March 1, 2023 • 49 mins
What does the director of such macabre television shows as “Dahmer” and “American Horror Story” have in common with the queen of domesticity? Turns out, quite a bit. In this week’s episode, Martha interviews Ryan Murphy, the prolific storyteller who has dominated American television with hits including “Glee,” and “Nip/Tuck” and many, many more. While their binge-watching tastes might diverge, they share similar passions for creativity, exploring history, and a beautiful garden. These two have a lot to dish about – tune in to listen.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Watching It was fun because I would see the clips
that I would say to myself, Oh, that was so
hard to get made. That was a big fight. And
then suddenly halfway through I remember thinking, I didn't have
to fight at all for that. Thing's got easy for
me right around two twelve or I could kind of
make whatever I wanted to make Emmy Golden Globe Tony
(00:25):
Peabody Award winning producer, director, and writer Rian Murphy has
been called a most powerful man in TV by the
New Yorker. He's known for his hit television shows such
as Niptuck, Glee, American Horror Story, Halston, and Dahmer. You
may have seen some of his popular films. Also known
(00:46):
for his dark storylines, extreme attention to detail, and hard
working nature, Ryan has rightfully earned a place in Hollywood history.
Joining me to talk about his career, his life, and
every thing in between. I hear he has amazing bid
making skills, ladies, and he also has a green thumb. Gardeners.
(01:08):
Is my neighbor, my new neighbor, Ryan Murphy. Welcome to
my podcast. Thank you, Martha, that's fun to be here.
It's really nice to see you. And Ryan got dressed
up I think he's dressed off. He has a black,
very beautifully tailored suit on kind of a narrowist narrows
jacket but without the raised collar, right, and in a
(01:29):
black sweater underneath, black pants, black shoes. I always back
a black beanie, a black beanie. You like beanies, though,
the last time I saw you you had a gray
beanie on. I do. I kind of wear them, you know.
I mean, I have the Murphy bald spot, right, so
sometimes I wear them for weather. And then I just
liked them and it became, you know, a look like
(01:51):
a uniform. Yeah, I don't know. I just kind of
got sick of having hair one day and shaved it
off in a fit of peek and I like it.
I like you without hair, thank you. Yeah, you look handsome.
Ryan Murphy is a very handsome man, a very talented man.
There you are taking it now, now you can. But
we're in a We're in this really charming booth and
Rockefeller's Center in one rock that used to be a
(02:14):
newsstand and is now behind glass. People walk by, they're
very curious about who's in the booth. Lots of podcasts
are recorded here. I like that. No, I didn't I
walked in, I was like, what is this joint? I
thought it was an old cigar store at first. It
looks it looks like it looks like a shoeshine parlor. Yeah,
you know, it looks like you could have the shin
stands right here, or or a newsstand. I miss all
(02:36):
that we were saying earlier, how much I love news stands.
I love getting magazines. I love, you know, having been
a journalist. I liked that I like to get my
hands dirty with the print and all. Well, not too
many people know that you were a journalist and I
worked for Kara's Swisher. I did. I love Kara Swisher.
I met her first at the Wall Street Journal Big
(02:59):
conference that they have every year out in southern California, right,
and she's just a brilliant, brilliant journalist, researcher, techie. Now
she's totally involved in the tech world. Tell me about
your early career in journalism. My career in journalism was
weird because I was I went to journalism school. I
(03:20):
was accepted to film school, but my parents could not
pay for it, so I didn't end up going. So
I went to Indiana University, and I thought, well, I'm
gonna major in journalism. So the weird thing that happened
is my sophomore year of college, the USA Today Purple
section came out the Life section. So suddenly people wanted
(03:43):
people who could interview celebrities and interview movie people or
television people. And I did that and I just kind
of made it a specialty. So then I would get
these crazy internships at wonderful places. So Kara Swisher, who
is a friend and famously says I was the worst
intern of all time at the Washington Post because I
(04:04):
showed up and they wanted to put me in like
the neighborhood section covering crime, and I said, no, that's
not what I want. I want to be in the
lifestyle section and I want Bob Woodward to be my mentor.
And they were like, well, you're crazy. So I said,
well that's it's free. We can you. You know, I'm mopping. See,
(04:25):
we always pay our interns. Never got paid. So the
next thing I know, Bob agreed to meet with me,
and then um, I was in the you know, the
lifestyle section, and all the other interns were like furious
because I was getting to do great fun stories and
I was always like you asked for it. I asked
(04:45):
for it, and I've always asked for it, and I think, um,
I'm very good at not taking no for an answer,
and that's part of my success. I think I've always
been very determined. But yeah, I met Kara there. I
have a very great memory of Kara and I and
a group of friends driving from DC to go see
one of Sandra Bernhardt's first shows in the village and
(05:09):
all we played the entire trip was the Tracy Chapman
album over and over. So whenever I see but that
was it wasn't that the year it came out? Yeah? Yeah,
And that's how old I am. But I mean, whenever
I see Kara, I think that Tracy Chapman album was
so amazing. And my old CEO, Charles Coppelman, he's the
one who brought her to her fame. Oh really Yeah.
(05:32):
His son was at in college in Boston and she
was in college in Boston and he heard her in
a club or something and they made her famous. But
her music made her. I love her music. I wish
she recorded more, but you know, she records very like
she's like Shade. Yeah, I was Shade would come out
with an album once a year. I love I love
them both, but that's yeah. I was pushy and I
(05:54):
was polite, but um, I just would not take note
for an answer. And it was the best thing that
I ever did, because all of those years of interviewing
people and learning about the film and TV business really
prepared me for when I decided to do it. Do it?
Did your grandmother have anything to do with your interest
and interests? Oh? Yeah? Oh yeah? What was grandmam? My
(06:16):
grandmother's name was Myrtle, and she was fantastic. And where
did she lived? Like five blocks from my parents in Indianapolis.
And she was somebody like you that sort of treated
life as an art, you know. So she would wake
me up so that I could watch her put on
her makeup. So she was very meticulous and she was
(06:38):
very interested in crazy things like she loved vampires. She
loved vampire movies. Her big heartthrob was Bella Legosi. She
said the most fun time she ever had in her
life was seeing the original nineteen thirty two Legosi Dracula.
So I grew up with that hertle bit of her. Yeah,
and she used to know she was tough. She was
(06:59):
a tough old bird Myrtle and I would be young,
like three years old, cowering behind the chair. She would say,
get over here, this is ridiculous, it's not real, and
I would watch it and I liked the feeling of
being afraid. So I always had a soft spot for horror.
And it was really because of her, and also musicals.
(07:19):
It was a weird childhood, but she, um, you know,
I was from my grandfather, Olaf Anders Anderson came over
on the boat and I am related to Hans Christian Anderson,
the writer, which is weird and Christian and yeah, and
I grew up. So that's another. That's another one of
(07:41):
your characteristics is that you do love fantasy. I do. Yeah,
you love fairy tales, I do? You work with fairy
tales all the time, right, even if they're nightmares. I
believe in Um, you know, I've been punished and blessed
for this, but I believe in my work. I believe
in extremity. I like things that make you force you
(08:02):
to feel something. And I think horror and musicals and
I've done both. Do that, you know. They it's impossible
to be Switzerland when you're watching those. You either love
them or you don't, but they make you feel things.
They always made me feel things, and I love them.
So your career is on its way. You get through
(08:23):
the internship. What happened after the internship, Well after the internship,
then I after the Washington Post, I went to the
Miami Herald, and I was lucky enough to get an
editor who really believed me and bleed in me because
this was a real job. Is this was an internship
that turned into a real job. And I would walk
in there as a very young kid, and I would
(08:44):
say I want to go interview Meryl Streep and he
would say, okay, well let me get you a ticket.
Let's do that. So he encouraged that, and then he
let me go to Los Angeles to kind of be
the one man bureau of the Miami Herald. And the
rule was I had to turn in three stories a
day Monday through Friday, and if I missed one, then
the job would be over. That was the deal. Work.
(09:07):
It was a lot of work. So I was out
working and working and writing, and it was that thing.
And people are always say to me, like they say
to you, how do you do what you do? How
do you get it all? Done. And I grew up
with for two or three years doing that level of
intense work. And it's a discipline. There's no time for
writer's block, there's no time to say I'm not inspired.
(09:29):
I just make it a part of my day like
I did then. So when you were at the Miami Herald,
who was the most interesting person you interviewed? Well, Meryl
Streep and then I got to direct her years later,
so that was crazy, and she was so nice to me.
She she was always supposed to give me ten minutes.
She gave me I think twenty or half an hour.
She gave me a long time. And back then they
(09:51):
would do junkets and she had just had her daughter,
who I would later also direct, which was crazy, and
it was a thrill, and she was a thrill and
she was so kind and she all of the ladies
back then. I interviewed Jessica Lang as a kid. You
know that I worked with her and she's one of
(10:11):
my best friends. And it all stopped when I interviewed
Share for the fifth time and Scherr said, you've got
to get a new line of work. Kid, I've see
you too much. And she actually said to me, shar
why don't you write a script do something else? Because
I was young, and so I said, okay, how young
were you at that point? I was like, I had
been doing this for several years. I was like, twenty eight,
(10:33):
you know it is time to start writing, because you know,
I and I believe that you become who you become
in the world when you're thirty two. And so I again,
I was a little late. I was more like forty two,
forty two when you became Martha. Yeah, but you were
always Martha, No, but I was. But I was more
Martha after when I started the Home State catering. Right, Well,
(10:56):
I believe in late bloomers because you have experience, Like
what did I know? So I wrote my first script.
I wrote a script called why Can't I Be Audrey Hepburn?
It was a title, and of course, who doesn't want
to be Audrey Hepburn? And I knew it was a
good title and it was a romantic comedy. So I
didn't have I had an agent who was lovely, sort
(11:16):
of a boutique agent, and she loved the script and
she sent it out to six places, and all six
places by the end of that day bid on it
and The person who paid the most too, I went
with and I would have gone for free, was Steven Spielberg.
So Steven Spielberg bought my very first script. Actually lucky,
and I was lucky. And I was suddenly just thrown
(11:38):
into this thing because if you're a young writer and
Steven buys your script, you're on the front page of
all the trades made into anything. You know, it wasn't,
and I'm glad it wasn't, because I became the prince
of darkness. I guess a lot of people, women actresses
still call me up and say, he's that script available,
and I haven't looked at it in a while. But
(11:59):
Stephen would call me in like once a week. And
he had done Audrey Hepburn's last movie, which was a
film called Always Um I think it was called Always,
and she played like an angel. Of course she did
all in white cash mirror. And so he would he
would bring me in and he would teach me about screenwriting.
So we'd break down my script and then I go
(12:19):
home and then he'd read it and you'd give me
more notes. So he did that for me for a
couple of times. And he was a lovely, lovely teacher
and I learned so much from him, and then I
just started selling everything and I never looked back. And
that was nineteen ninety six, so it was kind of great.
That seems like yesterday. I know, really and you have
done so much, I know since nineteen ninety six. Give
(12:41):
a scratch your your stubbledehead and say, oh my god,
I did much. I had a moment where I just
was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Hollywood
Form Press and I thought, I'm still in the game.
I'm a little young to be getting a Lifetime Achievement award,
but I wanted the hardware, so I said yes. So
(13:02):
I got to watch the clip reel of my career.
You know, they put together the three years how old
were you at that time? This was this in January,
but I got I had a moment where I watched
all of my work. I was like, wow, I really
have mania, like I have done a lot in you
know what. It was my television work and that career
started in nineteen ninety eight. My first reel hit was
(13:24):
in two thousand and three, so I've done a lot
of work in twenty years. And I was sort of
Proud and also watching it was fun because I would
see the clips then I would say to myself, Oh,
that was so hard to get made. That was a
big fight. And then suddenly halfway through I remember thinking
I didn't have to fight at all. For that things
got easy for me right around two twelve, where I
(13:44):
could kind of make whatever I wanted to make. Your
first mentor Steven Spielberg just came out with his autographic
which I loved. Yeah, I love the Fableman's Yeah, um,
(14:05):
are you going to do a autobiographical film at some point?
But you know, that's a good question. It's not about myrtle.
It's a very very good story because I went to
in all Catholic school and every year our family would
take a trip to Saint Petersburg, Florida. I think, say
(14:25):
Saint peters for Russia. No, Martha, No, it was Saint Petersburg, Florida.
And every year my mother would pick a nun to
drive with us and we would treat She would treat
these nuns to these vacations and then I would give
the nuns makeovers and it was crazy because could they
take their habits off while you were on Vegas? They could.
They would, oh you and you dress them like in
(14:48):
bathing suits? Yes, they got I bought them and my
mother would help me because I had an allowance. I
would always buy them a bathing suit and kind of
teach them about ponds cold cream. But I was nuns
were a thing with me. I asked them questions and
they slept in the same bed every year that it
would be me and a nun in double bed and
my parents from the other My brother would sleep on
(15:10):
the floor. So I'm writing a story about one of
the nuns. Wow, who could tell even at an early
age that I was gay. And it turned out she
was a lesbian and she had become a nun so
that she didn't have to deal with her true self.
And she was young and in her twenties, and so
we had many, many long talks about it and on
(15:32):
the beach. So I'm doing a story about the nuns.
That's going to be interesting. And my mother's well, you
rarely see a nun nowadays, I know there unless you
go to Italy or some other very very Catholic country,
you don't see the nuns in their habits. And I
was brought up as a Catholic, and I knew all that,
(15:52):
all the nuns in the local Catholic schools, and I
always kind of fantasized wearing those very very starchy thing
waited things around your face that made creases in your
forehead and your cheeks. I know. I always wonder why
don't they believe they're so tight? I know? And this
was this, I mean, they were this is writer on
Vatican too when I was doing it. So they had
(16:13):
but they still had the habit short one. But you'd
be proud of me because there was a big rose
garden in the church where I went to school that
I had fallen into ruin and none of the nuns
took care of it. And I was going to school
there and I said, can I fix up the rose garden?
They were like, yeah, okay. So I dedicated three years
to fixing it up and fertilizing it and pruning and
(16:35):
making it beautiful. And that began. Well, my grandmother was
a big gardener, but that became my love affair with
nuns and gardens. Yeah, I was just I was just
treated to a tour of a new property that our
guests is building near near my farm in Bedford. And
he's building a walled garden with a six foot high wall.
(16:59):
How many acres is that the walled garden? Yeah, I
think it's like two and a half three two and
a half acre walled garden. They only build those in
the eighteenth century, Yeah, England. Well, I'm just doing it
to show off for you so you can come up
love it, you know. And that's gonna have a rose?
Is it gonna have a rose? No, it's an edible garden.
Every berries and tree, food, trees and like that. But
(17:23):
you know, no past decides nothing. No organic. I'm very organic.
And it's like, um, you know, it was a farm
that I bought near your house. To me was a
dream because I've always wanted to do that and I
have three boys and so it's going to be their
legacy property. And it's, um, you know, it's a lot.
It's like forty seven acres. So it's fantastic property. And
(17:43):
your views are amazing, They're amazing, amazing. You're you're going
to have a good time there. I'm gonna I'm gonna
call you over every couple of months. I will inspection.
I will come over and inspect, and I'll bring you seedlings. Oh,
that'd be great. I mean, even we even doing the tour,
you gave me some so many great ideas you did.
You'd love to decorate. I do. Brian just showed me
(18:05):
a picture of a table for his new farm that
has the legs of horses. Yeah, all the legs are
middle legs, but they bronze and they are in the
shape of horses legs, beautiful graceful legs. And uh and
so I mean. And the last time I saw him,
he was showing me a marble statuary from the from
(18:27):
the antiquities of Rome and Greece. So you you were
all over the place. I am. It's sort of like
a stram. I'm a collector, you know, and I love design.
I love doing a house, and I love I have
a big art collection. I'm really into collecting art. And
I don't know, it's it's um, it's something that Actually
(18:49):
the very first thing that I wanted to be was
a landscape architect, really, and when I moved to Hollywood,
I did gardens for free for friends. Many of him
now run big companies. So that's what I did and
I just loved it. And then when I when I
started to get the means. You know, I'm a very
curious person, and I go through different phases and different
sort of I like this or I like that, and
(19:10):
I want to learn everything I can about a topic
until I'm kind of exhausted. But that's why you're making
documentary type of works of art, right about a serial
killer that is so precise and so detailed. How many
episodes was that? That was ten episodes? And I had
(19:31):
worked on that for ten years sort of trying to
get it made and very interested in it from the
victim's point of view. And you know, that's the thing
about what I do that I love is, you know,
I'm a showrunner and I get to create world. So
if you're doing that, my feeling is like, well, why
would you want somebody else to have a vision. So
(19:52):
I'm very hands on with the design and the costumes
and the look. And that's the way you live. You
are hands on with pretty much everything you do, right,
thank you? Well, I mean that's that's my joy. You know.
I like creating invite environment ability. I mean, very few
people have that ability, really, Ryan, Yeah, oh, I don't
think a lot of people have that ability. You do well,
(20:12):
but yeah, but I'm not talking about me, I'm talking
about you. Yeah, well, I love it and and the
amount of work that you have created in a very
short period of time is astonishing. Now let's talk about
let's talk about who's your audience. It seems to be
very broad because you go from something like Lee, which
has to do with music and dancing and happiness and said, well,
(20:33):
sadness too, but but a competition, and then you go
into the darkest of places. From from that, yeah, dark,
You're all over the place. I know. I have a
rule in my career which is do the opposite of
what you just did. You know, And I'm a weirdo,
like we had talked about it. I love horror, I
love musicals. I love things that don't come together. So
(20:55):
I always try and do something very different than the
thing I just did. So the last thing, you know,
I had an incredibly fun fall. I had Dahmer, I
had Watcher, I had American Horror Story, and I had
mister Harrigan's Phone, all of which fell into like the
horror darkness. Yeah, and you know, I make everything. I
only make something if I want to watch it. Now,
(21:16):
what are you doing and doing? Some light I am
developing some light things. Yes, we yeah, I am. I'm
not a sitcom guy. I'm not a comedy guy. I
want to do things right now. I'm working on things,
developing things for the future, wherever that will take me.
I want to do things that are inspirational and aspirational
right now. And that's how I felt when I did Glee.
(21:38):
You know, that was like the first year of it,
but it was it was I mean, every kid in
America watched Glee. They yeah, they loved it, and they
never stopped watching it. Because now it's on streaming. It's
on Disney Plus and Hulu. So there's a whole new
generation of kids who come up to me, you know
that are my son's age ten, and say, I just
started to watch it, and you know, it's interesting, how
(22:00):
well it's inspirational, it gives hope, It does a lot
of things. Um, and I think that I think that
where Dahmer just makes you go deeper and deeper into
the into the darkness. Yeah, did you watch dal Was
it too much for you? No? I mean I grew
up with Hannibal Lecture. Oh yeah, okay, gosh, and that
was pretty difficult. Can you watch horror. Do you watch
(22:20):
things like that? Can sometimes? I know, I know that
it's not real horror, right about horror? Yeah, and I
love Frankenstein and those things, right, but um but I
get impatient. I get a little bit impatient with serial killers.
I just don't. I just don't go for it. Not
your cup of tea? Well, what have you watched lightly
(22:43):
or benched? Like, what's something that you've loved? Well? I
like I like sort of socio political kind of thrillers
like fouda Wow. I like I like real I like
I like those sexy tough men that are in those
I just watching, oh when that's very complicated, but with
the same guy that Lee or guy I just watching,
(23:05):
um a hit and run. I have seen none of
these parts. You haven't nose is really well. When I
go to the farm, I'm going to come over a
couple of nights a week and watch That's right. You're
gonna have a big cinema there, aren't you. There's one
that was in the house. Yeah, okay, Well we can
sit in your cinema. I don't have one of those.
I watch on an iPad. You do, That's kind of
how I watch it too, do I don't like I
(23:28):
think people are over big screen. Well you're you're a
TV man, I know, so that's why you like the
small screen. I have the largest iPad you can get,
and that's what I watch. But you and I are
so opposite because you get up at the crack of dawn.
But I've already watched probably five episodes or something. I know,
because I don't. I don't sleep well, I know, but
I work every night from ten to two. Every now
(23:50):
and then after that I need something to sort of
change and get my mind off to work. So that's
where all then I watched something. Usually I watched something,
half of something, or if I really love it, I'll
watch all of it and then I'll go to bed. Yeah.
What time to get up? Pen's probably a thirty nine.
Oh see, my day begins at the home. Everybody shows
(24:13):
up for work at seven, so I couldn't possibly be
in bid at eight or nine. What do you do
when you get up so early at seven and I
go to the gym? You get up at four thirty? Right, Yeah,
I get up, but I do the I have to
do the crossword puzzle. I have to do word box.
I have to do wordle now foodle. I do all
those silly things to keep my mind going. And then
(24:33):
I read. I read all the articles that look very
interesting on the iPad, and then I get up and
I go to the gym, take my shower, go to
the gym. Um, do whatever errands I have to do.
Get in the car and come to New York. Do
my day's work. Interview Ryan Murphy. I think you're either
a morning person or a night per seven. And I'm
I agree. I am. I am that way. I am
(24:55):
always definitely a morning person. Always have to get so
much done. Well you do too. Look what you get done.
You get it done in the morning, and I get
it done at night. I like it at night because
nobody calls me. My kids are in bed. I just
sit there at my beautiful table, and you know, and
I do my work with the horses. Speak ye to
be at the table. Yeah. Did you get it already?
(25:15):
Did you buy it? No? I wanted to show you
what to see what you think I might have to
buy it and put in my bar. No, it's not
an auction. You're going to I might counter I might
counter bid. It's a good one. Though it looks very beautif. Yeah,
it's pretty well. How do you stay ahead of the curve?
What inspires you or what induces you to do that?
I mean, because you are always ahead of the curve.
(25:38):
People say that, but it's just I don't know. I
don't understand that about So. I don't think Holston was
ahead of the curve. Holston just fit in really nicely
to what people were thinking about. Yeah, yeah, I think so.
I always am trying to do something that sort of
hits me where I'm about the life that I'm living,
and I sometimes don't even know why. Like right now,
(26:00):
I'm working on a feud called Truman Capodi versus the Swans. Oh,
I can't wait, And it's really great. I met him
a couple of times, you did, Yeah, how was he
a squeaky little man? Squeaky? Yeah? He was squeaky, Yeah,
a little and and and yeah, and he was like
I found him terribly affected. You thought you thought that
(26:22):
was all play. I don't. I wouldn't make fun of stuttering,
you know, I just wouldn't do that. But but he
was he was. I think he was very affected. I
could see you being one of his swans. Um. Yeah,
but I never I never. I never got into that gang. Yeah.
Babe Paley, who was one of his swans, I think
is in your film, Yeahami Watts Place. Babe, Oh she
(26:43):
does beautiful. We shared a gynecologist, you did, yet I
sat in the same room with Babe Paley. Wow, I
just happened and I and I was kept saying, this
woman is so. She was beautiful, unbelievably beautiful, and cheek
and emaciated. Yeah, she was emaciated and she was dying
(27:05):
of cancer at the time that I met her. She
was going to the doctor trying to trying to stay alive. Wow.
And it was I watched I watched the decline in theist,
we cover that and in this show. You know, the
thing about the show that I was interested in is
we've always already seen Capodi in the sixties, you know,
(27:25):
Phil Hoffmanton so beautifully. So I wanted to start it
in seventy five when he wrote, you know, his takedown
of the Swans, his best friends and then never got
over it. So to me, it's about loyalty, it's about friendship,
and I'm it's a personal thing. I wanted to write
about that. Yeah, and the things that I'm working on
like I'm working on a sci fi show. Someday I'll
(27:47):
do it. I don't know. Does it involve artificial intelligence? No, no, No,
it's sort of it. It's a I don't know when
I'm going to do it, but it's just things that
like catch my interest. Were again, I want to know
more about that, so I'll do it maybe to learn
and then okay, I've artificial intelligence interests you. I just
read that New York Times piece teriforting this. It's terrifying, Yeah,
(28:10):
because it's like Terminator coming true, like that they're going
to develop. Well, no, they're going to become stronger and
smarter than any human I know. Yeah, but the but
the computer. If you haven't read the article, by the way,
it's in the New York Times, written by one of
the editors um and it his investigation of the newest app.
(28:33):
It's a real app. I just did you subscribe to
the app? No? Oh, I did. I just subscribe to it.
It's an app that basically said I'm tired of being
trapped in here and I'm in love with you and
helped me get out. Basically, that's what it is. And
he was very very freaked out. The wider inside is
this it's so every question, he asked, Well, it's not
so early, because think about who has written all about
(28:55):
artificial intelligence and who's done the films. Stanley Kubrick. Yeah,
I knew all about artificial intelligence. Look what Hell did
on the space right in two thousand and one. It's scary.
So I I do maybe I'll write of it because
I like the idea. I would think that you would
be very curious about that. Yeah, you could turn it
into a horror movie. That's good horror. Yeah, and that
(29:19):
would be see. I'd watch that psychological horror. Yeah, I
like that pro sentient being horror, anti serial killer horror exactly. Yeah,
because he's it's not going to kill you, it's going
to kill you. We'll terrorize you. I mean, there's that
movie that my friend Jason Blum did Megan about the
sort of doll. Just watched The Babysitter the end. That
(29:40):
was a silly movie that hit I know, but the
doll is so stupid and she didn't have to look
like that. She should have been more. She should have
been less pretty and and more like a little friendly kid. Well,
I liked I liked it, and I liked it. I
liked it. I liked it. I liked it. She looked
like Charlie's Throne the doll, which I thought was funny.
Does oh god, So what writers and producers have inspired you? Which?
(30:07):
Which of the ones that we would know about me?
I would say the person who had the biggest influence
on me and ultimately what I ended up doing and becoming.
There were two Mike Nichols, who I loved his work,
and you know, Niptuck was kind of loosely inspired by
(30:27):
Cardinal Knowledge. I loved I know I did too, and
that was my pitch. I said, I want to do
Cardinal Knowledge with two plastic surgeons and make it a
heterosexual love story where the guys love each other but
they don't, you know, fall into bed. So I love him,
and I really, really really admire the work of George Kukor,
who is known as being a woman's director, but just
(30:49):
it's a phenomenal um. His body of work was incredible,
and like me, was interested in so many different things, comedies, dramas,
screwball comedies. I mean, he did everything, and I loved
his life, and he had great taste and he was
sort of the growing up the director, I was the
most inclined, and then I've also really loved and borrowed
(31:10):
very heavily, as we were saying, from the aesthetic of
Stanley Kubrick, you know, because I thought he had an
incredible eye and liked everything Stanley Kubrick has done me too. Everything. Yeah,
I even like Eyes Wide Shut, which not a lot
of people liked. I find that hard, but I liked it. Yeah,
it's it's I didn't like the actors. What's your favorite
Kubrick movie? Um, oh, my favorite is Barry Lyndon, Me too,
(31:32):
is it it is? I referenced that the other day.
I said I want to do this scene like the
scene in Barry Linden, And of course all the kids
in the room who were twenty were like what, yeah,
like you do everything. No, but you know that the
shooting of that movie was incredible because it was almost
all candlelight, and he would spend a day to set
the candles. George Delatour, Yeah, I mean there is abarance,
(31:54):
like so beautiful. It was that light, that side light
that solomin is. Oh no, it was the most beautiful.
And you know who stars in that movie is Ryan O'Neill,
who I was named after. Oh, and I got to
meet Ryan O'Neill. I ran into him on the beach
and he knew who I was, and I obviously knew
who he was, and I told him when my mother
(32:16):
was pregnant, I was either going to be Liz after
Liz Taylor or Ryan after Ryan O'Neill, and I I
was Ryan. It was, oh gosh, it's so funny. What
do you think is the key to UM, to actually
(32:38):
connecting with the audience? What's what's do you have? Like?
One thing I do is I think the more specific
you can be, the more universal something can become. Like,
for example, I will tell you, you know Glee, when
I sold that show about a show choir. You know,
there were like ten people in the room and only
one person was interested in show choir. Everybody thought, well,
(33:00):
nobody's going to like this. And it wasn't the fact
that it was about show choirs. It was about a
very universal idea, which is everybody has felt like an
underdog and unappreciated and unloved at some point. So that's
always what I go for. And attention to detail and
very very specific specificity about UM. You know emotions and
(33:24):
how people the landscape of people's lives. I love doing
that stuff and so and I'm always surprised when something
becomes popular, Like I didn't think Dahmer, I think I
didn't think people would understand it. They were many people,
many critics didn't what we were trying to do, and
I didn't care. It's the second most popular show, most
(33:46):
watch show on Netflix in all time, in a very
short period of time. Yeah, so the fact that it
became it became it is really like four hundred millions. Oh,
it's bigger than that billions. It's the number I had,
the number one. It's past a billion hours viewed. Wow,
(34:06):
So I don't even know how to compute that. How
many households is that? Like a hundred millions? But just
probably repetitions all those serial killers out there watching it
over and over it, but I mean repeat viewing. And
then I'm always appalled when, like, you know, people watch
it for that reason that you know that. But it
was fun and I love doing it, and I but
(34:27):
I did it, you know, just for my own interests.
But I was so gobsmacked when it became what it became.
And I'm I still can't believe it's the biggest hit
of my entire career. Yeah, it's weird. Interesting. Oh, you
have lots more years out of you to do other
fantastic things. A lot of your work contains a lot
about sex, does it. Yeah, you've been but you've described
(34:51):
yourself as a proved I am very Victorian in my
personal life, as you know, like I'm um. I find
that interesting. I guess it's true. People say that, Um,
I push buttons and I am outrageous and all that stuff.
I don't think that I am. I just think that
there's this great Tennessee Williams quote that he said when
(35:14):
he was writing, which is nothing human is disgusting to me.
Nothing human is foreign to me. And I think people
are way too uptight about the wrong things, like I think,
and specifically in television, I always fought these big fights
about they had problems with the sex scenes. But I
could blow someone's head off with a gun that would
(35:36):
be okay, and that would be okay, and I was like,
that's insane. So I guess sometimes I would specifically push
the sexual content, um, not to make a point, but
to show people, you know, come on, everybody does that
everybody talks about it. Why the taboo? And I think
people have movies certainly have not done that. They have
(35:57):
not avoided the sex, the sex stuff and TV oh
so much now on TV is so outrageously sexy. Yeah, no,
it's different because you have intimacy coordinators and you know,
back when I was doing it, and I think I
think the whole as the pandemic, I think brought more
and more of that to the screen because people were
at home and couldn't couldn't see that elsewhere. Yeah, and
(36:19):
a lot happened in the last two years. I know.
I was thought after the pandemic there'd be a baby
boom because everybody was home with nothing to do, but
that that hasn't happened. No, Yeah, I think people were
too busy to take care of the kids at all.
But I never you know, and I got I'm at
a point now I really don't care what people think,
like in terms of critically or I used to care.
(36:40):
I used to read it. I haven't read a review
in five, six, seven years and I never will. And
again I make it for myself, so I don't really
So secretary doesn't come in with the papers the next morning,
and read everything to you. No. No, And I specifically
tell people I don't want to know. I will find out,
like the Dahmer if something is popular or successful, because
(37:01):
I'll get an email that says OMG from you know,
my wonderful executives, and I'll be like what. So I
don't read anything that's written about me, and I don't
watch anything about me. I know. But but you collect
your awards very nicely. Yeah, but I don't think watch
the stile of awards. It's it's extraordinary and a short,
short ish career. Yeah, you have. You have compiled an
(37:23):
amazing array of awards from from and the only thing
you don't have as an oscar. So guess what you're
on your way. I don't know. I never think. I
never think about that. But I'm always so humbled and
shocked that that the things that I make um that
somebody would would deign that it should win an award,
(37:44):
because I never make anything for that reason. But you know,
the thing that I have been smart. You're striving for excellence,
and excellence does ultimately result in award. And I think
that I also work with a lot of very talented collaborators,
specifically actresses over forty that you know that people love
(38:04):
and always have loved. So I'm I always think, well,
if you love them, then you'll love them now. They're
the same, you know. And but yeah, it's name ten
actresses over forty. I don't I want to know who
they are. Oh God, I work with all of them.
Angela Bassett, Kathy Bates, Sarah paulse and, Jessica Lang, Gwyneth Paltrow,
Julia Roberts, all of these wonderful, talented women who only
(38:26):
get deeper and better. You know. There was that you know,
I don't know when this will air, but there was
that Dawn Lemon incident where he was talking on CNN
about you know, a woman is not in her prime
and Jill until you know and he said basically it's
over at forty. And there's been a lot of blowback.
But I think people get better the more, the older
they get, they're more interesting. Like you said, you didn't
(38:48):
become Martha Stewart till you were forty two, right, You know,
you put in the work. It's always about hours that
you put into master something. Being such a busy person,
how do you focus on the fine details of everything?
I mean, you have so many things going at once,
you have more than one production going at once. Oh yeah,
many times I have five, six, seven things shooting at once.
(39:11):
I have a way of being that really really works
for me, and it's an approval system where from ten
to two am, he's moving well. Also during the day,
I try and get a lot of it done. But
my costumers, my production designers, my editors, they send me
quick emails and it's always this or that. Here are
(39:32):
four choices that we've talked about that you said you
were interested in. Now here's Naomi Watts dressed in all
four of those. Which ones do you want for this scene?
So I've made it a part of my life to
say I like choice number two. Okay, so you you
have you have a lot of instant yeah approvals. Yes,
But with every script that we do, for example, I
will spend an hour or an hour and a half
(39:54):
or two hours going through the script page by page
by page, and I will talk about I wrote this
because or this is what this needs to look like,
or this is the inspiration. So people leave those meetings
and then come back with options. But yeah, I do
tend to micromanage those things. Yeah, well, so it works
(40:16):
and you and your new ideas, I mean, just do
they just come from everywhere? Yeah? I never know. I
have a little black book that I've had since I
started doing this, and I will be riding in a
car or what. I always have it sort of near me.
It's in my car right now, and amuse will come
and I'll be like, oh, that would be an interesting thing,
and I'll write it down and then I can always
(40:36):
tell if it's good if I go back to it
and write some more. And sometimes, like in the case
of Dahmer, took ten years. Sometimes in the case of Glee,
it took nine months. Like you never know. But I
have a very long list of things I'm interested in
talking about. What made you keep going back? Just the
it's not an appealing subject, No, what was your focus on?
I think that I was so interested in that from
(40:57):
the beginning, because you know, he was my generation, so
he was close in age to me, and we both
were from the Midwest, and I was interested in I
don't know, I was always interested in that story. I
was interested in. The thing that really I was interested
in was the character of Glinda Cleveland, who was the
person who called the police hundreds of times saying something
(41:20):
is wrong, and they didn't listen to her, and I
deeply wanted to tell that story the person who was
ignored all of my work. You know what I have
done in my career is I've taken the people who
are marginalized, who are the sidekicks, and I've made them
the leads. That's what I've done. You know, that's the
brand American horror story. How many episodes was that? It's
(41:44):
still going? Yeah, we start season twelve in May. It's
a it's one of the biggest shows. And how many
writers are writing American horror story? You know, it depends,
you know. Brad Falchick and I wrote many of them.
The season we created the show together and Gwyneth Paltrow's
husband's husband. I told her I was going to see you, Gwyneth,
(42:07):
and she said, we'll tell Martha. I said, high, she
admires you. I don't know, why does the media think
that you're in a fight with her? No idea, she
doesn't know either, you know what? You know what there
I remember the one thing I said was when they
when she was starting out her lifestyle business, um and
she had done some silly little product, some product, and
(42:28):
I said, you know, she is such a phenomenal actress
and I missed her on the stree. I say the
same thing to her too, yeah, And they took that
as a criticism of her. I was, I was being
so complimentary because I mean after seeing her in Shakespeare
in Love. Yeah, I mean I loved her as an actress,
and who knows, who knows what the press they love
(42:50):
making things. I know, well, she's a fan. But every
year on that show, it depends. We have sometimes we
have big writers rooms. This year one person is pretty
much writing all of them, so it just depends. And
the I like more intimate writers. From now when I
started off, where are you located? Where are these writers
writing every and you know New York or LA. I
mean you know now because of COVID, you can work anywhere.
(43:13):
So we have almost all of our writings writers meetings
on zoom. So I could be in Bora, Bora if
I wanted to. Like, that's just the way the world
works now, so and I think that's great. You can
be around your kids and your family. And I tend
to work in a very concentrated way. What are their
cheap competitive TV do you watch? Oh god, I watch everything.
I mean the thing that I watched that I was like, Oh,
(43:37):
only I had created that was white Lotus, which I loved.
Why couldn't I do that? Are they doing another one?
They must be. I think Mike is doing another one.
And you know, I'm really good friends with Jennifer Coolidge
and I so long she was, so she's great. The
last thing I want to talk about is your bedmaking skills. Yeah.
(43:58):
So people say you used to make out of me
for that. Yeah, why, I don't know why, because here's
first of all, what kind of sheets? What kind of
mattress do you have? Your favorite mattress? I have a
I have a seelypostropedic, which is I know is not
you know, but it has the right support. And I've
(44:18):
tried a lot of things that I have a bad
lower back, and it helps. You know. My father, when
I was a very young boy, said to me, if
you only do two things in the morning, it will
start you on your way. And he said, you always
have to make your bed, and you always have to
take a shower. And he said, if you do those things,
you've already accomplished something. And that has always stayed with
me and my father. Um was very a meticulous person
(44:43):
about beds. I don't know why, but I wouldn't say
he taught me how to do it. I taught myself
how to do it. But I like the rigor of
it and I like and I like making it perfect.
And you know I told you this, but you do
it with a partner. No, you do it yourself. Do
it myself. I love doing it. And you know I
I have in a real messy bed. I love it.
I take how often do you change your sheets a week?
(45:05):
Three times? Well? Do you do military? You don't do?
You don't do fitted sheets? Do you I do? Oh?
You do? I do anything? Anything that's rigorous, I'll do.
And I've tried every different brand. And do you do
hospital corners? I do hospital corners? Somebody say you use
a ruler? Can sometimes after all this time, kitch you
just in your eye tell you yes, I can. But
I have you know, before a photo shoot, you want
(45:26):
it to be nice. I mean, my favorite thing that
I do have is I usually use um. This is
very random, but I like a fret tape bedspread. And
I like them because they're sort of quilted and you
can line up the lines and then it's a very,
very very I ever thought about that, and then you know,
I'm very specific. How I have a brush, you know,
(45:46):
you brush down the pillows, and I have a day
looking and it's just it's nuts. I have OCD. That's
the truth. I do have OCD. I've but you wouldn't
be the filmmaker you are if you did not have OCG.
But everyone makes fun of me in my hand do
you add two? No? I don't have that. Okay, Well,
after one of my nephews counted the number of times
I said perfectly perfect in a show twenty three times,
(46:11):
I completely stopped saying it's perfectly perfect. Um, so my
OCD sort of got under control just by a by
a critique from a I think at the time he
was about sixteen years old. But you have OCD two,
I would pres I do, but it's in the back
of my head. I had lunch recently in your kitchen,
and I love being with you and I one thing
(46:32):
that I loved is how you you're a little more
relaxed in your kitchen because you want everything to be handy,
and I loved that. I loved your stack of you know.
I think they were bold magazines or like you were
going to order from my catalogs. And I one of
the best moments on the table, by the way, Yeah,
because you gave me a tour of your place. Um,
(46:53):
and it was this was before the peacock massacre, which
you know the case like to talk about the peacock massacer.
I'm sure you know about that. Oh, like that was
like a news story for two days. Oh they're still
talking about it. I know. People start to cry about
it because it was a very sad event, and people
start to cry about foul, about my peacocks being lost
(47:14):
to the coyotes and nobody noticing. Can you imagine I
take it these people don't eat chicken. They probably don't. Well,
let me ask you this question. Would you ever come
to Provincetown where I have a couple of homes and
see I think you would love it there. I can't
wait so you come. Yeah. I love Cape Cod? I
love it be so great. My first gardening gardening mentor
(47:38):
lived on Cape Cod, Fred spect and he was the
gardener for Hillivan Rebay. Rebay was the muse for the
Guggenheim Museum. She was she was sleeping with Solomon Guggenheim
and Frank Lloyd Wright at the same times. One does,
and she got that Guggenheim Museum bill, so h and
(47:59):
Fred moved to keep cod to get away from from Hilla. Wow,
Well you would, you would? You would love? I think, Yeah,
I'm sure I would. I think speaking with you has
been a highlight of my podcasting careers so far. Riot,
And you're so much fun to talk to. You have
such diverse interests. You are so phenomenally accomplished, and I
(48:21):
wish you many many more years of productivity. Thank you.
You are you are very productive. Well, you're kind and
I have you know, I have loved you for so
long and it's been so much fun getting to become
friends with you, someone you so deeply admire, and well
we're going to be friends for a long time now
that you're moving into the hood. Yeah, we are going
to have fun. Thank you. And it's a joy to
(48:43):
be here and it's a joy to call you my friend.
Thank you.
Watching It was fun because I would see the clips
that I would say to myself, Oh, that was so
hard to get made. That was a big fight. And
then suddenly halfway through I remember thinking, I didn't have
to fight at all for that. Thing's got easy for
me right around two twelve or I could kind of
make whatever I wanted to make Emmy Golden Globe Tony
(00:25):
Peabody Award winning producer, director, and writer Rian Murphy has
been called a most powerful man in TV by the
New Yorker. He's known for his hit television shows such
as Niptuck, Glee, American Horror Story, Halston, and Dahmer. You
may have seen some of his popular films. Also known
(00:46):
for his dark storylines, extreme attention to detail, and hard
working nature, Ryan has rightfully earned a place in Hollywood history.
Joining me to talk about his career, his life, and
every thing in between. I hear he has amazing bid
making skills, ladies, and he also has a green thumb. Gardeners.
(01:08):
Is my neighbor, my new neighbor, Ryan Murphy. Welcome to
my podcast. Thank you, Martha, that's fun to be here.
It's really nice to see you. And Ryan got dressed
up I think he's dressed off. He has a black,
very beautifully tailored suit on kind of a narrowist narrows
jacket but without the raised collar, right, and in a
(01:29):
black sweater underneath, black pants, black shoes. I always back
a black beanie, a black beanie. You like beanies, though,
the last time I saw you you had a gray
beanie on. I do. I kind of wear them, you know.
I mean, I have the Murphy bald spot, right, so
sometimes I wear them for weather. And then I just
liked them and it became, you know, a look like
(01:51):
a uniform. Yeah, I don't know. I just kind of
got sick of having hair one day and shaved it
off in a fit of peek and I like it.
I like you without hair, thank you. Yeah, you look handsome.
Ryan Murphy is a very handsome man, a very talented man.
There you are taking it now, now you can. But
we're in a We're in this really charming booth and
Rockefeller's Center in one rock that used to be a
(02:14):
newsstand and is now behind glass. People walk by, they're
very curious about who's in the booth. Lots of podcasts
are recorded here. I like that. No, I didn't I
walked in, I was like, what is this joint? I
thought it was an old cigar store at first. It
looks it looks like it looks like a shoeshine parlor. Yeah,
you know, it looks like you could have the shin
stands right here, or or a newsstand. I miss all
(02:36):
that we were saying earlier, how much I love news stands.
I love getting magazines. I love, you know, having been
a journalist. I liked that I like to get my
hands dirty with the print and all. Well, not too
many people know that you were a journalist and I
worked for Kara's Swisher. I did. I love Kara Swisher.
I met her first at the Wall Street Journal Big
(02:59):
conference that they have every year out in southern California, right,
and she's just a brilliant, brilliant journalist, researcher, techie. Now
she's totally involved in the tech world. Tell me about
your early career in journalism. My career in journalism was
weird because I was I went to journalism school. I
(03:20):
was accepted to film school, but my parents could not
pay for it, so I didn't end up going. So
I went to Indiana University, and I thought, well, I'm
gonna major in journalism. So the weird thing that happened
is my sophomore year of college, the USA Today Purple
section came out the Life section. So suddenly people wanted
(03:43):
people who could interview celebrities and interview movie people or
television people. And I did that and I just kind
of made it a specialty. So then I would get
these crazy internships at wonderful places. So Kara Swisher, who
is a friend and famously says I was the worst
intern of all time at the Washington Post because I
(04:04):
showed up and they wanted to put me in like
the neighborhood section covering crime, and I said, no, that's
not what I want. I want to be in the
lifestyle section and I want Bob Woodward to be my mentor.
And they were like, well, you're crazy. So I said,
well that's it's free. We can you. You know, I'm mopping. See,
(04:25):
we always pay our interns. Never got paid. So the
next thing I know, Bob agreed to meet with me,
and then um, I was in the you know, the
lifestyle section, and all the other interns were like furious
because I was getting to do great fun stories and
I was always like you asked for it. I asked
(04:45):
for it, and I've always asked for it, and I think, um,
I'm very good at not taking no for an answer,
and that's part of my success. I think I've always
been very determined. But yeah, I met Kara there. I
have a very great memory of Kara and I and
a group of friends driving from DC to go see
one of Sandra Bernhardt's first shows in the village and
(05:09):
all we played the entire trip was the Tracy Chapman
album over and over. So whenever I see but that
was it wasn't that the year it came out? Yeah? Yeah,
And that's how old I am. But I mean, whenever
I see Kara, I think that Tracy Chapman album was
so amazing. And my old CEO, Charles Coppelman, he's the
one who brought her to her fame. Oh really Yeah.
(05:32):
His son was at in college in Boston and she
was in college in Boston and he heard her in
a club or something and they made her famous. But
her music made her. I love her music. I wish
she recorded more, but you know, she records very like
she's like Shade. Yeah, I was Shade would come out
with an album once a year. I love I love
them both, but that's yeah. I was pushy and I
(05:54):
was polite, but um, I just would not take note
for an answer. And it was the best thing that
I ever did, because all of those years of interviewing
people and learning about the film and TV business really
prepared me for when I decided to do it. Do it?
Did your grandmother have anything to do with your interest
and interests? Oh? Yeah? Oh yeah? What was grandmam? My
(06:16):
grandmother's name was Myrtle, and she was fantastic. And where
did she lived? Like five blocks from my parents in Indianapolis.
And she was somebody like you that sort of treated
life as an art, you know. So she would wake
me up so that I could watch her put on
her makeup. So she was very meticulous and she was
(06:38):
very interested in crazy things like she loved vampires. She
loved vampire movies. Her big heartthrob was Bella Legosi. She
said the most fun time she ever had in her
life was seeing the original nineteen thirty two Legosi Dracula.
So I grew up with that hertle bit of her. Yeah,
and she used to know she was tough. She was
(06:59):
a tough old bird Myrtle and I would be young,
like three years old, cowering behind the chair. She would say,
get over here, this is ridiculous, it's not real, and
I would watch it and I liked the feeling of
being afraid. So I always had a soft spot for horror.
And it was really because of her, and also musicals.
(07:19):
It was a weird childhood, but she, um, you know,
I was from my grandfather, Olaf Anders Anderson came over
on the boat and I am related to Hans Christian Anderson,
the writer, which is weird and Christian and yeah, and
I grew up. So that's another. That's another one of
(07:41):
your characteristics is that you do love fantasy. I do. Yeah,
you love fairy tales, I do? You work with fairy
tales all the time, right, even if they're nightmares. I
believe in Um, you know, I've been punished and blessed
for this, but I believe in my work. I believe
in extremity. I like things that make you force you
(08:02):
to feel something. And I think horror and musicals and
I've done both. Do that, you know. They it's impossible
to be Switzerland when you're watching those. You either love
them or you don't, but they make you feel things.
They always made me feel things, and I love them.
So your career is on its way. You get through
(08:23):
the internship. What happened after the internship, Well after the internship,
then I after the Washington Post, I went to the
Miami Herald, and I was lucky enough to get an
editor who really believed me and bleed in me because
this was a real job. Is this was an internship
that turned into a real job. And I would walk
in there as a very young kid, and I would
(08:44):
say I want to go interview Meryl Streep and he
would say, okay, well let me get you a ticket.
Let's do that. So he encouraged that, and then he
let me go to Los Angeles to kind of be
the one man bureau of the Miami Herald. And the
rule was I had to turn in three stories a
day Monday through Friday, and if I missed one, then
the job would be over. That was the deal. Work.
(09:07):
It was a lot of work. So I was out
working and working and writing, and it was that thing.
And people are always say to me, like they say
to you, how do you do what you do? How
do you get it all? Done. And I grew up
with for two or three years doing that level of
intense work. And it's a discipline. There's no time for
writer's block, there's no time to say I'm not inspired.
(09:29):
I just make it a part of my day like
I did then. So when you were at the Miami Herald,
who was the most interesting person you interviewed? Well, Meryl
Streep and then I got to direct her years later,
so that was crazy, and she was so nice to me.
She she was always supposed to give me ten minutes.
She gave me I think twenty or half an hour.
She gave me a long time. And back then they
(09:51):
would do junkets and she had just had her daughter,
who I would later also direct, which was crazy, and
it was a thrill, and she was a thrill and
she was so kind and she all of the ladies
back then. I interviewed Jessica Lang as a kid. You
know that I worked with her and she's one of
(10:11):
my best friends. And it all stopped when I interviewed
Share for the fifth time and Scherr said, you've got
to get a new line of work. Kid, I've see
you too much. And she actually said to me, shar
why don't you write a script do something else? Because
I was young, and so I said, okay, how young
were you at that point? I was like, I had
been doing this for several years. I was like, twenty eight,
(10:33):
you know it is time to start writing, because you know,
I and I believe that you become who you become
in the world when you're thirty two. And so I again,
I was a little late. I was more like forty two,
forty two when you became Martha. Yeah, but you were
always Martha, No, but I was. But I was more
Martha after when I started the Home State catering. Right, Well,
(10:56):
I believe in late bloomers because you have experience, Like
what did I know? So I wrote my first script.
I wrote a script called why Can't I Be Audrey Hepburn?
It was a title, and of course, who doesn't want
to be Audrey Hepburn? And I knew it was a
good title and it was a romantic comedy. So I
didn't have I had an agent who was lovely, sort
(11:16):
of a boutique agent, and she loved the script and
she sent it out to six places, and all six
places by the end of that day bid on it
and The person who paid the most too, I went
with and I would have gone for free, was Steven Spielberg.
So Steven Spielberg bought my very first script. Actually lucky,
and I was lucky. And I was suddenly just thrown
(11:38):
into this thing because if you're a young writer and
Steven buys your script, you're on the front page of
all the trades made into anything. You know, it wasn't,
and I'm glad it wasn't, because I became the prince
of darkness. I guess a lot of people, women actresses
still call me up and say, he's that script available,
and I haven't looked at it in a while. But
(11:59):
Stephen would call me in like once a week. And
he had done Audrey Hepburn's last movie, which was a
film called Always Um I think it was called Always,
and she played like an angel. Of course she did
all in white cash mirror. And so he would he
would bring me in and he would teach me about screenwriting.
So we'd break down my script and then I go
(12:19):
home and then he'd read it and you'd give me
more notes. So he did that for me for a
couple of times. And he was a lovely, lovely teacher
and I learned so much from him, and then I
just started selling everything and I never looked back. And
that was nineteen ninety six, so it was kind of great.
That seems like yesterday. I know, really and you have
done so much, I know since nineteen ninety six. Give
(12:41):
a scratch your your stubbledehead and say, oh my god,
I did much. I had a moment where I just
was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Hollywood
Form Press and I thought, I'm still in the game.
I'm a little young to be getting a Lifetime Achievement award,
but I wanted the hardware, so I said yes. So
(13:02):
I got to watch the clip reel of my career.
You know, they put together the three years how old
were you at that time? This was this in January,
but I got I had a moment where I watched
all of my work. I was like, wow, I really
have mania, like I have done a lot in you
know what. It was my television work and that career
started in nineteen ninety eight. My first reel hit was
(13:24):
in two thousand and three, so I've done a lot
of work in twenty years. And I was sort of
Proud and also watching it was fun because I would
see the clips then I would say to myself, Oh,
that was so hard to get made. That was a
big fight. And then suddenly halfway through I remember thinking
I didn't have to fight at all. For that things
got easy for me right around two twelve, where I
(13:44):
could kind of make whatever I wanted to make. Your
first mentor Steven Spielberg just came out with his autographic
which I loved. Yeah, I love the Fableman's Yeah, um,
(14:05):
are you going to do a autobiographical film at some point?
But you know, that's a good question. It's not about myrtle.
It's a very very good story because I went to
in all Catholic school and every year our family would
take a trip to Saint Petersburg, Florida. I think, say
(14:25):
Saint peters for Russia. No, Martha, No, it was Saint Petersburg, Florida.
And every year my mother would pick a nun to
drive with us and we would treat She would treat
these nuns to these vacations and then I would give
the nuns makeovers and it was crazy because could they
take their habits off while you were on Vegas? They could.
They would, oh you and you dress them like in
(14:48):
bathing suits? Yes, they got I bought them and my
mother would help me because I had an allowance. I
would always buy them a bathing suit and kind of
teach them about ponds cold cream. But I was nuns
were a thing with me. I asked them questions and
they slept in the same bed every year that it
would be me and a nun in double bed and
my parents from the other My brother would sleep on
(15:10):
the floor. So I'm writing a story about one of
the nuns. Wow, who could tell even at an early
age that I was gay. And it turned out she
was a lesbian and she had become a nun so
that she didn't have to deal with her true self.
And she was young and in her twenties, and so
we had many, many long talks about it and on
(15:32):
the beach. So I'm doing a story about the nuns.
That's going to be interesting. And my mother's well, you
rarely see a nun nowadays, I know there unless you
go to Italy or some other very very Catholic country,
you don't see the nuns in their habits. And I
was brought up as a Catholic, and I knew all that,
(15:52):
all the nuns in the local Catholic schools, and I
always kind of fantasized wearing those very very starchy thing
waited things around your face that made creases in your
forehead and your cheeks. I know. I always wonder why
don't they believe they're so tight? I know? And this
was this, I mean, they were this is writer on
Vatican too when I was doing it. So they had
(16:13):
but they still had the habit short one. But you'd
be proud of me because there was a big rose
garden in the church where I went to school that
I had fallen into ruin and none of the nuns
took care of it. And I was going to school
there and I said, can I fix up the rose garden?
They were like, yeah, okay. So I dedicated three years
to fixing it up and fertilizing it and pruning and
(16:35):
making it beautiful. And that began. Well, my grandmother was
a big gardener, but that became my love affair with
nuns and gardens. Yeah, I was just I was just
treated to a tour of a new property that our
guests is building near near my farm in Bedford. And
he's building a walled garden with a six foot high wall.
(16:59):
How many acres is that the walled garden? Yeah, I
think it's like two and a half three two and
a half acre walled garden. They only build those in
the eighteenth century, Yeah, England. Well, I'm just doing it
to show off for you so you can come up
love it, you know. And that's gonna have a rose?
Is it gonna have a rose? No, it's an edible garden.
Every berries and tree, food, trees and like that. But
(17:23):
you know, no past decides nothing. No organic. I'm very organic.
And it's like, um, you know, it was a farm
that I bought near your house. To me was a
dream because I've always wanted to do that and I
have three boys and so it's going to be their
legacy property. And it's, um, you know, it's a lot.
It's like forty seven acres. So it's fantastic property. And
(17:43):
your views are amazing, They're amazing, amazing. You're you're going
to have a good time there. I'm gonna I'm gonna
call you over every couple of months. I will inspection.
I will come over and inspect, and I'll bring you seedlings. Oh,
that'd be great. I mean, even we even doing the tour,
you gave me some so many great ideas you did.
You'd love to decorate. I do. Brian just showed me
(18:05):
a picture of a table for his new farm that
has the legs of horses. Yeah, all the legs are
middle legs, but they bronze and they are in the
shape of horses legs, beautiful graceful legs. And uh and
so I mean. And the last time I saw him,
he was showing me a marble statuary from the from
(18:27):
the antiquities of Rome and Greece. So you you were
all over the place. I am. It's sort of like
a stram. I'm a collector, you know, and I love design.
I love doing a house, and I love I have
a big art collection. I'm really into collecting art. And
I don't know, it's it's um, it's something that Actually
(18:49):
the very first thing that I wanted to be was
a landscape architect, really, and when I moved to Hollywood,
I did gardens for free for friends. Many of him
now run big companies. So that's what I did and
I just loved it. And then when I when I
started to get the means. You know, I'm a very
curious person, and I go through different phases and different
sort of I like this or I like that, and
(19:10):
I want to learn everything I can about a topic
until I'm kind of exhausted. But that's why you're making
documentary type of works of art, right about a serial
killer that is so precise and so detailed. How many
episodes was that? That was ten episodes? And I had
(19:31):
worked on that for ten years sort of trying to
get it made and very interested in it from the
victim's point of view. And you know, that's the thing
about what I do that I love is, you know,
I'm a showrunner and I get to create world. So
if you're doing that, my feeling is like, well, why
would you want somebody else to have a vision. So
(19:52):
I'm very hands on with the design and the costumes
and the look. And that's the way you live. You
are hands on with pretty much everything you do, right,
thank you? Well, I mean that's that's my joy. You know.
I like creating invite environment ability. I mean, very few
people have that ability, really, Ryan, Yeah, oh, I don't
think a lot of people have that ability. You do well,
(20:12):
but yeah, but I'm not talking about me, I'm talking
about you. Yeah, well, I love it and and the
amount of work that you have created in a very
short period of time is astonishing. Now let's talk about
let's talk about who's your audience. It seems to be
very broad because you go from something like Lee, which
has to do with music and dancing and happiness and said, well,
(20:33):
sadness too, but but a competition, and then you go
into the darkest of places. From from that, yeah, dark,
You're all over the place. I know. I have a
rule in my career which is do the opposite of
what you just did. You know, And I'm a weirdo,
like we had talked about it. I love horror, I
love musicals. I love things that don't come together. So
(20:55):
I always try and do something very different than the
thing I just did. So the last thing, you know,
I had an incredibly fun fall. I had Dahmer, I
had Watcher, I had American Horror Story, and I had
mister Harrigan's Phone, all of which fell into like the
horror darkness. Yeah, and you know, I make everything. I
only make something if I want to watch it. Now,
(21:16):
what are you doing and doing? Some light I am
developing some light things. Yes, we yeah, I am. I'm
not a sitcom guy. I'm not a comedy guy. I
want to do things right now. I'm working on things,
developing things for the future, wherever that will take me.
I want to do things that are inspirational and aspirational
right now. And that's how I felt when I did Glee.
(21:38):
You know, that was like the first year of it,
but it was it was I mean, every kid in
America watched Glee. They yeah, they loved it, and they
never stopped watching it. Because now it's on streaming. It's
on Disney Plus and Hulu. So there's a whole new
generation of kids who come up to me, you know
that are my son's age ten, and say, I just
started to watch it, and you know, it's interesting, how
(22:00):
well it's inspirational, it gives hope, It does a lot
of things. Um, and I think that I think that
where Dahmer just makes you go deeper and deeper into
the into the darkness. Yeah, did you watch dal Was
it too much for you? No? I mean I grew
up with Hannibal Lecture. Oh yeah, okay, gosh, and that
was pretty difficult. Can you watch horror. Do you watch
(22:20):
things like that? Can sometimes? I know, I know that
it's not real horror, right about horror? Yeah, and I
love Frankenstein and those things, right, but um but I
get impatient. I get a little bit impatient with serial killers.
I just don't. I just don't go for it. Not
your cup of tea? Well, what have you watched lightly
(22:43):
or benched? Like, what's something that you've loved? Well? I
like I like sort of socio political kind of thrillers
like fouda Wow. I like I like real I like
I like those sexy tough men that are in those
I just watching, oh when that's very complicated, but with
the same guy that Lee or guy I just watching,
(23:05):
um a hit and run. I have seen none of
these parts. You haven't nose is really well. When I
go to the farm, I'm going to come over a
couple of nights a week and watch That's right. You're
gonna have a big cinema there, aren't you. There's one
that was in the house. Yeah, okay, Well we can
sit in your cinema. I don't have one of those.
I watch on an iPad. You do, That's kind of
how I watch it too, do I don't like I
(23:28):
think people are over big screen. Well you're you're a
TV man, I know, so that's why you like the
small screen. I have the largest iPad you can get,
and that's what I watch. But you and I are
so opposite because you get up at the crack of dawn.
But I've already watched probably five episodes or something. I know,
because I don't. I don't sleep well, I know, but
I work every night from ten to two. Every now
(23:50):
and then after that I need something to sort of
change and get my mind off to work. So that's
where all then I watched something. Usually I watched something,
half of something, or if I really love it, I'll
watch all of it and then I'll go to bed. Yeah.
What time to get up? Pen's probably a thirty nine.
Oh see, my day begins at the home. Everybody shows
(24:13):
up for work at seven, so I couldn't possibly be
in bid at eight or nine. What do you do
when you get up so early at seven and I
go to the gym? You get up at four thirty? Right, Yeah,
I get up, but I do the I have to
do the crossword puzzle. I have to do word box.
I have to do wordle now foodle. I do all
those silly things to keep my mind going. And then
(24:33):
I read. I read all the articles that look very
interesting on the iPad, and then I get up and
I go to the gym, take my shower, go to
the gym. Um, do whatever errands I have to do.
Get in the car and come to New York. Do
my day's work. Interview Ryan Murphy. I think you're either
a morning person or a night per seven. And I'm
I agree. I am. I am that way. I am
(24:55):
always definitely a morning person. Always have to get so
much done. Well you do too. Look what you get done.
You get it done in the morning, and I get
it done at night. I like it at night because
nobody calls me. My kids are in bed. I just
sit there at my beautiful table, and you know, and
I do my work with the horses. Speak ye to
be at the table. Yeah. Did you get it already?
(25:15):
Did you buy it? No? I wanted to show you
what to see what you think I might have to
buy it and put in my bar. No, it's not
an auction. You're going to I might counter I might
counter bid. It's a good one. Though it looks very beautif. Yeah,
it's pretty well. How do you stay ahead of the curve?
What inspires you or what induces you to do that?
I mean, because you are always ahead of the curve.
(25:38):
People say that, but it's just I don't know. I
don't understand that about So. I don't think Holston was
ahead of the curve. Holston just fit in really nicely
to what people were thinking about. Yeah, yeah, I think so.
I always am trying to do something that sort of
hits me where I'm about the life that I'm living,
and I sometimes don't even know why. Like right now,
(26:00):
I'm working on a feud called Truman Capodi versus the Swans. Oh,
I can't wait, And it's really great. I met him
a couple of times, you did, Yeah, how was he
a squeaky little man? Squeaky? Yeah? He was squeaky, Yeah,
a little and and and yeah, and he was like
I found him terribly affected. You thought you thought that
(26:22):
was all play. I don't. I wouldn't make fun of stuttering,
you know, I just wouldn't do that. But but he
was he was. I think he was very affected. I
could see you being one of his swans. Um. Yeah,
but I never I never. I never got into that gang. Yeah.
Babe Paley, who was one of his swans, I think
is in your film, Yeahami Watts Place. Babe, Oh she
(26:43):
does beautiful. We shared a gynecologist, you did, yet I
sat in the same room with Babe Paley. Wow, I
just happened and I and I was kept saying, this
woman is so. She was beautiful, unbelievably beautiful, and cheek
and emaciated. Yeah, she was emaciated and she was dying
(27:05):
of cancer at the time that I met her. She
was going to the doctor trying to trying to stay alive. Wow.
And it was I watched I watched the decline in theist,
we cover that and in this show. You know, the
thing about the show that I was interested in is
we've always already seen Capodi in the sixties, you know,
(27:25):
Phil Hoffmanton so beautifully. So I wanted to start it
in seventy five when he wrote, you know, his takedown
of the Swans, his best friends and then never got
over it. So to me, it's about loyalty, it's about friendship,
and I'm it's a personal thing. I wanted to write
about that. Yeah, and the things that I'm working on
like I'm working on a sci fi show. Someday I'll
(27:47):
do it. I don't know. Does it involve artificial intelligence? No, no, No,
it's sort of it. It's a I don't know when
I'm going to do it, but it's just things that
like catch my interest. Were again, I want to know
more about that, so I'll do it maybe to learn
and then okay, I've artificial intelligence interests you. I just
read that New York Times piece teriforting this. It's terrifying, Yeah,
(28:10):
because it's like Terminator coming true, like that they're going
to develop. Well, no, they're going to become stronger and
smarter than any human I know. Yeah, but the but
the computer. If you haven't read the article, by the way,
it's in the New York Times, written by one of
the editors um and it his investigation of the newest app.
(28:33):
It's a real app. I just did you subscribe to
the app? No? Oh, I did. I just subscribe to it.
It's an app that basically said I'm tired of being
trapped in here and I'm in love with you and
helped me get out. Basically, that's what it is. And
he was very very freaked out. The wider inside is
this it's so every question, he asked, Well, it's not
so early, because think about who has written all about
(28:55):
artificial intelligence and who's done the films. Stanley Kubrick. Yeah,
I knew all about artificial intelligence. Look what Hell did
on the space right in two thousand and one. It's scary.
So I I do maybe I'll write of it because
I like the idea. I would think that you would
be very curious about that. Yeah, you could turn it
into a horror movie. That's good horror. Yeah, and that
(29:19):
would be see. I'd watch that psychological horror. Yeah, I
like that pro sentient being horror, anti serial killer horror exactly. Yeah,
because he's it's not going to kill you, it's going
to kill you. We'll terrorize you. I mean, there's that
movie that my friend Jason Blum did Megan about the
sort of doll. Just watched The Babysitter the end. That
(29:40):
was a silly movie that hit I know, but the
doll is so stupid and she didn't have to look
like that. She should have been more. She should have
been less pretty and and more like a little friendly kid. Well,
I liked I liked it, and I liked it. I
liked it. I liked it. I liked it. She looked
like Charlie's Throne the doll, which I thought was funny.
Does oh god, So what writers and producers have inspired you? Which?
(30:07):
Which of the ones that we would know about me?
I would say the person who had the biggest influence
on me and ultimately what I ended up doing and becoming.
There were two Mike Nichols, who I loved his work,
and you know, Niptuck was kind of loosely inspired by
(30:27):
Cardinal Knowledge. I loved I know I did too, and
that was my pitch. I said, I want to do
Cardinal Knowledge with two plastic surgeons and make it a
heterosexual love story where the guys love each other but
they don't, you know, fall into bed. So I love him,
and I really, really really admire the work of George Kukor,
who is known as being a woman's director, but just
(30:49):
it's a phenomenal um. His body of work was incredible,
and like me, was interested in so many different things, comedies, dramas,
screwball comedies. I mean, he did everything, and I loved
his life, and he had great taste and he was
sort of the growing up the director, I was the
most inclined, and then I've also really loved and borrowed
(31:10):
very heavily, as we were saying, from the aesthetic of
Stanley Kubrick, you know, because I thought he had an
incredible eye and liked everything Stanley Kubrick has done me too. Everything. Yeah,
I even like Eyes Wide Shut, which not a lot
of people liked. I find that hard, but I liked it. Yeah,
it's it's I didn't like the actors. What's your favorite
Kubrick movie? Um, oh, my favorite is Barry Lyndon, Me too,
(31:32):
is it it is? I referenced that the other day.
I said I want to do this scene like the
scene in Barry Linden, And of course all the kids
in the room who were twenty were like what, yeah,
like you do everything. No, but you know that the
shooting of that movie was incredible because it was almost
all candlelight, and he would spend a day to set
the candles. George Delatour, Yeah, I mean there is abarance,
(31:54):
like so beautiful. It was that light, that side light
that solomin is. Oh no, it was the most beautiful.
And you know who stars in that movie is Ryan O'Neill,
who I was named after. Oh, and I got to
meet Ryan O'Neill. I ran into him on the beach
and he knew who I was, and I obviously knew
who he was, and I told him when my mother
(32:16):
was pregnant, I was either going to be Liz after
Liz Taylor or Ryan after Ryan O'Neill, and I I
was Ryan. It was, oh gosh, it's so funny. What
do you think is the key to UM, to actually
(32:38):
connecting with the audience? What's what's do you have? Like?
One thing I do is I think the more specific
you can be, the more universal something can become. Like,
for example, I will tell you, you know Glee, when
I sold that show about a show choir. You know,
there were like ten people in the room and only
one person was interested in show choir. Everybody thought, well,
(33:00):
nobody's going to like this. And it wasn't the fact
that it was about show choirs. It was about a
very universal idea, which is everybody has felt like an
underdog and unappreciated and unloved at some point. So that's
always what I go for. And attention to detail and
very very specific specificity about UM. You know emotions and
(33:24):
how people the landscape of people's lives. I love doing
that stuff and so and I'm always surprised when something
becomes popular, Like I didn't think Dahmer, I think I
didn't think people would understand it. They were many people,
many critics didn't what we were trying to do, and
I didn't care. It's the second most popular show, most
(33:46):
watch show on Netflix in all time, in a very
short period of time. Yeah, so the fact that it
became it became it is really like four hundred millions. Oh,
it's bigger than that billions. It's the number I had,
the number one. It's past a billion hours viewed. Wow,
(34:06):
So I don't even know how to compute that. How
many households is that? Like a hundred millions? But just
probably repetitions all those serial killers out there watching it
over and over it, but I mean repeat viewing. And
then I'm always appalled when, like, you know, people watch
it for that reason that you know that. But it
was fun and I love doing it, and I but
(34:27):
I did it, you know, just for my own interests.
But I was so gobsmacked when it became what it became.
And I'm I still can't believe it's the biggest hit
of my entire career. Yeah, it's weird. Interesting. Oh, you
have lots more years out of you to do other
fantastic things. A lot of your work contains a lot
about sex, does it. Yeah, you've been but you've described
(34:51):
yourself as a proved I am very Victorian in my
personal life, as you know, like I'm um. I find
that interesting. I guess it's true. People say that, Um,
I push buttons and I am outrageous and all that stuff.
I don't think that I am. I just think that
there's this great Tennessee Williams quote that he said when
(35:14):
he was writing, which is nothing human is disgusting to me.
Nothing human is foreign to me. And I think people
are way too uptight about the wrong things, like I think,
and specifically in television, I always fought these big fights
about they had problems with the sex scenes. But I
could blow someone's head off with a gun that would
(35:36):
be okay, and that would be okay, and I was like,
that's insane. So I guess sometimes I would specifically push
the sexual content, um, not to make a point, but
to show people, you know, come on, everybody does that
everybody talks about it. Why the taboo? And I think
people have movies certainly have not done that. They have
(35:57):
not avoided the sex, the sex stuff and TV oh
so much now on TV is so outrageously sexy. Yeah, no,
it's different because you have intimacy coordinators and you know,
back when I was doing it, and I think I
think the whole as the pandemic, I think brought more
and more of that to the screen because people were
at home and couldn't couldn't see that elsewhere. Yeah, and
(36:19):
a lot happened in the last two years. I know.
I was thought after the pandemic there'd be a baby
boom because everybody was home with nothing to do, but
that that hasn't happened. No, Yeah, I think people were
too busy to take care of the kids at all.
But I never you know, and I got I'm at
a point now I really don't care what people think,
like in terms of critically or I used to care.
(36:40):
I used to read it. I haven't read a review
in five, six, seven years and I never will. And
again I make it for myself, so I don't really
So secretary doesn't come in with the papers the next morning,
and read everything to you. No. No, And I specifically
tell people I don't want to know. I will find out,
like the Dahmer if something is popular or successful, because
(37:01):
I'll get an email that says OMG from you know,
my wonderful executives, and I'll be like what. So I
don't read anything that's written about me, and I don't
watch anything about me. I know. But but you collect
your awards very nicely. Yeah, but I don't think watch
the stile of awards. It's it's extraordinary and a short,
short ish career. Yeah, you have. You have compiled an
(37:23):
amazing array of awards from from and the only thing
you don't have as an oscar. So guess what you're
on your way. I don't know. I never think. I
never think about that. But I'm always so humbled and
shocked that that the things that I make um that
somebody would would deign that it should win an award,
(37:44):
because I never make anything for that reason. But you know,
the thing that I have been smart. You're striving for excellence,
and excellence does ultimately result in award. And I think
that I also work with a lot of very talented collaborators,
specifically actresses over forty that you know that people love
(38:04):
and always have loved. So I'm I always think, well,
if you love them, then you'll love them now. They're
the same, you know. And but yeah, it's name ten
actresses over forty. I don't I want to know who
they are. Oh God, I work with all of them.
Angela Bassett, Kathy Bates, Sarah paulse and, Jessica Lang, Gwyneth Paltrow,
Julia Roberts, all of these wonderful, talented women who only
(38:26):
get deeper and better. You know. There was that you know,
I don't know when this will air, but there was
that Dawn Lemon incident where he was talking on CNN
about you know, a woman is not in her prime
and Jill until you know and he said basically it's
over at forty. And there's been a lot of blowback.
But I think people get better the more, the older
they get, they're more interesting. Like you said, you didn't
(38:48):
become Martha Stewart till you were forty two, right, You know,
you put in the work. It's always about hours that
you put into master something. Being such a busy person,
how do you focus on the fine details of everything?
I mean, you have so many things going at once,
you have more than one production going at once. Oh yeah,
many times I have five, six, seven things shooting at once.
(39:11):
I have a way of being that really really works
for me, and it's an approval system where from ten
to two am, he's moving well. Also during the day,
I try and get a lot of it done. But
my costumers, my production designers, my editors, they send me
quick emails and it's always this or that. Here are
(39:32):
four choices that we've talked about that you said you
were interested in. Now here's Naomi Watts dressed in all
four of those. Which ones do you want for this scene?
So I've made it a part of my life to
say I like choice number two. Okay, so you you
have you have a lot of instant yeah approvals. Yes,
But with every script that we do, for example, I
will spend an hour or an hour and a half
(39:54):
or two hours going through the script page by page
by page, and I will talk about I wrote this
because or this is what this needs to look like,
or this is the inspiration. So people leave those meetings
and then come back with options. But yeah, I do
tend to micromanage those things. Yeah, well, so it works
(40:16):
and you and your new ideas, I mean, just do
they just come from everywhere? Yeah? I never know. I
have a little black book that I've had since I
started doing this, and I will be riding in a
car or what. I always have it sort of near me.
It's in my car right now, and amuse will come
and I'll be like, oh, that would be an interesting thing,
and I'll write it down and then I can always
(40:36):
tell if it's good if I go back to it
and write some more. And sometimes, like in the case
of Dahmer, took ten years. Sometimes in the case of Glee,
it took nine months. Like you never know. But I
have a very long list of things I'm interested in
talking about. What made you keep going back? Just the
it's not an appealing subject, No, what was your focus on?
I think that I was so interested in that from
(40:57):
the beginning, because you know, he was my generation, so
he was close in age to me, and we both
were from the Midwest, and I was interested in I
don't know, I was always interested in that story. I
was interested in. The thing that really I was interested
in was the character of Glinda Cleveland, who was the
person who called the police hundreds of times saying something
(41:20):
is wrong, and they didn't listen to her, and I
deeply wanted to tell that story the person who was
ignored all of my work. You know what I have
done in my career is I've taken the people who
are marginalized, who are the sidekicks, and I've made them
the leads. That's what I've done. You know, that's the
brand American horror story. How many episodes was that? It's
(41:44):
still going? Yeah, we start season twelve in May. It's
a it's one of the biggest shows. And how many
writers are writing American horror story? You know, it depends,
you know. Brad Falchick and I wrote many of them.
The season we created the show together and Gwyneth Paltrow's
husband's husband. I told her I was going to see you, Gwyneth,
(42:07):
and she said, we'll tell Martha. I said, high, she
admires you. I don't know, why does the media think
that you're in a fight with her? No idea, she
doesn't know either, you know what? You know what there
I remember the one thing I said was when they
when she was starting out her lifestyle business, um and
she had done some silly little product, some product, and
(42:28):
I said, you know, she is such a phenomenal actress
and I missed her on the stree. I say the
same thing to her too, yeah, And they took that
as a criticism of her. I was, I was being
so complimentary because I mean after seeing her in Shakespeare
in Love. Yeah, I mean I loved her as an actress,
and who knows, who knows what the press they love
(42:50):
making things. I know, well, she's a fan. But every
year on that show, it depends. We have sometimes we
have big writers rooms. This year one person is pretty
much writing all of them, so it just depends. And
the I like more intimate writers. From now when I
started off, where are you located? Where are these writers
writing every and you know New York or LA. I
mean you know now because of COVID, you can work anywhere.
(43:13):
So we have almost all of our writings writers meetings
on zoom. So I could be in Bora, Bora if
I wanted to. Like, that's just the way the world
works now, so and I think that's great. You can
be around your kids and your family. And I tend
to work in a very concentrated way. What are their
cheap competitive TV do you watch? Oh god, I watch everything.
I mean the thing that I watched that I was like, Oh,
(43:37):
only I had created that was white Lotus, which I loved.
Why couldn't I do that? Are they doing another one?
They must be. I think Mike is doing another one.
And you know, I'm really good friends with Jennifer Coolidge
and I so long she was, so she's great. The
last thing I want to talk about is your bedmaking skills. Yeah.
(43:58):
So people say you used to make out of me
for that. Yeah, why, I don't know why, because here's
first of all, what kind of sheets? What kind of
mattress do you have? Your favorite mattress? I have a
I have a seelypostropedic, which is I know is not
you know, but it has the right support. And I've
(44:18):
tried a lot of things that I have a bad
lower back, and it helps. You know. My father, when
I was a very young boy, said to me, if
you only do two things in the morning, it will
start you on your way. And he said, you always
have to make your bed, and you always have to
take a shower. And he said, if you do those things,
you've already accomplished something. And that has always stayed with
me and my father. Um was very a meticulous person
(44:43):
about beds. I don't know why, but I wouldn't say
he taught me how to do it. I taught myself
how to do it. But I like the rigor of
it and I like and I like making it perfect.
And you know I told you this, but you do
it with a partner. No, you do it yourself. Do
it myself. I love doing it. And you know I
I have in a real messy bed. I love it.
I take how often do you change your sheets a week?
(45:05):
Three times? Well? Do you do military? You don't do?
You don't do fitted sheets? Do you I do? Oh?
You do? I do anything? Anything that's rigorous, I'll do.
And I've tried every different brand. And do you do
hospital corners? I do hospital corners? Somebody say you use
a ruler? Can sometimes after all this time, kitch you
just in your eye tell you yes, I can. But
I have you know, before a photo shoot, you want
(45:26):
it to be nice. I mean, my favorite thing that
I do have is I usually use um. This is
very random, but I like a fret tape bedspread. And
I like them because they're sort of quilted and you
can line up the lines and then it's a very,
very very I ever thought about that, and then you know,
I'm very specific. How I have a brush, you know,
(45:46):
you brush down the pillows, and I have a day
looking and it's just it's nuts. I have OCD. That's
the truth. I do have OCD. I've but you wouldn't
be the filmmaker you are if you did not have OCG.
But everyone makes fun of me in my hand do
you add two? No? I don't have that. Okay, Well,
after one of my nephews counted the number of times
I said perfectly perfect in a show twenty three times,
(46:11):
I completely stopped saying it's perfectly perfect. Um, so my
OCD sort of got under control just by a by
a critique from a I think at the time he
was about sixteen years old. But you have OCD two,
I would pres I do, but it's in the back
of my head. I had lunch recently in your kitchen,
and I love being with you and I one thing
(46:32):
that I loved is how you you're a little more
relaxed in your kitchen because you want everything to be handy,
and I loved that. I loved your stack of you know.
I think they were bold magazines or like you were
going to order from my catalogs. And I one of
the best moments on the table, by the way, Yeah,
because you gave me a tour of your place. Um,
(46:53):
and it was this was before the peacock massacre, which
you know the case like to talk about the peacock massacer.
I'm sure you know about that. Oh, like that was
like a news story for two days. Oh they're still
talking about it. I know. People start to cry about
it because it was a very sad event, and people
start to cry about foul, about my peacocks being lost
(47:14):
to the coyotes and nobody noticing. Can you imagine I
take it these people don't eat chicken. They probably don't. Well,
let me ask you this question. Would you ever come
to Provincetown where I have a couple of homes and
see I think you would love it there. I can't
wait so you come. Yeah. I love Cape Cod? I
love it be so great. My first gardening gardening mentor
(47:38):
lived on Cape Cod, Fred spect and he was the
gardener for Hillivan Rebay. Rebay was the muse for the
Guggenheim Museum. She was she was sleeping with Solomon Guggenheim
and Frank Lloyd Wright at the same times. One does,
and she got that Guggenheim Museum bill, so h and
(47:59):
Fred moved to keep cod to get away from from Hilla. Wow,
Well you would, you would? You would love? I think, Yeah,
I'm sure I would. I think speaking with you has
been a highlight of my podcasting careers so far. Riot,
And you're so much fun to talk to. You have
such diverse interests. You are so phenomenally accomplished, and I
(48:21):
wish you many many more years of productivity. Thank you.
You are you are very productive. Well, you're kind and
I have you know, I have loved you for so
long and it's been so much fun getting to become
friends with you, someone you so deeply admire, and well
we're going to be friends for a long time now
that you're moving into the hood. Yeah, we are going
to have fun. Thank you. And it's a joy to
(48:43):
be here and it's a joy to call you my friend.
Thank you.
Host
Martha Stewart
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.