Now What? with Brooke ShieldsHow Rosie O’Donnell learned to embrace controversy
Actor, comedian, and podcaster Rosie O’Donnell joins Brooke for a wide-ranging conversation about having a family member who suffers from addiction, the ways they learned to practice tough love, and what it’s like to come into your own in the public eye. Rosie opens up about her early stand-up career (including stealing Jerry Seinfeld’s jokes!), her controversial turn as a co-host on The View, and why producers of a cult-classic film pushed her to hide her sexuality.
What do you do when life doesn't go according to plan that moment you lose a job, or a loved one, or even a piece of yourself. I'm Brookshields and this is now What, a podcast about pivotal moments as told by people who lived them. Each week, I sit down with a guest to talk about the times they were knocked off course and what they did to move forward. Some stories are funny, others are gut wrenching, but all are unapologetically human and remind us that every success and every setback is accompanied by a choice, and that choice answers one question, now.
What.
How did you develop your comedy? How did you develop a set?
I did the open mic night and I told stories about my family because at the beginning I did Jerry Seinfeld jokes seriously like I had seen him on MERV Griffin. And I went to the comedy club and I did as many as I could, not only with his jokes that he had written, which I didn't realize you had to write your own jokes, because I thought streisand doesn't write her own songs. Why do I have to write my own jokes? So I got up on stage and I went you know sometimes your carstals, you open up the hood. What are you looking for? A big on off, switch on off. I not only took his jokes, I took his cadence. I took everything.
And to ever tell him that he knows.
Because the other comics came over to me and said, where'd you get those jokes, Rosie? And I said, uh, Johnny Seinman, he was on MERV Griffin yesterday. They said you can't do that. I said, I certainly can. He didn't write those jokes. They go, yes, he did. And I was like, I'm fucked if I have to write my own jokes. So the other comics said to me, try just telling stories about your family. The jokes will come. And that's what I did.
My guess today is the incredible Rosie o'donnal. Rosie is an Emmy Award winning talk show host, comedian, actor, podcaster, and most importantly, a wonderful friend and mother. We met years ago, and I've loved watching her transformation from a stand up comic to a fixture in pop culture, an important and occasionally controversial social and political commentator, and an activist whose work with marginalized communities is too extensive to list. Here Rosie is honest, vulnerable, and committed to personal growth. As always. I was just blown away by her candor and her willingness to share so much of herself with all of us. So here is Rosie O'Donnell, Rosie O'donnald, Welcome to now What. I'm so excited a that you've asked me to do your podcast, and I'm very very happy about that, so thank you.
It was my pleasure.
We've kind of warmed up a little bit, So thank you so much for joining my podcast, which is called.
Now What Now What? What a great title.
It is a great title, much like yours. Onward. What made you decide you wanted to do a podcast?
Truthfully, it was doing a series, an hour long drama series last year that took so much time and energy and ended up being sort of disappointing artistically, and you know, they fired the show runner in between, and the lead mail didn't have a great time, wasn't happy about, you know, being in it, and it just was I thought of all this time that I'm out of my house with my little ten year old daughter. It was too much time. It wasn't worth not being a round her. So I really did think after that show finished, what can I do to stay home and still be creatively inspired? And I had been asked to do a podcast years ago, and I tried, and guess what, I had no idea how to do it. I would sit there by myself and I would try to just talk, like and it was like, this is not going to work.
And you didn't interview people. You weren't interviewing people. You were just talking.
I was talking. Yeah, that shows you a stupid way to do a podcast. I didn't have anyone to interview. I didn't have subject matters, I didn't have experts was but I never I never aired it. I recorded them and then I listened back to them and said, yeah, I don't want this deal. I'm sorry, I can't do it.
You call this just a start of a third and big chapter, and I just love that.
Yeah, third and final chapter. Truthfully, we have one to thirty, and then we got thirty to sixty, and then we got sixty on and how long you go on is anyone's guess. But this is the third and final chapter of a three chapter book. I like that.
I don't know if I'm comfortable yet saying final chapter because I feel like there's going to be a few pivots in this chapter or that this.
Yeah, they can be a lot of three many chapters, yes, many chapters. Yeah, that's true. There's so many times that I remember Nora Efron saying to me, you know, I didn't start directing until I was forty eight, or you know I didn't start doing you know, Georgia O'Keeffe never painted until and she would always know people who started things later than most. And I always hear her voice in my head whenever I think, oh, I'm too old for that. No, Grandma Moses learned to paint when she was a grandma.
I love that, though. That's as there is such a thing. I mean, my mom didn't want to be called grandma. Nobody want to be called grandma. And I just think, you know, I'm always like, hurry up and have kids kids, You're like, Mom, that's weird.
My daughter has three. I'm a grandma now three babies. She has three babies under the age of four, and she's pregnant with her fourth.
Wow, one to three for now.
Boom boom boom boom boom.
Oh my godness.
She's only twenty five and you know, it's uh, she's had some challenges and you know, she's had a hard hand dealt to her. I think as a kid, she was born kind of compromised in some ways, and she struggled, and we try to support her as best we can and try to, you know, not let addiction wreak havoc on the whole family.
Well that's a very very very hard, hard part of a story. You know. How do you think being parents, though, has helped her and changed her?
You know, I'm not so sure that it has yet. You know, I think that stable footing and some continuity, and you know, I think that those things, when they become part of a routine for her and she's able to care for herself better, will enhance her love or her ability to parent.
I mean, that's young to have that many children. My god, it is yes, has she Have you seen her mature in some ways?
You know, I'd like to say yes, but it's a struggle. And you know, from alcohol addiction from your mother. When addiction is in the equation, love doesn't matter. You can love someone to death and want them so much to be well and take care of themselves. But you know, I've been going to alan On for a while now to sort of deal with a lot of the stuff that comes with it, and it's helped me tremendously. I don't know if you had access to.
That ever, not when I was thirteen, when I was in my twenties, because I was continuing to carry the belief that I could change the situation, I couldn't get it quite out of my head. And then when was took hearing other people's stories and also going to AA too, because it was important for me to not just be ACOA or AA or alan On, like I wanted to know the different pieces that are affected in that type of a relationship, and it did take a lot of the onus off of me, which I will always be thankful for. The hardest part is loving someone yes, and not being able to fix it for that no, you.
Know, and never ever being able to stop trying. Like the you know, the one woman said to me, listen, if your addict is angry at you, you're doing something right right, And that's a very hard part for me to do, you know, Like when she has a need or she'll call and she needs something, it's so hard for me to stand in and not enable and not be so upset when she's upset of me, you know.
But also this idea of tough love. You know, we never think really to associate the word tough with love, you know, right? Did you learn that lesson? And through alan On?
I did, Actually I did with these wonderful you know, there's a group that I am in that is mothers of addicts and it's been so life saving for me.
And I imagine that losing your mom at such a young age brings this springs up a lot, because one thing I always felt with my mother was the minute she drank, I lost her, you know. And I've I've had my younger daughter sort of give me that back to me and saying it's annoying when you drink, mom, and that put up put a bell and I was just I can't repeat this. I cannot repeat this. And it's the thing I'm the most afraid of. To give listeners just a little bit of a background. Can you talk a little bit about your childhood, like what you were like as a little kid and wear it all. Where the Rosie that we love, where was she as a little kid?
Well, we were a very Catholic, Irish Catholic household. My mom had five children right in a row, so right now in my family it's sixty three, sixty two, sixty one, sixty and fifty five.
So that is the meaning of Irish twins.
You're not kidding. We had four in a row, and people would always think my sister and I were twins, and that my two brothers, my two older brothers, were twins, but we weren't. We were all single births. And my mother was member of the parish council at Christ the King Church and was very connected to the church. And she also had just started working when she got sick. She started again because my youngest brother was in kindergarten, so she started being as secretary at a school. And then shortly after that she was diagnosed with breast cancer. And by the time they opened her up, she had had pain in her back and I remember just like it was like around October Halloween she started not feeling well and then she was in the hospital and when they opened her up, which I only found out later, everywhere so they just told her to go home.
Did she tell you all of this, any of you didn't find any of this out until much later.
Yes, She brought us into the hospital one at a time, my sister and I, and she gave me a little gift from the people who sell things to people in the you know those little sign like this. It was a little emerald fake ring, and she gave that to me, and she told me to never forget. She never said I love you. We were not and I love you. Family. We were very closed off to emotions. You weren't encouraged to tell your feelings. Did you ever tell her you loved her?
No?
But I did tell my grandmother who lived with us, who was my mother's mother, who never could cook or never could drive anywhere or you know, she was just a home bound woman who my mom took care of. And when she died, I thought, are they gonna let her stay here? Like I didn't understand what had happened.
Were you all close your brothers siblings to me?
Yes, we were. We were. Now there's two sides. There's three of us on one side and two on the other side. And it's been like that for years and it's very sad. But if you don't have parents to say, knock it off. Your all coming to Thanksgiving and for one day you're going to get along. We didn't have that. We didn't have anyone keeping us together as children, and so now you know, we're estranged. And it's one of the most painful things that's happened to me in my adult life. You know, it's to be estranged from, especially my sister who I was so close to for so long.
It's such a tremendous loss. I mean, we will get off loss. It's not. It doesn't. That does not only define you. You've talked about the loss of your mother really sort of defining a lot of your life. Yes, but it feels like there's this theme of loss of being estranged. How do you How have you found the strength to process it all and remain hopeful?
You know what it is. I don't really let people leave my life, you know. I don't let like Jackie and Jeanie, my two best friends, are still my best friends since I was three. When I knocked on her door when I was three, when we just moved into Long Island suburbia, I said, do you have anyone here who's three? And the mother let me in and she did. Jackie and we are best friends still to this day.
You were on a campaign, Hey, Do you have anybody here who's three?
Yes? Can you imagine letting your three year old child walk across the street and go up and knock on the houses that were just being built? Do you have anyone three? And they did, so it was a big bonus for me, and I keep people close, you know, I don't really have much loss outside of the huge ones like my mother and my sister.
I feel like your sense of loyalty is just so pure. I've seen it towards me, I've seen it towards others over the course of many, many years, and I've seen you take the high road. I admire your work ethic and your resilience and feel like comedy is a part of that. Right right, When did you first realize that you were funny? Well?
You know, my mom, I think, suffered with depression. And when I would come home from school, if there was Barbara streisand on, I knew it was going to be a good day. And I would do my Barber streisand impressions for my mother and for my nana. When my mom was in a good mood, I would do it. Isn't this the height and non Chalan? I would do it all you know in my kitchen. So I knew I was funny, and I knew that I was going to be an entertainer from the time I was in kindergarten. Other kids are bringing in Barbie dolls and I'm like, going, I'd like to now do a number from the Canter and Ebb musical like and I would sing for the And IM not a singer, honey, you know I can fake it a little bit, but I'm not singer. I'm not a Broadway singer. Like, let's be realistic.
You know I'm not either. You're not gonna sing. I'm not gonna stand up opposite you know, Gheno and low people away, right, But I do have. And you paved the way because if it hadn't been for you in Greece on Broadway, the whole idea of casting someone who is not traditionally a Broadway star performer was the beginning of my whole Broadway career.
And in mine too.
So you started when did you see your first Broadway show?
I saw my first Broadway show in nineteen seventy three, Bette Midler clams on a half show.
Oh god, was that not the best revolutionary?
Revolutionary and I remember thinking, I want to be that woman. I wanted to be here now. Streisand was not someone I ever saw on a stage, So she was only in movies. She was far away in Hollywood. She lived in Malibu. I had no knowledge of all this but Broadway, where I could wait by the stage door and see a sweaty actor come out that just sang Pippen. I would be over the moon, over the moon.
How did you get into stand up?
Well, when I was in high school, there was a boy in my grade whose older brother was fifteen years older than him, and he was a stand up comic, and he came to see the show where you make fun of the teachers called Senior Follies. And I had written the Senior Follies show and I performed in it. I was Gilda Radner, Rosanna and Rosanna Dana. Right you, Evan, Notice you got a little spit in your mouth that goes up and down and up and down. I would do that. And so this kid says, I'd like you to meet my brother Richie. And Richie Minovini, who was a well known comic in the touring circuit, said to me, I got a comedy club on Huntington and Huntington, will you come and try I said, I don't want to be a stand up comic. I want to be on Broadway. And he's like, well, why don't you just try it? So I went to this comedy club and I had all my friends there. It was a Saturday night, and everybody was, you know, laughing and cracking up. And I didn't even have jokes. I would say things like Mary Lynn is dating Billy and Bob doesn't know, and everybody would laugh because it was true. It was just like it was like being in the lunch room at my cafeteria. And so Richie comes up to me and says, why don't you come back tomorrow. Well tomorrow was a school night, Sunday, so none of my friends could go. So I went up and I died a horrible death. I had not you didn't know you, You didn't know your audience. Now I didn't know anyone in the crowd. And I was standing up there going like, you know, here's my impression of pac Man. Who whoa? That's what I literally. And I was fifteen, sixteen years old, you know. So he said keep coming back, and he let me go sit and watch and I can't believe that my father let me. But I went every night to these comedy clubs and I would sit and watch and then Shirley Hemphill do you remember her from What's Happening? Shirley Hemphill was the headliner at the Eastside Comedy Club and she came in a day early when I was doing the hosting for the open mic night, and she said to Richie Manavini, she's opening for me this weekend, and he said she's not ready. She said, she's opening for me or I'm not going on and you're to pay your fifty bucks a show. And it was my first paying gig.
And how old were you?
Sixteen?
Wow? So wait, then take me back a little bit. So then you go to college and then drop out.
Yeah, I go to college and I had a one six two grade point average at Dickinson College, which was a D minus because I would not get up at seven am to take World History. I would you know. I had writing class I loved, a photography class I loved, but all the ones that you were required to take, I like, wouldn't show up. And I remember environmental science I couldn't understand. And the final was there are three lakes, and they told you all about the sedimentary stuff under which lake would be empty after this rainfall. And I run oh Lake B because there were some terrorists with camels who were coming in to the country and this was during the Iran Contra thing, you know, and they stopped at this lake and the camels drank. And I wrote this elaborate story, and she, this woman, professor Betty Barnes, called me into her office and she said, now, miss O'Donnell, I don't know if I'm going to be able to pass you with this, but this is the funniest thing I've ever read. I think you should go into comedy. I'm gonna give you the D minus. And she gave me a D minus instead of failing me. Was so nice of her. Then I quit that college and I went to Boston University, a conservatory where you had to audition, and I auditioned, and I went there to be an actress. And during the night I would go to the comedy clubs and do open mic night. And one night they said to me, so and so has passed out drunk. Will you go with Dennis Leary, who was unknown to this club in the suburbs of Boston and will you do thirty minutes? And I said sure, Now Brook, I had never done thirty minutes, but it was sixty dollars for one show. And I went with Dennis Leary and two other Boston comedians and I got up there. I did about six minutes and then I said good night, and then I'm sure I closed with whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, because it was such a great pac Man Joe. And on the way home, Dennis Leary said, listen, if you say you can do thirty, you better have at least twenty. And I said, well, thank you, I'm going to try to get twenty. And then I dropped out and I started getting gigs, and eventually there was a woman in the club east Side Comedy Club that my friend's older brother owned, and she came over to me and said, Hi, I'm Ed McMahon's daughter. And I said, you're not Ed McMahon's daughter. You're in the middle of a long island. What are you doing? And well, my dad has me as a producer of Star Search. I'm here looking for talent. We'd like to book you on Star Search. I was like, are you kidding me. She gave me your card. The next day, Star Search called me and I was on my way out to Los Angeles and I won five episodes, and you got like twenty seven hundred dollars each time you won. I was richer than I had ever been. I ran out of material on the fifth or sixth episode. I called my comic friends at home and said, what jokes of yours can I use? And they told me what I could do. But I lost that six week and that was the beginning of my career. And as a result of doing Star Search, I got booked all over the country and I started touring when I was like twenty two.
I'd love to pivot to when you were on your show The ROSI O'donnalds show and it ran for six years, six yes seasons. What do you remember most from that experience in that time?
The love, truthfully, the love of the cast and then the crew, The love of all those producers that helped me do it. The love of the people I grew up watching and loving, you know. I mean, I remember Mary Tyler Moore came on the show and I went into her dressing room and introduced myself and showed her the notebook that I had kept since her show was on, with trivia questions written in childish scrawl, and she was like, is this real? I was like, it certainly, is so getting to me.
As if you would have made it up, Like the night before, I'm gonna I'm going to write in a book, I'm going to pretend.
To Mary Tyler Moore exactly. All I wanted to do was get that Mary Richard. But you know, I loved doing it. I loved every minute of it. Now, there were things that became too much. It became too big too soon. It became an overwhelming thing to be shot out of a cannon into the stratosphere and then say, you know you got to stay up there. I'm like, no, no, no, I don't. I'm only doing this until my kid goes to kindergarten. Then I'm quitting.
And then you're dubbed Queen of Nice.
Which was never accurate. You know, I it wasn't a horrible thing to be called, but I didn't think it was accurate. I don't think anyone who ever saw my stand up in my heyday would think that I was nice. I went after Woody Allen and I went after you know, sexism, and I went after you know, I cursed. I was you know, I was definitely not the Queen of nice in terms of my stand up.
Isn't it interesting how it was kind of like a negative I mean, you know that you take something like that and in that context, and in Hollywood it's almost it's it is an insult in many ways.
Well, at the time, people were being killed. On the Jenny Jones Show, they had a person who was, you know, upset that the person had a crush on him and ended up murdering one of the former guests. You know, Heralda was getting punched in the face every day. So according to the standards of daytime at the time, with the exclusion of Oprah, I was the Queen of nice only because nobody was getting bloodied on my show.
You know, can you talk to me about your decision to leave the show.
Yeah. When I took the show, the Rose O'donnald Show, I told them that I only wanted to go until my son was in kindergarten. Well, I ended up going until he was in first grade, and when the show was a big hit in year two, they said we want to extend your contract. I said, okay, I had signed a four year deal. I said, I'll give you two more years. That was six years now. The whole staff knew this from the beginning. I told everyone, no, I'm going to leave after that year. And everybody was like, h you'll never leave. You're not going to walk away from that money. You would never do it. And I left and people were shocked. Howard Stern asked me a lot. Don't you wish you'd just stayed on a few more years and got a few more hundred millions? And my point was this, if you ever have one hundred million dollars and you think you need more, you have missed the meaning of life. So I had more money than a human should have, and I said, I'm done.
I mean, that's a huge decision to make. And I know that we've talked about a lot of your pivotal experiences, but if you look back at your life, is there a moment where you thought, oh shit, now what do I do? You know? It's not this podcast?
No, no, honey, not at all. I think that after the Tom Selleck interview, where the first time I actually confronted someone about their political beliefs about guns, and he was the head of the NRA spokesperson at that point. He was not the head, he was the spokesperson for the NRA, and Columbine had just happened, and he was on a few weeks after that. And after I did that, and then the NRA started sending, you know, a lot of mail, not all of it happy, And I thought, at that point.
What did I do?
What did I step in?
Was this when you were hosting your show? This was when you were hosting your show, right.
Okay, yeah, Columbine was ninety nine.
How did you move through it?
You know? I moved through it by realizing that what I had to say was important and that women aren't just going to sit back and shut up as they're killing our children in schools. And as a mother, I was a young mother, I was very broken by Columbine.
Well, I mean, it was a devastating, It was just devastating in every way. But there was also a shift. And then for you personally, you go to the view and you get to have opinions.
Yes, what was that? Like? Wow?
It was you know what.
I grew up playing sports. I'm a very big tomboy. I played baseball. I played basketball, was on every team. I was the captain. You know. I was very into supporting other women. Title nine. Passed the ball, you get, the layup, you pass, you run. You know. It was team work. That's where I was going in. So I went in there with a team work attitude. But you know, Elizabeth Hasselbeck was on there and was the producer of an all woman's talk show with supposally a woman's voice. Was a man, an old sis white man, Republican who was against everything that I believed in and stood for. And he loved Elizabeth Hasselbeck and would go into her little dressing room and give her notes and talking points of the Republican press that they would release daily. She had the talking points, and you know, I was trying to get her to feel more than to fact. I'm like, but what do you feel about this?
You know?
And I tried. Here's what I did. When I took the job. I said to myself, I'm gonna love her no matter what. I took her to a first Broadway show. I took her kids to see the Nickelodeon shows with me and my kids. I had her to my house with her husband. They swam in my pool. I thought we were friends in a civil kind of way, and then one day on the show, she kind of threw me under the bus and I was like, are you fucking kidding me? And I finished the show, got my coat, walked out and said I Am not going back. And I didn't until a few of the years later when they asked me to come back, and Whoopy was on it, and you know it, we clashed in ways that I was shocked by.
That takes balls, all of it. I have to say, do you think that they you were made to be the villain in all of that?
In some ways I was, but it was all right. You know, I think I had produced my own show. I was the solo boss, and here I was not having any power to make decisions. There would be you know, the Rory Kennedy documentary about Abu Grabe was out about the torture that we did as a country, how we sanctioned it. And Bill Getty wanted to do the new Fall lipstick colors and I'm like, we're not going to talk. And then you know, Bill Cosby was a big topic, and I wanted to discuss Bill Cosby and Whoopee did not. Do you regret doing that show? No, I don't have any regrets in terms of like career and show business like that. I feel like each thing I learned something. But I know this is not the best use of my talent to get in a show where I have to argue and defend you know, basic principles of humanity and kindness. I don't know it was. It was not something that I would ever do again, you know. And when she died, Barbara and I, you know, got along after we went out to dinner. We knew each other way before I did that show, before she asked me to do it, and we remained you know, friendly towards the end. And you know, I forgave her because she was older and she did the best that she could with you know, what she had to work with. But it's nothing I'd want to do again. I could say that.
Yes, Something that strikes me about your career is that throughout it, there have been women who've lifted you up. Yes, in your comedy and your shows.
Well, and you know what's interesting, you know it's interesting too, Brooke, is that all of my movies were directed by women. Well, like I did League of the Row was Penny. She picked me out of being a VJ and gave me that. And then Sleepless in Seattle was Nora Ephron. She not only helped my career, she got me an apartment in her apartment building, the Apthorpe, and I lived there for the whole time I had Parker as a baby and was doing my talk show. And there have been women who have taken me in and nurtured me in a way that I wish all women did with each other.
I mean, there is something very I'm sure your mom can see this and can see that you didn't lose faith, and that you weren't alone, and that there were women that came to your rescue. I'm just getting a note today my producer, Julia, wants to know if you'd ever do a Now and Then sequel.
I would love that. I would love to do it Now and then Sequel. You know what's funny about the movie Now and Then. My character was gay, she was a lesbian. And in the film, I'm very close to Rita Wilson's character and I'm a gynecologist and I'm delivering her baby. And then I look up up from catching the baby and I say to her, I love you, you know, just friends like you know, not as a lover. And when they showed the film, the producer said, let's take out that she's gay, and they took every little tiny thing that I had done to build the character into an accurate gay woman and made her straight.
God did that just piss you off?
Well? I was like, this can't be really happening. Is this really happening? But you know, this was before Will and Grace, This was before Ellen was out, This was before you know, and it was very controversial to be gay, and it was contraver. My agent didn't know if I should take the job because what if people find out that you are gay? And I was like, come on, I'm an actress.
When did you come when did you come out?
After I I had two foster children and one of them we had for many years and I tried to adopt her and the state of Florida was not allowing gay parents foster parents to adopt the children that they raised. So I joined an ACLU lawsuit against the State of Florida and the Loft and Cruteaux lawsuit. Two men who were pediatric who were aids nurses and they would take the children of the dying people with AIDS and take the positive children and also the negative children, some of the children zero converted, but they wouldn't allow them to adopt these children that they had nursed back from the brink of death. So I joined the lawsuit with them because I wanted there to be a cause to coming out more than you know, hey I'm gay.
You know.
I wanted there to be some something that would be done to help children and need as a result, you know, And this lawsuit felt like God was saying, hey, you're up, kid, You're up.
You know, well, it's using using what you have in a very positive way and making a difference for the right reasons. So that it isn't you know, you on a soapbox or you making it about you. You were making it about something bigger, which I'm so sure helped so many people.
Yeah, it was. It was something that you know, being gay was never hard for me. It was harder being a child. So when I sort of figured out that I was gay, I was sixteen. I was driving my car by myself for the first time and I said out loud, I am a lesbian, I am a gay person. I am a gay person driving a car and I am a lesbian. I like, I just had to say it, and I didn't trust to say it in my house. I didn't trust to say it anywhere except alone in my car. And so that's that was, you know that I didn't have the trauma of, oh, your parents are going to find out a lot of gay kids worry about their parents looking at them with disapproving eyes. I didn't have that, you know, and so it wasn't as big of a challenge as it is for most people.
For me, that was the incredible ROSI o'donnal. If you want to hear more from her, go listen to her podcast Onward, which is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Now What with Burke Shields is a production of iHeartRadio. Our lead producer and wonderful showrunner is Julia Weaver. Additional research and editing by Darby Masters and Abu Zafar. Our executive producer is Christina Everett. The show is mixed by Vahid Fraser.
