November 21, 2024 • 17 mins
Interviews with co-host Mary Catherine Garrison conducted before and after her work on Rip Current.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Rip Current is a production of iHeart Podcasts. The views
and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the host.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Producers, or parent company. Listener discretion is it fine?
Speaker 1 (00:15):
This is a rip Current bonus episode. You don't need
to listen to follow the rip Current storyline, but it
provides more information, context, and analysis to enhance the main podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Enjoy.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
One of the great things about making Rip Current was
getting to know and work with my co host, Mary
Catherine Garrison. We hadn't originally planned to have a second
narrative voice on the podcast, so I first met her
when I interviewed her about playing Lynnette in the musical Assassins.
When we did decide to try a second voice, the
(00:52):
first person we contacted was Mary Catherine, and the rest
is history. At the end of our last recording session,
and I interviewed her a second time to get her
thoughts after going through the entire season. So this episode
has both interviews. First my initial interview with Mary Catherine,
then or Break, and then the second interview.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
So my name is Mary Catherine Garrison. I am an actor, performer,
and artist, and I did a whole bunch of Broadway
and now I mostly do TV film stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
How did you get involved with assassins?
Speaker 1 (01:32):
I remember that. I think I'd only done one, maybe
two shows on Broadway before that one came about. I'm
not a singer, I'm an I guess I'm an actor
who sings, and so I remember getting the audition and saying, well,
I mean, I just can't do this because it's Sondheim
and the agents and everybody was like, no, you should.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
It's more of a.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Character type singing gig Well. Stephen Songhim in the room
for the audition, I can't remember. I think he was
so I think that was pretty crazy, singing his song
to his face along with Joe Mantello. But then I
got the part, and then nine to eleven happened, and
the production was postponed for I think it was a
year and a half or two years, and then everybody
(02:13):
got back on the saddle.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Wow. Was that like part of the Broadway opening back
up after nine to eleven.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
I think they waited a while. I think Broadway had
been open for a little bit because I think the
tone of that show, in particular, I don't think anyone
was in the mood to think about people like that.
The guns thing for a while, so it took a minute.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah, it's interesting. So what kind of research did you
do for this part?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
The point they were trying to make was less to
be the historical document about these people and their actions,
and it was more to make a point about who
we are as people and why some people think that
that's the route to make their point, to put a
bull's eye on a very public political figure. So most
(03:03):
of what happened with the character was dreamt up and
just the kind of actor that I am, I like,
I need, I need something to be rooted in, something real,
and then if it's not totally accurate, at least it's
coming from a real place. And at the time, Lynette
Throne was still in jail, and so I actually wrote
to her, and I think we only had one exchange,
(03:25):
And I'm so sorry, Toby. I went to look for
these letters and I can't find them. I think they
got thrown out. And I think some boxes in the
basement got flooded and rotten, and I think that they
got thrown out with that. So it would have been
really fun to like scan them for you and you
could read them. But I remember I wrote back and
I told her I was doing, and I imagine she
got a lot of letters like this. She wrote me
that pretty quickly, and it was a very unsallacious letter,
(03:52):
which I think the one of the things we learned
about a lot of these Manson women was that they
were just kind of ended up being regular grandmother type
ladies in jail for a very very long time. And
her letter was very kind and very encouraging, and she
did not address a lot of Charlie's stuff, but she
was still in touch with him at the time, So
(04:13):
whatever connection she felt she had with him that led
her to do what she did, she was still connected
to Charlie at least in some ways, which I thought
that was a really interesting realization because she was kind
of wacky. I mean, she was a strange person, but
her letter was utterly unwacky, very sane, and she was
(04:33):
still theoretically devoted to him. She didn't say that outright,
but she implied that they were still in touch. He
wasn't what people thought and that kind of thing. But
she didn't say a whole lot more than that, which
was kind of a bummer, and I think I might
have written her again. I think that one letter was
all I ever got interesting.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Did she talk at all about her motivations for the assassination?
Speaker 1 (04:57):
She didn't, so I had to you know it myself,
I guess. But the thing about this show, Assassin's you know,
there was a real spectrum of mental health with all
of these characters. So and some people were firmly grounded
in some political purpose and other people were just wacky.
And I think for where Lynette was at the time,
(05:21):
for her, it felt like the only thing she could
do to get the attention that Charlie needed. I doubt
she did the same thing again, but she was a
kid when she did it.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
So in the play, what motivation is she given that.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
It will somehow free Charlie. And I think she thinks
that by killing the president, which of course she was
unsuccessful doing that, it would somehow bring attention to Charlie
and the world would see that he was their savior
and not this lunatic criminal that they all believed him
to be.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
She talks about she was like trying to save the redwoods,
that it was an environmental thing. I've also heard people
say that's what she said, but it was really all
about getting more attention to Manson. It's pretty consistently said
she was doing like this weird environmental lobbying kind of
and she just got fixated on the fact that the
(06:19):
redwoods were dying.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Well, I mean that feels like a very sixty seventies
thing to do. Yeah, the whole build up for this
character is for that song with her.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
And John Hink.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah, so the whole build up for this character was
for their duet, and it was just so his was
about Jodie Foster and in mine was about Charles Manson,
and so the whole drive for my character had to
be Charlie.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Right. Interesting. What was attractive about the part for you?
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Well, I mean most actors are interested in doing a
part that someone will hire them to do, so there's always,
you know, just the gratitude of getting a job. And
this was a pretty big scale opportunity. I mean I
was in my twenties and the director was very encouraging
and he really liked what I did, and I just
felt like it was a great First of all, to
(07:11):
seeing on Broadway, which is not something I ever thought
I would do. That was pretty cool. And then to
sing Sondheim something of that caliber was so exciting to
me because obviously that's again not what I thought I
would ever do. But I like playing parts that I
don't want to be the hero or liked all the time.
(07:31):
I liked slawed people. I liked that dimension, and I
liked that I could make What I wanted to do
was make someone who everyone thought was just crazy, but
make her a real person. And I think getting her
letter seeing that, well, she actually really is a real person.
That's not a stretch. She's not just some looney tunes
even if she may have been, I don't know, but
(07:52):
she is a real person. And it was a fun
challenge to do those with the writing where she was
kind of rich and is just crazy, so it was
fun to ground it. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah? It does. And I don't know if this is
an answerable question when you're doing that, Like what's kind
of your mindset in that situation, Like if you're sort
of inhabiting when that's from who is notorious. Everybody knows
she is. There's definitely this perception of her as being
this wacky Manson girl. What sort of mindset are you
(08:24):
in when you're trying to in front of an audience
sort of feel like there's more to it?
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Than this. Well, I'll tell you that there's two answers.
The first answer is that the space I was living
in on stage was I have found my calling. I
know what I'm supposed to do. I know how to
be useful in this world. I know that this man
could save us all, and it is my mission to
(08:50):
make sure that he's able to do that. And then
the second part of your question is because you know
I'm not psychotic, I'm aware there's an audience, so you
are performing, so you're not constantly pretending, is what I'm saying.
But I got a death threat shortly after because I
think we did some interview or something and it came
out that I communicated with her, and I ended up
(09:10):
getting a death threat in the theater, which is my
person only death threat to date, and it was really
quite scary. They had cut out the article that I
had been interviewed in and they had drawn blood dripping
down the eyes, and it's just set all over it.
You will die, Die, Die, die, You should die. You
don't deserve to live. Die Die Die Mary Catherine will
die over and over and over on this piece of paper.
(09:32):
And my entrance for that show was through the audience
because we all the big opening number, we have all
there's a big opening number, and then there's a scene
that starts, and all the characters, all these different assassins
are entering in different ways, and mine happened to be
through the audience, and I had to lay on the
steps in front of the audience. You know, I could
reach out and touch a knee easily. So I never
(09:54):
knew did that person come see the show? Are they
going to come see the show? Are they sitting somewhere
were they can get to me? I mean, this is
we weren't screening for weapons and guns. You know, anything
could have happened. You're just wide up in theater. So
once that happened, which was pretty shortly after we opened,
I had both those things in my head constantly. Nothing
else ever happened, So I guess it was just a fluke,
(10:16):
but it was pretty scary.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
My second interview with Mary Catherine is after the break.
So this is the second of the two interviews I
did with Mary Catherine. So I was interested like sort
(10:42):
of going through this project, reading the scripts, voicing some
other stuff from Lynette from whether you had sort of
different thoughts about her versus when you were actually playing
her on Broadway in Assassins.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
For sure.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
So when I was doing Assassins, it was the eighteen
hundreds and the Internet was not available, which is not
exactly true, but there wasn't you, I didn't have access
to the kind of information that you would have access
to now. And I also stopped doing a lot of
research because the Assassins is sort of it's not based
(11:20):
in history necessarily. It's more meant like I think the
characters are a foundation for the writers the play and
the songs to express what they were trying.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
To express politically.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
So the research I was doing was not useful, it
wasn't necessary, So I sort of stopped doing a lot
of research at some point. So then I'm just immersed
in this version of Squeaky that we invented for the show,
and so that's in my mind who she became. And
then all these low many years later, here we are
with all this actual, historically accurate information. So it was
(11:52):
interesting as I was reading some of it to think
about some of the scenes and how I played them
and how I was speaking, like how I thought she
sound in my head.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
I did not do historically accurate version of her.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Which was I was not intending to do that, but
it was really interesting to hear to think about what
I had done, what the show was saying, and then
to hear and read the actual words and hear her
voice and like the gentleness ever, so you know, she's
softer and more gentle than I played her.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
What was interesting if you know that.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
She tried to shoot Gerald Ford. People don't really know
what happened in between the two. We can only find
a certain amount while doing research for it. I think
there's like this immediate jump from oh, she was with
Manton and then she tried to kill the president, and
then there was this whole period in between when you
know she was just kind of a drift and sort
of yeah, doing these sort of more criminal things to
(12:44):
kind of try and support him. But it wasn't the
same sort of being in sort of a hippie cult
with all her sisters or however she considered them.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
I didn't know that Toby until this, Like, I didn't
even get that far in the musical Sarah Jane and
Squeaky from or the comic Relief. You know, we were
doing like not pratfalls, but like fumbling with our guns
because our assassination attempts weren't successful, and so we were
supposed to make the audience laugh. It's actually a very
dark and heavy thing that happened, and so the juxtaposition
(13:15):
of that was really interesting too.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
But yeah, the.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Whole how a drift she was, how lost she was
the time that, how long he had been in jail
at that point, But she was still devoted to him.
I mean, it was all it was still about him.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
It still is. I think she still is.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
I mean when I was writing letters with her, she
was still devoted to him.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
I mean that's one of the questions at the end,
is like how much of it was what she talked about,
which is saving the environment, which is actually something that's
aged pretty well, I guess, versus like trying to get
more people thinking about Charlie Manson in nineteen seventy five,
when he'd sort of fallen off the radar.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
What's that?
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Like a broken clock is right twice a day, Like
a cult can have a couple of good points of view,
you know, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
She was smart. It wasn't like she was like incapable
of sort of identifying things that were important. But you know,
obviously through this haze of manson influence. So while you
were doing this play, did you know much about Sarah
Jane Moore? Was it just listening to your co star
or whatever, playing her singing the songs whatever. Was there
(14:23):
a sense of who she was historically or was she
just a character?
Speaker 3 (14:27):
She was just a character.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
And her name is Becky Lynn Baker, by the way,
and she's still a good friend of mine. And she
was absolutely brilliant in that part. You know. I'm sure
she did all of her research, but my job was
to do my thing. And of course the two never
met in real life. So the absurdity of them sitting
on a park bench while Squeaky gets high, which is
what one of the scenes was, or they both get high.
Actually we were the comic relief in the show. So
(14:49):
that was my take on her. So I had no
idea about the FBI Underground Revolutionary.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
That whole life. I didn't know any of that. You
educate me, Toby, that's what we're trying to do here.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
It's just interesting that you know the two women are
the comic relief, especially when Sarah Jane Moore it seems
as though the reason why she wasn't successful is because
she had a gun that was defective that she got
at sort of the last second and hadn't had a
chance to adjust it.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
But in the show she fumbles and drops it and
you know, it goes off in her purse. And I
think your point is that it's the women who are
the comic relief and the other men are taken much
more seriously.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Yeah, it's very strange.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
It is interesting. I never thought about that.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
John Hinckley seems like he'd be more comic fodder with
his whole obsession with Jody Foster.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
And no, they took that very seriously.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
In the show, Squeaky and John Hinckley have a duet,
so each song was done in the decade that The
Assassin happened. So Stephen Sondheim wrote a song in the
style of that decade, and so it's a really wide
breadth of musical styles in this show. But because Squeaky
and John Hinckley were in the seventies, we had this
really cool like seventies ballads, one of the more popular songs
on of the show. And it's dead serious. It's dead serious.
(16:07):
All John Hinckley scenes are serious interesting.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
So, you know, I think people who've been listening to
the podcast, are probably interested in sort of what you're
up to today in your acting career.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
I'm in a show called Somebody Somewhere on HBO. It
is my dream job. It's something that I've been so
proud of, and we are about to have season three
come out at the end of October. Depending on when
our listeners are listening, I believe the date is October
twenty seventh for season three, we need our viewers.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Hopefully people will tune in.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
It's a really, really special show and I'm extremely proud
to be part of it.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Yeah, so people should definitely check it out. I've watched it.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Did you like it?
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Yeah, thank you?
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Yeah. I mean it's very different than the stuff that
you're used to.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
There's no dragons, yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
There's very few swords, no car chases. One of our
producers is a huge fan.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Oh good.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
They were super psyched when they heard you were doing this.
That's the end of my interview with Mary Catherine Garrison.
I want to send out a big thank you to
her for being a part of this project. She was
incredible to work with and her voice and personality are
a huge part of rip current. Please check her out
on Somebody Somewhere on HBO, I'm Toby Ball. For more
(17:28):
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite show. For more information
on Rip Current, visit the show website at ripcurrentpod dot
com
Rip Current is a production of iHeart Podcasts. The views
and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the host.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Producers, or parent company. Listener discretion is it fine?
Speaker 1 (00:15):
This is a rip Current bonus episode. You don't need
to listen to follow the rip Current storyline, but it
provides more information, context, and analysis to enhance the main podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Enjoy.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
One of the great things about making Rip Current was
getting to know and work with my co host, Mary
Catherine Garrison. We hadn't originally planned to have a second
narrative voice on the podcast, so I first met her
when I interviewed her about playing Lynnette in the musical Assassins.
When we did decide to try a second voice, the
(00:52):
first person we contacted was Mary Catherine, and the rest
is history. At the end of our last recording session,
and I interviewed her a second time to get her
thoughts after going through the entire season. So this episode
has both interviews. First my initial interview with Mary Catherine,
then or Break, and then the second interview.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
So my name is Mary Catherine Garrison. I am an actor, performer,
and artist, and I did a whole bunch of Broadway
and now I mostly do TV film stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
How did you get involved with assassins?
Speaker 1 (01:32):
I remember that. I think I'd only done one, maybe
two shows on Broadway before that one came about. I'm
not a singer, I'm an I guess I'm an actor
who sings, and so I remember getting the audition and saying, well,
I mean, I just can't do this because it's Sondheim
and the agents and everybody was like, no, you should.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
It's more of a.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Character type singing gig Well. Stephen Songhim in the room
for the audition, I can't remember. I think he was
so I think that was pretty crazy, singing his song
to his face along with Joe Mantello. But then I
got the part, and then nine to eleven happened, and
the production was postponed for I think it was a
year and a half or two years, and then everybody
(02:13):
got back on the saddle.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Wow. Was that like part of the Broadway opening back
up after nine to eleven.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
I think they waited a while. I think Broadway had
been open for a little bit because I think the
tone of that show, in particular, I don't think anyone
was in the mood to think about people like that.
The guns thing for a while, so it took a minute.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah, it's interesting. So what kind of research did you
do for this part?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
The point they were trying to make was less to
be the historical document about these people and their actions,
and it was more to make a point about who
we are as people and why some people think that
that's the route to make their point, to put a
bull's eye on a very public political figure. So most
(03:03):
of what happened with the character was dreamt up and
just the kind of actor that I am, I like,
I need, I need something to be rooted in, something real,
and then if it's not totally accurate, at least it's
coming from a real place. And at the time, Lynette
Throne was still in jail, and so I actually wrote
to her, and I think we only had one exchange,
(03:25):
And I'm so sorry, Toby. I went to look for
these letters and I can't find them. I think they
got thrown out. And I think some boxes in the
basement got flooded and rotten, and I think that they
got thrown out with that. So it would have been
really fun to like scan them for you and you
could read them. But I remember I wrote back and
I told her I was doing, and I imagine she
got a lot of letters like this. She wrote me
that pretty quickly, and it was a very unsallacious letter,
(03:52):
which I think the one of the things we learned
about a lot of these Manson women was that they
were just kind of ended up being regular grandmother type
ladies in jail for a very very long time. And
her letter was very kind and very encouraging, and she
did not address a lot of Charlie's stuff, but she
was still in touch with him at the time, So
(04:13):
whatever connection she felt she had with him that led
her to do what she did, she was still connected
to Charlie at least in some ways, which I thought
that was a really interesting realization because she was kind
of wacky. I mean, she was a strange person, but
her letter was utterly unwacky, very sane, and she was
(04:33):
still theoretically devoted to him. She didn't say that outright,
but she implied that they were still in touch. He
wasn't what people thought and that kind of thing. But
she didn't say a whole lot more than that, which
was kind of a bummer, and I think I might
have written her again. I think that one letter was
all I ever got interesting.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Did she talk at all about her motivations for the assassination?
Speaker 1 (04:57):
She didn't, so I had to you know it myself,
I guess. But the thing about this show, Assassin's you know,
there was a real spectrum of mental health with all
of these characters. So and some people were firmly grounded
in some political purpose and other people were just wacky.
And I think for where Lynette was at the time,
(05:21):
for her, it felt like the only thing she could
do to get the attention that Charlie needed. I doubt
she did the same thing again, but she was a
kid when she did it.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
So in the play, what motivation is she given that.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
It will somehow free Charlie. And I think she thinks
that by killing the president, which of course she was
unsuccessful doing that, it would somehow bring attention to Charlie
and the world would see that he was their savior
and not this lunatic criminal that they all believed him
to be.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
She talks about she was like trying to save the redwoods,
that it was an environmental thing. I've also heard people
say that's what she said, but it was really all
about getting more attention to Manson. It's pretty consistently said
she was doing like this weird environmental lobbying kind of
and she just got fixated on the fact that the
(06:19):
redwoods were dying.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Well, I mean that feels like a very sixty seventies
thing to do. Yeah, the whole build up for this
character is for that song with her.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
And John Hink.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah, so the whole build up for this character was
for their duet, and it was just so his was
about Jodie Foster and in mine was about Charles Manson,
and so the whole drive for my character had to
be Charlie.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Right. Interesting. What was attractive about the part for you?
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Well, I mean most actors are interested in doing a
part that someone will hire them to do, so there's always,
you know, just the gratitude of getting a job. And
this was a pretty big scale opportunity. I mean I
was in my twenties and the director was very encouraging
and he really liked what I did, and I just
felt like it was a great First of all, to
(07:11):
seeing on Broadway, which is not something I ever thought
I would do. That was pretty cool. And then to
sing Sondheim something of that caliber was so exciting to
me because obviously that's again not what I thought I
would ever do. But I like playing parts that I
don't want to be the hero or liked all the time.
(07:31):
I liked slawed people. I liked that dimension, and I
liked that I could make What I wanted to do
was make someone who everyone thought was just crazy, but
make her a real person. And I think getting her
letter seeing that, well, she actually really is a real person.
That's not a stretch. She's not just some looney tunes
even if she may have been, I don't know, but
(07:52):
she is a real person. And it was a fun
challenge to do those with the writing where she was
kind of rich and is just crazy, so it was
fun to ground it. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah? It does. And I don't know if this is
an answerable question when you're doing that, Like what's kind
of your mindset in that situation, Like if you're sort
of inhabiting when that's from who is notorious. Everybody knows
she is. There's definitely this perception of her as being
this wacky Manson girl. What sort of mindset are you
(08:24):
in when you're trying to in front of an audience
sort of feel like there's more to it?
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Than this. Well, I'll tell you that there's two answers.
The first answer is that the space I was living
in on stage was I have found my calling. I
know what I'm supposed to do. I know how to
be useful in this world. I know that this man
could save us all, and it is my mission to
(08:50):
make sure that he's able to do that. And then
the second part of your question is because you know
I'm not psychotic, I'm aware there's an audience, so you
are performing, so you're not constantly pretending, is what I'm saying.
But I got a death threat shortly after because I
think we did some interview or something and it came
out that I communicated with her, and I ended up
(09:10):
getting a death threat in the theater, which is my
person only death threat to date, and it was really
quite scary. They had cut out the article that I
had been interviewed in and they had drawn blood dripping
down the eyes, and it's just set all over it.
You will die, Die, Die, die, You should die. You
don't deserve to live. Die Die Die Mary Catherine will
die over and over and over on this piece of paper.
(09:32):
And my entrance for that show was through the audience
because we all the big opening number, we have all
there's a big opening number, and then there's a scene
that starts, and all the characters, all these different assassins
are entering in different ways, and mine happened to be
through the audience, and I had to lay on the
steps in front of the audience. You know, I could
reach out and touch a knee easily. So I never
(09:54):
knew did that person come see the show? Are they
going to come see the show? Are they sitting somewhere
were they can get to me? I mean, this is
we weren't screening for weapons and guns. You know, anything
could have happened. You're just wide up in theater. So
once that happened, which was pretty shortly after we opened,
I had both those things in my head constantly. Nothing
else ever happened, So I guess it was just a fluke,
(10:16):
but it was pretty scary.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
My second interview with Mary Catherine is after the break.
So this is the second of the two interviews I
did with Mary Catherine. So I was interested like sort
(10:42):
of going through this project, reading the scripts, voicing some
other stuff from Lynette from whether you had sort of
different thoughts about her versus when you were actually playing
her on Broadway in Assassins.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
For sure.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
So when I was doing Assassins, it was the eighteen
hundreds and the Internet was not available, which is not
exactly true, but there wasn't you, I didn't have access
to the kind of information that you would have access
to now. And I also stopped doing a lot of
research because the Assassins is sort of it's not based
(11:20):
in history necessarily. It's more meant like I think the
characters are a foundation for the writers the play and
the songs to express what they were trying.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
To express politically.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
So the research I was doing was not useful, it
wasn't necessary, So I sort of stopped doing a lot
of research at some point. So then I'm just immersed
in this version of Squeaky that we invented for the show,
and so that's in my mind who she became. And
then all these low many years later, here we are
with all this actual, historically accurate information. So it was
(11:52):
interesting as I was reading some of it to think
about some of the scenes and how I played them
and how I was speaking, like how I thought she
sound in my head.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
I did not do historically accurate version of her.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Which was I was not intending to do that, but
it was really interesting to hear to think about what
I had done, what the show was saying, and then
to hear and read the actual words and hear her
voice and like the gentleness ever, so you know, she's
softer and more gentle than I played her.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
What was interesting if you know that.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
She tried to shoot Gerald Ford. People don't really know
what happened in between the two. We can only find
a certain amount while doing research for it. I think
there's like this immediate jump from oh, she was with
Manton and then she tried to kill the president, and
then there was this whole period in between when you
know she was just kind of a drift and sort
of yeah, doing these sort of more criminal things to
(12:44):
kind of try and support him. But it wasn't the
same sort of being in sort of a hippie cult
with all her sisters or however she considered them.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
I didn't know that Toby until this, Like, I didn't
even get that far in the musical Sarah Jane and
Squeaky from or the comic Relief. You know, we were
doing like not pratfalls, but like fumbling with our guns
because our assassination attempts weren't successful, and so we were
supposed to make the audience laugh. It's actually a very
dark and heavy thing that happened, and so the juxtaposition
(13:15):
of that was really interesting too.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
But yeah, the.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Whole how a drift she was, how lost she was
the time that, how long he had been in jail
at that point, But she was still devoted to him.
I mean, it was all it was still about him.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
It still is. I think she still is.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
I mean when I was writing letters with her, she
was still devoted to him.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
I mean that's one of the questions at the end,
is like how much of it was what she talked about,
which is saving the environment, which is actually something that's
aged pretty well, I guess, versus like trying to get
more people thinking about Charlie Manson in nineteen seventy five,
when he'd sort of fallen off the radar.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
What's that?
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Like a broken clock is right twice a day, Like
a cult can have a couple of good points of view,
you know, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
She was smart. It wasn't like she was like incapable
of sort of identifying things that were important. But you know,
obviously through this haze of manson influence. So while you
were doing this play, did you know much about Sarah
Jane Moore? Was it just listening to your co star
or whatever, playing her singing the songs whatever. Was there
(14:23):
a sense of who she was historically or was she
just a character?
Speaker 3 (14:27):
She was just a character.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
And her name is Becky Lynn Baker, by the way,
and she's still a good friend of mine. And she
was absolutely brilliant in that part. You know. I'm sure
she did all of her research, but my job was
to do my thing. And of course the two never
met in real life. So the absurdity of them sitting
on a park bench while Squeaky gets high, which is
what one of the scenes was, or they both get high.
Actually we were the comic relief in the show. So
(14:49):
that was my take on her. So I had no
idea about the FBI Underground Revolutionary.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
That whole life. I didn't know any of that. You
educate me, Toby, that's what we're trying to do here.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
It's just interesting that you know the two women are
the comic relief, especially when Sarah Jane Moore it seems
as though the reason why she wasn't successful is because
she had a gun that was defective that she got
at sort of the last second and hadn't had a
chance to adjust it.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
But in the show she fumbles and drops it and
you know, it goes off in her purse. And I
think your point is that it's the women who are
the comic relief and the other men are taken much
more seriously.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Yeah, it's very strange.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
It is interesting. I never thought about that.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
John Hinckley seems like he'd be more comic fodder with
his whole obsession with Jody Foster.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
And no, they took that very seriously.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
In the show, Squeaky and John Hinckley have a duet,
so each song was done in the decade that The
Assassin happened. So Stephen Sondheim wrote a song in the
style of that decade, and so it's a really wide
breadth of musical styles in this show. But because Squeaky
and John Hinckley were in the seventies, we had this
really cool like seventies ballads, one of the more popular songs
on of the show. And it's dead serious. It's dead serious.
(16:07):
All John Hinckley scenes are serious interesting.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
So, you know, I think people who've been listening to
the podcast, are probably interested in sort of what you're
up to today in your acting career.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
I'm in a show called Somebody Somewhere on HBO. It
is my dream job. It's something that I've been so
proud of, and we are about to have season three
come out at the end of October. Depending on when
our listeners are listening, I believe the date is October
twenty seventh for season three, we need our viewers.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Hopefully people will tune in.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
It's a really, really special show and I'm extremely proud
to be part of it.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Yeah, so people should definitely check it out. I've watched it.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Did you like it?
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Yeah, thank you?
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Yeah. I mean it's very different than the stuff that
you're used to.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
There's no dragons, yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
There's very few swords, no car chases. One of our
producers is a huge fan.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Oh good.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
They were super psyched when they heard you were doing this.
That's the end of my interview with Mary Catherine Garrison.
I want to send out a big thank you to
her for being a part of this project. She was
incredible to work with and her voice and personality are
a huge part of rip current. Please check her out
on Somebody Somewhere on HBO, I'm Toby Ball. For more
(17:28):
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite show. For more information
on Rip Current, visit the show website at ripcurrentpod dot
com
Host
Toby Ball
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