The Mogul

Julie Anne and Arden interview Betsy Beers (00:55), aka Shonda Rhimes's producing partner - she is the executive producer of Grey's Anatomy, Bridgerton, Scandal, How To Get Away With Murder, Private Practice, Inventing Anna, and more. They chat about her New York Broadway inspired upbringing (29:07), how she went from performing to producing (46:48), her cult hit 200 Cigarettes, working with Julie Anne on Grey's and Bridgerton (52:44), her path to becoming one of the most powerful women in Hollywood, and so much more. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Lady Borah, I'm a man heaven.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hello, best, no need distress, She's taking care of it.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
She's a late.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Hello and welcome to another episode of Lady of the Road.
My name is Arden Marine, coming to you from my
bougie garage in Los Angeles, California, along with my co host.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Miss Julie and Robinson.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
And we are so excited to have our guest today.
I think we admire this woman very much. And Julian,
would you like to tell our listeners who we are
going to be chatting with today?

Speaker 2 (00:51):
I will. I'm so excited. Betsy Bias, you are a
force of nature. I'm sure a lot of people have
hed you by now. We met about fifteen years ago.
I reckon when you plucked me from obscurity in the
UK and invited me to direct Grey's Anatomy, even before

(01:12):
Grey's Anatomy was Grey's Anatomy. You're a powerhouse producer known
for Scandal, Grey's Anatomy, How to Get Away with Murder,
Private Practice, The Catch, David Station nineteen and now of
course Bridgeton and you've had your own evening of television
on Thursday nights on ABC. And all of this is
with Shondaland. You are the land of Shondaland. I would

(01:36):
also say this is a little bit intimidating because I
remember very clearly that you were one of the first
people to use podcasts and social media, and this was
your innovation to promote the programming. I remember you were
in Jack Warner's office back in the day, and I
remember coming in one day and you were like, Oh,
I've just got to finish doing this podcast and then

(01:57):
I could talk to you. So that adds an extra
layer of anxiety into the conversation that we're about to have.
I mean, this is all pretty well documented, but I
in this podcast, I'm interested in what the building blocks

(02:17):
were that went into building this powerhouse producer that we
see before us today. How you were positioned perfectly when
the meeting with Shonda took place to with her build
the empire that is Shondaland. Because it's like that ten

(02:39):
thousand hours thing, there's a lot of work goes into
building and positioning a person so precisely that they're able to,
you know, then take off. So I'm super excited and thank.

Speaker 4 (02:55):
You well, first of all, thank you for that incredibly
flattering and in wonderful introduction. And I'm also just going
to say to everybody one of the joys of this
entire experience has been when Julian Robinson came into my
life about fifteen years ago and knocked our socks off,

(03:16):
and in a typical Julian Robinson fashion, was very sort
of humble about the entire thing, but came in as
a incredibly qualified and celebrated director in England and simply
killed it. And then it started the long relationship with you,
where not only have you directed on your shows, but

(03:38):
we've developed and produced shows together and you are a
fabulous pilot director. So I'm honored to be here. And
I'd also like to point out I had nothing to
do with social media. I hate tweeting, I'm terrible at instagramming.
You don't want to see what.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
I look like at home.

Speaker 4 (03:55):
But we did do podcasts in the early days because
it was one of the only ways I could figure
out a way to contribute something to the social machine.
So back in the olden days, we did We did
a pot Shonda, I did a podcast about Gray's Anatomy,
partially because it was an easy way for people to
get to hear Shonda's voice, so I asked her questions

(04:15):
and then it's sort of morphed into this Shondaland revealed,
which was once again my luddite way in those days
of contributing to social media. And now look at y'all
in your podcast universe and your bougie garage.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
This is uh, it's it's it's a pleasure.

Speaker 4 (04:37):
So yeah, you just ask me, ask me anything, and
I'll try to tell you and make it vaguely interesting.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
Thank you, Thank you. I'm I'm interested in something that's
not very well documented, So forgive me, baby Betsy. I'm interested.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
It's gonna be this Fridays on CBS as well.

Speaker 4 (05:02):
Exactly exactly the most obnoxious child on the block, exactly.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
Well, it's interesting because I've I looked, I did a
little bit of digging as much as I could, and
I found out that you went to two of the
most competitive educational institutions in the world, and so there
must have been an element of a drive there from

(05:27):
from early on to actually get into those institutions, which
were Milton Academy and Williams College. And I was interested
in even before that. I hope this is okay that
I mentioned it. You're increasing your Marie Claire kind of college.
You said that you had a volatile, unpredictable mother and

(05:50):
a dead father for most of your childhood.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
That's pretty accurate.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yeah, And I wondered whether that or there was I
could you just talk about Yeah.

Speaker 4 (06:01):
I think and I can certainly talk about the lead
up to the experiences at Milton and at Williams.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (06:09):
So I grew up on Long Island. My dad was
a theatrical agent. He actually was a talent agent, and
he discovered a lot of talent in the forties. He
worked for William Morris in the old days, and he
also cast live television for some of the folks who
are listening in the olden days, in the very beginning
of TV in the fifties and sort of mid to

(06:30):
late fifties. And those are the nineteen fifties, guys, I
suppose the eighteen fifties. Let's not make me older than
I actually am. But he was responsible for casting a
lot of the live television theater that they used to
do in those days. And he discovered Grace Kelly. He
worked with Jane Kelly.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (06:48):
He was involved with you know, John Frankenheimer and Ingrid
Bergman and all these different people of that period, and
by the time I was born later.

Speaker 3 (06:58):
He unfortunately all this sort.

Speaker 4 (07:00):
Of TV business had moved to the West Coast and
you could die died in the world New Yorker refused
to leave and ended up with a I would say,
a more quiet career as he got older, and my
mother was strangely a Latin and English teacher, so they
were a bit of an odd couple.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
He did.

Speaker 4 (07:21):
He died when I just turned ten, and my mother
was a fierce smart, highly passionate, definitely volatile, you know,
with a lot on her plate, I think, but she
also helped support us by teaching at the local elementary school,
which was a really excellent private school on Long Island.

(07:46):
So I was trained in two things. Really, I was
trained in theater because the way I read. I learned
how to read was on his lap with these books
that actually described every play that opened on Broadway. And
I learned how to read by identifying actors that he'd represented.
And then you turn on the TV and I'd go,
that's Burt Reynolds, And that was sort of how I

(08:08):
learned stuff.

Speaker 3 (08:09):
But then the flip side.

Speaker 4 (08:11):
Was my mother was highly literate, very book smart, very
very protective.

Speaker 3 (08:21):
She hated bullies.

Speaker 4 (08:25):
Her heart was in the right place. But one of
the huge priorities in our household was education, without a doubt.
So in one night hand, I had this very theatrical
background where education was not a huge part of my
father's background, but he was self educated, and my mother,
who was fiercely protective of our abilities to get access

(08:46):
to the best education that we could get because, in
her opinion, it was a huge portion of if you're
well educated, you have the ability to look at your
options and understand what your choices are. So along the
way of saying it was sorted in my DNA to
care about school and love aspects of school, and it

(09:07):
was certainly part of the community that I grew up
in and my elementary school experience. The expectation was that
I would go off to boarding school and you know
that off to college. So I'd like to take more
credit for it, but I think I was lucky in
that I did love aspects of school. But then we

(09:28):
always picked schools that had very strong drama programs and
very strong arts programs, And part of the reason I
did go to Melton Academy, was because they had one
of the stronger arts programs and it was required at
Milton as opposed to a lot of other schools of
that ILK in that time. And then ended up going
to Williams specifically for their theater program and the educational aspect,

(09:52):
and honestly, truthfully because they had this amazing year abroad
program and I knew I wanted to get the hell
out of Dodge, so I was really excited about the
opportunity to go to England, which I did for a
year to study.

Speaker 3 (10:04):
Theater in English.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
Oh so it was.

Speaker 3 (10:09):
It sort of.

Speaker 4 (10:10):
I don't think I was particularly imaginative about any of it,
but it was definitely. I'm very grateful that I had
both experiences, I think, and I'm very grateful that I
could have both experiences, both the theater side and the
academic side, which does sound a little schizophrenic, but it

(10:33):
ends up sort of coalescing in the job that I
have now. And one of the things I always say
to people is what's great about whatever you do is
somewhere along the line.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
It'll end up being useful. So it's you know, a
lot of people say I wasted.

Speaker 4 (10:47):
My time or did this or the other thing. And
I mean, all right, so my vague minor in medieval
German history maybe didn't come in all the time, but
there are aspects about it that I still use, at
the very least to impress people who think I'm stupid
in meetings.

Speaker 1 (11:06):
So you do sound like organically perfectly. It's like perfectly trained,
just by naturally where you were to be fantastic, get
your job, and to be aware that Hollywood was a career,
that it was a viable career, and then to apply
the education to it. I was telling Julianne before I
came on. I also grew up in a volatile house,

(11:27):
and I also went to boarding school. I went to Middlesex.

Speaker 3 (11:30):
You went to Middlesex.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
Yeah, And I have to say, and theater was not
a priority there. But they had a great physical space,
and the upshot of that was no one was interested
in using it. So I would write plays. You know,
everyone was playing lacrosse and stuff, and so I would
just they had this beautiful theater and so I would
just like write plays and stage them there. But I
did really relate to in Murray Clare article, your love

(11:55):
of television, and that that was a consistent parent, all
of that, and then the fun of getting to leave
and get out of that house at fourteen was like
such a gift for me.

Speaker 3 (12:03):
Oh, it totally was. And I think for me.

Speaker 4 (12:07):
One of the things was when my father died. I
mean before that, when I was about five, I was like,
I want to be an actor. I had two choices,
princess or actor. I was like, and I was and
my mother kept going like, Princess is a rough choice.
I'm just gonna be honest, I'm not sure we can
pull Princess off. But in fairness to my mother too,
I have to say that they were always really supportive,

(12:30):
despite the fact that she was always wrestling with her
own often wrestling with her own demons. I think very
sort of fiercely loving and really really wanted to make
sure that we all got to do what we really
really wanted to do. And the funny thing is is,
I don't know if this is true for you too,
But I by the way, I'm just pointing at a
screen like an idiot, because all anybody can do is

(12:51):
hear my voice. But I'm pointing at a screen because
by the way, your garage isn't bougie at all.

Speaker 3 (12:56):
It's really fabulous.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
Than it's actually sound for. This is fabric I've put south.

Speaker 3 (13:02):
My god, you're so advanced.

Speaker 1 (13:05):
I love design, I love fabulous.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
Thank you.

Speaker 4 (13:09):
But I trained to be an actor for years and
it's you know, I feel like I was able to
continue those studies and then moved to New York and
attempt to be an actor and realized I wasn't a
very good actor and went into comedy where it was
a lot more of a natural fit. But you it
is interesting how you end up. You know, all those

(13:33):
years acting have given me a gigantic sympathy for actors
and makes me basically love actors and the profession and
was sort of my introduction into you know what you're describing,
which is you were actually able to find your space
at school at Middlesex and use that area for your
own purposes, which got you interested in writing. I think

(13:56):
when I was doing comedy, I got really interested in
the idea of producing because we didn't have any producers.

Speaker 3 (14:04):
We didn't know what that was.

Speaker 4 (14:06):
But I was sort of the person who was like
organizing things and putting things together and trying to figure
out ways to work things out. So I look back
and I think, oh, yeah, I kind of, despite my
best intentions, gave myself the best training for what I
ended up doing, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
And you mentioned that your mom was keen to make
sure that you all did what you wanted to do
in life. How many of you were there in the house.

Speaker 4 (14:36):
There were three of us, but I was the youngest.
I was definitively a big, big, oops baby. I believe
I was like a miracle child, because I still don't
quite understand how that happened.

Speaker 3 (14:49):
But I have two older sisters.

Speaker 4 (14:52):
And one of them, you know, one of them I
the age was such that she left home at a
particular place. She went away to boarding school too. So
there was a large part of my childhood where both
are a decent part where both other sisters were off
at school and I was allott at home with my mom.

Speaker 3 (15:14):
But weirdly, my middle.

Speaker 4 (15:15):
Sister she ended up going into later in her you know,
she went to school and lived London, and I followed
in her footsteps, loving London and loving England. But she
ended up moving out to She started in New York,
working sort of in the business, and then moving out
to California and getting involved in producing and ended up

(15:39):
running you know, mini series and movies at a particular
point for you know, one of the largest organizations in
LA So she was she was in that business too.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (15:51):
And yeah, I think my mom was always I don't
think she had as many choices as we potentially did.
So I feel like she she tried to really make
sure that we felt like we had choices. I mean,
I have a lot of sympathy for her now because
she was an incredibly and I probably wrote about this,
but she's an incredibly strong, incredibly forceful.

Speaker 3 (16:18):
Force of nature.

Speaker 4 (16:20):
And if you're a teacher in an elementary school and
you're a woman and it's the sixties and early seventies,
that is not popular, no right in her you know,
she didn't have the charming, adorable social niceties of a
lot of this incredibly kind of buttoned down community. And
I feel like she suffered a lot for that, you know,

(16:44):
because she I think she had higher ambitions and I'm
not sure she ever really got to fill them.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
I don't know if you all have parents like that too, But.

Speaker 2 (16:56):
Yeah, I mean, my my mom was really interesting. She
was a civil rights activist, and she was one of
the first women to go to Africa as part of
the Peace Corps. She was like the first wave of people,
and so that's hence my weird multi national upbringing just amazing.

(17:20):
So I feel like she was maybe the first wave
of people that actually was able to just say to
her family East Coast family, No, I'm going to do this.

Speaker 1 (17:30):
You know, that's impressive.

Speaker 3 (17:31):
That is impressive.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
My mom definitely wore the little white gloves to work.
She grew up in Douglaston, Long Island and went to
Bayside High Oh my god. Yeah, and it was interesting.
It was like Julianne's mom. I will say my mom
always made me believe that I could do anything I
wanted to do. My father was very sexist, and they

(17:53):
married on a dare and they stayed married for fifty years.
They stayed married for fifty years, and so he was
very much against me, and she was very much like, no,
go for it, you got it. Don't have a B plan,
but I think and but for herself.

Speaker 2 (18:09):
You know.

Speaker 1 (18:10):
They moved to the small town and it was basically
you're a teacher, you're a real estate agent. So she
sold houses till the day she died, but she always
and she had she didn't think she had a good
you know, we didn't grow up wealthy, and Middlesex was expensive,
and she thought that high school was where people actually learn.
And so she's like, she would take out like a
third mortgage, and she said, I'd rather run out of

(18:32):
money for college. Who cares about college? Can your brain
can learn in high school?

Speaker 2 (18:36):
I want to.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
I want you to be a smart, educated woman. And
maybe you won't get a college degree because you might
not be able to afford it. But she doubled down
on high school because she thought that's where because she
didn't think she was educated.

Speaker 4 (18:48):
So incredibly both interesting and radical. I mean, you think
about it, and look, I totally identified with what you're saying,
because we were in this incredibly well off, waspy chunk
of Long Island.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (19:02):
I loathed up and we were we were the poor kids. Yeah,
So it was always that feeling of being less than anyway.
And you know, I'm going to say, thinking about it,
if you go to a good enough high school, or
you have a good enough experience in high school, I
don't know what your experience was like, but I loved
high school.

Speaker 3 (19:21):
I loved high school. I loved it like I love
I would have freaking lived there for the rest of
my life.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
That's what I was gonna That was going to be
my next question. Actually, how did you how how did
you find boarding school?

Speaker 1 (19:32):
Loved it, loved to college at fourteen because it's co ed,
it's so best, it's so fun.

Speaker 3 (19:38):
I loved it, and it was awesome for me.

Speaker 4 (19:41):
For me, it was the first time, I mean I
went to an elementary school. My mother taught me yea,
oh it was she taught Latin. It was not a
pleasant experience. She wasn't a very happy person at that point.
So not only was I sort of like the poor
awkward kid, it wasn't incredibly pop anyway. I was a poor,

(20:02):
awkward kid whose mom taught there. So everybody kind of
knew that you were poor an awkward, and I felt
incredibly like tied to that identity. And you go at
a boarding school, it's like moving to California, you know
how California is like the wild West still, and you
go I could change my name to trow Fazug McMillan
and nobody would be able to figure out or they

(20:23):
would care. They just go Hey, Trau Faz, I don't
know who you were before, but you're in California.

Speaker 3 (20:28):
Congratulations. And that was like what boarding school was like
for me.

Speaker 4 (20:31):
Boarding school was like, wait a second, I can develop
a personality here, and it was like it was really
really liberating, and also it was such a freaking good
education that to your mom's point, and I'm pointing at
you now nobody can see me, but I'm pointing aggressively
at the screen in an enthusiastic.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
And passionate way. I think the amazing thing was I
really didn't like college, I mean now, because I'd already
done it.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
Yes, we did it.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
I was ready to go. I was like, do I
have I already did it?

Speaker 3 (21:04):
Yeah? We Now, wait where did you go to college?

Speaker 1 (21:06):
I didn't go to a great college. I went to
a I went to an okay college. I went to
Colorado College where they have the block plan it's one.

Speaker 3 (21:12):
Oh, yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
I because I felt like I'd already done I'd already
done the East, I'd already done small and so I
thought I just wanted I wanted to move to New
York or LA. But I was very young. I was seventeen,
and my mom was like, you, you know, let's just
but I didn't spend much time there. I kept finding ways.
I went to Chicago when I was nineteen and did
a year there. I did improv Then I went to

(21:35):
New York and worked at Conan. I was just I
was ready to go, but I didn't. I didn't think
I was safe in the world. And again, my mom
was the one who she was working extra hours. She
was the one who took on debt like she was
the one. I think just because I was too young,
she didn't think i'd be safe to go.

Speaker 4 (21:51):
I get that, I mean, I get it, but it's
it's so funny. I wish i'd talked to you. I
wish I could time travel to future, then back to
past because I ended up going to Williams, partially because
it was in those days which were paleolithic for your listeners,
because I'm three hundred years old, it was like eighteen fifteen.

(22:12):
It was bridgeton time. But in those days, it was
sort of like when you went to school, there were
like three or four, five or six schools. Everybody just
told you had to go to. Yeah, And because I
was a boarding school on the East Coast, nobody thought
to suggest, Oh, I don't know, like Northwestern or Berkeley.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
Yes, or.

Speaker 4 (22:34):
You know someplace that was interesting and had a great
theater department but was bigger. And the places that I
was choosing from were Princeton, Yale, Harvard, UPenn, Wesley, and
it was all kind of East coasty stuff. And I
ended up going to Williams, partially because I also sort

(22:55):
of knew I had to be on the East coast
because my mom. I just felt like it was better
given a lot of circumstances. And the minute I got there,
I went, wait a second, this is like a bad
version of boarding school. Yeah, because you had all these
kids who've never been let out of their houses before,
and the first weekend, Julian, you were like standing in

(23:16):
the middle of the quad with what I would say
is a bunch of amateurs all throwing up in the
corner and trying to like bang each other. And You're like,
how did I go back in time to like like
I was more sophisticated as a sophomore at boarding school?

Speaker 3 (23:32):
This is stupidity.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
I've got a couple of questions coming out of that.
One is, so you've described that you were being taught
by your mother, but your father was this empresario. Was
there a change in circumstance at a certain point.

Speaker 3 (23:49):
That's it's interesting.

Speaker 4 (23:50):
No, by the time I was born, he was not
in a money earning position, because being an agent at
William Morris in the olden days wasn't like being an
agent William Morris now your employee of the old agency
in town, yep. And basically you made a salary. And
then at a particular point when his work all moved
out of town, his job fell on hard times. So

(24:12):
to your point, and my mother, who I can't remember
when she's I think she started teaching when I was little,
is my memory. But and I would stay at home
with my father, who would babysit me as a tiny,
tiny little kid, and my mother would go teach school.
So we were never we were never particularly well off regardless.
But my mother really wanted to move to this fancy

(24:35):
community on Long Island. My father would have been happy,
I think years before, just to stay in New York.
But that was the difference between the two of them.
They didn't necessarily see eye to eye in a lot
of ways on that. But so to answer your question,
I always grew up with those circumstances. I was lucky
because his family actually was well off, so in worst

(24:57):
case scenarios, and like when I was able to go
to good schools because there was a way to potentially
pay at least for education.

Speaker 3 (25:10):
Which is sort of what we're talking about. But yeah,
it was.

Speaker 4 (25:14):
It's funny because we all think about you were a
big dude in the business. He was an incredibly talented
and smart and talent friendly agent who his exactly his
goal was never to make a lot of money. His
goal was to make sure the right person got the

(25:37):
right part, or that he would create an opportunity. He's
an artist, exactly, and he's an artist, and he's a
self educated artist.

Speaker 3 (25:46):
So I think a lot of it too had to
do with.

Speaker 4 (25:50):
At the same time, he was doing all this, and
he saw every play that opened on Broadway from nineteen
thirty to the day he died in nineteen sixty eight,
like literally every single play. He never missed an opening
of a theatrical performance on Broadway, and it didn't matter
if it was it lasted a day.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
Or not, he still saw it.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
Did you go to any of them with him?

Speaker 2 (26:12):
Did he?

Speaker 4 (26:12):
You know? It's one of the saddest things for me
is that I was super young when he died, because
my sisters did a lot. And the other funny thing
was my mother was lessened to theater, but she loved musicals,
and my father freaking hated musicals, like hated them. So
the joke was he would go to musical and he

(26:33):
just fall asleep. He loved thirt and Wilder, he loved
our town, he loved a bunch of her plays. But
he also read voraciously and wrote a journal about all.

Speaker 3 (26:43):
The stuff that he read. So I have more.

Speaker 4 (26:47):
Connection in a weird way as an adult with him
now from some of those pieces of information that I found.
And also when I first came out to Los Angeles,
there were some folks alive that had met him and
known him wow. And so one of them was this
director John Frankenheimer, who a lot of people don't know
about now but was a very well known director in

(27:08):
life television and then he made a number of famous
movies and was this kind of crusty, saucy dude who
I met in a meeting. He realized who I was,
and we went out a bunch of times and he
told me stories about my dad and that was the
some of the best kind of background information I got

(27:31):
about what kind of guy he was and how he worked,
and because I had to kind of piece some of
it together, and you know with my sister's stories and stuff.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
How old were you when he passed away.

Speaker 3 (27:43):
I just turned ten, so I was young.

Speaker 1 (27:48):
He sounds magical, I have to say, he sounds he was.

Speaker 4 (27:51):
He was hysterical. It was like having a little kid
in the house. Though it was sort of like he
told toilet jokes. Let's see, at one he taught me
how to play shoot craps. Yeah, but he called it
seven come eleven, So I think my mother wouldn't know
what was going, but it was it was like it

(28:13):
was like having a kid in the house. You know.

Speaker 1 (28:15):
He was the artful dodger, raised you.

Speaker 3 (28:19):
Well, the artful dodger. And then the Latin teacher would
come home. So it was it was a little sketchy,
and it's julian Julianne can testify to I have both
in me good because the.

Speaker 4 (28:30):
Latin teacher sometimes I always wanted to do like a
a blog which was like called mean Latin teacher, because
the Latin teacher comes out sure.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
On that note, on that note, we will go to
a nottbreak guy, keep that breaking.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
The train moving, Latin teachers, keeping the train moving.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
Yeah, we will. We will come back, and I'd like
to talk to you a little bit more about when
we come back about being a performer in New York City.

Speaker 3 (28:57):
Oh, just gird your loins, babe, we're back.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
Betsy, could you tell us about Billie and former in
New York City? So you were an actor and also
you moved then you moved into comedy. You mentioned it
a little bit earlier. Why what happened? Why didn't you
stick with that particular route?

Speaker 4 (29:23):
Okay, well, I'm so glad you asked this question. That
was that was dripping with sarcasm.

Speaker 3 (29:31):
So so okay. So I trained like from the age
of five on.

Speaker 4 (29:36):
I knew I was going to be an actor. I
did summerstock, I acted locally. I was in every play
in high school. The drama department at Williams decided I
wasn't very talented, so I didn't end up doing as
much there. I did a lot when I went to
England for the year abroad, but I knew that's what
I wanted to do.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
So can I just say, where did you go in England,
I'm fascinated.

Speaker 4 (29:59):
Okay, So there is this program called the British and
European Studies Group, and I went for about a year
and I studied at RADA in Central and then I
had a tutor from Cambridge from it was Churchill and
he was one of the heads of the English department,
and so I did both theater training there and then

(30:23):
I ended up, you know, doing different literature courses.

Speaker 3 (30:27):
And he was lovely. He took a shine to me
in terms of like.

Speaker 4 (30:32):
I did a couple of courses with him, and then
he became a private tutor and I'd go up to
Cambridge every week and we talked.

Speaker 3 (30:38):
About DH Lawrence. Actually, how was that for a big
load of pretentious too hot for people that I don't
know who D. H. Lawrence is, but I was. I
was absolutely in heaven.

Speaker 4 (30:48):
And when I graduated from Williams, I did the prerequisite
summer stock in New Jersey. Yes, having already done some
earlier in my college career, got to New York and
started realizing that I just I was not a good
serious actor.

Speaker 3 (31:07):
I mean, nobody took me seriously.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
Who was your like Dre who is a prototype that
you like, who did you sort of look up to.

Speaker 3 (31:14):
And want a career like, that's such a good question.

Speaker 4 (31:17):
Okay, so this is the problem. This should told me
something really earlier. So you mentioned the fact that like
I loved I loved television. I grew up with TV
very often. I didn't know when my bedtime was because
things were relatively chaotic, so I would know when to
go to bed depending on what was on TV. Right, sure, yeah,
but so like my role models were like Mary Tyler
Moore and Carol Burnett. So yes, But why I thought

(31:40):
I was going to be Judy Dench, I don't know.
I just I thought that that's what being an actor was,
and then I just would never get any good parts,
like nobody wanted me. And plus I wasn't I wasn't real,
like I wasn't classically beautiful. I was kind of funny looking,
and very early on when I got to New York,

(32:01):
I discovered this. I can't remember. I think it was
like somebody that I met discovered this improv troop downtown.
Robin Williams sipped in there briefly, like Bruce Willis trained there.
They were a hot mess. I mean it was like
a hot mess, and it was the early.

Speaker 3 (32:19):
Eighties of New York.

Speaker 4 (32:20):
But I found out really quickly that I was really
good at thinking on my feet and I was actually
and I'd done a certain medic of improv in high
school and college, but I never actually really done formats before,
and this particular group was very big on not doing
set formats.

Speaker 3 (32:37):
Second City Uperate Citizens, a lot of them do sketches.

Speaker 4 (32:40):
We would always do new stuff and we'd always make
it up, which means the shows were kind of sucky.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
But we learned a lot, and I discovered that I
was actually pretty good at it.

Speaker 4 (32:50):
I was pretty good at coming up things really fast,
and then I did better when I didn't have prep
time because I didn't overthink everything. And Julian can probably
testify to the fact that I can. I can pull
something apart way too much just to really irritate people
around myself.

Speaker 2 (33:05):
So I personally don't haven't found that to be true.

Speaker 3 (33:08):
But let's let's take a wood for it.

Speaker 4 (33:10):
That's lovely for you to say, but I find it.
I found it very liberating. And the other thing was
that it's all if you don't listen, you don't survive.
So the key to surviving and doing improvisation, and then
we ended up doing sketch com meeting.

Speaker 3 (33:24):
I ended up.

Speaker 4 (33:26):
Breaking off from that group and we formed our own group. Uh,
two men and a woman and I started a smaller group.
One of those people ended up being like kind of
a partner there, and then my best friend, and then
my future husband, and then my ex husband.

Speaker 3 (33:45):
And now still a really really close friend.

Speaker 2 (33:48):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (33:49):
So we've had a you know, credibly long relationship. But
we we ended up like building a lot of the
shows ourselves. And at a particular point, relatively early on,
I was waitressing to pay the bills. The gentlemen got
me a job as a waitress, and I still think
everyone to this day that I was waitress because waitressing
is the best training ever for everything in the world.

Speaker 3 (34:13):
Ever.

Speaker 2 (34:13):
I cut my thumb off when I was waitressing.

Speaker 3 (34:16):
Oh that's not good.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
The top of my thumb. Yeah, I cut off because
I was opening a bottle of wine like that, you know,
those pushed down things, and cut off and it was
really embarrassing. I was at the table. There's blood everywhere, oh, Julianne.

Speaker 3 (34:32):
Okay, so I actually couldn't do that thing where you
open wine. Well, at all.

Speaker 4 (34:37):
So at this one restaurant I would go to and
help out a friend, which was a nicer restaurant than
the restaurant worked at. I would put the wine bottle
between my legs and pull and they would pay extra
for me to come over and open because they were like, Okay,
I want to see the lady put the bottle. This
is life.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
A show. So I a minor career as a as
a commercial actor.

Speaker 4 (35:04):
I didn't book a whole ton, but what I book
was always whacky and crazy and funny, and I was
like the whacky next door neighbor. My agent in New
York and my partner was writing and had written a
bunch of really good specs scripts, so he had representation.
And my New York agents said you should go out
to LA because you can be a whacky next door
anamor I'm a sitcom.

Speaker 3 (35:25):
So I was like okay.

Speaker 4 (35:26):
And my oldest sister, who I mentioned before, to whom
I was really close, had moved out here was working
in the business, and I thought, oh, this is great.

Speaker 3 (35:34):
I'll be close to my sister Libby, and you know,
Peter and I will move out here and it's going.

Speaker 4 (35:38):
To be great and I got out, and within about
ten seconds it was really clear nobody wanted me is
a freaking wacky next door neighbor and a sipcom because
in those days, wacky next door neighbors and sitcoms all
looked like Suzanne Summers, right, and I looked like you're
real next door neighbor. And plus I just honestly, I

(35:59):
wasn't that good. I didn't audition well, and I found
I started to and I haven't really talked about this
very much, but I started to get real anxiety attacks
about auditioning. I didn't I just wasn't very confident. There
was something about it where I just didn't feel like
I was always started second guessing myself, and I was

(36:20):
super self conscious. And I didn't like the camera. I
liked live audiences, but something about the camera I found
really difficult. And there came this point where in order
to make money, I couldn't get a job waitressing because you, guys,
in California in the late eighties, you couldn't get a

(36:42):
job at a fine dining restaurant if you were a woman.
They only hired dudes, right. So a friend of a
friend got me a job reading scripts for freelance. Like
they just said, here right up coverage and for anybody
who doesn't know what that is, basically big studios and networks.
What they would do is they would have a bunch

(37:02):
of books that would come in, a bunch of scripts
that would come in. They didn't have enough executives to
read the scripts of the books, so they would hire
these outside people to read and essentially write a book
report and a summary comments as to whether or not
the thing was any good. And here's where the English
teacher and Latin teacher and all the education came in.
Because I'd had this baller education, and I'd studied film,

(37:25):
and I'd studied all this other stuff, and so reading
was like the easiest thing in the world. And I
discovered that I could read the stuff, and I could
figure out ways of fixing this stuff, and then I
would send it back in and as difficult as it
had been being an actor, within like three months, I
was offered a full time job at a studio. And
then the first thing that I recommended was this movie

(37:48):
called I'm Going to Get You Sucka which was which
was it was during a writer's strike back in those
days in the late eighties. It was Keenan Ivory William's
first movie. They didn't have enough executives. They were like, well,
why don't you tag along?

Speaker 2 (38:01):
And I love that movie. I loved that movie, and
I was like, why does.

Speaker 3 (38:07):
Everybody say, like, Hollywood so hard? This is so easy.

Speaker 4 (38:12):
I stopped acting seconds later the studio shut down.

Speaker 3 (38:17):
I lost my job. I had nothing for a year.

Speaker 4 (38:21):
But I was really lucky because I had this sort
of like dark moment of the cell where I was
sort of like, I worked to be an actor for
all these years, but I always sort of thought that
whatever I did, I think would be really hard and
really painful and should be really hard and painful. And
I felt really weird that I found this thing that
was like I just really enjoyed and was interesting and engaging.

(38:45):
And the whole idea that I could help people articulate
what they want to do, what they wanted to see,
was really fun because the focus didn't have to be
on me, but you could actually you could this piece of.

Speaker 3 (39:05):
You would be part of what you ended up seeing
in a weird way.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
Yeah, exactly. And on that point again, your Mary clare speech,
I'm just fact checking it for you now, You'll be
pleased to hear you say in it that everything you
touched bombed when it came to movies, the movies that
you made. But that's so not true. I mean, look,

(39:30):
two hundred cigarettes, let's look at that was a bomb.

Speaker 3 (39:34):
It wasn't it was, but it was a total freaking bomb.
But it was before its time.

Speaker 2 (39:40):
It's really interesting because the movies that you made have
stood the test of time. Looking back, you're like that,
that's a damn good movie. And all of those breakout
performances at the comedy, the drama, the mix, the music.
It's very familiar to me, the way the pacing of it.
And also female director.

Speaker 4 (40:02):
Excuse me, female director, female line producer, female costume designer,
female production designer, female editor, female executed, like producer, producer.

Speaker 3 (40:14):
We only had one dude, and that was the DP
mm hmm. I mean there was like it was all women,
and I looked at them.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
I can't even believe that.

Speaker 3 (40:23):
It was well it was. You know, it's funny.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
It was a cult hit. It was a cult it is.

Speaker 4 (40:28):
Now and you know it's funny is you can't get
it anywhere because I think there are music rights problems
with Paramount. That's partially my fault because I placed all
the music. But it was the first thing I ever did,
and I look back on it and it it's more
like a TV series than it is like a movie.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
It really reminds me of Shondola what we do now.

Speaker 4 (40:53):
Yes, but I didn't realize that until I look back
and I went, okay, and I I give so much
credit Teresa braymcarcia, who was the director. She was a
casting director, she got all that talent. She was amazing.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
I mean, I've never seen Pull Rudd. I mean, Pull
Rudd was fantastic.

Speaker 3 (41:12):
He was great despite the Mutton shops he insisted me.
And it was it was. It was a total trauba
on fire because I never produced a movie before and
it was Streets of New York.

Speaker 4 (41:22):
It was thirty five days. We shot nights Forever. We
had an incredibly oppressive and terrifying production company with a
Harry Cone like boss at the head of it. Was
it the boss the I think, I know, uh huh, yes,
probably probably, And it was. It was this amazing baptism

(41:46):
by fire. But I look, I learned a lot and
I really enjoyed the process, and it just people didn't
understand what it was.

Speaker 3 (41:56):
Uh huh was Martha Plimpton in that Martha Plimpton?

Speaker 2 (42:00):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (42:00):
Ben, Lacy Applin, Courtney.

Speaker 2 (42:03):
Love Crazy by the way, it's fantastic in it. She's
really good Love.

Speaker 1 (42:06):
She's a great actress.

Speaker 3 (42:07):
She was really she was.

Speaker 4 (42:08):
Really good and she did a really, really good job.
Jenny Garoffalo, there's a whole story behind that. She totally
bailed us out. Dave Chappelle, Kate Hudson, Jay Moore, what.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
A cast and it was. It was nuts.

Speaker 3 (42:21):
It was a nuts thing to do, like your first
time out.

Speaker 4 (42:24):
But to that point, what's weird is honestly poor Mark Gordon,
because if I was really associated with the movie while
I worked with him, it was just prior to the
Shondre relationship, and during the Shondre relationship, like that company
made like Day After Tomorrow, which I had that much
to do with, and Casanova, which I think is a

(42:45):
terrific movie which I love, in which I was making
the same time I was flying back to Gray Season one,
was commuting from Venicetta ly to California. All nice house,
that proglamorous. I was a leathering, freaking idiot by the
time I would get a place. But I thought that
was a beautiful movie and great, but the timing was wrong,

(43:05):
Like it was always the timing was wrong, and it
wasn't until I got to TV that I caught up
with my time. Like I felt like the timing was
right in a strange way.

Speaker 3 (43:15):
There was also this really weird.

Speaker 4 (43:16):
I'm talking a lot, but you know, I think that's
what I'm supposed to do, right, Yeah, we want So
we had this moment I was I was commuting back
and forth from California to Venice, and I remember sitting
in Piazza's head Marco and the sun was rising and
we were waiting for the right light. And I was

(43:37):
sitting there and my foot was twitching in my chair,
and I was reading through the next Gray's Anatomy script
that Seohan had sent me.

Speaker 3 (43:44):
I think we're in like episode two or three or something.

Speaker 4 (43:47):
That's that, and I'm reading it and I'm looking around
and I say to somebody, I don't understand what this
is taking so long, And jokingly I turned I think
to like Jeremy Irons, and I said, you know it's
so funny, is if I were back home right now,
we would have already done twenty setups, and he looked at.

Speaker 3 (44:05):
Me and he went, oh, Darling, I think you probably
like television. Oh wow. It was something like that. It
was probably wiser because it was fucking Jeremy Iron.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
So Jeremy I like this on the podcast Thank you
so much.

Speaker 4 (44:24):
I apologize, Jeremy I, but I remember thinking, man, you're right,
and I still love movies and I'm still excited to
make movies. And Juliane and I've had this conversation which
I think there's something amazing about a close ended story.

Speaker 3 (44:39):
But there was something at that point.

Speaker 4 (44:41):
About the thing about series was the endless possibility of
where you could go and the fact that like life,
TV is about or screen smaller screens are about, you know,
stories about people who don't change overnight.

Speaker 3 (45:00):
Yeah, you know there's there.

Speaker 4 (45:01):
You don't have to have an epiphany in a long
running television series. What you have is life, which is
the slow growth of realizing kind of who you are.

Speaker 3 (45:10):
And I loved.

Speaker 4 (45:13):
I loved that aspect of it that you never knew.
I always sort of felt like if you read something
or you hear a pitch and you don't know how
it's going to end, that's a great show.

Speaker 1 (45:24):
I'm fascinated listening to this whole journey, like just the
pivoting that you did, Like you I admire so much,
starting out wanting to be a performer and then just
trusting and listening to your instincts about because I know
so many people who maniacally stick to their dream to
the point where it almost drives them into the ground,
even though when there's something else that's so much more expansive,

(45:47):
like that, their life gets so limited when they have
blinders on, like no, it has to be this, and
that it's I almost think because I did improv, like
just listening to you being willing to take the cues
of the universe and trust, like this feels good. What
if it's okay, if it's something other than what I
thought it was when I started out on this journey,
and then even pivoting from movies to TV. I've just

(46:09):
been very present for the ride and not having to
get ahead of your own story and what you're doing,
Like it's it's inspiring to me to hear that, because
I think people can get very locked into things.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
That this is the perfect moment to take another ad break.

Speaker 5 (46:25):
Oh look at you, You're such a prosh It's the
perfect time and when we come back, we are going
to talk about being a non writing executive producer.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
Oh yes, and we're back. So Betsy, I'm intrigued. Two
hundred Cigarettes. There's a lot of Shonda in that movie,
and there's a lot of Shonda land output in that
movie in terms of pacing, in terms of fun, in

(47:04):
terms of drive. So it makes me think that as
the land, how does that how does that look? How
does that work? Question?

Speaker 4 (47:13):
Well, first of all, this one I'm going to say
about being the land is I think in the olden days,
I was the land nowadays, just so people understand, Shondaland
is bigger than my land, Like Shondaland.

Speaker 3 (47:23):
Is now podcasts, it is now.

Speaker 4 (47:28):
A website, it is products, and it is so it's
I'm a I'm now a small piece or I'm a section.

Speaker 3 (47:36):
Of the land.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
But it's a land that you built, you know, it's.

Speaker 3 (47:39):
It definitely is you know, it's funny.

Speaker 4 (47:43):
You know you would have to ask Shanda, do you
think that you're you know, there's a lot of Shonda
or you know Shonda sort of style in two hundred
Cigarettes because I think I think, I think it's certainly
in terms of pacing, in terms of comedy, in terms
of because this is the funny thing about Shonda too,
is everybody was six of us, Shanda is this like
drama writer, and Shanda wrote comedy like sure she did

(48:06):
introducing Dorothy Dandridge, but she also did you know, Princess Diaries,
and she the specs that I read, which were the
funniest things that I'd read, like initially when I first
met her. So yeah, there is a there is a
sort of if I think about probably what she was doing,
and she's definitely, you know, more than ten years younger

(48:27):
than I am, so she was at a different stage
when I was making that movie certainly, But when you
sort of think about we talked about that sort of
trajectory of having a lot of light stuff in your background.
And also I think it also for me is as
a woman, I mean, you know this, Julianne, as a woman,

(48:49):
people are way more comfortable with you doing things that
are funny, you know, not necessarily threatening, and I think
especially at that point there was it was certainly it's
certainly easier and I can't speak for her, but for me,
because I'd always use comedy as a way in the door,

(49:10):
and also because I laugh a lot and I think
a lot of stuff is funny. It felt like a
natural thing to be able to.

Speaker 3 (49:18):
Do.

Speaker 4 (49:18):
I think there is something about sense of humor, but
also the extremity of emotional situation, because there was something
about the whole idea of how horrible we all feel
in the year's eve, and I think that there is
a large portion of that incredibly tortured internal part of

(49:40):
all of us, which is I don't have a party
to go to, I don't have a date, but that
it's as big as a nuclear holocaust event, and there
is a certain amount of that humor. I think that
does continue, at least through the stuff that I continued
to like, you know, which is perspective.

Speaker 3 (50:01):
Is in the eye of the beholder.

Speaker 2 (50:03):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 3 (50:04):
But watching people deal with.

Speaker 4 (50:06):
Crisis in a different way, and what one person calls
a crisis another person calls a crisis is always is
often entertaining.

Speaker 2 (50:13):
Yes, we have basically in the last twenty minutes or so,
we've just got some questions and some advice because a
lot of this show is about self help, and I
need a lot of self help all the time. So
it's one of the joys is being able to talk

(50:34):
to somebody like you and.

Speaker 1 (50:35):
Get some selfishly created this so we can ask people
who are on it tips.

Speaker 3 (50:40):
Oh god, I want to host this thing too.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
Then she's so good, so good. Jone Jet had some
great self help yet so I know you had a
question on do you want to ask you a question
about Gray's about pitching that in the room?

Speaker 1 (50:57):
I mean I still in you know, in twenty twenty
one or in twenty twenty did the likability factor like
the late Likable Ladies?

Speaker 3 (51:08):
You know.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
It was my writing partner and I had a script
that was getting funding for a movie that was a woman.
It was a dark comedy about a woman who was
in an unhappy marriage and has an affair and bad
things happened, and there was a mail investor. We have
a sex scene where she's having sex with her husband
and his bored and is watching television and he was

(51:28):
so upset by that, and it's like, you know, they
have kids, they you know how bad Like he wanted
an enthusiastic he wanted her to be a better wife.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
The whole thing is.

Speaker 1 (51:38):
And it's like my parents had kids and I never
saw them even shake hands like, it doesn't mean.

Speaker 3 (51:43):
That it's no feeling, no touching. There was no touching,
no no play.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
I mean I never been saw them in the same room.
Would you mind telling our listeners the you guys got
so much pushback pitching Grays and I was so wowed
by the wh you were in the room. And one
of the gentlemen was judging Meredith Gray and the fact
that you had enough wherewithal to have your own back,

(52:10):
and this gentleman was saying, if you wouldn't mind this
story had knocked my socks off.

Speaker 3 (52:15):
No.

Speaker 4 (52:16):
And what's funny is it harkens back to earlier conversation,
which is their advantages to having the actor and the
Latin teacher because the Latin teacher is very impatient, yes,
and the actor enjoys the room right or Trieste or
one strange rider.

Speaker 3 (52:36):
So yeah, So basically we had we shot the.

Speaker 4 (52:40):
Pilot, I think, and just for people who don't know,
the thing about Gray's anatomy was every single step of
the way we almost didn't make. So Seanda did this
incredible pitch. We developed the show. She did this incredible pitch.
They bought the pitch and there I'm terrific, she wrote
the pilot. The pilot was what you saw. I mean,

(53:01):
we found an old version of the pilot recently. There
were certain things that were slightly different, but honestly, it
was pretty much what you saw.

Speaker 1 (53:08):
I watched it again last night. It holds. It's so great,
it holds up. And it was one of having a
complicated female like, thank you for creating this world.

Speaker 3 (53:16):
Once again.

Speaker 4 (53:17):
It was like it never occurred to us that because
this all sort of came out of partially to this
idea that neither saw anything on television that looked like us,
that sounded like us, that acted like us. Were flawed, screwy, dark, competitive,
and there's no reason why you can't be friends or
work in an environment. And I was always friends with

(53:40):
the people that I worked with, and it didn't mean
that we weren't competing for projects, but I had my
people's back and they had my end was like you had,
that's what you did. And she had a similar sort
of experience in her world. And so it was a
bit of an anomaly to begin with. And then basically
we're the last pilot to get picked up too. We

(54:02):
were told that they were really went sure they didn't
understand the tone of the show. So God bless this woman,
Susan Lyne, who was head of ABC at that time.
She was a co president, I think, with Lloyd Braun
and I remember Seanda. I went in and we were like, okay,
we're just going to sell them. So I found this
article in New York Times that I had nothing to

(54:23):
do with our show, but it was all about like
women in the workplace in conflict. And she we bought
this whole sort of like this is why this is relevant,
and it's an important time for people to see women
as doctor and what's the conflict of leaving home? I mean,
it was all freaking smoke and marras And she was like,
all right, last pilot to get picked up to shoot

(54:44):
in pilot terms. And Julianne can understand this for all
you listeners because she's genius at this too. When you're
the last person picked up, you're the last pilot picked up,
let's just say Noan's available. There is it is. It
is really like picking through vegetables at the farmer's market
at about two o'clock in the afternoon.

Speaker 3 (55:05):
But we got really lucky.

Speaker 4 (55:06):
We had this casting director Lindelowie, who was willing to
do it, who had never really done television before, but
she was.

Speaker 3 (55:11):
Like, I don't know, this is really kind of interesting. Yeah,
this is fun.

Speaker 4 (55:16):
And there's these two women and this was fun. And
we had Peter Horton, who was a friend of Mark
Gordon's whose company it was, and was really really wanted
to do with the pilot and loved the pilot and
was a passionate supporter of and was the person I
think who introduced us to Julianne, who we were able
to get as a director, but was definitely an underdog

(55:37):
because he wasn't one of three people that everybody always
hires to do pilots and casting. We were really lucky
because Ellen Pompeo had tested for another show at ABC,
and this genius executive who actually introduced shawned in the
originally Suzanne pap Were Gibbs, who unfortunately passed away a
few years ago. She saw this audition and she said,

(55:59):
you know you really she was at the studio at
the time. She said, really should look at her from Meredith.

Speaker 3 (56:04):
She was great. Patrick Dempsey was terrific. That was a
that was a whole process though.

Speaker 4 (56:09):
It was like the whole thing. The whole thing was
a process. We started filming and one of the first
notes we got was two they shot and I'm making
a face right now, like I just smell Coop. He
doesn't know what I'm doing with my face. And we
got to this like first day of shooting and we

(56:30):
shot the lock wind the locker room seeds where they're
all meeting for the first time in Sandra's by the
locker room and Katie Igel comes in and blah blah blah.
And the note was the executive was on set and
he was like the hair and we said what they said,
the hits it's messy.

Speaker 3 (56:49):
Oh my god, it's natural.

Speaker 4 (56:51):
And we were like, well, they're first day doctors. The
doctor their doctors. He was like no, no, no, So
we had to their hair and eat it up. And
they left and I was like, messer carup again, like
Mester harrap became that's ridiculous, And.

Speaker 3 (57:06):
It was sort of like that each step of the way.

Speaker 4 (57:08):
We finally got picked up last show to get picked up,
had to pitch the whole thing all over again sort of.
And the meeting that you're talking to long wooded way
of getting to it the midiate you're describing. We walked
in and I can't remember exactly which point of the
food chain it was, but we were sitting in a
room and it was all men and the two of us,
and this one executive took it upon himself to say

(57:32):
a two year point, everyone's got.

Speaker 3 (57:35):
To be likable in the world.

Speaker 4 (57:36):
Apparently, apparently you only want to watch women if they're
likable or, by the way, side note, if they have
a disability which makes them sympathetic and explains why they're
being Oh, I don't know, krusty or slightly impatient.

Speaker 5 (57:47):
So in this.

Speaker 4 (57:48):
Particular case, he said, I don't know. I just I
find this kind of repulsive. I mean, you have a
lead character, a woman that I'm supposed to like, who
the night before her first day at work working at
this hospital goes out, gets drunk and gets late and
has a one night stand.

Speaker 3 (58:07):
I mean, who would do that?

Speaker 4 (58:11):
And I remember with that, skipping a beat because it's true,
I said me, I did it, yes, And I said,
I went out the night before my last job, got wasted, like,
fucked all night, and came back to work like I
went to work first day hungover like an animal. And

(58:34):
let me just say, probably was still drunk. So and
I remember it was some version of that, probably simpler
and more elegant, but I remember.

Speaker 3 (58:44):
Shot.

Speaker 4 (58:45):
Shot always says like that moment you meant and you
you are a keeper like we this is this makes
total sense because no one could say anything because they
could look at me and go like you're a sled
or to my face, but they were confronted with somebody
who's saying, so, see that was me, and you've been

(59:08):
treating me like a normal executive.

Speaker 2 (59:10):
But that was me.

Speaker 3 (59:14):
So it's and and you know, all the way along,
I always.

Speaker 4 (59:18):
Say that I think I said this in this speech,
which is you're not a threat until you're somewhat successful,
and then once all of a sudden you gain a
certain amount of success and agency, that's when the knives
come out.

Speaker 2 (59:32):
What do you mean by that? I'm really interested in that, Betsy,
which put oh the knives coming out? What do you mean?

Speaker 4 (59:39):
It's it's the it's the fact that I think when
when you don't have any power for women, you know,
you don't have as hard. It's like navigating the world
is not necessarily it's hard because nobody takes you that seriously.

Speaker 3 (59:52):
But as soon as you.

Speaker 4 (59:53):
Actually have a certain amount of power or agency or sway,
that's when a lot of conflict.

Speaker 3 (01:00:00):
Gets thrown in your face.

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
And how do you navigate that? This is the self
help put Yeah, I.

Speaker 4 (01:00:08):
Think it's not until you're challenged over things that you
know you shouldn't be challenged over that you start to
develop the wherewithal and the confidence to say, no, this
is what I need and this is what more importantly
I want. Very often it's up to us to forge
that path and be able to identify the moment where

(01:00:28):
it happens. But I think very often when you talk
to other women who have gotten to a particular place
where nobody took them as seriously as they could might have,
and there's always an AHA moment. For us, it was
a moment where we walked into a meeting and we
realized that there'd been a pre meeting before we got there,
and they're all going to try to convince us to
do something, and that was my Aha.

Speaker 3 (01:00:51):
That was my oh, no, you don't.

Speaker 4 (01:00:53):
And let's just say it didn't go well after that,
because that's when the mean Latin teacher comes out and
encourage anybody who's listening is if you honestly feel like
you're not getting your due, you will because you'll find
the moment where you can and the moment where you
have the opportunity. And they come in different ways and

(01:01:15):
shapes and sizes. But the more you respect yourself and
your output, the less you will have tolerance for the
people who are trying to make your movement towards fully realizing.

Speaker 3 (01:01:29):
What you can do and the work that you want
to do. The more it's up to you to challenge that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
If that makes sense, would you get nervous along the
way when you would speak up or would you have
to have your.

Speaker 4 (01:01:41):
Eye I have this thing which is yes sometimes but
I have to see it's the improv thing, which is
I think, I read a room, or I think.

Speaker 3 (01:01:50):
About a lot, and I listen to what people are saying.

Speaker 4 (01:01:52):
And then a lot of the way I operate or
I try to focus is I try to I try
to figure out how I can make the most effective message,
like how I.

Speaker 3 (01:02:04):
Can sell my point. And I'm going to quote a
story from a long time ago.

Speaker 4 (01:02:14):
There was a bodyguard who was describing his job. He
was a bodyguard for a singer and my friend asked him,
how do you do your job, like, how do you
bodyguard this famous person?

Speaker 3 (01:02:27):
He said, It's very simple. First you are nice and
then you are not nice.

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (01:02:32):
And in my brain I'm always sort of like first
for me, first, I will always give people the bet
of the doubt. I will listen, and then the impatience
comes out in me, and I can't control the impatience.
So what happens is when the impatience comes out, then
there's a larger force at work, which means in terms

(01:02:53):
of thinking about it, I'll think about it up to
a point and then my mouth burst open and I say, oh,
that was me. You know, I got drunk and had
a one night stand and shut up at work the
next day hungover. That wasn't me thinking about it. That
was me literally saying, oh no, you don't, no, no,
you don't, No, you don't because I know I.

Speaker 3 (01:03:16):
Have right on my side here.

Speaker 1 (01:03:17):
I admire that so much.

Speaker 3 (01:03:19):
That's how I wish. I wish I could do it
all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
I love it.

Speaker 3 (01:03:23):
I loved it. But I have been a.

Speaker 2 (01:03:25):
Question about producing. What are the building blocks that you
use just in your head, just the go to building
blocks when you're thinking about putting together one of these.
You know obviously mega hits after mega hits. What are
the basic principles that you go to?

Speaker 4 (01:03:46):
I got to tell you, I think it always starts
with something really simple, which is, do I want to
watch this? Mm hmm, It's really simple. It's just does
this idea really intrigue me? Do I know how this
is going to end? Or what the correct storytelling methodology is?

(01:04:06):
I can't figure it out. Is it something I've ever
really seen before? Just like this, is it something I've
done before? Is it something we've done before? And you know,
is it something just emostally unsumm level I relate to?
And is there somewhere in it an unresolvable conflict?

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
I was just actually thinking as well about the physical
production side of it. So, for example, with Bridgeton, you
are very clear costumes, costumes, costumes, costumes, And I just
wondered if you have a different instinct for each show
or is it is it?

Speaker 3 (01:04:43):
Is it?

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
Is it is an instinctive thing? Or is it a
set of building blocks that you just have as a
go to instinctively because of your background as a movie producer,
just where that comes from.

Speaker 4 (01:04:57):
I'm fast I think I think you know what it
is is it's it's what is the dominant what is
the dominant thing that I'm trying to convey or we're
trying to bay in each show, right, So with Bridgerton
and we did it in a couple of different ways.
It was costumes for me and music for me in
some ways too. The music Chris Bowers by the way, amazing,
amazing composer, obsessed with that.

Speaker 3 (01:05:19):
But and Shonda was, you know, super.

Speaker 4 (01:05:22):
Obviously involved and instrumental in all this as well as too,
as well as Chris and Van Duzan and Julianne who,
like you know, hello directed the first episode and personally
my favorite episode, episode six, which.

Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
My kids have never forgiven me full by the.

Speaker 4 (01:05:38):
Way, Sexy six, Sexy six today, but also have the
emotional complexity of them that that was such a difficult
episode in terms of calibrating the topic. Sentence for us,
I think, or at least for me going in was okay,
how do you actually make this people be able to
relate to what this is really about in a way

(01:05:59):
which doesn't take them out of the period, but makes
things just relatable enough that they feel like they're going
to make the connection. And the thing about costumes is
we didn't do a literal. We decided very early on
it wasn't going to be a literal interpretation of Regency England.
It was going to be much like the whole World was,

(01:06:20):
and much like the whole idea was, which is it's
a reimagination of regency England. But it's close enough that
you don't go, oh, this is taking me out of
it because they're wearing you know, Fendi and holding handbags.

Speaker 3 (01:06:34):
It's there.

Speaker 4 (01:06:36):
You have to look carefully, and everything's just a little
bit larger than life. Everything's just more joice and slightly
and in the case of the costumes, they hear in
the make us all slightly larger than life and bigger,
and the colors were brighter. And with the music, it
was the idea of what if you had what if
you actually played songs people would recognize, but they wouldn't
know they would recognize it. So, very very early on,

(01:06:59):
I remember that there was this group that I used
to really love called Rodrigue and Gabriella, and they were.

Speaker 3 (01:07:04):
These musicians who were Mexican who used to perform.

Speaker 4 (01:07:07):
They couldn't get any work and they would go to
resorts in Mexico and they would play music that was
the stuff they loved. Like they were hard rock people,
but they loved you know, steroid heaven and they loved
all these stuff and stuff, and.

Speaker 3 (01:07:20):
So they would play it in flamenco style and nobody recognized, but.

Speaker 4 (01:07:24):
It's what they liked, and they put out a bunch
of albums and relatively early on, I remember talking to
Alex potsavas Er genius music people, and I think Julianne
and Chris and sort of saying, you know, there's something
about the idea of having music which is sounds like
it's from the period, but if you really listen to it,
it's not. It's it's a cover and it's but that's

(01:07:49):
all just you take. It's once again it's about articulation.
It's you take whatever the creator or the overarching theme
or base of the work is, and then you try
to figure out all these different ways to reinforce and
articulate what that is so that no matter where you turn,

(01:08:10):
there's a consistency of what you're trying to say.

Speaker 2 (01:08:14):
Something that I'm really interested in. I heard this program
about polyplat on you must remember this.

Speaker 3 (01:08:23):
I have a huge Polyplat fan anyway, yeaheah.

Speaker 2 (01:08:25):
And her daughter said that she felt the Polyplat started
getting marginalized when she got older in Hollywood. And I'm
just fascinated by that, And I wonder what your reaction
is to that, because it's it's definitely something, you know,
when I came over, I was this cute, young good

(01:08:48):
than I actually was looking human. And I'm just fascinated
by this particular question about Hollywood, whether it actually is
still that way or whether it's changed.

Speaker 4 (01:09:03):
You know, it's so weird, is I don't. I have
a hard time answering it because I've been in the
same place for so long, and I've been working, you know,
with the same person who I adore for so long
and for whom my age I think has always been.
It's my age has been utilized for good and that
I've seen a lot of stuff, I've done a lot

(01:09:23):
of stuff, and I am appreciated and.

Speaker 3 (01:09:28):
Supported for that information that I have, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:09:34):
Having said that, though, look I can't deny that. I
think probably I'm very fortunate because I'm in a position
where I am valued for that experience.

Speaker 3 (01:09:44):
I doubt that that is the case most places.

Speaker 4 (01:09:47):
And I went through something a few years ago where
I remember I would never tell anybody how old I
was for years because I, like you said, Julianne, like
I looked younger than I was at that particular point,
and I really struggled with it. And it wasn't until
I read an article that mentioned my age in I

(01:10:09):
think was like TV Guide, and they were off.

Speaker 3 (01:10:13):
They had me younger by like seven or eight years,
and I.

Speaker 4 (01:10:16):
Thought, this is screwed up, Like there's something wrong about this,
Like they had to figure it out by going like
doing bad math, and clearly whoever wrote the article is
not very good at math, because it's pretty easy to
figure out if you really want to do a deep dive.

Speaker 3 (01:10:30):
But it was.

Speaker 4 (01:10:31):
It was buff flattering, but it was It struck me
as a problem because I thought, here, I am somebody
who has been successfully making a living and doing what
I love and been successful at what I do, and
I'm hiding. If I'm hiding, what is that saying to
women and what is that saying to people to men?
I mean, if I don't have the opportunity to be

(01:10:53):
able to say, okay, guys, I'm in my mid to
late fifties and I can't. When I read I read
this article for a polyd reporter, I think or something,
but it was like I think I was late fifties probably,
and I remember writing this up and saying, look, we
all need to the more people come out and say
that this is what age does to me, and I

(01:11:15):
don't want to be actually I don't my value and
part of my value.

Speaker 3 (01:11:19):
Is my age.

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
And I love this.

Speaker 3 (01:11:21):
I think it's like, don't you feel this way.

Speaker 4 (01:11:23):
It's like all your experience and all the things you've
done and the things that and I do feel like
it's something which is it needs to be talked about
more subt value.

Speaker 2 (01:11:33):
That's why I'm trying. I totally agree with that.

Speaker 3 (01:11:36):
And like you you do. You look like you're fourteen,
so it must be hard.

Speaker 1 (01:11:40):
I know, But how is it being a fourteen year
old director, Julie?

Speaker 3 (01:11:43):
Is that I've done so much in such a short
amount of.

Speaker 1 (01:11:45):
Time ten thousand hours and thousand hours of life.

Speaker 2 (01:11:49):
I'm going to go into the last question because I
don't want to keep you any longer. But this question
is absolutely essential to the success of this podcast, and
it's a question that we've asked everyone it is. What
would you, Betsy be a say, now to the young
you in that home in Lung Island, maybe before you

(01:12:12):
went to boarding school, what advice would.

Speaker 3 (01:12:16):
You give that which age young BET's year we talk about.

Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
You can make your choice. You could say ten, you
could say seventeen, twenty two, whatever. What daver age speaks
to you?

Speaker 2 (01:12:29):
Younger? Younger?

Speaker 1 (01:12:29):
Betsy?

Speaker 4 (01:12:31):
You know, I would probably give the advice to myself
that I give when people ask me for advice, which
is a couple of things. I would say, you don't
have to pretend to know what you're doing when you
really don't know what you're doing. Just admit you don't
know what you're doing, and it's okay. People won't hate
you or judge you. They'll be happy because people like

(01:12:54):
to share what they know and help other people learn things.
But I also I do think that at various points
in my life I've been I always struggle with am
I good enough?

Speaker 3 (01:13:07):
Am I smart enough? Am I? Did I make the
wrong decision?

Speaker 5 (01:13:11):
You know?

Speaker 4 (01:13:11):
I think for me there's a lot of I always
want to make sure you don't want to regret things,
and that at crossroads or when you you know it's
the red shoes, the blue shoes. You know, I got
the blue shoes, and did I really want the red shoes?
Should have gotten the red shoes. I think the second
guessing of myself probably at points I think I would

(01:13:32):
go back and probably say there is no wrong decision.
Just try to remember there's no wrong decision because every
single one of those decisions I made. The red shoes,
the blue shoes, you know, the ice cream that I ate,
the years as a waiter, the crappy experiences on stage,
the really terrible dinner theater, the you know, weird jobs,

(01:13:55):
and the appeariance where it was way harder what I
was doing.

Speaker 3 (01:14:01):
All of it has been useful. And the great thing
is experience.

Speaker 4 (01:14:07):
Every single one of those experiences will be useful and
you will find will help you at some point navigate
your future. So if you always think when this is
your past, this will help navigate your future. So don't
regret the you know, the the road not taken because

(01:14:27):
you took a different one, and it'll it will have
as much value to you later on as anything you
thought you should have done.

Speaker 1 (01:14:36):
I think that's beautiful. It's been such a joy speaking
with you. I see somebody who's been fully seeming, lefully
present in their life and sort of on this wonderful
adventure and just somebody who's just appears to be on
a daily basis showing up one hundred percent and just
taking life on life's terms, but like charting the seas

(01:14:59):
and it's and I thank you, you know what, as
a woman on earth, as a woman in Hollywood, thank
you and Shanda and everything, just for your for your
for your changing the landscape of what it can look
like for for female leads, for real people, all of it,
for showing that women can be all of it.

Speaker 4 (01:15:21):
I'd also like to say that thank you very much
for the kind words. Thank you for the opportunity to
glather like a mating act for the last an hour
and a half.

Speaker 2 (01:15:28):
That's what I've the conversation I've wanted to have for
fifteen years. It's great, really, you have.

Speaker 4 (01:15:32):
So much time in between shots too. But also I
want to thank you because you are actually creating a
platform for women to discuss their experiences, to share the
kinds of journeys they've taken to do the work that
they do, and they're not very many platforms like this
out there. So the fact that you have created this,

(01:15:54):
you know, Julian and Arden, as a place for people
to speak blunt and joyfully and hilariously about and profoundly
in some cases about the.

Speaker 3 (01:16:09):
The paths that they've taken.

Speaker 4 (01:16:12):
Is a real delight. So I'm honored that you asked me,
and I really really appreciate the time.

Speaker 2 (01:16:18):
Thank you so much. It's about being vulnerable, isn't It's
about being kind of brave enough to be a bit vulnerable. Yeah,
something I find hot.

Speaker 3 (01:16:25):
Oh everybody does. But you've made it very easy.

Speaker 2 (01:16:28):
Thank you, Thank you, Betsy huge, Thank you, Betsy.

Speaker 1 (01:16:33):
It's nice to meet you, Betsy. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:16:36):
Have a great day.

Speaker 1 (01:16:37):
By oh my goodness. For our listeners, how cool was Betsy. Julianne,
thank you for bringing us like bringing us Betsy, bringing
her into our universe. That was amazing. Thank you to
our listeners. You can email us at Lady Road Podcast
at gmail dot com and where can people find you

(01:16:57):
on Instagram, Miss Julianne.

Speaker 2 (01:17:00):
At Julianne Robinson director. I think that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:17:04):
You've been nailing it lately. I have to say I'm
at Arta Marine m y R. I n my book
Little Miss Little Compton is about as out worldwide, and
we will be back next time. Thank you so much
for listening, Take care, goodbye, bye bye bye