May 5, 2022 • 46 mins
This week, Jamie talks about all aspects of friendship with Jennifer Grey. They discuss Jennifer’s best friend as well as her time on Dancing with the Stars. Tune in to find out why Jamie calls her Dr. Jennifer Grey.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
If something donative. 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 my Heart Radio. It's a podcast
(00:20):
about friendship. We talk about everything, We cry, 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
(00:43):
it that you have a really good sense 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 idea unlocative I'm a good friend the podcast.
(01:05):
You have to wear a beret, you know that's what?
Is that not true? Because I'm a little embarrassed if
that's not true, because that's what everyone told me. Okay,
well for for my listener, For my uninitiated listener, my
guest today is wearing a beret on her birthday. Her
(01:26):
name is Jennifer Gray, and she is a good friend
of mine and a good friend to you. Um and
I'm happy to welcome you here to the Good Friend Podcast.
Miss Birthday Girl is so much. I'm so here, and
you are the only person wearing a beret. We will
(01:48):
accept you as you are in this moment where you are.
That's what friends do, well, it is what friends do.
It It is what friends should do. It should be
come as you are. Um. Is it that way with
you with your friends or is it conditional? I think
(02:09):
that the more we can accept each other exactly as
we are, the deeper the love and the more chance
of longevity and true connection. I'm with you. It's interesting
because you are someone who I know very well, who
(02:33):
we have gotten closer and closer and closer now over
the years. But what's interesting to me is you also
have like a best friend. Your friend Tracy always loomed
very large to me in the in the in our
relationship and just in an example of a ride or
(02:59):
die friend. Can you just talk a little bit about
her and how you guys met and where you met
and you know, kind of like the the Masha Nations
of that friendship. Tracy Pollen and I met when we
were fifteen, and we met at Dalton where I was
a new student, and I didn't know anybody, and it
(03:21):
was a remedial math class, and it was a bunch
of math fits because we were not mathletes. We were
special at special math needs. And there were many of
us crammed in this room and it smelled a lot
like bo much too small, too many adolescents, and we
(03:41):
couldn't talk because we were in this tiny room around
this table um, and the fumes were intense and the
ideas were beyond my ken. So I basically would just
like look at this cool girl. And then we met
at a party again, because I didn't have any classes
with her. We met a party in East Hampton when
(04:02):
it was like like John John Kennedy, that crowd, you know,
he went to collegiate and all the collegiate boys were
like the cool, sexy boys, and we were the Dalton girls.
And the Dalton girls were kind of like considered to
be like the cool girls and or so we thought
I wasn't one of them because I was brand new
from Malibu and I was a little um too much
(04:22):
hippie Malibu beach chick, and I hadn't quite gotten to
the groovy Upper east Side New York high powered families.
So I felt very much like a fish out of water.
And I went to East Hampton to this party and
it was one of those weekends where come out to
East Hampton for the weekend, and everybody at this house.
(04:45):
It was one of those old because old money is
Tampton houses, and there was no there were no adults anywhere.
It was just all of a sudden, the whole house
was writhing with these bodies making out, listening to the
eyes brothers, the heat is on sensuality, and it was
just like every chair, every every surface was covered with
(05:07):
this kind of like esser drawing. Somebodies just jigs out
into each other and I was I cannot believe that
I am the only one not pair it up. I'm
wandering around this house and just pot smoke, and probably
the cool kids were doing coke upstairs somewhere. I didn't
(05:28):
really know many people in this group. It was kind
of new and I knew I was spending the weekend there,
but I didn't understand where I'd sleep with all these
kids everywhere, and it just felt so strange to be
singled out is the only like man left standing. It
was like musical chairs and I was just the only one.
(05:49):
And then I saw the silhouette in the doorway of
this person. I guess it was a girl, and then
I got closer and I saw it was trace See
and there she was. She and I looked at each other,
and we only knew each other from the remedial math class,
and I I saw her and I knew for a
(06:10):
fact she was one of the prettiest girls in the school.
Like she was gorgeous and cool and smart and sweet
and funny from what I could tell, the little bit
I could tell, And I thought, how is it? She
and I sat on the porch and like, how much
of how we must be the biggest losers in the world.
How is it that everybody is paired up but us?
(06:32):
What is wrong with us? How can this be? And
so we bonded that night as the two people who
were left with nobody even trying to make out with us.
And that's when we became friends. And I realized, you
know what, if she no one's coming after her, and
(06:53):
she's definitely like beautiful and cool and great and sexy
and all those things, then maybe I'm not so bad either.
And then I realized she was super funny and that
she wanted to be an actress too, and we started
haven't sleepovers and doing her homework together. You know, she'd
always teased me that I would I had so a
d D. That she'd be like, we have to study,
(07:14):
and I'd be like, I know, we know I now,
but how about all of that and that? And that's
basically still our relationship and now we're well into our
other chapters of our life. And you know, she's like
my sister. I never had a sister, and the idea
of this person that exists in the world that no
matter what's happening, especially if things are particularly rough, particularly rocky,
(07:39):
particularly rough sees, she's who I call and she just
drops everything and she gets into action and listens whether
it's like a medical issue, because we're both pretend doctors.
I know we're going to discuss that. Yeah, we can
hang a shingle. She and I as the two people
who like I barely graduate it at high school, but
(08:01):
I swear to God, I'm a medical intuitive, but I
get it, like she and I could have a practice together.
I have obviously, I know a bit of that story,
and I know how bonded you two became. I didn't
actually know the origin story which is fascinating to me. Um,
how old were you guys at that point? By the way,
(08:21):
just but by the way, just even the I'm going
to a party in the you know, Hampton's, I'm gonna
spend the night there for the weekend. That idea of
this sort of that freedom at that age was not
what I experienced at all, um, And which is fine.
It's just a comparison, which is interesting to me. So
when you bond with somebody and you have that close
(08:43):
of a friendship that early in your life, and it's
that formative and helpful and close when you moved out
to California. She didn't move out to California, correct, well, Um,
I moved back and forth for many years, and she
moved out here when she married Michael J. Fox. He
(09:07):
was living here, he was doing family ties here, and
they met out here. I mean they ended up having
their life here, and I was back in New York.
I think it was buried back and forth, like we
all have been extremely bi coastal for I mean my
whole childhood and her adulthood. She has spent more time,
much more time in New York. But I'll let her
(09:28):
speak for herself. But Basically, she had a period of
time when she was West Coast Okay. But there was
a period where you where she was there and you
were here or yes, I'm trying to give get a sense.
I mean, she's been there for years now and I've
been here for years now. So we have been separated
by the country for many, many years since you and
(09:51):
I have been closer friends. Yes, correct, right, you've so
it's always been so interesting to me because you have
kept that relationship through a long bit of distance. As
you said, you've been separated by the country. Um. She
obviously is married with children. She has four children, and
(10:12):
her fourth child we were pregnant at the same time
with her fourth and my first. That must have been lovely.
Talk to me about that for a minute. Well, she
didn't want to tell me she was pregnant because first,
if it was, it was early. So it was in
that stage when no one's telling anyone. And she didn't
want to tell me because she was so worried about
(10:33):
my reaction because it was her fourth and I was
so desperate to have one. And so when she called
me to tell me she was pregnant, I said, well,
so am I and I'm not telling anyone, and she said,
what I was so scared to tell you. I think
it was her telling me first and then me telling her.
And we are babies were born a month apart to
(10:55):
the day, and so we were pregnant together. We were
on the in your vacations on the sum in the summer, pregnant.
Then we were nursing our babies together. You know, we
have all these pictures of us doing all of these things,
and we call each other like, oh, she's sitting up,
what's she doing? But you know, I had that whole
amazing shared Um. It was my first time in her
(11:18):
Obviously she was extremely adept at being a mother at
that point. Yeah. But but that, you know, and obviously
this isn't this is a show about good friendship and
people's experiences. That was not my experience. UM, I didn't
naturally have that with people. I ended up meeting people
(11:42):
with children, UM my children's age, and of course our
families became very close as those kids got closer. Um,
and I too had a relationship with those people. But
just I you know, I'm sitting here kind of as
your friend with this sort of utific smile on my face,
and I I'm imagining you wanting to be able to,
(12:08):
you know, be pregnant and have a child, and there
you are with your best friend, even though you're on
opposite coasts, both going through it at the same time
as a beautiful shared experience. You know what was the
craziest thing when I just mentioned that is that they
just saw me just so just beside myself, like I'll
never meet somebody and I'll never have a baby. And
(12:31):
I remember them saying to me like, if you want,
you know, we'll help you. You can have a baby
and we'll help you. And you can have a baby
by yourself and we'll help you. And I was like,
how how like they just weren't going to let me
not have that dream. It was. I just remember them saying,
don't worry, we'll help you make this happen. And I
(12:51):
just like Michael was became like a brother to me,
you know, because she was like my sister. And I
just got this amazing man in the deal as well,
because I'm such a girl's girl. But to have my
best girlfriend have such an extraordinary husband has been such
a boon for me. Yeah. Yeah, And I've heard you
(13:11):
speak of Michael in that way, and it has been
brotherly brotherly love. Certainly. He's just such a deeply caring,
deep human being. I don't deep. I keep saying the
word deep, and it's it's like, it's profound when you
have this abundance of connections to people who are and
(13:35):
when I say extraordinary humans, I'm not talking about even
anything to do with outside accomplishments, you know, aside from
the fact you know he's a genius and a writer
and whatever those things are. It's so much more about
having access to people who have a perspective and a
(13:56):
history with you. They know where you've come from, they
know your wounds, and they know what it is you need.
And time can pass and it's like no time has passed.
It's that elasticity of time where you can really drop
deep right away. There's little sound bite, thank you, elasticity.
(14:17):
I love that something. I'm a good friend. We'll be
right back with more good friend after this quick break,
so stick around, don't. I'm a good friend. I don't. Okay,
(14:41):
I want to talk to you, Dr Dr Gray. We
need to talk about Dr Gray. For my listener, For
my uninitiated listener to this podcast, I pride myself on
being fair early hooked up. I'm one of those people
(15:03):
I pride. Excuse me and let me interrupt you just
will you may not, it's my podcast. Let me just
tell you. Whatever she's saying, she's downplaying it. Because so
I pride myself, and we all know that sometimes we
get lost in our pride. We get prideful about what
(15:26):
we can manifest and do, and it gets a little
lost because you go, really, you're not really all that,
But we I have pride of it. And I'm someone
who's reliable and you know, good in an emergency and
usually can click into a certain mode of thought and
(15:50):
I can apply good, common sense thought to things. But
my friend Jennifer is a doctor. My friend Jennifer has
such a wide knowledge and awareness and connections to every
(16:13):
aspect of medical care that you could imagine. And I'm
fascinated by where that began. You know you did You're
not a doctor, as you said, you barely got out
of high school. How did you become Dr? Gray? Um?
First of all, I agree with you and Um a
(16:37):
second of all, I have and an incredible um and
voracious appetite and curiosity and like puzzles and I like
to figure out if there's a problem or they're suffering happening.
I like to have some agency and be able to
(17:01):
mitigate suffering for myself, my friends, my family, a stranger.
I don't really care, but I feel like if there
is something to be discovered and ameliorated, I am like
a truffle pig. I just want to get that truffle
and I almost can't rest until I get some kind
(17:25):
of satisfaction. And because I like a puzzle, I like
a game, and because the stakes are high to me
if someone's suffering, and I believe that I wouldn't be
the doctor I am today without Google, but I definitely
(17:45):
had got um some kind of doctorate at Google. You
but I have a very strong intuitive sense of what
words to search. And then I scan and I look
around and I keep adding words to the search until
I can feel like like I'm getting like cherry, cherry, cherry.
(18:09):
You know, I'm just kind of just like pulling the slots.
I'm just doing this thing, and then I get this
feeling inside of I. I just I want to help
other people and I want to help myself. And I
have had so many physical issues, especially in the past
(18:30):
ten years and um, I've discovered even emotional, psychological, neurological
like anything in those realms. I'm infinitely fascinated by what's
happening in the most cutting edge science of any of
these issues, because I'm thrilled by an excited by gaining
(18:55):
some kind of understanding and being able to move the needle.
Does that make sense? Yeah, of course. It's one of
the greatest friend gifts that you give. You know, we
each try to show up with what are our um.
You know, I would also, just because I'm going to
(19:16):
say it, when we first started meeting each other through
our other friends. Honestly, every time I saw you, I
would look at you and run my finger in the
air from top to toe with this sort of look
of like, oh please, really, this is what you've put
(19:36):
together today? Because you have insane taste. You have that
gift of sight. I think you and I have similar
taste because everyone's taste is so subjective. I think ours
are in alignment. No excuse me, you just should It's
my show. You just sit there. I'm telling you that
(19:59):
I would to look at you and I'd be like, really,
silver birkin stocks, Really you're wearing silver birkin stocks with
white jeans. I'm gonna probably silver clouds. At the time,
they might have been silver clogs. I'm just was going
to lose my mind, is what I remember, because that
was always an area that I struggled with, and you
(20:19):
seemed too, without even any extra thought at all, just
had that beautiful ability. But really the gift, besides the
joy of the friendship, is the leaning in that you
do when there is an issue, particularly a medical issue. Um,
(20:44):
you get very quiet. It's it's you say you have
a d D but in a weird way. Well that's
that's the the hyper focus, right, That ability to hyperly
focus on something and laser beam into it is I
think a really um strong aspect of you as a friend. UM.
(21:08):
And I've been on the receiving end of it. I've
watched you um navigated. Uh, it's it's impressive. And do
you know where it began. Well, I will tell you
that my mom's dad and my mom's mom both had
(21:29):
come over from Ukraine as children and didn't speak the language,
and they both met in pharmacist school and they were
very unusual for a woman to be in pharmacist school
in US. I guess it was the thirties, very long
time ago, and they were I think my grandfather opened
(21:52):
a pharmacy in Brownsville, Brooklyn, which was not the Brooklyn
we know now it's the very It was very different,
very all immigrants and Jews, and he what became the
like it's what urgent care is today, very similar. It was.
He was the neighborhood doctor and it was the place
everyone hung out. And my mom was the daughter of
(22:15):
the pharmacist, and so she um grew up, you know,
helping her dad, and that her mom became the woman owner,
but she wasn't the owner. She was like she kind
of faded away. But it was all about helping people,
and it was a way for I guess immigrants without
any money and new to the country could become doctors
(22:38):
in a sense. And so they're incredible drive and brains
to be able to do that coming from where from
where they from whence they came. It was insane and
um and it also became a very social place, and
it became very political and very it was like a
(22:59):
very strong almost like the artery of the neighborhood. And
so when I was growing up, there was always that
sense of I don't know. I think maybe it's comes
from like wanting to a Jewish doctor like this, like
that that idolatry in Jewish culture of the doctor. But
(23:21):
the idea it's not playing God, but it's being able
to help somebody else in any kind of way, but
especially UM. It's so practical, like you can't ignore if
you've helped somebody in that response. In that respect, the
idea of UM, I think it comes from the solitary
(23:43):
and lonely experience of being sick or being in pain,
and the loneliness of feeling like nobody has had ybroid cancer.
Note that I know where nobody's had six final surgeries
like I have that I know nobody's had their spinal
court untethered and all of these fusions and all the
(24:03):
stuff that I've gone through that you watch me go
through all of those. It's a very lonely feeling to
feel like no one knows how to help you. Sure,
I hate asking for help. So I think it also
comes from wanting to help myself, educate myself and take
the fear away and kind of be able to have
(24:26):
more a sense of control, even if it's just an illusion. Yeah,
but having knowledge, having a mind that is facile enough
be able to listen to something, look at the puzzle,
start to understand what's going on. Is is a way
(24:48):
of controlling it, but it's also a way of understanding
it and advocating for yourself. Honestly, you're not helpless. You
have a mind, and it helps my mind to have
some kind of understanding of the terrain. Because every time
there's a health issue, whether it's a friend or my
(25:10):
family or me or my dog or anything, it's very
um it creates a lot of fear, and especially if
there's pain involved or confusion. And I like to do
like it's the wisdom to know the difference. I want
to be able to change the things I can, and
(25:33):
so I do as much as I can with my
you know, Google and my intuition and my just obsession
with because it's my obsession comes from like being thrilled
by understanding any of these pieces. I'm thrilled to just
(25:55):
like oh and oh, and then there's just so many
new things to learn about, you know, and everything is
always changing. It's always there's always new studies, and it's
just fascinating to me that we don't have to accept
what we used to accept as there's nothing to do.
I just like having something to do well. And and
(26:18):
as it relates to friendship, I will tell you there
are many people who I will talk to. I mean,
let's just even bring up UM. The most recent example
of this, which is UM you recently started working with.
You have an older dog and a new puppy, and UM.
(26:43):
Because of COVID and these bigger clinics, it's much more
challenging to take a dog in if you have more
than one and one has to be in the car.
I had to sit in the parking lot for every
single one of my dog appointments in the past year
and a half. I couldn't even go in, I know.
And then you sit in the car and you wait
for the call, which is by the way them shape
(27:06):
shifting and figuring out a way too safely administered veterinary
care two pets and the families with safety and protocols
in place and all the rest of it. It's beautiful.
But you found a mobile vet, and that mobile vet
came to you and then administered the care, the veterinary
(27:27):
care and medicine. And it was an old fashioned idea.
It's like the you know country doctor. You know house calls.
I mean, now if somebody gets a house call, you're like,
oh are you Beyonce? Like you know what I mean?
That gets only for the elite and it's only for
the rich. And that wasn't what house calls. It was
(27:50):
just what doctors did. They didn't make you come to
them if the child was sick. They came to your
house and you I didn't think I need to have
a mobile vet come and yet there was an issue
and I couldn't. It was a Friday and I could think,
and you gave me this contact, and you know, within
(28:12):
ten hours that person was at our home, helping with
the dog in that moment, and it was such an example.
You don't probaletize, you don't. You don't um you know,
you don't kind of carry on about it. You offer
the opportunity, you offer the opinion based on your own experience,
(28:34):
and you're happy to pass on a reference you It's
such a generosity of friendship. And uh, there's not a
person I know that doesn't call you first, because someone
will say, oh, I spoke to Jennifer and she said
this or that, and you're not a doctor. And nobody
(28:55):
is saying you're a doctor, and yet you have a
really beautiful way of sharing that um in friendship and
it's something that I'm better for. And I know I'm
not the only one. When Tracy was in New York
and you were out here and you know, young motherhood.
(29:15):
I know, I know because I live near where you
used to live, UM and um. Which has to do
with the community of your school, like you were, you
got very involved in that world. Is that how I
(29:36):
guess what I'm I'm looking forward to explore with you
is friendships like friendships later in life that didn't start, Yeah,
that weren't. Like if I want to college, i'd have
college friends for the rest of my life. But since
I didn't, I'm stuck with my high school friends for
the rest of my life. Because I love you, You're
stuck with your high school friends or your work friends.
Because the thing is is that that kind of being
(29:58):
forced into the same under the same in the same community,
where you're forced to be so dependent and intimate with
everybody for a long term, creates a different kind of
of depth of connection and almost sisterhood. I guess that's
why people love their sorority sisters and blah blah blah. Right,
so since I didn't have that, I met people on movies.
(30:22):
I've met people at school with my daughter's school because
you had to do those early play dates together and
the mommy and mees and stuff like that. And the
truth is is that and then when you get married,
you've got your husband's friends and you've got you know
you inherit friends. Um. And I feel like I've made
some really good friends through my daughter's school, and I
(30:46):
have made some really good friends through work. But there's
something about our group. And when I say our, I
mean you and me, Jamie, our group because we were
forced together regularly for many years two to let people
let each other know the good, the bad, and the
(31:09):
ugly in a within a container. That creates an intimacy
and a continuity that is extremely hard to get as
an adult, in my opinion, Once you have a family,
have your kids, once you have this other life where
you're really not living around your your life isn't around
(31:32):
a village fire, and that village fire that comes from
living in a community where you're really dependent pro dependent
and um, the the the depth of being privy to
people's highs and lows, as opposed to not reaching out
(31:55):
when things are hard, or only hearing about reading of
our things when things are great. There's just something about
the continuity of checking in on each other. Because we're
pack animals, we should were not meant to be isolated
as we have been this year. It's very different. We
(32:15):
are not meant to be solitary creatures. Even though I
love my alone time, probably more than anyone I know,
maybe next to you. And sometimes people just bug me.
But the truth is I really need to be loving others,
loved back, cared for and caring for others. And to me,
(32:37):
that's friendship, something good friend. We'll be right back with
more good friend after this quick break. Don't we have
a friend group? It's big and wide, it's married ages
(33:01):
of people, varied ages of experiences. And for me, you
have leaned in during some of the hardest days of
my life. And yeah, it was your birthday. I went
searching for a certain picture of you that I had
(33:23):
files of pictures from when you were on Dancing with
the Stars, and I remember it was when we were
all just falling in love with hips domatic and all
of them and all of the filtering that we were doing,
and I had taken a photograph of you in the
bathroom at Dancing with the Stars during a minute break. Um.
(33:49):
And what my uninitiated listener doesn't know is that Jennifer
and I were at that point good friends. We both
loved each other, we had both shared some stuff. But
when she decided to do that competition that show, I
(34:13):
remember saying to you. I think you said to me,
would you like to come to the first one when
they when you know I can invite a guest, And
I remember saying yes. I was thrilled. I was so excited.
And I remember after the first one, I looked at
you and said, I will be here every single week.
(34:37):
I promise you, I will sit here every single week.
And you know, I still had two kids, and I
wasn't working at the time, but I had two kids,
and and I did live on the other side of town,
and it wasn't quote convenient, it wasn't like it was
around the corner. But I was so impressed with your
(35:02):
bravery that you were going to put it out there
in the way that you have to in a show
like that, which it is if if you've never watched
a season from beginning to the end. It's physically ridiculous
what these people go through. It's emotionally ridiculous what you
(35:26):
go through. And the combination of it all was powerful
for me as your friend, and it I felt like
and I got to move into an into a closer
circle with you, And I remember it took me saying
(35:47):
you know, I will be here every week if you'll
have me, and you saying yes please, and then the
the lovely time we spent around it really, I think
was the thing that made us lean into each other
more and more. Is that how you would think or
characterize it? Um? Obviously I was on the other end
(36:10):
of that story. I was having what I remembered as
soon as you started talking about that was when I
had my I was trying to decide whether or not
to do it, and I had such hideous stage right,
such incapacitating stage right. And I also had had a
terrible accident years before and had real problems with my neck,
(36:33):
and I just had two spinal surgeries and two thyroid
cancer surgeries a few months before. And so when I
was doing this, I was really doing it against everything
in my You know how they say, your ego is
not your amigo. I was doing everything that's right. You've
(36:55):
heard me. Your ego is not My ego is not
my amigo. So my ego was saying I would rather
die than put myself in this position and put myself
out there, especially because I have learning issues with how
I learned things, and it's very hard for me to
learn dance steps. And nobody believes it, but it's true.
(37:16):
And you can ask anyone I've ever danced with that
it's a nacht mare to survive anything like that with
me because I'm very I have special needs around it,
but I didn't know. I just had shame around it.
And so I was doing it just for my daughter's benefit,
because I was trying to model for her two do
(37:36):
something because I loved it and not care what other
people thought, and not care if I failed, and since
she was trying to teach her that, I didn't want
to be a hypocrite. And I thought, and I remember
our friend Alexandra saying to me, I think you should
do it, and I was like what, and she and
(37:56):
I think, she's, you know, got the greatest taste and
I in the world, and she was I said if
she thinks I should really, and she might even had
a dream about it or something. And so I when
I went and finally decided to do it, I had
enormous terror. I mean extreme terror, not anxious, not nervous,
(38:17):
like paralyzing terror. And I remember going to the first
um night when you do before you start the show,
you go and you do a big press event where
they introduced the new people who will be competing in
that season. And I had to do the dog. I
got to as you would say, I got to do
(38:38):
the dog and Pony show. And I went and did it,
and I came back home and I was going to
go to sleep to go my first day of rehearsal
the next day, and I called you. I remember my
husband in the bed and here I went into the
living room and I called you, and I couldn't stop crying,
and I said, I can't do it. I can't do it.
(38:59):
I can't do it. I cannot. I have to get
out of it. I have to get out of it.
And the hysteria that you were able to hold, you
were able to contain this hysteria having been such a
veteran in the business and understand my emotional um, the
(39:21):
complexities of my wounds, and that what I've gone through
in my life. You knew so much about that landscape
that you could listen to me and calm me down
with that amazing voice that you can have when I'm
in that state of just listening and reassuring me. And
(39:41):
I don't even remember what you said, but I was
able to calm down, go to sleep, and start. And
then I remember the terrible anxiety before every show, and
you being there and in the dressing room and us
being so goofy and Alexandra and and and all of
our friends, you know, just rally being around me. It
(40:02):
was It's that alone feeling of like I'm alone with
my terror, I'm alone with my pain, I'm alone with
nobody feels like I do. And just having people witness
you and cheer for you is to me one of
the greatest things. It's the only thing I really care
about at this point in my life. I feel like,
(40:23):
as you said, it was the bearing witness the holding
you emotionally and physically when I was literally like sobbing
and sometimes physically yes, and witnessing it. And you know,
(40:45):
we didn't know weekend, week out what was going to happen.
We didn't it wasn't you know for the listener that
it's not predetermined. There are a lot of factors, you know.
Um was normally so much gnarlier than anybody has any
idea unless you've gone through it. And they all call
(41:06):
me after, before and after, and they're like, should I
do it? I'm like, only tell you something. It's gnarly.
It's gnarly, and it's one of the greatest things you'll
ever experience, and it's it's not for the fan of part. Yeah,
well what it it? You not only modeled it. Here's
the deal. We don't know what we model what we don't.
(41:30):
We just don't know. We're not doing it. As I'm here,
I am modeling this, so other women you know it.
You modeled something. Maybe you were doing it in your
own mind as a way to say, I am a
mother of a daughter, I am going to face a fear.
I'm going to suit up and show up and do
(41:51):
this work that terrifies me. And UM challenge myself with
struggles and my age and the fact we hadn't danced
for twenty years at all, and things broke in your
body during it and you know you had to I
(42:11):
mean you had next surgery. I mean you know I had.
I had a spot too, had a fusion, the next fusion,
and another next surgery too, thyroid cancer surgeries. I do
the show and then I rupture my lower back the
second last night, and then have to have my lower
back fused, and then eventually had to have my spinal
(42:31):
cord untethered. And like it's just just it's ridiculous. But
what I was saying about it is really this. You
not only modeled it for your daughter, you modeled it
for me. You let me in. And so again to
the listener, that's the goal here is we want to
be let in, Let me in, you know, let me
(42:54):
into your life, let me into it. And I didn't
have that history with you. We were aren't going to
go to the Hampton's together. Um, I'm not sure I
would have gone with you to the Hampton's at fourteen.
I think I would have been like my mom will
be mad. I was such a good girl, such a mom,
you know, like rule follower. And so what it allowed
us was away in that has remained now and now
(43:21):
has made it really important crucial relationship and a crucial friendship,
um in my good friendship, and I couldn't love you more.
And I'm so happy that my listener was able to
(43:43):
bear witness and listen to you talk about your life
our friendship, because you are an essential good friend and
I love you and thank you for being on the
Good Friend podcast. But it was gentle. You know, It's
(44:03):
always such a delicious feeling to soak in being seen
and known and to know another and to have a
shorthand and to have history and or even with new people,
to be able to recognize that we are not alone,
and we are all alone. And yet this is the
(44:24):
only moment when I actually, when I'm thinking about you
or what's going on with you, I am freed from
the bondage of self and I get to be fully
attentive because I care so much, and because I want
everybody to be able to have that feeling of relief,
(44:47):
because we're all needing that relief and to feel connected
to another. And so thank you for doing that for me.
And I hope the listener walks away with that good
feeling and then they reach out to somebody else that
they know, and you know, again, this may be models
(45:07):
for them. Something and it will continue to grow because
that's the whole idea here. I love you Jennifer Gray,
thank you for being on the good Friend podcast, and
and I love you. Don't Know. Good Friend is produced
(45:33):
by Dylan Fagin and is a production of my heart Radio.
Our theme song, good Friend is written, produced, and performed
by Emily King. Unallogative from a good Friend, I Don't
(45:56):
Already Native from a good Friend. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
If something donative. 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 my Heart Radio. It's a podcast
(00:20):
about friendship. We talk about everything, We cry, 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
(00:43):
it that you have a really good sense 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 idea unlocative I'm a good friend the podcast.
(01:05):
You have to wear a beret, you know that's what?
Is that not true? Because I'm a little embarrassed if
that's not true, because that's what everyone told me. Okay,
well for for my listener, For my uninitiated listener, my
guest today is wearing a beret on her birthday. Her
(01:26):
name is Jennifer Gray, and she is a good friend
of mine and a good friend to you. Um and
I'm happy to welcome you here to the Good Friend Podcast.
Miss Birthday Girl is so much. I'm so here, and
you are the only person wearing a beret. We will
(01:48):
accept you as you are in this moment where you are.
That's what friends do, well, it is what friends do.
It It is what friends should do. It should be
come as you are. Um. Is it that way with
you with your friends or is it conditional? I think
(02:09):
that the more we can accept each other exactly as
we are, the deeper the love and the more chance
of longevity and true connection. I'm with you. It's interesting
because you are someone who I know very well, who
(02:33):
we have gotten closer and closer and closer now over
the years. But what's interesting to me is you also
have like a best friend. Your friend Tracy always loomed
very large to me in the in the in our
relationship and just in an example of a ride or
(02:59):
die friend. Can you just talk a little bit about
her and how you guys met and where you met
and you know, kind of like the the Masha Nations
of that friendship. Tracy Pollen and I met when we
were fifteen, and we met at Dalton where I was
a new student, and I didn't know anybody, and it
(03:21):
was a remedial math class, and it was a bunch
of math fits because we were not mathletes. We were
special at special math needs. And there were many of
us crammed in this room and it smelled a lot
like bo much too small, too many adolescents, and we
(03:41):
couldn't talk because we were in this tiny room around
this table um, and the fumes were intense and the
ideas were beyond my ken. So I basically would just
like look at this cool girl. And then we met
at a party again, because I didn't have any classes
with her. We met a party in East Hampton when
(04:02):
it was like like John John Kennedy, that crowd, you know,
he went to collegiate and all the collegiate boys were
like the cool, sexy boys, and we were the Dalton girls.
And the Dalton girls were kind of like considered to
be like the cool girls and or so we thought
I wasn't one of them because I was brand new
from Malibu and I was a little um too much
(04:22):
hippie Malibu beach chick, and I hadn't quite gotten to
the groovy Upper east Side New York high powered families.
So I felt very much like a fish out of water.
And I went to East Hampton to this party and
it was one of those weekends where come out to
East Hampton for the weekend, and everybody at this house.
(04:45):
It was one of those old because old money is
Tampton houses, and there was no there were no adults anywhere.
It was just all of a sudden, the whole house
was writhing with these bodies making out, listening to the
eyes brothers, the heat is on sensuality, and it was
just like every chair, every every surface was covered with
(05:07):
this kind of like esser drawing. Somebodies just jigs out
into each other and I was I cannot believe that
I am the only one not pair it up. I'm
wandering around this house and just pot smoke, and probably
the cool kids were doing coke upstairs somewhere. I didn't
(05:28):
really know many people in this group. It was kind
of new and I knew I was spending the weekend there,
but I didn't understand where I'd sleep with all these
kids everywhere, and it just felt so strange to be
singled out is the only like man left standing. It
was like musical chairs and I was just the only one.
(05:49):
And then I saw the silhouette in the doorway of
this person. I guess it was a girl, and then
I got closer and I saw it was trace See
and there she was. She and I looked at each other,
and we only knew each other from the remedial math class,
and I I saw her and I knew for a
(06:10):
fact she was one of the prettiest girls in the school.
Like she was gorgeous and cool and smart and sweet
and funny from what I could tell, the little bit
I could tell, And I thought, how is it? She
and I sat on the porch and like, how much
of how we must be the biggest losers in the world.
How is it that everybody is paired up but us?
(06:32):
What is wrong with us? How can this be? And
so we bonded that night as the two people who
were left with nobody even trying to make out with us.
And that's when we became friends. And I realized, you
know what, if she no one's coming after her, and
(06:53):
she's definitely like beautiful and cool and great and sexy
and all those things, then maybe I'm not so bad either.
And then I realized she was super funny and that
she wanted to be an actress too, and we started
haven't sleepovers and doing her homework together. You know, she'd
always teased me that I would I had so a
d D. That she'd be like, we have to study,
(07:14):
and I'd be like, I know, we know I now,
but how about all of that and that? And that's
basically still our relationship and now we're well into our
other chapters of our life. And you know, she's like
my sister. I never had a sister, and the idea
of this person that exists in the world that no
matter what's happening, especially if things are particularly rough, particularly rocky,
(07:39):
particularly rough sees, she's who I call and she just
drops everything and she gets into action and listens whether
it's like a medical issue, because we're both pretend doctors.
I know we're going to discuss that. Yeah, we can
hang a shingle. She and I as the two people
who like I barely graduate it at high school, but
(08:01):
I swear to God, I'm a medical intuitive, but I
get it, like she and I could have a practice together.
I have obviously, I know a bit of that story,
and I know how bonded you two became. I didn't
actually know the origin story which is fascinating to me. Um,
how old were you guys at that point? By the way,
(08:21):
just but by the way, just even the I'm going
to a party in the you know, Hampton's, I'm gonna
spend the night there for the weekend. That idea of
this sort of that freedom at that age was not
what I experienced at all, um, And which is fine.
It's just a comparison, which is interesting to me. So
when you bond with somebody and you have that close
(08:43):
of a friendship that early in your life, and it's
that formative and helpful and close when you moved out
to California. She didn't move out to California, correct, well, Um,
I moved back and forth for many years, and she
moved out here when she married Michael J. Fox. He
(09:07):
was living here, he was doing family ties here, and
they met out here. I mean they ended up having
their life here, and I was back in New York.
I think it was buried back and forth, like we
all have been extremely bi coastal for I mean my
whole childhood and her adulthood. She has spent more time,
much more time in New York. But I'll let her
(09:28):
speak for herself. But Basically, she had a period of
time when she was West Coast Okay. But there was
a period where you where she was there and you
were here or yes, I'm trying to give get a sense.
I mean, she's been there for years now and I've
been here for years now. So we have been separated
by the country for many, many years since you and
(09:51):
I have been closer friends. Yes, correct, right, you've so
it's always been so interesting to me because you have
kept that relationship through a long bit of distance. As
you said, you've been separated by the country. Um. She
obviously is married with children. She has four children, and
(10:12):
her fourth child we were pregnant at the same time
with her fourth and my first. That must have been lovely.
Talk to me about that for a minute. Well, she
didn't want to tell me she was pregnant because first,
if it was, it was early. So it was in
that stage when no one's telling anyone. And she didn't
want to tell me because she was so worried about
(10:33):
my reaction because it was her fourth and I was
so desperate to have one. And so when she called
me to tell me she was pregnant, I said, well,
so am I and I'm not telling anyone, and she said,
what I was so scared to tell you. I think
it was her telling me first and then me telling her.
And we are babies were born a month apart to
(10:55):
the day, and so we were pregnant together. We were
on the in your vacations on the sum in the summer, pregnant.
Then we were nursing our babies together. You know, we
have all these pictures of us doing all of these things,
and we call each other like, oh, she's sitting up,
what's she doing? But you know, I had that whole
amazing shared Um. It was my first time in her
(11:18):
Obviously she was extremely adept at being a mother at
that point. Yeah. But but that, you know, and obviously
this isn't this is a show about good friendship and
people's experiences. That was not my experience. UM, I didn't
naturally have that with people. I ended up meeting people
(11:42):
with children, UM my children's age, and of course our
families became very close as those kids got closer. Um,
and I too had a relationship with those people. But
just I you know, I'm sitting here kind of as
your friend with this sort of utific smile on my face,
and I I'm imagining you wanting to be able to,
(12:08):
you know, be pregnant and have a child, and there
you are with your best friend, even though you're on
opposite coasts, both going through it at the same time
as a beautiful shared experience. You know what was the
craziest thing when I just mentioned that is that they
just saw me just so just beside myself, like I'll
never meet somebody and I'll never have a baby. And
(12:31):
I remember them saying to me like, if you want,
you know, we'll help you. You can have a baby
and we'll help you. And you can have a baby
by yourself and we'll help you. And I was like,
how how like they just weren't going to let me
not have that dream. It was. I just remember them saying,
don't worry, we'll help you make this happen. And I
(12:51):
just like Michael was became like a brother to me,
you know, because she was like my sister. And I
just got this amazing man in the deal as well,
because I'm such a girl's girl. But to have my
best girlfriend have such an extraordinary husband has been such
a boon for me. Yeah. Yeah, And I've heard you
(13:11):
speak of Michael in that way, and it has been
brotherly brotherly love. Certainly. He's just such a deeply caring,
deep human being. I don't deep. I keep saying the
word deep, and it's it's like, it's profound when you
have this abundance of connections to people who are and
(13:35):
when I say extraordinary humans, I'm not talking about even
anything to do with outside accomplishments, you know, aside from
the fact you know he's a genius and a writer
and whatever those things are. It's so much more about
having access to people who have a perspective and a
(13:56):
history with you. They know where you've come from, they
know your wounds, and they know what it is you need.
And time can pass and it's like no time has passed.
It's that elasticity of time where you can really drop
deep right away. There's little sound bite, thank you, elasticity.
(14:17):
I love that something. I'm a good friend. We'll be
right back with more good friend after this quick break,
so stick around, don't. I'm a good friend. I don't. Okay,
(14:41):
I want to talk to you, Dr Dr Gray. We
need to talk about Dr Gray. For my listener, For
my uninitiated listener to this podcast, I pride myself on
being fair early hooked up. I'm one of those people
(15:03):
I pride. Excuse me and let me interrupt you just
will you may not, it's my podcast. Let me just
tell you. Whatever she's saying, she's downplaying it. Because so
I pride myself, and we all know that sometimes we
get lost in our pride. We get prideful about what
(15:26):
we can manifest and do, and it gets a little
lost because you go, really, you're not really all that,
But we I have pride of it. And I'm someone
who's reliable and you know, good in an emergency and
usually can click into a certain mode of thought and
(15:50):
I can apply good, common sense thought to things. But
my friend Jennifer is a doctor. My friend Jennifer has
such a wide knowledge and awareness and connections to every
(16:13):
aspect of medical care that you could imagine. And I'm
fascinated by where that began. You know you did You're
not a doctor, as you said, you barely got out
of high school. How did you become Dr? Gray? Um?
First of all, I agree with you and Um a
(16:37):
second of all, I have and an incredible um and
voracious appetite and curiosity and like puzzles and I like
to figure out if there's a problem or they're suffering happening.
I like to have some agency and be able to
(17:01):
mitigate suffering for myself, my friends, my family, a stranger.
I don't really care, but I feel like if there
is something to be discovered and ameliorated, I am like
a truffle pig. I just want to get that truffle
and I almost can't rest until I get some kind
(17:25):
of satisfaction. And because I like a puzzle, I like
a game, and because the stakes are high to me
if someone's suffering, and I believe that I wouldn't be
the doctor I am today without Google, but I definitely
(17:45):
had got um some kind of doctorate at Google. You
but I have a very strong intuitive sense of what
words to search. And then I scan and I look
around and I keep adding words to the search until
I can feel like like I'm getting like cherry, cherry, cherry.
(18:09):
You know, I'm just kind of just like pulling the slots.
I'm just doing this thing, and then I get this
feeling inside of I. I just I want to help
other people and I want to help myself. And I
have had so many physical issues, especially in the past
(18:30):
ten years and um, I've discovered even emotional, psychological, neurological
like anything in those realms. I'm infinitely fascinated by what's
happening in the most cutting edge science of any of
these issues, because I'm thrilled by an excited by gaining
(18:55):
some kind of understanding and being able to move the needle.
Does that make sense? Yeah, of course. It's one of
the greatest friend gifts that you give. You know, we
each try to show up with what are our um.
You know, I would also, just because I'm going to
(19:16):
say it, when we first started meeting each other through
our other friends. Honestly, every time I saw you, I
would look at you and run my finger in the
air from top to toe with this sort of look
of like, oh please, really, this is what you've put
(19:36):
together today? Because you have insane taste. You have that
gift of sight. I think you and I have similar
taste because everyone's taste is so subjective. I think ours
are in alignment. No excuse me, you just should It's
my show. You just sit there. I'm telling you that
(19:59):
I would to look at you and I'd be like, really,
silver birkin stocks, Really you're wearing silver birkin stocks with
white jeans. I'm gonna probably silver clouds. At the time,
they might have been silver clogs. I'm just was going
to lose my mind, is what I remember, because that
was always an area that I struggled with, and you
(20:19):
seemed too, without even any extra thought at all, just
had that beautiful ability. But really the gift, besides the
joy of the friendship, is the leaning in that you
do when there is an issue, particularly a medical issue. Um,
(20:44):
you get very quiet. It's it's you say you have
a d D but in a weird way. Well that's
that's the the hyper focus, right, That ability to hyperly
focus on something and laser beam into it is I
think a really um strong aspect of you as a friend. UM.
(21:08):
And I've been on the receiving end of it. I've
watched you um navigated. Uh, it's it's impressive. And do
you know where it began. Well, I will tell you
that my mom's dad and my mom's mom both had
(21:29):
come over from Ukraine as children and didn't speak the language,
and they both met in pharmacist school and they were
very unusual for a woman to be in pharmacist school
in US. I guess it was the thirties, very long
time ago, and they were I think my grandfather opened
(21:52):
a pharmacy in Brownsville, Brooklyn, which was not the Brooklyn
we know now it's the very It was very different,
very all immigrants and Jews, and he what became the
like it's what urgent care is today, very similar. It was.
He was the neighborhood doctor and it was the place
everyone hung out. And my mom was the daughter of
(22:15):
the pharmacist, and so she um grew up, you know,
helping her dad, and that her mom became the woman owner,
but she wasn't the owner. She was like she kind
of faded away. But it was all about helping people,
and it was a way for I guess immigrants without
any money and new to the country could become doctors
(22:38):
in a sense. And so they're incredible drive and brains
to be able to do that coming from where from
where they from whence they came. It was insane and
um and it also became a very social place, and
it became very political and very it was like a
(22:59):
very strong almost like the artery of the neighborhood. And
so when I was growing up, there was always that
sense of I don't know. I think maybe it's comes
from like wanting to a Jewish doctor like this, like
that that idolatry in Jewish culture of the doctor. But
(23:21):
the idea it's not playing God, but it's being able
to help somebody else in any kind of way, but
especially UM. It's so practical, like you can't ignore if
you've helped somebody in that response. In that respect, the
idea of UM, I think it comes from the solitary
(23:43):
and lonely experience of being sick or being in pain,
and the loneliness of feeling like nobody has had ybroid cancer.
Note that I know where nobody's had six final surgeries
like I have that I know nobody's had their spinal
court untethered and all of these fusions and all the
(24:03):
stuff that I've gone through that you watch me go
through all of those. It's a very lonely feeling to
feel like no one knows how to help you. Sure,
I hate asking for help. So I think it also
comes from wanting to help myself, educate myself and take
the fear away and kind of be able to have
(24:26):
more a sense of control, even if it's just an illusion. Yeah,
but having knowledge, having a mind that is facile enough
be able to listen to something, look at the puzzle,
start to understand what's going on. Is is a way
(24:48):
of controlling it, but it's also a way of understanding
it and advocating for yourself. Honestly, you're not helpless. You
have a mind, and it helps my mind to have
some kind of understanding of the terrain. Because every time
there's a health issue, whether it's a friend or my
(25:10):
family or me or my dog or anything, it's very
um it creates a lot of fear, and especially if
there's pain involved or confusion. And I like to do
like it's the wisdom to know the difference. I want
to be able to change the things I can, and
(25:33):
so I do as much as I can with my
you know, Google and my intuition and my just obsession
with because it's my obsession comes from like being thrilled
by understanding any of these pieces. I'm thrilled to just
(25:55):
like oh and oh, and then there's just so many
new things to learn about, you know, and everything is
always changing. It's always there's always new studies, and it's
just fascinating to me that we don't have to accept
what we used to accept as there's nothing to do.
I just like having something to do well. And and
(26:18):
as it relates to friendship, I will tell you there
are many people who I will talk to. I mean,
let's just even bring up UM. The most recent example
of this, which is UM you recently started working with.
You have an older dog and a new puppy, and UM.
(26:43):
Because of COVID and these bigger clinics, it's much more
challenging to take a dog in if you have more
than one and one has to be in the car.
I had to sit in the parking lot for every
single one of my dog appointments in the past year
and a half. I couldn't even go in, I know.
And then you sit in the car and you wait
for the call, which is by the way them shape
(27:06):
shifting and figuring out a way too safely administered veterinary
care two pets and the families with safety and protocols
in place and all the rest of it. It's beautiful.
But you found a mobile vet, and that mobile vet
came to you and then administered the care, the veterinary
(27:27):
care and medicine. And it was an old fashioned idea.
It's like the you know country doctor. You know house calls.
I mean, now if somebody gets a house call, you're like,
oh are you Beyonce? Like you know what I mean?
That gets only for the elite and it's only for
the rich. And that wasn't what house calls. It was
(27:50):
just what doctors did. They didn't make you come to
them if the child was sick. They came to your
house and you I didn't think I need to have
a mobile vet come and yet there was an issue
and I couldn't. It was a Friday and I could think,
and you gave me this contact, and you know, within
(28:12):
ten hours that person was at our home, helping with
the dog in that moment, and it was such an example.
You don't probaletize, you don't. You don't um you know,
you don't kind of carry on about it. You offer
the opportunity, you offer the opinion based on your own experience,
(28:34):
and you're happy to pass on a reference you It's
such a generosity of friendship. And uh, there's not a
person I know that doesn't call you first, because someone
will say, oh, I spoke to Jennifer and she said
this or that, and you're not a doctor. And nobody
(28:55):
is saying you're a doctor, and yet you have a
really beautiful way of sharing that um in friendship and
it's something that I'm better for. And I know I'm
not the only one. When Tracy was in New York
and you were out here and you know, young motherhood.
(29:15):
I know, I know because I live near where you
used to live, UM and um. Which has to do
with the community of your school, like you were, you
got very involved in that world. Is that how I
(29:36):
guess what I'm I'm looking forward to explore with you
is friendships like friendships later in life that didn't start, Yeah,
that weren't. Like if I want to college, i'd have
college friends for the rest of my life. But since
I didn't, I'm stuck with my high school friends for
the rest of my life. Because I love you, You're
stuck with your high school friends or your work friends.
Because the thing is is that that kind of being
(29:58):
forced into the same under the same in the same community,
where you're forced to be so dependent and intimate with
everybody for a long term, creates a different kind of
of depth of connection and almost sisterhood. I guess that's
why people love their sorority sisters and blah blah blah. Right,
so since I didn't have that, I met people on movies.
(30:22):
I've met people at school with my daughter's school because
you had to do those early play dates together and
the mommy and mees and stuff like that. And the
truth is is that and then when you get married,
you've got your husband's friends and you've got you know
you inherit friends. Um. And I feel like I've made
some really good friends through my daughter's school, and I
(30:46):
have made some really good friends through work. But there's
something about our group. And when I say our, I
mean you and me, Jamie, our group because we were
forced together regularly for many years two to let people
let each other know the good, the bad, and the
(31:09):
ugly in a within a container. That creates an intimacy
and a continuity that is extremely hard to get as
an adult, in my opinion, Once you have a family,
have your kids, once you have this other life where
you're really not living around your your life isn't around
(31:32):
a village fire, and that village fire that comes from
living in a community where you're really dependent pro dependent
and um, the the the depth of being privy to
people's highs and lows, as opposed to not reaching out
(31:55):
when things are hard, or only hearing about reading of
our things when things are great. There's just something about
the continuity of checking in on each other. Because we're
pack animals, we should were not meant to be isolated
as we have been this year. It's very different. We
(32:15):
are not meant to be solitary creatures. Even though I
love my alone time, probably more than anyone I know,
maybe next to you. And sometimes people just bug me.
But the truth is I really need to be loving others,
loved back, cared for and caring for others. And to me,
(32:37):
that's friendship, something good friend. We'll be right back with
more good friend after this quick break. Don't we have
a friend group? It's big and wide, it's married ages
(33:01):
of people, varied ages of experiences. And for me, you
have leaned in during some of the hardest days of
my life. And yeah, it was your birthday. I went
searching for a certain picture of you that I had
(33:23):
files of pictures from when you were on Dancing with
the Stars, and I remember it was when we were
all just falling in love with hips domatic and all
of them and all of the filtering that we were doing,
and I had taken a photograph of you in the
bathroom at Dancing with the Stars during a minute break. Um.
(33:49):
And what my uninitiated listener doesn't know is that Jennifer
and I were at that point good friends. We both
loved each other, we had both shared some stuff. But
when she decided to do that competition that show, I
(34:13):
remember saying to you. I think you said to me,
would you like to come to the first one when
they when you know I can invite a guest, And
I remember saying yes. I was thrilled. I was so excited.
And I remember after the first one, I looked at
you and said, I will be here every single week.
(34:37):
I promise you, I will sit here every single week.
And you know, I still had two kids, and I
wasn't working at the time, but I had two kids,
and and I did live on the other side of town,
and it wasn't quote convenient, it wasn't like it was
around the corner. But I was so impressed with your
(35:02):
bravery that you were going to put it out there
in the way that you have to in a show
like that, which it is if if you've never watched
a season from beginning to the end. It's physically ridiculous
what these people go through. It's emotionally ridiculous what you
(35:26):
go through. And the combination of it all was powerful
for me as your friend, and it I felt like
and I got to move into an into a closer
circle with you, And I remember it took me saying
(35:47):
you know, I will be here every week if you'll
have me, and you saying yes please, and then the
the lovely time we spent around it really, I think
was the thing that made us lean into each other
more and more. Is that how you would think or
characterize it? Um? Obviously I was on the other end
(36:10):
of that story. I was having what I remembered as
soon as you started talking about that was when I
had my I was trying to decide whether or not
to do it, and I had such hideous stage right,
such incapacitating stage right. And I also had had a
terrible accident years before and had real problems with my neck,
(36:33):
and I just had two spinal surgeries and two thyroid
cancer surgeries a few months before. And so when I
was doing this, I was really doing it against everything
in my You know how they say, your ego is
not your amigo. I was doing everything that's right. You've
(36:55):
heard me. Your ego is not My ego is not
my amigo. So my ego was saying I would rather
die than put myself in this position and put myself
out there, especially because I have learning issues with how
I learned things, and it's very hard for me to
learn dance steps. And nobody believes it, but it's true.
(37:16):
And you can ask anyone I've ever danced with that
it's a nacht mare to survive anything like that with
me because I'm very I have special needs around it,
but I didn't know. I just had shame around it.
And so I was doing it just for my daughter's benefit,
because I was trying to model for her two do
(37:36):
something because I loved it and not care what other
people thought, and not care if I failed, and since
she was trying to teach her that, I didn't want
to be a hypocrite. And I thought, and I remember
our friend Alexandra saying to me, I think you should
do it, and I was like what, and she and
(37:56):
I think, she's, you know, got the greatest taste and
I in the world, and she was I said if
she thinks I should really, and she might even had
a dream about it or something. And so I when
I went and finally decided to do it, I had
enormous terror. I mean extreme terror, not anxious, not nervous,
(38:17):
like paralyzing terror. And I remember going to the first
um night when you do before you start the show,
you go and you do a big press event where
they introduced the new people who will be competing in
that season. And I had to do the dog. I
got to as you would say, I got to do
(38:38):
the dog and Pony show. And I went and did it,
and I came back home and I was going to
go to sleep to go my first day of rehearsal
the next day, and I called you. I remember my
husband in the bed and here I went into the
living room and I called you, and I couldn't stop crying,
and I said, I can't do it. I can't do it.
(38:59):
I can't do it. I cannot. I have to get
out of it. I have to get out of it.
And the hysteria that you were able to hold, you
were able to contain this hysteria having been such a
veteran in the business and understand my emotional um, the
(39:21):
complexities of my wounds, and that what I've gone through
in my life. You knew so much about that landscape
that you could listen to me and calm me down
with that amazing voice that you can have when I'm
in that state of just listening and reassuring me. And
(39:41):
I don't even remember what you said, but I was
able to calm down, go to sleep, and start. And
then I remember the terrible anxiety before every show, and
you being there and in the dressing room and us
being so goofy and Alexandra and and and all of
our friends, you know, just rally being around me. It
(40:02):
was It's that alone feeling of like I'm alone with
my terror, I'm alone with my pain, I'm alone with
nobody feels like I do. And just having people witness
you and cheer for you is to me one of
the greatest things. It's the only thing I really care
about at this point in my life. I feel like,
(40:23):
as you said, it was the bearing witness the holding
you emotionally and physically when I was literally like sobbing
and sometimes physically yes, and witnessing it. And you know,
(40:45):
we didn't know weekend, week out what was going to happen.
We didn't it wasn't you know for the listener that
it's not predetermined. There are a lot of factors, you know.
Um was normally so much gnarlier than anybody has any
idea unless you've gone through it. And they all call
(41:06):
me after, before and after, and they're like, should I
do it? I'm like, only tell you something. It's gnarly.
It's gnarly, and it's one of the greatest things you'll
ever experience, and it's it's not for the fan of part. Yeah,
well what it it? You not only modeled it. Here's
the deal. We don't know what we model what we don't.
(41:30):
We just don't know. We're not doing it. As I'm here,
I am modeling this, so other women you know it.
You modeled something. Maybe you were doing it in your
own mind as a way to say, I am a
mother of a daughter, I am going to face a fear.
I'm going to suit up and show up and do
(41:51):
this work that terrifies me. And UM challenge myself with
struggles and my age and the fact we hadn't danced
for twenty years at all, and things broke in your
body during it and you know you had to I
(42:11):
mean you had next surgery. I mean you know I had.
I had a spot too, had a fusion, the next fusion,
and another next surgery too, thyroid cancer surgeries. I do
the show and then I rupture my lower back the
second last night, and then have to have my lower
back fused, and then eventually had to have my spinal
(42:31):
cord untethered. And like it's just just it's ridiculous. But
what I was saying about it is really this. You
not only modeled it for your daughter, you modeled it
for me. You let me in. And so again to
the listener, that's the goal here is we want to
be let in, Let me in, you know, let me
(42:54):
into your life, let me into it. And I didn't
have that history with you. We were aren't going to
go to the Hampton's together. Um, I'm not sure I
would have gone with you to the Hampton's at fourteen.
I think I would have been like my mom will
be mad. I was such a good girl, such a mom,
you know, like rule follower. And so what it allowed
us was away in that has remained now and now
(43:21):
has made it really important crucial relationship and a crucial friendship,
um in my good friendship, and I couldn't love you more.
And I'm so happy that my listener was able to
(43:43):
bear witness and listen to you talk about your life
our friendship, because you are an essential good friend and
I love you and thank you for being on the
Good Friend podcast. But it was gentle. You know, It's
(44:03):
always such a delicious feeling to soak in being seen
and known and to know another and to have a
shorthand and to have history and or even with new people,
to be able to recognize that we are not alone,
and we are all alone. And yet this is the
(44:24):
only moment when I actually, when I'm thinking about you
or what's going on with you, I am freed from
the bondage of self and I get to be fully
attentive because I care so much, and because I want
everybody to be able to have that feeling of relief,
(44:47):
because we're all needing that relief and to feel connected
to another. And so thank you for doing that for me.
And I hope the listener walks away with that good
feeling and then they reach out to somebody else that
they know, and you know, again, this may be models
(45:07):
for them. Something and it will continue to grow because
that's the whole idea here. I love you Jennifer Gray,
thank you for being on the good Friend podcast, and
and I love you. Don't Know. Good Friend is produced
(45:33):
by Dylan Fagin and is a production of my heart Radio.
Our theme song, good Friend is written, produced, and performed
by Emily King. Unallogative from a good Friend, I Don't
(45:56):
Already Native from a good Friend. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
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