March 22, 2021 • 26 mins
Before they met, Neil and David were two hot young actors often up for the same gigs. With love, determination and laughs, they've long since made sure that jealousy (professional and romantic) is the only thing unwelcome in the gorgeous Harlem brownstone they share with their two children.
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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 we were excited for
(00:40):
our visit with Neil Patrick Harris and David Burka. I mean,
I certainly was until I got the flu. Yeah, that
was really too bad. But we couldn't have brought that
along on our date, so off you went uptown without me.
It was such a shame. You would have loved their house.
It's a big, old, beautiful brownstone. You have to go
(01:03):
up practically twenty steps to get to the front door,
and it has quite a history. So how old is
the house? Nineteen o five? Wow, it had been everything
from a speakeasy for mill workers to music school for
girls to a single person occupancy. When you think it
was a brothel, No, I's just wishful. I began to
(01:26):
wonder where in this five story house would we have
our talk? So who's the decorator? David has better taste
than I do, so if we ever have disagreements about interiors,
it usually comes from a financial standpoint. In that I
tend to say, dude, we have dogs and two small children.
(01:47):
We don't need a forty billion dollar rug, So you're
the sort of decorator and you're the accountant. Then they
led me into their red velvet screening room with rows
of cushy theater seats, just like in old Hollywood. What
a fitting place to chat with these two actors. What
kind of marriages did your parents sad? My parents were
(02:11):
together until my mom passed away eleven years ago, and
your parents. My parents are still married and they've celebrated
fifty plus years of marriage, so they've always been only
together with each other. So because you were gay, did
you think you wouldn't have that? I thought that I
was going to be alone or single for most of
(02:36):
my adult life. But I also had a random path
from adolescence into adulthood because I ended up being on
a television show when I was fifteen years old, and
so all free puberty through puberty when you're figuring out
what turns you on, I felt a bit under a
microscope of television, and so I didn't have the freedom
(03:00):
to randomly hit on somebody or go to a bar.
So I was by myself a lot and had a
fantas asked a group of friends in Los Angeles who
knew everything about me. But I just I just wasn't dating.
I had never even showered with another person until I
was in my late twenties, so it was all new
(03:24):
to me. And what about you, David, I you know,
I didn't know what I wanted until sort of I
got into a college and then after college, living in
New York, I, you know, I saw lots of different
relationships and men having babies already and having a family.
So I always knew that I was going to settle
down and be with someone and stay with someone and
(03:47):
have a family and kids. Once we started dating, we
never really stopped, So we didn't date lots of people
while we were dating each other, and then decide we
just started dating, moved in together, and we've been together
ever since. The same sex marriage wasn't legal at that time,
and it seemed like a potential but not an inevitability,
(04:09):
and so we were more conscientious of what wording we
used to call each other. I just didn't like the
word partner for some reason. I just I still think
that's a very strange way to it eliminates any sense
of lover. Gay lover sounds only romantic like you're just humping.
Sounds a little invasive of your life. Eight Then boyfriends
(04:34):
sounded very juvenile. Boyfriends like I was forty calling Phil
my boyfriend saticular. Right, it seems like it's short lived,
like we just met, whence you've been together for years.
So I just said better half and then and then
once the marriage thing happened, it happened very quickly. But
we didn't want to get married because it was suddenly
allowed to get married. We want to get married to
(04:54):
get because we wanted to get But you were already
in a committed relationship, correct, and that was and did
you had kids? Yeah? I just didn't want to go
to the courthouse with a with a hundred other people
and people holding up signs and other people picketing and
then photographers that I don't want to get married on
that context. I want to get merride with my family
(05:15):
right in Italy when it's legal and it's not a
big deal. The nice thing about a destination wedding is
you can easily reduce the number of people you can
invite it. Yeah, it was a very small wedding. It
was only forty seven people. Yeah, we got married with
thirty five and it wasn't. It wasn't a great wonderful.
The nice thing about an Italian wedding or any Italian
trip is that everything is so delicious there. And what
(05:38):
was Tuscan Perusia? Yeah, the mountains beautiful? You know. One
of the things that I've noticed, because we've been married
forty years. Do you count from the day that you
started dating or from your wedding? Now we're counting from
the day we got married. We met three years before then,
but we knew immediately. I mean we fell in up,
(06:00):
we went, we went to dinner, we went to bed.
That was it the same, That's what it was. Because
we're getting we count from the day over first day, sure,
because and then you add ten years like a dog
in gay years. Fifty years we've been together. So how
(06:22):
did you meet? David got a very coveted role of
Tulsa in Gypsy that was starring Bernadette Peters and directed
by Sam Mendez, and it was it was a role
that every young male actor from the ages of eighteen,
third and a half they tried to find. We're trying
to get so David got this covered roll of Tulsa
(06:44):
and the dainty June in that show as a girl
named Kate Rinders. And I knew Kate Rinders from LA
And so I was walking down the street. I was
doing another show on Broadway. I was the MC in Cabaret,
and I was walking down the street and I saw Kate.
We will pass by each other and I said hello,
And she was with this very study dancer guy in
(07:06):
a leather jacket, like amazing hair, and I just thought
that she had a boyfriend that was really hot. I
told her that. I said, who's a guy that you're dating.
She said, David. Oh no, he's totally gay. I said, really,
and then I started stalking him. Oh that's great, So
how did you what happen? We had similar schedules because
(07:27):
we were both doing shows all the way. Yeah, we
would and he would show up at different places. Kate
would say, Oh, we're going this place tonight, and then
Neil would be there at the bar. What is going on?
This guy is looking at him. I had a boyfriend
at the time and things weren't going so well, and
then we finally broke up, and then I gave this
guy a date. I was like, I was circling like
(07:47):
some sort of ulture waiting for them. But when I
when I met him, first met him, he looked very strange.
He had jet black hair and he had was very
white and blue blue eyes, so he didn't necessarily look
like Neil, So I mean, he was still handsome, but
it wasn't like true I was in the character because
(08:08):
DMC was Wimer Germany. So my armpits were dyed black,
my hair was dyed black, my eyebrows were dyed black. Wow,
so I and my my skin colors pretty pale. So
I looked like a vampire a bit. But then I
had you come with Kate to see the show, and
that was a very sexy version of Cabaret. If you
remember Alan coming did it originally with Natasha Richardson, And
(08:32):
it's walking around and sitting in people's laps in the
audience and making out with the cast members. Yeah, it was.
It was. I played the whole show to him, and
look where I got there. You got yourself a mate.
So then it started. And then it started, yeah, yeah,
And we lived in New York for a couple of months,
(08:53):
and then we made the move to Los Angeles and
it was nine years in LA isn't it? Well? It
was it amazing though, because I'm now that I'm thinking
about this. We talked about being in the same industry
and how that has its complications, But I don't think
we would have connected in otherwise because we both had
the same schedule, so we would all be hanging out
at the same time post show ten o'clock where everyone
(09:17):
will be out having drinks. So it's easy to connect
then and all day just to go bike riding and
do stuff in Central Park and hang out turn a
day because we have to work till the nighttime, right,
and then we got to see each other in our shows,
so you know we got it's always a turnout. Yeah,
talent as a turnout, we'll have more. After a quick break,
(09:51):
we're back to Marlowe's interview with Neil Patrick Harris and
David Burka. With two hot guys in one marriage, I
want to know if either of them was the jealous type.
M me. I think me. I can have a bit
of jealousy streak in my body. I get very protective
(10:12):
if guys are, you know, trying to make a move
on him or rarely, please, did we know couples that
have open relationships? I would just be worried all the time,
like who is he with? And what am I not doing?
And who? Why can't you know? Am I not good enough?
(10:32):
And so I'd go crazy if there was an open relationship,
I'd you hire a private detective and I'd figure out
where he's going. Sicilian No, I'm polish, um, but I
think that I would, you know, tap his phone. It
would be hard for me. Was that a discussion. When
(10:52):
we started dating, our sex life was so strong and
it maintained itself that three years. It was for long
enough that that that the idea of opening up the relationship.
We spent all of our time together all the time,
so it wasn't a relationship of convenience. When gay guys
(11:14):
weren't able to be out publicly and stand so tall
and be so proud of who they were, they had
to pretend that they were someone else, and therefore promiscuity
was understood because they weren't able to tell anyone and
they were they were having sex on the sly. But
now it's there's a normalization to it, and I think
(11:35):
now in the same way guys would cheat on each
other if they're two guys. There's still an old adage
that a guy that has a wife has a piece
on the side, or a mistress or I mean, I
think historically that's I don't think that that's unique to
two gentlemen. I's a lot of the loop though, too.
I mean, I don't know, there's the grinder and gruff
(11:56):
and bumble and all these true we don't I don't.
I mean, so many people are on these apps in
there that's very sing left or right. I don't know
what it is that's true. We started dating before any
of that miss that whole generation. It's a whole different thing. Like,
but when you're with somebody who's well known, there's a
that's an aphrodisiac of its own. So people come on
(12:18):
to you because you're you know, you're somebody famous and
that's exciting, right, yeah, right. And there's also there's also
a bit of me being an actor and also having
the jealousy of hey, well what about me? Because he
gets a lot of attention, a lot of attention like
oh I'm here too, you know that, not give me
the eye contact or like brushing aside or oh you're
(12:41):
nice too. This is what true To and Sting talked about.
If they all talk about that. So how do you
deal with that? What do you do? Do you demand
something more from him? How does that work? Because that's
true in every field. If you're the CEO of a company,
you're gonna get all the attention and the spouses. Sometimes
I feel like I say, behind, every great man is
(13:02):
a great partner, it's a great mate. And then you know,
I should feel happy and honored that he's sharing his
time with me. And then other times I'm super upset
and annoyed and I sort of just stop my feet
and say, hey, you know, I need some attention here.
And then what do you do when he does that?
I give him attention. That's easy. It was also even
(13:25):
more challenging both being actors, and so I think it
sometimes it is more the emotions more on the sleeve,
because I'm sharing with him good news of some job
opportunity in the same field that he wishes the opportunity
was his own. And that's understandable. And weren't two guys, yes,
(13:47):
and we're the same sex, which which amplifies it as well.
You know, I was working as an actor in New
York for a really long time and we decided to
move to Los Angeles. When Neil got a show in
LA called How I Met Your Mother, and I wasn't
having the best of time in LA but we stuck
it out because he was doing a job there. So
(14:09):
you know, you make choices to be with the person
that you love. That was sort of the main thing
I think, taking a backseat to my career a bit. Yet,
such a weird industry as actors, because you're only kind
(14:30):
of as good as your next random job that you get.
There's no job security in acting. You can be on
a television show for seven years and then when the
show's canceled, you're just auditioning again. It's not like you
have tenure, and so it's a little bit complicated. But
David has additional skill sets beyond acting, and so one
(14:54):
of the things that came from a tenure in Los
Angeles is that you find other things that you can
do that don't require someone to tell you that you
got the job. And David went to Lacom dying and
it was fast. It was a fast twenty days in
hospital leukemia, and I just thought, I can't be in
(15:15):
Los Angeles and be depressed and go out for auditions
that I didn't want to do anyway, And so I
went to Lacourt on Blue and became a chef and
just started working right away. And then when did the
kids come? He got together in what year? We've been
fift together? Fifteen? They're eight now, right, so that would
be six seven. It was recently after my mom died
(15:41):
eleven years ago. We looked at each other and said,
life's too short. We gotta have kids now, because my
mom really wanted just kids and Wally wanted grandkids, and
so we thought, you know, we can't wait anymore. Let's
just start the process of having a surrogate and eck donors.
Having kids is a real game changer. And when you're
two guys, you don't accidentally get pregnant as much as
(16:04):
we tried, so we you know, that's not really an
option unless you make it an actual reality. I'm on
a TV show, so we're making nice money, and so
let's do it. One of the things I believe the
strongest is that when same sex couples want to have kids,
it's because they've really thought it through, because you can't
accidentally do it. I said that in jest, but there's
(16:26):
a lot of truth to that, and so therefore, when
we have kids, we're ready for it. We didn't go no,
what's happening? Are we? Are? We gonna do this? It's
funny when people think that gay people shouldn't have kids.
I mean, they have to go through so many hoops
and someone who's really thought about it having kids, and
someone who really takes the time to do it. So
what did that do to the love nest? Oh my gosh,
(16:48):
it was rough. It was rough, and I have to
say for the first five years, I wasn't sure it's
gonna work out. I thought that were really rocky roads,
Like I didn't know if I could be a dad
and be a husband at the same time. It pulled
us apart, and yet it brought It brings you together, Yes,
(17:10):
because you're having to do things once you have kids.
It's much harder to just say that's it, I'm out.
And yet you also have no time to say, let's
stay up all night and drink and connect for till
four o'clock in mark. All you want to do is
get a little bit of rest and how do you
(17:31):
say romantic and find that time when you have little children.
I'd like to know. I'd like to read your book
and find out we make we make concerted efforts to connect.
We'll have date nights. Date nights are staycase, or we
try to go on vacation together, parlay a couple of days,
(17:52):
or one or two days before after if we're traveling
for business. An afternoon sex is underrated when the kids
are not on from school yet. Wait ten minutes. You're
waiting until everyone goes to sleep to have sex. You're
gonna be a sleep or sex. You're all so excited
during the day. Tonight it's going to happen tonight. Your
(18:15):
world is going to be rockeding. This is right. Yeah.
I think for those that are looking to get married,
if if you're if you're coming at it with the
rigidity of what we have right now. We want to
maintain this feeling that we have right now. It doesn't
(18:39):
stay that way because when you have sex with the
same person over and over, it gets redundant, and then
you can try different things sort of, but then it
changes and then you don't like each other and suddenly
you're not attracted to them, and then you have to
figure out how to be reattracted them, but in a
different way because you're aging. And then you have to figure.
Then you're suddenly figure you're in love with like their
(19:00):
soul more than their body. But then you get in
love with their body again. It's just it's more, it's
it morphs, and I think, I think acknowledge that is
tenuous and kind of dangerous because what does that mean.
But in a weird way, we keep falling in love
with each other in different ways over and over, and
I think that keeps our sex life alive because it's
(19:23):
not just we're not trying to continue to do what
we did and then it's not going. Well, why what's happening? Oh,
there's no connection. We're trying, We're trying to do it,
but it's not working. So I'm out, Like I feel
like some people do that. What I've noticed in my friends,
on our friends, some people don't know how to come
back from a bad situation, whether it's infidelity or a
(19:46):
fight or whatever. Either they don't know how to talk
to each other, or there's their anger is so a
manswa they would hold. So how do you fight? I
think we just blurt out what we have to say
and we say it. There's a good thing, and there's
a bad part about that too, But we don't hold
anything in. We're actors too, so we can read your
(20:08):
face like there's something wrong with them. I know immediately
right what's going on. If you don't communicate, you're going
to build up assumptions and you're going to have resentments,
and I think that's more corrosive than anything. So the
lines of communications deserve to be open. Will they be
fiery and messy, of course, But we've seen couples that
(20:30):
pretended everything's fine when it's not, and then it feels
like it becomes this chasm exists, and then there's so
much unsaid that when it gets so bad, there's so
much to say that you don't even know where to begin.
So we see a couple's counselor and have done so
weekly for most of our entire time together, like our
(20:56):
fifteen years. Why did you do that? That's great to know.
Friends of ours said, you should. You should see a
couple's counselor together before anything's wrong, so that you develop
skills to communicate and develop ways to be honest around
each other before it's bad, so that the idea of
going to see a therapist together isn't because it's a
(21:18):
last resort we go and see everything, we talk about
all kinds of stuff. That's been really helpful because we
know that for that hour or two hours that we're
meeting him, we're there to work. It's work. So good
to take a moment you're in conflict, just go to
your corners for a minute. You're not in the headspace
to say, you know what, I'm all reacting. You're right.
(21:38):
Is there something that you've noticed about yourself or about
him that has changed? Oh? Yeah, for the last three years,
I've been sober, so I don't drink any alcohol. So
that's helped a lot because that sort of not only
made me more depressed, but it also made me more
heightened to want to start a fight, or be more right,
(22:01):
or be more headstrong. So that's been a big change.
Did you do that because Neil asked you to? No. No,
there's some substance abuse in my family, and I think
that I owed it to myself and I owed it
to my kids. It's one of the things I'm just
deeply proud about David is his determination to do that.
(22:23):
It's a very hard, complicated decision, but it never got
to the point where I was I was in jail
or harmed an armed myself. My bottom was not bad,
but it was bad enough that I needed to change.
I could persevere anything and I would still be with him.
He's an amazing parent. And I think what makes what
(22:46):
makes me love David is the depth of flavor, is
of the the amount of roots that have been planted
where you can't control where they go. And that's why
it's fun, because it's always changing. You know. Well, we
realize that we did do make certain decisions about things
(23:07):
to change. I learned that I wasn't a very good
listener and that when Phil had a problem, and it
took about ten years, and one day he was telling
me something. It was very troublesome for him, and he
stopped in the middle, niece and please don't say anything.
Don't tell me anything. And the thing that bothered him
(23:28):
is that I'm a fixer. So if somebody gives me
a problem, I'm going for the phone. So I had
to learn I know I can do this, but this
isn't the way to do this with another person. Good point,
I'm not, you know, And he one day he said
to me, stop producing me. I can do it. And
it was big. I think in a relationship. We could
(23:50):
all afford to just go with the flow a little
bit if you missed the flight, and if the other
person is to blame, there's no need to blame them.
Here you are, you missed the flight. Now you can
stay at the airport for a couple more hours. We
spent a lot of time in our relationship coming up
with individual expectations of how the party's gonna go, how
(24:11):
the vacation's going to go, how tonight's gonna go, how
how that phone call is going to go. And it's
rarely met. And you can be bothered by being inaccurate
in your expectations, or you can just go with a
new outcome. No, I think expectations is huge. What do
(24:31):
you see that makes the marriage last? And maybe it's
just the expectation thing, which is really better said than
anybody is said. Laughter. I would have going to say
laughter and see I really was, really is. I think
that that's part of the reason, one of the main
reasons we've been stayed together, because we just make each
other laugh all the time. He makes me laugh so much,
(24:54):
vice versa. And that's Neil Patrick Harris and his husband
David Burke. I sure wish I'd been there for that.
I do too, you would have loved them, Ungil. Next time,
I'm Marlow, Thomas Old, Donahue. It doesn't even have to
be this, s Churchill said, every time you make someone laugh,
(25:14):
you give them a mini vacation. And I just always
loved that. This was great. Thank you. I really enjoyed
Double Day. There's 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
(25:37):
Be You by Stellwagen, Symfinette, 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 Rostak, Jason Gambrel, Paul Williams,
(26:01):
and Bruce Kluger. 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 we were excited for
(00:40):
our visit with Neil Patrick Harris and David Burka. I mean,
I certainly was until I got the flu. Yeah, that
was really too bad. But we couldn't have brought that
along on our date, so off you went uptown without me.
It was such a shame. You would have loved their house.
It's a big, old, beautiful brownstone. You have to go
(01:03):
up practically twenty steps to get to the front door,
and it has quite a history. So how old is
the house? Nineteen o five? Wow, it had been everything
from a speakeasy for mill workers to music school for
girls to a single person occupancy. When you think it
was a brothel, No, I's just wishful. I began to
(01:26):
wonder where in this five story house would we have
our talk? So who's the decorator? David has better taste
than I do, so if we ever have disagreements about interiors,
it usually comes from a financial standpoint. In that I
tend to say, dude, we have dogs and two small children.
(01:47):
We don't need a forty billion dollar rug, So you're
the sort of decorator and you're the accountant. Then they
led me into their red velvet screening room with rows
of cushy theater seats, just like in old Hollywood. What
a fitting place to chat with these two actors. What
kind of marriages did your parents sad? My parents were
(02:11):
together until my mom passed away eleven years ago, and
your parents. My parents are still married and they've celebrated
fifty plus years of marriage, so they've always been only
together with each other. So because you were gay, did
you think you wouldn't have that? I thought that I
was going to be alone or single for most of
(02:36):
my adult life. But I also had a random path
from adolescence into adulthood because I ended up being on
a television show when I was fifteen years old, and
so all free puberty through puberty when you're figuring out
what turns you on, I felt a bit under a
microscope of television, and so I didn't have the freedom
(03:00):
to randomly hit on somebody or go to a bar.
So I was by myself a lot and had a
fantas asked a group of friends in Los Angeles who
knew everything about me. But I just I just wasn't dating.
I had never even showered with another person until I
was in my late twenties, so it was all new
(03:24):
to me. And what about you, David, I you know,
I didn't know what I wanted until sort of I
got into a college and then after college, living in
New York, I, you know, I saw lots of different
relationships and men having babies already and having a family.
So I always knew that I was going to settle
down and be with someone and stay with someone and
(03:47):
have a family and kids. Once we started dating, we
never really stopped, So we didn't date lots of people
while we were dating each other, and then decide we
just started dating, moved in together, and we've been together
ever since. The same sex marriage wasn't legal at that time,
and it seemed like a potential but not an inevitability,
(04:09):
and so we were more conscientious of what wording we
used to call each other. I just didn't like the
word partner for some reason. I just I still think
that's a very strange way to it eliminates any sense
of lover. Gay lover sounds only romantic like you're just humping.
Sounds a little invasive of your life. Eight Then boyfriends
(04:34):
sounded very juvenile. Boyfriends like I was forty calling Phil
my boyfriend saticular. Right, it seems like it's short lived,
like we just met, whence you've been together for years.
So I just said better half and then and then
once the marriage thing happened, it happened very quickly. But
we didn't want to get married because it was suddenly
allowed to get married. We want to get married to
(04:54):
get because we wanted to get But you were already
in a committed relationship, correct, and that was and did
you had kids? Yeah? I just didn't want to go
to the courthouse with a with a hundred other people
and people holding up signs and other people picketing and
then photographers that I don't want to get married on
that context. I want to get merride with my family
(05:15):
right in Italy when it's legal and it's not a
big deal. The nice thing about a destination wedding is
you can easily reduce the number of people you can
invite it. Yeah, it was a very small wedding. It
was only forty seven people. Yeah, we got married with
thirty five and it wasn't. It wasn't a great wonderful.
The nice thing about an Italian wedding or any Italian
trip is that everything is so delicious there. And what
(05:38):
was Tuscan Perusia? Yeah, the mountains beautiful? You know. One
of the things that I've noticed, because we've been married
forty years. Do you count from the day that you
started dating or from your wedding? Now we're counting from
the day we got married. We met three years before then,
but we knew immediately. I mean we fell in up,
(06:00):
we went, we went to dinner, we went to bed.
That was it the same, That's what it was. Because
we're getting we count from the day over first day, sure,
because and then you add ten years like a dog
in gay years. Fifty years we've been together. So how
(06:22):
did you meet? David got a very coveted role of
Tulsa in Gypsy that was starring Bernadette Peters and directed
by Sam Mendez, and it was it was a role
that every young male actor from the ages of eighteen,
third and a half they tried to find. We're trying
to get so David got this covered roll of Tulsa
(06:44):
and the dainty June in that show as a girl
named Kate Rinders. And I knew Kate Rinders from LA
And so I was walking down the street. I was
doing another show on Broadway. I was the MC in Cabaret,
and I was walking down the street and I saw Kate.
We will pass by each other and I said hello,
And she was with this very study dancer guy in
(07:06):
a leather jacket, like amazing hair, and I just thought
that she had a boyfriend that was really hot. I
told her that. I said, who's a guy that you're dating.
She said, David. Oh no, he's totally gay. I said, really,
and then I started stalking him. Oh that's great, So
how did you what happen? We had similar schedules because
(07:27):
we were both doing shows all the way. Yeah, we
would and he would show up at different places. Kate
would say, Oh, we're going this place tonight, and then
Neil would be there at the bar. What is going on?
This guy is looking at him. I had a boyfriend
at the time and things weren't going so well, and
then we finally broke up, and then I gave this
guy a date. I was like, I was circling like
(07:47):
some sort of ulture waiting for them. But when I
when I met him, first met him, he looked very strange.
He had jet black hair and he had was very
white and blue blue eyes, so he didn't necessarily look
like Neil, So I mean, he was still handsome, but
it wasn't like true I was in the character because
(08:08):
DMC was Wimer Germany. So my armpits were dyed black,
my hair was dyed black, my eyebrows were dyed black. Wow,
so I and my my skin colors pretty pale. So
I looked like a vampire a bit. But then I
had you come with Kate to see the show, and
that was a very sexy version of Cabaret. If you
remember Alan coming did it originally with Natasha Richardson, And
(08:32):
it's walking around and sitting in people's laps in the
audience and making out with the cast members. Yeah, it was.
It was. I played the whole show to him, and
look where I got there. You got yourself a mate.
So then it started. And then it started, yeah, yeah,
And we lived in New York for a couple of months,
(08:53):
and then we made the move to Los Angeles and
it was nine years in LA isn't it? Well? It
was it amazing though, because I'm now that I'm thinking
about this. We talked about being in the same industry
and how that has its complications, But I don't think
we would have connected in otherwise because we both had
the same schedule, so we would all be hanging out
at the same time post show ten o'clock where everyone
(09:17):
will be out having drinks. So it's easy to connect
then and all day just to go bike riding and
do stuff in Central Park and hang out turn a
day because we have to work till the nighttime, right,
and then we got to see each other in our shows,
so you know we got it's always a turnout. Yeah,
talent as a turnout, we'll have more. After a quick break,
(09:51):
we're back to Marlowe's interview with Neil Patrick Harris and
David Burka. With two hot guys in one marriage, I
want to know if either of them was the jealous type.
M me. I think me. I can have a bit
of jealousy streak in my body. I get very protective
(10:12):
if guys are, you know, trying to make a move
on him or rarely, please, did we know couples that
have open relationships? I would just be worried all the time,
like who is he with? And what am I not doing?
And who? Why can't you know? Am I not good enough?
(10:32):
And so I'd go crazy if there was an open relationship,
I'd you hire a private detective and I'd figure out
where he's going. Sicilian No, I'm polish, um, but I
think that I would, you know, tap his phone. It
would be hard for me. Was that a discussion. When
(10:52):
we started dating, our sex life was so strong and
it maintained itself that three years. It was for long
enough that that that the idea of opening up the relationship.
We spent all of our time together all the time,
so it wasn't a relationship of convenience. When gay guys
(11:14):
weren't able to be out publicly and stand so tall
and be so proud of who they were, they had
to pretend that they were someone else, and therefore promiscuity
was understood because they weren't able to tell anyone and
they were they were having sex on the sly. But
now it's there's a normalization to it, and I think
(11:35):
now in the same way guys would cheat on each
other if they're two guys. There's still an old adage
that a guy that has a wife has a piece
on the side, or a mistress or I mean, I
think historically that's I don't think that that's unique to
two gentlemen. I's a lot of the loop though, too.
I mean, I don't know, there's the grinder and gruff
(11:56):
and bumble and all these true we don't I don't.
I mean, so many people are on these apps in
there that's very sing left or right. I don't know
what it is that's true. We started dating before any
of that miss that whole generation. It's a whole different thing. Like,
but when you're with somebody who's well known, there's a
that's an aphrodisiac of its own. So people come on
(12:18):
to you because you're you know, you're somebody famous and
that's exciting, right, yeah, right. And there's also there's also
a bit of me being an actor and also having
the jealousy of hey, well what about me? Because he
gets a lot of attention, a lot of attention like
oh I'm here too, you know that, not give me
the eye contact or like brushing aside or oh you're
(12:41):
nice too. This is what true To and Sting talked about.
If they all talk about that. So how do you
deal with that? What do you do? Do you demand
something more from him? How does that work? Because that's
true in every field. If you're the CEO of a company,
you're gonna get all the attention and the spouses. Sometimes
I feel like I say, behind, every great man is
(13:02):
a great partner, it's a great mate. And then you know,
I should feel happy and honored that he's sharing his
time with me. And then other times I'm super upset
and annoyed and I sort of just stop my feet
and say, hey, you know, I need some attention here.
And then what do you do when he does that?
I give him attention. That's easy. It was also even
(13:25):
more challenging both being actors, and so I think it
sometimes it is more the emotions more on the sleeve,
because I'm sharing with him good news of some job
opportunity in the same field that he wishes the opportunity
was his own. And that's understandable. And weren't two guys, yes,
(13:47):
and we're the same sex, which which amplifies it as well.
You know, I was working as an actor in New
York for a really long time and we decided to
move to Los Angeles. When Neil got a show in
LA called How I Met Your Mother, and I wasn't
having the best of time in LA but we stuck
it out because he was doing a job there. So
(14:09):
you know, you make choices to be with the person
that you love. That was sort of the main thing
I think, taking a backseat to my career a bit. Yet,
such a weird industry as actors, because you're only kind
(14:30):
of as good as your next random job that you get.
There's no job security in acting. You can be on
a television show for seven years and then when the
show's canceled, you're just auditioning again. It's not like you
have tenure, and so it's a little bit complicated. But
David has additional skill sets beyond acting, and so one
(14:54):
of the things that came from a tenure in Los
Angeles is that you find other things that you can
do that don't require someone to tell you that you
got the job. And David went to Lacom dying and
it was fast. It was a fast twenty days in
hospital leukemia, and I just thought, I can't be in
(15:15):
Los Angeles and be depressed and go out for auditions
that I didn't want to do anyway, And so I
went to Lacourt on Blue and became a chef and
just started working right away. And then when did the
kids come? He got together in what year? We've been
fift together? Fifteen? They're eight now, right, so that would
be six seven. It was recently after my mom died
(15:41):
eleven years ago. We looked at each other and said,
life's too short. We gotta have kids now, because my
mom really wanted just kids and Wally wanted grandkids, and
so we thought, you know, we can't wait anymore. Let's
just start the process of having a surrogate and eck donors.
Having kids is a real game changer. And when you're
two guys, you don't accidentally get pregnant as much as
(16:04):
we tried, so we you know, that's not really an
option unless you make it an actual reality. I'm on
a TV show, so we're making nice money, and so
let's do it. One of the things I believe the
strongest is that when same sex couples want to have kids,
it's because they've really thought it through, because you can't
accidentally do it. I said that in jest, but there's
(16:26):
a lot of truth to that, and so therefore, when
we have kids, we're ready for it. We didn't go no,
what's happening? Are we? Are? We gonna do this? It's
funny when people think that gay people shouldn't have kids.
I mean, they have to go through so many hoops
and someone who's really thought about it having kids, and
someone who really takes the time to do it. So
what did that do to the love nest? Oh my gosh,
(16:48):
it was rough. It was rough, and I have to
say for the first five years, I wasn't sure it's
gonna work out. I thought that were really rocky roads,
Like I didn't know if I could be a dad
and be a husband at the same time. It pulled
us apart, and yet it brought It brings you together, Yes,
(17:10):
because you're having to do things once you have kids.
It's much harder to just say that's it, I'm out.
And yet you also have no time to say, let's
stay up all night and drink and connect for till
four o'clock in mark. All you want to do is
get a little bit of rest and how do you
(17:31):
say romantic and find that time when you have little children.
I'd like to know. I'd like to read your book
and find out we make we make concerted efforts to connect.
We'll have date nights. Date nights are staycase, or we
try to go on vacation together, parlay a couple of days,
(17:52):
or one or two days before after if we're traveling
for business. An afternoon sex is underrated when the kids
are not on from school yet. Wait ten minutes. You're
waiting until everyone goes to sleep to have sex. You're
gonna be a sleep or sex. You're all so excited
during the day. Tonight it's going to happen tonight. Your
(18:15):
world is going to be rockeding. This is right. Yeah.
I think for those that are looking to get married,
if if you're if you're coming at it with the
rigidity of what we have right now. We want to
maintain this feeling that we have right now. It doesn't
(18:39):
stay that way because when you have sex with the
same person over and over, it gets redundant, and then
you can try different things sort of, but then it
changes and then you don't like each other and suddenly
you're not attracted to them, and then you have to
figure out how to be reattracted them, but in a
different way because you're aging. And then you have to figure.
Then you're suddenly figure you're in love with like their
(19:00):
soul more than their body. But then you get in
love with their body again. It's just it's more, it's
it morphs, and I think, I think acknowledge that is
tenuous and kind of dangerous because what does that mean.
But in a weird way, we keep falling in love
with each other in different ways over and over, and
I think that keeps our sex life alive because it's
(19:23):
not just we're not trying to continue to do what
we did and then it's not going. Well, why what's happening? Oh,
there's no connection. We're trying, We're trying to do it,
but it's not working. So I'm out, Like I feel
like some people do that. What I've noticed in my friends,
on our friends, some people don't know how to come
back from a bad situation, whether it's infidelity or a
(19:46):
fight or whatever. Either they don't know how to talk
to each other, or there's their anger is so a
manswa they would hold. So how do you fight? I
think we just blurt out what we have to say
and we say it. There's a good thing, and there's
a bad part about that too, But we don't hold
anything in. We're actors too, so we can read your
(20:08):
face like there's something wrong with them. I know immediately
right what's going on. If you don't communicate, you're going
to build up assumptions and you're going to have resentments,
and I think that's more corrosive than anything. So the
lines of communications deserve to be open. Will they be
fiery and messy, of course, But we've seen couples that
(20:30):
pretended everything's fine when it's not, and then it feels
like it becomes this chasm exists, and then there's so
much unsaid that when it gets so bad, there's so
much to say that you don't even know where to begin.
So we see a couple's counselor and have done so
weekly for most of our entire time together, like our
(20:56):
fifteen years. Why did you do that? That's great to know.
Friends of ours said, you should. You should see a
couple's counselor together before anything's wrong, so that you develop
skills to communicate and develop ways to be honest around
each other before it's bad, so that the idea of
going to see a therapist together isn't because it's a
(21:18):
last resort we go and see everything, we talk about
all kinds of stuff. That's been really helpful because we
know that for that hour or two hours that we're
meeting him, we're there to work. It's work. So good
to take a moment you're in conflict, just go to
your corners for a minute. You're not in the headspace
to say, you know what, I'm all reacting. You're right.
(21:38):
Is there something that you've noticed about yourself or about
him that has changed? Oh? Yeah, for the last three years,
I've been sober, so I don't drink any alcohol. So
that's helped a lot because that sort of not only
made me more depressed, but it also made me more
heightened to want to start a fight, or be more right,
(22:01):
or be more headstrong. So that's been a big change.
Did you do that because Neil asked you to? No. No,
there's some substance abuse in my family, and I think
that I owed it to myself and I owed it
to my kids. It's one of the things I'm just
deeply proud about David is his determination to do that.
(22:23):
It's a very hard, complicated decision, but it never got
to the point where I was I was in jail
or harmed an armed myself. My bottom was not bad,
but it was bad enough that I needed to change.
I could persevere anything and I would still be with him.
He's an amazing parent. And I think what makes what
(22:46):
makes me love David is the depth of flavor, is
of the the amount of roots that have been planted
where you can't control where they go. And that's why
it's fun, because it's always changing. You know. Well, we
realize that we did do make certain decisions about things
(23:07):
to change. I learned that I wasn't a very good
listener and that when Phil had a problem, and it
took about ten years, and one day he was telling
me something. It was very troublesome for him, and he
stopped in the middle, niece and please don't say anything.
Don't tell me anything. And the thing that bothered him
(23:28):
is that I'm a fixer. So if somebody gives me
a problem, I'm going for the phone. So I had
to learn I know I can do this, but this
isn't the way to do this with another person. Good point,
I'm not, you know, And he one day he said
to me, stop producing me. I can do it. And
it was big. I think in a relationship. We could
(23:50):
all afford to just go with the flow a little
bit if you missed the flight, and if the other
person is to blame, there's no need to blame them.
Here you are, you missed the flight. Now you can
stay at the airport for a couple more hours. We
spent a lot of time in our relationship coming up
with individual expectations of how the party's gonna go, how
(24:11):
the vacation's going to go, how tonight's gonna go, how
how that phone call is going to go. And it's
rarely met. And you can be bothered by being inaccurate
in your expectations, or you can just go with a
new outcome. No, I think expectations is huge. What do
(24:31):
you see that makes the marriage last? And maybe it's
just the expectation thing, which is really better said than
anybody is said. Laughter. I would have going to say
laughter and see I really was, really is. I think
that that's part of the reason, one of the main
reasons we've been stayed together, because we just make each
other laugh all the time. He makes me laugh so much,
(24:54):
vice versa. And that's Neil Patrick Harris and his husband
David Burke. I sure wish I'd been there for that.
I do too, you would have loved them, Ungil. Next time,
I'm Marlow, Thomas Old, Donahue. It doesn't even have to
be this, s Churchill said, every time you make someone laugh,
(25:14):
you give them a mini vacation. And I just always
loved that. This was great. Thank you. I really enjoyed
Double Day. There's 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
(25:37):
Be You by Stellwagen, Symfinette, 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 Rostak, Jason Gambrel, Paul Williams,
(26:01):
and Bruce Kluger. If you like our show, please remember
to share, rate, and review. Thanks for listening.
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