June 21, 2021 • 25 mins
How “Mambo Mouth” found love and lived happily ever after. New Yorkers to the core, John and Justine combined his Latin roots with her Jewish heritage, and they never met a holiday they couldn’t turn into a party for their extended family. He may need his own floor of the house in order to write, but Justine seems to keep him inspired, simply by being herself.
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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. To visit with actor
(00:41):
John Legozamo and his wife Justine. All we had to
do was get in a cab and head downtown to
Greenwich Village. It seemed easy enough. We had the address,
but as we cruised down their block amidst all these
beautiful brownstones, we could not, for the life of us
find number fifty one. What it's said on the building
(01:02):
was eighteen fifty four, eighteen fifty little plaque outside outside,
So you think it's ten years before, Yes, sir, yes, sir.
I love the field knows this Kindiston. Don't play trivial
for suit with him. You believe the room, they won't
fly forget trivial pursuit. This house was just teeming with history.
(01:24):
We've lived here about ten years in this house. And
is there is there another family above you or do
you have the home? We have the whole thing. Our
kids live upstairs when they're home, both in college, their
home for the summer, so it's just us. New a
little garden in the back. We have a garden in
the back that John takes care of. And did you
remodel a lot? We didn't gut renovation pretty much. Yeah,
(01:47):
we restorted back to what it was originally. Oh as closed,
like this floor from eight nineteen hundreds. Yeah, yeah, like
this part of the floor is the original floor from that.
You can tell by how beat up it is. I
mean it was underneath exactly exactly. We settled in by
a window overlooking the tree lined street outside. So how
(02:09):
did you, guys? Meat? Were you? We met out a
movie actually John was in Carlito's Way and I was
a costume pa and we met at a fitting. No,
I mean the first time I saw her it was
it was electric. I mean it was incredible, and she's
like the finest one I ever seen. And then we
(02:29):
started dating and then you know, and she said yes yeah, yeah,
eventually he said yes, yeah. I took a few years.
Was it electric for you? Absolutely? I knew, really, I
knew immediately that we should be together, But there was
at first fitting. I really did. Yeah. So she was
so first of all, incredibly sexy and beautiful, but also
(02:51):
at the same time she was like something really connected.
But I knew who he was from because he had
already done Mombo Malthain Spicker and so I was working
for the costume designers and I asked them if I
could go to the fitting and how Yeah, and it
(03:14):
was it was kiss may I mean she made it
happen in sort of a way and then it just yeah.
So and you had been married already. I was engaged.
I was engaged at the time that I was. We
knew each other a long time before we started dating.
I'm not. I'm not the police. Were you ever married before? No? No, No,
(03:37):
I wasn't either. Well you were mad before two? Yeah?
He had five children? Whoa yeah in six years birth
control was yeah. But it was interesting because I didn't
get married to him and I was forty And he said, uh,
how did you know? You know not to get married.
(04:00):
How did you not do it? I said, because I'm
a female. You know, guys think you know somebody else
is gonna take care of all. Yeah, I knew. I
don't want. I don't want to do that. I want
to be an actress, yeah, I want. I want to study,
I want to travel. I went to London and did
a play and you know, I was going but I
still forward thanking for somebody even back then. Oh yeah sixties. Yeah. Um. Anyway,
(04:27):
so you met and you got married much later if
we had children first, So our kids, our daughter was
born in nineteen ninety nine. Why we just thought you
didn't want to be married or I think we had
different reasons. Actually, for me, I didn't feel like I
wanted to be married. Um, it just didn't mean anything
to me. I always knew my whole life I wanted
(04:48):
to have children, but I just never really saw marriage
as part of my life. I didn't see the point.
It just wasn't it. I thought that was really sexy.
I thought that was like, oh yeah, I like that.
You'll raise again Katholic and Seven day Adventists. Oh really?
And then all my family converted to Evangelism. Oh wow,
How did your parents feel about you not marrying a Latin?
Was that a problem? We'd line of people. We don't
(05:10):
have those issues. We love everybody, We want everybody to
love everybody. Yeah, we fearful. So I was raised sort
of Jewish, but barely. I mean really, my parents were atheists,
so they never said a word about it. I think
they were so relieved that I had found someone I
don't know that they ever thought I really would. I
(05:30):
was extremely independent, and so when they saw how much
I loved John and how what a wonderful man he is, Uh,
they never said a word about it. They were a
beautiful man. They really accepted me like right away, and
I love them too. You know it was easy. What
made you get married? Huh? With the kids are older
and you felt it think, yeah, I think we were
(05:50):
going they were going to go to school, and we'd
have we'd have separate different names, and all that stuff
gets complicated for me. I felt after nine eleven happened
and there was all that talk of like you can't
travel with someone's nut, you don't have to say name,
and there was like this weird moment, I mean, yeah,
made you really think, rethink life and the values of
(06:11):
in your values. And so we got married, We got
a country house. We just changed life a little bit,
just to just focus more on on the moments, the
important moments, you mean, the family, Yeah, family, values, friends,
you know, the things that really matter that really count.
At the end, I'm Lebanese, which is actually Arab, right,
(06:32):
and so people were talking terribly about right people, so
you know, and I found myself having to say, well,
you know, I'm kind of arab Lebanese jo. I couldn't
let it go. No, you have to have to speak up. Yeah.
So coming from different cultures, because you really did come
from the Hispanic culture, right, Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean
we came from very different socio economic backgrounds. But I
(06:53):
think opposites attract for a reason. I mean, I mean
it's just that such a natural thing. So what was
your background? Us? Upper west Side Private School in New York. Uh.
You know, my grandparents came from Russia, and then my
parents were both born in Brooklyn, and my dad worked
hard and after the Upper Warst Side exactly so, and
(07:16):
my nice Jewish Yeah, I went to Field thin everyone
I knew was just like me, and it was a
pretty small world. And yeah, and then I grew up,
you know, kind of ghetto in Queens and you know,
getting in trouble and fresh air, fun kid. And then
I started to find creativity as a as a sort
(07:39):
of means that saved me, gave me a future, and
gave me a whole way of using everything that I'd
grown up with as ammunition and as and I used
art as a weapon to you must have been getting
left too. I mean, talking about it as a kid,
did you get left? Oh? Yeah, you know. I was
a funny guy. Yeah, at the same time, but I
was also getting into a lot of trouble because I
(08:02):
couldn't I wouldn't shut up. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
I mean I came up at a time where I
felt like we were incredibly invisible, even though in my
personal life Latin people were everywhere, but they weren't in
the media. And it's still kind of like that, were
still at less than three percent of the faces in
(08:22):
front of the camera, and yet LA is fifty percent Latin.
How is that possible. It's almost like present day apartheid
and in New York City where the same number as
white people, and yet there was such a dearth. It
was just a desert of our stories being told. And
I just couldn't understand that, and I didn't want it
to perpetuate it. So I started writing my stories so
I could see my people even though I was playing
(08:43):
them all right, when you say that you were living
among them, did you live in Hispanic neighborhood? Yeah, I
grew up in a Hispanic neighborhood. You know, my school
was black and Hispanic Latin into New York. Yeah, I
went down. I went to high school at Bertram High. Yeah,
and there was a lot of pride. And that's that's
I guess that's what gave me the confidence that our
(09:04):
stories aren't any lesser. Well, i've seen you in concert.
We're both every time. Actually, yeah, that's awesome. Thank you
for supporting. I know it came down to the public, remember, yeah, yeah,
we love the Moron Show and then Lumbo Mouth. Thank you.
That was nineteen ninety. Yeah. With John's cultural identity so
(09:24):
central to his life, I wanted to know if Justine
felt connected to a Jewish community. Not at all, except
you know, a lot of the people that I grew
up with are so I hear about it through them.
But I haven't been to a temple since I was
ten twelve years old. Way, did you give anything to
(09:45):
your kids like that? Or did you celebrate Christmas or oh, yeah,
we did. We celebrate Christmas and Eastern and then my
family comes and they celebrate Passover as well. Yea, my
mom comes to all that stuff. We love getting to
love traditions. But I mean I'm not religious. I mean
I believe in in in a higher power, and we
did this. We did a Palm Sunday. We would go
(10:05):
Palm Sunday. And it's beautiful because these people improvised this
and then there's a lot of singing, this gospel, this
Latin music. It's so beautiful. I love the colors and
the you know, the robes, and yeah, yeah, I love it.
But I don't believe in God. I don't have that
sort of a faith, but I certainly believe in God.
(10:25):
I think there's somebody there. He always says, will you
think they're in the sky as I didn't think. Marlo
blesses herself in turbulence when we're on an airplane. That's smart.
Calms down, we'll have more. After a quick break, we're
(10:59):
back to our interview with John and Justine Legozamo. While
they seem entirely on the same page, they grew up
in very different circumstances. So challenges do arise, especially when
you're raising kids and sharing a home. To me, I
always thought like, of course they'll go to private school.
I wouldn't have thought it wouldn't even occur to me
(11:21):
to do anything else. I think, But we were just
actually today having this conversation where John really wanted them
to go to public school and because that's all I knew.
I grew up going to public schools. And why did
you think that's better? Just because the real world. Yeah,
it's a real world, and everybody's of color, and it
just it was so much fun and I don't know,
(11:42):
sometimes it was tough, but a lot of times it
was incredibly fun and exciting. And I learned so much
in school from people then, not from the teachers that
were different. You mean, just our culture is so much
from black and land culture is so much fun that
we're always in and dated with it, you know, right,
I loved it. So was that an accommodation that you
decided to make. I don't know that you voiced those
(12:07):
feelings at that time. Oh you did, Yeah, I just said,
listen in the ear it but your kids went to
public school? No, they went to private schools. Oh so
you may become yes, interesting why I tried to weigh
all all the factors and go, you know, they're going
to have a celebrity name, and maybe that might not
(12:29):
be so easy going into a public school system to
have coming from where where we come. Now, our kids
this sort of new income. Right, it may not be
as comfortable, right, you know what I mean? Like I
had nothing, and all the kids that I went to
school had nothing, so we were all pretty even an equal, right.
But what happens if you if you have all this
and you're and then you go to school with kids
(12:51):
that don't have enough? How is that going to feel? Right?
So I thought maybe that might not be so good
a name. You have a name, then it's like, is
that going to cause problems and strife? Right? Now? We
live in the Brownstone because I need separation to be
able to write. Oh, I can't be on the same
floor because I can't write. So she made that concession
living in a Brownson when she rather live in an apartment.
(13:12):
We tried living in an apartment for a few years,
but John was so miserable that it just wasn't worth it. Hi. Yeah,
and there's too much stimuli and I can't. I need
to be with my thoughts. I mean, look, I married
an actor who was his life. It was no surprise
to me. I knew him for years before we got married.
I knew that he was going to be traveling a lot,
(13:33):
and that there was no clear schedule and it's not easy. Yeah,
we're like circus folk, you know what I mean. It's
like I've been an actor for so long that I
didn't understand the sacrifices she was making because I was
so used to being uprooted all the time. I had
no control over geography or time or destiny. That you
just surrendered to it. You got work. But that's what
(13:56):
I mean. Yeah, I mean it was that's hard on
a on a marriage, It's hard on race. Did you
take We tried at first, Yeah, but it was really
difficult to travel till they were five. We took them
and then we stopped and then I stopped, We stopped going.
Was that hard on your marriage? Yeah? But you know
we tried to keep a two week maximum. That was
(14:17):
a thing. I don't remember any sort of that, Yeah,
but that was that was That was may We tried.
But you know there were months. We didn't see each
other for months at a time. I mean, it just
was it hard on the marriage. I mean I guess
at times, you know, marriage isn't easy. So when all
(14:37):
that traveling, there must have been some jealousy, right, a
little bit of jealousy. I was very jealous of Pella,
you know right now when when he traveled or yeah,
and he's away and the women love famous people or
men love famous people, and you know, there's something alluring
about a person who's talented, very sorry, oh and famous, famous,
(15:01):
good looking, funny. Hey yeah, No, I think the jealousy
is the other way around, right, Yeah. I am not
a jealous person. I don't have it. It's but I'm
a jealous person. Oh yeah, yeah, So when you left
for a long time, that musn't have been hard. Yeah,
that bothers me. Yeah, you know, and like yeah, so yeah,
no I had issues, So tell us what did you do? Well?
(15:21):
We talked about it. We talked. We were pretty articular.
It wasn't like fighting. It was just more like, you know,
voicing that, you know, I'm uncomfortable with this. I'm uncomfortable
with that. That bothers me. And she's incredibly understanding about that.
So like male friends and stuff like that. Right, that's
exactly because I lived in Hollywood and Phil lived in
Chicago when we first met. In our first a couple
(15:43):
of years of marriage, we traveled and he would read
the paper that I'd gone out to dinner with, like
Chuck Groton, who like an old old friend. And he'd
say he went to dinner with Chuck Rodan. I'd say,
he's like this old friend of mine. He directed me
in Two Things, co starred with him in a movie.
You know he said, yeah, but you know I feel
a little uncomfortable. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right right, there's the
(16:05):
two of you. Yeah yeah, okay, did you stop? Yeah? Yeah?
I mean too, Yeah, it's not worth it. But I
would watch him on television and all these women would
look at him like it was a big ice cream cone.
I think, oh God, are they going to come up
to him afterward and tickle his fancy? And what's going
to happen here? None of that matters because I know
(16:26):
that his ultimate commitment is to me and my children
and our life together. How do you fight and how
do you come back? Because if you don't know how
to come back, that's usually how marriages. I believe you
shouldn't say things you can't take back, and I try.
She's not as so as good. She's not as good
as with that part of it. I mean, I'm more mean.
She'll say anything. I can be enraged, but not say
(16:51):
things that you can't take back or do things that
I can't take back. It's very rare that he really
loses control. When I say rare, I mean less than
five times and the whole time I've known him. When
you are less, I have less of that skill. Maybe
I mean I don't get mad like that very often,
(17:11):
but maybe tend to lose control of my emotions more
than John does. And then how do you come back?
Who comes back? John? Before? You should be me all
the time? It was always me like, come out, Let's
try to make up. There's not going to bed mad,
Let's try to fix this up. We just let it
out and we're fine. Now let's just go back to talking.
(17:33):
Let's talk it out. And I don't have as much
problem apologizing, I think as I is too. I'll just
I'm much easier to say I'm sorry. I think getting
rid of that kind of pride is so important. Yeah, yeah,
it doesn't help anything. Who was it that said to it? Oh?
Rob Reiner said? Whoever said that love me is ever
having to say your sorary has never been in love? Right? Right?
(17:56):
If you don't say I'm sorry, you're in love really right? Yeah?
Because you got you gotta make amend and you got
it often, and you gotta take accountability. If you don't
have somebody who's accountable, I mean, who, what kind of
those were you with? Try right? When when do you
think either one of you can answer this that you
first trusted, knew that this was a person you could trust,
(18:19):
you know, with not just sexually, but with your head,
you know, with your heart, you know. To give you
an example, when Phil and I were going together, we
met in January and this was August, and so this
was his big vacations, two week vacation. At While we're
in Italy, I get a phone call from Elaine May,
(18:40):
who you know, my good friend and we had worked
on a screen screenplay together. And she said, Mike Nichols
movie has just gone has just gone caput, and he's
looking for a new project. You've got to come back
right away because we have a chance to get Mike
to direct this. I said, Oh God, Atlanta, this guy's
(19:00):
only got two weeks. This is it. I said, if
I if I come back now, I'm done with this
guy and I we're pretty crazy about each other. It
was a really hot time in It'll lay the two
of us. Ah, God Jesus, So I go back to
the room and I explain the whole thing. He says, well,
it has to be this week, but is it's a funeral.
(19:21):
I said, no, it's no, but it's just you know,
he's going to decide now. And he looked at me
like I was the most disposable human being he'd never
known in his life. And I and I said, look,
I don't know your business, but and I know this
is a really great time we're having, but is there
anybody if you got a call to do an interview
(19:43):
with that you would leave? And he just thought a moment,
he said, Jimmy Carter, and when president at the time,
right right right when he said that, I thought, I
can trust this guy. This guy is not going to
bullshit me, right and say no, there's no one. There's
no way I would leave you. You know that he
(20:03):
was willing to think and say, yeah, okay, there's one
Jimmy Carter, and I I think I feel deeply in
love with him that he would not, you know, sexually
calm me like that. Anyway, I didn't go. We didn't
get Mike anyway, but I didn't leave for you. Yeah,
(20:23):
I think those are those are important life moments. In life,
when you go this person i'm with is more important
than my career, right, you have to make that decision
and show it. Sometimes that's what I could trust. That.
That's I don't know of a safer thing than that.
That's a big one. Mine is a small one, though,
but even a small one. Small one is that we
(20:44):
had a date early on, and it was at the Angelica,
because when the Angelica was everything, you know, like all
the hipsters, everybody was cool, was going to Angelica to
see the latest in the indie film and you were late,
and I flipped out over lateness. Really it sets me
(21:06):
off because I was pathologically early, so I was there
for like forty five minutes too early. And then she
comes late, so I was really upset, and she was
so upset. She started crying and I was like, oh
my god, you don't remember any of this, Oh my god,
if you're standing in the corner. And I was very upset,
(21:27):
trying to not be upset with its very early odd
and but she was okay with me being this hotheaded
about a stupid little thing, and yeah, and I was like,
oh my god, she cares about my feelings and she doesn't.
She's not saying you're an asshole, You're an idiot, you're
a moron, what the hell is wrong with you? Crazy?
(21:49):
I'm only like twenty minutes later. Whatever it was, And
I don't know, And we spent a lot of time
talking about it, and we didn't go to the movie
and we just spent a lot of time just talking
about and she was trying to calm me down, and
I just, I don't know, I felt really heard, really
respect it, and I don't know, I just, yeah, maybe
fall in love with her even more. She's never disappointed
(22:10):
that she's always been like that. Yeah. I think the
first moment for me was we started I think we
had started dating in August, and it was like very soon.
We had been together about a month and Thanksgiving was
coming up and we were starting to think about Thanksgiving
and John said to me, let's get all our families
and all have Thanksgiving together. But we'd only been together
a month, and I thought, Wow, this is really serious,
(22:34):
Like he wants my entire friend and they did, and
so we had all the families that we had, like
fifty people it was, and I so, yes, I trusted
him at that point, I thought, well, he's really serious
about this. I think it's this one beautiful thing about Justine.
She tries whatever the situation, where the problem is, She's
(22:55):
willing to put the effort and just try, and that's it.
Doesn't have to succeed at whatever the challenges, but she's
willing to try for me, and that makes me fall
in love with her every single time. That's nice. I
think seeing a bigger picture than just what's happening today,
you know, whatever sort of annoying small things are happening
(23:21):
on a daily basis, just remembering, you know, we have
a bigger life that we've created together, and we have
a past and we have a future. Marriage goes in cycles,
and there's good times and bad times, and if you
just hang on, you'll get to the next cycle. Yeah.
I mean, you got to know somehow that this is
(23:41):
the person you want to spend the rest of your
days with. I know that Justine and I could have
a great life forever, forever. So there you have it,
our lively conversation with John and just Stine Lebozamo Until
next time. I'm Phil Donahue and I'm Marlow Thomas, and
(24:04):
I think that that makes us work on it. It
makes me work on it, and I think that's that's
fun too. That's what keeps it exciting. Double Date is
a production of Pushkin Industries. The show was created by
US and produced by Sarah Lilly. Michael Bahari is associate producer.
Musical adaptations of It Had to Be You by Sellwagon, Symfinette,
(24:27):
Marlo and I are executive producers, along with Mia Lobell
and Letal Molad from Pushkin. Special thanks to Jacob Wiseberg,
Malcolm Gladwell, Heather Faine, John Snars, Carly Migliori, Eric Sandler,
Emily Rostek, Jason Gambrel, Paul Williams, and Bruce Kluger. If
(24:50):
you like our show, please remember to share, rate, and review.
Thanks for listening, bo
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. To visit with actor
(00:41):
John Legozamo and his wife Justine. All we had to
do was get in a cab and head downtown to
Greenwich Village. It seemed easy enough. We had the address,
but as we cruised down their block amidst all these
beautiful brownstones, we could not, for the life of us
find number fifty one. What it's said on the building
(01:02):
was eighteen fifty four, eighteen fifty little plaque outside outside,
So you think it's ten years before, Yes, sir, yes, sir.
I love the field knows this Kindiston. Don't play trivial
for suit with him. You believe the room, they won't
fly forget trivial pursuit. This house was just teeming with history.
(01:24):
We've lived here about ten years in this house. And
is there is there another family above you or do
you have the home? We have the whole thing. Our
kids live upstairs when they're home, both in college, their
home for the summer, so it's just us. New a
little garden in the back. We have a garden in
the back that John takes care of. And did you
remodel a lot? We didn't gut renovation pretty much. Yeah,
(01:47):
we restorted back to what it was originally. Oh as closed,
like this floor from eight nineteen hundreds. Yeah, yeah, like
this part of the floor is the original floor from that.
You can tell by how beat up it is. I
mean it was underneath exactly exactly. We settled in by
a window overlooking the tree lined street outside. So how
(02:09):
did you, guys? Meat? Were you? We met out a
movie actually John was in Carlito's Way and I was
a costume pa and we met at a fitting. No,
I mean the first time I saw her it was
it was electric. I mean it was incredible, and she's
like the finest one I ever seen. And then we
(02:29):
started dating and then you know, and she said yes yeah, yeah,
eventually he said yes, yeah. I took a few years.
Was it electric for you? Absolutely? I knew, really, I
knew immediately that we should be together, But there was
at first fitting. I really did. Yeah. So she was
so first of all, incredibly sexy and beautiful, but also
(02:51):
at the same time she was like something really connected.
But I knew who he was from because he had
already done Mombo Malthain Spicker and so I was working
for the costume designers and I asked them if I
could go to the fitting and how Yeah, and it
(03:14):
was it was kiss may I mean she made it
happen in sort of a way and then it just yeah.
So and you had been married already. I was engaged.
I was engaged at the time that I was. We
knew each other a long time before we started dating.
I'm not. I'm not the police. Were you ever married before? No? No, No,
(03:37):
I wasn't either. Well you were mad before two? Yeah?
He had five children? Whoa yeah in six years birth
control was yeah. But it was interesting because I didn't
get married to him and I was forty And he said, uh,
how did you know? You know not to get married.
(04:00):
How did you not do it? I said, because I'm
a female. You know, guys think you know somebody else
is gonna take care of all. Yeah, I knew. I
don't want. I don't want to do that. I want
to be an actress, yeah, I want. I want to study,
I want to travel. I went to London and did
a play and you know, I was going but I
still forward thanking for somebody even back then. Oh yeah sixties. Yeah. Um. Anyway,
(04:27):
so you met and you got married much later if
we had children first, So our kids, our daughter was
born in nineteen ninety nine. Why we just thought you
didn't want to be married or I think we had
different reasons. Actually, for me, I didn't feel like I
wanted to be married. Um, it just didn't mean anything
to me. I always knew my whole life I wanted
(04:48):
to have children, but I just never really saw marriage
as part of my life. I didn't see the point.
It just wasn't it. I thought that was really sexy.
I thought that was like, oh yeah, I like that.
You'll raise again Katholic and Seven day Adventists. Oh really?
And then all my family converted to Evangelism. Oh wow,
How did your parents feel about you not marrying a Latin?
Was that a problem? We'd line of people. We don't
(05:10):
have those issues. We love everybody, We want everybody to
love everybody. Yeah, we fearful. So I was raised sort
of Jewish, but barely. I mean really, my parents were atheists,
so they never said a word about it. I think
they were so relieved that I had found someone I
don't know that they ever thought I really would. I
(05:30):
was extremely independent, and so when they saw how much
I loved John and how what a wonderful man he is, Uh,
they never said a word about it. They were a
beautiful man. They really accepted me like right away, and
I love them too. You know it was easy. What
made you get married? Huh? With the kids are older
and you felt it think, yeah, I think we were
(05:50):
going they were going to go to school, and we'd
have we'd have separate different names, and all that stuff
gets complicated for me. I felt after nine eleven happened
and there was all that talk of like you can't
travel with someone's nut, you don't have to say name,
and there was like this weird moment, I mean, yeah,
made you really think, rethink life and the values of
(06:11):
in your values. And so we got married, We got
a country house. We just changed life a little bit,
just to just focus more on on the moments, the
important moments, you mean, the family, Yeah, family, values, friends,
you know, the things that really matter that really count.
At the end, I'm Lebanese, which is actually Arab, right,
(06:32):
and so people were talking terribly about right people, so
you know, and I found myself having to say, well,
you know, I'm kind of arab Lebanese jo. I couldn't
let it go. No, you have to have to speak up. Yeah.
So coming from different cultures, because you really did come
from the Hispanic culture, right, Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean
we came from very different socio economic backgrounds. But I
(06:53):
think opposites attract for a reason. I mean, I mean
it's just that such a natural thing. So what was
your background? Us? Upper west Side Private School in New York. Uh.
You know, my grandparents came from Russia, and then my
parents were both born in Brooklyn, and my dad worked
hard and after the Upper Warst Side exactly so, and
(07:16):
my nice Jewish Yeah, I went to Field thin everyone
I knew was just like me, and it was a
pretty small world. And yeah, and then I grew up,
you know, kind of ghetto in Queens and you know,
getting in trouble and fresh air, fun kid. And then
I started to find creativity as a as a sort
(07:39):
of means that saved me, gave me a future, and
gave me a whole way of using everything that I'd
grown up with as ammunition and as and I used
art as a weapon to you must have been getting
left too. I mean, talking about it as a kid,
did you get left? Oh? Yeah, you know. I was
a funny guy. Yeah, at the same time, but I
was also getting into a lot of trouble because I
(08:02):
couldn't I wouldn't shut up. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
I mean I came up at a time where I
felt like we were incredibly invisible, even though in my
personal life Latin people were everywhere, but they weren't in
the media. And it's still kind of like that, were
still at less than three percent of the faces in
(08:22):
front of the camera, and yet LA is fifty percent Latin.
How is that possible. It's almost like present day apartheid
and in New York City where the same number as
white people, and yet there was such a dearth. It
was just a desert of our stories being told. And
I just couldn't understand that, and I didn't want it
to perpetuate it. So I started writing my stories so
I could see my people even though I was playing
(08:43):
them all right, when you say that you were living
among them, did you live in Hispanic neighborhood? Yeah, I
grew up in a Hispanic neighborhood. You know, my school
was black and Hispanic Latin into New York. Yeah, I
went down. I went to high school at Bertram High. Yeah,
and there was a lot of pride. And that's that's
I guess that's what gave me the confidence that our
(09:04):
stories aren't any lesser. Well, i've seen you in concert.
We're both every time. Actually, yeah, that's awesome. Thank you
for supporting. I know it came down to the public, remember, yeah, yeah,
we love the Moron Show and then Lumbo Mouth. Thank you.
That was nineteen ninety. Yeah. With John's cultural identity so
(09:24):
central to his life, I wanted to know if Justine
felt connected to a Jewish community. Not at all, except
you know, a lot of the people that I grew
up with are so I hear about it through them.
But I haven't been to a temple since I was
ten twelve years old. Way, did you give anything to
(09:45):
your kids like that? Or did you celebrate Christmas or oh, yeah,
we did. We celebrate Christmas and Eastern and then my
family comes and they celebrate Passover as well. Yea, my
mom comes to all that stuff. We love getting to
love traditions. But I mean I'm not religious. I mean
I believe in in in a higher power, and we
did this. We did a Palm Sunday. We would go
(10:05):
Palm Sunday. And it's beautiful because these people improvised this
and then there's a lot of singing, this gospel, this
Latin music. It's so beautiful. I love the colors and
the you know, the robes, and yeah, yeah, I love it.
But I don't believe in God. I don't have that
sort of a faith, but I certainly believe in God.
(10:25):
I think there's somebody there. He always says, will you
think they're in the sky as I didn't think. Marlo
blesses herself in turbulence when we're on an airplane. That's smart.
Calms down, we'll have more. After a quick break, we're
(10:59):
back to our interview with John and Justine Legozamo. While
they seem entirely on the same page, they grew up
in very different circumstances. So challenges do arise, especially when
you're raising kids and sharing a home. To me, I
always thought like, of course they'll go to private school.
I wouldn't have thought it wouldn't even occur to me
(11:21):
to do anything else. I think, But we were just
actually today having this conversation where John really wanted them
to go to public school and because that's all I knew.
I grew up going to public schools. And why did
you think that's better? Just because the real world. Yeah,
it's a real world, and everybody's of color, and it
just it was so much fun and I don't know,
(11:42):
sometimes it was tough, but a lot of times it
was incredibly fun and exciting. And I learned so much
in school from people then, not from the teachers that
were different. You mean, just our culture is so much
from black and land culture is so much fun that
we're always in and dated with it, you know, right,
I loved it. So was that an accommodation that you
decided to make. I don't know that you voiced those
(12:07):
feelings at that time. Oh you did, Yeah, I just said,
listen in the ear it but your kids went to
public school? No, they went to private schools. Oh so
you may become yes, interesting why I tried to weigh
all all the factors and go, you know, they're going
to have a celebrity name, and maybe that might not
(12:29):
be so easy going into a public school system to
have coming from where where we come. Now, our kids
this sort of new income. Right, it may not be
as comfortable, right, you know what I mean? Like I
had nothing, and all the kids that I went to
school had nothing, so we were all pretty even an equal, right.
But what happens if you if you have all this
and you're and then you go to school with kids
(12:51):
that don't have enough? How is that going to feel? Right?
So I thought maybe that might not be so good
a name. You have a name, then it's like, is
that going to cause problems and strife? Right? Now? We
live in the Brownstone because I need separation to be
able to write. Oh, I can't be on the same
floor because I can't write. So she made that concession
living in a Brownson when she rather live in an apartment.
(13:12):
We tried living in an apartment for a few years,
but John was so miserable that it just wasn't worth it. Hi. Yeah,
and there's too much stimuli and I can't. I need
to be with my thoughts. I mean, look, I married
an actor who was his life. It was no surprise
to me. I knew him for years before we got married.
I knew that he was going to be traveling a lot,
(13:33):
and that there was no clear schedule and it's not easy. Yeah,
we're like circus folk, you know what I mean. It's
like I've been an actor for so long that I
didn't understand the sacrifices she was making because I was
so used to being uprooted all the time. I had
no control over geography or time or destiny. That you
just surrendered to it. You got work. But that's what
(13:56):
I mean. Yeah, I mean it was that's hard on
a on a marriage, It's hard on race. Did you
take We tried at first, Yeah, but it was really
difficult to travel till they were five. We took them
and then we stopped and then I stopped, We stopped going.
Was that hard on your marriage? Yeah? But you know
we tried to keep a two week maximum. That was
(14:17):
a thing. I don't remember any sort of that, Yeah,
but that was that was That was may We tried.
But you know there were months. We didn't see each
other for months at a time. I mean, it just
was it hard on the marriage. I mean I guess
at times, you know, marriage isn't easy. So when all
(14:37):
that traveling, there must have been some jealousy, right, a
little bit of jealousy. I was very jealous of Pella,
you know right now when when he traveled or yeah,
and he's away and the women love famous people or
men love famous people, and you know, there's something alluring
about a person who's talented, very sorry, oh and famous, famous,
(15:01):
good looking, funny. Hey yeah, No, I think the jealousy
is the other way around, right, Yeah. I am not
a jealous person. I don't have it. It's but I'm
a jealous person. Oh yeah, yeah, So when you left
for a long time, that musn't have been hard. Yeah,
that bothers me. Yeah, you know, and like yeah, so yeah,
no I had issues, So tell us what did you do? Well?
(15:21):
We talked about it. We talked. We were pretty articular.
It wasn't like fighting. It was just more like, you know,
voicing that, you know, I'm uncomfortable with this. I'm uncomfortable
with that. That bothers me. And she's incredibly understanding about that.
So like male friends and stuff like that. Right, that's
exactly because I lived in Hollywood and Phil lived in
Chicago when we first met. In our first a couple
(15:43):
of years of marriage, we traveled and he would read
the paper that I'd gone out to dinner with, like
Chuck Groton, who like an old old friend. And he'd
say he went to dinner with Chuck Rodan. I'd say,
he's like this old friend of mine. He directed me
in Two Things, co starred with him in a movie.
You know he said, yeah, but you know I feel
a little uncomfortable. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right right, there's the
(16:05):
two of you. Yeah yeah, okay, did you stop? Yeah? Yeah?
I mean too, Yeah, it's not worth it. But I
would watch him on television and all these women would
look at him like it was a big ice cream cone.
I think, oh God, are they going to come up
to him afterward and tickle his fancy? And what's going
to happen here? None of that matters because I know
(16:26):
that his ultimate commitment is to me and my children
and our life together. How do you fight and how
do you come back? Because if you don't know how
to come back, that's usually how marriages. I believe you
shouldn't say things you can't take back, and I try.
She's not as so as good. She's not as good
as with that part of it. I mean, I'm more mean.
She'll say anything. I can be enraged, but not say
(16:51):
things that you can't take back or do things that
I can't take back. It's very rare that he really
loses control. When I say rare, I mean less than
five times and the whole time I've known him. When
you are less, I have less of that skill. Maybe
I mean I don't get mad like that very often,
(17:11):
but maybe tend to lose control of my emotions more
than John does. And then how do you come back?
Who comes back? John? Before? You should be me all
the time? It was always me like, come out, Let's
try to make up. There's not going to bed mad,
Let's try to fix this up. We just let it
out and we're fine. Now let's just go back to talking.
(17:33):
Let's talk it out. And I don't have as much
problem apologizing, I think as I is too. I'll just
I'm much easier to say I'm sorry. I think getting
rid of that kind of pride is so important. Yeah, yeah,
it doesn't help anything. Who was it that said to it? Oh?
Rob Reiner said? Whoever said that love me is ever
having to say your sorary has never been in love? Right? Right?
(17:56):
If you don't say I'm sorry, you're in love really right? Yeah?
Because you got you gotta make amend and you got
it often, and you gotta take accountability. If you don't
have somebody who's accountable, I mean, who, what kind of
those were you with? Try right? When when do you
think either one of you can answer this that you
first trusted, knew that this was a person you could trust,
(18:19):
you know, with not just sexually, but with your head,
you know, with your heart, you know. To give you
an example, when Phil and I were going together, we
met in January and this was August, and so this
was his big vacations, two week vacation. At While we're
in Italy, I get a phone call from Elaine May,
(18:40):
who you know, my good friend and we had worked
on a screen screenplay together. And she said, Mike Nichols
movie has just gone has just gone caput, and he's
looking for a new project. You've got to come back
right away because we have a chance to get Mike
to direct this. I said, Oh God, Atlanta, this guy's
(19:00):
only got two weeks. This is it. I said, if
I if I come back now, I'm done with this
guy and I we're pretty crazy about each other. It
was a really hot time in It'll lay the two
of us. Ah, God Jesus, So I go back to
the room and I explain the whole thing. He says, well,
it has to be this week, but is it's a funeral.
(19:21):
I said, no, it's no, but it's just you know,
he's going to decide now. And he looked at me
like I was the most disposable human being he'd never
known in his life. And I and I said, look,
I don't know your business, but and I know this
is a really great time we're having, but is there
anybody if you got a call to do an interview
(19:43):
with that you would leave? And he just thought a moment,
he said, Jimmy Carter, and when president at the time,
right right right when he said that, I thought, I
can trust this guy. This guy is not going to
bullshit me, right and say no, there's no one. There's
no way I would leave you. You know that he
(20:03):
was willing to think and say, yeah, okay, there's one
Jimmy Carter, and I I think I feel deeply in
love with him that he would not, you know, sexually
calm me like that. Anyway, I didn't go. We didn't
get Mike anyway, but I didn't leave for you. Yeah,
(20:23):
I think those are those are important life moments. In life,
when you go this person i'm with is more important
than my career, right, you have to make that decision
and show it. Sometimes that's what I could trust. That.
That's I don't know of a safer thing than that.
That's a big one. Mine is a small one, though,
but even a small one. Small one is that we
(20:44):
had a date early on, and it was at the Angelica,
because when the Angelica was everything, you know, like all
the hipsters, everybody was cool, was going to Angelica to
see the latest in the indie film and you were late,
and I flipped out over lateness. Really it sets me
(21:06):
off because I was pathologically early, so I was there
for like forty five minutes too early. And then she
comes late, so I was really upset, and she was
so upset. She started crying and I was like, oh
my god, you don't remember any of this, Oh my god,
if you're standing in the corner. And I was very upset,
(21:27):
trying to not be upset with its very early odd
and but she was okay with me being this hotheaded
about a stupid little thing, and yeah, and I was like,
oh my god, she cares about my feelings and she doesn't.
She's not saying you're an asshole, You're an idiot, you're
a moron, what the hell is wrong with you? Crazy?
(21:49):
I'm only like twenty minutes later. Whatever it was, And
I don't know, And we spent a lot of time
talking about it, and we didn't go to the movie
and we just spent a lot of time just talking
about and she was trying to calm me down, and
I just, I don't know, I felt really heard, really
respect it, and I don't know, I just, yeah, maybe
fall in love with her even more. She's never disappointed
(22:10):
that she's always been like that. Yeah. I think the
first moment for me was we started I think we
had started dating in August, and it was like very soon.
We had been together about a month and Thanksgiving was
coming up and we were starting to think about Thanksgiving
and John said to me, let's get all our families
and all have Thanksgiving together. But we'd only been together
a month, and I thought, Wow, this is really serious,
(22:34):
Like he wants my entire friend and they did, and
so we had all the families that we had, like
fifty people it was, and I so, yes, I trusted
him at that point, I thought, well, he's really serious
about this. I think it's this one beautiful thing about Justine.
She tries whatever the situation, where the problem is, She's
(22:55):
willing to put the effort and just try, and that's it.
Doesn't have to succeed at whatever the challenges, but she's
willing to try for me, and that makes me fall
in love with her every single time. That's nice. I
think seeing a bigger picture than just what's happening today,
you know, whatever sort of annoying small things are happening
(23:21):
on a daily basis, just remembering, you know, we have
a bigger life that we've created together, and we have
a past and we have a future. Marriage goes in cycles,
and there's good times and bad times, and if you
just hang on, you'll get to the next cycle. Yeah.
I mean, you got to know somehow that this is
(23:41):
the person you want to spend the rest of your
days with. I know that Justine and I could have
a great life forever, forever. So there you have it,
our lively conversation with John and just Stine Lebozamo Until
next time. I'm Phil Donahue and I'm Marlow Thomas, and
(24:04):
I think that that makes us work on it. It
makes me work on it, and I think that's that's
fun too. That's what keeps it exciting. Double Date is
a production of Pushkin Industries. The show was created by
US and produced by Sarah Lilly. Michael Bahari is associate producer.
Musical adaptations of It Had to Be You by Sellwagon, Symfinette,
(24:27):
Marlo and I are executive producers, along with Mia Lobell
and Letal Molad from Pushkin. Special thanks to Jacob Wiseberg,
Malcolm Gladwell, Heather Faine, John Snars, Carly Migliori, Eric Sandler,
Emily Rostek, Jason Gambrel, Paul Williams, and Bruce Kluger. If
(24:50):
you like our show, please remember to share, rate, and review.
Thanks for listening, bo
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