don't there's nothing else you want to do. I like animals. I always have this fantasy of working with animals. I don't know what. There's certainly nothing that could support the homes that I have, so you know, probably in I do love the acting part, it's all the stuff around it that that is difficult. I really don't know. I've never known what was going to happen next is something comes along catches my eye. It's almost like, oh, look, something glittering happened, kind of like that Sopranos ended. And I just started reading scripts and nothing appealed to me, and I thought, I don't know, maybe I'm done, and uh, I think I just wasn't ready or maybe there really wasn't anything good. And then I read that one at the time, it was Nurse Mona. It was written by Evan Dunsky, and I read it and it was very dark, but there was something about the character I liked, and I kind of came to life that way I was ready, the script changed and morphed into something that felt better to me, and and that's how it happened. I but I had similar feelings, like maybe I did what I wanted to do with all this stuff. And I don't know. I mean, I have no idea. I really don't know what the heck is going to happen next? And in the how many seasons this just finished? What? Season seven? Yeah? Go figure? You know you sign up, You're like be a couple of years. You have no idea? Crazy? And then during that seven years and you had the break when you weren't working, did you always take off your shot some stuff for you? Yeah. I did a bunch of plays and I did I did, Yeah, I did want to Theater Club, I did one uh, the Ben Stiller and How to Blue Leaves. I did other things which escaped men. Not if I not if I don't have to, it's different. You have kids in school, it's a different thing. What's the most successful thing you've done professionally? What do you think the most other than the obvious one? What were the most successful? Is it the obvious one? Um? Not necessarily? Yeah, I mean for me, the greatest success I've had professionally. Is the environment that we created at Nurse Jackie the working environment. Yeah, well, that we assume at a certain level of expert ease that the people you're gonna hire for your A, D. S and your camera people stuff, you know that they're all they've been working a long time and they're good at what they do. More important to us was that they were manageable and kind after sixteen hours or whatever. So we made a lot of phone calls to people who have been on sets with them after a long day to find out what they would be like, because, uh, you know, having been around other environments, I just feel like I've just gotten too old for craziness. That's interesting that Nurse Jackie, which you're still doing. That's that's still on the air. That is these epic days. It's long days. Not terrible. Actually, I've had way more epic days. But even a normal day of twelve or thirteen hours is still a long day to an average individual. It's a lot of days to spend doing this one thing. But regardless of the length of the days, you just want to be hanging with people who are nice. So and we we got, yeah, we got we really did a great job with Nurse Jackie. I love the people. They were nice and spectful. And I read somewhere that you said, you're like Nurse Jackie in some ways and not at all like her in other ways. Well, what are the ways that you are? What are the ways that you are like Nurse Jackie? Oh, I don't know. I don't recall saying that, but that doesn't mean I didn't the first supposed here? What are the ways? I think she's diligent about her job. I think she takes it seriously. It's important to her to be good at it. She's professional, professional, but also competent. You know, she knows that she did very few situations she can't handle. I think that's important to her, and I think it's important to me too. I don't know. Other than that we veer. I kind of think it's cool that she doesn't really give a ship the way she's perceived. She gets what she needs done, she gets done without worrying about the ramifications who she might have heard. I mean, I spend far too much time thinking about that stuff. It has led me to not good places where so I have I often thought it would be fun to be more like her in that way? Did you become like any of your characters? No? Never, not really really took off the nails and the hair, or I took off the scrubs and then was gone. I don't think so. I don't think so. I mean, maybe other people would tell me otherwise. But you know, there's a human nous to Eadie Falco's characters, no matter how tough their exterior appears. Her women are vulnerable and fallible, and we can't get enough of them. This is the seventh and final season for Showtime's Nurse Jackie. After that, we'll eagerly await to see who Edie Falco inhabits next. She told me she's hoping for a new play to come her way. This is Alec Baldwin you're listening to. Here's the Thing two

Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin

Award-winning actor Alec Baldwin takes listeners into the lives of artists, policy makers and perfor 
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