March 24, 2022 • 39 mins
Today Jamie has a conversation with Cathy Waterman, someone who has taught her as much about friendship as anyone she knows. They discuss the importance of friendship without judgment, finding a friend who is your "missing piece," and how their time rock climbing together is a great metaphor for their friendship.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
If there's something, I'll get it. I'm a good friend.
Hi everybody, it's Jamie Lee Curtis and you're listening to
the Good Friend Podcast, presented to you by I Heart Radio.
It's a podcast about friendship. We talk about everything, We cry,
(00:24):
we laugh, we think about what it really means to
be a good friend. And I have conversations with some
of my best friends, some people I've never met, and
sort of everything in between. So I hope by the
end of it that you have a really good sense
(00:47):
of what friendship means to me and the people that
I consider friends. And I hope you can take those
same ideas into your own friendship groups, and I hope
you enjoy it. I don't know id on the lot.
I'm a good friend. This is how we roll here,
(01:07):
we roll into it, we roll out of it. There's
no big I know, there's no big announcement. I'm trying
not to pretend to be like a daytime television although
I do get into my late night DJ voice, which
sometimes gets very DJ. My guest today on the Good
Friend Podcast is a good friend is a friend who
(01:31):
has taught me as much about friendship as anybody I know,
And that is my friend. Cathy Waterman, Welcome to the
Good Friend Podcast. I'm so happy to be here with you, Jamie.
I never thought I would do this when you first asked,
And here I am because you are a good friend.
So let's talk about why you wouldn't want to Why
(01:53):
because I'm very private. Yeah, I'm not gonna ask you
to betray your privacy stuff in your life or your family.
But you do represent friendship in the most beautiful way
for my listener. UM, I do think we have one, Cathy.
I try to like to think we have one. UM.
(02:15):
Kathy is a spectacular jewelry designer creator. UM. We did
not meet because of her children. We met because our
daughters danced together. But over the years, obviously I've had
the great privilege of wearing her stuff whenever I do
public things. UM. I wear a child charm around my
(02:39):
neck seven since the day she placed it around my neck.
And UM, she is as important a person to me
as there is, UM. And you represent friendship to me. UM.
You represented in all areas of your life. You grew
up here in Los Angeles. I did. I grew up
(02:59):
in Burbank, California. And when we talk about friendship. You
may want to be asking questions, but here I go. Um.
I started kindergarten and kindergarten through the eighth grade. I
had one friend, one friend, She was my best friend.
There were all sorts of people around who I was
(03:20):
friendly with, but when I had play dates, it was
always with Sue. She was different than I was, but
she was the same, which I think is something I
found with most of my friends. But yeah, in Burbank,
California's Southern California girl not afraid really very much except
(03:40):
being in public. Um. And I understand you're a private
person and that this this is a public This is
sort of as public as you like to be in.
The great news is that it's just our voices and
our stories and our hearts connecting. And um, you know,
you brought up something already that's interesting to me, which
(04:02):
is we don't necessarily look for friends who are just
like us. That the way you described her is that
you really didn't have necessarily something in common, that she
was different than you, but that you connected. Can you
think or talk about what aspects of her we're different?
(04:24):
So I found that through most of my friendships, whether
it's wanting or your need to complete yourself, to find
missing pieces, um, to learn I'm not I'm that's amazing,
continue please, sorry, just it's finding new ways to be um. So,
(04:48):
Sue was a Christian scientist and I'm a Jew, and
it fascinated me that she was never vaccinated. We got
online for the SONGK vaccine at our grammar school and
Sue wasn't there. And when they did, he did some
kind of during school, some kind of religious programming. Sue
(05:12):
wasn't there. Neither was I because it was quit mostly Christian.
But she had a big family, a big Swedish family,
and it was it looked different, the home look different.
She had a lovely June Jacobson, was a lovely homemaker mother.
Her father had a job as a truant officer. It
(05:33):
couldn't have been more different than my enterprising, entrepreneurial father
and my seeking mother. She was always looking for something
new and different and intrepid in that way, more so
than I am. But Sue was a kind girl, a
lovely girl. She accepted me, which is you know, that's
(05:56):
I guess that's a prerequisite, you know, an acceptance without judgment. Yeah,
that would be the definition of a friendship, right to
be a good friends, acceptance without judgment. You again, as
you always do, you go right to the heart of
(06:17):
the matter, and you said something that no one else
has said. You find the missing peace. And I've been
looking for missing pieces and connecting up and I didn't
realize that that's what it was, because you and I
are very different people, and yet we were missing pieces
(06:42):
for each other. And I didn't really know that be
for this moment because when we first met. You remember,
I joke you about this all the time because you said,
I've never had a friend who as an actor, kind
of as a sort of declaratories been sort of like
actors go away, because I get it, and I felt
(07:06):
kind of privileged to be that friend who was an actor.
But honestly, I think we we didn't know it when
we became friends, but there is an aspect of a
missing piece with each of us in each other's lives,
and I just think that's the first time anybody has
(07:26):
mentioned that. And here you are talking about your first
friend where you were missing pieces for each other. It
was very different. Most of the time people talk about
finding the similarities, and I love that you talk about
it in reference to a missing piece. Yeah, you know,
(07:49):
I think what I said in the beginning was similar
but different, the same but different, different but the same.
You and I have so many any similarities. We can,
I think, complete each other's sentences. We have minds that
never quit. You are far more adept at at at
(08:12):
taking your ideas and joining the whole world with them,
and I admire that beyond that ability. But there's something,
and you know, I can't articulate what it was about
me that fit with you, but when I can say,
was you take my comment about never having an act
(08:33):
of friend as disparaging just a statement of fact. It
was just I had lots of friends and lots of
kind of friends in different periods of my life. That's
an interesting thing, is how someone you and I had
been friends for a very long time, and I tend
to have very long friendships, although there are some friendships
(08:55):
that have my law school friends. I love two people
in law school. I don't see them. I don't know
much about them. I probably should google them and see
what's going on. You know what I mean. It's but
some people are constantly and those people are the people
of your heart. It's like you're magnetized to them, right,
(09:16):
I think you and I were. It just happened. I couldn't.
I don't know if I could describe it what happened.
You know what the attraction was, But I think we
both had it food. It was our daughters, for sure,
our beautiful daughter daughters. We lived near each other. We
have a similar locale of where we planted our lives,
(09:39):
and we both have planted near each other in a
very special place that we both love. Our daughters became friends,
which allowed us to spend more time because often that
happens where your kids connect, but you don't necessarily connect
to the parents. I know the friendships that you have
(10:01):
made through all three of your children's passions. So your
eldest son, Nikki, was a soccer player, and you had
a crew of of kids in the soccer and their
parents and you were all very close. You did that
(10:23):
with Coco, your youngest, with soccer and friendships, and you
certainly did it with Claire, your middle who It was
my daughter Annie's friend when they danced together, and that's
where we met. We met in a dance class. We met.
We met waiting for our kids as they danced, watching
(10:44):
our kids watching our kids dance. It wasn't so much
we of course, we were waiting, but I think we
were witnessing. I think we were We were exploring this
world of who are these kids? Who was this teacher? Um?
You know, who are these parents? What's this whole millier
you about? And I have to say that Annie is
(11:08):
my first grandchild, godmother. That's what happened. Yeah, that's what happened.
You and I. You and I are closing you and
you know, you and my youngest daughter, Coco are close.
And Annie and Claire, you know, my middle daughter, your oldest,
(11:29):
our dear friends, and something special for one another, A
safe place and your safe place for me, Jamie. It
is things I don't talk to anyone else about I
can talk to you about. I feel safe. That's really special.
(11:49):
That's something that doesn't come along that often. No, And
the only way you can feel real safety with some
of these when you really start to peel those layers
away and let each other into the difficulties of life.
Life is hard for everybody. Um. I refer to it
(12:14):
as everybody gets their turn in the barrel many many times.
And you and I have had that. We've also I
don't know how much you remember, but you and I
took up rock climbing together. Oh we did. That was joyous.
(12:34):
That was joyous. So the thing, the reason I brought
it up from my listener is Kathy and I became
girlfriends through our daughters who were dancers, and we went
to a lot of dance competitions. We were dance moms.
I don't know if you've seen that show. We were
those people in the stands cheering our daughters when their
(12:56):
feats landed and know when their numbers went well at
the awards. You know. We went to dance competitions together
for five six years regularly. But Kathy and I also
went I think it was a birthday party of somebody
(13:17):
where it was at a climbing gym, and Kathy and
I took the introduction class together for adults. Now, we
had never done a sport together. Kathy is not an athlete.
I'm not saying she's uncoordinated or not strong, but she
(13:39):
is not an athlete. Um. We we showed up at
this class, and I guess it was such the beginning
for me of where I felt that I had something
unique with you. The what you need to know to
my listener is that Hathy has very close friends and
(14:03):
there is a group of them and they are all
the similar age. They all had first children together and
other children together. All of the children were all friends.
And so I'm not saying I felt outside of it,
but it's a strong bond when when you come to
(14:25):
a group of women who are you know, very close friends,
and Kathy and I rock climbing and laughing. Kild say
l A m FO like, no, well, I don't even know.
Somebody will tell me. I'll get a letter now going
that isn't what l A f and whatever it is
(14:46):
laughing my whatever ass off whatever la mayo. We laughed
because we were new at something. We didn't know how
to do it. And I suggest to any person listening,
if you are just connecting up with a new friend,
(15:11):
find a pastime that neither one of you know how
to do, and then try to go do it. Because
we were both learners. You had to learn not you
had to wear all this gear. And then let's see
if Cathy remembers on ballet, ballet, on climbing climb on. No,
(15:36):
I never knew the climbing climates because on ballet, balat
on means I are is the safety? Are you my safety?
Which is what is? You belay someone? You stand below
them holding the rope, and if they fall, you support them.
You saved them. When you're climbing, you say on ballet,
(15:59):
and then the other person speaks the language and says
bill at on. And then you say climbing, which says
I am now going to start to climb, and then
the other person says climb on. And when they say that,
that means I've got you. And I think that's what
I took away from the whole thing, Kathy, is that
(16:21):
there was a level of I've got you safety and
laughter and failing miserably UM climbing these rock walls. And
we didn't keep it up for a very long time.
I think we did it a couple of months. Is,
by the way, incredibly hard on your hands, UM. And
(16:43):
for whatever reason, it didn't last for either one of us, UM.
But it was a momentary beginning that allowed us a
new step into each other and allowed us to fail together.
There's almost nothing more fun than failing. It's something that
(17:04):
means nothing right. And both of us are easy to laugh,
really easy to laugh. Yeah, and we laughed. Oh yes,
but we've laughed through a lot of things. We've laughed
through sheep in Ireland and Ireland. Oh gosh. By the way,
when you go to visit somebody on a farm in Ireland,
(17:27):
they don't really mention that if you walk out in
the fields you're going to just be covered in sheep.
You just they don't mention it there, you know, because
they're just covered in sheep and all the time, so
they just think it's normal. We were both laughing. Wouldn't
have been more fun? Yeah, something, I'm a good friend.
(17:51):
We'll be right back with more good friend after this
quick break, so stick around and get him God. One
of the most important things for me in being a
(18:11):
friend is being useful. It's not so much i'd like
to look good or I like to feel good, but
I'd rather be useful than learn a new sports. I'd
rather be useful than a lot of things. And you
have been useful to me in um exercising demons. That's
(18:32):
that's a very strong word. But I think I don't
know if your listeners will understand what that means. But
we've all got them. They live inside of us. Very
often I keep them in a boundary box in my
in my mind somewhere. My daughter, my youngest daughter, taught
me about boundary boxes, how you put things away. You
(18:54):
don't really go to them unless you intend to. And
so I keep these things in boundary boxes. But when
they're overflowing, I called Jamie. Help me release them. You
help me clear the rocks from the path, so that
I can be free again. Well, as you know, I'm
(19:16):
in recovery and one of the fundamentals of recovery is
a phrase, You're only as sick as your secrets. That
secrets um source conflict and keep you, as you said,
not able to be free to move forward from it.
(19:36):
And yes, we have boundary lives, and of course there
are people we have boundaries with and that's healthy. And
that's as we become adults, we learn more and more
about boundaries. We have families, all of us. But being
able to really open the box and let that stuff
(19:58):
out and in a safe you I mean you brought
up safety from the beginning, just in a safe way,
through conversation, through not talking, from just being bearing witness
to someone. Um, yeah, it's it's it's an it's such
(20:18):
a crucial aspect of friendship for me and I think
for you, Yes, the sense of the ability to be vulnerable,
so I can be vulnerable with you know, I have
a set of friends and it's a small group and
most of them friends for like you, Jamie. You know,
(20:42):
I don't know how long we've been friends, but most
of my friends very few new friends. You know, a
couple of my new friends, but they're not It's not um,
I'm not sure that the ability to be vulnerable is there.
That's that's that's a soub person who will allow me
(21:02):
to to expose exposed pain. I guess exposed fear most
of its fear base. I'm sure that I think that's
very human, right. The ability to be vulnerable with someone
is um special. And by the way, going back to
(21:24):
the rock climbing metaphor, when you're climbing high and someone
else has the rope and you have to totally trust
that that person and you know, as the kids say,
has your back, you know I have your back. It's
all designed to say I am trustworthy, I am there
(21:46):
for you, I'm interested in you, I care about you
and what happens to you, and life happens to everybody.
Everybody has life. Um, it's the beautiful thing about life
and the heartbreaking thing about life. And we've been able
(22:09):
to do that with each other. I want you mentioned
your early life having one friend, and even though you're
in the arts, as you said, you went to law school. Um,
and you have a very strong parents. You had two
very strong parents. Um. Your mom was a seeker, a
(22:30):
real thinker and seeker, and your dad was ambitious and
smart and tenacious and creative and clever and um. And
then you married very young. How old were you when
you met Eddie? I was eighteen when we had our
first date, and we married ten years later on yeah,
(22:54):
the day of our first the anniversary of our first date.
So yeah, we've been together for a very long time. I,
as you know, have been also married for a very
long time. Um. As I like to say to my
first husband, he does not like it, poor Chris. Whenever
(23:15):
I just make a joke and say, like in a
bio you know where you you submit a bio about yourself,
and it's just they're so boring. So I always try
to make it funny because it's just my nature. And
so I would write, Um, you know, she's still married
to her first husband. He just does not like poor guy. Um,
(23:40):
my husband does not like that I don't wear a
wedding ring, nor does he, which he can't understand that
they're the same thing. It's the same thing. Good friend.
We'll be right back with more good friend after this quick.
(24:09):
In your early mom friendships, UM, with your with your crew,
I would call them like your crew. This is this
is a group of women that have been together through
a lot, right, three women, yes, oh, three other women
to other women to other women, right, so your triumvirate friendship.
(24:33):
Normally it's funny because we've had I've had a couple
UM interviews where I've talked to two people at once,
two dear friends. UM. And it's always interesting to see
how people navigate threesomes. And obviously it's not fair to
really talk about it in depth here because they're not
(24:55):
here with us. But UM, your friends Barbara and Donna
have and you have a very close triangle of friendship
with UM. Was it the birth of your children that
really connected your dots all at first? Or was it
(25:16):
I actually don't know what the original seed. The original
seed's interesting. UM. So I went to work after I
passed the bar and decided not going to be a lawyer.
I'd like to do something creative. I had a sense,
(25:38):
you know, I had been very academic as a child,
and I went to work UM as a story editor,
worked into development for two men, Steve Tisch and John Avnet,
and working for them, I met John's wife, Barbara, and
(25:58):
we hit it off right away. She had no children,
her daughter is turning forties, so we've probably been friends
forty two years, best friends for forty two years. And
I left that job not long thereafter and kept Barbara
as a friend through our three children. Similar ages. Um
(26:20):
and Donna. We are not we are alike and different.
And Donna who I think I met Donna probably five
or six, seven years later because our kids play soccer together.
Then they ended up going to school together, and I
would when we talk about a triangle. We do things together,
(26:41):
we'll give parties together. But they're really individual relationships. They're
much more. It's much more my relationship with Barbara and
my relationship with Donna. It's not really about a triumvirate.
That's not I don't think any of us would see
it that way. It's int thing because I think the
(27:02):
triumvirate is simply my impression, not ever that you guys
have give do you know what I mean. It's not
I'm not I don't refer to it as a triangle
because of something you do. It's because I see, I
would see you in our early friendship when we first
(27:24):
started to get to know each other. Often there would
be some sort of event social thing, and as you said,
you would do things together, and it was a feeling
of real safety. You know, A triangle is a very uh.
(27:45):
It's a symbol of quality and safety and uh. And
I have admired the way you guys have as friends,
conducted your friendships and families over these years. And of
course we're all of the age people's families. We've lost
(28:09):
parents and um. You know, there there have been the
life on life's terms, aspects of life that have affected
and um, you know, brought us all a lot of
sadness and um and and the opportunity to hold each
(28:32):
other up, the opportunity to probe each other up. So
in those those moments, you know, I remember saying to
you when Janet died, I'll be your mom. Mhm. I'm
a little older than you, and I said I'll be
(28:53):
your mom, and I wanted to give comfort. So there
were opportunities. There have opportunities through life to take part
in joy and to share the sweetness and the hard edges,
and the opportunity to build together, to plant gardens together.
(29:14):
It's been remarkable. Yeah, I've watched your family and lived
with you through so much, and I feel honored to
be included, to be a part and to watch and contribute.
And I feel honored how you participate in my life
(29:36):
and the life of my family. I'm honored. Has nothing
to do with you being an actress. Yeah, No, I
know that. I know that, and that was really UM.
And I remember when my mom died. I remember you
saying that. UM. And when I think about people, I
(30:00):
I do think about those moments, and that's what really
sort of grounds that heart connection. UM. And then I
think about us rock climbing and just laughing or trying
to do those ridiculous stairs. We happen to live in
(30:20):
a neighborhood where there are these sort of famous climbing stairs.
By the way, we call them climbing stairs. You know,
the people that invented them just called them stairs because
they they served a purpose. They brought you from a
higher level down to the ocean level. But of course
we now have turned them into an exercise regime, and
(30:43):
there was a period of time, thankfully it's over um
where we would and again I think that. But that's
what I think the listener wants to know is because
that also bonded us trying again a new thing that
was hard to do. It's hard. Those things are hard,
(31:06):
and you you cannot even do one all the way,
and then all of a sudden you can do too.
And by the end of it, I think we were
able to do like four times up and down these stairs,
seven times, six times, and it never got easier. You think,
after you do the first one, okay, the second one
is going to be easier, maybe the third, you'll get
(31:28):
into a rhythm. Your heart's going to be beating, You're
going to feel the tingling. It never got easier ever.
It was horrible on the first one, as it was
on the sixth one. Um. But I do I think
of those times also as much as the heart stuff.
(31:51):
I connect immediately when I just think of you, I
will think of the emotional connections that we've had through
hard times. I remember, Um, when your dad died and
UM for the listener. I'm a little early to things, UM,
and I was the first person at the service, UM
(32:12):
and before Kathy and her mom even pulled up in
the cars, and so I was sort of standing there.
But I I remember that day very very well, deeply,
as much as I remember the silly, funny UM times
(32:35):
that we have shared, including a vacation we took together
up in the mountain area and had a had a
crazy um rafting. Yes, yes, that was fabulous and scary,
and and we have been through every single emotion, we
(32:59):
have through every kind of experience together. It is so
rich and deep the memories, and thank you for bringing
some of those up. I'm not sure I would have
celebrity celebrity Rock. Of the reason we say it is
that we were in a boating incident where we were
floating a river. It happened to be that the water
(33:20):
table was very low, and so where normally the boats
sort of just cruise through this one area, because the
water was lower, it changed how the boats got through
and our boat ended up um up against this huge
boulder in the middle of this river, and it kind
(33:43):
of went up on its side and it filled with
water and it meant we all had to get out
of the boat and climb up on this huge boulder
about seven of us um and then they would flip
the boat figure it out. But there was a moment
where they were trying to make sure that the boat
(34:05):
didn't go all the way down the river. So there
was a rope and they were trying to tie it
around the rock. But at the same time I got
into like total boss Jamie mode because I didn't like
a rope being around anybody anywhere near and we had
(34:28):
kids with us, and I was really stern because saying
I don't care about the boat, I cared that a
rope is being somehow around us, and God forbid that,
you know what I'm saying. It was a moment, and
the reason we call it celebrity Rock is, as I said,
(34:51):
in high water, this little passage is where you get
really good pictures of the people on the boat. So
the professional photographers that the boat company hires are poised
on the bank opposite this big boulder because normally people are,
you know, paddling through and everybody's got that look on
(35:12):
their face like I am really tough, and you get
these great pictures. Well, here we were, now this group
of people straddling this rock. It was simply that they
happened to be there in that moment. And we got
the pictures back and we called it Celebrity Rock. Um,
because you know, what are you gonna do? So before
(35:33):
I let you go, I do want to talk about
conflict in friendships, which you know, Um, it is not
something I don't think you and I've ever had a conflict.
And in my life my way of dealing with conflict
is I just sort of shut down. I get very quiet,
(35:54):
kind of silent, silent scream. I'm like Edward Monk. You know, UM,
what about you? Same same I? Um, yeah, I am.
I would say conflict diverse. I don't choose friends that
I will have conflicts with. I'm not a judgmental person
(36:16):
and so I'm very accepting. And you know you can
pretty much do you. And and you know, after all
of these years, I know what that looks like. And
if I see something new, it's, um, yeah, it's you.
And I grew up in a home with a father
who was extremely mercurial, and you never knew what would
(36:40):
trigger him. Most likely it would be spilling the milk
at the dinner table. And I learned how to put
a wall up. And I think a lot of us
do this, and and that wall goes up like that,
there's very little to bring it down, except now my
children are able to say let it go. It's been
(37:04):
a long hard learn for me with my friends. My friends,
I don't have conflicts with my friends. We all accept
one another as I do you, Jamie, I can't imagine anything. Yeah,
any place we would conflict, we'd rub up against each
other in a way that made each of us or
(37:24):
either of us feel uncomfortable. It won't happen. And I
avoid them firing someone. Oh my god, it's the worst
thing in the world for me. And but in friendship
it doesn't come up luckily mm hmm. And Yet what
I love is what you opened with, which is that
your best friend growing up with somebody very different from you,
(37:48):
and that level of not needing to just be friends
with someone who's just the same as you, and really
having that expansion to be able to accept people for
who they are and and love them for who they
are in their difference from you. Um, that missing piece
(38:11):
is uh a profound statement about a good friend. And
I couldn't be happier hearing it from you on the
good Friend podcast. Thank you for being here with us.
I'm so happy to have been here. I love you,
I love our friendship, and I love everything new that
(38:31):
you do. Jamie, you thrilled me. Thank you and UH
for my listener Um stay safe out there, and God
bless you and Kathy, thanks for being here and thanks
for being such a good friend. Good Friend is produced
(39:01):
by Dylan Fagin and is a production of I Heart Radio.
Our theme song, good Friend is written, produced, and performed
by Emily King. Don't Already unlator from a good Friend,
(39:25):
Don't Already from a good Friend. For more podcasts from
my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
If there's something, I'll get it. I'm a good friend.
Hi everybody, it's Jamie Lee Curtis and you're listening to
the Good Friend Podcast, presented to you by I Heart Radio.
It's a podcast about friendship. We talk about everything, We cry,
(00:24):
we laugh, we think about what it really means to
be a good friend. And I have conversations with some
of my best friends, some people I've never met, and
sort of everything in between. So I hope by the
end of it that you have a really good sense
(00:47):
of what friendship means to me and the people that
I consider friends. And I hope you can take those
same ideas into your own friendship groups, and I hope
you enjoy it. I don't know id on the lot.
I'm a good friend. This is how we roll here,
(01:07):
we roll into it, we roll out of it. There's
no big I know, there's no big announcement. I'm trying
not to pretend to be like a daytime television although
I do get into my late night DJ voice, which
sometimes gets very DJ. My guest today on the Good
Friend Podcast is a good friend is a friend who
(01:31):
has taught me as much about friendship as anybody I know,
And that is my friend. Cathy Waterman, Welcome to the
Good Friend Podcast. I'm so happy to be here with you, Jamie.
I never thought I would do this when you first asked,
And here I am because you are a good friend.
So let's talk about why you wouldn't want to Why
(01:53):
because I'm very private. Yeah, I'm not gonna ask you
to betray your privacy stuff in your life or your family.
But you do represent friendship in the most beautiful way
for my listener. UM, I do think we have one, Cathy.
I try to like to think we have one. UM.
(02:15):
Kathy is a spectacular jewelry designer creator. UM. We did
not meet because of her children. We met because our
daughters danced together. But over the years, obviously I've had
the great privilege of wearing her stuff whenever I do
public things. UM. I wear a child charm around my
(02:39):
neck seven since the day she placed it around my neck.
And UM, she is as important a person to me
as there is, UM. And you represent friendship to me. UM.
You represented in all areas of your life. You grew
up here in Los Angeles. I did. I grew up
(02:59):
in Burbank, California. And when we talk about friendship. You
may want to be asking questions, but here I go. Um.
I started kindergarten and kindergarten through the eighth grade. I
had one friend, one friend, She was my best friend.
There were all sorts of people around who I was
(03:20):
friendly with, but when I had play dates, it was
always with Sue. She was different than I was, but
she was the same, which I think is something I
found with most of my friends. But yeah, in Burbank,
California's Southern California girl not afraid really very much except
(03:40):
being in public. Um. And I understand you're a private
person and that this this is a public This is
sort of as public as you like to be in.
The great news is that it's just our voices and
our stories and our hearts connecting. And um, you know,
you brought up something already that's interesting to me, which
(04:02):
is we don't necessarily look for friends who are just
like us. That the way you described her is that
you really didn't have necessarily something in common, that she
was different than you, but that you connected. Can you
think or talk about what aspects of her we're different?
(04:24):
So I found that through most of my friendships, whether
it's wanting or your need to complete yourself, to find
missing pieces, um, to learn I'm not I'm that's amazing,
continue please, sorry, just it's finding new ways to be um. So,
(04:48):
Sue was a Christian scientist and I'm a Jew, and
it fascinated me that she was never vaccinated. We got
online for the SONGK vaccine at our grammar school and
Sue wasn't there. And when they did, he did some
kind of during school, some kind of religious programming. Sue
(05:12):
wasn't there. Neither was I because it was quit mostly Christian.
But she had a big family, a big Swedish family,
and it was it looked different, the home look different.
She had a lovely June Jacobson, was a lovely homemaker mother.
Her father had a job as a truant officer. It
(05:33):
couldn't have been more different than my enterprising, entrepreneurial father
and my seeking mother. She was always looking for something
new and different and intrepid in that way, more so
than I am. But Sue was a kind girl, a
lovely girl. She accepted me, which is you know, that's
(05:56):
I guess that's a prerequisite, you know, an acceptance without judgment. Yeah,
that would be the definition of a friendship, right to
be a good friends, acceptance without judgment. You again, as
you always do, you go right to the heart of
(06:17):
the matter, and you said something that no one else
has said. You find the missing peace. And I've been
looking for missing pieces and connecting up and I didn't
realize that that's what it was, because you and I
are very different people, and yet we were missing pieces
(06:42):
for each other. And I didn't really know that be
for this moment because when we first met. You remember,
I joke you about this all the time because you said,
I've never had a friend who as an actor, kind
of as a sort of declaratories been sort of like
actors go away, because I get it, and I felt
(07:06):
kind of privileged to be that friend who was an actor.
But honestly, I think we we didn't know it when
we became friends, but there is an aspect of a
missing piece with each of us in each other's lives,
and I just think that's the first time anybody has
(07:26):
mentioned that. And here you are talking about your first
friend where you were missing pieces for each other. It
was very different. Most of the time people talk about
finding the similarities, and I love that you talk about
it in reference to a missing piece. Yeah, you know,
(07:49):
I think what I said in the beginning was similar
but different, the same but different, different but the same.
You and I have so many any similarities. We can,
I think, complete each other's sentences. We have minds that
never quit. You are far more adept at at at
(08:12):
taking your ideas and joining the whole world with them,
and I admire that beyond that ability. But there's something,
and you know, I can't articulate what it was about
me that fit with you, but when I can say,
was you take my comment about never having an act
(08:33):
of friend as disparaging just a statement of fact. It
was just I had lots of friends and lots of
kind of friends in different periods of my life. That's
an interesting thing, is how someone you and I had
been friends for a very long time, and I tend
to have very long friendships, although there are some friendships
(08:55):
that have my law school friends. I love two people
in law school. I don't see them. I don't know
much about them. I probably should google them and see
what's going on. You know what I mean. It's but
some people are constantly and those people are the people
of your heart. It's like you're magnetized to them, right,
(09:16):
I think you and I were. It just happened. I couldn't.
I don't know if I could describe it what happened.
You know what the attraction was, But I think we
both had it food. It was our daughters, for sure,
our beautiful daughter daughters. We lived near each other. We
have a similar locale of where we planted our lives,
(09:39):
and we both have planted near each other in a
very special place that we both love. Our daughters became friends,
which allowed us to spend more time because often that
happens where your kids connect, but you don't necessarily connect
to the parents. I know the friendships that you have
(10:01):
made through all three of your children's passions. So your
eldest son, Nikki, was a soccer player, and you had
a crew of of kids in the soccer and their
parents and you were all very close. You did that
(10:23):
with Coco, your youngest, with soccer and friendships, and you
certainly did it with Claire, your middle who It was
my daughter Annie's friend when they danced together, and that's
where we met. We met in a dance class. We met.
We met waiting for our kids as they danced, watching
(10:44):
our kids watching our kids dance. It wasn't so much
we of course, we were waiting, but I think we
were witnessing. I think we were We were exploring this
world of who are these kids? Who was this teacher? Um?
You know, who are these parents? What's this whole millier
you about? And I have to say that Annie is
(11:08):
my first grandchild, godmother. That's what happened. Yeah, that's what happened.
You and I. You and I are closing you and
you know, you and my youngest daughter, Coco are close.
And Annie and Claire, you know, my middle daughter, your oldest,
(11:29):
our dear friends, and something special for one another, A
safe place and your safe place for me, Jamie. It
is things I don't talk to anyone else about I
can talk to you about. I feel safe. That's really special.
(11:49):
That's something that doesn't come along that often. No, And
the only way you can feel real safety with some
of these when you really start to peel those layers
away and let each other into the difficulties of life.
Life is hard for everybody. Um. I refer to it
(12:14):
as everybody gets their turn in the barrel many many times.
And you and I have had that. We've also I
don't know how much you remember, but you and I
took up rock climbing together. Oh we did. That was joyous.
(12:34):
That was joyous. So the thing, the reason I brought
it up from my listener is Kathy and I became
girlfriends through our daughters who were dancers, and we went
to a lot of dance competitions. We were dance moms.
I don't know if you've seen that show. We were
those people in the stands cheering our daughters when their
(12:56):
feats landed and know when their numbers went well at
the awards. You know. We went to dance competitions together
for five six years regularly. But Kathy and I also
went I think it was a birthday party of somebody
(13:17):
where it was at a climbing gym, and Kathy and
I took the introduction class together for adults. Now, we
had never done a sport together. Kathy is not an athlete.
I'm not saying she's uncoordinated or not strong, but she
(13:39):
is not an athlete. Um. We we showed up at
this class, and I guess it was such the beginning
for me of where I felt that I had something
unique with you. The what you need to know to
my listener is that Hathy has very close friends and
(14:03):
there is a group of them and they are all
the similar age. They all had first children together and
other children together. All of the children were all friends.
And so I'm not saying I felt outside of it,
but it's a strong bond when when you come to
(14:25):
a group of women who are you know, very close friends,
and Kathy and I rock climbing and laughing. Kild say
l A m FO like, no, well, I don't even know.
Somebody will tell me. I'll get a letter now going
that isn't what l A f and whatever it is
(14:46):
laughing my whatever ass off whatever la mayo. We laughed
because we were new at something. We didn't know how
to do it. And I suggest to any person listening,
if you are just connecting up with a new friend,
(15:11):
find a pastime that neither one of you know how
to do, and then try to go do it. Because
we were both learners. You had to learn not you
had to wear all this gear. And then let's see
if Cathy remembers on ballet, ballet, on climbing climb on. No,
(15:36):
I never knew the climbing climates because on ballet, balat
on means I are is the safety? Are you my safety?
Which is what is? You belay someone? You stand below
them holding the rope, and if they fall, you support them.
You saved them. When you're climbing, you say on ballet,
(15:59):
and then the other person speaks the language and says
bill at on. And then you say climbing, which says
I am now going to start to climb, and then
the other person says climb on. And when they say that,
that means I've got you. And I think that's what
I took away from the whole thing, Kathy, is that
(16:21):
there was a level of I've got you safety and
laughter and failing miserably UM climbing these rock walls. And
we didn't keep it up for a very long time.
I think we did it a couple of months. Is,
by the way, incredibly hard on your hands, UM. And
(16:43):
for whatever reason, it didn't last for either one of us, UM.
But it was a momentary beginning that allowed us a
new step into each other and allowed us to fail together.
There's almost nothing more fun than failing. It's something that
(17:04):
means nothing right. And both of us are easy to laugh,
really easy to laugh. Yeah, and we laughed. Oh yes,
but we've laughed through a lot of things. We've laughed
through sheep in Ireland and Ireland. Oh gosh. By the way,
when you go to visit somebody on a farm in Ireland,
(17:27):
they don't really mention that if you walk out in
the fields you're going to just be covered in sheep.
You just they don't mention it there, you know, because
they're just covered in sheep and all the time, so
they just think it's normal. We were both laughing. Wouldn't
have been more fun? Yeah, something, I'm a good friend.
(17:51):
We'll be right back with more good friend after this
quick break, so stick around and get him God. One
of the most important things for me in being a
(18:11):
friend is being useful. It's not so much i'd like
to look good or I like to feel good, but
I'd rather be useful than learn a new sports. I'd
rather be useful than a lot of things. And you
have been useful to me in um exercising demons. That's
(18:32):
that's a very strong word. But I think I don't
know if your listeners will understand what that means. But
we've all got them. They live inside of us. Very
often I keep them in a boundary box in my
in my mind somewhere. My daughter, my youngest daughter, taught
me about boundary boxes, how you put things away. You
(18:54):
don't really go to them unless you intend to. And
so I keep these things in boundary boxes. But when
they're overflowing, I called Jamie. Help me release them. You
help me clear the rocks from the path, so that
I can be free again. Well, as you know, I'm
(19:16):
in recovery and one of the fundamentals of recovery is
a phrase, You're only as sick as your secrets. That
secrets um source conflict and keep you, as you said,
not able to be free to move forward from it.
(19:36):
And yes, we have boundary lives, and of course there
are people we have boundaries with and that's healthy. And
that's as we become adults, we learn more and more
about boundaries. We have families, all of us. But being
able to really open the box and let that stuff
(19:58):
out and in a safe you I mean you brought
up safety from the beginning, just in a safe way,
through conversation, through not talking, from just being bearing witness
to someone. Um, yeah, it's it's it's an it's such
(20:18):
a crucial aspect of friendship for me and I think
for you, Yes, the sense of the ability to be vulnerable,
so I can be vulnerable with you know, I have
a set of friends and it's a small group and
most of them friends for like you, Jamie. You know,
(20:42):
I don't know how long we've been friends, but most
of my friends very few new friends. You know, a
couple of my new friends, but they're not It's not um,
I'm not sure that the ability to be vulnerable is there.
That's that's that's a soub person who will allow me
(21:02):
to to expose exposed pain. I guess exposed fear most
of its fear base. I'm sure that I think that's
very human, right. The ability to be vulnerable with someone
is um special. And by the way, going back to
(21:24):
the rock climbing metaphor, when you're climbing high and someone
else has the rope and you have to totally trust
that that person and you know, as the kids say,
has your back, you know I have your back. It's
all designed to say I am trustworthy, I am there
(21:46):
for you, I'm interested in you, I care about you
and what happens to you, and life happens to everybody.
Everybody has life. Um, it's the beautiful thing about life
and the heartbreaking thing about life. And we've been able
(22:09):
to do that with each other. I want you mentioned
your early life having one friend, and even though you're
in the arts, as you said, you went to law school. Um,
and you have a very strong parents. You had two
very strong parents. Um. Your mom was a seeker, a
(22:30):
real thinker and seeker, and your dad was ambitious and
smart and tenacious and creative and clever and um. And
then you married very young. How old were you when
you met Eddie? I was eighteen when we had our
first date, and we married ten years later on yeah,
(22:54):
the day of our first the anniversary of our first date.
So yeah, we've been together for a very long time. I,
as you know, have been also married for a very
long time. Um. As I like to say to my
first husband, he does not like it, poor Chris. Whenever
(23:15):
I just make a joke and say, like in a
bio you know where you you submit a bio about yourself,
and it's just they're so boring. So I always try
to make it funny because it's just my nature. And
so I would write, Um, you know, she's still married
to her first husband. He just does not like poor guy. Um,
(23:40):
my husband does not like that I don't wear a
wedding ring, nor does he, which he can't understand that
they're the same thing. It's the same thing. Good friend.
We'll be right back with more good friend after this quick.
(24:09):
In your early mom friendships, UM, with your with your crew,
I would call them like your crew. This is this
is a group of women that have been together through
a lot, right, three women, yes, oh, three other women
to other women to other women, right, so your triumvirate friendship.
(24:33):
Normally it's funny because we've had I've had a couple
UM interviews where I've talked to two people at once,
two dear friends. UM. And it's always interesting to see
how people navigate threesomes. And obviously it's not fair to
really talk about it in depth here because they're not
(24:55):
here with us. But UM, your friends Barbara and Donna
have and you have a very close triangle of friendship
with UM. Was it the birth of your children that
really connected your dots all at first? Or was it
(25:16):
I actually don't know what the original seed. The original
seed's interesting. UM. So I went to work after I
passed the bar and decided not going to be a lawyer.
I'd like to do something creative. I had a sense,
(25:38):
you know, I had been very academic as a child,
and I went to work UM as a story editor,
worked into development for two men, Steve Tisch and John Avnet,
and working for them, I met John's wife, Barbara, and
(25:58):
we hit it off right away. She had no children,
her daughter is turning forties, so we've probably been friends
forty two years, best friends for forty two years. And
I left that job not long thereafter and kept Barbara
as a friend through our three children. Similar ages. Um
(26:20):
and Donna. We are not we are alike and different.
And Donna who I think I met Donna probably five
or six, seven years later because our kids play soccer together.
Then they ended up going to school together, and I
would when we talk about a triangle. We do things together,
(26:41):
we'll give parties together. But they're really individual relationships. They're
much more. It's much more my relationship with Barbara and
my relationship with Donna. It's not really about a triumvirate.
That's not I don't think any of us would see
it that way. It's int thing because I think the
(27:02):
triumvirate is simply my impression, not ever that you guys
have give do you know what I mean. It's not
I'm not I don't refer to it as a triangle
because of something you do. It's because I see, I
would see you in our early friendship when we first
(27:24):
started to get to know each other. Often there would
be some sort of event social thing, and as you said,
you would do things together, and it was a feeling
of real safety. You know, A triangle is a very uh.
(27:45):
It's a symbol of quality and safety and uh. And
I have admired the way you guys have as friends,
conducted your friendships and families over these years. And of
course we're all of the age people's families. We've lost
(28:09):
parents and um. You know, there there have been the
life on life's terms, aspects of life that have affected
and um, you know, brought us all a lot of
sadness and um and and the opportunity to hold each
(28:32):
other up, the opportunity to probe each other up. So
in those those moments, you know, I remember saying to
you when Janet died, I'll be your mom. Mhm. I'm
a little older than you, and I said I'll be
(28:53):
your mom, and I wanted to give comfort. So there
were opportunities. There have opportunities through life to take part
in joy and to share the sweetness and the hard edges,
and the opportunity to build together, to plant gardens together.
(29:14):
It's been remarkable. Yeah, I've watched your family and lived
with you through so much, and I feel honored to
be included, to be a part and to watch and contribute.
And I feel honored how you participate in my life
(29:36):
and the life of my family. I'm honored. Has nothing
to do with you being an actress. Yeah, No, I
know that. I know that, and that was really UM.
And I remember when my mom died. I remember you
saying that. UM. And when I think about people, I
(30:00):
I do think about those moments, and that's what really
sort of grounds that heart connection. UM. And then I
think about us rock climbing and just laughing or trying
to do those ridiculous stairs. We happen to live in
(30:20):
a neighborhood where there are these sort of famous climbing stairs.
By the way, we call them climbing stairs. You know,
the people that invented them just called them stairs because
they they served a purpose. They brought you from a
higher level down to the ocean level. But of course
we now have turned them into an exercise regime, and
(30:43):
there was a period of time, thankfully it's over um
where we would and again I think that. But that's
what I think the listener wants to know is because
that also bonded us trying again a new thing that
was hard to do. It's hard. Those things are hard,
(31:06):
and you you cannot even do one all the way,
and then all of a sudden you can do too.
And by the end of it, I think we were
able to do like four times up and down these stairs,
seven times, six times, and it never got easier. You think,
after you do the first one, okay, the second one
is going to be easier, maybe the third, you'll get
(31:28):
into a rhythm. Your heart's going to be beating, You're
going to feel the tingling. It never got easier ever.
It was horrible on the first one, as it was
on the sixth one. Um. But I do I think
of those times also as much as the heart stuff.
(31:51):
I connect immediately when I just think of you, I
will think of the emotional connections that we've had through
hard times. I remember, Um, when your dad died and
UM for the listener. I'm a little early to things, UM,
and I was the first person at the service, UM
(32:12):
and before Kathy and her mom even pulled up in
the cars, and so I was sort of standing there.
But I I remember that day very very well, deeply,
as much as I remember the silly, funny UM times
(32:35):
that we have shared, including a vacation we took together
up in the mountain area and had a had a
crazy um rafting. Yes, yes, that was fabulous and scary,
and and we have been through every single emotion, we
(32:59):
have through every kind of experience together. It is so
rich and deep the memories, and thank you for bringing
some of those up. I'm not sure I would have
celebrity celebrity Rock. Of the reason we say it is
that we were in a boating incident where we were
floating a river. It happened to be that the water
(33:20):
table was very low, and so where normally the boats
sort of just cruise through this one area, because the
water was lower, it changed how the boats got through
and our boat ended up um up against this huge
boulder in the middle of this river, and it kind
(33:43):
of went up on its side and it filled with
water and it meant we all had to get out
of the boat and climb up on this huge boulder
about seven of us um and then they would flip
the boat figure it out. But there was a moment
where they were trying to make sure that the boat
(34:05):
didn't go all the way down the river. So there
was a rope and they were trying to tie it
around the rock. But at the same time I got
into like total boss Jamie mode because I didn't like
a rope being around anybody anywhere near and we had
(34:28):
kids with us, and I was really stern because saying
I don't care about the boat, I cared that a
rope is being somehow around us, and God forbid that,
you know what I'm saying. It was a moment, and
the reason we call it celebrity Rock is, as I said,
(34:51):
in high water, this little passage is where you get
really good pictures of the people on the boat. So
the professional photographers that the boat company hires are poised
on the bank opposite this big boulder because normally people are,
you know, paddling through and everybody's got that look on
(35:12):
their face like I am really tough, and you get
these great pictures. Well, here we were, now this group
of people straddling this rock. It was simply that they
happened to be there in that moment. And we got
the pictures back and we called it Celebrity Rock. Um,
because you know, what are you gonna do? So before
(35:33):
I let you go, I do want to talk about
conflict in friendships, which you know, Um, it is not
something I don't think you and I've ever had a conflict.
And in my life my way of dealing with conflict
is I just sort of shut down. I get very quiet,
(35:54):
kind of silent, silent scream. I'm like Edward Monk. You know, UM,
what about you? Same same I? Um, yeah, I am.
I would say conflict diverse. I don't choose friends that
I will have conflicts with. I'm not a judgmental person
(36:16):
and so I'm very accepting. And you know you can
pretty much do you. And and you know, after all
of these years, I know what that looks like. And
if I see something new, it's, um, yeah, it's you.
And I grew up in a home with a father
who was extremely mercurial, and you never knew what would
(36:40):
trigger him. Most likely it would be spilling the milk
at the dinner table. And I learned how to put
a wall up. And I think a lot of us
do this, and and that wall goes up like that,
there's very little to bring it down, except now my
children are able to say let it go. It's been
(37:04):
a long hard learn for me with my friends. My friends,
I don't have conflicts with my friends. We all accept
one another as I do you, Jamie, I can't imagine anything. Yeah,
any place we would conflict, we'd rub up against each
other in a way that made each of us or
(37:24):
either of us feel uncomfortable. It won't happen. And I
avoid them firing someone. Oh my god, it's the worst
thing in the world for me. And but in friendship
it doesn't come up luckily mm hmm. And Yet what
I love is what you opened with, which is that
your best friend growing up with somebody very different from you,
(37:48):
and that level of not needing to just be friends
with someone who's just the same as you, and really
having that expansion to be able to accept people for
who they are and and love them for who they
are in their difference from you. Um, that missing piece
(38:11):
is uh a profound statement about a good friend. And
I couldn't be happier hearing it from you on the
good Friend podcast. Thank you for being here with us.
I'm so happy to have been here. I love you,
I love our friendship, and I love everything new that
(38:31):
you do. Jamie, you thrilled me. Thank you and UH
for my listener Um stay safe out there, and God
bless you and Kathy, thanks for being here and thanks
for being such a good friend. Good Friend is produced
(39:01):
by Dylan Fagin and is a production of I Heart Radio.
Our theme song, good Friend is written, produced, and performed
by Emily King. Don't Already unlator from a good Friend,
(39:25):
Don't Already from a good Friend. For more podcasts from
my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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