Speaker 1: Hey, Fanaritos, Welcome back to how Rude Tanner Ritos, and
Speaker 1: boy do we have a very special guest on the
Speaker 1: podcast today. Lydia Cornell played the gorgeous Spanish teacher Senorita Mosley,
Speaker 1: who famously locked lips with Danny Tanner in the season
Speaker 1: two episode El Problema Grande de dj But the word
Speaker 1: actress doesn't nearly capture all of the facets.
Speaker 2: Of her extraordinary life.
Speaker 1: She is not just the beauty who is best known
Speaker 1: for her role as the younger sister Sarah on the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty sitcom Too Close for Comfort. She is a
Speaker 1: woman and children's advocate, an international public speaker on recovery
Speaker 1: with twenty nine years of sobriety, a lecturer at the
Speaker 1: LMU School of Film and Television, and a prolific writer
Speaker 1: who has been invited to share her writings with the
Speaker 1: International Museum of Peace. She also hosts a podcast called Godshots,
Speaker 1: which explores mental health through the true stories of life's
Speaker 1: uncanny coincidences. To say we are in awe of Lydia
Speaker 1: before we even sit down to chat with her is
Speaker 1: an understatement. Faner Ritos, please welcome the extraordinarily inspirational Lydia Cornell.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, it's so wonderful to see you.
Speaker 3: I like, I'm so excited that you're on the show,
Speaker 3: and I just can't I can't thank you enough for
Speaker 3: doing this.
Speaker 2: And also like, you're just a badass, may I say?
Speaker 3: Like, And we keep finding out that we grew up
Speaker 3: surrounded and interacting with people who are absolute legends. Oh
Speaker 3: and you are definitely one of them. So you're so
Speaker 3: no truly, we so wanted to have you.
Speaker 2: On the show.
Speaker 3: And I just have to say I was a fan
Speaker 3: of Too Close to for Comfort as a kid, and
Speaker 3: I never somehow realized. I think maybe because I didn't
Speaker 3: really have scenes with you that, like you were the
Speaker 3: teacher and the Yeah, anyway, big fan, love it.
Speaker 2: You're a puge.
Speaker 4: Your care because of his voice is really bizarre.
Speaker 2: Never anyway, no, no, no, no worries.
Speaker 4: Not only that way.
Speaker 3: You should have heard us last week. She was Andrea
Speaker 3: was sick, I had allergies. It sounded like we were
Speaker 3: like the two old muppets, the two like old men
Speaker 3: in the balcony, Like we love you guys.
Speaker 1: You guys are so sweet cool, Thank you, You're so
Speaker 1: sweet for doing this and the more we find out,
Speaker 1: like we just it's like peeling an onion. We just
Speaker 1: keep finding out more and more cool facts about you,
Speaker 1: and we're like, oh, we could get her on the show.
Speaker 2: Be so cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, I'm very very excited.
Speaker 4: I had no idea even you know.
Speaker 5: I just think about how beautiful the show was, and
Speaker 5: when Bob Saggett died, I was devastated because I've known
Speaker 5: him forever.
Speaker 3: Well, Lydia, welcome to the show. We are so excited
Speaker 3: to have you on. Senorita Mosley. Yes, Ola, I can
Speaker 3: understand it, but I can't speak it.
Speaker 2: That I can read it. Great, if you could write
Speaker 2: that down for me, I'll let you know. Abe, you're
Speaker 2: going to take a crack at.
Speaker 1: This that now we know how you got the gig
Speaker 1: and Senorita Mosley, it's fantastic.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 5: I'm old friends with Jeff Franklin from years ago from
Speaker 5: the garage. Yeah, and then he said you you speak Spanish, right,
Speaker 5: because I do. I like to show up my Spanish.
Speaker 4: Wherever I go.
Speaker 3: It's like I wish I paid more attention and spoke
Speaker 3: better Spanish. But from originally oh okay, well that that
Speaker 3: makes sense, So yeah, we'd love to like.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's so much to dig into.
Speaker 3: With who you are, your history, you're acting, you're you're
Speaker 3: you're speaking, you're writing like you're just you're it's you're
Speaker 3: really really talented. And I hope people no, it's true,
Speaker 3: Like I women in this business who really do a
Speaker 3: lot and who kind of take the bowl by the
Speaker 3: horns and go and create things for themselves. I have
Speaker 3: huge admiration for me too, because this business is not
Speaker 3: always friendly to women and to women creators, and it's
Speaker 3: particularly not one that women often stay in for their
Speaker 3: entire lives. And so when you meet women who are
Speaker 3: doing it and doing it successfully, I always like to
Speaker 3: just be like, big up to you, because it's you know.
Speaker 4: You make me want to cry.
Speaker 5: I'm serious, I just got tears in my eyes because
Speaker 5: it has been a rough journey. I mean I worry
Speaker 5: about I really have such love for younger women, and
Speaker 5: you know, I became a mom at forty. So I
Speaker 5: look at you guys, and you're young, and you're still
Speaker 5: you're vibrant, and you're exciting, and you're doing it right now. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I want to encourage younger people to please stet to
Speaker 5: their dreams and don't let anything ever stop you if
Speaker 5: you believe in yourself. But you have to start believing
Speaker 5: in yourself. A lot of women don't. That was my
Speaker 5: problem for many years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're taught to doubt ourselves a lot. And I
Speaker 3: think something Andrew and I talk about it a lot.
Speaker 3: Something happens, I think, particularly for women around mid age forties,
Speaker 3: all of a sudden you kind of start going, I wait,
Speaker 3: hold on, I'm not doing this for anybody.
Speaker 2: Else like this is there's a freaking.
Speaker 3: I am a different I am a different woman, and
Speaker 3: so I love when and I love to see women
Speaker 3: mentoring younger women. You know, we're so often taught that, like,
Speaker 3: women don't look out for other women, and I don't
Speaker 3: find that to be true. Once we all get to
Speaker 3: the age where we kind of untangle that myths.
Speaker 5: Yeah, oh gosh, I can't say I love collaboration and
Speaker 5: not competition. We're all yanique. We all love unique gifts
Speaker 5: and to really spend each day in gratitude and joy.
Speaker 4: It's hard.
Speaker 5: It's hard to jump togself when you don't have a
Speaker 5: regular job.
Speaker 3: You know, it's staying in this business without completely sacrificing
Speaker 3: who you are is really hard, and it's it's not
Speaker 3: always easy.
Speaker 2: But I'd love to start.
Speaker 3: I mean, at the beginning, I could just I'm gonna
Speaker 3: jump all over there. I used to try and keep
Speaker 3: my ADHD under control.
Speaker 2: But yeah, let's started.
Speaker 3: Let's start at the beginning, because that's usually a great
Speaker 3: place to start. When did you first start acting or
Speaker 3: getting into wanting to create or or write or perform?
Speaker 5: When I was five, I got lost to Disneyland and
Speaker 5: I got lost the Sleeping Beauty's Capital and they call
Speaker 5: the police. Who knows what happened, honestly, but I was
Speaker 5: obsessed with the Land of Make Belief, probably to escape
Speaker 5: a very And I love my mom.
Speaker 4: She just passed away two years ago, a very critical, bipolar,
Speaker 4: borderline mother and I I know that's a hot term nowadays,
Speaker 4: but it took me.
Speaker 5: So long to unravel this toxic relationship. And I've had
Speaker 5: a complete forgiveness of her. I forgave her completely and
Speaker 5: I love her to pieces now in my heart. But
Speaker 5: I think a lot of actors come to Hollywood to
Speaker 5: seek the adoration of strangers. And you guys started here.
Speaker 5: I came here from far away. You know, it was
Speaker 5: a dream to be Hayley Mills. And I watched The
Speaker 5: Moon Spinners and Pollyanna, and I thought, oh my god,
Speaker 5: it's like she was. So the sense of innocence and
Speaker 5: the sense of wonder was what turned me on about
Speaker 5: the entertainment industry, thinking it was full of innocence and
Speaker 5: wonder back then. But and it still is, you know,
Speaker 5: I have to seek that out. And I love movies.
Speaker 5: I just loved Micheli and I was in every play
Speaker 5: in high school. I had a little theater in the
Speaker 5: backyard with all over the sandbox, and I always got
Speaker 5: to play the boy because.
Speaker 4: All the girls the neighborhood wouldn't play the boy, so.
Speaker 2: I was the prince or you know, oh, I love it.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 3: And I used to create very Shakespearean of you, yeah exactly,
Speaker 3: well reversed but it's close.
Speaker 4: And I used to create poster board scenery.
Speaker 5: And my dad was in the He was a violinist,
Speaker 5: was raised in Shanghai, escaped the Russian Revolution, and he
Speaker 5: was his little boy, raised in Shanghai's whole life wow.
Speaker 5: And he was in the Shanghai Philharmonic and then he
Speaker 5: got into an American a really good music school here,
Speaker 5: not Julliard.
Speaker 4: The other went Phillips And.
Speaker 5: That's when the Japanese invaded the Rape of Nan King
Speaker 5: and they shut the city down and he couldn't leave
Speaker 5: for ten more years. So he didn't make it to
Speaker 5: America un till later. But he played first violin in
Speaker 5: the Alpasa Symphony and I went to see him do
Speaker 5: a production of Pinocchio and he let me come to
Speaker 5: the rehearsals, and I was exploring the stage and just
Speaker 5: the theater, the gauze whale with the light inside, and
Speaker 5: he went in and out of the scenery in the
Speaker 5: set design, and I was obsessed with theater. And that's
Speaker 5: what started the bug. And then I did every play
Speaker 5: in high school. I was a nerd and a had
Speaker 5: very bad acne. I had one friend in high school,
Speaker 5: a gay guy, Dny Monroe. We moved from Scarsdale to
Speaker 5: I mean from El Pasa to Scarsale, so I didn't
Speaker 5: fit in.
Speaker 4: So it was like a really great escape.
Speaker 2: And that was where you started. Was theater.
Speaker 4: Yes, well, I was in a well.
Speaker 5: I wasn't in I was in a fellow, but I
Speaker 5: didn't play Tesdemona. I played a male torch bearer with
Speaker 5: long sideburns to cover my with my gay friend Monroe,
Speaker 5: but behind the Semona who's.
Speaker 4: The cheerleader with longlood here. So I wanted to be blunt.
Speaker 5: You know. It was this crazy idea that you could
Speaker 5: escape your own reality by becoming an actress, right, you
Speaker 5: know my motives weren't exactly sure.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean that I don't know that it's yeah,
Speaker 3: I think that's I mean that's what a lot of
Speaker 3: people come here looking for some sort of escape it,
Speaker 3: whether you're viewing it or participating it. It is some
Speaker 3: sort of escapism, some sort of pretending to be someone else,
Speaker 3: sort of you know, when you get to have this
Speaker 3: persona in these creations and you know, well, I didn't.
Speaker 4: Mean it wasn't pure. It was like it was for
Speaker 4: the fun. Yeah, I thought it was going to be
Speaker 4: just right, wonderland of fun.
Speaker 5: And I remember my high school drama teacher, mister Hazel
Speaker 5: time I did the scene from Glass Bannagerie, the opening
Speaker 5: where the brother talks about I have tricks in my pocket,
Speaker 5: I have things up my sleeve, and his eyes were
Speaker 5: looking at me like like I became that guy. I'm
Speaker 5: not like doing gender bending roles. I just happened to
Speaker 5: love these roles where the main part was always more interesting,
Speaker 5: you know. So I'm writing roles like that for women,
Speaker 5: But back then I would he loved what I was
Speaker 5: doing and it kind of fed my passion.
Speaker 1: So what was your first professional acting job it was?
Speaker 1: Was it too close for comfort or was it I wanted?
Speaker 5: My parents had moved to Holland my father had lost
Speaker 5: his job and he was given a job in the
Speaker 5: shipping industry by one of his childhood friends and made
Speaker 5: it the Europe and he had a heart attack and
Speaker 5: I went to take care of him with my family,
Speaker 5: and I began writing letters to all the producers on
Speaker 5: Dutch American TV shows that were in Dutch with Dutch subtitles.
Speaker 5: Had written letters begging for jobs, and then I went,
Speaker 5: I'm going to go to Hollywood. I graduated college with
Speaker 5: a business degree in Boulder. By the way, I worked
Speaker 5: at Caribou Ranch with Joni Mitchell and Billie Joel and
Speaker 5: you know, driving rocks throws to the airport and meeting
Speaker 5: all those guys.
Speaker 2: It was a touch so cool.
Speaker 4: It was so cool.
Speaker 5: It was like I wanted to be in the rocks
Speaker 5: in the music business first as a sideway to get in,
Speaker 5: so I go, how did I get into Holland? And finally,
Speaker 5: once I got back from Holland to La I went
Speaker 5: to dinner with an agent one night. I was new
Speaker 5: in town, brand new, and we went to La Scala
Speaker 5: boutique and we walked in in the front booth. He
Speaker 5: introduces me to four people, Natalie Wood, Robert Wagner, Aaron Spelling,
Speaker 5: and Fred Astaire. They were all sitting together at the
Speaker 5: front booth. I was so starstruck, I was shaking. I
Speaker 5: couldn't I was tongue tied. And then we sat across
Speaker 5: from them on another booth and during the dinner, I'm
Speaker 5: not kidding this happened.
Speaker 4: Natalie would went like this to me.
Speaker 5: She summoned me with her index finger, and I'm like,
Speaker 5: I just like walked over there by hygnosis or something.
Speaker 5: And she said, mister Spelling would like to meet you.
Speaker 5: So apparently he likes to meet all the young new
Speaker 5: girls right right here. You're an actress. And I said yeah.
Speaker 5: He says, why don't you come into our casting office tomorrow.
Speaker 5: I meet Kathy Henderson and I got my first love book.
Speaker 5: Oh and I got Charlie's Angel too, like two jobs.
Speaker 4: That was it.
Speaker 2: That's so cool.
Speaker 5: It was played shuffleboard and I looked right in the camera.
Speaker 4: I didn't realize you don't look in the cap.
Speaker 1: Rookie mistake, right, That's what an incredible meeting. That's that's
Speaker 1: like a fever dream that doesn't even seem real.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well you guys, come on, I went to hear
Speaker 3: your That feels like a feels like a dinner at
Speaker 3: Jeff Franklin's house when you walk in and you're like.
Speaker 2: What, how are all these people here? This is a dream?
Speaker 2: What is happening? Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 4: A lot of parties have in his big house, that house.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, yeah, it's great parties, great music parties to.
Speaker 4: Boys and then whitney Y and Bobby Brown.
Speaker 2: Yeah, music is always always a huge part of it.
Speaker 3: So what was the what was like the turn like
Speaker 3: the role kind of that turning point for your career
Speaker 3: where you realized you were going to be doing more
Speaker 3: than playing shuffleboard in a bikini and looking at the camera,
Speaker 3: but where we were like, oh, I think I might
Speaker 3: actually like this is a thing, I might actually do the.
Speaker 5: Very next Huggerson And it was I met these producers,
Speaker 5: some of these agents, agents, managers at a party and
Speaker 5: they said, hey, you look like the type they're casting
Speaker 5: right now.
Speaker 4: And they had They managed a young boy named Michael J.
Speaker 5: Fox who was playing a He was twenty one playing
Speaker 5: a twelve year old on Palmer's Down USA, and no
Speaker 5: one knew who he was really. But I signed with
Speaker 5: them twenty percent they took, My agent took it, and
Speaker 5: my other manager, business Menser.
Speaker 4: Took five. It was like thirty five percent out the window.
Speaker 5: Right, and they sent me on one audition three. The
Speaker 5: first one was Blue Jeans for ABC. I acted the
Speaker 5: hell out of that role. It was a stage screen test.
Speaker 5: Didn't get it. Cry Apparently, if you sign a pilot
Speaker 5: agreement to audition for a pilot, you sign seven years
Speaker 5: of your life away. You can't do another pilot audition.
Speaker 5: So the luck was I didn't get that one because
Speaker 5: it didn't go. The second one was Lady's manag for CBS.
Speaker 4: I didn't get that one.
Speaker 5: The third one was keep It in the Family too
Speaker 5: close for comfort, and I was late.
Speaker 4: I took a bus.
Speaker 5: I was wearing the draggle, my hair was all like
Speaker 5: wet from the rain. It was raining in La and
Speaker 5: I remember coming in late thirty minutes late in the
Speaker 5: cat and the secretary said, sorry, they've seen foreign to girls.
Speaker 4: It's too late.
Speaker 5: And I started to cry, like you know, just not
Speaker 5: cry cry. But Arnie written comes out of the office
Speaker 5: and he goes she.
Speaker 4: Lets the part letter coming in read, and so I
Speaker 4: went in and it was my third big audition.
Speaker 1: Wow, sorry my voice, that's incredible.
Speaker 5: And then there's a line in the script. I'm reading
Speaker 5: with Varcy Carsey and Tom Warner.
Speaker 4: They're in the room.
Speaker 5: My god, right, yeah, ABC execs Bob Stolphy and Arnie Sultan,
Speaker 5: who created Gets Smart with mel Brooks. And then there's
Speaker 5: the captain director and I'm reading with Arnie and there's
Speaker 5: a line in the script.
Speaker 4: That says, Sarah gives Dad a raspberry. So after my.
Speaker 5: Line, my line was, in case you haven't noticed, we're
Speaker 5: two very sophisticated young women.
Speaker 4: So there and I pick up an imaginary raspberry and
Speaker 4: I thrust it at him and.
Speaker 5: They burst out laughing. The whole room exploded with laughter,
Speaker 5: and I turned red and they go, what the hell
Speaker 5: are you having me here? And I went, getting you
Speaker 5: a raspberry? Like you said there and he goes, you
Speaker 5: don't know what a raspberry is, and they all did
Speaker 5: a bronx to here.
Speaker 4: You know that big loud right?
Speaker 5: And what time can you Be's a callbacks tomorrow for
Speaker 5: the network?
Speaker 4: They thought, you know, and then he said he said
Speaker 4: what planet are you from? And I think I said Texas.
Speaker 4: I was so.
Speaker 5: But anyway, the next day was a miracle because I
Speaker 5: read what Ted night in front of Tony Famopolis, the
Speaker 5: president of ABC.
Speaker 4: All the execs were there. I wasn't even nervous.
Speaker 5: I was the only one wearing a virginal flowered dress.
Speaker 5: The other four Callback girls were wearing cleavage and boobs
Speaker 5: hanging out and nipples showing and cut off and I'm
Speaker 5: like a virgin.
Speaker 4: And I read with Ted.
Speaker 5: And they were laughing and clapping. At the end, I
Speaker 5: read with Devrevon Volckenberg, who plays my sister. At the
Speaker 5: end of it, she says, what's your name again? I said,
Speaker 5: Lydia Cordemilov, Corni Lov.
Speaker 4: This is weird Russian name. I have to get a
Speaker 4: shorter name. She says, that's weird.
Speaker 5: I worked for a Gregreek Corniloff, but they moved him
Speaker 5: to Holland and I went, that's my father. She works
Speaker 5: in the interval with shipping company in New York City.
Speaker 5: Out of ten million people in New York ever worked
Speaker 5: for my dad.
Speaker 4: We're best friends.
Speaker 1: What are the odds?
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4: I wrote a movie.
Speaker 5: I directed her in a movie we did together. I mean,
Speaker 5: we're like sisters.
Speaker 1: Oh oh wow, what a great story. That's one of
Speaker 1: those one of those god shots coincidences.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, we're just school just all sort of lined
Speaker 3: up exactly as it was supposed to.
Speaker 2: That's incredible.
Speaker 5: It's a god I love that term, Like I trademarked
Speaker 5: that term already because it's about synchronous city.
Speaker 4: That's uncanny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of those.
Speaker 1: So what great training ground to be on a sitcom,
Speaker 1: which is kind of like doing a live play, but
Speaker 1: where you get to mess up and redo your lines
Speaker 1: if you mess up. And that's so you did Too
Speaker 1: Close for Comfort for six seasons, seven seasons.
Speaker 5: Six seasons, and then Ted died in this He died
Speaker 5: in the sixth season.
Speaker 4: So I and I.
Speaker 5: Did five seasons full. We were negotiating to go in
Speaker 5: the sixth. Ted then did something kind of weird, he said,
Speaker 5: I want only well, I shouldn't say this on the year.
Speaker 4: I loved Ted, but he got rid of Nasty.
Speaker 5: You want to get rid of Nancy and you just want
Speaker 5: to have Jim Bullock and another family or something.
Speaker 4: I ran to Nancy and I went to lunch recently
Speaker 4: she told me the whole story. So we're good. I
Speaker 4: loved him, I've learned. I learned everything from him, how.
Speaker 5: To do his spit take, which is like, yeah, I
Speaker 5: learned like every comedic.
Speaker 4: And also I got in a lot of trouble with him.
Speaker 4: I mean, at one point, really, I was standing.
Speaker 5: I couldn't look him in the eye because he made
Speaker 5: me laugh or made me nervous. So I look about
Speaker 5: him his forehead and he would yell, why is she
Speaker 5: looking at my forehead?
Speaker 4: He would yell at the booth. I'm like, I'm.
Speaker 2: But event Jody and I do that all the time.
Speaker 3: Yep, you guys too, Oh yeah, because we would make
Speaker 3: each other laugh. We would have these stupid bits between
Speaker 3: Stephanie and Kimmy that we'd have to do, particularly in
Speaker 3: Fuller House, and we were all and so it would
Speaker 3: be like just we'd be wearing some ridiculous costume or something,
Speaker 3: and I was like, just look at my forehead, like,
Speaker 3: don't look me in the eye, because if if you
Speaker 3: look me in the eye.
Speaker 2: Where it's all bad.
Speaker 3: So yeah, a forehead, the forehead is a great place
Speaker 3: to look when you're trying.
Speaker 2: To get it's a good trick.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, that's so funny. You did that.
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 5: I got in trouble the National National requires in spies
Speaker 5: to the debt, and they were a thing I was printing,
Speaker 5: but I was actually they gave me pearl buttons and
Speaker 5: the warded lady couldn't do them.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 4: I got in a lot of trouble with Tatalot.
Speaker 5: I was so nervous, and my managers kept trying to
Speaker 5: get more money and I went, no, I'll do to
Speaker 5: show for free. But you know, you know how that
Speaker 5: works when you started write, become a.
Speaker 3: Little well yeah, I mean, you know, this business is
Speaker 3: it's it's a dance between the business part and the
Speaker 3: show part. And and you know, unfortunately the business part
Speaker 3: wins out a lot as opposed to the creative performance side.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you know it's there, it's always it gets
Speaker 2: a little sticky.
Speaker 3: But like six seasons on a show is incredible. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's like, you know, most people, I mean, nowadays, shows
Speaker 3: don't hardly get six seasons, you know, but even back then,
Speaker 3: like six seasons was a lot.
Speaker 4: I forget to be grateful about.
Speaker 5: I keep going I haven't really done my real dream yet,
Speaker 5: which is writing directing. You know, It's always been a
Speaker 5: dream to be a writer. And I can't believe I'm
Speaker 5: not more grateful. I should be really grateful.
Speaker 4: We have a lot fun and then every hiatus I
Speaker 4: did a love I had six love books, two hotels, Hunter,
Speaker 4: eighteen Night Writer, Simon and Simon, Hardball, full House.
Speaker 2: All of the all of the top eighties shows you hit,
Speaker 2: you hit them all Amazing.
Speaker 4: Race Car Driving, Dix Hazard, two hour Movie Crazy.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, those.
Speaker 4: Are the eighties.
Speaker 1: That's so sweet to hear that you still keep in
Speaker 1: touch with Deborah. Do you still keep in touch with
Speaker 1: Jim j Bullets or.
Speaker 4: We just spent two days with him in Palm Springs
Speaker 4: just hanging out. How my boyfriend and I go.
Speaker 2: Oh, that sounds fabulous. Yeah, that sounds super fun.
Speaker 5: I love Jim. And they named Monroe after my high
Speaker 5: school friend.
Speaker 2: I was going to ask that.
Speaker 1: I was like, what a coincidence? Is not a common name.
Speaker 1: Yeah that is so cool. Oh wow, oh I love that.
Speaker 2: Are you still in La Yeah, you're out here. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I living kind of hard to do. I mean it is.
Speaker 5: I raised my kids in Beverly Hills. I raised three
Speaker 5: boys and two dogs, including my husband, and they.
Speaker 3: All Was he one of the boys or the dogs
Speaker 3: were absolutely yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 5: I had a stepson who had grittle bung disease. I
Speaker 5: love him so much. He's twenty eight.
Speaker 4: My son is.
Speaker 5: Thirty, just through thirty. My biological thing. It was such
Speaker 5: a great household. We have a wonderful time. But now
Speaker 5: I met the love of my life. And he's a writer.
Speaker 5: He wrote Seinfeld, got an Immy wg A wards. He
Speaker 5: brought all those eighties shows too.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. That's incredible.
Speaker 3: So you still you're still very much involved in I mean,
Speaker 3: this business and have been for a very long time.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's incredible.
Speaker 5: There's times I want to leave, but I have. I
Speaker 5: have so much writing I'm doing right now, writing kind.
Speaker 4: Of a spiritual therapy comedy.
Speaker 5: I write comedy about my own complete assholish things that happen,
Speaker 5: I mean, things that have happened to me.
Speaker 4: I had some hilarious Hollywood horror stories.
Speaker 5: So the new book I'm writing is called Hiding My
Speaker 5: Brain and My bra It should have been done by now.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, yeah, oh my god, I want to read it.
Speaker 1: I was like, how do I get my I want
Speaker 1: my hands on an advanced copy please.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, definitely, it's just about to be turned in.
Speaker 4: But I also there's some tragic parts in it as well, because.
Speaker 5: I'm, you know, thirty years sober and I had a
Speaker 5: really I found my soul.
Speaker 4: It's funny you can find your soul in a shallow.
Speaker 5: Place like LA because it's got this incredible recovery community.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Sorry, the La recovery community is really it's unlike anywhere else, and.
Speaker 2: We're very spoiled.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the recovery community out here. You go other places,
Speaker 3: you're like, oh man, like recovery. You know, it's great anywhere,
Speaker 3: and you'll find your people.
Speaker 2: But La has just such a.
Speaker 3: And so many creative people, and so many people in
Speaker 3: this business I think too, that are also sober and
Speaker 3: that it there's just such a connection amongst a lot
Speaker 3: of people in this area.
Speaker 4: Totally agree. I love yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean you're really open about your sobriety
Speaker 3: and you're speaking and all of that, which I obviously
Speaker 3: have huge.
Speaker 2: Admiration for.
Speaker 5: What.
Speaker 3: You know, twenty nine years you said twenty nine or
Speaker 3: thirty years.
Speaker 5: I'll me thirty, but I'm twenty nine twenty nine yeah, seven,
Speaker 5: I mean nine to eleven, nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's yeah, that's incredible.
Speaker 1: Congratulations, that's really inspirational.
Speaker 5: It's everything. I can't believe it. I was like a
Speaker 5: radioactive drunk. I mean, I really had, and then one
Speaker 5: day everything shifted because I surrendered. It was like, I
Speaker 5: kind of want to prove this power through quantum physics
Speaker 5: because it's I wasn't raised in a fundamentalist religion, but
Speaker 5: I definitely believe in the power of love, your higher self. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and it's transformative once you just I title a body
Speaker 5: my old brain out started believing that it was possible
Speaker 5: to be happy and to stop worrying, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So it's really it's it's a common theme on
Speaker 1: this podcast. We talk a lot about how you turn
Speaker 1: tragedy into comedy. We're using that as a way to
Speaker 1: cope with degree for the difficult times in your life.
Speaker 1: And is that do you think that's why you're so
Speaker 1: drawn to writing comedy and performing comedy.
Speaker 2: Time time plus tragedy equals comedy.
Speaker 4: Exactly.
Speaker 5: I can't believe you said everything about tragedy turning into comedy.
Speaker 4: That's my entire life. Actually, yeah, and every I.
Speaker 5: Have a sponsor, and every time I tell her, let's
Speaker 5: just look at this as an opportunity.
Speaker 4: You're going to have a transformation.
Speaker 5: Don't fight it, accept it right, accepting Sometimes we jump
Speaker 5: to the solution too quickly, but acceptance is accept where
Speaker 5: you are right now.
Speaker 2: It's not going to kill you, right, and then you.
Speaker 5: Can move into the beauty the transformation, which is to
Speaker 5: see the good around you.
Speaker 4: I really believe love is the physical force. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I was gonna says it's you know, it's one
Speaker 3: of those things until.
Speaker 2: You get to a place where you.
Speaker 3: Can and I have gone through this many times in
Speaker 3: my life until I learned to be able to get
Speaker 3: to a place where I could find joy regardless of
Speaker 3: outer circumstances. Then I found that once I was able
Speaker 3: to tap into that joy, that then all of the
Speaker 3: things that I wanted for myself became that much easier
Speaker 3: because I also recognized that they weren't in the external,
Speaker 3: you know, and they weren't in the things I would
Speaker 3: surround myself with.
Speaker 2: It was all like what am I feeling on the inside.
Speaker 3: I can drive a car and have no money and
Speaker 3: live in a one bedroom apartment, but I can all
Speaker 3: but I can be happy because happiness and outer monetary
Speaker 3: stuff are not at all connected. And like learning that
Speaker 3: sort of thing and like the reflection of that, and
Speaker 3: that's why I just I love listening to what you
Speaker 3: talk about and all that because.
Speaker 2: It's so it's so key to like really learning how to.
Speaker 3: Live in the present moment and that it's that being
Speaker 3: happy is not necessarily a condition, right, Like it's not
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, Like you can be content
Speaker 3: in the midst of yes, incredible darkness, because you know
Speaker 3: that that is also momentary, you know, God that it's
Speaker 3: all sort of transitory. But anyway, I I, Yeah, this
Speaker 3: is one of my favorite things to talk about. So
Speaker 3: I'm like very excited. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: In the darkest moment of my divorce, when I was
Speaker 5: when my little stepson was going to move away to
Speaker 5: Malibu High and I was going to lose my little
Speaker 5: he was fourteen when we divorced, Jack went off to
Speaker 5: see his dad for the summer, and I'm sitting under
Speaker 5: this fig tree.
Speaker 4: I never knew we.
Speaker 5: Had a fig tree because I didn't look up during
Speaker 5: the whole marriage ring.
Speaker 4: And suddenly, by the end of that year, when my
Speaker 4: life had come to fruition, the whole tree was full
Speaker 4: of figs.
Speaker 5: But I had this amazing revelation that life is about
Speaker 5: the very moment you're in. If you can be here now,
Speaker 5: if you have one foot in tomorrow and one fitting yesterday,
Speaker 5: you're pissing on today. And I suddenly a butterfly, I'm
Speaker 5: not kidding, butterfly started circling me because I was in
Speaker 5: this grief, deep grief. It was almost like a pang
Speaker 5: of heartache over the divorce. It wasn't that I it's
Speaker 5: a love story. I have a really funny story about
Speaker 5: my marriage. It's like hilarious. I mean, I couldn't leave
Speaker 5: my marriage sooner. I was getting too much comedy.
Speaker 4: Material out of it.
Speaker 3: But I mean, I get it. I've been divorced three times.
Speaker 3: It's so much, so much material, you just never ending,
Speaker 3: and it's still going yet.
Speaker 5: But then this butterfly appeared and I started and it
Speaker 5: was snapped out of my internal grief by an external
Speaker 5: It was weird, like I always had an internal transformation,
Speaker 5: but this time, and this is during.
Speaker 4: Sobriety, this butterfly was so beautiful.
Speaker 5: I began chasing butterflies and I was taken to I
Speaker 5: had to go to a Delmar event for autistic children
Speaker 5: that weekend, and they put me up at a hotel
Speaker 5: and I went to the San Diego Zoo alone, cried
Speaker 5: about my marriage, and I started playing with the animals,
Speaker 5: like a gorilla stucker hung out at me, and a
Speaker 5: peacock I sawt like a nerd, but a peacock opened
Speaker 5: its feathers and I'm like. All the toddlers and I
Speaker 5: were ooing an eye against the animals. All the parents
Speaker 5: were on their phones, and I'm like, I'm a child again,
Speaker 5: and I was so in love with this day. I
Speaker 5: stayed so present, and when I got home, I saw
Speaker 5: the one thing I wanted to see was a monarch
Speaker 5: butterfly in person. I've never seen one in person, and
Speaker 5: it was waiting for me at my front door on
Speaker 5: a rose and I go and I realized the universe
Speaker 5: is interactive. It wants to play with us. It wants
Speaker 5: to show off for us. It wants to give us
Speaker 5: our dreams, but we're never present. Where was worrying or regretting,
Speaker 5: you know, and that was like a revelation kind of
Speaker 5: a day.
Speaker 3: Well, they've done these incredible studies about having a sense
Speaker 3: of awe. If you can cultivate a sense of awe
Speaker 3: or a sense of wonder, yes, every day over something small,
Speaker 3: whether it's a bird or a piece of art or
Speaker 3: a sunset or something that you just go wow, and
Speaker 3: you tap into that childlike sense of like that's so cool.
Speaker 3: They have done studies that show that that is a
Speaker 3: huge connection and boost to like serotonin levels and dopamine
Speaker 3: and like all of this stuff. That that sense of
Speaker 3: awe and sort of childlike wonder and keeping that sense
Speaker 3: of play and like excitement about what might be next
Speaker 3: in your day that you don't know about. That that
Speaker 3: is the thing that really is one of the huge
Speaker 3: keys to contentment because those little things are are literally
Speaker 3: you know, like you said, it's by your front door,
Speaker 3: it's by it's the moments that you can find a
Speaker 3: sense of awe or beauty in some of the most
Speaker 3: horrific moments. And it's those moments that like, that's that's life, right,
Speaker 3: is that that those two things kind of coming up
Speaker 3: against each other and how important?
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 5: I can't believe you relate to that. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 5: I love when people relate to this because a lot
Speaker 5: of you know, my.
Speaker 4: Boyfriend's very grounded in reality.
Speaker 5: It's like, okay, but it's kind of fun having a
Speaker 5: grounded person and a very ethereal person in the same house.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Oh that well that's my husband and I. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: you need those two people otherwise everyone's floating off the planet.
Speaker 3: And also, like I tend to it's those like both
Speaker 3: sides of my brain where I'm like, well, yes, but
Speaker 3: also this there's like sensible, but there's also like my
Speaker 3: woo woo side, and I love my woo woo side,
Speaker 3: but I also love my science side. But I think
Speaker 3: the two are much more interconnected than we give them credit.
Speaker 5: But anyway, by the way, wait, Einstein says, no problem
Speaker 5: can be solved at the same level it was created on.
Speaker 5: Do you have to go to a higher level it's
Speaker 5: spiritual or diplomatic. You can't fight fire with fire, can't
Speaker 5: your alcoholism with more alcohol, And you can't really create
Speaker 5: peace with bums.
Speaker 4: So it's like go to a spiritual or diplomatic solution.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it requires a bigger picture thinking and sort of
Speaker 3: getting outside of your sense of self ego, your own ego,
Speaker 3: yes exactly.
Speaker 2: Oh ego is not your am ego.
Speaker 3: Really, as you can probably tell, we could talk to
Speaker 3: Lydio all day. I mean, she is an absolute inspiration
Speaker 3: in everything that she has accomplished in her lifetime. Well,
Speaker 3: we couldn't bear to cut this interview short, so stay
Speaker 3: tuned for Part two of our interview with Lydia Cornell,
Speaker 3: airing this Friday, and in the meantime, if you want
Speaker 3: to find us on Instagram, you can check us out
Speaker 3: at how Rude Podcast. You can also send us emails
Speaker 3: at howardpodcast at gmail dot com. We love to hear
Speaker 3: all your comments, your questions. We just love hearing from
Speaker 3: our fan of ritos. You guys really make this show
Speaker 3: such a joy for us to do. And yeah, until
Speaker 3: next time, Part two Lydia Cornell, You guys, it's going
Speaker 3: to be really exciting.
Speaker 2: But remember, here we go, here we go. The world
Speaker 2: is small, but the house is full.
Speaker 1: I'm always waiting, like on the edge of my seat
Speaker 1: to see if you screw it up.
Speaker 3: I feel like I should have in honor of Sendri
Speaker 3: in a Moseley, I should have translated it into Spanish.
Speaker 2: Oh well, that's okay. Well I tried okay,