July 12, 2021 • 25 mins
Bryan and Robin met as actors when he had to kidnap her on a TV show. Friends first, their attraction blossomed later — like a lightbulb turned on that reveals everything. He proposed in a hilarious way – in a bathtub. They are serious about their relationship, they’re funny and sweet and we learned a lot from them.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin. Hi, I'm Phil Donahue and I'm Marlowe Thomas, and
we're going on a series of double dates to find
out what makes a marriage last. What a crazy afternoon
(00:40):
in New York the day we met Brian Cranston and
Robin Dearden. Oh god, I remember Brian was starring in
the hit Broadway production of Network and the curtain was
going up in just a few hours. So we had
a very narrow window of time to visit with them
at their apartment. And then our cab driver took us
to the wrong address and it was rush hour. We
(01:02):
were almost a full hour late. It was just the worst,
no time to kind of warm up to each other. Wonderful.
Pugged into the room. You plugged into that. Yes, I
noticed that an idiot completely. She's discombobulated. You were rattled,
but Brian was so relaxed. Lift yeah, yeah, so let's
(01:26):
talk once we got our act together. We dove in
by talking about their parents' marriages. All seven of my parents'
marriages were wonderful. My mom was married four times, my
dad was married three times. They had numerous boyfriends and girlfriends,
and yeah, so in many ways my parents taught me
(01:50):
what not to do? This kind of lais a fair
attitude into marriage? Didn't work? Um, where were you from
from la born and raised out there? And uh so
were you kind of against marriage? No? I was married
once before I was twenty three, and then I got
(02:11):
married again when I was thirty five. I think I
was thirty five. You were there. I was thirty three,
so ten years after my trial marriage. So didn't scare
you off marriage? The fact that there were all those marriages. No, No,
because the woman that I married wasn't a bad person.
She was a lovely person. It was the wrong time
(02:34):
and I wasn't in love with her, and I think
I took a very casual look at it. It wasn't
fair to her, wasn't fair to me. Fortunately, we didn't
have any children, and she went her separate way and
remarried and has a life and the life she wanted.
What about you, Robin, What about your family? I came
(02:55):
from the complete opposite of his. I had to leave
it to beaver. I was raised in Whittier, little tiny town,
Nixon's hometown. I'm a native of California too. I never
wanted to get married. It wasn't high on my list,
and my parents never instilled in me the need to
(03:16):
be married. We grew up in the mostly our formative
years in the seventies, and the sexual revolution in the
sixties busted it open, and the seventies sort of celebrated
that kind of looseness, and you got waylaid and off track.
I think a lot by fun, yeah, by fun right,
(03:38):
and by freedom and convincing yourself that you may be
in love with someone when you're really not and you
may not have that much in common with them, and
now you're in so deep, be like, oh, how do
I extract myself? I got married very young, and then
afterward I realized, oh, I've made a mistake, and I realized,
(04:01):
then if I do this again, I really have to
know what I'm doing and be in love of So
then you met on a set, right, Yeah, we met
on a on a really terrible television show called Airwolf,
which starred a helicopter and uh, and I was a
(04:23):
bad guy of the week on this episode. She was
the victim of the week. I kidnapped her and held
her for ransom, and along with a few other women,
I was going to say, how sexy you met a
gun on her who is threatened to kill her or
dat her, which we met on Airwolf. We didn't start
(04:46):
dating then. It was a year later that we ran
into each other in an improv comedy class um and
and got to know each other and got to be friends.
But I think we were we were lucky. We were
guided to this the year at the time that we met.
(05:07):
I had a girlfriend too, had a boyfriend, so we
were able to just not have the tension I should
make a move and ask her out and all this
and fun. We were able to just have fun and
flirt and and end Oh that's nice. And we just
kind of slowed into it, as opposed to h over
(05:28):
extending yourself physically making that commitment and then having the
backtrack to figure out who this person is, who you
just had relations with, and you are yes, exactly. We
fool ourselves and we go, oh my god, I'm doing
this again. And then I went to Oxford for a
(05:52):
summer and he came over and he stopped at Oxford
and I went, oh, it's you. And I've never felt
that way in my life. Oh it's you mean. I
can't explain it except that it was just this reaction
to oh, I do. I do want to get married
(06:12):
and I want to marry you. That's so you knew that.
I knew pretty fast and I had never felt that
way before. And you were you thinking that she could
be the one? Or yeah, I was. I was very
keen on this. We had the most romantic date in
at Stratford upon Avon. I rented a punch over and
(06:34):
we were we had sandwiches, a beautiful day, like looked
like this wine and we found a little shady place
under a tree in the water and it was like
we kissed like male like bandits. Oh how lovely, how great? Yeah,
your proposal received a lot of ink. Was that is
(06:56):
that bathtub in London? Or with that? No, he owned
a cabin with a friend of his two actors. They
bought a cabin up in Big Bear. It was hilarious
because the bathroom was a standard sized bag in a
crappy cabin in the mountains. So there wasn't any room
for me to face him facing the spout. Your back
(07:24):
was against his chifts. Yes, so I kept thinking, guard
I designed it this way because I thought that if
I was to face her and trying to get these
lines out, we would cry, I would crack. I did.
I relate did so. I thought, Man, how am I
(07:44):
going to do this? How am I going to do this?
A champagne? I have little music going, and I'm going,
what the hell is this? And every time I start
to talk and she starts to turn around to look,
and I pushed her face back towards the front so
that I could let me just get this out. Was
that a surprise at that moment? It wasn't a surprise
(08:05):
because I was like, oh, I know where this is
going kind of now. The other thing was the ring. Yeah,
I'm we're nude as one is in a bathtub? Right
Where would I put the ring? So I thinking, no,
she'll see it. There's if I put it. No, that's
(08:27):
down the drain, and I said, I thought, oh, I
put it on my baby toe. I put it all
the way on my and submerged the foot. That's so great,
So that she then this foot and did this because
I couldn't reach it. Is this a horror movie? No,
(08:48):
it sounds like a sounds like an improv. It was, Yeah,
that's very worked out. It's a good thing. She said, Yes,
how embarrassing. How do you get out of that you know,
there's a lot of sincerity in that, you know, you're
not just another girl. Yeah, and it worked. So what what? Well,
(09:10):
let me put it, how do you fight? Everybody has
their way that they fight and how they make up
from a fight. Because I'm Italian and Lebanese and he's Irish,
we have a very different way of fighting. We've had
to learn over years how actually to fight. So without
you know, something going out the window. I used to
say to him, I have a feeling that someday that
(09:31):
we do nothing left but an eyelash and some white hair.
They were here. So how would you say you're a stylist?
I would first say that I'm the moodier of the
two of us. He's crankier than I am. Yeah, I
am not. She is perfect, much steadier in her comportment
(09:56):
and personality than I am. Hans bounds, I pound hyeah
as she is learning to not take things too seriously
and to let things go. I have learned to identify
when the train is going on the wrong track early,
so that it's not so far down the road that
(10:19):
you go, oh, I've made a mistake, and I am sorry,
And now we need to back up. A train to
go to get on the right now. I need to
learn to go. Oh that's the switch. Uh, start start
making adjustments now as opposed to holding onto that and
letting it go too far down the road. That's a
(10:41):
great visual to think about. There's a switch that you
can stop this now. Yeah, that's a big deal. Yeah,
you know, Alan Alda said in the middle of a fight,
he has to say to himself, but she's the one
I love. I have to like back off of this.
You know, I actually love her. I don't need to
(11:03):
choose this. I asked Billy Graham once, have you ever
considered divorce? Never murder? Have you, guys, ever thrown that
divorce word around? Never? So, because then you're you're you're
holding upon and if you're thinking that, then there's a problem, right,
(11:28):
But to use it, go get help as a couple. Yeah,
we firmly believe in getting help as a couple. Oh yeah, absolutely.
And have you earlier later both be late? Really yeah,
before you were married, because you thought what because we
were both in our thirties. Because I recognize that I
(11:49):
had gotten myself into situations where I'm in a relationship
and I don't want to be again and again and again,
and I'm thinking, wait a minute, what why is this
pattern happening to me? Slow down and pull it back.
But if you do find some one who you really know,
(12:11):
as I did with Robin, Okay, now, I don't want
to mess this up. So I'm impressed with your insight
at that time of your life. Where did that come from?
When we went into therapy, it was before we're married,
because Brian used to say to me, I love you.
I know I want to marry you. I just don't
know when I was thirty four, so there was a
(12:31):
part of me that was going, but you're assuming I'll
still be here, right? And that made me mad because
it was like, even thought it was ready, I got
it right. So right? What else should I say? No? No,
You're lucky that she cared enough. I mean, isn't it
amazing that the timing of any couple can work out?
(12:53):
I know. I was on Phil's show promoting something and
he said to me on his show, how does a
girl like you not get married? I was like thirty
six or so at the time, and I said, I'm
never getting married, no intention of getting married, and he said, really, yeah,
it's all right. So we started dating getting married a
(13:16):
perfect woman. So I don't know about seven eight months
in he asked me to marry him and I said,
you're crazy. I just I'm not ever getting married. So
that he never brought it up again, and like three
years old, buy and I said, I kind of like
to get married. You know. It was like he was
smart enough to like, okay, fine, I just want to
(13:36):
get married, right, because you weren't saying I don't want
to have a relationship with you. No. I was crazy
about him. I was what you call candy Burger and
I used to say about our boyfriends, I'm crazy about him.
But we never said I'm in love with anybody. I
didn't admit the love part until we actually broke up
for three months because it was so hard. I was
in LA he was in Chicago with his show, and
(13:59):
it was so much trouble to get together. It was
exciting as hell. I mean we would, you know, we
would make out in the airport, but it was it
was terrible in many ways, and said, you know what,
this is just too much, and so we did. We
broke up, and in those three months of being apart,
I thought there's nobody but him, and he called me
in the middle of the night and he said, I
(14:21):
never thought anybody could be this irreplaceable. And then we
both cried on the phone, and that was ye know,
you allowed yourselves to slow down, right separate and really
experienced the loss right what you had to lose if
you weren't together right early on, because we both wanted
(14:44):
it to work, I came up with an idea that
would take the decision making out and that is, if
either one of us said I want us to go
in to see the therapist, there is no discussion to it.
(15:04):
And we agreed upon that early on. So whenever anyone
says it's really important to me, okay, you're back off,
it's like, let's set it up. What are you doing?
And she is almost always the one to say, I
think we need to go in, And it surprises me. Really, Yes,
it's important to me, And just the idea of being
(15:26):
in that environment and offering up a thought, a notion
of feeling that comes to you and ensuring it right
and having somebody who's who's not impartial basically in looking
at both sides and how I receive information, how he
receives information. Yeah, interpreters. The thing is, mental health has
(15:49):
always been viewed as a weakness. Yeah, sure that if
you need therapy, Oh, your character is in question. If
you need therapy, it must be it must be crazy.
I tell people all the time when there's really when
you go to therapy, it's like, yeah, I said, let me,
let me ask you a question. You drive a car.
(16:10):
If you're if the red light on your car said
engine trouble, would you stop, open up the hood and
start decorating? Of course not. He's like, I don't know
where to begin. What makes you think that you can
fix your marriage if that warning light is on? Right?
(16:31):
And that's all it is, right, just the caution light
going hey. And so we actually use the phrase we
need a tuneup. That's great, let's just go get a tunup.
Most people go to a life completely unconscious, and they
don't understand why they run into a bus, right, and
that and you run into a bus in your marriage,
you run into a bus raising children? You have a
(16:53):
daughter daughter? Yeah, and did you were you good co
parenting or did you argue about that or did you
have to find a pattern for that? Now we didn't know.
We've never we haven't really had. How do you find
that style? You know too well? You know it's making
it sound like we haven't had any knockdown, drag out fights,
(17:14):
and believe me, we have. That's you do. We've been
married thirty years. Of course, Brian wanted more children and
I didn't. We'll have more. After a quick break, we're
(17:40):
back to our interview with actors Brian Cranston and Robin Dearden.
After having one child, Robin and Brian faced a tough dilemma.
He had hopes for more children. Robin was done. Really
so that was a big therapy thing. Wow, I'll bet
I think I really would have resented having two kids
(18:04):
when he would be gone like six months or go
off into a movie or right, And how did you
get through that? Well? Um, as a progressive, enlightened male,
I said, well, I think it's fair that you should
have two votes and I'll have one vote. So because
(18:27):
of the biological so I said, I said, well maybe
when Taylor is one years old, I'll bring it up.
When she's two years old, I'll bring it up, and
after that I won't bring it up. But we like no, okay,
but we did go to therapy for that, and I
(18:48):
learned something really interesting about you at that because I
had Yes, we were getting deep into him wanting more
children so much and me being fine with not. The
therapist asked, Brian, why do you think this is so important?
And you had this epiphany of because I only think
(19:09):
of a family as my siblings, because his parents were
so fractured that us only having one was not a family.
I really relied on my brother, who's two years older
than me, during the fracture of the family. He was
like he was running defense and blocking for me and
(19:29):
figuring things out together. And we're very, very close. For
a long long time, I thought, boy, I really needed
my brother. Our little sister needed us two at times
to take care of her, to babysit when mom was
drinking too much or whatever, you know. So that's what
I kept thinking. It's not for me, it's for Taylor.
(19:50):
I thought it's better for Taylor to have a sibling.
I don't disagree with you. I think that that's true.
I want to go, what do you think? Sure now? Sure, sure, now,
big big deal. That's amazing having had to change your
(20:15):
marriage a lot by having a baby. Bye oh oh yeah, Well,
because I did Haven when I was forty because I
did have major complications. It took me a year to
even feel quasi normal again. He just wrecked me. It
just totally wrecked me. And that was part of it. Two.
(20:35):
I just don't want to go through that again. It
was just so it deprived you of the joy of motherhood.
Didn't for a while. Yeah, I mean not from two,
not from two on, from two years old on. But
that first year was really really hard. It was really hard.
But Brian was home then, he wasn't gone. I wasn't,
you know, going through myself. Oh yeah, and it's like,
(20:57):
we'll just do this, We'll just get through this. That's
who he is that in everything, he's like that. There
was another point. His grandmother was in dementia in a
home and she had to go to the bathroom and
he said, I'll help you, grandma, and she said, oh no, okay.
She wasn't really sure who he was and she said,
(21:18):
oh no, no no, I'd be two bears. He goes, oh, Grahama,
don't you know I'm a doctor now? And she went, okay,
that's so good. And how and what was it about
about Robin that made you? I think part of it
was just the the person that she is, that she
still has a joyous appreciation for simple things, for just life,
(21:43):
a good positive outlook. She wasn't cynical or sarcastic. Yet
she was funny. She was beautiful, still is, and the
character of a person is what you should hitch your
wagons too. What are the choices you make when times
(22:04):
are tough? Is there an example? Well, it's interesting because
one of our first fights was when she had this
boyfriend and we were now getting together, and she hadn't
officially told the boyfriend that he didn't live in Los Angeles,
(22:28):
that this was not going to go any further. And
I thought, you know, this is I'm sensing something here.
I'm sensing something here. I lost my voice. I physically
lost my voice. It was such a psychological wow. It
(22:50):
was like I got laryngitis. I couldn't speak. Yes, so
did you believe it? Well? I was having a difficult
time and right so rightfully so yes, thank you for
saying so. I was in the right on here completely.
But they were asking, what is it about me that
(23:11):
you love so much? Mistake? I don't think I'm gonna
do any better than you You're probably right. What would
your pass on to a young couple who's about to
be married that you've learned being able to laugh? It's
(23:35):
really important to me, m And then the other thing
is just I'll say sometimes I'm your best friend. I've
gotten your back, don't forget that. And I think if
you can both remember that. What about you, mister? You
have to know that you've fallen in love before you
(23:57):
attempt this. Now's it sounds overly simplistic, because well, of course,
but really be in love and take the time to
really desire that person, to miss that person. Sometimes separation
is not necessarily a bad thing, and to find out
(24:18):
how you truly feel at your core if this is
a relationship that can endure. And with that nugget, it
was time for Brian to get going for his stage
performance that night. It was incredible with the performance to
give and the clock ticking, they didn't rush us. They
(24:41):
gave it their all. I love them for that and
they were fun to be with. I'd match you guys
up anytime. Robin, You've got to meet this guy. Until
next time. I'm Phil Donahue and I'm Marlow Thomas are fabulous.
(25:03):
Double Day there's a production of Pushkin Industries. The show
was created by US and produced by Sarah Lily. Michael
Bahari is associate producer. Musical adaptations of It Had to
Be You by Selwagen, Simfinette, Marlo and I are executive producers,
along with Mia Lobell and Letal Molad from Pushkin. Special
(25:27):
thanks to Jacob Wiseburg, Malcolm Gladwell, Heather Faine, John Snars,
Carly Migliori, Eric Sandler, Emily Rostek, Jason Gambrel, Paul Williams,
and Bruce Klugger. If you like our show, please remember
to share, rate, and review. Thanks for listening.
Pushkin. Hi, I'm Phil Donahue and I'm Marlowe Thomas, and
we're going on a series of double dates to find
out what makes a marriage last. What a crazy afternoon
(00:40):
in New York the day we met Brian Cranston and
Robin Dearden. Oh god, I remember Brian was starring in
the hit Broadway production of Network and the curtain was
going up in just a few hours. So we had
a very narrow window of time to visit with them
at their apartment. And then our cab driver took us
to the wrong address and it was rush hour. We
(01:02):
were almost a full hour late. It was just the worst,
no time to kind of warm up to each other. Wonderful.
Pugged into the room. You plugged into that. Yes, I
noticed that an idiot completely. She's discombobulated. You were rattled,
but Brian was so relaxed. Lift yeah, yeah, so let's
(01:26):
talk once we got our act together. We dove in
by talking about their parents' marriages. All seven of my parents'
marriages were wonderful. My mom was married four times, my
dad was married three times. They had numerous boyfriends and girlfriends,
and yeah, so in many ways my parents taught me
(01:50):
what not to do? This kind of lais a fair
attitude into marriage? Didn't work? Um, where were you from
from la born and raised out there? And uh so
were you kind of against marriage? No? I was married
once before I was twenty three, and then I got
(02:11):
married again when I was thirty five. I think I
was thirty five. You were there. I was thirty three,
so ten years after my trial marriage. So didn't scare
you off marriage? The fact that there were all those marriages. No, No,
because the woman that I married wasn't a bad person.
She was a lovely person. It was the wrong time
(02:34):
and I wasn't in love with her, and I think
I took a very casual look at it. It wasn't
fair to her, wasn't fair to me. Fortunately, we didn't
have any children, and she went her separate way and
remarried and has a life and the life she wanted.
What about you, Robin, What about your family? I came
(02:55):
from the complete opposite of his. I had to leave
it to beaver. I was raised in Whittier, little tiny town,
Nixon's hometown. I'm a native of California too. I never
wanted to get married. It wasn't high on my list,
and my parents never instilled in me the need to
(03:16):
be married. We grew up in the mostly our formative
years in the seventies, and the sexual revolution in the
sixties busted it open, and the seventies sort of celebrated
that kind of looseness, and you got waylaid and off track.
I think a lot by fun, yeah, by fun right,
(03:38):
and by freedom and convincing yourself that you may be
in love with someone when you're really not and you
may not have that much in common with them, and
now you're in so deep, be like, oh, how do
I extract myself? I got married very young, and then
afterward I realized, oh, I've made a mistake, and I realized,
(04:01):
then if I do this again, I really have to
know what I'm doing and be in love of So
then you met on a set, right, Yeah, we met
on a on a really terrible television show called Airwolf,
which starred a helicopter and uh, and I was a
(04:23):
bad guy of the week on this episode. She was
the victim of the week. I kidnapped her and held
her for ransom, and along with a few other women,
I was going to say, how sexy you met a
gun on her who is threatened to kill her or
dat her, which we met on Airwolf. We didn't start
(04:46):
dating then. It was a year later that we ran
into each other in an improv comedy class um and
and got to know each other and got to be friends.
But I think we were we were lucky. We were
guided to this the year at the time that we met.
(05:07):
I had a girlfriend too, had a boyfriend, so we
were able to just not have the tension I should
make a move and ask her out and all this
and fun. We were able to just have fun and
flirt and and end Oh that's nice. And we just
kind of slowed into it, as opposed to h over
(05:28):
extending yourself physically making that commitment and then having the
backtrack to figure out who this person is, who you
just had relations with, and you are yes, exactly. We
fool ourselves and we go, oh my god, I'm doing
this again. And then I went to Oxford for a
(05:52):
summer and he came over and he stopped at Oxford
and I went, oh, it's you. And I've never felt
that way in my life. Oh it's you mean. I
can't explain it except that it was just this reaction
to oh, I do. I do want to get married
(06:12):
and I want to marry you. That's so you knew that.
I knew pretty fast and I had never felt that
way before. And you were you thinking that she could
be the one? Or yeah, I was. I was very
keen on this. We had the most romantic date in
at Stratford upon Avon. I rented a punch over and
(06:34):
we were we had sandwiches, a beautiful day, like looked
like this wine and we found a little shady place
under a tree in the water and it was like
we kissed like male like bandits. Oh how lovely, how great? Yeah,
your proposal received a lot of ink. Was that is
(06:56):
that bathtub in London? Or with that? No, he owned
a cabin with a friend of his two actors. They
bought a cabin up in Big Bear. It was hilarious
because the bathroom was a standard sized bag in a
crappy cabin in the mountains. So there wasn't any room
for me to face him facing the spout. Your back
(07:24):
was against his chifts. Yes, so I kept thinking, guard
I designed it this way because I thought that if
I was to face her and trying to get these
lines out, we would cry, I would crack. I did.
I relate did so. I thought, Man, how am I
(07:44):
going to do this? How am I going to do this?
A champagne? I have little music going, and I'm going,
what the hell is this? And every time I start
to talk and she starts to turn around to look,
and I pushed her face back towards the front so
that I could let me just get this out. Was
that a surprise at that moment? It wasn't a surprise
(08:05):
because I was like, oh, I know where this is
going kind of now. The other thing was the ring. Yeah,
I'm we're nude as one is in a bathtub? Right
Where would I put the ring? So I thinking, no,
she'll see it. There's if I put it. No, that's
(08:27):
down the drain, and I said, I thought, oh, I
put it on my baby toe. I put it all
the way on my and submerged the foot. That's so great,
So that she then this foot and did this because
I couldn't reach it. Is this a horror movie? No,
(08:48):
it sounds like a sounds like an improv. It was, Yeah,
that's very worked out. It's a good thing. She said, Yes,
how embarrassing. How do you get out of that you know,
there's a lot of sincerity in that, you know, you're
not just another girl. Yeah, and it worked. So what what? Well,
(09:10):
let me put it, how do you fight? Everybody has
their way that they fight and how they make up
from a fight. Because I'm Italian and Lebanese and he's Irish,
we have a very different way of fighting. We've had
to learn over years how actually to fight. So without
you know, something going out the window. I used to
say to him, I have a feeling that someday that
(09:31):
we do nothing left but an eyelash and some white hair.
They were here. So how would you say you're a stylist?
I would first say that I'm the moodier of the
two of us. He's crankier than I am. Yeah, I
am not. She is perfect, much steadier in her comportment
(09:56):
and personality than I am. Hans bounds, I pound hyeah
as she is learning to not take things too seriously
and to let things go. I have learned to identify
when the train is going on the wrong track early,
so that it's not so far down the road that
(10:19):
you go, oh, I've made a mistake, and I am sorry,
And now we need to back up. A train to
go to get on the right now. I need to
learn to go. Oh that's the switch. Uh, start start
making adjustments now as opposed to holding onto that and
letting it go too far down the road. That's a
(10:41):
great visual to think about. There's a switch that you
can stop this now. Yeah, that's a big deal. Yeah,
you know, Alan Alda said in the middle of a fight,
he has to say to himself, but she's the one
I love. I have to like back off of this.
You know, I actually love her. I don't need to
(11:03):
choose this. I asked Billy Graham once, have you ever
considered divorce? Never murder? Have you, guys, ever thrown that
divorce word around? Never? So, because then you're you're you're
holding upon and if you're thinking that, then there's a problem, right,
(11:28):
But to use it, go get help as a couple. Yeah,
we firmly believe in getting help as a couple. Oh yeah, absolutely.
And have you earlier later both be late? Really yeah,
before you were married, because you thought what because we
were both in our thirties. Because I recognize that I
(11:49):
had gotten myself into situations where I'm in a relationship
and I don't want to be again and again and again,
and I'm thinking, wait a minute, what why is this
pattern happening to me? Slow down and pull it back.
But if you do find some one who you really know,
(12:11):
as I did with Robin, Okay, now, I don't want
to mess this up. So I'm impressed with your insight
at that time of your life. Where did that come from?
When we went into therapy, it was before we're married,
because Brian used to say to me, I love you.
I know I want to marry you. I just don't
know when I was thirty four, so there was a
(12:31):
part of me that was going, but you're assuming I'll
still be here, right? And that made me mad because
it was like, even thought it was ready, I got
it right. So right? What else should I say? No? No,
You're lucky that she cared enough. I mean, isn't it
amazing that the timing of any couple can work out?
(12:53):
I know. I was on Phil's show promoting something and
he said to me on his show, how does a
girl like you not get married? I was like thirty
six or so at the time, and I said, I'm
never getting married, no intention of getting married, and he said, really, yeah,
it's all right. So we started dating getting married a
(13:16):
perfect woman. So I don't know about seven eight months
in he asked me to marry him and I said,
you're crazy. I just I'm not ever getting married. So
that he never brought it up again, and like three
years old, buy and I said, I kind of like
to get married. You know. It was like he was
smart enough to like, okay, fine, I just want to
(13:36):
get married, right, because you weren't saying I don't want
to have a relationship with you. No. I was crazy
about him. I was what you call candy Burger and
I used to say about our boyfriends, I'm crazy about him.
But we never said I'm in love with anybody. I
didn't admit the love part until we actually broke up
for three months because it was so hard. I was
in LA he was in Chicago with his show, and
(13:59):
it was so much trouble to get together. It was
exciting as hell. I mean we would, you know, we
would make out in the airport, but it was it
was terrible in many ways, and said, you know what,
this is just too much, and so we did. We
broke up, and in those three months of being apart,
I thought there's nobody but him, and he called me
in the middle of the night and he said, I
(14:21):
never thought anybody could be this irreplaceable. And then we
both cried on the phone, and that was ye know,
you allowed yourselves to slow down, right separate and really
experienced the loss right what you had to lose if
you weren't together right early on, because we both wanted
(14:44):
it to work, I came up with an idea that
would take the decision making out and that is, if
either one of us said I want us to go
in to see the therapist, there is no discussion to it.
(15:04):
And we agreed upon that early on. So whenever anyone
says it's really important to me, okay, you're back off,
it's like, let's set it up. What are you doing?
And she is almost always the one to say, I
think we need to go in, And it surprises me. Really, Yes,
it's important to me, And just the idea of being
(15:26):
in that environment and offering up a thought, a notion
of feeling that comes to you and ensuring it right
and having somebody who's who's not impartial basically in looking
at both sides and how I receive information, how he
receives information. Yeah, interpreters. The thing is, mental health has
(15:49):
always been viewed as a weakness. Yeah, sure that if
you need therapy, Oh, your character is in question. If
you need therapy, it must be it must be crazy.
I tell people all the time when there's really when
you go to therapy, it's like, yeah, I said, let me,
let me ask you a question. You drive a car.
(16:10):
If you're if the red light on your car said
engine trouble, would you stop, open up the hood and
start decorating? Of course not. He's like, I don't know
where to begin. What makes you think that you can
fix your marriage if that warning light is on? Right?
(16:31):
And that's all it is, right, just the caution light
going hey. And so we actually use the phrase we
need a tuneup. That's great, let's just go get a tunup.
Most people go to a life completely unconscious, and they
don't understand why they run into a bus, right, and
that and you run into a bus in your marriage,
you run into a bus raising children? You have a
(16:53):
daughter daughter? Yeah, and did you were you good co
parenting or did you argue about that or did you
have to find a pattern for that? Now we didn't know.
We've never we haven't really had. How do you find
that style? You know too well? You know it's making
it sound like we haven't had any knockdown, drag out fights,
(17:14):
and believe me, we have. That's you do. We've been
married thirty years. Of course, Brian wanted more children and
I didn't. We'll have more. After a quick break, we're
(17:40):
back to our interview with actors Brian Cranston and Robin Dearden.
After having one child, Robin and Brian faced a tough dilemma.
He had hopes for more children. Robin was done. Really
so that was a big therapy thing. Wow, I'll bet
I think I really would have resented having two kids
(18:04):
when he would be gone like six months or go
off into a movie or right, And how did you
get through that? Well? Um, as a progressive, enlightened male,
I said, well, I think it's fair that you should
have two votes and I'll have one vote. So because
(18:27):
of the biological so I said, I said, well maybe
when Taylor is one years old, I'll bring it up.
When she's two years old, I'll bring it up, and
after that I won't bring it up. But we like no, okay,
but we did go to therapy for that, and I
(18:48):
learned something really interesting about you at that because I
had Yes, we were getting deep into him wanting more
children so much and me being fine with not. The
therapist asked, Brian, why do you think this is so important?
And you had this epiphany of because I only think
(19:09):
of a family as my siblings, because his parents were
so fractured that us only having one was not a family.
I really relied on my brother, who's two years older
than me, during the fracture of the family. He was
like he was running defense and blocking for me and
(19:29):
figuring things out together. And we're very, very close. For
a long long time, I thought, boy, I really needed
my brother. Our little sister needed us two at times
to take care of her, to babysit when mom was
drinking too much or whatever, you know. So that's what
I kept thinking. It's not for me, it's for Taylor.
(19:50):
I thought it's better for Taylor to have a sibling.
I don't disagree with you. I think that that's true.
I want to go, what do you think? Sure now? Sure, sure, now,
big big deal. That's amazing having had to change your
(20:15):
marriage a lot by having a baby. Bye oh oh yeah, Well,
because I did Haven when I was forty because I
did have major complications. It took me a year to
even feel quasi normal again. He just wrecked me. It
just totally wrecked me. And that was part of it. Two.
(20:35):
I just don't want to go through that again. It
was just so it deprived you of the joy of motherhood.
Didn't for a while. Yeah, I mean not from two,
not from two on, from two years old on. But
that first year was really really hard. It was really hard.
But Brian was home then, he wasn't gone. I wasn't,
you know, going through myself. Oh yeah, and it's like,
(20:57):
we'll just do this, We'll just get through this. That's
who he is that in everything, he's like that. There
was another point. His grandmother was in dementia in a
home and she had to go to the bathroom and
he said, I'll help you, grandma, and she said, oh no, okay.
She wasn't really sure who he was and she said,
(21:18):
oh no, no no, I'd be two bears. He goes, oh, Grahama,
don't you know I'm a doctor now? And she went, okay,
that's so good. And how and what was it about
about Robin that made you? I think part of it
was just the the person that she is, that she
still has a joyous appreciation for simple things, for just life,
(21:43):
a good positive outlook. She wasn't cynical or sarcastic. Yet
she was funny. She was beautiful, still is, and the
character of a person is what you should hitch your
wagons too. What are the choices you make when times
(22:04):
are tough? Is there an example? Well, it's interesting because
one of our first fights was when she had this
boyfriend and we were now getting together, and she hadn't
officially told the boyfriend that he didn't live in Los Angeles,
(22:28):
that this was not going to go any further. And
I thought, you know, this is I'm sensing something here.
I'm sensing something here. I lost my voice. I physically
lost my voice. It was such a psychological wow. It
(22:50):
was like I got laryngitis. I couldn't speak. Yes, so
did you believe it? Well? I was having a difficult
time and right so rightfully so yes, thank you for
saying so. I was in the right on here completely.
But they were asking, what is it about me that
(23:11):
you love so much? Mistake? I don't think I'm gonna
do any better than you You're probably right. What would
your pass on to a young couple who's about to
be married that you've learned being able to laugh? It's
(23:35):
really important to me, m And then the other thing
is just I'll say sometimes I'm your best friend. I've
gotten your back, don't forget that. And I think if
you can both remember that. What about you, mister? You
have to know that you've fallen in love before you
(23:57):
attempt this. Now's it sounds overly simplistic, because well, of course,
but really be in love and take the time to
really desire that person, to miss that person. Sometimes separation
is not necessarily a bad thing, and to find out
(24:18):
how you truly feel at your core if this is
a relationship that can endure. And with that nugget, it
was time for Brian to get going for his stage
performance that night. It was incredible with the performance to
give and the clock ticking, they didn't rush us. They
(24:41):
gave it their all. I love them for that and
they were fun to be with. I'd match you guys
up anytime. Robin, You've got to meet this guy. Until
next time. I'm Phil Donahue and I'm Marlow Thomas are fabulous.
(25:03):
Double Day there's a production of Pushkin Industries. The show
was created by US and produced by Sarah Lily. Michael
Bahari is associate producer. Musical adaptations of It Had to
Be You by Selwagen, Simfinette, Marlo and I are executive producers,
along with Mia Lobell and Letal Molad from Pushkin. Special
(25:27):
thanks to Jacob Wiseburg, Malcolm Gladwell, Heather Faine, John Snars,
Carly Migliori, Eric Sandler, Emily Rostek, Jason Gambrel, Paul Williams,
and Bruce Klugger. If you like our show, please remember
to share, rate, and review. Thanks for listening.
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