December 25, 2024 • 57 mins
S.E. first met Thomas Sadoski when she was consulting on Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom, of which Thomas was one of its stars. They felt a deep connection then that has only grown through the years of early parenting and also their shared humanitarian work for the organization, Inara. The friends now get the opportunity to dive deep. They talk about Thomas's early stage and screen career, his biggest, youthful mistake and how he's learned from it, and the connection between 9/11 and the start of his mental health journey. S.E. and Thomas also talk about what it means to be a humanitarian and Thomas turns the tables on S.E. and asks her how she's managing through the tumultuous political year. Plus, S.E. puts Thomas on the spot during the lightening round, asking him his favorite movie or project by his wife, actor Amanda Seyfried.
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Tell me what I'm missing. A producer comes up from DC.
He wants to make a name for himself in New York.
He chases a story that's not there in the story.
It's not a kidnaper, tree, chemical weapons, saren gas on civilians.
He cooks an interview. He takes a pair of scissors
to raw footage of a man on the street of
a retired three star Marine general. We go to air
(00:24):
forty eight hours it takes for the story to come undone,
and with it, Atlanta's cable news ACN is brought to
its knees.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
That was a clip from a show called The Newsroom,
which aired twenty twelve to twenty four thirteen on HBO.
It's a show that's really close to my heart for
a few reasons. For one, Aaron Sorkin, who created it
and wrote it, asked me to consult on it, which
was really fun. So I got a great job out
of it, but also got to meet and become friends
(00:52):
with Aaron, who's just such a treasure.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
I love that guy.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
But through the Newsroom I also got to meet, though
not while the show was filming or airing, one of
its stars, Tom Stotski, who played don Keefer. We'll get
into it here, but I simply can't imagine my life
without having met Tommy. He's I'm gonna get emotional, but
(01:15):
I won't.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
I won't.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
I'll save it because that might be later. But he's
incredibly immensely talented. He's hilarious, he's smart, he's thoughtful, he
is steadying, he's reassuring, he's got the biggest heart, and
he gives the best hugs. His beautiful family and mine
have become close, and I'm just so grateful for that.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Tommy, welcome to off the cup.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I mean, what am I supposed to do with that?
Speaker 3 (01:40):
What am I supposed to do with that?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
That was so professional of medship?
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Without welling up a little.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Bit, I get it, man. I love you to pieces.
I love you. Guys have been like you said, like
our families have become so close, and it's been such
a like a privilege and a joy to get to
know you guys, and to get to live through the
last crazy, mad, wild, insane, beautiful, hectic, terrifying stretch of
(02:17):
our lives as parents, but as Americans and as people
of conscience, and you know, not only do are we
sharing like our familiar lives together, but we we share
a passion for humanitarianism. We work together in the humanitarian world.
We you know, you're a You're a near and dear
(02:42):
my friend.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
You are the same.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
And we're going to get into We're going to get
into all the things. We're going to get into your
work and our philanthropic work. But first, I always like
to ask what kind of kid were you?
Speaker 1 (02:52):
I was? I think I was pretty shy in the
larger scale, like out in public, in the world, particularly
around people I didn't know. I was really really shy.
I was almost like achingly so. And then with a
(03:14):
sort of a tight group of people, a smaller tighter
group of people, I think I was pretty rambunctious.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Did you come to acting early and was it a
way of releasing some of your shyness mitigating some of
your shyness?
Speaker 1 (03:28):
I don't know. You know, I think I started really
I think I started really falling in love with it
as an idea pretty early on. You know, I was
like in you know, elementary school plays like Paddington Bear
and stuff, and you know, I think I started to
to feel some sense of oh, you know, I am
(03:51):
I'm operating from a different place in myself right now
that feels really genuine and feels really connected. And in
terms of did it serve to mitigate my shyness, you know,
I don't know that it necessarily did that. What I
really fell in love with, and I think what it
started to draw out of me early on was this
(04:12):
idea that it connected me to people. It didn't mitigate
my shyness as much as it built a bridge of
empathy and compassion between me and somebody else, not necessarily
that it was a two way street, right It wasn't
a bridge that I expected anyone to cross back towards me,
but it was one that was established between me and
the outside world. Where I started to pay attention and
(04:36):
see and admire and fall in love with humanity and understand,
you know that the vast majority of people that I
was coming across, regardless of what differences I may have
had with them, or what issues even that I may
have had with them, And this has served me into adulthood,
that most of them are just people, and that that
(05:00):
on a fundamental level we were I was actually able
to see eye to eye with everybody, almost everybody. There
are certain people that I think it's that that's an impossibility,
at least it is for me. I haven't quite evolved
to that point yet. I don't pretend that I've attained
any kind of version of enlightenment. I just know that
I have found a way to make some peace with
(05:24):
the vast majority of people that I come across.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
That's a really good way of putting it. So you
go into theater and you start, you start big man,
I mean off Broadway production of Kenneth Lanergan's This Is
Our Youth. You're Mark Ruffalo's understudy.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
The plate does very well.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, And you know, I just interviewed Laura Lenny for
something and we talked about Lanigan because she starred in
his film You Can count On Me also with Mark.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
What was that experience, Like.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
It's so funny because You can count On Me as
the first movie I ever auditioned for, And Kenny told
me that it was it was between me and Mark
to decide who was going to play that part, and
it was entirely dependent on who they ended up hiring
to play the sister. So if they got somebody who
was a little bit older, which they ended up doing
with Laura perfectly brilliantly that it was going to end
(06:14):
up being marked, but if they decided to go a
little bit younger, it was probably gonna end up being me.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
And uh that's amazing.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know how true that was at
the time, but it's something that I've definitely carried in
my back pocket for a long time. I also think
that that movie is legitimately one of the best movies
that came out of those early indie or that golden
era of indie film that was happening in the late
nineties and then early two thousands. Really powerful, spectacular, absolutely spectacular,
(06:40):
And you know, to work on Kenny's work is I mean,
that's a it's a real privilege, He's I think working
with Kenny really prepared me on some levels to work
with Sorkin. Uh oh really, yeah, because they're both they're
both writers who understand the musicality of their works words, yeah,
(07:01):
who write specifically to the sort of jazz that they
hear in their head, and are very considered about word
choice and the things that they are how they're saying
what they're saying, and they take it very seriously. And
I you know, I transgressed with Kenny early in my career.
I actually, after This Is Our Youth, I went to
(07:22):
do a revival of his play the Waverley Gallery up
at the Long Wharf in New Haven, and Kenny came
up and saw it, which was amazing and kind and
generous of him. And after the show, you know, he
sort of pulled me aside and he was like, man,
I need you to go back and really look at
what I wrote, cause you changed in some stuff up there,
(07:45):
And like, I get it, like some nights, you know,
things just happen and whatever, but like there was enough
stuff that was off that I just you know, and
I could feel that I had transgressed, that I had
hurt his feelings in some way. Oh man, And that
just buried me. That is a that is like a
(08:05):
loadstone of guilt that I have never I've used it is,
and it's it's not one that I've I've given up easily,
I think, because it has served me, you know, going forward.
And then when I when I did come across working
with Aaron, it was like I knew this so intimately,
you know what I mean, Like I obviously from working
(08:27):
in Shakespeare and being a classically trained actor and everything.
I knew that there were certain like things that you
just don't do, and the fact that I had done it.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Oh well, from the stage to We'll go to the
(08:56):
silver screen first, because the first thing I ever saw
you in was Loser Amy Heckerling movie, which is a
really fun movie. I like Amy's movies, but Tommy, I
can watch it now because you're so unlikable in it.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
You were too good an actor. You were too good.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Yeah. Uh wow, you're.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Such a dick in that movie.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Yeah, you know what, I think, I think, I yes,
thank you. It is a first movie I ever made.
To this day, I think it the best review I've
ever gotten in terms of a piece of written review,
like an actual piece of literature came from that movie.
That may be paraphrasing, but I think I remember it
correctly mentioned Zach Worth and Jimmy Simpson and I as
(09:41):
something like biddecked in the most garish wardrobe ever assembled
in the cause of heterosexual villainy. And I remember, Man,
I remember reading that and thinking, like, you know what,
Like most critics, I just sort of laugh at but
(10:03):
this one in particular, I was like, I get you,
and I feel like that may I mean to this day,
that still makes me smile.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Well that and that review makes sense with Amy Heckerling
because there's such an attention to wardrobe for her.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
It is and she I love her to death, Amy
is She's She's been incredibly kind to me throughout the
course of my career. And you know, when I was
like young broke actor, you know, she was like, come
sleep in my basement when you need to come out
to LA to audition for stuff, you know what I mean,
And like, yeah, she always had a couch that I
(10:38):
could crash on, you know, which was just so unbelievably
generous and kind of her. And she is really one
of the great ones.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Well, I have a soft spot for that movie, but
it's really, like I said, hard for me to watch.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Now.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
You're also a graduate of a school that many many
actors have matriculated through, the University of Law and Order.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Yes, yes, why is that? Like? Oh man, So look
here's the thing. It was the only thing that kept
a roof over my head for a number of years
was scoring. Yeah, was scoring like one episode a season
on Law and Order. Again, this was in the early
(11:21):
early two thousands and I was living in Williamsburg. It
was like late nineties, early two thousands, so it was
I was living kind of in the deep deep Williamsburg.
So it was still cheap and affordable and it wasn't
hip yet, and you could afford a couple of months
rent based on, you know, one episode of Law and Order,
depending on the size of your part, like if you
had like a really if you were like the big
(11:42):
guest star, that was it for the year. You were
set man, like you really, Oh yeah, it was great,
you know it was it was like nine months of rent.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
What kind of money are we talking.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
I don't know, it was like twelve grand or fifteen
grand or something.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
You know, an episode was.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Well for like one one guest star spot.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Yeah, wow, that's real.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
And you know when all was said and done, like
when you're getting your residuals back and all of that
sort of stuff, so he could really take care of you,
you know, totally. It was also like the training ground,
like it was everybody you knew, all of the cast,
like all of most of the background actors, everybody who
(12:23):
was playing a small part, regardless of whether it was
like a one line, one word bartender part, all the
way up to like the big guest star, like you
knew everybody because you were all New York theater rats,
you know what I mean, and like you were all
just like making your money, getting through it, you know,
and going and playing with some of these guys who
(12:44):
I mean, it was it was awesome. I I met
That's where I met Sam Waterston. I actually attempted to
assassinate Sam in an episode before I know it's it's
it's like just like taking a chip off the nose
of Mount rush one of the Mount Rushmore statues. Yeah, indeed,
(13:05):
but it was, like, you know, it was cool. I
still to this day every once in a while, people
will come up to me and be like, oh my god,
I just saw you in a rerun of Law and Order,
and like, I'm one of the few remaining actors out
there who did the original three, the original Recipe, Extra Crispy,
(13:27):
and the Colonel's Special on It was But you know,
it was funny because we were just on the cusp
of coming into what they referred to as the Michael
O'Keeffe rule, which is like you have these you had
these three franchises that were running concurrently, and I guess
(13:48):
somebody was watching through the three episodes that aired over
the course of the week and realized that they had
hired Michael O'Keeffe to be in these episodes in like
all three episodes of the franchise that just happened to
air the same week.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
And as different people.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
As different people, and so they had to they had
to like put the Michael o'kee rule in place, which
is that if you would if you had done one
episode of any one of the franchise, you couldn't work
in any of the franchise again for the rest of
the season. You had to wait until next season before.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
You get Does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah, it totally did. When you look back on it,
it makes complete sense. But I just like there was
a couple of there was a there was like a
wonderful like year or two right after I sort of
came out of school where that rule wasn't in place
yet and you could snag some work pretty easily on
those shows. I love it. Listen. I will say this,
there are two people in the entertainment industry whom I
(14:55):
will hold to an extraordinary degree of admiration, respect, and
on some level love, not that I've really met or
spent any time with them, But that is Dick Wolf
and Dennis Leary. The reason is that after September eleventh,
(15:17):
the industry fled New York City. It just bailed on us,
and Dick Wolf and Dennis Leary did not. They kept
their shows in New York and in fact, Dick went
so far as to start other shows that shot in
New York to fill the void that were left by
(15:38):
some of the other ones that were leaving. You know,
for people who don't remember or weren't around, which is
crazy to say to me, and I can't believe I'm
that old, but for people who weren't alive yet or
don't remember what happened to the city after the eleventh
and for the next I mean decade. It was certainly
(16:02):
the first few years afterwards, it was just it was
like a ghost. Everything was just leaving on mass and
everyone was desperately scrambling to try to figure out how
the hell we were going to keep our city together
and keep you know, roofs over our heads and keep
this thriving, important cultural hub, thriving important and full of culture.
(16:28):
And you know, those guys, really they did something pretty
incredible for all of us, which I appreciate.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Well, I want to get into a little bit. You
and I talk a lot about mental health, and you've
personally calmed me down in the midst of some anxiety
episodes over the years.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
What brought you to a mental health journey?
Speaker 1 (16:48):
So right around August July and August of two thousand
and one, I started to experience and anxiety attacks and
really like regular, significant crippling anxiety attacks, both on stage
(17:14):
and then in my day to day life. I had
had some you know, some scary stuff happened to me
during that stretch of time. And then obviously September eleventh happened,
and I was not too too far away from everything
(17:34):
when it kind of went down. I was near the
public theater in the East Village, so like I was,
I'd woke up and woken up in the morning, was
heading out the door watching New York One, just to
check and see where the weather was going to be,
like it was a gorgeous day, and all of a
sudden they popped on and were like, you know, somebody
accidentally For what we knew at the time, it sounded
(17:57):
like as if somebody had accidentally flown like a assessin
too close to one of the World Trade Center towers
had gotten blown off course by the wind. And I
woke up my girlfriend at the time, and I was like,
check this out, you know, like this is crazy. All right,
I got to go to work, and I got up,
went to work, and by the time I had gotten
(18:17):
down to the public and was getting ready to walk
in the doors, I realized that all of the traffic.
First of all, it was just it was the weirdest
sound that I've never experienced in New York, since it
was like eerily quiet except for just a very intense
(18:45):
background din of sirens, and it was it was like
three hundred and sixty degrees. Like it wasn't just like, oh,
there's a cop car a couple blocks away. It was
like it wasn't anything directly near you, but it was
all around you at a distance, and everything else was silent.
People weren't talking to each other on the street. Everyone
(19:05):
was sort of looking around trying to figure out what
was happening, or they had a sense of it, and
they were hustling and they weren't talking to anybody. And
I remember looking downtown and seeing the smoke coming out
of the towers plural at this point and realizing that
the traffic was all going the wrong way on the street.
(19:26):
It was coming uptown down Downtown Street, and I was like,
and no one was honking any horns. People were just
going like hell. It was crazy. And it was at
that moment that I realized, I think something's off. And
I jumped into a payphone.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
What's that.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Yeah, because like I whipped out my flip phone. There
was no service because the towers were down right, yep.
I stepped into a payphone. I called my parents and
they had just woken up, and I was like, look,
I don't know what's going on. Turn on the news.
Just know that I'm okay, and I'm heading back home,
you know. And it was sort of in that conversation
that I realized something really bad was going on. I
(20:08):
stopped by a deli on my way back to the train,
and the you know, the guys had the TV out
and everyone was just standing in the deli like dead,
silent jaws on the floor and we watched the first
tower come down. And it was from there that I
jumped on the train and headed back in and over
(20:31):
the course of like the next you know, two weeks,
it was realizing like, you know, the depth and the extent.
And I was living right across the river from from
the World Trade Center at that point. So we when
we woke up in the morning the next day on
(20:52):
the twelfth, our entire neighborhood looked like it snowed overnight.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
And yeah, ash, it was like, you know.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
A quarter inch of ash over everything. And it was
just the realization of like, oh my god, you know,
so that took a real chunk out of me. And
then it was some years later that I realized that
I had, for the better part of my life, starting
(21:24):
at age about fifteen, been seriously self medicating to the
point where it was now problematic in my life was
rapidly slipping out of my fingers, you know, like I
I could no longer I could no longer lower my
(21:48):
standards to keep up with my behavior.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
What were you doing? What were you using?
Speaker 1 (21:53):
I was primarily I mean, listen, I'll be completely honest.
I was anything like what people are like, what was
your drug of choice? And I was like whatever you had,
you know, like I didn't care. I was really really
sneaky about it, so that the people who I was
living with and around and in relationships with most of
(22:13):
that time thought that, oh, you know, Tommy just likes
to drink or whatever. But I was like hiding pills
and finding all sorts of stuff. Whatever it was, whatever, whatever,
just you know, quiet the voices, calm that. Yeah, the
anxiety and whatever. And it got to the point where
I just I didn't recognize myself anymore and I couldn't
(22:33):
live like like that anymore. And so, you know, mercifully,
my very best friend in the world is somebody who
had been sober for a long time, and I knew that,
and I called her and I said, I think I
got a problem and share. Her response was, oh, thank god,
I've been waiting for this call.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Oh wow, and.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
That it was from that day on, I've been stone
cold sober. And it started, I think for me a
journey that I'm still very much what I think of
as being very much in the early phases of in
(23:17):
terms of mental health, not just mental health, but an
understanding of what mental health means in this sort of
universalist sense, Like I didn't grow up with a particularly
intense faith system. I didn't, you know, I was sort
of like pushed around from one version of a church
to another I didn't really buy into any of it.
(23:40):
I became a pretty devout anti theist at some point
in my early teen years because I grew up in
a very conservative, very Christian town in Texas, and I
was like, this is not it, you know. I just
(24:02):
I saw the the Monday to Saturday sinners become Saints
again on Sunday, and I was like, I'm sorry, this
just doesn't work for me, Like, I don't buy it.
And then I was going to school with their kids,
you know what I mean, and I was like, wow, like,
if that's all it takes, then maybe it's better not
(24:23):
to And I just I sort of I left all
of that behind. And then I also, you know, throughout
the course of growing up and paying attention to the
world around me and the news, I began to realize
that a lot of the problems that were happening in
the world had one thing in common. And and then
(24:45):
you know, I think at age sixteen, I was exposed
to Christopher Hitchens for the first time, and I think
that that pretty much sent me off the rails in
a place that I listened to, a place that I've
never given up and that I couldn't pass enjoy bathing
in more. I mean, it is just it's still to
this day like I will if I'm in a particularly
(25:07):
bad mood, I will just go onto YouTube and find
like Hitchens giving a speech or an interview somewhere and
just take thirty minutes to just sit in it. And
you know, that definitely informed me. I think at a
certain point though, in my quest for understanding how to
come to peace with myself and come to peace with
(25:30):
myself in the world. And I said this recently in
a an opportunity to speak to some college students that
were graduating, and I said this to them, that it
was at a certain point I had sort of become
that like most boring of creatures, which is the angry
young man, and it didn't work anymore. And it's not
(25:56):
to say, Amanda will certainly tell you that it's you
know not. I am not at all perfect in this regard.
I'm a damn sight better than I used to be,
and trying to come to peace with the world and
trying to come to peace with myself in the world
(26:16):
has been a journey that has led me back to
something resembling a question about faith. I'm no longer no longer.
I'm no longer mad at it in the way that
I was.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Yeah, I used to paint.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
With a very broad brush, and now I am willing
to parse. I'm willing to say I don't have time
for your organization. I don't have time for your institution. However,
there are quite a number of really good ideas that
are floating around out there in terms of how we
can relate to each other. And you know, I read
(26:55):
Tick Nott con wrote a beautiful book. I think if
I'm I'm remembering the correct title, Living Buddha, Living Christ.
But anyway, it was a very interesting sort of discussion
about like how it's possible to have these things intertwined.
I found a community of recovering junkies who had found
(27:17):
peace and something resembling stability through meditation and through you know,
Buddhist teachings. I threw myself into that for a while
and still love those guys very much and support them totally.
But it's not totally my scene. You know, Like I'm
not a monastic, and you know, every day things change
(27:41):
because now I'm a father, you know, and like and
it's a whole different set of challenges in terms of
mental health, and like what you want to pass on
to the next generation and you know what you don't
and what you don't And like, my new sort of
big question mark since the kids have started to grow up,
(28:01):
is the reality of epigenetics, right, Like, what are the
traumas that I experienced?
Speaker 3 (28:09):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (28:10):
How did it change my DNA? Because it's only like
what ten percent of your DNA? I think if I'm
quoting accurately, don't totally quote me on this, It's neither
ten or twenty percent of your DNA is actually sort
of pre programmed for Youah. The other eighty to ninety
percent is malleable, is evolutionary DNA. It changes dependent on
(28:34):
what your circumstances and everything, which of course makes sense
when you think about it. But what are the traumas
that I've experienced throughout the course of my life? How
did that alter my DNA? And have those codes been
passed on to my kids? And if so, how do
I deprogram that, you know, so that they're not carrying
(28:56):
a lot of the same weight and historical trauma. You
know that I am like my kids didn't I'm you know,
my kids are blessed upon, blessed upon blest. They are
not children of the depression, you know, and my parents were,
you know, children of the depression, or at least children
(29:16):
of people.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Who yeah, in World War two.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Yeah, And so you know, it's it's it's unsurprising that
I was raised with a scarcity mentality, despite the fact
that my father had worked his ass off to make
sure that we were, you know, solidly a middle class
family when I was growing up. So like, finding a
way to make sense of that and to change it
(29:41):
and to pass on the whatever bits of wisdom that
I'm coming across is really my sort of driving focus
right now. You know, I'm curious with you. I'm going
to turn the tables on you now because I feel
like I've been talking about myself too much and it
makes me really uncomfortable.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
This is an inner you about you.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Yeah, but I don't care about that.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
So, as dear friends and as people who have been
there for each other in these moments of really you know,
heartshaking and mind quaking, what are you finding right now?
Because your path in terms of mental health has been
really inspiring to me because you have been so open
(30:26):
about it, You've been so honest about it, and you
have chosen to do it, not in public and make
you sound like an influencer or some horrible thing like that,
but but that you've been unabashed about it, unabashed about
talking about the reality of it and the importance of dealing.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
With it, and not unashamed, intentionally unashamed.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Well right, and you have made your bones on being
a fiercely intelligent and considered and thoughtful analyst of the
world around you. And so I think that that adds
an additional level of courage to being able to come
out and say like, yeah, there are times I'm scared
(31:11):
out of my mind. You know. I don't think that
a lot of people who are known for being you know,
intelligent and thoughtful and considered, all of which you are
in extremists, had the humility and the confidence to do that.
And it's been something that's very impressive and inspiring to me.
(31:35):
So I want to know where you are, how you like,
what was the jumping off point if you don't mind
talking about it, and where you what are the what
are the the ducks that you've put in a road
to get where you are now?
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Well, first and thank you, but for I mean, this
is the promise of this podcast to our listeners, you
are going to hear from some people you may know
really well about their mental health struggles, because when we
talk about it, we take it out of the silence,
We end the stigma. And I found when I came out,
I mean, I had a nervous breakdown a few years ago.
(32:09):
It was debilitating for me. It felt like it came
out of nowhere, but it didn't. It came on the
back of twenty years of anxiety that I didn't know
I was living with, and I thought the awful things
I was.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
Doing were normal.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
But when I talked about the nervous breakdown and how
I was feeling, I heard from a lot of people,
colleagues and friends included, as well as strangers, who said,
I just can't believe it. You seemed your life seemed perfect,
you seem to have everything together. I just can't believe
that you've been struggling or that this happened to you.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
And that's what people think, that.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Somehow being successful, or being on television, or being a
celebrity like yourself, having money, whatever it is, somehow inoculates
you from having a mental health issue, And of course
it doesn't but when you hear from people who you
think are really together, maybe even someone you admire, admitting
(33:11):
that they have struggled, that it hasn't been easy, but
that they got help and that it's working, I mean,
I just think that's really powerful. And so that's the
whole premise of this podcast is to be entertaining, but
also to deliver on that on that mental health promise.
But what I'm doing now, Tommy, is really tough in
(33:32):
an election year because so many of my own anxiety
triggers are the news. Okay, so like this is challenge,
This is a challenging year.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Last year, you know, was an off year. You know,
I like went to Belgium for the summer, Like, oh yeah,
the last year was easier. This year is tough.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
But what I do is, I'm very aware of my
mental health right now, and protecting my mental health is
priority one. Preserving my mental health as job one, and
it means saying no to some things. It means setting
some boundaries. It means going onto social media and other
kinds of platforms with intentionality, not passively, not just ingesting
(34:15):
stuff that is being thrown my way, but saying do
I want this?
Speaker 3 (34:19):
Do I need this.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Is this good for me? Maybe I don't need it,
but to turn it back on you. I was talking
to my therapist the other day about a trip I had,
and she said, how are you feeling about it?
Speaker 3 (34:32):
I said good. I said, I'm not.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Anxious about it now, but I'm worried I will be
when I get there. And she said, oh, so you're
worried about being worried classic anxiety, classic anxiety disorder. And
I do I worry about being anxious? Do you worry
about the things that happen inside your brain? Do you
(34:54):
worry about falling back? Do you worry about being worried
or falling off of a kind of steady a steady wagon.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
I don't anymore. It's one. It's one of the places
that for what are the reason? Yeah, you know, it's
one of the places and for whatever reason, I've been
able to make some sense of is. And a lot
of this had to do with, you know, years of
(35:28):
like really concerted effort into mindfulness as a practice. Yeah,
you know, listening to teachers like Tara Brock and Jack
Cornfield and Noel Levine and obviously Tick not Han and
the idea of right now it's like this right now,
(35:50):
it's like this. You know, this is a phrase that
I keep in my back pocket. I don't even keep
in my back pocket. I keep the thing hung around
my neck, you know, I I am. It doesn't again,
it doesn't mean that I have any sort of like
perfect stability at any given moment. You know, I can
be grumpy, I can be unreasonable, I can be unpleasant
(36:14):
to be around. I can you know all of those things.
You know, I can. I can be a human being
right right at times. And then there are ways in
which you know, I I don't spend a very much
time at all outside of being concerned reasonable concerns about
(36:38):
obviously like my children's health and well being, and some
unreasonable concerns about this thing that I do for a
living that I am more passionate about than almost anything
else that I've ever known. I'm pretty I'm able to
keep my feet pretty solidly on the ground. And when
(36:59):
I do take off, which the world is constantly inviting
you to do. Yeah, this phrase and the real understanding
of what the phrase means, and a real understanding of
what acceptance is. So this is this, I think is
something that's become very important to me a true understanding
of acceptance. What is acceptance Because I for a long
(37:23):
time thought that I meant that I thought that I
meant that I had to co sign on whatever was
happening in the moment that people were asking me to
accept what's happening right now meant that I had to
co sign on something that I may find morally, ethically
reprehensible or whatever. And actually, what acceptance invites you to do,
(37:45):
asks you to do, is to recognize that what's happening
is exactly as it is happening, and that all the
rest of the stories around it you can choose to
engage in or perpetuate or follow, but it has to
be a choice. Acceptance invites you to start from zero
(38:07):
right now. It is like this, this is the moment, yeah,
And starting from zero, man is just a very holy cow.
It's a really helpful place to start from, particularly in
a world that is desperate, desperate to drag you into defending,
(38:30):
distracting and demanding right demanding that things are different than
they are, distracting yourself from the feelings that you're having
around what the reality of the situation is and the
causes and conditions of being human being and defending against
these feelings that are asking you to empathize and find
(38:53):
compassion with the world. And it is a world that,
if you look at it from one perspective, is not
at all a world that deserves very much compassion. And
if you look at it from another angle, it is
a world that demands nothing but compassion. And I made
(39:18):
the choice to sort of try to walk from one
path to another. And it's not to say that I'm
permanently on one or that I'm on it at any
sort of regularity, but I'm making that journey and it
starts with right now, it's like this. Also, I got
rid of all of my social media because I just
I found also that well yeah, I mean, I found
(39:40):
it to be emotionally carcinogenic. And you know, it's totally
it's only gotten worse. I will say, since Elon Musk
took over where it's called now Elana Palooza. It highlights
for me exactly why it is so important for me
(40:02):
to be able to have my feet on the ground
and say right now, it's like this, because when I'm
engaged on social media, I'm not actually talking to real people.
I'm talking to manifestations of real people.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Yeah, and you're getting sucked into the thing that you
didn't want to get sucked into.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Yeah, man, And like, look, I think you and I
both know like there was a way because we're of
this roughly of the same generation. You're younger than man,
that's fine, I'm not presentful about that at all, but
we're roughly of the same generation in that I think
we were like the last generation that got to have schoolyard.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Justice, yeah right, totally.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Yeah, where like if you were going to say something
about somebody, you were going to have to say it
to their face. Yep, oh way to have you were
going to have to deal like you you could talk
that mess if you wanted to. But at some point recess.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Was going to happen exactly exact, you know.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
The fact that you don't have to put your ass
where your lips have been flappen.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
Anymore I think has been so profoundly sickening to the
human spirit, not just because of you know, the ways
that I like to remember it, which is like, you
know you're gonna get whooped, but also because sometimes when
you when you're hurting somebody, you're saying something that's hurtful
(41:29):
or unkind to somebody to have to look them in
the eye when you're doing it.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
Yeah, it changes everything.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
It changes everything, And you know, every everything about how
we live these days is geared towards removing that reality.
It's how wars are being fought. It's how wars of
words are being fought. Yeah, you know, I think, like
I look back on it, and I just like these
(41:56):
things that I see, like people whose I respect, like
Ezra Kline and Sam Harris to extraordinary minds really truly,
I mean I think that they're both extraordinary minds and
important voices. And watching this weird thing that sort of
(42:17):
happened where like all of a sudden, as Recline was
like lobbing these like grenades over the wall towards Sam
Harris about how he was antisemitic or a racist or whatever,
blah blah blah blah blah. Was like, if you would
just sit down and talk to each other eye to I,
you'd know that that is not true. You're having a
complex disagreement about a complex problem, but you're falling into
(42:41):
the easiest of traps, And like, I'm just so I'm
bored of that. I don't want to be part of
that anymore. It doesn't serve me and my ability to
raise my children and be a good partner and a
good artist and like it, you know, and more importantly,
like a good humanitarian in the world, like I can't.
(43:04):
I can't do it. Well.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
I want to talk about that before we go. We
have a lightning round at the end, but before we go,
I do want to talk about Inara, because that's what
brought us together after the newsroom. NARA was started by
(43:27):
my colleague at the time at CNN R with Damon
and It's you were on the board and I was
really just a supporter, and then I joined the board
as well. But the point of Innara is it provides
critical life saving medical and mental health care to children
in conflict areas, so Syria, Lebanon, Ukraine, Gaza, et cetera.
(43:49):
We both work for this organization, We both care deeply
about it. You do something I cannot physically do.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
You go there and you sit with kids.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
Yeah, And I struggle with transference and personalizing trauma and
taking it on and I cannot do that, and it
makes me feel guilty, and it makes me feel less
of a humanitarian. But I can't do it. How do
you get to the place where you can go and
(44:22):
be with these kids who've had the worst things happen.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Well, first and foremost, guilt has no place in humanitarianism.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
There's no getting around it. I'll feel guilty about it,
but I just know I can't do it.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Well, I don't think that that's the thing. There's there's
no sense in feeling guilty about something that you know
you can't do, and I say this, well, how do
you do it? No, this is nice. I say this
to you with like total love, Like there's there's no
sense in that because you have to know yourself and
you do. You know yourself, and there's no sense in
(45:02):
being feeling guilt about knowing yourself and knowing what your
limits are and what like. That's that's just self knowledge.
And the fact that you have that self knowledge and
that you are willing to continue to engage as opposed
to just throw in the towel, you know, is I
(45:25):
think quite admirable. So, like, let's take the guilt cudgel
and the hair shirt and like get rid of that,
because that doesn't have a place for my friend se
Cup to be dealing with I will tell you also
that just because you are not on the ground does
(45:46):
not mean that you are not helping. And the reality
of the situation is you know yourself and you know
what you're capable of, and you're doing it anyway, and
that is to be celebrated.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
Well, listen, all we all do the best we can.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
But that's not true. That's not true.
Speaker 3 (46:01):
I'm doing the best I can.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Then, yes, you are doing the best you can, and
that is to be celebrated, and that is to be
and that is to be owned, and it's not to
be felt guilty about. Okay, So, my dear friend, what
I do. What I found is that for whatever reason,
I have the capacity to show up in these circumstances
(46:30):
and compartmentalize it.
Speaker 3 (46:31):
Yeah, yep.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
And it costs. I'm not gonna lie you know. It
costs to have a child, to have a child dying
in your hands, to have a baby dying in your
hands from starvation costs. That does change your DNA, yep.
It changes your soul, and it changes the way that
you view the world and the way you operate in
(46:54):
the world, and it challenges your perception of what you think.
What you think full stop, so for whatever reason, and
I genuinely don't know why. When Arwa first called me
(47:15):
and said, you know, get your butt over here to Beirut.
I want you to see what we're doing on the ground,
I said, I said, yeah, okay, cool. And I think
it was because I trusted.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
Her, yeah, implicitly, which was a mistake me too.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
I say that. I say that with all the love
in the world and admiration in the world. What a mistake.
She smelled a sucker and she got me no. But like, listen,
Arwa is genetically built for this stuff, like she is
just she's I mean, my god, like there are there
(47:57):
are just people who are built to do things. And
she yeah, she's built to do this. And you know,
I trusted her and she brought me over there and
we got to work, and it was it was a lot.
And I will tell you that sitting with those kids,
sitting with the families, sitting with doctor G, doctor Gassan Abusita,
(48:23):
and getting to be friends with doctor G and really
see him at work, and then sitting with the other
humanitarian organizations, the United Nations and some of those other
the institutional humanitarian organizations, it sparked something in me that
it had always sort of been there, Like my humanitarian
(48:43):
awakening was Srebnitza in nineteen ninety five, and this was
something that I just sort of it was a if
I look back over the course of my life, it
was just kind of a logical conclusion. Yeah, but it
awakened something in me that was like, oh, no, we
have to do I have to do more. Listen. What
I do for a living is tell stories and connect
(49:04):
the dots in humanity. Like my belief of what an
actor's job is, what an artist's job is is to
really hold up a very finely polished mirror to humanity.
And I have, for whatever reason, the ability to show
up and listen and take on and invest in these
(49:28):
stories in a way that simultaneously allows me to be
super present for people so that they know that they're
being heard and seen and felt, and that somebody gives
a damn and that I can then carry back home and.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
Explain and talk about, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
I don't know where it came from, how or what,
but it's there, and so I do it. I do
it with Enara, I do it with w Child, And
because of that, I've seen the worst of what we're
capable of as a as a species, and it has
also sort of lowered my hysteria levels quite a bit
(50:16):
in terms of coming home I have. It's lowered my
hysteria levels, and it's also frankly, it's made me like
a lot less pleasant to be around at cocktail parties
at a certain point, and really unpleasant to be around
when year Amazon delivery of your brand new six person
(50:42):
luxury tent and sleeping bag and all of your cool
equipment has arrived so that you can go camp out
in front of your college dorm room and scream and
yell it. My capacity for patients dealing with that stuff is, yeah,
(51:03):
I'm very unpleasant in those circumstances because I've actually it's
it's difficult for me who's seen real activism.
Speaker 3 (51:12):
I get that.
Speaker 1 (51:13):
I'm very glad that I've found this part of my life,
and I don't know that everybody who comes into my
orbit is glad that I found this part of my life.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
Well, I am glad that you found this part of
your life, because it's how I found you. On the
other side. Okay, Lightning round, do it. I'm going to
name the titles of your Law and Order episodes one
(51:46):
is fake. You're gonna tell me which one's fake? Okay,
anchor Criminal Law, House of Cards, lonely.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
Ville, House of Cards.
Speaker 2 (51:59):
Correct, that was an episode in one of your seasons,
but you weren't in it.
Speaker 3 (52:04):
I was okay, good you pass. What is the best
Aaron Sorkin project ever? Ever?
Speaker 1 (52:11):
The West Wing?
Speaker 3 (52:13):
Oh? Okay.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
I would say a few good men, but I mean
there's no right there's no wrong answer here.
Speaker 1 (52:18):
Yeah, yeah, the West Wing.
Speaker 3 (52:20):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (52:20):
Sports Night was pretty great too.
Speaker 3 (52:22):
Sports Night's great.
Speaker 1 (52:23):
I mean there's there's literally no bad answer.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
Social Network's great. I know there's no wrong answer. We
didn't mention this. You're married to Amanda Seyfried. Yes, what's
your favorite movie or project of hers?
Speaker 1 (52:36):
First Reformed? Oh?
Speaker 3 (52:38):
I don't know that one.
Speaker 1 (52:39):
Oh my god, it's hern Ethan Hawk Paul Schrader movie
she did with Ethan Hawk. Oh, okay, about a priest
who sort of hits the end of his rope in
terms of watching environmental catastrophe, befollowing the world around him,
and he can't make sense of his faith and what
he's been called to and watching the world be destroyed.
So it's oh yeah, it's a real light one. It's
(53:02):
a laugher. Uh, it's a romp. Yeah, no, it's actually
it was the al prequel to the prequel to Mama Mia.
But she shot it while she was pregnant, like for real,
real pregnant. So but that's my favorite of hers, which
is Look, the answer came out quickly, but it's not
(53:26):
an easy it's it's not an easy choice, but that
I just think that that movie is so special in
her performance and it is I mean, for my money,
where the world really got to see who my wife
is as an artist was in the Dropout. The world
(53:50):
really got to see just and I'm not even this
is just like the first vision into like the real
depths of her artistry was in was like her transformative
artistry was in that show. But my favorite project of
hers is First Reformed.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
Great, here's another pop quiz.
Speaker 2 (54:12):
We were having lunch in the city once and ran
into this comedian who was it.
Speaker 1 (54:18):
Chris Rock No, Jerry Seinfeld.
Speaker 3 (54:21):
No, we were down in the village.
Speaker 2 (54:24):
I think we were in the West Village and we
were finishing lunch and as we were leaving, he was
sitting there someone else.
Speaker 3 (54:34):
Who Okay, here's the clue.
Speaker 2 (54:35):
He went on to marry a girl we know, oh
Olivia one.
Speaker 1 (54:40):
Uh huh, Oh my god, John Lvaney yeah, yes, Oh
my god.
Speaker 3 (54:47):
Do you remember running into him?
Speaker 1 (54:49):
Oh my god, I do. Now we were.
Speaker 2 (54:52):
Babies with us, like we had our baby exce.
Speaker 1 (54:56):
Right, we were in the village, we were at the
was that Italian place down there in the building.
Speaker 3 (55:02):
Yeah, somewhere you recommended?
Speaker 2 (55:04):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, anyway, yep, just funny that years later
he ended up marrying a newsroom actress, right, like.
Speaker 1 (55:12):
They just had their second Baby's amazing.
Speaker 2 (55:16):
Okay, the last questions, okay, important to me culturally, spiritually,
all the things.
Speaker 3 (55:24):
When is iced coffee season.
Speaker 1 (55:27):
It's always ice coffee season.
Speaker 3 (55:29):
Okay, that's right. Answer. I knew we were friends for
a reason. Answer is you're.
Speaker 1 (55:33):
Around year round, year round. Yeah, man, it's always ice
coffee season. Like, yeah, listen, it gets warm inside buildings
in the East Coast during the winter.
Speaker 2 (55:43):
Don't and I don't want to sip it. It's not
precious iced coffee.
Speaker 1 (55:49):
I don't want to say you main line it, you main.
Speaker 3 (55:52):
Line it, I'd injected if I could.
Speaker 1 (55:54):
Quick time for a fun fact, always, I didn't drink
coffee until I married Amanda. Really I did not drink
coffee until I married Amanda and her her love affair
with coffee was so intense that I felt like I
either had to I had to figure out what it
was all about, or I was forever going to feel
(56:16):
like yeah, or else I was forever gonna feel like
I was left out. And it took it took me
all about two weeks to really get it. And now I'm.
Speaker 3 (56:27):
It's good man, It's good.
Speaker 1 (56:28):
It really is?
Speaker 3 (56:29):
It truly is Amy Sadovski. I love you.
Speaker 1 (56:32):
I mean that, I love you too, my friend.
Speaker 3 (56:36):
Next week on Off the Cup.
Speaker 2 (56:38):
If you're an avid listener, you know how I like
to end the show with my favorite question, when is
iced coffee season?
Speaker 1 (56:45):
Well, I mean it's interesting.
Speaker 2 (56:47):
I think it is, And the answers we've received so
far have actually been pretty revealing. So next week we're
rounding up the best of the year, and we'll sprinkle
in if you guess you haven't.
Speaker 3 (56:58):
Even heard yet, if you can make some.
Speaker 2 (57:00):
Guesses, that's our special New Year's episode next week.
Speaker 3 (57:04):
On Off the Cup.
Speaker 2 (57:08):
Off the Cup is a production of iHeart Podcasts as part.
Speaker 3 (57:11):
Of the Recent Choice Network.
Speaker 2 (57:13):
I'm Your Hostess, cupp Editing and sound designed by Derek Clements.
Our executive producers are Messie Cupp, 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,
Tell me what I'm missing. A producer comes up from DC.
He wants to make a name for himself in New York.
He chases a story that's not there in the story.
It's not a kidnaper, tree, chemical weapons, saren gas on civilians.
He cooks an interview. He takes a pair of scissors
to raw footage of a man on the street of
a retired three star Marine general. We go to air
(00:24):
forty eight hours it takes for the story to come undone,
and with it, Atlanta's cable news ACN is brought to
its knees.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
That was a clip from a show called The Newsroom,
which aired twenty twelve to twenty four thirteen on HBO.
It's a show that's really close to my heart for
a few reasons. For one, Aaron Sorkin, who created it
and wrote it, asked me to consult on it, which
was really fun. So I got a great job out
of it, but also got to meet and become friends
(00:52):
with Aaron, who's just such a treasure.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
I love that guy.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
But through the Newsroom I also got to meet, though
not while the show was filming or airing, one of
its stars, Tom Stotski, who played don Keefer. We'll get
into it here, but I simply can't imagine my life
without having met Tommy. He's I'm gonna get emotional, but
(01:15):
I won't.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
I won't.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
I'll save it because that might be later. But he's
incredibly immensely talented. He's hilarious, he's smart, he's thoughtful, he
is steadying, he's reassuring, he's got the biggest heart, and
he gives the best hugs. His beautiful family and mine
have become close, and I'm just so grateful for that.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Tommy, welcome to off the cup.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I mean, what am I supposed to do with that?
Speaker 3 (01:40):
What am I supposed to do with that?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
That was so professional of medship?
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Without welling up a little.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Bit, I get it, man. I love you to pieces.
I love you. Guys have been like you said, like
our families have become so close, and it's been such
a like a privilege and a joy to get to
know you guys, and to get to live through the
last crazy, mad, wild, insane, beautiful, hectic, terrifying stretch of
(02:17):
our lives as parents, but as Americans and as people
of conscience, and you know, not only do are we
sharing like our familiar lives together, but we we share
a passion for humanitarianism. We work together in the humanitarian world.
We you know, you're a You're a near and dear
(02:42):
my friend.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
You are the same.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
And we're going to get into We're going to get
into all the things. We're going to get into your
work and our philanthropic work. But first, I always like
to ask what kind of kid were you?
Speaker 1 (02:52):
I was? I think I was pretty shy in the
larger scale, like out in public, in the world, particularly
around people I didn't know. I was really really shy.
I was almost like achingly so. And then with a
(03:14):
sort of a tight group of people, a smaller tighter
group of people, I think I was pretty rambunctious.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Did you come to acting early and was it a
way of releasing some of your shyness mitigating some of
your shyness?
Speaker 1 (03:28):
I don't know. You know, I think I started really
I think I started really falling in love with it
as an idea pretty early on. You know, I was
like in you know, elementary school plays like Paddington Bear
and stuff, and you know, I think I started to
to feel some sense of oh, you know, I am
(03:51):
I'm operating from a different place in myself right now
that feels really genuine and feels really connected. And in
terms of did it serve to mitigate my shyness, you know,
I don't know that it necessarily did that. What I
really fell in love with, and I think what it
started to draw out of me early on was this
(04:12):
idea that it connected me to people. It didn't mitigate
my shyness as much as it built a bridge of
empathy and compassion between me and somebody else, not necessarily
that it was a two way street, right It wasn't
a bridge that I expected anyone to cross back towards me,
but it was one that was established between me and
the outside world. Where I started to pay attention and
(04:36):
see and admire and fall in love with humanity and understand,
you know that the vast majority of people that I
was coming across, regardless of what differences I may have
had with them, or what issues even that I may
have had with them, And this has served me into adulthood,
that most of them are just people, and that that
(05:00):
on a fundamental level we were I was actually able
to see eye to eye with everybody, almost everybody. There
are certain people that I think it's that that's an impossibility,
at least it is for me. I haven't quite evolved
to that point yet. I don't pretend that I've attained
any kind of version of enlightenment. I just know that
I have found a way to make some peace with
(05:24):
the vast majority of people that I come across.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
That's a really good way of putting it. So you
go into theater and you start, you start big man,
I mean off Broadway production of Kenneth Lanergan's This Is
Our Youth. You're Mark Ruffalo's understudy.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
The plate does very well.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, And you know, I just interviewed Laura Lenny for
something and we talked about Lanigan because she starred in
his film You Can count On Me also with Mark.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
What was that experience, Like.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
It's so funny because You can count On Me as
the first movie I ever auditioned for, And Kenny told
me that it was it was between me and Mark
to decide who was going to play that part, and
it was entirely dependent on who they ended up hiring
to play the sister. So if they got somebody who
was a little bit older, which they ended up doing
with Laura perfectly brilliantly that it was going to end
(06:14):
up being marked, but if they decided to go a
little bit younger, it was probably gonna end up being me.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
And uh that's amazing.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know how true that was at
the time, but it's something that I've definitely carried in
my back pocket for a long time. I also think
that that movie is legitimately one of the best movies
that came out of those early indie or that golden
era of indie film that was happening in the late
nineties and then early two thousands. Really powerful, spectacular, absolutely spectacular,
(06:40):
And you know, to work on Kenny's work is I mean,
that's a it's a real privilege, He's I think working
with Kenny really prepared me on some levels to work
with Sorkin. Uh oh really, yeah, because they're both they're
both writers who understand the musicality of their works words, yeah,
(07:01):
who write specifically to the sort of jazz that they
hear in their head, and are very considered about word
choice and the things that they are how they're saying
what they're saying, and they take it very seriously. And
I you know, I transgressed with Kenny early in my career.
I actually, after This Is Our Youth, I went to
(07:22):
do a revival of his play the Waverley Gallery up
at the Long Wharf in New Haven, and Kenny came
up and saw it, which was amazing and kind and
generous of him. And after the show, you know, he
sort of pulled me aside and he was like, man,
I need you to go back and really look at
what I wrote, cause you changed in some stuff up there,
(07:45):
And like, I get it, like some nights, you know,
things just happen and whatever, but like there was enough
stuff that was off that I just you know, and
I could feel that I had transgressed, that I had
hurt his feelings in some way. Oh man, And that
just buried me. That is a that is like a
(08:05):
loadstone of guilt that I have never I've used it is,
and it's it's not one that I've I've given up easily,
I think, because it has served me, you know, going forward.
And then when I when I did come across working
with Aaron, it was like I knew this so intimately,
you know what I mean, Like I obviously from working
(08:27):
in Shakespeare and being a classically trained actor and everything.
I knew that there were certain like things that you
just don't do, and the fact that I had done it.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Oh well, from the stage to We'll go to the
(08:56):
silver screen first, because the first thing I ever saw
you in was Loser Amy Heckerling movie, which is a
really fun movie. I like Amy's movies, but Tommy, I
can watch it now because you're so unlikable in it.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
You were too good an actor. You were too good.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Yeah. Uh wow, you're.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Such a dick in that movie.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Yeah, you know what, I think, I think, I yes,
thank you. It is a first movie I ever made.
To this day, I think it the best review I've
ever gotten in terms of a piece of written review,
like an actual piece of literature came from that movie.
That may be paraphrasing, but I think I remember it
correctly mentioned Zach Worth and Jimmy Simpson and I as
(09:41):
something like biddecked in the most garish wardrobe ever assembled
in the cause of heterosexual villainy. And I remember, Man,
I remember reading that and thinking, like, you know what,
Like most critics, I just sort of laugh at but
(10:03):
this one in particular, I was like, I get you,
and I feel like that may I mean to this day,
that still makes me smile.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Well that and that review makes sense with Amy Heckerling
because there's such an attention to wardrobe for her.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
It is and she I love her to death, Amy
is She's She's been incredibly kind to me throughout the
course of my career. And you know, when I was
like young broke actor, you know, she was like, come
sleep in my basement when you need to come out
to LA to audition for stuff, you know what I mean,
And like, yeah, she always had a couch that I
(10:38):
could crash on, you know, which was just so unbelievably
generous and kind of her. And she is really one
of the great ones.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Well, I have a soft spot for that movie, but
it's really, like I said, hard for me to watch.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Now.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
You're also a graduate of a school that many many
actors have matriculated through, the University of Law and Order.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Yes, yes, why is that? Like? Oh man, So look
here's the thing. It was the only thing that kept
a roof over my head for a number of years
was scoring. Yeah, was scoring like one episode a season
on Law and Order. Again, this was in the early
(11:21):
early two thousands and I was living in Williamsburg. It
was like late nineties, early two thousands, so it was
I was living kind of in the deep deep Williamsburg.
So it was still cheap and affordable and it wasn't
hip yet, and you could afford a couple of months
rent based on, you know, one episode of Law and Order,
depending on the size of your part, like if you
had like a really if you were like the big
(11:42):
guest star, that was it for the year. You were
set man, like you really, Oh yeah, it was great,
you know it was it was like nine months of rent.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
What kind of money are we talking.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
I don't know, it was like twelve grand or fifteen
grand or something.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
You know, an episode was.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Well for like one one guest star spot.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Yeah, wow, that's real.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
And you know when all was said and done, like
when you're getting your residuals back and all of that
sort of stuff, so he could really take care of you,
you know, totally. It was also like the training ground,
like it was everybody you knew, all of the cast,
like all of most of the background actors, everybody who
(12:23):
was playing a small part, regardless of whether it was
like a one line, one word bartender part, all the
way up to like the big guest star, like you
knew everybody because you were all New York theater rats,
you know what I mean, and like you were all
just like making your money, getting through it, you know,
and going and playing with some of these guys who
(12:44):
I mean, it was it was awesome. I I met
That's where I met Sam Waterston. I actually attempted to
assassinate Sam in an episode before I know it's it's
it's like just like taking a chip off the nose
of Mount rush one of the Mount Rushmore statues. Yeah, indeed,
(13:05):
but it was, like, you know, it was cool. I
still to this day every once in a while, people
will come up to me and be like, oh my god,
I just saw you in a rerun of Law and Order,
and like, I'm one of the few remaining actors out
there who did the original three, the original Recipe, Extra Crispy,
(13:27):
and the Colonel's Special on It was But you know,
it was funny because we were just on the cusp
of coming into what they referred to as the Michael
O'Keeffe rule, which is like you have these you had
these three franchises that were running concurrently, and I guess
(13:48):
somebody was watching through the three episodes that aired over
the course of the week and realized that they had
hired Michael O'Keeffe to be in these episodes in like
all three episodes of the franchise that just happened to
air the same week.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
And as different people.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
As different people, and so they had to they had
to like put the Michael o'kee rule in place, which
is that if you would if you had done one
episode of any one of the franchise, you couldn't work
in any of the franchise again for the rest of
the season. You had to wait until next season before.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
You get Does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah, it totally did. When you look back on it,
it makes complete sense. But I just like there was
a couple of there was a there was like a
wonderful like year or two right after I sort of
came out of school where that rule wasn't in place
yet and you could snag some work pretty easily on
those shows. I love it. Listen. I will say this,
there are two people in the entertainment industry whom I
(14:55):
will hold to an extraordinary degree of admiration, respect, and
on some level love, not that I've really met or
spent any time with them, But that is Dick Wolf
and Dennis Leary. The reason is that after September eleventh,
(15:17):
the industry fled New York City. It just bailed on us,
and Dick Wolf and Dennis Leary did not. They kept
their shows in New York and in fact, Dick went
so far as to start other shows that shot in
New York to fill the void that were left by
(15:38):
some of the other ones that were leaving. You know,
for people who don't remember or weren't around, which is
crazy to say to me, and I can't believe I'm
that old, but for people who weren't alive yet or
don't remember what happened to the city after the eleventh
and for the next I mean decade. It was certainly
(16:02):
the first few years afterwards, it was just it was
like a ghost. Everything was just leaving on mass and
everyone was desperately scrambling to try to figure out how
the hell we were going to keep our city together
and keep you know, roofs over our heads and keep
this thriving, important cultural hub, thriving important and full of culture.
(16:28):
And you know, those guys, really they did something pretty
incredible for all of us, which I appreciate.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Well, I want to get into a little bit. You
and I talk a lot about mental health, and you've
personally calmed me down in the midst of some anxiety
episodes over the years.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
What brought you to a mental health journey?
Speaker 1 (16:48):
So right around August July and August of two thousand
and one, I started to experience and anxiety attacks and
really like regular, significant crippling anxiety attacks, both on stage
(17:14):
and then in my day to day life. I had
had some you know, some scary stuff happened to me
during that stretch of time. And then obviously September eleventh happened,
and I was not too too far away from everything
(17:34):
when it kind of went down. I was near the
public theater in the East Village, so like I was,
I'd woke up and woken up in the morning, was
heading out the door watching New York One, just to
check and see where the weather was going to be,
like it was a gorgeous day, and all of a
sudden they popped on and were like, you know, somebody
accidentally For what we knew at the time, it sounded
(17:57):
like as if somebody had accidentally flown like a assessin
too close to one of the World Trade Center towers
had gotten blown off course by the wind. And I
woke up my girlfriend at the time, and I was like,
check this out, you know, like this is crazy. All right,
I got to go to work, and I got up,
went to work, and by the time I had gotten
(18:17):
down to the public and was getting ready to walk
in the doors, I realized that all of the traffic.
First of all, it was just it was the weirdest
sound that I've never experienced in New York, since it
was like eerily quiet except for just a very intense
(18:45):
background din of sirens, and it was it was like
three hundred and sixty degrees. Like it wasn't just like, oh,
there's a cop car a couple blocks away. It was
like it wasn't anything directly near you, but it was
all around you at a distance, and everything else was silent.
People weren't talking to each other on the street. Everyone
(19:05):
was sort of looking around trying to figure out what
was happening, or they had a sense of it, and
they were hustling and they weren't talking to anybody. And
I remember looking downtown and seeing the smoke coming out
of the towers plural at this point and realizing that
the traffic was all going the wrong way on the street.
(19:26):
It was coming uptown down Downtown Street, and I was like,
and no one was honking any horns. People were just
going like hell. It was crazy. And it was at
that moment that I realized, I think something's off. And
I jumped into a payphone.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
What's that.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Yeah, because like I whipped out my flip phone. There
was no service because the towers were down right, yep.
I stepped into a payphone. I called my parents and
they had just woken up, and I was like, look,
I don't know what's going on. Turn on the news.
Just know that I'm okay, and I'm heading back home,
you know. And it was sort of in that conversation
that I realized something really bad was going on. I
(20:08):
stopped by a deli on my way back to the train,
and the you know, the guys had the TV out
and everyone was just standing in the deli like dead,
silent jaws on the floor and we watched the first
tower come down. And it was from there that I
jumped on the train and headed back in and over
(20:31):
the course of like the next you know, two weeks,
it was realizing like, you know, the depth and the extent.
And I was living right across the river from from
the World Trade Center at that point. So we when
we woke up in the morning the next day on
(20:52):
the twelfth, our entire neighborhood looked like it snowed overnight.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
And yeah, ash, it was like, you know.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
A quarter inch of ash over everything. And it was
just the realization of like, oh my god, you know,
so that took a real chunk out of me. And
then it was some years later that I realized that
I had, for the better part of my life, starting
(21:24):
at age about fifteen, been seriously self medicating to the
point where it was now problematic in my life was
rapidly slipping out of my fingers, you know, like I
I could no longer I could no longer lower my
(21:48):
standards to keep up with my behavior.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
What were you doing? What were you using?
Speaker 1 (21:53):
I was primarily I mean, listen, I'll be completely honest.
I was anything like what people are like, what was
your drug of choice? And I was like whatever you had,
you know, like I didn't care. I was really really
sneaky about it, so that the people who I was
living with and around and in relationships with most of
(22:13):
that time thought that, oh, you know, Tommy just likes
to drink or whatever. But I was like hiding pills
and finding all sorts of stuff. Whatever it was, whatever, whatever,
just you know, quiet the voices, calm that. Yeah, the
anxiety and whatever. And it got to the point where
I just I didn't recognize myself anymore and I couldn't
(22:33):
live like like that anymore. And so, you know, mercifully,
my very best friend in the world is somebody who
had been sober for a long time, and I knew that,
and I called her and I said, I think I
got a problem and share. Her response was, oh, thank god,
I've been waiting for this call.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Oh wow, and.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
That it was from that day on, I've been stone
cold sober. And it started, I think for me a
journey that I'm still very much what I think of
as being very much in the early phases of in
(23:17):
terms of mental health, not just mental health, but an
understanding of what mental health means in this sort of
universalist sense, Like I didn't grow up with a particularly
intense faith system. I didn't, you know, I was sort
of like pushed around from one version of a church
to another I didn't really buy into any of it.
(23:40):
I became a pretty devout anti theist at some point
in my early teen years because I grew up in
a very conservative, very Christian town in Texas, and I
was like, this is not it, you know. I just
(24:02):
I saw the the Monday to Saturday sinners become Saints
again on Sunday, and I was like, I'm sorry, this
just doesn't work for me, Like, I don't buy it.
And then I was going to school with their kids,
you know what I mean, and I was like, wow, like,
if that's all it takes, then maybe it's better not
(24:23):
to And I just I sort of I left all
of that behind. And then I also, you know, throughout
the course of growing up and paying attention to the
world around me and the news, I began to realize
that a lot of the problems that were happening in
the world had one thing in common. And and then
(24:45):
you know, I think at age sixteen, I was exposed
to Christopher Hitchens for the first time, and I think
that that pretty much sent me off the rails in
a place that I listened to, a place that I've
never given up and that I couldn't pass enjoy bathing
in more. I mean, it is just it's still to
this day like I will if I'm in a particularly
(25:07):
bad mood, I will just go onto YouTube and find
like Hitchens giving a speech or an interview somewhere and
just take thirty minutes to just sit in it. And
you know, that definitely informed me. I think at a
certain point though, in my quest for understanding how to
come to peace with myself and come to peace with
(25:30):
myself in the world. And I said this recently in
a an opportunity to speak to some college students that
were graduating, and I said this to them, that it
was at a certain point I had sort of become
that like most boring of creatures, which is the angry
young man, and it didn't work anymore. And it's not
(25:56):
to say, Amanda will certainly tell you that it's you
know not. I am not at all perfect in this regard.
I'm a damn sight better than I used to be,
and trying to come to peace with the world and
trying to come to peace with myself in the world
(26:16):
has been a journey that has led me back to
something resembling a question about faith. I'm no longer no longer.
I'm no longer mad at it in the way that
I was.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Yeah, I used to paint.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
With a very broad brush, and now I am willing
to parse. I'm willing to say I don't have time
for your organization. I don't have time for your institution. However,
there are quite a number of really good ideas that
are floating around out there in terms of how we
can relate to each other. And you know, I read
(26:55):
Tick Nott con wrote a beautiful book. I think if
I'm I'm remembering the correct title, Living Buddha, Living Christ.
But anyway, it was a very interesting sort of discussion
about like how it's possible to have these things intertwined.
I found a community of recovering junkies who had found
(27:17):
peace and something resembling stability through meditation and through you know,
Buddhist teachings. I threw myself into that for a while
and still love those guys very much and support them totally.
But it's not totally my scene. You know, Like I'm
not a monastic, and you know, every day things change
(27:41):
because now I'm a father, you know, and like and
it's a whole different set of challenges in terms of
mental health, and like what you want to pass on
to the next generation and you know what you don't
and what you don't And like, my new sort of
big question mark since the kids have started to grow up,
(28:01):
is the reality of epigenetics, right, Like, what are the
traumas that I experienced?
Speaker 3 (28:09):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (28:10):
How did it change my DNA? Because it's only like
what ten percent of your DNA? I think if I'm
quoting accurately, don't totally quote me on this, It's neither
ten or twenty percent of your DNA is actually sort
of pre programmed for Youah. The other eighty to ninety
percent is malleable, is evolutionary DNA. It changes dependent on
(28:34):
what your circumstances and everything, which of course makes sense
when you think about it. But what are the traumas
that I've experienced throughout the course of my life? How
did that alter my DNA? And have those codes been
passed on to my kids? And if so, how do
I deprogram that, you know, so that they're not carrying
(28:56):
a lot of the same weight and historical trauma. You
know that I am like my kids didn't I'm you know,
my kids are blessed upon, blessed upon blest. They are
not children of the depression, you know, and my parents were,
you know, children of the depression, or at least children
(29:16):
of people.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Who yeah, in World War two.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Yeah, And so you know, it's it's it's unsurprising that
I was raised with a scarcity mentality, despite the fact
that my father had worked his ass off to make
sure that we were, you know, solidly a middle class
family when I was growing up. So like, finding a
way to make sense of that and to change it
(29:41):
and to pass on the whatever bits of wisdom that
I'm coming across is really my sort of driving focus
right now. You know, I'm curious with you. I'm going
to turn the tables on you now because I feel
like I've been talking about myself too much and it
makes me really uncomfortable.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
This is an inner you about you.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Yeah, but I don't care about that.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
So, as dear friends and as people who have been
there for each other in these moments of really you know,
heartshaking and mind quaking, what are you finding right now?
Because your path in terms of mental health has been
really inspiring to me because you have been so open
(30:26):
about it, You've been so honest about it, and you
have chosen to do it, not in public and make
you sound like an influencer or some horrible thing like that,
but but that you've been unabashed about it, unabashed about
talking about the reality of it and the importance of dealing.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
With it, and not unashamed, intentionally unashamed.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Well right, and you have made your bones on being
a fiercely intelligent and considered and thoughtful analyst of the
world around you. And so I think that that adds
an additional level of courage to being able to come
out and say like, yeah, there are times I'm scared
(31:11):
out of my mind. You know. I don't think that
a lot of people who are known for being you know,
intelligent and thoughtful and considered, all of which you are
in extremists, had the humility and the confidence to do that.
And it's been something that's very impressive and inspiring to me.
(31:35):
So I want to know where you are, how you like,
what was the jumping off point if you don't mind
talking about it, and where you what are the what
are the the ducks that you've put in a road
to get where you are now?
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Well, first and thank you, but for I mean, this
is the promise of this podcast to our listeners, you
are going to hear from some people you may know
really well about their mental health struggles, because when we
talk about it, we take it out of the silence,
We end the stigma. And I found when I came out,
I mean, I had a nervous breakdown a few years ago.
(32:09):
It was debilitating for me. It felt like it came
out of nowhere, but it didn't. It came on the
back of twenty years of anxiety that I didn't know
I was living with, and I thought the awful things
I was.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
Doing were normal.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
But when I talked about the nervous breakdown and how
I was feeling, I heard from a lot of people,
colleagues and friends included, as well as strangers, who said,
I just can't believe it. You seemed your life seemed perfect,
you seem to have everything together. I just can't believe
that you've been struggling or that this happened to you.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
And that's what people think, that.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Somehow being successful, or being on television, or being a
celebrity like yourself, having money, whatever it is, somehow inoculates
you from having a mental health issue, And of course
it doesn't but when you hear from people who you
think are really together, maybe even someone you admire, admitting
(33:11):
that they have struggled, that it hasn't been easy, but
that they got help and that it's working, I mean,
I just think that's really powerful. And so that's the
whole premise of this podcast is to be entertaining, but
also to deliver on that on that mental health promise.
But what I'm doing now, Tommy, is really tough in
(33:32):
an election year because so many of my own anxiety
triggers are the news. Okay, so like this is challenge,
This is a challenging year.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Last year, you know, was an off year. You know,
I like went to Belgium for the summer, Like, oh yeah,
the last year was easier. This year is tough.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
But what I do is, I'm very aware of my
mental health right now, and protecting my mental health is
priority one. Preserving my mental health as job one, and
it means saying no to some things. It means setting
some boundaries. It means going onto social media and other
kinds of platforms with intentionality, not passively, not just ingesting
(34:15):
stuff that is being thrown my way, but saying do
I want this?
Speaker 3 (34:19):
Do I need this.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Is this good for me? Maybe I don't need it,
but to turn it back on you. I was talking
to my therapist the other day about a trip I had,
and she said, how are you feeling about it?
Speaker 3 (34:32):
I said good. I said, I'm not.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Anxious about it now, but I'm worried I will be
when I get there. And she said, oh, so you're
worried about being worried classic anxiety, classic anxiety disorder. And
I do I worry about being anxious? Do you worry
about the things that happen inside your brain? Do you
(34:54):
worry about falling back? Do you worry about being worried
or falling off of a kind of steady a steady wagon.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
I don't anymore. It's one. It's one of the places
that for what are the reason? Yeah, you know, it's
one of the places and for whatever reason, I've been
able to make some sense of is. And a lot
of this had to do with, you know, years of
(35:28):
like really concerted effort into mindfulness as a practice. Yeah,
you know, listening to teachers like Tara Brock and Jack
Cornfield and Noel Levine and obviously Tick not Han and
the idea of right now it's like this right now,
(35:50):
it's like this. You know, this is a phrase that
I keep in my back pocket. I don't even keep
in my back pocket. I keep the thing hung around
my neck, you know, I I am. It doesn't again,
it doesn't mean that I have any sort of like
perfect stability at any given moment. You know, I can
be grumpy, I can be unreasonable, I can be unpleasant
(36:14):
to be around. I can you know all of those things.
You know, I can. I can be a human being
right right at times. And then there are ways in
which you know, I I don't spend a very much
time at all outside of being concerned reasonable concerns about
(36:38):
obviously like my children's health and well being, and some
unreasonable concerns about this thing that I do for a
living that I am more passionate about than almost anything
else that I've ever known. I'm pretty I'm able to
keep my feet pretty solidly on the ground. And when
(36:59):
I do take off, which the world is constantly inviting
you to do. Yeah, this phrase and the real understanding
of what the phrase means, and a real understanding of
what acceptance is. So this is this, I think is
something that's become very important to me a true understanding
of acceptance. What is acceptance Because I for a long
(37:23):
time thought that I meant that I thought that I
meant that I had to co sign on whatever was
happening in the moment that people were asking me to
accept what's happening right now meant that I had to
co sign on something that I may find morally, ethically
reprehensible or whatever. And actually, what acceptance invites you to do,
(37:45):
asks you to do, is to recognize that what's happening
is exactly as it is happening, and that all the
rest of the stories around it you can choose to
engage in or perpetuate or follow, but it has to
be a choice. Acceptance invites you to start from zero
(38:07):
right now. It is like this, this is the moment, yeah,
And starting from zero, man is just a very holy cow.
It's a really helpful place to start from, particularly in
a world that is desperate, desperate to drag you into defending,
(38:30):
distracting and demanding right demanding that things are different than
they are, distracting yourself from the feelings that you're having
around what the reality of the situation is and the
causes and conditions of being human being and defending against
these feelings that are asking you to empathize and find
(38:53):
compassion with the world. And it is a world that,
if you look at it from one perspective, is not
at all a world that deserves very much compassion. And
if you look at it from another angle, it is
a world that demands nothing but compassion. And I made
(39:18):
the choice to sort of try to walk from one
path to another. And it's not to say that I'm
permanently on one or that I'm on it at any
sort of regularity, but I'm making that journey and it
starts with right now, it's like this. Also, I got
rid of all of my social media because I just
I found also that well yeah, I mean, I found
(39:40):
it to be emotionally carcinogenic. And you know, it's totally
it's only gotten worse. I will say, since Elon Musk
took over where it's called now Elana Palooza. It highlights
for me exactly why it is so important for me
(40:02):
to be able to have my feet on the ground
and say right now, it's like this, because when I'm
engaged on social media, I'm not actually talking to real people.
I'm talking to manifestations of real people.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Yeah, and you're getting sucked into the thing that you
didn't want to get sucked into.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Yeah, man, And like, look, I think you and I
both know like there was a way because we're of
this roughly of the same generation. You're younger than man,
that's fine, I'm not presentful about that at all, but
we're roughly of the same generation in that I think
we were like the last generation that got to have schoolyard.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Justice, yeah right, totally.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Yeah, where like if you were going to say something
about somebody, you were going to have to say it
to their face. Yep, oh way to have you were
going to have to deal like you you could talk
that mess if you wanted to. But at some point recess.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Was going to happen exactly exact, you know.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
The fact that you don't have to put your ass
where your lips have been flappen.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
Anymore I think has been so profoundly sickening to the
human spirit, not just because of you know, the ways
that I like to remember it, which is like, you
know you're gonna get whooped, but also because sometimes when
you when you're hurting somebody, you're saying something that's hurtful
(41:29):
or unkind to somebody to have to look them in
the eye when you're doing it.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
Yeah, it changes everything.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
It changes everything, And you know, every everything about how
we live these days is geared towards removing that reality.
It's how wars are being fought. It's how wars of
words are being fought. Yeah, you know, I think, like
I look back on it, and I just like these
(41:56):
things that I see, like people whose I respect, like
Ezra Kline and Sam Harris to extraordinary minds really truly,
I mean I think that they're both extraordinary minds and
important voices. And watching this weird thing that sort of
(42:17):
happened where like all of a sudden, as Recline was
like lobbing these like grenades over the wall towards Sam
Harris about how he was antisemitic or a racist or whatever,
blah blah blah blah blah. Was like, if you would
just sit down and talk to each other eye to I,
you'd know that that is not true. You're having a
complex disagreement about a complex problem, but you're falling into
(42:41):
the easiest of traps, And like, I'm just so I'm
bored of that. I don't want to be part of
that anymore. It doesn't serve me and my ability to
raise my children and be a good partner and a
good artist and like it, you know, and more importantly,
like a good humanitarian in the world, like I can't.
(43:04):
I can't do it. Well.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
I want to talk about that before we go. We
have a lightning round at the end, but before we go,
I do want to talk about Inara, because that's what
brought us together after the newsroom. NARA was started by
(43:27):
my colleague at the time at CNN R with Damon
and It's you were on the board and I was
really just a supporter, and then I joined the board
as well. But the point of Innara is it provides
critical life saving medical and mental health care to children
in conflict areas, so Syria, Lebanon, Ukraine, Gaza, et cetera.
(43:49):
We both work for this organization, We both care deeply
about it. You do something I cannot physically do.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
You go there and you sit with kids.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
Yeah, And I struggle with transference and personalizing trauma and
taking it on and I cannot do that, and it
makes me feel guilty, and it makes me feel less
of a humanitarian. But I can't do it. How do
you get to the place where you can go and
(44:22):
be with these kids who've had the worst things happen.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Well, first and foremost, guilt has no place in humanitarianism.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
There's no getting around it. I'll feel guilty about it,
but I just know I can't do it.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Well, I don't think that that's the thing. There's there's
no sense in feeling guilty about something that you know
you can't do, and I say this, well, how do
you do it? No, this is nice. I say this
to you with like total love, Like there's there's no
sense in that because you have to know yourself and
you do. You know yourself, and there's no sense in
(45:02):
being feeling guilt about knowing yourself and knowing what your
limits are and what like. That's that's just self knowledge.
And the fact that you have that self knowledge and
that you are willing to continue to engage as opposed
to just throw in the towel, you know, is I
(45:25):
think quite admirable. So, like, let's take the guilt cudgel
and the hair shirt and like get rid of that,
because that doesn't have a place for my friend se
Cup to be dealing with I will tell you also
that just because you are not on the ground does
(45:46):
not mean that you are not helping. And the reality
of the situation is you know yourself and you know
what you're capable of, and you're doing it anyway, and
that is to be celebrated.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
Well, listen, all we all do the best we can.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
But that's not true. That's not true.
Speaker 3 (46:01):
I'm doing the best I can.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Then, yes, you are doing the best you can, and
that is to be celebrated, and that is to be
and that is to be owned, and it's not to
be felt guilty about. Okay, So, my dear friend, what
I do. What I found is that for whatever reason,
I have the capacity to show up in these circumstances
(46:30):
and compartmentalize it.
Speaker 3 (46:31):
Yeah, yep.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
And it costs. I'm not gonna lie you know. It
costs to have a child, to have a child dying
in your hands, to have a baby dying in your
hands from starvation costs. That does change your DNA, yep.
It changes your soul, and it changes the way that
you view the world and the way you operate in
(46:54):
the world, and it challenges your perception of what you think.
What you think full stop, so for whatever reason, and
I genuinely don't know why. When Arwa first called me
(47:15):
and said, you know, get your butt over here to Beirut.
I want you to see what we're doing on the ground,
I said, I said, yeah, okay, cool. And I think
it was because I trusted.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
Her, yeah, implicitly, which was a mistake me too.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
I say that. I say that with all the love
in the world and admiration in the world. What a mistake.
She smelled a sucker and she got me no. But like, listen,
Arwa is genetically built for this stuff, like she is
just she's I mean, my god, like there are there
(47:57):
are just people who are built to do things. And
she yeah, she's built to do this. And you know,
I trusted her and she brought me over there and
we got to work, and it was it was a lot.
And I will tell you that sitting with those kids,
sitting with the families, sitting with doctor G, doctor Gassan Abusita,
(48:23):
and getting to be friends with doctor G and really
see him at work, and then sitting with the other
humanitarian organizations, the United Nations and some of those other
the institutional humanitarian organizations, it sparked something in me that
it had always sort of been there, Like my humanitarian
(48:43):
awakening was Srebnitza in nineteen ninety five, and this was
something that I just sort of it was a if
I look back over the course of my life, it
was just kind of a logical conclusion. Yeah, but it
awakened something in me that was like, oh, no, we
have to do I have to do more. Listen. What
I do for a living is tell stories and connect
(49:04):
the dots in humanity. Like my belief of what an
actor's job is, what an artist's job is is to
really hold up a very finely polished mirror to humanity.
And I have, for whatever reason, the ability to show
up and listen and take on and invest in these
(49:28):
stories in a way that simultaneously allows me to be
super present for people so that they know that they're
being heard and seen and felt, and that somebody gives
a damn and that I can then carry back home and.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
Explain and talk about, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
I don't know where it came from, how or what,
but it's there, and so I do it. I do
it with Enara, I do it with w Child, And
because of that, I've seen the worst of what we're
capable of as a as a species, and it has
also sort of lowered my hysteria levels quite a bit
(50:16):
in terms of coming home I have. It's lowered my
hysteria levels, and it's also frankly, it's made me like
a lot less pleasant to be around at cocktail parties
at a certain point, and really unpleasant to be around
when year Amazon delivery of your brand new six person
(50:42):
luxury tent and sleeping bag and all of your cool
equipment has arrived so that you can go camp out
in front of your college dorm room and scream and
yell it. My capacity for patients dealing with that stuff is, yeah,
(51:03):
I'm very unpleasant in those circumstances because I've actually it's
it's difficult for me who's seen real activism.
Speaker 3 (51:12):
I get that.
Speaker 1 (51:13):
I'm very glad that I've found this part of my life,
and I don't know that everybody who comes into my
orbit is glad that I found this part of my life.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
Well, I am glad that you found this part of
your life, because it's how I found you. On the
other side. Okay, Lightning round, do it. I'm going to
name the titles of your Law and Order episodes one
(51:46):
is fake. You're gonna tell me which one's fake? Okay,
anchor Criminal Law, House of Cards, lonely.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
Ville, House of Cards.
Speaker 2 (51:59):
Correct, that was an episode in one of your seasons,
but you weren't in it.
Speaker 3 (52:04):
I was okay, good you pass. What is the best
Aaron Sorkin project ever? Ever?
Speaker 1 (52:11):
The West Wing?
Speaker 3 (52:13):
Oh? Okay.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
I would say a few good men, but I mean
there's no right there's no wrong answer here.
Speaker 1 (52:18):
Yeah, yeah, the West Wing.
Speaker 3 (52:20):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (52:20):
Sports Night was pretty great too.
Speaker 3 (52:22):
Sports Night's great.
Speaker 1 (52:23):
I mean there's there's literally no bad answer.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
Social Network's great. I know there's no wrong answer. We
didn't mention this. You're married to Amanda Seyfried. Yes, what's
your favorite movie or project of hers?
Speaker 1 (52:36):
First Reformed? Oh?
Speaker 3 (52:38):
I don't know that one.
Speaker 1 (52:39):
Oh my god, it's hern Ethan Hawk Paul Schrader movie
she did with Ethan Hawk. Oh, okay, about a priest
who sort of hits the end of his rope in
terms of watching environmental catastrophe, befollowing the world around him,
and he can't make sense of his faith and what
he's been called to and watching the world be destroyed.
So it's oh yeah, it's a real light one. It's
(53:02):
a laugher. Uh, it's a romp. Yeah, no, it's actually
it was the al prequel to the prequel to Mama Mia.
But she shot it while she was pregnant, like for real,
real pregnant. So but that's my favorite of hers, which
is Look, the answer came out quickly, but it's not
(53:26):
an easy it's it's not an easy choice, but that
I just think that that movie is so special in
her performance and it is I mean, for my money,
where the world really got to see who my wife
is as an artist was in the Dropout. The world
(53:50):
really got to see just and I'm not even this
is just like the first vision into like the real
depths of her artistry was in was like her transformative
artistry was in that show. But my favorite project of
hers is First Reformed.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
Great, here's another pop quiz.
Speaker 2 (54:12):
We were having lunch in the city once and ran
into this comedian who was it.
Speaker 1 (54:18):
Chris Rock No, Jerry Seinfeld.
Speaker 3 (54:21):
No, we were down in the village.
Speaker 2 (54:24):
I think we were in the West Village and we
were finishing lunch and as we were leaving, he was
sitting there someone else.
Speaker 3 (54:34):
Who Okay, here's the clue.
Speaker 2 (54:35):
He went on to marry a girl we know, oh
Olivia one.
Speaker 1 (54:40):
Uh huh, Oh my god, John Lvaney yeah, yes, Oh
my god.
Speaker 3 (54:47):
Do you remember running into him?
Speaker 1 (54:49):
Oh my god, I do. Now we were.
Speaker 2 (54:52):
Babies with us, like we had our baby exce.
Speaker 1 (54:56):
Right, we were in the village, we were at the
was that Italian place down there in the building.
Speaker 3 (55:02):
Yeah, somewhere you recommended?
Speaker 2 (55:04):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, anyway, yep, just funny that years later
he ended up marrying a newsroom actress, right, like.
Speaker 1 (55:12):
They just had their second Baby's amazing.
Speaker 2 (55:16):
Okay, the last questions, okay, important to me culturally, spiritually,
all the things.
Speaker 3 (55:24):
When is iced coffee season.
Speaker 1 (55:27):
It's always ice coffee season.
Speaker 3 (55:29):
Okay, that's right. Answer. I knew we were friends for
a reason. Answer is you're.
Speaker 1 (55:33):
Around year round, year round. Yeah, man, it's always ice
coffee season. Like, yeah, listen, it gets warm inside buildings
in the East Coast during the winter.
Speaker 2 (55:43):
Don't and I don't want to sip it. It's not
precious iced coffee.
Speaker 1 (55:49):
I don't want to say you main line it, you main.
Speaker 3 (55:52):
Line it, I'd injected if I could.
Speaker 1 (55:54):
Quick time for a fun fact, always, I didn't drink
coffee until I married Amanda. Really I did not drink
coffee until I married Amanda and her her love affair
with coffee was so intense that I felt like I
either had to I had to figure out what it
was all about, or I was forever going to feel
(56:16):
like yeah, or else I was forever gonna feel like
I was left out. And it took it took me
all about two weeks to really get it. And now I'm.
Speaker 3 (56:27):
It's good man, It's good.
Speaker 1 (56:28):
It really is?
Speaker 3 (56:29):
It truly is Amy Sadovski. I love you.
Speaker 1 (56:32):
I mean that, I love you too, my friend.
Speaker 3 (56:36):
Next week on Off the Cup.
Speaker 2 (56:38):
If you're an avid listener, you know how I like
to end the show with my favorite question, when is
iced coffee season?
Speaker 1 (56:45):
Well, I mean it's interesting.
Speaker 2 (56:47):
I think it is, And the answers we've received so
far have actually been pretty revealing. So next week we're
rounding up the best of the year, and we'll sprinkle
in if you guess you haven't.
Speaker 3 (56:58):
Even heard yet, if you can make some.
Speaker 2 (57:00):
Guesses, that's our special New Year's episode next week.
Speaker 3 (57:04):
On Off the Cup.
Speaker 2 (57:08):
Off the Cup is a production of iHeart Podcasts as part.
Speaker 3 (57:11):
Of the Recent Choice Network.
Speaker 2 (57:13):
I'm Your Hostess, cupp Editing and sound designed by Derek Clements.
Our executive producers are Messie Cupp, 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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