Here's The Thing with Alec BaldwinIt’s time for the premiere of our fourth season of “Here’s the Thing with Alec Baldwin” at iHeartRadio. Our first episode features the woman behind what TV Guide called “the most famous soap opera character in the history of daytime TV.” Actor Susan Lucci inhabited the role of bad girl Erica Kane on ABC’s “All My Children” for four decades, from the show’s inception in 1970 until 2011. She earned the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress for the role in 1999 after nineteen nominations – and in December 2023, received the Daytime Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award. Lucci’s body of work also includes numerous television series, films and the Broadway stage. She is the author of All my Life: A Memoir and is a National Spokesperson for the American Heart Association. Susan Lucci talks with host Alec Baldwin about how she played a role that evolved over decades, how she realized a lifelong dream of performing on Broadway, and her thoughts on the rumors of a potential reboot of the beloved soap.
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio. So many actors who went on to have amazing careers in primetime television and film started in soap operas. Meg Ryan, Tom Selleck, Julianne Moore, to name just a few. And then there are those who stayed in daytime television to become huge stars in that genre. My guest today is, without a doubt, the biggest star in the history of daytime TV. Susan Lucci, the actress, played the iconic villain Erica Kaine on ABC's All My Children for four decades, from the show's inception in nineteen seventy until it wrapped in twenty eleven. Following nineteen nominations. She finally took home the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in nineteen ninety nine, and sare the Emmy's Lifetime Achievement Award this past December. But Lovable bad Girl is not the only role in Lucci's wheelhouse. She has acted in numerous roles in film and TV, from Devious Maids to Hot in Cleveland, and starred on Broadway in Annie Get Your Gun. Susan Lucci has yet another achievement to boast of a long and healthy partnership with husband Helmet Huber. Hubert passed away in twenty twenty two after fifty two years of marriage. I wanted to know what was the secret of their successful union.
Incredibly good luck for my part to meet him, because I was young and I didn't I don't think I really knew exactly how fabulous he was and just got really lucky. Fortunately he had a very good sense of humor and he was very confident. This was really helpful in this business we're talking about. You know, he took a lot of ribbing all those guys I was kissing on all my children. But you know, he got it. You know he knew I came home to him and I wanted to.
So yeah, yeah, I remember when I was younger. I mean, now I don't really do any of that, but when I was younger, and I had a girlfriend at one time who really was very very agitated by that. I was just starting to make films or just was starting to go from TV to films, and I had to kiss somebody who was very well known, and this movie was going to be all over TV and everything. Me kissing this person was going to be featured. Who knows, and she really just couldn't take it. She was really very angry all the time.
It's not for everybody. Yeah, I used to say, if that she were on the other foot, I would have been throwing my stilettos. I mean I would not have taken it as well.
When I was young, well, when I had it the other way, when a woman in my life was in the business and she was kissing other people, I just would look at her and say, if you left me for him, you got to be an idiot.
I would sound like helmet, like your good luck.
I mean, please go right ahead. Don't teach me everything about you. I need to know, but you. I don't want to talk just about the TV show at length. I want to talk about the other things you did and the other things you wanted to do. I mean, your commitment to that show is singular. You are right to the end, you surf that wave right to the shore. But other than that, what were there other things you wanted you did do, other things, you made films, You stepped in for Bernadette and Nanny gets.
Your want to go in for Bernadette.
I was so through all the I loved.
The whole original company.
Yeah, I love But how did that happen? Like you go to this the TV show and you say I want out, or you went did the TV show and went to night work at night.
I did both. I did both. I had a short time off but all the rehearsals. I just was able to have time off just before the opening, but I wound up getting pneumonia. Because I would work at all my children. They accommodated my schedule so that we started a little earlier in the morning, did all my stuff first, and then I would on my lunch hour, get in a car, go to the theater, grab a chicken soup on the way, and go and rehearse, go to voice lessons five nights a week because I had never sung professionally.
Did you study theater and acting in college? Where'd you go?
I went to Marymount College. It is a Catholic women's college, but it's in Tarrytown, and all the drama faculty was from Yale and Royal Shakespeare Company in London, Mary Marytha Grand. It was a wonderful school. Wonderful for me. Jesuit school which is the smarty pants guy, so that was good. The faculty was phenomenal and they were all working in the business. So the head of the drama department, who was from Yale, was also a member of Cafe La Mama and Lincoln Center Rep. So I got the classics as well as the news stuff.
So you do that show. You did small roles and things back in the sixties, but then you're doing films throughout the eighties, nineties, two thousands, you're doing Army Wives a couple through episodes of that. You're working outside the show. Why did you feel you wanted to? You're just a kind of I don't want to say workaholic, but you like to work.
I do like to work, and I like to work as an actress, and you know, probably a couple of things. First of all, I'd never thought that I could call myself an actress if I only played one part. And even though the part was the part that kept me on that show for so long, because I loved doing that part. That part was one of the best parts, with the most range and the most possibilities. And I worked with a company of actors who I loved and trusted, and it was wonderful, and the writing was fantastic. It was Agnes Nixon and a lot of reasons that kept me there. However, having said that, I just never thought that playing one part would make me an actress. I had to do more, and so I did. And the other thing I started to say is that I think a lot of actors, you know, you feel like you should say yes as much as you can say yes, because someday it won't all be there, So you just say yes, why you can.
I did a soap. The doctors and everybody in that cast, not everybody, but a thick band of them were all like they did the soap for the pension and welfare and the paycheck and the medical and then they ran off to the theater. It was their passion. We were a half hour which was starting to fade and go down. The older cast was primary. I always tell people that the cast photo were the adults in front and the kids in the back, because the kids were the supporting players. And that changed with Bold and the Beautiful, with all my children, well, my children were Ryan's Hope, Young and the restless. However, on your show, the youth revolution comes and you're still young at this point, but you're one of the older cast members of the younger cast mean no, no, no.
I started playing Eric as a fifteen year old high school girl, something that drew me to that drew me to the show because the man who was the head of the department at Marymount, who came from Yale, only wanted me to do theater and maybe film. Those two things. Television and daytime television never even came into the equation. But when I read the script and I saw that the four kids and we were in high school were now featured with storylines, and I loved the part. I thought, well, I'm going to change his mind. I'm going to do this and it's so well written and I have this incredible part, so I took the part. He was not happy at first, but then he actually was interviewed by TV Guide and said, at the time, I know why she did this.
You know, but even as you're in that generation, when you're younger and you stayed with the show and you're getting older, yes, and other young stars are coming into for the show, you remain one of the stars of the show. Why how did you pull that off?
I think it was the writing that pulled it off, you know, thank you for saying that. No, thank you. I was very lucky, as I said, she You know, so I started her playing as a fifteen year old girl. But she was never the girl next door, and she was not the girl that you know, everybody was going to embrace. She was the naughty girl in town, and she was major bad girl in town and on a world stage. And I never thought the audience was going to like her. I loved to play her, the bad girl, the bad girl.
Yeah, and you never thought they would embrace the bad girl.
Never thought the boy.
Were you wrong?
Yeah?
Turned out that we loved bad girls. They loved bad girls. They do love that. And what they saw, and again the writing was there to support it was they saw that she was a girl who had dreams for herself and she was going to go out there and get them. She had spirit, she had spunk. She'd always do it the right or the nice way. But they really loved her spunk, her spirit.
They would watch these shows. I remember because the generation comes in now where the audience is in sixties housewives, it's young people, college kids, and they stop in the middle of the day to watch their stories, my stories and then they would watch the show and then you're on there doing whatever, and they sit there and be like, you know, Corey, Corey, it's us. We did that. You know, anything bad you did was very familiar to them. Well.
And also Erica I think represented my generation that we were working. You know, my generation was working. They were not getting out of college and just getting married. They had their own dreams and aspirations to have. Wasn't enough, wasn't the only thing on their mind. They had additional things on their minds and going to Merrymount, which was a women's college. I remember when we would talk about our dreams. We had aspirations for ourselves in terms of career, and it wasn't a question of if we were going to do that, It was when we're going to do? This is what we were going to do, and how could we.
Do it now. Obviously, Agnes Nixon wasn't your head writer throughout the entire one. She was the creator, the creator, and then the writers would come and go.
The writers would, yes, a lot of them would stay for years, but Lorraine Broderick became the head writer because Agnes would come and go occasionally.
Did everybody who came on to run the show. They all basically treated you the same way. But then another great advantage you had was Eric is not going anywhere.
It seemed to be that way. It seemed to be the way. It's hard only again, you, I think because Agnes was involved and it was her creation, and she was in the room, you know. And also I remember our last producer, Julie Cruthers, who lucky to have wonderful producers too, and Julie would say the last man who was the head of ABC Daytime, I believe, was not so enamored of Agnes being involved. And I remember Julie saying that Agnes is the youngest voice in the room, so she had good stories to tell and she remained relevant and groundbreaking always. So I think because of Agnes and Agnes's beautiful writing for my character Erica, I think that's why I got to stay.
These people work really hard. You come up with a fresh idea every day. The only bad part was we do with double tape very rarely because we had to accommodate people who were working on Broadway. We had cast members who were on a Wednesday, they did the matinee, so they would have to leave by one. We'd pretape their scenes and they had a scene on a Christmas show where they're floating between everybody. So they're in a party and all the family of the show was there and they're floating with the camera and they go, I'll land on this one and this one, and they're like, my god, I can't wait for us to head down to Palm Beach and have a nice vacation. Something light. Pan to the next one and the wife or the girlfriend saying to the boyfriend, I knew you had drinks with her chat I knew you had drinks with I saw you and something from being turgid there. Then they'd land on me last, and I was like a little bit drunk because I went to lunch at Hurley's down on the bottom of the building. That's where we always went because we usually left it and come back we had launch and film. Now we had to come back to finish the rest of the taping as we did a double taping, and I came back when they finally land on me in their floating shot. They landed me and I go, you know, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry everybody. I blow the whole take for and they looked at me, like, you better straight out.
This was at the beginning.
This was in the beginning, and I thought it was I didn't take it as seriously as I should have, But I learned a lot. I learned a lot of the things that were significant to me about the professionalism of your acting career on that TV show, on that daytime TV.
Interesting, it's wonderful.
The show ends twenty eleven, correct, and all of the daytime. That was an empire. Where did you shoot a West End Avenue over in the big at the Kremlin?
I call it the Kremlin sixty sixth and Columbus. Yeah, And we moved to sixty seventh and West End, And the last two years we shot in La.
You did, I didn't know that.
I hadn't lant well. We were told that it would be more cost effective at that time, and also because of the climate, it would be really great. We could shoot outside as well, with the location actually nearby.
Did you enjoy it?
I did?
I did.
I didn't expect to, because so many actors from New York would say how much they didn't love working in LA I did, maybe because I grew up in the suburbs and I was used to being in a car and even like it, so I was fine with that.
And where did you live when you were out there? Where did you shoot?
We shot in Glendale. We shot in Glendale, and we had an apartment in Glendale. The studio was six minutes from our apartment. If I hit the red lights in Garden City, it was an hour and a half commute. But I really it was fine for me because I studied my lines on the way in and I could just return phone calls and be a vegetable way.
How did you get in every day? Somebody drove you?
Yes, it began with helmet driving me. That's love, Yes, it really, Yes, he was fantastic. But then when I was twenty seven, one of the vice presidents of the network offered me a limo, you know, to pick me up and take me in, And I remember saying, I thank them very much, But I said, you know, people are coming here on this subway, and if I show up in a limo, this is an ensemble, I'm going to be playing scenes with them. This is probably not going to be a good way to have a company of actors.
You didn't want to be viewed that way, No.
I wanted to be. I was part of the company. I recognized that the part that was being written, and I was lucky enough to have it was written for me, but there was a collaboration for sure. I saw it was on the page, and frankly, I mean, you know, my experience with the writing there was incredible, and I had good training, so I knew how I mean. My judgment I thought was a good judgment and it was really so well written. Also, I was one of those characters you're talking about that the writer wanted to tell the story through, and I realized that it was very, very lucky. But one thing with Agnes is that she would tell very complicated, relevant stories, current stories through everybody's eyes. I think Erica was Agnes's voice, but I really admired the fact that these complicated issues anybody watching out there could could have see themselves represented.
What was the challenge for you to keep that role fresh? Do you suggest things to them? I always believe that someone who's as talented as you are, and who owns that role in the way that you did, you have every right to turn to them and say, I'd like you to mayven think about this? You suggest how much were you able to suggest very little?
Really, yeah, very little.
You just referred to Agnes.
It was there, you know. I was really lucky most mostly I would read this. First of all, it was a newscript every day, and you know very well from having been on daytime. It was the length of a play a day. It was a play a day, and so there's a lot of material not only to commit to memory, but to fill to make work, you know. And so the day to day was very occupying of my mind. And I was in such good hands in the final times, you know, when we moved to la and when the person who was in the charge of daytime brought in a new writer altogether, and he met with our company of actors during a lunch period in our rehearsal hall. And the first thing that that writer, who might have been a wonderful writer in a different genre, but what he said was I'm going to shake things up. That's fine, but he said, so some of you may not recognize your characters or your relationships and so on. And so what happened was that during rehearsal in the morning, what he said was true, and so many actors were concerned. I was one of them too. Of course, you know, people would come to me and say, what are you doing about this? So you just try to hold on tooth and nail, you know.
You tell when people were coming on the younger people knew were people, whether they had it or not, the discipline to do the show.
I could see that some people were, you know, no, we're wonderful. Wonderful yeah, Josh, Kim Darnell, they stood out right away. Kim Delaney, Kim just mel be my god, yeah, Kim Delaney, yes. And actually Michael B.
Jordan.
Michael played my steps on by marriage, to Jack Montgomery, to Walt Willie, who was spectacular too, but he was one who was sixteen and always very what you're saying, discipline, showed up on time, showed up prepared, very respectful, very nice person, good guy.
When you did the show. Were their actors you just fere like you enjoyed working with them?
They were, Oh absolutely, what Willie, who I worked with most often, who was my love interest throughout lots of times, in and out. He's so funny and very quick and loved working with him. And on the other side of the coind David Canary, who was spectacular actor I worked with him, probably next to Walt. I worked with David Canary most, but we hate I mean I hated him, Erica hated him. But those scenes were wonderful. And you know you were saying earlier about you know, the senior actors leaving because they were on Broadway and they had places to go. I thought that was one of the biggest pluses working in New York. But the other actors were phenomenal Broadway actors. I mean Jimmy Mitchell who danced the Curly Ballet in Oklahoma on Broadway and was so urbane. And you know, I was young and to learn from these incredibly successful actors who were working on Broadway. Sometimes someone like Philip Bosco, who, yeah, would come and do you know an arc on the show? Yeah. Oh, I remember one day I was doing a concert version of One Touch of Venus and we would rehearse the Amsterdam Theater during my lunch hour, run out there and do that and come back was for encores, Yes, and at the time, and I was so much fun and again, wonderful Broadway actors. Piggy Cass was playing my mother, Yes, I know, it was incredible. And coming back to the studio and waiting behind the sets, you know, if the cameras broke down a little bit or something was happening technically that we didn't know what we had to be on hold, stayed our places. So behind the scenes, my set flowed into behind Jimmy Mitchell's set, and he came up to me and he just took me in his arms and waltz with me. He danced with me all over the backstage while we were waiting. You know, some of those wonderful experiences.
Actress Susan Lucci. If you enjoy conversations with talented female Thespians, check out my episode with former As the World Turns star and Oscar winner Julianne Moore.
I'm very chatty. I like to talk all the way up to action. I do, I do, And if you can't talk to me, I'm really disappointed. Then I get lonely, and I want to be lonely when I want, I want to be with my buddy.
I want to talk to me. You talk to me every friends, buddy talking to you.
What'd you do this morning? What'd you have for dinner last night? What are you doing later today?
Are you cold?
Do you like that Sweater'd you like my sweater? What are you doing?
Action? Acting?
I love it.
That's my favorite part.
He said.
You get this great connection with other human being. And then the scene is like, ooh, comes alive.
To hear more of my conversation with Julianne Moore, go to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Susan Lucci shares the story of how she landed the part of a lifetime a leading role on.
The Great White Way.
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing Susan Lucci. She has spent decades enjoying the prolific output of a successful acting career. She's also the mother of two children and stepmother to two more. I was curious whether anyone in her family wanted to follow her into show business.
My daughter did for a while.
What you do?
She was on passions? Ahuh yeah, and she was wonderful. She's absolutely wonderful.
And then what happened?
She didn't love it?
And can you say why?
I don't know that it was ever articulated why, but she did not really love it.
And most people I know who their kids go into it, especially now a lot of my friends, their kids go in and they were one. The one thing that they can't handle is the unreliability of it. Oh, you know that you don't work that much and you're off all this time. You don't know what's going to happen to you. You don't know where you're going to be four months from now, six months when they couldn't stand that. They wanted to have their life and live somewhere and go to their yoga class and have their husband or a boyfriend or whatever.
Those Yeah, it's not for everybody.
It's not for ever.
And being the spouse of the person you were saying earlier, you know, you had a girlfriend who didn't get it, and Helmut did get it. But I would marvel at that and really admire him for how great he was about and smart, you know, because it's not for everybody.
Somebody famous one said to me. Don't get too blown off course, don't let the wind in your sales to take you. Don't watch comedies that make you laugh, make you see, don't watch dramas that make you cry, he said, watch National geographic shows of animals.
While you're on that set in the middle of while you're shooting a movie.
Yeah, and don't get too in a different head. Try to stay in this kind of neutral gear. And he said to me, like when you go in, he goes, don't don't talk to people on the phone. Don't talk to your girlfriend on the phone. Don't talk to your decorator on the phone about how much money he's going to spend on.
God forbid, you have a fight with your girlfriend, don't.
Talk to do it. The other one was this guy turned to me once. It was Albert Salmi, the great, great character actor. Albert sell me. He was there was sitting on the the set in a chair reading the La Times or something, and he says, are you're going to go back to your trailer? I? Oh, no, I think I'll hang out. And he said that's the best thing to go. Don't leave the set, said, don't go back to your trailer. The set is where it's at. Always be staying linked to the process.
That's great. Yeah, felt the same way. I would see people reading books and I thought, gee, how do they do that? I can't do that. Concentrate what takes you out of that world? Different world.
One last question about the show directors. So I found that we had some wonderful directors, most of who had this is back in the eighties, with great theater backgrounds, and they were kind of wickedly funny, you know. I'd say to the director, Henry Kaplan, I'd.
Say, oh, Henry, you know, Henry, you're wickedly funny, is exactly he was.
He terrorized me too, terrorized me.
I have a drink in my head like this, and I go, I'm gonna can I hold this up? When I see this line, I want to sip and then I want to pull it away and say the other partl where I'm thinking of anything to play, And I go, and I'll do this and I'll never forget I'm doing a scene with Kim Zimmer And Henry goes, that's fine, you do what everyone does. I'm gonna be on her anyway, you bast We have some great directors that.
We have great directors, and Henry, Henry was terrific. Also we used to get our notes. They called him red chairs. They would call us to red chairs, which were a bunch of red director's chairs set up, you know, in the middle of the studio, to get our notes. So the whole company of actors got their notes together. This was both humiliating and bonding, you know, because we're humility together. We all had our chance being and when Henry was directing, the humiliation was flying. We were just buried. We buried you destroyed you right before you had to go on air and play those scenes. Yeah. Actually, yeah, that was him, and it took me a while. It took me a couple of weeks to figure out that that was his humor because I was destroyed.
Oh he was about well you did Bob Center director. Yes, well, they all want to move on to the hour shows because it's more fun for them. Yeah, the half hour shows. You think you're all just getting started. Yeah, that's over now you are doing what? No, No, they said there might be a reboot of the show or not.
You know they're saying that, and I'm told that. Then. Of course, the writers' strike came and the actors strike, so I thought it was gone by then, but I'm told it's still possibly in the works, so we'll see.
That's another credible Now in terms of other things you're doing, you've been involved with that theater in Westhampton for a very long time.
Correct, well, with celebrity autobiography, right, you know we took the play there. You were in the first one.
I did one of them, and I did a couple of them at Guildhall.
At Guildhall, actually I did the first concert there with Marvin Hamlish. Yeah, sang yes a little bit. Marvin asked, well, I met Marvin and sag Harbor at that theater. Actually he was doing a concert there, and his wife came out to me during intermission and told me that she was Marvin's wife, and she was great herself, but she said, Marvin's wife, and he'd like to meet you. Would you like to meet Marvin? I said, what, I'd like to meet Marvin, of course. So she took me backstage to meet him afterwards. And that was a meeting that changed my life. First of all, it was all during that time where I hadn't won the Emmy for many, many and many nominations, and he was assuring me that it had nothing to do with my work. I mean, he was really encouraging me. He was a fan, which was so thrilling that Marvin Hamlish would be a fan. Then he called me afterwards and asked me if I'd like to work with him. We worked at Heinzhall in Pittsburgh the first time.
Do you know?
Heinzhall and the deal was that I would give a seminar to the seniors who were drama majors at Carnegie Mellen or Carnegie might have been just Carnegie.
At the time.
Anyway. He called me then one night and said to me, I'd like to write a song for you to dance with the chorus boys who are dance majors at Carnegie. They will be there and they will come and they will dance with you, and you will dance with them. How does that sound? I said, that sounds amazing, you know. Thank you, and his doorbell rang at his apartment. He said, hold on a second, my Chinese food is here, and so he went to get his Chinese food and we left it at that. But it was great working with him. That was my first time working with him. And then yes we were at West Hampton Nice Theater, Nice Theater. And then after I won the Emmy, the producers Brandon Barry Weisler called me and asked me if I would like to play Anna Oakley and I get your gun if I'd like to go in for Bernadette. Bernadette was going to be leaving the show and would I like to go in for her? And my agent called me from ICM at the time in LA and she said, to me, sit down here. She said, I don't even know if you sing. I said, well, yeah, I did musical theater in high school and college. Yes, I'd like to do that. And she said okay, And I said and because Marvin, he said I should come to his apartment so he could hear me sing and see if he thought I could do this, because after our last appearance together he said, if you ever need me, I'm here to help you, let me know. So I was offered this part, and I was way too shy to call Marvin Hamlash and ask him anything, but Helmet was not. So Helmet called Harvin Hamush told him what was being offered and what did he think, And Marvin was very generous. He had been on he was on tour. When Helmet reached me, he was in Europe and he said, but I'm coming home Sunday night. Come to my apartment and sing for me and I'll tell you. So we went to Marvin's apartment. Scariest thing I ever did at that time. I rang Marvin Hamlush his doorbell to his apartment and he answered, and his lyricist was there with him and his wife, Terry Blair, in the back room, and he said, so, come on in, I have lyricists here. I'm going to play the piano and sing through some of the numbers. And I had by then, you know, just locked myself in my room and learned all the music. And he said, so, I want you to sing a ballad and an uptune and I had to and I did, and he said, okay, I'm going to go now to the back of the apartment. He has one of those pre World War two apartments and he went and it looked like a La Liique glass partition and he went way in the back and he said, now sing to me, and I did, and he came out and I guess because it's Broadway and he need to know he could hear me. And he said, okay. He said you can do this. He said, you can do this if you want to, or I want you to work for a week with Craig Cornelia. That was his he was his lyricist, and come back to me and sing again, and so I did, and he said, yeah, there's no question you can do this. He said, you're very brave tall you're not, and so Bernadette wasn't either.
So it worked.
Worked, so he encouraged me to do it, and he really helped me to get to the place where I could do it because the next step was to sing for Barry and fran Weisler, and I wanted to. They did not ask for that. I wanted to be one. I wanted to know I could do it.
How long did you do it?
Not long enough? I'll tell you it was just a month because by that time Bernadette decided she didn't want to leave. She was just going to leave for the holidays. She came back after that riba after that because by that time all my children wouldn't let me go. They were beginning a new truly a very important storyline. But at the beginning when they told me it was going to be a very important storyline, and they couldn't let me go. If you tell me no, I'm not just going to say, oh okay, I'm never going to throw out my hands.
It's a great opportunity for you.
Oh my goodness, my dream. I grew up in New York to be a little girl, to grow up in New York and then you have a chance to be on Broadway. Oh my god.
Yeah, a great show.
Oh great show, great part with the original cast. So you know I would try to go over that brick wall, over it, under it, through it, rounded. How you know. I gave them all sorts of notions. Can we do this? Can we do that? This was the opportunity of a lifetime. But all my children did not see it that way. ABC did not see it that way at the time.
Actress Susan Lucci, if you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Susan Lucci shares Howard felt to finally take home the Emmy after her nineteenth nomination. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Susan Lucci has inhabited many amazing roles, including one as national and Ambassador for the American Heart Association. The organization seeks to reduce deaths caused from heart disease and stroke, and has contributed over five billion dollars in cardiovascular and cerebro vascular research. I wanted to know how she first got involved with the nonprofit.
I had a hard incident actually five years ago, so that's great, you know that everything's wonderful. But it took me quite by surprise. I had never been zick, nothing, and my mother. I lost my mother at one hundred and four.
So where was she then?
She was in assisted living in Florida, which is a they have, it's an art form in Florida. She was in a beautiful, wonderful place, but she had never had anything major. She was a hundred at the time. So I was out actually shopping for a birthday present for a friend, and it was a third time that month I had felt some pressure on my chest, radiating around my ribcage to my back. The first two times I didn't take it seriously. I thought, as most women do, Oh, it's nothing, it'll go away. I don't have time for this, and it did go away. But the third time it felt like an elephant pressing on my chest. And I had heard a woman do an interview many years before, no reason to even remember this, but I did, and I sat down good. I was out in a public place because the manager came over and asked me how I was feeling. I told her, and she said, Susan, my car is right outside. I can get you to Saint Francis Hospital, the heart hospital. It's a mile down the road, faster than an ambulance will come. And I went with her. It turned out she also had a degree in nursing. I mean, what are the odds of that? She was so calm, and I had no reason of a cardiologist, but my husband did and I called him. He met me at the er. Turned out I had a ninety percent blockage in my main artery and a seventy five percent blockage in the adjacent He never smoked. I never smoked. There's no reason to have this turned out. This is interesting. We all in my family thought that I have my mother's jeans because she never had anything. I never had anything. And it turned out and my otherwise fabulous, handsome, terrific father's jeans in that regard, So it was a calcium build up. Who knew that. I found out anyway, so I couldn't keep my good luck to myself. I had to get out there and tell women what symptoms would be, and to listen to them and to put themselves on their own to do list and take take care of themselves.
You were a finalist and a beauty pageant? Is that true?
Yes? I was?
What was the beauty pageant? You were the finalist in Miss New York State.
Mister York State Universe for.
The Miss Universe. Yes, you were like getting on deck from Miss Universe. Yes, and you were, and you were you were the runner up for Miss New York State Universe.
Yes.
When I look at you, you're so attract if not as just as a woman and beautiful, you're an unbelievably beautiful woman, a gorgeous woman, and you're attractive as a person. You got this warmth you of that magical Juna saqua that people have on camera. People are connected to you, and they're looking at you and taking you in that head toss of yours.
Thanks.
You should have patented that you could make a billion dollars teaching people how to do different types of head tosses. Shouldn't effects or your head tosses is legendary, But you stayed connected. I'm assuming because of family your husband are the things that a lot of people do, but with beauty, tellent that you could have gone to LA and just made movies and did TV and just ran in that direction, and you didn't why.
Maybe that uncertainty, you know that you were saying some of the younger generation now is.
For you telling us your insecure Susan Lucci absolutely?
Yeah.
Was it also a family?
Yes. I by that time, by the time my career was taking off, I had my first child, my daughter, Liza, who was probably three years old, four years old, and I just thought I wanted to raise my children here. You know, anything you ever read about raising children and being a celebrity yourself, especially not in New York, but going to LA and.
Being a mom and being a mom.
I'm a dad, but a mom, big difference.
Yeah, And so I wanted to raise them with as much and I'm going to put this in quotation marks normalcy as possible. And what I knew is normalcy was growing up in the town I grew up in, and in fact, when I met my husband, I wanted to move away from there. You know, when you grow up someplace the grass is always green, or someplace else, and I didn't realize how special a place it was. But my husband, who came from the Austrian Alps pretty special place itself. Grew up in this magical way, thought that Garden City was a great place to raise children, and so he you know, he had that influence over me, and I thought it was right. And from everything I read and everything he said and everything I could see by that time, I thought, yeah, there's a sense of community here, and there's a lot here for raising children in normalcy. Also, as I got closer up to the nighttime series situation at that time, not that my daughter was even in school as she was three, I learned that they take a break at the time, it was you would never see your children. You know, you go back to work on a nighttime series, at least in those days at the time where your children are getting out of school. So the whole summer, you know, you're busy going back to work. Whereas if I stayed in daytime, I could go whenever I wanted to go, according to the more control over my room.
I tried forever never to work in the summertime, and in many many years I didn't. I would I think the time as I worked in the summer was for like for Scorsese, oh well, like I nobody was saying like I had to say yes, there was no and go shoot in August or something for a couple of weeks. I mean, I never had a big part in those films, but just to be with him and be around him was a thrill. But I tried to, you know, be with my kids and stay home all the time. And then eventually that becomes who you are now. When you finally won your Emmy, your heart fought, well earned, well deserved Emmy. Well you were sitting that you just expected to be the same over again.
You kind of kind of, yes, I will tell you that every year I would get whipped into a frenzy because the press corps, you know, they've did this is your year, this is your year. But that year everything was in place. It was a great storyline. It was very well shot, very well directed, very well acted by everybody. Good stuff. But you know, after a while, I mean, nineteen, it was my nineteenth nomination. You know, you kind of say history's taught me. I'm probably not, you know, and yet part of you and I'm also not. I'm a hopeful person. I didn't want to give up completely, you know, so yeah, I thought, well maybe, but I wrote a couple in my head the night before, lying in bed, I thought, wow, if they're right, there were people I really want to thank, so, you know, talked through my head a little bit who I might think, but I kind of didn't want to let myself even go there.
You know, you won the Emmy for for Acting, your nineteenth nomination. Yes, and then you won the Life Achievement Award. Yes, just now, just now, well, and now how did that come about?
That was a phone call. I got a phone call from my publicist saying, what was the organization the Daytime Emmy?
The Daytime Emmys, and there's an.
Emmy committee, right, and they unanimously said they wanted to give me the awards.
So my god, well, congratulations for that. Congratulations for that.
Thank you much less hair raising when you know ahead of time.
Much less. And Nicholson said to me a while ago, I said to him, when you won the Oscar had been nominated a couple of times. When you won the Oscar, you kind of looked like you knew you were going to win. You were sitting there, you had this really kind of a weird kind of smile on your face, sitting and I watched for the film and he goes.
They owed it to me.
Oh, he said, they owed it to me, and they knew they owed it to me. I've been nominated two or three times before and I didn't get it, and they knew they owed it.
Tonight, it's so fun.
Let me just say, you are this great goddess and legend of daytime television and so forth. But I tell you, I hope you don't retire. You can't retire because you're not done. You're not done. Thank you, a lot of other things you could be doing. Thank you, My thanks to Susan Lucci. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Maureen Hobin. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.
