Speaker 1: Rip Current is a production of iHeart Podcasts. The views
Speaker 1: and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the host.
Speaker 2: Producers, or parent company. Listener discretion is it fine?
Speaker 1: This is a rip Current bonus episode. You don't need
Speaker 1: to listen to follow the rip Current storyline, but it
Speaker 1: provides more information, context, and analysis to enhance the main podcast.
Speaker 3: Enjoy.
Speaker 2: One of the great things about making Rip Current was
Speaker 2: getting to know and work with my co host, Mary
Speaker 2: Catherine Garrison. We hadn't originally planned to have a second
Speaker 2: narrative voice on the podcast, so I first met her
Speaker 2: when I interviewed her about playing Lynnette in the musical Assassins.
Speaker 2: When we did decide to try a second voice, the
Speaker 2: first person we contacted was Mary Catherine, and the rest
Speaker 2: is history. At the end of our last recording session,
Speaker 2: and I interviewed her a second time to get her
Speaker 2: thoughts after going through the entire season. So this episode
Speaker 2: has both interviews. First my initial interview with Mary Catherine,
Speaker 2: then or Break, and then the second interview.
Speaker 1: So my name is Mary Catherine Garrison. I am an actor, performer,
Speaker 1: and artist, and I did a whole bunch of Broadway
Speaker 1: and now I mostly do TV film stuff.
Speaker 2: How did you get involved with assassins?
Speaker 1: I remember that. I think I'd only done one, maybe
Speaker 1: two shows on Broadway before that one came about. I'm
Speaker 1: not a singer, I'm an I guess I'm an actor
Speaker 1: who sings, and so I remember getting the audition and saying, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I just can't do this because it's Sondheim
Speaker 1: and the agents and everybody was like, no, you should.
Speaker 2: It's more of a.
Speaker 1: Character type singing gig Well. Stephen Songhim in the room
Speaker 1: for the audition, I can't remember. I think he was
Speaker 1: so I think that was pretty crazy, singing his song
Speaker 1: to his face along with Joe Mantello. But then I
Speaker 1: got the part, and then nine to eleven happened, and
Speaker 1: the production was postponed for I think it was a
Speaker 1: year and a half or two years, and then everybody
Speaker 1: got back on the saddle.
Speaker 2: Wow. Was that like part of the Broadway opening back
Speaker 2: up after nine to eleven.
Speaker 1: I think they waited a while. I think Broadway had
Speaker 1: been open for a little bit because I think the
Speaker 1: tone of that show, in particular, I don't think anyone
Speaker 1: was in the mood to think about people like that.
Speaker 1: The guns thing for a while, so it took a minute.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting. So what kind of research did you
Speaker 2: do for this part?
Speaker 1: The point they were trying to make was less to
Speaker 1: be the historical document about these people and their actions,
Speaker 1: and it was more to make a point about who
Speaker 1: we are as people and why some people think that
Speaker 1: that's the route to make their point, to put a
Speaker 1: bull's eye on a very public political figure. So most
Speaker 1: of what happened with the character was dreamt up and
Speaker 1: just the kind of actor that I am, I like,
Speaker 1: I need, I need something to be rooted in, something real,
Speaker 1: and then if it's not totally accurate, at least it's
Speaker 1: coming from a real place. And at the time, Lynette
Speaker 1: Throne was still in jail, and so I actually wrote
Speaker 1: to her, and I think we only had one exchange,
Speaker 1: And I'm so sorry, Toby. I went to look for
Speaker 1: these letters and I can't find them. I think they
Speaker 1: got thrown out. And I think some boxes in the
Speaker 1: basement got flooded and rotten, and I think that they
Speaker 1: got thrown out with that. So it would have been
Speaker 1: really fun to like scan them for you and you
Speaker 1: could read them. But I remember I wrote back and
Speaker 1: I told her I was doing, and I imagine she
Speaker 1: got a lot of letters like this. She wrote me
Speaker 1: that pretty quickly, and it was a very unsallacious letter,
Speaker 1: which I think the one of the things we learned
Speaker 1: about a lot of these Manson women was that they
Speaker 1: were just kind of ended up being regular grandmother type
Speaker 1: ladies in jail for a very very long time. And
Speaker 1: her letter was very kind and very encouraging, and she
Speaker 1: did not address a lot of Charlie's stuff, but she
Speaker 1: was still in touch with him at the time, So
Speaker 1: whatever connection she felt she had with him that led
Speaker 1: her to do what she did, she was still connected
Speaker 1: to Charlie at least in some ways, which I thought
Speaker 1: that was a really interesting realization because she was kind
Speaker 1: of wacky. I mean, she was a strange person, but
Speaker 1: her letter was utterly unwacky, very sane, and she was
Speaker 1: still theoretically devoted to him. She didn't say that outright,
Speaker 1: but she implied that they were still in touch. He
Speaker 1: wasn't what people thought and that kind of thing. But
Speaker 1: she didn't say a whole lot more than that, which
Speaker 1: was kind of a bummer, and I think I might
Speaker 1: have written her again. I think that one letter was
Speaker 1: all I ever got interesting.
Speaker 2: Did she talk at all about her motivations for the assassination?
Speaker 1: She didn't, so I had to you know it myself,
Speaker 1: I guess. But the thing about this show, Assassin's you know,
Speaker 1: there was a real spectrum of mental health with all
Speaker 1: of these characters. So and some people were firmly grounded
Speaker 1: in some political purpose and other people were just wacky.
Speaker 1: And I think for where Lynette was at the time,
Speaker 1: for her, it felt like the only thing she could
Speaker 1: do to get the attention that Charlie needed. I doubt
Speaker 1: she did the same thing again, but she was a
Speaker 1: kid when she did it.
Speaker 2: So in the play, what motivation is she given that.
Speaker 1: It will somehow free Charlie. And I think she thinks
Speaker 1: that by killing the president, which of course she was
Speaker 1: unsuccessful doing that, it would somehow bring attention to Charlie
Speaker 1: and the world would see that he was their savior
Speaker 1: and not this lunatic criminal that they all believed him
Speaker 1: to be.
Speaker 2: She talks about she was like trying to save the redwoods,
Speaker 2: that it was an environmental thing. I've also heard people
Speaker 2: say that's what she said, but it was really all
Speaker 2: about getting more attention to Manson. It's pretty consistently said
Speaker 2: she was doing like this weird environmental lobbying kind of
Speaker 2: and she just got fixated on the fact that the
Speaker 2: redwoods were dying.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean that feels like a very sixty seventies
Speaker 1: thing to do. Yeah, the whole build up for this
Speaker 1: character is for that song with her.
Speaker 2: And John Hink.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the whole build up for this character was
Speaker 1: for their duet, and it was just so his was
Speaker 1: about Jodie Foster and in mine was about Charles Manson,
Speaker 1: and so the whole drive for my character had to
Speaker 1: be Charlie.
Speaker 2: Right. Interesting. What was attractive about the part for you?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean most actors are interested in doing a
Speaker 1: part that someone will hire them to do, so there's always,
Speaker 1: you know, just the gratitude of getting a job. And
Speaker 1: this was a pretty big scale opportunity. I mean I
Speaker 1: was in my twenties and the director was very encouraging
Speaker 1: and he really liked what I did, and I just
Speaker 1: felt like it was a great First of all, to
Speaker 1: seeing on Broadway, which is not something I ever thought
Speaker 1: I would do. That was pretty cool. And then to
Speaker 1: sing Sondheim something of that caliber was so exciting to
Speaker 1: me because obviously that's again not what I thought I
Speaker 1: would ever do. But I like playing parts that I
Speaker 1: don't want to be the hero or liked all the time.
Speaker 1: I liked slawed people. I liked that dimension, and I
Speaker 1: liked that I could make What I wanted to do
Speaker 1: was make someone who everyone thought was just crazy, but
Speaker 1: make her a real person. And I think getting her
Speaker 1: letter seeing that, well, she actually really is a real person.
Speaker 1: That's not a stretch. She's not just some looney tunes
Speaker 1: even if she may have been, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: she is a real person. And it was a fun
Speaker 1: challenge to do those with the writing where she was
Speaker 1: kind of rich and is just crazy, so it was
Speaker 1: fun to ground it. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2: Yeah? It does. And I don't know if this is
Speaker 2: an answerable question when you're doing that, Like what's kind
Speaker 2: of your mindset in that situation, Like if you're sort
Speaker 2: of inhabiting when that's from who is notorious. Everybody knows
Speaker 2: she is. There's definitely this perception of her as being
Speaker 2: this wacky Manson girl. What sort of mindset are you
Speaker 2: in when you're trying to in front of an audience
Speaker 2: sort of feel like there's more to it?
Speaker 1: Than this. Well, I'll tell you that there's two answers.
Speaker 1: The first answer is that the space I was living
Speaker 1: in on stage was I have found my calling. I
Speaker 1: know what I'm supposed to do. I know how to
Speaker 1: be useful in this world. I know that this man
Speaker 1: could save us all, and it is my mission to
Speaker 1: make sure that he's able to do that. And then
Speaker 1: the second part of your question is because you know
Speaker 1: I'm not psychotic, I'm aware there's an audience, so you
Speaker 1: are performing, so you're not constantly pretending, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: But I got a death threat shortly after because I
Speaker 1: think we did some interview or something and it came
Speaker 1: out that I communicated with her, and I ended up
Speaker 1: getting a death threat in the theater, which is my
Speaker 1: person only death threat to date, and it was really
Speaker 1: quite scary. They had cut out the article that I
Speaker 1: had been interviewed in and they had drawn blood dripping
Speaker 1: down the eyes, and it's just set all over it.
Speaker 1: You will die, Die, Die, die, You should die. You
Speaker 1: don't deserve to live. Die Die Die Mary Catherine will
Speaker 1: die over and over and over on this piece of paper.
Speaker 1: And my entrance for that show was through the audience
Speaker 1: because we all the big opening number, we have all
Speaker 1: there's a big opening number, and then there's a scene
Speaker 1: that starts, and all the characters, all these different assassins
Speaker 1: are entering in different ways, and mine happened to be
Speaker 1: through the audience, and I had to lay on the
Speaker 1: steps in front of the audience. You know, I could
Speaker 1: reach out and touch a knee easily. So I never
Speaker 1: knew did that person come see the show? Are they
Speaker 1: going to come see the show? Are they sitting somewhere
Speaker 1: were they can get to me? I mean, this is
Speaker 1: we weren't screening for weapons and guns. You know, anything
Speaker 1: could have happened. You're just wide up in theater. So
Speaker 1: once that happened, which was pretty shortly after we opened,
Speaker 1: I had both those things in my head constantly. Nothing
Speaker 1: else ever happened, So I guess it was just a fluke,
Speaker 1: but it was pretty scary.
Speaker 2: My second interview with Mary Catherine is after the break.
Speaker 2: So this is the second of the two interviews I
Speaker 2: did with Mary Catherine. So I was interested like sort
Speaker 2: of going through this project, reading the scripts, voicing some
Speaker 2: other stuff from Lynette from whether you had sort of
Speaker 2: different thoughts about her versus when you were actually playing
Speaker 2: her on Broadway in Assassins.
Speaker 3: For sure.
Speaker 1: So when I was doing Assassins, it was the eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds and the Internet was not available, which is not
Speaker 1: exactly true, but there wasn't you, I didn't have access
Speaker 1: to the kind of information that you would have access
Speaker 1: to now. And I also stopped doing a lot of
Speaker 1: research because the Assassins is sort of it's not based
Speaker 1: in history necessarily. It's more meant like I think the
Speaker 1: characters are a foundation for the writers the play and
Speaker 1: the songs to express what they were trying.
Speaker 3: To express politically.
Speaker 1: So the research I was doing was not useful, it
Speaker 1: wasn't necessary, So I sort of stopped doing a lot
Speaker 1: of research at some point. So then I'm just immersed
Speaker 1: in this version of Squeaky that we invented for the show,
Speaker 1: and so that's in my mind who she became. And
Speaker 1: then all these low many years later, here we are
Speaker 1: with all this actual, historically accurate information. So it was
Speaker 1: interesting as I was reading some of it to think
Speaker 1: about some of the scenes and how I played them
Speaker 1: and how I was speaking, like how I thought she
Speaker 1: sound in my head.
Speaker 3: I did not do historically accurate version of her.
Speaker 1: Which was I was not intending to do that, but
Speaker 1: it was really interesting to hear to think about what
Speaker 1: I had done, what the show was saying, and then
Speaker 1: to hear and read the actual words and hear her
Speaker 1: voice and like the gentleness ever, so you know, she's
Speaker 1: softer and more gentle than I played her.
Speaker 3: What was interesting if you know that.
Speaker 2: She tried to shoot Gerald Ford. People don't really know
Speaker 2: what happened in between the two. We can only find
Speaker 2: a certain amount while doing research for it. I think
Speaker 2: there's like this immediate jump from oh, she was with
Speaker 2: Manton and then she tried to kill the president, and
Speaker 2: then there was this whole period in between when you
Speaker 2: know she was just kind of a drift and sort
Speaker 2: of yeah, doing these sort of more criminal things to
Speaker 2: kind of try and support him. But it wasn't the
Speaker 2: same sort of being in sort of a hippie cult
Speaker 2: with all her sisters or however she considered them.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that Toby until this, Like, I didn't
Speaker 1: even get that far in the musical Sarah Jane and
Speaker 1: Squeaky from or the comic Relief. You know, we were
Speaker 1: doing like not pratfalls, but like fumbling with our guns
Speaker 1: because our assassination attempts weren't successful, and so we were
Speaker 1: supposed to make the audience laugh. It's actually a very
Speaker 1: dark and heavy thing that happened, and so the juxtaposition
Speaker 1: of that was really interesting too.
Speaker 3: But yeah, the.
Speaker 1: Whole how a drift she was, how lost she was
Speaker 1: the time that, how long he had been in jail
Speaker 1: at that point, But she was still devoted to him.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was all it was still about him.
Speaker 3: It still is. I think she still is.
Speaker 1: I mean when I was writing letters with her, she
Speaker 1: was still devoted to him.
Speaker 2: I mean that's one of the questions at the end,
Speaker 2: is like how much of it was what she talked about,
Speaker 2: which is saving the environment, which is actually something that's
Speaker 2: aged pretty well, I guess, versus like trying to get
Speaker 2: more people thinking about Charlie Manson in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 2: when he'd sort of fallen off the radar.
Speaker 3: What's that?
Speaker 1: Like a broken clock is right twice a day, Like
Speaker 1: a cult can have a couple of good points of view,
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah.
Speaker 2: She was smart. It wasn't like she was like incapable
Speaker 2: of sort of identifying things that were important. But you know,
Speaker 2: obviously through this haze of manson influence. So while you
Speaker 2: were doing this play, did you know much about Sarah
Speaker 2: Jane Moore? Was it just listening to your co star
Speaker 2: or whatever, playing her singing the songs whatever. Was there
Speaker 2: a sense of who she was historically or was she
Speaker 2: just a character?
Speaker 3: She was just a character.
Speaker 1: And her name is Becky Lynn Baker, by the way,
Speaker 1: and she's still a good friend of mine. And she
Speaker 1: was absolutely brilliant in that part. You know. I'm sure
Speaker 1: she did all of her research, but my job was
Speaker 1: to do my thing. And of course the two never
Speaker 1: met in real life. So the absurdity of them sitting
Speaker 1: on a park bench while Squeaky gets high, which is
Speaker 1: what one of the scenes was, or they both get high.
Speaker 1: Actually we were the comic relief in the show. So
Speaker 1: that was my take on her. So I had no
Speaker 1: idea about the FBI Underground Revolutionary.
Speaker 3: That whole life. I didn't know any of that. You
Speaker 3: educate me, Toby, that's what we're trying to do here.
Speaker 2: It's just interesting that you know the two women are
Speaker 2: the comic relief, especially when Sarah Jane Moore it seems
Speaker 2: as though the reason why she wasn't successful is because
Speaker 2: she had a gun that was defective that she got
Speaker 2: at sort of the last second and hadn't had a
Speaker 2: chance to adjust it.
Speaker 1: But in the show she fumbles and drops it and
Speaker 1: you know, it goes off in her purse. And I
Speaker 1: think your point is that it's the women who are
Speaker 1: the comic relief and the other men are taken much
Speaker 1: more seriously.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very strange.
Speaker 3: It is interesting. I never thought about that.
Speaker 2: John Hinckley seems like he'd be more comic fodder with
Speaker 2: his whole obsession with Jody Foster.
Speaker 3: And no, they took that very seriously.
Speaker 1: In the show, Squeaky and John Hinckley have a duet,
Speaker 1: so each song was done in the decade that The
Speaker 1: Assassin happened. So Stephen Sondheim wrote a song in the
Speaker 1: style of that decade, and so it's a really wide
Speaker 1: breadth of musical styles in this show. But because Squeaky
Speaker 1: and John Hinckley were in the seventies, we had this
Speaker 1: really cool like seventies ballads, one of the more popular songs
Speaker 1: on of the show. And it's dead serious. It's dead serious.
Speaker 1: All John Hinckley scenes are serious interesting.
Speaker 2: So, you know, I think people who've been listening to
Speaker 2: the podcast, are probably interested in sort of what you're
Speaker 2: up to today in your acting career.
Speaker 1: I'm in a show called Somebody Somewhere on HBO. It
Speaker 1: is my dream job. It's something that I've been so
Speaker 1: proud of, and we are about to have season three
Speaker 1: come out at the end of October. Depending on when
Speaker 1: our listeners are listening, I believe the date is October
Speaker 1: twenty seventh for season three, we need our viewers.
Speaker 3: Hopefully people will tune in.
Speaker 1: It's a really, really special show and I'm extremely proud
Speaker 1: to be part of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so people should definitely check it out. I've watched it.
Speaker 3: Did you like it?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you?
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean it's very different than the stuff that
Speaker 2: you're used to.
Speaker 3: There's no dragons, yeah.
Speaker 2: There's very few swords, no car chases. One of our
Speaker 2: producers is a huge fan.
Speaker 3: Oh good.
Speaker 2: They were super psyched when they heard you were doing this.
Speaker 2: That's the end of my interview with Mary Catherine Garrison.
Speaker 2: I want to send out a big thank you to
Speaker 2: her for being a part of this project. She was
Speaker 2: incredible to work with and her voice and personality are
Speaker 2: a huge part of rip current. Please check her out
Speaker 2: on Somebody Somewhere on HBO, I'm Toby Ball. For more
Speaker 2: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 2: wherever you listen to your favorite show. For more information
Speaker 2: on Rip Current, visit the show website at ripcurrentpod dot
Speaker 2: com