January 23, 2024 • 41 mins
It’s time for the premiere of our fourth season of “Here’s the Thing with Alec Baldwin” at iHeartRadio. Our first episode features the woman behind what TV Guide called “the most famous soap opera character in the history of daytime TV.” Actor Susan Lucci inhabited the role of bad girl Erica Kane on ABC’s “All My Children” for four decades, from the show’s inception in 1970 until 2011. She earned the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress for the role in 1999 after nineteen nominations – and in December 2023, received the Daytime Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award. Lucci’s body of work also includes numerous television series, films and the Broadway stage. She is the author of All my Life: A Memoir and is a National Spokesperson for the American Heart Association. Susan Lucci talks with host Alec Baldwin about how she played a role that evolved over decades, how she realized a lifelong dream of performing on Broadway, and her thoughts on the rumors of a potential reboot of the beloved soap.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from iHeart Radio. So many actors who went on
to have amazing careers in primetime television and film started
in soap operas. Meg Ryan, Tom Selleck, Julianne Moore, to
name just a few. And then there are those who
(00:23):
stayed in daytime television to become huge stars in that genre.
My guest today is, without a doubt, the biggest star
in the history of daytime TV. Susan Lucci, the actress,
played the iconic villain Erica Kaine on ABC's All My
Children for four decades, from the show's inception in nineteen
(00:46):
seventy until it wrapped in twenty eleven. Following nineteen nominations.
She finally took home the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding
Lead Actress in nineteen ninety nine, and sare the Emmy's
Lifetime Achievement Award this past December. But Lovable bad Girl
is not the only role in Lucci's wheelhouse. She has
(01:10):
acted in numerous roles in film and TV, from Devious
Maids to Hot in Cleveland, and starred on Broadway in
Annie Get Your Gun. Susan Lucci has yet another achievement
to boast of a long and healthy partnership with husband
Helmet Huber. Hubert passed away in twenty twenty two after
(01:32):
fifty two years of marriage. I wanted to know what
was the secret of their successful union.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Incredibly good luck for my part to meet him, because
I was young and I didn't I don't think I
really knew exactly how fabulous he was and just got
really lucky. Fortunately he had a very good sense of
humor and he was very confident. This was really helpful
in this business we're talking about. You know, he took
(02:01):
a lot of ribbing all those guys I was kissing
on all my children. But you know, he got it.
You know he knew I came home to him and
I wanted to.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
So yeah, yeah, I remember when I was younger. I mean,
now I don't really do any of that, but when
I was younger, and I had a girlfriend at one
time who really was very very agitated by that. I
was just starting to make films or just was starting
to go from TV to films, and I had to
kiss somebody who was very well known, and this movie
(02:30):
was going to be all over TV and everything. Me
kissing this person was going to be featured. Who knows,
and she really just couldn't take it. She was really
very angry all the time.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
It's not for everybody. Yeah, I used to say, if
that she were on the other foot, I would have
been throwing my stilettos. I mean I would not have
taken it as well.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
When I was young, well, when I had it the
other way, when a woman in my life was in
the business and she was kissing other people, I just
would look at her and say, if you left me
for him, you got to be an idiot.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
I would sound like helmet, like your good luck.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
I mean, please go right ahead. Don't teach me everything
about you. I need to know, but you. I don't
want to talk just about the TV show at length.
I want to talk about the other things you did
and the other things you wanted to do. I mean,
your commitment to that show is singular. You are right
to the end, you surf that wave right to the shore.
(03:22):
But other than that, what were there other things you
wanted you did do, other things, you made films, You
stepped in for Bernadette and Nanny gets.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Your want to go in for Bernadette.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
I was so through all the I loved.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
The whole original company.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah, I love But how did that happen? Like you
go to this the TV show and you say I
want out, or you went did the TV show and
went to night work at night.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
I did both. I did both. I had a short
time off but all the rehearsals. I just was able
to have time off just before the opening, but I
wound up getting pneumonia. Because I would work at all
my children. They accommodated my schedule so that we started
a little earlier in the morning, did all my stuff first,
and then I would on my lunch hour, get in
(04:09):
a car, go to the theater, grab a chicken soup
on the way, and go and rehearse, go to voice
lessons five nights a week because I had never sung professionally.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Did you study theater and acting in college? Where'd you go?
Speaker 2 (04:23):
I went to Marymount College. It is a Catholic women's college,
but it's in Tarrytown, and all the drama faculty was
from Yale and Royal Shakespeare Company in London, Mary Marytha Grand.
It was a wonderful school. Wonderful for me. Jesuit school
which is the smarty pants guy, so that was good.
The faculty was phenomenal and they were all working in
the business. So the head of the drama department, who
(04:44):
was from Yale, was also a member of Cafe La
Mama and Lincoln Center Rep. So I got the classics
as well as the news stuff.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
So you do that show. You did small roles and
things back in the sixties, but then you're doing films
throughout the eighties, nineties, two thousands, you're doing Army Wives
a couple through episodes of that. You're working outside the show.
Why did you feel you wanted to? You're just a
kind of I don't want to say workaholic, but you
(05:13):
like to work.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
I do like to work, and I like to work
as an actress, and you know, probably a couple of things.
First of all, I'd never thought that I could call
myself an actress if I only played one part. And
even though the part was the part that kept me
on that show for so long, because I loved doing
that part. That part was one of the best parts,
with the most range and the most possibilities. And I
(05:35):
worked with a company of actors who I loved and trusted,
and it was wonderful, and the writing was fantastic. It
was Agnes Nixon and a lot of reasons that kept
me there. However, having said that, I just never thought
that playing one part would make me an actress. I
had to do more, and so I did. And the
other thing I started to say is that I think
(05:55):
a lot of actors, you know, you feel like you
should say yes as much as you can say yes,
because someday it won't all be there, So you just
say yes, why you can.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
I did a soap. The doctors and everybody in that cast,
not everybody, but a thick band of them were all
like they did the soap for the pension and welfare
and the paycheck and the medical and then they ran
off to the theater. It was their passion. We were
a half hour which was starting to fade and go down.
The older cast was primary. I always tell people that
(06:28):
the cast photo were the adults in front and the
kids in the back, because the kids were the supporting players.
And that changed with Bold and the Beautiful, with all
my children, well, my children were Ryan's Hope, Young and
the restless. However, on your show, the youth revolution comes
and you're still young at this point, but you're one
of the older cast members of the younger cast mean no, no, no.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
I started playing Eric as a fifteen year old high
school girl, something that drew me to that drew me
to the show because the man who was the head
of the department at Marymount, who came from Yale, only
wanted me to do theater and maybe film. Those two things.
Television and daytime television never even came into the equation.
(07:11):
But when I read the script and I saw that
the four kids and we were in high school were
now featured with storylines, and I loved the part. I thought, well,
I'm going to change his mind. I'm going to do
this and it's so well written and I have this
incredible part, so I took the part. He was not
(07:31):
happy at first, but then he actually was interviewed by
TV Guide and said, at the time, I know why
she did this.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
You know, but even as you're in that generation, when
you're younger and you stayed with the show and you're
getting older, yes, and other young stars are coming into
for the show, you remain one of the stars of
the show. Why how did you pull that off?
Speaker 2 (07:52):
I think it was the writing that pulled it off,
you know, thank you for saying that. No, thank you.
I was very lucky, as I said, she You know,
so I started her playing as a fifteen year old girl.
But she was never the girl next door, and she
was not the girl that you know, everybody was going
to embrace. She was the naughty girl in town, and
she was major bad girl in town and on a
(08:15):
world stage. And I never thought the audience was going
to like her. I loved to play her, the bad girl,
the bad girl.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Yeah, and you never thought they would embrace the bad girl.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Never thought the boy.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Were you wrong?
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Turned out that we loved bad girls. They loved bad girls.
They do love that. And what they saw, and again
the writing was there to support it was they saw
that she was a girl who had dreams for herself
and she was going to go out there and get them.
She had spirit, she had spunk. She'd always do it
the right or the nice way. But they really loved
(08:50):
her spunk, her spirit.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
They would watch these shows. I remember because the generation
comes in now where the audience is in sixties housewives,
it's young people, college kids, and they stop in the
middle of the day to watch their stories, my stories
and then they would watch the show and then you're
on there doing whatever, and they sit there and be like,
you know, Corey, Corey, it's us. We did that. You know,
(09:14):
anything bad you did was very familiar to them. Well.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
And also Erica I think represented my generation that we
were working. You know, my generation was working. They were
not getting out of college and just getting married. They
had their own dreams and aspirations to have. Wasn't enough,
wasn't the only thing on their mind. They had additional
(09:36):
things on their minds and going to Merrymount, which was
a women's college. I remember when we would talk about
our dreams. We had aspirations for ourselves in terms of career,
and it wasn't a question of if we were going
to do that, It was when we're going to do?
This is what we were going to do, and how
could we.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Do it now. Obviously, Agnes Nixon wasn't your head writer
throughout the entire one. She was the creator, the creator,
and then the writers would come and go.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
The writers would, yes, a lot of them would stay
for years, but Lorraine Broderick became the head writer because
Agnes would come and go occasionally.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Did everybody who came on to run the show. They
all basically treated you the same way. But then another
great advantage you had was Eric is not going anywhere.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
It seemed to be that way. It seemed to be
the way. It's hard only again, you, I think because
Agnes was involved and it was her creation, and she
was in the room, you know. And also I remember
our last producer, Julie Cruthers, who lucky to have wonderful
producers too, and Julie would say the last man who
(10:44):
was the head of ABC Daytime, I believe, was not
so enamored of Agnes being involved. And I remember Julie
saying that Agnes is the youngest voice in the room,
so she had good stories to tell and she remained
relevant and groundbreaking always. So I think because of Agnes
and Agnes's beautiful writing for my character Erica, I think
(11:08):
that's why I got to stay.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
These people work really hard. You come up with a
fresh idea every day. The only bad part was we
do with double tape very rarely because we had to
accommodate people who were working on Broadway. We had cast
members who were on a Wednesday, they did the matinee,
so they would have to leave by one. We'd pretape
their scenes and they had a scene on a Christmas
show where they're floating between everybody. So they're in a
(11:30):
party and all the family of the show was there
and they're floating with the camera and they go, I'll
land on this one and this one, and they're like,
my god, I can't wait for us to head down
to Palm Beach and have a nice vacation. Something light.
Pan to the next one and the wife or the
girlfriend saying to the boyfriend, I knew you had drinks
with her chat I knew you had drinks with I
saw you and something from being turgid there. Then they'd
(11:52):
land on me last, and I was like a little
bit drunk because I went to lunch at Hurley's down
on the bottom of the building. That's where we always
went because we usually left it and come back we
had launch and film. Now we had to come back
to finish the rest of the taping as we did
a double taping, and I came back when they finally
land on me in their floating shot. They landed me
and I go, you know, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry everybody.
(12:16):
I blow the whole take for and they looked at me, like,
you better straight out.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
This was at the beginning.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
This was in the beginning, and I thought it was
I didn't take it as seriously as I should have,
But I learned a lot. I learned a lot of
the things that were significant to me about the professionalism
of your acting career on that TV show, on that
daytime TV.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Interesting, it's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
The show ends twenty eleven, correct, and all of the daytime.
That was an empire. Where did you shoot a West
End Avenue over in the big at the Kremlin?
Speaker 2 (12:49):
I call it the Kremlin sixty sixth and Columbus. Yeah,
And we moved to sixty seventh and West End, And
the last two years we shot in La.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
You did, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
I hadn't lant well. We were told that it would
be more cost effective at that time, and also because
of the climate, it would be really great. We could
shoot outside as well, with the location actually nearby.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Did you enjoy it?
Speaker 2 (13:13):
I did?
Speaker 1 (13:14):
I did.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
I didn't expect to, because so many actors from New
York would say how much they didn't love working in
LA I did, maybe because I grew up in the
suburbs and I was used to being in a car
and even like it, so I was fine with that.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
And where did you live when you were out there?
Where did you shoot?
Speaker 2 (13:31):
We shot in Glendale. We shot in Glendale, and we
had an apartment in Glendale. The studio was six minutes
from our apartment. If I hit the red lights in
Garden City, it was an hour and a half commute.
But I really it was fine for me because I
studied my lines on the way in and I could
just return phone calls and be a vegetable way.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
How did you get in every day? Somebody drove you?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Yes, it began with helmet driving me. That's love, Yes,
it really, Yes, he was fantastic. But then when I
was twenty seven, one of the vice presidents of the
network offered me a limo, you know, to pick me
up and take me in, And I remember saying, I
thank them very much, But I said, you know, people
(14:15):
are coming here on this subway, and if I show
up in a limo, this is an ensemble, I'm going
to be playing scenes with them. This is probably not
going to be a good way to have a company
of actors.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
You didn't want to be viewed that way, No.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
I wanted to be. I was part of the company.
I recognized that the part that was being written, and
I was lucky enough to have it was written for me,
but there was a collaboration for sure. I saw it
was on the page, and frankly, I mean, you know,
my experience with the writing there was incredible, and I
had good training, so I knew how I mean. My
(14:50):
judgment I thought was a good judgment and it was
really so well written. Also, I was one of those
characters you're talking about that the writer wanted to tell
the story through, and I realized that it was very,
very lucky. But one thing with Agnes is that she
would tell very complicated, relevant stories, current stories through everybody's eyes.
(15:12):
I think Erica was Agnes's voice, but I really admired
the fact that these complicated issues anybody watching out there
could could have see themselves represented.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
What was the challenge for you to keep that role fresh?
Do you suggest things to them? I always believe that
someone who's as talented as you are, and who owns
that role in the way that you did, you have
every right to turn to them and say, I'd like
you to mayven think about this? You suggest how much
were you able to suggest very little?
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Really, yeah, very little.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
You just referred to Agnes.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
It was there, you know. I was really lucky most
mostly I would read this. First of all, it was
a newscript every day, and you know very well from
having been on daytime. It was the length of a
play a day. It was a play a day, and
so there's a lot of material not only to commit
to memory, but to fill to make work, you know.
And so the day to day was very occupying of
(16:07):
my mind. And I was in such good hands in
the final times, you know, when we moved to la
and when the person who was in the charge of
daytime brought in a new writer altogether, and he met
with our company of actors during a lunch period in
our rehearsal hall. And the first thing that that writer,
(16:28):
who might have been a wonderful writer in a different genre,
but what he said was I'm going to shake things up.
That's fine, but he said, so some of you may
not recognize your characters or your relationships and so on.
And so what happened was that during rehearsal in the morning,
what he said was true, and so many actors were concerned.
(16:52):
I was one of them too. Of course, you know,
people would come to me and say, what are you
doing about this? So you just try to hold on
tooth and nail, you know.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
You tell when people were coming on the younger people
knew were people, whether they had it or not, the
discipline to do the show.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
I could see that some people were, you know, no,
we're wonderful. Wonderful yeah, Josh, Kim Darnell, they stood out
right away. Kim Delaney, Kim just mel be my god, yeah,
Kim Delaney, yes. And actually Michael B.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Jordan.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Michael played my steps on by marriage, to Jack Montgomery,
to Walt Willie, who was spectacular too, but he was
one who was sixteen and always very what you're saying, discipline,
showed up on time, showed up prepared, very respectful, very
nice person, good guy.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
When you did the show. Were their actors you just
fere like you enjoyed working with them?
Speaker 2 (17:48):
They were, Oh absolutely, what Willie, who I worked with
most often, who was my love interest throughout lots of times,
in and out. He's so funny and very quick and
loved working with him. And on the other side of
the coind David Canary, who was spectacular actor I worked
with him, probably next to Walt. I worked with David
(18:10):
Canary most, but we hate I mean I hated him,
Erica hated him. But those scenes were wonderful. And you
know you were saying earlier about you know, the senior
actors leaving because they were on Broadway and they had
places to go. I thought that was one of the
biggest pluses working in New York. But the other actors
were phenomenal Broadway actors. I mean Jimmy Mitchell who danced
(18:34):
the Curly Ballet in Oklahoma on Broadway and was so urbane.
And you know, I was young and to learn from
these incredibly successful actors who were working on Broadway. Sometimes
someone like Philip Bosco, who, yeah, would come and do
you know an arc on the show? Yeah. Oh, I
remember one day I was doing a concert version of
(18:57):
One Touch of Venus and we would rehearse the Amsterdam
Theater during my lunch hour, run out there and do
that and come back was for encores, Yes, and at
the time, and I was so much fun and again,
wonderful Broadway actors. Piggy Cass was playing my mother, Yes,
I know, it was incredible. And coming back to the
studio and waiting behind the sets, you know, if the
(19:20):
cameras broke down a little bit or something was happening
technically that we didn't know what we had to be
on hold, stayed our places. So behind the scenes, my
set flowed into behind Jimmy Mitchell's set, and he came
up to me and he just took me in his
arms and waltz with me. He danced with me all
over the backstage while we were waiting. You know, some
(19:41):
of those wonderful experiences.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Actress Susan Lucci. If you enjoy conversations with talented female Thespians,
check out my episode with former As the World Turns
star and Oscar winner Julianne Moore.
Speaker 4 (20:01):
I'm very chatty. I like to talk all the way
up to action. I do, I do, And if you
can't talk to me, I'm really disappointed. Then I get lonely,
and I want to be lonely when I want, I
want to be with my buddy.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
I want to talk to me. You talk to me
every friends, buddy talking to you.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
What'd you do this morning? What'd you have for dinner
last night? What are you doing later today?
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Are you cold?
Speaker 4 (20:18):
Do you like that Sweater'd you like my sweater? What
are you doing?
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Action? Acting?
Speaker 2 (20:22):
I love it.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
That's my favorite part.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
He said.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
You get this great connection with other human being. And
then the scene is like, ooh, comes alive.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
To hear more of my conversation with Julianne Moore, go
to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Susan
Lucci shares the story of how she landed the part
of a lifetime a leading role on.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
The Great White Way.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
Susan Lucci. She has spent decades enjoying the prolific output
of a successful acting career. She's also the mother of
two children and stepmother to two more. I was curious
whether anyone in her family wanted to follow her into
(21:15):
show business.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
My daughter did for a while.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
What you do?
Speaker 2 (21:20):
She was on passions? Ahuh yeah, and she was wonderful.
She's absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
And then what happened?
Speaker 2 (21:26):
She didn't love it?
Speaker 1 (21:28):
And can you say why?
Speaker 2 (21:29):
I don't know that it was ever articulated why, but
she did not really love it.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
And most people I know who their kids go into it,
especially now a lot of my friends, their kids go
in and they were one. The one thing that they
can't handle is the unreliability of it. Oh, you know
that you don't work that much and you're off all
this time. You don't know what's going to happen to you.
You don't know where you're going to be four months
from now, six months when they couldn't stand that. They
(21:56):
wanted to have their life and live somewhere and go
to their yoga class and have their husband or a
boyfriend or whatever.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Those Yeah, it's not for everybody.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
It's not for ever.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
And being the spouse of the person you were saying earlier,
you know, you had a girlfriend who didn't get it,
and Helmut did get it. But I would marvel at
that and really admire him for how great he was
about and smart, you know, because it's not for everybody.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Somebody famous one said to me. Don't get too blown
off course, don't let the wind in your sales to
take you. Don't watch comedies that make you laugh, make
you see, don't watch dramas that make you cry, he said,
watch National geographic shows of animals.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
While you're on that set in the middle of while
you're shooting a movie.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Yeah, and don't get too in a different head. Try
to stay in this kind of neutral gear. And he
said to me, like when you go in, he goes,
don't don't talk to people on the phone. Don't talk
to your girlfriend on the phone. Don't talk to your
decorator on the phone about how much money he's going
to spend on.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
God forbid, you have a fight with your girlfriend, don't.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Talk to do it. The other one was this guy
turned to me once. It was Albert Salmi, the great,
great character actor. Albert sell me. He was there was
sitting on the the set in a chair reading the
La Times or something, and he says, are you're going
to go back to your trailer? I? Oh, no, I
think I'll hang out. And he said that's the best
thing to go. Don't leave the set, said, don't go
(23:18):
back to your trailer. The set is where it's at.
Always be staying linked to the process.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
That's great. Yeah, felt the same way. I would see
people reading books and I thought, gee, how do they
do that? I can't do that. Concentrate what takes you
out of that world? Different world.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
One last question about the show directors. So I found
that we had some wonderful directors, most of who had
this is back in the eighties, with great theater backgrounds,
and they were kind of wickedly funny, you know. I'd
say to the director, Henry Kaplan, I'd.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Say, oh, Henry, you know, Henry, you're wickedly funny, is
exactly he was.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
He terrorized me too, terrorized me.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
I have a drink in my head like this, and
I go, I'm gonna can I hold this up? When
I see this line, I want to sip and then
I want to pull it away and say the other
partl where I'm thinking of anything to play, And I go,
and I'll do this and I'll never forget I'm doing
a scene with Kim Zimmer And Henry goes, that's fine,
you do what everyone does. I'm gonna be on her anyway,
you bast We have some great directors that.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
We have great directors, and Henry, Henry was terrific. Also
we used to get our notes. They called him red chairs.
They would call us to red chairs, which were a
bunch of red director's chairs set up, you know, in
the middle of the studio, to get our notes. So
the whole company of actors got their notes together. This
was both humiliating and bonding, you know, because we're humility together.
(24:38):
We all had our chance being and when Henry was directing,
the humiliation was flying. We were just buried. We buried
you destroyed you right before you had to go on
air and play those scenes. Yeah. Actually, yeah, that was him,
and it took me a while. It took me a
couple of weeks to figure out that that was his
humor because I was destroyed.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Oh he was about well you did Bob Center director. Yes, well,
they all want to move on to the hour shows
because it's more fun for them. Yeah, the half hour shows.
You think you're all just getting started. Yeah, that's over
now you are doing what? No, No, they said there
might be a reboot of the show or not.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
You know they're saying that, and I'm told that. Then.
Of course, the writers' strike came and the actors strike,
so I thought it was gone by then, but I'm
told it's still possibly in the works, so we'll see.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
That's another credible Now in terms of other things you're doing,
you've been involved with that theater in Westhampton for a
very long time.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Correct, well, with celebrity autobiography, right, you know we took
the play there. You were in the first one.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
I did one of them, and I did a couple
of them at Guildhall.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
At Guildhall, actually I did the first concert there with
Marvin Hamlish. Yeah, sang yes a little bit. Marvin asked, well,
I met Marvin and sag Harbor at that theater. Actually
he was doing a concert there, and his wife came
out to me during intermission and told me that she
was Marvin's wife, and she was great herself, but she said,
(26:06):
Marvin's wife, and he'd like to meet you. Would you
like to meet Marvin? I said, what, I'd like to
meet Marvin, of course. So she took me backstage to
meet him afterwards. And that was a meeting that changed
my life. First of all, it was all during that
time where I hadn't won the Emmy for many, many
and many nominations, and he was assuring me that it
had nothing to do with my work. I mean, he
(26:28):
was really encouraging me. He was a fan, which was
so thrilling that Marvin Hamlish would be a fan. Then
he called me afterwards and asked me if I'd like
to work with him. We worked at Heinzhall in Pittsburgh
the first time.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Do you know?
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Heinzhall and the deal was that I would give a
seminar to the seniors who were drama majors at Carnegie
Mellen or Carnegie might have been just Carnegie.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
At the time.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Anyway. He called me then one night and said to me,
I'd like to write a song for you to dance
with the chorus boys who are dance majors at Carnegie.
They will be there and they will come and they
will dance with you, and you will dance with them.
How does that sound? I said, that sounds amazing, you know.
(27:12):
Thank you, and his doorbell rang at his apartment. He said,
hold on a second, my Chinese food is here, and
so he went to get his Chinese food and we
left it at that. But it was great working with him.
That was my first time working with him. And then
yes we were at West Hampton Nice Theater, Nice Theater.
And then after I won the Emmy, the producers Brandon
(27:34):
Barry Weisler called me and asked me if I would
like to play Anna Oakley and I get your gun
if I'd like to go in for Bernadette. Bernadette was
going to be leaving the show and would I like
to go in for her? And my agent called me
from ICM at the time in LA and she said,
to me, sit down here. She said, I don't even
know if you sing. I said, well, yeah, I did
(27:57):
musical theater in high school and college. Yes, I'd like
to do that. And she said okay, And I said
and because Marvin, he said I should come to his
apartment so he could hear me sing and see if
he thought I could do this, because after our last
appearance together he said, if you ever need me, I'm
(28:18):
here to help you, let me know. So I was
offered this part, and I was way too shy to
call Marvin Hamlash and ask him anything, but Helmet was not.
So Helmet called Harvin Hamush told him what was being
offered and what did he think, And Marvin was very generous.
He had been on he was on tour. When Helmet
(28:39):
reached me, he was in Europe and he said, but
I'm coming home Sunday night. Come to my apartment and
sing for me and I'll tell you. So we went
to Marvin's apartment. Scariest thing I ever did at that time.
I rang Marvin Hamlush his doorbell to his apartment and
he answered, and his lyricist was there with him and
his wife, Terry Blair, in the back room, and he said, so,
(29:02):
come on in, I have lyricists here. I'm going to
play the piano and sing through some of the numbers.
And I had by then, you know, just locked myself
in my room and learned all the music. And he said, so,
I want you to sing a ballad and an uptune
and I had to and I did, and he said, okay,
I'm going to go now to the back of the apartment.
He has one of those pre World War two apartments
(29:25):
and he went and it looked like a La Liique
glass partition and he went way in the back and
he said, now sing to me, and I did, and
he came out and I guess because it's Broadway and
he need to know he could hear me. And he said, okay.
He said you can do this. He said, you can
do this if you want to, or I want you
to work for a week with Craig Cornelia. That was
his he was his lyricist, and come back to me
(29:48):
and sing again, and so I did, and he said, yeah,
there's no question you can do this. He said, you're
very brave tall you're not, and so Bernadette wasn't either.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
So it worked.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Worked, so he encouraged me to do it, and he
really helped me to get to the place where I
could do it because the next step was to sing
for Barry and fran Weisler, and I wanted to. They
did not ask for that. I wanted to be one.
I wanted to know I could do it.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
How long did you do it?
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Not long enough? I'll tell you it was just a
month because by that time Bernadette decided she didn't want
to leave. She was just going to leave for the holidays.
She came back after that riba after that because by
that time all my children wouldn't let me go. They
were beginning a new truly a very important storyline. But
at the beginning when they told me it was going
(30:40):
to be a very important storyline, and they couldn't let
me go. If you tell me no, I'm not just
going to say, oh okay, I'm never going to throw
out my hands.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
It's a great opportunity for you.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Oh my goodness, my dream. I grew up in New
York to be a little girl, to grow up in
New York and then you have a chance to be
on Broadway. Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Yeah, a great show.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Oh great show, great part with the original cast. So
you know I would try to go over that brick wall,
over it, under it, through it, rounded. How you know.
I gave them all sorts of notions. Can we do this?
Can we do that? This was the opportunity of a lifetime.
But all my children did not see it that way.
ABC did not see it that way at the time.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Actress Susan Lucci, if you're enjoying this conversation, tell a
friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on
the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
When we come back, Susan Lucci shares Howard felt to
finally take home the Emmy after her nineteenth nomination. I'm
(31:50):
Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Susan
Lucci has inhabited many amazing roles, including one as national
and Ambassador for the American Heart Association. The organization seeks
to reduce deaths caused from heart disease and stroke, and
has contributed over five billion dollars in cardiovascular and cerebro
(32:14):
vascular research. I wanted to know how she first got
involved with the nonprofit.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
I had a hard incident actually five years ago, so
that's great, you know that everything's wonderful. But it took
me quite by surprise. I had never been zick, nothing,
and my mother. I lost my mother at one hundred
and four.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
So where was she then?
Speaker 2 (32:36):
She was in assisted living in Florida, which is a
they have, it's an art form in Florida. She was
in a beautiful, wonderful place, but she had never had
anything major. She was a hundred at the time. So
I was out actually shopping for a birthday present for
a friend, and it was a third time that month
I had felt some pressure on my chest, radiating around
(32:57):
my ribcage to my back. The first two times I
didn't take it seriously. I thought, as most women do, Oh,
it's nothing, it'll go away. I don't have time for this,
and it did go away. But the third time it
felt like an elephant pressing on my chest. And I
had heard a woman do an interview many years before,
(33:17):
no reason to even remember this, but I did, and
I sat down good. I was out in a public
place because the manager came over and asked me how
I was feeling. I told her, and she said, Susan,
my car is right outside. I can get you to
Saint Francis Hospital, the heart hospital. It's a mile down
the road, faster than an ambulance will come. And I
(33:40):
went with her. It turned out she also had a
degree in nursing. I mean, what are the odds of that?
She was so calm, and I had no reason of
a cardiologist, but my husband did and I called him.
He met me at the er. Turned out I had
a ninety percent blockage in my main artery and a
seventy five percent blockage in the adjacent He never smoked.
I never smoked. There's no reason to have this turned out.
(34:02):
This is interesting. We all in my family thought that
I have my mother's jeans because she never had anything.
I never had anything. And it turned out and my
otherwise fabulous, handsome, terrific father's jeans in that regard, So
it was a calcium build up. Who knew that. I
found out anyway, so I couldn't keep my good luck
to myself. I had to get out there and tell
(34:24):
women what symptoms would be, and to listen to them
and to put themselves on their own to do list
and take take care of themselves.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
You were a finalist and a beauty pageant? Is that true?
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Yes? I was?
Speaker 1 (34:38):
What was the beauty pageant? You were the finalist in
Miss New York State.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Mister York State Universe for.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
The Miss Universe. Yes, you were like getting on deck
from Miss Universe. Yes, and you were, and you were
you were the runner up for Miss New York State Universe.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
When I look at you, you're so attract if not
as just as a woman and beautiful, you're an unbelievably
beautiful woman, a gorgeous woman, and you're attractive as a person.
You got this warmth you of that magical Juna saqua
that people have on camera. People are connected to you,
and they're looking at you and taking you in that
(35:13):
head toss of yours.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
You should have patented that you could make a billion
dollars teaching people how to do different types of head tosses.
Shouldn't effects or your head tosses is legendary, But you
stayed connected. I'm assuming because of family your husband are
the things that a lot of people do, but with beauty,
tellent that you could have gone to LA and just
made movies and did TV and just ran in that direction,
(35:36):
and you didn't why.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Maybe that uncertainty, you know that you were saying some
of the younger generation now is.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
For you telling us your insecure Susan Lucci absolutely?
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Was it also a family?
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Yes. I by that time, by the time my career
was taking off, I had my first child, my daughter, Liza,
who was probably three years old, four years old, and
I just thought I wanted to raise my children here.
You know, anything you ever read about raising children and
being a celebrity yourself, especially not in New York, but
(36:15):
going to LA and.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Being a mom and being a mom.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
I'm a dad, but a mom, big difference.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Yeah, And so I wanted to raise them with as
much and I'm going to put this in quotation marks
normalcy as possible. And what I knew is normalcy was
growing up in the town I grew up in, and
in fact, when I met my husband, I wanted to
move away from there. You know, when you grow up
someplace the grass is always green, or someplace else, and
(36:43):
I didn't realize how special a place it was. But
my husband, who came from the Austrian Alps pretty special
place itself. Grew up in this magical way, thought that
Garden City was a great place to raise children, and
so he you know, he had that influence over me,
and I thought it was right. And from everything I
read and everything he said and everything I could see
(37:05):
by that time, I thought, yeah, there's a sense of
community here, and there's a lot here for raising children
in normalcy. Also, as I got closer up to the
nighttime series situation at that time, not that my daughter
was even in school as she was three, I learned
that they take a break at the time, it was
you would never see your children. You know, you go
(37:26):
back to work on a nighttime series, at least in
those days at the time where your children are getting
out of school. So the whole summer, you know, you're
busy going back to work. Whereas if I stayed in daytime,
I could go whenever I wanted to go, according to
the more control over my room.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
I tried forever never to work in the summertime, and
in many many years I didn't. I would I think
the time as I worked in the summer was for
like for Scorsese, oh well, like I nobody was saying
like I had to say yes, there was no and
go shoot in August or something for a couple of weeks.
I mean, I never had a big part in those films,
but just to be with him and be around him
was a thrill. But I tried to, you know, be
(38:05):
with my kids and stay home all the time. And
then eventually that becomes who you are now. When you
finally won your Emmy, your heart fought, well earned, well
deserved Emmy. Well you were sitting that you just expected
to be the same over again.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
You kind of kind of, yes, I will tell you
that every year I would get whipped into a frenzy
because the press corps, you know, they've did this is
your year, this is your year. But that year everything
was in place. It was a great storyline. It was
very well shot, very well directed, very well acted by everybody.
Good stuff. But you know, after a while, I mean, nineteen,
(38:40):
it was my nineteenth nomination. You know, you kind of
say history's taught me. I'm probably not, you know, and
yet part of you and I'm also not. I'm a
hopeful person. I didn't want to give up completely, you know,
so yeah, I thought, well maybe, but I wrote a
couple in my head the night before, lying in bed,
I thought, wow, if they're right, there were people I
(39:01):
really want to thank, so, you know, talked through my
head a little bit who I might think, but I
kind of didn't want to let myself even go there.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
You know, you won the Emmy for for Acting, your
nineteenth nomination. Yes, and then you won the Life Achievement Award. Yes,
just now, just now, well, and now how did that
come about?
Speaker 2 (39:18):
That was a phone call. I got a phone call
from my publicist saying, what was the organization the Daytime Emmy?
Speaker 1 (39:23):
The Daytime Emmys, and there's an.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Emmy committee, right, and they unanimously said they wanted to
give me the awards.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
So my god, well, congratulations for that. Congratulations for that.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Thank you much less hair raising when you know ahead
of time.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Much less. And Nicholson said to me a while ago,
I said to him, when you won the Oscar had
been nominated a couple of times. When you won the Oscar,
you kind of looked like you knew you were going
to win. You were sitting there, you had this really
kind of a weird kind of smile on your face,
sitting and I watched for the film and he goes.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
They owed it to me.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Oh, he said, they owed it to me, and they
knew they owed it to me. I've been nominated two
or three times before and I didn't get it, and
they knew they owed it.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
Tonight, it's so fun.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Let me just say, you are this great goddess and
legend of daytime television and so forth. But I tell you,
I hope you don't retire. You can't retire because you're
not done. You're not done. Thank you, a lot of
other things you could be doing. Thank you, My thanks
to Susan Lucci. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios
(40:33):
in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice,
and Maureen Hobin. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social
media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the
thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from iHeart Radio. So many actors who went on
to have amazing careers in primetime television and film started
in soap operas. Meg Ryan, Tom Selleck, Julianne Moore, to
name just a few. And then there are those who
(00:23):
stayed in daytime television to become huge stars in that genre.
My guest today is, without a doubt, the biggest star
in the history of daytime TV. Susan Lucci, the actress,
played the iconic villain Erica Kaine on ABC's All My
Children for four decades, from the show's inception in nineteen
(00:46):
seventy until it wrapped in twenty eleven. Following nineteen nominations.
She finally took home the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding
Lead Actress in nineteen ninety nine, and sare the Emmy's
Lifetime Achievement Award this past December. But Lovable bad Girl
is not the only role in Lucci's wheelhouse. She has
(01:10):
acted in numerous roles in film and TV, from Devious
Maids to Hot in Cleveland, and starred on Broadway in
Annie Get Your Gun. Susan Lucci has yet another achievement
to boast of a long and healthy partnership with husband
Helmet Huber. Hubert passed away in twenty twenty two after
(01:32):
fifty two years of marriage. I wanted to know what
was the secret of their successful union.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Incredibly good luck for my part to meet him, because
I was young and I didn't I don't think I
really knew exactly how fabulous he was and just got
really lucky. Fortunately he had a very good sense of
humor and he was very confident. This was really helpful
in this business we're talking about. You know, he took
(02:01):
a lot of ribbing all those guys I was kissing
on all my children. But you know, he got it.
You know he knew I came home to him and
I wanted to.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
So yeah, yeah, I remember when I was younger. I mean,
now I don't really do any of that, but when
I was younger, and I had a girlfriend at one
time who really was very very agitated by that. I
was just starting to make films or just was starting
to go from TV to films, and I had to
kiss somebody who was very well known, and this movie
(02:30):
was going to be all over TV and everything. Me
kissing this person was going to be featured. Who knows,
and she really just couldn't take it. She was really
very angry all the time.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
It's not for everybody. Yeah, I used to say, if
that she were on the other foot, I would have
been throwing my stilettos. I mean I would not have
taken it as well.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
When I was young, well, when I had it the
other way, when a woman in my life was in
the business and she was kissing other people, I just
would look at her and say, if you left me
for him, you got to be an idiot.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
I would sound like helmet, like your good luck.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
I mean, please go right ahead. Don't teach me everything
about you. I need to know, but you. I don't
want to talk just about the TV show at length.
I want to talk about the other things you did
and the other things you wanted to do. I mean,
your commitment to that show is singular. You are right
to the end, you surf that wave right to the shore.
(03:22):
But other than that, what were there other things you
wanted you did do, other things, you made films, You
stepped in for Bernadette and Nanny gets.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Your want to go in for Bernadette.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
I was so through all the I loved.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
The whole original company.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah, I love But how did that happen? Like you
go to this the TV show and you say I
want out, or you went did the TV show and
went to night work at night.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
I did both. I did both. I had a short
time off but all the rehearsals. I just was able
to have time off just before the opening, but I
wound up getting pneumonia. Because I would work at all
my children. They accommodated my schedule so that we started
a little earlier in the morning, did all my stuff first,
and then I would on my lunch hour, get in
(04:09):
a car, go to the theater, grab a chicken soup
on the way, and go and rehearse, go to voice
lessons five nights a week because I had never sung professionally.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Did you study theater and acting in college? Where'd you go?
Speaker 2 (04:23):
I went to Marymount College. It is a Catholic women's college,
but it's in Tarrytown, and all the drama faculty was
from Yale and Royal Shakespeare Company in London, Mary Marytha Grand.
It was a wonderful school. Wonderful for me. Jesuit school
which is the smarty pants guy, so that was good.
The faculty was phenomenal and they were all working in
the business. So the head of the drama department, who
(04:44):
was from Yale, was also a member of Cafe La
Mama and Lincoln Center Rep. So I got the classics
as well as the news stuff.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
So you do that show. You did small roles and
things back in the sixties, but then you're doing films
throughout the eighties, nineties, two thousands, you're doing Army Wives
a couple through episodes of that. You're working outside the show.
Why did you feel you wanted to? You're just a
kind of I don't want to say workaholic, but you
(05:13):
like to work.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
I do like to work, and I like to work
as an actress, and you know, probably a couple of things.
First of all, I'd never thought that I could call
myself an actress if I only played one part. And
even though the part was the part that kept me
on that show for so long, because I loved doing
that part. That part was one of the best parts,
with the most range and the most possibilities. And I
(05:35):
worked with a company of actors who I loved and trusted,
and it was wonderful, and the writing was fantastic. It
was Agnes Nixon and a lot of reasons that kept
me there. However, having said that, I just never thought
that playing one part would make me an actress. I
had to do more, and so I did. And the
other thing I started to say is that I think
(05:55):
a lot of actors, you know, you feel like you
should say yes as much as you can say yes,
because someday it won't all be there, So you just
say yes, why you can.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
I did a soap. The doctors and everybody in that cast,
not everybody, but a thick band of them were all
like they did the soap for the pension and welfare
and the paycheck and the medical and then they ran
off to the theater. It was their passion. We were
a half hour which was starting to fade and go down.
The older cast was primary. I always tell people that
(06:28):
the cast photo were the adults in front and the
kids in the back, because the kids were the supporting players.
And that changed with Bold and the Beautiful, with all
my children, well, my children were Ryan's Hope, Young and
the restless. However, on your show, the youth revolution comes
and you're still young at this point, but you're one
of the older cast members of the younger cast mean no, no, no.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
I started playing Eric as a fifteen year old high
school girl, something that drew me to that drew me
to the show because the man who was the head
of the department at Marymount, who came from Yale, only
wanted me to do theater and maybe film. Those two things.
Television and daytime television never even came into the equation.
(07:11):
But when I read the script and I saw that
the four kids and we were in high school were
now featured with storylines, and I loved the part. I thought, well,
I'm going to change his mind. I'm going to do
this and it's so well written and I have this
incredible part, so I took the part. He was not
(07:31):
happy at first, but then he actually was interviewed by
TV Guide and said, at the time, I know why
she did this.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
You know, but even as you're in that generation, when
you're younger and you stayed with the show and you're
getting older, yes, and other young stars are coming into
for the show, you remain one of the stars of
the show. Why how did you pull that off?
Speaker 2 (07:52):
I think it was the writing that pulled it off,
you know, thank you for saying that. No, thank you.
I was very lucky, as I said, she You know,
so I started her playing as a fifteen year old girl.
But she was never the girl next door, and she
was not the girl that you know, everybody was going
to embrace. She was the naughty girl in town, and
she was major bad girl in town and on a
(08:15):
world stage. And I never thought the audience was going
to like her. I loved to play her, the bad girl,
the bad girl.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Yeah, and you never thought they would embrace the bad girl.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Never thought the boy.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Were you wrong?
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Turned out that we loved bad girls. They loved bad girls.
They do love that. And what they saw, and again
the writing was there to support it was they saw
that she was a girl who had dreams for herself
and she was going to go out there and get them.
She had spirit, she had spunk. She'd always do it
the right or the nice way. But they really loved
(08:50):
her spunk, her spirit.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
They would watch these shows. I remember because the generation
comes in now where the audience is in sixties housewives,
it's young people, college kids, and they stop in the
middle of the day to watch their stories, my stories
and then they would watch the show and then you're
on there doing whatever, and they sit there and be like,
you know, Corey, Corey, it's us. We did that. You know,
(09:14):
anything bad you did was very familiar to them. Well.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
And also Erica I think represented my generation that we
were working. You know, my generation was working. They were
not getting out of college and just getting married. They
had their own dreams and aspirations to have. Wasn't enough,
wasn't the only thing on their mind. They had additional
(09:36):
things on their minds and going to Merrymount, which was
a women's college. I remember when we would talk about
our dreams. We had aspirations for ourselves in terms of career,
and it wasn't a question of if we were going
to do that, It was when we're going to do?
This is what we were going to do, and how
could we.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Do it now. Obviously, Agnes Nixon wasn't your head writer
throughout the entire one. She was the creator, the creator,
and then the writers would come and go.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
The writers would, yes, a lot of them would stay
for years, but Lorraine Broderick became the head writer because
Agnes would come and go occasionally.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Did everybody who came on to run the show. They
all basically treated you the same way. But then another
great advantage you had was Eric is not going anywhere.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
It seemed to be that way. It seemed to be
the way. It's hard only again, you, I think because
Agnes was involved and it was her creation, and she
was in the room, you know. And also I remember
our last producer, Julie Cruthers, who lucky to have wonderful
producers too, and Julie would say the last man who
(10:44):
was the head of ABC Daytime, I believe, was not
so enamored of Agnes being involved. And I remember Julie
saying that Agnes is the youngest voice in the room,
so she had good stories to tell and she remained
relevant and groundbreaking always. So I think because of Agnes
and Agnes's beautiful writing for my character Erica, I think
(11:08):
that's why I got to stay.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
These people work really hard. You come up with a
fresh idea every day. The only bad part was we
do with double tape very rarely because we had to
accommodate people who were working on Broadway. We had cast
members who were on a Wednesday, they did the matinee,
so they would have to leave by one. We'd pretape
their scenes and they had a scene on a Christmas
show where they're floating between everybody. So they're in a
(11:30):
party and all the family of the show was there
and they're floating with the camera and they go, I'll
land on this one and this one, and they're like,
my god, I can't wait for us to head down
to Palm Beach and have a nice vacation. Something light.
Pan to the next one and the wife or the
girlfriend saying to the boyfriend, I knew you had drinks
with her chat I knew you had drinks with I
saw you and something from being turgid there. Then they'd
(11:52):
land on me last, and I was like a little
bit drunk because I went to lunch at Hurley's down
on the bottom of the building. That's where we always
went because we usually left it and come back we
had launch and film. Now we had to come back
to finish the rest of the taping as we did
a double taping, and I came back when they finally
land on me in their floating shot. They landed me
and I go, you know, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry everybody.
(12:16):
I blow the whole take for and they looked at me, like,
you better straight out.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
This was at the beginning.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
This was in the beginning, and I thought it was
I didn't take it as seriously as I should have,
But I learned a lot. I learned a lot of
the things that were significant to me about the professionalism
of your acting career on that TV show, on that
daytime TV.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Interesting, it's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
The show ends twenty eleven, correct, and all of the daytime.
That was an empire. Where did you shoot a West
End Avenue over in the big at the Kremlin?
Speaker 2 (12:49):
I call it the Kremlin sixty sixth and Columbus. Yeah,
And we moved to sixty seventh and West End, And
the last two years we shot in La.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
You did, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
I hadn't lant well. We were told that it would
be more cost effective at that time, and also because
of the climate, it would be really great. We could
shoot outside as well, with the location actually nearby.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Did you enjoy it?
Speaker 2 (13:13):
I did?
Speaker 1 (13:14):
I did.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
I didn't expect to, because so many actors from New
York would say how much they didn't love working in
LA I did, maybe because I grew up in the
suburbs and I was used to being in a car
and even like it, so I was fine with that.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
And where did you live when you were out there?
Where did you shoot?
Speaker 2 (13:31):
We shot in Glendale. We shot in Glendale, and we
had an apartment in Glendale. The studio was six minutes
from our apartment. If I hit the red lights in
Garden City, it was an hour and a half commute.
But I really it was fine for me because I
studied my lines on the way in and I could
just return phone calls and be a vegetable way.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
How did you get in every day? Somebody drove you?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Yes, it began with helmet driving me. That's love, Yes,
it really, Yes, he was fantastic. But then when I
was twenty seven, one of the vice presidents of the
network offered me a limo, you know, to pick me
up and take me in, And I remember saying, I
thank them very much, But I said, you know, people
(14:15):
are coming here on this subway, and if I show
up in a limo, this is an ensemble, I'm going
to be playing scenes with them. This is probably not
going to be a good way to have a company
of actors.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
You didn't want to be viewed that way, No.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
I wanted to be. I was part of the company.
I recognized that the part that was being written, and
I was lucky enough to have it was written for me,
but there was a collaboration for sure. I saw it
was on the page, and frankly, I mean, you know,
my experience with the writing there was incredible, and I
had good training, so I knew how I mean. My
(14:50):
judgment I thought was a good judgment and it was
really so well written. Also, I was one of those
characters you're talking about that the writer wanted to tell
the story through, and I realized that it was very,
very lucky. But one thing with Agnes is that she
would tell very complicated, relevant stories, current stories through everybody's eyes.
(15:12):
I think Erica was Agnes's voice, but I really admired
the fact that these complicated issues anybody watching out there
could could have see themselves represented.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
What was the challenge for you to keep that role fresh?
Do you suggest things to them? I always believe that
someone who's as talented as you are, and who owns
that role in the way that you did, you have
every right to turn to them and say, I'd like
you to mayven think about this? You suggest how much
were you able to suggest very little?
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Really, yeah, very little.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
You just referred to Agnes.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
It was there, you know. I was really lucky most
mostly I would read this. First of all, it was
a newscript every day, and you know very well from
having been on daytime. It was the length of a
play a day. It was a play a day, and
so there's a lot of material not only to commit
to memory, but to fill to make work, you know.
And so the day to day was very occupying of
(16:07):
my mind. And I was in such good hands in
the final times, you know, when we moved to la
and when the person who was in the charge of
daytime brought in a new writer altogether, and he met
with our company of actors during a lunch period in
our rehearsal hall. And the first thing that that writer,
(16:28):
who might have been a wonderful writer in a different genre,
but what he said was I'm going to shake things up.
That's fine, but he said, so some of you may
not recognize your characters or your relationships and so on.
And so what happened was that during rehearsal in the morning,
what he said was true, and so many actors were concerned.
(16:52):
I was one of them too. Of course, you know,
people would come to me and say, what are you
doing about this? So you just try to hold on
tooth and nail, you know.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
You tell when people were coming on the younger people
knew were people, whether they had it or not, the
discipline to do the show.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
I could see that some people were, you know, no,
we're wonderful. Wonderful yeah, Josh, Kim Darnell, they stood out
right away. Kim Delaney, Kim just mel be my god, yeah,
Kim Delaney, yes. And actually Michael B.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Jordan.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Michael played my steps on by marriage, to Jack Montgomery,
to Walt Willie, who was spectacular too, but he was
one who was sixteen and always very what you're saying, discipline,
showed up on time, showed up prepared, very respectful, very
nice person, good guy.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
When you did the show. Were their actors you just
fere like you enjoyed working with them?
Speaker 2 (17:48):
They were, Oh absolutely, what Willie, who I worked with
most often, who was my love interest throughout lots of times,
in and out. He's so funny and very quick and
loved working with him. And on the other side of
the coind David Canary, who was spectacular actor I worked
with him, probably next to Walt. I worked with David
(18:10):
Canary most, but we hate I mean I hated him,
Erica hated him. But those scenes were wonderful. And you
know you were saying earlier about you know, the senior
actors leaving because they were on Broadway and they had
places to go. I thought that was one of the
biggest pluses working in New York. But the other actors
were phenomenal Broadway actors. I mean Jimmy Mitchell who danced
(18:34):
the Curly Ballet in Oklahoma on Broadway and was so urbane.
And you know, I was young and to learn from
these incredibly successful actors who were working on Broadway. Sometimes
someone like Philip Bosco, who, yeah, would come and do
you know an arc on the show? Yeah. Oh, I
remember one day I was doing a concert version of
(18:57):
One Touch of Venus and we would rehearse the Amsterdam
Theater during my lunch hour, run out there and do
that and come back was for encores, Yes, and at
the time, and I was so much fun and again,
wonderful Broadway actors. Piggy Cass was playing my mother, Yes,
I know, it was incredible. And coming back to the
studio and waiting behind the sets, you know, if the
(19:20):
cameras broke down a little bit or something was happening
technically that we didn't know what we had to be
on hold, stayed our places. So behind the scenes, my
set flowed into behind Jimmy Mitchell's set, and he came
up to me and he just took me in his
arms and waltz with me. He danced with me all
over the backstage while we were waiting. You know, some
(19:41):
of those wonderful experiences.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Actress Susan Lucci. If you enjoy conversations with talented female Thespians,
check out my episode with former As the World Turns
star and Oscar winner Julianne Moore.
Speaker 4 (20:01):
I'm very chatty. I like to talk all the way
up to action. I do, I do, And if you
can't talk to me, I'm really disappointed. Then I get lonely,
and I want to be lonely when I want, I
want to be with my buddy.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
I want to talk to me. You talk to me
every friends, buddy talking to you.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
What'd you do this morning? What'd you have for dinner
last night? What are you doing later today?
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Are you cold?
Speaker 4 (20:18):
Do you like that Sweater'd you like my sweater? What
are you doing?
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Action? Acting?
Speaker 2 (20:22):
I love it.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
That's my favorite part.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
He said.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
You get this great connection with other human being. And
then the scene is like, ooh, comes alive.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
To hear more of my conversation with Julianne Moore, go
to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Susan
Lucci shares the story of how she landed the part
of a lifetime a leading role on.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
The Great White Way.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
Susan Lucci. She has spent decades enjoying the prolific output
of a successful acting career. She's also the mother of
two children and stepmother to two more. I was curious
whether anyone in her family wanted to follow her into
(21:15):
show business.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
My daughter did for a while.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
What you do?
Speaker 2 (21:20):
She was on passions? Ahuh yeah, and she was wonderful.
She's absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
And then what happened?
Speaker 2 (21:26):
She didn't love it?
Speaker 1 (21:28):
And can you say why?
Speaker 2 (21:29):
I don't know that it was ever articulated why, but
she did not really love it.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
And most people I know who their kids go into it,
especially now a lot of my friends, their kids go
in and they were one. The one thing that they
can't handle is the unreliability of it. Oh, you know
that you don't work that much and you're off all
this time. You don't know what's going to happen to you.
You don't know where you're going to be four months
from now, six months when they couldn't stand that. They
(21:56):
wanted to have their life and live somewhere and go
to their yoga class and have their husband or a
boyfriend or whatever.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Those Yeah, it's not for everybody.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
It's not for ever.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
And being the spouse of the person you were saying earlier,
you know, you had a girlfriend who didn't get it,
and Helmut did get it. But I would marvel at
that and really admire him for how great he was
about and smart, you know, because it's not for everybody.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Somebody famous one said to me. Don't get too blown
off course, don't let the wind in your sales to
take you. Don't watch comedies that make you laugh, make
you see, don't watch dramas that make you cry, he said,
watch National geographic shows of animals.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
While you're on that set in the middle of while
you're shooting a movie.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Yeah, and don't get too in a different head. Try
to stay in this kind of neutral gear. And he
said to me, like when you go in, he goes,
don't don't talk to people on the phone. Don't talk
to your girlfriend on the phone. Don't talk to your
decorator on the phone about how much money he's going
to spend on.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
God forbid, you have a fight with your girlfriend, don't.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Talk to do it. The other one was this guy
turned to me once. It was Albert Salmi, the great,
great character actor. Albert sell me. He was there was
sitting on the the set in a chair reading the
La Times or something, and he says, are you're going
to go back to your trailer? I? Oh, no, I
think I'll hang out. And he said that's the best
thing to go. Don't leave the set, said, don't go
(23:18):
back to your trailer. The set is where it's at.
Always be staying linked to the process.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
That's great. Yeah, felt the same way. I would see
people reading books and I thought, gee, how do they
do that? I can't do that. Concentrate what takes you
out of that world? Different world.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
One last question about the show directors. So I found
that we had some wonderful directors, most of who had
this is back in the eighties, with great theater backgrounds,
and they were kind of wickedly funny, you know. I'd
say to the director, Henry Kaplan, I'd.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Say, oh, Henry, you know, Henry, you're wickedly funny, is
exactly he was.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
He terrorized me too, terrorized me.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
I have a drink in my head like this, and
I go, I'm gonna can I hold this up? When
I see this line, I want to sip and then
I want to pull it away and say the other
partl where I'm thinking of anything to play, And I go,
and I'll do this and I'll never forget I'm doing
a scene with Kim Zimmer And Henry goes, that's fine,
you do what everyone does. I'm gonna be on her anyway,
you bast We have some great directors that.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
We have great directors, and Henry, Henry was terrific. Also
we used to get our notes. They called him red chairs.
They would call us to red chairs, which were a
bunch of red director's chairs set up, you know, in
the middle of the studio, to get our notes. So
the whole company of actors got their notes together. This
was both humiliating and bonding, you know, because we're humility together.
(24:38):
We all had our chance being and when Henry was directing,
the humiliation was flying. We were just buried. We buried
you destroyed you right before you had to go on
air and play those scenes. Yeah. Actually, yeah, that was him,
and it took me a while. It took me a
couple of weeks to figure out that that was his
humor because I was destroyed.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Oh he was about well you did Bob Center director. Yes, well,
they all want to move on to the hour shows
because it's more fun for them. Yeah, the half hour shows.
You think you're all just getting started. Yeah, that's over
now you are doing what? No, No, they said there
might be a reboot of the show or not.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
You know they're saying that, and I'm told that. Then.
Of course, the writers' strike came and the actors strike,
so I thought it was gone by then, but I'm
told it's still possibly in the works, so we'll see.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
That's another credible Now in terms of other things you're doing,
you've been involved with that theater in Westhampton for a
very long time.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Correct, well, with celebrity autobiography, right, you know we took
the play there. You were in the first one.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
I did one of them, and I did a couple
of them at Guildhall.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
At Guildhall, actually I did the first concert there with
Marvin Hamlish. Yeah, sang yes a little bit. Marvin asked, well,
I met Marvin and sag Harbor at that theater. Actually
he was doing a concert there, and his wife came
out to me during intermission and told me that she
was Marvin's wife, and she was great herself, but she said,
(26:06):
Marvin's wife, and he'd like to meet you. Would you
like to meet Marvin? I said, what, I'd like to
meet Marvin, of course. So she took me backstage to
meet him afterwards. And that was a meeting that changed
my life. First of all, it was all during that
time where I hadn't won the Emmy for many, many
and many nominations, and he was assuring me that it
had nothing to do with my work. I mean, he
(26:28):
was really encouraging me. He was a fan, which was
so thrilling that Marvin Hamlish would be a fan. Then
he called me afterwards and asked me if I'd like
to work with him. We worked at Heinzhall in Pittsburgh
the first time.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Do you know?
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Heinzhall and the deal was that I would give a
seminar to the seniors who were drama majors at Carnegie
Mellen or Carnegie might have been just Carnegie.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
At the time.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Anyway. He called me then one night and said to me,
I'd like to write a song for you to dance
with the chorus boys who are dance majors at Carnegie.
They will be there and they will come and they
will dance with you, and you will dance with them.
How does that sound? I said, that sounds amazing, you know.
(27:12):
Thank you, and his doorbell rang at his apartment. He said,
hold on a second, my Chinese food is here, and
so he went to get his Chinese food and we
left it at that. But it was great working with him.
That was my first time working with him. And then
yes we were at West Hampton Nice Theater, Nice Theater.
And then after I won the Emmy, the producers Brandon
(27:34):
Barry Weisler called me and asked me if I would
like to play Anna Oakley and I get your gun
if I'd like to go in for Bernadette. Bernadette was
going to be leaving the show and would I like
to go in for her? And my agent called me
from ICM at the time in LA and she said,
to me, sit down here. She said, I don't even
know if you sing. I said, well, yeah, I did
(27:57):
musical theater in high school and college. Yes, I'd like
to do that. And she said okay, And I said
and because Marvin, he said I should come to his
apartment so he could hear me sing and see if
he thought I could do this, because after our last
appearance together he said, if you ever need me, I'm
(28:18):
here to help you, let me know. So I was
offered this part, and I was way too shy to
call Marvin Hamlash and ask him anything, but Helmet was not.
So Helmet called Harvin Hamush told him what was being
offered and what did he think, And Marvin was very generous.
He had been on he was on tour. When Helmet
(28:39):
reached me, he was in Europe and he said, but
I'm coming home Sunday night. Come to my apartment and
sing for me and I'll tell you. So we went
to Marvin's apartment. Scariest thing I ever did at that time.
I rang Marvin Hamlush his doorbell to his apartment and
he answered, and his lyricist was there with him and
his wife, Terry Blair, in the back room, and he said, so,
(29:02):
come on in, I have lyricists here. I'm going to
play the piano and sing through some of the numbers.
And I had by then, you know, just locked myself
in my room and learned all the music. And he said, so,
I want you to sing a ballad and an uptune
and I had to and I did, and he said, okay,
I'm going to go now to the back of the apartment.
He has one of those pre World War two apartments
(29:25):
and he went and it looked like a La Liique
glass partition and he went way in the back and
he said, now sing to me, and I did, and
he came out and I guess because it's Broadway and
he need to know he could hear me. And he said, okay.
He said you can do this. He said, you can
do this if you want to, or I want you
to work for a week with Craig Cornelia. That was
his he was his lyricist, and come back to me
(29:48):
and sing again, and so I did, and he said, yeah,
there's no question you can do this. He said, you're
very brave tall you're not, and so Bernadette wasn't either.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
So it worked.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Worked, so he encouraged me to do it, and he
really helped me to get to the place where I
could do it because the next step was to sing
for Barry and fran Weisler, and I wanted to. They
did not ask for that. I wanted to be one.
I wanted to know I could do it.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
How long did you do it?
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Not long enough? I'll tell you it was just a
month because by that time Bernadette decided she didn't want
to leave. She was just going to leave for the holidays.
She came back after that riba after that because by
that time all my children wouldn't let me go. They
were beginning a new truly a very important storyline. But
at the beginning when they told me it was going
(30:40):
to be a very important storyline, and they couldn't let
me go. If you tell me no, I'm not just
going to say, oh okay, I'm never going to throw
out my hands.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
It's a great opportunity for you.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Oh my goodness, my dream. I grew up in New
York to be a little girl, to grow up in
New York and then you have a chance to be
on Broadway. Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Yeah, a great show.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Oh great show, great part with the original cast. So
you know I would try to go over that brick wall,
over it, under it, through it, rounded. How you know.
I gave them all sorts of notions. Can we do this?
Can we do that? This was the opportunity of a lifetime.
But all my children did not see it that way.
ABC did not see it that way at the time.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Actress Susan Lucci, if you're enjoying this conversation, tell a
friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on
the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
When we come back, Susan Lucci shares Howard felt to
finally take home the Emmy after her nineteenth nomination. I'm
(31:50):
Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Susan
Lucci has inhabited many amazing roles, including one as national
and Ambassador for the American Heart Association. The organization seeks
to reduce deaths caused from heart disease and stroke, and
has contributed over five billion dollars in cardiovascular and cerebro
(32:14):
vascular research. I wanted to know how she first got
involved with the nonprofit.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
I had a hard incident actually five years ago, so
that's great, you know that everything's wonderful. But it took
me quite by surprise. I had never been zick, nothing,
and my mother. I lost my mother at one hundred
and four.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
So where was she then?
Speaker 2 (32:36):
She was in assisted living in Florida, which is a
they have, it's an art form in Florida. She was
in a beautiful, wonderful place, but she had never had
anything major. She was a hundred at the time. So
I was out actually shopping for a birthday present for
a friend, and it was a third time that month
I had felt some pressure on my chest, radiating around
(32:57):
my ribcage to my back. The first two times I
didn't take it seriously. I thought, as most women do, Oh,
it's nothing, it'll go away. I don't have time for this,
and it did go away. But the third time it
felt like an elephant pressing on my chest. And I
had heard a woman do an interview many years before,
(33:17):
no reason to even remember this, but I did, and
I sat down good. I was out in a public
place because the manager came over and asked me how
I was feeling. I told her, and she said, Susan,
my car is right outside. I can get you to
Saint Francis Hospital, the heart hospital. It's a mile down
the road, faster than an ambulance will come. And I
(33:40):
went with her. It turned out she also had a
degree in nursing. I mean, what are the odds of that?
She was so calm, and I had no reason of
a cardiologist, but my husband did and I called him.
He met me at the er. Turned out I had
a ninety percent blockage in my main artery and a
seventy five percent blockage in the adjacent He never smoked.
I never smoked. There's no reason to have this turned out.
(34:02):
This is interesting. We all in my family thought that
I have my mother's jeans because she never had anything.
I never had anything. And it turned out and my
otherwise fabulous, handsome, terrific father's jeans in that regard, So
it was a calcium build up. Who knew that. I
found out anyway, so I couldn't keep my good luck
to myself. I had to get out there and tell
(34:24):
women what symptoms would be, and to listen to them
and to put themselves on their own to do list
and take take care of themselves.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
You were a finalist and a beauty pageant? Is that true?
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Yes? I was?
Speaker 1 (34:38):
What was the beauty pageant? You were the finalist in
Miss New York State.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Mister York State Universe for.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
The Miss Universe. Yes, you were like getting on deck
from Miss Universe. Yes, and you were, and you were
you were the runner up for Miss New York State Universe.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
When I look at you, you're so attract if not
as just as a woman and beautiful, you're an unbelievably
beautiful woman, a gorgeous woman, and you're attractive as a person.
You got this warmth you of that magical Juna saqua
that people have on camera. People are connected to you,
and they're looking at you and taking you in that
(35:13):
head toss of yours.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
You should have patented that you could make a billion
dollars teaching people how to do different types of head tosses.
Shouldn't effects or your head tosses is legendary, But you
stayed connected. I'm assuming because of family your husband are
the things that a lot of people do, but with beauty,
tellent that you could have gone to LA and just
made movies and did TV and just ran in that direction,
(35:36):
and you didn't why.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Maybe that uncertainty, you know that you were saying some
of the younger generation now is.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
For you telling us your insecure Susan Lucci absolutely?
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Was it also a family?
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Yes. I by that time, by the time my career
was taking off, I had my first child, my daughter, Liza,
who was probably three years old, four years old, and
I just thought I wanted to raise my children here.
You know, anything you ever read about raising children and
being a celebrity yourself, especially not in New York, but
(36:15):
going to LA and.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Being a mom and being a mom.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
I'm a dad, but a mom, big difference.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Yeah, And so I wanted to raise them with as
much and I'm going to put this in quotation marks
normalcy as possible. And what I knew is normalcy was
growing up in the town I grew up in, and
in fact, when I met my husband, I wanted to
move away from there. You know, when you grow up
someplace the grass is always green, or someplace else, and
(36:43):
I didn't realize how special a place it was. But
my husband, who came from the Austrian Alps pretty special
place itself. Grew up in this magical way, thought that
Garden City was a great place to raise children, and
so he you know, he had that influence over me,
and I thought it was right. And from everything I
read and everything he said and everything I could see
(37:05):
by that time, I thought, yeah, there's a sense of
community here, and there's a lot here for raising children
in normalcy. Also, as I got closer up to the
nighttime series situation at that time, not that my daughter
was even in school as she was three, I learned
that they take a break at the time, it was
you would never see your children. You know, you go
(37:26):
back to work on a nighttime series, at least in
those days at the time where your children are getting
out of school. So the whole summer, you know, you're
busy going back to work. Whereas if I stayed in daytime,
I could go whenever I wanted to go, according to
the more control over my room.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
I tried forever never to work in the summertime, and
in many many years I didn't. I would I think
the time as I worked in the summer was for
like for Scorsese, oh well, like I nobody was saying
like I had to say yes, there was no and
go shoot in August or something for a couple of weeks.
I mean, I never had a big part in those films,
but just to be with him and be around him
was a thrill. But I tried to, you know, be
(38:05):
with my kids and stay home all the time. And
then eventually that becomes who you are now. When you
finally won your Emmy, your heart fought, well earned, well
deserved Emmy. Well you were sitting that you just expected
to be the same over again.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
You kind of kind of, yes, I will tell you
that every year I would get whipped into a frenzy
because the press corps, you know, they've did this is
your year, this is your year. But that year everything
was in place. It was a great storyline. It was
very well shot, very well directed, very well acted by everybody.
Good stuff. But you know, after a while, I mean, nineteen,
(38:40):
it was my nineteenth nomination. You know, you kind of
say history's taught me. I'm probably not, you know, and
yet part of you and I'm also not. I'm a
hopeful person. I didn't want to give up completely, you know,
so yeah, I thought, well maybe, but I wrote a
couple in my head the night before, lying in bed,
I thought, wow, if they're right, there were people I
(39:01):
really want to thank, so, you know, talked through my
head a little bit who I might think, but I
kind of didn't want to let myself even go there.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
You know, you won the Emmy for for Acting, your
nineteenth nomination. Yes, and then you won the Life Achievement Award. Yes,
just now, just now, well, and now how did that
come about?
Speaker 2 (39:18):
That was a phone call. I got a phone call
from my publicist saying, what was the organization the Daytime Emmy?
Speaker 1 (39:23):
The Daytime Emmys, and there's an.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Emmy committee, right, and they unanimously said they wanted to
give me the awards.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
So my god, well, congratulations for that. Congratulations for that.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Thank you much less hair raising when you know ahead
of time.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Much less. And Nicholson said to me a while ago,
I said to him, when you won the Oscar had
been nominated a couple of times. When you won the Oscar,
you kind of looked like you knew you were going
to win. You were sitting there, you had this really
kind of a weird kind of smile on your face,
sitting and I watched for the film and he goes.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
They owed it to me.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Oh, he said, they owed it to me, and they
knew they owed it to me. I've been nominated two
or three times before and I didn't get it, and
they knew they owed it.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
Tonight, it's so fun.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Let me just say, you are this great goddess and
legend of daytime television and so forth. But I tell you,
I hope you don't retire. You can't retire because you're
not done. You're not done. Thank you, a lot of
other things you could be doing. Thank you, My thanks
to Susan Lucci. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios
(40:33):
in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice,
and Maureen Hobin. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social
media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the
thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.
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