Speaker 1: I have a rant. I have a I have a
Speaker 1: kids these days style of I.
Speaker 2: Love a parenting rant.
Speaker 1: Okay, actually this isn't apparent rant, well kind of, this
Speaker 1: is this is my video game rant I. I don't
Speaker 1: play video games that much, Like I never got into it.
Speaker 1: I played computer games when I was younger, but like
Speaker 1: console games like sitting down and like playing. And I realized,
Speaker 1: like what I liked back in the day, like the
Speaker 1: only times I really enjoyed console games were GoldenEye, okay,
Speaker 1: and Mario Kart and street Fighter too, and uh, Blades
Speaker 1: of Steel was a hockey game. And what I realized
Speaker 1: is they were games you played as a group, like
Speaker 1: you sat together and you played it.
Speaker 2: With one other person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you these do not exist anymore. And I am
Speaker 1: so like, and what that's what I want to do
Speaker 1: with my son, Like I don't want to play video
Speaker 1: games where like I'm watching him play a game or
Speaker 1: he's watching me play a game. And if you look
Speaker 1: online you try and find games, there are literally only
Speaker 1: like four of what they call couch co op or
Speaker 1: couch multiplayer games.
Speaker 2: Couch co player everything online with other people.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's the thing. It's like now there's there's multiplayer games.
Speaker 1: You get to play with people, but they're all sitting
Speaker 1: on their own screens with their headsets. And maybe that's
Speaker 1: like a fun social experience, but to me it seems
Speaker 1: so isolating. So I am giving a shout out to
Speaker 1: there's there's like one game designer who I've discovered who
Speaker 1: makes great uh couch games. His name is Joseph Farre.
Speaker 2: It's like a guy, it's not really one.
Speaker 1: Guy, and he has made the greatest games. He started.
Speaker 1: He made this game called Brothers, a Tale of two sons,
Speaker 1: and you get to play Brothers, and the whole point
Speaker 1: of his games. And then he made this game called
Speaker 1: It Takes Two, which Indian I became obsessed with. You
Speaker 1: get to play in It Takes Two. You play two
Speaker 1: parents who your daughter you're getting a divorce, and your
Speaker 1: daughter cries over her dolls that her parents are getting
Speaker 1: a divorce, and the parents magically get transported into the dolls,
Speaker 1: and so then you play as the parents and the
Speaker 1: screen is split and you run around shrunken dolls and
Speaker 1: you have to try and get back to your daughter,
Speaker 1: and of course you learn about your relationship. Game No,
Speaker 1: it's incredible character development. It's hysterical. And then he has
Speaker 1: a new game that Indian and I are in the
Speaker 1: middle of the plane and we are having so much fun.
Speaker 1: It's called split fiction, and again you're two different characters.
Speaker 1: You're split and you have to work together. The gameplay
Speaker 1: keeps evolving every level, but it's just so much fun
Speaker 1: to be in a room together, laughing, experiencing a story.
Speaker 1: We have to help each other, so like if one
Speaker 1: of us is not like very good at the game,
Speaker 1: it like actually stops the game. So we have to
Speaker 1: like learn patience. I have to, like, you know, Indy
Speaker 1: will be like, dude, you're not doing a round. I'm like,
Speaker 1: hey man, I'm maybe not as good at video games
Speaker 1: as you are. And like we like engage. It's a
Speaker 1: social experience. So shout out for these games. And you
Speaker 1: want to play games with your kids, I highly recommend, like,
Speaker 1: if you want to get into video games, do this,
Speaker 1: Like find a game where you actually sit next to
Speaker 1: each other. Yeah, and you play together because and and
Speaker 1: what's great is you're not fighting each other. You're not
Speaker 1: like shooting each other like Golden Eye. You know, you're
Speaker 1: actually just playing together and you're you're laughing and you're
Speaker 1: experiencing a story. These are really good games. The other one,
Speaker 1: I would say, there's this game called Unraveled or actually
Speaker 1: Unraveled too, where you play two little yarn people and
Speaker 1: you just it's a it's the most calming, beautiful game.
Speaker 1: There's no dialogue, there's just beautiful music and you're these
Speaker 1: little yarn people and you help each other swing from
Speaker 1: like trees and you have to like go through this
Speaker 1: world like swinging each other and it is so soothing
Speaker 1: and Indian and I have played this game like three
Speaker 1: times start to finish because we'll just sit there and like,
Speaker 1: uh laugh and like have these moments. It's so fun.
Speaker 1: So couch co op games highly recommend. I wish there
Speaker 1: were more of them because I.
Speaker 3: Think we all played a great one when we were dating,
Speaker 3: called A Way Out.
Speaker 1: What's that?
Speaker 2: It's a game where you are are you brothers in it? Jensen?
Speaker 2: Are you just friends? I think you're friends?
Speaker 3: Okay, you're friends, but maybe you're in jail and you
Speaker 3: have to break out of jail together and it's the
Speaker 3: two of you up against everybody else and it's what
Speaker 3: we had so much fun. So oh yeah, we played
Speaker 3: it for a long time. Untill we beat the game.
Speaker 1: There has to be like, there should be more games
Speaker 1: like that right now.
Speaker 2: It kind of really is.
Speaker 1: It was a story together. It's so fun.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 2: Also, Danielle, when we first started dating, my friend Justin,
Speaker 2: shout out to Justin and I stayed up all night
Speaker 2: long playing Until Dawn, which was that like horror game
Speaker 2: that we loved.
Speaker 1: Yes, I remember I'm a movie, but that was really
Speaker 1: fun too.
Speaker 3: So there's another one for you to check out, right
Speaker 3: that's too horror? Yeah, so maybe, but A Way Out
Speaker 3: wasn't horror, but it is. You know, you're getting your
Speaker 3: breaking out of jail. There's a jail break and you
Speaker 3: know it's Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also, so much did you finish Brothers because I don't
Speaker 1: want to tell you what happens. Oh, it's pretty tragic.
Speaker 1: And Indy was like devastating. He was like emotional. He
Speaker 1: was like he was like really sad about it, and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't realize this game was going to get this emotional.
Speaker 1: But that's what I like about all because also it
Speaker 1: takes two you know, it's kind of grown up. But Indy,
Speaker 1: because you're a doll, but like, you know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like it's It was a really cool way for him
Speaker 1: to get into a lot of sophisticated feelings. Like it
Speaker 1: was like, you know, we're just playing a game, but
Speaker 1: we also he was like, oh, the parents are going
Speaker 1: to get back together and the daughter is sad because
Speaker 1: they're going to the divorce. It was like we were
Speaker 1: able to like actually have conversations and it was, man,
Speaker 1: it's so fun, like, yeah.
Speaker 2: Well this, uh.
Speaker 3: We recently started playing a wrestling game with Adler. It's
Speaker 3: not it's not a story based game, but it is
Speaker 3: a game where two players. You don't have to play
Speaker 3: with two players, like he can play against the computer
Speaker 3: if he wants to, but it's it is a game
Speaker 3: where Jensen and Adler or Adler and I can play
Speaker 3: against each other.
Speaker 1: I want to play. I want to play.
Speaker 3: Ww E two K twenty five ww two K twenty five.
Speaker 1: Okay, So and you get to play real wrestlers, like
Speaker 1: real characters from.
Speaker 3: Yes now that we are WrestleMania. Now he's gonna have
Speaker 3: some expertise in it. I think he's really gonna like it.
Speaker 3: We should also let all of our dear listeners know
Speaker 3: mister Wilfredell is not joining us for today's episode.
Speaker 2: He had a previous.
Speaker 3: Commitment he needed to do, and so we we are.
Speaker 3: We miss him, but it's a he probably would have
Speaker 3: been a a good person to ask about video games today,
Speaker 3: although I don't know that he plays modern games.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think he does anymore. Welcome to Pod
Speaker 2: meets World. I'm Danielle Fischel, I'm right strong, and there's
Speaker 2: no seat four C.
Speaker 3: As the duo of pro wrestling experts we now are,
Speaker 3: it is easy to compare this week's guest to the
Speaker 3: infamous barbershop incident of nineteen ninety one with Brutus the Barber,
Speaker 3: Beefcake and the Rockers Sean Michaels and Marty Jeannetti.
Speaker 2: You of course know what I'm talking about. Writer.
Speaker 3: You see, the Rockers were the most promising young tag
Speaker 3: team in the then WWF. They were former champs, undeniable babyfaces,
Speaker 3: but they were never seen apart, always seen as a team.
Speaker 3: But it was on the set of this barber shop
Speaker 3: interview segment where that all changed. Shawn Michaels, signaling the
Speaker 3: duo's breakup and the start of his own legendary heartbreak
Speaker 3: kid character turned on his best friend Marty super kicking
Speaker 3: him through a plate glass window.
Speaker 2: Now do we see this week's.
Speaker 3: Guest turning on her internationally beloved ninety eight year old
Speaker 3: husband and sending him through plate glass No, but we
Speaker 3: are ready for her Shawn Michael's close up. With an
Speaker 3: acting career that spans seven decades, our guest has done
Speaker 3: it all, from her early work in daytime dramas to
Speaker 3: roles in classic TV series like Little House on the Prairie,
Speaker 3: Golden Girls.
Speaker 2: And Home Improvement.
Speaker 3: She became a go to actor when you needed a
Speaker 3: real pro, and that resulted in two Emmy wins for
Speaker 3: Best Supporting Actress in a Drama For Saint Elsewhere, where
Speaker 3: she played missus Ellen Craig alongside her real life husband
Speaker 3: William Daniels, known to this podcast as mister Feenie. And
Speaker 3: then she join us all on Boy Meets World, starting
Speaker 3: in season five and culminating in four episodes of season
Speaker 3: six as the Penbrook Dean Lila Bolander. She's also an author,
Speaker 3: a mother, a grandmother.
Speaker 2: An icon.
Speaker 3: She is the Sean Michaels of Boy Meets World. This week,
Speaker 3: we are talking to Bonnie Bartlett. Yeah, there you're there, Bonnie.
Speaker 4: It's so lighter enough, like can you see me?
Speaker 2: I can see you. You look fabulous as always.
Speaker 4: I'm young old.
Speaker 2: We're so sorry. Will is not here today.
Speaker 3: He had an appointment with his wife that he couldn't miss,
Speaker 3: and so he's not joining us for this episode. It's
Speaker 3: just going to be writer and I today to talk
Speaker 3: with you.
Speaker 5: You know, I got a note from Will's father. He's
Speaker 5: done some legal work for me, even in Canada.
Speaker 2: So he got.
Speaker 5: A lovely birthday, Bill birthday, and nice to his Father's
Speaker 5: a lovely.
Speaker 3: Guy, isn't he thought the Captain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's the best.
Speaker 3: So great, well, Bonnie, We are so happy to have
Speaker 3: you back on our podcast, this time by yourself, so
Speaker 3: we can focus on only you for season six and
Speaker 3: the emergence of Dean Lila Bolinger. Right, so let's start
Speaker 3: with your origin story. When did you first find yourself
Speaker 3: wanting to be an actor?
Speaker 5: I think I was born that way. I was really
Speaker 5: born that way. I was imitating all of the May
Speaker 5: West and all those blondes, you know, the movies, and
Speaker 5: I was very busy imitating them, entertaining people with stories,
Speaker 5: you know, and stuff like that. And I my father
Speaker 5: had been an actor. We just we watched stuff together
Speaker 5: on we listened rather radio to all the LUNs and
Speaker 5: Helen Hayes.
Speaker 4: And all those wonderful people. And I was there from
Speaker 4: the start. I can't remember when.
Speaker 5: I didn't want to be an actress, but I wanted
Speaker 5: to go to New York. I didn't want to be
Speaker 5: a movie actress. I wanted to be in New York.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, you want to do stage?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I want to be on the stage.
Speaker 1: How did you find out you were any good? Did
Speaker 1: you get to do like theater school in school?
Speaker 5: Because I think it was in junior high school, the
Speaker 5: beginning of junior high school.
Speaker 4: And we had a little class of some kind.
Speaker 5: And and I read from I did I'm a good.
Speaker 3: Girl, I am my fair lady.
Speaker 5: Yes, but the play, the play that it came from,
Speaker 5: was and I did the whole play for them and
Speaker 5: the class.
Speaker 4: It wasn't meant to be a performance. It turned out
Speaker 4: to be a performance.
Speaker 5: They all laughed, they loved it and everybody, and I thought,
Speaker 5: oh boy, this is neat.
Speaker 4: And then I started to do any play that was around.
Speaker 3: Was your father supportive of you following in his footsteps?
Speaker 2: Or did he?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Did he warn you about all the hardships.
Speaker 4: Oh I knew about all that. Yeah, I knew about
Speaker 4: all that.
Speaker 5: But he he really wanted me to just be a
Speaker 5: wife and mother. He did a teacher, want me to
Speaker 5: be a teacher, and he didn't want me to go
Speaker 5: into the business. And but I did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you did it anyway.
Speaker 5: He didn't want me to go to New York when
Speaker 5: I was eighteen, so I went to Northwestern, Okay, which
Speaker 5: was good because that's where I met Bill Yes and
Speaker 5: did a lot of bit wonderful plays there and just.
Speaker 1: Did you have to audition to get into Northwestern?
Speaker 4: At Northwestern did you audition?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Oh yeah, yeah, well.
Speaker 4: You had to do audition as a matter of fact.
Speaker 5: My freshman year, well, first of all, we did a
Speaker 5: play where you did a little workshop thing that everybody
Speaker 5: that the famous acting teacher said, wow, that's an actress.
Speaker 5: And then I got the lead in a play called
Speaker 5: Dark in the Moon, played Barbara Allen, and I got
Speaker 5: the I won all the awards and it.
Speaker 4: Was perfect part for me. At that time. I was
Speaker 4: just it was a great little show.
Speaker 5: So I won the fresh even though I was a freshman,
Speaker 5: I won the Acting award, which is very unusual.
Speaker 4: Wow, you know, Charlotte Ray was.
Speaker 5: There and she she was doing a wonderful thing, and
Speaker 5: she said, ah, you beat me, you got the.
Speaker 4: She was a.
Speaker 5: Senior and she always Charlotte and I are good friends.
Speaker 5: But I mean she's gone now, but she always had
Speaker 5: a little bit of a space there because yeah, I
Speaker 5: beat her or something.
Speaker 4: You know, we will.
Speaker 5: We we're an all competitive but good friends, good friend.
Speaker 4: She was wonderful.
Speaker 3: When you moved to New York, you found yourself studying
Speaker 3: with the legendary Lee Strasburg when you moved. When you
Speaker 3: moved there, So for listeners who don't know about that method,
Speaker 3: what did you take away from studying with him?
Speaker 5: Well, I was with him for so long, and I
Speaker 5: was also his personal friends of the family and so forth.
Speaker 4: When I get away from him, pro and con Yeah.
Speaker 5: He could be very destructive to an actor, or he
Speaker 5: could be amazingly constructive.
Speaker 4: It depended how. I don't know what he was. He
Speaker 4: had an amazing.
Speaker 5: Ability to help you discover your problems as an actor
Speaker 5: and help people that.
Speaker 4: It was very intuitive and very amazing with Bill.
Speaker 5: Bill always says, because Bill I dragged him into later
Speaker 5: then he always said, Strasburg said to me, I don't
Speaker 5: know what to do with you.
Speaker 4: I look at you, and I don't know what to
Speaker 4: do with you. Let's find out who you are.
Speaker 5: And that was extremely helpful to Bill, who had all
Speaker 5: the early you know, fake things that they teach little kids.
Speaker 5: You know, he was performing, and so he learned to
Speaker 5: be very fake because that's what they did in those
Speaker 5: days and right, so that even at Northwestern he had
Speaker 5: he still had some of that. He was a wonderful
Speaker 5: character actor Bill. At at Northwestern his best parts were
Speaker 5: old men.
Speaker 4: He was wonderful at that.
Speaker 5: But anyway, so Strasburg, I would say, helped Bill enormously in.
Speaker 4: A very quick time, very quick time. With me.
Speaker 5: I had to go through a lot of emotional problems
Speaker 5: I had to go through. I was also in therapy
Speaker 5: at the same time, so they helped.
Speaker 4: The therapy and Lee. The therapy and Lee.
Speaker 5: It helped, painful, sometimes hurt, hurting. He could hurt me,
Speaker 5: but he also was trying to help me get rid
Speaker 5: of a lot of problems that I had with my
Speaker 5: father and so forth.
Speaker 3: What was your first TV role? What was the first
Speaker 3: job you booked on TV?
Speaker 5: It was on a Pilco playhouse and I played the part.
Speaker 4: It was a nice part, and.
Speaker 5: I remember I was on a bus and having conversations with.
Speaker 4: People on a bus.
Speaker 5: Okay, and my whole family around the country turned into
Speaker 5: Philco that night. And now the first really good part
Speaker 5: that I had. I played a lot of little stuff.
Speaker 4: Philco. We had Robert Montgomery Presents, We had.
Speaker 5: All those shows then, and I did a lot of
Speaker 5: little stuff on that, But that Philco was the first that.
Speaker 5: And then later I got a lead on a soap
Speaker 5: opera and that was too much work.
Speaker 2: Was that called Love of Life? In nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 4: Love of Life?
Speaker 1: Wow? There was that a New York or was that in.
Speaker 4: La New York, New York?
Speaker 5: And it was very well paid and Bill wasn't making
Speaker 5: any money, so we could certainly use that money. It
Speaker 5: bought us the apartment. And but you know, it's no,
Speaker 5: it's not good acting. It's not acting.
Speaker 4: You don't have any time.
Speaker 2: I'm just going to say, how could how could it
Speaker 2: be good?
Speaker 3: When you're doing multiple episodes in a day or in
Speaker 3: a week, it's no good.
Speaker 5: You just do it, you know, and you you get facile,
Speaker 5: very facile. And finally they brought in Teleprice. I couldn't
Speaker 5: use teleprompters.
Speaker 4: It just only time I could use tell.
Speaker 5: If I had a telephone conversation, I could use the
Speaker 5: teleprompter because read it off there.
Speaker 4: And nobody would know.
Speaker 1: Right, I can't do that.
Speaker 5: But some of the men that I worked with use teleprompters.
Speaker 5: I don't know how they did it, but you know
Speaker 5: they were I don't know how they did it, but
Speaker 5: they did, and I guess it didn't. It wasn't bad.
Speaker 1: So were you miserable the whole time you were doing
Speaker 1: the soap opera? Were you just like waiting to get
Speaker 1: off of it?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I needed the money, but it doesn't At
Speaker 5: that time, really good actors in the theater like to
Speaker 5: be on a soap, but they didn't want to sign
Speaker 5: a contract. You know what I mean that we would
Speaker 5: have wonderful actors who would come in to do a week,
Speaker 5: pick up some money. They would come in to pick
Speaker 5: up some money, but then they their theater was the
Speaker 5: main thing. So we had some one especially character people,
Speaker 5: wonderful character people who would come along for a week
Speaker 5: or a little short timent.
Speaker 4: No contracts.
Speaker 5: See, And when I left the soap, I said, I'll
Speaker 5: do a soap, and I think I did a couple
Speaker 5: after that, but I said, no contract, no contract.
Speaker 2: So how many years were you on Love of Life?
Speaker 4: Three and a half, three and a half too much,
Speaker 4: too long?
Speaker 3: And then on a larger nighttime TV scale, you played
Speaker 3: Gray Snider Edwards on the incredibly popular Little House on
Speaker 3: the Prairie.
Speaker 5: When I came to New York because many years later, yes,
Speaker 5: I didn't work because I had the two little boys,
Speaker 5: and I did some theater.
Speaker 4: But when we came to.
Speaker 5: New York, I mean California, Bill's agents because Bill was
Speaker 5: by that time, he was working a lot making all
Speaker 5: these interesting movies. Yeah, And his agent sent me over
Speaker 5: to Michael and he said, it's just a general appointment.
Speaker 5: But as it turned out, he hired me that day.
Speaker 5: He met me and he said, I've got a part
Speaker 5: for you and starts, and I did it in the
Speaker 5: next couple of days and turned into Grace. She was
Speaker 5: not she was never a.
Speaker 2: Michael Landon You're talking.
Speaker 5: To Michael, Yeah, nice guy, really nice guy. And and
Speaker 5: he he hired me for that, and I was always
Speaker 5: on the show. I never had a contract, which was
Speaker 5: fine with me, but I didn't know that that was
Speaker 5: a good thing in Hollywood. Yeah right, I didn't know
Speaker 5: that it makes a difference in the money.
Speaker 4: But I was happy. I was so happy to do
Speaker 4: that show. I loved the part.
Speaker 3: And so what year was that that you because you
Speaker 3: said you had two small kids. I would love to
Speaker 3: talk to you about the decision you made and when
Speaker 3: it was When did you have your first child? And
Speaker 3: and and what was that you decided to take some
Speaker 3: time off from work, and what was that like for you.
Speaker 5: It was the best time of my life. I just
Speaker 5: loved it. I didn't miss acting. I forgot that I
Speaker 5: was an actress. I didn't miss it at all. It
Speaker 5: was just two boys that you know, I had lost
Speaker 5: a baby, and so maybe maybe that's why I treasured
Speaker 5: it more because I lost a son right after birth,
Speaker 5: and I've had a hard time getting pregnant ten years
Speaker 5: before I got pregnant the first time.
Speaker 4: And I said, the doctor said, oh.
Speaker 5: This was just a mistake, and it'll you won't you'll
Speaker 5: get pregnant. I said, no, I won't. If I didn't
Speaker 5: get pregnant for ten years, this is the first.
Speaker 4: Time it's not going to happen.
Speaker 5: I was in the mid thirties and so I said, no,
Speaker 5: we'll They said, we'll wait. I said, I waited a
Speaker 5: little while, and then we adopted. I always I'm good
Speaker 5: at making the right choices, you know, when something happens,
Speaker 5: and that I knew, I knew what I wanted and
Speaker 5: we got two wonderful boys.
Speaker 3: And so how long did you take off of work?
Speaker 3: And was it an adjustment for you?
Speaker 4: Ten years? It was like I was in.
Speaker 5: I did a couple of little things. I ran down
Speaker 5: to to do a show in Florida just overnight that
Speaker 5: great actor Jackie Gleeson.
Speaker 4: I went down.
Speaker 5: I did one of his shows quickly, and I during
Speaker 5: the time when they were I did a play. I
Speaker 5: went out to do Lanford Wilson's first play and it
Speaker 5: was with Charlie Derning and Chris Walking and they were marvelous.
Speaker 5: It was a wonderful experience. But I missed the kids.
Speaker 5: I would get on a bus and come home over,
Speaker 5: you know, just to be able to get them up
Speaker 5: in the morning and off, you know, brek get them
Speaker 5: off in the morning to school, and then get on
Speaker 5: a bus back back to Buffalo or wherever we were.
Speaker 5: We were out of town somewhere, and I said, and
Speaker 5: my son. Robie hates me to tell this story, but
Speaker 5: I would come in and to their beds if they
Speaker 5: were just going to better I say, he said, Mama.
Speaker 1: Where were you like this?
Speaker 4: To Mama, where did you go?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that's all.
Speaker 4: I needed, That's all I needed, and I stopped.
Speaker 5: I just stopped, and I spent time going to school
Speaker 5: with them and doing all the things at school. I
Speaker 5: actually lived at their schools. And Michael was very independent,
Speaker 5: even as a six year old, very independent in New
Speaker 5: York at that time.
Speaker 4: Do you believe it? He could come out of the apartment,
Speaker 4: go downstairs, go across the street, take a bus down there,
Speaker 4: take another bus all the way to the east side,
Speaker 4: and then walk to school.
Speaker 5: You couldn't do that today. And he was great. He
Speaker 5: was a big boy too, so he was great, very
Speaker 5: very independent. But he now he loves la he loves living.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so getting back to a little house on the prairie.
Speaker 2: Did you enjoy working on that show?
Speaker 4: It was pure pleasure.
Speaker 5: I mean, I have been so lucky that I have
Speaker 5: rare other than the soap. I have never been in
Speaker 5: a movie or play or anything that I didn't enjoy.
Speaker 4: And I liked all the people and it was just wonderful.
Speaker 4: I've been blessed, blessed with wonderful directors, just delightful, delightful.
Speaker 4: My career has been delightful.
Speaker 3: You have appeared on so many classic TV shows, Gun Smoke,
Speaker 3: The Patty Duke Show.
Speaker 2: Heart to Heart.
Speaker 3: Did it feel like you were making it in Hollywood?
Speaker 2: Were you?
Speaker 5: I never thought of that. I never thought of being
Speaker 5: nor did Bill. But we just liked the work. Yeah,
Speaker 5: you know, we didn't have a career. We wanted to work.
Speaker 5: We wanted to make enough money to send our kids
Speaker 5: to school.
Speaker 4: And things like that. There was no.
Speaker 5: Thought at that time people went into the business just
Speaker 5: to work. I don't think they went into the business
Speaker 5: to become stars.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not the reason for it.
Speaker 5: I think a lot, you know, a lot of people
Speaker 5: now kind of jumped the gun.
Speaker 4: That's fine.
Speaker 5: That's the way the world is because everything changes. As
Speaker 5: we know, everything changes. So but we we have really
Speaker 5: been blessed.
Speaker 2: We really have so sweet.
Speaker 1: Did you even when you even when you were winning
Speaker 1: Emmys for Saint Elsewhere, you guys weren't like, oh we've arrived,
Speaker 1: like we have definitely established never.
Speaker 5: Felt that, you know, winning an award is nice, but
Speaker 5: it doesn't get you anywhere really except that forever you
Speaker 5: will be described as an Emmy winning activate right, you
Speaker 5: will be described as a or or Oscar winning if
Speaker 5: it were an oscar.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: Yes, that comes with the territory. It's good on your resume.
Speaker 5: It is good on your resume, but it doesn't who
Speaker 5: whip you into a lot of people who have won
Speaker 5: Oscars who've disappeared.
Speaker 3: You know, well, my as writer mentioned in nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 3: you then booked the job of a lifetime, Ellen Craig
Speaker 3: on Saint Elsewhere, a role that would bring you two
Speaker 3: Emmy Awards for Best Supporting Actress and a Drama Series.
Speaker 2: Did you always know that that character was special?
Speaker 5: I knew that the show was special. I knew that
Speaker 5: the writing was extraordinary, and I knew. They just brought
Speaker 5: me on to play with Bill for a brief moment
Speaker 5: and they picked up on it, and then they wrote
Speaker 5: and wrote and wrote for us.
Speaker 4: They all said that we.
Speaker 5: Reminded them of their parents in many ways, you know,
Speaker 5: So they kind of wrote.
Speaker 4: That stuff, and uh, we just it just flowed. It
Speaker 4: just came out.
Speaker 5: We never worked at it, We never rehearsed there's a
Speaker 5: place where you didn't have to rehearse or very little.
Speaker 5: We never rehearsed at home or anything. He learns lines
Speaker 5: one way. I learned him another.
Speaker 2: You know, so, uh, how do you how do you
Speaker 2: learn lines?
Speaker 5: I just learned them in a block. I learned to
Speaker 5: do that in the soap. Okay, I learned him in
Speaker 5: a block. Bill learns some and and I might, I
Speaker 5: might change a little bit, and it's okay, you know,
Speaker 5: but I but I learned it in a in a block,
Speaker 5: a paragraph at a time. And he learns them by
Speaker 5: learning lines, by the pool, learning lines. And he had
Speaker 5: a lot of scientific stuff. Bill has always been a
Speaker 5: lawyer or a doctor. Some he just learns them by
Speaker 5: going over them and learning them.
Speaker 4: That's what he does.
Speaker 5: I can learn them in my head, right, I don't
Speaker 5: as a matter of fact, I don't like to go.
Speaker 4: Over them too much.
Speaker 1: I'm very curious because you know, my wife is an actor,
Speaker 1: and we met acting and but we meet a lot
Speaker 1: of people who, you know, they couldn't imagine two actors
Speaker 1: being together. What was it like for you guys? Did
Speaker 1: you ever?
Speaker 4: Did you?
Speaker 1: I mean you say you didn't learn lines together? Could
Speaker 1: you give each other notes, could you give each other?
Speaker 4: Fee each other very much? Not so much?
Speaker 5: Well, there was a play where she was very special.
Speaker 5: She was very Anyway, he came up and he watched
Speaker 5: the rehearsal. He said, where'd you get the funny voice? Well,
Speaker 5: I knew Tom right then. That's all he had to say.
Speaker 5: And I knew myself. In other words, I was imitating her,
Speaker 5: imitating the actress who had been done the play in
Speaker 5: the first place, because I was getting stuck, and that's
Speaker 5: all he had to say, where'd you get the funny voice?
Speaker 4: And then I knew right away? But I was on
Speaker 4: the wrong truck. Start.
Speaker 1: I do this my wife Alex, we do this all
Speaker 1: the time, and it's it's actually the voice is the
Speaker 1: main thing. Like when she is insecure about an audition,
Speaker 1: I can always tell because I'm like, what's you're doing?
Speaker 1: The voice thing? It's like she goes a little too high,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, you don't need to do that, make
Speaker 1: it yours. And then she and once in the second
Speaker 1: I say, she's like okay, and then it's a million
Speaker 1: times better. But it's like whenever she's just a little off,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, it's your director.
Speaker 4: La.
Speaker 1: I don't even know if most people would know it
Speaker 1: as well, you know, but it's like I know her
Speaker 1: so well and I know exactly that tick, and I
Speaker 1: could just like, no, you're going up, you're going up,
Speaker 1: You're doing your thing, and then she's relaxes and it's right, and.
Speaker 5: I could your playing to the house, you're playing to
Speaker 5: the balcony. And then he come down and he would
Speaker 5: get back. One time he was doing h one floor
Speaker 5: over the Cuckoo's List, And when I went out town
Speaker 5: to see him and he said, what do you think?
Speaker 4: He said, it's like you don't want to be a
Speaker 4: the stage. And that was true.
Speaker 6: He didn't want to be there, Douglas and the part
Speaker 6: he didn't like, and he didn't like and he you know,
Speaker 6: so he immediately knew what I meant because he didn't
Speaker 6: want to be on the stage, right.
Speaker 5: But he didn't know that. Still, I said, it looks
Speaker 5: like you don't want to be on the stage.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: And then he was like, you know, I'm not enjoying this.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 3: There were so many heavy hitters on Saint Elsewhere, so
Speaker 3: much talent, so much success. With something like that, did
Speaker 3: you run into a lot of egos? Or does everyone
Speaker 3: kind of wrangle it in because they've got great material.
Speaker 4: Everybody wanted to be on the show. He called the producer.
Speaker 5: Very prominent actors would call the producer and say, please
Speaker 5: put me on the show, you know, try to find
Speaker 5: something for me because they all everybody knew that it
Speaker 5: was so well written. Yeah, it was so well produced.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, and all these wonderful actors were
Speaker 5: on it. So what we had Denzel was just a
Speaker 5: kind of beginning movie career, so he kind of had
Speaker 5: the job, but he was doing other things too. But
Speaker 5: he it was a paycheck for him, you know, because
Speaker 5: he he was always getting released to do a movie
Speaker 5: or something, and you know, the producer was wonderful with him.
Speaker 5: So but yet it gave him a paycheck to raise
Speaker 5: his family. So let's see. I know, Oh, Betty White
Speaker 5: asked to be on the show, and so they wrote
Speaker 5: something and she was very nervous, just nervous because it
Speaker 5: wasn't funny, you know, Betty.
Speaker 4: But she did a good job. But she said, I've
Speaker 4: never been so nervous in my life.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's so crazy nervous. And you know, Betty boy, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, I mean, how could she be nervous.
Speaker 2: I know, you'd think nothing would make her nervous, but.
Speaker 4: After all she'd done.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I knew her in New York when she was
Speaker 5: doing live commercials and she was wonderful. And I think
Speaker 5: that's the hardest thing in the world to do live commercial.
Speaker 1: I don't even what is a live commercial?
Speaker 4: What is that? A live commercial? Spokesman? And you just
Speaker 4: come on and you.
Speaker 2: Have a little uh QVC like QVC.
Speaker 5: No, But I mean you're you're you're pumping a product
Speaker 5: and you're talking and you talk.
Speaker 4: For a minute or two or whatever it is. It's
Speaker 4: all you talking about the product. And it's the hardest
Speaker 4: thing in the world.
Speaker 5: I think, yeah, because you're not a character, you know,
Speaker 5: but some people Betty, Betty was great at that.
Speaker 4: But Betty could do that.
Speaker 5: She would go out to the audience, you know, and
Speaker 5: talk to them and all of that. And I had
Speaker 5: a friend Georgia Ane Johnson, a wonderful actress who's no
Speaker 5: longer with.
Speaker 4: Us either, but she could do those.
Speaker 5: She made a lot of money in New York doing
Speaker 5: those long live commercials. Woo hard. I was good at it.
Speaker 5: I had to do a couple in Woo It was
Speaker 5: a challenge.
Speaker 1: What what what are you really good at? What has
Speaker 1: always been like your specialty? Is there a certain type.
Speaker 5: Of le being a good character. I'm a character actress.
Speaker 5: I go into it. The whole point is not to
Speaker 5: be me. I have to learn how to well, that's
Speaker 5: what Strasberg is all about. You learn. You have to
Speaker 5: be you, but you want to be somebody else. But
Speaker 5: you have to be you first, and then you take
Speaker 5: on all the other character things. But don't you have
Speaker 5: to have you? Like you talked to your to your wife.
Speaker 1: You have to find it. They have to make it
Speaker 1: your version of humanity.
Speaker 5: Your humanity has to be there, right, you know, no
Speaker 5: matter what the character is. But for me, I love
Speaker 5: see jumping into another person's skin.
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I never wanted to be, you know what, a star,
Speaker 5: a movie star now that even though I used to
Speaker 5: imitate them all and I love them all.
Speaker 4: Honey girls, Jean Harlow, people like that.
Speaker 5: I don't you don't even know the names, but I
Speaker 5: would imitate all, you know, very sexy stuff. Yes, come
Speaker 5: out and see me sometime.
Speaker 4: You know, when I was a little girl, see me.
Speaker 4: Sometimes I would imitate them all because.
Speaker 1: You were also part of a generation that really shifted acting.
Speaker 1: I mean, like from what from those movie stars that
Speaker 1: you were imitating that you know, they were doing very
Speaker 1: different things than what you your generation started doing, especially
Speaker 1: in like the sixties and seventies, Like I feel like,
Speaker 1: I mean, were you aware of what was happening and
Speaker 1: did you feel like were you proud of what you
Speaker 1: were doing and able to see these other actors around
Speaker 1: you making conscious choices and changing the way actors act?
Speaker 5: Yes, I think I learned from all of the wonderful actors.
Speaker 5: One of the first play I saw in New York
Speaker 5: was Julie Harris in Member of the Wedding. Was a
Speaker 5: great lesson in acting because she was playing a fourteen
Speaker 5: year old girl. But it was Julie, you know, and
Speaker 5: she was wonderful, and everything that she would do after
Speaker 5: that was anything I saw her in. I thought she
Speaker 5: was wonderful all the Oh, of course, the greatest of
Speaker 5: all Zudah Hagen, I mean you could, of course she taught.
Speaker 5: I never studied with her. I'm sorry I didn't, but
Speaker 5: I never did. But she I can't tell you how
Speaker 5: many amazing performances she did, totally different, totally different in
Speaker 5: one play she would be the quiet wife, but she
Speaker 5: was so strong on the stage that she was always thinking.
Speaker 5: And you read her.
Speaker 1: Thoughts right Virginia Wolf? Right, she was the first. Who's
Speaker 1: who's afraid of Virginia Wolf? Wasn't she?
Speaker 4: She was?
Speaker 1: Wasn't she Who's afraid of Virginia Wolf? She was the first?
Speaker 1: Oh great she originated it, right, But that's so.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's the uh. Yeah, she was absolutely superb. Huh yeah,
Speaker 5: really superb. I mean, I don't mean to disparage it,
Speaker 5: but if you saw to see Elizabeth Taylor in.
Speaker 1: That part, is nothing compared to what she was doing
Speaker 1: to the play.
Speaker 5: I mean, she was good, she did a good job
Speaker 5: for her, she did a job, but none of the depth.
Speaker 4: Udah Hagen was superb actress.
Speaker 3: Our audience will also recognize you as Mary Anne Benedict.
Speaker 2: In the movie Twins.
Speaker 3: You played the mother of Julius and Vincent, the mother
Speaker 3: of unlikely twins played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Speaker 2: And Danny DeVito.
Speaker 3: Please tell us everything you remember about working with the
Speaker 3: two of them.
Speaker 4: But they were darling, both of them in different ways.
Speaker 5: I liked Arnold a lot, and Arnold's a very smart guy,
Speaker 5: smart guy, and at one point I said to it.
Speaker 5: I looked at him and I said, you know, I
Speaker 5: could be your mother. I could be your mother. He said,
Speaker 5: my mother, my lover.
Speaker 3: The flirt.
Speaker 5: Very flirtatious and Danny I knew, of course, from a
Speaker 5: lot of television, so I sort of knew about him.
Speaker 4: But when I went to the reading and I saw this.
Speaker 5: Guy and clothes that didn't fit him, the first you
Speaker 5: out what is this all about?
Speaker 4: I don't want to do this movie.
Speaker 5: And I made a huge mistake, almost left the movie,
Speaker 5: but my agent made me go to see the director
Speaker 5: and he said.
Speaker 4: Well, what do you what? What's the matter? What? What
Speaker 4: don't you like about this?
Speaker 5: I said, well, and I went through the whole thing
Speaker 5: and I said there should be something here, so there
Speaker 5: should be something and then if she could do And
Speaker 5: then he said, well, I'll.
Speaker 4: Tell you what I'm going to do, Bonnie.
Speaker 5: I can't make you do this movie, but I'm going
Speaker 5: to use all of your suggestions.
Speaker 4: And you want you to know that, Wow, how do
Speaker 4: you leave?
Speaker 1: That?
Speaker 4: You don't you stay? You stay? I don't know got
Speaker 4: into me.
Speaker 5: I just I didn't realize the I probably am not
Speaker 5: that good at comedy.
Speaker 4: So I didn't realize.
Speaker 5: The h how could this could be? I didn't realize
Speaker 5: it at all, and I was very surprised. And after
Speaker 5: I went to a screening afterwards and Arnold was there
Speaker 5: with his wife, who was Kennedy. I said to her,
Speaker 5: aren't you proud of him? And she said, oh, yes,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 4: He said, should I go to New York and study
Speaker 4: and be an actor?
Speaker 5: I said, no, no instincts for an actor. Just do
Speaker 5: what you're doing. Just keep going on track, So don't
Speaker 5: worry about it. Don't don't don't worry about being a
Speaker 5: theater actor. You don't want to do that.
Speaker 3: And others will remember you as Barbara Thorndyke on The
Speaker 3: Golden Girls.
Speaker 5: That was so much fun, you know. That was a
Speaker 5: little part that I took that. I thought, oh, it
Speaker 5: has been amazing people.
Speaker 3: I know it's only you only appeared in one episode,
Speaker 3: but it is a fan favorite.
Speaker 4: It is, and.
Speaker 5: It's because I was such a nice you know what
Speaker 5: I mean, I was like such a terrible I that
Speaker 5: was my mother. I based that whole character on my mother.
Speaker 5: I've made that, you know, and not thinking.
Speaker 4: That this is a terrible person at all. She was.
Speaker 5: She would smile and say something like that, smile say
Speaker 5: I'm so sorry you can't come right right.
Speaker 4: I mean she would do that.
Speaker 5: She could do that in a minute, be anti semitic,
Speaker 5: but be very sweet about it. You know, she'd be
Speaker 5: very sweet about it.
Speaker 3: After you did that role, did anybody ever mistake you
Speaker 3: for that character? Like, did you ever feel like people
Speaker 3: would meet you and then think of you as.
Speaker 2: Kind of being a villain?
Speaker 4: I don't think so.
Speaker 2: Okay, so I don't think so.
Speaker 5: But I was surprised at how it's the most watch
Speaker 5: of the Golden Girls shows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a real fan favorite. You're it's a fan.
Speaker 4: Favorite, and I'm delighted. But I was surprised. Yes, I
Speaker 4: was surprised.
Speaker 5: When I went out to the I had been on
Speaker 5: Saint Elsewhere, so I want to well the beginning of
Speaker 5: the show and the audience and the audience, Oh there's.
Speaker 4: Ellen Craig, you know one day Ellen Craig.
Speaker 5: And then after the show and I walked out and
Speaker 5: they booed, you knew.
Speaker 4: You got them?
Speaker 5: That's great, And I, oh, Bill said, don't if if
Speaker 5: you want to play anti so many characters, that's what
Speaker 5: you're gonna get. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's so cool.
Speaker 4: It's great. It's great that the audience is so percested.
Speaker 1: You got them.
Speaker 5: Bill always says that the audiences will tell you what
Speaker 5: you got.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So that's like you guys, uh and you guys and
Speaker 5: mister Feenie, that's why you guys have this huge audience
Speaker 5: and it goes on and on because it's the audience
Speaker 5: that tells you what they like and onto and fortunate.
Speaker 4: You're fortunate as we have been.
Speaker 2: We really are.
Speaker 3: Do you remember any roles you almost got and then
Speaker 3: were so bummed about, Like any movies or TV shows
Speaker 3: that feel like the ones that got away?
Speaker 4: Well, there was a Blay.
Speaker 5: We're gonna not remember the name, but there was a
Speaker 5: play in New York that I was up for and
Speaker 5: I thought I got and they they done away ended
Speaker 5: up doing it and it took her to Hollywood and
Speaker 5: it was a part I surely did want and she
Speaker 5: was wonderful.
Speaker 4: And I didn't get to do it. So that was one.
Speaker 5: And then there was a time when I was asked
Speaker 5: to do a play edit all big play and it
Speaker 5: was in stock somewhere and I wanted to do it
Speaker 5: very much.
Speaker 4: It was the wife.
Speaker 5: In one of the plays, a very complicated part, and
Speaker 5: I wanted so much to try that, but a television
Speaker 5: show came up where it's a lot of money, and
Speaker 5: so I decided not to do it.
Speaker 4: I've always regretted that.
Speaker 5: They said you can come in a little late, you
Speaker 5: could come in a few days late, but I thought, no, No,
Speaker 5: I need that rehearsal to do that.
Speaker 4: You just don't walk into an Edward All play.
Speaker 5: And you got a rehearsal. You can't just walk through that.
Speaker 5: And I but I've always regretted it. I wish I
Speaker 5: had done that. I mean, we were out here where
Speaker 5: Nick Boys were fine, I could have. It was just
Speaker 5: a mistake that I made in favor of money, really television,
Speaker 5: where I should not have taken that television.
Speaker 4: I should have gone and done the play there for.
Speaker 2: Me, right for me and my native pursuit.
Speaker 5: I never got to play that part, and it's a
Speaker 5: perfect part for me to tackle.
Speaker 4: Yes, there you go.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk Boy meets World a little bit.
Speaker 3: Obviously, Bill was on the show since moment one playing
Speaker 3: our mister Feenie, and we know Michael broached the idea
Speaker 3: with him about having you join the show. And obviously
Speaker 3: we all had already known you. Did you have any
Speaker 3: reservations about joining the cast.
Speaker 5: I don't think he did broach it to Bill. Oh no,
Speaker 5: I think he called me. Michael Jacobs called me and said, Bonnie,
Speaker 5: would you come on the show. It'll be your regular
Speaker 5: salary and come on the show two with Bill and
Speaker 5: you know? And I said, of course, I'd love to.
Speaker 5: And then they made the arrangements. And if Bill knew anything,
Speaker 5: you know, Bill never knows anything that's going on. He
Speaker 5: really never knows. He never knows what's going on in
Speaker 5: the set. People I know everything. But so he said,
Speaker 5: you know, and that was the way, and they brought
Speaker 5: me on the show. And I think probably because I guess,
Speaker 5: did he know it was the last season. I'm not
Speaker 5: sure if he knew it was the.
Speaker 2: Last It wasn't the last season.
Speaker 3: It was season You came in in season six and
Speaker 3: we did season seven, okay.
Speaker 5: All right, So then he didn't know. I guess he
Speaker 5: just wanted to bring Bill a friend. Yeah, he thought, well,
Speaker 5: let's bring both.
Speaker 3: He brought you in for one episode in season five,
Speaker 3: but then you had the recurring role in season six, okay,
Speaker 3: where you spent four episodes with us.
Speaker 2: Did you have any reservations joining it or was it
Speaker 2: just like no.
Speaker 4: Except I I was.
Speaker 5: I wasn't as comfortable in sitcoms as I was in drama,
Speaker 5: so I did have a but I I knew if
Speaker 5: I worked with Bill it would be okay.
Speaker 3: Is it ever difficult to work with Bill? If you
Speaker 3: guys have wow?
Speaker 5: I love and he loved He teased me in front
Speaker 5: of the sets everybody, and I love it. I didn't
Speaker 5: mind it at all because I knew where it came from.
Speaker 5: But he loves to tease, and that's what he likes
Speaker 5: me around because he can't tease another.
Speaker 3: Actress, right right, only you? Did you like performing in
Speaker 3: front of a live studio audience having grown up with
Speaker 3: theater you're used to, You're used to it.
Speaker 4: Did you like it in nervis I'm a nervous actor
Speaker 4: on stage. I'm nervous when I go on and.
Speaker 5: Until I feel comfortable, and so.
Speaker 4: It was, uh, yeah, that's a challenge for me. Let
Speaker 4: me put it that way. I learned when I went
Speaker 4: with Home Improvement.
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm.
Speaker 5: The first show I did, I was a wreck. I
Speaker 5: was a wreck, and Tim and Pat were wonderful, but
Speaker 5: I was a wreck. But and then I was on
Speaker 5: that show about six or seven times. By the end
Speaker 5: of the time I was on it, I was just
Speaker 5: getting to know how to do it. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 5: so that I was very pleased. The last show that
Speaker 5: I was on, I thought, there, Now that's it, you're there.
Speaker 5: I was at the right level, you know, for comedy,
Speaker 5: reality and comedy.
Speaker 4: I mean I was able to do that. You know,
Speaker 4: do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yes, it's a weird.
Speaker 1: It's a tough needle to thread because you have to
Speaker 1: bring energy. You have to bring you know, you have
Speaker 1: to get the laughs. But you also don't want to
Speaker 1: be just a yeah, you know, you have to find
Speaker 1: the reality in it. Yeah, it's very hard.
Speaker 5: And I remember one time that Tim uh said, look,
Speaker 5: you do this, and you do.
Speaker 4: That, and you say that, and you tell them the
Speaker 4: kids that are there.
Speaker 5: I said, right in the show he said it, and
Speaker 5: I said, I can't do that.
Speaker 4: That's shick. He said, just do it.
Speaker 5: And I got three big laughs and he said, now
Speaker 5: didn't that feel good? Yep? Said yes, you know, because
Speaker 5: but I don't. I don't know how to orige it.
Speaker 5: I just did what he told me to do right,
Speaker 5: and he knew it was a funny thing.
Speaker 4: And there you go. And Michael Jacobs is the same.
Speaker 4: He knows where the.
Speaker 5: Lafts are and he wants to make sure that you
Speaker 5: do it so you get the left Yep.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's just it's just music. Sometimes it's like you
Speaker 1: have to hit the rhythm and yeah, it tells the
Speaker 1: audience that it's funny, they know. Yeah, yeah, Well.
Speaker 3: We have been to a lot of conventions with you
Speaker 3: and Bill, and so many people are pleasantly surprised to
Speaker 3: find out that the Dean really is married to mister Feoenie.
Speaker 3: And I think it's because a whole new generation of
Speaker 3: people are discovering the show.
Speaker 2: You know, and you guys had such long careers before,
Speaker 2: but for the new thirteen, fourteen.
Speaker 3: Fifteen year olds who are coming to it now, to them,
Speaker 3: it's all new boy meets world.
Speaker 4: Mister Feenie, yes or Bill, it's all it's all about.
Speaker 4: And he and we are going to do it. We're
Speaker 4: going to be doing a convention with you, I think
Speaker 4: in Long.
Speaker 2: Beach, yes, and in August.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so we'll see you guys. He misses everybody, you know,
Speaker 5: he really misses everybody.
Speaker 2: He miss you guys.
Speaker 5: You know, he he's never been attached as much to
Speaker 5: a group. You know, he stayed elsewhere, everybody was went
Speaker 5: their own way, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: He's never been as a but he feels attached to
Speaker 4: you guys.
Speaker 2: Well, we've definitely come a long way with him.
Speaker 3: He's seen us through you guys have seen us through
Speaker 3: lots of different stages of life.
Speaker 4: Yes, and he really loves you all. And of course
Speaker 4: it's been very lucrative.
Speaker 5: And we have a store online store, very successful so far,
Speaker 5: and it's called the Bill and Bonnie Bill and Bonnie
Speaker 5: Daniels dot com. Great online store. We sell all kinds
Speaker 5: of things. Poor Bill, I make him sign books. The
Speaker 5: books are going like crazy and they were out of proof.
Speaker 5: We had to make.
Speaker 2: More books and wonderful.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's been very successful and it gives my son
Speaker 5: something to do. And I wanted that I wanted people
Speaker 5: to still be able to get stuff from Bill.
Speaker 3: Yes, Bill and Bonnie Daniels dot com. Just to promote
Speaker 3: it one more time. But I also want to talk
Speaker 3: about some of your modern work because it is also
Speaker 3: incredibly impressive. You have been on parks and rec better
Speaker 3: call Saul Key and Peel and they are all such
Speaker 3: great shows. Do you and Bill still watch TV together?
Speaker 3: And do you have any current favorites?
Speaker 4: Do you know what Bill watches what every night?
Speaker 5: Seinfeld, really Seinfeld, and he sits there and loves it
Speaker 5: because it's all physical comedy, you know, I mean, he
Speaker 5: he loves that. He loves to He thinks that girl,
Speaker 5: he thinks is the funniest thing he ever saw.
Speaker 4: You know. Yeah, he just thinks she's great.
Speaker 5: And he always said, if you're if you're a pretty girl,
Speaker 5: pretty actress, and our funny, he says, that's.
Speaker 4: Golden, that's golden. You know, a pretty girl who.
Speaker 5: Can be fund Barbara Harris, you know that his idea
Speaker 5: of a superb comedian.
Speaker 3: In twenty twenty three, you released your memoir Middle of
Speaker 3: the Rainbow, How a wife, mother and daughter managed to
Speaker 3: find herself and win two Emmys. It's a wonderful book.
Speaker 3: Did you enjoy the process of writing It was painful?
Speaker 4: Yeah, the writing was hard.
Speaker 5: When I did the the audio I had, I loved it.
Speaker 5: I loved doing the audio because I was acting, I
Speaker 5: was performing. But to actually bring up all this, I
Speaker 5: had a very good friend who helped editor and helped
Speaker 5: me with Lauren Lester and and.
Speaker 4: He says, said, put it all out there.
Speaker 5: Just write and write and write and write and write everything.
Speaker 4: You remember everything, everything.
Speaker 2: So gosh, hmm brings up a lot.
Speaker 4: It brings a.
Speaker 1: Lot that.
Speaker 5: Ingrid Bergmann said the best thing you can do for
Speaker 5: a long for a long.
Speaker 4: Life is to have a poor memory.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but you know, which is kind of an interesting
Speaker 5: way of putting it, you know. And that's Bill, that's Bill.
Speaker 5: He remembers nothing but I remember, which is great if
Speaker 5: you're writing.
Speaker 2: A book, right exactly. It helps.
Speaker 5: Then you know, you got to put it all out there.
Speaker 5: You can't just put out pieces to write at all.
Speaker 4: That's me.
Speaker 5: That's my approach to life period. You know, you got
Speaker 5: to if you're going to do it, you got to
Speaker 5: put it all out there.
Speaker 3: You faced a little of what we face on this
Speaker 3: podcast quite a bit, which is the clickbait headline. You
Speaker 3: had tons of interesting stories, hundreds of pages in your memoir,
Speaker 3: but everyone seemed to want to focus on one small
Speaker 3: moment in the seventies where you and Bill tested the
Speaker 3: idea of an open marriage. Were you surprised by that
Speaker 3: reaction and do you have any regrets with anything you shared.
Speaker 4: I was very surprised.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was very surprised because you know, it was
Speaker 5: at a time in New York when everything was everything,
Speaker 5: you know. I mean it was a wild time, right,
Speaker 5: and not that happy a time, but it was a
Speaker 5: wild time.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I don't think it made anybody happy.
Speaker 5: And then what stopped it all was AIDS. All of
Speaker 5: a sudden, there was AIDS and all that action stopped, right,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I I didn't.
Speaker 5: I didn't not like it, and I didn't like it,
Speaker 5: and I was very happy when it was over.
Speaker 4: I was very happy.
Speaker 3: I was much more comfortable when you wrote about it
Speaker 3: in the book, and then that seemed to be the
Speaker 3: thing that people were focusing on the most. Did you
Speaker 3: have any regrets sharing so much?
Speaker 2: A little bit?
Speaker 4: A little bit?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I thought, Oh, I didn't think everybody would. I
Speaker 5: didn't think everybody would take it so seriously because I
Speaker 5: was part of a whole.
Speaker 4: Group of people and they wouldn't.
Speaker 5: Things have changed, yeah, things always do change. Yeah, and
Speaker 5: then COVID changes everybody. I mean, you know, things whole
Speaker 5: things now have changed, and God knows what will happen now.
Speaker 5: Those little things that I wrote about in the book
Speaker 5: that's nothing.
Speaker 4: That's nothing.
Speaker 5: That's just a long marriage to actors in a position.
Speaker 5: If we were somewhere else, we wouldn't have behaved that way.
Speaker 5: It's just you behave the way you're allowed to behave,
Speaker 5: you know. And it was part of the part of
Speaker 5: the routine. It was routine.
Speaker 3: Well, we know our audience and really the entire world
Speaker 3: recently celebrated Bill's ninety eighth birthday recently, and I know
Speaker 3: everyone including us, would love and update.
Speaker 2: How is Bill doing well?
Speaker 5: As I told you, he watches Seinfeld, he raises New
Speaker 5: York Times, and he's at a place where as he's
Speaker 5: never remembered things, so that that's always been there, but
Speaker 5: now it's more. He's very forgetful. He's very he will
Speaker 5: forget people. He had a very close friend who just
Speaker 5: died and he can't.
Speaker 4: Cope with that.
Speaker 5: He can't, he said, I can't believe it. I can't
Speaker 5: believe he's no longer here. He was a guy that
Speaker 5: he helped him a lot when he was the president
Speaker 5: of SAG and that all the deaths are hard for him,
Speaker 5: and most of them are men. Yeah, and his men
Speaker 5: friends are all gone. So that's very hard for him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he just went out.
Speaker 5: This morning for breakfast with a guy who was a
Speaker 5: friend from SAG. You know, he helped him there. He
Speaker 5: got very close to a lot of people at SAG.
Speaker 5: He had a lot of enemies, and it was very
Speaker 5: hard because you had a lot of enemies. But he
Speaker 5: made some very close buddies, just friends, not actors, just you.
Speaker 4: Know, commercial people not in his field.
Speaker 1: Necessarily interesting. Interesting.
Speaker 3: Well, Bonnie, we love seeing you every time. I'm very
Speaker 3: excited that we get to see you at the end
Speaker 3: of August. Thank you for coming, yes, and thank you
Speaker 3: for coming and spending a whole hour of your time
Speaker 3: with us.
Speaker 2: It was so great.
Speaker 3: As much as we love Bill, it's so nice to
Speaker 3: have an entire hour dedicated to you and your accomplishments
Speaker 3: and all of the contributions you've made to the field
Speaker 3: of entertainment and to our lives and to Boy Meets World.
Speaker 3: So on, behalf of our entire audience. Thank you so
Speaker 3: much for spending your time with us.
Speaker 4: You you're so dear, dear, Thank.
Speaker 1: You so much, thank you so good to say.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Bonnie.
Speaker 1: Great to see you too.
Speaker 2: We'll see you in a couple months.
Speaker 4: Okay, good bye bye.
Speaker 2: All is so great talking to her.
Speaker 1: H yeah, I you know, one of my one of
Speaker 1: my friends, David Pressman, his dad, Lawrence Pressman, is a
Speaker 1: older actor who knew them back in the theater days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's he's younger than them by about ten or
Speaker 1: fifteen years. And so we have these lunches where he tells,
Speaker 1: you know, we just talked, talk about those days. And
Speaker 1: it's the same thing as like these names. I'm like,
Speaker 1: Barbara Harris, what, who to Hoggen what? And I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'm learning, like I feel just from these conversations, because
Speaker 1: there are these you know, they who they consider legends,
Speaker 1: were like theater actors that we just don't remember, we
Speaker 1: don't hear about, you know, and they're they're they're they're
Speaker 1: not we don't have them on film, we don't have
Speaker 1: you know. So like I went and saw Who's Afraid
Speaker 1: of a Tinier Wolf with with Larry and afterwards he
Speaker 1: was like, oh, Nod Hoggin, you have to you know,
Speaker 1: and it was like, I'm like, where is it. He's like,
Speaker 1: I think there might be an audio recording, but he's
Speaker 1: so three times with her, you know, you just have
Speaker 1: these conversations, and I love hearing about about Bill and
Speaker 1: Bonnie back in those days.
Speaker 2: Me too.
Speaker 3: I love anytime we're with them and they tell us
Speaker 3: those stories. It's always so fascinating.
Speaker 1: Everybody was a drunk, That's what I love. Like every
Speaker 1: one of the stories is like, yeah, oh Bill was
Speaker 1: doing so and so it was horrible, drunk, horrible. I'm like, Bonnie,
Speaker 1: was there anybody who was not drinking? She's like, well,
Speaker 1: those theater it was how you survived.
Speaker 2: And it is really interesting.
Speaker 3: I did think it's so funny that, like for us
Speaker 3: who grew up doing TV, and I know you obviously
Speaker 3: you started in theater too, but like when we talk
Speaker 3: about projects that we missed out on or whatever, we
Speaker 3: always think of movies and TV. And any time you
Speaker 3: talk to Bill or Bonnie about their careers, theater, theater,
Speaker 3: the role, the parts in theater, the stories of the theater,
Speaker 3: like it was the.
Speaker 1: Things that's the actors medium. It's like the ultimate.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, even when we asked her about her book,
Speaker 1: it was like when she got to read it, when
Speaker 1: she got to perform it, you know, it's like when
Speaker 1: you're that essentially an actor, it's like it's just so cool.
Speaker 3: Well, and her biggest regret being that she took a
Speaker 3: job she she wanted. She wanted a TV job and
Speaker 3: it was good for the money, but she really wanted
Speaker 3: and what would have been good for her soul? She's like,
Speaker 3: I should have done it for me.
Speaker 1: Oh so cool, so cool.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you all for joining us for this episode
Speaker 3: of Pod Meets World. As always, you can follow us
Speaker 3: on Instagram pod Meets World Show. You can send us
Speaker 3: your emails pod Meets World Show at gmail dot com
Speaker 3: and writer, We've got merch.
Speaker 1: Moment of silence for the missing.
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Speaker 1: We love you all, pod dismissed. Pod Meets World is
Speaker 1: an iHeart podcast producer hosted by Danielle Fischel, Wilfredell and
Speaker 1: Rider Straw. Executive producers Jensen Karp and Amy Sugarman. Executive
Speaker 1: in charge of production, Danielle Romo, producer and editor, Taras Who, producer,
Speaker 1: Maddie Moore, engineer and boy mets World Superman Easton Outen.
Speaker 1: Our theme song is by Kyle Morton of Typhoon. Follow
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Speaker 1: at podmetsworldshowat gmail dot com.