January 22, 2025 • 50 mins
This week it's Steven Weber! If you were an appointment TV, 90s fanatic like S.E., you'll know Steven as the snarky affable dickhead (Steven's words) Brian Hackett from the sitcom Wings. But of course, Steven has had an illustrious career since that class 90s show went off the air in 1997. Steven has gone from small screen to big screen (Single White Female) to stage (The Producers) and back again (he's now starring on a network drama throwback, Chicago Med). But S.E. and Steven get into so much more, like how to parent these days and boys in particular, how Steven broke free of those toxic masculinity role models of his youth, and how he really feels about social media. He also — spoiler! — makes S.E. tear up!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I want to switch gears to some more personal stuff
because that's what we do here. If you don't mind, depends, Okay,
you can say no, but I was wondering, depends. Welcome
to Off the Cup, my personal anti anxiety antidote. I'm
a big fan of TV. I don't watch as much
(00:24):
now that I'm on it and listen the Bravo schedule
keeps me very busy. But I love TV and I
really love sitcoms, good ones. There aren't many good ones
these days, but back in the nineties, man, you couldn't
flip on the TV without landing on a great sitcom.
One of those iconic classic sitcoms was Wings, and even
(00:47):
today it has such a cult following. My producer Lauren
in fact, says it's our favorite show of all time.
I'm so happy to have one of the stars of
that show on the pod. He's done so much Wings,
Stephen King, miniseries, n cis once and again, Desperate Housewives
Without a Trace, Curb, He's done TV, film, stage, truly
(01:09):
a renaissance man. It's Stephen Weber. Welcome to Off the Cup.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Hi, se Hi, I'm.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
So glad that we're here together too.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Same thank you. I've always been a fan of yours,
and so I love your work and so I'm happy
to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
That's so nice. And back at you, I'm a fan
as well. I always like to start by asking, you know,
this podcast is biographical, we're getting to know you. I
always like to start by asking, what kind of kid
were you?
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Kind of kid was I? I mean, I was a
fairly precocious kid. I realize now that I was trying
to get the affection of my parents and people around me.
I did a lot of code switching, even before there
was a term. I tried to fit in with any
group that I found myself among. Yeah, my household was
(02:00):
a kind of a showbiz household. My father was an
agent and manager of comedians and singers in the Borsch
Belt and in New York nightclubs, and my mom had
been a nightclub singer in the fifties and that really
kind of classic cool cigarettes and suits and you know, nightclubs,
very cool, and you know, and in that world there
(02:21):
was a degree of dysfunction. So I found that I
was able to find acceptance and make friends and keep
people from beating up on me by doing imitations and
my being precocious, and my sister, who's no longer with us,
was always heard to say shut up to me all
(02:42):
the time because I just would not shut the hell up.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Like Matt Well, we all need sisters to do that.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Once in a while, exactly keep you in place.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
So, I mean, amidst the dysfunction, was it also because
I was reading a little bit about about your parents,
was it also like a very creative household?
Speaker 2 (02:57):
I mean, it wasn't creative in the sense that we
were artists or there was a kind of an air
of artistry or craftsmanship in the air. Was very kind
of Broadway Danny Rose esque environment that I was exposed to,
not as low rent, but so it was less about
being creative and more practical and in a way kind
(03:20):
of a street smart approach to show business. Any creativity
was nascent and kind of emerged later on us.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Did you know you wanted to go into the business early?
Speaker 2 (03:32):
I myself did not know anything so clearly, as much
as I just found myself on this path. I was
doing school plays and like I say, doing imitations to
get grown ups to laugh. But my parents sort of
nudged me in that direction. I had done some commercials
when I was a kid in the era of the
(03:53):
sixty second commercial, you know that type of thing. In
the sixth I just found myself in this, on this path,
and so I didn't really know it. I was just
in it.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Did you like it when you were in it as
a young person?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Absolutely, because it gave me all this affirmation that maybe
I didn't really know that I needed or wanted in
the applause and laughter, And.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
I began to find that I was applying all of
those things that I had developed out of a psychological
need to be accepted, applying it in a world that
valued it.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yeah, those were the tools that were required to, I guess,
find a monoicum of success, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah. When I was young, I got into ballet, and
like the competitive, yelling and Russian kind of ballet, not
like the fun costumes and fun music. So it's really
really tough. And because it was so competitive and they
were so brutal to us, I stuck with it way
longer than I probably should have because I was chasing
that affirmation right, But with it it came a lot
(04:59):
of rejection as well. And I imagine acting is a
similar kind of experience. You get this affirmation that feels
so good, but also a lot of rejection.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Well, I would agree, and in a way, I think
that that helps you find a more balanced approach psychologically
and emotionally. Believe it or not. Even though actors, even
more than dancers, are very easily denigrated as being flighty
or airy or you know whatever, they actually, for the
most part, are very reasonable, kind of balanced people. They
(05:32):
could be effusive, and they could.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
Be outrageous or flamboyant occasionally or self centered, but for
the most part, whatever affirmation they find or are seeking
is absolutely counterbalanced by the amount of rejection that they
that they encounter.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
And it's not wholly destructive. It isn't. I mean, it
can be if you have the kind of mentoring that
is toxic. I mean it sounds like anybody you know
holding a stick and yelling at you yes and be terrible.
It was terrible, got terrible. I look, I went to school,
I went to high school in college for theater, and
knew lots of dancers, and of course all the pimply,
(06:10):
geeky actors were staring at the dancers who were like
standing at the bar and then pleaing with abandoned. But
when I went to school, it wasn't well. It was tough,
especially very rigorous for dancers. It didn't never approach the
(06:30):
kind of you know, dictatorial kind of abuse, yeah, that
I have heard people have endured. I'm very sorry. Are
your feet well formed or are you still on point?
Speaker 1 (06:42):
My feet are terrible. My body is a little messed
up too. But mostly the damage was psychological. And you know,
being a young girl going through all the changes that
young girls go through and all the insecurities anyway, was
like the worst time to be told you're fat, or
you're lazy, or you're awful, or why aren't your feet better?
(07:03):
You know, that was just all bad. It was all bad.
And eventually I quit in the nick of time. But
you know, it wasn't fun.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Do you feel nauseous when you see a piece of rosin?
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Oh my god, I haven't thought about rosin in so long.
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
No.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
And there's a lot of like ballet stuff on TikTok
where people are showing like how they prepare their point shoes,
and oh my god, does it just flood of memories
And I'm trying, I'm working with my therapist, trying to
put that in a place where it's not such a
terrible memory. But it wasn't great.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
But are you're a relatively new parent, aren't you.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, My son's nine.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
And is he exhibiting any kind of attraction to the
arts in any way you like to perform, is like
to sing act.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
He's a ham. He wouldn't be drawn to anything very
organized or structural or formal, And so we're trying not
to turn him off from the things he loves, like
music with like formal instruction. We're waiting for him to
maybe express an interest in doing that, because right now
he just he loves We have a piano. He loves
(08:11):
sitting down at the piano and like self teaching how
to play songs, which is Grady loves singing. He does
love dancing, and I encourage trying everything with him. But
I would never let him. I would never let him
go into the kind of dance world that I ended
up in. I just wouldn't got No.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
That sounds horrible, But on the other hand, there are
great things like theater camps or faced camps, which subtly
introduced a kind of structured world into the world that
you just describe every you just where.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Yeah, like the fun of it.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
The fun of it. Yeah, when they find other people
are having fun, their peers are having fun, then they
take to it and it takes them in a good way.
And I've always thought that having a kind of an
art arts based education, even especially in theater. And I'm
not talking about acting for movies or TV. That's a
different thing. Yeah, but theater is so instructive and well,
(09:11):
you learn so many things beyond basics. You learn about history,
you learn about socializing, you learn about other cultures you
and also you learn about yourself and yourself and the world.
And so it's actually very experiential. And I'm a big
advocate of arts education. And it's funny how it's so
often minimized in academic programs. I feel like it used
(09:36):
to play a much bigger role in the department of
other disciplines. I mean, you can't have science or architecture
or economics really without art, without an understanding any way,
blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
No, I love that, And you're right. I mean, last
year he did like a Minecraft coding camp, caring into computers.
But you're right, and I did a lot of theater
stuff with as a kid as well, before ballet kind
of took over. And I loved it. It never felt
like it didn't feel like learning even it just felt
like fun, right, And yeah, no, I'll think about that.
(10:09):
That's good, please please, I will. I will back to you.
You start sort of formally on a soap, right, I yes.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
When I got out of college, one of my early
jobs was on As the World Turns. I'd done theater
before that, a few theater things, but As the World
Turns was really my first big cool gig.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Did you like it?
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Oh? It was incredible because it was it was everything
that I had kind of grown to want to be
a part of, which was the backstage, the technical aspects
of television production. I always liked the idea of an
actor in the fifties, you know, scruffy but you know,
running to take a class in the morning and then
(10:52):
doing a soap in the afternoon, and then doing a
radio show and then doing some theater and then taking class.
And this was a version of that. It was As
the World Turns, and I worked with all these amazing actors,
some of whom who had started in radio, and and
I was learning a lot so it was a great
early job.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
How does the role of Brian Hackett come to you?
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Good segue? Well, I mean that was, first of all,
it I was that guy in many respects. I was
a kind of a snarky, affable dickhead that was always
wise cracking and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
And chasing skirts, chase.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Skirts, Yeah, bas of skirts, and no shame in that, No, no,
no no. And also it's it's fine, It's fine because
just a shirt, not necessarily whoever's in it, just.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
The skirts fashion.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Fashion. And so that was something that was a character
that had obviously been written by the people that created
the show, and I just kind of stepped into it
and was, you know, lending my body to that character
that had already been written. What am I saying. I'm
saying that they had written an affably snarky, skirt chasing
guy and I was more or less that guy.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
And it worked. But but you went up against I mean,
some very very famous people also auditioned for the Hackett Brothers.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Okay, tell me, I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
George Clooney, have you heard of him?
Speaker 2 (12:21):
I guess?
Speaker 1 (12:21):
So what's he up, Tonton? He doesn't do anything. Bryan Cranston.
Have you heard of that guy?
Speaker 2 (12:25):
He did not audition for that role. I don't know
where you're getting this.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
According to my research, yes he did.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Well, talk to your researcher because okay, impossible, I don't
think so.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
First, David Duchovney, Well, here's the thing.
Speaker 5 (12:39):
Possibly, you know, Look, we were all younger back then,
and we were all probably up for roles and either
went to the auditions and some got passed to the
next level, some didn't.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
So technically speaking, maybe a lot of people were up
for it while they were trying to figure out who
would best fit this role.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Now, no, forget technically speaking, I think you need to
leave with I beat George Clooney for the role.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
I would never start any sentence which beat George Clooney
for the role, because you know, it's a powerful dude. Yes, yes,
so I don't want to piss him off.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
And he could be president one day.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
You don't know, he could be. He might already have been.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
He might right for a masshole like myself, I grew
up in Massachusetts.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Excuse me.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Wings was so fun and she had cheers as well.
Cheers was ours right, and there were so many crossovers
between Cheers and Wings. Talk about that.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
There were a few. Well, Cheers was the biggest show going. Uh,
you know by the time they went off the air,
everybody on Earth watched the finale and everything. So we
were Wings wasn't offshoot from Cheers. The several of the
writers who began on Cheers developed Wings, and so it
was to my show's advantage to cross over. So we
(14:01):
had you know, we had a Norm and Cliff Claven
come over at one point, and then we had Fraser Fraser. Yeah,
they came over because.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
They existed in the same universe essentially.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
That's right, Which is I sort of hope that in
the Fraser reboot they bring you know, Brian back and
he's much much changed.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Me too, because the Fraser reboot takes place in Boston,
So I mean, I love this. He should be going
to Nantucket exactly. Yes, let's make this happen. You can
make it.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
You make it happen. You have more work on me.
You have your own show.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
We're going to work on it because it's the thing
I need to see.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
No, it was great. It was a great time.
Speaker 6 (14:38):
And first of all, it was sort of the the
the I say the last gasp, But it was towards
the end of that must see TV world network TV
feel that is not quite the same now with all
the streamers.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
I mean, the show I'm currently on Chicago Med has
that feel that all this world news, it does network thing.
But you know, viewership has changed. The industry has changed
so substantially that it's it's a little different.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Well, that's what I was going to ask next. Like
I mean, I said in the intro that nineties was
like a golden age for sitcoms. That's how it felt
to me. Yeah, that's how it felt to you too.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Absolutely, we were in it. I mean, first of all,
it was such a part of the culture NBC and
you know, whether it was Friends, Seinfeld, Err and that
there was everybody was on magazine covers remember magazines.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
And oh yeah, I know what those are.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
And and there was lots of swag and swagger, and
there was a lot more money and and it was
an appointment to television. So yes, the country did had
these same patterns of viewership that have become quite you
know different nowadays.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Well, I just remember going to school. Yeah, and like
you had to talk about that's right, Er, you had
to talk about party five. You had to talk about
what had just happened that Thursday night on the CTV,
like and everyone everyone watched. Yeah, And now you go
somewhere and it's like, are you watching X show on Netflix? No,
but I'm binging this one. It's so bifurcated.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
It is bifurcated. It's decimated. You know, it's you know,
but it's it was a different time and arguably better.
It's hard to say this.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
I say better.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Well, but there's lots of great shows out there now,
and I'm like you, I really don't watch any of them.
In fact, I've I've found real kind of solace and
watching old movies. I'm a Criterion guy and I turned
classics movie.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
So it just come. I'm in that world now and
I miss a lot of new, great, younger talent. But
who cares?
Speaker 1 (16:39):
No, I do too, because I've since I think Seinfeld
and maybe The British Office were the last two good
sitcoms I watched. And when they rebooted The British Office here,
maybe it's because I was such a protector of the
British Office, I just I couldn't watch it. It made me mad,
it made me sad, and I think since then, none
(17:01):
of the sitcoms have really felt like they lived up
they measured up to the nineties sitcoms.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Well, whether you want to admit it or not, you're
from a different generation and I no, no, do that.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Just don't call me ma'am.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Sorry, sorry, dear, No, but times have changed.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
No, you're right, and the change.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Was actually really rapid. One of the weird things that
I I think happened was that my generation, arguably yours.
I'm older than you, but we had the same references
that our parents had, social references that our grandparents had.
You know, everybody knew who Jack Benny was starting with, right,
and they were still in evidence even in the shows
(17:48):
that I watched as a as a young person, they
had Christmas specials, they were still around. And then suddenly,
you know, the advent of technology and iPhones and actually
the twenty four hour news cycle, which you are part of,
things kind of the page turned really quickly and and
all that went away. All that history was kind of
(18:09):
relegated to the attic, I suppose, And so now you know,
my this current generation is not it's just a different,
different rhythm, different energy and different expectations, and so you
know there are there actually are good shows there. There's
some fantastic shows. It's funny that you mentioned the English
(18:30):
the British Office. I'm a I love British television and
British and I sort of again found the kind of
sanctuary in that and all shows that are old in
Great Britain but were new in America from Yeah that
Are to you know, Faulty Towers of course, and and
even older things like are You Being Served? And all
classic funny, weird thing audiences haven't seen. But maybe it's
(18:56):
just it's just not our I can't include you in
my pathology.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
It's o Ken, we're of a similar right, Yeah, so
it just got to give over to hand it over
to the TikTokers, I guess tkers. So what happens Wings
Wings goes off the air. I've interviewed a bunch of
actors for this, Henry Winkler being one who you know,
was like the most popular person, the most famous person
(19:20):
on the planet during Happy Days, and when that went
off the air, he expected lots of calls and they
didn't come. What happens for you when Wings goes off
the air.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Well. The interesting thing about Wings is that while it
was technically a hit, it was never the hottest, sexiest
or edgiest show. There were other shows around Wings that
took those those titles, and as such, there wasn't that
much heat on the show, so that when it was over,
(19:51):
I think me and Tim other actors, of course, you know,
Tom Church, yeah, schlub, we're able to transition into other
projects more easy. Yeah, And I mean I right after
Wings was over again, it was still that era where
there's that older television mentality, and I was I was
(20:12):
given a show to do. I was given a show
called The Weber Show was actually was called Cursor. It
only ran a season. Wasn't great, it wasn't terrible, but
it just wasn't anything. And in a sense, the energy
that I guess was embodied in Wings and in my
character had passed and they were moving on. But like
(20:34):
I say, it was a little easier for us to
transition because there wasn't so much heightened expectations. But it
took me. It took me a while to figure out
what the hell to do. I mean, I did a
lot of guesting. I started doing playing a lot of
characters that were not Brian Hackett. They were darker, they
were heavies, and I enjoyed that for a long time
(20:57):
until it sort of became untenable. It was just kind
of like I had to ask the universe after a
while to say, Okay, that's it. That's I'm done playing
these awful men. Can I please? Yeah, it's enough, But
I don't know. I did some theater and which I love,
and yeah, I've been lucky enough to have a working
(21:21):
actor's career ever since those heightened days of Wings.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Oh yeah, I mean, anyone just looking at your credits,
I mean embodies like this is this is the definition
of a successful career, because you've just gotten to do
so much and you kind of keep reinventing and taking
twists and turns. One of those is an incredible movie
called Single White Female.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
You think that's an incredible movie.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
I do. I know it's can't be, I know, but
it's so maybe because I was at an age, ah
where it really freaked me out.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Yeah, it was definitely of its time. You know. It
was that eighties genres hand that rocks the Cradle.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Yes, that's another one.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
All that stuff that's scary movie. And yeah, and it
was a.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Really weak movie out Wait, did you not think that
Single White Female was a good movie?
Speaker 2 (22:10):
I mean it was. It's a campy movie and it
rarely comes to my mind anymore because it's been relegated
to that that kind of old fashioned genre that has
looked down on. It's very sexist and very you know,
kind of crazy. Although my character, who an affable another
affable skirt chaser, funny that he gets has come up
(22:32):
and a very just.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
He does classic way the heel I know. I mean, no,
I actually I did. I thought it was of a time,
but I thought it was a really suspenseful, oh thriller.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
It works, It worked.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Yeah, I was into it. Man, was that was that
very different for you? Or actually do you see it
as sort of a similar kind of role?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Uh? Different? Well, I mean it was. It was sort
of a similar role. That it's the type of guy
that I was playing and had been playing again that
this anarchy dickhead, and this was and you know, this
was a darker genre. And I was able to work
with director Barbee Schroeder who did the great movie Barfly,
you know, and and of course Jennifer Jason Lee and
(23:18):
Bridgid Fonda.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Yeah, and you shot in New York, right, we.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Shot, Yes, we shot some some interiors in la but
we shot in the city, you know, my hometown. We
shot in the I guess the end. Sonia was the Yeah, exactly,
that's right. And it was really fun. You know, it
was so much fun. It was a long time ago.
We had a lot of fun on that set.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
I can see that. So in two thousand and one,
two thousand and two, you take over for Matthew Broderick
in the Producers too. Yeah, it doesn't two. It's an
iconic role that he and Nathan Lane had sort of brought,
brought that show to Broadway from a Melbrooks movie to
great acclaim. What was it like to take over that role?
Speaker 2 (24:00):
It was amazing and incredibly gratifying, was looking back. Of course,
there were things that were a little discordant and odd.
You know, the fact that I and another actor, a
fellow named Henry Goodman, who was originally cast, who was
an English actor, took over these now iconic roles. It
(24:24):
was weird because, yeah, while I've been working and everything
wouldn't I wasn't considered the type of level of star
that Matthew Broderick or Nathan Lane were, so it was
a little odd. But then right at the beginning of
that run, Henry was let go and for whatever reasons,
and I think I was close to being let go,
(24:45):
but I was retained. And it turned out to be,
of course, an incredible experience. To be on Broadway was
the height of an actor's dream, and to be in
that show, which was at the time and maybe to
this day, the most successful and most highly awarded production
ever in the history of Broadway.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Totally, it was the biggest thing on Broadway, the first.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Thing on Broadway and the next thing in New York.
You know, we had billboards and and and.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
The celebrities went every night.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Everybody went the craft Jerry Lewis came by and he laughed.
It was It was an amazing experience. And also I
learned a lot apropos of our earlier part of the
conversation about theater being a great place to learn. You
see things backstage that are so wondrous that make the
things on stage look pale, and having to do with
(25:35):
the craftsmanship and the the organization and the technical proficiency
of the crew and the dressers and the ensemble. It
was incredibly gratifying. I felt part of a family, a community,
which is really important. It proved to be really important emotionally,
(25:56):
emotionally for me.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
You know, yeah, I love Broadway. I'm a big fan
of musicals, end plays, and I always imagine this duality
that it's both the funnest thing one could do and
also the hardest, because I see how hard actors work
on Broadway and so many shows.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
It's incredibly hard. I mean, there's there's a bunch of
dualities on doing Broadway. One is the glitzy, you know,
glittery side, yeah, and then the kind of seemy underbelly
and you.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Know of like backstage right, Yeah, your dressing rooms are
like cockroach infested and there it's.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Gritty and dingy, and that's part of the appeal. You
feel like you're doing something that requires effort. You know. Again,
I love working on TV, but it's a totally different,
totally different experience. You know, you really feel like you're
part of something that is thousands of years old when
(26:55):
you do the play and there's so much community again
involved in it, and you're just a cog in the wheel.
There's something kind of nice about that. But look, there's
no there's no getting away from the fact that when
you walk to work and there's your walking looking look,
I'm reliving it now. I'm looking at I'm looking at
the theater Marquees and it was Times Square. Yeah, it's amazing.
(27:19):
It really is incredible.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
And just to think, like, who else has been in
my dressing room over the past one years.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
There's ghosts in there. I did a play in England
at the Old VIC and I mean the Ghosts of
Olivier and oh my god, everybody. It was really tremendous
and it's it'sable. You can really feel it.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
I can feel it just by listening to talk about it.
That's so cool. I want to switch gears to some
more personal stuff because that's what we do here. If
you don't mind, depends, okay, you can, you can say no, but.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
I I'm wearing depends.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Just an aside apropos of nothing I'm wearing depends.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
No.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
I was wondering if you could tell me about your
your first mayor you were pretty young.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
My first marriage, Well, yeah, I mean I was young.
It's funny sixty three now and when I look at
people who are twenty four twenty five years old. For
the most part, I think, don't get married you don't
understand what you're about to do. And similarly, I didn't
really understand what marriage was. I met my first wife.
(28:23):
We were on a soap and she was from a
very different upbringing than I had, and I suffice to say,
it didn't It didn't work out for a variety of
reasons that predated our marriage. I mean, she had things
in her background, and not in her background, but in
(28:44):
her family that just kind of blossomed into into things
that didn't feed the relationship. And again I was too
young to even understand who this person was, let alone
marry them, let alone how to be in a relationship.
And in a way, it was lucky for us that
(29:06):
we broke up, because it would have been really, really brutal.
It was all. It had already gotten difficult by the
time we did break up. But it's hard to talk
about these things because at least it's really because she's
still alive and she's still trying to figure stuff out,
as we all are. But you know, nobody gets out
(29:26):
of this life unscathed, right, And you know, I realized
that marriage and having a family and being a parent
are all things that we think we understand until we
actually get there.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Man, is that true?
Speaker 2 (29:43):
And I mean even at this stage of the game.
I have two sons and they're twenty one and twenty three,
and you know, the years from and you'll see, I
guess the years from thirteen to eighteen are the hardest
part of parenting that I ever ever experienced. And then
there's another thing that after that that is also challenging.
The the the so called tough, exhausting part of lugging
(30:06):
diapers and potty training and feeding and you know, lugging
everything around. That's easy, Yes, it's easy.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Well tell me what was what was so tough about
the teen years?
Speaker 2 (30:18):
The teen years is, uh, is when they are battling
their own hormones and the the inundation by social media
and society at large is right? Yeah, And also as parents,
I mean, as speaking for myself, I had a lot
(30:40):
to learn about who I was and what I needed
to be and the type of male role model that
I needed to be for my sons. You can't. I
began to think after a while that you know, boys,
I mean women, It's very general and you could roll
your eye but women are tethered to the earth. They're
tethered to the active creation and to nature. Men not
(31:03):
so much. Men have lost their purpose in a manner speaking,
and so they need to be taught. And the way
to teach men, I think, is to model a kind
of behavior. And when I was a kid, I didn't
have kind of healthy male role model. I just didn't.
I took a lot of my cues from kind of
(31:25):
toxic masculinity, broken men, you know, guys, and in movies,
you know, and I kind of fell in love with
that stereotype that Boguart, that kind of Eugene O'Neil cigarette
smoking broken and I thought, oh, this is so romantic,
and I kind of emulated that to a certain extent,
and guess what, it turns out to have been incredibly unhealthy.
(31:49):
So I had to many years later kind of relearn
before I before I turned my own sons into kind
of broken men. So it's hard. It's hard to And
another hard part about parenting, uh, these older kids is
eventually when they go to school, to to move back,
(32:09):
to give them the room to grow and to not
try to control them and try to impose an idea
of success upon them that may have worked for.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Me, right, they not work for them right.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
And it's so hard. Okay, it's so difficult. I have
I have a lot of the answers. I have the answers.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Frank just ask me.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
You got it right here? No, you don't want to know. Okay,
it's hard art, you know, and you become, you become
the person that you wish you had growing up. I mean,
I'm not saying you necessarily. Yeah, And they don't want
it because it's part of it's part of how they
have to grow. I suppose.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
It's tough. I mean, I'm you know, listen, I learn
a lot from my kid. Yeah, he's his special needs,
and so I learn a lot about the way he
thinks about the world. And I think the way he
thinks about the world is really cool. But at the
same time, I'm so protective and I just want to
wrap him in bubble wrap, which I know you can't do.
(33:13):
And like you say, I'm also trying to break cycles
of the past. Things that you know, intentionally or otherwise
unintentionally happened a generation behind me, and that happened to me,
and then I don't you know, they're just so much
going on in your mind as a parent of things
you want to do, and then in the moment things
you just have to do, and you do kind of
(33:34):
sloppily and hastily, because in the moment it's a lot.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
It is a lot. One thing that I heard, one
kind of little story was that, And it's always ascribed
to some an early tribe and you know whatever, in
whatever culture where the father would take the son out
of the kind of the nest of the home, where
(33:58):
the home is more let's run by the matriarch, the mother,
who does all these all the nurturing, all the caring.
But the father had to take the son out in
this ritual and basically bring him into the forest and
put him on top of a rock.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Let's stop already, no, already, absolutely no.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Well, hold, it's just a story, all right.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
The anxiety already, Oh, forget it.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Wait, it's a nightmare. And and and he says to
the son, all right, I'm going to blindfold you. You
have to stay on top of this rock all night,
from sundown to sun up, and keep the blindfold on,
no matter what you hear around you, no matter what
animals you hear, no matter what rustling, no matter what,
(34:48):
and you cannot get down off this rock. And when
you feel the first raisin, start to cry, son, and
you're on your face, then you can take it off.
The kid, terrified, agrees, puts him up there, puts the
blindfold on, and the kids stays there all night, and
he hears the most terrifying sounds and feels the cold
on his skin, and the hours go by, hours go by,
(35:12):
and finally feels the warmth of the son on his face,
and he takes the blindfold off, and the father was
there the whole time, you know, just just off. Okay.
So I don't know, I'm not sure why that moves me,
except to say it's a type of love that that
I wish I was able we were able to kind
of express as simply as that, because it empowers the
(35:39):
person and all and you know, and look, it's not
exclusive to two men, but but it's it shows both
love and also trust in this child and fields their resilience.
And so much in the society as geared towards distracting
from that and towards you know, entertaining and and and
(36:00):
then the toxic versions of fat, which is really a
pain in the ass. So That's what I learned, almost
too late to hopefully transmit to my own sons, to
sort of stop the chain of dysfunction that was leached
down to me.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Yeah, but you've transmitted it to me.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Well, now you've really put your kid. Oh it's a killer.
I mean, there's all sorts of things like that which
are simultaneously practical and spiritual.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Yeah, right right, it's to be built.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
So much to be found in that type of relating
of information.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
You mentioned distractions, and I think one of the biggest
distractions we all have to wrestle with this social media,
not just as it pertains to our kids, but at
our own mental health. You're very active on social media,
You're very good at it. Is that a fun outlet
for you?
Speaker 2 (37:07):
No, I think it's more a product of a kind
of addictive behavior which sound like a conspiracy for you.
I think is built into the algorithm. It's built into
why we use you know, why this thing is with
me twenty four to seven, and I'm aware of it
and worried about it. I think that my contributions to
(37:32):
social media, and I use that word in italics, contributions
are ultimately meaningless. On the one hand, I have met
people and connected, You've been one.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Of them the same, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
But I think at the end of the day, it's
just a kind of a rage aggregator, and it's just
about volume rather than substance.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
And I don't think it's been the best thing in
terms of bringing people's inner lives out, because it's so
easy to be in one's basement or to be in
one's bubble and type out the least regulated thoughts, thoughts
(38:15):
that either need to be kept in or told to
somebody in confidence, or told to a therapist or something.
And it's created a kind of a landscape of a
division and dysfunction that I think is not good. And
people will defend it by calling it freedom of speech,
but I don't know. I think there's something else going
(38:35):
on that when the history of this era is writ
at some point it has to be taken into consideration.
The mass appeal of this technical the technological I don't know,
it's not even a megaphone. It's something more nefarious. Yeah,
I mean, it's like cigarettes, man, everybody has everybody. Ye,
(38:58):
I'm not sure if it's so great. There are great things. Look,
I appreciate being able to find certain people and connect
with them and also get certain information, but it may
be robbing me. I mean, I don't know, I don't
know my kids' phone numbers anymore.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean. I when I
had like a total nervous breakdown a couple of years ago,
and so got into therapy, and you know, I was
talking to my therapist about my day, which involves being
on social media and the news and a lot of
triggers for me. And we worked this thing out where
she said, I feel like you go on social media
(39:33):
like a lot of people very passively, which I would do.
I would do it waiting online, in the grocery store,
waiting for an elevator, in between breaks on TV on set.
I would do it for lots of reasons one borden.
One to validate myself, like what are people saying about me?
(39:53):
One to maybe pick some fights, sure, maybe also to
learn some things. But it was always passive. And she said,
try going on more intentionally, And we came up with
this idea that, like it's a grocery store, you don't
go into the grocery store waiting for things to jump
into your cart. You know what, you want, and that's
what you leave with. And when you go on social
(40:13):
media passively, all kinds of shit jumps into your cart
that you weren't there for, that you don't want, that
is bad for you, and you don't even know it's happening.
So I think that was really helpful for me because
I have to use social media absolutely, you know, but
that was a helpful way for me to sort of
put some boundaries on it.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Look, the key one of the key words is passivity.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
And this kind of passivity that's been induced, kind of
a mass passivity and where people are not actively engaged
in living that this is what passes for socialization. It's
such an ironic, you know, moniker social social network, it's
(40:56):
an anti social network. Yeah, completely, because you don't ever
have to leave. You don't ever have to leave anywhere
to find to get a wealth of of data and information.
But you know, we have bodies for a reason. One
of the things that bugs made about the technology is
that it approximates what we already have. You know, I'm
not saying I I for a life without GPS, but
(41:18):
god damn it, you know, I drove around LA with
a you know, the Thomas Guide had to do it.
You know, I got into some stupid argument with a
bunch of people online about cursive. Why do we need cursive?
People say, and of course I made my jokes that
My joke is that my sons went to all these
progressive arty schools and they're lovely guys and they're great musicians,
(41:41):
but their signatures looks like somebody stabbed them through the
hand with a pen. Smash their feet, smash them had,
you know, and they're terrible. And somebody said, well, so
what nobody uses it anymore? But I said, it's like, look,
it's nobody grows up learning penmanship so they can be
a fantastic calligraphy or connective tissue. It's you know, it's
(42:04):
the physical and the intellectual, and you need it. And
you already have vision, We already have thoughts, we already
have imagination. But with you know, AI and all this stuff,
it's making me. It's worrying me because we won't need
our bodies anymore. We'll just be brains resting on tongues.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
I love that. I love that brain's resting on tongues.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
That'll be the when we form our company podcast, that
will be the symbol of brain resting on a tongue.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
Perfect. Love it. Okay, I have a lightning round which
is called a.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
Cup of Weber, and I love that cup of Weber.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Love it. Okay, we're doing it. Okay, I have a
lightning round which includes a short wings quiz. If you
don't mind, I don't care.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
I don't care anymore.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Okay. The airport was named.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Uh Tom nevers Field.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Correct? Who was Tom Nevers?
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Oh? Well, actually Tom Nevers was a Native American I believe, yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
You got it.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
I don't know what he did.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
According to tradition, he kept watch for wales from a
station on the high point of Nantucket's southeast corner that
bears his name. Huh, but you got it, I mean that, yes,
you got it all right. What was Helen's dream.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Job, Oh, to be a cellist.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
Why was Brian expelled from the NASA astronaut training program?
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Oh as, I think he he accidentally he accidentally sharded
when he was on the no on the centrifuge. I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Your answer is better no, apparently because he took too
many dates into the simulator.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
God, I mean that whole you know, that whole whole
kind of prototypical male. Hey cool, it's so nauseating to
me at this true, so annoying.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
What what is the theme song?
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Oh, that's I want to say Mozart, isn't it Mozart?
Speaker 1 (44:09):
It's Schubert, but yeah, yes, yeah, it's it's a version
of the rondo from Piano Piano Sonata and a major
bye bye front Schubert.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
And now I and did you ever dance to that?
Did you ever have to do dance.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
To a lot of Schubert? Absolutely good?
Speaker 2 (44:27):
Did you have a pianist? Did you have a live accompanies?
Of course, of course, I think that's fantastic. Okay, So
I went to Sunny purchased State University Purchase and Jacques
Dmboise was the dean dance right and again when all
the pimply male actors were kind of drooling on the windows,
they had accompanist and they had you know, guys throwing
them in the air, and it was superb oh god,
(44:49):
And they all smoked cigarettes and ate bags of chicks
and walked. Turned out.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
That part of it was really awesome. And I grew
up with like a big repertoire of classical music just
in my head from the age of six to eighteen
when I stopped, and by the end I was dancing
professionally at Boston Bala and I had a class with Barishnikoff.
I had a class with very famous dancers. So that part.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Now you share a dressing room with Jake Tapper.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
Bless, it's not the same. But no, but that part
was very cool. And I'm always very proud of my
musical education through through ballet because I didn't have to
study it. It was just in my head every day
for hours and hours and hours, and I loved that.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
Oh. Look, I went to high school performing arts and
my best friend was a classical guitarist. Oh and so
you know, rather than get high and listen to a CDC,
he would play Bach, you know, he would play And
I got a classical music education.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
Awesome.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Well, now, even so many years later in my sort
of anxious life, when I'm really anxious, classical music calms
me down immediately. It's my sort of my my trick.
So I'm grateful for it. Okay, we're done with the
wing squiz. You passed with Flying Colors, TV or theater, theater,
(46:14):
monk or psych ha, I'll have to say Monk yeah,
best sitcom of all time.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
I mean for me, it's a toss up between Blackadder,
which is England and I'm a Sanford and Son psychopath.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
Oh wow, yeah, look what's happening. I know when you
do this.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Or maybe psychopathic. I'm saying I watch sanfran Son. It
kills me, It kills.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
It's a classic. It's a classic for a reason.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
It's amazingly hon Esther is everything to me. I would
have married Lawanda Page.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
I mean you would have destroyed Yeah, these are great answers. Okay,
who's a real person that you'd like to play either stage, TV, whatever?
A real person?
Speaker 2 (47:03):
I mean, it's terrible. I never think of this stuff
real person will like to play. I mean, I don't know,
let's skip that. It's too hard, it's too many. I
don't know, that's a hard question.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
That's okay.
Speaker 2 (47:17):
Sorry.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
Maybe it's like a version of Bogart when he's younger,
well the.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
Younger, No, no, no, I mean, first of all, he
died when he was like fifty six. He died so young.
I mean I'm oldimate already. I mean, I don't know
somebody who's heroic and not a not a.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Dick okay, okay, we'll look for that role for you. Okay, please, yep.
The last question is always the most important one because
it's important to me spiritually, culturally, and otherwise. When is
iced coffee season?
Speaker 2 (47:53):
Oh god, when isn't that's.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
The correct answer.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
So you're round, Oh you're around in winter.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
The correct answer.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
I'm on a coffee hiatus because the caffeine was making
me mental. Okay. And and and you know the first
two days after getting off caffeine. Yeah, oh oh, you
think that's it. I'm having I'm having an aneurysm in
that sense.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:17):
And and and the the best thing for that is
et cetern migrain.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (48:23):
Why there's a little bit of caffeine in it?
Speaker 1 (48:27):
Oh, so like weans you off a little bit.
Speaker 2 (48:28):
Weans you off. And brother, it's it's everything. But I
love coffee.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
I love coffee, but ice coffee. It's ice coffee all day,
every day.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
Okay, ice coffee. Yeah, ice coffee. But I feel I
get jumpier with ice coffee. It makes it makes me
well because.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
You're pulling, you're sucking it in faster. Yeah, you're not
sipping it. Okay, we solved it. I think that's science.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
You're never not going for it. You're like the ice
coffee of journalists going right.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
This has been really fun. Stephen Webber, thank you so
much for coming out.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
I've enjoyed it. I just I just bloviate. I'm sorry you.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
What, no, you don't. This was great. I mean I
learned a lot. I cried a little, h laughed. It
was great. Thank you, thank you. Coming up next week
on Off the Cup, it's stage, silver screen and small
screen actor Zachary Quinto. You did some drama in high school? Right?
Speaker 2 (49:28):
I did do? Yeah, she's reaching for there's actual footage.
Is that you? Yes, we'll flaugh.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
Off the Cup is a production of iHeart Podcasts as
part of the Recent Choice Network. I'm your host Cup
editing and sound designed by Derek Clements. Our executive producers
are Messie Cup, Lauren Hanson, and Lindsay Hoffman. If you
like Off the Cup, please rate and review wherever you
get your podcasts, follow or subscribe for new episodes every Wednesday,
I want to switch gears to some more personal stuff
because that's what we do here. If you don't mind, depends, Okay,
you can say no, but I was wondering, depends. Welcome
to Off the Cup, my personal anti anxiety antidote. I'm
a big fan of TV. I don't watch as much
(00:24):
now that I'm on it and listen the Bravo schedule
keeps me very busy. But I love TV and I
really love sitcoms, good ones. There aren't many good ones
these days, but back in the nineties, man, you couldn't
flip on the TV without landing on a great sitcom.
One of those iconic classic sitcoms was Wings, and even
(00:47):
today it has such a cult following. My producer Lauren
in fact, says it's our favorite show of all time.
I'm so happy to have one of the stars of
that show on the pod. He's done so much Wings,
Stephen King, miniseries, n cis once and again, Desperate Housewives
Without a Trace, Curb, He's done TV, film, stage, truly
(01:09):
a renaissance man. It's Stephen Weber. Welcome to Off the Cup.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Hi, se Hi, I'm.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
So glad that we're here together too.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Same thank you. I've always been a fan of yours,
and so I love your work and so I'm happy
to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
That's so nice. And back at you, I'm a fan
as well. I always like to start by asking, you know,
this podcast is biographical, we're getting to know you. I
always like to start by asking, what kind of kid
were you?
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Kind of kid was I? I mean, I was a
fairly precocious kid. I realize now that I was trying
to get the affection of my parents and people around me.
I did a lot of code switching, even before there
was a term. I tried to fit in with any
group that I found myself among. Yeah, my household was
(02:00):
a kind of a showbiz household. My father was an
agent and manager of comedians and singers in the Borsch
Belt and in New York nightclubs, and my mom had
been a nightclub singer in the fifties and that really
kind of classic cool cigarettes and suits and you know, nightclubs,
very cool, and you know, and in that world there
(02:21):
was a degree of dysfunction. So I found that I
was able to find acceptance and make friends and keep
people from beating up on me by doing imitations and
my being precocious, and my sister, who's no longer with us,
was always heard to say shut up to me all
(02:42):
the time because I just would not shut the hell up.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Like Matt Well, we all need sisters to do that.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Once in a while, exactly keep you in place.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
So, I mean, amidst the dysfunction, was it also because
I was reading a little bit about about your parents,
was it also like a very creative household?
Speaker 2 (02:57):
I mean, it wasn't creative in the sense that we
were artists or there was a kind of an air
of artistry or craftsmanship in the air. Was very kind
of Broadway Danny Rose esque environment that I was exposed to,
not as low rent, but so it was less about
being creative and more practical and in a way kind
(03:20):
of a street smart approach to show business. Any creativity
was nascent and kind of emerged later on us.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Did you know you wanted to go into the business early?
Speaker 2 (03:32):
I myself did not know anything so clearly, as much
as I just found myself on this path. I was
doing school plays and like I say, doing imitations to
get grown ups to laugh. But my parents sort of
nudged me in that direction. I had done some commercials
when I was a kid in the era of the
(03:53):
sixty second commercial, you know that type of thing. In
the sixth I just found myself in this, on this path,
and so I didn't really know it. I was just
in it.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Did you like it when you were in it as
a young person?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Absolutely, because it gave me all this affirmation that maybe
I didn't really know that I needed or wanted in
the applause and laughter, And.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
I began to find that I was applying all of
those things that I had developed out of a psychological
need to be accepted, applying it in a world that
valued it.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yeah, those were the tools that were required to, I guess,
find a monoicum of success, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah. When I was young, I got into ballet, and
like the competitive, yelling and Russian kind of ballet, not
like the fun costumes and fun music. So it's really
really tough. And because it was so competitive and they
were so brutal to us, I stuck with it way
longer than I probably should have because I was chasing
that affirmation right, But with it it came a lot
(04:59):
of rejection as well. And I imagine acting is a
similar kind of experience. You get this affirmation that feels
so good, but also a lot of rejection.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Well, I would agree, and in a way, I think
that that helps you find a more balanced approach psychologically
and emotionally. Believe it or not. Even though actors, even
more than dancers, are very easily denigrated as being flighty
or airy or you know whatever, they actually, for the
most part, are very reasonable, kind of balanced people. They
(05:32):
could be effusive, and they could.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
Be outrageous or flamboyant occasionally or self centered, but for
the most part, whatever affirmation they find or are seeking
is absolutely counterbalanced by the amount of rejection that they
that they encounter.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
And it's not wholly destructive. It isn't. I mean, it
can be if you have the kind of mentoring that
is toxic. I mean it sounds like anybody you know
holding a stick and yelling at you yes and be terrible.
It was terrible, got terrible. I look, I went to school,
I went to high school in college for theater, and
knew lots of dancers, and of course all the pimply,
(06:10):
geeky actors were staring at the dancers who were like
standing at the bar and then pleaing with abandoned. But
when I went to school, it wasn't well. It was tough,
especially very rigorous for dancers. It didn't never approach the
(06:30):
kind of you know, dictatorial kind of abuse, yeah, that
I have heard people have endured. I'm very sorry. Are
your feet well formed or are you still on point?
Speaker 1 (06:42):
My feet are terrible. My body is a little messed
up too. But mostly the damage was psychological. And you know,
being a young girl going through all the changes that
young girls go through and all the insecurities anyway, was
like the worst time to be told you're fat, or
you're lazy, or you're awful, or why aren't your feet better?
(07:03):
You know, that was just all bad. It was all bad.
And eventually I quit in the nick of time. But
you know, it wasn't fun.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Do you feel nauseous when you see a piece of rosin?
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Oh my god, I haven't thought about rosin in so long.
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
No.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
And there's a lot of like ballet stuff on TikTok
where people are showing like how they prepare their point shoes,
and oh my god, does it just flood of memories
And I'm trying, I'm working with my therapist, trying to
put that in a place where it's not such a
terrible memory. But it wasn't great.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
But are you're a relatively new parent, aren't you.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, My son's nine.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
And is he exhibiting any kind of attraction to the
arts in any way you like to perform, is like
to sing act.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
He's a ham. He wouldn't be drawn to anything very
organized or structural or formal, And so we're trying not
to turn him off from the things he loves, like
music with like formal instruction. We're waiting for him to
maybe express an interest in doing that, because right now
he just he loves We have a piano. He loves
(08:11):
sitting down at the piano and like self teaching how
to play songs, which is Grady loves singing. He does
love dancing, and I encourage trying everything with him. But
I would never let him. I would never let him
go into the kind of dance world that I ended
up in. I just wouldn't got No.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
That sounds horrible, But on the other hand, there are
great things like theater camps or faced camps, which subtly
introduced a kind of structured world into the world that
you just describe every you just where.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Yeah, like the fun of it.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
The fun of it. Yeah, when they find other people
are having fun, their peers are having fun, then they
take to it and it takes them in a good way.
And I've always thought that having a kind of an
art arts based education, even especially in theater. And I'm
not talking about acting for movies or TV. That's a
different thing. Yeah, but theater is so instructive and well,
(09:11):
you learn so many things beyond basics. You learn about history,
you learn about socializing, you learn about other cultures you
and also you learn about yourself and yourself and the world.
And so it's actually very experiential. And I'm a big
advocate of arts education. And it's funny how it's so
often minimized in academic programs. I feel like it used
(09:36):
to play a much bigger role in the department of
other disciplines. I mean, you can't have science or architecture
or economics really without art, without an understanding any way,
blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
No, I love that, And you're right. I mean, last
year he did like a Minecraft coding camp, caring into computers.
But you're right, and I did a lot of theater
stuff with as a kid as well, before ballet kind
of took over. And I loved it. It never felt
like it didn't feel like learning even it just felt
like fun, right, And yeah, no, I'll think about that.
(10:09):
That's good, please please, I will. I will back to you.
You start sort of formally on a soap, right, I yes.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
When I got out of college, one of my early
jobs was on As the World Turns. I'd done theater
before that, a few theater things, but As the World
Turns was really my first big cool gig.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Did you like it?
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Oh? It was incredible because it was it was everything
that I had kind of grown to want to be
a part of, which was the backstage, the technical aspects
of television production. I always liked the idea of an
actor in the fifties, you know, scruffy but you know,
running to take a class in the morning and then
(10:52):
doing a soap in the afternoon, and then doing a
radio show and then doing some theater and then taking class.
And this was a version of that. It was As
the World Turns, and I worked with all these amazing actors,
some of whom who had started in radio, and and
I was learning a lot so it was a great
early job.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
How does the role of Brian Hackett come to you?
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Good segue? Well, I mean that was, first of all,
it I was that guy in many respects. I was
a kind of a snarky, affable dickhead that was always
wise cracking and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
And chasing skirts, chase.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Skirts, Yeah, bas of skirts, and no shame in that, No, no,
no no. And also it's it's fine, It's fine because
just a shirt, not necessarily whoever's in it, just.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
The skirts fashion.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Fashion. And so that was something that was a character
that had obviously been written by the people that created
the show, and I just kind of stepped into it
and was, you know, lending my body to that character
that had already been written. What am I saying. I'm
saying that they had written an affably snarky, skirt chasing
guy and I was more or less that guy.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
And it worked. But but you went up against I mean,
some very very famous people also auditioned for the Hackett Brothers.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Okay, tell me, I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
George Clooney, have you heard of him?
Speaker 2 (12:21):
I guess?
Speaker 1 (12:21):
So what's he up, Tonton? He doesn't do anything. Bryan Cranston.
Have you heard of that guy?
Speaker 2 (12:25):
He did not audition for that role. I don't know
where you're getting this.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
According to my research, yes he did.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Well, talk to your researcher because okay, impossible, I don't
think so.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
First, David Duchovney, Well, here's the thing.
Speaker 5 (12:39):
Possibly, you know, Look, we were all younger back then,
and we were all probably up for roles and either
went to the auditions and some got passed to the
next level, some didn't.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
So technically speaking, maybe a lot of people were up
for it while they were trying to figure out who
would best fit this role.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Now, no, forget technically speaking, I think you need to
leave with I beat George Clooney for the role.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
I would never start any sentence which beat George Clooney
for the role, because you know, it's a powerful dude. Yes, yes,
so I don't want to piss him off.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
And he could be president one day.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
You don't know, he could be. He might already have been.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
He might right for a masshole like myself, I grew
up in Massachusetts.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Excuse me.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Wings was so fun and she had cheers as well.
Cheers was ours right, and there were so many crossovers
between Cheers and Wings. Talk about that.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
There were a few. Well, Cheers was the biggest show going. Uh,
you know by the time they went off the air,
everybody on Earth watched the finale and everything. So we
were Wings wasn't offshoot from Cheers. The several of the
writers who began on Cheers developed Wings, and so it
was to my show's advantage to cross over. So we
(14:01):
had you know, we had a Norm and Cliff Claven
come over at one point, and then we had Fraser Fraser. Yeah,
they came over because.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
They existed in the same universe essentially.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
That's right, Which is I sort of hope that in
the Fraser reboot they bring you know, Brian back and
he's much much changed.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Me too, because the Fraser reboot takes place in Boston,
So I mean, I love this. He should be going
to Nantucket exactly. Yes, let's make this happen. You can
make it.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
You make it happen. You have more work on me.
You have your own show.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
We're going to work on it because it's the thing
I need to see.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
No, it was great. It was a great time.
Speaker 6 (14:38):
And first of all, it was sort of the the
the I say the last gasp, But it was towards
the end of that must see TV world network TV
feel that is not quite the same now with all
the streamers.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
I mean, the show I'm currently on Chicago Med has
that feel that all this world news, it does network thing.
But you know, viewership has changed. The industry has changed
so substantially that it's it's a little different.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Well, that's what I was going to ask next. Like
I mean, I said in the intro that nineties was
like a golden age for sitcoms. That's how it felt
to me. Yeah, that's how it felt to you too.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Absolutely, we were in it. I mean, first of all,
it was such a part of the culture NBC and
you know, whether it was Friends, Seinfeld, Err and that
there was everybody was on magazine covers remember magazines.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
And oh yeah, I know what those are.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
And and there was lots of swag and swagger, and
there was a lot more money and and it was
an appointment to television. So yes, the country did had
these same patterns of viewership that have become quite you
know different nowadays.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Well, I just remember going to school. Yeah, and like
you had to talk about that's right, Er, you had
to talk about party five. You had to talk about
what had just happened that Thursday night on the CTV,
like and everyone everyone watched. Yeah, And now you go
somewhere and it's like, are you watching X show on Netflix? No,
but I'm binging this one. It's so bifurcated.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
It is bifurcated. It's decimated. You know, it's you know,
but it's it was a different time and arguably better.
It's hard to say this.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
I say better.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Well, but there's lots of great shows out there now,
and I'm like you, I really don't watch any of them.
In fact, I've I've found real kind of solace and
watching old movies. I'm a Criterion guy and I turned
classics movie.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
So it just come. I'm in that world now and
I miss a lot of new, great, younger talent. But
who cares?
Speaker 1 (16:39):
No, I do too, because I've since I think Seinfeld
and maybe The British Office were the last two good
sitcoms I watched. And when they rebooted The British Office here,
maybe it's because I was such a protector of the
British Office, I just I couldn't watch it. It made me mad,
it made me sad, and I think since then, none
(17:01):
of the sitcoms have really felt like they lived up
they measured up to the nineties sitcoms.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Well, whether you want to admit it or not, you're
from a different generation and I no, no, do that.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Just don't call me ma'am.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Sorry, sorry, dear, No, but times have changed.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
No, you're right, and the change.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Was actually really rapid. One of the weird things that
I I think happened was that my generation, arguably yours.
I'm older than you, but we had the same references
that our parents had, social references that our grandparents had.
You know, everybody knew who Jack Benny was starting with, right,
and they were still in evidence even in the shows
(17:48):
that I watched as a as a young person, they
had Christmas specials, they were still around. And then suddenly,
you know, the advent of technology and iPhones and actually
the twenty four hour news cycle, which you are part of,
things kind of the page turned really quickly and and
all that went away. All that history was kind of
(18:09):
relegated to the attic, I suppose, And so now you know,
my this current generation is not it's just a different,
different rhythm, different energy and different expectations, and so you
know there are there actually are good shows there. There's
some fantastic shows. It's funny that you mentioned the English
(18:30):
the British Office. I'm a I love British television and
British and I sort of again found the kind of
sanctuary in that and all shows that are old in
Great Britain but were new in America from Yeah that
Are to you know, Faulty Towers of course, and and
even older things like are You Being Served? And all
classic funny, weird thing audiences haven't seen. But maybe it's
(18:56):
just it's just not our I can't include you in
my pathology.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
It's o Ken, we're of a similar right, Yeah, so
it just got to give over to hand it over
to the TikTokers, I guess tkers. So what happens Wings
Wings goes off the air. I've interviewed a bunch of
actors for this, Henry Winkler being one who you know,
was like the most popular person, the most famous person
(19:20):
on the planet during Happy Days, and when that went
off the air, he expected lots of calls and they
didn't come. What happens for you when Wings goes off
the air.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Well. The interesting thing about Wings is that while it
was technically a hit, it was never the hottest, sexiest
or edgiest show. There were other shows around Wings that
took those those titles, and as such, there wasn't that
much heat on the show, so that when it was over,
(19:51):
I think me and Tim other actors, of course, you know,
Tom Church, yeah, schlub, we're able to transition into other
projects more easy. Yeah, And I mean I right after
Wings was over again, it was still that era where
there's that older television mentality, and I was I was
(20:12):
given a show to do. I was given a show
called The Weber Show was actually was called Cursor. It
only ran a season. Wasn't great, it wasn't terrible, but
it just wasn't anything. And in a sense, the energy
that I guess was embodied in Wings and in my
character had passed and they were moving on. But like
(20:34):
I say, it was a little easier for us to
transition because there wasn't so much heightened expectations. But it
took me. It took me a while to figure out
what the hell to do. I mean, I did a
lot of guesting. I started doing playing a lot of
characters that were not Brian Hackett. They were darker, they
were heavies, and I enjoyed that for a long time
(20:57):
until it sort of became untenable. It was just kind
of like I had to ask the universe after a
while to say, Okay, that's it. That's I'm done playing
these awful men. Can I please? Yeah, it's enough, But
I don't know. I did some theater and which I love,
and yeah, I've been lucky enough to have a working
(21:21):
actor's career ever since those heightened days of Wings.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Oh yeah, I mean, anyone just looking at your credits,
I mean embodies like this is this is the definition
of a successful career, because you've just gotten to do
so much and you kind of keep reinventing and taking
twists and turns. One of those is an incredible movie
called Single White Female.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
You think that's an incredible movie.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
I do. I know it's can't be, I know, but
it's so maybe because I was at an age, ah
where it really freaked me out.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Yeah, it was definitely of its time. You know. It
was that eighties genres hand that rocks the Cradle.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Yes, that's another one.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
All that stuff that's scary movie. And yeah, and it
was a.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Really weak movie out Wait, did you not think that
Single White Female was a good movie?
Speaker 2 (22:10):
I mean it was. It's a campy movie and it
rarely comes to my mind anymore because it's been relegated
to that that kind of old fashioned genre that has
looked down on. It's very sexist and very you know,
kind of crazy. Although my character, who an affable another
affable skirt chaser, funny that he gets has come up
(22:32):
and a very just.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
He does classic way the heel I know. I mean, no,
I actually I did. I thought it was of a time,
but I thought it was a really suspenseful, oh thriller.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
It works, It worked.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Yeah, I was into it. Man, was that was that
very different for you? Or actually do you see it
as sort of a similar kind of role?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Uh? Different? Well, I mean it was. It was sort
of a similar role. That it's the type of guy
that I was playing and had been playing again that
this anarchy dickhead, and this was and you know, this
was a darker genre. And I was able to work
with director Barbee Schroeder who did the great movie Barfly,
you know, and and of course Jennifer Jason Lee and
(23:18):
Bridgid Fonda.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Yeah, and you shot in New York, right, we.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Shot, Yes, we shot some some interiors in la but
we shot in the city, you know, my hometown. We
shot in the I guess the end. Sonia was the Yeah, exactly,
that's right. And it was really fun. You know, it
was so much fun. It was a long time ago.
We had a lot of fun on that set.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
I can see that. So in two thousand and one,
two thousand and two, you take over for Matthew Broderick
in the Producers too. Yeah, it doesn't two. It's an
iconic role that he and Nathan Lane had sort of brought,
brought that show to Broadway from a Melbrooks movie to
great acclaim. What was it like to take over that role?
Speaker 2 (24:00):
It was amazing and incredibly gratifying, was looking back. Of course,
there were things that were a little discordant and odd.
You know, the fact that I and another actor, a
fellow named Henry Goodman, who was originally cast, who was
an English actor, took over these now iconic roles. It
(24:24):
was weird because, yeah, while I've been working and everything
wouldn't I wasn't considered the type of level of star
that Matthew Broderick or Nathan Lane were, so it was
a little odd. But then right at the beginning of
that run, Henry was let go and for whatever reasons,
and I think I was close to being let go,
(24:45):
but I was retained. And it turned out to be,
of course, an incredible experience. To be on Broadway was
the height of an actor's dream, and to be in
that show, which was at the time and maybe to
this day, the most successful and most highly awarded production
ever in the history of Broadway.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Totally, it was the biggest thing on Broadway, the first.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Thing on Broadway and the next thing in New York.
You know, we had billboards and and and.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
The celebrities went every night.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Everybody went the craft Jerry Lewis came by and he laughed.
It was It was an amazing experience. And also I
learned a lot apropos of our earlier part of the
conversation about theater being a great place to learn. You
see things backstage that are so wondrous that make the
things on stage look pale, and having to do with
(25:35):
the craftsmanship and the the organization and the technical proficiency
of the crew and the dressers and the ensemble. It
was incredibly gratifying. I felt part of a family, a community,
which is really important. It proved to be really important emotionally,
(25:56):
emotionally for me.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
You know, yeah, I love Broadway. I'm a big fan
of musicals, end plays, and I always imagine this duality
that it's both the funnest thing one could do and
also the hardest, because I see how hard actors work
on Broadway and so many shows.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
It's incredibly hard. I mean, there's there's a bunch of
dualities on doing Broadway. One is the glitzy, you know,
glittery side, yeah, and then the kind of seemy underbelly
and you.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Know of like backstage right, Yeah, your dressing rooms are
like cockroach infested and there it's.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Gritty and dingy, and that's part of the appeal. You
feel like you're doing something that requires effort. You know. Again,
I love working on TV, but it's a totally different,
totally different experience. You know, you really feel like you're
part of something that is thousands of years old when
(26:55):
you do the play and there's so much community again
involved in it, and you're just a cog in the wheel.
There's something kind of nice about that. But look, there's
no there's no getting away from the fact that when
you walk to work and there's your walking looking look,
I'm reliving it now. I'm looking at I'm looking at
the theater Marquees and it was Times Square. Yeah, it's amazing.
(27:19):
It really is incredible.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
And just to think, like, who else has been in
my dressing room over the past one years.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
There's ghosts in there. I did a play in England
at the Old VIC and I mean the Ghosts of
Olivier and oh my god, everybody. It was really tremendous
and it's it'sable. You can really feel it.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
I can feel it just by listening to talk about it.
That's so cool. I want to switch gears to some
more personal stuff because that's what we do here. If
you don't mind, depends, okay, you can, you can say no, but.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
I I'm wearing depends.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Just an aside apropos of nothing I'm wearing depends.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
No.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
I was wondering if you could tell me about your
your first mayor you were pretty young.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
My first marriage, Well, yeah, I mean I was young.
It's funny sixty three now and when I look at
people who are twenty four twenty five years old. For
the most part, I think, don't get married you don't
understand what you're about to do. And similarly, I didn't
really understand what marriage was. I met my first wife.
(28:23):
We were on a soap and she was from a
very different upbringing than I had, and I suffice to say,
it didn't It didn't work out for a variety of
reasons that predated our marriage. I mean, she had things
in her background, and not in her background, but in
(28:44):
her family that just kind of blossomed into into things
that didn't feed the relationship. And again I was too
young to even understand who this person was, let alone
marry them, let alone how to be in a relationship.
And in a way, it was lucky for us that
(29:06):
we broke up, because it would have been really, really brutal.
It was all. It had already gotten difficult by the
time we did break up. But it's hard to talk
about these things because at least it's really because she's
still alive and she's still trying to figure stuff out,
as we all are. But you know, nobody gets out
(29:26):
of this life unscathed, right, And you know, I realized
that marriage and having a family and being a parent
are all things that we think we understand until we
actually get there.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Man, is that true?
Speaker 2 (29:43):
And I mean even at this stage of the game.
I have two sons and they're twenty one and twenty three,
and you know, the years from and you'll see, I
guess the years from thirteen to eighteen are the hardest
part of parenting that I ever ever experienced. And then
there's another thing that after that that is also challenging.
The the the so called tough, exhausting part of lugging
(30:06):
diapers and potty training and feeding and you know, lugging
everything around. That's easy, Yes, it's easy.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Well tell me what was what was so tough about
the teen years?
Speaker 2 (30:18):
The teen years is, uh, is when they are battling
their own hormones and the the inundation by social media
and society at large is right? Yeah, And also as parents,
I mean, as speaking for myself, I had a lot
(30:40):
to learn about who I was and what I needed
to be and the type of male role model that
I needed to be for my sons. You can't. I
began to think after a while that you know, boys,
I mean women, It's very general and you could roll
your eye but women are tethered to the earth. They're
tethered to the active creation and to nature. Men not
(31:03):
so much. Men have lost their purpose in a manner speaking,
and so they need to be taught. And the way
to teach men, I think, is to model a kind
of behavior. And when I was a kid, I didn't
have kind of healthy male role model. I just didn't.
I took a lot of my cues from kind of
(31:25):
toxic masculinity, broken men, you know, guys, and in movies,
you know, and I kind of fell in love with
that stereotype that Boguart, that kind of Eugene O'Neil cigarette
smoking broken and I thought, oh, this is so romantic,
and I kind of emulated that to a certain extent,
and guess what, it turns out to have been incredibly unhealthy.
(31:49):
So I had to many years later kind of relearn
before I before I turned my own sons into kind
of broken men. So it's hard. It's hard to And
another hard part about parenting, uh, these older kids is
eventually when they go to school, to to move back,
(32:09):
to give them the room to grow and to not
try to control them and try to impose an idea
of success upon them that may have worked for.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Me, right, they not work for them right.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
And it's so hard. Okay, it's so difficult. I have
I have a lot of the answers. I have the answers.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Frank just ask me.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
You got it right here? No, you don't want to know. Okay,
it's hard art, you know, and you become, you become
the person that you wish you had growing up. I mean,
I'm not saying you necessarily. Yeah, And they don't want
it because it's part of it's part of how they
have to grow. I suppose.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
It's tough. I mean, I'm you know, listen, I learn
a lot from my kid. Yeah, he's his special needs,
and so I learn a lot about the way he
thinks about the world. And I think the way he
thinks about the world is really cool. But at the
same time, I'm so protective and I just want to
wrap him in bubble wrap, which I know you can't do.
(33:13):
And like you say, I'm also trying to break cycles
of the past. Things that you know, intentionally or otherwise
unintentionally happened a generation behind me, and that happened to me,
and then I don't you know, they're just so much
going on in your mind as a parent of things
you want to do, and then in the moment things
you just have to do, and you do kind of
(33:34):
sloppily and hastily, because in the moment it's a lot.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
It is a lot. One thing that I heard, one
kind of little story was that, And it's always ascribed
to some an early tribe and you know whatever, in
whatever culture where the father would take the son out
of the kind of the nest of the home, where
(33:58):
the home is more let's run by the matriarch, the mother,
who does all these all the nurturing, all the caring.
But the father had to take the son out in
this ritual and basically bring him into the forest and
put him on top of a rock.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Let's stop already, no, already, absolutely no.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Well, hold, it's just a story, all right.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
The anxiety already, Oh, forget it.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Wait, it's a nightmare. And and and he says to
the son, all right, I'm going to blindfold you. You
have to stay on top of this rock all night,
from sundown to sun up, and keep the blindfold on,
no matter what you hear around you, no matter what
animals you hear, no matter what rustling, no matter what,
(34:48):
and you cannot get down off this rock. And when
you feel the first raisin, start to cry, son, and
you're on your face, then you can take it off.
The kid, terrified, agrees, puts him up there, puts the
blindfold on, and the kids stays there all night, and
he hears the most terrifying sounds and feels the cold
on his skin, and the hours go by, hours go by,
(35:12):
and finally feels the warmth of the son on his face,
and he takes the blindfold off, and the father was
there the whole time, you know, just just off. Okay.
So I don't know, I'm not sure why that moves me,
except to say it's a type of love that that
I wish I was able we were able to kind
of express as simply as that, because it empowers the
(35:39):
person and all and you know, and look, it's not
exclusive to two men, but but it's it shows both
love and also trust in this child and fields their resilience.
And so much in the society as geared towards distracting
from that and towards you know, entertaining and and and
(36:00):
then the toxic versions of fat, which is really a
pain in the ass. So That's what I learned, almost
too late to hopefully transmit to my own sons, to
sort of stop the chain of dysfunction that was leached
down to me.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Yeah, but you've transmitted it to me.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Well, now you've really put your kid. Oh it's a killer.
I mean, there's all sorts of things like that which
are simultaneously practical and spiritual.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Yeah, right right, it's to be built.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
So much to be found in that type of relating
of information.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
You mentioned distractions, and I think one of the biggest
distractions we all have to wrestle with this social media,
not just as it pertains to our kids, but at
our own mental health. You're very active on social media,
You're very good at it. Is that a fun outlet
for you?
Speaker 2 (37:07):
No, I think it's more a product of a kind
of addictive behavior which sound like a conspiracy for you.
I think is built into the algorithm. It's built into
why we use you know, why this thing is with
me twenty four to seven, and I'm aware of it
and worried about it. I think that my contributions to
(37:32):
social media, and I use that word in italics, contributions
are ultimately meaningless. On the one hand, I have met
people and connected, You've been one.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Of them the same, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
But I think at the end of the day, it's
just a kind of a rage aggregator, and it's just
about volume rather than substance.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
And I don't think it's been the best thing in
terms of bringing people's inner lives out, because it's so
easy to be in one's basement or to be in
one's bubble and type out the least regulated thoughts, thoughts
(38:15):
that either need to be kept in or told to
somebody in confidence, or told to a therapist or something.
And it's created a kind of a landscape of a
division and dysfunction that I think is not good. And
people will defend it by calling it freedom of speech,
but I don't know. I think there's something else going
(38:35):
on that when the history of this era is writ
at some point it has to be taken into consideration.
The mass appeal of this technical the technological I don't know,
it's not even a megaphone. It's something more nefarious. Yeah,
I mean, it's like cigarettes, man, everybody has everybody. Ye,
(38:58):
I'm not sure if it's so great. There are great things. Look,
I appreciate being able to find certain people and connect
with them and also get certain information, but it may
be robbing me. I mean, I don't know, I don't
know my kids' phone numbers anymore.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean. I when I
had like a total nervous breakdown a couple of years ago,
and so got into therapy, and you know, I was
talking to my therapist about my day, which involves being
on social media and the news and a lot of
triggers for me. And we worked this thing out where
she said, I feel like you go on social media
(39:33):
like a lot of people very passively, which I would do.
I would do it waiting online, in the grocery store,
waiting for an elevator, in between breaks on TV on set.
I would do it for lots of reasons one borden.
One to validate myself, like what are people saying about me?
(39:53):
One to maybe pick some fights, sure, maybe also to
learn some things. But it was always passive. And she said,
try going on more intentionally, And we came up with
this idea that, like it's a grocery store, you don't
go into the grocery store waiting for things to jump
into your cart. You know what, you want, and that's
what you leave with. And when you go on social
(40:13):
media passively, all kinds of shit jumps into your cart
that you weren't there for, that you don't want, that
is bad for you, and you don't even know it's happening.
So I think that was really helpful for me because
I have to use social media absolutely, you know, but
that was a helpful way for me to sort of
put some boundaries on it.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Look, the key one of the key words is passivity.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
And this kind of passivity that's been induced, kind of
a mass passivity and where people are not actively engaged
in living that this is what passes for socialization. It's
such an ironic, you know, moniker social social network, it's
(40:56):
an anti social network. Yeah, completely, because you don't ever
have to leave. You don't ever have to leave anywhere
to find to get a wealth of of data and information.
But you know, we have bodies for a reason. One
of the things that bugs made about the technology is
that it approximates what we already have. You know, I'm
not saying I I for a life without GPS, but
(41:18):
god damn it, you know, I drove around LA with
a you know, the Thomas Guide had to do it.
You know, I got into some stupid argument with a
bunch of people online about cursive. Why do we need cursive?
People say, and of course I made my jokes that
My joke is that my sons went to all these
progressive arty schools and they're lovely guys and they're great musicians,
(41:41):
but their signatures looks like somebody stabbed them through the
hand with a pen. Smash their feet, smash them had,
you know, and they're terrible. And somebody said, well, so
what nobody uses it anymore? But I said, it's like, look,
it's nobody grows up learning penmanship so they can be
a fantastic calligraphy or connective tissue. It's you know, it's
(42:04):
the physical and the intellectual, and you need it. And
you already have vision, We already have thoughts, we already
have imagination. But with you know, AI and all this stuff,
it's making me. It's worrying me because we won't need
our bodies anymore. We'll just be brains resting on tongues.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
I love that. I love that brain's resting on tongues.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
That'll be the when we form our company podcast, that
will be the symbol of brain resting on a tongue.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
Perfect. Love it. Okay, I have a lightning round which
is called a.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
Cup of Weber, and I love that cup of Weber.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Love it. Okay, we're doing it. Okay, I have a
lightning round which includes a short wings quiz. If you
don't mind, I don't care.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
I don't care anymore.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Okay. The airport was named.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Uh Tom nevers Field.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Correct? Who was Tom Nevers?
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Oh? Well, actually Tom Nevers was a Native American I believe, yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
You got it.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
I don't know what he did.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
According to tradition, he kept watch for wales from a
station on the high point of Nantucket's southeast corner that
bears his name. Huh, but you got it, I mean that, yes,
you got it all right. What was Helen's dream.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Job, Oh, to be a cellist.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
Why was Brian expelled from the NASA astronaut training program?
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Oh as, I think he he accidentally he accidentally sharded
when he was on the no on the centrifuge. I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Your answer is better no, apparently because he took too
many dates into the simulator.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
God, I mean that whole you know, that whole whole
kind of prototypical male. Hey cool, it's so nauseating to
me at this true, so annoying.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
What what is the theme song?
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Oh, that's I want to say Mozart, isn't it Mozart?
Speaker 1 (44:09):
It's Schubert, but yeah, yes, yeah, it's it's a version
of the rondo from Piano Piano Sonata and a major
bye bye front Schubert.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
And now I and did you ever dance to that?
Did you ever have to do dance.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
To a lot of Schubert? Absolutely good?
Speaker 2 (44:27):
Did you have a pianist? Did you have a live accompanies?
Of course, of course, I think that's fantastic. Okay, So
I went to Sunny purchased State University Purchase and Jacques
Dmboise was the dean dance right and again when all
the pimply male actors were kind of drooling on the windows,
they had accompanist and they had you know, guys throwing
them in the air, and it was superb oh god,
(44:49):
And they all smoked cigarettes and ate bags of chicks
and walked. Turned out.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
That part of it was really awesome. And I grew
up with like a big repertoire of classical music just
in my head from the age of six to eighteen
when I stopped, and by the end I was dancing
professionally at Boston Bala and I had a class with Barishnikoff.
I had a class with very famous dancers. So that part.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Now you share a dressing room with Jake Tapper.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
Bless, it's not the same. But no, but that part
was very cool. And I'm always very proud of my
musical education through through ballet because I didn't have to
study it. It was just in my head every day
for hours and hours and hours, and I loved that.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
Oh. Look, I went to high school performing arts and
my best friend was a classical guitarist. Oh and so
you know, rather than get high and listen to a CDC,
he would play Bach, you know, he would play And
I got a classical music education.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
Awesome.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Well, now, even so many years later in my sort
of anxious life, when I'm really anxious, classical music calms
me down immediately. It's my sort of my my trick.
So I'm grateful for it. Okay, we're done with the
wing squiz. You passed with Flying Colors, TV or theater, theater,
(46:14):
monk or psych ha, I'll have to say Monk yeah,
best sitcom of all time.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
I mean for me, it's a toss up between Blackadder,
which is England and I'm a Sanford and Son psychopath.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
Oh wow, yeah, look what's happening. I know when you
do this.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Or maybe psychopathic. I'm saying I watch sanfran Son. It
kills me, It kills.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
It's a classic. It's a classic for a reason.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
It's amazingly hon Esther is everything to me. I would
have married Lawanda Page.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
I mean you would have destroyed Yeah, these are great answers. Okay,
who's a real person that you'd like to play either stage, TV, whatever?
A real person?
Speaker 2 (47:03):
I mean, it's terrible. I never think of this stuff
real person will like to play. I mean, I don't know,
let's skip that. It's too hard, it's too many. I
don't know, that's a hard question.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
That's okay.
Speaker 2 (47:17):
Sorry.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
Maybe it's like a version of Bogart when he's younger,
well the.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
Younger, No, no, no, I mean, first of all, he
died when he was like fifty six. He died so young.
I mean I'm oldimate already. I mean, I don't know
somebody who's heroic and not a not a.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Dick okay, okay, we'll look for that role for you. Okay, please, yep.
The last question is always the most important one because
it's important to me spiritually, culturally, and otherwise. When is
iced coffee season?
Speaker 2 (47:53):
Oh god, when isn't that's.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
The correct answer.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
So you're round, Oh you're around in winter.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
The correct answer.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
I'm on a coffee hiatus because the caffeine was making
me mental. Okay. And and and you know the first
two days after getting off caffeine. Yeah, oh oh, you
think that's it. I'm having I'm having an aneurysm in
that sense.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:17):
And and and the the best thing for that is
et cetern migrain.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (48:23):
Why there's a little bit of caffeine in it?
Speaker 1 (48:27):
Oh, so like weans you off a little bit.
Speaker 2 (48:28):
Weans you off. And brother, it's it's everything. But I
love coffee.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
I love coffee, but ice coffee. It's ice coffee all day,
every day.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
Okay, ice coffee. Yeah, ice coffee. But I feel I
get jumpier with ice coffee. It makes it makes me
well because.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
You're pulling, you're sucking it in faster. Yeah, you're not
sipping it. Okay, we solved it. I think that's science.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
You're never not going for it. You're like the ice
coffee of journalists going right.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
This has been really fun. Stephen Webber, thank you so
much for coming out.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
I've enjoyed it. I just I just bloviate. I'm sorry you.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
What, no, you don't. This was great. I mean I
learned a lot. I cried a little, h laughed. It
was great. Thank you, thank you. Coming up next week
on Off the Cup, it's stage, silver screen and small
screen actor Zachary Quinto. You did some drama in high school? Right?
Speaker 2 (49:28):
I did do? Yeah, she's reaching for there's actual footage.
Is that you? Yes, we'll flaugh.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
Off the Cup is a production of iHeart Podcasts as
part of the Recent Choice Network. I'm your host Cup
editing and sound designed by Derek Clements. Our executive producers
are Messie Cup, Lauren Hanson, and Lindsay Hoffman. If you
like Off the Cup, please rate and review wherever you
get your podcasts, follow or subscribe for new episodes every Wednesday,
Host
S.E. Cupp
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