Table for TwoLong before Ted Sarandos’s company turned “binge watching” into a national pastime, the co-C.E.O. of Netflix stayed up long past his bedtime in order to catch The Jack Benny Program and I Love Lucy, developing a passion for film and television that has guided him ever since. After spending his early career rising through the ranks of the video distribution industry, Sarandos’s acumen caught the attention of Netflix founder Reed Hastings, who pitched Sarandos on his company: what if renting movies and television shows could be done from the couch? Over the following decades, Netflix evolved into the streaming service we know today. And all the while, Sarandos’s keen eye for potential smash-hits such as House of Cards continues to help deliver unforgettable plotlines to homes around the world. On this week’s episode of Table for Two, Sarandos joins host Bruce Bozzi to discuss his early life in Arizona, meeting his wife, Nicole Avant, and the process of writing the prologue to a new edition of her book, Think You’ll Be Happy.
Hi everybody, it's Bruce. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Table for Two. Today we're back at one of my favorite places, the Tower Bar, for another amazing lunch.
I mean I usually do the chop with chicken. Yeah, that's my I'll see.
I'm going to do the exact same things. It's one of my favorite things.
This time around, we're speaking with someone who has helped changed the landscape of television as the co CEO of Netflix, but today we're going to be focusing in on something very important to him.
Family.
Our guest recently wrote a touching forward to the paperback version of his wife, Nicole Levant's book, Think You'll Be Happy.
Oh actually I can take smigula. Normally it takes sparkling.
But you know you're not going to say you.
Take sparkling please.
That's right.
We're having lunch with Ted Surrandos.
We're going to talk about.
His in laws, his own parents, and how his childhood help shape who he is today. So sit back, grab a glass of rose, and I hope you enjoy our conversation. I'm rus Bozzie and this is my podcast Table for two. So if you've pulled up a chair today, it's your lucky day. We're having lunch with You've changed what TV is, how we watch TV. You are a man of such.
Integrity and warmth, and.
I've had such the pleasure of getting to know you and your wife Nicole.
We are having lunch today with Ted Sorrandos.
Thank you for having me.
Oh my god, thank you for joining me.
And you know we're and today is an interesting conversation that we're going to have because Nicole, your wife, Nicole was on the show and she wrote her memoir I think You'll be happy moving through grief with great grace and gratitude.
And the second edition has just been dropped.
Right, yeah, yeah, and you wrote the prologue to it, and I did.
I've never done that before.
Yeah, So tell me and I want to talk about your phrase I will meet you there.
I think it's so beautiful. But Rick, how did that come about?
To ask me to write the foot the road for the for the book was so important for her because and for both of us really, because it's how you process grief, for how you process events in your life is really up to you. Like you realize pretty quick that you don't have much control over these things. That happened. We did not anticipate, you know, months before the you know, the terrible murder of Nicholl's mother or the you know, the timely passing of my father, that either one of those things will be true, that we were planning his eightieth birthday and we you know, just have Thanksgiving.
It's just it's a yeah, I mean, it's a contextualized to a listener. Within a week, Ted you lost your father who was about to be eighty, and a home break in Jacqueline and she was murdered, and like that's like life changes like.
This, just like that. And again neither neither we could have been planned on or thought about or such a terrible turn of events. And I think the thing that you know Nicole as well, But I think what about the thing about her is that she really is this kind of EmPATH, and she really is so thinking of other people so unconsciously. I don't think she wrote the book thinking she wrote the book for herself, but of course it's a book that helps millions of people, Yes, and it's a she knew going into it. What can I do? How can I turn this terrible thing in my life into something positive for other people, and that was the moment because she had been struggling to write a book for a long time, for a few years, more of a biography, more was about her, And it totally makes sense that what she needed to get over is not making it about her as soon as it was about somebody else. It was about her mom's that it flowed out of her just came out of her. So the process of going with her to some of the bookstops and hearing seeing the emotional reaction from people who've read the book, it's very very moving and very very touching. And it was me watching her journey from the side and reading around and shearing heron for sure. And then she's reminded me one night, she said, you know you're you're inextractable from this story. Is this was your you know Jackie as she was a mother. I say she was a mother, my mother in law. But she was everything you'd hope your mother would be, you know, meaning, super supportive, incredibly wise, every loving, everything you really want your mom to be. My you know, Jackie got to be from my mother passed away several years before, and so she was great and not just for me, but for my kids as a grandmother, unbelievably supportive and engaged and wise, and people look up to her, including my kids, and so universal.
When you ever her name is mentioned, it.
No, she was earned. I mean she's she did more on this planet in a very short time. I know, you know, you die in your eighties, you figure, oh you had a good run. But she jammed a lot of life into that into there. And I look at that that she's so inspiring in that way. So and when Nicole said, you know, the book, the paperback was coming out and it was an opportunity for the book to reach an even wider audience, and she asked me if I would take a run it right in the phone. It was very very moved that she asked her.
It's really beautiful. Your words are really beautiful.
And the picture you paint of not only sort of the trauma of that night and receiving that phone call, but also sort of getting the family to the hospital, and then the emergence of watching your wife take on this moment where becoming the matriarch in this sort of, as you said, way that her mother could never have imagined but had prepared her that way, and then being with Clarence as he departed the past. Where did that come from from?
With? Well, I mean for Jackie preparing Nicole for anything, the how beautiful it is, it included preparing her for the very worst thing you can imagine, not intentionally, but but maybe intentionally, you know. And I think that her her the way that Nicole just Rice rose to the occasion. There was no time, there's no time for anything but for me to step up, right, and she instinctively knew that. You know, we're in we're in the we're in the emergency room. We're waiting for the word from the doctor. So what happened? How was Jackie, which is going to make it through this surgery after this shooting? And they did the thing that you see on TV where they come and ask you to go to a little room, right and you know, so walking to the room, we knew, you know, that was not going to be good.
Yea.
And Nicole's brother Alex was there. He was distraught, and her father was just overcome with griefs and it's almost as if the entire room melted down and Nicole rose up because she knew she had to and it was just it's a beautiful thing to think back on that, you know, such a horrific night. Yeah, to actually watch this physical transformation of somebody, somebody you love as much as I love to call and know that it wasn't like she didn't that in that moment she didn't need my help. I knew she would, I knew she would down the road, and in that moment she did not. It was very instinctive and very automatic for her. It was just a reflex.
I really do love I will meet you there. We're going to revisit that. But so, like, let's just talk about the actual reel, Like where did.
You meet n I met Nicoll during the Obama run for the first one. I was going to a We went to a big fundraiser here in La. It was the first one he did after he got the nomination. And I was the last person to arrive and she was pissed late. Yeah. So her very first words to me were, you are late. Words I have heard many times.
Wait, this was the first time you met, the first time I laid eyes on, first time, you are late.
And she she's like she again, she's immediately she was in charge, she was running this event. You take your pictures and you get to your table. And I remember just having my breath taken away a little bit when I walked in the room at her energy and I and her beauty of course, but also energy. And I'm looking at her and I found myself watching her work the room like working around. You go here, you go there. She was very, very very much in charge of that room. And a friend of ours, Laurence Bender, who actually introduced me to Nicole, was hosting a table and that we were sitting at, and she came over to tell Lawrence you are not the Senator is not coming to your table. If you want to meet the Senator, you go to that table, and she stormed away again. And so I said to Lawrence to go who is this.
She's a frire story.
And he said, how do you not know Nicole Avon? She's famous in this town. I have no I've never met her. He goes, oh, you'll meet her tonight. She's great. And so after the event was over, Laurence hosted a table at Ago, the former Ago, and said, you guy, should you should come? So I said great. We go to the dinner and Nicole comes walking in the room and Laurence said, switch seats. You should talk to Nicoll. She's she's great. You should get to know Nicole. And she sat down next to me and we talked for three hours with a table of ten, but it was just the table for two, isn't that we talked for three hours straight.
That's when that takes over and like the white light, everything goes away, but the two of you, like all the noise in the restaurant was just and from that point on, So then you asked her out on a date.
Well, we talked that night though by the way, we talked about everything you're never supposed to talk about on a date, Like we talked about religion, politics, history, everything we're not supposed to talk about it, right, And it really was an unbelievable experience that by the time we I did ask her for a date if you afterwards, and she she she had she tells the story, but that she had been She said kind of like unconscious. I hope I see him again. And I wrote a note to her at the bottom, but I said, I hope I see you again. So and uh.
So Nicole has that way about her. She yes, she's a manifestor, Yeah, she's a manifestor she really is.
But she so that then that we met for a drink that turned into dinner and after a pretty short time, right, we not only were together after very sure you were married? Right?
Well?
I mean, if I truly believe, like I shouldn't point in your life too, when you've lived enough life and you know, you just know, you know, you.
Know, and it's just like, yeah, let's we we gain our life together. Yeah, we were.
I think we're about nine months in and I said to her, I don't know what else I'm going to know in six months that I don't already know, right, And I was very sure about it, right. Yeah.
My next question in reading this, when I was thinking about it, I was like, so, when was the first.
Time you said I will meet you there, like.
You know, in because there's two ways to be saying yeah, i'll meet you there, I'll meet you at.
The tower, or i'll meet you there.
Yeah, I think it's kind of like that you'll be happy in the way, but it was it was not a conscious.
Decision, right, so that you'll be happy.
To also take that right away, think you'll be happy, but i'll meet you there. Is it actually just kind of very organically flowed and I sat down to write at the first draft, and it's a thing that stuck out to me as kind of an like you said, it's a string of words, it means very little, or it could be life changing, and for me it was. And again, meeting somebody where they are physically or where they are emotionally, and to recognition that in a life together, consequences dictate that things change and and you change, and you're not in the same state that you were in, and you're not in the same space that you were in sometimes and you have to meet that person where they are and try to help them through it and that they will do the same for you.
That's very important.
And it's not always easy, as you know, to meet someone there, you know, as we evolve, as you have a shared life, a journey, which is really what you have with someone when you really choose to spend. Has there been a time where to meet Nicole or meet or you know, having Hole meet you there wasn't so easy where it's like, Okay, I'm gonna get there, but I don't know how much.
Oh for sure, it's all I mean, I would say when the first time I consciously remember the meet you there. Being part of our life was right after we got married, she became the US ambassador to the rahamas sure and physically moved to the Bahamas, and I could not physically move with her at that time, so we were I was doing two weeks home and one week there for the first couple of years of our marriage. Okay, so our whole marriage was I'll meet you there, and then when I would meet there, I would you know, get off the plane and get into a suit and be you know, you had duty duties on top of that, and then also I had to show up for her in a way that she was there by herself, you know, so to be able to make up for lost time constantly and then still invest in time, invest our time in each other. We had little bites of getaway time together that were not part of duty. And then also we're you know, both that we have kids that were also needed that attention. And then yeah, and so when I have a Sarah an TONI and Sarah and Nicole came into our lives and at a really ruckous time going into early teens.
Oh so yeah, with me with Brian and Billy's it's not an easy time.
To begin a relationship with somebody because what you also realized that I'm sure the call felt this way and you they have to love you like you love her and she loves you, because without that it's not easy.
Yeah, and it's and it's bouncy. And I think about it the time together and Nicole's willingness to invest and lean into them and uh and you know sometimes swallow some pretty hard transactions, yes, and also like to step into a role and she really did. I mean, I think some of Sarah and my daughter's favorite times in our relationship together was times that she was in the Bahamas without me with Nicole. Yeah, and just really that spent some real time and saying with san with TONI told me would have these really almost rituals in the Bamas that he really loved and enjoyed it. And then he would show up and have duty. So like he you know, when he showed up he was the ambassador's son and they would you know, he would show up on an aircraft carrier and to meet people.
Yeah. No, And it's funny with when when you were a kid and you're like because.
When you're the step which I hate the word, I never you know, Billy and I we don't really use step because it's you know, you get past whatever that is.
But you also have to.
Maintain your sense of like who you are as the like. So in the room sometimes you know, you respect the parents, the biological parents, and you might disagree or agree, but you have to find that thread.
It's a difficult road. It's a difficult road and not underappreciated too. Yeah, so I definitely think that that is something where if you could find that place and people comment on it a lot about Nicole and the relationship with the kids, Yeah, it's very special.
Kind of sounds like this could be a good show on Netflix.
So I'll meet you there kind of again started with this dual life we had back and forth. Interesting when Nicole came back from the Bahamas, it was because my mother had just passed, and it was this time where she writes about it in the book What a Difficult How she looks back with great regret her reaction because she was so busy in the role that I was talking to her about the funeral and she was talking back and forth about work, and then this realization that she was not in the right place at that moment. But she came to that conclusion on her own, and it was led to the chain of events and led to her coming home, which was, you know, there's a lot that she was needed for here, and then she came back and up to work work on Obama's reelection, but also more importantly, she came home to be with the family. It's so unlikely, not because she's black and I'm white. It's because I grew up like very lower middle class and I find out later that I'm dating a princess at Beverly Hills.
Thanks for joining us on Table for two.
We've been speaking with our guest, Ted Crandos about his wife, Nicole. Levant's parents, Clarence and Jacqueline. Clarence was known as the Black Godfather at Motown Records. Jacqueline, or Jackie as she was lovingly known, was a huge influence in both Nicole and Ted's lives before her tragic murder in twenty twenty one. People don't experience, you know, knock on wood, hopefully what you guys experienced within that short period of time. So how did the light come back in through into your family, into you and Nicole through the darkest hour of that, you know, how does how do you dealing with grief?
As Nicole is written about.
Yeah, it's interesting because I feel like it was very it also was organic as as as shocking as the whole incident was and the whole dealing with it, this whole kind of organic period that kind of started with the passing of my father and ended with the passing of Clarence a couple of years later, with this tragedy in the middle, you know what I mean. So it wasn't it kind of eased, It almost eased you into it out of it. And and like my father passed exactly the way we all hope to, just took a shower, put on his pajamas, went to sleep and didn't wait God, bless God. He was about to turn eighty and was you know, he had lived a life and it was beautiful. And then you know, Jackie, with that, you know, kind of horrific and you couldn't have imagine Clarence was kind of in that, you know, somewhere in between. Yeah, we didn't really see it coming, but he was sick and said he was you know, uh, And and then what we did have is that last week together where he you know, he was unconscious for you know, for that period of time because.
He moved in with you and Nicole.
Yeah, you have this whole immediately he came, he came from the hospital to live with Nicole and I and we and it was like a gift, I say in the in the forward, it was like a cosmic payback almost, this incredible experience of.
Having them with us for a couple of years. Uh, and to tell great stories. And I took that as like almost like a like a built in mentorship at home. Have to imagine making deals for a living and having clear at the house. Yeah, and he and he veryly never he always had great advice, and it was never about the deal itself. It was just about people and how people react to different things. Did you try this, did you think about this? You should ask to mention this or that kind of thing. Yes, Yeah, it was all the things that happened on the edge of a deal that make the deal open, you know, closer enough. So really helpful in that way. But we'd have these meals together. We just talked about music and we talked about life. And he would tell you know, he hit a very big repertoire of stories, they kind of got smaller and smaller every night. And the story. I'm always endlessly fascinated by what stories stayed with you till the very very yeah, from childhood or from adult even from your later adult lives. And so in that way, it was a very interesting thing to watch, and we would just spend we got to spend a lot of time together, which in contrast, when my father passed fairly unexpectedly and he had lost my father had a stroke several years before and lost his speech. So for seven or eight years of end of his life, we didn't really talk, couldn't talk, and so my father was a I would say a kind of a long goodbye in that way, and Clarence said, filled a big, gigantic void for that time that I wish I had with my dad.
Is there a story that came out of that that you had never known? That you were like, oh, wow.
You know, there's funny. He would say these little It wasn't really out of it, didn't come out of that, but it's like he planted the seed for it there then you find I found out about it later. Actually, he would always say these things because he did so many enormous things. He would say some things in a very nonchalant way. You know. I helped Albell sell Stax Records.
Just that that's it.
And then you see this great Stax Records documentary on HBO recently, and Clarence changed the face of those artists and changed the whole fate and future of a certain kind of music because of that deal. And so you realized these things later as they come out. He just did him. It was just like, oh, yeah, help the buddy. I helped the buddy.
You know.
You you talked about the ability just to keep going forward and not be stuck in the nostalgia of what was and creating.
And I love and admire and respect these guys, you know, these pioneers ahead of us. And I became very good friends. I've been for a for a long time, very good friends with Tony Bennett. We did a document before Netflix streaming even we did a documentary on Tony Bennett with Clint Eastwood, and somebody knew I was a I was obsessed with Tony Bennett, and they said, hey, this might be an interesting thing. Clin Eewood's going to produce it and his team is directing and an editing, and I'm like, let's do this, right, So do this. I get to know Tony. I joined his board for Exploring the Arts, which is a nonprofit that pays for performing arts programs in public schools. So after the budget gets cut, the first thing that gets cut usually is the arts programs. So we come in and backfill that. We do it for seventeen schools in New York and LA and and through that process, and this was Tony's you know, passion, right and through that and so much so that he built a performing arts school in Queens in his hometown of Astoria. And he named it the Frank Sinatra School. So imagine doing all that work and naming it for somebody else, right, But that's to me, it's like that kind of humility. So great. But I knew. So I got to Tony, and then I got Norman Lear, who's become a very good friend. And you know, I knew once I knew all these guys in there who were in their nineties, I knew that these days were coming, and have so many of them in the last few years. It's just it's kind of opened to either a void or an opportunity in the universe.
That's a good way to look at the opportunity and also.
The the the idea that you were able to, you know, share a journey.
Where does that fit into your work?
Because now you have all these really great stories, does that inspire you or motivate your help sort of shape the work that you've done.
Yeah, I mean, look at the idea that you can have, that your the work can have a lasting impact is phenomenal. In a world is full of distraction and full of noise, something that really stands out or sticks around is pretty special. We were talking before we started here about how young people don't really know old things right, and we grew up on old things right. So the reason I think one of the things that really influenced my success had been I grew up watching I couldn't sleep at night. I was not never a big sleeper, like five hours a night when I was a kid. So you watch late night TV. So I watched. I knew every episode of the Jack Benny Show, the Dye Griffis Show, Thank You, I Love Lucy, And so for me, I was really shaped by those early days of comedy and and so for me and that influences I desire to make things that people can't wait to see. I remember reading an article about I Love Lucy was so popular and it's peak that during the commercial breaks, the water pressure in New York City would drop because that's what people would wait, everyone's going to go to the time. And it's like that impact our custure. And then you know, the other night, we had a hundred million people around the world watching the Jake powfight. Yeah you know, I mean yeah, you so back fifty years to find an audience that big, right, and especially for you know, for for a boxing match was back with Muhammad Ali was fighting on ABC to get a bigger and after that, the next biggest audience at the same time would have been the Mash finale over forty years ago, right exactly. So so so a lot of these things will stick with me about what to do and and to get to know people who have done it way before me. That's you know, that's a gift in life.
I think, you know, to being raised by her mother. The sense of when you would speak about Jackie was all about really making sure how you presented and how and level of respect and how you spoke to people like that's a very important thing to pass on to your children, because the Cole calls it home training.
Home training, right. You know, you were not messing around with Jackie.
You know one of our one of the times, one of the business stories with Jackie and me is she we were we went to visit one time during We were bringing food over to the house all the time during COVID, but we went over to visit one time and she obviously had this thing planned because she was ready. So Nicole goes in the other room. She's talking to Clarence. I'm talking to Jackie, and she says to me, you should make a show on Netflix about Queen Charlotte. Just out of the blue, WHOA, And I call Jackie. There is a show a Netflix abou Quen Charlotte. It's called Bridgerton. She goes, no, no, no, I've seen that show. It's great Jesus, but it's you know, the Queen Charlotte's a real person and she's got an unbelievable history, and you should do something about Queen Charlotte specifically. And I go. She rolls her eyes and walks down the hall and she comes back with a stack of books about Queen Charlotte and letters, handwritten letters that Queen Charlotte had written that Jackie had collected at auctions over the years because she was, you know, she was obsessed with history and history makers, particularly black history, and you know, Queen Charlotte is this incredible figure and she's a you know, she's the real deal figure. And so I almost, like, almost just being nice, I say, oh yeah, I'll take a look, you know, because Jackie's never done this before. It never suggested or pitched any And I get home and start flipping through the material and it's remarkable. Her life is remarkable. And I called Shanda and I said, Shonda, my mother in law thinks you should do this. And I started reading through, and I think you should. And in fact, I worry now that Charlotte has become a popular character because of Bridgington and someone else is going to do it. You should do that. You should be the one's true And she sent her We sent the materials. As she dug into it, she goes, we're doing this right, and it just came together that quick.
That's fascinating. She was sitting on that like she knew.
She had the stack.
She was just like, okay, you wait for the right now.
Watched Bridgerton then said, wait a minute, you're missing a character here that needs her story told.
Yea, and Nicole talks about it. But you know they had her girl indoor and she grew up much did with Jackie's influence. But they had a wall of power basically just like a wall of black people first who did this, that and the other and all like people who are super accomplished Black people through history, and it was Nicole knew every one of them and every story growing up, and that was never lost at that history was never lost on her. So for Jackie to bring Queen Charlotte back to life something that she'd done for Nicole her whole life. So she just did it for the rest of the world.
Welcome back to Table for two.
While his wife Nicole had incredible parents, so did Ted Sarantos.
Long before his time.
As co CEO of Netflix, Ted grew up with his family in Phoenix, Arizona. What lasting influence did his parents leave on him? When you lost your dad and I didn't realize that there was a time where he couldn't speak.
But a son losing a father's very seminal.
It's a big moment.
How did that change you? Do you think?
How did it impact me? With my dad? Mostly there's a role reversal that happens eventually where you're taking care of your parents, right, And my dad was pretty independent and before he had his stroke, he lived on a boat. It was funny, he was. My parents were very young parents in their twenties and four kids together. And then my younger brother, who passed away also several years ago, came later, so he had raising five kids. They were just kids raising kids. And I remember growing up having this, you know that it's not that they were you didn't like having young, fun parents. When you're younger, you want, right, you want your parents to be your parents, and and he used to be crazy. But I realized as I got older and became a parent of myself, what was happening was my parents were just trying to capture the little the youth that got away from them, right, because they got to get too young. They started babies too young. So my dad was in his forties, he was trying to find his twenties, you know. And I came to understand that later too late in life actually, And same with my mom, like you know, and then they didn't really have like incredible role models in that way. So that for us growing up, it was I always jokingly saying I was raised by wolves because we didn't have a lot of rules in the house when they had set dinner time. The reason they watch TV all night is they weren't paying attention. Uh, And part of me was like mad about that all the time. And I would argue, and I used to argue with my dad a lot about all kinds of stuff, right, And then I realized at some point that the limited time we had together, but a silly thing to do is waste that time arguing with them. So he would say something that I either was wrong or I disagreed with politically or something, and instead of arguing with them, like oh that's interesting, and just stop arguing with it. Right, And we had a beautiful relationship.
And once you can make a shift, yeah, big shift.
That's it comes with age, it comes with wisdom, and it also comes with the.
Real realization that her life and we had this really.
I mean, as much as I talk about the life being chaotic and crazy, there's a real beauty to what was happening there too. My sister, my oldest sister, Kathy. I mean I think back of like memories and influence everything else. I read the book Jaws, which was a very racy book at that time when I was very.
I never read that really.
Oh yeah, there's very graphic sex scenes and kind of and but I got but I took it. I took it from from her. And she was a dance in an Arthur Murray dance instructure at some point. She did this really cool thing when we were growing up. She would always bring the kind of orphaned people to Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner at our house, and so being exposed to a variety of people in the lives and story he's started very young for me, and in fact, many of the stories that we did, you know, the folks who came to that dinner that would likely to be a gay dancer, who whose parents kicked him out right and didn't have family to spell celebrate the holidays with all that kind of stuff I'm talking about in the late in the mid seventies and eighties in Arizona.
In Arizona, yeah, yeah, concern, yeah yeah.
So she so again she kind of exposed me to this world that was you know, bigger than bigger than me. Uh. And this the stories that are being told at the table are not typical of the Arizona Table stories anyway. Uh. And then my sister Jean is this crazed growing up, she was this crazy Barbara streisand fan. So I think she gave me the sense of a fandom, like a real understanding of fandom, and like she would change her hairstyle of Barbara did.
So, and she changed her hairstyle a lot.
Oh yes, yeah, she did the Superman my favorite. This is my sister trying desperately to coffee that look in the fact, so much so that her boyfriend at the time who later became her husband, took me to see the uh the filming of the Original starsbod they did it. I was like a ten years older. We did it. They did at the ASU the opening of the film.
Offer me yeah, because they had the big scene.
Yeah, and they had to fill up the stadium, so it was the gigantic bill of rock stars. Peter Frampton, who was like the biggest start at the time with the liner to fill up the stadium, right, Okay, So again it's kind of very all these kind of early influences I always trying to think about. And then my sister Terry, who's two years older than me. Her she is like she understood, she understood a relationship with my dad better than I did. My dad loved cars and mechanics. He could fix anything, can build anything. And she talk about meets you where you are. She started doing that stuff to get bad more quality time with my dad. Yeah, and she's you know so, and she's so decided I'm watching her house. She kind of and it managed relationships in a way by meeting people where they are. It was a really cool influence. And my brother Joey who passed away too young, but he incredibly talented designer and dancer and super gifted guy who just like I just feel like he just wasn't built for this world. He had He had a really hard time and for someone so gifted and talented, he just had a really hard time getting things together all the time. So and but his kind of just passion for life and living life was something that was irew.
What an interesting I did not know any of this in regard to you, how you grew up and and I think having the young parents created this like camp in a way that.
You could, you know, become who you are and like lean into.
It and maybe you don't ever know what when you're in the middle of it, you know, really have to look back at I think my favorite show as a kid, I used to love that Happy Days of Her usurely.
I mean that lineup, I forget about it.
But I also remember watching because my dad. My dad smoked a lot, so we never went to the movies because he didn't want to go to I was though smoking. But if it was about the fifties we're in, that was that was his thing.
Go two hours? What was the Richard American?
American American everywhere? All the Americans and all that stuff.
We saw them all you got drive in?
We did. We went to the big sky drive in.
Yeah, why don't you bring those back?
I know it was a great COVID was going to bring him back and it didn't stick.
You drive in the cars going up and down window, you know. Yeah, the kids out of the trunk. People are running around, little kids in their pajamas.
So soundestly, I mean we used to go and those were really special night.
Yeah, it was fun. But also I was thinking about Happy Days, like the influence of that time period, you know, because iknew about knew about the fifties, I knew about old stuff and he but I remember our whole family watching Love American Style too, watching what became the pilot for Happiness was.
On Love Oh that they had a little vignette.
Yeah.
Yeah, so Love America Style was. I mean we were young, the come on with the.
Heart that was like the red, white and blue and it was like a vignette to a vignette. I mean my parents were out, my sister and I were like young. It was like that was like the ten o'clock sah. It was like it was like racy, and that's where kids don't have that they don't have like what we had.
Also, you know the you can only see something once a week, and you.
Know you were like looking forward to happy days and line I can tell you the eight is Enough, Charlie's Angels Vegas lineup on ABC or.
You know, you just knew what you were into.
And it was I was saying, I attribute a lot of my what drew me to television was order, like schedule and order, and I knew what time things were on and where I could find them and all that kind of stuff, and the house was not orderly at all. And I talk about my brothers and sister and my dad, but I didn't tell you anything about my mom, who is the funniest woman you've ever met. The life of the party.
My mom.
My mom was the life of the party at all times. Hysterical, hysterically funny and irresponsible.
Okay, did she smoke too, She was.
She was great. She would smoke and then quit, and then smoke, then quit. She was like she was selectively addictive. And I think about her personality, but to everything were smoking driving, We drove across country. We moved from New Jersey to Arizona. When I was a kid, we drove across country. I don't think they cracked the window.
Was smoking away. We were just like no.
Seatbelts, crawling up and down, having them exactly try to hate you in the back seat when he was especially with as many.
So here's my growing up. My parents, my mom, we were always out of money. I always thought we were poor, poor, but actually my mom they were just terrible with money. Because my dad was an electric working union electrician, so they probably had enough money. But we're always we always had like the utility some one utility was always off, so it was called dueling utilities. The electric was on, the gas was off, the thought, the phone was off. So it's like all the constantly. Again, they were just bad managing money. So we did one year for Christmas. My dad was it was during a layoff period and we had no money for Christmas and my dad, uh built so I'm gonna make the kids gifts for Christmas and he made us. I still have mine. He's like chests like a treasure Mine was like a treasure chest a store like the store, yeah, and built up and they're all different, they're different looking, and uh like I said, I still have that gift. I know have And my mom she was on the mission and okay, we're gonna make gifts this year. Okay, I got it, but she couldn't take it. So like Christmas, Eves went out and bounced checks and bought us all crazy toys and everything else.
So I still have those toys.
I don't have any of those toys, but I still have the chest.
So what's things like that like?
Again, as you look back, like I can look back on all the toys, I don't have things like that that become the most meaningful.
And we used to go on these vacates. Once a year we go on a vacation and we usually always the sad go for a week, okay, And one year we went and this is per classic my mom and classic my dad. We go and check in the hotel, and then the last day we're going to check out, my mom tells my dad all your money to pay the bill, to pay the hotel. Boll So of course you wouldn't cancel the trip. You're just gonna go figure out, figured it out, and I'll wait till the end, wait till the exactly so that my dad goes to the marina and fix his boats until he makes enough money to pay for the hotel.
See said, all those stories you said make you you yeah and bring you to the call telling you it's like there's like no coincidences in this world. Like it gives you, like the backbone, It gives you the integrity, It gives you the ambition, it gives you the heart because to have dueling utilities to be like in that situation where like you're like, oh no, like you're kid, you're taking it in.
And I really like now I look back and like I needed like we needed the fun of that vacation, and we needed to see my dad's work ethic to pay for it, right, you know what I mean. So it's that that exposure to it.
Exactly. Did you come Arizona to Los Angeles? Yeah?
I went. It was a period of time. So I came up through home and working video stores first and then through home video distribution, and the distribution business got dried up. Basically, the Blockbuster Video went direct and just squeezed out all the distributors, and we were the biggest distributor at the time, and so we took our billion dollar private company I was working at called et D lost like six or seven hundred million dollars in sales overnight as a Blockbuster. So we started shutting down plants. It was like it was not a great time professional and I knew I wanted to be in the business and I wanted to be in some steer in some steering capacity. So I'm gonna have to be in California to do that. I didn't know what, you know what that in what form that would take. I got recruited from a company a West Coast video video city that's their headquarters was in Torrance at the time, uh, in Philadelphia, and got recruited to co to work for them doing I was ahead of products, so basically the programming for the stores, which is a Hollywood video kind of size video chain. Yeah, uh and marked and marketing and merchandising, and so I did that for a pretty short time, about a year. But that's what moved me to LA And then I got in that year at the at that chain, I did a deal. It was the big emergence of DVD and I did a deal with this with Warner Brothers and Sony Columbia then to do revenue sharing on DVD, which was unheard of at the time. Yes, And it got into the trade magazines and read Hastings read the magazine article and said, I need that guy, I need that deal wow, And read knew, you know, he's a brilliant engineer, had a great idea for this, you know, for Netflix, envisioned it to be exactly what Netflix is now. And when I talked to him first in nineteen ninety nine.
That's crazy. And when you were getting like the DVDs out of the machine, Yeah.
Well for us, it was you know the or this back then er we're doing a right mail.
When I first met up, and it was so harsh for me to wrap my head around.
But this is rethinking. Like he went to the video store and got a forty dollars late charge for Apollo thirteen, and he said, this is toumb this is stupid. I'm gonna do something about this. And instead of like protesting the late feet, he built the company. And somebody said, these things called DVDs are coming, and Read had this idea, like, why don't we use the mail to send the videos back and forth? They were the tapes are too heavy, but DVDs were light.
Enough put the whole thing together.
He went to Tower Records and about five CDs and mailed them to himself. He goes, oh, this will work. That's the genius of Read Hastings. And then when I met him, he described Netflix pretty much as it sits right now, full digital media company. That the Internet at that time was so slow and so expensive that was unfathomable, and but he said, no, no, the Internet's going to get twice as fast at half the price every eighteen months. It's called More's law. And I just nodded, like I knew what.
He's talking about. I had no idea what he was talking about.
And I can't remember coming back home and thinking, I don't know if he's crazy or he's a genius or both, but he's going to do something to change the world, right.
Yeah.
So I was like, yeah, I just I love how life works. I love the you know, how you got you get put into different rooms or people start to say, okay, well.
That deal put me on Read's radar, which led to this role at Netflix. But if it was a different executive than Read, he most it would never allow a guy like me to exist, you know what I mean. And he gave me even when you know we did the deal for House of Cards was our first series we did the that was the first deal we did. We first, Lillly Hammer was the first one to get on our air, but House of Cards was the first big deal we did. And I remember at the time He's like it was it was more than the entire budget we had for streaming at the time, and we did the deal, and Read afterwards it's like, why did you do that? When I did in the original cut that business and and I told him, I said, I read, I did the risk, risk reward analysis on huh, And I said, if this works will fundamentally change our business. If it doesn't, we will have overpaid for a show. We do it all the time. And he goes, oh, okay, I'm totally supportive and just set and we're off to the rasis wow and a different He created a company and a culture that gave me the running room and the confidence to do that. And then also, didn't you know at any time we'll be tripped up anywhere along the way. He didn't crush you and kill you. And it's like, which is key.
Yeah, that's the humanity in it, in the humanity in you. That's what comes across.
Because when you have those kind of like influences, people tend to pass that out.
Yeah, and I look back to it. That is what struck me about that first meeting with Reading ninety nine was that he talked about this gigantic company that didn't exist, and he talked about a company that was going to be around after him, which is interesting now I think about at this kind of succession and I look at it. He was thinking about succession before the company was even built, you know, if because if you want a company to be around a long time. It implies there will be succession exactly so like and even the way he toyed around with the co CEO models and all these kind of things, all selfless all ways to make this company that will last, you know, for generations and generations and you know, way after you're going to be around. You have to be able to at your company without yourself, right, which is hard for especially for a founder.
One hundred percent believe me, coming from a family business that lasted ninety four years.
I think that was one of the.
Things that they stopped thinking about was just to you know, you know, not only to be innovative during a time of such great innovation in business, but also how was it going to look. I will take your line, I will meet you there, Because I think it's so powerful in life, from even raising your daughter who's seventeen and having moments right now where we're sort of at each other to take a step back to say, okay, where is she at?
How do I meet her there?
And how do I teach her to also understand how to you know, how do we all meet each other there at a time where right now it's a very.
We've been so much energy trying to drag people to where we are right exactly, intead of saying now I'll meet you there, and so we can't get there together.
Yeah.
I mean, it's a it's it's it's it's so beautiful and I really want people to If you haven't read Nicole's memoir, think I think You'll be happy, which is the text, right.
It is a text that Nicole got from her mother six hours before she was I think.
You'll be happy, and you're you're right. It's all like how do you say it?
And you know, Norman ly said to me once and I only met him once and I was sat on his podcast and he said something, but I think it is on a moment right here is if I changed one piece of my life, one piece.
I would not be sitting here with you right now. Everything I've done brings us to this moment.
And then he goes and now it's gone, like it's okay, like now, and I was like, like, oh my god, this is Normally I.
Always think about it in terms of perspective, right, And Norman had that way of putting everything in perspective before a meal, looking around the table, just telling everyone, wait, imagine how many things had to happen just like that for us to be here right now, and you just pause and think about it. Right, It's like everything that went wrong right is now part of this thing that went so perfectly right. Yeah. And I think that's a really great lesson for Nicole and for the book and for her story, which is all these things that went wrong actually ended up in this gigantic big picture of where things that are so right exactly and so worth being grateful for us completely. And it's that kind of grateful to be grateful in the face of incredible loss and tragedy. Something medical role models for me, and hopefully when you read her books you can role model for everybody.
I think she does.
If I sort of as we come sort of to the conclusion of our lunch, and I hope everyone has enjoyed your your So I could spend hours talking to if I had to ask you, if you had to, like say a word about your in laws and your wife, like to just one word that comes to you to describe Jackie or or feeling, what would they be?
Elegant? Yeah, true elegance, True elegance. It's which is, you know, a way of over you know, captured, you know, encapsuling grace and dignity and elegance that all comes together like it was everything put together, everything thought of. You know, it's just elegance, right, And you're.
Forward to I will meet you, you know, I will meet you there for Nicole's book. You say, I try to keep up. I try to find the same comfort she does. I love where it takes her and I love to meet her there. And I think that is a beautiful sentiment. And thank you Ted for joining me today. Thank you wonderful good lunch.
Thanks everyone for pulling up a chair. Thank you for pulling up a chair.
I love our lunches and never forget the romance of a meal. If you enjoy the show, please tell a friend and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. Table for Two with Bruce Bosi is produced by iHeartRadio seven three seven Park and Airmail. Our executive producers are Bruce Bossi and Nathan Ca. Our supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. Our editors are Vincent to Johnny and Cas b Bias. Table for two is researched and written by Jack Sullivan. Our sound engineers are mil B Klein, Jess Krainich, Evan Taylor.
And Jesse Funk.
Our music supervisor is Randall poster Our talent booking is done by Jane Sarkin.
Table for two's social media manager is Gracie Wiener.
Special thanks to Amy Sugarman, Uni Scherer, Kevin Yvane, Bobby Bauer, Alison Kanter Graber.
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