Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from iHeart Radio. With more than eight hundred film
Speaker 1: and television credits to his name, Eric Roberts is one
Speaker 1: of the most prolific actors in Hollywood and one of
Speaker 1: the most misunderstood. Born into a family of actors and playwrights, Roberts.
Speaker 2: Grew up in Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 1: His parents co founded one of the city's first integrated
Speaker 1: theater companies, the Atlanta Actors and Writers Workshop. From the
Speaker 1: age of four, Roberts performed in repertory theater. His two
Speaker 1: younger sisters were also child actors, one of whom would
Speaker 1: go on to become one of the biggest movie stars
Speaker 1: in the world, Julia Roberts. Eric Roberts left home at
Speaker 1: eighteen to move to New York City. Just a few
Speaker 1: years later, he was cast as the lead in Frank
Speaker 1: Pearson's nineteen seventy eight film King of the Gypsy. The
Speaker 1: performance earned Roberts his first Golden Globe nomination and made
Speaker 1: him an international star.
Speaker 2: He would go on to receive.
Speaker 1: Golden Globe nominations for his performances in Bob Fosse's Star
Speaker 1: eighty and an Academy Award nomination for andre Konchulovski's Runaway Train.
Speaker 1: In September twenty twenty four, Eric Roberts published his memoir
Speaker 1: Runaway Train, or the Story of My Life so Far.
Speaker 2: I was curious what it was.
Speaker 1: Like growing up in a family where a theater wasn't
Speaker 1: just a passion but a way of life.
Speaker 3: I got out of school, Actually I didn't give ass
Speaker 3: back to school, Ada the American Academy. I was in
Speaker 3: New York by this time. I didn't get askedpect to
Speaker 3: be a senior. So I went across town and auditioned
Speaker 3: for the Actors Studio. Got in, and so just dropped
Speaker 3: the American Academy out of my condescence, went straight to
Speaker 3: the Actors Studio, got in, started working, started to having
Speaker 3: fun there, and then got my first movie very quickly
Speaker 3: and was very lucky. I became an international movie start
Speaker 3: at twenty two years old. It was King of the Gypsies, Yeah,
Speaker 3: with Susan Sarandom played my mom, jed Hurst played my dad,
Speaker 3: Shelly Wyner's playing grandmother, Certain Hayden played my grandfather, and
Speaker 3: Brooke Shields played my baby's sister and my god thirty
Speaker 3: years later, I played Brooks husband in a movie.
Speaker 2: Who directed King of the Gypsies.
Speaker 3: Frank Pearson, the cool ass Frank Pierson.
Speaker 2: B Frank Pearson who I love.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he wrote Doddy Afternoon. He won Oscars for Cat Blue,
Speaker 3: all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1: So you go to the American Academy and my brother
Speaker 1: Stephen wasn't invited back there, by the way, so he's
Speaker 1: in good company with you.
Speaker 2: But you go and that's your first movie? How old
Speaker 2: were you?
Speaker 3: I got the movie at twenty one and it came
Speaker 3: out when I was twenty two.
Speaker 2: That was your first movie?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you did You've done plays before. I grew
Speaker 3: up in repertory theater. I did my first play at four.
Speaker 3: I did my first TV series at eight. But I
Speaker 3: was in reptuee theater my whole life. I did eight
Speaker 3: to twelve plays every year in my life up until
Speaker 3: I left home.
Speaker 2: And the repertoire theater was owned and managed by.
Speaker 3: Who by my dad and my mother. It's called the
Speaker 3: Actors in the Writer's Workshop, and it was funded by
Speaker 3: the Martin Luther King Foundation, And we patterned after Joe
Speaker 3: Papp's theater in that we toured the underprivileged areas all
Speaker 3: week and then on the weekends we had theater in
Speaker 3: our central park which is called Piedmont Park, and we
Speaker 3: had theater and we did two places on Saturday, two
Speaker 3: places on Sunday. And that was my life for I
Speaker 3: don't know, fifteen years.
Speaker 1: So it's safe to say you grew up in a
Speaker 1: show business family. This involved your other siblings as well.
Speaker 1: Were they all in the REP company?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm a lot older than they are. I'm eleven
Speaker 3: years older than Julie. I'm nine years old than Lisa's
Speaker 3: so I was already getting ready to leave home by
Speaker 3: the time they were cognizant. I like change a lot
Speaker 3: of diapers, but I didn't do a lot of plays
Speaker 3: with them.
Speaker 1: Really, yeah, did they eventually do any Were they involved
Speaker 1: in that work at a whole now?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, but only in the children's place in
Speaker 3: the afternoon. And my father wrote a play called Little
Speaker 3: Lisa for my sister Lisa. It was all we knew,
Speaker 3: all we did. And I left home very young. I
Speaker 3: went to New York at eighteen.
Speaker 1: And when you did the film with Frank, when you
Speaker 1: did the film with Pearson and that took off, what
Speaker 1: did that do for you. Well, how did you feel
Speaker 1: about that burgeoning film stardom?
Speaker 2: Were you ready for it or you weren't.
Speaker 3: Well, you're never ready for that because you can never
Speaker 3: really understand when it's going to be up to you're
Speaker 3: in it. What happens, as you know, Alec, when you
Speaker 3: get famous, you don't change, but everybody thinks you're going to,
Speaker 3: or you're about to, or you might, and everybody acts
Speaker 3: differently with you. You're not the one who changes, but
Speaker 3: you're around you treats you differently, and it's so silly,
Speaker 3: and you say to them, this is so silly. It's
Speaker 3: not you, but they don't understand. You have to be
Speaker 3: in it to understand it. It's the kind of thing
Speaker 3: that if you talk about you sound like, well it's me.
Speaker 3: It's so hard to be famous, and you sound like
Speaker 3: a big asshole. So you can't do that. So yeah,
Speaker 3: have to avoid that. But everybody does treat you differently.
Speaker 3: It is not you who changed with the stardom. It
Speaker 3: is the world around you, how it adheres to you,
Speaker 3: how it likes you, how it does that thing it
Speaker 3: does to stars, And it's very silly and very overstated.
Speaker 3: And what you just have to do is just ignore it.
Speaker 1: I made a couple of movies, mostly supporting roles in
Speaker 1: films in the late eighties, and I always mentioned that
Speaker 1: I did a play Prelude to a Kiss, off Broadway
Speaker 1: with Mary Louise Parker, and we got a very very
Speaker 1: love letter from Frank Rich back when that really mattered.
Speaker 1: And the point is is that I went through my
Speaker 1: career and I relied on these instincts that I thought
Speaker 1: were good instincts, and they were very decent instincts. And
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, when Prelude moved to Broadway
Speaker 1: and I didn't go with the show, and Tim Hutton
Speaker 1: did the show on Broadway and I went to go
Speaker 1: to a movie to make a lot of money. That's
Speaker 1: when I ignored my instincts. And everything went wrong from
Speaker 1: there for me. The instincts that got me somewhere, I
Speaker 1: started to abandon those because all of a sudden, you
Speaker 1: have something to protect.
Speaker 3: No, but I would disagree with you, Alec. It didn't
Speaker 3: go wrong from there. You've had a great career, You've
Speaker 3: done some really awesome, awesome work. That's just a fact.
Speaker 1: But when you do King of the Gypsies, does everything
Speaker 1: start to get more precious, and everyone's telling you you
Speaker 1: can't do that.
Speaker 2: You got to do this, Oh yes, to lose.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I was telling now. The reason I work
Speaker 3: so much now is to make up really for lost time,
Speaker 3: because back in those days, everything was so precious, supposedly
Speaker 3: so precious, and stuff like Breaking Away, for instance, was
Speaker 3: the first big movie that he had me turned down
Speaker 3: because yes, Eric, it's going to be a hit. Yes
Speaker 3: you're going to be a star, but you're going to
Speaker 3: be an adolescent star, and they're gonna have to overcome that.
Speaker 3: We want you to be an adults.
Speaker 2: Who's telling you this.
Speaker 3: Bill Tresh. Bill Tresh my manager, So we'll have another
Speaker 3: hurdle to get over. If we make you an adolescent star,
Speaker 3: we have to make an adult store. So you must
Speaker 3: turn down Breaking Away. I didn't want to, but I
Speaker 3: did because he's smarter than me. I thought about the industry,
Speaker 3: so he knows what to do and what not to do.
Speaker 3: So I do what he suggested. But I did that
Speaker 3: with dozens and dozens of movies. So all it really
Speaker 3: ended up being was I was not employed. I was
Speaker 3: just waiting for some perfect piece or something.
Speaker 2: So what's the next thing you did after King of
Speaker 2: the Gypsies.
Speaker 3: After King of the Gypsies, I went back to the
Speaker 3: theater and I did a massive appeal with my low O'Shea.
Speaker 2: I did on Broadway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, I went back to the theater and
Speaker 3: oh yeah, I did Paul's Case for the American Short
Speaker 3: Story Series. That's right. Everybody fought me over that. I
Speaker 3: really wanted to do that piece, and Bill and everybody
Speaker 3: else thought it was it was not worthy of me.
Speaker 3: But I did it because I wanted to. And then
Speaker 3: I got the nicest review in the New York Times.
Speaker 3: It had a little picture of me on the back
Speaker 3: page and it said the perfect Paul Eric Roberts, King
Speaker 3: of the Gypsies was no Fluke. That's my proudest interview
Speaker 3: I ever got.
Speaker 2: What was the next movie?
Speaker 3: The next movie would have been A Raggedy Man with
Speaker 3: Sissy Spacey and Jack Fisk, her husband was the director.
Speaker 3: That was a glorious piece as Sissy got to play
Speaker 3: a single working mother back in the forties. And I'm
Speaker 3: a sailor who blows through town and leaves her with
Speaker 3: a kiss and makes her friends with her sons, and
Speaker 3: it's just a wonderful wonderful story, and that's when I
Speaker 3: met Sam Shephard for the first time. He and I
Speaker 3: ended up making four movies together, but that was our
Speaker 3: first time and we made fast friends. Sam was a
Speaker 3: cool guy to work with and I'm miss him.
Speaker 2: How far awayway from Pope.
Speaker 3: Pope was my fifth or sixth film. Yeah, I said.
Speaker 3: There was Raggedy Man, then some TV stuff in Star eighty,
Speaker 3: and then Pope.
Speaker 2: Star eighty was before Pope.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I was twenty five when I did Star eighty.
Speaker 1: I tell people that in order to play a role
Speaker 1: like that of her husband of Paul, if you said
Speaker 1: to me, give me the twenty five top performances by
Speaker 1: a male actor of the last seventy five years inhabiting
Speaker 1: a really serious dramatic role, you're on that list.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Thanks, I mean that performance in that movie, no apologies,
Speaker 1: no pulling your punches. You play him as determined and
Speaker 1: is self seeking and is driven, not reading the room
Speaker 1: very well, not a lot of self awareness. But those
Speaker 1: scenes when you're there at the mansion and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: you're dying for this guy. You're dying, You're looking at him,
Speaker 1: You're looking at the TV, going, oh, Paul don't do that.
Speaker 1: If you don't do that, maybe this will work. And
Speaker 1: you just see Hugh playing this character who believes he
Speaker 1: has everything. Who wouldn't want me, who wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: be in business with me, who wouldn't want to fuck me?
Speaker 1: Everybody wants to be me or be with me, But
Speaker 1: you play it not in a loud but in the
Speaker 1: most nuanced way. That is one of the greatest performances
Speaker 1: I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, brother, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Phil.
Speaker 3: Let me tell you why it is. It's not me.
Speaker 3: I am the instrument. I am the vessel. But it
Speaker 3: was all Bob Bossy. He wrote an incredible screenplay. And
Speaker 3: then we shot all the stuff up in Vancouver and
Speaker 3: we come down to La We shot in Maccoova for
Speaker 3: a month. We're down in La now. We had two
Speaker 3: days off in between. I'm living at Paul Jabora's house,
Speaker 3: which which is a great, big mansion. Anyway, in the
Speaker 3: middle of the night, suddeny, somebody's banging on my door.
Speaker 3: Paul's Jabara has some weird living he does, so I
Speaker 3: think it could be anything at the door, so I
Speaker 3: grab a hammer. His construction the house, there are tools out.
Speaker 3: I grab a hammer and I go answer the door.
Speaker 3: What the fuck? And is Bob Bozzy. He's got a
Speaker 3: little portable typewriter and he says, how you doing. I said,
Speaker 3: I'm sleeping. He said, well, we have to work. I said, okay,
Speaker 3: come on in. He comes in. He says, I type
Speaker 3: you dance. I said okay, And that's his expression for
Speaker 3: he types improv. I type you dance. So it's a
Speaker 3: mill of the fucking night. Okay, I guess we do that.
Speaker 3: And so he started doing that to me. He would
Speaker 3: come over every day after work and he type I dance,
Speaker 3: and he would work and he would rewrite. And I
Speaker 3: also got from him the most personal note from a
Speaker 3: director I ever got. I'm doing a scene one day
Speaker 3: with my guitar and I mess up the song and
Speaker 3: I said cut. Well, you don't say cut on a
Speaker 3: Fossy said le's you're a fosse. And he goes, what
Speaker 3: are you doing? I said, I fucked up. He goes,
Speaker 3: God damn it, Come here and he walks across that
Speaker 3: big sound change of zoa trub, you know, the big one.
Speaker 3: He walks across it. He goes, come here, and I'm
Speaker 3: in my underwear, and I got the crew behind me
Speaker 3: and I got a guitar and I walk over there.
Speaker 3: What he's look at me? I said, I'm looking at you.
Speaker 3: Look at me. I'm looking at you, dude. He goes, Okay,
Speaker 3: you're playing me if I weren't successful, do you understand?
Speaker 3: And I did, and I really did, so I started
Speaker 3: imitating even how he walked on the way back to
Speaker 3: the set at that moment, I basically played him in
Speaker 3: that movie, even though it was somebody else.
Speaker 1: Now Mary Elle, I would imagine with Fosse Fossey, some
Speaker 1: of the women in his projects suffer a great deal.
Speaker 1: Did she have a tough time on that film? Did
Speaker 1: he direct her heavily as well?
Speaker 3: Let me tell you one quick story that won't hurt
Speaker 3: her feelings. I'm crazy about her, by the way, as
Speaker 3: a person and an actor. But here's the deal. So
Speaker 3: we're like shooting maybe two three days, and we're in
Speaker 3: Vancouver and he says, to get your voice out of
Speaker 3: your face, I want it coming from your chest. You're
Speaker 3: telling and he started and he kind of imitated her,
Speaker 3: kind of made fun of her, and she started crying. Okay, well,
Speaker 3: you know when a woman cries on his set the
Speaker 3: makeup runs, I got to get up and go, so
Speaker 3: she got some good So it helds up like two hours.
Speaker 3: And he says to me, quote, she can't take it,
Speaker 3: I hope you can. And that was all that was
Speaker 3: ever said about it.
Speaker 2: That was all that was ever said.
Speaker 3: But yeah, he was a passionate lunatic and when he
Speaker 3: was onto something, he wanted you write with him, and
Speaker 3: if you warnt, he would drag you by the hair.
Speaker 3: It's no abused and abused word. But he was a genius.
Speaker 3: And once you work with a real genius two things
Speaker 3: that you're not one and that they're hard to find.
Speaker 3: And man, he was the most special thing in my
Speaker 3: life ever had that I didn't expect.
Speaker 1: Now, there weren't many movies I've ever done. We're all
Speaker 1: watch a movie and I'll go, my god, who is that?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: I tried to become someone else dispositionally and attitudinally and
Speaker 1: everything and emotionally. When you saw Star eighty, did you
Speaker 1: freak out? Because you'll sit here there and go, oh
Speaker 1: my god, who is that guy? Who is that guy?
Speaker 3: It's the same feeling when you watch a project that
Speaker 3: you hit. It's like hitting a Ball perfectly. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's it.
Speaker 1: Wow, Now when you do that movie. I was always
Speaker 1: explaining to people who don't work in this business. I said,
Speaker 1: you have got to pick up where you left off.
Speaker 1: If I don't see an actor for five years and
Speaker 1: I run into them at a film festival, we're hugging
Speaker 1: like I saw you last week.
Speaker 2: I said, it's very parapatetic.
Speaker 1: We're all on the go, we're all moving around. But
Speaker 1: if I had a good experience with you, when I
Speaker 1: see you, I keep in touch with some people, and
Speaker 1: a lot of them move see I don't. Did you
Speaker 1: stay in touch with him at all? Or was it
Speaker 1: out of sight, out of mind for him?
Speaker 3: Well, he was discussing he wanted me in his next movie,
Speaker 3: and it was maybe going to be about the Kennedy
Speaker 3: guy got shot in the face up in Harlem. He
Speaker 3: had talked to me about it and he was working
Speaker 3: on it. And so I waited about eight months after
Speaker 3: he died, and I called Gwen and I said, Gwen,
Speaker 3: he was working on a piece ball Blame. Talked to
Speaker 3: me about it. Can I see it? And she said,
Speaker 3: let's just let it be. I was heartbroken. That's that,
Speaker 3: and so I thought, if you.
Speaker 1: Were age appropriate, he would have put you in every movie.
Speaker 1: You could have done all that jazz, but you were
Speaker 1: too young. I love all that jazz.
Speaker 2: Love.
Speaker 3: Oh it's a great movie.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 3: Cabaret is great. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I love all Bob stuff. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he made perfect movies. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So then when you do Pope, the director is who
Speaker 2: We had two directors.
Speaker 3: We had one director who got fired and we had
Speaker 3: Sjo Rosenberg, who ended up really directing the film. But
Speaker 3: at first it was this. I got that script in
Speaker 3: January of that year. We're not shooting until September. I
Speaker 3: got a script in January. Back of the old days
Speaker 3: when you get warnings. I got this script in in January,
Speaker 3: and I got the book in the script from Cotching Kirkwood,
Speaker 3: and it said pick apart Paulie or Charlie. So I
Speaker 3: read the book, I read the script, I read the
Speaker 3: book again, and I decide, I'm going to pick Paulie,
Speaker 3: but I'm going to play him differently. So I have
Speaker 3: to ask because it's not on the page. So I
Speaker 3: call Cotching Kirkwood and say, hey, guys, I picked Paulie
Speaker 3: and they said why, I said, because he's a fun
Speaker 3: ass part, and I want to play him, but I
Speaker 3: want to be allowed to play him as he is
Speaker 3: done on the page. I've talked to you guys, I go, okay,
Speaker 3: But we wanted you to pick Charlie, and we thought
Speaker 3: you would because he's the leading man. He's cool, he
Speaker 3: gets dressed up, he's got the babe blah blah. We
Speaker 3: thought you'd picking. I said, no, he's a good part,
Speaker 3: but I like Paulie because he's better. If I can
Speaker 3: be allowed to play him like this. He's written as
Speaker 3: a tough, dumb thug that's been done ten billion times
Speaker 3: by ten billion actors, even though I've done it eighty
Speaker 3: five times. Can I do something else? I want to
Speaker 3: play a mama's boy who wants to be this guy
Speaker 3: but is not this guy looks up to Charlie because
Speaker 3: he sees Charlie as this guy. I want to be that.
Speaker 3: And they said, whatever you do, Eric, you do it
Speaker 3: because we're hiring you because it's you, So whatever you do,
Speaker 3: we're behind you. I said, okay. So that was January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August.
Speaker 3: I'm dieting. I dropped thirty pounds. And I purmed my hair.
Speaker 3: I learned my script from back to front. I'm ready
Speaker 3: to go. I shot, ready to go, and we have
Speaker 3: five days of rehearsal and we start to shoot. We're
Speaker 3: all staying at the Mayflower Hotel in Manhattan. I'm living
Speaker 3: in Westport, Connecticut at the time. Next shor to Chris Walking.
Speaker 3: After the third day of rehearsal, the director asked me
Speaker 3: to stay after to talk to him. Okay, I do,
Speaker 3: what's up, dude, Why are you so skinny? I said, well,
Speaker 3: that's the sky. I want to be a walking Spas attack.
Speaker 3: He goes, why'd you perm your hair? I said, same thing,
Speaker 3: walking spas attack. And then he gets angry. What the
Speaker 3: fuck is a.
Speaker 2: Walking spas attack?
Speaker 3: It's going well, I said, John Belushi, only skin He goes, no, No,
Speaker 3: that's not this guy. This guy's a tough thug. This
Speaker 3: guy is tough and stupid. Blah blah blah. I said, no,
Speaker 3: that's how he's written. That's not what I'm playing. And
Speaker 3: I told the producers and I thought they would tell you,
Speaker 3: but yeah, they gave me the go ahead to not
Speaker 3: play what's on the page. He said, well, I don't
Speaker 3: agree with them. I don't agree with you, and I'd
Speaker 3: like you to resign. I said, well, I'm not doing that,
Speaker 3: But I say to him, let me think about it,
Speaker 3: and I.
Speaker 2: Go up to Goodness.
Speaker 3: I go up to Mickey's room, knock on the door
Speaker 3: and say, Mickey, the boss just asked me to quit.
Speaker 3: He said what. So we called the producers and they
Speaker 3: fired that director and they brought in Shoer Rosenberg, who
Speaker 3: directed a great movie.
Speaker 2: You're One and knowly with Mickey.
Speaker 3: Micky and I have worked together now, I don't know
Speaker 3: four times, five times. Our other big thing was he
Speaker 3: plays a speed dealer and I play his boss who
Speaker 3: sells him the speed. Now, when they offer me that part,
Speaker 3: that's also another character change, they call me, we're gonna
Speaker 3: hook you up with Mickey Rourke.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 3: I love Mickey. Great. What's the part bill? They send
Speaker 3: me the script. I love the script. But he's a
Speaker 3: tough guy and he has his body exposed, and he
Speaker 3: has all these girls and he sells Mickey speed and
Speaker 3: he's all cool and all this stuff and all cliche.
Speaker 3: Watched yeah, and I said, you know what, that's been
Speaker 3: done a lot too. Can I plan the opposite? Can
Speaker 3: I play a screaming queen with boys, and they said, yes, oh,
Speaker 3: it was called spun Spu.
Speaker 2: I'm watching it tonight.
Speaker 3: It's called Somebody.
Speaker 2: It's in my basket tonight.
Speaker 3: And this cool Swedish director and he said, Eric, of course,
Speaker 3: I love the idea of god. Jonas Ackerlin Nikki has
Speaker 3: the best death scene of any of us guys who
Speaker 3: played bad guys in the history of motion pictures. Wait
Speaker 3: till you have to watch. You're not going to even
Speaker 3: give you a hint. It is so moving and it
Speaker 3: is so immediate.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's so good. Eventually, go on, what year did
Speaker 2: you do Runaway Training?
Speaker 3: Nineteen eighty five?
Speaker 2: And it's by and large I don't remember every frame
Speaker 2: of the film. Great film.
Speaker 1: I always tell people, you go to watch you if
Speaker 1: you want to watch a smart and intense and well shot,
Speaker 1: well edited film. It's essentially a two hander. Now they
Speaker 1: hired him first.
Speaker 2: Or you first.
Speaker 3: They hire him first, and then they bring in John
Speaker 3: and I and we meet him and we have a
Speaker 3: great lunch talking about stuff each other and how much
Speaker 3: we love each other's work, all that stuff everybody does,
Speaker 3: you know when they get together. And then I say
Speaker 3: to him the same thing I said to the Pope people,
Speaker 3: this guy's kind of cliche because he's in he's in
Speaker 3: jemp with statutory rape. So I want to make him
Speaker 3: not gross. I want to even make him not incestiarily
Speaker 3: a man. I want to even change his voice so
Speaker 3: it's up high so he's not lack a threat. And
Speaker 3: if he's country, everybody think he's stupid. So you know,
Speaker 3: I have to talk about his education, you know. So
Speaker 3: I asked him if I could do that. He said,
Speaker 3: you can do anything you want. But he's Russian. He
Speaker 3: couldn't hear the accent.
Speaker 2: He didn't know.
Speaker 3: He didn't know what the fuck you were doing, I know,
Speaker 3: but he allowed it. And John Voight is one of
Speaker 3: my three favorite actors I've ever worked with. Oh my god,
Speaker 3: we never came I might have character to each other.
Speaker 3: We lived in those characters for the whole shoot and
Speaker 3: we just did it and it was just satisfying.
Speaker 2: Where did you shoot them?
Speaker 3: We're supposed to shoot in Montana, and we get to Montana,
Speaker 3: the whole cast, the whole crew, and the thaws. Where's
Speaker 3: the snow?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: So the producers Golden Globus, they'd say, well, let's go
Speaker 3: to Alaska. Place in Alaska. We shoots in Alaska, so
Speaker 3: we moved Anchorage and they got forty miles a track.
Speaker 3: There was just our track, forty miles back and forth,
Speaker 3: and we shot a movie.
Speaker 1: John, who I've begged to do this show, and I
Speaker 1: told him when I ran intoim, I said, listen, I
Speaker 1: don't want to talk about politics. I don't give a
Speaker 1: shit about your politics or whatever. I said, I am,
Speaker 1: you know, you're a great admirer. And I when he
Speaker 1: popped up on Ray Donathan and was just completely knocked
Speaker 1: out by how great John is at this stage of
Speaker 1: his career. I mean, he was so what a fox.
Speaker 3: John is a mega talent. John is a megata. Look
Speaker 3: at his list of movies. I mean coming home all
Speaker 3: those I mean, oh my god, eh, I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: a cowboy. I'm in my conference. I know, dude, it's endless.
Speaker 3: And he's always great, always, I know. And we never
Speaker 3: talked politics. We never came out of character, either of us.
Speaker 3: We've taken character from starting to finish.
Speaker 1: Actor Eric Roberts. If you enjoy conversations for the claimed
Speaker 1: stars of the stage and screen, check out my episode
Speaker 1: with the legendary Lrie Metcalf.
Speaker 4: Greta sent me the script and I read it and
Speaker 4: really responded to the material. And it was very small
Speaker 4: independent movie in so I thought, oh, I haven't done
Speaker 4: a movie in about ten years, so this will be
Speaker 4: a nice little way to put my toe back in
Speaker 4: the water and see how it is. When Ladybird exploded,
Speaker 4: I was unprepared for. I had no idea what that
Speaker 4: publicity circus train was. That you have to get on,
Speaker 4: you know, and ride for about three months.
Speaker 1: To hear more of my conversation with ry Metcalf, go
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Eric
Speaker 1: Roberts tells the story of Bob Fossey showing up at
Speaker 1: his door in the middle of the night with a typewriter.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing. Eric
Speaker 1: Roberts has always been deeply committed to his preparation as
Speaker 1: an actor, from his days studying at the Royal Academy
Speaker 1: in London to working with some of the most sought
Speaker 1: after directors in Hollywood, Roberts has developed a meticulous approach
Speaker 1: to building characters from the ground up with diverse roles.
Speaker 1: In films like King of the Gypsies star eighty, Pope
Speaker 1: of Greenwich Village and Runaway Train. I wanted to know
Speaker 1: whether his instinct to stray from what's written on the
Speaker 1: page has served him well across five decades of filmmaking.
Speaker 3: I'm old school. I'm like you. I'm old school. I
Speaker 3: do mountains of homework. I live for my time at
Speaker 3: my desk. That's the most precious time I have. Besides
Speaker 3: my time alone with my wife, is my time my
Speaker 3: desk with homework. Those two things are my joys in life.
Speaker 3: I get a bunch of choices and stuff. I do
Speaker 3: my thing. I'm gonna go this way, go the other way.
Speaker 3: And then I say to my director, what do you
Speaker 3: want to see? And he'll tell me, and I'll take
Speaker 3: what he wants and I will try to fit into
Speaker 3: what I've done, and they're presented all because he's the boss.
Speaker 3: And see what I love about show business and what
Speaker 3: people don't like about show is but I do is
Speaker 3: It's an authoritative system. You have a dictator and everybody else,
Speaker 3: and that's how it works best because you have one
Speaker 3: guy with his idea, his drive, his vision. Okay, let's
Speaker 3: all get behind this guy because it's good. Here we
Speaker 3: go and you get behind him and you drive for him.
Speaker 3: He's the guy out front pulling us all.
Speaker 1: As I'm working now in films, I mean, by the
Speaker 1: time they get the funding together and they're really ready
Speaker 1: to give you a plane ticket and send you there,
Speaker 1: it's Thursday, and this you're on a plane Friday, and
Speaker 1: saturday's your wardrobe fitting. It's so different from what it
Speaker 1: used to be. No rehearsals, a lot of time, no rehearsals.
Speaker 1: What I want to talk to you about is then
Speaker 1: and now. You made great films, you gave historic performances
Speaker 1: in movies.
Speaker 2: But when you show up on the set with.
Speaker 1: The director who you've made more movies than everybody on
Speaker 1: the whole fucking crew combined.
Speaker 2: What's it like for you now to do that? What
Speaker 2: do you do?
Speaker 3: That's not a conscious thought, really, it's all the same process.
Speaker 3: It's just I have less time now. As you pointed out,
Speaker 3: we have no time. So I arrived with my same
Speaker 3: question every day. Hi, Hey, okay, what do you want
Speaker 3: to see? Boss? I always call them boss to establish
Speaker 3: they are my boss. I let them boss me around,
Speaker 3: tell me what to do.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: I have my idea of what I'm going to do.
Speaker 3: But I let them pull it in the direction that
Speaker 3: they want it, and usually they thank me.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: A lot of times they don't, but usually, yeah.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 1: It's funny you say that because I had one guy
Speaker 1: I worked with on a film over in London and
Speaker 1: they had whatever the financing was where we had to
Speaker 1: run over to London and shoot this for a weekend.
Speaker 1: It was one of these tech thrillers and I'm the
Speaker 1: CIA boss screaming at everybody. But the director was really
Speaker 1: interesting because he wanted to direct and he was really
Speaker 1: this very boisterous us, this big Icelandic guy or Norwigi
Speaker 1: go Ia figure out he was from lovely guy. But
Speaker 1: as soon as we were on the set, he was
Speaker 1: very gentlemanly. He was very solicitous. He said, oh, I
Speaker 1: would love for you to do my film.
Speaker 2: I met with him.
Speaker 1: I talked to him finally when we're there and we're
Speaker 1: making the film, he was like okay, everybody, you know,
Speaker 1: he was really like booming, oh do this do that?
Speaker 1: I thought, my god, I haven't been around that in
Speaker 1: a while. I'm usually around guy. So we're talking to
Speaker 1: the DP and talking to the lighting people and look
Speaker 1: at video playback and they.
Speaker 2: Don't have a fucking word to say to me. They
Speaker 2: think I'm good. They're like you, you do what you
Speaker 2: do well, you hired you to do what you do.
Speaker 2: You figure it out. And I like to be directed.
Speaker 2: Do you like to be directed?
Speaker 3: I love to be told what to need to ask
Speaker 3: my wife. That's how we're trained to be, to be
Speaker 3: able to do whatever they want. When I try to
Speaker 3: do what we want to do, We're trained to do
Speaker 3: whatever they need. And it's a great feeling. I love
Speaker 3: to be told what to do. Yes.
Speaker 1: Now, I want you to know that I was gonna
Speaker 1: do a film once which was the most macabre and
Speaker 1: strange and insane movie, and I was actually kind of
Speaker 1: excited to do it. But it didn't work out. And
Speaker 1: then the director rewrote the film and a gender reversal.
Speaker 1: All the men were gone. He wanted me to play
Speaker 1: a doctor who gives my wife cancer. I inject her
Speaker 1: with cancer cells to watch or die, and I masturbate
Speaker 1: to her dying decomposing. But I thought, this guy's the
Speaker 1: most fucked up guy, Tom six. He did the show.
Speaker 3: When you find yourself in those kind of hands, what
Speaker 3: I do is I completely give over to them. Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm here for them, So whatever weirdness they're gonna take me,
Speaker 3: have me present, I'm gonna do, Well, what do you
Speaker 3: want to see? What are you looking for? And I
Speaker 3: let them tell me and I go deliver for them.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's a he Sometimes you're like, okay, well I
Speaker 3: wouldn't have thought of that, but okay, yeah, but we
Speaker 3: work for them.
Speaker 1: So, you know, talk about actors then and now. When
Speaker 1: you're working now and you're doing films with younger, less
Speaker 1: experienced actors, you think actors are different today than they
Speaker 1: were thirty years ago.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, sure they are. It was it was a
Speaker 3: vocation thirty years ago. It's like it's like a moment
Speaker 3: now it's like I'm going to be famous. It's not
Speaker 3: like I'm going to do this and it's going to
Speaker 3: make me famous. But I'm doing this and this makes
Speaker 3: me famous. But I'm not in this to be famous
Speaker 3: for this.
Speaker 2: To do this, We'll do a sequence of things right
Speaker 2: and build my way up.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, yeah, I'm sure every generation has some kind
Speaker 3: of version of this. But the younger guys have gotten lazy.
Speaker 3: They don't want to work. They just want to be famous,
Speaker 3: and uh, you know me too. But I love the work.
Speaker 1: Now, when you make films for me, I have my
Speaker 1: example of this. My example is Mission Impossible. You go
Speaker 1: along and you're doing small things. I was joking with people.
Speaker 1: I'd say, I do an independent film and the entire
Speaker 1: budget of the film was a budget for gum on
Speaker 1: the set of Mission Impossible, and I said the reason
Speaker 1: that that was always tough. Then I go on the
Speaker 1: set of Mission and I go, oh god, I remember this,
Speaker 1: big movies, big budget. So when you show up on
Speaker 1: Nolan's set to do Dark Knight, what was that like
Speaker 1: for you?
Speaker 3: Well, if you're a movie geek, which I am, it
Speaker 3: was even even more than you're asking about, because.
Speaker 2: It was this.
Speaker 3: We shot all the Chicago stuff in Chicago and then
Speaker 3: all the other stuff. We're gonna We're gonna shoot at Pinewood. Okay,
Speaker 3: we've all shot pine Well, we all know what it's like.
Speaker 3: But we get there. That was a lie. We're not
Speaker 3: shooting Pinewood. It's a secret because we're hiding from the press. Okay,
Speaker 3: so where are we. We're the old Zeppelin hanger, thirty
Speaker 3: miles north. Go there. So we got the old zeppelinanger.
Speaker 3: We walk in. It's about three football fields wide, about
Speaker 3: three stories tall, and you walk in and it's all
Speaker 3: Gotham City. It is so cool. And if you are
Speaker 3: a movie geek, which I am, it's heaven, man, it's heaven.
Speaker 3: And me and Gary Aleman would play all day long.
Speaker 3: We weren't on camera. It was just so much fun, dude,
Speaker 3: to be there, and it was like a dream. It
Speaker 3: was like it was like it was like a movie
Speaker 3: about a movie. It was like we weren't even working.
Speaker 3: We're making a movie about a movie. Even though we weren't.
Speaker 3: It was just it was heaven.
Speaker 1: So Nolan, what is the director of his ilk, the
Speaker 1: modern blockbuster director?
Speaker 2: What was he like to work with?
Speaker 3: Really sweet, a perfect gentleman. His wife Emma is kind
Speaker 3: of the boss and she says things like all right,
Speaker 3: moving along, Christopher. But he gave me my favorite note
Speaker 3: I ever got from a director. We're doing this big
Speaker 3: party scene and I had the last line and it's
Speaker 3: kind of a closing line, baboom, and I say it
Speaker 3: cut dead silence on the megaphone. Eric Roberts, don't be funny.
Speaker 2: Not to take now.
Speaker 3: I'm not known to be funny. So that was my
Speaker 3: favorite note I ever got.
Speaker 1: God to be on those sets. They asked me, what's
Speaker 1: it like to work with Cruise? And of course everybody
Speaker 1: says the same thing, but it happens to be true,
Speaker 1: which is he's just the hardest.
Speaker 2: Working guy you've ever met in your life. And he's
Speaker 2: all about work.
Speaker 1: We come to work, he wants to talk, he wants
Speaker 1: of a nice he knows the perfect timing. It's ten
Speaker 1: minutes of good morning and high and give you a hug,
Speaker 1: and let's get a coffee. Then we're gonna get into
Speaker 1: rehearsal in the next twenty and it's all the same
Speaker 1: every day, pretty much management by him and Chris. But man,
Speaker 1: was it a joy to work with him because they
Speaker 1: took their time. You know, they didn't luxuriate in toime.
Speaker 1: But whenever they paused and decided that something wasn't working
Speaker 1: and they needed a change or some amendment to the
Speaker 1: text or whatever it was, with a purpose.
Speaker 2: They weren't just jerking off, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And God, when I did mission, I had two small
Speaker 1: parts of mission and it was the time of my
Speaker 1: life to work with with Tom.
Speaker 3: Well, Tom Cruise is so famous that he gets undermine.
Speaker 3: He is so talented he is so handsome and he's
Speaker 3: so famous that everybody wants to take something away from him.
Speaker 3: But he's one of our permanent greats.
Speaker 2: Forever dude, or yeah, forever, forever Actor Eric Roberts.
Speaker 1: If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be
Speaker 1: sure to follow Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back,
Speaker 1: Eric Roberts discusses why his role on HBO's The Righteous
Speaker 1: Gemstones was one of the best jobs of his entire career.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the thing. Eric
Speaker 1: Roberts is many things. An OSCAR nominated actor, a stage veteran,
Speaker 1: a memoir writer, and recently a contestant on ABC's Dancing
Speaker 1: with the Stars. Roberts says he joined the cast because
Speaker 1: it's his wife's favorite television show. Having recently watched my
Speaker 1: wife perform on the latest season, I wanted to know
Speaker 1: what Robert's experience was like performing on Dancing with the Stars.
Speaker 3: I am not a dancer, Alec, but you know, I
Speaker 3: had this incredible partner, Britt. She was so good to me,
Speaker 3: and you know, I fell over my four feet and
Speaker 3: tried to get through it. It didn't do very well.
Speaker 3: I think I lasted four cuts. My wife is a
Speaker 3: fan of the show. She's a huge fan of the show,
Speaker 3: and she loved your wife on the show. She went
Speaker 3: nuts through your wife. She thinks your wife has made
Speaker 3: those beautiful women on the planet and will say so
Speaker 3: to everybody.
Speaker 1: I would agree, yeah, but I'll tell you my wife
Speaker 1: went there and you realize eventually, you realize pretty quickly
Speaker 1: that she's bringing to the event what the pros bring.
Speaker 1: So it's like, where's the drama? You know, she comes in,
Speaker 1: she nails that, she goes home. She comes in, she
Speaker 1: nails it, she goes home, and she only lasted four
Speaker 1: cuts and they sent her home, and she was very
Speaker 1: despondent about that because it's not a dance competition, it's
Speaker 1: a TV show.
Speaker 2: I mean, Andy Richter lasted longer than.
Speaker 1: My wife didne Dancing with the Stars, which tells you
Speaker 1: everything you need to know. I got two more questions
Speaker 1: for you now. One is one of the more recent things.
Speaker 1: I was told. What we read you said was one
Speaker 1: of the best experiences you've had in your career was
Speaker 1: righteous Gemstones. Talk about that man, what part did you play?
Speaker 3: I played a guy named Junior who was the next
Speaker 3: partner of our lead when they would promote wrestling. But
Speaker 3: here's what happened. That was an open call. So my
Speaker 3: wife and I shot an at home audition and we
Speaker 3: sent it in and I got the part. Like that
Speaker 3: day he called it. Yeah, well by blah blah, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you're it, We got ya Okay. It was the best scripts,
Speaker 3: the most fun character, the best actors to work with,
Speaker 3: the best location. Everything was perfect. I have never had
Speaker 3: a job I liked anymore than Righteous Gemstones. I had
Speaker 3: so much fun making that show. And those people are
Speaker 3: all geniuses. The actors are great, the right directors are great.
Speaker 3: I just loved everybody. I can't say enough nice things
Speaker 3: about that because I was allowed to play this really
Speaker 3: fed up guy completely and three dimensionally, and they were
Speaker 3: just so.
Speaker 2: The show is right, if the tone of the show
Speaker 2: is right, you can have a ball like oh yeah.
Speaker 3: And it was perfect because of them, and they invited
Speaker 3: me in for a season. It was such a pleasure.
Speaker 2: I love John.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's my favorite job I ever had.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. That's amazing. What's something that you haven't done?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 1: You've done a lot of movies and TV, a lot
Speaker 1: of things on film, a lot of theater in your
Speaker 1: youth so forth. Is there something that you haven't done
Speaker 1: you wish you're looking forward to doing one day?
Speaker 3: Maybe they're sure, is man, I'd like to play Nuriev
Speaker 3: after he stopped dancing.
Speaker 2: Is somebody writing something for you?
Speaker 3: No, it was talked about years ago. This person came
Speaker 3: to me from Russia and said, how'd you like to
Speaker 3: play Nuriev? I said, I don't have those legs and
Speaker 3: I can't dance, so we can't do any dancing. It
Speaker 3: was like, yeah, but yeah, I mean he was as
Speaker 3: fascinating guy in a fascinating time, and he was gay
Speaker 3: when you was against the law to be homosexual, So yeah,
Speaker 3: I'd be interested in that. But that went away. But
Speaker 3: I did a bunch of homework then in the interim,
Speaker 3: and I really know the guy now and I really
Speaker 3: want to play him, and he needs to be played
Speaker 3: because he wrote ranks with everybody, everything there was, but
Speaker 3: he maintained who he was and his talent was beyond recognition.
Speaker 3: He was a one of a kind and he died alone. Dude,
Speaker 3: He died very much. He really yeah, you know, he
Speaker 3: really know he had AIDS, but yeah he was. He
Speaker 3: was a gay Russian with AIDS. How marginalized can you
Speaker 3: make yourself? And yeah back then, yeah yeah, but there's nothing.
Speaker 3: There's nothing moving forward with that now then, I know
Speaker 3: of No.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you some pell. You are a great,
Speaker 2: great fucking actor, and you're enough.
Speaker 1: And every one of these movies, all of these ten
Speaker 1: thousand fucking movies you make a year, they're lucky to
Speaker 1: have you.
Speaker 2: They're lucky to have you. They are they're lucky to
Speaker 2: have you.
Speaker 3: I will tell them you said so.
Speaker 2: My thanks to actor Eric Roberts.
Speaker 1: This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City.
Speaker 1: We're produced by Kathleen Brusso, Zach MacNeice, and Victoria de Martin.
Speaker 1: Our engineer is Isaac Kaplin Woolner. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's
Speaker 1: the thing.
Speaker 2: Is brought to you by iHeart Radio.