Speaker 1: The Craig Ferguson's Fancy Rascal Tour continues in November twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three. For the full list of dates, please go
Speaker 1: to the Craig Ferguson Show dot com slash to her website.
Speaker 1: My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast
Speaker 1: is Joy. I talk to interest in people about what
Speaker 1: brings them happiness. Meet Adriana Triggyani. Adriana is my friend.
Speaker 1: She's a writer, she's a director, and she's a great cook.
Speaker 1: But you'll have to take my word for the last
Speaker 1: part unless you know her, in which case, why you
Speaker 1: listen to this?
Speaker 2: Just call her? I have said in a little chemistry
Speaker 2: between you and ject Now I like it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it looks like a young apputuno to mean, it's
Speaker 3: not a bad look. That's a good look. That's a
Speaker 3: look you hold on to. But I want you to
Speaker 3: look at his recent birthday party pictures and plan ahead
Speaker 3: of Yeah, yeah, you really have to plan ahead.
Speaker 2: What about getting older?
Speaker 3: Yes, there has to be a plan. If there's no plan,
Speaker 3: you're flailing.
Speaker 2: What is your plan for getting older?
Speaker 3: Well, I do have one, but I heard.
Speaker 2: You say your daughter, I'll be a burden.
Speaker 3: Okay, so every night from the time she was born
Speaker 3: in the crib, the last thing I say to I
Speaker 3: say I love you, Lucia, and then i'd say I
Speaker 3: will be a burden.
Speaker 2: Good night.
Speaker 3: And I said it every night. And it's a family joke.
Speaker 2: Now, will you do that?
Speaker 3: While you want?
Speaker 2: You should? You should? I mean, come on, I'm saying she.
Speaker 3: Wants to look after me. Last night we watched a
Speaker 3: man called Auto. Have you seen that movie?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: With Tom Hanks, I know, not your favorite.
Speaker 2: I don't say that.
Speaker 3: Well I heard you say it once and I'm just
Speaker 3: defending your position.
Speaker 2: No, that's not that's not true.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well I hope he comes.
Speaker 2: He's the greatest that drive ever.
Speaker 3: No, No, let me tell you something. We're as great
Speaker 3: as the material always. So people don't even want to
Speaker 3: hear that because they think it looks like it was
Speaker 3: made up on the spot.
Speaker 2: When it's good, when it's a good actor, sure, and.
Speaker 3: When it's a good material, yeah, a great actor can
Speaker 3: triumph over bad material, though I've seen it many times. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but not for this sustaining whole narrative. There'll be a
Speaker 3: scene where you go, WHOA. Okay, yeah, maybe you see that,
Speaker 3: but over the whole narrative. To hold the logic of
Speaker 3: it together takes the writer.
Speaker 2: Hold on a second though.
Speaker 1: A great actor maybe, but a great movie star doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. Like Sean Connery, even in Zone, he
Speaker 1: just wanted.
Speaker 3: To walk in the room. Yeah, I stand there with
Speaker 3: his tips and he could destroy the world with his gaze, just.
Speaker 1: Like sure, I'm waiting a Mangini and it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: It's just that. So listen. I want to. I want to.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go on a journey because the name of
Speaker 1: the podcast is joy. Oh you bring me joy.
Speaker 3: Okay, you bring me.
Speaker 2: Jo, your your friendship brings me joy.
Speaker 3: That makes me.
Speaker 2: But I want to. I want everyone here to get
Speaker 2: to know you a little bit.
Speaker 1: Okay, So we're going to start with little baby Adri
Speaker 1: but it's still gonna be long. I mean, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna be a baby for a long part of the conversation.
Speaker 1: We're going to start with little baby Adree. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: so close your eyes.
Speaker 2: You're in the creb. Now where is the crib?
Speaker 3: Okay? We're in Banger, Pennsylvania, near Rosetta, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: Right, which is it doesn't help anyone.
Speaker 3: It does. It does because this is the town in
Speaker 3: the United States that they sent doctors and medical whole
Speaker 3: groups teams of people to study these Italian Americans that
Speaker 3: didn't die heart attacks if you stepped one step outside
Speaker 3: of Rosetta. This is where my father was born, my
Speaker 3: grandfather was born and raised, and he was the mayor
Speaker 3: of the town. And in the sixties they came in
Speaker 3: and studied everybody, the babies, the old people. Because if
Speaker 3: you stepped over the line of the town into what
Speaker 3: was called bangor right, which is where the Welsh were
Speaker 3: the Johnny bulls, because they came and owned the slate
Speaker 3: quarries and the Italians worked for them.
Speaker 2: The Wells should see the welshould drink.
Speaker 3: They do well. There's a lot of drinking. Yeah, But
Speaker 3: the Italians, with all the bad health habits that they
Speaker 3: could discern, making blood pudding, eating sugar, that the stress
Speaker 3: of being in a quarry, all of that the dangers,
Speaker 3: this little community didn't stuffer from any anxiety. There wasn't cancer,
Speaker 3: there wasn't heart attack, and they couldn't figure it out.
Speaker 3: So this team of doctors came in. They wrote books
Speaker 3: about it. I'll give them to you, and Dean Ornish
Speaker 3: put it in his study. Malcolm Gladwell put it in
Speaker 3: a book of his eye made a little documentary about it.
Speaker 3: What we found out when they completed the study in
Speaker 3: like nineteen sixty five, the doctors concluded that the people
Speaker 3: didn't die of heart attacks because they felt emotionally safe.
Speaker 3: Really so they women worked in the blouse factories. My
Speaker 3: grandmother owned a blouse factory with my grandfather, I mean
Speaker 3: a bloss factory. Blas said. They were yeah, sartorial stuff,
Speaker 3: you know, you made close. They made clothes right, and
Speaker 3: they came up my grandparents. My grandfather was a machinist
Speaker 3: and my grandmother was a four lady at fourteen. So
Speaker 3: I come from real workers.
Speaker 2: I know you do it, but you're a worker.
Speaker 3: I don't rest. But on the other side of the family,
Speaker 3: same thing. My grandfather Carlo I wrote a book about
Speaker 3: you know, fictionalized and Shoemaker's Wife where they went to
Speaker 3: Minnesota and he was in the iron ore mines and
Speaker 3: he brought my grandmother there from Hoboken, New Jersey, Italian immigrants.
Speaker 3: But he got his citizenship in World War One by
Speaker 3: fighting for American World War One and denounced a citizenship
Speaker 3: and then they became Americans and he started the Progressive
Speaker 3: Shoe Shop. He was cool. You would have loved him.
Speaker 2: What's the progressive?
Speaker 3: I never knew.
Speaker 2: I want to know about you, but just before.
Speaker 3: We I know everything.
Speaker 2: This is what you do. I know you though, this
Speaker 2: is what this is what you do.
Speaker 3: I can't. I'm going to get to me because when
Speaker 3: I'm there, because because it's really fascinating what happens. I
Speaker 3: mean my mother and father. My mother was a librarian,
Speaker 3: but she was also brilliant, so she started the architecture
Speaker 3: library at the University of Notre Dame when she was
Speaker 3: twenty one years old. Lord she graduated from Saint Catherines
Speaker 3: in Minnesota. They have to understand something. My grandfather died
Speaker 3: when he was thirty nine. Carlo boniclly wait. I thought
Speaker 3: nobody died different times. He got gassed in World War
Speaker 3: One and got cancer. They all did in his platoon.
Speaker 3: All came home and died before. They said, you won't
Speaker 3: see your fortieth birthday. And my mother told me the
Speaker 3: story she remembered when he came back from the Mayo
Speaker 3: clinic and he dropped his bag and he said to
Speaker 3: his wife Lucci. I'm gonna I'm going to be dead
Speaker 3: in a year. He just had a backache. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: So he was so cool and I found out lots
Speaker 3: and lots about him. Anyway, So he was in the
Speaker 3: iron ore mindest when he couldn't breathe because of the
Speaker 3: guest gast. But he was also a shoemaker, but he
Speaker 3: would have been a shoe designer. That was his goal
Speaker 3: was to design shoes as much as make them. But
Speaker 3: when you work in a mining town, you're adjusting people's
Speaker 3: foot infirmities basically, and you're fixing their shoes and boots
Speaker 3: and all that stuff. So that's what he did. But
Speaker 3: he was very ambitious, My mom told me, very ambitious.
Speaker 3: And he called his shop the Progressive Shoe Shop.
Speaker 2: What does that mean? Progressive shoe shop?
Speaker 3: You know what I meant to him. I think I'm
Speaker 3: an American and you're getting Italian artistry. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: kiss my Italian American ass.
Speaker 2: That's what he was saying.
Speaker 1: All right, So little baby Adria is growing up in the.
Speaker 3: Catholic baby boom. All right, okay, yeah, my parents were
Speaker 3: married in the late fifties. My mother had many many
Speaker 3: so you have five girls, two boys. Right, Okay, I'm
Speaker 3: in the middle.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: And I found a letter recently that my grandmother wrote
Speaker 3: to one of her children about my birth, my auspicious birth.
Speaker 3: And this is the two words that were in the
Speaker 3: letter another girl. Oh wow, I just found that. I
Speaker 3: think that's a great title.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is good to do.
Speaker 3: But anyways, so but I never felt that from the
Speaker 3: time I was little, I saw the dramatic possibilities of everything.
Speaker 3: I thought it was a movie I was watching, having
Speaker 3: never watched a movie. You know what I'm saying, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I do, because I was in it. I was in it.
Speaker 3: There was a train moving and I jumped on it
Speaker 3: and wow. And I was fascinated by my father and mother.
Speaker 3: I mean every picture of me as a kid, there
Speaker 3: was a sea of children. But looking up at my mother,
Speaker 3: I would look at my mother like I was looking
Speaker 3: at the blessed mother. I mean like and I was
Speaker 3: Bernadett and lords. I just was looking at her.
Speaker 1: Like I was gonna ask you abolism. Because because the imagery,
Speaker 1: I was always jealous of the Catholic kids when I
Speaker 1: come on over.
Speaker 2: Well, no, not that jealous.
Speaker 1: But I was jealous of the guy because we were Protestants.
Speaker 2: So we just like we had like.
Speaker 3: Well you do the stripped down version.
Speaker 2: It just it's a white wall and you know they read.
Speaker 3: From the Bible and listen. I'm a Protestant lover, but
Speaker 3: it's like there's no hush in the Catholic church. You
Speaker 3: go in, they put on a different robe in every season,
Speaker 3: and we decorate the statue. It's Tuesday night. My aunt
Speaker 3: is crowning the Blessed Mother for may Queen. I mean
Speaker 3: my aunt. I don't think she can get up on
Speaker 3: the step stool. My aunt. I love her dearly, but
Speaker 3: she's like nothing in bestive. But you know she's going
Speaker 3: to crown her. We do these things, say the Rosary,
Speaker 3: we do these rituals, and this is the secret, right,
Speaker 3: don't peak under the curtain of that church. Don't peak
Speaker 3: under the curtain of any institutions. When you do, you'll
Speaker 3: be disappointed and you will be a part of nothing.
Speaker 1: Well, see, that's why you're at heart probably a Protestant,
Speaker 1: because you know it's theater. That was what the whole
Speaker 1: argument was.
Speaker 3: Yes, I have a problem probably with all of it
Speaker 3: on some level, but.
Speaker 2: I have a friend.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you to my friend Phil my friend
Speaker 1: Phil from Philly is an Italian Catholic, and I said,
Speaker 1: hey Phil, he said, because I was interested in the
Speaker 1: Catholic thing, I said, hey, Phil, do you believe in transubstantiation?
Speaker 1: He said, what's that? He said, it's when the biscuit
Speaker 1: turns in to the body of Jesus during the Eucharist.
Speaker 2: And he's like, I never heard of that. It's the
Speaker 2: whole basis of the Catholic faith. He's like, uh no.
Speaker 3: And there's always people don't know about that, and they
Speaker 3: always conflate and confuse the Blessed Mother and the assumption
Speaker 3: and the ascension and.
Speaker 2: Let's you're still religious.
Speaker 3: Oh. I prayed like a you know, I just went
Speaker 3: Sunday and got.
Speaker 2: A treat and all that.
Speaker 3: Well, my guide died. The priest that you know talking about.
Speaker 3: We were talking about Alan Alder earlier. He looked just
Speaker 3: like Alan Alden. And in the seventies I would just
Speaker 3: they stopped the box confession. And you have to understand,
Speaker 3: I grew up in Appalachia, where the Catholic Church was
Speaker 3: less than one percent of the population, so it was
Speaker 3: like the island of misfit toys. There was the former
Speaker 3: this and the this, and the the families were from
Speaker 3: the coal region, so you had, you know, Czechs and
Speaker 3: Polish people who still had their accent, and we were
Speaker 3: the Italians. But the Italians that were in Appalachi prior
Speaker 3: to us changed their names, so we'd have to dig
Speaker 3: around to find them, right, But you'll find enclaves wherever
Speaker 3: there's mining. You're going to find immigrant people here. You're
Speaker 3: always going to find that. But yeah, So the Catholicism
Speaker 3: I grew up with was very open and very welcoming,
Speaker 3: and the priests we got and the nuns that we got.
Speaker 3: In fact, when I was like ten years old, the
Speaker 3: nuns quit. They just said, we're not wearing these habits anymore.
Speaker 3: We're scaring the kids. And they became their own force
Speaker 3: for social order. It wasn't really in order. It had
Speaker 3: nothing to do with the Catholic Church. It was just
Speaker 3: about doing good works. And there was a woman down there.
Speaker 3: She's still alive. I think she's in her nineties now,
Speaker 3: a woman named Katherine Rumschlag, Sister Catherine, that was the
Speaker 3: mother superior and that don't you know, she cut you.
Speaker 3: She was all business. She now lives in community with
Speaker 3: a group of the ex nuns and some of the families.
Speaker 3: There was a noun, a beautiful nun who left the order.
Speaker 3: I mean she was gorgeous, Yeah, and got married and
Speaker 3: not that it has anything to do with anything but
Speaker 3: just having to picture her, but just this beautiful woman
Speaker 3: and she had children and now she lives in that community.
Speaker 3: She's retired and she lives with these the ex nuns.
Speaker 1: All right, So you come from a very warm, Catholic immigrant,
Speaker 1: safe emotionally environment and yet you live now right now,
Speaker 1: you're a New Yorker and you've got a long journey
Speaker 1: from Appalachia to your sophisticated life that you have now.
Speaker 1: With your sophistication, Yeah, you're pretty sophisticated.
Speaker 2: Like you write books and your.
Speaker 3: Well, I write books, but to me, writing books is
Speaker 3: what my grandmother did call peace work in a factory.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But you didn't just start writing books, right, You
Speaker 2: were a writer.
Speaker 1: In television, that's right, comedy writer, right, So how did
Speaker 1: you get from Appalai to write in comedy?
Speaker 3: Okay? So you know there were key moments where I
Speaker 3: made decisions, and the big one was I'll never forget this.
Speaker 3: I was in the principal's office and you know, for whatever,
Speaker 3: delivering something from my teacher, like the absentee list or whatever.
Speaker 3: And this man comes in, Nae Mark Holyfield, and he's
Speaker 3: talking to the school secretary who was smoking. Everybody smoked then,
Speaker 3: like smoking a way Patsy Arnold, who I loved because
Speaker 3: you could give her the dish and then you get
Speaker 3: at something back, you know what I mean. Loved her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyway, so that's why are you going so well
Speaker 2: with Megan? My wife?
Speaker 3: Oh hey, yeah, we get we get We got the
Speaker 3: job done in five minutes and now best he's okay.
Speaker 3: So so this man comes in and he says, look,
Speaker 3: I'm looking for I need a reporter from my radio
Speaker 3: show and paying her thing. And I'm listening to this
Speaker 3: now I'm making money. I am the town babysitter. I
Speaker 3: am the I don't like to use this sword, but
Speaker 3: I would say, like it was almost like a ring
Speaker 3: I was running because I they'd call my house and
Speaker 3: I go, yeah, and I have four sisters and I'd
Speaker 3: book them.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: I didn't get a kickback, but I would take the
Speaker 3: best job.
Speaker 2: Like, so you're running a babysit and syndicate.
Speaker 3: I'm running a city. I'm very entrepreneurial. I'm sorry to
Speaker 3: tell you so anyway, and you know, people loved when
Speaker 3: the Italians came because we also cleaned, went to kids
Speaker 3: to bed and we cleaned the house, and to women
Speaker 3: like getting two for one fifty cents an hour. Okay,
Speaker 3: So I would like to say not that any of
Speaker 3: them needed their houses clean. You know they needed it
Speaker 3: and ain't got a bunch of kids you need it.
Speaker 3: So anyway, so I hear this guy and he says, uh,
Speaker 3: he says, I need a report. And I'm fourteen years old.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking, here's the thing about me, and I think
Speaker 3: you know this, I think I could do anything like
Speaker 3: if I walked past the television said, and somebody's ice skating.
Speaker 3: When we went to the ice show when I was
Speaker 3: little in Knoxville, Tennessee, I wanted to be that. I
Speaker 3: wanted to be that girl with the big head dress
Speaker 3: who skated over to the side and like did this
Speaker 3: did you ever do it? I've never had on a
Speaker 3: pair of ice skates in my life, but my kid
Speaker 3: has the time. No, now, I'll break my back anyway.
Speaker 3: So anyway, so oh, I was in amorateur ice skating
Speaker 3: and my mother I skated her whole life, and my
Speaker 3: father I skated, but we didn't because there were no
Speaker 3: ice drinks or anything like that. Right, So when I
Speaker 3: found out that we need to qualify for the Olympics,
Speaker 3: you gotta do a three minute routine for like three years,
Speaker 3: I'm like, I got to make up funny stuff every day,
Speaker 3: you see.
Speaker 1: All Right, So the guy's looking for a report, or
Speaker 1: you're fourteen, you think maybe ice skating is not for you.
Speaker 1: So do you approach this guy and say I want
Speaker 1: to be a reporter or mister Hollyfield?
Speaker 3: I said, I'm a writer and I would like to
Speaker 3: have that job. And he went okay. He said can
Speaker 3: you drive? No, but I'll get somebody to drive me. Okay,
Speaker 3: what kind of things do you? Right? I said, well,
Speaker 3: I'm on school paper.
Speaker 2: You were on the school paper.
Speaker 3: Now what he didn't know is that I was in
Speaker 3: trouble at the school newspaper because I would write what
Speaker 3: they called the gossip column, blind items. Okay, and I
Speaker 3: got called and you have done and you know I'm somebody.
Speaker 3: You know. You know I have a good heart, Yes
Speaker 3: you do. But I wrote a joke that's haunted me
Speaker 3: to this.
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you the joke only one, because
Speaker 1: I've got like a bucket loads of that stuff.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, at that time, you had a homeroom teacher,
Speaker 3: and then you were to make sure you were in school,
Speaker 3: and then you were farmed out to your first period class. Sure,
Speaker 3: there was a teacher named Bobby Jane Cooper and I
Speaker 3: saw her first thing every day. And she was an
Speaker 3: interesting looking woman, kind of like an animated character, sort.
Speaker 2: Of like O lave oil Are we talking?
Speaker 4: Or no?
Speaker 3: The other extreme?
Speaker 2: Gotcha?
Speaker 3: Okay? Kind of like if you put the Liberty bell
Speaker 3: in a skirt. You know what I'm talking about. Okay. So,
Speaker 3: and she wore really red lipstick, which I thought was
Speaker 3: kind of cool. Well, I started keeping track of her
Speaker 3: outfits just for my column, you know, so that I
Speaker 3: could say and so this was the joke. And I
Speaker 3: got called in and I was so ashamed of this joke,
Speaker 3: but it worked on paper. Which home room teacher with
Speaker 3: the initials b j C. Has worn the same blue
Speaker 3: wool skirt six school days in a row, which means
Speaker 3: she went on Monday to Friday. And I think, now
Speaker 3: I would do that, now, sure I would think nothing
Speaker 3: of it. Of course I got called in. It was bad.
Speaker 3: It's like the insensitivity of this comment. And they made
Speaker 3: me go apologize to her, which was so humiliating.
Speaker 2: You got canceled on Twitter and I.
Speaker 3: Said, you know, I'm so sorry. I said, I just
Speaker 3: you know, I have to come up with this material
Speaker 3: and I thought it would work and I didn't mean to,
Speaker 3: you know, she said you had use my initials. She said,
Speaker 3: I hope you've learned your lesson. We don't make a
Speaker 3: lot of money as teachers. We're here because we love
Speaker 3: teaching before we're wearing And I was like, oh, oh
Speaker 3: my god, that's is that the worst story I ever heard? Okay,
Speaker 3: so now everyone hates me within the sound of my voice.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, I just feel awful. I just feel
Speaker 2: awful for everybody.
Speaker 3: Now here's the other part of this though. This was
Speaker 3: the slow crawl to journalism wasn't for me till the
Speaker 3: big story when I was okay, I was getting five
Speaker 3: bucks a story and that was pretty good, right, And
Speaker 3: they ran me at the top of every hour and.
Speaker 2: I it's a radio show.
Speaker 3: It's a radio show. And I decided and I'd tape
Speaker 3: them the night before. The engineer would like in a break,
Speaker 3: would tape my stories and I went to the town meetings.
Speaker 3: I did a really good series about a coal mining
Speaker 3: strike that was but I went to meet with the
Speaker 3: women and I got a real sense of that. You know,
Speaker 3: it wasn't. Listen, the jokes I was writing wasn't because
Speaker 3: I was rich and I was sitting on a throne.
Speaker 3: It was because I was trying to like be funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get it. So and also, you're a kid.
Speaker 1: What are you fifteen years old?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm fourteen fifteen. Yeah, but that never mattered in
Speaker 3: my family. You do the wrong thing, you put on
Speaker 3: the rack. But anyway, so I decided doing this. They
Speaker 3: kept calling me in. My boss kept calling me in. Mean,
Speaker 3: his name was mister Stallard. He was Holyfield's boss, and
Speaker 3: I remember being in his office and he was smoking
Speaker 3: so much Carly see the guy, right, He said, to
Speaker 3: tell you the future of this business, it's going to
Speaker 3: be a black woman, and it's going to be television.
Speaker 3: He predicted Oprah like before Oprah. Right, Okay, so I'm
Speaker 3: just throwing that out there. So anyway, because so he
Speaker 3: knew what he was talking about. I respected him. But
Speaker 3: he said to me, he said nobody cares about what
Speaker 3: you think. You just tell us what happened. We don't
Speaker 3: care about what you think. You are not the thing.
Speaker 3: The story is the thing, Because I would.
Speaker 1: It's been completely forgotten in it in life.
Speaker 3: If I did that now. Yeah, See, I have a
Speaker 3: hard time when I watched the news because I don't
Speaker 3: want your opinion. I don't care what you think.
Speaker 2: There is no news, says all opinion.
Speaker 3: Tell me what happened. Yeah, And interestingly enough, in my family,
Speaker 3: my great uncle, priest journalist, ran the Leco di Bergomo
Speaker 3: for forty years and I've had his stuff translated. And
Speaker 3: it's so simple and it's good. It works in drama too,
Speaker 3: or comedy. It's that simple narrative. What's what happened, How
Speaker 3: did it happen, When did it happen, and why did
Speaker 3: it happen?
Speaker 1: Oh out, Johnny Carson, you still say, tell them what
Speaker 1: you're going to do.
Speaker 2: Do it. Tell them what you're doing, and then tell
Speaker 2: them what you did.
Speaker 3: Who's gets who trained me as a play right? If
Speaker 3: they don't know within two minutes while they're in that chair,
Speaker 3: you've lost them. They got to know. That's exactly what
Speaker 3: Johnny Carson.
Speaker 1: Saying, I Craig Ferguson will be on the road once
Speaker 1: again this fall, bringing the Fantasy Rascal to or two
Speaker 1: your region. For tickets and full list of tour dates,
Speaker 1: go to my website, The Craig Ferguson Show dot com
Speaker 1: slash tour. Come and see me live or don't. I'm
Speaker 1: not your father. So you're doing the reporter for the
Speaker 1: local radio right with this sense?
Speaker 3: I want to just I got to get out of here.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, that's a small town mentality for it.
Speaker 1: Look, if you have an artist's brain and art is
Speaker 1: hert and artist soul, would you do? Would I? And
Speaker 1: you grew up in a small town, which I did?
Speaker 1: You're like, I, I gotta get out of here. I
Speaker 1: had decided that I was going to change my name
Speaker 1: to Al Shapiro and live in New York. I was
Speaker 1: ten years old, and I wanted to be apparently an
Speaker 1: Italian taxi driver and living you. I wanted to be
Speaker 1: Al Shapiro and live in New York. And I was
Speaker 1: going to wear leather wristbands for some reason.
Speaker 2: That was another thing I was going to do.
Speaker 1: And you know what, I might still do it. But
Speaker 1: the point is, you want to get out of town.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh oh, And then other things started happening that
Speaker 3: were really bad. What the girls I ran with, two
Speaker 3: of them got pregnant.
Speaker 2: Ah, I see the sex starts coming along.
Speaker 3: Well, they had the eighth graders with the twelfth graders
Speaker 3: in the same school.
Speaker 2: That doesn't sound like a good idea, all right, So
Speaker 2: you so.
Speaker 3: That was another motivator.
Speaker 2: So you leave because you don't want to get pregnant.
Speaker 3: No, don't, let's not. Let's not act like I'm some
Speaker 3: talented you are that left town. No, no, no, no no.
Speaker 3: I did a radio show down there, and then man
Speaker 3: said the year the confirmation of the power of the
Speaker 3: C grade, Like, because I wasn't any I wasn't distinctive.
Speaker 3: I was funny, but I wasn't distinctive.
Speaker 1: Funny is distinctive. I wouldn't have you dismiss funny is
Speaker 1: not being distinctive.
Speaker 2: It ist.
Speaker 3: No, we know that now. It's a talent's a gift,
Speaker 3: it's all that stuff. But back then that didn't you understand.
Speaker 3: In Appalachia people are hilarious and their characters and so
Speaker 3: it's the birthplace to me of all art because it's
Speaker 3: an around me. Were people that were funny or smarter better.
Speaker 3: I agree that too, But they didn't have this. They
Speaker 3: didn't have the Al Shapiro, Escape Shapiro, and they didn't
Speaker 3: have the I gotta get out of here.
Speaker 2: Right, So how did you get up?
Speaker 3: Okay? I have two sisters ahead of me that are smart,
Speaker 3: and the one that's directly ahead of me is very smart.
Speaker 3: And my father and mother met at Notre Dame. My
Speaker 3: mother's brother, remember the immigrants from Minnesota. Mmm. He was
Speaker 3: a basketball star at Notre Dame, complete free ride. I
Speaker 3: know that's hard to believe. I'm a big athlete in
Speaker 3: my family, but he was incredible, Orlando Wonna Chellie. And
Speaker 3: so he was in college and his sisters were graduating.
Speaker 3: My mother's a twin. There's they call ada Ida and Irma,
Speaker 3: and they went to Saint Catharine together, both librarian science.
Speaker 3: Library science, went all the way through, you know, like
Speaker 3: now it's considered a master's by the way, right, And
Speaker 3: they needed jobs. They weren't going to go back to Chisholm,
Speaker 3: and their mother didn't want them to come home. They
Speaker 3: wanted she wanted them to fly okuds. And my mother
Speaker 3: was the second twin, the shy one they didn't even
Speaker 3: know she was in there, right, Okay, So Orlando goes
Speaker 3: to the head librarian.
Speaker 2: It was your basketball playing uncle, uncle.
Speaker 3: Right, So he goes to the head librarian at Notre Dame.
Speaker 3: You know that touchdown Jesus they call it. My mother
Speaker 3: was on the committee that designed that.
Speaker 2: Wow. Okay, yeah, it's exciting.
Speaker 3: It's very exciting. So I mean, if you had you
Speaker 3: met her, now she's in have him. But if you
Speaker 3: had met her.
Speaker 1: Loved you, I'm going to marry because I'm I'm a
Speaker 1: Scottish Protestant and you're an Italian cat. Like this, it's
Speaker 1: a whole different Afterwall, I'm going to a very cold swamp.
Speaker 3: The great that, the Great Bernadette Canny said, there's no
Speaker 3: labels on the other side. Don't forget that. That's all
Speaker 3: bull anyway.
Speaker 1: So the origin of Alexandria, I said, everyone is forgiven.
Speaker 3: Of course, Well what would be that? What's the point
Speaker 3: You put us in the sewer and then you're not
Speaker 3: Now you're not going to forgive us. What's the basis
Speaker 3: of that? Anyway?
Speaker 2: They excommunicated him for that exactly.
Speaker 3: Everybody's welcomes gates down, all right, So she got a
Speaker 3: job there and that's where she met my father, and
Speaker 3: my father we don't have time for him on this podcast,
Speaker 3: but he was an interesting cat, very very very I
Speaker 3: wrote a joke about him. I mean he was a
Speaker 3: fascist with us. I mean no, he never went back
Speaker 3: on something, even when he was wrong. I'm a tough parent,
Speaker 3: but I'm not that parent. You didn't want to tell
Speaker 3: the guy the truth because you'd pay right. I became
Speaker 3: a fantasist, I would say, based on that. I just
Speaker 3: was like I could make something up to get around something.
Speaker 3: But big things they ignored. They didn't notice at all.
Speaker 3: When I planned a wedding when I was fourteen, Ady,
Speaker 3: how are we getting you out of out Palasia? Well,
Speaker 3: my two smart sisters got into Saint Mary's, which is
Speaker 3: the women's college in South Bend, Indiana, across the street
Speaker 3: from Notre Dame. But it's it's it's a powerhouse place,
Speaker 3: incredible place. And so my sisters got in and they
Speaker 3: weren't going to take me. And I wrote that note
Speaker 3: a letter and I just said, you have to take me.
Speaker 3: I have to get out of here. Like I had dreams,
Speaker 3: like when I look at catalogs of going to Columbia.
Speaker 3: But I did not have the grades and also not
Speaker 3: the interest in getting the grades, and there were so.
Speaker 2: Much I want to study. What did you want to study?
Speaker 3: The journalists?
Speaker 1: You want to study journalism? And you did you get
Speaker 1: accepted for journalism in this place?
Speaker 3: No, you just are an undergrad. But the first thing
Speaker 3: I did when I walked in and I keep in
Speaker 3: mnd have been a reporter for a couple of years, right, yeah,
Speaker 3: really young. I go to the head of the theater department,
Speaker 3: doctor edge Bain, and I said, I want to be
Speaker 3: a theater major. I am a playwright.
Speaker 1: Everybody direct your story has good. The name of a character,
Speaker 1: Reg Bain, it's just like, my name is doctor Reg.
Speaker 3: Bab married to a woman named Georgia. And I and
Speaker 3: he had like really black hair that he'd have to
Speaker 3: flip back all the time.
Speaker 2: And so you go to reg Bain and what do
Speaker 2: you say to Regiment?
Speaker 3: And I said to rege Bain, I'm a freshman. And
Speaker 3: I walk in there, freshman with glasses this thick. I
Speaker 3: just held up the water bottle and I'm like, you know,
Speaker 3: and I go in and I go, doctor Bain, I
Speaker 3: just want you to understand something right up front. I
Speaker 3: am going to be a theater major. And he looked
Speaker 3: up at me and he said, nobody ever comes in
Speaker 3: here when they're freshman says they're a theater major. He said,
Speaker 3: it doesn't worry like that. He said, you can change
Speaker 3: your mind. I said no, no, no, you don't understand.
Speaker 3: I want to take every class you offer in the theater,
Speaker 3: every single one. And he said, well, we have three concentrations, acting, directing,
Speaker 3: and writing. And I said, but I want to start now.
Speaker 3: And he said, all right, I'll put you an intro
Speaker 3: to theater. I'll put you in history theater, put in two.
Speaker 3: He said if you don't do well, we're not having
Speaker 3: this conversation again.
Speaker 2: And I was like, okay, so you had to study.
Speaker 2: He made you study.
Speaker 3: He made me study. But I was so unsophisticated, Craig.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's like other kids had read books, and
Speaker 3: I was an avid reader, but there's books you need
Speaker 3: to read sometimes. So then I became that person. I
Speaker 3: was a hoover reader. I read everything, but I didn't
Speaker 3: then drill into my area. So I drilled into the
Speaker 3: area and I started my concentrations, and I.
Speaker 2: Would did you write plays?
Speaker 3: I wrote plays like right away, and I had written
Speaker 3: plays in high school that I was very proud of.
Speaker 3: And I worked on crew for the town musical, which.
Speaker 2: Is your whole Edita put getting.
Speaker 3: Storyteller. Why did you have? So? Then I go to
Speaker 3: South Bend, Indiana, which compared the Big Stone Gap is
Speaker 3: a big city. Loved it so. But my sisters were
Speaker 3: there in case I needed them, but they were studying
Speaker 3: in Rome. They would go buddy in Italy for a year,
Speaker 3: so I was kind of And then the sister under
Speaker 3: me came there too, So there were four of us there.
Speaker 2: What do you say girls studying?
Speaker 3: The oldest one government, the second one was pre law.
Speaker 3: I think she was in English. I don't even know
Speaker 3: what a mage was. And the one under me was business.
Speaker 1: This is a fascinating story of these women from Appalachia
Speaker 1: who are all these heavy hirs in these is amazing
Speaker 1: when you think about it. Yeah, yeah, you look at
Speaker 1: that picture of these women coming out there. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then there's the baby who went there too, But
Speaker 3: she wasn't there when we were there. We were going.
Speaker 3: By the time she got.
Speaker 2: There, what does she do?
Speaker 3: She runs my sister's law office and she has four kids,
Speaker 3: right so a nice husband.
Speaker 2: So you have a nice husband. I met your husband.
Speaker 2: He's a dog.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean he's not going anywhere, no that
Speaker 3: we know of. You know tomorrow, if you take this,
Speaker 3: could be sitting here crying.
Speaker 2: No, I think it's going to be okay. I think
Speaker 2: you guys have I think you going to be all right.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm not a bet in mind, but
Speaker 2: we'll see.
Speaker 3: Anyway.
Speaker 2: Look, you're there, let's let's go graduate.
Speaker 3: You're graduating, now, I'm graduating. I come straight to New York.
Speaker 3: It's straight New York. Straight. Oh. I had no place
Speaker 3: to live. I knew no one except this my senior
Speaker 3: year at Saint Mary's that grege Bane. I was called
Speaker 3: in because I demanded, because I'd taken every course study.
Speaker 3: I begged, demanded, put it out there. I want to
Speaker 3: write and direct on the main stage of your theater.
Speaker 3: Now that was reserved for revivals and professionals that came in,
Speaker 3: like Frank Canino from Canada. Come David Hare. We did
Speaker 3: his play. Okay, okay, so major people had come through,
Speaker 3: but I said, give me the slot.
Speaker 2: Did you get it?
Speaker 3: I got it for a play had written?
Speaker 2: Did you direct?
Speaker 3: I pitched the play. I didn't tell it. I wasn't finished,
Speaker 3: and I said, this was my senior year, the ball
Speaker 3: of my senior year. Right, let's to get in there.
Speaker 3: I'm just keep in mind at the eighties, said everybody
Speaker 3: picture the eighties. I remember them, so they were good anyway.
Speaker 3: So I had this idea for a play, okay, but
Speaker 3: I wanted to be an extravagance and I want to
Speaker 3: be bigger than big.
Speaker 2: And you surprise me.
Speaker 3: It's called Notes from the Nile and it's the rewritten
Speaker 3: story of Cleopatra, except that Cleopatra was so beautiful no
Speaker 3: one could look at her.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: I brought Julius Caesar back from the dead and because
Speaker 3: he had an affair with her, and then you know
Speaker 3: the whole story Cleopatra. But then I what I did
Speaker 3: is I infused it with what has happened since Cleopatra's reign.
Speaker 3: So I had Debbie the fish wife, and tap she
Speaker 3: did tap routines. I had Eddie the fisherman who she's
Speaker 3: having an affair with in the palace. Who was Eddie
Speaker 3: Fisher Elizabeth Taylor had you see, I conflated everything, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and then the handmaidens were just like Docile. I made
Speaker 3: them the handmaidens that eventually Mark Margaret Atwood wrote about
Speaker 3: they were dopes and the handman.
Speaker 1: So this is magical realism, sort of a war.
Speaker 3: There's a warn Egypt mm hmm for Cleopatra and okay,
Speaker 3: she says, okay, you can have your word, but you're
Speaker 3: going to fight it with hershey kisses and cotton balls.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: So weapons were made and intermission and it was all
Speaker 3: environmental and crazy.
Speaker 2: Did you put this play on?
Speaker 3: I wrote and directed it.
Speaker 2: That's great, and that's the play that you bring to
Speaker 2: New York.
Speaker 3: That's a play I'm hoping to bring to New York
Speaker 3: and like, get to it. I get to New York
Speaker 3: and now we're like in the mid eighties, and you
Speaker 3: realized if you were in theater and you came from
Speaker 3: Saint Mary's, ain't happening for you, honey. I was doing
Speaker 3: stage ratings with major actors. I mean, I could get
Speaker 3: any actor to read it play because actors. I love actors.
Speaker 2: Proper actors want to work, they want to act.
Speaker 3: They also are always looking in material for what's the pith,
Speaker 3: what are we doing here? And and then as a writer,
Speaker 3: you can once I heard their voices. I could write
Speaker 3: for them, which is how I got into television. But
Speaker 3: I just I could hear them. I could hear them.
Speaker 3: But I was doing the club circuit with my comedy trip.
Speaker 3: I had a comedy trip with girls.
Speaker 2: What were you called?
Speaker 3: The outcasts?
Speaker 2: Uh? Yuh? What did you do? Sometimes?
Speaker 3: Sometimes we were good? Sometimes it was sketchy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everybody started, But I was.
Speaker 4: I was.
Speaker 3: I was the pet barnum of it, like I wrote
Speaker 3: and directed it, and I was in it. And the
Speaker 3: only reason I was in it because I one night
Speaker 3: at the Horn of Plenty. You remember that club.
Speaker 2: I don't know, the Horn of Planting.
Speaker 3: It's on Bleaker and Charles right. It was run by
Speaker 3: this man who just tried to get in the in
Speaker 3: our dressing room, which was his office between costume changes.
Speaker 1: Okay, well he was PARV and you surprised me. There
Speaker 1: was a pair of in New York in the nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3: And I just I would like hold the door, you know,
Speaker 3: I said, don't worry girls, it's all fine. And then
Speaker 3: one night I had to send him out into the
Speaker 3: bar to fill the room. He started to get onto it,
Speaker 3: like I don't just need your act in here. I
Speaker 3: want to make money. So it was there was a
Speaker 3: two drink minimum, which was the standard of the day,
Speaker 3: but I had to get them drunk men in from
Speaker 3: that room into this room. So one night, this is
Speaker 3: how I'm just telling you, this is why I never
Speaker 3: became a performer per se, except I am performing now.
Speaker 3: I still got up there to do our act and
Speaker 3: helping the show, and a guy stood up and he
Speaker 3: flung a Swedish meatball from the free snack bar out
Speaker 3: my head and it hit the thing went down the
Speaker 3: back and something. I'm not this type of person, but
Speaker 3: it made me angry. No, and I said, hey, mister,
Speaker 3: and the room went dead. You know what, I don't
Speaker 3: appreciate that. I said, we work in offices all day,
Speaker 3: we're exhausted. We're coming in here trying to entertain you,
Speaker 3: and you're throwing food at us. And he got up.
Speaker 3: He's drunk, he's gripping the table and he said, he's
Speaker 3: dead silent. Here he goes he is stink and I thought, well,
Speaker 3: maybe he's right.
Speaker 2: No, maybe he's right.
Speaker 1: All right, So the outcasts are That leads me to TV, though.
Speaker 2: Now, how do you get to TV from there?
Speaker 3: The two girlfriends. I'm gonna name them Ruth Palmer and
Speaker 3: Susan and Geluxy. I always say this to my kid,
Speaker 3: and I'm sure you say it to yours. You graduate
Speaker 3: with your class, So the comedians you came up with
Speaker 3: will become a little black or whoever you were with,
Speaker 3: they become your that's your team. Now, to the public,
Speaker 3: it looks like we're all competing. We're not competing, though
Speaker 3: we're trying to all. Just come on, everybody, pull that wagon,
Speaker 3: you know, pull that wagon.
Speaker 2: He doesn't just.
Speaker 3: Keep moving, get up there, you know. So I had
Speaker 3: this posse and they'd come and see the show, and
Speaker 3: they go, you need an agent. I said, what's an agent?
Speaker 3: That's how I was unsophisticated. Of course I knew there
Speaker 3: were agents. I read books. I knew about agents.
Speaker 2: He didn't know how to get one. I understand that
Speaker 2: did know how to get one. Who's your agent? Who
Speaker 2: did you?
Speaker 4: Who did you get of the same agent? Is it
Speaker 4: still Nancy Joseph's, the legendary Nancy Joseph's She was at
Speaker 4: ic M. Yeah, her dad founded ICE.
Speaker 3: And we know. Yes, I'm glad you're telling that to
Speaker 3: the listeners, because you know I still I just saw
Speaker 3: her in LA but she said she she's a good
Speaker 3: one for you too. But this is the thing about her,
Speaker 3: she knew she was dealing with something weird with me.
Speaker 3: No I'll give her so she said, I'm gonna put
Speaker 3: this guy, this guy, move you around and you know,
Speaker 3: do all that. But she was always my person. How
Speaker 3: do we get her though? Is the key thing. These
Speaker 3: two girls, Ruth Palmerence and Suzanne Glock. Ruth was in
Speaker 3: the mailroom at William Morris and Suzanne was like a
Speaker 3: junior assistant at ICM. They grew up in New York together,
Speaker 3: which already makes them to me goddesses because they grew
Speaker 3: up in New York and right, they're sophisticated, educated, they
Speaker 3: know the lay of the land. They're like, we're gonna
Speaker 3: get you meeting. Here's a list of meetings. You're gonna
Speaker 3: meet all these people. I went to the first meeting
Speaker 3: at ICM, set up by Suzanne. The next one was
Speaker 3: set up by Ruth, and so it went. I meet
Speaker 3: this guy named Wylie housem young agent, and he looked
Speaker 3: at my stuff and he said, okay, if we're going
Speaker 3: to craft a theater career, we're going to do this.
Speaker 3: And he said if we do television, we're going to
Speaker 3: do this. And I said, what do you mean TV?
Speaker 3: And he said, well, you know like write for sitcoms.
Speaker 3: I said, how do you do that? You have to
Speaker 3: write a specscript? What's a specscript? Can you give me one? Well,
Speaker 3: I don't know if we have any land around. Let
Speaker 3: me try to find you one. He said, but I
Speaker 3: have this tape and I can give you to listen to.
Speaker 3: Said okay, So I didn't. I couldn't tell him I
Speaker 3: didn't have a television set or a VCR. Right, I
Speaker 3: didn't have one.
Speaker 2: That that was the thing. It was tapes.
Speaker 3: It was all tapes. And by the way, how many
Speaker 3: tapes of comedians would come over the transom for me
Speaker 3: to write it? Once I got into the racket. But anyway,
Speaker 3: but I loved them watching those. But anyway, so I
Speaker 3: call a friend and I go, I need to borrow
Speaker 3: your thing and watch this thing because because what happened
Speaker 3: in the meeting was the first meeting I have. He
Speaker 3: said I'll be your agent and I said, well, where
Speaker 3: do I sign? And when I signed, he said, okay,
Speaker 3: I'm your agent. He said, we're going to craft this.
Speaker 3: He said, no, I don't have any money. I need
Speaker 3: a job right now. Right then, he said, then you
Speaker 3: got to write a specscript. And he said, you know,
Speaker 3: take it. Some people take a few months to do that.
Speaker 3: I said, by Monday morning, I had a specscript.
Speaker 2: Who'd you write it for?
Speaker 3: Roseanne?
Speaker 2: Did you get the job?
Speaker 3: Not only did I get the job, I didn't go
Speaker 3: to Roseanne the show, but I met Matt Williams, who
Speaker 3: I'm still friends with right, who went on to create
Speaker 3: Home improve and all that. He gave me a deal
Speaker 3: in the nineties. But he was like my guide. I
Speaker 3: couldn't see the picture Craig of the thing. I had
Speaker 3: to listen to it. And I got every big character right,
Speaker 3: except Becky because she'd go be icky and I thought
Speaker 3: she said Betty. So in my script it says Betty.
Speaker 3: I wrote this crazy script.
Speaker 2: I knew they never made the script though, right.
Speaker 3: No, But Carcy Werner hired me and I went on
Speaker 3: a different world as a story editor.
Speaker 2: Nice. So now you're in a different world.
Speaker 3: Now. Not only am I in a different world, I'm
Speaker 3: doing pilots all over town. Nancy would always say, don't
Speaker 3: tell people how many pilots you've written. I wrote, could
Speaker 3: but he banked it. Yeah, you know, we're in the
Speaker 3: middle of a strike. Now, I saw the land land there. Hey,
Speaker 3: there's going to be sometimes you ain't working, you better
Speaker 3: bank it. And that's what I did.
Speaker 2: So you write these pilots and you ended a different world?
Speaker 3: Is that?
Speaker 2: Were you on that for a long time?
Speaker 3: One year? Then I then I went to I came
Speaker 3: back to New York because I wanted to be in
Speaker 3: New York because my grandmother was alive and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: I want to be near Pennsylvania, so I came back here.
Speaker 3: I also am just more in tuned here. Yes, I
Speaker 3: love it out there. I loved when I was there,
Speaker 3: but and I loved Los Angeles. There's a lot to
Speaker 3: recommend it, but you know, ultimately it wasn't going to
Speaker 3: be a place for you. It wasn't a fit for me.
Speaker 3: And even now worse because you have to drive everywhere
Speaker 3: and it takes hours, so and I just don't want
Speaker 3: to spend time in a car. I don't like cars.
Speaker 3: So then I get back here, and so in succession
Speaker 3: I got jobs, so I would get pilots, and then
Speaker 3: I would get I got Bill Persky hired me on
Speaker 3: a show called Working It Out with Jane Curtin. What
Speaker 3: he's like my mentor, mentor, like family mentor, he's like love.
Speaker 3: Bill Persky's still with us, he's ninety two. Then there's
Speaker 3: Alan's Wui Bell hired me as to replace Monica Johnson,
Speaker 3: the only female writer on Good Sports, starring Farah Fawcett
Speaker 3: and Ryan O'Neill.
Speaker 1: I'm not familiar with that short, but I wish I
Speaker 1: had seen it.
Speaker 3: It was It happened during the Gulf War, and I
Speaker 3: don't know, it just disappeared. But it was a good
Speaker 3: concept and I loved those two and we could talk
Speaker 3: off camera about them then, both of them, Fair and Ryan.
Speaker 3: Then I did City Kids, which I was a showrunner for,
Speaker 3: which was shot in New York, which is very avant
Speaker 3: guard you could still watch it and go. It was
Speaker 3: with the Jim Henson company. Oh okay, and they had
Speaker 3: a thing then called TGIF.
Speaker 1: I used to live above Venier's Bakery. I love that
Speaker 1: and every night but two am I used to hear
Speaker 1: this woman walking by and she would sing beautiful operatic
Speaker 1: arias and it was amazing. I mean she was she
Speaker 1: could really sing and I was like, I look out
Speaker 1: the window and she was a young one and she
Speaker 1: would walk by singing these areas. And I eventually I
Speaker 1: met her and she was a waitress and her shift
Speaker 1: finished at one am, and she said, you walked down
Speaker 1: the street singing operatic arias nobody comes near you.
Speaker 3: That's so funny, gig.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that she had, that was her pillow that
Speaker 1: she would she would sing like every thought she was crazy.
Speaker 1: Did you run into any of that because you're a
Speaker 1: young woman working, did you get did you Were you
Speaker 1: aware of that? You're a very forceful personality. I don't
Speaker 1: know that that makes a difference or not. Were you
Speaker 1: aware of.
Speaker 3: That kind of I'm a funny person. Yeah, I'm always
Speaker 3: aware of my safety wherever I am. Like when I
Speaker 3: moved here, I was very aware, like you gotta be careful,
Speaker 3: and I did things that you know. I got in
Speaker 3: trouble at my boarding house. I lived in a boarding
Speaker 3: house and I took a throw pillow and just pretended
Speaker 3: I was pregnant on the subway late at night, coming
Speaker 3: home from a gig. So I figured nobody's going to
Speaker 3: hit a pregnant woman or kill a pregnant woman. But
Speaker 3: I got in trouble for stealing the pillow, but I said, no,
Speaker 3: I brought it back. I'm bringing the pillow back.
Speaker 2: I give birthday.
Speaker 3: But I was that kind of person, and I'd say
Speaker 3: to the girls, take those glasses. You know, we'd use
Speaker 3: some sketches. I said, we're I'm on the subway. You'll
Speaker 3: be all right, and we're going to come at you
Speaker 3: if you're you know, I'd get out of things joking too.
Speaker 3: I get out sticky situations by being funny and just
Speaker 3: you know, the only way to get a man who's
Speaker 3: intent to bed you off of it is to entertain
Speaker 3: him and get him off the subject. It works, but frankly,
Speaker 3: it was like working a third shift and who needs that.
Speaker 3: But you know, the girls in my group we talk
Speaker 3: about this too. Many of them fell in love, got married,
Speaker 3: left the group, left show business and stuff. And there
Speaker 3: wasn't anything that was going to keep me from show business.
Speaker 2: It was just a different person.
Speaker 3: I just just like, how could he possibly be that
Speaker 3: interesting to you? How could he ever be this other thing?
Speaker 2: So then you meet Tim. What happened? Because you meet
Speaker 2: Tim and Tim is a great life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's well listen, I'm giving you the story here
Speaker 3: like as truthfully as I can, because you know, anybody
Speaker 3: that I was ever interested in, it was. I kept
Speaker 3: him at a distance. I wasn't getting involved him different.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I just liked him. I just thought.
Speaker 3: And I also saw this too. When you work in Hollywood,
Speaker 3: you see those beautiful executives and they don't have a man.
Speaker 3: And if you had any interest in a man, which
Speaker 3: I did, you say the windows closing. And my friends
Speaker 3: would still laugh about me going the windows closing. Girls,
Speaker 3: you got to get on this. Let me tell you something.
Speaker 3: Ten years for a woman, it's one hundred years a
Speaker 3: bad road. And if you don't, this is now or never.
Speaker 3: It's now or never. And they never I mean at
Speaker 3: the time they were just women who said I But
Speaker 3: I said, no, you know if you want that. So
Speaker 3: when they complained to me, now, I said, I told you.
Speaker 3: I said, it's a window. You can have somebody now,
Speaker 3: but it's going to be a different thing.
Speaker 1: And I just you know, So what happened with Tim then?
Speaker 1: How calm he was different? Did you make a decision
Speaker 1: that all right, this this is the one for me,
Speaker 1: this is it.
Speaker 3: I was doing plays in Pennsylvania. This is before television
Speaker 3: because I met him before a different world, right, And
Speaker 3: he wasn't ever going to live in New York. He
Speaker 3: didn't want anything to do with this, and I thought,
Speaker 3: so funny for you. And he's still. Every once in
Speaker 3: a while, I will give me a gig and I say,
Speaker 3: you can dig all you want, but you're here. You
Speaker 3: might as well make it work. You know.
Speaker 2: I think he's doing okay, he's okay.
Speaker 3: He's doing fine. But no, he came here and he
Speaker 3: hit the ground running. I mean as a lighting designer,
Speaker 3: he just he's really he was trained by Emerol Fiarantino,
Speaker 3: who did the Kennedy Nixon debates. I mean, he really
Speaker 3: learned on the job and now he's you know, he
Speaker 3: does great. And she won an Emmy.
Speaker 2: I don't have an Emmy. I have no I got
Speaker 2: a couple. You can have one money okay, all.
Speaker 3: Right, I need one for the other side of the mantle.
Speaker 3: Said to my husband, can you win another one? And
Speaker 3: need some synergy here? You know?
Speaker 2: I cold my mom. I said, I want an Emmy.
Speaker 2: She went daytime Emmy. Oh man Jabi, so tell me this.
Speaker 2: You go to Italy now, love huh A Lot. Why
Speaker 2: is that?
Speaker 3: Well, I find you know, I had an experience there.
Speaker 3: I think I told you about this where I was
Speaker 3: on the mountaintop and the Alps where my grandparents on
Speaker 3: the Bone and Cheli side are from, and I it's
Speaker 3: a piece I've never known. So that's probably where I'm gonna.
Speaker 2: End up going back to the old country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I loved working with you in Scotland. That
Speaker 3: was really fun. So I'd like to write and direct
Speaker 3: over there, and I'm working on stuff in order to
Speaker 3: do that.
Speaker 2: I think Scotland and Italy are very similar countries.
Speaker 3: We really have to talk about that, because I knew
Speaker 3: you liked Italians immediately, even though you were a very
Speaker 3: stone cold to me on the phone. The first time
Speaker 3: I talked.
Speaker 2: It was just garden myself. I was in Italy when
Speaker 2: you called me.
Speaker 3: I know you were I'm in Italy and I was like,
Speaker 3: mister Ferguson, and then I just and you said, okay,
Speaker 3: call me in forty eight hours. Nobody ever said that
Speaker 3: to me in my life, not even a credit card company.
Speaker 3: So I was like, what is this? Okay? So I
Speaker 3: hung up the phone and I called Kathy Lee and
Speaker 3: I said, I don't know. I mean, I got to
Speaker 3: work this guy over a little more here. And she
Speaker 3: if you look up determination in the dictionary, her little
Speaker 3: head's there like buday. She like her. But anyway, so
Speaker 3: when I called you, I thought, and it wasn't like
Speaker 3: there were edges like of warmth there either, like or
Speaker 3: I could kind of wheedle in. I said, okay, well
Speaker 3: we'll talk about this, and all right, I'll give you
Speaker 3: forty eight hours. And so then I think I called
Speaker 3: back and begged you to.
Speaker 2: Do it, didn't I Yeah, you did.
Speaker 3: And then you say, okay, tell me about this script.
Speaker 2: Yeah you did.
Speaker 3: So I told you about the script and then you know,
Speaker 3: all right, all right, you weren't happy about it, but
Speaker 3: I said, I don't care. He doesn't have to be happy,
Speaker 3: just has to be good. And then I was stunned,
Speaker 3: and how brilliant you were.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't need to talk about that though. What
Speaker 2: we need to talk about.
Speaker 3: It, Well, I'm only here because of that.
Speaker 2: We have to talk about how Scotland and Italy. I think, yeah, let's.
Speaker 3: Get them together. Okay. So you know, my last novel
Speaker 3: was about the internment of the Scots and the destruction
Speaker 3: of Scots during World War Two, Italian.
Speaker 2: Scotts, Italian Scots yeah yeah, and the.
Speaker 3: Maker Italians and rallys. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know the Glaswegian Italians even now because there's like
Speaker 1: a huge Italian community in Glasgow, but they have Glasgow
Speaker 1: accents but they kind of talk Italian. Yeah, so they go, hey,
Speaker 1: what's the comedy you you're coming over to here and
Speaker 1: you come to my house and maybe we watched the
Speaker 1: football and then it's this weird accent and it's fantastic now.
Speaker 3: And then you start scratching around and you'll find it
Speaker 3: Anna Maria and you go oh yeah, oh yeah, I'm Italian. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and you'll find like a Patro and you go, oh
Speaker 3: Daniello okay, well, and it's huge.
Speaker 1: In Glasgow, I mean in Glasgow in particular, it's huge.
Speaker 3: Italian people are like, why don't we know this? Why
Speaker 3: don't we know this? Because of this get out. That's
Speaker 3: how the immigrant feels every day. They don't talk about
Speaker 3: their experiences. Even when people blow up in a boat,
Speaker 3: they're not going to talk about it and talk about it.
Speaker 3: Seventy years had to pass before it was even mentioned
Speaker 3: or there was a shrine belt in uh at St
Speaker 3: Andrew's Cathedral in Glasgow.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But in the Orkneys, do you know that, I know
Speaker 3: all about the paper church.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Orkneys. The President of War, they Bill a church.
Speaker 2: He's still there.
Speaker 3: Your wonderful film in Scotland. You have a great film
Speaker 3: commission and they came to New York to ask me
Speaker 3: to direct a movie about that.
Speaker 2: Why didn't you do it?
Speaker 3: Well, because there's things I had deadlines and stuff, But
Speaker 3: my sick we still do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you do it.
Speaker 1: I'll do I'll do a kind of the Italians came
Speaker 1: over and I'll do it. I'll do Bill Patterson's voice,
Speaker 1: and unless you get Bill Parson then it'll be fine.
Speaker 2: Oh, for goodness sake, flea bag, what are you up to?
Speaker 3: You know that's so funny. That would be great.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: I read the book and I was enchanted by it,
Speaker 3: and then yeah, all the islands. What happened was Churchill
Speaker 3: made a really big mistake. But I had a ball
Speaker 3: touring sixty cities with this novel to say this to
Speaker 3: everybody that I come in contact with, which is basically
Speaker 3: they till the soil of propaganda, thirteen years of it.
Speaker 3: In the British newspapers, anti Italian sentiment. Now people look
Speaker 3: at a room with a view and Ianforster and all
Speaker 3: that stuff, and they go, oh, the Brits are the
Speaker 3: Scots love the Italians. They do, and they were intermarried.
Speaker 3: But when Mussolini declared war, get out. That was the
Speaker 3: only thing. Churchill panicked because he didn't even know, because
Speaker 3: there wasn't sonar yet how much activity was going on
Speaker 3: under the sea. There this guy gun through preen, had
Speaker 3: U boats everywhere. It was like snakes on it. I
Speaker 3: describe it as such in the novels, like snakes at
Speaker 3: the bet of the ocean. They were going to take England.
Speaker 3: They were close. This wasn't even a joke. So he
Speaker 3: didn't know. Churchill didn't know what to do. Now, I
Speaker 3: want you to keep in mind, what was the propaganda.
Speaker 3: It's the same trope you here because the immigrant faces
Speaker 3: the same fight always. You can't come in. Now that
Speaker 3: you're here. Here's the jobs. You're all service jobs because
Speaker 3: most of your battalions, your Glasswegian Italians were doing service jobs, waitering,
Speaker 3: made or d They're good looking, they have an accent.
Speaker 3: That worked at clarages and the big hotels, and the
Speaker 3: women did the cleaning. They did the laundry and the
Speaker 3: pressing and the tailoring and this artorial stuff. Okay, great,
Speaker 3: so you had that going then.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, though, because just my family
Speaker 1: or Scottish my people were doing those jobs too, you know,
Speaker 1: working class people were doing those jobs too.
Speaker 3: And but this was what the working class people were against.
Speaker 3: They felt the Italian immigrants were bringing their people over
Speaker 3: and taking.
Speaker 2: Their take on the job.
Speaker 3: And they want to keep and they want to keep
Speaker 3: in shipbuilding, all of the great stuff that goes on
Speaker 3: in Glasgow. But what I found out was that, you know,
Speaker 3: without that propaganda, Churchill wouldn't made that decision. I had
Speaker 3: to pay thousands of dollars and I get it to
Speaker 3: this day for this article written by a man named Gunther,
Speaker 3: not the famous gun Through historian, another guy or Boswell,
Speaker 3: not not the theater guy John Boswell in the mirror,
Speaker 3: I believe, and it was so reprehensible. I said, I
Speaker 3: can't recreate that. I'm gonna pay to put that in there.
Speaker 3: But then it was one of thousands and thousands of
Speaker 3: articles against Italians in.
Speaker 2: Britain during the nineteen thirties forties.
Speaker 3: You know, I said, I said, you know, they said
Speaker 3: I talked about them making the fish and chips and
Speaker 3: the gelato and stuff. And there were Italians that got
Speaker 3: very rich making the Jelya. They put the factories up
Speaker 3: outside of Glasgow, but most of them were peddlers and
Speaker 3: working class people. They were not elevated in that way however.
Speaker 3: And I would say this people, people go fish and chips.
Speaker 3: That's British, that's Scottish, that's calamari.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's Italian. It's calamari the Italians, right.
Speaker 1: You know what? It was funny when I grew up
Speaker 1: because I was working class and SCHOOLU teach and grew
Speaker 1: up as much.
Speaker 3: Hungry for it. Right now, save fish and chips.
Speaker 2: But here's the other thing.
Speaker 1: But the time was and this is the weird thing
Speaker 1: with being a Glaswegian growing up in Scotland. At the
Speaker 1: time I was four years old, I knew exactly what
Speaker 1: a cappuccino was and I wanted one because Italians ran
Speaker 1: the caffe's in their Dini family.
Speaker 3: You got Italian, did you get your thing done? He's
Speaker 3: hartly Italian.
Speaker 1: Everybody in my family thinks there is some kind of
Speaker 1: has to be. It has to be, I think, So
Speaker 1: I'm very comfortable when I go to Italy. I think
Speaker 1: Italy is like Scotland, with much better weather and much
Speaker 1: better food and slightly friendlier people. Sometimes they sound friendlier
Speaker 1: because my Italian is so bad.
Speaker 3: I know when you're trying and everybody's trying. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: well you speak. There's affinity. When I get there, I
Speaker 3: get good, but I'm not like is this morning, I'm terrible.
Speaker 3: I'll make it and that's it.
Speaker 2: Italian a very little.
Speaker 3: But the thing is, I think there is an affinity
Speaker 3: between these folks, between Scotland and Italy. I really do.
Speaker 3: There's a and I think some of it like it's
Speaker 3: particularly for part of my family that's from the mountains.
Speaker 3: I'm also Venetian and farmers from outside of Venice. And
Speaker 3: then people that live in mountains or people that live
Speaker 3: in rough terrain or rough weather, they're they're built a
Speaker 3: certain way, like goats. They're strong and they don't expect
Speaker 3: everything to go their way because they're not in control.
Speaker 3: Do you agree with that, because it's just America that way.
Speaker 2: I'm amazed, goes wow, that was really unbelieved. I cannot
Speaker 2: believe that.
Speaker 3: In the same way, I think there's just no way
Speaker 3: this is going to work out, and then when it does,
Speaker 3: it's like, Okay, well that was luck. I never think
Speaker 3: it's like coming my way.
Speaker 2: Do you know?
Speaker 1: What's great is that we've been talking for either the
Speaker 1: best part of an hour, and now we've got to
Speaker 1: stop talking because we do have to stop talking, you know,
Speaker 1: you and I have to stop. It is awesome, it's joyful,
Speaker 1: it's fantastic. I'm delighted to be your friend, and I'm.
Speaker 3: So happier in my life.
Speaker 2: Craig Ferguson, you are you are a job. But you know,
Speaker 2: but we.
Speaker 3: Also get I get Megan.
Speaker 2: You get I get Liam ye, all.
Speaker 3: Your crazy ancillaries that I love so much.
Speaker 5: Your friends, you get Linda, you I got them all,
Speaker 5: you know. Yeah, But I get Tim and I get Lucci,
Speaker 5: and you know, I get your sisters at the casino
Speaker 5: gigs and I meet everybody.
Speaker 2: It's all good. It's all good. And what we should do.
Speaker 3: Is that another movie.
Speaker 2: No, we should go to Italy. We should just all right,
Speaker 2: what do you.
Speaker 3: Want to go? Let's talk and we'll go because the
Speaker 3: apps are my thing. And then and then Venice, I'm
Speaker 3: pretty good at that. You're my favorite ton of itally
Speaker 3: right now, Trevisa. Yes, how did you know that? Did
Speaker 3: I tell you that because I'm psychic? No, my people
Speaker 3: were from That's where all our paperwork is. Also because
Speaker 3: the farm is right outside of there.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's crazy.
Speaker 3: I think Treviso is it hidden jam And we shouldn't
Speaker 3: have told everybody about it? All right, because it's
Speaker 4: Okay, all right, not all before