Speaker 1: Pushkin. I think my life would be greatly impoverished if
Speaker 1: it weren't for the wonderful time with Shakespeare from college
Speaker 1: until today, pretty close to being enough to get to
Speaker 1: perform it, to have something of the sensation of what
Speaker 1: it's like to be able to see into the world
Speaker 1: the way Hamlet does. It's a beneficial feedback loop into
Speaker 1: your whole nature. His way of understanding the world, built
Speaker 1: into the language opposition. All of these things held in
Speaker 1: wonderful narrative. They have no bottom. That was Sam Waterston.
Speaker 1: I'm San Fracoso and this is Talk Easy. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Hey everyone, I'm Samford Girl. So this is
Speaker 1: Talk Easy. Today on the show is Sam Waterston, and
Speaker 1: this is an episode I've been wanting to do for
Speaker 1: a long time now. He's an actor. I think you
Speaker 1: probably know that he's been doing it for over fifty years.
Speaker 1: And because of that fact, I'm not going to do
Speaker 1: a formal introduction. Instead, I'd like to point out why
Speaker 1: this episode is especially unusual and unique to this show.
Speaker 1: For one, fifteen minutes before the podcast, I got a
Speaker 1: call from Katherine Waterston, who is Sam's daughter. Keep in
Speaker 1: mind that right before I do these I'm frantic, I
Speaker 1: have to go to the bathroom. I'm anxious. I don't
Speaker 1: know what the hell I'm talking about or asking. And
Speaker 1: she calls, and she did not know we were going
Speaker 1: to do this. I told her at the last minute.
Speaker 1: And the first thing she says is, well, have you
Speaker 1: done your research? Which is a great thing to hear
Speaker 1: right before you do a podcast for an hour. That
Speaker 1: was unusual, And in that conversation, Katherine gave me good
Speaker 1: pointers and things to talk about that I would have
Speaker 1: not had if not for her. So, first off, we've
Speaker 1: been doing this show for four years and we've never
Speaker 1: had someone's daughter call in to give assistance. But I'm
Speaker 1: very thankful that she called. The second thing is that
Speaker 1: when Sam arrives, he arrives with his wife of forty
Speaker 1: four years. That is definitely a first on this show.
Speaker 1: We've never had a partner come in and sit in
Speaker 1: the control room. It was a real Waterston family affair,
Speaker 1: is what I'm trying to say. And the last thing
Speaker 1: is that you may have noticed that Sam Waterston comes
Speaker 1: from a generation of actors that are often very reluctant
Speaker 1: to give interviews. I don't know what it is I
Speaker 1: have some idea, but I don't exactly know. But for Sam,
Speaker 1: this is a highly unusual setting. He has not sat
Speaker 1: for a long form interview of any kind except for
Speaker 1: perhaps a couple of occasions in his life with Charlie Rose.
Speaker 1: But aside from that, he hasn't exactly felt comfortable sharing
Speaker 1: and airing his thoughts publicly. But he happens to be
Speaker 1: at a new place in his life where the kind
Speaker 1: of dialogue we try to have on this show each
Speaker 1: week is something he was open to. So this was
Speaker 1: truly a special episode for so many reasons, as you're
Speaker 1: about to hear. And I have to say, without hyperbole
Speaker 1: that taping this podcast was truly an honor of a lifetime.
Speaker 1: And I feel in this moment distinctly blessed to be
Speaker 1: doing this show for you wherever you are listening. Boy,
Speaker 1: I love doing this and I love sitting with Sam,
Speaker 1: So I have a feeling you may feel the same
Speaker 1: after this episode. Without further ado, here is the one
Speaker 1: and only Sam Waterston. Sam Waterston, Yes, how are we doing?
Speaker 1: I'm fine? How are you so? About twenty minutes before
Speaker 1: this podcast, your daughter calls me kind of frantically and
Speaker 1: she says, oh, my god, you're gonna do this with
Speaker 1: my dad. Here are some things I think you should
Speaker 1: talk about. Al really, we'll save those for later. She
Speaker 1: did mention, and it's maybe the place to start that
Speaker 1: you are in a moment of perhaps more self reflection
Speaker 1: than usual. Maybe that's just the nature of getting older.
Speaker 1: Does that seem accurate? Yeah, I think it is. The
Speaker 1: way I would describe it. I guess is that I've
Speaker 1: been entertaining an awful lot of questions for an awful
Speaker 1: long time, and now it feels like if I'm ever
Speaker 1: going to get down to cases, i'd better do it soon.
Speaker 1: I was talking to Martin Sheen about this, and I
Speaker 1: said that I've always wanted to figure out everything and
Speaker 1: understand everything, and now it feels like I'm running out
Speaker 1: of time, so I better get on the job. Well,
Speaker 1: there are a bunch of things we can try to
Speaker 1: find the answer too. Oh good, you can help me.
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to help you, please. I also
Speaker 1: hope you can help me. I don't know. Let's start
Speaker 1: with this on the nature of reflecting on the past.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty nine, your mother is performing in a play.
Speaker 1: I believe it's Anthony and Cleopatra, she's pregnant with you.
Speaker 1: She would later go on to say that this is
Speaker 1: one of the reasons you decided to become an actor.
Speaker 1: She also painted the sets for that right, and the
Speaker 1: set to her picasso Esque, and we still have these
Speaker 1: two twenty foot by four or five foot wide figures
Speaker 1: that she painted for that show. What do you make
Speaker 1: of the sort of genetic nature of that question? Could
Speaker 1: it possibly be passed on? It feels like we're making
Speaker 1: things up? But it's okay. I mean, they're perfectly good
Speaker 1: things to make up. That's always sounds like shed made
Speaker 1: that up too, And the way I experienced it with
Speaker 1: her when she was alive was friendly, complimentary, loving. So
Speaker 1: it's a nice story. I I like it. Story Narrative
Speaker 1: is an unrecognized fundamental appetite. I think we can't do without.
Speaker 1: So if there's not some fact based story to tell,
Speaker 1: then we make one up. But even fact based stories
Speaker 1: are embroidered into a narrative so that the facts make
Speaker 1: a kind of sense. At six, your father cast you
Speaker 1: in a play. He did you describe that time as
Speaker 1: a joyous time because it meant that you could stay
Speaker 1: up with him late, Yeah, and have undivided attention, which
Speaker 1: is what every child in a crowded family wants. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what are the memories that come into your head? The
Speaker 1: real part, the nugget that I remember is sitting in
Speaker 1: that dark theater next to my father while the play
Speaker 1: that he was directing was in the bright lights up
Speaker 1: at the end of the room. And that's what I remember.
Speaker 1: How did your parents describe you as a child as
Speaker 1: you grew up. I think I was disobedient. I think
Speaker 1: I was. This is not things that they accused me of.
Speaker 1: But I was the third child. I got away with
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that my older siblings didn't, and
Speaker 1: I like that a lot. I still to this day
Speaker 1: on a terrible shirker of dishwashing. But they used to
Speaker 1: have charts and stuff in my family for whose turn
Speaker 1: it was every week? And I somehow I would be
Speaker 1: absent on their key day. And it just happened to this.
Speaker 1: I don't know, ill, we really don't know where he went,
Speaker 1: but he had he had a meeting. I think it
Speaker 1: was the teenage meeting. It seems like a very structured,
Speaker 1: put together home. Not at all, not at all. No,
Speaker 1: that was about the only piece of real serious organization
Speaker 1: we had. My father was an academic, a really cultured
Speaker 1: and brilliant guy, and multi lingual, and my mother was
Speaker 1: a painter and you know, profoundly eccentric. So now that
Speaker 1: there was a precious little there was some order. My
Speaker 1: father was English, he had some of the habits of
Speaker 1: he brought from England to America, of being together. Would
Speaker 1: you describe yourself that way? I don't know how interesting
Speaker 1: it is, Oh, I would describe myself. I'm curious to
Speaker 1: know how other people perceived me. But curious, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess I really want them to like me, or
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be in this business. But how would I
Speaker 1: describe myself? See, that's a big question a seeker. I
Speaker 1: guess we'll find the answer at the end of this. Okay, good,
Speaker 1: because I think so what did your parents say about
Speaker 1: you in high school? Thinking about wanting to act or
Speaker 1: wanting to make something? They were both really tempted by
Speaker 1: the life of being artists, and they almost did it.
Speaker 1: My father was a very elegant writer and wanted to
Speaker 1: make writing his life, and my mother was a very
Speaker 1: gifted painter, and a lot of her friends made a
Speaker 1: life around their artistic pursuit. But the way my parents
Speaker 1: tell it is that they went upstate to would Stock,
Speaker 1: for mont not Woodstock, New York, but there was an
Speaker 1: artist community there and they were absolutely shocked and appalled
Speaker 1: at all the little progeny of artists running around unsupervised.
Speaker 1: And they decided that they wanted family, and they wanted
Speaker 1: to do it right and not with their left hand
Speaker 1: like it seemed all these people in this community were
Speaker 1: doing so, so they they decided not to Did that
Speaker 1: story ever deter you in the beginning from venturing into
Speaker 1: this field, I think I think it was more like
Speaker 1: it was the path not taken. So they were kind
Speaker 1: of curious what it would be like if you actually
Speaker 1: did it right, so before you do it. In September
Speaker 1: of nineteen fifty seven, you were attending Groton, a Massachusetts
Speaker 1: prep school. At the time President Eisenhower dispatch federal troops
Speaker 1: to enforce the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: In your class there was a student named Tom from
Speaker 1: North Carolina. Do you remember this person? You said that
Speaker 1: he favored equal rights and integration, but if those soldiers
Speaker 1: had entered his town, he would have risen in protest,
Speaker 1: walked me through what it was like to be a
Speaker 1: active high school seventeen year old person in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: seven as the country was going through these pretty massive
Speaker 1: systemic changes. Well, first, I should say that that's what
Speaker 1: I remember Tom saying, But that's not what Tom remembers.
Speaker 1: I've told this story before, and I guess he heard it.
Speaker 1: He objected. Until I was out of college, until I
Speaker 1: was in New York, I didn't have any feelings about
Speaker 1: race really except for what we read in the newspapers,
Speaker 1: and so that conversation rose out of what we read
Speaker 1: in the newspapers. As far as interaction with African Americans
Speaker 1: or people of different skin color or even from a
Speaker 1: different background, it was really very limited. I lad what
Speaker 1: you might call a sheltered life, but that wasn't its
Speaker 1: only characteristic. It was it was an enormous respectful learning.
Speaker 1: There were in the abstract principles of inclusion and open
Speaker 1: mindedness and tolerance and all of that stuff were very
Speaker 1: much in the forefront of how I was brought up
Speaker 1: and taught to think. But that was really the first
Speaker 1: time that the wider world intruded about race in my life.
Speaker 1: And my father was one of these people who led
Speaker 1: a quiet and reserved life, and he, like me, saw
Speaker 1: the many I mean I got it from him, I think,
Speaker 1: looking at all the many sides of a question, and
Speaker 1: always walking around the statue, not settling on one point
Speaker 1: of view. But in big moments, he didn't have any
Speaker 1: trouble at all rising to the occasion. And sometimes he's
Speaker 1: told this against himself. It was wrong, but he acted.
Speaker 1: So when World War two came, he was still a
Speaker 1: British subject. He didn't have to go to the war,
Speaker 1: and he volunteered because he he heard the call. And
Speaker 1: when the freedom writers were writing in their buses in
Speaker 1: the South, and the New York Times was printing articles
Speaker 1: about Martin Luther King's association with communists and stuff, he
Speaker 1: went down there and wrote on a bus. So Broughton
Speaker 1: was a boarding school. One of my classmates was the
Speaker 1: first African American who had been admitted to school, and
Speaker 1: it caused a gigantic uproar. Some people were very upset,
Speaker 1: and another classmate of mine, his father, wrote a letter
Speaker 1: to Time magazine which was published. So this is how
Speaker 1: I gradually came to understand that there were these gigantic
Speaker 1: injustices going on in the world. But it wasn't really
Speaker 1: until I was out of college that I began living
Speaker 1: in an integrated society. Before we move on into what
Speaker 1: happens in your career, I think it's important to understand,
Speaker 1: for people who don't know you, including me, what kind
Speaker 1: of conversations did you have with your parents about the
Speaker 1: kind of person you ought to be in the world.
Speaker 1: Both my wife and I have lived operating under the
Speaker 1: assumption that to be a good parent, the only thing
Speaker 1: you can do is try to become as decent a
Speaker 1: person as you possibly can, and then let your children
Speaker 1: see it, and then they will take from that whatever
Speaker 1: is useful to them. But then I realized that you
Speaker 1: know Kate, and she would also be saying and you
Speaker 1: also talked a blue streak about what you thought we
Speaker 1: ought to do. So I think we as a family
Speaker 1: talked freely. I think the part of society that we
Speaker 1: all occupied wasn't necessarily you know, laying it all on
Speaker 1: the table and talking about everything and getting everything out
Speaker 1: there and sorting it for the out and digging into
Speaker 1: the hidden things and what did you really mean? And
Speaker 1: all that stuff that was not at all the world
Speaker 1: that we grew up and my mother grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: and Boston was a very buttoned up society against which
Speaker 1: she and her wonderful aunt Caroline Atkinson, who was also
Speaker 1: a painter, rebelled in their prospective generations, but not by
Speaker 1: burning their bros or anything, but just by not living
Speaker 1: that way. So I think we spoke freely, but we
Speaker 1: didn't talk about everything, and we didn't air everything. Did
Speaker 1: you feel like you could talk freely? When you leave home,
Speaker 1: you go to university at Yale, you seem to find
Speaker 1: your footing or calling if it's meant to be a
Speaker 1: calling and waiting for Godot. Yeah, you're on stage and
Speaker 1: there is this moment you've described that I'm going to
Speaker 1: just let you describe because I'll just watch it. It
Speaker 1: was so cool. I was playing Lucky and waiting for Yodoho.
Speaker 1: The director was summoned put from me, but really very
Speaker 1: largely all his own made a map for the Lucky speech,
Speaker 1: which is a very long monologue. You know it will
Speaker 1: I can't perform it for you, but no, I can
Speaker 1: do the first sentence. Probably you're welcome to Given the
Speaker 1: existence as uttered fourth in the public works of Puncher
Speaker 1: and Watman of a personal God and qua qua qua
Speaker 1: Quaw with white Beard qua Quake Wah outside died beyond extension,
Speaker 1: who from the heights of Divine Ampa Divine Aphasil loves
Speaker 1: this dearly for reasons unknown, but time will tell. And
Speaker 1: it goes on like that. I could, I couldn't fact
Speaker 1: check you. I think that was close. It sounds pretty
Speaker 1: good to me. So it was split into two halves,
Speaker 1: and the idea was that for the first half half,
Speaker 1: Lucky who is presented in the play and who has
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of education and airy edition and is
Speaker 1: now Patso's slave, and Patso every once in a while
Speaker 1: orders him to, you know, make a show of his
Speaker 1: airy edition. So Lucky starts the speech with an enormous
Speaker 1: amount of confidence that it's going to turn into a
Speaker 1: sentence and makes some sense. And then, according to the
Speaker 1: way it was laid out, about halfway through, he loses
Speaker 1: that confidence and it becomes a kind of race to
Speaker 1: try to at least make a sentence, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of panic and horror that it's not working out. So
Speaker 1: we did this. We only did about five performance. As
Speaker 1: the first performance, the Yale Daily News, which is the
Speaker 1: newspaper of the University came and Sow wrote reviews saying
Speaker 1: that I was too smart for the part. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what that meant, because you weren't smart enough to
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Yeah, I guess not. Yeah, probably anyway,
Speaker 1: I couldn't. I couldn't fathom it. He just sent me
Speaker 1: right up for it. And so every performance thereafter I
Speaker 1: was coming up to the speech and wondering what the
Speaker 1: heck it could be that was making me the actor
Speaker 1: smarter than the character I was playing, And I couldn't
Speaker 1: figure I couldn't figure out. On the last night, I
Speaker 1: was coming up to and I'm Lucky's on stage carrying
Speaker 1: bags around, doing what he's told to do for quite
Speaker 1: a long time. So there's a long long time to
Speaker 1: think this over. And I did a lot of thinking.
Speaker 1: And then just before Patso says speak Pig, the thought
Speaker 1: went through my head, I'm never going to figure this out,
Speaker 1: and I'm never going to get to do this again,
Speaker 1: and if I don't get it tonight, that's it. He said,
Speaker 1: speak Pigan. I thought, I'm never going to get to
Speaker 1: speak again. And it informed the speech and the audience
Speaker 1: thought the first half was hilarious, and then I paused
Speaker 1: for breath, and they burst into applause. I inhaled, they
Speaker 1: shut up as one person, and then I went into
Speaker 1: this panic thing and you could have heard a pin drop.
Speaker 1: And then he took my hat off or whatever it
Speaker 1: was that made me shut up, and I fell to
Speaker 1: the ground, and there was another long pause, and the
Speaker 1: crowd went wild, and I thought, I want to do this.
Speaker 1: It's such a wonderful thing. And it every once in
Speaker 1: a while it happens where you and the audience are
Speaker 1: of one mind. That's a really great feeling. Did you
Speaker 1: know at the time that it was a special moment. Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's so much now a part of my myth,
Speaker 1: my narrative that yeah, I can't really say, but I
Speaker 1: do know that it that it hit me hard enough
Speaker 1: that I thought, I I thought to get away from
Speaker 1: this if I could, Because even in school there were
Speaker 1: teachers who saw that I was attracted to acting and
Speaker 1: warned me against the the Babylonian sin pot that right,
Speaker 1: the show business wasn't and also it's tremendous uncertainty. It
Speaker 1: was your parents going to Woodstock, Yeah, And so I
Speaker 1: went to France with the idea that I would I
Speaker 1: took my junior abroad, and I went difference with the
Speaker 1: idea that I would never act again, or at least
Speaker 1: I would take a year off, and it lasted a
Speaker 1: few weeks. You know, maybe the better question is not
Speaker 1: about whether you knew it was a special moment, but rather,
Speaker 1: are you someone who's capable of recognizing a good thing
Speaker 1: when it's a good thing. Are you grateful moment to
Speaker 1: moment for the things that happened to you that have
Speaker 1: happened to you? Yes, I think so insufficiently grateful? Surely?
Speaker 1: Why insufficient because I was going to get really corny,
Speaker 1: but I mean, life is an extraordinary gift, blessing, and
Speaker 1: I feel like my life has been just a cornucopia
Speaker 1: of good fortune and blessings and the whole thing. There's
Speaker 1: a series of years, from an outside perspective, worth things
Speaker 1: in your career start to happen. Nineteen seventy two through
Speaker 1: about nineteen seventy four seemed to me to be the
Speaker 1: kind of years if you were to ever write a memoir,
Speaker 1: that you would dedicate many chapters too. For a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of reasons. In seventy two, you're playing Benedict in
Speaker 1: the New York Shakespeare Festival's production of Much Ado About Nothing.
Speaker 1: Shortly thereafter, Kathy Hepburn watches this performance, and you have
Speaker 1: a blind date with the woman who like, oh, I
Speaker 1: thought you were to leave at the most important thing. No, no,
Speaker 1: I just I don't bury the lead. I save it
Speaker 1: for the end when it matters. I believe it's the
Speaker 1: woman who's sitting in the control room. Yes, over there.
Speaker 1: I like the smile on your face. It makes me happy.
Speaker 1: Let me too. It's a reflection of how happy it
Speaker 1: makes me. So we'll break this up in two parts. Okay,
Speaker 1: walk me through the Katherine Hepburn asking you to talk
Speaker 1: about the Glass Menagerie with her after seeing your performance
Speaker 1: in this production. So she summoned me to her house
Speaker 1: in Turtle Bay in New York to meet her. Summoned
Speaker 1: is a good word. Yeah, she seems like that's what
Speaker 1: she does. She doesn't have friends, She summons her friends over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's from the outsider's point of view. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm sure she just thought, let's have some friends over.
Speaker 1: But but you know, there's a kind of commanding presence there.
Speaker 1: So I felt summoned, and I went and her assistant
Speaker 1: and guardian and protector and loyal friend answered the door
Speaker 1: and ushered me into the living room, which was a
Speaker 1: very tall ceiling living room with big French windows looking
Speaker 1: out on the garden, which was a shared garden amongst
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of brownstone, similar brownstone. You remember the house.
Speaker 1: I remember the front door being very unprepossessing and small,
Speaker 1: and then this terrific living room, and I remember the
Speaker 1: windows and what was out there. And I was asked
Speaker 1: to be seated and to wait, and then there was
Speaker 1: a pause, you know where you could have heard clock sticking,
Speaker 1: but I don't remember if there were. Are you anxious?
Speaker 1: Are you nervous here? Of course? Yes? And then I
Speaker 1: heard is he there yet? And she was coming downstairs?
Speaker 1: And then you know, the rest is a blank. Actually
Speaker 1: I don't remember what happened after that, but it must
Speaker 1: have been okay because she said it was all right
Speaker 1: for me to do the part. Did it make sense
Speaker 1: to you that this was happening to you? There are
Speaker 1: innumerable actors trying to perform, to make a living out
Speaker 1: of this craft. Did it makes sense that Katherine Appern said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I think he is interesting? He is
Speaker 1: actually who should be doing this with. That's a really
Speaker 1: good question. And I and I wonder now, looking back,
Speaker 1: where I got the gaul or the arrogance or whatever
Speaker 1: it was to think I deserved absolutely all the best
Speaker 1: parts in all the best plays all the time, I
Speaker 1: thought something must have gone terribly wrong when I didn't
Speaker 1: get the parts there I wanted. I mean, anybody who's
Speaker 1: any ever been anywhere near show business knows that you
Speaker 1: get an advanced degree in rejection. It just comes with it.
Speaker 1: But I always thought, I don't know where, I don't
Speaker 1: know why. What was I Who was I to feel
Speaker 1: like there was some kind of injustice going on when
Speaker 1: I didn't get the parts that I want? But you
Speaker 1: don't strike me as someone who's arrogant. You use the
Speaker 1: term I wouldn't have thought that of myself either, But
Speaker 1: looking back, I do remember clearly the feeling of something
Speaker 1: terribly wrong, but when it was really just the standard
Speaker 1: thing that happens to all of us. I don't know why.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's the third child thing. This is you know
Speaker 1: that if you complain enough about the injustice, things will
Speaker 1: be righted someway, you'll get your way. Yeah, how do
Speaker 1: you too describe that first date. Lynn was a model
Speaker 1: at the time, a friend of hers how to dinner party,
Speaker 1: who I knew already because we were in a movie together.
Speaker 1: And she had pretty much been telling both of us
Speaker 1: that we needed to meet each other and that the
Speaker 1: ground had been laid. And then she invited us to
Speaker 1: dinner and we didn't talk much. Those are awkward situations. Well,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of other people at the dinner party,
Speaker 1: but I registered her immediately and I think, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is my memories that we had our backs to
Speaker 1: each other, but we were pretty close together, maybe on
Speaker 1: the floor or one of us on a sofa, on
Speaker 1: one of us on the floor near the fireplace. And
Speaker 1: then then we walked for a long time after we
Speaker 1: left the dinner party. And then after we'd walked a
Speaker 1: very long way, we got in a cab and I
Speaker 1: rolled down the window and I shouted, thank you God.
Speaker 1: And Lynde didn't think, who is incredible, weird, strange person?
Speaker 1: Let me out of here. It's a bold move. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I like to say that I knew she was crazy
Speaker 1: about me from the first minute that she saw me,
Speaker 1: and she likes to laugh at me about that. But
Speaker 1: I think we both recognized that we've found our meat,
Speaker 1: and we just started having a really good time from
Speaker 1: the beginning. This is essential. I've been told, I've heard, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you want to have a good time. Yeah, you want
Speaker 1: to be having a good time. It's not always easy
Speaker 1: to have a good time. No, I guess that's why
Speaker 1: it's so helpful to be powerfully attracted to one another
Speaker 1: and to be having a good time. Were you someone
Speaker 1: who believed that you could be with someone to the
Speaker 1: end of this whole ride? I had no idea, And
Speaker 1: I think you know that was another thing that kind
Speaker 1: of helped us both. We'd both come out of really
Speaker 1: disappointing and wounding relationships, and we didn't want to get
Speaker 1: serious about it anything. We were both relationship shy, and
Speaker 1: I don't think that's a bad way to start at all. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're together, we seem to really like each other. This
Speaker 1: is all fine, but let's not make any long term plans.
Speaker 1: Let's not you know, it turns out that that can
Speaker 1: last a long time. Well, while you guys were just
Speaker 1: having fun, you're in a film called The Great Gatsby.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember this, but I remember
Speaker 1: it vaguely. Kind of a big deal. I want to
Speaker 1: watch something together if you don't mind on what it's
Speaker 1: right behind you? Nick? Is it really you? It is? Oh,
Speaker 1: my dear last love. I'm paralyzed with happiness. Hey, Jordan,
Speaker 1: this is my second cousin, once removed. Nick Carraways, does
Speaker 1: that mean we kiss when we greet? Or no? I
Speaker 1: hope it means we do. M Tom says, you've just
Speaker 1: come from Chicago. Tell me everything? Do they miss me?
Speaker 1: The whole town is desolate. Oh gorgeous. All the cars
Speaker 1: have their left rear wheel painted black as a morning beast,
Speaker 1: and there's a persistent whale all night. Let's go back tomorrow, Tom,
Speaker 1: I love a persistent whale. Well, I love a drink.
Speaker 1: Come on, let's all have a drink. I've been lying
Speaker 1: on that sofa for as long as I can remember.
Speaker 1: You live across the sound in West d I know
Speaker 1: somebody there. I don't know a single person. You mus
Speaker 1: know Gatsby? Oh he's my neighbor. Gatsby? What Gatsby? How
Speaker 1: do you like that? How did you like that? Well?
Speaker 1: I don't think i've seen that, and I don't know
Speaker 1: how old is that movie? Nineteen seventy four Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a long time ago. What happens when you watch that,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I was curious and it was a pleasure.
Speaker 1: We were all a lot younger, I remember, you know,
Speaker 1: the stakes were very, very high. I remember my friend
Speaker 1: Scott Wilson, who I became friends with on that film,
Speaker 1: and we were friends all our lives from that movie
Speaker 1: until he passed away last year. So I remember that.
Speaker 1: Is it strange watching all of you in that setting,
Speaker 1: remembering what you were like in your thirties trying to
Speaker 1: make it work? Well, it didn't strike me as immediately strange,
Speaker 1: but I suppose if I were to sit on that
Speaker 1: memory for a while, stuff would come along. But more
Speaker 1: than just about that scene, it would be about the
Speaker 1: whole experience. My mother was an extra on that, As
Speaker 1: I told you, she was a painter. She said that
Speaker 1: the director was the first man that she had ever
Speaker 1: met who had like coming out of his eyes. The
Speaker 1: way that film looks seems like there's light coming out
Speaker 1: of everyone's eyes. I think that was very much part
Speaker 1: of the idea. Yeah, the rich are not like the
Speaker 1: rest of us is a line from a book, and
Speaker 1: I think you were supposed to see that and think
Speaker 1: that all that glitters is not gold. But yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a great experience, a wonderful experience for me. The
Speaker 1: character Nick Carraway is very much an observer of the story.
Speaker 1: In some ways, he is the surrogate member of the
Speaker 1: audience in the film. Does that seem like the kind
Speaker 1: of person that you may be in alignment with in
Speaker 1: an off screen Well, I think it's something that I
Speaker 1: might have accused myself of until recently. But how do
Speaker 1: you mean, Well, before I came to talk to you, Okay,
Speaker 1: I was at a fire Drill Friday demonstration, one of
Speaker 1: these fire drill Fridays that Jane Fonda has organized starting
Speaker 1: in DC during the last hiatus with Grace and Frankie,
Speaker 1: and I went there to participate in them. And I
Speaker 1: really I'm forever grateful to Jane for making me ask
Speaker 1: myself the question if if I really thought the things
Speaker 1: that I thought, I wasn't I saying them? And why
Speaker 1: I wasn't I saying them as loudly as I could
Speaker 1: think of to say them? And why was I saying
Speaker 1: them from the comfort basically of my own home, you know,
Speaker 1: saying this is wrong and that shouldn't be and all
Speaker 1: that stuff, but not really leaving the comfort of my
Speaker 1: own private orbit. And so I went to a couple
Speaker 1: in DC, and I got myself arrested for the first
Speaker 1: time for any kind of political protest, for the first
Speaker 1: time in my whole life. I mean, it's part of
Speaker 1: the reason I'm here talking to you is because this
Speaker 1: is not what I think I would have normally done
Speaker 1: before this year, Because it's a real question. What is
Speaker 1: there of interest that I might be able to say
Speaker 1: that other people might want to listen to. Is that's
Speaker 1: a real question. There's plenty of things. Well, I'm glad
Speaker 1: to hear you say it. This is something actually Catherine mentioned,
Speaker 1: which is that you are at this place in your
Speaker 1: life right now, at the tender age of seventy nine,
Speaker 1: where you are more vocal about the things you believe in,
Speaker 1: about the things you want to see in the world.
Speaker 1: Before you arrived at this place, do you think you
Speaker 1: were quiet or reluctant to speak publicly out of shyness
Speaker 1: or out of fear. Well, no, not out of fear,
Speaker 1: I don't think, but being dubious that I had anything,
Speaker 1: and being critical of a lot of people shooting their
Speaker 1: mouths off, and being critical of the whole world of
Speaker 1: blah blah blah is my opinion, talking heads and all
Speaker 1: the whole society that we live in and thinking that
Speaker 1: keeping your peace might be a really good thing. And
Speaker 1: I still, I still do appreciate people that don't blab
Speaker 1: away like I am now. So I guess for the
Speaker 1: sake of the world is what I thought there would
Speaker 1: be a good idea to shut up. But now I
Speaker 1: just want to know what I think, and I don't
Speaker 1: know how much more time there is to find that out,
Speaker 1: and I don't And what this whole fired real Friday's
Speaker 1: thing made vivid was that you can't really know what
Speaker 1: you think unless you say it, because otherwise it just
Speaker 1: rattles around in your head and it changes the way
Speaker 1: we were talking earlier about memories changing. It just meanders around.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have a structure. It's fascinating to me that
Speaker 1: you've arrived at this idea or this question of what
Speaker 1: the hell do I think? At seventy nine. I was
Speaker 1: having little epiphanies before that. But this is different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what feels different about it? Well, I'm talking to you,
Speaker 1: for example, Are you more comfortable? Yes? Because I don't
Speaker 1: think and this is funny, but I don't really mind
Speaker 1: if it turns out that I'm talking like an idiot.
Speaker 1: If that's the case, I'd rather know it. I haven't
Speaker 1: found you to be an idiot. Well it's nice. There's
Speaker 1: still time. Yeah. And also when you listen to the
Speaker 1: tape stuff that could come to a different conclusion. There
Speaker 1: is something topical that I'm reluct to talk about, but
Speaker 1: I feel I must because I, like many people, was
Speaker 1: first introduced to your work by way of Woody Allen
Speaker 1: and Interiors Hana and her sisters, especially crimes and misdemeanors.
Speaker 1: We had Alison Pillon last week and she was wonderful
Speaker 1: at midnight in Paris, and it's something we talked about
Speaker 1: and I want to ask you about it because you've
Speaker 1: seen the cycles of behavior in this strange town. My
Speaker 1: question is, how do you think we can talk about
Speaker 1: the work when the work is tethered to a tarnished legacy. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I think that's a terribly important question
Speaker 1: to answer her in any immediate way, because if if
Speaker 1: the work is good, it will History tells us that
Speaker 1: it will probably survive whatever scandal is attached to the
Speaker 1: creator's name. People will say, well, well, they'll say whatever
Speaker 1: they say, but they'll say that's a great movie. The
Speaker 1: thing that's challenging for people who want to make stuff
Speaker 1: like myself, or people who love film, plays, television, any
Speaker 1: kind of art, is that they believe, in the current
Speaker 1: climate where we're at, that they have to do some
Speaker 1: kind of erasure and zige their heads, that they have
Speaker 1: to get rid of all these things because one person
Speaker 1: involved or the creator of this one thing did something bad.
Speaker 1: That's a different, a really much harder question, I think,
Speaker 1: which is what do we do now right about now?
Speaker 1: This might be dodging the question, but I think you know,
Speaker 1: you want to be a little careful about what you
Speaker 1: really know? What do you really know? Or what do
Speaker 1: you really know? Maybe the emphasis should be on that.
Speaker 1: At the same time, that question has given such a
Speaker 1: past to so many powerful, mostly men, that it's not
Speaker 1: an adequate answer. It's alive quandary. We're going through just
Speaker 1: an enormous transition. It seems like it's daily life, but
Speaker 1: it's really huge and in the long run, and maybe
Speaker 1: even in the very short run, one of the great things,
Speaker 1: apart from hope about the future, is surprise. This could
Speaker 1: all crystallize in some new way that we haven't imagined
Speaker 1: tomorrow or even this afternoon, or you know, we don't
Speaker 1: know what's coming. And these are all things that need
Speaker 1: to be addressed and dealt with at the people, the
Speaker 1: classes of people that have been taking it on the
Speaker 1: chinne all these years. Rise Up is a really good
Speaker 1: name from the movement. It's astonishing there hasn't been a
Speaker 1: revolt before this. It's in dialogue with what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: But your father said that success is like smoking. Did
Speaker 1: you laugh when he said that? He wrote it? It
Speaker 1: was in a letter? When did you write it? When
Speaker 1: I was doing the Great Guessbie. We were in England
Speaker 1: and he wrote me this letter saying that he was
Speaker 1: delighted with the success that I seemed to be having.
Speaker 1: And then he said, I've always thought that the success
Speaker 1: was a bit like smoking. Probably wouldn't do any harm,
Speaker 1: or much harm, as long as you didn't inhale. Its
Speaker 1: just words to live by. Did you believe him? I
Speaker 1: think I laughed first. I think that's was my first reaction,
Speaker 1: but laugh like, oh that's right on the money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe him. I believed him then, and I believe him,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's part of the reason for not
Speaker 1: doing interviews like this and things like that. It's very
Speaker 1: easy to think, well, I must mean something about what
Speaker 1: it seems you have a real good handle on how
Speaker 1: to not let ego infect you. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: possible to have a really good handle on not having
Speaker 1: your ego infect you. I think I love when I
Speaker 1: say things and then you're like, absolutely not. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: But I think John Houston said that about sex. You
Speaker 1: know that it's when you're younger. It's it's like riding
Speaker 1: trying to ride a wild horse, and it pretty much
Speaker 1: does what it wants and it never really goes away.
Speaker 1: But it's easier as you go older. You write it
Speaker 1: and it doesn't write you. And you would hope that
Speaker 1: that would be true of these other things like ego
Speaker 1: that sees you. But I'm not at all confident. There
Speaker 1: is a question Catherine had I'm going to ask for
Speaker 1: her since she's far away. She said, what has a
Speaker 1: lifelong relationship with Shakespeare taught you about acting and about yourself?
Speaker 1: It's a great question. I think my life would be
Speaker 1: greatly impoverished if it weren't for the wonderful opportunity to
Speaker 1: spend time with Shakespeare throughout my career, from when I
Speaker 1: was in college until today. You know, people used to
Speaker 1: go around with the Bible and Shakespeare. Pioneers went out
Speaker 1: west with just those two books. I think they're pretty
Speaker 1: close to being enough. Shakespeare is just so enormously rich,
Speaker 1: and then to get to perform it, to have something
Speaker 1: of the sensation of what it's like to be able
Speaker 1: to see into the world the way Hamlet does, because
Speaker 1: after all, your mouth is moving and it's saying these words.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's a beneficial feedlap back loop into
Speaker 1: your whole nature, into your brain, into your body. I
Speaker 1: think it gets into your body and it's it does
Speaker 1: you a world of good. This is his way of
Speaker 1: understanding the world, which is in the language, built into
Speaker 1: the language, opposition and contradiction and metaphor association and all
Speaker 1: of these things in the held in wonderful narrative and bottomless.
Speaker 1: My son James came back from doing The Mid Summer
Speaker 1: Night's Dream one year and said that his favorite line
Speaker 1: in Shakespeare were bottoms, lines that ended in him saying,
Speaker 1: for it hath no bottom. And I think that's true.
Speaker 1: Of Shakespeare's characters, they have no bottom. And here's the
Speaker 1: really curious thing. It turns out that in the history
Speaker 1: of his writing, as people have looked into it, that
Speaker 1: are an awful lot of the plays that we attributed
Speaker 1: attribute to him. And I'm not going to be able
Speaker 1: to give you the list of which ones, but many
Speaker 1: of them were done in collaboration, almost like writing for
Speaker 1: the writer's room of a sitcom. You write this scene,
Speaker 1: all write that scene, you do the other one. This
Speaker 1: is basically the narrative. And so these characters have contradictions
Speaker 1: in them because of who wrote the scenes that make
Speaker 1: them deeper than the kind of tidy characters that come
Speaker 1: out when it's all from one man's pen. Isn't that
Speaker 1: just glorious? It is? I had heard that, But I
Speaker 1: love you saying that because so much of your life
Speaker 1: kind of begins and ends with Shakespeare, and in your
Speaker 1: performance in New York and your ongoing pursuit of trying
Speaker 1: to get to the bottom of it. We have to
Speaker 1: go soon, so we have to answer some big questions,
Speaker 1: or at least we have to ask them. Go ahead,
Speaker 1: what does your faith mean to you? Right now? At
Speaker 1: seventy nine? It means a lot to me. It's one
Speaker 1: of the one of the questions that has been in
Speaker 1: the air for me for a long time. And I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say that it was entirely not in the air now,
Speaker 1: but I feel sure that God is and that christis
Speaker 1: his son, and then I don't know anything else, not anything.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that I think is a
Speaker 1: trap for a religion is that there are so many
Speaker 1: questions in the world, so many unanswerable and unknowable things,
Speaker 1: and we are all so fragile and vulnerable that one
Speaker 1: of the attractions of religion is the promise of making
Speaker 1: you feel okay in that circumstance. And what I think
Speaker 1: it does often is it slides over into saying, no,
Speaker 1: you're not in an uncertain world. You know positively what's
Speaker 1: going to happen. Everything is settled. Just do the things
Speaker 1: in this list and you're done. And instead, I think
Speaker 1: what religion has in it and can give you is
Speaker 1: feeling comfortable in your nearly perfect ignorance. Are you comfortable? Yes?
Speaker 1: And I think I am a little more comfortable for
Speaker 1: having said it out allowed to you, So I think
Speaker 1: this is doing me good. What are the new questions
Speaker 1: you've been batting around. I think the most obvious one
Speaker 1: is climate and the climate emergency, which you and I
Speaker 1: have both been reading about it. It's been as long
Speaker 1: as you've been alive, longer than you've been alive, twice
Speaker 1: as long as you've been alive, maybe even more than that,
Speaker 1: maybe half a century. People have seen this emergency coming,
Speaker 1: warned about it, talked about it. And I've been reading
Speaker 1: all that stuff, and I've done this and that, and
Speaker 1: I've gotten gradually a little louder. It's not like I
Speaker 1: was absolutely silent until the day before yesterday. Now all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, I'm talking. But the dramatic change came
Speaker 1: with fire real Fridays and getting kicked off the field
Speaker 1: at halftime at the Harvard Dale game this past year
Speaker 1: because the students there. We're trying to get the university
Speaker 1: to divest from fossil fuel investments. This is a thing
Speaker 1: that needs to be done, that action needs to be
Speaker 1: taken on right now, immediately yesterday the day before. It's
Speaker 1: been a long standing problem and we've all worried it
Speaker 1: and watched it and all that stuff, and that won't
Speaker 1: do anymore. You're talking about future generations in many ways,
Speaker 1: and how they're going to be able to live the
Speaker 1: kind of life you led and that I hope to lead. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's certainly something I'm thinking about. In terms of whether
Speaker 1: to have children. Well, I go back to the things
Speaker 1: I said before. There's a hope. If having children represents
Speaker 1: hope to you, then willy nilly, even if you're headed
Speaker 1: for the end of the world, I think having children
Speaker 1: is a good idea because we live on hope, and
Speaker 1: there are way too many children in the world. We're
Speaker 1: eating up way too much of the Earth's resources. But
Speaker 1: maybe just one, you know, for the hope. And then
Speaker 1: the other thing is, and this backs up hope, is
Speaker 1: that you can be absolutely certain that you're going to
Speaker 1: be surprised tomorrow, next day, and by the whole outcome
Speaker 1: of this whole thing. It's not going to be the
Speaker 1: way you think it's gonna be. So, I mean, Lennon
Speaker 1: and I made children without any reason to believe that
Speaker 1: we were ever going to be able to pay for
Speaker 1: them or any of that. But they really are very
Speaker 1: powerful motivators. They'll get you out of bed every morning.
Speaker 1: I recommend them. I was wondering that you did three
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety episodes of Law and Order. I was like,
Speaker 1: that pays for a whole life, certainly, Well, I've paid
Speaker 1: for a lot of college. You know, people listening are
Speaker 1: gonna be like, now you mentioned Law and Order at
Speaker 1: the end of this goddamn thing. Where the hell was
Speaker 1: it the whole time? We have a couple more things.
Speaker 1: I actually can I ask you about this on a
Speaker 1: practical level, you have done theater, which is inherently impractical. Monetarily,
Speaker 1: there is not a lot of money. Even at the
Speaker 1: highest level. There is some, but there's no guarantee. Right
Speaker 1: film and television obviously there is more. Law and Order
Speaker 1: is basically I assume lifetime set. But you don't strike
Speaker 1: me as someone who has ever made a decision based
Speaker 1: on dollars and cents. I don't think that's entirely true.
Speaker 1: You got to make a living, right, and if you
Speaker 1: have children, they depend on you for their living for
Speaker 1: a very long time. So yes, of course you do
Speaker 1: things in order to make money. My arrogance, the thing
Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier, was to think that I
Speaker 1: should be able to be an artist, and that there
Speaker 1: would be an injustice if I wasn't able to make
Speaker 1: a living right and be an artist. I don't know
Speaker 1: whether I feel that purely now, but I think it
Speaker 1: was a very beneficial thing to think when I was
Speaker 1: starting out. I think it's a real powerful animator, and
Speaker 1: it gives you a sort of place to stand to
Speaker 1: make your case. You gotta give me this job because
Speaker 1: I'm an artist. You know. It gives you a kind
Speaker 1: of argument. I have something for us on the subject
Speaker 1: of hope. You're part of a scene that I believe
Speaker 1: to be one of the most hopeful pieces of writing
Speaker 1: committed to film in the Forum's history, so I wanted
Speaker 1: to watch it for a second before we left. We
Speaker 1: are all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices.
Speaker 1: Some are on a grand scale. Most of these choices
Speaker 1: are lesser points. But we define ourselves by the choices
Speaker 1: we have made. We are, in fact this sum total
Speaker 1: of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly. Human
Speaker 1: happiness does not seem to have been included in the
Speaker 1: design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity
Speaker 1: to love, that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And
Speaker 1: yet most human beings seem to have the ability to
Speaker 1: keep trying and even to find joy from simple things
Speaker 1: like their family, their work, and from the hope that
Speaker 1: future generations might understand more. Thank you for showing me that.
Speaker 1: If I'm honest, I am not generally capable of watching
Speaker 1: that and not crying. Again, complicated because I have to
Speaker 1: publicly recognize that the person who wrote those words represents
Speaker 1: a great deal of pain for some people listening. Whether
Speaker 1: what he did happened or not, it doesn't really matter
Speaker 1: because people are in pain. But boy, you can't tell
Speaker 1: me that that isn't it? Right there? I agree? So
Speaker 1: my question to you is a moral choices, some on
Speaker 1: a grand scale, most of these are on lesser points.
Speaker 1: You're turning eighty this year, I imagine you're thinking about
Speaker 1: the decisions, the choices, grand and small. How do you
Speaker 1: think you've done well? The very last thing I heard
Speaker 1: my father say before he died, he was in a
Speaker 1: hospital in Connecticut, and a medication was giving him hallucinations
Speaker 1: and bad dreams, and and then he would have these
Speaker 1: moments of clarity. And he had Parkinson's, so he had
Speaker 1: a shake. So he had just come out of a
Speaker 1: troubled sleep. And I had my face near his mouth
Speaker 1: so I could hear what he was saying, and the
Speaker 1: last thing I heard him say was the young people
Speaker 1: must not be given the wrong idea, which probably has
Speaker 1: more meaning for me because it was my father talking.
Speaker 1: But I I'm going to need a lot of forgiveness,
Speaker 1: and thank God there is forgiveness in the world. I
Speaker 1: don't think that sets me apart from the great run
Speaker 1: of humanity. I think we all are pretty big disappointments.
Speaker 1: But when you ask me how I think I've done,
Speaker 1: my mind immediately goes to the enormous good fortune that
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed. So, you know, if the question is how
Speaker 1: to go, it's been going great and long may it continue.
Speaker 1: But if you're asking me what the sum of my
Speaker 1: life is and how it ought to be judged, I
Speaker 1: hope the judge is really nice and very understanding. Otherwise
Speaker 1: we're all out of luck. Well, I can't promise you
Speaker 1: who that judge is going to be. I thought I
Speaker 1: was going to be you. I was kind of I
Speaker 1: thought you said that at the beginning, that you were
Speaker 1: going to sort this all out for me. You don't
Speaker 1: need me as your judge. I'm very I'm very disappointed now.
Speaker 1: I came all this way, you know, I know this
Speaker 1: is not just around the corner. I know you came
Speaker 1: a long way. I did a long way, and I'm
Speaker 1: truly thankful that you did come this long way and
Speaker 1: stay with me. I'm grateful that this turned out to
Speaker 1: be you. Thank you very much. Anytime. Sam Waterson thought
Speaker 1: you soon, thought to you soon. And that's our show
Speaker 1: special thanks this week to Katherine Waterston. To learn more
Speaker 1: about her father, Sam Waterston. You can visit our website
Speaker 1: at www dot talk easypod dot com. There you'll find
Speaker 1: a back catalog of episodes with a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: actors I think you may like, including Philip Baker Hall,
Speaker 1: Robert Forrester, Alan Alda, Laura Dern, Edward Norton, Tracy Let's,
Speaker 1: Kenneth Brana, and many many more. If you haven't done
Speaker 1: so already, be sure to subscribe to the show on Spotify,
Speaker 1: Apple Music, Stitcher, SoundCloud, wherever you get your podcasts. You
Speaker 1: can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at talk easypod,
Speaker 1: and if you'd like to write us an email about
Speaker 1: this episode, or any episode, or hell about anything, feel
Speaker 1: free to do so at talk easypod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: As always, this show is made possible by our incredible team.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Janick Sa Bravo. Our editor is
Speaker 1: Andrea Lynn. Illustrations by Krishna Chenoe, design by Ian Jones.
Speaker 1: Our music is by Dylan Peck and Jin Sang. Our
Speaker 1: engineer is Tim Moore, and we tape out of your
Speaker 1: recording here in Los Angeles, California. Our associate producer is
Speaker 1: Nicky Spina, and the show is produced each week by
Speaker 1: Caroline Reebok. It was, by the way, Caroline's birthday yesterday,
Speaker 1: so happy birthday to Caroline. I'm Sam Fragoso. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening to Talk Easy. We'll be back here next
Speaker 1: Sunday with Juliette Louis. Until then, have a good week everyone.
Speaker 1: Choo choo boosts shoo