April 28, 2025 • 61 mins
We first got to know her as Dean Lila Bolander, and eventually Mr. Feeny’s better half, but now the gang talks to Bonnie Bartlett, one-on-one, about how she built her iconic, Emmy-winning career and captured the heart of William Daniels (in real life!).
Bonnie shares stories spanning from her start in theater to her time on “Golden Girls," and reveals if she was surprised by the spicy headline that came from her recent memoir.
Plus, Bonnie takes us behind the scenes of her time on BMW and tells us what show Bill watches every single night! It's a heartwarming new episode of Pod Meets World...
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
I have a rant. I have a I have a
kids these days style of I.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Love a parenting rant.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Okay, actually this isn't apparent rant, well kind of, this
is this is my video game rant I. I don't
play video games that much, Like I never got into it.
I played computer games when I was younger, but like
console games like sitting down and like playing. And I realized,
like what I liked back in the day, like the
(00:47):
only times I really enjoyed console games were GoldenEye, okay,
and Mario Kart and street Fighter too, and uh, Blades
of Steel was a hockey game. And what I realized
is they were games you played as a group, like
you sat together and you played it.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
With one other person.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yeah, you these do not exist anymore. And I am
so like, and what that's what I want to do
with my son, Like I don't want to play video
games where like I'm watching him play a game or
he's watching me play a game. And if you look
online you try and find games, there are literally only
like four of what they call couch co op or
(01:30):
couch multiplayer games.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Couch co player everything online with other people.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yes, that's the thing. It's like now there's there's multiplayer games.
You get to play with people, but they're all sitting
on their own screens with their headsets. And maybe that's
like a fun social experience, but to me it seems
so isolating. So I am giving a shout out to
there's there's like one game designer who I've discovered who
makes great uh couch games. His name is Joseph Farre.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
It's like a guy, it's not really one.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Guy, and he has made the greatest games. He started.
He made this game called Brothers, a Tale of two sons,
and you get to play Brothers, and the whole point
of his games. And then he made this game called
It Takes Two, which Indian I became obsessed with. You
get to play in It Takes Two. You play two
parents who your daughter you're getting a divorce, and your
(02:26):
daughter cries over her dolls that her parents are getting
a divorce, and the parents magically get transported into the dolls,
and so then you play as the parents and the
screen is split and you run around shrunken dolls and
you have to try and get back to your daughter,
and of course you learn about your relationship. Game No,
it's incredible character development. It's hysterical. And then he has
(02:47):
a new game that Indian and I are in the
middle of the plane and we are having so much fun.
It's called split fiction, and again you're two different characters.
You're split and you have to work together. The gameplay
keeps evolving every level, but it's just so much fun
to be in a room together, laughing, experiencing a story.
We have to help each other, so like if one
of us is not like very good at the game,
(03:09):
it like actually stops the game. So we have to
like learn patience. I have to, like, you know, Indy
will be like, dude, you're not doing a round. I'm like,
hey man, I'm maybe not as good at video games
as you are. And like we like engage. It's a
social experience. So shout out for these games. And you
want to play games with your kids, I highly recommend, like,
if you want to get into video games, do this,
(03:29):
Like find a game where you actually sit next to
each other. Yeah, and you play together because and and
what's great is you're not fighting each other. You're not
like shooting each other like Golden Eye. You know, you're
actually just playing together and you're you're laughing and you're
experiencing a story. These are really good games. The other one,
I would say, there's this game called Unraveled or actually
Unraveled too, where you play two little yarn people and
(03:52):
you just it's a it's the most calming, beautiful game.
There's no dialogue, there's just beautiful music and you're these
little yarn people and you help each other swing from
like trees and you have to like go through this
world like swinging each other and it is so soothing
and Indian and I have played this game like three
times start to finish because we'll just sit there and like,
uh laugh and like have these moments. It's so fun.
(04:15):
So couch co op games highly recommend. I wish there
were more of them because I.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Think we all played a great one when we were dating,
called A Way Out.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
What's that?
Speaker 2 (04:28):
It's a game where you are are you brothers in it? Jensen?
Are you just friends? I think you're friends?
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Okay, you're friends, but maybe you're in jail and you
have to break out of jail together and it's the
two of you up against everybody else and it's what
we had so much fun. So oh yeah, we played
it for a long time. Untill we beat the game.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
There has to be like, there should be more games
like that right now.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
It kind of really is.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
It was a story together. It's so fun.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Also, Danielle, when we first started dating, my friend Justin,
shout out to Justin and I stayed up all night
long playing Until Dawn, which was that like horror game
that we loved.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yes, I remember I'm a movie, but that was really
fun too.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
So there's another one for you to check out, right
that's too horror? Yeah, so maybe, but A Way Out
wasn't horror, but it is. You know, you're getting your
breaking out of jail. There's a jail break and you
know it's Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Also, so much did you finish Brothers because I don't
want to tell you what happens. Oh, it's pretty tragic.
And Indy was like devastating. He was like emotional. He
was like he was like really sad about it, and I'm like, oh,
I didn't realize this game was going to get this emotional.
But that's what I like about all because also it
takes two you know, it's kind of grown up. But Indy,
because you're a doll, but like, you know, I don't know,
(05:50):
like it's It was a really cool way for him
to get into a lot of sophisticated feelings. Like it
was like, you know, we're just playing a game, but
we also he was like, oh, the parents are going
to get back together and the daughter is sad because
they're going to the divorce. It was like we were
able to like actually have conversations and it was, man,
it's so fun, like, yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Well this, uh.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
We recently started playing a wrestling game with Adler. It's
not it's not a story based game, but it is
a game where two players. You don't have to play
with two players, like he can play against the computer
if he wants to, but it's it is a game
where Jensen and Adler or Adler and I can play
against each other.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
I want to play. I want to play.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Ww E two K twenty five ww two K twenty five.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Okay, So and you get to play real wrestlers, like
real characters from.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Yes now that we are WrestleMania. Now he's gonna have
some expertise in it. I think he's really gonna like it.
We should also let all of our dear listeners know
mister Wilfredell is not joining us for today's episode.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
He had a previous.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Commitment he needed to do, and so we we are.
We miss him, but it's a he probably would have
been a a good person to ask about video games today,
although I don't know that he plays modern games.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, I don't think he does anymore. Welcome to Pod
meets World. I'm Danielle Fischel, I'm right strong, and there's
no seat four C.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
As the duo of pro wrestling experts we now are,
it is easy to compare this week's guest to the
infamous barbershop incident of nineteen ninety one with Brutus the Barber,
Beefcake and the Rockers Sean Michaels and Marty Jeannetti.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
You of course know what I'm talking about. Writer.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
You see, the Rockers were the most promising young tag
team in the then WWF. They were former champs, undeniable babyfaces,
but they were never seen apart, always seen as a team.
But it was on the set of this barber shop
interview segment where that all changed. Shawn Michaels, signaling the
duo's breakup and the start of his own legendary heartbreak
(08:06):
kid character turned on his best friend Marty super kicking
him through a plate glass window.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Now do we see this week's.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Guest turning on her internationally beloved ninety eight year old
husband and sending him through plate glass No, but we
are ready for her Shawn Michael's close up. With an
acting career that spans seven decades, our guest has done
it all, from her early work in daytime dramas to
roles in classic TV series like Little House on the Prairie,
(08:37):
Golden Girls.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
And Home Improvement.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
She became a go to actor when you needed a
real pro, and that resulted in two Emmy wins for
Best Supporting Actress in a Drama For Saint Elsewhere, where
she played missus Ellen Craig alongside her real life husband
William Daniels, known to this podcast as mister Feenie. And
then she join us all on Boy Meets World, starting
(09:00):
in season five and culminating in four episodes of season
six as the Penbrook Dean Lila Bolander. She's also an author,
a mother, a grandmother.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
An icon.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
She is the Sean Michaels of Boy Meets World. This week,
we are talking to Bonnie Bartlett. Yeah, there you're there, Bonnie.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
It's so lighter enough, like can you see me?
Speaker 2 (09:24):
I can see you. You look fabulous as always.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
I'm young old.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
We're so sorry. Will is not here today.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
He had an appointment with his wife that he couldn't miss,
and so he's not joining us for this episode. It's
just going to be writer and I today to talk
with you.
Speaker 5 (09:42):
You know, I got a note from Will's father. He's
done some legal work for me, even in Canada.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
So he got.
Speaker 5 (09:51):
A lovely birthday, Bill birthday, and nice to his Father's
a lovely.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Guy, isn't he thought the Captain.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Yeah, he's the best.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
So great, well, Bonnie, We are so happy to have
you back on our podcast, this time by yourself, so
we can focus on only you for season six and
the emergence of Dean Lila Bolinger. Right, so let's start
with your origin story. When did you first find yourself
wanting to be an actor?
Speaker 5 (10:22):
I think I was born that way. I was really
born that way. I was imitating all of the May
West and all those blondes, you know, the movies, and
I was very busy imitating them, entertaining people with stories,
you know, and stuff like that. And I my father
(10:45):
had been an actor. We just we watched stuff together
on we listened rather radio to all the LUNs and
Helen Hayes.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
And all those wonderful people. And I was there from
the start. I can't remember when.
Speaker 5 (11:04):
I didn't want to be an actress, but I wanted
to go to New York. I didn't want to be
a movie actress. I wanted to be in New York.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Oh wow, you want to do stage?
Speaker 4 (11:13):
Yeah, I want to be on the stage.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
How did you find out you were any good? Did
you get to do like theater school in school?
Speaker 5 (11:21):
Because I think it was in junior high school, the
beginning of junior high school.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
And we had a little class of some kind.
Speaker 5 (11:30):
And and I read from I did I'm a good.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Girl, I am my fair lady.
Speaker 5 (11:37):
Yes, but the play, the play that it came from,
was and I did the whole play for them and
the class.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
It wasn't meant to be a performance. It turned out
to be a performance.
Speaker 5 (11:50):
They all laughed, they loved it and everybody, and I thought,
oh boy, this is neat.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
And then I started to do any play that was around.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Was your father supportive of you following in his footsteps?
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Or did he?
Speaker 4 (12:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Did he warn you about all the hardships.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Oh I knew about all that. Yeah, I knew about
all that.
Speaker 5 (12:09):
But he he really wanted me to just be a
wife and mother. He did a teacher, want me to
be a teacher, and he didn't want me to go
into the business. And but I did.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Yeah, you did it anyway.
Speaker 5 (12:25):
He didn't want me to go to New York when
I was eighteen, so I went to Northwestern, Okay, which
was good because that's where I met Bill Yes and
did a lot of bit wonderful plays there and just.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Did you have to audition to get into Northwestern?
Speaker 4 (12:43):
At Northwestern did you audition?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yeah? Oh yeah, yeah, well.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
You had to do audition as a matter of fact.
Speaker 5 (12:51):
My freshman year, well, first of all, we did a
play where you did a little workshop thing that everybody
that the famous acting teacher said, wow, that's an actress.
And then I got the lead in a play called
Dark in the Moon, played Barbara Allen, and I got
the I won all the awards and it.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Was perfect part for me. At that time. I was
just it was a great little show.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
So I won the fresh even though I was a freshman,
I won the Acting award, which is very unusual.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
Wow, you know, Charlotte Ray was.
Speaker 5 (13:28):
There and she she was doing a wonderful thing, and
she said, ah, you beat me, you got the.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
She was a.
Speaker 5 (13:35):
Senior and she always Charlotte and I are good friends.
But I mean she's gone now, but she always had
a little bit of a space there because yeah, I
beat her or something.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
You know, we will.
Speaker 5 (13:50):
We we're an all competitive but good friends, good friend.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
She was wonderful.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
When you moved to New York, you found yourself studying
with the legendary Lee Strasburg when you moved. When you
moved there, So for listeners who don't know about that method,
what did you take away from studying with him?
Speaker 5 (14:08):
Well, I was with him for so long, and I
was also his personal friends of the family and so forth.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
When I get away from him, pro and con Yeah.
Speaker 5 (14:19):
He could be very destructive to an actor, or he
could be amazingly constructive.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
It depended how. I don't know what he was. He
had an amazing.
Speaker 5 (14:34):
Ability to help you discover your problems as an actor
and help people that.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
It was very intuitive and very amazing with Bill.
Speaker 5 (14:49):
Bill always says, because Bill I dragged him into later
then he always said, Strasburg said to me, I don't
know what to do with you.
Speaker 4 (14:59):
I look at you, and I don't know what to
do with you. Let's find out who you are.
Speaker 5 (15:05):
And that was extremely helpful to Bill, who had all
the early you know, fake things that they teach little kids.
You know, he was performing, and so he learned to
be very fake because that's what they did in those
days and right, so that even at Northwestern he had
(15:30):
he still had some of that. He was a wonderful
character actor Bill. At at Northwestern his best parts were
old men.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
He was wonderful at that.
Speaker 5 (15:41):
But anyway, so Strasburg, I would say, helped Bill enormously in.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
A very quick time, very quick time. With me.
Speaker 5 (15:51):
I had to go through a lot of emotional problems
I had to go through. I was also in therapy
at the same time, so they helped.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
The therapy and Lee. The therapy and Lee.
Speaker 5 (16:02):
It helped, painful, sometimes hurt, hurting. He could hurt me,
but he also was trying to help me get rid
of a lot of problems that I had with my
father and so forth.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
What was your first TV role? What was the first
job you booked on TV?
Speaker 5 (16:27):
It was on a Pilco playhouse and I played the part.
Speaker 4 (16:32):
It was a nice part, and.
Speaker 5 (16:35):
I remember I was on a bus and having conversations with.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
People on a bus.
Speaker 5 (16:42):
Okay, and my whole family around the country turned into
Philco that night. And now the first really good part
that I had. I played a lot of little stuff.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
Philco. We had Robert Montgomery Presents, We had.
Speaker 5 (17:02):
All those shows then, and I did a lot of
little stuff on that, But that Philco was the first that.
And then later I got a lead on a soap
opera and that was too much work.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Was that called Love of Life? In nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
Love of Life?
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Wow? There was that a New York or was that in.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
La New York, New York?
Speaker 5 (17:24):
And it was very well paid and Bill wasn't making
any money, so we could certainly use that money. It
bought us the apartment. And but you know, it's no,
it's not good acting. It's not acting.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
You don't have any time.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
I'm just going to say, how could how could it
be good?
Speaker 3 (17:42):
When you're doing multiple episodes in a day or in
a week, it's no good.
Speaker 5 (17:46):
You just do it, you know, and you you get facile,
very facile. And finally they brought in Teleprice. I couldn't
use teleprompters.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
It just only time I could use tell.
Speaker 5 (17:59):
If I had a telephone conversation, I could use the
teleprompter because read it off there.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
And nobody would know.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Right, I can't do that.
Speaker 5 (18:08):
But some of the men that I worked with use teleprompters.
I don't know how they did it, but you know
they were I don't know how they did it, but
they did, and I guess it didn't. It wasn't bad.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
So were you miserable the whole time you were doing
the soap opera? Were you just like waiting to get
off of it?
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Yes?
Speaker 5 (18:27):
Yeah, yeah, I needed the money, but it doesn't At
that time, really good actors in the theater like to
be on a soap, but they didn't want to sign
a contract. You know what I mean that we would
have wonderful actors who would come in to do a week,
pick up some money. They would come in to pick
up some money, but then they their theater was the
(18:50):
main thing. So we had some one especially character people,
wonderful character people who would come along for a week
or a little short timent.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
No contracts.
Speaker 5 (19:01):
See, And when I left the soap, I said, I'll
do a soap, and I think I did a couple
after that, but I said, no contract, no contract.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
So how many years were you on Love of Life?
Speaker 4 (19:13):
Three and a half, three and a half too much,
too long?
Speaker 3 (19:19):
And then on a larger nighttime TV scale, you played
Gray Snider Edwards on the incredibly popular Little House on
the Prairie.
Speaker 5 (19:27):
When I came to New York because many years later, yes,
I didn't work because I had the two little boys,
and I did some theater.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
But when we came to.
Speaker 5 (19:35):
New York, I mean California, Bill's agents because Bill was
by that time, he was working a lot making all
these interesting movies. Yeah, And his agent sent me over
to Michael and he said, it's just a general appointment.
But as it turned out, he hired me that day.
(19:58):
He met me and he said, I've got a part
for you and starts, and I did it in the
next couple of days and turned into Grace. She was
not she was never a.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Michael Landon You're talking.
Speaker 5 (20:10):
To Michael, Yeah, nice guy, really nice guy. And and
he he hired me for that, and I was always
on the show. I never had a contract, which was
fine with me, but I didn't know that that was
a good thing in Hollywood. Yeah right, I didn't know
that it makes a difference in the money.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
But I was happy. I was so happy to do
that show. I loved the part.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
And so what year was that that you because you
said you had two small kids. I would love to
talk to you about the decision you made and when
it was When did you have your first child? And
and and what was that you decided to take some
time off from work, and what was that like for you.
Speaker 5 (20:51):
It was the best time of my life. I just
loved it. I didn't miss acting. I forgot that I
was an actress. I didn't miss it at all. It
was just two boys that you know, I had lost
a baby, and so maybe maybe that's why I treasured
it more because I lost a son right after birth,
(21:12):
and I've had a hard time getting pregnant ten years
before I got pregnant the first time.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
And I said, the doctor said, oh.
Speaker 5 (21:22):
This was just a mistake, and it'll you won't you'll
get pregnant. I said, no, I won't. If I didn't
get pregnant for ten years, this is the first.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
Time it's not going to happen.
Speaker 5 (21:31):
I was in the mid thirties and so I said, no,
we'll They said, we'll wait. I said, I waited a
little while, and then we adopted. I always I'm good
at making the right choices, you know, when something happens,
and that I knew, I knew what I wanted and
we got two wonderful boys.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
And so how long did you take off of work?
And was it an adjustment for you?
Speaker 4 (21:57):
Ten years? It was like I was in.
Speaker 5 (22:00):
I did a couple of little things. I ran down
to to do a show in Florida just overnight that
great actor Jackie Gleeson.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
I went down.
Speaker 5 (22:14):
I did one of his shows quickly, and I during
the time when they were I did a play. I
went out to do Lanford Wilson's first play and it
was with Charlie Derning and Chris Walking and they were marvelous.
It was a wonderful experience. But I missed the kids.
(22:36):
I would get on a bus and come home over,
you know, just to be able to get them up
in the morning and off, you know, brek get them
off in the morning to school, and then get on
a bus back back to Buffalo or wherever we were.
We were out of town somewhere, and I said, and
my son. Robie hates me to tell this story, but
(22:59):
I would come in and to their beds if they
were just going to better I say, he said, Mama.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Where were you like this?
Speaker 4 (23:06):
To Mama, where did you go?
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Well, yeah, that's all.
Speaker 4 (23:10):
I needed, That's all I needed, and I stopped.
Speaker 5 (23:16):
I just stopped, and I spent time going to school
with them and doing all the things at school. I
actually lived at their schools. And Michael was very independent,
even as a six year old, very independent in New
York at that time.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Do you believe it? He could come out of the apartment,
go downstairs, go across the street, take a bus down there,
take another bus all the way to the east side,
and then walk to school.
Speaker 5 (23:44):
You couldn't do that today. And he was great. He
was a big boy too, so he was great, very
very independent. But he now he loves la he loves living.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Yeah, so getting back to a little house on the prairie.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Did you enjoy working on that show?
Speaker 4 (24:01):
It was pure pleasure.
Speaker 5 (24:03):
I mean, I have been so lucky that I have
rare other than the soap. I have never been in
a movie or play or anything that I didn't enjoy.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
And I liked all the people and it was just wonderful.
I've been blessed, blessed with wonderful directors, just delightful, delightful.
My career has been delightful.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
You have appeared on so many classic TV shows, Gun Smoke,
The Patty Duke Show.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Heart to Heart.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Did it feel like you were making it in Hollywood?
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Were you?
Speaker 5 (24:44):
I never thought of that. I never thought of being
nor did Bill. But we just liked the work. Yeah,
you know, we didn't have a career. We wanted to work.
We wanted to make enough money to send our kids
to school.
Speaker 4 (25:01):
And things like that. There was no.
Speaker 5 (25:04):
Thought at that time people went into the business just
to work. I don't think they went into the business
to become stars.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
Yeah, it's not the reason for it.
Speaker 5 (25:14):
I think a lot, you know, a lot of people
now kind of jumped the gun.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
That's fine.
Speaker 5 (25:21):
That's the way the world is because everything changes. As
we know, everything changes. So but we we have really
been blessed.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
We really have so sweet.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Did you even when you even when you were winning
Emmys for Saint Elsewhere, you guys weren't like, oh we've arrived,
like we have definitely established never.
Speaker 5 (25:46):
Felt that, you know, winning an award is nice, but
it doesn't get you anywhere really except that forever you
will be described as an Emmy winning activate right, you
will be described as a or or Oscar winning if
it were an oscar.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
You know.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
Yes, that comes with the territory. It's good on your resume.
It is good on your resume, but it doesn't who
whip you into a lot of people who have won
Oscars who've disappeared.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
You know, well, my as writer mentioned in nineteen eighty two,
you then booked the job of a lifetime, Ellen Craig
on Saint Elsewhere, a role that would bring you two
Emmy Awards for Best Supporting Actress and a Drama Series.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Did you always know that that character was special?
Speaker 5 (26:36):
I knew that the show was special. I knew that
the writing was extraordinary, and I knew. They just brought
me on to play with Bill for a brief moment
and they picked up on it, and then they wrote
and wrote and wrote for us.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
They all said that we.
Speaker 5 (26:54):
Reminded them of their parents in many ways, you know,
So they kind of wrote.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
That stuff, and uh, we just it just flowed. It
just came out.
Speaker 5 (27:07):
We never worked at it, We never rehearsed there's a
place where you didn't have to rehearse or very little.
We never rehearsed at home or anything. He learns lines
one way. I learned him another.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
You know, so, uh, how do you how do you
learn lines?
Speaker 5 (27:25):
I just learned them in a block. I learned to
do that in the soap. Okay, I learned him in
a block. Bill learns some and and I might, I
might change a little bit, and it's okay, you know,
but I but I learned it in a in a block,
a paragraph at a time. And he learns them by
learning lines, by the pool, learning lines. And he had
(27:48):
a lot of scientific stuff. Bill has always been a
lawyer or a doctor. Some he just learns them by
going over them and learning them.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
That's what he does.
Speaker 5 (27:58):
I can learn them in my head, right, I don't
as a matter of fact, I don't like to go.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
Over them too much.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
I'm very curious because you know, my wife is an actor,
and we met acting and but we meet a lot
of people who, you know, they couldn't imagine two actors
being together. What was it like for you guys? Did
you ever?
Speaker 4 (28:18):
Did you?
Speaker 1 (28:18):
I mean you say you didn't learn lines together? Could
you give each other notes, could you give each other?
Speaker 4 (28:22):
Fee each other very much? Not so much?
Speaker 5 (28:26):
Well, there was a play where she was very special.
She was very Anyway, he came up and he watched
the rehearsal. He said, where'd you get the funny voice? Well,
I knew Tom right then. That's all he had to say.
And I knew myself. In other words, I was imitating her,
(28:50):
imitating the actress who had been done the play in
the first place, because I was getting stuck, and that's
all he had to say, where'd you get the funny voice?
Speaker 4 (28:58):
And then I knew right away? But I was on
the wrong truck. Start.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
I do this my wife Alex, we do this all
the time, and it's it's actually the voice is the
main thing. Like when she is insecure about an audition,
I can always tell because I'm like, what's you're doing?
The voice thing? It's like she goes a little too high,
and I'm like, you don't need to do that, make
it yours. And then she and once in the second
I say, she's like okay, and then it's a million
times better. But it's like whenever she's just a little off,
(29:25):
I'm like, oh, it's your director.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
La.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
I don't even know if most people would know it
as well, you know, but it's like I know her
so well and I know exactly that tick, and I
could just like, no, you're going up, you're going up,
You're doing your thing, and then she's relaxes and it's right, and.
Speaker 5 (29:41):
I could your playing to the house, you're playing to
the balcony. And then he come down and he would
get back. One time he was doing h one floor
over the Cuckoo's List, And when I went out town
to see him and he said, what do you think?
Speaker 4 (29:57):
He said, it's like you don't want to be a
the stage. And that was true.
Speaker 6 (30:02):
He didn't want to be there, Douglas and the part
he didn't like, and he didn't like and he you know,
so he immediately knew what I meant because he didn't
want to be on the stage, right.
Speaker 5 (30:16):
But he didn't know that. Still, I said, it looks
like you don't want to be on the stage.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
And then he was like, you know, I'm not enjoying this.
Speaker 5 (30:26):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
There were so many heavy hitters on Saint Elsewhere, so
much talent, so much success. With something like that, did
you run into a lot of egos? Or does everyone
kind of wrangle it in because they've got great material.
Speaker 4 (30:53):
Everybody wanted to be on the show. He called the producer.
Speaker 5 (30:58):
Very prominent actors would call the producer and say, please
put me on the show, you know, try to find
something for me because they all everybody knew that it
was so well written. Yeah, it was so well produced.
I mean, you know, and all these wonderful actors were
on it. So what we had Denzel was just a
(31:20):
kind of beginning movie career, so he kind of had
the job, but he was doing other things too. But
he it was a paycheck for him, you know, because
he he was always getting released to do a movie
or something, and you know, the producer was wonderful with him.
(31:41):
So but yet it gave him a paycheck to raise
his family. So let's see. I know, Oh, Betty White
asked to be on the show, and so they wrote
something and she was very nervous, just nervous because it
wasn't funny, you know, Betty.
Speaker 4 (32:03):
But she did a good job. But she said, I've
never been so nervous in my life.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (32:08):
Yeah, that's so crazy nervous. And you know, Betty boy, yeah,
you know, I mean, how could she be nervous.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
I know, you'd think nothing would make her nervous, but.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
After all she'd done.
Speaker 5 (32:21):
Yeah, I knew her in New York when she was
doing live commercials and she was wonderful. And I think
that's the hardest thing in the world to do live commercial.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
I don't even what is a live commercial?
Speaker 4 (32:33):
What is that? A live commercial? Spokesman? And you just
come on and you.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Have a little uh QVC like QVC.
Speaker 5 (32:41):
No, But I mean you're you're you're pumping a product
and you're talking and you talk.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
For a minute or two or whatever it is. It's
all you talking about the product. And it's the hardest
thing in the world.
Speaker 5 (32:58):
I think, yeah, because you're not a character, you know,
but some people Betty, Betty was great at that.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
But Betty could do that.
Speaker 5 (33:07):
She would go out to the audience, you know, and
talk to them and all of that. And I had
a friend Georgia Ane Johnson, a wonderful actress who's no
longer with.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
Us either, but she could do those.
Speaker 5 (33:18):
She made a lot of money in New York doing
those long live commercials. Woo hard. I was good at it.
I had to do a couple in Woo It was
a challenge.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
What what what are you really good at? What has
always been like your specialty? Is there a certain type.
Speaker 5 (33:33):
Of le being a good character. I'm a character actress.
I go into it. The whole point is not to
be me. I have to learn how to well, that's
what Strasberg is all about. You learn. You have to
be you, but you want to be somebody else. But
(33:53):
you have to be you first, and then you take
on all the other character things. But don't you have
to have you? Like you talked to your to your wife.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
You have to find it. They have to make it
your version of humanity.
Speaker 5 (34:10):
Your humanity has to be there, right, you know, no
matter what the character is. But for me, I love
see jumping into another person's skin.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (34:23):
I never wanted to be, you know what, a star,
a movie star now that even though I used to
imitate them all and I love them all.
Speaker 4 (34:33):
Honey girls, Jean Harlow, people like that.
Speaker 5 (34:36):
I don't you don't even know the names, but I
would imitate all, you know, very sexy stuff. Yes, come
out and see me sometime.
Speaker 4 (34:48):
You know, when I was a little girl, see me.
Sometimes I would imitate them all because.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
You were also part of a generation that really shifted acting.
I mean, like from what from those movie stars that
you were imitating that you know, they were doing very
different things than what you your generation started doing, especially
in like the sixties and seventies, Like I feel like,
I mean, were you aware of what was happening and
did you feel like were you proud of what you
(35:16):
were doing and able to see these other actors around
you making conscious choices and changing the way actors act?
Speaker 5 (35:25):
Yes, I think I learned from all of the wonderful actors.
One of the first play I saw in New York
was Julie Harris in Member of the Wedding. Was a
great lesson in acting because she was playing a fourteen
year old girl. But it was Julie, you know, and
(35:45):
she was wonderful, and everything that she would do after
that was anything I saw her in. I thought she
was wonderful all the Oh, of course, the greatest of
all Zudah Hagen, I mean you could, of course she taught.
I never studied with her. I'm sorry I didn't, but
I never did. But she I can't tell you how
(36:08):
many amazing performances she did, totally different, totally different in
one play she would be the quiet wife, but she
was so strong on the stage that she was always thinking.
(36:28):
And you read her.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Thoughts right Virginia Wolf? Right, she was the first. Who's
who's afraid of Virginia Wolf? Wasn't she?
Speaker 4 (36:36):
She was?
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Wasn't she Who's afraid of Virginia Wolf? She was the first?
Oh great she originated it, right, But that's so.
Speaker 5 (36:42):
Yeah, that's the uh. Yeah, she was absolutely superb. Huh yeah,
really superb. I mean, I don't mean to disparage it,
but if you saw to see Elizabeth Taylor in.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
That part, is nothing compared to what she was doing
to the play.
Speaker 5 (37:04):
I mean, she was good, she did a good job
for her, she did a job, but none of the depth.
Speaker 4 (37:14):
Udah Hagen was superb actress.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
Our audience will also recognize you as Mary Anne Benedict.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
In the movie Twins.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
You played the mother of Julius and Vincent, the mother
of unlikely twins played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
And Danny DeVito.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
Please tell us everything you remember about working with the
two of them.
Speaker 4 (37:37):
But they were darling, both of them in different ways.
Speaker 5 (37:40):
I liked Arnold a lot, and Arnold's a very smart guy,
smart guy, and at one point I said to it.
I looked at him and I said, you know, I
could be your mother. I could be your mother. He said,
my mother, my lover.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
The flirt.
Speaker 5 (38:01):
Very flirtatious and Danny I knew, of course, from a
lot of television, so I sort of knew about him.
Speaker 4 (38:10):
But when I went to the reading and I saw this.
Speaker 5 (38:13):
Guy and clothes that didn't fit him, the first you
out what is this all about?
Speaker 4 (38:18):
I don't want to do this movie.
Speaker 5 (38:20):
And I made a huge mistake, almost left the movie,
but my agent made me go to see the director
and he said.
Speaker 4 (38:32):
Well, what do you what? What's the matter? What? What
don't you like about this?
Speaker 5 (38:36):
I said, well, and I went through the whole thing
and I said there should be something here, so there
should be something and then if she could do And
then he said, well, I'll.
Speaker 4 (38:45):
Tell you what I'm going to do, Bonnie.
Speaker 5 (38:46):
I can't make you do this movie, but I'm going
to use all of your suggestions.
Speaker 4 (38:50):
And you want you to know that, Wow, how do
you leave?
Speaker 1 (38:55):
That?
Speaker 4 (38:55):
You don't you stay? You stay? I don't know got
into me.
Speaker 5 (39:00):
I just I didn't realize the I probably am not
that good at comedy.
Speaker 4 (39:08):
So I didn't realize.
Speaker 5 (39:09):
The h how could this could be? I didn't realize
it at all, and I was very surprised. And after
I went to a screening afterwards and Arnold was there
with his wife, who was Kennedy. I said to her,
aren't you proud of him? And she said, oh, yes,
(39:31):
you know.
Speaker 4 (39:32):
He said, should I go to New York and study
and be an actor?
Speaker 5 (39:35):
I said, no, no instincts for an actor. Just do
what you're doing. Just keep going on track, So don't
worry about it. Don't don't don't worry about being a
theater actor. You don't want to do that.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
And others will remember you as Barbara Thorndyke on The
Golden Girls.
Speaker 5 (39:55):
That was so much fun, you know. That was a
little part that I took that. I thought, oh, it
has been amazing people.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
I know it's only you only appeared in one episode,
but it is a fan favorite.
Speaker 4 (40:08):
It is, and.
Speaker 5 (40:09):
It's because I was such a nice you know what
I mean, I was like such a terrible I that
was my mother. I based that whole character on my mother.
I've made that, you know, and not thinking.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
That this is a terrible person at all. She was.
Speaker 5 (40:26):
She would smile and say something like that, smile say
I'm so sorry you can't come right right.
Speaker 4 (40:32):
I mean she would do that.
Speaker 5 (40:34):
She could do that in a minute, be anti semitic,
but be very sweet about it. You know, she'd be
very sweet about it.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
After you did that role, did anybody ever mistake you
for that character? Like, did you ever feel like people
would meet you and then think of you as.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Kind of being a villain?
Speaker 4 (40:52):
I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Okay, so I don't think so.
Speaker 5 (40:55):
But I was surprised at how it's the most watch
of the Golden Girls shows.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Yeah, it's a real fan favorite. You're it's a fan.
Speaker 4 (41:05):
Favorite, and I'm delighted. But I was surprised. Yes, I
was surprised.
Speaker 5 (41:09):
When I went out to the I had been on
Saint Elsewhere, so I want to well the beginning of
the show and the audience and the audience, Oh there's.
Speaker 4 (41:16):
Ellen Craig, you know one day Ellen Craig.
Speaker 5 (41:20):
And then after the show and I walked out and
they booed, you knew.
Speaker 4 (41:25):
You got them?
Speaker 5 (41:26):
That's great, And I, oh, Bill said, don't if if
you want to play anti so many characters, that's what
you're gonna get. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Wow, that's so cool.
Speaker 4 (41:37):
It's great. It's great that the audience is so percested.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
You got them.
Speaker 5 (41:44):
Bill always says that the audiences will tell you what
you got.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (41:49):
So that's like you guys, uh and you guys and
mister Feenie, that's why you guys have this huge audience
and it goes on and on because it's the audience
that tells you what they like and onto and fortunate.
Speaker 4 (42:07):
You're fortunate as we have been.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
We really are.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
Do you remember any roles you almost got and then
were so bummed about, Like any movies or TV shows
that feel like the ones that got away?
Speaker 4 (42:21):
Well, there was a Blay.
Speaker 5 (42:25):
We're gonna not remember the name, but there was a
play in New York that I was up for and
I thought I got and they they done away ended
up doing it and it took her to Hollywood and
it was a part I surely did want and she
was wonderful.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
And I didn't get to do it. So that was one.
Speaker 5 (42:48):
And then there was a time when I was asked
to do a play edit all big play and it
was in stock somewhere and I wanted to do it
very much.
Speaker 4 (43:03):
It was the wife.
Speaker 5 (43:06):
In one of the plays, a very complicated part, and
I wanted so much to try that, but a television
show came up where it's a lot of money, and
so I decided not to do it.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
I've always regretted that.
Speaker 5 (43:21):
They said you can come in a little late, you
could come in a few days late, but I thought, no, No,
I need that rehearsal to do that.
Speaker 4 (43:29):
You just don't walk into an Edward All play.
Speaker 5 (43:31):
And you got a rehearsal. You can't just walk through that.
And I but I've always regretted it. I wish I
had done that. I mean, we were out here where
Nick Boys were fine, I could have. It was just
a mistake that I made in favor of money, really television,
where I should not have taken that television.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
I should have gone and done the play there for.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
Me, right for me and my native pursuit.
Speaker 5 (44:00):
I never got to play that part, and it's a
perfect part for me to tackle.
Speaker 4 (44:05):
Yes, there you go.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
Well, let's talk Boy meets World a little bit.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
Obviously, Bill was on the show since moment one playing
our mister Feenie, and we know Michael broached the idea
with him about having you join the show. And obviously
we all had already known you. Did you have any
reservations about joining the cast.
Speaker 5 (44:36):
I don't think he did broach it to Bill. Oh no,
I think he called me. Michael Jacobs called me and said, Bonnie,
would you come on the show. It'll be your regular
salary and come on the show two with Bill and
you know? And I said, of course, I'd love to.
(44:57):
And then they made the arrangements. And if Bill knew anything,
you know, Bill never knows anything that's going on. He
really never knows. He never knows what's going on in
the set. People I know everything. But so he said,
you know, and that was the way, and they brought
(45:19):
me on the show. And I think probably because I guess,
did he know it was the last season. I'm not
sure if he knew it was the.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
Last It wasn't the last season.
Speaker 3 (45:30):
It was season You came in in season six and
we did season seven, okay.
Speaker 5 (45:36):
All right, So then he didn't know. I guess he
just wanted to bring Bill a friend. Yeah, he thought, well,
let's bring both.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
He brought you in for one episode in season five,
but then you had the recurring role in season six, okay,
where you spent four episodes with us.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
Did you have any reservations joining it or was it
just like no.
Speaker 4 (45:58):
Except I I was.
Speaker 5 (46:01):
I wasn't as comfortable in sitcoms as I was in drama,
so I did have a but I I knew if
I worked with Bill it would be okay.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
Is it ever difficult to work with Bill? If you
guys have wow?
Speaker 5 (46:16):
I love and he loved He teased me in front
of the sets everybody, and I love it. I didn't
mind it at all because I knew where it came from.
But he loves to tease, and that's what he likes
me around because he can't tease another.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
Actress, right right, only you? Did you like performing in
front of a live studio audience having grown up with
theater you're used to, You're used to it.
Speaker 4 (46:39):
Did you like it in nervis I'm a nervous actor
on stage. I'm nervous when I go on and.
Speaker 5 (46:47):
Until I feel comfortable, and so.
Speaker 4 (46:53):
It was, uh, yeah, that's a challenge for me. Let
me put it that way. I learned when I went
with Home Improvement.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 5 (47:04):
The first show I did, I was a wreck. I
was a wreck, and Tim and Pat were wonderful, but
I was a wreck. But and then I was on
that show about six or seven times. By the end
of the time I was on it, I was just
getting to know how to do it. Yeah, you know,
so that I was very pleased. The last show that
(47:27):
I was on, I thought, there, Now that's it, you're there.
I was at the right level, you know, for comedy,
reality and comedy.
Speaker 4 (47:37):
I mean I was able to do that. You know,
do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (47:41):
Yes, it's a weird.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
It's a tough needle to thread because you have to
bring energy. You have to bring you know, you have
to get the laughs. But you also don't want to
be just a yeah, you know, you have to find
the reality in it. Yeah, it's very hard.
Speaker 5 (47:55):
And I remember one time that Tim uh said, look,
you do this, and you do.
Speaker 4 (48:01):
That, and you say that, and you tell them the
kids that are there.
Speaker 5 (48:03):
I said, right in the show he said it, and
I said, I can't do that.
Speaker 4 (48:07):
That's shick. He said, just do it.
Speaker 5 (48:09):
And I got three big laughs and he said, now
didn't that feel good? Yep? Said yes, you know, because
but I don't. I don't know how to orige it.
I just did what he told me to do right,
and he knew it was a funny thing.
Speaker 4 (48:25):
And there you go. And Michael Jacobs is the same.
He knows where the.
Speaker 5 (48:30):
Lafts are and he wants to make sure that you
do it so you get the left Yep.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
Sometimes it's just it's just music. Sometimes it's like you
have to hit the rhythm and yeah, it tells the
audience that it's funny, they know. Yeah, yeah, Well.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
We have been to a lot of conventions with you
and Bill, and so many people are pleasantly surprised to
find out that the Dean really is married to mister Feoenie.
And I think it's because a whole new generation of
people are discovering the show.
Speaker 2 (49:01):
You know, and you guys had such long careers before,
but for the new thirteen, fourteen.
Speaker 3 (49:07):
Fifteen year olds who are coming to it now, to them,
it's all new boy meets world.
Speaker 4 (49:11):
Mister Feenie, yes or Bill, it's all it's all about.
And he and we are going to do it. We're
going to be doing a convention with you, I think
in Long.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
Beach, yes, and in August.
Speaker 5 (49:25):
Yeah, so we'll see you guys. He misses everybody, you know,
he really misses everybody.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
He miss you guys.
Speaker 5 (49:33):
You know, he he's never been attached as much to
a group. You know, he stayed elsewhere, everybody was went
their own way, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (49:47):
He's never been as a but he feels attached to
you guys.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Well, we've definitely come a long way with him.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
He's seen us through you guys have seen us through
lots of different stages of life.
Speaker 4 (49:57):
Yes, and he really loves you all. And of course
it's been very lucrative.
Speaker 5 (50:03):
And we have a store online store, very successful so far,
and it's called the Bill and Bonnie Bill and Bonnie
Daniels dot com. Great online store. We sell all kinds
of things. Poor Bill, I make him sign books. The
(50:26):
books are going like crazy and they were out of proof.
We had to make.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
More books and wonderful.
Speaker 5 (50:32):
Yeah, it's been very successful and it gives my son
something to do. And I wanted that I wanted people
to still be able to get stuff from Bill.
Speaker 3 (50:43):
Yes, Bill and Bonnie Daniels dot com. Just to promote
it one more time. But I also want to talk
about some of your modern work because it is also
incredibly impressive. You have been on parks and rec better
call Saul Key and Peel and they are all such
great shows. Do you and Bill still watch TV together?
And do you have any current favorites?
Speaker 4 (51:02):
Do you know what Bill watches what every night?
Speaker 5 (51:06):
Seinfeld, really Seinfeld, and he sits there and loves it
because it's all physical comedy, you know, I mean, he
he loves that. He loves to He thinks that girl,
he thinks is the funniest thing he ever saw.
Speaker 4 (51:26):
You know. Yeah, he just thinks she's great.
Speaker 5 (51:30):
And he always said, if you're if you're a pretty girl,
pretty actress, and our funny, he says, that's.
Speaker 4 (51:39):
Golden, that's golden. You know, a pretty girl who.
Speaker 5 (51:43):
Can be fund Barbara Harris, you know that his idea
of a superb comedian.
Speaker 3 (51:50):
In twenty twenty three, you released your memoir Middle of
the Rainbow, How a wife, mother and daughter managed to
find herself and win two Emmys. It's a wonderful book.
Did you enjoy the process of writing It was painful?
Speaker 4 (52:03):
Yeah, the writing was hard.
Speaker 5 (52:06):
When I did the the audio I had, I loved it.
I loved doing the audio because I was acting, I
was performing. But to actually bring up all this, I
had a very good friend who helped editor and helped
me with Lauren Lester and and.
Speaker 4 (52:27):
He says, said, put it all out there.
Speaker 5 (52:30):
Just write and write and write and write and write everything.
Speaker 4 (52:34):
You remember everything, everything.
Speaker 2 (52:36):
So gosh, hmm brings up a lot.
Speaker 4 (52:40):
It brings a.
Speaker 1 (52:41):
Lot that.
Speaker 5 (52:44):
Ingrid Bergmann said the best thing you can do for
a long for a long.
Speaker 4 (52:49):
Life is to have a poor memory.
Speaker 5 (52:54):
Yeah, but you know, which is kind of an interesting
way of putting it, you know. And that's Bill, that's Bill.
He remembers nothing but I remember, which is great if
you're writing.
Speaker 2 (53:08):
A book, right exactly. It helps.
Speaker 5 (53:11):
Then you know, you got to put it all out there.
You can't just put out pieces to write at all.
Speaker 4 (53:17):
That's me.
Speaker 5 (53:18):
That's my approach to life period. You know, you got
to if you're going to do it, you got to
put it all out there.
Speaker 3 (53:28):
You faced a little of what we face on this
podcast quite a bit, which is the clickbait headline. You
had tons of interesting stories, hundreds of pages in your memoir,
but everyone seemed to want to focus on one small
moment in the seventies where you and Bill tested the
idea of an open marriage. Were you surprised by that
(53:49):
reaction and do you have any regrets with anything you shared.
Speaker 4 (53:53):
I was very surprised.
Speaker 5 (53:55):
Yeah, I was very surprised because you know, it was
at a time in New York when everything was everything,
you know. I mean it was a wild time, right,
and not that happy a time, but it was a
wild time.
Speaker 2 (54:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (54:12):
I don't think it made anybody happy.
Speaker 5 (54:14):
And then what stopped it all was AIDS. All of
a sudden, there was AIDS and all that action stopped, right,
you know.
Speaker 4 (54:25):
But yeah, I I didn't.
Speaker 5 (54:30):
I didn't not like it, and I didn't like it,
and I was very happy when it was over.
Speaker 4 (54:36):
I was very happy.
Speaker 3 (54:37):
I was much more comfortable when you wrote about it
in the book, and then that seemed to be the
thing that people were focusing on the most. Did you
have any regrets sharing so much?
Speaker 2 (54:47):
A little bit?
Speaker 4 (54:48):
A little bit?
Speaker 5 (54:48):
Yeah, I thought, Oh, I didn't think everybody would. I
didn't think everybody would take it so seriously because I
was part of a whole.
Speaker 4 (54:57):
Group of people and they wouldn't.
Speaker 5 (55:01):
Things have changed, yeah, things always do change. Yeah, and
then COVID changes everybody. I mean, you know, things whole
things now have changed, and God knows what will happen now.
Those little things that I wrote about in the book
that's nothing.
Speaker 4 (55:18):
That's nothing.
Speaker 5 (55:19):
That's just a long marriage to actors in a position.
If we were somewhere else, we wouldn't have behaved that way.
It's just you behave the way you're allowed to behave,
you know. And it was part of the part of
the routine. It was routine.
Speaker 3 (55:38):
Well, we know our audience and really the entire world
recently celebrated Bill's ninety eighth birthday recently, and I know
everyone including us, would love and update.
Speaker 2 (55:51):
How is Bill doing well?
Speaker 5 (55:53):
As I told you, he watches Seinfeld, he raises New
York Times, and he's at a place where as he's
never remembered things, so that that's always been there, but
now it's more. He's very forgetful. He's very he will
(56:14):
forget people. He had a very close friend who just
died and he can't.
Speaker 4 (56:19):
Cope with that.
Speaker 5 (56:20):
He can't, he said, I can't believe it. I can't
believe he's no longer here. He was a guy that
he helped him a lot when he was the president
of SAG and that all the deaths are hard for him,
and most of them are men. Yeah, and his men
friends are all gone. So that's very hard for him.
Speaker 2 (56:43):
Yeah, but he just went out.
Speaker 5 (56:46):
This morning for breakfast with a guy who was a
friend from SAG. You know, he helped him there. He
got very close to a lot of people at SAG.
He had a lot of enemies, and it was very
hard because you had a lot of enemies. But he
made some very close buddies, just friends, not actors, just you.
Speaker 4 (57:07):
Know, commercial people not in his field.
Speaker 1 (57:12):
Necessarily interesting. Interesting.
Speaker 3 (57:15):
Well, Bonnie, we love seeing you every time. I'm very
excited that we get to see you at the end
of August. Thank you for coming, yes, and thank you
for coming and spending a whole hour of your time
with us.
Speaker 2 (57:27):
It was so great.
Speaker 3 (57:28):
As much as we love Bill, it's so nice to
have an entire hour dedicated to you and your accomplishments
and all of the contributions you've made to the field
of entertainment and to our lives and to Boy Meets World.
So on, behalf of our entire audience. Thank you so
much for spending your time with us.
Speaker 4 (57:46):
You you're so dear, dear, Thank.
Speaker 1 (57:50):
You so much, thank you so good to say.
Speaker 2 (57:53):
Thank you, Bonnie.
Speaker 1 (57:54):
Great to see you too.
Speaker 2 (57:55):
We'll see you in a couple months.
Speaker 4 (57:56):
Okay, good bye bye.
Speaker 2 (57:59):
All is so great talking to her.
Speaker 1 (58:03):
H yeah, I you know, one of my one of
my friends, David Pressman, his dad, Lawrence Pressman, is a
older actor who knew them back in the theater days. Yeah,
and he's he's younger than them by about ten or
fifteen years. And so we have these lunches where he tells,
(58:25):
you know, we just talked, talk about those days. And
it's the same thing as like these names. I'm like,
Barbara Harris, what, who to Hoggen what? And I'm you know,
I'm learning, like I feel just from these conversations, because
there are these you know, they who they consider legends,
were like theater actors that we just don't remember, we
don't hear about, you know, and they're they're they're they're
not we don't have them on film, we don't have
(58:47):
you know. So like I went and saw Who's Afraid
of a Tinier Wolf with with Larry and afterwards he
was like, oh, Nod Hoggin, you have to you know,
and it was like, I'm like, where is it. He's like,
I think there might be an audio recording, but he's
so three times with her, you know, you just have
these conversations, and I love hearing about about Bill and
Bonnie back in those days.
Speaker 2 (59:07):
Me too.
Speaker 3 (59:08):
I love anytime we're with them and they tell us
those stories. It's always so fascinating.
Speaker 1 (59:13):
Everybody was a drunk, That's what I love. Like every
one of the stories is like, yeah, oh Bill was
doing so and so it was horrible, drunk, horrible. I'm like, Bonnie,
was there anybody who was not drinking? She's like, well,
those theater it was how you survived.
Speaker 2 (59:28):
And it is really interesting.
Speaker 3 (59:29):
I did think it's so funny that, like for us
who grew up doing TV, and I know you obviously
you started in theater too, but like when we talk
about projects that we missed out on or whatever, we
always think of movies and TV. And any time you
talk to Bill or Bonnie about their careers, theater, theater,
(59:49):
the role, the parts in theater, the stories of the theater,
like it was the.
Speaker 1 (59:54):
Things that's the actors medium. It's like the ultimate.
Speaker 5 (59:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (59:58):
I mean, even when we asked her about her book,
it was like when she got to read it, when
she got to perform it, you know, it's like when
you're that essentially an actor, it's like it's just so cool.
Speaker 3 (01:00:08):
Well, and her biggest regret being that she took a
job she she wanted. She wanted a TV job and
it was good for the money, but she really wanted
and what would have been good for her soul? She's like,
I should have done it for me.
Speaker 1 (01:00:20):
Oh so cool, so cool.
Speaker 3 (01:00:23):
Well, thank you all for joining us for this episode
of Pod Meets World. As always, you can follow us
on Instagram pod Meets World Show. You can send us
your emails pod Meets World Show at gmail dot com
and writer, We've got merch.
Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
Moment of silence for the missing.
Speaker 3 (01:00:37):
Merch Podmeetsworldshow dot com writer send us out.
Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
We love you all, pod dismissed. Pod Meets World is
an iHeart podcast producer hosted by Danielle Fischel, Wilfredell and
Rider Straw. Executive producers Jensen Karp and Amy Sugarman. Executive
in charge of production, Danielle Romo, producer and editor, Taras Who, producer,
Maddie Moore, engineer and boy mets World Superman Easton Outen.
Our theme song is by Kyle Morton of Typhoon. Follow
(01:01:07):
us on Instagram at podmets World Show, or email us
at podmetsworldshowat gmail dot com.
I have a rant. I have a I have a
kids these days style of I.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Love a parenting rant.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Okay, actually this isn't apparent rant, well kind of, this
is this is my video game rant I. I don't
play video games that much, Like I never got into it.
I played computer games when I was younger, but like
console games like sitting down and like playing. And I realized,
like what I liked back in the day, like the
(00:47):
only times I really enjoyed console games were GoldenEye, okay,
and Mario Kart and street Fighter too, and uh, Blades
of Steel was a hockey game. And what I realized
is they were games you played as a group, like
you sat together and you played it.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
With one other person.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yeah, you these do not exist anymore. And I am
so like, and what that's what I want to do
with my son, Like I don't want to play video
games where like I'm watching him play a game or
he's watching me play a game. And if you look
online you try and find games, there are literally only
like four of what they call couch co op or
(01:30):
couch multiplayer games.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Couch co player everything online with other people.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yes, that's the thing. It's like now there's there's multiplayer games.
You get to play with people, but they're all sitting
on their own screens with their headsets. And maybe that's
like a fun social experience, but to me it seems
so isolating. So I am giving a shout out to
there's there's like one game designer who I've discovered who
makes great uh couch games. His name is Joseph Farre.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
It's like a guy, it's not really one.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Guy, and he has made the greatest games. He started.
He made this game called Brothers, a Tale of two sons,
and you get to play Brothers, and the whole point
of his games. And then he made this game called
It Takes Two, which Indian I became obsessed with. You
get to play in It Takes Two. You play two
parents who your daughter you're getting a divorce, and your
(02:26):
daughter cries over her dolls that her parents are getting
a divorce, and the parents magically get transported into the dolls,
and so then you play as the parents and the
screen is split and you run around shrunken dolls and
you have to try and get back to your daughter,
and of course you learn about your relationship. Game No,
it's incredible character development. It's hysterical. And then he has
(02:47):
a new game that Indian and I are in the
middle of the plane and we are having so much fun.
It's called split fiction, and again you're two different characters.
You're split and you have to work together. The gameplay
keeps evolving every level, but it's just so much fun
to be in a room together, laughing, experiencing a story.
We have to help each other, so like if one
of us is not like very good at the game,
(03:09):
it like actually stops the game. So we have to
like learn patience. I have to, like, you know, Indy
will be like, dude, you're not doing a round. I'm like,
hey man, I'm maybe not as good at video games
as you are. And like we like engage. It's a
social experience. So shout out for these games. And you
want to play games with your kids, I highly recommend, like,
if you want to get into video games, do this,
(03:29):
Like find a game where you actually sit next to
each other. Yeah, and you play together because and and
what's great is you're not fighting each other. You're not
like shooting each other like Golden Eye. You know, you're
actually just playing together and you're you're laughing and you're
experiencing a story. These are really good games. The other one,
I would say, there's this game called Unraveled or actually
Unraveled too, where you play two little yarn people and
(03:52):
you just it's a it's the most calming, beautiful game.
There's no dialogue, there's just beautiful music and you're these
little yarn people and you help each other swing from
like trees and you have to like go through this
world like swinging each other and it is so soothing
and Indian and I have played this game like three
times start to finish because we'll just sit there and like,
uh laugh and like have these moments. It's so fun.
(04:15):
So couch co op games highly recommend. I wish there
were more of them because I.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Think we all played a great one when we were dating,
called A Way Out.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
What's that?
Speaker 2 (04:28):
It's a game where you are are you brothers in it? Jensen?
Are you just friends? I think you're friends?
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Okay, you're friends, but maybe you're in jail and you
have to break out of jail together and it's the
two of you up against everybody else and it's what
we had so much fun. So oh yeah, we played
it for a long time. Untill we beat the game.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
There has to be like, there should be more games
like that right now.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
It kind of really is.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
It was a story together. It's so fun.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Also, Danielle, when we first started dating, my friend Justin,
shout out to Justin and I stayed up all night
long playing Until Dawn, which was that like horror game
that we loved.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yes, I remember I'm a movie, but that was really
fun too.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
So there's another one for you to check out, right
that's too horror? Yeah, so maybe, but A Way Out
wasn't horror, but it is. You know, you're getting your
breaking out of jail. There's a jail break and you
know it's Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Also, so much did you finish Brothers because I don't
want to tell you what happens. Oh, it's pretty tragic.
And Indy was like devastating. He was like emotional. He
was like he was like really sad about it, and I'm like, oh,
I didn't realize this game was going to get this emotional.
But that's what I like about all because also it
takes two you know, it's kind of grown up. But Indy,
because you're a doll, but like, you know, I don't know,
(05:50):
like it's It was a really cool way for him
to get into a lot of sophisticated feelings. Like it
was like, you know, we're just playing a game, but
we also he was like, oh, the parents are going
to get back together and the daughter is sad because
they're going to the divorce. It was like we were
able to like actually have conversations and it was, man,
it's so fun, like, yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Well this, uh.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
We recently started playing a wrestling game with Adler. It's
not it's not a story based game, but it is
a game where two players. You don't have to play
with two players, like he can play against the computer
if he wants to, but it's it is a game
where Jensen and Adler or Adler and I can play
against each other.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
I want to play. I want to play.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Ww E two K twenty five ww two K twenty five.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Okay, So and you get to play real wrestlers, like
real characters from.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Yes now that we are WrestleMania. Now he's gonna have
some expertise in it. I think he's really gonna like it.
We should also let all of our dear listeners know
mister Wilfredell is not joining us for today's episode.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
He had a previous.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Commitment he needed to do, and so we we are.
We miss him, but it's a he probably would have
been a a good person to ask about video games today,
although I don't know that he plays modern games.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, I don't think he does anymore. Welcome to Pod
meets World. I'm Danielle Fischel, I'm right strong, and there's
no seat four C.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
As the duo of pro wrestling experts we now are,
it is easy to compare this week's guest to the
infamous barbershop incident of nineteen ninety one with Brutus the Barber,
Beefcake and the Rockers Sean Michaels and Marty Jeannetti.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
You of course know what I'm talking about. Writer.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
You see, the Rockers were the most promising young tag
team in the then WWF. They were former champs, undeniable babyfaces,
but they were never seen apart, always seen as a team.
But it was on the set of this barber shop
interview segment where that all changed. Shawn Michaels, signaling the
duo's breakup and the start of his own legendary heartbreak
(08:06):
kid character turned on his best friend Marty super kicking
him through a plate glass window.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Now do we see this week's.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Guest turning on her internationally beloved ninety eight year old
husband and sending him through plate glass No, but we
are ready for her Shawn Michael's close up. With an
acting career that spans seven decades, our guest has done
it all, from her early work in daytime dramas to
roles in classic TV series like Little House on the Prairie,
(08:37):
Golden Girls.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
And Home Improvement.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
She became a go to actor when you needed a
real pro, and that resulted in two Emmy wins for
Best Supporting Actress in a Drama For Saint Elsewhere, where
she played missus Ellen Craig alongside her real life husband
William Daniels, known to this podcast as mister Feenie. And
then she join us all on Boy Meets World, starting
(09:00):
in season five and culminating in four episodes of season
six as the Penbrook Dean Lila Bolander. She's also an author,
a mother, a grandmother.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
An icon.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
She is the Sean Michaels of Boy Meets World. This week,
we are talking to Bonnie Bartlett. Yeah, there you're there, Bonnie.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
It's so lighter enough, like can you see me?
Speaker 2 (09:24):
I can see you. You look fabulous as always.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
I'm young old.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
We're so sorry. Will is not here today.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
He had an appointment with his wife that he couldn't miss,
and so he's not joining us for this episode. It's
just going to be writer and I today to talk
with you.
Speaker 5 (09:42):
You know, I got a note from Will's father. He's
done some legal work for me, even in Canada.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
So he got.
Speaker 5 (09:51):
A lovely birthday, Bill birthday, and nice to his Father's
a lovely.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Guy, isn't he thought the Captain.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Yeah, he's the best.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
So great, well, Bonnie, We are so happy to have
you back on our podcast, this time by yourself, so
we can focus on only you for season six and
the emergence of Dean Lila Bolinger. Right, so let's start
with your origin story. When did you first find yourself
wanting to be an actor?
Speaker 5 (10:22):
I think I was born that way. I was really
born that way. I was imitating all of the May
West and all those blondes, you know, the movies, and
I was very busy imitating them, entertaining people with stories,
you know, and stuff like that. And I my father
(10:45):
had been an actor. We just we watched stuff together
on we listened rather radio to all the LUNs and
Helen Hayes.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
And all those wonderful people. And I was there from
the start. I can't remember when.
Speaker 5 (11:04):
I didn't want to be an actress, but I wanted
to go to New York. I didn't want to be
a movie actress. I wanted to be in New York.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Oh wow, you want to do stage?
Speaker 4 (11:13):
Yeah, I want to be on the stage.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
How did you find out you were any good? Did
you get to do like theater school in school?
Speaker 5 (11:21):
Because I think it was in junior high school, the
beginning of junior high school.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
And we had a little class of some kind.
Speaker 5 (11:30):
And and I read from I did I'm a good.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Girl, I am my fair lady.
Speaker 5 (11:37):
Yes, but the play, the play that it came from,
was and I did the whole play for them and
the class.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
It wasn't meant to be a performance. It turned out
to be a performance.
Speaker 5 (11:50):
They all laughed, they loved it and everybody, and I thought,
oh boy, this is neat.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
And then I started to do any play that was around.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Was your father supportive of you following in his footsteps?
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Or did he?
Speaker 4 (12:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Did he warn you about all the hardships.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Oh I knew about all that. Yeah, I knew about
all that.
Speaker 5 (12:09):
But he he really wanted me to just be a
wife and mother. He did a teacher, want me to
be a teacher, and he didn't want me to go
into the business. And but I did.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Yeah, you did it anyway.
Speaker 5 (12:25):
He didn't want me to go to New York when
I was eighteen, so I went to Northwestern, Okay, which
was good because that's where I met Bill Yes and
did a lot of bit wonderful plays there and just.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Did you have to audition to get into Northwestern?
Speaker 4 (12:43):
At Northwestern did you audition?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yeah? Oh yeah, yeah, well.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
You had to do audition as a matter of fact.
Speaker 5 (12:51):
My freshman year, well, first of all, we did a
play where you did a little workshop thing that everybody
that the famous acting teacher said, wow, that's an actress.
And then I got the lead in a play called
Dark in the Moon, played Barbara Allen, and I got
the I won all the awards and it.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Was perfect part for me. At that time. I was
just it was a great little show.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
So I won the fresh even though I was a freshman,
I won the Acting award, which is very unusual.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
Wow, you know, Charlotte Ray was.
Speaker 5 (13:28):
There and she she was doing a wonderful thing, and
she said, ah, you beat me, you got the.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
She was a.
Speaker 5 (13:35):
Senior and she always Charlotte and I are good friends.
But I mean she's gone now, but she always had
a little bit of a space there because yeah, I
beat her or something.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
You know, we will.
Speaker 5 (13:50):
We we're an all competitive but good friends, good friend.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
She was wonderful.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
When you moved to New York, you found yourself studying
with the legendary Lee Strasburg when you moved. When you
moved there, So for listeners who don't know about that method,
what did you take away from studying with him?
Speaker 5 (14:08):
Well, I was with him for so long, and I
was also his personal friends of the family and so forth.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
When I get away from him, pro and con Yeah.
Speaker 5 (14:19):
He could be very destructive to an actor, or he
could be amazingly constructive.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
It depended how. I don't know what he was. He
had an amazing.
Speaker 5 (14:34):
Ability to help you discover your problems as an actor
and help people that.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
It was very intuitive and very amazing with Bill.
Speaker 5 (14:49):
Bill always says, because Bill I dragged him into later
then he always said, Strasburg said to me, I don't
know what to do with you.
Speaker 4 (14:59):
I look at you, and I don't know what to
do with you. Let's find out who you are.
Speaker 5 (15:05):
And that was extremely helpful to Bill, who had all
the early you know, fake things that they teach little kids.
You know, he was performing, and so he learned to
be very fake because that's what they did in those
days and right, so that even at Northwestern he had
(15:30):
he still had some of that. He was a wonderful
character actor Bill. At at Northwestern his best parts were
old men.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
He was wonderful at that.
Speaker 5 (15:41):
But anyway, so Strasburg, I would say, helped Bill enormously in.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
A very quick time, very quick time. With me.
Speaker 5 (15:51):
I had to go through a lot of emotional problems
I had to go through. I was also in therapy
at the same time, so they helped.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
The therapy and Lee. The therapy and Lee.
Speaker 5 (16:02):
It helped, painful, sometimes hurt, hurting. He could hurt me,
but he also was trying to help me get rid
of a lot of problems that I had with my
father and so forth.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
What was your first TV role? What was the first
job you booked on TV?
Speaker 5 (16:27):
It was on a Pilco playhouse and I played the part.
Speaker 4 (16:32):
It was a nice part, and.
Speaker 5 (16:35):
I remember I was on a bus and having conversations with.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
People on a bus.
Speaker 5 (16:42):
Okay, and my whole family around the country turned into
Philco that night. And now the first really good part
that I had. I played a lot of little stuff.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
Philco. We had Robert Montgomery Presents, We had.
Speaker 5 (17:02):
All those shows then, and I did a lot of
little stuff on that, But that Philco was the first that.
And then later I got a lead on a soap
opera and that was too much work.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Was that called Love of Life? In nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
Love of Life?
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Wow? There was that a New York or was that in.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
La New York, New York?
Speaker 5 (17:24):
And it was very well paid and Bill wasn't making
any money, so we could certainly use that money. It
bought us the apartment. And but you know, it's no,
it's not good acting. It's not acting.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
You don't have any time.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
I'm just going to say, how could how could it
be good?
Speaker 3 (17:42):
When you're doing multiple episodes in a day or in
a week, it's no good.
Speaker 5 (17:46):
You just do it, you know, and you you get facile,
very facile. And finally they brought in Teleprice. I couldn't
use teleprompters.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
It just only time I could use tell.
Speaker 5 (17:59):
If I had a telephone conversation, I could use the
teleprompter because read it off there.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
And nobody would know.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Right, I can't do that.
Speaker 5 (18:08):
But some of the men that I worked with use teleprompters.
I don't know how they did it, but you know
they were I don't know how they did it, but
they did, and I guess it didn't. It wasn't bad.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
So were you miserable the whole time you were doing
the soap opera? Were you just like waiting to get
off of it?
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Yes?
Speaker 5 (18:27):
Yeah, yeah, I needed the money, but it doesn't At
that time, really good actors in the theater like to
be on a soap, but they didn't want to sign
a contract. You know what I mean that we would
have wonderful actors who would come in to do a week,
pick up some money. They would come in to pick
up some money, but then they their theater was the
(18:50):
main thing. So we had some one especially character people,
wonderful character people who would come along for a week
or a little short timent.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
No contracts.
Speaker 5 (19:01):
See, And when I left the soap, I said, I'll
do a soap, and I think I did a couple
after that, but I said, no contract, no contract.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
So how many years were you on Love of Life?
Speaker 4 (19:13):
Three and a half, three and a half too much,
too long?
Speaker 3 (19:19):
And then on a larger nighttime TV scale, you played
Gray Snider Edwards on the incredibly popular Little House on
the Prairie.
Speaker 5 (19:27):
When I came to New York because many years later, yes,
I didn't work because I had the two little boys,
and I did some theater.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
But when we came to.
Speaker 5 (19:35):
New York, I mean California, Bill's agents because Bill was
by that time, he was working a lot making all
these interesting movies. Yeah, And his agent sent me over
to Michael and he said, it's just a general appointment.
But as it turned out, he hired me that day.
(19:58):
He met me and he said, I've got a part
for you and starts, and I did it in the
next couple of days and turned into Grace. She was
not she was never a.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Michael Landon You're talking.
Speaker 5 (20:10):
To Michael, Yeah, nice guy, really nice guy. And and
he he hired me for that, and I was always
on the show. I never had a contract, which was
fine with me, but I didn't know that that was
a good thing in Hollywood. Yeah right, I didn't know
that it makes a difference in the money.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
But I was happy. I was so happy to do
that show. I loved the part.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
And so what year was that that you because you
said you had two small kids. I would love to
talk to you about the decision you made and when
it was When did you have your first child? And
and and what was that you decided to take some
time off from work, and what was that like for you.
Speaker 5 (20:51):
It was the best time of my life. I just
loved it. I didn't miss acting. I forgot that I
was an actress. I didn't miss it at all. It
was just two boys that you know, I had lost
a baby, and so maybe maybe that's why I treasured
it more because I lost a son right after birth,
(21:12):
and I've had a hard time getting pregnant ten years
before I got pregnant the first time.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
And I said, the doctor said, oh.
Speaker 5 (21:22):
This was just a mistake, and it'll you won't you'll
get pregnant. I said, no, I won't. If I didn't
get pregnant for ten years, this is the first.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
Time it's not going to happen.
Speaker 5 (21:31):
I was in the mid thirties and so I said, no,
we'll They said, we'll wait. I said, I waited a
little while, and then we adopted. I always I'm good
at making the right choices, you know, when something happens,
and that I knew, I knew what I wanted and
we got two wonderful boys.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
And so how long did you take off of work?
And was it an adjustment for you?
Speaker 4 (21:57):
Ten years? It was like I was in.
Speaker 5 (22:00):
I did a couple of little things. I ran down
to to do a show in Florida just overnight that
great actor Jackie Gleeson.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
I went down.
Speaker 5 (22:14):
I did one of his shows quickly, and I during
the time when they were I did a play. I
went out to do Lanford Wilson's first play and it
was with Charlie Derning and Chris Walking and they were marvelous.
It was a wonderful experience. But I missed the kids.
(22:36):
I would get on a bus and come home over,
you know, just to be able to get them up
in the morning and off, you know, brek get them
off in the morning to school, and then get on
a bus back back to Buffalo or wherever we were.
We were out of town somewhere, and I said, and
my son. Robie hates me to tell this story, but
(22:59):
I would come in and to their beds if they
were just going to better I say, he said, Mama.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Where were you like this?
Speaker 4 (23:06):
To Mama, where did you go?
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Well, yeah, that's all.
Speaker 4 (23:10):
I needed, That's all I needed, and I stopped.
Speaker 5 (23:16):
I just stopped, and I spent time going to school
with them and doing all the things at school. I
actually lived at their schools. And Michael was very independent,
even as a six year old, very independent in New
York at that time.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Do you believe it? He could come out of the apartment,
go downstairs, go across the street, take a bus down there,
take another bus all the way to the east side,
and then walk to school.
Speaker 5 (23:44):
You couldn't do that today. And he was great. He
was a big boy too, so he was great, very
very independent. But he now he loves la he loves living.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Yeah, so getting back to a little house on the prairie.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Did you enjoy working on that show?
Speaker 4 (24:01):
It was pure pleasure.
Speaker 5 (24:03):
I mean, I have been so lucky that I have
rare other than the soap. I have never been in
a movie or play or anything that I didn't enjoy.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
And I liked all the people and it was just wonderful.
I've been blessed, blessed with wonderful directors, just delightful, delightful.
My career has been delightful.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
You have appeared on so many classic TV shows, Gun Smoke,
The Patty Duke Show.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Heart to Heart.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Did it feel like you were making it in Hollywood?
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Were you?
Speaker 5 (24:44):
I never thought of that. I never thought of being
nor did Bill. But we just liked the work. Yeah,
you know, we didn't have a career. We wanted to work.
We wanted to make enough money to send our kids
to school.
Speaker 4 (25:01):
And things like that. There was no.
Speaker 5 (25:04):
Thought at that time people went into the business just
to work. I don't think they went into the business
to become stars.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
Yeah, it's not the reason for it.
Speaker 5 (25:14):
I think a lot, you know, a lot of people
now kind of jumped the gun.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
That's fine.
Speaker 5 (25:21):
That's the way the world is because everything changes. As
we know, everything changes. So but we we have really
been blessed.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
We really have so sweet.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Did you even when you even when you were winning
Emmys for Saint Elsewhere, you guys weren't like, oh we've arrived,
like we have definitely established never.
Speaker 5 (25:46):
Felt that, you know, winning an award is nice, but
it doesn't get you anywhere really except that forever you
will be described as an Emmy winning activate right, you
will be described as a or or Oscar winning if
it were an oscar.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
You know.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
Yes, that comes with the territory. It's good on your resume.
It is good on your resume, but it doesn't who
whip you into a lot of people who have won
Oscars who've disappeared.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
You know, well, my as writer mentioned in nineteen eighty two,
you then booked the job of a lifetime, Ellen Craig
on Saint Elsewhere, a role that would bring you two
Emmy Awards for Best Supporting Actress and a Drama Series.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Did you always know that that character was special?
Speaker 5 (26:36):
I knew that the show was special. I knew that
the writing was extraordinary, and I knew. They just brought
me on to play with Bill for a brief moment
and they picked up on it, and then they wrote
and wrote and wrote for us.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
They all said that we.
Speaker 5 (26:54):
Reminded them of their parents in many ways, you know,
So they kind of wrote.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
That stuff, and uh, we just it just flowed. It
just came out.
Speaker 5 (27:07):
We never worked at it, We never rehearsed there's a
place where you didn't have to rehearse or very little.
We never rehearsed at home or anything. He learns lines
one way. I learned him another.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
You know, so, uh, how do you how do you
learn lines?
Speaker 5 (27:25):
I just learned them in a block. I learned to
do that in the soap. Okay, I learned him in
a block. Bill learns some and and I might, I
might change a little bit, and it's okay, you know,
but I but I learned it in a in a block,
a paragraph at a time. And he learns them by
learning lines, by the pool, learning lines. And he had
(27:48):
a lot of scientific stuff. Bill has always been a
lawyer or a doctor. Some he just learns them by
going over them and learning them.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
That's what he does.
Speaker 5 (27:58):
I can learn them in my head, right, I don't
as a matter of fact, I don't like to go.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
Over them too much.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
I'm very curious because you know, my wife is an actor,
and we met acting and but we meet a lot
of people who, you know, they couldn't imagine two actors
being together. What was it like for you guys? Did
you ever?
Speaker 4 (28:18):
Did you?
Speaker 1 (28:18):
I mean you say you didn't learn lines together? Could
you give each other notes, could you give each other?
Speaker 4 (28:22):
Fee each other very much? Not so much?
Speaker 5 (28:26):
Well, there was a play where she was very special.
She was very Anyway, he came up and he watched
the rehearsal. He said, where'd you get the funny voice? Well,
I knew Tom right then. That's all he had to say.
And I knew myself. In other words, I was imitating her,
(28:50):
imitating the actress who had been done the play in
the first place, because I was getting stuck, and that's
all he had to say, where'd you get the funny voice?
Speaker 4 (28:58):
And then I knew right away? But I was on
the wrong truck. Start.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
I do this my wife Alex, we do this all
the time, and it's it's actually the voice is the
main thing. Like when she is insecure about an audition,
I can always tell because I'm like, what's you're doing?
The voice thing? It's like she goes a little too high,
and I'm like, you don't need to do that, make
it yours. And then she and once in the second
I say, she's like okay, and then it's a million
times better. But it's like whenever she's just a little off,
(29:25):
I'm like, oh, it's your director.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
La.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
I don't even know if most people would know it
as well, you know, but it's like I know her
so well and I know exactly that tick, and I
could just like, no, you're going up, you're going up,
You're doing your thing, and then she's relaxes and it's right, and.
Speaker 5 (29:41):
I could your playing to the house, you're playing to
the balcony. And then he come down and he would
get back. One time he was doing h one floor
over the Cuckoo's List, And when I went out town
to see him and he said, what do you think?
Speaker 4 (29:57):
He said, it's like you don't want to be a
the stage. And that was true.
Speaker 6 (30:02):
He didn't want to be there, Douglas and the part
he didn't like, and he didn't like and he you know,
so he immediately knew what I meant because he didn't
want to be on the stage, right.
Speaker 5 (30:16):
But he didn't know that. Still, I said, it looks
like you don't want to be on the stage.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
And then he was like, you know, I'm not enjoying this.
Speaker 5 (30:26):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
There were so many heavy hitters on Saint Elsewhere, so
much talent, so much success. With something like that, did
you run into a lot of egos? Or does everyone
kind of wrangle it in because they've got great material.
Speaker 4 (30:53):
Everybody wanted to be on the show. He called the producer.
Speaker 5 (30:58):
Very prominent actors would call the producer and say, please
put me on the show, you know, try to find
something for me because they all everybody knew that it
was so well written. Yeah, it was so well produced.
I mean, you know, and all these wonderful actors were
on it. So what we had Denzel was just a
(31:20):
kind of beginning movie career, so he kind of had
the job, but he was doing other things too. But
he it was a paycheck for him, you know, because
he he was always getting released to do a movie
or something, and you know, the producer was wonderful with him.
(31:41):
So but yet it gave him a paycheck to raise
his family. So let's see. I know, Oh, Betty White
asked to be on the show, and so they wrote
something and she was very nervous, just nervous because it
wasn't funny, you know, Betty.
Speaker 4 (32:03):
But she did a good job. But she said, I've
never been so nervous in my life.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (32:08):
Yeah, that's so crazy nervous. And you know, Betty boy, yeah,
you know, I mean, how could she be nervous.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
I know, you'd think nothing would make her nervous, but.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
After all she'd done.
Speaker 5 (32:21):
Yeah, I knew her in New York when she was
doing live commercials and she was wonderful. And I think
that's the hardest thing in the world to do live commercial.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
I don't even what is a live commercial?
Speaker 4 (32:33):
What is that? A live commercial? Spokesman? And you just
come on and you.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Have a little uh QVC like QVC.
Speaker 5 (32:41):
No, But I mean you're you're you're pumping a product
and you're talking and you talk.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
For a minute or two or whatever it is. It's
all you talking about the product. And it's the hardest
thing in the world.
Speaker 5 (32:58):
I think, yeah, because you're not a character, you know,
but some people Betty, Betty was great at that.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
But Betty could do that.
Speaker 5 (33:07):
She would go out to the audience, you know, and
talk to them and all of that. And I had
a friend Georgia Ane Johnson, a wonderful actress who's no
longer with.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
Us either, but she could do those.
Speaker 5 (33:18):
She made a lot of money in New York doing
those long live commercials. Woo hard. I was good at it.
I had to do a couple in Woo It was
a challenge.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
What what what are you really good at? What has
always been like your specialty? Is there a certain type.
Speaker 5 (33:33):
Of le being a good character. I'm a character actress.
I go into it. The whole point is not to
be me. I have to learn how to well, that's
what Strasberg is all about. You learn. You have to
be you, but you want to be somebody else. But
(33:53):
you have to be you first, and then you take
on all the other character things. But don't you have
to have you? Like you talked to your to your wife.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
You have to find it. They have to make it
your version of humanity.
Speaker 5 (34:10):
Your humanity has to be there, right, you know, no
matter what the character is. But for me, I love
see jumping into another person's skin.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (34:23):
I never wanted to be, you know what, a star,
a movie star now that even though I used to
imitate them all and I love them all.
Speaker 4 (34:33):
Honey girls, Jean Harlow, people like that.
Speaker 5 (34:36):
I don't you don't even know the names, but I
would imitate all, you know, very sexy stuff. Yes, come
out and see me sometime.
Speaker 4 (34:48):
You know, when I was a little girl, see me.
Sometimes I would imitate them all because.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
You were also part of a generation that really shifted acting.
I mean, like from what from those movie stars that
you were imitating that you know, they were doing very
different things than what you your generation started doing, especially
in like the sixties and seventies, Like I feel like,
I mean, were you aware of what was happening and
did you feel like were you proud of what you
(35:16):
were doing and able to see these other actors around
you making conscious choices and changing the way actors act?
Speaker 5 (35:25):
Yes, I think I learned from all of the wonderful actors.
One of the first play I saw in New York
was Julie Harris in Member of the Wedding. Was a
great lesson in acting because she was playing a fourteen
year old girl. But it was Julie, you know, and
(35:45):
she was wonderful, and everything that she would do after
that was anything I saw her in. I thought she
was wonderful all the Oh, of course, the greatest of
all Zudah Hagen, I mean you could, of course she taught.
I never studied with her. I'm sorry I didn't, but
I never did. But she I can't tell you how
(36:08):
many amazing performances she did, totally different, totally different in
one play she would be the quiet wife, but she
was so strong on the stage that she was always thinking.
(36:28):
And you read her.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Thoughts right Virginia Wolf? Right, she was the first. Who's
who's afraid of Virginia Wolf? Wasn't she?
Speaker 4 (36:36):
She was?
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Wasn't she Who's afraid of Virginia Wolf? She was the first?
Oh great she originated it, right, But that's so.
Speaker 5 (36:42):
Yeah, that's the uh. Yeah, she was absolutely superb. Huh yeah,
really superb. I mean, I don't mean to disparage it,
but if you saw to see Elizabeth Taylor in.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
That part, is nothing compared to what she was doing
to the play.
Speaker 5 (37:04):
I mean, she was good, she did a good job
for her, she did a job, but none of the depth.
Speaker 4 (37:14):
Udah Hagen was superb actress.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
Our audience will also recognize you as Mary Anne Benedict.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
In the movie Twins.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
You played the mother of Julius and Vincent, the mother
of unlikely twins played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
And Danny DeVito.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
Please tell us everything you remember about working with the
two of them.
Speaker 4 (37:37):
But they were darling, both of them in different ways.
Speaker 5 (37:40):
I liked Arnold a lot, and Arnold's a very smart guy,
smart guy, and at one point I said to it.
I looked at him and I said, you know, I
could be your mother. I could be your mother. He said,
my mother, my lover.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
The flirt.
Speaker 5 (38:01):
Very flirtatious and Danny I knew, of course, from a
lot of television, so I sort of knew about him.
Speaker 4 (38:10):
But when I went to the reading and I saw this.
Speaker 5 (38:13):
Guy and clothes that didn't fit him, the first you
out what is this all about?
Speaker 4 (38:18):
I don't want to do this movie.
Speaker 5 (38:20):
And I made a huge mistake, almost left the movie,
but my agent made me go to see the director
and he said.
Speaker 4 (38:32):
Well, what do you what? What's the matter? What? What
don't you like about this?
Speaker 5 (38:36):
I said, well, and I went through the whole thing
and I said there should be something here, so there
should be something and then if she could do And
then he said, well, I'll.
Speaker 4 (38:45):
Tell you what I'm going to do, Bonnie.
Speaker 5 (38:46):
I can't make you do this movie, but I'm going
to use all of your suggestions.
Speaker 4 (38:50):
And you want you to know that, Wow, how do
you leave?
Speaker 1 (38:55):
That?
Speaker 4 (38:55):
You don't you stay? You stay? I don't know got
into me.
Speaker 5 (39:00):
I just I didn't realize the I probably am not
that good at comedy.
Speaker 4 (39:08):
So I didn't realize.
Speaker 5 (39:09):
The h how could this could be? I didn't realize
it at all, and I was very surprised. And after
I went to a screening afterwards and Arnold was there
with his wife, who was Kennedy. I said to her,
aren't you proud of him? And she said, oh, yes,
(39:31):
you know.
Speaker 4 (39:32):
He said, should I go to New York and study
and be an actor?
Speaker 5 (39:35):
I said, no, no instincts for an actor. Just do
what you're doing. Just keep going on track, So don't
worry about it. Don't don't don't worry about being a
theater actor. You don't want to do that.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
And others will remember you as Barbara Thorndyke on The
Golden Girls.
Speaker 5 (39:55):
That was so much fun, you know. That was a
little part that I took that. I thought, oh, it
has been amazing people.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
I know it's only you only appeared in one episode,
but it is a fan favorite.
Speaker 4 (40:08):
It is, and.
Speaker 5 (40:09):
It's because I was such a nice you know what
I mean, I was like such a terrible I that
was my mother. I based that whole character on my mother.
I've made that, you know, and not thinking.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
That this is a terrible person at all. She was.
Speaker 5 (40:26):
She would smile and say something like that, smile say
I'm so sorry you can't come right right.
Speaker 4 (40:32):
I mean she would do that.
Speaker 5 (40:34):
She could do that in a minute, be anti semitic,
but be very sweet about it. You know, she'd be
very sweet about it.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
After you did that role, did anybody ever mistake you
for that character? Like, did you ever feel like people
would meet you and then think of you as.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Kind of being a villain?
Speaker 4 (40:52):
I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Okay, so I don't think so.
Speaker 5 (40:55):
But I was surprised at how it's the most watch
of the Golden Girls shows.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Yeah, it's a real fan favorite. You're it's a fan.
Speaker 4 (41:05):
Favorite, and I'm delighted. But I was surprised. Yes, I
was surprised.
Speaker 5 (41:09):
When I went out to the I had been on
Saint Elsewhere, so I want to well the beginning of
the show and the audience and the audience, Oh there's.
Speaker 4 (41:16):
Ellen Craig, you know one day Ellen Craig.
Speaker 5 (41:20):
And then after the show and I walked out and
they booed, you knew.
Speaker 4 (41:25):
You got them?
Speaker 5 (41:26):
That's great, And I, oh, Bill said, don't if if
you want to play anti so many characters, that's what
you're gonna get. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Wow, that's so cool.
Speaker 4 (41:37):
It's great. It's great that the audience is so percested.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
You got them.
Speaker 5 (41:44):
Bill always says that the audiences will tell you what
you got.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (41:49):
So that's like you guys, uh and you guys and
mister Feenie, that's why you guys have this huge audience
and it goes on and on because it's the audience
that tells you what they like and onto and fortunate.
Speaker 4 (42:07):
You're fortunate as we have been.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
We really are.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
Do you remember any roles you almost got and then
were so bummed about, Like any movies or TV shows
that feel like the ones that got away?
Speaker 4 (42:21):
Well, there was a Blay.
Speaker 5 (42:25):
We're gonna not remember the name, but there was a
play in New York that I was up for and
I thought I got and they they done away ended
up doing it and it took her to Hollywood and
it was a part I surely did want and she
was wonderful.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
And I didn't get to do it. So that was one.
Speaker 5 (42:48):
And then there was a time when I was asked
to do a play edit all big play and it
was in stock somewhere and I wanted to do it
very much.
Speaker 4 (43:03):
It was the wife.
Speaker 5 (43:06):
In one of the plays, a very complicated part, and
I wanted so much to try that, but a television
show came up where it's a lot of money, and
so I decided not to do it.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
I've always regretted that.
Speaker 5 (43:21):
They said you can come in a little late, you
could come in a few days late, but I thought, no, No,
I need that rehearsal to do that.
Speaker 4 (43:29):
You just don't walk into an Edward All play.
Speaker 5 (43:31):
And you got a rehearsal. You can't just walk through that.
And I but I've always regretted it. I wish I
had done that. I mean, we were out here where
Nick Boys were fine, I could have. It was just
a mistake that I made in favor of money, really television,
where I should not have taken that television.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
I should have gone and done the play there for.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
Me, right for me and my native pursuit.
Speaker 5 (44:00):
I never got to play that part, and it's a
perfect part for me to tackle.
Speaker 4 (44:05):
Yes, there you go.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
Well, let's talk Boy meets World a little bit.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
Obviously, Bill was on the show since moment one playing
our mister Feenie, and we know Michael broached the idea
with him about having you join the show. And obviously
we all had already known you. Did you have any
reservations about joining the cast.
Speaker 5 (44:36):
I don't think he did broach it to Bill. Oh no,
I think he called me. Michael Jacobs called me and said, Bonnie,
would you come on the show. It'll be your regular
salary and come on the show two with Bill and
you know? And I said, of course, I'd love to.
(44:57):
And then they made the arrangements. And if Bill knew anything,
you know, Bill never knows anything that's going on. He
really never knows. He never knows what's going on in
the set. People I know everything. But so he said,
you know, and that was the way, and they brought
(45:19):
me on the show. And I think probably because I guess,
did he know it was the last season. I'm not
sure if he knew it was the.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
Last It wasn't the last season.
Speaker 3 (45:30):
It was season You came in in season six and
we did season seven, okay.
Speaker 5 (45:36):
All right, So then he didn't know. I guess he
just wanted to bring Bill a friend. Yeah, he thought, well,
let's bring both.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
He brought you in for one episode in season five,
but then you had the recurring role in season six, okay,
where you spent four episodes with us.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
Did you have any reservations joining it or was it
just like no.
Speaker 4 (45:58):
Except I I was.
Speaker 5 (46:01):
I wasn't as comfortable in sitcoms as I was in drama,
so I did have a but I I knew if
I worked with Bill it would be okay.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
Is it ever difficult to work with Bill? If you
guys have wow?
Speaker 5 (46:16):
I love and he loved He teased me in front
of the sets everybody, and I love it. I didn't
mind it at all because I knew where it came from.
But he loves to tease, and that's what he likes
me around because he can't tease another.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
Actress, right right, only you? Did you like performing in
front of a live studio audience having grown up with
theater you're used to, You're used to it.
Speaker 4 (46:39):
Did you like it in nervis I'm a nervous actor
on stage. I'm nervous when I go on and.
Speaker 5 (46:47):
Until I feel comfortable, and so.
Speaker 4 (46:53):
It was, uh, yeah, that's a challenge for me. Let
me put it that way. I learned when I went
with Home Improvement.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 5 (47:04):
The first show I did, I was a wreck. I
was a wreck, and Tim and Pat were wonderful, but
I was a wreck. But and then I was on
that show about six or seven times. By the end
of the time I was on it, I was just
getting to know how to do it. Yeah, you know,
so that I was very pleased. The last show that
(47:27):
I was on, I thought, there, Now that's it, you're there.
I was at the right level, you know, for comedy,
reality and comedy.
Speaker 4 (47:37):
I mean I was able to do that. You know,
do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (47:41):
Yes, it's a weird.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
It's a tough needle to thread because you have to
bring energy. You have to bring you know, you have
to get the laughs. But you also don't want to
be just a yeah, you know, you have to find
the reality in it. Yeah, it's very hard.
Speaker 5 (47:55):
And I remember one time that Tim uh said, look,
you do this, and you do.
Speaker 4 (48:01):
That, and you say that, and you tell them the
kids that are there.
Speaker 5 (48:03):
I said, right in the show he said it, and
I said, I can't do that.
Speaker 4 (48:07):
That's shick. He said, just do it.
Speaker 5 (48:09):
And I got three big laughs and he said, now
didn't that feel good? Yep? Said yes, you know, because
but I don't. I don't know how to orige it.
I just did what he told me to do right,
and he knew it was a funny thing.
Speaker 4 (48:25):
And there you go. And Michael Jacobs is the same.
He knows where the.
Speaker 5 (48:30):
Lafts are and he wants to make sure that you
do it so you get the left Yep.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
Sometimes it's just it's just music. Sometimes it's like you
have to hit the rhythm and yeah, it tells the
audience that it's funny, they know. Yeah, yeah, Well.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
We have been to a lot of conventions with you
and Bill, and so many people are pleasantly surprised to
find out that the Dean really is married to mister Feoenie.
And I think it's because a whole new generation of
people are discovering the show.
Speaker 2 (49:01):
You know, and you guys had such long careers before,
but for the new thirteen, fourteen.
Speaker 3 (49:07):
Fifteen year olds who are coming to it now, to them,
it's all new boy meets world.
Speaker 4 (49:11):
Mister Feenie, yes or Bill, it's all it's all about.
And he and we are going to do it. We're
going to be doing a convention with you, I think
in Long.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
Beach, yes, and in August.
Speaker 5 (49:25):
Yeah, so we'll see you guys. He misses everybody, you know,
he really misses everybody.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
He miss you guys.
Speaker 5 (49:33):
You know, he he's never been attached as much to
a group. You know, he stayed elsewhere, everybody was went
their own way, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (49:47):
He's never been as a but he feels attached to
you guys.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Well, we've definitely come a long way with him.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
He's seen us through you guys have seen us through
lots of different stages of life.
Speaker 4 (49:57):
Yes, and he really loves you all. And of course
it's been very lucrative.
Speaker 5 (50:03):
And we have a store online store, very successful so far,
and it's called the Bill and Bonnie Bill and Bonnie
Daniels dot com. Great online store. We sell all kinds
of things. Poor Bill, I make him sign books. The
(50:26):
books are going like crazy and they were out of proof.
We had to make.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
More books and wonderful.
Speaker 5 (50:32):
Yeah, it's been very successful and it gives my son
something to do. And I wanted that I wanted people
to still be able to get stuff from Bill.
Speaker 3 (50:43):
Yes, Bill and Bonnie Daniels dot com. Just to promote
it one more time. But I also want to talk
about some of your modern work because it is also
incredibly impressive. You have been on parks and rec better
call Saul Key and Peel and they are all such
great shows. Do you and Bill still watch TV together?
And do you have any current favorites?
Speaker 4 (51:02):
Do you know what Bill watches what every night?
Speaker 5 (51:06):
Seinfeld, really Seinfeld, and he sits there and loves it
because it's all physical comedy, you know, I mean, he
he loves that. He loves to He thinks that girl,
he thinks is the funniest thing he ever saw.
Speaker 4 (51:26):
You know. Yeah, he just thinks she's great.
Speaker 5 (51:30):
And he always said, if you're if you're a pretty girl,
pretty actress, and our funny, he says, that's.
Speaker 4 (51:39):
Golden, that's golden. You know, a pretty girl who.
Speaker 5 (51:43):
Can be fund Barbara Harris, you know that his idea
of a superb comedian.
Speaker 3 (51:50):
In twenty twenty three, you released your memoir Middle of
the Rainbow, How a wife, mother and daughter managed to
find herself and win two Emmys. It's a wonderful book.
Did you enjoy the process of writing It was painful?
Speaker 4 (52:03):
Yeah, the writing was hard.
Speaker 5 (52:06):
When I did the the audio I had, I loved it.
I loved doing the audio because I was acting, I
was performing. But to actually bring up all this, I
had a very good friend who helped editor and helped
me with Lauren Lester and and.
Speaker 4 (52:27):
He says, said, put it all out there.
Speaker 5 (52:30):
Just write and write and write and write and write everything.
Speaker 4 (52:34):
You remember everything, everything.
Speaker 2 (52:36):
So gosh, hmm brings up a lot.
Speaker 4 (52:40):
It brings a.
Speaker 1 (52:41):
Lot that.
Speaker 5 (52:44):
Ingrid Bergmann said the best thing you can do for
a long for a long.
Speaker 4 (52:49):
Life is to have a poor memory.
Speaker 5 (52:54):
Yeah, but you know, which is kind of an interesting
way of putting it, you know. And that's Bill, that's Bill.
He remembers nothing but I remember, which is great if
you're writing.
Speaker 2 (53:08):
A book, right exactly. It helps.
Speaker 5 (53:11):
Then you know, you got to put it all out there.
You can't just put out pieces to write at all.
Speaker 4 (53:17):
That's me.
Speaker 5 (53:18):
That's my approach to life period. You know, you got
to if you're going to do it, you got to
put it all out there.
Speaker 3 (53:28):
You faced a little of what we face on this
podcast quite a bit, which is the clickbait headline. You
had tons of interesting stories, hundreds of pages in your memoir,
but everyone seemed to want to focus on one small
moment in the seventies where you and Bill tested the
idea of an open marriage. Were you surprised by that
(53:49):
reaction and do you have any regrets with anything you shared.
Speaker 4 (53:53):
I was very surprised.
Speaker 5 (53:55):
Yeah, I was very surprised because you know, it was
at a time in New York when everything was everything,
you know. I mean it was a wild time, right,
and not that happy a time, but it was a
wild time.
Speaker 2 (54:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (54:12):
I don't think it made anybody happy.
Speaker 5 (54:14):
And then what stopped it all was AIDS. All of
a sudden, there was AIDS and all that action stopped, right,
you know.
Speaker 4 (54:25):
But yeah, I I didn't.
Speaker 5 (54:30):
I didn't not like it, and I didn't like it,
and I was very happy when it was over.
Speaker 4 (54:36):
I was very happy.
Speaker 3 (54:37):
I was much more comfortable when you wrote about it
in the book, and then that seemed to be the
thing that people were focusing on the most. Did you
have any regrets sharing so much?
Speaker 2 (54:47):
A little bit?
Speaker 4 (54:48):
A little bit?
Speaker 5 (54:48):
Yeah, I thought, Oh, I didn't think everybody would. I
didn't think everybody would take it so seriously because I
was part of a whole.
Speaker 4 (54:57):
Group of people and they wouldn't.
Speaker 5 (55:01):
Things have changed, yeah, things always do change. Yeah, and
then COVID changes everybody. I mean, you know, things whole
things now have changed, and God knows what will happen now.
Those little things that I wrote about in the book
that's nothing.
Speaker 4 (55:18):
That's nothing.
Speaker 5 (55:19):
That's just a long marriage to actors in a position.
If we were somewhere else, we wouldn't have behaved that way.
It's just you behave the way you're allowed to behave,
you know. And it was part of the part of
the routine. It was routine.
Speaker 3 (55:38):
Well, we know our audience and really the entire world
recently celebrated Bill's ninety eighth birthday recently, and I know
everyone including us, would love and update.
Speaker 2 (55:51):
How is Bill doing well?
Speaker 5 (55:53):
As I told you, he watches Seinfeld, he raises New
York Times, and he's at a place where as he's
never remembered things, so that that's always been there, but
now it's more. He's very forgetful. He's very he will
(56:14):
forget people. He had a very close friend who just
died and he can't.
Speaker 4 (56:19):
Cope with that.
Speaker 5 (56:20):
He can't, he said, I can't believe it. I can't
believe he's no longer here. He was a guy that
he helped him a lot when he was the president
of SAG and that all the deaths are hard for him,
and most of them are men. Yeah, and his men
friends are all gone. So that's very hard for him.
Speaker 2 (56:43):
Yeah, but he just went out.
Speaker 5 (56:46):
This morning for breakfast with a guy who was a
friend from SAG. You know, he helped him there. He
got very close to a lot of people at SAG.
He had a lot of enemies, and it was very
hard because you had a lot of enemies. But he
made some very close buddies, just friends, not actors, just you.
Speaker 4 (57:07):
Know, commercial people not in his field.
Speaker 1 (57:12):
Necessarily interesting. Interesting.
Speaker 3 (57:15):
Well, Bonnie, we love seeing you every time. I'm very
excited that we get to see you at the end
of August. Thank you for coming, yes, and thank you
for coming and spending a whole hour of your time
with us.
Speaker 2 (57:27):
It was so great.
Speaker 3 (57:28):
As much as we love Bill, it's so nice to
have an entire hour dedicated to you and your accomplishments
and all of the contributions you've made to the field
of entertainment and to our lives and to Boy Meets World.
So on, behalf of our entire audience. Thank you so
much for spending your time with us.
Speaker 4 (57:46):
You you're so dear, dear, Thank.
Speaker 1 (57:50):
You so much, thank you so good to say.
Speaker 2 (57:53):
Thank you, Bonnie.
Speaker 1 (57:54):
Great to see you too.
Speaker 2 (57:55):
We'll see you in a couple months.
Speaker 4 (57:56):
Okay, good bye bye.
Speaker 2 (57:59):
All is so great talking to her.
Speaker 1 (58:03):
H yeah, I you know, one of my one of
my friends, David Pressman, his dad, Lawrence Pressman, is a
older actor who knew them back in the theater days. Yeah,
and he's he's younger than them by about ten or
fifteen years. And so we have these lunches where he tells,
(58:25):
you know, we just talked, talk about those days. And
it's the same thing as like these names. I'm like,
Barbara Harris, what, who to Hoggen what? And I'm you know,
I'm learning, like I feel just from these conversations, because
there are these you know, they who they consider legends,
were like theater actors that we just don't remember, we
don't hear about, you know, and they're they're they're they're
not we don't have them on film, we don't have
(58:47):
you know. So like I went and saw Who's Afraid
of a Tinier Wolf with with Larry and afterwards he
was like, oh, Nod Hoggin, you have to you know,
and it was like, I'm like, where is it. He's like,
I think there might be an audio recording, but he's
so three times with her, you know, you just have
these conversations, and I love hearing about about Bill and
Bonnie back in those days.
Speaker 2 (59:07):
Me too.
Speaker 3 (59:08):
I love anytime we're with them and they tell us
those stories. It's always so fascinating.
Speaker 1 (59:13):
Everybody was a drunk, That's what I love. Like every
one of the stories is like, yeah, oh Bill was
doing so and so it was horrible, drunk, horrible. I'm like, Bonnie,
was there anybody who was not drinking? She's like, well,
those theater it was how you survived.
Speaker 2 (59:28):
And it is really interesting.
Speaker 3 (59:29):
I did think it's so funny that, like for us
who grew up doing TV, and I know you obviously
you started in theater too, but like when we talk
about projects that we missed out on or whatever, we
always think of movies and TV. And any time you
talk to Bill or Bonnie about their careers, theater, theater,
(59:49):
the role, the parts in theater, the stories of the theater,
like it was the.
Speaker 1 (59:54):
Things that's the actors medium. It's like the ultimate.
Speaker 5 (59:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (59:58):
I mean, even when we asked her about her book,
it was like when she got to read it, when
she got to perform it, you know, it's like when
you're that essentially an actor, it's like it's just so cool.
Speaker 3 (01:00:08):
Well, and her biggest regret being that she took a
job she she wanted. She wanted a TV job and
it was good for the money, but she really wanted
and what would have been good for her soul? She's like,
I should have done it for me.
Speaker 1 (01:00:20):
Oh so cool, so cool.
Speaker 3 (01:00:23):
Well, thank you all for joining us for this episode
of Pod Meets World. As always, you can follow us
on Instagram pod Meets World Show. You can send us
your emails pod Meets World Show at gmail dot com
and writer, We've got merch.
Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
Moment of silence for the missing.
Speaker 3 (01:00:37):
Merch Podmeetsworldshow dot com writer send us out.
Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
We love you all, pod dismissed. Pod Meets World is
an iHeart podcast producer hosted by Danielle Fischel, Wilfredell and
Rider Straw. Executive producers Jensen Karp and Amy Sugarman. Executive
in charge of production, Danielle Romo, producer and editor, Taras Who, producer,
Maddie Moore, engineer and boy mets World Superman Easton Outen.
Our theme song is by Kyle Morton of Typhoon. Follow
(01:01:07):
us on Instagram at podmets World Show, or email us
at podmetsworldshowat gmail dot com.
Hosts And Creators
Will Friedle
Danielle Fishel
Rider Strong
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