Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hi, I'm Phil Donahue and I'm Marlowe Thomas, and
Speaker 1: we're going on a series of double dates to find
Speaker 1: out what makes a marriage last. What a crazy afternoon
Speaker 1: in New York the day we met Brian Cranston and
Speaker 1: Robin Dearden. Oh god, I remember Brian was starring in
Speaker 1: the hit Broadway production of Network and the curtain was
Speaker 1: going up in just a few hours. So we had
Speaker 1: a very narrow window of time to visit with them
Speaker 1: at their apartment. And then our cab driver took us
Speaker 1: to the wrong address and it was rush hour. We
Speaker 1: were almost a full hour late. It was just the worst,
Speaker 1: no time to kind of warm up to each other. Wonderful.
Speaker 1: Pugged into the room. You plugged into that. Yes, I
Speaker 1: noticed that an idiot completely. She's discombobulated. You were rattled,
Speaker 1: but Brian was so relaxed. Lift yeah, yeah, so let's
Speaker 1: talk once we got our act together. We dove in
Speaker 1: by talking about their parents' marriages. All seven of my parents'
Speaker 1: marriages were wonderful. My mom was married four times, my
Speaker 1: dad was married three times. They had numerous boyfriends and girlfriends,
Speaker 1: and yeah, so in many ways my parents taught me
Speaker 1: what not to do? This kind of lais a fair
Speaker 1: attitude into marriage? Didn't work? Um, where were you from
Speaker 1: from la born and raised out there? And uh so
Speaker 1: were you kind of against marriage? No? I was married
Speaker 1: once before I was twenty three, and then I got
Speaker 1: married again when I was thirty five. I think I
Speaker 1: was thirty five. You were there. I was thirty three,
Speaker 1: so ten years after my trial marriage. So didn't scare
Speaker 1: you off marriage? The fact that there were all those marriages. No, No,
Speaker 1: because the woman that I married wasn't a bad person.
Speaker 1: She was a lovely person. It was the wrong time
Speaker 1: and I wasn't in love with her, and I think
Speaker 1: I took a very casual look at it. It wasn't
Speaker 1: fair to her, wasn't fair to me. Fortunately, we didn't
Speaker 1: have any children, and she went her separate way and
Speaker 1: remarried and has a life and the life she wanted.
Speaker 1: What about you, Robin, What about your family? I came
Speaker 1: from the complete opposite of his. I had to leave
Speaker 1: it to beaver. I was raised in Whittier, little tiny town,
Speaker 1: Nixon's hometown. I'm a native of California too. I never
Speaker 1: wanted to get married. It wasn't high on my list,
Speaker 1: and my parents never instilled in me the need to
Speaker 1: be married. We grew up in the mostly our formative
Speaker 1: years in the seventies, and the sexual revolution in the
Speaker 1: sixties busted it open, and the seventies sort of celebrated
Speaker 1: that kind of looseness, and you got waylaid and off track.
Speaker 1: I think a lot by fun, yeah, by fun right,
Speaker 1: and by freedom and convincing yourself that you may be
Speaker 1: in love with someone when you're really not and you
Speaker 1: may not have that much in common with them, and
Speaker 1: now you're in so deep, be like, oh, how do
Speaker 1: I extract myself? I got married very young, and then
Speaker 1: afterward I realized, oh, I've made a mistake, and I realized,
Speaker 1: then if I do this again, I really have to
Speaker 1: know what I'm doing and be in love of So
Speaker 1: then you met on a set, right, Yeah, we met
Speaker 1: on a on a really terrible television show called Airwolf,
Speaker 1: which starred a helicopter and uh, and I was a
Speaker 1: bad guy of the week on this episode. She was
Speaker 1: the victim of the week. I kidnapped her and held
Speaker 1: her for ransom, and along with a few other women,
Speaker 1: I was going to say, how sexy you met a
Speaker 1: gun on her who is threatened to kill her or
Speaker 1: dat her, which we met on Airwolf. We didn't start
Speaker 1: dating then. It was a year later that we ran
Speaker 1: into each other in an improv comedy class um and
Speaker 1: and got to know each other and got to be friends.
Speaker 1: But I think we were we were lucky. We were
Speaker 1: guided to this the year at the time that we met.
Speaker 1: I had a girlfriend too, had a boyfriend, so we
Speaker 1: were able to just not have the tension I should
Speaker 1: make a move and ask her out and all this
Speaker 1: and fun. We were able to just have fun and
Speaker 1: flirt and and end Oh that's nice. And we just
Speaker 1: kind of slowed into it, as opposed to h over
Speaker 1: extending yourself physically making that commitment and then having the
Speaker 1: backtrack to figure out who this person is, who you
Speaker 1: just had relations with, and you are yes, exactly. We
Speaker 1: fool ourselves and we go, oh my god, I'm doing
Speaker 1: this again. And then I went to Oxford for a
Speaker 1: summer and he came over and he stopped at Oxford
Speaker 1: and I went, oh, it's you. And I've never felt
Speaker 1: that way in my life. Oh it's you mean. I
Speaker 1: can't explain it except that it was just this reaction
Speaker 1: to oh, I do. I do want to get married
Speaker 1: and I want to marry you. That's so you knew that.
Speaker 1: I knew pretty fast and I had never felt that
Speaker 1: way before. And you were you thinking that she could
Speaker 1: be the one? Or yeah, I was. I was very
Speaker 1: keen on this. We had the most romantic date in
Speaker 1: at Stratford upon Avon. I rented a punch over and
Speaker 1: we were we had sandwiches, a beautiful day, like looked
Speaker 1: like this wine and we found a little shady place
Speaker 1: under a tree in the water and it was like
Speaker 1: we kissed like male like bandits. Oh how lovely, how great? Yeah,
Speaker 1: your proposal received a lot of ink. Was that is
Speaker 1: that bathtub in London? Or with that? No, he owned
Speaker 1: a cabin with a friend of his two actors. They
Speaker 1: bought a cabin up in Big Bear. It was hilarious
Speaker 1: because the bathroom was a standard sized bag in a
Speaker 1: crappy cabin in the mountains. So there wasn't any room
Speaker 1: for me to face him facing the spout. Your back
Speaker 1: was against his chifts. Yes, so I kept thinking, guard
Speaker 1: I designed it this way because I thought that if
Speaker 1: I was to face her and trying to get these
Speaker 1: lines out, we would cry, I would crack. I did.
Speaker 1: I relate did so. I thought, Man, how am I
Speaker 1: going to do this? How am I going to do this?
Speaker 1: A champagne? I have little music going, and I'm going,
Speaker 1: what the hell is this? And every time I start
Speaker 1: to talk and she starts to turn around to look,
Speaker 1: and I pushed her face back towards the front so
Speaker 1: that I could let me just get this out. Was
Speaker 1: that a surprise at that moment? It wasn't a surprise
Speaker 1: because I was like, oh, I know where this is
Speaker 1: going kind of now. The other thing was the ring. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm we're nude as one is in a bathtub? Right
Speaker 1: Where would I put the ring? So I thinking, no,
Speaker 1: she'll see it. There's if I put it. No, that's
Speaker 1: down the drain, and I said, I thought, oh, I
Speaker 1: put it on my baby toe. I put it all
Speaker 1: the way on my and submerged the foot. That's so great,
Speaker 1: So that she then this foot and did this because
Speaker 1: I couldn't reach it. Is this a horror movie? No,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a sounds like an improv. It was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very worked out. It's a good thing. She said, Yes,
Speaker 1: how embarrassing. How do you get out of that you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of sincerity in that, you know, you're
Speaker 1: not just another girl. Yeah, and it worked. So what what? Well,
Speaker 1: let me put it, how do you fight? Everybody has
Speaker 1: their way that they fight and how they make up
Speaker 1: from a fight. Because I'm Italian and Lebanese and he's Irish,
Speaker 1: we have a very different way of fighting. We've had
Speaker 1: to learn over years how actually to fight. So without
Speaker 1: you know, something going out the window. I used to
Speaker 1: say to him, I have a feeling that someday that
Speaker 1: we do nothing left but an eyelash and some white hair.
Speaker 1: They were here. So how would you say you're a stylist?
Speaker 1: I would first say that I'm the moodier of the
Speaker 1: two of us. He's crankier than I am. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: am not. She is perfect, much steadier in her comportment
Speaker 1: and personality than I am. Hans bounds, I pound hyeah
Speaker 1: as she is learning to not take things too seriously
Speaker 1: and to let things go. I have learned to identify
Speaker 1: when the train is going on the wrong track early,
Speaker 1: so that it's not so far down the road that
Speaker 1: you go, oh, I've made a mistake, and I am sorry,
Speaker 1: And now we need to back up. A train to
Speaker 1: go to get on the right now. I need to
Speaker 1: learn to go. Oh that's the switch. Uh, start start
Speaker 1: making adjustments now as opposed to holding onto that and
Speaker 1: letting it go too far down the road. That's a
Speaker 1: great visual to think about. There's a switch that you
Speaker 1: can stop this now. Yeah, that's a big deal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, Alan Alda said in the middle of a fight,
Speaker 1: he has to say to himself, but she's the one
Speaker 1: I love. I have to like back off of this.
Speaker 1: You know, I actually love her. I don't need to
Speaker 1: choose this. I asked Billy Graham once, have you ever
Speaker 1: considered divorce? Never murder? Have you, guys, ever thrown that
Speaker 1: divorce word around? Never? So, because then you're you're you're
Speaker 1: holding upon and if you're thinking that, then there's a problem, right,
Speaker 1: But to use it, go get help as a couple. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we firmly believe in getting help as a couple. Oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: And have you earlier later both be late? Really yeah,
Speaker 1: before you were married, because you thought what because we
Speaker 1: were both in our thirties. Because I recognize that I
Speaker 1: had gotten myself into situations where I'm in a relationship
Speaker 1: and I don't want to be again and again and again,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, wait a minute, what why is this
Speaker 1: pattern happening to me? Slow down and pull it back.
Speaker 1: But if you do find some one who you really know,
Speaker 1: as I did with Robin, Okay, now, I don't want
Speaker 1: to mess this up. So I'm impressed with your insight
Speaker 1: at that time of your life. Where did that come from?
Speaker 1: When we went into therapy, it was before we're married,
Speaker 1: because Brian used to say to me, I love you.
Speaker 1: I know I want to marry you. I just don't
Speaker 1: know when I was thirty four, so there was a
Speaker 1: part of me that was going, but you're assuming I'll
Speaker 1: still be here, right? And that made me mad because
Speaker 1: it was like, even thought it was ready, I got
Speaker 1: it right. So right? What else should I say? No? No,
Speaker 1: You're lucky that she cared enough. I mean, isn't it
Speaker 1: amazing that the timing of any couple can work out?
Speaker 1: I know. I was on Phil's show promoting something and
Speaker 1: he said to me on his show, how does a
Speaker 1: girl like you not get married? I was like thirty
Speaker 1: six or so at the time, and I said, I'm
Speaker 1: never getting married, no intention of getting married, and he said, really, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all right. So we started dating getting married a
Speaker 1: perfect woman. So I don't know about seven eight months
Speaker 1: in he asked me to marry him and I said,
Speaker 1: you're crazy. I just I'm not ever getting married. So
Speaker 1: that he never brought it up again, and like three
Speaker 1: years old, buy and I said, I kind of like
Speaker 1: to get married. You know. It was like he was
Speaker 1: smart enough to like, okay, fine, I just want to
Speaker 1: get married, right, because you weren't saying I don't want
Speaker 1: to have a relationship with you. No. I was crazy
Speaker 1: about him. I was what you call candy Burger and
Speaker 1: I used to say about our boyfriends, I'm crazy about him.
Speaker 1: But we never said I'm in love with anybody. I
Speaker 1: didn't admit the love part until we actually broke up
Speaker 1: for three months because it was so hard. I was
Speaker 1: in LA he was in Chicago with his show, and
Speaker 1: it was so much trouble to get together. It was
Speaker 1: exciting as hell. I mean we would, you know, we
Speaker 1: would make out in the airport, but it was it
Speaker 1: was terrible in many ways, and said, you know what,
Speaker 1: this is just too much, and so we did. We
Speaker 1: broke up, and in those three months of being apart,
Speaker 1: I thought there's nobody but him, and he called me
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night and he said, I
Speaker 1: never thought anybody could be this irreplaceable. And then we
Speaker 1: both cried on the phone, and that was ye know,
Speaker 1: you allowed yourselves to slow down, right separate and really
Speaker 1: experienced the loss right what you had to lose if
Speaker 1: you weren't together right early on, because we both wanted
Speaker 1: it to work, I came up with an idea that
Speaker 1: would take the decision making out and that is, if
Speaker 1: either one of us said I want us to go
Speaker 1: in to see the therapist, there is no discussion to it.
Speaker 1: And we agreed upon that early on. So whenever anyone
Speaker 1: says it's really important to me, okay, you're back off,
Speaker 1: it's like, let's set it up. What are you doing?
Speaker 1: And she is almost always the one to say, I
Speaker 1: think we need to go in, And it surprises me. Really, Yes,
Speaker 1: it's important to me, And just the idea of being
Speaker 1: in that environment and offering up a thought, a notion
Speaker 1: of feeling that comes to you and ensuring it right
Speaker 1: and having somebody who's who's not impartial basically in looking
Speaker 1: at both sides and how I receive information, how he
Speaker 1: receives information. Yeah, interpreters. The thing is, mental health has
Speaker 1: always been viewed as a weakness. Yeah, sure that if
Speaker 1: you need therapy, Oh, your character is in question. If
Speaker 1: you need therapy, it must be it must be crazy.
Speaker 1: I tell people all the time when there's really when
Speaker 1: you go to therapy, it's like, yeah, I said, let me,
Speaker 1: let me ask you a question. You drive a car.
Speaker 1: If you're if the red light on your car said
Speaker 1: engine trouble, would you stop, open up the hood and
Speaker 1: start decorating? Of course not. He's like, I don't know
Speaker 1: where to begin. What makes you think that you can
Speaker 1: fix your marriage if that warning light is on? Right?
Speaker 1: And that's all it is, right, just the caution light
Speaker 1: going hey. And so we actually use the phrase we
Speaker 1: need a tuneup. That's great, let's just go get a tunup.
Speaker 1: Most people go to a life completely unconscious, and they
Speaker 1: don't understand why they run into a bus, right, and
Speaker 1: that and you run into a bus in your marriage,
Speaker 1: you run into a bus raising children? You have a
Speaker 1: daughter daughter? Yeah, and did you were you good co
Speaker 1: parenting or did you argue about that or did you
Speaker 1: have to find a pattern for that? Now we didn't know.
Speaker 1: We've never we haven't really had. How do you find
Speaker 1: that style? You know too well? You know it's making
Speaker 1: it sound like we haven't had any knockdown, drag out fights,
Speaker 1: and believe me, we have. That's you do. We've been
Speaker 1: married thirty years. Of course, Brian wanted more children and
Speaker 1: I didn't. We'll have more. After a quick break, we're
Speaker 1: back to our interview with actors Brian Cranston and Robin Dearden.
Speaker 1: After having one child, Robin and Brian faced a tough dilemma.
Speaker 1: He had hopes for more children. Robin was done. Really
Speaker 1: so that was a big therapy thing. Wow, I'll bet
Speaker 1: I think I really would have resented having two kids
Speaker 1: when he would be gone like six months or go
Speaker 1: off into a movie or right, And how did you
Speaker 1: get through that? Well? Um, as a progressive, enlightened male,
Speaker 1: I said, well, I think it's fair that you should
Speaker 1: have two votes and I'll have one vote. So because
Speaker 1: of the biological so I said, I said, well maybe
Speaker 1: when Taylor is one years old, I'll bring it up.
Speaker 1: When she's two years old, I'll bring it up, and
Speaker 1: after that I won't bring it up. But we like no, okay,
Speaker 1: but we did go to therapy for that, and I
Speaker 1: learned something really interesting about you at that because I
Speaker 1: had Yes, we were getting deep into him wanting more
Speaker 1: children so much and me being fine with not. The
Speaker 1: therapist asked, Brian, why do you think this is so important?
Speaker 1: And you had this epiphany of because I only think
Speaker 1: of a family as my siblings, because his parents were
Speaker 1: so fractured that us only having one was not a family.
Speaker 1: I really relied on my brother, who's two years older
Speaker 1: than me, during the fracture of the family. He was
Speaker 1: like he was running defense and blocking for me and
Speaker 1: figuring things out together. And we're very, very close. For
Speaker 1: a long long time, I thought, boy, I really needed
Speaker 1: my brother. Our little sister needed us two at times
Speaker 1: to take care of her, to babysit when mom was
Speaker 1: drinking too much or whatever, you know. So that's what
Speaker 1: I kept thinking. It's not for me, it's for Taylor.
Speaker 1: I thought it's better for Taylor to have a sibling.
Speaker 1: I don't disagree with you. I think that that's true.
Speaker 1: I want to go, what do you think? Sure now? Sure, sure, now,
Speaker 1: big big deal. That's amazing having had to change your
Speaker 1: marriage a lot by having a baby. Bye oh oh yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: because I did Haven when I was forty because I
Speaker 1: did have major complications. It took me a year to
Speaker 1: even feel quasi normal again. He just wrecked me. It
Speaker 1: just totally wrecked me. And that was part of it. Two.
Speaker 1: I just don't want to go through that again. It
Speaker 1: was just so it deprived you of the joy of motherhood.
Speaker 1: Didn't for a while. Yeah, I mean not from two,
Speaker 1: not from two on, from two years old on. But
Speaker 1: that first year was really really hard. It was really hard.
Speaker 1: But Brian was home then, he wasn't gone. I wasn't,
Speaker 1: you know, going through myself. Oh yeah, and it's like,
Speaker 1: we'll just do this, We'll just get through this. That's
Speaker 1: who he is that in everything, he's like that. There
Speaker 1: was another point. His grandmother was in dementia in a
Speaker 1: home and she had to go to the bathroom and
Speaker 1: he said, I'll help you, grandma, and she said, oh no, okay.
Speaker 1: She wasn't really sure who he was and she said,
Speaker 1: oh no, no no, I'd be two bears. He goes, oh, Grahama,
Speaker 1: don't you know I'm a doctor now? And she went, okay,
Speaker 1: that's so good. And how and what was it about
Speaker 1: about Robin that made you? I think part of it
Speaker 1: was just the the person that she is, that she
Speaker 1: still has a joyous appreciation for simple things, for just life,
Speaker 1: a good positive outlook. She wasn't cynical or sarcastic. Yet
Speaker 1: she was funny. She was beautiful, still is, and the
Speaker 1: character of a person is what you should hitch your
Speaker 1: wagons too. What are the choices you make when times
Speaker 1: are tough? Is there an example? Well, it's interesting because
Speaker 1: one of our first fights was when she had this
Speaker 1: boyfriend and we were now getting together, and she hadn't
Speaker 1: officially told the boyfriend that he didn't live in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: that this was not going to go any further. And
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, this is I'm sensing something here.
Speaker 1: I'm sensing something here. I lost my voice. I physically
Speaker 1: lost my voice. It was such a psychological wow. It
Speaker 1: was like I got laryngitis. I couldn't speak. Yes, so
Speaker 1: did you believe it? Well? I was having a difficult
Speaker 1: time and right so rightfully so yes, thank you for
Speaker 1: saying so. I was in the right on here completely.
Speaker 1: But they were asking, what is it about me that
Speaker 1: you love so much? Mistake? I don't think I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do any better than you You're probably right. What would
Speaker 1: your pass on to a young couple who's about to
Speaker 1: be married that you've learned being able to laugh? It's
Speaker 1: really important to me, m And then the other thing
Speaker 1: is just I'll say sometimes I'm your best friend. I've
Speaker 1: gotten your back, don't forget that. And I think if
Speaker 1: you can both remember that. What about you, mister? You
Speaker 1: have to know that you've fallen in love before you
Speaker 1: attempt this. Now's it sounds overly simplistic, because well, of course,
Speaker 1: but really be in love and take the time to
Speaker 1: really desire that person, to miss that person. Sometimes separation
Speaker 1: is not necessarily a bad thing, and to find out
Speaker 1: how you truly feel at your core if this is
Speaker 1: a relationship that can endure. And with that nugget, it
Speaker 1: was time for Brian to get going for his stage
Speaker 1: performance that night. It was incredible with the performance to
Speaker 1: give and the clock ticking, they didn't rush us. They
Speaker 1: gave it their all. I love them for that and
Speaker 1: they were fun to be with. I'd match you guys
Speaker 1: up anytime. Robin, You've got to meet this guy. Until
Speaker 1: next time. I'm Phil Donahue and I'm Marlow Thomas are fabulous.
Speaker 1: Double Day there's a production of Pushkin Industries. The show
Speaker 1: was created by US and produced by Sarah Lily. Michael
Speaker 1: Bahari is associate producer. Musical adaptations of It Had to
Speaker 1: Be You by Selwagen, Simfinette, Marlo and I are executive producers,
Speaker 1: along with Mia Lobell and Letal Molad from Pushkin. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Jacob Wiseburg, Malcolm Gladwell, Heather Faine, John Snars,
Speaker 1: Carly Migliori, Eric Sandler, Emily Rostek, Jason Gambrel, Paul Williams,
Speaker 1: and Bruce Klugger. If you like our show, please remember
Speaker 1: to share, rate, and review. Thanks for listening.