Mary Steenburgen and Ted Danson LIVE with Ilana Levine - host of Little Known Facts

[Music] I want to be the first to welcome you to what is the hundred and twenty fifth episode of little-known facts I am sure can you hear me can you all say hello so we know if our mics or I think I think it's working yeah yeah we're recording this this will be a podcast episode this will be on YouTube and so just know whatever you say or do will be recorded forever I'm so unbelievably honored and thrilled to welcome Mary Steenburgen and Ted Danson to the podcast if you're not sure this is Mary Steenburgen and this is Ted Danson when I talked to Neil about wanting to do something on this stage which has been home to so many of the most beautiful artists working over the years including Mary and Ted who have both graced the stage here with their beautiful talents I couldn't imagine two better people to begin this series with because it is a big thing to return to the theater sometimes when Hollywood and other opportunities snap people up they become rarely seen on a stage and I also just want to say the reason Ted and Mary are here aside from their being very sweet about my podcast is because Neil Pepe and Mary McCann who are here today and run the Atlantic are two of the warmest most generous humans on the planet who we really would do anything for so I just wanted to say that in case at the end I'm crying and forget all the thank-yous so thank you to everyone here in and the crew who made this all happen thank you between SantaCon and all the other things going on for braving the new york city streets to be with us and little known fact I have been such huge fans of both of yours for so long and the idea that I am now it's a little like looking into the Sun for me right now is gonna be so happy with this interview so I will forever today remember December 8th because someone will say do you remember the first time you met Ted and Mary and I'll be like yes I remember where I was I remember what they look like when they walked in someone was carrying two poinsettias to their side and it was glorious but I wonder if you two remember the first time you saw each other and met yes coming this was amazing do you want to begin yeah yeah okay first time Mary was starring in cross creek and I went in for an audition to play her husband and I was sitting in this downstairs area of this building and then there were interior stairs going up and it was raining and she was late and she ran up the stairs I looked at her and then we went up and we sat and we auditioned and I did not get the part thank God because I was a hot mess back then so she wouldn't have even seen me but that was the first time I remember that he was very charming and what I loved about him was that he was very handsome but funny like just handsome doesn't ever did you did you fight for me to get the part clearly not hard enough Peter Coyote got that part but then years later and then we met at Henry Winkler's birthday party one here and I was a huge cheers fan by then so I stopped you and like fangirl to you for quite a while and then and then we met a third time during the inauguration of Bill Clinton at some party or something I think we're getting dip the same table and you took a little I can't quite remember but you took a little it was not a barb but it was a little bit about mmm and I went no I have no idea to get my attention I don't know it was just the equivalent of a pigtail and the inkwell kind of thing I just remember that I remember looking up Greg oh wait what well I don't remember that but IRA and then and then we met again on a movie so we did a movie together that is okay but right what money and but it was a great first day yeah did it start okay so first of all I happen I think my friend Alexandra Styron is here today and I met al because I was working on a huge Broadway event for Bill Clinton and in 92 I guess and part of my reward forgetting to do such a wonderful event was to go to the inaugural the Arkansas inaugural ball I was there yeah yeah I know one barbed me at all the entire night it was really thrilling to be at the ball of the state where he had been governor and it was thrilling and there was I remember kind of a smattering of like I wonder if Mary Steenburgen the Arkansas Xion Arkansas you or our kanzen except I there is gonna be there let's let's actually talk about that because you've been really a friend a real friend not just a Hollywood celebrity campaigning for someone how did you meet the Clintons originally my dad was at for a train conductor and he went to an event where the young governor of Arkansas was speaking about mentorship and acting encouraging retired people to mentor young people and he said you know we have a young woman from this community and she she went to New York and studied and was a waitress for years and she's recently done her first film and it shows you you know the talent in this community and he sees someone like wiping tears and he finishes his speech and at the end of it he goes out into the audience and he so sir I see my remarks have touched you in some way I'm Bill Clinton and the man said well I'm Marsh Steenburgen and if you're going to talk about my daughter I think you better meet her and that was the two of them the two of them met first and and so when Todd and I got married bill actually gave me away because my dad wasn't there anymore and so we're we're close we we love them very much but that went from like a conversation on like a campaign trail stop do it really happened do you know what I mean like yeah then you meet him yeah I think that I mean Wall Street well first first of all in those days I was more famous than them so that was and the weirdest thing is in some ways not so much with Hillary but especially with Bill our relationship gelled at that moment and so I'm like his bossy annoying sister that has not like when the Secret Service guys would want someone to tell him it's time to stop playing cards and everyone wants to go to bed they always sent him Mary because because I I just don't you know that's how we know it family family I guess right so it was it's just a strange weird phenomena that and when people talk about their Hollywood the Hollywood connection and I always laugh because they had nothing to it really had to do with Arkansas and and so it's just been a kind of bizarre and unexpected journey that was a privilege and at times painful and at times inspiring and it's been a part of both of our lives I him to meet bill at the White House which was weird yeah yeah no I mean you to sit down with to a you know a dining room table just the four of us you know I I was trying to I knew how much they loved marrying you yes and I was trying to not be you know too far forward you know in my whatever so it was it was a bizarre evening but then at one point either that morning or that I mean the next morning it was just Bill and me and a Secret Service agent and passing in a hallway but he stopped and talked and it was clearly who are you what are your intentions you know version of you know good morning that's heady that's heavy well let me jump in one more time because what's amazing about them is all they care about is you they are so interested in what you're doing who you are they're cut so it's really even though I was incredibly nervous it's amazingly easy conversation because they're so interested in people that they wanted to know all about you and where you came from and all of the above well that's a quality I would boomerang back to you guys because I had the opportunity to be hanging in the back with you in the dressing room and I felt like you were both incredibly inquisitive and curious about me and it was very touching that you took the time to do that so I thought I'd turn it around and let you guys just interview me now well actually eyeing this weekend I can tell you a story about your friend al Styron that I think she knows but her mom knows Rose who's a friend of ours but when I was going to do ragtime they were trying to figure out who was going to play my husband and Milosz Foreman hadn't has had that he wanted a real life writer to play and not an actor it ended up being an actor that was cast but but Peter Coyote no not either but but he he interviewed several or audition several great writers including JP John levy but Alice dad came to audition bill Styron came to audition to play father and I fell in love with he actually wanted him to do it because I fell in love with him because he was so brave he was so brave it was like a total thing that was so weird for him where as other people that came to audition would just read it and they were cautious and they weren't and bill just he was so brave and and I was like oh this is who it should be but it it wasn't but I but I loved him that is incredible it's my bill bill Styron yeah yeah everyone should have one yeah it should have a different story you both grew up it's a very big thing to get to New York if you did not grow up in New York many of us who are from the East Coast really take it for granted like well I drove over the George Washington Bridge and I found my way but you came from Arizona and you came from Arkansas and I would imagine you weren't making annual trips to Broadway and and dinner at Sardis so you know what I could be wrong I'm imagining that that was not your childhood so maybe starting with you go ahead Ted I grew up in Arizona but at age 13 I went away my father was an archaeologist and an anthropologist and the director of a museum and we lived outside of town and all my friends were there Hopi or Navajo children or sons and daughters of ranchers so it was very you know nineteen early sixties amazing run out the door and come back right bareback on your horses out into the dead I cut quite a figure on a horse that's my father speaking anyway then I went away to a school and Connecticut Kent school for boards in Connecticut at 13 18 I went to Stanford didn't know what to do didn't do anything fell in love with acting transferred to Carnegie Mellon Carnegie Mellon we all thought we'd get into repertory companies because that's it was a classical training and no one did in my class and so we all just went on group two to New York and knew I was gonna hate it fell in love with it and was there about 6 or 7 years before I moved to Los Angeles so they sent you to boarding school no that was my idea you wanted to go I wanted to go back to this whole I didn't want to be left out my Rancher kids who lived friends who were too far out of town to go to school were being homeschooled up to a point and then been sent away to a school my sister was going to Wellesley and leaving I didn't want to be left alone right so I thought it was my idea my mother loved it because it was a church school my father probably loved it because he knew I was a lazy student and all of the above but I really thought it was my idea so when you got to Stanford when you say you found acting and then you transferred to the wonderful Carnegie Mellon I how did you find it or how did it find you silly but true I followed a young lady named Beth who I finally I wish they were true I would so love to meet her thank you for my career [Laughter] well you'd like to thank her yeah I would I would we I wanted to have a cup of coffee with her she stayed for five minutes and then said she had to go to an audition and I thought well can I come and she said yes and then discovered that you had to do something to remain in the room so I made something up and I heard somebody laugh and I thought oh this is interesting not bad and I got the smallest part you could be to get in man is man a Berthold Brecht play I was like the fourth Rifle carrier from the left and I was just smitten it was like I had met my gypsy clan I was like just I was just a light bulb went off I literally moved my station wagon to the back of the theater and slept in my station wagon and never left until I transferred to Carnegie do you have a Beth well I sure didn't have a station wagon but now I don't know that I have if I have a Beth it's that I remembered having a conversation with two girlfriends of mine in Arkansas and one of them said you know I know what I want to be I want to she played bass in a band and she and that's what she wanted to do and the other one wanted to sing and I remember thinking what in the world will I say when it's my turn to say you know and then I literally remember thinking I'm an actor and which is such a weird thought for a girl in Arges oh he's never traveled anywhere or knows any actors but my tiny little limited experience of having gone to see South Pacific at the front Street Theatre in Memphis or you know or being in the crucible in school and stuff it just I remember that those moments were breathless for me that I could literally barely breathe and that that there was something so utterly compelling about theatre and I had been a kid who there have been some sadnesses in my childhood that my escape was to read books and and so for me I think in that moment one of the things I realized was that I had been an actor for years it's just that nobody had ever seen it because it was all we feel that way a lot you know as women in the business yeah we're acting all the time it's just that no one notices but no but I I knew I knew that those worlds those imaginary worlds that I created and I loved especially loved English you know I loved Dickens and the Bronte sisters and all that stuff and it was it was just my preferred way of getting through the world and so having becoming an actor I think I think it felt like I always was that and what I've had to work a little harder at is becoming an actual a human being that isn't acting you know so how did you make your way to New York well I went to one year of college to a wonderful school in Arkansas called Hendrix College in Conway Arkansas and I was in I was cast in the play a play there the night Thoreau spent in jail and played Lydia Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson's wife and the professor they are said you know you should go to New York because they're gonna know what to do with you and you belong in New York and I said well I wouldn't even know where to go and usable here's a list of schools and he gave me all the schools you would imagine some of them like Juilliard I knew I couldn't even begin to afford and it was four years and all this stuff but he checked this one there's one checkmark I still have the paper and it says the Neighborhood Playhouse and I only applied to one school it was the Neighborhood Playhouse and I I was the last class to study with Sandy Meisner before he had his box yeah yeah and so I remember his voice and anyway that was I'm still very close with the Neighborhood Playhouse some with Pamela Muller who runs the school and I loved it very much that's my alma mater that's incredible were you guys here at the same time did you yes and we like to think that we are both in the drama bookstore is that still here at the drama books in the stacks at the same time so that's what we think is that we were like across from each other and maybe looked up and saw each other and then went back to somewhere between 1972 and 74 for sure that's at least that's when I was at the Playhouse and yeah I came to New York in 72 and we both did so you both had pretty remarkable beginnings in that whether they were large parts or small parts you got work as an understudy pretty quickly in a Tom Stoppard play right after Magritte and yeah and and then was able to go on yeah I take baby steps or I have taken baby steps because I think you know God knows that I can't take too much at one time so I had to write do this not so much for well we built a little lip here so it just yeah be comfortable so you spent what a great way to learn an understudy in a fancy production of something and acting was so new to me because I Carnegie was all new I never acted before except that one time in Stanford and did everyone stop talking or did the air go off the airway okay you know you stopped talking oh that's what it is yeah yeah but I didn't care what I was doing I took classes again I studied uh the Sandy Meisner technique with Robert Patterson here in the city and I really almost didn't care for his acting in class or being paid to act somewhere I was just smitten you know and that lasted for a long time that kinda did you have funny jobs just sort of know it I'm smitten but but once cheers happen once you are career starting you start making money then fear and wanting more and all of that career stuff snuck in before that it was just pure joy of I don't care don't pay me I don't care what I just want to do it totally may I say as someone who lives with you you do experience quite a lot of joy when you act yes yes no no I'm sorry it was that did I not say that sound like in the old days you yes now I just want money I want lots of money and I don't care about joy this is free I just would like to present you with a bottle of smart water as a thank you for being you can see I don't actually drink smart water no I would you either of you like to have some water no no thank you okay cuz there's always time for a water break it's one of those places where you edit or no yeah probable robber I promised there'd be a green at it so far nothing we've said is in the episode there's that one thing starting go we're gonna start now um well it would be I would be remiss to not talk about Cheers because it has you already express a little disdain yeah normally I want it I want to explain what I meant what I meant when I was talking about Cheers in the dressing room earlier is that I probably watched every episode of Cheers I mean that's just probably true I think most people whether you were of the age to watch it when it came on the first time or watch it now would be hard-pressed to find a show that's less perfect because what it did in terms of casting the most remarkable people who whether they were or grew into the parts as it went on whether you had writers who understood how to write for those people or learned how to write for them it really created I mean I think the theater is a place where all of us feel like ah this is my chosen family I found my people and even though cheers was a made-up place though we were confused because you could visit it in Boston but you would not be there when I went because I wasn't an actress yet and I didn't understand that it's just this sign and not the actual there's a soundstage somewhere um you created a world where people who didn't always feel included outside that bar walked in there whether they were norm or woody her whoever they were and there was their family and they felt loved and it was an incredible thing to think that someplace like that could exist and you guys found a way to make us and this is so silly because it was a TV show and not a real place but it felt real to us and I'm sure you've spent the last you know 25 years or more having people come up to you who feel like I know you I've gone through things with you ya know it's been a remark I mean people come up or see me and they start smiling by and large because they remember something funny that I was part of and yeah everything I do I'm sitting here because I'm sitting next to you because of because you know I've Cheers I invited Mary and she was like you know I understand that's that's why I asked about the editing page I've already seen the evening with Mary Steenburgen yes but that's okay the point is once you're here what you do with an opportunity oh right all of us that's the lesson it doesn't matter why you're here but make the most of it whoa two against one no no it's really like are you kidding this is for all of us we're all so excited to have a moment with you together because you bring so much love in the room with you when you walk in and that's what we felt watching that show and I wonder did you audition for cheers yes can you talk about that I had somebody had fallen out the day before of an episode of taxi and this was all I'm paramount lot and back then they were like seven or eight really well-known sitcoms at Paramount being shot at the same time and I was like this little family so I came in to the last minute to play a hairdresser on an episode of taxi and Jimmy burrows lesson Glenn Charles were just starting to put together cheers and they were starting to cast it and Jimmy had remembered auditioning me for something maybe the year before and I didn't get it so he saw that I was on a lot they brought me over and we talked two or three times that week and I read and at one point I said they said don't don't take anything without another job without checking with us you know so you're saying that I hope I call yeah you're saying that I that I you want me for this they what no no we're not saying that but and I literally walked out the back of their office and saw coming up the stairs like a line of actors who I'd seen work you know over there but it was one of the I think it was the first time that I experienced not having doubt or allowing myself to have doubt I just kept going I think this is mine and I'm gonna behave as if it were but then the I think partly the reason why I did get cheers is they they had all they had ended up having three couples Fred Dreyer who went on to be in a some sort of drama and Julia Duffy and three other anyway two other couples and Shelley Long and myself and we had mixed and matched and then they finally settled on Shelley and me and we then walked down one couple at a time and auditioned in a room almost as full of people as this is and a little makeshift bar and we did a scene and then we leave and the next couple came too and I think I got it because Shelley and I worked well together and Shelley really was remarkable she had that character from like day one and you really hadn't seen that character since maybe Lucille Ball or something she was spectacular so I credit and give her a lot of credit for me being interesting had you done comedy before yes a little here and there you know but no no I mean I was doing anything or I could find get my hands on but I had done but I think by then I had done body heat and Creepshow and the onion field yeah not not funny not known yeah no no I I was doing taxi you know at that moment but and did you feel I I know I know you know history shows that it did not start out as a show with great ratings and that over time miraculously a network kept staying behind it so that it could find its audience and grow was that as loving a family onset as it felt like to those of us at home yeah it was everyone was everyone they didn't know the long kind of overview of cheers and the success but they knew how lucky we were to be around that kind of writing and that that's what I would I don't think you had to be funny to be on Cheers you had to just be a good actor and do that character and do that those words and you know they was so good the writing that you just kind of hung on to that but I would like to say the reading was brilliant really brilliant but you guys and the way you worked off of each other you and Shelley watch I mean I was such a fan of that show and particularly of watching the two of you and everything that sandy had taught me in school I watched the two of you doing of just working off each other and the words were brilliant but you guys really well everyone on that show was but you two together it was like magic so when she left did you that's just yes soak that in magic yeah don't move on too quickly he'll let you know when it's time sorry can we have a signal it like go like this when I can when I can move on when Shelley left did you think oh maybe this shows - yes yeah maybe I was you know maybe with a new dance partner I won't be good she won't enjoy it as much yeah all of the above it was very scary but we'd already experienced the writing being able to absorb loss because Nicholas Anto had died after the third year and in came woody harrelson it is astounding but the character woody was all so astounding you know and they did that and Kelsey Grammer came in and played Frasier Crane that wasn't part of the first year so we knew how good the writing was and they found crazy you know Kirstie Alley yeah raising a great way I mean seems like amazing woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown in all scenes she was amazing she was truly amazing well method method acting yeah no I was just about to say that they discovered Shelley and I were so different from each other that it was kind of oil and water in it and it worked for a romantic relationship though Kirstie and I are kind of cut from the same cloth so it didn't quite work and they discovered that they had to have a triangle there was always a triangle and that's that's how brilliant the writing is you know that they got that and address that immediately amazing well your your beginning has a story that involves a an actor and I I'm sorry that things didn't go better for him Jack Nicholson because he was so promising it was so promising but but you know there's a story that that goes around about how you got that part and I'm just curious if it's apocryphal or really how it went down so can you share how you got cast in your first movie opposite Jack Nicholson at a very young age yes well some pretty young I was 24 but it feels really feels a young Nana googoo gah-gah yeah so I was I had graduated from I went two years to the Neighborhood Playhouse I got out ready to take the world by storm no one was interested I was a waitress during my school years and then kept waitressing I worked at numerous restaurants that are sadly no longer there on the east side one was called Hudson Bay Inn and then after a couple of years of nothing happening a group of us from the neighborhood Playhouse formed a comedy improv group group and we needed audiences so don't ask me what this logic is but we knew someone at the Bureau of alcoholism of the city of New York so we started doing shows for halfway houses so my first acting jobs was in Bedford Stuyvesant and Harlem and the Bowery improv shows a little cute improv like anyone have like calling out to the ice what do you want to see every single time do drunks on a street corner like this would be the variation would be two drunks on a bus two drunks on the subway and they wanted they wanted to see them what they had been through you know and so and I remember at the time I was deeply inspired by a show on Broadway and it was Lily Tomlin's one-woman show and I'd gone to see it and I remember just being like so wanting to be her and learning that lesson in comedy that comedy more than anything is really your own voice like you have to you cannot be brilliant Lily Tomlin's version of funny you have to find the funny that's Mary Steenburgen and I remember consciously you know in those terrible little sad you know shows where sometimes there were five of us and there were three of them or you know and I mean it was you know trudging through the snow and going up three flights of stairs and then we did a whole comedy show and no one laughed one time and at the end of it they said we're so sorry we thought we were told that there was a message about alcoholism in here and we just kept waiting for the mess and it was like there was no we're just we're just doing comedy and frog for you so but eventually I I moved up in the world to a better restaurant I was a waitress at the magic pan which some of you may remember he doesn't love a great who doesn't love a crepe and so I wore a little green dirndl and black orthopaedic shoes and stockings and was dressed like my version of a little French girl and there were two magic pans those of you who remember one was on the west side inexplicably both on 57th Street one on West and went on East between 3rd and Lex so mine was between 3rd and Lex and it was populated with the most wonderful crazy fantastic characters all who were actors and this lovely couple who made sure we all made it to auditions we could you know take an extra shift later and it was just this really fun wonderful place and so somehow was so Chris guest who directed Best in Show and waiting for Guffman some of my favorite movies his mother Jean gas saw me at the Manhattan Theatre Club because our comedy improv group was now the resident company at the Manhattan Theatre Club in their cabaret between shows and she saw me and she recommended me to a big casting director and I went and I met with her and it was nice meeting and at the end of the meeting I'm about to leave and this is where it gets this is very weird sounding but literally the bells in my head went off for the first time in all these years and and I turned around and I said before I leave are you casting anything in particular and she said I'm casting a movie called going south and I would love to get you in on it but it has to be very beautiful models or well-known actresses and you don't really fall into either of carrot categories which was true but I looked at her and I said I I I'm just gonna go wait outside until you maybe change your mind and give me a script now in the history of my being in New York this is exactly what all my friends had told me to be like and I had never been like that once you could ask anyone who knew me that was not part of my repertoire it was my moment and I knew it somehow and I went and I went outside and I sat down but then I started feeling like oh my god she's never gonna call me in on anything so I like just blew the one important person I know in this whole city and unless you count the people at the Bureau of alcoholism in the city of New York and and so I am looking down at my feet and I'm literally composing my apology because someone else has gone in there to meet with her and I'm I'm thinking of what I'll say I'm excuse I'll make and I see these two feet and I hear this voice saying are you waiting to see me and I thought oh my god just like Jack Nicholson would probably be in California or in Hollywood or something and he and I said no and he goes you're not I said no I still haven't looked up and he goes why not and I finally look up and yep it's him it's Jack Nicholson in the flesh and I said I don't have a script he walks over to the desk picks up the script hands it to me and he goes okay ten minutes tomorrow at whatever it was one o'clock or something and I said okay and then I thought I better not wait and talk to that lady and so I went I lived I lived with my friend Peter Coyote just kidding that never happened right now I know but yeah and and we read that thing over and over and over and we lived in a fifth floor walk I walk up with a busted out window at the back that my landlord wooden Burfict so we just put plywood up it was charming and anyway I stayed up all night preparing for it like tried to sleep but that was stupid it wasn't going to happen and and then went over there dressed vaguely and what I thought maybe with looks slightly like an 1800s outfit without looking too cheesy and corny it was subtle but it worked and so anyway I go and I start reading and reading and hiko's his pizza came and I stood up to leave and goes note sit down eat the pizza keep reading we read every scene in the movie twice at one point the woman looked in there I think she thought something untoward was happening but there wasn't and so I read everything and and then he goes as I'm about to leave he goes you know I I want to direct this I said and he goes you know what that means and I went yeah and I had no clue what that meant and everyone told me as soon as I left what did that mean and he goes that means he can't cast you you know you've never done a movie your last name is Steenburgen I was too weird for words and so you know there he's not gonna cast an unknown name Steenburgen and so so I went back to my waitressing and then several days later the message came you're going to Hollywood first screen test I go out I borrow a thousand dollars for some from some friends in Arkansas and buy some nice clothes I go out they put me up at this Chateau Marmont for one night but I stayed a couple of extra nights and I did the the screen test in wardrobe makeup and all these big stars were doing the test as well and at the end of five days I'd run out of money I needed money to get back to the magic pan to my waitress who shipped I was down to like two dollars and I went into Paramount and I said thank you so much for that really unique and fantastic experience could I have my one nights hotel bill in cash and they jack with smoking a big cigar and he goes don't worry about a kid sit down because you're on the payroll and I will say that I haven't seen that screen test and we just got a copy of it that our family's gonna watch together over Christmas they found that in the depths of Paramount Studios the student that Paramount's been important to both of us in our lives and so I just got chills and he told that story because it really sounds like a fairy tale it wasn't her - it was and then you do the movie and do you go back to waitressing oh I didn't I did rub it I did end up on an unemployment and I did and really close to being penniless again but I got my second movie it was I think of it about nine months to a year later and it was time after your time with Malcolm McDowell do treated hearing first of all may I say one thing about that her name is Mary she absolutely did not have to sleep with anyone to have children if you know the story goes I have Terry don't worry it's Christmas and it's her holiday yes and you have two incredible children and and you married that co-star Malcolm McDowell Joe adore he's a very good friend and he's wonderful and has three little boys who are my kids little half-brothers whoo-wee all the doors that's amazing yeah life is funny how it works out well you want an Oscar Mary Steenburgen has won an Oscar which is no small thing from Melvin and Howard that was your third so no no more magic pan for you the thing that is remarkable when you go home as you will and you are going to Google all night every little reference because there's so many things that they're teasing that I've gotten to live within the this happened very quickly like the two weeks since we decided to do this um when you listen to your Oscar acceptance speech what's incredible is your accent is still so much more a young girl from Arkansas then you sound now so when you listen to it it's remarkable because really over time we acclimate to where we are and obviously you don't sound British at this point but you really have transitioned from sounding much more like a southern person I mean maybe when she's drunk does she sound more drunk and pissed AHA yes then it comes out that seems appropriate you talked about I you were married before also and you talked about how you spoiler alert you talked about how you had met her at that audition that you didn't get Peter Coyote got the movie and you said it wouldn't have worked cuz I was a mess at that time it wouldn't have been like the right time for us to be Ted and Mary as you are now and I don't mean the Ted and Mary from The Mary Tyler Moore Show which is a very iconic Ted and Mary as well but then you did meet at the right time so timing is such a huge thing right like Jack Nicholson has to walk in to that place at that time and you have to have the courage on that crazy day to be like I'm gonna wait right like so listen to my angels or whatever that was yeah so did you were you divorced when you guys met yes okay sorry and she still isn't are you divorced did you get divorced because so did you know like sets are very exciting and it's so intimate and you're in this little bubble and I made a rule I I'm Aries someone that I met working together and I had like this six week rule that if I still remember that person six weeks after the job I've married 22 times of course all our lines are written for us and people are leaving hundred-dollar bills in an envelope in our hotel room you don't take the trash don't take the trash out in and and it's all it's all taken care of for you and the lines are written and then the thing is over and that's why I wait six weeks and then if I'm still like Oh Dominic yeah was there a six week rule I don't know I don't we we came in knowing a lot about each other ourselves and you know I had worked on myself for like a year and a half really trying to grow up and be the kind of person that I knew I should be and I took it very seriously in that period of my life but I knew that I was incapable of having a relationship that I wouldn't mess up and you also said you had this similar I had just told right before that movie I just broken up with someone and I and this was someone that every woman thought I was insane to not just want to marry you know because Peter Coyote yes but I when I couldn't make it work I told my friend that I look like I'd be good in a relationship I present like I would be but I'm not and I now know this about myself I have two children they're amazing I adore them I'm done I'm not gonna put myself through this again I'm finished and when we first started working together it was not on my radar at all it was not even a thought in my mind in fact wait so the first night that we that we kind of were around each other on this movie was I had just wrapped a movie broken up with my boyfriend gone through hell and stayed up all night at a wedding on the set of the editor and his wife his now wife and I was I was a part of the wedding and then so I never slept and I had to get on a plane and fly to San Francisco to find out if Ted Danson would approve me for this no that was the spin you got because I didn't that was not that's not what happened we I just heard that we were a meeting okay well I heard differently and then I got approval and I was really concerned about the fact that I was literally on fumes I had not been to sleep anyway I go we go there and would go out to dinner at one of Wolfgang Puck's restaurants in San Francisco that I don't think is there anymore but we've got it from the freezer section in it but I like the barbecue chicken myself but but I remembered that he was shooting a movie where they had put extensions in his hair to make his hair long maybe they were maybe they weren't maybe they're mine I met I remember uh sort of meeting at the bar and I'm like hello hello nice to see you again and then he he said here I'll show you I'll show you where we're seated and it was with the director and the costume designer and and I walked behind him and of course he's wonderfully tall but he was tossing his fake hair and and it was like tossing it and and I just remember thinking this is the most ridiculous creature I've ever met and I'm about to spend two months playing his wife on camera in the next 25 years yeah actually actually yeah do you remember doing that with your hair I was I was bald with my hair yeah to the point when I was showering in and one of the little beads would fall off and a strand of hair would fall up [Laughter] here's what I was thinking because usually I know you don't believe this but I around beautiful women if there's no introduction or something like that it's all very peripheral you don't I don't look at beautiful women until they sound like you have no this was back then even them so are I'm shy I'm embarrassed or whatever and but the here you're about to work with each other and you're getting together the whole deal is that you've now have license to you know look and I was just knocked out by how radiant and beautiful and your laugh and your smile and I was I was not like who I'm madly in love I was like I wish I were capable of having a relationship because what an amazing person yeah so I was smitten even though I wasn't yeah she thought I was weird but yeah and over the course of that film did it go well first off that night I told her literally every everything everything about me on the side you know it was like I've made all these discoveries about myself so it was like I couldn't stop blabbing about who I was where I was and what a mess I was and which I'm sure was a great turn-on huh nothing through nights at the alcohol Bureau had she met anyone Emma Street dinner RIA yeah but somehow you win her over it was it it wasn't right away I tell the truth no my my first reaction was man he's got he's got a lot on his plate to work through but it was like he he also struck me as somebody who was very a very rare person in that every crazy thing he told me about his family in his life and himself he was owning in this really beautiful way so I was struck by that that I loved and and then we started working together and then we would all go out to dinner and Ted wouldn't be there and I just noticed Oh Ted's not here and it was like we were friends and and and I also remembered that I had this image even though I'm an actor and I should have known better I had this image of him being this sort of slick TV guy which I like to say later was dispelled by the fact that slick TV guys don't say gosh a Rooney after making love oh yeah oh yeah you will be tonight but but I did I think I was surprised I think it was surprised by like how how humble and like how real and how what a mess up it wasn't there was no slick TV guy there and it was actually such a fascinating background his family and you know there's like an innocence to his family and and to the it was just such a different thing than I thought he was you know and we became really great friends we did but yeah let's get to the yeah so one weekend one weekend knowing that this is not going to be relationship time what could we do together that'd be fun I know because we were playing these kind of 1960s old-fashioned me kind of couple let's go on it we'll go on a picnic a canoe ride and a picnic and there were other canoes involved and and we got on this beautiful canoe this is the big river magazine and it was a beautiful canoe that had an outrigger and a you know on one side it had this beautiful pontoon rigger thing and we went up the big river in Mendocino with a picnic and it was we kept going and other canoes that fall back and fall back and it was four hours up and four hours back and basically we fell in love by literally canoeing together with silences and canoeing you know beautifully and effortlessly find out if you're in sync or not in a canoe you know and it turned out we were yeah and and to the point where Mary this is way more than you want to know for our for her wedding servus she wrote a poem about that time and literally that canoe ride was like a charter for our marriage for our relationship she's always the one that goes oh let's go around one more curve and off we go yeah and you blended families and it's you know it's real it got real but you have sustained a relationship that is one that involves a lot of time apart work takes you guys apart I imagine some of the time or did you make choices to just work in LA or just kind of get to raise your kids and in Ojai right so did you make a decision like while we have these children we're only going to choose jobs geographically in a certain way or how did that I'm so we had a two-week rule you had to find each other after two weeks and that's gone to about two days now but you know what I talked about this I think you do make some choices and life makes choices for you and you never quite know who's in control there but we've supported each other Zack Ternes we've never gone oh put me before your act Ernest there there was never that kind of moment in our life I don't think although you know we wouldn't go take something and you know wherever if we were two months three months away from each other it wouldn't make sense for that I want to switch gears and to Mary and it's so inspiring to me she came on the little net effects podcast and it was really I can tell it's life-changing but there's the other thing that happened to which is you had to get what I understand was a pretty simple surgery arm surgery and something otherworldly sort of happened and I can tell this story but probably not as good it happened to you so yeah so I had this arm and it was fairly innocuous and I wasn't even concerned about it how the surgery maybe hour and a half or something most and woke up and felt completely weird but I had had anesthetic so it was like everybody thought drink water drink water and then as the night went on then the next day and the next day I just felt like I had a different brain and the best way I can describe it is I went from a brain that had a normal relationship to music in that I enjoyed it I was not a musician I didn't dream of being a musician - a person who was obsessed with music who in a room where music is playing could barely focus on what anyone was saying had trouble thinking about anything but music could not have learned a line to save my life at that time luckily I wasn't working because I couldn't have worked and it was very distressing and scary I didn't sleep it was weird for him because it was like he was suddenly married to someone who was struggling and who was just totally distracted by something no one could hear but her right and so around the same time people started sending me a book that dr. Oliver Sacks wrote called music Ophelia and he's the doctor who wrote the man who mistook his wife for a hat and it was about people who had had some sort of disturbance to the brain who developed a obsessive relationship with music and I looked a little bit of the book and I got really freaked out by it because there were people with brain tumors and all this other stuff and people that have been struck by lightning and all I had done was have a little surgery on my arm and so anyway there was a point at which I looked in the mirror in our bathroom and Martha's Vineyard I looked in the mirror and went it's not going to go away you have to figure this out you you have too many people counting on you your mother your wife you can't go off the deep end so what do you do so I started studying songwriting and then I started writing music I didn't really know what I was doing but just trying to record singing not not because I wanted to be a singer and I'm not a great singer I'm an OK singer but but because I needed to it was my only instrument to convey what I heard in my head and then I eventually went to a guy on Martha's Vineyard who was a really good musician and I said if I sing every note that I'm hearing can you help me make them into songs and he said sure and so we crafted like 12 songs out of the hundreds I was writing and we sent them under my mother's name to this wonderful big music lawyer Don Passman who was like I think he might be a dull lawyer over but Quincy Jones and all these people had worked with him and he called my manager and he goes hey you know that kid Nellie wall I want to send that kid I want to work with that kid and my manager goes yeah kids not gonna describe her but I will send her in I was I was 54 at the time that was 11 years ago and so I went in to meet him and he went Mary Steenburgen what are you doing here I said I'm near 10 o'clock and you already said you want to work with me Camby ages and so I wrote they started sending me to Nashville to write and I wrote with just amazing writers and have been writing for the last 11 years worked with Universal and I just just signed with Warner Chappell and I'm doing the songs for an animated film and so I've really and working with the people in Nashville they are my teachers and my inspiration because in Nashville it's the best songwriters on the planet and so it's it's a part of my life that's deeply important to me I can now focus on multiple things if I had to say to you what I think happened to me I think that my grandmother who was very musical I think the genes were in there and somehow in that surgery that little channel of my brain got opened and the reason it felt so weird was that all my friends I write music with all by the way who are younger than the youngest of you here they they are used to that brain they grew up with that brain and I got it like one day and when I was 54 years old and the one thing I will say about it to young people is that you know life has a way and on and also even maybe more importantly to anyone our age out there is that life has a way of saying that you're supposed to agree to this kind of universal diminishment as you get older and one of the tragedies of that unspoken agreement is that you say no to things or I can't do it and I don't know exactly what happened to me but I know one thing I've worked my ass off on it and number two I said yes to it so I would say don't ever let someone convince you that if you if you have a desire to do something you know listen to it carefully and you know yeah the world's practical and money is money and blah blah blah but it it it would have changed my life forever verified said no somehow to this and we have dear dear friends that we never would have known were it not for music and bands stay at our house when they come to play in LA you know it's like crazy stuff I never would have known that is so young that this portal opened to you of creativity in this whole new way I'm so happy to know that it's not a painful thing and oh god no it's purely intuitive in this yeah you know yeah opening up of something I you know full disclosure and I'm sad that I can't share it with anyone because it's private but I was able to hear some of your stuff and and many of the things you've written are in fact for projects but Mary wrote a song I'm gonna start crying I listen to it on a loop yesterday because it was extraordinary maybe the best love song I've ever heard it's called I choose you oh and it's something that you wrote for Ted and I don't know what the circumstances are because I'm not you or Ted and I felt like oh she wrote she read my diary and she wrote a song about someone I love it's so beautiful and so amazing and I hope someday it's something that you'll share with others because the way cheers felt like a bar where everybody knows your name that song really felt like I described truly what it is to be seen not just to love someone but to see someone fully and I think what is really lovely today as we as we come to a close is to be in your presence is to see two people who are continuing to do really beautiful work the good place is just an extraordinary show I'm still in the stage where my kids are home and and trying to VAT like what they can and can't watch and finding something that offers something entertaining but also very deep and to to be a part of the show I will speak for you I imagine being a part of a show that just is all about empathy and kindness I can't imagine that's not a very satisfying thing to be a part of yeah hugely so yeah it makes me feel very good it's extraordinary and it's so funny and I think all of us today feel like this is the good place I know I certainly feel like that I could go on and on with you guys forever and I hope we can continue the conversation in the future you are the most remarkable and the grace with which you move through the world and the way whether it's by Providence or great management you've been able to kind of find yourselves involved in big and small ways and projects that are so meaningful and adding something to the culture of entertainment rather than diminishing it what a lucky thing for all of us and I just want to end I know that you both wait for us it's been amazing for us to be sitting here talking to you because how you ask questions and what you're interested in and how you've been with us in this hour it says a lot about you so thank you so so grateful and I I would I would also like to add that we're in this space at the Atlantic theater and one of the deepest honors of my life is to be a company member at the Atlantic theater and that anyone listening that's coming to New York should check out what's going on at the Atlantic theater because it's it's cutting edge theater and rapidly become one of the most important theaters if not the most in my opinion in New York neo pop am Mary McCann are to credit for this and for the the legions of young people who are inspired by them and their work and we're we're just honored to be here yeah well thank you for being here you'll be able to hear this on the podcast little known facts with a long levine and thank you to all for being here today and thank you to marry and to honor [Music] okay

Channel: Little Known Facts with Ilana Levine

Views: 3,832

Rating: 4.8805971 out of 5

Keywords: mary steenburgen, ted danson, academy award winner, cheers, step brothers, zoeys extraordinary playlist, whats eating gilbert grape, leonardo dicaprio, elf, will ferrell, curb your enthusiasm, larry david, martha's vineyard, the good place, kristin bell, three men and a baby, celebrity couples, hollywood, marriage, love, instagram, live performance, broadway, theater, nashville, bill clinton, the white house, singer

Id: BUGjnvtwSuw

Length: 70min 12sec (4212 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 21 2018