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Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the

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Speaker 1: Thing from iHeart Radio. My guest today is a Tony

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Speaker 1: nominated actress, singer, recording artist, and writer. Melissa Rico has

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Speaker 1: graced the Broadway stage in iconic roles like Eliza Doolittle

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Speaker 1: in My Fair Lady and the title role in One

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Speaker 1: Touch of Venus. She is also one of the most

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Speaker 1: celebrated interpreters of the work of composers Stephen Sondheim and

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Speaker 1: Michelle LeGrande. Her twenty eighteen album Sondheim Sublime was described

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Speaker 1: by The Wall Street Journal as the best all Sondheim

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Speaker 1: album ever recorded. In addition to Sondheim, Erko's interpretation of

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Speaker 1: Michelle Legrand's music was so profound that she was asked

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Speaker 1: by The New York Times to write his eulogy and

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Speaker 1: was the only American singer invited to perform at his

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Speaker 1: memorial in Paris. In addition to her career on stage

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Speaker 1: and in the recording studio, Erico is a recent contributing

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Speaker 1: editor to The New York Times and was the only

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Speaker 1: American singer invited to perform at his memorial in Paris.

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Speaker 1: As a native New Yorker, and performer with a long

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Speaker 1: career on the Broadway stage. I was curious if Melissa

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Speaker 1: Erico was a frequent theatergoer herself.

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Speaker 2: Well, I pursued tickets today to Ragtime. I don't go

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Speaker 2: to the theater obsessively. I don't, not in recent years.

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Speaker 2: I don't exactly have a good reason. If it's a

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Speaker 2: Sondhim musical, I'll never miss it ever, nothing even a gesture.

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Speaker 2: And yeah, I never miss a thing. I'm gonna. I'm

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Speaker 2: gonna check out Ragtime. It's merely because I'm a parent,

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Speaker 2: I think, you know. But if it's a have to

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Speaker 2: you know, the Irish rep you know, or Bill Irwin

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Speaker 2: is in it, certain things, I'm going to check it out.

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Speaker 2: But so no, not obsessively. A lot of my friends

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Speaker 2: are Tony voters that we're getting to that age, or

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Speaker 2: everybody I know is voting.

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Speaker 1: So he started. And you've made a name for yourself

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Speaker 1: doing you know, the standards. The big chips have rolled

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Speaker 1: into town.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, and when you became.

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Speaker 1: Famous, and as my recollection, you became famous when you

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Speaker 1: did My Fair Lady with Chamberlain, that's when you really

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Speaker 1: really made your name in New York as one of

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Speaker 1: the princesses of.

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Speaker 2: The Yeah, I did like miss before that. I did

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Speaker 2: actually added Karenina with the creator of Circle in the

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Speaker 2: Square with Ted Man, and I did make a bit

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Speaker 2: of a stir in that for some reason, maybe because

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Speaker 2: it was such a misguided show and I sort of

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Speaker 2: stood out as something that was positive. I remember John

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Speaker 2: Simon saying he wished that the entire cast had gotten

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Speaker 2: hit by the train and other memorable lines. Way late

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Speaker 2: in my career, he asked me out to launch and

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Speaker 2: he started to love my work. That is a little

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Speaker 2: novella in itself, like my relationship too. Well, there's always

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Speaker 2: a novella, right, but I could just track that relationship.

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Speaker 2: It's a beautiful, crazy shape. But he came to love

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Speaker 2: me with Boy did he make life complicated in the

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Speaker 2: early days. Who John Simon?

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Speaker 3: Simon? Oh Simon, the critical?

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Speaker 2: Oh sorry, I'm asus.

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Speaker 3: When you say that about Simon.

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Speaker 1: Well, we'll get into critics for a second, and that

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Speaker 1: is not even critics. I'll never forget this guy, who

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Speaker 1: I really adore. He wrote an article about me. He

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Speaker 1: wrote about an article about me in The New Yorker,

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Speaker 1: and he had the greatest line. He said, Alec Baldwin,

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Speaker 1: who resembles an NFL linebacker in his broadcast years.

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Speaker 2: That's so good, that's so bad, it's good.

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Speaker 3: And I was like, wow, that's spot off.

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Speaker 2: I remember the day's rice too, you know. Well, first

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Speaker 2: of all, do you remember the days where the New

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Speaker 2: York Times got printed and everybody would run get it

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Speaker 2: and bring it to the opening night party at Tapana

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Speaker 2: the Green?

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Speaker 3: Right?

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Speaker 2: Oh my god, So I remember those days where they

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Speaker 2: were hot off the press. They would go forty fourth Street,

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Speaker 2: they would run to the party, and you'd be in

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Speaker 2: this unbelievable dress from Bendel's.

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Speaker 3: Which would go to the Times Building and get go.

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Speaker 2: To the Times Building, grab the paper, bring it to

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Speaker 2: the party, and you just done this twelve million dollar musical.

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Speaker 2: This happened so many times, luckily and well unluckily. But

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Speaker 2: in my fair lady, I was in a green dress.

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Speaker 2: Tavern on the Green was completely packed. I bought it.

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Speaker 2: Its Fran Weisler came up to me and said, you're

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Speaker 2: gonna be a star, like really quietly, and I guess

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Speaker 2: it said the beguiling newcomer like, and then whatever the rest.

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Speaker 2: But they race with their eyes to the you know,

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Speaker 2: the first assessment, which is it's a disaster or it's

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Speaker 2: just you know, a gut punch is the worst. Fortunately,

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Speaker 2: unfortunately this show just opened when the show.

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Speaker 3: Was done in nineteen forty three, This and the Unfortunately

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Speaker 3: they look for.

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Speaker 2: That right away in the first paragraph and then they

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Speaker 2: just run up to you at the party. So that

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Speaker 2: was a good a good party. But yeah, I do

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Speaker 2: remember those days. But there I also remember the days

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Speaker 2: where the magazines would come out later, so you'd get

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Speaker 2: the New York Times, Stephen Holden if you were Cabaret

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Speaker 2: or Sunday remember how he used to do this second

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Speaker 2: review on Sunday, you'd get Frank Rich, then you'd get

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Speaker 2: Stephen Holden's possibly on piling on your telling a double wham.

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Speaker 2: You know, Thursday to Sunday you'd just be dying. Then

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Speaker 2: the magazines, and that's where John Simon was. The magazines,

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Speaker 2: so you'd walk by New York Magazine, New York Magazine,

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Speaker 2: and then the Variety. You look for Jeremy Garrard, things

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Speaker 2: like that, you know, And I'm definitely not somebody who

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Speaker 2: is like studies reviews, but I was young enough to

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Speaker 2: just want to get the just so I would look

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Speaker 2: quickly for one of those unfortunately or you know, houch

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Speaker 2: kind of words. And I saw dishpan face, Erico, dishpan face.

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Speaker 2: That was I think that's where.

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Speaker 3: I think it.

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Speaker 2: Later Tony Walton said, my face is like a moon,

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Speaker 2: so maybe I have a little flat face. It's good

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Speaker 2: for theater.

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Speaker 3: No, don't, don't. I would employ this. I would employ

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Speaker 3: none of those words.

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Speaker 2: And as I said later in my career, he went

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Speaker 2: got more and more and more complimentary, which I don't

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Speaker 2: remember any of the phraseology. I only remember the bad things.

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Speaker 1: But I did streetcar and I go to the party

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Speaker 1: and I'm going home and I don't want to read

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Speaker 1: the paper and I just wasn't in the mood if

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Speaker 1: it was. I'm assuming I'm going to get some kicking

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Speaker 1: the balls there or whatever.

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Speaker 3: And I go home and.

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Speaker 1: I pick up the paper on the corner and I

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Speaker 1: get the paper and I'm reading. I'm like, holy shit,

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Speaker 1: I mean he was really very kind to me. And

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Speaker 1: my ex wife turns to me, not the reason she's

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Speaker 1: my ex wife, but contributing.

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Speaker 3: She turns me, shees, you don't believe any of that,

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Speaker 3: do you.

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Speaker 1: It was like, well, okay, maybe I shouldn't believe any

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Speaker 1: of that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like my mom says, you know, like, well finally,

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Speaker 2: you know, so it's like, got a great musical, so

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Speaker 2: you're in a hit. Well, finally just puts your entire

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Speaker 2: past in somewhere weird light.

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Speaker 3: Just critics, I think, But I.

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Speaker 1: Think the critics. I'll give you two examples. I think

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Speaker 1: the critics in film and in the theater. Here's what's

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Speaker 1: missing and that and that is that if you've got

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Speaker 1: somebody who's as talented as you are, you're so talented,

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Speaker 1: you're so talented, and you're so gorgeous, and you get

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Speaker 1: up there and you play these parts and you can sing.

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Speaker 1: So if the show doesn't work, it's not your fault. No,

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Speaker 1: it's a director or the reader. And they don't want

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Speaker 1: to do they feel they have to dish out. And

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Speaker 1: in the and in film, what they do is they

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Speaker 1: pile up on the person who's not doesn't have that

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Speaker 1: much power. So if the person so if the star

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Speaker 1: of the movie prints money for the studio, they get

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Speaker 1: a little whisper who goes, don't you touch him?

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Speaker 2: Or business of it. I don't have a lot of business,

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Speaker 2: you know, like tentacles, like people like pushing away the

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Speaker 2: complexities of these things connecting you. Yeah, I don't have that.

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Speaker 2: So my life has actually been quite natural. I sort

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Speaker 2: of feel like I'm actually in the jungle, and like

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Speaker 2: experiencing the actual jungle. There's no cages, there's no monitors,

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Speaker 2: which has made it interesting and very lively. To answer

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Speaker 2: your question, by the way, I do go to the

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Speaker 2: theater like I'll see Audra or i'll go in if

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Speaker 2: I'm in London, I'll go see John Lithgow and go backstage.

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Speaker 2: In both cases, so it is friends, but it was

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Speaker 2: also like masters, like when I feel like there's a

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Speaker 2: master thing just FAI would never miss it. When you

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Speaker 2: called to do a play together last summer, what's the

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Speaker 2: first thing I.

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Speaker 3: Said, Well, you said yes, yes, right, I made it.

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Speaker 2: I made it happen.

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Speaker 1: But I want to lose the opportunity to mention to

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Speaker 1: people here on the show that it was really a

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Speaker 1: big moment in my life in terms of work, and

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Speaker 1: that is you see people you obviously are you know,

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Speaker 1: like I said, one of the great great leading ladies

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Speaker 1: of the Broadway musical stage, and you did Gorgon and

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Speaker 1: I had never done anything with you dramatic correct and

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Speaker 1: we're doing this thing, and again I remember going, holy.

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Speaker 3: Shit, like you can do that? I thought you weren't

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Speaker 3: that into that, And that's more musical musical saying right,

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Speaker 3: you were fantastic. I was top material.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I connect to things, and I have a kind

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Speaker 2: of unguardedness I always had, and you know, it probably

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Speaker 2: hasn't served me in other ways, possibly though I won't

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Speaker 2: regret it. But I do feel like artistically, like I'm

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Speaker 2: available to what's why jazz is feeling so good in

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Speaker 2: these cabarets and things. The parts that I had for

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Speaker 2: until I was forty six, I was playing all the aws,

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Speaker 2: was playing all the lovely characters, and just to sort

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Speaker 2: of tap the tuning fork back to this critics thing,

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Speaker 2: I was always called lovely or lovely appeared in a

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Speaker 2: lot of reviews because I had to be. I was

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Speaker 2: sort of in Brigadoon or I was in my fair

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Speaker 2: Lady high society. So many of these shows were the charming,

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Speaker 2: young sweet character. And I went to Harold Guskin at

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Speaker 2: one point. Do you remember Harold. Yes, Harold is an

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Speaker 2: acting coach who wrote a book called How to Stop Acting.

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Speaker 2: I told him about the reviews. He looked at a

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Speaker 2: bunch of them always said lovely, something like lovely. He said,

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Speaker 2: We're going to get the word lovely out of these reviews.

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Speaker 2: I'm going to teach you how to shit on the stage,

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Speaker 2: he said. And it was so gross. I was like, oh,

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Speaker 2: you know, Glen Close had just left and I like

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Speaker 2: bumped into you know, all kinds of people in the

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Speaker 2: in the lobby, which shows that particular show would have

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Speaker 2: been Dracula. I think, okay, who did you do Dracula

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Speaker 2: with Tom Hewitt? Was Dracula? He was wonderful. That was

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Speaker 2: a tricky sell for me. I was not sure that.

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Speaker 2: See Christopher Hampton wrote it, who wrote Lele And I

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Speaker 2: loved him and I knew him socially and part of

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Speaker 2: that kind of uh royalty of the British theater, and

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Speaker 2: I knew a lot of people exactly. And Christopher is

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Speaker 2: such a high vibration, and Frank Wildhorn was a composer,

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Speaker 2: and it was unclear where the balance was going to be.

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Speaker 2: There's a bodice ripper kind of you know, in obviously

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Speaker 2: a Dracula musical, there's also another kind of inferred, passionate, strange,

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Speaker 2: illuminating Sasbo's world whatever. There's everything women walking around in

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Speaker 2: there in there, but yeah, you know, like there's just

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Speaker 2: those all these Victorian dresses. And I was saying to Kelly,

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Speaker 2: maybe O'Hara, maybe we should be attracted to each other

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Speaker 2: over the waiting of the monster. And she was like

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Speaker 2: she was looking at me like monster, Like we can't.

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Speaker 3: Fix that free way with the monster.

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Speaker 2: She was literally looking at me like, Melissa, you care

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Speaker 2: so much. I was reading bram Stoker in my dressing room,

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Speaker 2: was having you.

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Speaker 3: Went to Yalees, You're meeting bram Stoker.

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Speaker 2: I was having paranormal experiences in the theater. I feel

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Speaker 2: like this is going to get quirky. I feel like

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Speaker 2: David Blasco full on was aligned with me because you

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Speaker 2: know he he haunts the theater. Have you heard about that.

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Speaker 2: David Blasco is a lot is a ghost. He's the

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Speaker 2: most famous ghost in Broadway history. He had an apartment

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Speaker 2: above the Blasco and so I visited the apartment multiple

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Speaker 2: times with somebody who was Dracula's understudy and had lots

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Speaker 2: of extra time. I'm and he got the key and

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Speaker 2: so we would sneak up there, you know, on between

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Speaker 2: the shows. Remember his name is a big guy. He

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Speaker 2: was a little old. We'd actually look around for for

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Speaker 2: signs of the paranormal. He was kind of nerdy in

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Speaker 2: his buff way. We had wonderful times up there looking

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Speaker 2: for the paranormal.

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Speaker 3: I think I found the paranormal. It's right here. It

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Speaker 3: doesn't stick your hand in my pocket, it's here.

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Speaker 2: This has gone wrong. No, anyhow, David Belasco, I'm sure

246
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Speaker 2: I saw him. I turned around looking at my dressing room.

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Speaker 2: I saw a man in a black coat go into

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Speaker 2: the mirror right next to the dressing room, not the

249
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Speaker 2: star dressing room. If you probably he walks through, it's

250
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Speaker 2: probably your dressing room is the bottom floor. I'm the second.

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Speaker 2: I was a second dressing room. Have you played the Belasco? Okay,

252
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Speaker 2: so I'm up a flight and there's that really old mirror. Beautiful.

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Speaker 2: I saw him walk into the mirror. I saw him walk.

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Speaker 2: I know this sounds like I'm making this up. I

255
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Speaker 2: actually turned around. I saw a man walk into the mirror.

256
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Speaker 2: Another experience I had was we were in previews and

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Speaker 2: the show was not going particularly well. There's a woman

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Speaker 2: in a blue dress who also haunts the theater and

259
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Speaker 2: when the previews were happening. They don't know why, but

260
00:12:13,240 --> 00:12:15,400
Speaker 2: all the pipes broke and there was a flood. Everything

261
00:12:15,440 --> 00:12:18,480
Speaker 2: was dumping down on millions of dollars of set, and

262
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Speaker 2: the fire department came and literally I heard these like

263
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Speaker 2: handsome Irish guys go David. Blasco strikes again. Like while

264
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Speaker 2: they're walking around, they know the place is haunted and

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Speaker 2: weird things happen there. I feel that when I went

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Speaker 2: back to get my coat one day in my l

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Speaker 2: shaped dressing room, and I went around the corner. Once

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Speaker 2: I got around looking for the coat, it was too

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Speaker 2: dark to see my coat. Someone turned on my lamp.

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Speaker 3: Blasco strikes again.

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Speaker 2: He turned on the lamp. Mm hmm. I was freaked out.

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Speaker 3: Turned it off, Christine and Christine.

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Speaker 2: Maybe it's all the powers, suggested, I look, I'm old

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Speaker 2: enough now. Maybe I'm just cuckoo. Oh you're singing the

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Speaker 2: Phantom of the Ore. I've passed on that role. Why

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Speaker 2: to go back to Yale?

277
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Speaker 4: But I want to.

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Speaker 2: I want to.

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Speaker 3: I want to. We're going to get there.

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Speaker 1: But let me just ask you this, which is that

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Speaker 1: when you do something, because I'm sure you get offered

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Speaker 1: a lot of things simultaneously when you do something like

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Speaker 1: Dracula Beyond, because many people don't understand this a paycheck

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Speaker 1: and I want to go to work. People say to me,

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Speaker 1: why did you do that? I go, I looked at

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Speaker 1: my calendar and I hadn't worked in two months, and

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Speaker 1: I was an anxious to go to work.

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Speaker 3: This is what I do. And so I go and

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Speaker 3: do this movie or this play or TV thing.

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Speaker 2: Whatever, and find did I do it?

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Speaker 3: Like, we'll pick one, Well, we're going to pick a couple,

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Speaker 3: So pick Dracula. Why that? Why did you want to

293
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Speaker 3: do that?

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Speaker 4: Well?

295
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Speaker 3: It was the draw.

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Speaker 2: Well, I'm get into my mid thirties at that point,

297
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Speaker 2: and you know, I had a ton of positivity around

298
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Speaker 2: what I was doing in a sort of third revival

299
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Speaker 2: of my career, and I started super young. I had

300
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Speaker 2: just finished working with some Time and Michelle legram and

301
00:13:46,320 --> 00:13:50,000
Speaker 2: had a Tony nomination. I had really awoken a kind

302
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Speaker 2: of vision of a sort of intellect meets actress singing.

303
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Speaker 2: I actually it was almost like straight acting the way

304
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Speaker 2: I think about things. Forgive me for saying barbistur. Samda's

305
00:14:00,520 --> 00:14:04,200
Speaker 2: a great inspiration to me, because every half sentence is

306
00:14:04,240 --> 00:14:08,360
Speaker 2: smart in her prime. There's just no She's the Gilgood

307
00:14:08,440 --> 00:14:11,559
Speaker 2: or the Laurence Olivia of music singing. And I was

308
00:14:11,600 --> 00:14:13,800
Speaker 2: starting to think like that. I was starting to animate

309
00:14:14,120 --> 00:14:17,240
Speaker 2: music like it was a play. And the Laburn thing

310
00:14:17,280 --> 00:14:20,080
Speaker 2: was so interesting and beautiful. I worked with James Lapine,

311
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Speaker 2: he was the director, and Jeremy SAMs wrote the words.

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Speaker 2: It was beautiful, and obviously Sondheim was Sunday in the

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Speaker 2: Park with George. I did that and it was like

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Speaker 2: my brain went wild. It was an art hist.

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Speaker 3: I loved it.

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Speaker 2: But that was right after so it's just like it

317
00:14:36,160 --> 00:14:38,240
Speaker 2: was like there was like a wind pushing me. And

318
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Speaker 2: I just thought, maybe because it's based on a beautiful novel,

319
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Speaker 2: maybe because it has so much undercurrent of social it

320
00:14:46,120 --> 00:14:49,720
Speaker 2: was actually kind of looking at sexuality and repression, and

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Speaker 2: it does a Victorian novel, and I just thought, well,

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Speaker 2: it's another corset thing. So I'm gonna look all right,

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Speaker 2: and you know, it's gonna look really nice and most

324
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Speaker 2: incredible clothes. I was my friend is missing, you know,

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Speaker 2: Oharah goes missing, and I'm just so well dressed. When

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Speaker 2: I was dressing out, I came out in these coats

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Speaker 2: with a lamp. I had hats, like in my in

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Speaker 2: my dress, looking for her in the cemetery, and she

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Speaker 2: comes out with the glow in the dark contact lenses

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Speaker 2: and snakes in her hair and throwing up, and I

331
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Speaker 2: was like, so well dressed. I was like, oh, honey,

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Speaker 2: where have you been?

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Speaker 3: You know.

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Speaker 2: It was also silly, but it didn't have to be,

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00:15:19,400 --> 00:15:21,320
Speaker 2: you see, it was I was trying to make sense

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Speaker 2: of it, Alec and so I thought, because it was

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00:15:23,760 --> 00:15:26,200
Speaker 2: Christopher Hampton and it was Bram Stoker, I thought there

338
00:15:26,280 --> 00:15:30,560
Speaker 2: was hope. You know, maybe I complicated, you know, it

339
00:15:30,600 --> 00:15:33,960
Speaker 2: turned out to be kind of like I was lost

340
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Speaker 2: in a sort of kitch maze, and I had to

341
00:15:37,240 --> 00:15:39,560
Speaker 2: make sense to the audience. After lots of weird stuff

342
00:15:39,560 --> 00:15:43,000
Speaker 2: would happen. I'd be left with Kelly O'Hara had like

343
00:15:43,040 --> 00:15:45,800
Speaker 2: sort of thrown up and went down, you know, somebody

344
00:15:45,840 --> 00:15:47,960
Speaker 2: stabbed her and she was throwing up, and she had

345
00:15:48,000 --> 00:15:51,320
Speaker 2: the snakes and she disappeared, and then glow in the garden.

346
00:15:51,360 --> 00:15:53,040
Speaker 2: She had the fangs and stuff, and I had to

347
00:15:53,400 --> 00:15:54,760
Speaker 2: I had to do a lot of stuff, and then

348
00:15:55,680 --> 00:15:58,440
Speaker 2: you respond to things or I had to bite Dracula

349
00:15:58,560 --> 00:15:59,720
Speaker 2: or something I don't I had to kill him at

350
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Speaker 2: the end. But here's the thing. Often I'd be left alone.

351
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Speaker 2: And the way the set worked was they were instead

352
00:16:05,840 --> 00:16:08,760
Speaker 2: of sending the set this way or up, like sideways

353
00:16:08,760 --> 00:16:11,160
Speaker 2: are up, they had a concept that all of these

354
00:16:11,200 --> 00:16:15,360
Speaker 2: pre Raphaelite style buildings, these large, large double story two

355
00:16:15,440 --> 00:16:18,760
Speaker 2: hundred feet way down there's a great depth in the glasco.

356
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Speaker 2: The set would go down, and so we would be

357
00:16:21,560 --> 00:16:24,840
Speaker 2: left with these precarious holes around us. People were very upset.

358
00:16:25,400 --> 00:16:28,800
Speaker 2: I actually spun Stephen McKinley Henderson. I spun his jacket

359
00:16:28,880 --> 00:16:32,080
Speaker 2: in previews and you can look it up. He's often

360
00:16:32,120 --> 00:16:35,720
Speaker 2: says I saved his life. It just was odd and dangerous,

361
00:16:35,760 --> 00:16:39,600
Speaker 2: and I felt responsible. And so after all the set

362
00:16:39,640 --> 00:16:42,920
Speaker 2: would close, you'd feel everything closed. I'd be left alone

363
00:16:42,960 --> 00:16:45,760
Speaker 2: with these solos. That's how it felt. It felt like

364
00:16:45,800 --> 00:16:49,440
Speaker 2: I'd been left with this weird like it could be funny,

365
00:16:49,480 --> 00:16:51,480
Speaker 2: but like I'm going to try to fix it for you,

366
00:16:51,960 --> 00:16:54,040
Speaker 2: and I just you know me, I didn't. I didn't

367
00:16:54,040 --> 00:16:56,480
Speaker 2: get giggles or phone it in. I just kept trying

368
00:16:56,480 --> 00:16:59,240
Speaker 2: to fix it. So it felt demanding.

369
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Speaker 1: You know, It's interesting that there are people I know

370
00:17:02,160 --> 00:17:05,600
Speaker 1: myself included, where periodically I didn't do this all the time,

371
00:17:05,600 --> 00:17:08,840
Speaker 1: but periodically, especially when I was younger, I felt responsible

372
00:17:08,880 --> 00:17:10,840
Speaker 1: for a lot of what was going on around me,

373
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Speaker 1: rather than keeping the focus on my own performance.

374
00:17:14,040 --> 00:17:14,640
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.

375
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Speaker 1: Like as I moved along in film, I began to

376
00:17:16,880 --> 00:17:19,400
Speaker 1: be like you know, I would do the scene with someone.

377
00:17:19,400 --> 00:17:21,880
Speaker 1: I said that to Paccino one time. I said, are

378
00:17:21,880 --> 00:17:23,960
Speaker 1: you doing a scene with someone and you're at the

379
00:17:24,040 --> 00:17:25,840
Speaker 1: net here playing tennis and the other person.

380
00:17:25,880 --> 00:17:26,520
Speaker 3: Isn't that good?

381
00:17:26,920 --> 00:17:28,440
Speaker 1: You got to the director and say, said me. Even

382
00:17:28,440 --> 00:17:31,440
Speaker 1: Pacino said, oh no, no, no, I never gon't get involved.

383
00:17:31,560 --> 00:17:34,000
Speaker 1: I keep my focus on myself. If you're not an

384
00:17:34,040 --> 00:17:36,400
Speaker 1: equal partner to me, I don't look at it that way.

385
00:17:36,440 --> 00:17:38,240
Speaker 1: I mean, you're doing your thing. I'm doing my thing.

386
00:17:38,680 --> 00:17:41,840
Speaker 1: Now I tend to be much more like you know.

387
00:17:42,119 --> 00:17:44,200
Speaker 1: I don't bother. I just come to work.

388
00:17:44,680 --> 00:17:44,840
Speaker 3: You know.

389
00:17:44,880 --> 00:17:46,360
Speaker 1: When I do a scene, I try not to leave

390
00:17:46,359 --> 00:17:48,720
Speaker 1: the set when we're doing that scene till all the

391
00:17:48,720 --> 00:17:50,880
Speaker 1: coverage is done. Then I can take a break. Cruise

392
00:17:51,000 --> 00:17:53,159
Speaker 1: said the greatest line to me once, Tom said the

393
00:17:53,160 --> 00:17:54,880
Speaker 1: greatest son he goes. He said, I got to give

394
00:17:54,920 --> 00:17:57,320
Speaker 1: them their money's worth, I said, who he goes? The

395
00:17:57,359 --> 00:17:59,000
Speaker 1: people that are paying me and the people that are

396
00:17:59,040 --> 00:18:02,240
Speaker 1: buying the tickets. Hm, I gotta get man. He's hard.

397
00:18:02,720 --> 00:18:05,119
Speaker 1: Everybody knows he's the hardest working person in the movie business.

398
00:18:05,160 --> 00:18:06,480
Speaker 2: He's not totally He's not wrong, Oh no.

399
00:18:06,560 --> 00:18:06,720
Speaker 3: Yeah.

400
00:18:06,720 --> 00:18:09,120
Speaker 1: And my point is, I thought to myself, he's going

401
00:18:09,160 --> 00:18:11,600
Speaker 1: to take this to another level of really really committing to.

402
00:18:11,600 --> 00:18:14,280
Speaker 3: Just doing life my thing. Yeah.

403
00:18:14,359 --> 00:18:16,359
Speaker 2: I kind of learned that a long time ago, and

404
00:18:16,440 --> 00:18:18,760
Speaker 2: maybe not in the most positive sense at first. Which

405
00:18:18,840 --> 00:18:21,199
Speaker 2: I worked with Bill Cosby when I was seventeen. I

406
00:18:21,240 --> 00:18:24,480
Speaker 2: played a young student Cosby whare I was on his

407
00:18:24,520 --> 00:18:27,520
Speaker 2: television show. It was called The Cosby Mysteries. Do you

408
00:18:27,560 --> 00:18:27,960
Speaker 2: remember that?

409
00:18:28,040 --> 00:18:30,720
Speaker 3: Yes, my friend David Black wrote on Cosby Mysteries.

410
00:18:31,000 --> 00:18:33,880
Speaker 2: I was in it as a teenager, and he used

411
00:18:33,920 --> 00:18:38,160
Speaker 2: to do his part and then leave and he'd leave

412
00:18:38,240 --> 00:18:41,439
Speaker 2: me with nobody a piece of tape or his stand

413
00:18:41,440 --> 00:18:42,800
Speaker 2: in and he'd say, that's what you went to Yale

414
00:18:42,840 --> 00:18:46,600
Speaker 2: drama school. I was going to Yale, that's what you're

415
00:18:46,600 --> 00:18:48,760
Speaker 2: going to yell for. Yeah, And he'd leave me alone,

416
00:18:48,800 --> 00:18:51,359
Speaker 2: so I'd have to act opposite him, but without him.

417
00:18:51,200 --> 00:18:53,000
Speaker 3: There, he didn't give a shit.

418
00:18:53,840 --> 00:18:55,600
Speaker 2: He was busy or something. He did ask me out

419
00:18:55,640 --> 00:18:59,280
Speaker 2: for lunch, you know sometimes, well, yeah, exactly. I came

420
00:18:59,320 --> 00:19:02,280
Speaker 2: to wonder about I misunderstood a lot of lunch invitations

421
00:19:02,320 --> 00:19:04,879
Speaker 2: in my career. I actually went to lunch and was

422
00:19:04,880 --> 00:19:07,280
Speaker 2: a total lady at a million lunches, and I.

423
00:19:07,240 --> 00:19:09,680
Speaker 3: Realized, that's why were you this that where you were there?

424
00:19:09,840 --> 00:19:13,200
Speaker 2: I misread so many lunches you didn't wear it. I

425
00:19:13,280 --> 00:19:17,160
Speaker 2: didn't know. I didn't even know. I didn't even think

426
00:19:17,160 --> 00:19:19,360
Speaker 2: of it. I thought people wanted to have lunch and talk.

427
00:19:19,680 --> 00:19:23,639
Speaker 2: I once had a Saturday night audition called with Harvey Weinstein,

428
00:19:24,880 --> 00:19:27,719
Speaker 2: and I remember it was like why Saturday night, you know?

429
00:19:28,119 --> 00:19:30,199
Speaker 2: But I went and I wanted it so badly. It

430
00:19:30,240 --> 00:19:32,840
Speaker 2: was for never Land, and I thought, I am never Land,

431
00:19:33,040 --> 00:19:36,200
Speaker 2: Peter Pan, I get me in there. I just wanted

432
00:19:36,200 --> 00:19:39,040
Speaker 2: it so badly, and I showed up so prepared, so

433
00:19:39,119 --> 00:19:42,520
Speaker 2: profoundly prepared, and I ended up being very ladylike and

434
00:19:42,680 --> 00:19:47,440
Speaker 2: going on about my young family on my marriage. Never

435
00:19:47,480 --> 00:19:51,080
Speaker 2: heard from him again. So maybe being stranded, unfortunately, is

436
00:19:51,119 --> 00:19:54,119
Speaker 2: a little bit of a not a familiar feeling. I

437
00:19:54,119 --> 00:19:56,560
Speaker 2: know I'm not victim or something, but artistically I don't

438
00:19:56,560 --> 00:19:59,119
Speaker 2: always have the Alec Baldwin opposite me. Here's one of

439
00:19:59,160 --> 00:20:03,159
Speaker 2: the beautiful things. Partnership took on a whole other meaning

440
00:20:03,359 --> 00:20:09,760
Speaker 2: when I started making my own work and the twenty

441
00:20:09,840 --> 00:20:12,560
Speaker 2: years I've been playing with this piano player, Ted Firth,

442
00:20:13,320 --> 00:20:16,879
Speaker 2: many masters as well are now playing with me. I

443
00:20:16,920 --> 00:20:21,240
Speaker 2: have about four or five of the most profound musicians

444
00:20:21,280 --> 00:20:25,439
Speaker 2: you can imagine. But what I've discovered in cabaret and

445
00:20:25,520 --> 00:20:28,399
Speaker 2: jazz is that we create these shows. I come up

446
00:20:28,440 --> 00:20:31,359
Speaker 2: with these themes. Everything has an arc, a story, a

447
00:20:31,480 --> 00:20:35,159
Speaker 2: costume of feeling. Every show there's one moment where I

448
00:20:35,200 --> 00:20:37,800
Speaker 2: stop the band and I just work with Ted and

449
00:20:37,840 --> 00:20:41,000
Speaker 2: we have a ballad of some anyone can whistle, I

450
00:20:41,040 --> 00:20:44,080
Speaker 2: can dream, can't I send in the clowns. That's not

451
00:20:44,119 --> 00:20:47,280
Speaker 2: the best example because it's very hard to reinvent that one.

452
00:20:47,320 --> 00:20:50,359
Speaker 2: It doesn't need much reinventing, But we do something that

453
00:20:50,400 --> 00:20:53,520
Speaker 2: the audience is absolutely riveted in the band or the

454
00:20:53,560 --> 00:20:56,280
Speaker 2: Bad and the Beautiful From my Noir record, this song

455
00:20:56,320 --> 00:20:58,760
Speaker 2: it's actually not called the bat of from the Call,

456
00:20:58,880 --> 00:21:00,959
Speaker 2: No it is called the bat of the bum It

457
00:21:01,000 --> 00:21:03,880
Speaker 2: is in this It is one of the most difficult

458
00:21:04,440 --> 00:21:07,119
Speaker 2: melodies I've ever sung. Tony Bennett couldn't learn it, and

459
00:21:07,119 --> 00:21:09,040
Speaker 2: that's why Bill Evans plays it as a solo on

460
00:21:09,080 --> 00:21:11,320
Speaker 2: their record. It just stops and it's out of the

461
00:21:11,320 --> 00:21:15,080
Speaker 2: blue solo, I'm told is because Tony was just flummoxed

462
00:21:15,200 --> 00:21:17,679
Speaker 2: by the melody. Yeah, oh, I love it. I worked

463
00:21:17,880 --> 00:21:21,359
Speaker 2: really hard on it. It's these moments that are chromatic,

464
00:21:21,920 --> 00:21:27,640
Speaker 2: super difficult and full of rich, evocative language. It's emotionally

465
00:21:28,080 --> 00:21:32,440
Speaker 2: improvised as well as chords and extended bars and what's

466
00:21:32,480 --> 00:21:35,679
Speaker 2: happening in my later you know, sort of in this

467
00:21:36,520 --> 00:21:39,800
Speaker 2: life process. All the handholding of Barbara Cook, it's your turn,

468
00:21:40,200 --> 00:21:43,119
Speaker 2: Rosemary Claar, You're wonderful, all these women who've held my

469
00:21:43,160 --> 00:21:45,120
Speaker 2: hand and said, just do it, do it your way,

470
00:21:45,200 --> 00:21:48,520
Speaker 2: just do it. Robirt of Flack putting all that love aside,

471
00:21:48,560 --> 00:21:50,600
Speaker 2: and there's a lot of it. I sit with Ted

472
00:21:50,640 --> 00:21:53,720
Speaker 2: in these moments and I'm not trying to sing a

473
00:21:53,800 --> 00:21:56,800
Speaker 2: song anymore. I'm trying to sort of let the song

474
00:21:57,800 --> 00:22:02,360
Speaker 2: teach me something as it's happened. There's so much beauty

475
00:22:02,440 --> 00:22:05,880
Speaker 2: and wisdom in the American songbook from the thirties through

476
00:22:06,160 --> 00:22:09,600
Speaker 2: Joni Mitchell, honestly through sound times. I'm sure, and I'm

477
00:22:09,600 --> 00:22:12,280
Speaker 2: sure if I would just start learning Sarah Burellis's music.

478
00:22:12,320 --> 00:22:16,320
Speaker 2: There's others, but I am so engrossed in the worlds

479
00:22:16,320 --> 00:22:19,600
Speaker 2: of Jerome Kern and early Oscar Hammer sign all the

480
00:22:19,800 --> 00:22:23,840
Speaker 2: seed bed of what became Sondheim. So when I work

481
00:22:23,880 --> 00:22:26,960
Speaker 2: with Ted, I'm so safe and we don't even talk.

482
00:22:27,240 --> 00:22:31,639
Speaker 2: It's like you with a great actress or actor Glenn Gary.

483
00:22:31,680 --> 00:22:34,840
Speaker 2: All the beautiful movies you've given us that are so masterful.

484
00:22:35,200 --> 00:22:37,359
Speaker 2: I bet you had partners where you didn't have to

485
00:22:37,440 --> 00:22:39,200
Speaker 2: talk about it. It was best to come out of

486
00:22:39,240 --> 00:22:42,800
Speaker 2: your trailer full of life and just face another person

487
00:22:42,840 --> 00:22:46,200
Speaker 2: who's full of life and don't talk. That's me and Ted.

488
00:22:46,240 --> 00:22:51,560
Speaker 2: We don't talk at all. I might say something that implies, God,

489
00:22:51,600 --> 00:22:54,560
Speaker 2: this kills me, or boy, that's a lonely song, or

490
00:22:55,320 --> 00:22:58,800
Speaker 2: dreaming saves your life. I'll say like a sentence like that,

491
00:22:58,960 --> 00:23:00,760
Speaker 2: and he'll go like mm hm, and then he'll start

492
00:23:00,800 --> 00:23:04,000
Speaker 2: playing what sounds like my subconscious like sounds like a

493
00:23:04,080 --> 00:23:06,760
Speaker 2: dream anyhow. So we just made a record called I

494
00:23:06,840 --> 00:23:10,119
Speaker 2: Can Dream, Can't I, And it's just the two of

495
00:23:10,240 --> 00:23:14,000
Speaker 2: us doing those moments. It's just an album full of

496
00:23:14,000 --> 00:23:17,520
Speaker 2: those moments. And I don't know if it's overkill in

497
00:23:17,600 --> 00:23:22,400
Speaker 2: terms of piano solos and meandering non arrangements. But it's

498
00:23:22,440 --> 00:23:23,359
Speaker 2: that's just what it is.

499
00:23:23,440 --> 00:23:25,679
Speaker 1: When you talk about that, that kind of battery you

500
00:23:25,680 --> 00:23:28,720
Speaker 1: can have with someone. Mine was so unlikely the greatest

501
00:23:28,720 --> 00:23:31,040
Speaker 1: example of that, even though there's other things I did

502
00:23:31,400 --> 00:23:33,720
Speaker 1: where I had this connection with someone, I'm acting with

503
00:23:33,800 --> 00:23:37,280
Speaker 1: somebody I'm really thinking. It usually begins often in the

504
00:23:37,280 --> 00:23:39,240
Speaker 1: theater where I'm doing the piece over and over again.

505
00:23:39,440 --> 00:23:40,879
Speaker 1: So when I did street Car and I had to

506
00:23:40,880 --> 00:23:42,960
Speaker 1: come out and I had to and I would tell.

507
00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:45,439
Speaker 1: I told Ed Harris, I said, I never loved a

508
00:23:45,480 --> 00:23:48,400
Speaker 1: woman more than Amy. When we were doing she was stella.

509
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:50,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, you lock horns.

510
00:23:50,640 --> 00:23:52,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, you just like that person. You have the same

511
00:23:53,080 --> 00:23:53,560
Speaker 3: thing going on.

512
00:23:53,640 --> 00:23:56,359
Speaker 2: And it's about the work actually, you know, I often

513
00:23:56,359 --> 00:23:58,960
Speaker 2: asked my mother about you know, always Ted. You know,

514
00:23:58,960 --> 00:24:01,080
Speaker 2: we don't we don't talk about. We don't talk about

515
00:24:01,200 --> 00:24:03,199
Speaker 2: you know, it's very hard to get work. Every day

516
00:24:03,240 --> 00:24:06,680
Speaker 2: is a struggle to get these concerts, to design the concerts,

517
00:24:06,680 --> 00:24:09,040
Speaker 2: to promote the concerts. I do so much by myself

518
00:24:09,400 --> 00:24:12,080
Speaker 2: and sometimes it's just unwieldy. And then I say, well, mom,

519
00:24:12,280 --> 00:24:15,159
Speaker 2: Ted doesn't push it on social media. He doesn't. She says, Melissa,

520
00:24:15,160 --> 00:24:18,119
Speaker 2: stop looking at ted, look together at the music. And

521
00:24:18,160 --> 00:24:20,800
Speaker 2: by the way, my mom's not, you know, not a boodhut. Anyway,

522
00:24:20,880 --> 00:24:23,920
Speaker 2: I mentioned her twice as so she was. But it's

523
00:24:24,000 --> 00:24:27,000
Speaker 2: the idea of just we both look together passionately at

524
00:24:27,040 --> 00:24:29,040
Speaker 2: the music. And I'm sure that's what you mean when

525
00:24:29,080 --> 00:24:30,800
Speaker 2: you have all the.

526
00:24:30,760 --> 00:24:31,639
Speaker 3: Person and the person.

527
00:24:31,680 --> 00:24:34,639
Speaker 1: I had the most strange connection that way was it

528
00:24:34,760 --> 00:24:37,000
Speaker 1: was Julie Harris played my mother on a TV show

529
00:24:37,320 --> 00:24:39,439
Speaker 1: and I go to do this TV show Not's landing,

530
00:24:39,440 --> 00:24:42,000
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I don't know. With the show's in

531
00:24:42,040 --> 00:24:44,639
Speaker 1: the top ten, my agent said, you're going to be

532
00:24:44,680 --> 00:24:46,360
Speaker 1: a cast addition to.

533
00:24:46,400 --> 00:24:47,040
Speaker 3: A hit show.

534
00:24:47,080 --> 00:24:49,640
Speaker 1: I go in there and all of them are lovely people.

535
00:24:49,680 --> 00:24:51,399
Speaker 1: I mean, I had a lot of fun. But Julie

536
00:24:51,400 --> 00:24:53,239
Speaker 1: Harris plays my mother, and it was like you'd sit

537
00:24:53,280 --> 00:24:54,840
Speaker 1: down with her and do a scene and she just

538
00:24:54,840 --> 00:24:55,640
Speaker 1: pulled it out of you.

539
00:24:55,640 --> 00:24:56,560
Speaker 3: You didn't have to do anything.

540
00:24:57,480 --> 00:25:00,359
Speaker 2: May seconds for me look her in the eye, and

541
00:25:00,400 --> 00:25:01,320
Speaker 2: there you were, and she.

542
00:25:01,400 --> 00:25:03,720
Speaker 1: Just took you on this magic carpet. She was so

543
00:25:04,800 --> 00:25:06,440
Speaker 1: empathic and so beautiful.

544
00:25:06,920 --> 00:25:09,120
Speaker 2: You know, I want to be like that. Please help

545
00:25:09,160 --> 00:25:11,040
Speaker 2: me get later. I want to be like that. Yeah,

546
00:25:11,160 --> 00:25:14,159
Speaker 2: as a person large, I really want to be that

547
00:25:14,240 --> 00:25:16,920
Speaker 2: for younger people and for any artistic process.

548
00:25:20,400 --> 00:25:25,639
Speaker 1: Actress and singer Melissa Raco. If you enjoy conversations with

549
00:25:25,840 --> 00:25:28,840
Speaker 1: the leading ladies of the Broadway stage, check out my

550
00:25:28,920 --> 00:25:30,720
Speaker 1: episode with Patty Lapone.

551
00:25:31,440 --> 00:25:33,480
Speaker 2: I knew when I was a kid that I had

552
00:25:33,480 --> 00:25:34,320
Speaker 2: a Broadway voice.

553
00:25:34,320 --> 00:25:36,239
Speaker 3: I wanted to be a rocker because I grew up

554
00:25:36,240 --> 00:25:38,800
Speaker 3: in that era of transistor radios at the Beach.

555
00:25:39,240 --> 00:25:39,520
Speaker 4: You know, the.

556
00:25:41,119 --> 00:25:44,760
Speaker 2: Rascals we started in the fifties, Little Anthony and the Imperials.

557
00:25:44,800 --> 00:25:47,280
Speaker 2: I mean all through the fifties and sixties and seventies.

558
00:25:47,640 --> 00:25:49,359
Speaker 3: I knew I didn't have a rock voice, though I

559
00:25:49,400 --> 00:25:50,800
Speaker 3: knew I had a Broadway voice.

560
00:25:52,119 --> 00:25:55,760
Speaker 1: To hear more of my conversation with Patti Lapone, go

561
00:25:55,840 --> 00:26:00,600
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break, Melissa

562
00:26:00,760 --> 00:26:04,800
Speaker 1: Rico talks about how her two musical north stars, Michelle

563
00:26:04,840 --> 00:26:21,080
Speaker 1: Legrand and Stephen Sondheim, shaped her artistic life. Hi'm Alec

564
00:26:21,119 --> 00:26:25,240
Speaker 1: Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing. Melissa Raco's stage

565
00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:29,320
Speaker 1: career began with the national tour of Les miserab, which

566
00:26:29,359 --> 00:26:33,359
Speaker 1: she joined while a freshman at Yale University. It was

567
00:26:33,400 --> 00:26:37,399
Speaker 1: the first of many iconic roles, including her star turn

568
00:26:37,520 --> 00:26:41,480
Speaker 1: as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady opposite Richard Chamberlain

569
00:26:41,760 --> 00:26:45,520
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety three. She earned a Tony nomination for

570
00:26:45,600 --> 00:26:49,360
Speaker 1: her performance in Michelle Legrand's Amour in two thousand and three.

571
00:26:50,119 --> 00:26:53,280
Speaker 1: But it's Eerko's later work on the stage and in

572
00:26:53,359 --> 00:26:56,840
Speaker 1: the studio interpreting the music of Sondheim and La Grand

573
00:26:57,240 --> 00:27:00,320
Speaker 1: that has truly set her apart as a singular voice

574
00:27:00,560 --> 00:27:05,720
Speaker 1: in American music. Equally praised for interpreting both composers repertoires.

575
00:27:06,080 --> 00:27:09,119
Speaker 1: I wanted to know which of the two Melissa encountered first.

576
00:27:09,880 --> 00:27:10,560
Speaker 2: It was Lagron.

577
00:27:11,160 --> 00:27:12,440
Speaker 3: How did you intersect with him?

578
00:27:12,640 --> 00:27:16,160
Speaker 2: Because I was living in la a whole long period

579
00:27:16,200 --> 00:27:17,600
Speaker 2: of my life in which I used to call you

580
00:27:17,640 --> 00:27:19,480
Speaker 2: as were old friends and ask your advice and things.

581
00:27:19,480 --> 00:27:22,160
Speaker 2: And I was doing lots and lots of television pilots,

582
00:27:22,480 --> 00:27:25,959
Speaker 2: and as I told you, I was. You know, there

583
00:27:25,960 --> 00:27:28,000
Speaker 2: were about seven of them. One of them involved them

584
00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:30,720
Speaker 2: cutting all my hair off and firing me the next day,

585
00:27:30,720 --> 00:27:32,400
Speaker 2: and I had no hair. They wanted me to look

586
00:27:32,440 --> 00:27:34,600
Speaker 2: like a French actress, they said, But they took twelve

587
00:27:34,680 --> 00:27:37,200
Speaker 2: inches off my hair and fired me. But I got

588
00:27:37,240 --> 00:27:40,560
Speaker 2: my hair put back, so I survived all of that LA.

589
00:27:40,760 --> 00:27:42,800
Speaker 2: And I got a phone call while I was living

590
00:27:42,800 --> 00:27:46,399
Speaker 2: in La that Michelle Legrand wrote a musical. I was

591
00:27:46,480 --> 00:27:49,520
Speaker 2: given a fax by my then manager and it said

592
00:27:49,520 --> 00:27:52,800
Speaker 2: that the passe Murai is coming over from Paris and

593
00:27:52,920 --> 00:27:56,040
Speaker 2: they're bringing it to Broadway. James Lapine is the director,

594
00:27:56,440 --> 00:28:00,000
Speaker 2: Jeremy SAMs is the writer, and with music by Michelle Legrand.

595
00:28:00,359 --> 00:28:03,040
Speaker 2: And it was like the paper was glowing in my hand,

596
00:28:03,800 --> 00:28:06,000
Speaker 2: truly glowing in my hand. My father had brought me

597
00:28:06,080 --> 00:28:08,280
Speaker 2: up to love the music through the Vietnam years, and

598
00:28:09,119 --> 00:28:11,680
Speaker 2: I knew every song. You have to believe me. I

599
00:28:11,680 --> 00:28:14,800
Speaker 2: didn't tell the backstory, but I love Michelle. I looked

600
00:28:14,800 --> 00:28:17,080
Speaker 2: at this paper. I looked at my manager and I said,

601
00:28:17,240 --> 00:28:21,320
Speaker 2: Michelle Lagron, Michelle Legron wrote a musical like it was.

602
00:28:21,680 --> 00:28:23,399
Speaker 2: And she turned to me, she goes, I know, I know,

603
00:28:23,560 --> 00:28:25,119
Speaker 2: I love her.

604
00:28:26,440 --> 00:28:28,679
Speaker 3: So Michelle has tops in my book.

605
00:28:28,840 --> 00:28:31,399
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so that's not my manager anymore. But I

606
00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:34,320
Speaker 2: flew back. I flew back met the team got the

607
00:28:34,359 --> 00:28:37,159
Speaker 2: leading part to see. James Lapine was was the stitch

608
00:28:37,680 --> 00:28:40,680
Speaker 2: he wrote Sunday in the Park with George. So right

609
00:28:40,720 --> 00:28:44,560
Speaker 2: after that I had a wonderful success. I met Son,

610
00:28:44,680 --> 00:28:47,040
Speaker 2: Tim and James for Sunday in the Park with George,

611
00:28:47,080 --> 00:28:50,320
Speaker 2: and I just got cast by the based on the meeting,

612
00:28:50,400 --> 00:28:51,600
Speaker 2: and they didn't ask me to sing.

613
00:28:51,640 --> 00:28:52,800
Speaker 3: When was the original production?

614
00:28:53,080 --> 00:28:56,520
Speaker 2: When the original production? Now I was the Kennedy Center.

615
00:28:56,560 --> 00:28:59,480
Speaker 2: It was the first major revival in history. It was

616
00:28:59,520 --> 00:29:01,640
Speaker 2: a very first time it had ever been seen again.

617
00:29:02,240 --> 00:29:04,920
Speaker 2: I wore Bernadette's clothes. They added a like a foot,

618
00:29:05,240 --> 00:29:07,720
Speaker 2: you know, to the dresses, but I wore her dresses.

619
00:29:07,760 --> 00:29:09,920
Speaker 2: It was such an honor. So that was a bit

620
00:29:09,960 --> 00:29:12,120
Speaker 2: back to back. So the two north Stars came back

621
00:29:12,160 --> 00:29:15,040
Speaker 2: to back. I can't choose between them, and they don't

622
00:29:15,040 --> 00:29:18,680
Speaker 2: always have the highest regard always for each other. And

623
00:29:19,160 --> 00:29:22,240
Speaker 2: sometimes I wrote Michell Legrand's eulogy in the New York Times,

624
00:29:22,800 --> 00:29:26,400
Speaker 2: and I said that he could write, he could turn

625
00:29:27,200 --> 00:29:30,080
Speaker 2: a melody to a chord that no one else on

626
00:29:30,200 --> 00:29:33,960
Speaker 2: earth besides him could have thought of. Sometimes quoted that

627
00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:36,120
Speaker 2: back to me in an email. We had so many

628
00:29:36,120 --> 00:29:39,440
Speaker 2: emails asking me like what like what like what cord?

629
00:29:40,240 --> 00:29:40,360
Speaker 3: Like?

630
00:29:40,440 --> 00:29:42,960
Speaker 2: What was he was? So he didn't want me to

631
00:29:42,960 --> 00:29:46,200
Speaker 2: revere him in the same way. You know, I revered

632
00:29:46,680 --> 00:29:49,800
Speaker 2: them both, but they were the polar opposites. One is

633
00:29:49,840 --> 00:29:53,240
Speaker 2: a total sensualist with multiple, you know, many women in

634
00:29:53,240 --> 00:29:56,160
Speaker 2: his life, lots of wives. Michelle's very happy with his

635
00:29:56,680 --> 00:29:59,800
Speaker 2: now wife whatever, but they're perfect. They actually he goes

636
00:29:59,800 --> 00:30:02,600
Speaker 2: back to the first girlfriend or something, so he's actually

637
00:30:02,600 --> 00:30:05,600
Speaker 2: back at the his true love. But he's just a

638
00:30:05,680 --> 00:30:11,280
Speaker 2: sensualist and an affirmative French troubadour really from the great tradition, Charlestrena,

639
00:30:11,480 --> 00:30:14,240
Speaker 2: from even the sound of the old carousel. It's just

640
00:30:14,360 --> 00:30:18,360
Speaker 2: all the dancing illusions of life, and you know, the

641
00:30:18,360 --> 00:30:20,480
Speaker 2: spirit of the poet lives on you. Hear an accordion,

642
00:30:20,760 --> 00:30:23,480
Speaker 2: you know in your brain when he's just beauty itself.

643
00:30:23,800 --> 00:30:26,080
Speaker 2: Sondheim is asking a lot of questions. It's like your

644
00:30:26,240 --> 00:30:29,920
Speaker 2: mammot is percussive. It tells you what to Everything is percussive.

645
00:30:30,400 --> 00:30:33,280
Speaker 2: Every syllable tells you what to think, where to turn

646
00:30:33,320 --> 00:30:35,960
Speaker 2: a phrase, and it's edgier, and it's all about the

647
00:30:35,960 --> 00:30:40,320
Speaker 2: ambivalences and disappointments in life. You get everything you want

648
00:30:40,360 --> 00:30:43,760
Speaker 2: in life and nothing that you want in life. That's

649
00:30:43,800 --> 00:30:47,280
Speaker 2: the sort of Sondheim life. You can probably apply that

650
00:30:47,320 --> 00:30:51,440
Speaker 2: thought to any song in any character. They both are

651
00:30:51,600 --> 00:30:53,640
Speaker 2: doomed by their duties and their desires.

652
00:30:54,720 --> 00:30:57,560
Speaker 1: You've been a leading lady in these musicals and these

653
00:30:57,680 --> 00:31:02,160
Speaker 1: very in a world of great romance, and what happens

654
00:31:02,200 --> 00:31:04,200
Speaker 1: when you go out there and you're not that in

655
00:31:04,240 --> 00:31:05,840
Speaker 1: love with the guy who is your leading man in

656
00:31:05,880 --> 00:31:08,800
Speaker 1: the in the show, not without naming names, meaning what's

657
00:31:08,840 --> 00:31:10,720
Speaker 1: it like for you to have to go and do

658
00:31:11,160 --> 00:31:13,080
Speaker 1: so when you do a movie if they do a

659
00:31:13,120 --> 00:31:15,480
Speaker 1: love scene with somebody that you're not that j as

660
00:31:15,520 --> 00:31:18,280
Speaker 1: a person. Forget about sexually, You're just not there. You're

661
00:31:18,320 --> 00:31:20,840
Speaker 1: not your favorite people. You get through it the days over,

662
00:31:20,920 --> 00:31:22,880
Speaker 1: it's over. When you have to go out there again

663
00:31:23,040 --> 00:31:25,080
Speaker 1: and again and again in a show and that person

664
00:31:25,160 --> 00:31:26,960
Speaker 1: isn't your capetin amen.

665
00:31:28,400 --> 00:31:29,280
Speaker 3: Have you had that happen?

666
00:31:29,920 --> 00:31:35,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I usually find a way though,

667
00:31:35,600 --> 00:31:37,440
Speaker 2: you know, there's a you know, musical theater is a

668
00:31:37,480 --> 00:31:40,280
Speaker 2: little different than than the film because you have to

669
00:31:40,320 --> 00:31:44,200
Speaker 2: be athletes. You're you're sharing a athletic task. So if

670
00:31:44,200 --> 00:31:49,400
Speaker 2: the person can get the athletics, you know, beautiful singing,

671
00:31:49,760 --> 00:31:52,960
Speaker 2: be there physically for you, be positive, not be ill

672
00:31:53,080 --> 00:31:55,280
Speaker 2: a lot. You know, when somebody's really ill, it's really

673
00:31:55,320 --> 00:31:57,880
Speaker 2: a downer. I've really annoyed, annoyed when I have a

674
00:31:58,280 --> 00:32:00,560
Speaker 2: leading man who's prone to like bronchitis sort of thing,

675
00:32:01,000 --> 00:32:03,280
Speaker 2: because because he's drinking all night, and you know, he's

676
00:32:03,320 --> 00:32:05,720
Speaker 2: drinking all night and he comes he direct and you're like, honey,

677
00:32:05,760 --> 00:32:11,640
Speaker 2: could you just just drink water, Just just stop drinking,

678
00:32:11,720 --> 00:32:13,640
Speaker 2: you know, and so you have to stick all the time.

679
00:32:13,800 --> 00:32:15,480
Speaker 2: So these things like that, you know, it's more like

680
00:32:15,480 --> 00:32:18,160
Speaker 2: people catching colds, and you want you want people to

681
00:32:18,200 --> 00:32:21,360
Speaker 2: be grounded and reliable and friendly. I've never really had

682
00:32:21,400 --> 00:32:25,880
Speaker 2: anyone that just really repulses me. There was one that's

683
00:32:25,960 --> 00:32:29,040
Speaker 2: not it. It was it came in just a little

684
00:32:29,120 --> 00:32:35,080
Speaker 2: too into his liquor whatever. Yeah, like.

685
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:42,920
Speaker 3: The clot Tom Jones, just a little Tom Jones.

686
00:32:42,560 --> 00:32:44,960
Speaker 2: Was bothers me because that's just like he's not thinking,

687
00:32:45,000 --> 00:32:47,480
Speaker 2: he's just being all like, yeah, cod piece.

688
00:32:48,360 --> 00:32:51,240
Speaker 1: Oh god, yeah, well that's important.

689
00:32:51,560 --> 00:32:52,760
Speaker 2: But I don't find that I.

690
00:32:52,840 --> 00:32:55,080
Speaker 3: Was in the ballet, I had a gigantic cod piece.

691
00:32:56,600 --> 00:32:58,240
Speaker 2: I'm not a code person like I.

692
00:32:58,200 --> 00:32:59,920
Speaker 1: Went to the codpiece story that made me a custom

693
00:33:00,080 --> 00:33:01,520
Speaker 1: god piece when I was in this and.

694
00:33:01,440 --> 00:33:03,600
Speaker 2: When I had to blatant Camelot, and I was supposed

695
00:33:03,600 --> 00:33:06,080
Speaker 2: to be absolutely in love with the guy with the

696
00:33:06,080 --> 00:33:08,520
Speaker 2: cod piece, right. I can't remember the character, but I

697
00:33:08,640 --> 00:33:12,680
Speaker 2: was working with King Arthur, who was Jeremy Irons. It

698
00:33:12,760 --> 00:33:15,240
Speaker 2: was very hard for me to, you know, to be like, gosh,

699
00:33:15,280 --> 00:33:16,400
Speaker 2: I'm going to go off with the.

700
00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:19,560
Speaker 1: Dickhead I mean codpiece.

701
00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:24,560
Speaker 4: It wouldn't been inst and I'm looking at him like,

702
00:33:24,600 --> 00:33:32,080
Speaker 4: forget it, Jeremy Irons off stage, off stage, we're like

703
00:33:32,160 --> 00:33:34,200
Speaker 4: perfect for each other. No.

704
00:33:34,320 --> 00:33:36,560
Speaker 2: Actually, there was one time we had between shows, you know,

705
00:33:37,400 --> 00:33:39,760
Speaker 2: we're getting notes or something, and the notes started and

706
00:33:39,800 --> 00:33:41,600
Speaker 2: we realized we had just had a three hour break.

707
00:33:41,600 --> 00:33:43,240
Speaker 2: And he goes, oh, darling, we just had three hours.

708
00:33:43,280 --> 00:33:46,400
Speaker 2: We should have had sex, but I forgot. Not that

709
00:33:46,440 --> 00:33:47,520
Speaker 2: I would have said yes, but it was.

710
00:33:49,640 --> 00:33:51,400
Speaker 1: And we're laying there naked on a bed. I'm going

711
00:33:51,440 --> 00:33:53,240
Speaker 1: to kill her in this movie The Juror that to me,

712
00:33:53,360 --> 00:33:54,200
Speaker 1: Moore was the star of.

713
00:33:54,520 --> 00:33:55,280
Speaker 3: And we're laying on.

714
00:33:55,240 --> 00:33:56,880
Speaker 1: This bed together and we're naked and we have a

715
00:33:56,920 --> 00:33:58,360
Speaker 1: sheet over us, and she goes, have you done this

716
00:33:58,360 --> 00:33:58,840
Speaker 1: a lot before?

717
00:33:58,920 --> 00:34:00,320
Speaker 3: These nude scenes like with you?

718
00:34:00,760 --> 00:34:02,240
Speaker 1: And she got I go listen to me favorite, Like

719
00:34:02,240 --> 00:34:04,160
Speaker 1: I said, twenty minutes from now, we won't even put

720
00:34:04,160 --> 00:34:05,160
Speaker 1: the sheet over us.

721
00:34:05,080 --> 00:34:06,960
Speaker 3: And then one's going to notice that the crew doesn't care.

722
00:34:07,360 --> 00:34:09,560
Speaker 1: We'll be butt naked ready and the crew doesn't give

723
00:34:09,560 --> 00:34:12,920
Speaker 1: the ship, so we'll cover up. So we have to

724
00:34:12,960 --> 00:34:14,879
Speaker 1: do this scene and we're like going at it. We're

725
00:34:14,880 --> 00:34:17,360
Speaker 1: like making down. But there was a lamp in her body,

726
00:34:17,400 --> 00:34:19,840
Speaker 1: were a towel, yeah, yeah, we a little fake LEAFU.

727
00:34:20,040 --> 00:34:22,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, they will I have my thick leaf. Yeah. And

728
00:34:22,200 --> 00:34:22,680
Speaker 3: you don't have.

729
00:34:22,640 --> 00:34:25,479
Speaker 2: Intimacy counseling back then, right, Oh yeah, me neither, because

730
00:34:25,480 --> 00:34:26,000
Speaker 2: that was.

731
00:34:25,920 --> 00:34:28,799
Speaker 1: My intimacy counselor. Because I said to her, they make think, okay,

732
00:34:28,840 --> 00:34:32,160
Speaker 1: that's lunch and I'm going to go have lunch. And

733
00:34:32,239 --> 00:34:33,880
Speaker 1: I look at her and I go and we're like

734
00:34:34,000 --> 00:34:36,600
Speaker 1: really really like pulsing here, look right.

735
00:34:36,560 --> 00:34:37,600
Speaker 3: In the eye, and I go, what do you want

736
00:34:37,600 --> 00:34:40,640
Speaker 3: for lunch? And she goes, you know, oh, and I

737
00:34:40,880 --> 00:34:43,920
Speaker 3: was like, oh, yeah, ok. I was married at the time,

738
00:34:43,960 --> 00:34:44,920
Speaker 3: and I was okay.

739
00:34:45,120 --> 00:34:45,319
Speaker 4: You know.

740
00:34:45,360 --> 00:34:48,399
Speaker 2: I wrote an essay about this, about doing my first

741
00:34:48,480 --> 00:34:51,919
Speaker 2: nude scene for the television show Billions, and it's called

742
00:34:51,960 --> 00:34:52,800
Speaker 2: Negotiating Nudity.

743
00:34:52,960 --> 00:34:53,479
Speaker 3: Are you nude?

744
00:34:53,480 --> 00:34:56,680
Speaker 2: In Billions, I played the wife of the you know

745
00:34:56,719 --> 00:34:58,600
Speaker 2: how there were two brothers. The premise of the show

746
00:34:58,680 --> 00:35:01,880
Speaker 2: is two brothers and the bad friend rather survived and

747
00:35:01,960 --> 00:35:04,520
Speaker 2: the good man died in the nine to eleven disaster.

748
00:35:05,120 --> 00:35:07,480
Speaker 2: I'm the wife of the good man. I knew all

749
00:35:07,480 --> 00:35:10,440
Speaker 2: the bad things about Damian Lewis. I know everything, and

750
00:35:10,520 --> 00:35:12,239
Speaker 2: I'm the wife that says I know you're bad and

751
00:35:12,280 --> 00:35:14,000
Speaker 2: I'm going to write a book and they shut my

752
00:35:14,000 --> 00:35:14,520
Speaker 2: life down.

753
00:35:14,760 --> 00:35:16,680
Speaker 3: How do you end up nude? That's why I end up.

754
00:35:16,680 --> 00:35:19,000
Speaker 2: Nude because I've written a tell all book and I

755
00:35:19,040 --> 00:35:21,360
Speaker 2: sleep with the publisher. I don't know I had to

756
00:35:21,360 --> 00:35:23,000
Speaker 2: sleep with the publisher if I had a good book.

757
00:35:23,080 --> 00:35:26,759
Speaker 2: But that's something I should revisit. What was creepy was

758
00:35:26,800 --> 00:35:29,680
Speaker 2: that I negotiated it, and I wrote an essay about

759
00:35:29,880 --> 00:35:32,480
Speaker 2: all the negotiations, because they ask you about your left

760
00:35:32,480 --> 00:35:34,360
Speaker 2: bosom and your right bosom, and what you're willing to

761
00:35:34,360 --> 00:35:36,919
Speaker 2: show in your back, this crack and that other thing

762
00:35:36,960 --> 00:35:39,120
Speaker 2: and the button on your lower back and just all

763
00:35:39,160 --> 00:35:39,720
Speaker 2: weird stuff.

764
00:35:41,080 --> 00:35:42,239
Speaker 3: Oh it all came off.

765
00:35:42,480 --> 00:35:45,040
Speaker 2: Oh really, did you have a contract that was specific?

766
00:35:46,680 --> 00:35:47,600
Speaker 3: Jack schmancrack.

767
00:35:48,200 --> 00:35:52,800
Speaker 2: I found the whole thing so it's just wrong tempered

768
00:35:52,800 --> 00:35:54,640
Speaker 2: for me, Like I just the wrong person to be,

769
00:35:54,800 --> 00:35:57,400
Speaker 2: you know, navigating all this. It just was crazy. So

770
00:35:57,560 --> 00:35:59,239
Speaker 2: I did write this essay, which I think is how

771
00:35:59,360 --> 00:36:01,440
Speaker 2: my New York Time things started, because that really was

772
00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:05,080
Speaker 2: really a good piece. Christina Cuomo actually printed it for

773
00:36:05,120 --> 00:36:07,520
Speaker 2: me in one of her magazines. And then I got

774
00:36:07,880 --> 00:36:10,319
Speaker 2: the phone call, that beautiful, famous phone call famous to

775
00:36:10,360 --> 00:36:12,399
Speaker 2: me when Scott Heller from The New York Times said,

776
00:36:12,400 --> 00:36:14,959
Speaker 2: we think you're right for the Times. I'm pretty sure

777
00:36:14,960 --> 00:36:17,319
Speaker 2: that it was that. Christina always thinks that she gave

778
00:36:17,360 --> 00:36:22,399
Speaker 2: me my first. But the show was tricky because I

779
00:36:22,440 --> 00:36:24,480
Speaker 2: had to get you know, spray painted or whatever for

780
00:36:24,600 --> 00:36:27,359
Speaker 2: body paint so that you look extra tan, you know,

781
00:36:27,400 --> 00:36:30,360
Speaker 2: and perfect your skin. I had worked out my body

782
00:36:30,440 --> 00:36:32,640
Speaker 2: was just as good as I was going to get.

783
00:36:33,080 --> 00:36:35,200
Speaker 2: And I looked at the call sheet. Of course, they

784
00:36:35,239 --> 00:36:36,640
Speaker 2: never told me who I was going to be in

785
00:36:36,680 --> 00:36:40,680
Speaker 2: bed with. It was Austin Pendleton. Ah, he's so what

786
00:36:40,960 --> 00:36:43,080
Speaker 2: was But Austin is an older.

787
00:36:42,800 --> 00:36:45,640
Speaker 3: Man could play the publisher Jesus christ.

788
00:36:45,920 --> 00:36:49,360
Speaker 2: Austin was my acting coach when I was in my twenties,

789
00:36:49,400 --> 00:36:51,120
Speaker 2: and he went to college. You went to Yale class

790
00:36:51,160 --> 00:36:55,200
Speaker 2: of sixty one with my fast one. Yes, he was

791
00:36:55,239 --> 00:36:57,840
Speaker 2: my acting teacher, and so that's what my article is

792
00:36:57,880 --> 00:37:01,680
Speaker 2: about facing your acting teacher in your a nude scene.

793
00:37:02,120 --> 00:37:04,359
Speaker 2: It was really hard and he was we were both,

794
00:37:04,440 --> 00:37:07,000
Speaker 2: I mean, we're it's really bizarre. It was a really

795
00:37:07,000 --> 00:37:10,000
Speaker 2: bizarre day. We obviously got to you know, we did

796
00:37:10,000 --> 00:37:11,920
Speaker 2: what we had to do it, but it was awkward

797
00:37:11,960 --> 00:37:14,359
Speaker 2: and it created a very funny article, and it was,

798
00:37:14,440 --> 00:37:16,359
Speaker 2: you know, we had a pile of towels between us.

799
00:37:16,440 --> 00:37:18,680
Speaker 2: But why are we talking about this? But he was

800
00:37:18,680 --> 00:37:21,680
Speaker 2: my teacher and he helped me to get Eliza Doolittle.

801
00:37:22,239 --> 00:37:25,360
Speaker 2: I and Roger Reese they were my coaches when I

802
00:37:25,440 --> 00:37:27,320
Speaker 2: was young. So you never know who's going to be

803
00:37:27,360 --> 00:37:27,879
Speaker 2: on the call sheet.

804
00:37:27,920 --> 00:37:31,640
Speaker 1: We were thinking you and I together called billions in concerts,

805
00:37:32,040 --> 00:37:33,719
Speaker 1: and you and I will reenact the nude scene.

806
00:37:33,719 --> 00:37:34,840
Speaker 3: Then you're gonna get to see.

807
00:37:34,680 --> 00:37:38,760
Speaker 2: Some songs, No, I have music.

808
00:37:38,560 --> 00:37:44,800
Speaker 3: Of grand together. Who cares all the quirky stuff?

809
00:37:47,560 --> 00:37:52,640
Speaker 1: Actress, singer and writer Melissa Raco. If you're enjoying this conversation,

810
00:37:52,760 --> 00:37:55,400
Speaker 1: tell a friend and be sure to follow Here's the

811
00:37:55,440 --> 00:37:59,799
Speaker 1: thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get

812
00:37:59,800 --> 00:38:04,040
Speaker 1: your podcasts. When we come back, Melissa Rico talks about

813
00:38:04,320 --> 00:38:07,759
Speaker 1: the great aunt who became a Zingfeld Folly star and

814
00:38:07,840 --> 00:38:21,960
Speaker 1: the grandmother who first recognized her talent. I'm Alec Baldwin

815
00:38:22,120 --> 00:38:25,399
Speaker 1: and this is Here's the thing. Melissa Rico was born

816
00:38:25,400 --> 00:38:28,440
Speaker 1: in New York City and raised in Manhasset, Long Island.

817
00:38:28,719 --> 00:38:32,239
Speaker 1: Her father was an orthopedic surgeon and a pianist, and

818
00:38:32,280 --> 00:38:34,640
Speaker 1: her mother was a teacher who now works as a

819
00:38:34,680 --> 00:38:38,840
Speaker 1: sculptor and artist. But the performing arts ran even deeper

820
00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:42,800
Speaker 1: in her family. Her maternal grandmother was an opera singer,

821
00:38:43,040 --> 00:38:46,400
Speaker 1: and her great aunt Rose was a successful Zigfeld Folly

822
00:38:46,480 --> 00:38:51,279
Speaker 1: star Eriko's own professional career began at just twelve years

823
00:38:51,280 --> 00:38:55,200
Speaker 1: old on the children's television series The Great Space Coaster.

824
00:38:55,880 --> 00:39:00,000
Speaker 1: The series led to title roles in Anna Karenina High Society,

825
00:39:00,680 --> 00:39:04,600
Speaker 1: Dracula Amor Sunday in the Park with George, and the

826
00:39:04,640 --> 00:39:09,520
Speaker 1: Irish Repertory theaters Finian's Rainbow. With such an illustrious career

827
00:39:09,600 --> 00:39:13,480
Speaker 1: and family history, I wondered who in Rico's family first

828
00:39:13,600 --> 00:39:16,600
Speaker 1: encouraged her to pursue performing professionally.

829
00:39:17,280 --> 00:39:20,160
Speaker 2: It might have been my grandmother. My grandmother and her sister.

830
00:39:20,320 --> 00:39:24,600
Speaker 2: Do you know, I was fascinated by my immigrant history,

831
00:39:24,960 --> 00:39:27,560
Speaker 2: and I was fascinated that the Italians who came over

832
00:39:28,200 --> 00:39:31,560
Speaker 2: in the turn of the century went and were seamstresses

833
00:39:31,560 --> 00:39:34,480
Speaker 2: for World War One. And then my aunt Rose was

834
00:39:34,520 --> 00:39:37,840
Speaker 2: a very successful Zigfeld girl. So I grew up in

835
00:39:37,880 --> 00:39:40,360
Speaker 2: a house full of the actual follies girls, just like

836
00:39:40,440 --> 00:39:43,560
Speaker 2: Sondhimem's musical, which he always found fascinating. So I knew

837
00:39:43,600 --> 00:39:46,440
Speaker 2: her and her friends. I think right away there was

838
00:39:46,480 --> 00:39:49,840
Speaker 2: a sense that the actresses, they were the only feminists.

839
00:39:49,920 --> 00:39:52,399
Speaker 2: I was given women who made money, who got out

840
00:39:52,440 --> 00:39:55,000
Speaker 2: of the house, who did something that were like pioneers.

841
00:39:55,239 --> 00:39:59,640
Speaker 2: So I think it was a sense of disposition, first

842
00:40:00,120 --> 00:40:02,960
Speaker 2: the voice, but that I had the disposition. Yeah, I

843
00:40:02,960 --> 00:40:05,000
Speaker 2: had the disposition to stand on my own two feet,

844
00:40:05,000 --> 00:40:06,279
Speaker 2: to get out in the world, to get out of

845
00:40:06,280 --> 00:40:09,200
Speaker 2: a house. I wasn't a house oriented person. I wanted

846
00:40:09,239 --> 00:40:12,400
Speaker 2: to I wanted to be. I was intrepid, naturally intrepid,

847
00:40:12,400 --> 00:40:16,000
Speaker 2: and I was as I got older and stopped doing gymnastics,

848
00:40:16,040 --> 00:40:18,360
Speaker 2: where I went right away to a theater camp and

849
00:40:18,400 --> 00:40:21,920
Speaker 2: the gymnastics gave me a funny body language, so right

850
00:40:21,920 --> 00:40:24,120
Speaker 2: away I was I had high kicks and flips, and

851
00:40:24,160 --> 00:40:25,920
Speaker 2: I could do cartwheels, and I was getting all the

852
00:40:26,080 --> 00:40:29,799
Speaker 2: comic characters Adelaide and Hetty LaRue, and I got all

853
00:40:29,800 --> 00:40:32,600
Speaker 2: the funny stuff because I was physically unusual. I had big,

854
00:40:32,640 --> 00:40:35,560
Speaker 2: curly hair, a shapely body, but it was an acrobat

855
00:40:36,120 --> 00:40:39,000
Speaker 2: and so I had a sort of boldness about me.

856
00:40:39,040 --> 00:40:42,120
Speaker 2: And this a natural style of singing. I wasn't an

857
00:40:42,120 --> 00:40:44,360
Speaker 2: opera singer. I have none of the background of Audrey

858
00:40:44,440 --> 00:40:48,000
Speaker 2: McDonald and Kelly O'Hara, all these girls who trained in classical.

859
00:40:48,360 --> 00:40:51,440
Speaker 2: I'm a little more from the hip, you know, an Italian.

860
00:40:51,040 --> 00:40:52,919
Speaker 3: American who just actress.

861
00:40:53,480 --> 00:40:55,520
Speaker 2: But I'm also just a girl doing cartwheels in the lawn.

862
00:40:55,840 --> 00:40:57,920
Speaker 2: I would love to jump into a play. When I

863
00:40:57,960 --> 00:41:00,440
Speaker 2: got to Yale, I thought, oh God, gosh, I can't

864
00:41:00,480 --> 00:41:02,360
Speaker 2: be in college for four years. I'm just I was

865
00:41:02,400 --> 00:41:05,640
Speaker 2: just chomping at the bit to work. And I would

866
00:41:05,640 --> 00:41:09,440
Speaker 2: look at backstage newspaper and look for another adventure, you know.

867
00:41:09,520 --> 00:41:12,560
Speaker 2: And I looked. I saw a Ringling Brothers audition Rhode

868
00:41:12,600 --> 00:41:16,120
Speaker 2: Island Theater by the Sea, and I auditioned for Rhode

869
00:41:16,120 --> 00:41:17,719
Speaker 2: Island Theater by the Sea. I got seen in the

870
00:41:17,760 --> 00:41:20,319
Speaker 2: hall by the director of le Miz pulled me out

871
00:41:20,560 --> 00:41:22,680
Speaker 2: of the hall. And it might have even been that

872
00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:25,960
Speaker 2: day that made me feel like I'm on the adventure

873
00:41:26,320 --> 00:41:28,520
Speaker 2: because they pulled me out of one thing. I'm in

874
00:41:28,520 --> 00:41:30,760
Speaker 2: the middle of college. They put me in an audition

875
00:41:30,840 --> 00:41:33,360
Speaker 2: for le Miz. I opened my mouth and they stopped me.

876
00:41:33,400 --> 00:41:36,239
Speaker 2: They said, can you start in ten days? And it

877
00:41:36,320 --> 00:41:39,319
Speaker 2: was dropping out of Yale, you know, which I was

878
00:41:39,320 --> 00:41:41,480
Speaker 2: also a really good student, and I did.

879
00:41:41,280 --> 00:41:43,239
Speaker 3: That part Yale.

880
00:41:43,360 --> 00:41:47,239
Speaker 2: Art history and philosophy, but mostly art history. I could

881
00:41:47,280 --> 00:41:49,040
Speaker 2: have gone down that road. That's a little bit of

882
00:41:49,040 --> 00:41:52,640
Speaker 2: a different topic. I loved my Yale education, but I

883
00:41:52,680 --> 00:41:54,960
Speaker 2: do have a me too story that we can put

884
00:41:55,000 --> 00:41:57,520
Speaker 2: aside for another time. But that was like a little

885
00:41:57,520 --> 00:42:00,719
Speaker 2: bit at Yale with one of the most prompt professors

886
00:42:00,719 --> 00:42:01,200
Speaker 2: in the world.

887
00:42:01,800 --> 00:42:04,479
Speaker 3: Yeah, just maybe he fixated on.

888
00:42:04,400 --> 00:42:06,759
Speaker 2: You, he fixated on me. And then it was there

889
00:42:06,800 --> 00:42:09,319
Speaker 2: was a bad episode and it just was just very heartbreaking.

890
00:42:09,360 --> 00:42:11,279
Speaker 2: I never picked up my thesis. I was at a

891
00:42:11,320 --> 00:42:15,200
Speaker 2: graduate level and this one thing for graduating, so my

892
00:42:15,320 --> 00:42:20,000
Speaker 2: intellectual life was kind of, you know, not discouraged, but

893
00:42:20,080 --> 00:42:21,759
Speaker 2: it just I don't know what I got. I kind

894
00:42:21,760 --> 00:42:24,560
Speaker 2: of just froze and just went into the theater. So

895
00:42:24,960 --> 00:42:27,240
Speaker 2: it was wonderful when, you know, in the twenty seventeen

896
00:42:27,280 --> 00:42:30,200
Speaker 2: when everybody started talking about these things, But I had

897
00:42:30,280 --> 00:42:34,840
Speaker 2: already been thinking about silence and women, because in twenty

898
00:42:34,960 --> 00:42:38,080
Speaker 2: fifteen I started this process, this making of my own cabarets.

899
00:42:38,320 --> 00:42:41,160
Speaker 2: The first cabaret I did was called Sing the Silence,

900
00:42:41,800 --> 00:42:44,920
Speaker 2: and it was about women and their silences, based on

901
00:42:45,200 --> 00:42:48,440
Speaker 2: a conversation I'd had with Sondheim where he told me

902
00:42:48,480 --> 00:42:53,120
Speaker 2: a person can sing the apostrophe of a word. Couldn't wouldn't?

903
00:42:53,400 --> 00:42:56,319
Speaker 2: I said, but there's no, there's an apostrophe, And he

904
00:42:56,400 --> 00:42:58,759
Speaker 2: was talking to me about silences, and so we got

905
00:42:58,800 --> 00:43:02,000
Speaker 2: into these weird habit holes and I started thinking about

906
00:43:02,040 --> 00:43:05,000
Speaker 2: silences and all of this. So anyhow, that was a kind

907
00:43:05,040 --> 00:43:07,640
Speaker 2: of a turning point moment. Just to go back when

908
00:43:07,680 --> 00:43:10,399
Speaker 2: I dropped out of college and left one life as

909
00:43:10,400 --> 00:43:13,759
Speaker 2: an intellectual or as a kind of a student of

910
00:43:13,800 --> 00:43:16,920
Speaker 2: the world, I still have that. I treat everything like

911
00:43:17,400 --> 00:43:18,440
Speaker 2: opportunity for research.

912
00:43:18,480 --> 00:43:19,360
Speaker 3: Finish.

913
00:43:19,400 --> 00:43:21,879
Speaker 2: I did it, went back, I did go back. Yeah,

914
00:43:22,120 --> 00:43:23,040
Speaker 2: that was you took.

915
00:43:22,960 --> 00:43:24,360
Speaker 3: A break for how long? How many years were you

916
00:43:24,360 --> 00:43:24,880
Speaker 3: out of there?

917
00:43:24,920 --> 00:43:27,359
Speaker 2: One and a half. But I did a year as

918
00:43:27,360 --> 00:43:31,320
Speaker 2: a correspondence student with other kids who were like journalists

919
00:43:31,360 --> 00:43:33,959
Speaker 2: or one kid who was at NASA and I was missing.

920
00:43:34,719 --> 00:43:36,880
Speaker 2: I called it Yale by mail. We did it all

921
00:43:36,920 --> 00:43:38,480
Speaker 2: by mail. It was really interesting. So I as a

922
00:43:38,520 --> 00:43:41,320
Speaker 2: correspondence student, so I didn't have to lose too much time.

923
00:43:41,600 --> 00:43:44,160
Speaker 2: That's the moment where I think I thought, maybe this

924
00:43:44,320 --> 00:43:46,200
Speaker 2: was going to take me not just out of high

925
00:43:46,239 --> 00:43:47,840
Speaker 2: school and be a good singer, oh wow, I have

926
00:43:47,880 --> 00:43:51,120
Speaker 2: a pretty voice, but into the profession, into crazy things

927
00:43:51,120 --> 00:43:52,879
Speaker 2: where you drop out of one thing and you jump

928
00:43:52,880 --> 00:43:55,799
Speaker 2: into another life and you pack your bags. That I

929
00:43:55,840 --> 00:43:57,440
Speaker 2: love the idea of that. You know.

930
00:43:57,840 --> 00:43:59,920
Speaker 1: Someone once pointed out to me. They said, oh, the

931
00:44:00,280 --> 00:44:03,120
Speaker 1: two ballet companies in New York, and there's two upper

932
00:44:03,160 --> 00:44:05,040
Speaker 1: companies in New York. And they said that, well, one

933
00:44:05,200 --> 00:44:08,840
Speaker 1: group they dance really well and they're acting is terrible,

934
00:44:08,880 --> 00:44:10,600
Speaker 1: and he goes and the other one they're acting is

935
00:44:10,640 --> 00:44:12,800
Speaker 1: really good, and they're dancing is so so. One group

936
00:44:12,840 --> 00:44:16,080
Speaker 1: they're singing is right, and they're acting is so. And

937
00:44:16,120 --> 00:44:18,160
Speaker 1: the thing that I love about you is that you

938
00:44:18,239 --> 00:44:21,879
Speaker 1: are an actress. Now you have made your reputation with

939
00:44:21,920 --> 00:44:25,960
Speaker 1: this huge component, this amazing piston in the engine here

940
00:44:26,000 --> 00:44:29,000
Speaker 1: of your singing career and singing in the theater and

941
00:44:29,080 --> 00:44:30,880
Speaker 1: so forth. But when I did that Gift of the

942
00:44:30,920 --> 00:44:33,239
Speaker 1: Gorgon with you, I mean, I'll say this till the

943
00:44:33,280 --> 00:44:33,960
Speaker 1: cows come home.

944
00:44:34,040 --> 00:44:37,480
Speaker 3: You were so fantastic. And what I realized was, without.

945
00:44:37,600 --> 00:44:40,240
Speaker 1: Mentioning other people, there are these dames in the theater

946
00:44:40,280 --> 00:44:43,600
Speaker 1: who they're acting is so so they're acting, and so

947
00:44:43,640 --> 00:44:47,359
Speaker 1: they're singing as pristine they're singing is remarkable, but they're not.

948
00:44:47,840 --> 00:44:48,800
Speaker 1: And you have both.

949
00:44:49,160 --> 00:44:49,520
Speaker 3: Thank you.

950
00:44:49,600 --> 00:44:52,320
Speaker 2: Peter Schaffer wrote equis and that we did the American

951
00:44:52,360 --> 00:44:54,200
Speaker 2: premiere you and I. It's the first time it's ever

952
00:44:54,200 --> 00:44:56,120
Speaker 2: been heard in the in the US. It was a

953
00:44:56,280 --> 00:44:56,920
Speaker 2: great thank you.

954
00:44:57,000 --> 00:44:58,000
Speaker 3: And we did Gorgon.

955
00:44:58,120 --> 00:45:00,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, we did the Gift of the Gorgon, which Judy

956
00:45:00,520 --> 00:45:03,080
Speaker 2: Dench says in her book was the ravaged her that

957
00:45:03,120 --> 00:45:05,080
Speaker 2: it was the hardest role she ever played. My part

958
00:45:05,320 --> 00:45:08,560
Speaker 2: so it's innate to that role is to be destroyed,

959
00:45:08,560 --> 00:45:10,719
Speaker 2: like you wrecked me. I remember waking up the next day.

960
00:45:10,800 --> 00:45:15,400
Speaker 2: I was wrecked. It was a very difficult relationship. We

961
00:45:15,400 --> 00:45:21,160
Speaker 2: were playing professors of Greek mythology and philosophy, so we

962
00:45:21,160 --> 00:45:23,759
Speaker 2: were like two PhD type teachers. Maybe we could do

963
00:45:23,800 --> 00:45:24,120
Speaker 2: it again.

964
00:45:24,160 --> 00:45:27,120
Speaker 1: Who knows, well we should do something again, because I'm

965
00:45:27,120 --> 00:45:29,720
Speaker 1: really dying too. I haven't done a play in a while.

966
00:45:30,280 --> 00:45:32,080
Speaker 1: This one guy wrote a review. Isn't it funny how

967
00:45:32,120 --> 00:45:33,440
Speaker 1: people if they write a review.

968
00:45:33,640 --> 00:45:37,520
Speaker 2: You were wonderful, as f Scott Fitzgerald, this time really good.

969
00:45:37,600 --> 00:45:39,799
Speaker 3: But the thing about that is that we did you

970
00:45:39,840 --> 00:45:40,720
Speaker 3: took about critics.

971
00:45:41,480 --> 00:45:46,120
Speaker 1: And one guy wrote a piece in a New Jersey

972
00:45:46,160 --> 00:45:48,680
Speaker 1: paper that was brought to my attention, and I thought

973
00:45:48,680 --> 00:45:52,080
Speaker 1: to myself, this guy's been reading my diary. He really

974
00:45:52,120 --> 00:45:54,640
Speaker 1: really got what I was trying to do, mister Baldwin.

975
00:45:54,719 --> 00:45:56,600
Speaker 1: This and this and this and this, and he wasn't

976
00:45:56,680 --> 00:45:59,719
Speaker 1: like licking me to death. But it was very very much,

977
00:46:00,120 --> 00:46:03,440
Speaker 1: very positive and and and filled with understanding.

978
00:46:03,640 --> 00:46:04,040
Speaker 2: I love that.

979
00:46:04,160 --> 00:46:06,240
Speaker 3: I think a lot of times people who.

980
00:46:06,440 --> 00:46:07,560
Speaker 2: Like I have a few like that.

981
00:46:10,800 --> 00:46:13,239
Speaker 3: I was so Rackey was somebody who was like, I

982
00:46:13,320 --> 00:46:15,600
Speaker 3: just know, why bother?

983
00:46:15,800 --> 00:46:18,080
Speaker 1: Why bother getting up there when he's But the point

984
00:46:18,120 --> 00:46:20,920
Speaker 1: is that Brandley was somebody who I thought, in my

985
00:46:21,040 --> 00:46:23,360
Speaker 1: mind he didn't really understand what acting was and what

986
00:46:23,400 --> 00:46:25,880
Speaker 1: people were doing and why I really want you and

987
00:46:25,880 --> 00:46:27,040
Speaker 1: I to find something to do together.

988
00:46:27,160 --> 00:46:30,160
Speaker 2: My twins apply to college in the fall, so I

989
00:46:30,160 --> 00:46:31,520
Speaker 2: know you're not on that place, but you could do

990
00:46:31,600 --> 00:46:32,319
Speaker 2: a play here and.

991
00:46:32,280 --> 00:46:34,160
Speaker 3: Still in college.

992
00:46:34,320 --> 00:46:37,640
Speaker 2: Yes, she's aware, she's at Duke and she is uh

993
00:46:38,840 --> 00:46:41,840
Speaker 2: already recruited at Goldman Sachs at the most premier premier.

994
00:46:41,920 --> 00:46:45,160
Speaker 2: She's brilliant. She's a math major, former tennis star, and

995
00:46:45,880 --> 00:46:48,399
Speaker 2: on the team. She's a beautiful human being. All three

996
00:46:48,440 --> 00:46:50,680
Speaker 2: of my girls, I'm proud to say, have hair down

997
00:46:50,680 --> 00:46:53,120
Speaker 2: to their waists. Just imagine the whole thing. Me and

998
00:46:53,160 --> 00:46:56,120
Speaker 2: these three women like they're with me right now. It's

999
00:46:56,360 --> 00:46:59,759
Speaker 2: they're everywhere as your beautiful, funny, playful children and your

1000
00:46:59,760 --> 00:47:02,000
Speaker 2: gorge his wife are like as I look at you,

1001
00:47:02,040 --> 00:47:05,040
Speaker 2: I see all that life. Do you remember the Bowery Babes. No,

1002
00:47:05,280 --> 00:47:07,120
Speaker 2: that was a period of my life. You gave me

1003
00:47:07,200 --> 00:47:10,800
Speaker 2: money during Hurricane Sandy. You donated from your foundation to

1004
00:47:11,760 --> 00:47:13,040
Speaker 2: you didn't know what it was. It was when I

1005
00:47:13,040 --> 00:47:15,160
Speaker 2: remember when I ran a mother's group down in Soho.

1006
00:47:15,680 --> 00:47:18,120
Speaker 2: I have five thousand families in it because when I

1007
00:47:18,200 --> 00:47:20,920
Speaker 2: was in the stage of parenting you're in. But I

1008
00:47:21,000 --> 00:47:23,879
Speaker 2: did this already. This Mother's Day which is coming up

1009
00:47:24,160 --> 00:47:27,240
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six. I am finishing it. It's twenty years

1010
00:47:27,239 --> 00:47:29,319
Speaker 2: and not for profit. We used to have a lot

1011
00:47:29,320 --> 00:47:31,319
Speaker 2: of money. You gave us some money which we did

1012
00:47:31,920 --> 00:47:33,600
Speaker 2: use for diapers dot com. I don't know if you

1013
00:47:33,640 --> 00:47:37,560
Speaker 2: remember you provided diapers for the community center you were.

1014
00:47:37,600 --> 00:47:39,400
Speaker 2: It was called Boweribabes. Actually it wasn't a thing you

1015
00:47:39,440 --> 00:47:42,080
Speaker 2: do with Broadway. It was the Lower east Side. It

1016
00:47:42,120 --> 00:47:44,760
Speaker 2: was a Lower east Side mother's community that I founded

1017
00:47:44,760 --> 00:47:47,279
Speaker 2: when I was in your parenting phase with all those

1018
00:47:47,280 --> 00:47:51,400
Speaker 2: little children, all that behavior which we would deal with. Actually,

1019
00:47:51,560 --> 00:47:53,840
Speaker 2: we used to have events for how to talk, so

1020
00:47:53,920 --> 00:47:56,320
Speaker 2: your kids will listen and listen, so your kids will talk,

1021
00:47:56,360 --> 00:47:59,800
Speaker 2: and you know, control but not control, let them be empowered.

1022
00:48:00,080 --> 00:48:02,279
Speaker 2: Closing it down this Mother's Day and all of our

1023
00:48:02,320 --> 00:48:05,640
Speaker 2: money whatever we saved over the years, there's twenty thousand dollars.

1024
00:48:05,800 --> 00:48:08,239
Speaker 2: We've already given it to Sloan Kettering, which I'm so

1025
00:48:08,280 --> 00:48:11,880
Speaker 2: proud of, to pediatric Cancer. So that's close. We're going

1026
00:48:11,920 --> 00:48:14,040
Speaker 2: to announce that it's all over. But it's a beautiful

1027
00:48:14,080 --> 00:48:16,080
Speaker 2: and difficult time to raise little children.

1028
00:48:16,239 --> 00:48:18,600
Speaker 1: You think Broadway and what's on Broadway has changed a

1029
00:48:18,600 --> 00:48:19,560
Speaker 1: lot since you started.

1030
00:48:19,840 --> 00:48:23,800
Speaker 2: Broadway. Of course, has changed because I'm not there. It's changed,

1031
00:48:23,800 --> 00:48:26,839
Speaker 2: but it's still temperamentally the same people, you know, isn't

1032
00:48:26,840 --> 00:48:29,560
Speaker 2: it moss Hart who says it's all the unhappy children.

1033
00:48:30,239 --> 00:48:31,920
Speaker 2: I think he says that in his book. You know,

1034
00:48:31,960 --> 00:48:33,680
Speaker 2: there's a lot of people who come to it because

1035
00:48:33,719 --> 00:48:35,719
Speaker 2: they find each other, and that's not a bad thing.

1036
00:48:36,360 --> 00:48:38,640
Speaker 2: It's still a beautiful holding ground for a lot of

1037
00:48:38,920 --> 00:48:39,480
Speaker 2: all times.

1038
00:48:39,520 --> 00:48:42,880
Speaker 1: The way it also links to Sondheim because from Rogerson

1039
00:48:43,000 --> 00:48:47,040
Speaker 1: Hard and Rogers and Hammerstein Oklahoma and all these sunny,

1040
00:48:47,360 --> 00:48:50,120
Speaker 1: beautiful things, some tragedy here and there, but my fare later.

1041
00:48:50,200 --> 00:48:52,719
Speaker 1: And then you get into Sondheim, people doing a lot

1042
00:48:52,760 --> 00:48:55,960
Speaker 1: of whining and Sondheim but it's real, honest. And then

1043
00:48:55,960 --> 00:48:58,040
Speaker 1: you get into shows that are like modern shows, which

1044
00:48:58,080 --> 00:49:02,520
Speaker 1: are very edgy and and strange and urban, and you

1045
00:49:02,560 --> 00:49:05,399
Speaker 1: know that the themes are very very existential.

1046
00:49:05,600 --> 00:49:08,640
Speaker 3: I mean, people are really really doing a lot of yeah,

1047
00:49:09,280 --> 00:49:09,760
Speaker 3: but there's.

1048
00:49:09,560 --> 00:49:11,919
Speaker 2: Still a community, a lot yeah, a lot of crying

1049
00:49:11,960 --> 00:49:13,080
Speaker 2: and a lot of loud singing.

1050
00:49:13,280 --> 00:49:13,440
Speaker 4: You know.

1051
00:49:13,480 --> 00:49:16,160
Speaker 2: There is some debate currently as of this week, there's

1052
00:49:16,160 --> 00:49:18,160
Speaker 2: some debate about the demands of eight shows a week.

1053
00:49:18,520 --> 00:49:20,520
Speaker 2: There are some actors who are now stepping forward and

1054
00:49:20,520 --> 00:49:22,919
Speaker 2: saying eight shows a week under the conditions that were

1055
00:49:22,920 --> 00:49:25,280
Speaker 2: being asked to, which is to outscream and out sing

1056
00:49:25,360 --> 00:49:28,960
Speaker 2: pop stars with no pro tools and so on, and

1057
00:49:29,000 --> 00:49:32,799
Speaker 2: so they're being asked to be pristine rock singers eight

1058
00:49:32,840 --> 00:49:36,880
Speaker 2: shows a week with orchestras blazing. When we were younger

1059
00:49:36,920 --> 00:49:39,920
Speaker 2: and when I was doing classic shows, the original orchestrations

1060
00:49:39,920 --> 00:49:43,160
Speaker 2: were spare. I would step forward in a Kurt Vile musical,

1061
00:49:43,200 --> 00:49:46,360
Speaker 2: which I've done a few, many of the orchestra stops

1062
00:49:46,400 --> 00:49:50,080
Speaker 2: pretty much, and you start going, tell me is love still?

1063
00:49:50,120 --> 00:49:51,960
Speaker 2: And there's nothing going on except a little like a

1064
00:49:52,000 --> 00:49:55,680
Speaker 2: little it's just a little something. The orchestra stops. They

1065
00:49:55,719 --> 00:49:59,279
Speaker 2: don't do that. Now. The orchestra's blazing, blaring, the sound

1066
00:49:59,280 --> 00:50:02,719
Speaker 2: systems are it's your vocal cords are being asked to

1067
00:50:02,760 --> 00:50:05,440
Speaker 2: do different things. So I think we're in a time

1068
00:50:05,480 --> 00:50:09,200
Speaker 2: where actors are pushing back and saying that this marvel

1069
00:50:09,239 --> 00:50:14,040
Speaker 2: comic level entertainment value. The demands are crazy, They're not

1070
00:50:14,120 --> 00:50:17,400
Speaker 2: human anymore. Hopefully people will start coming to my simple shows,

1071
00:50:17,560 --> 00:50:20,399
Speaker 2: me and a pianist, me and a small band, back

1072
00:50:20,440 --> 00:50:22,080
Speaker 2: to human size work.

1073
00:50:24,840 --> 00:50:29,600
Speaker 1: My thanks to Melissa Erico, this episode was recorded at

1074
00:50:29,640 --> 00:50:33,720
Speaker 1: CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo,

1075
00:50:34,080 --> 00:50:37,800
Speaker 1: Zach MacNeice, and Victoria De Martin. Our engineer is Isaac

1076
00:50:37,960 --> 00:50:41,120
Speaker 1: Kaplan Woolner. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought

1077
00:50:41,160 --> 00:51:03,279
Speaker 1: to you by iHeart Radio