Talk Easy with Sam FragosoToday, for your holiday week, we’re returning to one of our favorite 2024 conversations with actor Jeff Daniels.
Daniels is always writing. Plays, songs, a script or two. Even in interviews you get the sense the Michigan native is trying to relay the stories of his life in a way he’d find compelling as a reader, or listener. Bystander — as a viewer.
We sat in April around the latest chapter of his crime series American Rust (12:30), reprising his role as Police Chief Del Harris. It’s a performance inspired by his midwestern upbringing in Chelsea, Michigan (16:06) and the formative teachings of theater director Marshall W. Mason (21:20). Then, Daniels reflects on his arrival to New York City in 1976 (24:06), performing in Lanford Wilson’s play Fifth of July (27:20), and his early on-screen roles in Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild (31:10), Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo (34:20), and Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale (44:20).
On the back-half, we walk through his years making The Newsroom (51:48), working with screenwriter (and then playwright) Aaron Sorkin (53:20), and how the two of them reimagined Atticus Finch and To Kill a Mockingbird for both Broadway (59:49) and what he calls “a country at a crossroads” (1:05:33). To close, we sit with the utility of good writing in this fraught era (1:10:30), and a musical tribute to his late father, Robert (1:15:32).
Thoughts or future guest ideas? Email us at sf@talkeasypod.com.
Pushkin.
This is Talk Easy. I'm standa Fragoso. Welcome to the show today. I'm joined by actors, songwriter and playwright Jeff Daniels. I've been hosting Talk Easy for eight years now, and one of the byproducts of making something every week, at least for me, is that I have a lot of friends and family, especially my mother and father, that will send text messages to the effect of how's it going, where have you been? Are you going to take three weeks to respond to all thirty seven of my very funny memes? How come you don't call more? These are all very fair and justifiable questions, especially from my mom and dad, and I have to imagine for most people listening, this is a typical refrain you've had from your parents, or if you are a parent and have kids, you've probably sent that text, had that call. And so I've come up with a solution to this, which is what if I could solve this very real problem I'm having in my life through the show itself. What if instead of taping a typical intro for Jeff Daniels, I just try calling up my father and have him guess who's coming on the program this week? This is just an experiment. We may not do this every Sunday, but I thought, after eight years and four hundred episodes or so, why not try something a little bit different. I should note that my father has and I mean this, he has no idea that we're going to try this. I've not prepped him. There's been no debriefing. I'm not even giving him a heads up that I'm calling. So why don't we try him and uh, just see how this goes. He loves Jeff Daniels, so he'll probably get this pretty quick. But let's see what happens. By the way, this is gonna be the one time he doesn't pick up his phone.
Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system.
Oh god. Okay, So for listeners, we've made an edit. I've called him. I've called him six times. He hasn't answered. I'm going to try one more time. He's going to think something is terribly wrong. I know. And he's going to think like something bad has happened to me. Okay, we'll try them over time. If not, we'll call my mom. Here we go, Hello, Hey, what are you doing this? This is your son? Sam Jesus Christ.
Is going on.
Are pulling up for hostage or some ship.
Yeah, I have my hostage in this closet. So I don't know if you know, but we have a very special guest on the show.
Am I on the show right now? What the hell? What you were calling me? Some nonsense? Oh my god? Not again? Oh man?
All right, see if you can guess this, and I'll let you guess it. Our guest is someone I've been trying to have on the show for a long long time. He was born and raised in Chelsea, Michigan. He still lives and works there running the Purple Rose Theater Company.
Okay.
He fell in love with theater in college at the Central Michigan University. He's also I think the university's most accomplished college dropout because he never actually finished school. Instead, he left for New York City in nineteen seventy six. Now, when he was a young actor trying to make it, Jack Lemon once gave him some words of wisdom. He said, you gotta be different. Everybody's the same. They walked to the door and they're all the same. Actor, you got to be the one who's different, and sometimes that gives you choices, and so sure, enough. He took Lemon's advice and made a career out of it. I'm going to read some credits and then maybe you'll have a better idea who this is. His early work includes Terms of Endearment, Heartburn, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Speed, Dumb and Dumbo. You already know dumb and Dumberink? Isn't that one of your favorites? Dumb and dumber?
It's fine?
What about what about a rachnophobia? Do you remember that one?
Oh? Yeah, Spider's cool.
My personal favorite is a movie called Something Wild by Jonathan Demi. Have you seen that?
Yeah? You're talking about Jeff Daniels.
Wow, you guess that quick?
I mean I had what is that line? You had me at Hello at No but Chelsea Michigan. No, I was getting there, but more with terms of endearment.
Terms of endearment? Okay.
Yeah.
He's also done a whole lot of theater. He's been nominated for three Tony's, his latest being for his portrayal of Atticus Finch and Ta Kill a Monckingbird, adapted for the stage by Aaron Sorkin the last performance, I think I just want to highlight the newsroom he played Will McAvoy, Yes, the moderate Republican anchor hosting a fictitious show called Newsnight. He won an Emmy for that. It was his first Emmy win. Were you a newsroom guy?
Big time? We used to watch it when you were when you were a young lad.
You've never said the word lad, lad.
So the big thing for me that the speech everybody knows, the speech the.
America used to be. Speech used to be great. Yeah, we're not number one anymore exactly.
And I play that for my students so they can get a perspective of that we're not the shit we can be. And so that speech, it's just it's riveting. I mean, I played for certain classes who can get it. And so my deal is that look in four years from now, all every single one of you have the opportunity to vote, and you can change everything. Your generation can change everything. So what you do with it, it's it's your future.
I'm laborating this political point because in the last decade Daniels has made a pretty strong commitment to making work about politics. There's the Komi Rule, the Looming Tower, Amica can rust or you know, even playing Atticus Finch and to kill a Mockingbird post twenty twenty and all the protests that happened. Before we go to Jeff. What do you like about Jeff Daniels the actor.
He's authentic and I think that you know his his roles, especially lately, I mean, Louis Towers to me, is just amazing. I've been trying to get you to watch it because I've seen it like four or five times already. He's authentic, and I think he wants he wants to change. I think he sees his generation screwed up a lot of things and he's calling them out. That's amazing. You're gonna have them on the show.
I know it's been this has been a long one. This has been a long time in the making.
Yeah, well, I've been throwing out that name, Kevin Costner, you know.
Don't we don't we don't need. Look, we don't need. The short list of people that I've tried who have not agreed to come on the show. That's always my favorite thing. When I call my mom, She's like, you know, what'd be great? Have you thought about Brad Pitt? At least on this one. We have someone that I I really do love and I think started asking to come on like five or six years ago, and so with that, here is actor, playwright, songwriter, devout Detroit Tigers fan. Oh yeah, okay, exactly. Jeff Daniels. Jeff Daniels, nice to meet you.
Nice to be met?
Is it?
How are you?
How are you feeling today?
Good? Fine, terrific? Yeah good.
I'm sensing some ambivalence.
No, I'm I'm I've been on a family vacation with five grandkids, so it's been kind of and I just got in back yesterday. I kind of left it, and so yeah, it's like this is like a different experience New York City versus you know, Florida in a house with the kids, which are great, but it's it's, uh, I'm re entering the atmosphere.
So am I offering you a vacation from your vacation?
No, I don't want to say that. I don't want to say it because it is enjoyable.
We do enjoy it.
But yeah, suddenly it's just much quieter.
Well, I'll try to keep vaguely quiet. The show is called talk Easy.
Oh oh okay.
After all, we're taking this together in New York City, neither of us live here, but season two of American Rust is about a part of the country in southwest Pennsylvania, often ignored in films, TV shows, policies. Even when the first season debuted in twenty twenty one, you said that the show speaks to the crossroads. This country is in to the people who've been abandoned, left behind as John go elsewhere and the American dream fades so here we aren't three years later, do you still see the show and the country in those same terms.
The Midwest has always been flyover country for a reason. You know, the people on the coast, they don't want to go there. It's boring. The people aren't interesting, they're simple, they aren't sophisticated enough.
They haven't met my uncle or grandmother in Michigan then exactly.
And you know, I grew up there, and then after ten years in New York, and when we moved back there, we raised the kids in Michigan. And so when the chance to do American Rust came up, based on Philip Myers's book, It's set in Pittsburgh, and I'm reading the book, and I know these people. I live around these people, and in some ways I am of these people. I just thought it was so authentic and even the pace of the show the season, that small town pacing. They're just simple people. But what the show does and what Philip did and then Danny Foderman and Adam Rapp did the writers you have simple on the outside but complicated on the inside, and they were able to write a story not based on Philip's book, and then extended it and then made it really complicated so that it was something that people would want to watch.
You know.
Suddenly there are bodies dropping and things like that in season two. So's that ain't Andy of Mayberry.
I'm hoping that's not happening in Chelsea, Michigan, where you live. No, I mean not often at least.
No, not often, not off And it's certainly not like this. And that's where it goes beyond just you know, trying to do a documentary of what it's like to live in a small town in the Midwest. It isn't that. I do like the people. I like the characters. They're recognizable, they have stuff underneath what they're saying. They're saying one thing and thinking another, and all that stuff that you see in the Midwest.
We don't.
We don't as a rule kind of tell you what we're thinking all the time. I mean, you asked at the top of this interviewed, how are you doing? Really you're a little ambivalent. No, I'm just from the Midwest. You just don't get to read me. I'm not transparent. I'm not like over in your lap telling you exactly how I feel.
That's that's kind of.
I remember coming to New York and being of the Midwest and having to learn how to drop all that you know, how to you know, repress that kind of close to the vest, that kind of don't let anybody know what you're really thinking thing.
I'm born and raised in Chicago, so this is very familiar to me.
Definitely, the small town thing, kind of don't say anything and let them do all the talking kind of thing. So when I came to New York in the seventies, I was I was on an island. They kept going, Jeff, get up, do something in the acting class today, anything, please? You cannot sit in the chair and be silent anymore.
And did you say to them, well, less is more on it. I read that.
I didn't know what that meant. No, No, I didn't know. I didn't know anything. I was twenty one, and I I didn't know what I was doing.
In the sense of this show is part of you that you recognize yourself in the character of del Harris and the community of American rust. You know, you grew up in Michigan, the eldest son in a working class, moderate Republican household. Her father ran a lumber company in Chelsea, a company he planned that passed down to you. But the first indication that lumber may not have been in your cards was not going to be in your cards came, I believe in sixth grade when a music teacher named Diane Elroy got incredibly bored on a Friday afternoon and instructed students to do what.
Today, We're going to do a skit. We're gonna do a bunch of skits. We didn't even know it was improv. She didn't even know it was improv.
She was bored.
It's a Friday, We're gonna do skits. So she had a kid get up and do something, and then another one.
About the third.
One, she said, Jeff, you're a politician who is giving a speech and your pants are falling down.
Go ahead.
And I got up in front of the class and had the presence of performance mind to not just go right to the pants are falling down. I started with whatever I was taking. A sixth grader thinks a mayor might say, you know, at the open a ribbon coveting ceremony, I'm glad here today the firehouse, and I would tug at the belt just a little. The firehouse is the best firehouse we've ever built in our town. Tug at the belt again, and then it kept and then it was we're now both hands are tugging the belt, and I keep talking about the firehouse. And then by the bottom, I'm gonna guess seem like five minutes, but about minute and a half in, I'm holding up my pants as if they've got four hundred pound weights on them, trying to get to the floor. So it's this struggle to hold my pants. And the classroom was cracking up. And she went to my parents and she said, keep an eye on this one. There's something going going on.
When your teacher went to your parents, I wonder how much she relayed about the skit itself, because you were playing a mayor. Your father was elected mayor of Chelsea in nineteen sixty one, and so when I heard that story, I thought, No, wonder this kid knows how to do a stump speech. He probably has seen his father.
No, never saw dad, No, never saw No.
He went to You didn't you didn't support it, I know, the mayor thing.
No, he just went to meetings.
He just went to meetings on Tuesday nights, and then he came back and he was still the mayor.
We didn't know. We didn't know.
Now that had That was a tough, demanding job, don't. You can't put that down, not in.
A two stoplight town. It wasn't.
But my dad also was the guy that when the Kiwanis Club did their annual pageant. I remember this, I was five or six. They played Swan Lake and then he came out in a pink two two a ballot with a wig, probably a pink two two, and black high top Converse sneakers and did his version of Swan Lake and everyone was cracking up. That comedy that my dad had. I remember when they would have Bridge Club and they'd have eight couples and they're all playing bridge, and it's a Saturday night and we're downstairs and you can hear them, and all of a sudden you hear my dad talking and it's loud, and you know, the martinis are flowing, and you crawl up the stairs and you look and there's your dad standing up in front of all these other couples telling a ten minute story and they're all cracking up.
I remember seeing that.
It didn't click like I'm going to be an actor, but it was that that's in me. Those Jeanes are in me.
You remember seeing that and thinking what and feeling what what is that? What is how does he do that?
That's not the that's not the dad.
I know you saw a different person.
Yeah, didn't know it. Didn't know what I was seeing, but I was seeing something that clicked. And then the sixth grade thing with the classroom and the mayor speech, and then when I was a sophomore in high school, they were doing musicals. The same teacher sixth grade teacher was now doing the high school musicals, which they do would do once a year, and she'd pick one and she'd get all the kids from chorus. She taught chorus. I was in chorus because I could sing, but I was also on the basketball team because if you could, you know, walk in a straight line, you were athletic.
The team was five and twelve that year.
We were thank you. It was it was grim the.
Last game you played. I think you lost my thirty points or something like that.
Is that is that true?
Yes? I mean I don't have the statue in front of me, but thank you. Actually I have your field goal percentage if you want it.
Yeah, I would love to see that. I was either I'd either score twenty one points or three, but I would shoot like I was going to score fifty.
You shooting like it's your last game.
I was walking after a very bad basketball practice where all we did was run. I walked by the high school auditorium as a sophomore, and she was waiting for me. That same teacher. She said, get in here. I said, what we're doing auditions for South Pacific.
I need sailors. Get up on stage. God damn it.
So I went up and I you know, whatever that kid did in sixth grade he did again in that audition and got Now I'm hooked.
Now I'm in in your audio memoir alive and well enough, you said that quote. I've always thought that art is what gives us wings. Sometimes it's a teacher. So Diane clearly did that for you. Yeah, but so too did acting teacher and guest director Marshall W. Mason, who first casts you in a production of Summer and Smoke in your junior year of college. I think it was what do you think Mason saw on you at the age of twenty.
I think Marshall saw that thing maybe that I saw at the top of the stairs when my dad was telling that big story in front of all those people. He saw someone who could become someone else. He saw raw talent with self taught technique that was guessing right, and that whatever I was doing, I could become someone else seamlessly. Not to the degree that I could if I actually moved to New York and got into his circle repertory acting classes, which I eventually did, But that's where he gave me the technique and that kind of internal playbook that you use to get you where you need to go, whether it's on stage or in front of a camera. I still use it today.
For those unfamiliar. What are the tenets of that type? Well, I mean to the extent that you still find them useful.
As I tell directors five words or less if you can't tell me what you want in five words or left stay in the chair. It was a descendant of Stanislavski, who then Strasburg at the Actor's Studio took it, Sandy Meisner at the Neighborhood Playoffs. Kind of they all took versions of what Stanislavsky had discovered and kind of morphed it into their own thing. And I think Marshall was certainly a fan of Sandy Meisner and Sanford Meisner and put together his version of that. So it really was kind of a descendant of that stan of Slovsky method without all the personal trappings of please call me by my character's name. It was really focused on listening on using the other actor. You know, half your performance is in the other actor, which is not what we're taught in Hollywood and Hollywood your talk of you know, I'm ready for my close up, mister Demil, you act in front of a mirror. And he was kind of very no, make it about her, make it about him, make it about that other person. And then suddenly it's tennis back and forth and the audience goes in, you know, and a lot and The Fifth of July was a play that I did in nineteen seventy eight, where that quiet kid in the acting class got a part where he didn't say much in the play, and Lanford Wilson had written that for me, and I listened a lot, and I learned how to listen doing that play, which I did treat in three different productions.
So when you got cast in that play, you had been in New York for about two two and a half years at that point. But I just want to hold the drive over when you did decide to move from Michigan to New York September one, nineteen seventy six, at two pm in the Holland Tunnel, some clothes in your car, a guitar, and the forty five hundred dollars your father planned to spend on your senior year of tuition. When you clocked it was two pm and you were no longer in Kansas. What was racing through your mind.
Fear, I'm here for a reason, and I'm going to give it. So I mean, I'm going to give it some time. Marshall thinks I'm good. I have one person in the city who thinks I'm good. I remember that, and he stuck with me. He wouldn't let me leave after a year.
I was ready to leave. I was done. I'm just going to go home.
You called back, hop, Yeah, right, yeah.
I was about a year in and you know, I was living in one room on twenty third and seventh and it was just one of those, you know, horrible apartments, and man, I'm not happy. And you know, off Broadway was great, but you know, I wanted to go home.
I was done. I'll go back to the Lumberyard. I don't need to do this.
I was never invested to the point of I want to be a star. I want this is my dream. I have to fulfill it. I was just told I was good at it. Okay, I'm here because I'm good at it, but it's not happening. So I think I'm going to call the parents and I'm just going to tell him I'm going to come home. And my dad was, well, it's your decision. I guess he's starting to think Lumberyard again now. And mom was on the other end of the phone and was silent, and he talked for a few minutes and then he goes, Marge, what do you think And she goes find a way to stay and hung up. So I stayed. I'm not going back to that, and I stayed and she was right. It's like tough enough.
Were you surprised that my mother?
No, No, she was tough.
She was a farm girl, tough, tougher than your father.
Yeah, Dad, Dad was you know, Dad was strong in his own ways, and you know, could could talk to anybody and basically persuade people into thinking that what what he thought was right was the right thing to do.
Because it usually was.
I kind of grew up with Atticus Finch, you know, that's what Dad his reputation in town was. Mom suffered no fools, especially with her children.
When you spoke as a kid, did she stare at you with her arms crossed the way you do when I speak.
I don't know where to put them. I can put them here, I'll put them here. No, there's a microphone here, I can't. Oh no, I'll do I'll just hang on the Sididay.
Look you give when someone else is speaking. It's very complsed I listen, I listen, Yes, I listen. There's not a lot of active listening. There's a lot of very direct kind of listening. Yeah, she would do that, mm hmm.
Dad would.
Dad would move around, but she would she would.
He was more amiy.
She would stare at you and wait for you to stop talking. And then here's what you're going to do. Someday, I'll play my mother in a movie.
Since Dub and Dumber, we're wondering, when will you finally challenge yourself?
Harry Harry Dunn's mother.
So you stuck it out, You listen to her, you stick it out, you get that role in Fifth of July by Lamford Wilson. Was that the first time that you felt like a writer saw you, that a writer wrote for you.
Definitely was the first time a writer wrote for me. As I was at twenty two, twenty three, sitting in the back of the acting class, not wanting to do anything, scared to do anything, scared to make a mistake. All those you know, dredge up some personal memory and sob and acting class and then let everyone discuss it after you're done. You know, that's it was, you know, it's like therapy in an acting class. It was, Oh, that's where we're going to go. I don't get to do what I do in musicals, which is chicken wings and kind of what d da, No, we're not doing that here.
Okay, anti therapy is very Midwestern.
I'd say, oh god, yeah, yeah, we don't need help. That's what we say to ourselves. Wow, we say, or to anyone who happens to ask. Yeah, now we're fine, we don't need help. You're the one with a problem.
Thank you for looking at me when you said that.
Yeah, that's what acting class felt like, was like, Okay, we're going to open you up. And again, I'm in a Midwestern, moderate, soft Republican household where being except when dad got a couple of martinis in him, being extroverted was why do you have to be so noisy?
You know?
And in New York you come to learn how to if it's on your mind, it's out of your mouth and you're up on your feet and you're you're out, it comes. You have to learn to come out with those emotions instead of you have to unlock them. And that's what Marshall taught me. It was how to unlock them. He was the first one to teach me.
That while you're performing on stage, you're also auditioning for commercials, films, et cetera. In the early eighties before you land that breakout part. In terms of endearment, casting director Juliet Taylor told you to be quote less defensive and less angry at auditions. You've got to be more personable. What does getting defensive and angry at an audition look like?
You're not going to give me the part? So why am I here? I mean, what do you want?
And that didn't work?
No, I can't believe they didn't work.
Well, you got to understand this was several years now of terms of endearment, was seven years in of commercials in off Broadway, and you know, the dream of can I be in the movies is Broadway? Even an option? Is having a career, making a living as an actor, even an option. You know, when I talked to college kids brought in, I start out with rejection because that's the one thing that the academics can't teach you.
I have here. You tell actors that rejection is going to be part of it. And so are antidepressants.
Yeah yeah, I mean we're hot. The highs are high and the lows are really low. It's how we're wired. I mean, I'm not the only one. I mean Clapton wrote, you talked about it. Eric Clapton talks Every artist is because there's no sameness. And then when you do get in a hit, whether it's a play or whether it's a movie, it's temporary. Fame is fleeting, and you have to understand that now they're going to be focused on someone else and something else, and it's no longer. You're no longer the number one movie in the country or the number one show on Broadway, and now what. And the trap is trying to sustain that somehow, with being famous and being seen and being all that stuff, which I just is like a poison to me.
Was it a poison to you? Then?
Oh, yeah, it's always been Yeah, I just want to act. Why do I have to do anything else? Well, you have to promote yourself. Well, you have to be out there marketing. Well, you have to sell your personality. You have to be a brand. Gable was a brand. Tom Cruise is a brand. You know, Jimmy Stewart was a brand. You go to see Jimmy Stewart being Jimmy Stewart. I don't want that. I want to be I don't I want to be other people. That's all I want to be.
In those early films, I'm talking about Something Wild and the Purple Rose of Cairo. I want to start with the Jonathan Demi movie. When Something Wild came out, there was an article in the La Times by a writer that described you as quote the guy with the face like one hundred dollars cotton flannel shirt. To be clear, that was in the nineties. I didn't adjust that number for inflation. He also wrote, Daniels was born to picnic table bread for family portraits. The station wagon was invented with him in mind.
Okay, this is the La Times talking about the Midwest. Okay, I'm just let me just start with that the standard. Thank you so much for labeling me and based on one performance, and that's who I am and that's what my face is.
Yeah.
No.
Norman wrote that for look.
Something Wild was Jack Lemon and Dick Van Dyke had a baby and it was named Charlie Driggs.
And that's what I played in the movie.
I loved Lemon, I loved Dick Van Dyke growing up. Those were my influences going into that. I said, just do what they might do and just bounce off everything that was Demi was thrown at me.
Which parts of each of them? Did you take? Lemon and Van Dyke.
They were both physical. It was on their mind, it was out of their mouth, which is the opposite of what I went to New York with was So now is here are guys that are out.
The opposite of the Jeff Daniels from Chelsea, Michigan.
Yeah, and so that's fun. That's where the fun is.
So you know Dick Van Dyke, the physical comedy that he did, well, I mean I would sit in my living room and watch that show and probably that made it into some of those high school musicals. I just loved what he did, and he was funny, and he was fast and he talked fast. Jack Lemon was the same thing. Jack did some dramatic roles. But both those guys were kind of you couldn't see the script and it wasn't that they were ad libbing so much. Certainly Jack Lemon, could I call it the Jack Lemon stutter start, which it Yeah, Well, okay, I look all right, if you want me to sure, I'll answer the question when the line is, I'll answer the question. That's what Jack would do on that so.
Would by the way, it would be incredible if you did the rest of the interview as Jack Lemon.
Well, I mean I mean you sure, thank you, Yeah, no, but it was it was kind of a way to loosen me up.
That's a dead on impression. It is not that I mean, not doing the voice, but the mat that that the way the mannerism.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean they were just so.
This is an audio medium, so that's tough to play.
That is to I hope you can see that at home. It was tough, It was, it was it was fun to try to dive into that. Every role you're looking for a key thought, the one that you grab and then that launches you and that you can hang on all the way through the movie.
What is that key thought? What does that mean?
It's the thing again and this is boiling down what Marshall Mason taught me. I have to have a key thought that I can tape to the inside of my forehead.
And for something wild, that was one.
Jack Lemon, Dick Van Dyke, you know, just the two of them right there, and then just kind of go through that. So you look for that in every role. That kind of it's cliff notes, it's a cheat sheet.
The key thought for Purple Rose of Cairo.
Is what everything I have ever learned? Please let me remember now, that was Woody Allen at the height of his Woody alleness as a filmmaker. And I get that role. And it's two roles, two leading roles in a Woody Allen comedy. And you start on Monday.
So the first role is the matinee idol in a nineteen thirty six movie. And then when you step out of the screen, you're a standard neurotic actor.
Gil Shephard the standard neurotic actor. And Tom Baxter was the safari wearing, one dimensional young hero a black and white film that really probably wasn't very good.
Did the training at Circle Rep prepare you to star on a Woody Allen movie?
Oh?
Yeah, you know again, back and forth, back and forth, that tennis thing. And I was reminded of it on Purple Rosa Cairo when Woody because I was about a week in shooting it and I just.
You had replaced Michael Keaton.
Yeah, they had.
Mutually decided that it wasn't working after two weeks, and then he went on as screen He screen tested about well, probably four or five of us, and I got it, and about a week in I just went to Woody. I go Woody, I'm not Ero Flynn. According to the La Times, I'm just a guy who could sit at a picnic table somewhere outside, you know, Columbus, Ohio.
I'm glad I could read traumatize him.
Yeah, yeah, oh I remember that crap. And he goes, Aero Flinn. He goes, oh, I don't need you to be Aero Flynn. He goes, You've got Mia Farrow off camera, just adore her. And it was like, oh, so the and that led to again listening and going using the other actor and all that stuff that we're not taught. Circle taught it, but we're not taught. And that so the closer the camera got, and I stayed with this forever, Oh that extreme close up where it's like Darth Vader is a foot away from your face and you're worried about every little poor and your No. That's when the closer it gets, the more you make it about the other person. And by doing that, this thing happens where the camera can go in. The camera will now go in and see your thoughts and feel what you're thinking in a way because you're subconsciously you've let that all go. You've let the filter and the blockade go of that kind of here's the camera, it's really close, and that's all gone, and now you're pouring it into her and the camera goes in.
Demi and Alan, is there any commonality between the two of them besides both being great?
Jonathan had a spirit that was just he could have ten grand to make the movie or one hundred million, he'd be the same.
And the film would be the same.
They would have his stamp on it. Definitely.
He was a filmmaker that was so is Woody. They had that kind of confidence in where to put the camera and what they saw and reflected on this shot, and you knew you were in a Jonathan Demi movie, and you knew you were in a Woody Allen movie just by where he put the camera. The commonality was that even though we had a script on something wild, Jonathan encouraged me to just use as an outline. I had never taken an improv class, but I somehow was able to kind of, you know, loosen it up and say some things and then he go, great, keep that, don't say that, but now maybe talk about you know. It was that loosening up from take three to four, to five to six, Woody was similar. I mean, I went into Purporoze Cairo with that script and going okay, just and I'm not going to change a word. He goes, no, no, no, no, no no no.
If you want to say it a different way, go ahead. It's not the Bible. You know.
If I need you to say it a certain way, I'll ask you to do that. But he was very nice about it, and that just makes you want to make what he wrote, you know, work even better. And as a writer, I kept going back to getting even and without feathers. Those books he wrote that were like master classes and comedic writing. And so now I'm with him and I'm going to improve on top of them.
Not so much, but he did.
There's a scene in Purple Rows where I'm on the porch, I go to mia Fero's house, Cecilia's house as the neurotic actor. In what he kept saying just ad lib about what it means to be a star.
I struggled with my.
Whole life and now I'm finally beginning to breakthrough.
And my whole career is going right down a dream.
You don't have to worry about that, You'll always be a great movie star.
Oh well, that's that's very nice for you to two us. But technically I'm not really a star yet, Cecilia, don't you know. I mean, I try to carry myself like one. You know, I do the best I can as far as that, But star that's a big word. Yeah, no, no, no, starting.
And I would go for like a minute and I could see Woody off camera laughing, you know, snorting, and I'm going, Yes, I made Woody laugh. You know, that was cool, that was cool. But they both had this kind of, yeah, loosen it up kind of thing, which you know, was I didn't expect.
After The Purple Rose of Cairo came out, you appear on the cover of GQ magazine. In that profile, Woody said of you, he could be the next Carry Grant. He's got that sophisticated comedic style. He could do that stuff. The question is will there be sufficient literature to accommodate him. In most interviews you've done, the journalist likes to point out the Carry Grant line, but they never read the question that he poses at the end, which to me is the whole that's the whole story. And so as you move out of New York and back to Chelsea to raise a family. Did you find there to be sufficient literature to accommodate you occasionally?
But to move back to Michigan after ten years in New York and with a two year old boy, you know, Kathleen and I said, let's just go back home because the career is going to end. It probably peaked at Purple Rosa, Cairo and something wild, and that's it. And so let's just because they all end famous fleeting, it's going to end. I was so fatalistic, and I finally had the chance to go home.
Why so fatalistic?
I didn't trust it for a second, didn't want it.
Didn't trust or didn't want both.
Didn't want?
Don't I don't I go to Hollywood for a meeting. I would fly from Detroit on the nine am plane, land eleven thirty, La time, rent a car, do the meeting, hang out maybe, or get the five o'clock or get the red eye back home. I never took my coat off. I was worried that whatever I had that got me to people like Jonathan Demi and Woody Allen would be taken away. It would be contaminated, yes, by the stardom thing. And I didn't know how to do it. I didn't know how to schmooze. I didn't know how to suck up. I just wanted to be that actor that you saw on something, and now you're hiring me to do this thing for you.
Now.
I wanted to get there to that. So I went to Michigan and waited and sustained a career. You know, there are a lot of movies in there that are just paying for the lifestyle. You know, one hundred and one Dalmatians, my favorite March, and you know there was stuff in there. I'm just trying to stay in the business and waiting, and then when the kids finally got out of school and were off, then it became about chasing the writing. And that's where Woody was right.
I read that quote from Woody because of the literature comment, but I also read it because when you go back to Michigan and you're living there through the nineties, you had this quote, and it's just it's been like nagging at me since I've read it, and so I have to ask you about it. You said I was bored. I was playing golf. I was playing too much golf creatively. I was going to sleep above all, I went home and found out I was an outsider. When you look at those years, what did it mean to be an outsider when you went back home to be at home?
Yeah, I think I naively thought it would, you know, be the same, And in some ways it is the same, but you're not the same. That's what I think Wolf meant by the quote. It's different, but you're also different. And it was great for the family. That was the number one reason I don't know how to raise kids in Hollywood. You can, it's done successfully all the time, but I didn't know how to do it. And New York was too expensive, and the career is going to end, So why don't we just go back for the family's sake and I'll just commute to wherever I'm going to have to go.
But yeah, I did.
I was there, and creatively I had been awakened through Marshall and Circle and being an actor and that whole imaginative world that we live in. Once you tap into it, whether you're acting or writing or songs or whatever you're doing performing, it's a drug. It's a very heavy drug, and if you're able to hit it and bring it up suddenly it's there all the time, and that was still swirling, and so I would go home and around folks that weren't of that. I had to go to New York to learn how to do that. So that became a problem, and so I created the Purple Rose Theater Company, partly to give myself somewhere to go creatively, gambling that I could, you know, maybe do a version of what Circle Rep was in my own hometown, with no long term plan or anything, just let's see if this can work. And so that helped, and it still helps to this day. It was either I'm going to get out or I was picking up a guitar a lot in like two thousand, two thousand and one, I thought, well, maybe that's what I'll do now, because what I'm not going to do is be the asshole father standing on a set in a sitcom while some twenty two year old is making ten million a show and he's an hour late and he doesn't know his lines.
I'm not going to be that guy. I'll quit.
And if I don't get what I you know, that challenges me, I'll get out. And way back when suddenly there's this movie called The Squid in the Whale, and there's this young writer nobody's heard of, Noah Baumback. And I read the script and I said, this, what's this?
This?
How can I get this?
And they've been out to a couple of big stars and who of course wanted changes. And then I flew to New York. I was doing because of Wynn Dixie, which was this little family movie that was just give me a job. And I flew to New York and met with Noah and I went through the script. I said, this is funny. Page page page, This is funny, page page, This is funny. This is really funny. And he looked at Laura Lenny he said him Squid Whale was one of those starts where we my agent and manager and I made a conscious effort to let's chase good writing. Let's try to be known as a really great American actor, and if we don't make it, we don't make it. When my first novel came out, I had a lot of opportunities. I would reel your mother if I didn't partake. And I've never had an affair with a student, though many have come on to me. That's why you might not want to.
Be attached to your age. That sounds like Sophie's good for now?
Why do you all?
God damn it, I burned myself.
Cults are great. Did you hear from that agent?
Yeah?
But if you liked your novel, then you get it published right perfectly?
What happened to your old Asian?
Fred kissed me on.
Made a disparaging remark about the Knicks at a party. They played like thugs. I found it really offensive, kind of a jerk. I think it was important to your mother that I achieved some sort of commercial success, and when I didn't meet her expectations in that area.
The writing of that film as someone whose parents split early and often, I've seen it a whole lot of times, countless times, maybe too many times, And the last time I watched it, I never understood how you got to that angry place. But hearing this chapter that you were in a before that movie, did you see yourself in some of the anger of that character? This was a mercurial novelist who's frustrated that he's not being read enough, not being considered enough. Did you see some of yourself in that?
Yeah?
And that was the key thought I remember with Noah in rehearsals and just go I know what it is.
I know what it is because it's about his father as well.
Yeah.
But as for pelling Bernard and the underappreciated, right, the guy they aren't looking at in the room. When Norman Mailer are you are standing next to each other, they're going to look and talk to Norman Mayler. You're not good enough, You're not as good as they are. I tapped right into that, right into that. Yeah, and then then let yourself go slide down, which is where Bernard goes it.
Just you know, how did it feel to do that?
I mean it was It's not like you come out of it going, you know, get me in therapy.
But it's like, you know, that's never the answer.
Never the answer. It's completely unnecessary. But when you get a guy and you can become him. And that's the other thing that Marshall Mason's thing led me to, which in my head means I need to be able to think like the character in here, the part that you don't hear. And if I can think like the character, then everything else will kind of fall into play. If you've done the prep work and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, you want to be able to think like Atticus Finch or think like Harry Dunn. You want to be able to get in there there like that. So then you're just writing impulses, you're just writing instincts. And when you get that key into whatever the character is, then it's jump off the cliff and go. And whether with Bernard and Squid in the Whale, it was, yeah, if we're going to go dark, let's go dark. But that led to Got a Carnage, and that led to Newsroom, and I remember doing Got a Carnage on Broadway with Jim Gandelfini, and you know, the movies were drying up and it just wasn't you know, I wasn't getting anything that I wanted to do. And I said, Jim, I think I'm thinking about television. He goes, get yourself a good writer, he said, I got David Chase, and luckily for me, Aaron Sorkin wanted me. And then when you've got the writing is what he said. When you've got the writing, you can write it. You can write it, and they'll challenge you too, the writers. The good writer will challenge you. And that's what from that two thousand and nine on, I've been fortunate to have good writing come my way, and that's kept me not only in the business, but interested in the business.
After the break, we talk about Jeff's Unexpected second Act, as written by Aaron Sorkin, Stay with us. When he came to the newsroom, Aaron Sorkin was looking for an actor that could express that rage, that could tap into an anger. He did not think that you entirely had that at first, Is that right?
Yeah? He had been.
There was nothing really in film or TV that showed what he needed, that kind of you know, knee jerk rant that McAvoy needed to go on, and he just Aaron needed to be able to see that before he cast me. And then I got a tip my heads up on that that's what he needed to see. And we were sitting at a breakfast table in The Four Seasons in New York. I was meeting Aaron Sorkin for the first time, and Scott Rudin the producer newsroom, was sitting across the table, and I told a story about where I had lost it, and then I banged the table and the orange juice glasses rattled and jumped, and coffee and people at the other tables were turning around looking at Aaron's going okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. I think I yeah, no, no, no, good good good. And you know, I was halfway through the story, so I was going to finish it so because I wanted this part, and so it just became.
More strong armed them into giving you the role.
I auditioned.
I had to show that I could get there and that it might be uncomfortable and embarrassing. You know, that's all I knew. I didn't have any I didn't know Mac, I didn't know anything else except it's a show about a newsroom, and so that was well, if he needs to see this, here's my best version of it. And by the end of the breakfast, they said, you've got the part.
When we started this conversation, we talked about American US being representative of the crossroads this country is at. Do you see the newsroom and what you and Aaron Sorkin were going for to be a kind of prelude to America post pandemic.
I think one of the great strengths about Aaron's writing is that he's ahead of his time. There are things that he said, not just in the big Northwestern speech that will outlive both of us. Every episode, there are things that are said, that are opinions, that are dropped into conversations that the characters are having that now post COVID and you look at cable news and you look at that. They didn't listen at all, not that they were supposed to listen to Aaron sork in a newsroom and maybe take some notes. But he's really good at predicting what might happen. And like a lot of things in this world today, you can't stop it. And if there's money at the end of it, whether it's MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, and they can get more eyeballs going in that direction, and that's more money.
Welcome to News.
In the pilot episode, of course, there's that monologue you just mentioned. We your character explained how America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.
Why is it not the greatest country in the world, professor, that's my answer. You're saying, yes, let's talk about fine, Sharon. The NEA is a loser. Yeah, it accounts for a penny out of our paycheck.
But he gets to hit you with it anytime he wants. It doesn't cost money.
It costs votes, It costs airtime and column inches. You know why people don't like liberals because they lose. If liberals are so fucking smart.
Can they lose? So goddamn always hell, And.
With a straight face, you're gonna tell students that America is so star spangled awesome that we're the only ones in the world who have freedom. Canada has freedom, Japan has freedom, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium has freedom. So two hundred and seven sovereign states in the world, like one hundred and eighty of them have And you got you a sorority girl just in case you accidentally.
Wander into a voting booth one day.
There's some things you should know, and one of them is there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that were the greatest country in the world. We're seventh in literacy, twenty seventh in math, twenty second in science, forty ninth in life expectancy, one hundred and seventy eighth in infant mortality, third and median household income, number four in labor force, and number four in exports. We lead the world in only three categories. Number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending where we spend more than the next twenty six countries combined, twenty.
Five of whom her allies.
Now, none of this is the fault of a twenty year old college student, but you nonetheless are, without it on, a member of the worst period generation period ever periods.
When you ask what makes us.
The greatest country in the world, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, Yosementy.
I believe I'm part of the worst period generation, period ever, period that you're referring to in that speech.
I'm going to But you've come out of it nicely, I think.
Really, yeah, thank you. That's that's kind of you to say. I think that the comment is rooted in a kind of misplaced contempt. I don't think that's fair to our generation, frankly.
But not all of you.
No any other shots. No, that's it, that's it, Okay.
That's it.
Look McAvoy isn't right. McAvoy isn't. He isn't he isn't. He didn't care about ring right. He just cares about telling you what you need to know. Yes, and based on just what he thinks, and I think that's that's kind of where we came at it. And you know, as Sarkin wrote at the end of that season, there she is again, there's a sorority girl, and we hire her because she's exactly the kind of person that we want here, you know. And and so he brings it around.
Beyond me joking about it, I've always been moved by the monologue in your delivery of it. And you've called the speech the one I've been waiting to do for thirty five years. That word waiting stuck out to me because I wonder, were you waiting for thirty five years or did you perhaps need those thirty five years that we've been talking about and discussing today. Did you need them to do that scene as effectively and passionately as you did?
Absolutely needed it. Had I done it twenty years earlier, not as good. It's the thing about getting older. You know more and you've seen more, and you're hearing people, you know, give opinions that you don't agree with, and you're getting it, and it was just Yeah, it was like a perfect time for me to plant my feet and you know, unload that speech. Yeah, I didn't have to act much in that. That just kind of once you learned the speech, you could just kind of let it out, you know, let it out and let them cut it together. That's the great thing about getting older is that, you know, unlike athletes whose bodies slow down and all of that, is that actors, it's an accumulation. You know, you come out of every show you do, hopefully a better actor. You know more, you applied everything that you've ever learned, whether you consciously know it or not, into this scene. And especially if the writing's good. If the writing is good, then you have to remember everything you've ever learned and you have to be able to call that up and use it to now take you into a place that's a little someplace you've never been before. And you can't do that when you're younger. And I think you're right. I think like that newsroom speech was like a not only was it the speech that's never handed to me, it's handed to someone else. You know, you spend a lot of films doing supporting roles. He gets the speech, she gets the speech, and you're just there listening at the defense table or something. This was Aaron Sorkin handing me an Aaron Sorkin rant that I had seen on West Wing, that I had seen the those guys, and I know that Marty Sheen and all those guys were getting speeches from Aaron's typewriter and whatever, and they had the same feeling I did when they got handed something that had a lot of meat on it, and that I went right home and started pouring that into my head.
Before we go, can we talk about the accumulation and all the life that you brought to to Kill a Mockingbird by Aaron Sorkin. You said before I played Atticus Finch, I knew him, I grew up with him. You said in the beginning of this talk that there was a lot of your father and Atticus, and we've been talking about him intermittently throughout, and I wonder what did you make of your performance on Sunday, June sixteenth, twenty nineteen.
Yeah, that was a.
Special one.
My dad died in twenty twelve, and we, I don't know, we twenty nineteen were doing Mockingbird on Broadway and I'm in it for a year. I had been in it for I think seven months at that time, and it was Father's Day, and you're always looking to do the perfect show. Oh I just fumfered that one line. Okay, all right, go go, go, and you get through it. And then the next night you don't fumper that one, but just screw up something else, or you a little late on the something. Everything, there's something, there's always something that you wish you could almost got it perfect, you know, and it hadn't happened seven months. A lot of great stuff, but always something. Sunday, matinee out, I go Father's Day and I'm not religious, but I'm going, well, you know, this would be the time that I see a light. You know, God, if you're there, you know, God, if you're there, you know. And if you see my dad around there, you might want to, you know, position him somewhere I can see him, because then I'm with you.
Give him a good seat.
Right.
So we go into the show and the show is great, and every laugh is there, and and it's rolling, and I'm in the closing argument and it's as alive as it's ever been, and I'm about near the end of it, and I'm going, this is probably wow, this was there. It's a perfect show, and I would imagine him. You stand on stations as the orchestra section, and the aisle goes up, and there's that space back there where the people walk, and there's a light and the usher usually sits there, and I imagined him walking in to that light being brought in, and you could see the usher tapping him, going, no, there's your son, there's your sun right up there. And he turns and he's wearing the clothes that he would wear at the lumber company, and he would turn and look at me. And so I'm doing I'm at the end of the show that day, and I'm looking into that light and he's not there. Okay, well I tried. So dressing room done. I go outside and there's autographs, and so I do the autographs and I'm starting. I get the pen and a woman, an old woman, has an envelope and shoves it in my hand and I'm going oh. The security jumps right in. I go no, no's OK, thank you, I'll thank you. I'll put up my back pocket and she turned went I do the autographs, and then I go back home the apartment and I pull that letter out and it's a letter from a woman who was at the church in Chelsea that my dad went to. She was an associate pastor or something, the Methodist church, and she said, I knew your father and I remember a big, long letter about how proud she was of me, but also that she said, I remember asking your dad, aren't you proud of your son? I mean, he's famous, he's in movies, he did, he goes. I'm not proud of him for that. I'm proud of him for the person that he is. And I'm reading that at the apartment and.
I'm just going, oh, maybe he was there.
It's the first time I've ever told that without crying. What does that mean?
Doctor, Look, this is merely a consultation. We'll have to come back into the time for that. Oh so this is free, It's all been free.
Oh good, thank you?
Are you glad you didn't cry?
And telling you, Yeah, it's been it's it's it's Uh. It would have meant a lot for him to see that one. And he always knew I made the right decision just because of I was able to stay in the business. And he saw enough and Woody Allen and other he saw a lot. But that would have been that's the kid who drove to New York in nineteen seventy six. That's what I wanted to see him do.
I don't know if you thought about this, and I could be off, we can move on from it. You drove to New York September first, thirty eight years later, your father passes away on September first of twenty twelve.
Same day.
What do you make of that?
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
I don't think it's I don't know, I don't know. I can still remember driving away. Looking out the rearview mirror. I could see him standing at the top of the hill watching me go.
You still see that.
Here's another thing. I was doing American Rust season two, and we were shooting a scene with an old woman at the crack of a door, and we're trying to get information from her, and she's trying to think of the name of somebody that we're looking for. And we're in take one and the woman says, I don't know. In the script, I think the name was Smith. Say the name was Smith, and I think his name was smiths the line and take one and we're going and she goes, I think his name was ferguson, I'm sorry, can we cut? I don't know why I said that. I don't know, and we stopped shooting, and I'm looking at her. My mom had died two months earlier. Her maiden name was Ferguson. What do I make of that? Is that them going we're okay. You've heard that, I'm okay, We're okay. Is that letter from that associate pastor that's Dad saying I'm okay? Or I see I don't know.
I don't know.
But if you want to believe in hopeful things, it feels good and speaking of hopeful things, both the Newsroom and To Kill a Mockingbird, to me, I see them both as extensions of a kind of American hopefulness and American idealism.
I think, at their best, a fundamental belief that the moral universe is long, and it bends towards justice, and all the things that Will McAvoy may.
Say and that are being challenged today and on.
The right day, I believe in Atticus, I believe in Will macavoy, I believe in your father. And on the wrong day, on most days, these days, they feel like potentially relics of a bygone era. Naive about the goodness of us as American people. And when you came back for one last go at to kill a mockingbird into one, you said, we have an opportunity in this country right now to welcome in a new America. What did that mean to you then? And what does it mean to you now in twenty twenty four?
Every generation changes things. Dylan wasn't wrong. Times They are a changing. They are changing every ten years every generation. Even the worst one thing it was just a character in a television show, Sam Let it go, Okay, let it go.
Yeah.
And that's the other thing.
You get older and suddenly the younger generation is telling you everything that you aren't and why you're you know, you should die? Can you please die? Can you please die soon? You know that that kind of wave of But that's not what they're saying.
That's not in my notes, by the way, I know, but.
That's not what they're saying. And that new America is common and the doors are opening wide. White blindness is suddenly something we oh, geez, I had no idea because you're so busy trying to just you know, survive yourself. And that's so we get hit with that I think that was certainly the second time coming around with Mockingbird, Atticus Finch facing his white blindness and that we are a better country if we try all not to you know, dance like Mike Pence, if we're not stuck in the fifties. We're white people right or wrong, ran everything and everybody else go sit in the back of the room. You know, that's not us at our best. And you're right, the Macavoys and the Attica says Finch has come from that and harkened back to the goodness that was there, But there was a lot of badness and a lot of stuff that needs to be changed, and it is changing, you know. Around Brownstein wrote that book about nineteen seventy four being a pivotal world in music, and he said, you know, the culture changes before the politics. And that's what you see in culture is that we are a better country if we're opening the door to everyone. You know, we can not continue to shove people to the.
Back of the room.
Because that little black kid in Alabama who's eight years old, who's got a brilliant mind, but we're not going to educate him because of his color. He's the kid that if you actually gave a shit about him and gave him the opportunity so that he could get educated in a way. Suddenly he's now at John Hopkins and he's the kid who later on cures cancer. We're not going to get there if we're just doing it with white people. We're just not And I think it's taken four hundred years for everyone around to kind of, you know, oh yeah, maybe we are better. And that's one of the great things about this younger generation is they aren't going to stand for anything less. And at the end of the day, I think everyone who wants this more open New America still has to hang on to what's right, what's wrong, what's good, what's bad, and that doesn't change. And the rule of law. By the way, those things which may have been important to McAvoy and Atticus Finch, I see them being as important to this younger generation and this New America as well. And you got to hang on to that because look out here comes human nature and greed and power and all the things that take people down. So it still can be a great country. It still can.
My last thing for you, in the last twenty years, you've made a point to fold politics into your work. I think that's fair to say. I mean, there's the news room, there's the Komi Rule, there's the Looming Tower. I mean there's a long list, there's t Kill a Mockingbird. But what it comes back to, I think in the end, is writing your songwriting yours. The plays that you've written, the script's given to you. And the first person that saw you as a writer is Lanford Wilson. He passed away about eleven twelve years ago. Now, when the play Fifth of July is published and you take your physical copy and you get it signed by him, do you remember that day and do you remember what he wrote to you?
Yeah?
I remember that day and he signed it and he wrote, this play is at least half yours, and he had dedicated it to his partner at the time. You know, he just was in love with me. So since I wasn't going to go there, I can write for him.
And then he wrote for me.
And then I turned out to be more than just a boy, a cute twenty two year old kid from the Midwest, and he was the first star I ever met.
That's what he was.
I had done Hot l Baltimore at Eastern Michigan University that Marshall had guest directed. He came out to pick up a check and we had done Lanford's play hot El Baltimore, and I remember seeing by Landford Wilson on the cover. And then four months later I'm standing in the office a Circle Rep and there's Landford Wilson splay out in a chair, going hey.
Doll, how are you?
And it's nice to meet you, mister Wilson. And he was trying to rewrite a second act and he loved actors. He loved all the actors at Circle Rep. And he loved to write for actors. And then later on he wrote Fifth of July for me. I never wanted to be a director. I don't care about it as much that control. But I thought I could write, and I started The Purple Rows partly to try to become a playwright. And then when I brought Landford out, I actually sent Landford a play I wrote called A Vast Difference. I think it was a third play I wrote. And he said I can hear your voice, which was a writer thing. You want that you can hear Landford in Landford's work. You can hear Aaron Sorkin and Aaron Sorkham's work. I like that you can hear Patty Jaisky in the scene and network between William Holden and Faye Dunaway. Patty Chaievsky is in the room too. I like that. That's the theater, and so I wanted to learn how to do that, and Landford was my inspiration for that and also my kick in the ass. Now I know how to do it. I've written twenty two plays.
You also wrote in the book, whatever you do, make it matter. Oh yeah, that make it count. My last question for you, I mean, I guess the only question do you think you have?
Yeah, Lanford wrote in the book in the script, whatever you do, make it matter, make it count, which is, don't sell out, don't become some.
You know whatever. You're better than that.
And again that goes back to Woody Allen and the literature and you know. And then now that to me, let's go just chase the writing. Chase the good writing. It's hard to make everything matter and everything counts for your artistic integrity, as they say, one for you and one for them, them being the family and the bills. But the longer you go, if you can hang in there and then get that one where you get actors coming to the show going, how did you do that?
That's the award.
And it's because of the writing that, whether it matters and counts as an actor with your peers, or whether it matters and counts with an audience, that changes their lives and they go away, change forever.
I don't know.
I mean you try to reach for that, and then there are things like Mockingbird and the Speech and Newsroom that did that years later, decades later. I think I've turned it into don't settle, don't just repeat yourself and do something then expect people to tell you that you're great, because you're not. If you don't settle, and you can continue to get the material, I don't care if it's on stage or in an indie film or in a big movie or big TV show. If you can get the writing and get the writers, then you still have a chance to make this particular project matter and this particular project count. And I've been fortunate ever since Newsroom in particular, that bought me ten years of good writing from good writers. The good writers came Scott Frank, came Danny and Adam and on Aaron coming back with mockingbird. Yeah, it still matters, and it still counts. I dread the day when it doesn't, which is probably the day I'll quit.
Made that never come. And on the subject of things mattering, this talk has mattered a whole lot to me.
My arms are still crossed. You want to uncross them?
I am. I'm comfortable now.
Why don't we play one of your songs for the road? Okay, Jeff, thank you for the time.
Thank you, Sam.
You stood out in the crowd. You were one of the kind life of the party.
Never you took it all in with a grain of soul, took the blame. When the wood on your phone, I swear I could see you played his day.
I close my ey and I can hear you say.
I'm damned if I don't. I'm damned if I don't.
Hell I will, and the hell I.
Sometimes I remember, sometimes I recall Sometimes no matter how I trying to, it don't.
Matter at all. This time.
All it took.
What was for someone to say, is that your grandfathers.
And that's our show. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to leave us five stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever you get your podcasts. I want to give a special thanks to speak to the teams at Rogers and Cohen and Amazon. I also want to thank Ian Chang, Kira Posey, my father, and of course our guest today Jeff Daniels to find the new season of American Rust and his upcoming Netflix series A Man in Full. We've included links in our show notes at talkasypod dot com for more episodes with other great actors. I'd recommend Michelle Williams, Alison Pills, Sam Waterston, Def bettel Oscar Isaac and Tom Hanks to hear those and more Pushkin podcasts. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram at talk easy Pod. If you want to purchase one of our mugs they Come and Cream or Navy, you can do so at talkasypod dot com slash shop. Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Jennick Sabravo. Today's talk was edited by C. J. Mitchell and mixed by Andrew Vastola, who was taped at iHeartMedia in New York City. Our music is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Chrisha Shaowe. Photographs today are by Jenna Jones. Research assistants from Sharia aron K Graphics are by Ethan Seneca. I also want to thank our team at Pushkin Justin Richmond, Kerry Brody, Jacob Smith, Eric Sander Kura, Posey, Jorn McMillan, Tara Machado, Sarah Nix, Malcolm Gladwell, Greta Cohen, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm San Fragoso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next week with another episode. Until then, stay safe and so off
MHM
