The Stories of Actor Jeff Daniels

Actor Jeff Daniels is always writing. Plays, songs, a script or two. Even in interviews you get the sense the Michigan native is trying to relay the stories of his life in a way he’d find compelling as a reader, or listener. Bystander — as a viewer. 

He joins us this week around the latest chapter of his crime series American Rust (12:30), reprising his role as Police Chief Del Harris. It’s a performance inspired by his midwestern upbringing in Chelsea, Michigan (16:06) and the formative teachings of theater director Marshall W. Mason (21:20). Then, Daniels reflects on his arrival to New York City in 1976 (24:06), performing in Lanford Wilson’s play Fifth of July (27:20), and his early on-screen roles in Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild (31:10), Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo (34:20), and Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale (44:20).

On the back-half, we walk through his years making The Newsroom (51:48), working with screenwriter (and then playwright) Aaron Sorkin (53:20), and how the two of them reimagined Atticus Finch and To Kill a Mockingbird for both Broadway (59:49) and what he calls “a country at a crossroads” (1:05:33). To close, we sit with the utility of good writing in this fraught era (1:10:30), and a musical tribute to his late father, Robert (1:15:32).

For questions, comments, or to join our mailing list, reach me at [e-mail]. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. This is Talk Easy. I'm standing Forgoso. Welcome to

(00:37):
the show today. I'm joined by actors, songwriter and playwright
Jeff Daniels. I've been hosting Talk Easy for eight years now,

(00:59):
and one of the byproducts of making something every week,
at least for me, is that I have a lot
of friends and family, especially my mother and father, that
will send text messages to the effect of, how's it going,
where have you been? Are you going to take three
weeks to respond to all thirty seven of my very
funny memes? How come you don't call more? These are

(01:21):
all very fair and justifiable questions, especially from my mom
and dad, and I have to imagine for most people listening,
this is a typical refrain you've had from your parents,
or if you are a parent and have kids, you've
probably sent that text, had that call. And so I've
come up with a solution to this, which is what

(01:42):
if I could solve this very real problem I'm having
in my life through the show itself. What if instead
of taping a typical intro for Jeff Daniels, I just
try calling up my father and have him guess who's
coming on the program this week? This is just an experiment.
We may not do this every Sunday, but I thought,

(02:05):
after eight years and four hundred episodes or so, why
not try something a little bit different. I should note
that my father has and I mean this, he has
no idea that we're going to try this. I've not
prepped him. There's been no debriefing. I'm not even giving
him a heads up that I'm calling. So why don't

(02:26):
we try him and uh, just see how this goes.
He loves Jeff Daniels, so he'll probably get this pretty quick.
But let's see what happens. By the way, this is
gonna be the one time he doesn't pick up his phone.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
Oh god.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Okay, So for listeners, we've made an edit. I've called him.
I've called him six times. He hasn't answered. I'm going
to try one more time. He's going to think something
is terribly wrong. I know, and he's going to think
like something bad has happened to me. Okay, we'll try
them over time. If not, we'll call my mom.

Speaker 4 (03:07):
Here we go, Hello, Hey, what are you doing this?

Speaker 1 (03:17):
This is your son? Sam Jesus Christ.

Speaker 4 (03:22):
Is going on God, are you pulling up for hostage
or some shit?

Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yeah, I have my hostage in this closet. How did
you celebrate the solar eclipse week?

Speaker 4 (03:35):
Well, it took fifty eight students to the science and industry.
How many fifty eight?

Speaker 1 (03:42):
Fifty eight? Wow, fifty eight.

Speaker 4 (03:44):
It was intense, but it was great, beautiful kids.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
I heard, this is this is weird. I heard actually
only fifty five of them made it back to your school.

Speaker 4 (03:54):
Well, you know that's a good that's a good ratio.
It works out.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
Fifty five over fifty eight.

Speaker 4 (03:59):
That's right. No one's asking about them. So something was okay,
oh my god, this is fine. We had a time.
They got to run around before the eclipse. They had
big lawns in front of the science industry, in front
of the lake, beautiful weather. That was a great time.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Did you did you experience totality?

Speaker 4 (04:20):
None? Yeah, So it just got like it was it
felt like it was dusk, and then that was it.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
So I don't know if you know, but we have
a very special guest on the show.

Speaker 4 (04:33):
Am I on the show? Right now? What the hell?
What you were calling me? Some nonsense? Oh my god?
Not again?

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Oh man, all right, so's see if you can guess this,
and I'll let you guess it. Our guest is someone
I've been trying to have on the show for a
long long time. He was born and raised in Chelsea, Michigan.
He still lives and works there, running the Purple Rose
Theater Company. Okay, he fell in love with theater in

(05:07):
college at Central Michigan University. He's also I think the
university's most accomplished college dropout because he never actually finished school. Instead,
he left for New York City in nineteen seventy six. Now,
when he was a young actor trying to make it,
Jack Lemon once gave him some words of wisdom. He said,

(05:31):
you gotta be different. Everybody's the same. They walked at
the door and they're all the same. Actor, you got
to be the one who's different, and sometimes that gives
you choices. And so sure enough, he took Lemon's advice
and made a career out of it. I'm going to
read some credits and then maybe you'll have a better
idea who this is. His early work includes Terms of Endearment, Heartburn,

(05:57):
The Purple Rose of Cairo, Speed, Dumb, and Dumbo. You
already know dumb and dumber. Isn't that one of your favorites?
Dumb and dumber?

Speaker 4 (06:05):
It's fine?

Speaker 1 (06:06):
What about what about a rachnophobia? Do you remember that one?

Speaker 4 (06:09):
Oh? Yeah, Spider's cool.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
My personal favorite is a movie called Something Wild by
Jonathan Demi. Have you seen that?

Speaker 4 (06:16):
Yeah, you're talking about Jeff Daniels.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
Wow, you guess that quick?

Speaker 4 (06:21):
I mean I had what is that line? You had
me at Hello at no but Chelsea Michigan. No, I
was getting there, but more with terms of endearment.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
Terms of endearment. Okay.

Speaker 4 (06:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
He's also done a whole lot of theater. He's been
nominated for three Tony's, his latest being for his portrayal
of Atticus Finch and Ta Kill a Mockingbird, adapted for
the stage by Aaron Sorkin the last performance, I think
I just want to highlight the newsroom he played Will McAvoy, Yes,
the moderate Republican anchor hosting a fictitious show called Newsnight.

(07:00):
He won an Emmy for that. It was his first
Emmy win. Were you a newsroom guy?

Speaker 4 (07:05):
Big time? Yeah? We used to watch it when you
were when you were a young you've.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
Never said young lad once. I'm twenty nine, you've never
said the word lad, lad.

Speaker 4 (07:18):
So the big thing for me that the speech everybody knows,
the speech.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
The America used to be. Speech used to be great. Yeah,
we're not number one.

Speaker 4 (07:27):
Anymore exactly, And I play that for my students so
they can get a perspective of that we're not the
shit we can be. And so that speech, it's just
it's riveting. I mean, I played for certain classes who
can get it. And so my deal is that, look,
in four years from now, all every single one of
you have the opportunity to vote, and you can change everything.

(07:51):
Your generation can change everything. So what you do with it,
it's your future.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
I'm laborating this political point because in the last decade
Daniels has made a pretty strong commitment to making work
about politics. There's the Komi Rule, the Looming Tower, American
Rust or you know, even playing Atticus Finch and To
Kill a Mockingbird post twenty twenty and all the protests

(08:17):
that happened. Before we go to Jeff, what do you
like about Jeff Daniels the actor?

Speaker 4 (08:24):
He's authentic and I think that you know his his roles,
especially lately, I mean Looming Towers to me, is just amazing.
I've been trying to get you to watch it because
I've seen it like four or five times already. He's authentic,
and I think he wants he wants to change. I

(08:45):
think he's sees his generation screwed up a lot of
things and he's calling them out. That's amazing. You're going
to have them on the show.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
I know it's been this has been a long one.
This has been a long time in the making.

Speaker 4 (08:56):
Yeah, well, I've been throwing out that name, Kevin Costner, you.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
Know, yeah, don't.

Speaker 4 (09:01):
We don't.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
We don't need. Look, we don't need. The short list
of people that I've tried who have not agreed to
come on the show. That's always my favorite thing. When
I call my mom, She's like, you know, what'd be great?
Have you thought about Brad Pitt? At least on this one.
We have someone that I I really do love and

(09:22):
I think started asking to come on like five or
six years ago. And so with that, here is actor, playwright, songwriter,
devout Detroit Tigers fan. Oh yeah, ok, baby exactly. Jeff Daniels.

(10:00):
Jeff Daniels, Nice to meet you.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
Nice to be met?

Speaker 4 (10:03):
Is it?

Speaker 1 (10:03):
How are you? How are you feeling today? Good?

Speaker 2 (10:05):
Fine, terrific?

Speaker 1 (10:06):
Yeah, good, I'm sensing some ambivalent.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
No, I'm I've been on a family vacation with five grandkids,
so it's been kind of and I just got in
you back yesterday. I kind of left it, and so yeah,
it's like this is like a different experience New York
City versus you know, Florida in a house with the kids,
which are great, but it's it's, uh, I'm re entering
the atmosphere.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
So am I offering you a vacation from your vacation?

Speaker 2 (10:32):
No, I don't want to say that. I don't want
to say it because it is enjoyable. We do enjoy it.
But yeah, suddenly it's just much quieter.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
Well, I'll try to keep vaguely quiet. The show is
called talk Easy. Oh oh okay, after all, we're taping
this together in New York City. Neither of us live here.
But season two of American Rust is about a part
of the country in southwest Pennsylvania often ignored and films
TV shows policies. Even when the first season debuted in

(11:02):
twenty twenty one, you said that the show speaks to
the crossroads this country is in, to the people who've
been abandon left behind as jobs go elsewhere and the
American dream fades. So here we aren't three years later,
do you still see the show and the country in
those same terms.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
The Midwest has always been flyover country for a reason.
You know, the people on the coast, they don't want
to go there. It's boring. The people aren't interesting, they're simple,
they aren't sophisticated enough.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
They haven't met my uncle or grandmother in Michigan then exactly.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
And you know, I grew up there, and then after
ten years in New York, and when we moved back there,
we raised the kids in Michigan. And so when the
chance to do America and Rust came up based on
Philip Myers's book, It's set in Pittsburgh, and I'm reading
the book, and I know these people. I live around
these people, and in some ways I am of these people.

(12:01):
I just thought it was so authentic, and even the
pace of the show the season, that small town pacing.
They're just so people. But what the show does, and
what Philip did, and then Danny Fotterman and Adam Rapp did,
the writers you have simple on the outside but complicated
on the inside, and they were able to write a

(12:21):
story now based on Philip's book and then extended it
and then made it really complicated so that it was
something that people would want to watch.

Speaker 4 (12:29):
You know.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
Suddenly there are bodies dropping and things like that in
season two. So that's that's that, ain't Andy of Mayberry.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
I'm hoping that's not happening in Chelsea, Michigan, where you live. No,
I mean not often at least.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
No, not of, not of And it's certainly not like this.
And that's where it goes beyond just you know, trying
to do a documentary of what it's like to live
in a small town in the Midwest. It isn't that.
I do like the people. I like the characters. They're recognizable,
they have stuff underneath what they're saying. They're saying one
thing and thinking another, and all that stuff that you

(13:03):
see in the Midwest. We don't. We don't as a rule,
kind of tell you what we're thinking all the time.
I mean, you asked at the top of this interviewed,
how are you doing? Really you're a little ambivalent. No,
I'm just from the Midwest. You just don't get to
read me. I'm not transparent. I'm not like over in
your lap telling you exactly how I feel. That's that's

(13:25):
kind of I remember coming to New York and being
of the Midwest and having to learn how to like
drop all that you know, how to you know, repress
that kind of close to the vest, that kind of
don't let anybody know what you're really thinking thing.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
I'm born and raised in Chicago, so this is very
familiar to me.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
Definitely, the small town thing, kind of don't say anything
and let them do all the talking kind of thing.
So when I came to New York in the seventies,
I was I was on an island. They kept going, Jeff,
get up, do something in the acting class today, anything please?
You cannot sit in the chair and be silent anymore.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
And did you say to them, well, less is more
on it. I read that I didn't know what that meant. No, No,
I didn't know. I didn't know anything. I was twenty one,
and I just I didn't know what I was doing.
But in the sense of this show is part of
you that you recognize yourself in the character of del
Harris and the community of American rust. You know, you
grew up in Michigan, the eldest son in a working class,

(14:25):
moderate Republican household. Her father ran a lumber company in Chelsea,
a company he planned to passed down to you. But
the first indication that lumber may not have been in
your cards was not going to be in your cards came,
I believe in sixth grade, when a music teacher named
Diane Elroy got incredibly bored on a Friday afternoon and

(14:48):
instructed students to do one today.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
We're going to do a skit. We're gonna do a
bunch of skits. We didn't even know it was improv.
She didn't even know it was improv. She was bored.
It's a Friday, We're gonna do skits. So she had
a kid get up and do something, and then another one.
About the third one, she said, Jeff, you're a politician
who is giving a speech and your pants are falling down.

(15:13):
Go ahead. And I got up in front of the
class and had the presence of performance mind to not
just go right to the pants are falling down. I
started with whatever I was taking. A sixth grader thinks
a mayor might say, you know, at the open ribbon
coveting ceremony. I'm glad here today the firehouse, and I

(15:34):
would tug at the belt just a little. The firehouse
is the best firehouse we've ever built in our town.
Tug at the belt again, and then it kept, and
then it was we're now both hands are tugging the belt,
and I keep talking about the firehouse. And then by
the bottom, I'm gonna guess seemed like five minutes, but
about minute and a half in, I'm holding up my
pants as if they've got four hundred pound weights on them,

(15:57):
trying to get to the floor. So it's this struggle
to hold my pants, and the classroom was cracking up.
And she went to my parents and she said, keep
an eye on this one. There's something going on.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
When your teacher went to your parents, I wonder how
much she relayed about the skit itself, because you were
playing a mayor. Your father was elected mayor of Chelsea
in nineteen sixty one. And so when I heard that story,
I thought, No, wonder this kid knows how to do
a stump speech. He probably has seen his father.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
No, never saw dad, No never, no, No, he went.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
And you didn't. You didn't support it.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
I know the mayor thing. No, he just went to meetings.
He just went to meetings on Tuesday nights, and then
he came back and he was still the mayor. We
didn't know. We didn't know now that had.

Speaker 1 (16:44):
That was a tough, demanding job, don't. You can't put
that down, not in.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
A two stoplight town. It wasn't. But my dad also
was the guy that when the Kiwanas Club did their
annual pageant. I remember this, I was five or six.
They played Swan Lake and then he came out in
a pink two two a ballot with a wig, probably

(17:08):
a pink two two, and black high top converse sneakers
and did his version of Swan Lake and everyone was
cracking up that comedy that my dad had. I remember
when they would have Bridge Club and they'd have eight
couples and they're all playing bridge, and it's a Saturday
night and we're downstairs and you can hear them, and

(17:31):
all of a sudden, you hear my dad talking and
it's loud, and you know, the martinis are flowing, and
you crawl up the stairs and you look and there's
your dad standing up in front of all these other
couples telling a ten minute story and they're all cracking up.
I remember seeing that. It didn't click like I'm going

(17:53):
to be an actor, but it was that that's in me.
Those Jeanes are in me.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
You remember seeing that and thinking what and feeling what.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
What is that?

Speaker 1 (18:02):
What is how does he do that?

Speaker 2 (18:03):
That's not the that's not the dad.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
I know you saw a different person.

Speaker 2 (18:07):
Yeah, didn't know it. Didn't know what I was seeing,
but I was seeing something that clicked. And then the
sixth grade thing with the classroom and the mayor speech,
and then when I was a sophomore in high school,
they were doing musicals. The same teacher sixth grade teacher
was now doing the high school musicals, which they do
would do once a year, and she'd pick one and

(18:30):
she'd get all the kids from chorus. She taught chorus.
I was in chorus because I could sing, but I
was also on the basketball team because if you could,
you know, walk in a straight line, you were athletic.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
The team was five and twelve that year.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
We were thank you. It was it was grim.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
The last game you played. I think you lost my
thirty points or something like that.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
Is that is that true?

Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yes? I mean I don't have the statue in front
of me, but thank you. Actually, I have your field
goal percentage if you want it.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
Yeah, I would love to see that. I was either
I'd either score twenty one points or three, but I
would shoot like I was going to score fifty.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
You shooting like it's your last game.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
I was walking after a very bad basketball practice where
all we did was run. I walked by the high
school auditorium as a sophomore, and she was waiting for me,
that same teacher. She said, get in here. I said,
what we're doing auditions for South Pacific. I need sailors.
Get up on stage. Go damn it. So I went

(19:27):
up and I you know, whatever that kid did in
sixth grade he did again in that audition and got
Now I'm hooked.

Speaker 1 (19:33):
Now I'm in in your audio memoir Alive and well enough,
you said that quote. I've always thought that art is
what gives us wings. Sometimes it's a teacher. So Diane
clearly did that for you. Yeah, but so too did
acting teacher and guest director Marshall W. Mason, who first

(19:53):
cast you in a production of Summer and Smoke in
your junior year of college. I think it was what
do you think Mason saw on you at the age
of twenty.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
I think Marshall saw that thing maybe that I saw
at the top of the stairs and my dad was
telling that big story in front of all those people.
He saw someone who could become someone else. He saw
raw talent with self taught technique that was guessing right,
and that whatever I was doing, I could become someone

(20:24):
else seamlessly. Not to the degree that I could if
I actually moved to New York and got into his
circle repertory acting classes, which I eventually did. But that's
where he gave me the technique and that kind of
internal playbook that you use to get you where you
need to go, whether it's on stage or in front

(20:45):
of a camera.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
I still use it today for those unfamiliar. What are
the tenets of that techno? Well, I mean to the
extent that you still find them, musul.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
As I tell directors five words or less. If you
can't tell me what you want in five words or left,
stay in the chair. It was a descendant of Stanislavski,
who then Strasburg at the Actor's Studio took it Sandy
Meisner at the Neighborhoo playoffs kind of they all took
versions of what Stanislavsky had discovered and kind of morphed

(21:14):
it into their own thing. And I think Marshall was
certainly a fan of Sandy Meisner and Sanford Meisner and
put together his version of that. So it really was
kind of a descendant of that stan of Slovsky method
without all the personal trappings of please call me by
my character's name. It was really focused on listening, on

(21:36):
using the other actor. You know, half your performance is
in the other actor, which is not what we're taught
in Hollywood and Hollywood your talk of you know, I'm
ready for my close up, mister Demil, you act in
front of a mirror, and he was kind of very no,
make it about her, make it about him, Make it
about that other person. And then suddenly it's tennis back

(21:56):
and forth and the audience goes in, you know, And
a lot of The Fifth of July was a play
that I did in nineteen seventy eight where that quiet
kid in the acting class got a part where he
didn't say much the play and Lanford Wilson had written
that for me, and I listened a lot and I
learned how to listen doing that play which I did

(22:17):
treat in three different productions.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
So when you got cast in that play, you had
been in New York for about two two and a
half years at that point. But I just want to
hold the drive over when you did decide to move
from Michigan to New York September one, nineteen seventy six,
at two pm in the Holland Tunnel, some clothes in
your car, a guitar, and the forty five hundred dollars

(22:39):
your father planned to spend on your senior year of tuition.
When you clocked it was two pm and you were
no longer in Kansas. What was racing through your mind?

Speaker 2 (22:51):
Fear, I'm here for a reason, and I'm going to
give it. I mean, I'm going to give it some time.
Marshall thinks I'm good. I have one person in the
city who thinks I'm good. I remember that, and he
stuck with me. He wouldn't let me leave. After a year.
I was ready to leave. I was done. I'm just
going to go home.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
You called back home.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
Yeah, right, yeah. I was about a year in and
you know, I was living in one room on twenty
third and seventh, and it was just one of those
you know, horrible apartments, and man, I'm not happy. And
you know, off Broadway was great, but you know, I
wanted to go home. I was done. I'll go back
to the lumberyard. I don't need to do this. I

(23:32):
was never invested to the point of I want to
be a star. I want this is my dream. I
have to fulfill it. I was just told I was
good at it. Okay, I'm here because I'm good at it,
but it's not happening. So I think I'm going to
call the parents and I'm just going to tell him
I'm going to come home. And my dad was, well,
it's your decision. I guess he's starting to think lumberyard

(23:52):
again now. And mom was on the other end of
the phone and was silent, and he talked for a
few minutes and then he goes, Marge, what do you think?
And she goes find a way to stay and hung up.
So I stayed, I'm not going back to that, and
I stayed. And she was right, tough enough.

Speaker 1 (24:09):
Were you surprised she said that my mother?

Speaker 2 (24:12):
No, No, she was tough.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
She was a farm girl, tough, tougher than your father.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
Yeah, dad was, you know, Dad was strong, in his
own ways, and you know, could could talk to anybody
and basically persuade people into thinking that what he thought
was right was the right thing to do, because it
usually was. I kind of grew up with Atticus Finch.
You know, that's what Dad his reputation in town was.
Mom suffered no fools, especially with her children.

Speaker 1 (24:39):
When you spoke as a kid, did she stare at
you with her arms crossed the way you do when
I speak.

Speaker 2 (24:47):
I don't know where to put them. I can put
them here, I'll put them here. No, there's a microphone here.
I can't. Oh no, I'll I'll just hang on the Sepiday.

Speaker 1 (24:54):
Look you give when someone else is speaking, it's very complsed.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
I listen. I listen, Yes, I listen. There's not a
lot of active listening. There's a lot of very direct
kind of listening. Yeah. She would do that.

Speaker 1 (25:09):
Mm hm.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
Dad would. Dad would move around, but she would. She would.

Speaker 1 (25:14):
He was more amiby.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
She would stare at you and wait for you to
stop talking. And then here's what you're going to do.
Someday I'll play my mother in a movie.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
Since dub and Dumber, we're wondering when will you finally
challenge yourself Harry Harry Dunn's mother, So you stuck it out,
You listen to her, you stick it out, you get
that role in Fifth of July by Lamford Wilson. Was
that the first time that you felt like a writer
saw you, that a writer wrote for you?

Speaker 2 (25:41):
Definitely was the first time a writer wrote for me.
As I was at twenty two, twenty three, sitting in
the back of the acting class, not wanting to do anything,
scared to do anything, scared to make a mistake. All
those you know, dredge up some personal memory and sob
and acting class and that let everyone discuss it after
you're done. You know, that's it was. You know, it's

(26:02):
like therapy in an acting class. It was, Oh, that's
where we're going to go. I don't get to do
what I do in musicals, which is wings and kind
of no, we're not doing that here, Okay.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
Anti therapy is very Midwestern.

Speaker 2 (26:15):
I'd say, oh god, yeah, yeah, we don't need help.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
That's what we say to ourselves.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
Wow, we say, or to anyone who happens to ask, Yeah,
now we're fine, we don't need help. You're the one
with a problem.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
Thank you for looking at me when you said that, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:27):
That's what acting class felt like. Was like, Okay, we're
going to open you up. And again I'm I'm in
a Midwestern moderate, soft Republican household where being except when
dad got a couple of martinis in him being extroverted
was why do you have to be so noisy?

Speaker 1 (26:46):
You know?

Speaker 2 (26:46):
And in New York you come to learn how to
if it's on your mind, it's out of your mouth
and you're up on your feet and you're you're out,
it comes. You have to learn to come out with
those emotions instead of you have to unlock them. And
that's what Marshall taught me. It was how to unlock them.

Speaker 4 (27:01):
He was one.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
He was the first one to teach.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
Me that while you're performing on stage, you're also auditioning
for commercials, films, etc. In the early eighties, before you
land that breakout part. In terms of endearment, casting director
Juliet Taylor told you to be quote less defensive and
less angry at auditions. You've got to be more personable.

(27:25):
What does getting defensive and angry at an audition look like?

Speaker 2 (27:29):
You're not going to give me the part? So why
am I here? I mean, what do you want?

Speaker 1 (27:33):
And that didn't work.

Speaker 2 (27:34):
No, I can't believe they didn't. Wait, well, you got
to understand this was several years now of terms of endearment,
was seven years in of commercials in off Broadway, and
you know, the dream of can I be in the
movies is Broadway? Even an option, is having a career,
making a living as an actor, even an option. You know,

(27:57):
when I talked to college kids brought in, I start
out with rejection because that's the one thing that the
academics can't teach you.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
I have here. You tell actors that rejection is going
to be part of it. And so are antidepressants.

Speaker 2 (28:11):
Yeah, yeah, I mean we're hot. The highs are high
and the lows are really low. It's how we're wired.
I mean, I'm not the only one. I mean Clapton wrote,
you know, talked about it. Eric Clapton talks Every artist
is because there's no sameness. And then when you do
get in a hit, whether it's a play or whether
it's a movie, it's temporary. Fame is fleeting, and you

(28:33):
have to understand that now they're going to be focused
on someone else and something else, and it's no longer.
You're no longer the number one movie in the country
or the number one show on Broadway, and now what
And the trap is trying to sustain that somehow with
being famous and being seen and being all that stuff,
which I just is like a poison to me.

Speaker 1 (28:55):
Was it a poison to you? Then?

Speaker 2 (28:57):
Oh yeah, it's always been Yeah, I just want to act.
Why do I have to do anything else? Well, you
have to promote yourself. Well, you have to be out
there marketing. Well, you have to sell your personality. You
have to be a brand. Gable was a brand. Tom
Cruise is a brand.

Speaker 4 (29:11):
You know.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
Jimmy Stewart was a brand. You go to see Jimmy
Stewart being Jimmy Stewart. I don't want that. I want
to be I don't I want to be other people.
That's all I want to be.

Speaker 1 (29:21):
In those early films, I'm talking about Something Wild and
The Purple Rose of Cairo. I want to start with
the Jonathan Demi movie. When Something Wild came out, there
was an article in the La Times by a writer
that described you as quote the guy with the face
like one hundred dollars cotton flannel shirt. To be clear
that was in the nineties. I didn't adjust that number

(29:41):
for inflation. He also wrote, Daniels was born to picnic
table bread for family portraits. The station wagon was invented
with him in mind.

Speaker 2 (29:50):
Okay, this is the La Times talking about the Midwest. Okay,
I'm just let me just start with that the standard.
Thank you so much for labeling me and based on
one performance, and that's who I am and that's what
my face is. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
No, Norman wrote that for.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
Look, it was some of the while was Jack Lemon
and Dick Van Dyke had a baby and it was
named Charlie Drags And that's what I played in the movie.
I loved Lemon, I loved Dick Van Dyke growing up.
Those were my influences going into that. I said, just
do what they might do and just bounce off everything
that was DEMI was thrown at me.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
Which parts of each of them? Did you take? Lemon
and Van Dyke.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
They were both physical. It was on their mind. It
was out of their mouth, which is the opposite of
what I went to New York with was so now
is here are guys that are out.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
The opposite of the Jeff Daniels from Chelsea Michigan.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
Yeah, and so that's fun. That's where the fun is.
So you know Dick Van Dyke, the physical comedy that
he did, well, I mean I would sit in my
living room and watch that show and probably that made
it into some of those high school musicals. I just
loved what he did, and he was funny, and he
was fast and he talked fast. Jack Lemon was the

(31:07):
same thing. Jack did some dramatic rules, but both those
guys were kind of you couldn't see the script and
it wasn't that they were ad libbing so much. Certainly
Jack Lemon, could I call it the Jack Lemon stutter start, which, yeah,
well I'm okay, I look all right, if you want
me to sure, I'll answer the question when the line is,
I'll answer the question. That's what Jack would do on that.

Speaker 1 (31:29):
So would by the way, it would be incredible if
you did the rest of the interview as Jack Lemon.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
Well, I mean, I mean you sure, thank you. Yeah, no,
but it was it was kind of a way to
loosen me up.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
That's a dead on impression. It is not that's done,
I mean, not doing the voice, but the mat that
that the way the mannerism.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
Yeah, I yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean they were
just so.

Speaker 1 (31:50):
This is an audio medium, so that's tough to play.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
That is to I hope you can see that at home.
It was tough, It was it was it was fun
to try to dive into that. Every role you're looking
for a key thought, the one that you grab and
then that launches you and that you can hang on
all the way through the movie.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
What is that key thought? What does that mean?

Speaker 2 (32:09):
It's the thing again, this is boiling down what Marshall
Mason taught me. I have to have a key thought
that I can tape to the inside of my forehead.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
And for something wild that was one.

Speaker 2 (32:20):
Jack Lemon, Dick Van Dyke, you know, just the two
of them right there, and then just kind of go
through that. So you look for that in every role.
That kind of it's cliff notes, it's a cheat sheet.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
The key thought for Purple Rose of Cairo is.

Speaker 2 (32:35):
What everything I have ever learned. Please let me remember
now that was Woody Allen at the height of his
Woody Allen noess as a filmmaker. And I get that role.
And it's two roles, two leading roles in a Woody
Allen comedy and you start on Monday.

Speaker 1 (32:54):
So the first role is the matinee idol in a
nineteen thirty six movie. And then when you step out
of the screen, you're a standard neurotic actor.

Speaker 2 (33:02):
Gil Shepherd the standard neurotic actor, and Tom Baxter was
the safari wearing, one dimensional young hero in a black
and white film that really probably wasn't very good.

Speaker 1 (33:14):
Did the training at Circle Rep prepare you to star
on a Woody Allen movie?

Speaker 4 (33:18):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (33:18):
Yeah, you know again, back and forth, back and forth,
that tennis thing. And I was reminded of it on
Purple Rosa Cairo when Woody because I was about a
week in shooting it and I just.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
You had replaced Michael Keaton.

Speaker 2 (33:32):
Yeah, they had mutually decided that it wasn't working after
two weeks, and then he went on a screen He
screen tested about well, probably four or five of us,
and I got it. And about a week in I
just went to Woody. I go, Woody, I'm not Errol Flynn,
according to the La Times. I'm just a guy who
could sit at a picnic table somewhere outside you know, Columbus, Ohio.

Speaker 1 (33:54):
I'm glad I could read traumatize him.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
Yeah, yeah, oh, I remember that crap and he goes,
Aero Flynn. He goes, oh, I don't need you to
be Aero Flynn. He goes, You've got Mia Farrow off camera,
just adore her. And it was like, oh, so the
and that led to again listening and going using the
other actor and all that stuff that we're not taught.
Circle taught it, but we're not taught. And that so

(34:16):
the closer the camera got and I stayed with this forever. Oh,
that extreme close up where it's like Darth Vader is
a foot away from your face and you're worried about
every little poor and your No, that's when the closer
it gets, the more you make it about the other person.
And by doing that, this thing happens where the camera

(34:36):
can go in. The camera will now go in and
see your thoughts and feel what you're thinking in a
way because you're subconsciously you've let that all go. You've
let the filter and the blockade go of that kind
of here's the camera. It's really close, and that's all gone,
and now you're pouring it into her and the camera
goes in.

Speaker 1 (34:55):
Demi and Alan, is there any commonality between the two
of them besides both being.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
Great, Jonathan had a spirit that was just he could
have ten grand to make the movie or one hundred million,
he'd be the same and the film would be the same,
and it would have his stamp on it. Definitely, he
was a filmmaker that was so is Woody. They had
that kind of confidence in where to put the camera
and what they saw and reflected on this shot, and

(35:23):
you knew you were in a Jonathan Demi movie, and
you knew you were in a Woody Allen movie just
by where he put the camera. The commonality was that
even though we had a script on something wild, Jonathan
encouraged me to just use as an outline. I had
never taken an improv class, but I somehow was able
to kind of, you know, loosen it up and say

(35:45):
some things and then you go, great, keep that, don't
say that, but now maybe to talk about you know.
It was that loosening up from take three to four
to five to six. Woody was similar. I mean I
went into Purporosa, Cairo with that script and going okay,
just and I'm not going to change a word. He goes, no, no, no, no,
no no. If you want to say it a different way.
Go ahead. It's not the Bible, you know. If I

(36:07):
need you to say it a certain way, I'll I'll
ask you to do that. But he was very nice
about it, and and that just makes you want to
make what he wrote, you know, work even better. And
as a writer, I kept going back to getting even
and without feathers. Those books he wrote that were like
master classes and comedic writing. And so now I'm with
him and I'm going to improve on top of them.

(36:30):
Not so much, but he did. There's a scene in
Purple Rows where I'm on the porch I go to
Mia Fero's house, Cecilia's house as the neurotic actor. In
what he kept saying just ad lib about what it
means to be a star. I struggled with my.

Speaker 5 (36:47):
Whole life and now I'm finally beginning to breakthrough.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
And my whole career is going right down and drink.
You don't have to worry about that. You'll always be
a great movie star.

Speaker 5 (36:57):
Oh well, that's that's very nice for you too. But
technically I'm not really a star yet, Cecilia, don't you know.
I mean, I try to carry myself like one, you know,
I do the best I can as far as that,
but star that's a big word in a star. Yeah, no, no,
no starving.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
And I would go for like a minute and I
could see Woody off camera laughing, you know, snorting, and
I'm going, Yes, I made Woody laugh. You know, that
was cool. That was cool. But they both had this
kind of yeah, loosen it up kind of thing, which
you know, was I didn't expect.

Speaker 1 (37:34):
After The Purple Rose of Cairo came out, you appear
on the cover of GQ magazine. In that profile, Woody
said of you, he could be the next Carry Grant.
He's got that sophisticated comedic style. He could do that stuff.
The question is will there be sufficient literature to accommodate him.
In most interviews you've done, the journalist likes to point

(37:57):
out the Carry Grant line, but they never read the
question that he poses at the end, which to me
is the whole that's the whole story. And so as
you move out of New York and back to Chelsea
to raise a family, did you find there to be
sufficient literature to accommodate you?

Speaker 2 (38:17):
Occasionally, but to move back to Michigan after ten years
in New York and with a two year old boy,
you know, Kathleen, and I said, let's just go back
home because the career is going to end. It probably
peaked at Purple Rosa, Cairo and something wild and that's it,
and so let's just because they all end famous fleeting,
it's going to end. I was so fatalistic, and I
finally had the chance to go home.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
Why so fatalistic?

Speaker 2 (38:41):
I didn't trust it for a second, didn't want it.

Speaker 1 (38:44):
Didn't trust or didn't want both.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
Didn't want, don't I don't I go to Hollywood for
a meeting. I would fly from Detroit on the nine
am plane, land eleven thirty, La Time, rent a car,
do the meeting, hang out maybe, or get the five
o'clock or get the red eye back home. I never
took my coat off. I was worried that whatever I
had that got me to people like Jonathan Demi, Woody

(39:09):
Allen would be taken away. It would be.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
Contaminated, yes, by the stardom thing.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
And I didn't know how to do it. I didn't
know how to schmooze. I didn't know how to suck up.
I just wanted to be that actor that you saw
on something and now you're hiring me to do this
thing for you. Now, I wanted to get there to that.
So I went to Michigan and waited and sustained a career.
You know, there are a lot of movies in there
that are just paying for the lifestyle. You know, one

(39:38):
hundred and one Dalmatians my favorite march, and you know
there was stuff in there. I'm just trying to stay
in the business and waiting. And then when the kids
finally got out of school and were off, then it
became about chasing the writing. And that's where Woody was right.

Speaker 1 (39:54):
I read that quote from Woody because of the literature comment,
but I also read it because when you go back
to Michigan and you're living there through the nineties, you
have this quote, and it's just it's been like nagging
at me since I've read it, so I I have
to ask you about it. You said, I was bored,
I was playing golf, I was playing too much golf creatively,

(40:15):
I was going to sleep. Above all, I went home
and found out I was an outsider. When you look
at those years, what did it mean to be an
outsider when you went back home to be at home?

Speaker 2 (40:27):
Yeah, I think I naively thought it would, you know,
be the same, And in some ways it is the same,
but you're not the same. That's what I think Wolf
meant by the quote. It's different, but you're also different.
And it was great for the family. That was the
number one reason I don't know how to raise kids

(40:48):
in Hollywood. You can, it's done successfully all the time.
But I didn't know how to do it. And New
York was too expensive, and the career is going to end,
So why don't we just go back for the family's
sake and I'll just commute to wherever I'm going to
have to go. But yeah, I did. I was there,
and creatively I had been awakened through Marshall and Circle

(41:11):
and being an actor and that whole imaginative world that
we live in. Once you tap into it, whether you're
acting or writing or songs or whatever you're doing performing,
it's a drug. It's a very heavy drug, and if
you're able to hit it and bring it up, suddenly
it's there all the time. And that was still swirling,

(41:33):
and so I would go home and around folks that
weren't of that. I had to go to New York
to learn how to do that. So that became a problem,
and so I created the Purple Rose Theater Company, partly
to give myself somewhere to go creatively, gambling that I could,
you know, maybe do a version of what Circle Rep

(41:53):
was in my own hometown, with no long term plan
or anything, just let's see if this can work. And
so that helped, and it still helps to this day.
It was either I'm going to get out or I
was picking up a guitar a lot, and like two thousand,
two thousand and one, I thought, well, maybe that's what
I'll do now, because what I'm not going to do

(42:14):
is be the asshole father standing on a set in
a sitcom while some twenty two year old is making
ten million a show and he's an hour late and
he doesn't know his lines. I'm not going to be
that guy. I'll quit. And if I don't get what
I you know, that challenges me, I'll get out. And
way back when suddenly there's this movie called The Squid

(42:35):
in the Whale and there's this young writer nobody's heard of,
Noah Baumback and I read the script and I this,
what's this?

Speaker 4 (42:43):
This?

Speaker 2 (42:43):
How can I get this? And they'd been out to
a couple of big stars and who of course wanted changes.
And then I flew to New York. I was doing
because of Wynn Dixie, which was this little family movie
that was just give me a job. And I flew
to New York and met with Noah and I went
through the script. I said, this is funny. Page page, page,
This is funny, page page, This is funny. This is

(43:05):
really funny. And he looked at Laura. Lenny said him.
Squid in the Whale was one of those starts where
my agent and manager and I made a conscious effort
to let's chase good writing. Let's try to be known
as a really great American actor. And if we don't
make it, we don't make it.

Speaker 6 (43:26):
When my first novel came out, I had a lot
of opportunities. I would feel your mother if I didn't partake.
And I've never had an affair with a student, though
many have come on to me. That's why you might
not want to be attached to your age. It sounds
like Sophy's good for now.

Speaker 4 (43:41):
Why do you all?

Speaker 1 (43:42):
God damn it, I burned myself.

Speaker 2 (43:44):
Cults are great.

Speaker 7 (43:45):
God, you do hear from that agent?

Speaker 5 (43:47):
Yeah, but if you liked your novel, then you get
it published right perfectly?

Speaker 4 (43:52):
What happened to your old asian?

Speaker 2 (43:53):
Fred kissed me off?

Speaker 8 (43:56):
Made a disparaging remark about the Knicks at a party
they played like thogs.

Speaker 7 (44:01):
I found it really offensive, kind of a jerk.

Speaker 6 (44:04):
I think it was important to your mother that I
achieved some sort of commercial success us and when I
didn't meet her expectations.

Speaker 7 (44:12):
In that area.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
The writing of that film. As someone whose parents split
early and often, I have seen it a whole lot
of times, countless times, maybe too many times, And the
last time I watched it, I never understood how you
got to that angry place. But hearing this chapter that
you were in before that movie, did you see yourself

(44:39):
in some of the anger of that character? This was
a mercurial novelist who's frustrated that he's not being read enough,
not being considered enough. Did you see some of yourself
in that?

Speaker 2 (44:52):
Yeah? And that was the key thought. I remember with
Noah in rehearsals and just go, I know what it is.

Speaker 1 (44:58):
I know what it is because it's about his father
as well.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
Yeah. But as for pelling Bernard and the underappreciated right,
the guy they aren't looking at in the room when
Norman may you are standing next to each other, They're
going to look and talk to Norman Mayler. You're not
good enough, You're not as good as they are. I
tapped right into that, right into that. Yeah, and then
then let yourself go slide down, which is where Bernard

(45:22):
goes it.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
Just you know, how did it feel to do that?

Speaker 2 (45:27):
I mean it was. It's not like you come out
of it going, you know, get me in therapy. But
it's like, you know, that's never the answer, never the answer,
it's completely unnecessary. But when you get a guy and
you can become him. And that's the other thing that
Marshall Mason's thing led me to, which in my head
means I need to be able to think like the

(45:47):
character in here, the part that you don't hear. And
if I can think like the character, then everything else
will kind of fall into play. If you've done the
prep work and all that stuff. But at the end
of the day, you want to be able to think
like Atticus Finch or think like Harry Dunn. You want
to be able to get in there there like that.
So then you're just riding in pulses. You're just writing instincts,

(46:11):
and when you get that key into whatever the character is,
then it's jump off the cliff and go. And whether
with Bernard and Squid in the Whale, it was, yeah,
we're gonna go dark. Let's go dark. But that led
to Got a Carnage, and that led to Newsroom, and
I remember doing Got a Carnage on Broadway with Jim Gandelfini,

(46:31):
and you know, the movies were drying up and it
just wasn't you know, I wasn't getting anything that I
wanted to do. And I said, Jim, I think I'm
thinking about television. He goes, get yourself a good writer.
He said, I got David Chase, and luckily for me,
Aaron Sorkin wanted me. And then when you've got the
writing is what he said. When you've got the writing,

(46:52):
you can write it. You can write it, and they'll
challenge you too, the writers, the good writer will challenge you.
And that's what I've from that two thousand and nine on.
I've been fortunate to have good writing come my way,
and that's kept me not only in the business, but
interested in the business.

Speaker 1 (47:12):
After the break, we talk about Jeff's unexpected second act,
as written by Aaron Sorkin stay with us. When it

(47:36):
came to the newsroom, Aaron Sorkin was looking for an
actor that could express that rage, that could tap into
an anger. He did not think that you entirely had
that at first, Is that right?

Speaker 2 (47:48):
Yeah? He had been. There was nothing really in film
or TV that showed what he needed, that kind of
you know, knee jerk rant that McAvoy needed to go on,
and he just Aaron needed to be able to see
that before he cast me. And then I got a tip,
a heads up on that that's what he needed to see.

(48:11):
So when we were sitting at a breakfast table in
the Four Seasons in New York to I was meeting
Aaron Sorkin for the first time, and Scott Rudin, the
producer Newsroom, was sitting across the table, and I told
a story about where I had lost it, and then
I banged the table and the orange juice glasses rattled
and jumped and coffee and people at the other tables

(48:33):
were turning around looking at Aaron's going okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.
I think, I yeah, no, no, no, good good good,
And you know, I was halfway through the story, so
I was going to finish it so because I wanted
this part, and so it just became.

Speaker 1 (48:46):
More strong armed him into giving you the role.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
I auditioned. I had to show that I could get
there and that it might be uncomfortable and embarrassing. You know,
That's all I knew. I didn't have any I didn't
know Mac, I didn't know anything else except it's a
show about a newsroom. And so that was well, if
he needs to see this, here's my best version of it.
And by the end of the breakfast they said, you've
got the part.

Speaker 1 (49:09):
When we started this conversation, we talked about American rust
being representative of the crossroads this country is at. Do
you see the newsroom and what you and Aaron Sorkin
were going for to be a kind of prelude to
America post pandemic.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
I think one of the great strengths about Aaron's writing
is that he's ahead of his time. There are things
that he said, not just in the big Northwestern speech,
that will outlive both of us every episode. There are
things that are said that are opinions, that are dropped
into conversations that the characters are having that now post

(49:44):
COVID and you look at cable news and you look
at that they didn't listen at all, not that they
were supposed to listen to Aaron sork in a newsroom
and maybe take some notes. But he's really good at
predicting what might happen. And like a lot of things
in this world today, you can't stop it. And if

(50:04):
there's money at the end of it, whether it's MSNBC, CNN, Fox, Knew,
lose and they can get more eyeballs going in that direction,
and that's more money. Welcome to News.

Speaker 1 (50:15):
In the pilot episode, of course, there's that monologue you
just mentioned. We your character explained to how America is
not the greatest country in the world anymore? Why is
it not the.

Speaker 8 (50:25):
Greatest country in the world, professor, that's my answer.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
You're saying, yes, let's talk about fine, Sharon. The NEA
is a loser.

Speaker 8 (50:38):
Yeah, it accounts for a penny out of our paycheck.

Speaker 2 (50:40):
But he gets to hit you with it anytime he wants.
It doesn't cost money.

Speaker 8 (50:42):
It costs boats, it costs airtime and column inches. You
know why people don't like liberals because they lose. If
liberals are so fucking smart and they lose so goddamn
always hell, and with a straight face, you're gonna tell
students that America is so star spangled awesome that we're
the only ones.

Speaker 2 (50:58):
In the world who have freedom.

Speaker 8 (50:59):
Canada has freedom, Japan has freedom, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia,
Belgium has freedom. So two hundred and seven sovereign stays
in the world, like one hundred and eighty of them
at freed and got you a sorority girl just in
case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day.
There's some things you should know, and one of them
is there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement

(51:20):
that were the greatest country in the world. We're seventh
in literacy, twenty seventh in math, twenty second in science,
forty ninth in life expectancy, one hundred and seventy eighth
in infant mortality, third and median household income, number four
in labor force, and number four in exports.

Speaker 2 (51:33):
We lead the world in only three categories.

Speaker 8 (51:36):
Number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who
believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend
more than the next twenty six countries combined.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
Twenty five, of whom her allies.

Speaker 8 (51:45):
Now, none of this is the fault of a twenty
year old college student, but you nonetheless are, without it on,
a member of the worst period generation period ever periods.
When you ask what makes us the greatest country in
the world, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, Yosementy.

Speaker 1 (52:03):
I believe I'm part of the worst period generation, period ever,
period that you referring to in that speech going to.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
But you've come out of it nicely, I think.

Speaker 1 (52:14):
Really, yeah, thank you. That's that's kind of you to say.
I think that the comment is rooted in a kind
of misplaced contempt. I don't think that's fair to our generation, frankly.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
But not all of you.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
No any other shots. No, that's it, that's it, Okay,
that's it.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
Look, McAvoy isn't right. McAvoy isn't He isn't he isn't.
He didn't care about ring right. He just cares about
telling you what you need to know. Yes, and based
on just what he thinks. And I think that's that's
kind of where we came at it. And you know,
as Sarkin wrote at the end of that season, there
she is again there's a sorority girl, and we hire

(52:53):
her because she's exactly the kind of person that we
want here, you know, And and so he brings it around.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
Beyond me joking about it, I've always been moved by
the monologue in your delivery of it, and you've called
the speech the one I've been waiting to do for
thirty five years. That word waiting stuck out to me
because I wonder, were you waiting for thirty five years
or did you perhaps need those thirty five years that

(53:21):
we've been talking about and discussing today. Did you need
them to do that scene as effectively and passionately as
you did?

Speaker 2 (53:29):
Absolutely needed it. Had I done it twenty years earlier,
not as good. It's the thing about getting older. You
know more, and you've seen more, and you're hearing people,
you know, give opinions that you don't agree with, and
you're getting it, and it was just Yeah, it was
like a perfect time for me to plant my feet

(53:51):
and you know, unload that speech. Yeah. I didn't have
to act much in that that just kind of once
you learned the speech, you could just kind of let
it out, you know, let it out and let them
cut it together. That's the great thing about getting older
is that you know, unlike athletes, who's bodies slow down
and all of that, is that actors, it's an accumulation.

(54:15):
You know, you come out of every show you do,
hopefully a better actor. You know more. You applied everything
that you've ever learned, whether you consciously know it or not,
into this scene. And especially if the writing's good. If
the writing is good, then you have to remember everything
you've ever learned and you have to be able to

(54:37):
call that up and use it to now take you
into a place that's a little someplace you've never been before.
And you can't do that when you're younger. And I
think you're right. I think like that newsroom speech was
like a not only was it the speech that's never
handed to me, it's handed to someone else. You know,
you spend a lot of films doing supporting roles. He

(54:59):
gets the speech, she gets the speech, and you're just
there listening at the defense table or something. This was
Aaron Sorkin handing me an Aaron Sorkin rant that I
had seen on West Way, that I had seen those guys,
and I know that Marty Sheen and all those guys
were getting speeches from Aaron's typewriter and whatever, and they

(55:19):
had the same feeling I did when they got handed
something that had a lot of meat on it, and
that I went right home and started pouring that into
my head.

Speaker 1 (55:28):
Before we go, can we talk about the accumulation and
all the life that you brought to to Kill a
Mockingbird by Aaron Sorkin? You said before I played Atticus Finch,
I knew him, I grew up with him. You said
in the beginning of this talk that there was a
lot of your father and Atticus, and we've been talking
about him intermittently throughout, and I wonder what did you

(55:51):
make of your performance on Sunday, June sixteenth, twenty nineteen.

Speaker 2 (55:57):
Yeah, that was a special one. My dad died in
twenty twelve, and I don't know. We twenty nineteen were
doing Mockingbird on Broadway and I'm in it for a year.
I had been in it for I think seven months
at that time, and it was Father's Day and you're
always looking to do the perfect show. Oh, I just

(56:17):
fumfered that one line. Okay, all right, go go, go go,
and you get through it, and then the next night
you don't fumper that one, but just screw up something else,
or you a little late on the something. Everything there's something,
there's always something that you wish you could almost got
it perfect, you know, and it hadn't happened seven months.
A lot of great stuff, but always something. Sunday, matinee out,

(56:38):
i go Father's Day and I'm not religious, but I'm going, well,
you know, this would be the time that I see
a light, you know, God, if you're there to you know, God,
if you're there, you know, And if you see my
dad around there, you might want to, you know, position
him somewhere I can see him, because.

Speaker 7 (56:54):
Then I'll I'm with you.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
Give him a good seat.

Speaker 2 (56:56):
Right. So we go into the show and the show
is great, and every laugh is there and and it's rolling,
and I'm in the closing argument and it's as alive
as it's ever been, and I'm about near the end
of it, and I'm going, this is probably wow, this
was there. It's a perfect show, and I would imagine him.
You stand on stations as the orchestra section and the

(57:17):
aisle goes up, and there's that space back there where
the people walk and there's a light and the usher
usually sits there, and I imagined him walking in to
that light being brought in and you could see the
usher tapping him, going, no, there's your son. There's your
son right up there. And he turns and he's wearing
the clothes that he would wear at the lumber company,

(57:39):
and he would turn and look at me. And so
I'm doing I'm at the end of the show that
day and I'm looking into that light and he's not there. Okay,
well I tried. So dressing room done. I go outside
and there's autographs, and so I do the autographs and
I'm starting. I get the pen and a woman, an
old woman, giz, has an envelope and shoves it in

(58:01):
my hand and I'm going, oh. The security jumps right in.
I go no, no, she's okay, I thank you, I'll thank you.
I'll put up my back pocket and she turned went
So I do the autographs and then I go back
home the apartment and I pull that letter out and
it's a letter from a woman who was at the
church in Chelsea that my dad went to. She was

(58:24):
an associate pastor or something, the Methodist church, and she said,
I knew your father and I remember a big, long
letter about how proud she was of me, but also
that she said, I remember asking your dad, aren't you
proud of your son? I mean, he's famous, he's in movies.
Did he goes? I'm not proud of him for that.

(58:44):
I'm proud of him for the person that he is.
And I'm reading that at the apartment and I'm just going, oh,
maybe he was there. It's the first time I've ever
told that without crying. What does that mean?

Speaker 1 (59:00):
Doctor, Look, this is merely a consultation. We'll have to
come back into the time for that.

Speaker 2 (59:05):
Oh so this is free.

Speaker 1 (59:06):
It's all been free.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
Oh good, thank you?

Speaker 1 (59:09):
Are you glad you didn't cry in telling it?

Speaker 7 (59:12):
Yeah, it's been. It's it's Uh.

Speaker 2 (59:16):
It would have meant a lot for him to see
that one. And he always knew I made the right
decision just because I was able to stay in the business,
and he saw enough and Woody Allen and other he
saw a lot. But that would have been That's the
kid who drove to New York in nineteen seventy six.
That's what I wanted to see him do.

Speaker 1 (59:38):
I don't know if you thought about this, and I
could be off, we can move on from it. He
drove to New York September first, thirty eight years later.
Your father passes away on September first of twenty twelve,
same day. What do you make of that?

Speaker 7 (59:55):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (59:56):
I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 7 (01:00:01):
I don't think it's I don't know, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
I can still rem remember driving away. Looking out the
rearview mirror. I could see him standing at the top
of the hill watching me go. You still see that.
Here's another thing. I was doing American Rust season two,
and we were shooting a scene with an old woman
at the crack of a door, and we're trying to
get information from her, and she's trying to think of

(01:00:29):
the name of somebody that we're looking for. And we're
in take one and the woman says, I don't know.
In the script, I think the name was Smith. Say
the name was Smith, and I think his name was
smiths the line and take one and we're going and
she goes, I think his name was Ferguson. I'm sorry,

(01:00:50):
can we cut? I don't know why I said that.
I don't know, And we stopped shooting and I'm looking
at her. My mom had died two months earlier. Her
maiden name was Ferguson. What do I make of that?
Is that them going we're okay. You've heard that I'm okay,
We're okay. Is that that are from that associate pastor,

(01:01:12):
that's Dad saying I'm okay? Or I see I don't know.
I don't know.

Speaker 7 (01:01:17):
But if you want to believe in hopeful things, it
feels good and speaking of hopeful things, both the Newsroom
and To Kill a Mockingbird to me, I see them
both as extensions of a kind of American hopefulness and
American idealism.

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
I think, at their best, a fundamental belief that the
moral universe is long, and it bends towards justice, and
all the things that Will McAvoy may.

Speaker 7 (01:01:44):
Say and that are being challenged today and.

Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
On the right day, I believe in Atticus, I believe
in Will macavoy, I believe in your father. And on
the wrong day, on most days, these days, they feel
like potentially relics of a bygone era, naive about the
goodness of us as American people. And when you came

(01:02:08):
back for one lafe go at to kill a Mockingbird
in twenty twenty one, you said we have an opportunity
in this country right now to welcome in a new America.
What did that mean to you then and what does
it mean to you now in twenty twenty four as
we head towards this incredibly fraught presidential election.

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
Every generation changes things. Dylan wasn't wrong. Times They are
a changing. They are changing every ten years, every generation.
Even the worst one thing it was just a character
and a television show, Sam, let it go, Okay, let
it go.

Speaker 4 (01:02:46):
Yeah. And that's the other thing.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
You get older and suddenly the younger generation is telling
you everything that you aren't and why you're you know,
you should die? Can you please die? Can you please
die soon? You know that that kind of wave of
but that's not what they're saying.

Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
That's not in my notes, by the way, I know, but.

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
That's not what they're saying. And that new America is
common and the doors are opening wide white blinds is
suddenly something we oh, geez, I had no idea because
you're so busy trying to just you know, survive yourself.
And that's so we get hit with that. I think
that was certainly the second time coming around with Mockingbird.

(01:03:22):
Atticus Finch facing his white blindness, and that we are
a better country if we try all not to you know,
dance like Mike Pence, if we're not stuck in the fifties.
We're white people right or wrong, ran everything and everybody
else go sit in the back of the room. You know,
that's not us at our best. And you're right, the

(01:03:43):
Macavoys and the Attica says Finch has come from that
and harkened back to the goodness that was there. But
there was a lot of badness and a lot of
stuff that needs to be changed, and it is changing,
you know. Around Brownstein wrote that book about nineteen seventy
four being a pivotal world in music, and he said,

(01:04:03):
you know, the culture changes before the politics. And that's
what you say in culture, is that we are a
better country if we're opening the door to everyone. You know, we.

Speaker 7 (01:04:16):
Cannot continue to shove people to.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
The back of the room. Because that little black kid
in Alabama who's eight years old, who's got a brilliant mind,
but we're not going to educate him because of his color.
He's the kid that if you actually gave a shit
about him and gave him the opportunities so that he
could get educated in a way. Suddenly he's now at
John Hopkins and he's the kid who later on cures cancer.

(01:04:41):
We're not going to get there if we're just doing
it with white people. We're just not And I think
it's taken four hundred years for everyone around to kind
of you know, oh yeah, maybe we are better. And
that's one of the great things about this younger generation
is they aren't going to stand for anything less. And
that's why I think those who are going to hang

(01:05:02):
on to whatever Trump believes today and that whole kind
of white dominance thing, even though you know, as white
Republicans you're going to be a minority party, you already are.
You're outnumbered. That's the big difference between now and fifty
and one hundred years ago. Older white Republicans are a
minority now, and you don't get to run by minority rules.

(01:05:23):
So I think that's all common. I think it's a fight.
And at the end of the day, I think everyone
who wants this more open New America still has to
hang on to what's right, what's wrong, what's good, what's bad,
and that doesn't change and the rule of law. By
the way, those things which may have been important to

(01:05:47):
McAvoy and Atticus Finch. I see them being as important
to this younger generation and this new America as well.
And you got to hang on to that because look
out here comes human nature and greed and power and
all the things that take people down. So it still
can be a great country. It still can. I'm looking
at the younger people to kind of, you know, you think,

(01:06:09):
thank you know, it's your turn go. But in about
fifty years you're going to get hit upside.

Speaker 7 (01:06:13):
They had too.

Speaker 1 (01:06:18):
My last thing for you, in the last twenty years,
you've made a point to fold politics into your work.
I think that's fair to say. I mean there's the newsroom,
there's the Komi Rule, there's the Looming Tower. I mean,
there's a long list, there's t kill a Mockingbird. But
what it comes back to, I think in the end,

(01:06:38):
is writing your songwriting your plays. The plays that you've written,
the script's given to you. And the first person that
saw you as a writer is Lanford Wilson. He passed
away about eleven twelve years ago. Now, when the play
Fifth of July is published and you take your physical
copy and you get it signed by him, do you

(01:07:00):
remember that day, and do you remember what he wrote
to you?

Speaker 2 (01:07:05):
Yeah, I remember that day and he signed it and
he wrote, this play is at least half yours and
he had dedicated it to his partner at the time.
You know, he just was in love with me. So
since I wasn't going to go there, I can write
for him. And then he wrote for me. And then
I turned out to be more than just a boy,

(01:07:27):
a cute twenty two year old kid from the Midwest,
and he was the first star I ever met, That's
what he was. I had done hot Al Baltimore at
Eastern Michigan University that Marshall had guests directed. He came
out to pick up a check and we had done
Landford's play hot El Baltimore, and I remember seeing by
Lanford Wilson on the cover. And then four months later,

(01:07:50):
I'm standing in the office a Circle Rep and there's
Landford Wilson splayed out in a chair, going heydal, how
are you, and it's nice to meet you, mister Wilson.
And he was trying to rewrite a second act and
he loved actors. He loved all the actors at Circle Rep.
And he loved to write for actors, and then later
Ronie wrote Fifth of July for me. I never wanted

(01:08:12):
to be a director. I don't care about it as
much that control. But I thought I could write, and
I started The Purple Rows partly to try to become
a playwright. And then when I brought Lanford out, I
actually sent Lanford a play I wrote called The Vast Difference.
I think it was a third play I wrote. And
he said, I can hear your voice, which was a

(01:08:32):
writer thing. You want that. You can hear Landford in
Landford's work. You can hear Aaron Sorkin and Aaron Sorkham's work.

Speaker 1 (01:08:39):
I like that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:39):
You can hear Patty Chaisky in the scene and network
between William Holden and Fae donawait, Patty Chaievsky is in
the room too. I like that. That's the theater and
so I wanted to learn how to do that, and
Landford was my inspiration for that and also my kick
in the ass. Now I know how to do it.
I've written twenty two plays.

Speaker 1 (01:09:02):
He also wrote in the book, whatever you do, make
it matter. Oh yeah, that make it count. My last
question for you, and I guess the only question. Do
you think you have.

Speaker 2 (01:09:13):
Yeah, Lanford wrote in the book, in the script, whatever
you do, make it matter, make it count, which is,
don't sell out, don't become some you know whatever. You're
better than that. And again that goes back to Woody
Allen and the literature and you know, and then now
that to me, let's go just chase the writing. Chase
the good writing. It's hard to make everything matter and

(01:09:37):
everything count as for your artistic integrity, as they say,
one for you and one for them, them being the
family and the bills. But the longer you go, if
you can hang in there and then get that one
where you get actors coming to the show going, how
did you do that? That's the award. And it's because

(01:09:59):
of the writing that, whether it matters and counts as
an actor with your peers, or whether it matters and
counts with an audience that changes their lives and they go away,
change forever. I don't know. I mean, you try to
reach for that, and then there are things like Mockingbird
and the Speech and Newsroom that did that. Years later,
decades later, I think I've turned it into don't settle,

(01:10:22):
don't just repeat yourself and do something then expect people
to tell you that you're great, because you're not. If
you don't settle, and you can continue to get the material.
I don't care if it's on stage or in an
indie film or in a big movie or big TV show.
If you can get the writing and get the writers,
then you still have a chance to make this particular

(01:10:44):
project matter and this particular project count. And I've been
fortunate ever since Newsroom in particular, that bought me ten
years of good writing from good writers. The good writers
came Scott, Frank.

Speaker 8 (01:10:57):
Came, Danny and Adam, and on Aaron coming back with Mockingbird.

Speaker 2 (01:11:03):
Yeah, it still matters, and it still counts. I dread
the day when it doesn't, which is probably the day I'll.

Speaker 1 (01:11:08):
Quick it made that never come. And on the subject
of things mattering, this talk has mattered a whole lot
to me.

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
My arms are still crossed.

Speaker 1 (01:11:17):
You want to uncross them?

Speaker 2 (01:11:18):
I am. I'm comfortable now.

Speaker 1 (01:11:21):
Why don't we play one of your songs for the road? Okay, Jeff,
thank you for the time.

Speaker 2 (01:11:26):
Thank you, Sam.

Speaker 3 (01:11:32):
You stood out in the crowd. You were one other
kind life of the party. Never you took it all
in with a grain of song. He took the blame
when the wood on your phone, I swear I could
see you play this day. I close my eyes and

(01:11:55):
I can hear you see.

Speaker 2 (01:11:58):
I damned if I do. I'm damned if I don't.

Speaker 7 (01:12:03):
The hell I will, and the hell al.

Speaker 9 (01:12:07):
Sometimes I read that, sometimes I recall. Sometimes no matter
how I try, it don't matter at all.

Speaker 3 (01:12:24):
This time, all the time.

Speaker 9 (01:12:28):
Was for someone to say, is that your grandfathers?

Speaker 1 (01:13:17):
And that's our show. If you enjoyed today's episode, be
sure to leave us five stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever
you get your podcasts. I want to give a special
thanks to speak to the teams at Rogers and Cohen
and Amazon. I also want to thank Ian Chang, Kira Posey,
my father, and of course our guests today Jeff Daniels.
To find the new season of American Rust and his

(01:13:39):
upcoming Netflix series A Man in Full. We've included links
in our show notes at talkasypod dot com for more
episodes with other great actors. I'd recommend Michelle Williams, Alison Pills,
Sam Waterston, def beateel oscar Isaac, and Tom Hanks to
hear those and more. Pushkin Podcast listen on Apple, Spotify,

(01:14:00):
or wherever you like to listen. You can also follow
us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram at talk Easypod. If you
want to purchase one of our mugs they Come and Navy,
you can do so at talk easypod dot com slash shop.
Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer
is Jennick Sabravo. Today's talk was edited by C. J.

(01:14:21):
Mitchell and mixed by Andrew Vastola, who was taped at
iHeartMedia in New York City. Our music is by Dylan Peck.
Our illustrations are by christ Shadowy. Photographs today are by
Jenna Jones. Research assistants from Sharia aroon k Graphics are
by Ethan Seneca. I also want to thank our team
at Pushkin Justin Richmond, Kerry Brody, Jacob Smith, Eric Sandler,

(01:14:43):
Kira Posey, Jorn McMillan, Tara Machado, Sarah Nix, Malcolm Gladwell,
Greta Cohen, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm San Fragoso, thank you
for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here
next week with another episode. Until then, stay safe and
so on.