Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from My Heart Radio. People have different definitions of
Speaker 1: what makes a star. Is it raw talent, beauty or
Speaker 1: is it simply an ex factor, a certain ineffable quality.
Speaker 1: Whatever it is, Mary Lou Henner has it, and she
Speaker 1: has it in spades. Singer, dancer, actor, and wellness expert,
Speaker 1: Hanner is a multitalented performer who is also simply a
Speaker 1: joy to be around. She's like a Christmas tree and
Speaker 1: lights up every room she's in. She's starred in over
Speaker 1: a dozen films, seven Broadway shows, and two smash hits sitcoms.
Speaker 1: She played Ava Evans Newton on Evening Shade alongside Bert Reynolds,
Speaker 1: and perhaps most notably, Elaine Nardo on Taxi, a role
Speaker 1: that earned her five Golden Globe nominations. Mary Lou Hanna
Speaker 1: has also a New York Times bestselling author and recently
Speaker 1: staged a one woman autobiographical show. It covered everything from
Speaker 1: growing up in a large family in Chicago to her
Speaker 1: preternaturalnemonic skills. Henna is one of about sixty people in
Speaker 1: the world who can recall nearly every detail of her
Speaker 1: life down to the exact day and date. It's so
Speaker 1: funny because you know, I worked with Trump twice on
Speaker 1: Celebrity Apprentice, but he used to start the reboard room
Speaker 1: like Mary Lou if I took you to Vegas? Could
Speaker 1: you cheat for me? Could you count the cards? Could
Speaker 1: you let's go to Vegas. People. I'm sure people assume
Speaker 1: that this skill you have, but it's yeah, it's just there.
Speaker 1: It's weird. What do you call it? I call it
Speaker 1: a gift. People sometimes call it a condition. It's not.
Speaker 1: And that's why they changed the name. They used to
Speaker 1: call it hyper tynesia, but then they thought that that
Speaker 1: was like too weird a name, which it really is.
Speaker 1: But it's not that they don't call it that anymore.
Speaker 1: It's h SAM Highly Superior autobiographical Memory h SAM. And
Speaker 1: it's funny you should mention that and my show because
Speaker 1: I do a song about it in my show that
Speaker 1: my brother wrote the lyrics too. So I'm going to wait,
Speaker 1: don't tell me, no, no, you know what it's called.
Speaker 1: It's you know the Peggy Lee song because I'm a woman.
Speaker 1: You know that song? Okay, So I thought, because I
Speaker 1: have h SAM, so this is what we decided. I'll
Speaker 1: just do the first one packing them in and bucks count.
Speaker 1: It was yeah. I was like, because excuse me, mr.
Speaker 1: It was a very successful number and a very successful run,
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. They said it was the best
Speaker 1: show they've done there in seven years. Well, let me
Speaker 1: ask you this. You wrote a biography back in ninety four.
Speaker 1: You've written ten books, I believe, including that book. But
Speaker 1: when you do a one woman show, where do you start? Well,
Speaker 1: you need an opening number that sort of grabs people
Speaker 1: and sort of sets up the tone. And so I
Speaker 1: I wanted everything to start of connect to something in
Speaker 1: my life. And I was watching television and do you
Speaker 1: know the Cold Border movie? Not Night and Day, the
Speaker 1: other one that they that he did anyway, So all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, I'm flicking through channels and there it is,
Speaker 1: and it's Elvis Costello singing Let's Misbehave, And I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: that's the closing credits to Johnny Dangerously. I'm going to
Speaker 1: sing that song as my opener and then tell a
Speaker 1: story about Johnny Dangerously, but then say everything is connected,
Speaker 1: and then I go into the song about my memory
Speaker 1: because I wanted to set that up right away, because
Speaker 1: I throw dates around a lot and then I talked
Speaker 1: about my childhood, which was so unusual, so you know,
Speaker 1: and I do a little whole tribute to growing up
Speaker 1: in a dancing school. Well, yeah, what's funny. When I
Speaker 1: think of you, I think of many things. You know,
Speaker 1: when you do the show Taxi. You're someone who is
Speaker 1: part of that elite group of people that I know
Speaker 1: who were on ahead TV show back when tens of
Speaker 1: millions of people were watching TV. But such a remarkable
Speaker 1: group of people, all of whom went on to have this,
Speaker 1: you know, really heavy duty careers and everything in movies
Speaker 1: and TV and theater and so forth. And how did
Speaker 1: you get that job? Okay, this is a good story.
Speaker 1: I believe that the key to your life is how
Speaker 1: well you deal with Plan B, because so many Plan
Speaker 1: B things you plan for Plan A and you think
Speaker 1: this is how it's going to work out, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden forget it. I've been flown out
Speaker 1: to Los Angeles to do a screen test for a
Speaker 1: movie called Blood Brothers. I auditioned for Robert Mulligan. The
Speaker 1: guy was testing opposite. He didn't get the job, but
Speaker 1: they kept me around because they had to find the guy.
Speaker 1: And then they found him and it was Richard Gere,
Speaker 1: whom I knew through the Grease family because when I
Speaker 1: my first day in show business professionally, I was in
Speaker 1: the First National Company of Greece and I walked into
Speaker 1: that first rehearsal and it was Jeff Conaway playing Danny Zuko,
Speaker 1: Jerry Zachs playing Knicki, Michael Lembeck playing Sonny, Judy Kay
Speaker 1: playing Rizzo, Johnny Travolta playing Duty, and Richard gear rehearsing
Speaker 1: for the London Company to play Danny Zuko. Anyway, so
Speaker 1: Richard Knight crossed paths again because we ended up getting
Speaker 1: Austin Blood Brothers. So I came up to Los Angeles
Speaker 1: and then I ended up staying because I had a
Speaker 1: contract with CBS at the time, and they offered me
Speaker 1: money every month to stay away from the other networks
Speaker 1: while they found something for me holding holding deal. I
Speaker 1: had a holding deal for a few years. Now, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, they're starting to audition for Taxi and
Speaker 1: Joel Thirm he really liked me. They wanted a thirty
Speaker 1: five year old Italian New Yorker because they wanted her
Speaker 1: to have like a sixteen, seventeen, eighteen year old daughter
Speaker 1: and because unmarried woman and Goodbye Girl, those were all
Speaker 1: out then, so they like the mother daughter dynamic. But
Speaker 1: Joel said, I'm telling you this is the girl. I was.
Speaker 1: He said, this is the girl because she can hold
Speaker 1: her own with somebody like a Judd Hirsch. She was
Speaker 1: one of the guys, but you'd believe her having art aspirations,
Speaker 1: and I'm telling you, this is the girl. So he
Speaker 1: kept bringing me back with all these older actresses. But
Speaker 1: in the meantime, my mom was dying in the hospital
Speaker 1: in Chicago, so I would literally fly back and forth
Speaker 1: and back and forth and back and forth. So what
Speaker 1: happened was they really liked me, and at that point,
Speaker 1: paper Chase was picked up for a season because Taxi
Speaker 1: didn't have to do a pilot, so paper Chase was
Speaker 1: picked up for a season, and they said, okay, she
Speaker 1: tested higher than even John Houseman, we have to give
Speaker 1: her a contract. And my agent said, well, there's this
Speaker 1: other show, Taxi that you know, so we have to see.
Speaker 1: So my agents were able to play one against the other.
Speaker 1: And I really wanted to do Taxi because the idea
Speaker 1: of doing a sitcom was more appealing to me because
Speaker 1: it's like a stage play, you know. So Taxi said, well,
Speaker 1: she's too young. We see this teenage girl with her
Speaker 1: daughter boa blah blah blah blah. And they said, look,
Speaker 1: you're gonna lose her the paper Chase if you don't
Speaker 1: do it. And so they said, okay, we'll do it.
Speaker 1: She's a Laine. We'll give her two little kids. So
Speaker 1: that's what they did. So how it was Houseman Paper
Speaker 1: Chase And what was his name, Timothy something, Timothy Bottons. No,
Speaker 1: he didn't do the TV show. Tim Bottoms did the movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a good movie with Lindsey Wagner and everything.
Speaker 1: John Houseman was a real character. At the rap party
Speaker 1: for the pilot, he tried to French kissed me. I mean,
Speaker 1: he was like one of those guys. Well you can
Speaker 1: be canceled now I know. Oh my god, I've got
Speaker 1: I mean I never had like I'm sure you have
Speaker 1: a few stories who probably deserved to be canceled at
Speaker 1: some point in your life. Actually, I was very protective
Speaker 1: of myself. I've been the kind of girl that I
Speaker 1: think most well whatever, I don't want to say. You know,
Speaker 1: I had brothers, so I knew men are pigs, so
Speaker 1: I was like, on the defense, I was paying attention
Speaker 1: some of them. Are you know it's funny you say,
Speaker 1: because in that casting holding deal, I went out to
Speaker 1: l a I've told the story before, I think, but
Speaker 1: I'm there and Chris Guest's mother, Jane Guest, who I worshiped,
Speaker 1: Gene Guest, was in charge of casting Loveliest Woman in
Speaker 1: show She was one of the loveliest women in show business.
Speaker 1: And if she really believed in you, she like, hung
Speaker 1: in there with you. And she brings me into a
Speaker 1: meeting and they put me on a holding deal because
Speaker 1: I did a pilot for them that fizzled, and they said,
Speaker 1: we're gonna sign this holding deal because we really believe
Speaker 1: in you. We're gonna just keep throwing it against the
Speaker 1: wall until something sticks. And then he says, we want
Speaker 1: you to be the next Bill Bixby. I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: that sounds great. Did you ever honored the deal? Did
Speaker 1: you ever have to or did you get something else?
Speaker 1: And I went to do a pilot and then I
Speaker 1: did a TV movie for them. I did a couple
Speaker 1: of things for them. This is obviously a billion years ago.
Speaker 1: In the eighties and the early eighties, the one with
Speaker 1: Stephanie Zimbolist. You were so good in that that was NBC.
Speaker 1: Remember that, My god. Yeah, I could tell you the
Speaker 1: day we met and how we met. What it was
Speaker 1: May May the twenty two of it was a Wednesday,
Speaker 1: and this is how we met. I knew Tuck, your roommate.
Speaker 1: So Tuck and I went to dinner one time and
Speaker 1: in Venice and right where you guys used to live.
Speaker 1: So I went over to your house. And now we
Speaker 1: are both. I'm in New York doing the junket for Perfect,
Speaker 1: and I'm on a bunch of shows and I'm on
Speaker 1: Live at five with Sue Simmons, remember yeah, and you're
Speaker 1: and so you and I were both in the room,
Speaker 1: but I didn't see you because I didn't really know you.
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, you, I could feel you
Speaker 1: over my show, this person over my left shoulder, and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, Susiman says, and coming up
Speaker 1: next Alec Baldwin and later Mary lou Hanna, and it
Speaker 1: was like we looked at each other and I went,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh. I was like, oh my gosh. And
Speaker 1: you and I actually had lunch the day of the
Speaker 1: big Perfect opening, and you were a hundred days Ober
Speaker 1: that day and you showed me your coin. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: have thirty six years now and fabrary, I'll have thirty
Speaker 1: seven years and then unbelievable. It's incredible. And even last night,
Speaker 1: I want to have a drake. Last night I thought,
Speaker 1: let me just have a gigantic glass slurpea glass of
Speaker 1: red wine. Tell me good, because I have horrible insomnia.
Speaker 1: I've always had hard me with these kids. It's horrible.
Speaker 1: You know. I wrote a book called I Refused to
Speaker 1: Raise a Brat, and I wrote it with a brilliant
Speaker 1: planalist because I had these two kids, and I listened.
Speaker 1: Every time I listened to her, didn't the kids, it
Speaker 1: was all good, and then when I didn't, it was like, okay,
Speaker 1: it's gonna bite me on the us at some point.
Speaker 1: But it's so funny because having so many. I grew
Speaker 1: up with six. You grew up with six. We had
Speaker 1: the opposite of you guys, because it was two boys
Speaker 1: and four girl, which is different, and the third third
Speaker 1: I was third. We came up with this concept, the
Speaker 1: concept of hamper, you know, because our houses were like
Speaker 1: a big hamper. So now to this day, you could
Speaker 1: have a beautiful silk blouse. But it's got a stain,
Speaker 1: so you put a pin over it. That that's hamper.
Speaker 1: You know, your glasses are broken, so you put a
Speaker 1: pin in it. That's hamper. You know, you do you
Speaker 1: put a paper clip, paper clip, your uniform had staples
Speaker 1: in it or tape or something. You know. It's like
Speaker 1: I remember growing up, our phone court was always like
Speaker 1: so you had to like hold it. If you read
Speaker 1: If you read my memoir, it opens up with how
Speaker 1: my mother's bedroom was filled with plastic pails filled with laundry.
Speaker 1: It was laund her bedroom. Her bedroom was a hamper.
Speaker 1: But she had an ironing board at the foot of
Speaker 1: her bed and an iron and she had like these
Speaker 1: plastic hampers, these collapsible plastic things that were just and
Speaker 1: they were like falling off of each other. I said,
Speaker 1: if you, if you came to my house and you
Speaker 1: didn't know better, you thought this was in an illegal
Speaker 1: laundry thing that was running out of their house. My
Speaker 1: mother used to do her lime tree on Tuesdays. It
Speaker 1: was seven teen loads, you know, and she always had
Speaker 1: like seventeen loads from all of us. Because when you
Speaker 1: think about it, a house full of kids like that
Speaker 1: the beginning of the pandemic. I was home. My boys
Speaker 1: were here, my brother, his two children, my husband, we
Speaker 1: were here. I never did more cooking and cleaning and
Speaker 1: laundry and scrubbing grout in my life because I'm very
Speaker 1: you know, I like to be very organized. But we
Speaker 1: had a rule that everybody. My wife hates it. She's
Speaker 1: really angry with me that you're so meticulous that I'm
Speaker 1: so crushed by an o c D at that level
Speaker 1: with my kids, like I'm always cleaning my household, and
Speaker 1: long with my wife was like, this is going to
Speaker 1: kill you. Well, with kids, you gotta let it go.
Speaker 1: I mean because I was always and I was tested
Speaker 1: for o c D because that was part of the
Speaker 1: whole memory thing. They take blood, they do all kinds
Speaker 1: of tests for you. I don't have o c D.
Speaker 1: I call mine o c O obsessive compulsive order because
Speaker 1: one kid in the family had to have it with
Speaker 1: six kids, and my bedroom was off the kitchen and
Speaker 1: had no door, so people could be on the phone
Speaker 1: or at the kitchen table and look in at a
Speaker 1: little girl sleeping and I didn't care. I I was
Speaker 1: My oldest sister shared it with me. Then my younger
Speaker 1: sister than my brother. I mean, but always my room
Speaker 1: had no door. So I think that's how I ended
Speaker 1: up in show business. I think the same. I'll tell
Speaker 1: my wife, I go, don't you want to let's go
Speaker 1: to the opposite here. Don't you want to commend me
Speaker 1: for how neat I am? But would you would you
Speaker 1: rather have a husband who didn't want to clean? No? No,
Speaker 1: you that you have two biological children, to biological children,
Speaker 1: and they're how old now? They're twenty one is twenty seven,
Speaker 1: the other one is five and a half and you
Speaker 1: have them doing what phase of your career? What were
Speaker 1: you working on at the time you decided to put
Speaker 1: the brakes on and have kids? Oh well I had
Speaker 1: I had finished um okay, so I finished evening Shade.
Speaker 1: I do tell this in my club act because I
Speaker 1: always say I couldn't talk about the eighties and nineties
Speaker 1: without talking about Burt Reynolds, because I did five projects
Speaker 1: with him and we never had a thing, which is
Speaker 1: probably why we were able to work together so often.
Speaker 1: But I always adored him and he one morning, you know, Rob,
Speaker 1: my second husband, and I were frisky and then I
Speaker 1: go to work and Burt is directing this episode where
Speaker 1: he has me do a stunt where I am running, running, running,
Speaker 1: leaping over like a fence on a in a like
Speaker 1: football stadium stand and I land and then you know,
Speaker 1: run up to the team and he says, do it again,
Speaker 1: do it again, Do it again, do it again. So
Speaker 1: that night I was sitting in a restaurant, and this
Speaker 1: is after three and a half years, sitting in a restaurant,
Speaker 1: and I looked at Rob and I went, the eagle
Speaker 1: has landed. I just got pregnant. He said. What I said,
Speaker 1: I'm telling you. Contact was made and sure enough I
Speaker 1: was pregnant. So I always tell people Burt Reyll's got
Speaker 1: me pregnant, even though he's not the father of my kids.
Speaker 1: He's the spiritual frother Spa. And when you worked with him,
Speaker 1: he you did Cannibal too with him. Well, I first
Speaker 1: did the man who loved women, and we had such
Speaker 1: a great chemistry the very first day. But he called
Speaker 1: me the night that we we met, the very night,
Speaker 1: and he said, I want you to come down to
Speaker 1: the Dinner theater in Jupiter, Florida. I want you to
Speaker 1: do their playing our song, he said, And I want
Speaker 1: you to do Cannonball Run too, but I want a
Speaker 1: rewrite of the script. Do you know anybody, any of
Speaker 1: the guys from Taxi that might be willing to take
Speaker 1: a crack at it? I was like, okay, So originally
Speaker 1: the Countball I've never told this story before. The Countball
Speaker 1: Run to script was about the Dom and Burt sort
Speaker 1: of rescue this girl who's hiding out in a sanitarium
Speaker 1: and she's an heiress, and then they rescue her, and
Speaker 1: then she and Burt end up in a thing. And
Speaker 1: so then I get Harvey Miller, who was a taxi
Speaker 1: writer the job, and he turns it into two women,
Speaker 1: and then Shirley McLean wanted to do it, so then
Speaker 1: of course they put Shirley with Burt and I was
Speaker 1: with Dom, which was fine, but it's kind of funny.
Speaker 1: But I had like one of the best experience. That
Speaker 1: movie was so stupid. But there were a couple of
Speaker 1: days where we had like twenty three wagon trains in
Speaker 1: the desert outside of Tucson, Arizona, because it was a
Speaker 1: hundred and seventeen degrees. So we started hair and makeup
Speaker 1: was at two o'clock in the morning so we could
Speaker 1: be on the road before four, and we pulled the
Speaker 1: plug at one. But then everybody hung out at the
Speaker 1: pool at the Arizona Inn. So it was Sammy Davis Jr.
Speaker 1: And Dean Martin, all these guys and even Frank for
Speaker 1: a day. And to be with Shirley, who My had
Speaker 1: always loved and always idle, to play her friend and
Speaker 1: then to have her hanging out with the rat pack.
Speaker 1: It was like, you know, I was this little girl
Speaker 1: from Chicago who's watching these people at drive ins and stuff.
Speaker 1: So it was like a lot of fun. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: met him. For those people who don't know this, and
Speaker 1: I wasn't on a big devotee of this, but I
Speaker 1: went a few times. Is that Norby Walter's famous record executive,
Speaker 1: Norby Walters had his card game and the legendary card
Speaker 1: game at his apartment Wednesday nights and West Wednesday nights
Speaker 1: in West Hollywood. You go up to the apartment of
Speaker 1: his near Holloway, Yeah, Halloway in last Annaga, Lasiannaga, on
Speaker 1: your way to Barney's Beanery and on your way to
Speaker 1: the Sunset Marquis and you go to his house. And
Speaker 1: I went there. I went a handful of times. You know,
Speaker 1: velvita cheese and no alcohol. That was no alcohol, and
Speaker 1: you bought a hundred dollars where the chips and when
Speaker 1: you were finished, you were done. There was no serious gambling.
Speaker 1: And you went there. And I remember sitting there one time,
Speaker 1: and there was Harvey Korman and Tim Tim Conway Conway,
Speaker 1: the two of them were there one time. Kathy Lee
Speaker 1: Crosby would go every now and then Rod Steiger was
Speaker 1: there with a couple of times. He was when you
Speaker 1: were there, was there when I went. One time he
Speaker 1: seemed like he was in the throes of his kind
Speaker 1: of medicated agony. But but he but then to the
Speaker 1: right of me one time was Don Adams. And Don
Speaker 1: Adams is in a China white jumpsuit and everyone's waiting
Speaker 1: for the moment to arrive when someone's going to just
Speaker 1: do this and do the Don Adams thing. So somebody
Speaker 1: will puts down two pairs, you know. So he puts
Speaker 1: down two pairs, and I put down and I say
Speaker 1: I have three kings. I do, and everybody laughs, and
Speaker 1: he doesn't laugh. And then finally he smiles and nods
Speaker 1: to be like, Okay, good for you. You you saw
Speaker 1: the opportunity and you took it. But he was very
Speaker 1: serious and very really super antiseptic and very He was
Speaker 1: there to play cards. He didn't want to talk about
Speaker 1: his career or chit chatty. Was there to play cards
Speaker 1: with a bunch of schmocks. We weren't hard players, were
Speaker 1: eating Velvida and Hersy's kisses and drinking on punch. It's
Speaker 1: funny you're bringing up Norby Walters because you probably don't
Speaker 1: remember this, but we were both supposed to be there
Speaker 1: on It was. It was June the seventh of two
Speaker 1: thousand one. Okay, it was a Wednesday at June the
Speaker 1: six of two thousand one, seriously, and you called up
Speaker 1: and said you weren't gonna make it. He put me
Speaker 1: on the phone with you, and I said, you said,
Speaker 1: how are you doing? Blah blah blah, And I said
Speaker 1: something about I just I'm filing for divorce. And you said, oh,
Speaker 1: can I talk to you about divorce? I said, you said,
Speaker 1: let's meet tomorrow. So you and I went to Sushi
Speaker 1: Roku on Third Avenue and you were telling me there
Speaker 1: was all the pitfalls. This was two thousand one. It
Speaker 1: was what happened was we got together because I was
Speaker 1: avoiding the process servers because everybody said, oh, you have
Speaker 1: to let the woman serve first, because otherwise it looks
Speaker 1: like she cheated. Blah blah blah blah blah. And we
Speaker 1: were having a friendly divorce, you know, we went away
Speaker 1: that weekend and read about it ourselves in the paper.
Speaker 1: Rob and I were still friends. You know, I do
Speaker 1: things weird, but he were still like really good friends.
Speaker 1: But anyway, we sat at the sushi roku for like
Speaker 1: two and a half hours and you told me everything
Speaker 1: that was going on in what I should watch out for.
Speaker 1: I know you remind me your energy and my feelings
Speaker 1: if you remind me of when I was around streisand
Speaker 1: once and I said to her, you know, you and
Speaker 1: I would be the greatest divorced couple. You know, we
Speaker 1: would be married, we'd be in love, maybe we'd have
Speaker 1: a kid. Of course, we get divorced. It just has
Speaker 1: to be that way to show business. But I come
Speaker 1: over every Sunday. We'd have Chinese food screen on exactly.
Speaker 1: And I feel the same way about you. You and
Speaker 1: I would have made great x. We think very similarly,
Speaker 1: and that we have that big family kind of thing.
Speaker 1: This is a trite word and This is a trite idea,
Speaker 1: but not so trite now in the age of the
Speaker 1: pandemic and beyond. And that is positivity, and you have
Speaker 1: always been this, like staggeringly positive healthy. What's the secret? Well,
Speaker 1: A couple of things come to mind. I had a
Speaker 1: really great family. We're still super close. My parents both
Speaker 1: died tragically, both of them very young, and I think
Speaker 1: it bonded the family. I did a lot of therapy.
Speaker 1: I got my whole family involved in therapy. My my
Speaker 1: therapist would put six speaker boxes up in her office
Speaker 1: in Princeton, New Jersey, and every other Sunday for ten years,
Speaker 1: the siblings would do a group therapy. So we've worked
Speaker 1: out a lot of our stuff. That's number one. But
Speaker 1: I had an extraordinary childhood which was totally unusual, with
Speaker 1: the dancing school in the backyard, beauty shop in the kitchen,
Speaker 1: an uncle who taught art at the Catholic grammar school
Speaker 1: and lived upstairs with his boyfriend Charles, and menagerie of animals,
Speaker 1: and I just had such an unusual way of growing up.
Speaker 1: And I always had this mission to make something of
Speaker 1: myself and to share. I think it's a middle child
Speaker 1: and me always wanted to, like, if I have a
Speaker 1: good idea, I want to share it with everybody. I've
Speaker 1: never been very proprietary over anything. I just always want
Speaker 1: to share with people. I think it comes from being
Speaker 1: the middle maybe, But I also think having my memory
Speaker 1: has helped, because the memory makes you get over things
Speaker 1: very quickly, because you start to see the waves. And
Speaker 1: also being an actress, you know, every bad experience was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to take note of this. What can I
Speaker 1: do better next time? How can I figure this out?
Speaker 1: You know? I say to people all the time, they go,
Speaker 1: how do you do it? And it's like this, I go,
Speaker 1: think of flaps up and it's like you just close
Speaker 1: your ears to it, flaps up. I say that to
Speaker 1: my kids all the time. You know, smile not and
Speaker 1: move on. So you were married three times, you were
Speaker 1: married twice, and you're married again now final, final, And
Speaker 1: so each of these men things that you're willing to say,
Speaker 1: what do they represent for you? You seem to be
Speaker 1: such a thoughtful, deliberate aware. You seem like somebody that
Speaker 1: all the lights are on your your brain, your mind,
Speaker 1: your soul is like a house you pull up to.
Speaker 1: It's like some kind of a Richard Neutra all glass
Speaker 1: structure and all the lights are on. You're always on,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? And alert and aware. So
Speaker 1: when you're married one, and you're married too, and you're
Speaker 1: married three, what were you marrying them four? Well? First all,
Speaker 1: Freddie and I met at a screen test and I
Speaker 1: didn't know that they had added a kiss. And I
Speaker 1: was the six girl screen testing opposite him for a
Speaker 1: film called Hammett and we just different. People who don't
Speaker 1: know this is Forest. Yeah, sorry, Frederick Forrest the Academy
Speaker 1: Award nominate. And so he was so different from anybody
Speaker 1: I knew. He was a lot older than I was,
Speaker 1: but he was so different from anybody I ever knew.
Speaker 1: And I was so fascinated by him because his brain
Speaker 1: was so different and he was just I've just never
Speaker 1: seen anything like a totally instinctive, brilliant actor. Brilliant actor
Speaker 1: and would transform himself every part that he's played. He
Speaker 1: looks completely different. And he wanted to marry me a
Speaker 1: few months after we started dating, and I said no,
Speaker 1: let's live together. He said, no marriage or nothing. I said, okay,
Speaker 1: well then nothing. And then I went to my tenth
Speaker 1: year high school reunion in Chicago, and he went to
Speaker 1: a wedding and he called me and we were both
Speaker 1: feeling very sentimental, and we said, okay, let's get married.
Speaker 1: I said okay, and then we ended up getting married
Speaker 1: three weeks later in New Orleans and that was it.
Speaker 1: And then coming home from the honeymoon because the actors
Speaker 1: were on strike, I was going back to taxing, and
Speaker 1: I thought, what have I just done. I'm married a
Speaker 1: total stranger to me. You know, it was like crazy.
Speaker 1: But he was so fascinating and so loving and so
Speaker 1: full of demons that if you're not somebody who is
Speaker 1: exposed to demons a lot, you think like, I'll fix it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to take care of that. Yeah, everything you
Speaker 1: do in your twenties. No. I have three theories of marriage.
Speaker 1: The first one is marriage is like making waffles. You
Speaker 1: throw the first one out, okay. The second one is
Speaker 1: marriage is finding that special certain someone you just know
Speaker 1: you'd love to aggravate the rest of your life, because
Speaker 1: marriage is like, you know, all these little like diggy
Speaker 1: kind of things. And I said, but no, the real
Speaker 1: theory sting XUBERI wrote something and I added something to it,
Speaker 1: and that is you'll have a happy marriage when you
Speaker 1: real marriage isn't two people gazing longingly into each other's eyes,
Speaker 1: but rather looking out over the mountain in the same
Speaker 1: direction with their hands on each other's genitals. That's the
Speaker 1: part I added. That's the part I added, because you've
Speaker 1: got to no, that wasn't sayting zuberin now sorry that
Speaker 1: So you got to have vision and meat. So my
Speaker 1: first marriage was all heat, my second marriage was all vision,
Speaker 1: and finally I have vision and heat in my third marriage.
Speaker 1: Actress Mary Lou Henner. If you like hearing about the
Speaker 1: lives of groundbreaking women in comedy, check out my interview
Speaker 1: with Carol Burnett. Her hit variety show ran for more
Speaker 1: than a decade in the late sixties and seventies, and
Speaker 1: at the height of her success, she had to tread carefully.
Speaker 1: In that era there the only one who really would
Speaker 1: speak up was Lucy. It was very strong. But it's
Speaker 1: not in my nature to take over confront or anything.
Speaker 1: You know, like if if a sketch wasn't working or something.
Speaker 1: Instead of like Glee coner Sid would say, let's look, guys,
Speaker 1: the stinks. Now, come on, you gotta fix it. But
Speaker 1: but you know, they would do that, I would say,
Speaker 1: I'd call the writers down into the rehearsal hall and
Speaker 1: I'd say, you know, guys, um, I'm not doing this
Speaker 1: too well. Do you think maybe you could help me
Speaker 1: out with a different line here or there, because you know,
Speaker 1: otherwise I would have been a bit here more of
Speaker 1: my conversation with Carol Burnett in our archives that Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing dot org. After the Break, Mary lou Henner
Speaker 1: talks about how a change she made in her approach
Speaker 1: to auditioning completely opened up her career. I mean, I
Speaker 1: like Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Mary lou Henner is passionate about encouraging people to take
Speaker 1: charge of their happiness and well being. She's written several
Speaker 1: best selling books on living a healthy lifestyle, often sharing
Speaker 1: lessons that changed her own life. What happened was I
Speaker 1: went with Jerry Katzman, who's the head of William Morris
Speaker 1: at the time. He said, you have to write a book.
Speaker 1: I'm hooking you up with Judith Reagan. So Judith and
Speaker 1: I met at lunch and we like hung out together
Speaker 1: all day and everything. I had a book deal, so
Speaker 1: I started working on my autobiography. She is a character,
Speaker 1: and when she started her own imprint, she said to me,
Speaker 1: you have to write a health book because you're in
Speaker 1: such good shape. You this, you changed so much since
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. You. Every time I have anything wrong
Speaker 1: with me and my kids, I call you, and you
Speaker 1: always seem to know the answer. So I was doing
Speaker 1: the show Chicago on Broadway and one of the guys said, oh,
Speaker 1: why don't you give us like some lectures. I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: So in between shows, I would do these seminars and
Speaker 1: I'd have a little, you know, like recorder, and I'd be,
Speaker 1: you know, talking to them, and then I'd be putting
Speaker 1: on my eyelashes like the evils of dairy products, you know,
Speaker 1: as I'm putting on my eyelashes to go do roxy.
Speaker 1: And so then I worked with somebody who was like
Speaker 1: a real crafts person in terms of like books, and
Speaker 1: I was so rebbed up from all the fosse and
Speaker 1: my boys were very little, so I could like give
Speaker 1: him a bath, go to the theater, be revved up,
Speaker 1: go to an office and work on the book. And
Speaker 1: a few weeks after the show ended, the book came
Speaker 1: out and it went on the New York Times bestseller list,
Speaker 1: and I've sold over a million copies of that first
Speaker 1: health book, but then got a contract to keep going
Speaker 1: and going and going, so then I've done ton. What's
Speaker 1: your biggest health concern? You know, growing up in my lifetime,
Speaker 1: everybody was always saying, you know, don't smoke. And then
Speaker 1: when I went through my drug phase, people said, You've
Speaker 1: got to get sober and stop taking all these drugs
Speaker 1: and drinking, which I had a very relatively brief but
Speaker 1: white hot period of that for a couple of years
Speaker 1: in the eighties when I was very young, and then
Speaker 1: as I've gotten older. You know, the thing that shocks
Speaker 1: me that is the utter poison in my life is sugar,
Speaker 1: because I was pre diabetic and now I'm full diabetic
Speaker 1: and I'm which has been so for me and for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's your health concerns? Now? Like, what do you say
Speaker 1: to yourself? I never eat. I sometimes eat every now
Speaker 1: and then I cheat and I allow myself to eat.
Speaker 1: When you want to treat yourself to something that you
Speaker 1: know isn't the best possible thing for you, is it
Speaker 1: something sweet? Is a savory person, No, I would say
Speaker 1: probably sushi, is like my own, my last not so
Speaker 1: guilty pleasure. Yeah, but I haven't had dairy since Augustine.
Speaker 1: It was a Wednesday. I gave up dairy and never
Speaker 1: never had dairy since. And it changed my life. So
Speaker 1: I'm always trying to get people off of what was
Speaker 1: the impact sinuses and congestion you here about that's a lot,
Speaker 1: but you know, sore throats and stomach aches all the time.
Speaker 1: When I lived in New York, I'd lived near Z
Speaker 1: Bars and I would go pick up cheese ends. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a bars where they cut the cheese a certain
Speaker 1: way and then up a little a little rind and stuff.
Speaker 1: And I'd buy these little cheese bags, cheese ends bags
Speaker 1: on my way to unemployment and wondered why am I
Speaker 1: not working when I'm fat, constipated and half impulse, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, my whole stomach changed after I gave up dairy.
Speaker 1: I used to be an ice cream addict. I was
Speaker 1: like brand Oh they say the Brandon would sit with
Speaker 1: like a half a gallon of ice cream and watch
Speaker 1: TV and you have like a big jug of ice
Speaker 1: cream and lay in his bed and just with a
Speaker 1: spoon and eat like a half a gallon of ice
Speaker 1: cream that wasn't that bad. But dairy is always the
Speaker 1: first thing I talked to people about always. That's that's
Speaker 1: been on my that's my soapbox speech. Immediately with people especially,
Speaker 1: I can read people's faces and tell that they're like
Speaker 1: allergic to it or something like that, or they've had trouble.
Speaker 1: But the big killer right now, I think for everybody
Speaker 1: is the whole stress management people. Really, you know, I
Speaker 1: say three things. Learn to love the food that loves you,
Speaker 1: and we know what doesn't love us. Learned to love
Speaker 1: the food that loves you. It's very obviously what does
Speaker 1: Dairy did not love me, Meat did not love me.
Speaker 1: Sugar that does not love me, nor does it love you. Obviously,
Speaker 1: So I say, learned to love the food that loves you.
Speaker 1: I say motion is the lotion, because we've got to move.
Speaker 1: You know, your cat stretches, your dogs, you walk your dogs,
Speaker 1: your hamster's got a wheel with this beautiful human animal.
Speaker 1: You've gotta walk, you gotta do, you gotta move, move, move.
Speaker 1: Motion is the lotion. And then I also say you
Speaker 1: better fall in love with your stress or it's going
Speaker 1: to kill you. Because if I when I give I
Speaker 1: go all over the country. You better I can't fall
Speaker 1: in love with my stress. Well yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: but no, you have to, I always say, because I
Speaker 1: give give speeches all over the country. I'm always like
Speaker 1: asked to give you know, could go to different things,
Speaker 1: seminars and stuff. And I always say, every one of
Speaker 1: you in this audience wrote down your problems on a
Speaker 1: piece of paper, and I collected them and I started
Speaker 1: reading them out, and you had to pick some problems
Speaker 1: that are on a list. You'd all take back your
Speaker 1: own because you know the beast, you know how to
Speaker 1: handle it. You just might not be doing it well.
Speaker 1: I always tell people whenever i'm especially when I'm speaking
Speaker 1: to people in this profession. Number one, you find out
Speaker 1: how much you love acting. It's itself because you're gonna
Speaker 1: get to do so little of it. The life of
Speaker 1: the actor is all this other bullshit. You know, the
Speaker 1: rest of the year and you're in front of a camera,
Speaker 1: what forty five minutes a day, an hour or a day.
Speaker 1: The rest is sitting in the room you do the show.
Speaker 1: It's two hours at night. If you're inclined to do theater,
Speaker 1: And I said, you need to find out how much
Speaker 1: you love it. At number two, if you're in, get
Speaker 1: into it. Don't do what I did, which is to
Speaker 1: be like fuck l A and fuck you and I
Speaker 1: think you're all full of ship, and you know this
Speaker 1: whole thing is just this business is full of ship.
Speaker 1: Be a part of it. Joined the academy, go to
Speaker 1: the screening, be a part of the business, and don't
Speaker 1: be cynical about it. And if not, then get out.
Speaker 1: Get out. I always say, if something, do it or
Speaker 1: don't do it. If someone can talk to you out
Speaker 1: of it, let it, because otherwise you have to really
Speaker 1: really want to do it. And also I always say
Speaker 1: to people, look fall in love with auditioning because it
Speaker 1: might be the only ten minutes you have that job.
Speaker 1: So if you do it, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: then then it's like your job for ten minutes. And
Speaker 1: maybe you remember all these people from the TV Star
Speaker 1: Shelf that we always talk about, Gregory Harrison, who didn't
Speaker 1: inter you wants to Change My Life, Gregory Harris And
Speaker 1: we did Jack Nicholson h and Margaret parts in in
Speaker 1: Kernal Knowledge at the Pasadena Playhouse. We played those parts,
Speaker 1: so we saw each other naked in a shower. Yeah, Oh,
Speaker 1: my god, I'm sure you both look pretty good. We did,
Speaker 1: We still do, he did. He did an interview once
Speaker 1: years ago, it was a million years ago, like TV
Speaker 1: Guide or something stupid thing, and he did an interview
Speaker 1: where he said, basically I'm paraphrasing, he was like, you know,
Speaker 1: his whole energy changed, his whole career changed when he
Speaker 1: walked into auditions and his attitude was like, how can
Speaker 1: I help you? Like you called me here, I didn't
Speaker 1: put a gun to your head and make you audition
Speaker 1: me for this part. I have something you want. You're
Speaker 1: looking for something and whether and once he stopped giving
Speaker 1: the energy of like oh and being fawning and obsequious
Speaker 1: with them, everything changed. It's so funny you're saying this
Speaker 1: because I tell a story in my show again about
Speaker 1: how I auditioned for forty commercials before I got one
Speaker 1: and the reason I find he got and then I
Speaker 1: booked seventy two and two and a half years. I
Speaker 1: was quite crazy. I was doing commercials constantly, but it
Speaker 1: took me forty auditions to get my first one because
Speaker 1: on the thirty nine a friend of mine called me
Speaker 1: and it was for Mr. Coffee. I still remember the
Speaker 1: jingle and I had to sing it. I was so
Speaker 1: wrong for the part, but he called me in and
Speaker 1: he called me that night and he said he knew
Speaker 1: I was having trouble with auditions, and he said, are
Speaker 1: you this way the way you were today with me
Speaker 1: in your auditions? And I went, oh, my gosh, no,
Speaker 1: are you kidding. I was just so myself because you
Speaker 1: were there. He said, we almost changed the whole concept
Speaker 1: of the commercial because you were so original. He said,
Speaker 1: that's what you have to do every time you go
Speaker 1: into an audition. Stop giving people what you think they want.
Speaker 1: Just go in there and it's gonna hit. It's gonna hit.
Speaker 1: And he was right. And then I booked one right
Speaker 1: after the other and I became this body parts model
Speaker 1: and it was just like crazy that I did a
Speaker 1: lot of different parts of the body. I was which
Speaker 1: parts of the body did which part? This is in
Speaker 1: my show? I said. I did four plate text Brock commercials.
Speaker 1: You know, it's got sash here and seeing was to
Speaker 1: play text panties. You were wearing a bra, You were
Speaker 1: a bra model. I was a bra model, but sometimes
Speaker 1: I had like a shirt on, you know, and you
Speaker 1: could see certain things. But it was just like I'm
Speaker 1: looking exactly, And then I did to play text panties
Speaker 1: commercials or all you saw was my button. These were
Speaker 1: separate commercials, separate. The bra and the panties were separate shoots, separate,
Speaker 1: because if I was the producer, that's what I want
Speaker 1: to said. I said, and we need to shoot these separately,
Speaker 1: and we need to shoot them over five days. And
Speaker 1: I did do yes, And then I said, but all
Speaker 1: you see is my button, my crotch, walking my dog,
Speaker 1: walking around Lincoln Center getting on a bus. But the
Speaker 1: polaroids when you walk into the audition for a panties commercial,
Speaker 1: it's amazing because you see all these polaroids of just
Speaker 1: people's crotches and butts and side views and everything else.
Speaker 1: And then I was even the Fruit of the Loom
Speaker 1: panty host girl inside of a giant apple with my
Speaker 1: legs sticking out. And so I did like different cuts.
Speaker 1: But then I also did like I did an ex
Speaker 1: on by Centennial minute where I played Annie Sullivan. I
Speaker 1: got a Cleon domination for that, and I did everything
Speaker 1: from Reese's peanut butter to gleam toothpaste. So many different
Speaker 1: times I was the ponderosa Steakhouse Girl, the samson I
Speaker 1: Luggage Girl on. So I just kept doing it and
Speaker 1: doing it and doing it because every time and I
Speaker 1: learned this the heart, I mean, I learned the hard way.
Speaker 1: You walk in and you bring something to it, like
Speaker 1: Gregory says, how can I help you? Let me show
Speaker 1: you something like I would do with it. But what
Speaker 1: did you study at Chicago? You studied theater. No, they
Speaker 1: had a theater department, but they had no theater degree.
Speaker 1: So even though it was so, I know, I was
Speaker 1: a political science major and so and the first two
Speaker 1: years is mostly the core curriculum. So where did you
Speaker 1: learn to sing a dance? Well? I grew up in
Speaker 1: the dancing studio and I always sang because my two
Speaker 1: older sisters were in choir and stuff like that. So
Speaker 1: I'd go to their practices and stuff, and it was
Speaker 1: just something I always wanted, you know. I was on
Speaker 1: stage at two and a half at a father like
Speaker 1: a pinnacle for you, was at a big Dream Country Was.
Speaker 1: They called me on March the fourth scene Walter, whom
Speaker 1: I knew from the Greece family, and they called me
Speaker 1: and they said, uh, Annie Ranking is leaving Chicago. And
Speaker 1: she thinks she'd be a good replacement. What kind of
Speaker 1: dance shape are you in? And I said, oh, I
Speaker 1: haven't had my legs up over my head except for
Speaker 1: childbirtha a good weekend for about five years. So I
Speaker 1: better get my ass back into class. So I went
Speaker 1: to class for ten days and then I went to
Speaker 1: audition and then he said go home, work on the fosse,
Speaker 1: and I did. And I went back and there were
Speaker 1: like twenty seven potential actors in the room and they
Speaker 1: kept eliminating, eliminating until they told me I had the job.
Speaker 1: So I did four hundred and eight performance four hundred
Speaker 1: eight performances Broadway, but also did Vegas because they asked
Speaker 1: me to come to Vegas and I was like, no,
Speaker 1: I don't want to go to Vegas. And then my
Speaker 1: agent said, well, let's have some fun with your quote.
Speaker 1: And then he called me back. He said, they made
Speaker 1: you an offer you can't refuse. You're going to Vegas.
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, So I went to Vegas. But
Speaker 1: my favorite Vegas story because people always said, what's the
Speaker 1: difference between Broadway and Vegas? Although it's not this anymore,
Speaker 1: I'd say, oh yeah, cup holders, because back then you could.
Speaker 1: This was in two thousand. You couldn't. You could drink
Speaker 1: in Vegas, but you couldn't do it on Broadway. So, um,
Speaker 1: I've been there two weeks and they said we love
Speaker 1: you here. I said, really, you've seen the show and
Speaker 1: I was like all excited. He said, no, I haven't
Speaker 1: seen the show yet, but your crowd drinks a lot
Speaker 1: more belvedere than most people. Okay, yeah, I'll never forget.
Speaker 1: Someone wasn't connected to like one of these big fizzy musicals,
Speaker 1: and they were doing like some kind of a cast replacement,
Speaker 1: and they wanted all this stunt casting with somebody famous.
Speaker 1: And this actress walks into audition for the lead role.
Speaker 1: She's this famous actress, and she comes in and she
Speaker 1: does her audition and she leaves and everyone's just kind
Speaker 1: of standing there slack joe. After she leaves, and the
Speaker 1: director turns every and goes, she can't sing, she can't dance,
Speaker 1: she can't act. She's a star, you know, like we're
Speaker 1: gonna hire her even though she has She gets a
Speaker 1: D or inn F in all three categories based on
Speaker 1: what they saw there in that room that day. It's
Speaker 1: so funny because there's all these stories that you know
Speaker 1: that sort of shape your life, like that one you
Speaker 1: know you and you just right you hear it and
Speaker 1: you understand and you you know it right away. When
Speaker 1: I was first on taxi, somebody at ABC came and
Speaker 1: he goes, I've got a movie for you, Mary Lou.
Speaker 1: I said, really, what is it? And he said sizzle?
Speaker 1: I said, what's it about? He said, who cares sizzle?
Speaker 1: So Johnny and I always used to say we would
Speaker 1: like joking, like people were like, you know, who cares sizzle?
Speaker 1: You know, it's just that thing that you do. New
Speaker 1: York Times bestselling author Mary Lou Henner. If you're enjoying
Speaker 1: this conversation, be sure to subscribe to Here's the Thing
Speaker 1: on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. When we returned, Mary Lou Henner
Speaker 1: talks about finding lasting love the third time around. I'm
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing. Mary Lou
Speaker 1: Hanna recently developed and performed a one woman autobiographical show.
Speaker 1: It's filled with songs and stories from her remarkable life.
Speaker 1: I sing a song about my son's and show a
Speaker 1: video of like pictures of them and little videos. Oh
Speaker 1: it kills me every time if I watch it. I'm
Speaker 1: crying just thinking about it. I cried. And it's a
Speaker 1: mash up between Nick of Time because you know, it's
Speaker 1: funny NICKI took me three and a half years to
Speaker 1: get pregnant Joey like immediately I didn't even get my period.
Speaker 1: It was like, Bam, I'm pregnant again. So and he
Speaker 1: and so I do Nick of Time and happiness is
Speaker 1: just a thing called joe and that's it. And also
Speaker 1: I sing a song about Freddie, my first husband. I
Speaker 1: do Desperado because that's kind of who he was in
Speaker 1: my life. And that song always gets to me too.
Speaker 1: So it's like telling some of those type stories and
Speaker 1: talking about Bird was very emotional to a couple of times.
Speaker 1: So it depends, you know, it depends on the crowd.
Speaker 1: When you come and you're gonna camp an, it's your
Speaker 1: husband gonna come with you? He comes. Yeah, he's great.
Speaker 1: Oh that's he's another whole story. You know, we wrote
Speaker 1: a book. We got together. He was my roommate's boyfriend.
Speaker 1: I didn't dare twinkle in his direction. But then when
Speaker 1: he called me out of nowhere six months after my
Speaker 1: divorce from Rob was final. We got together within a week.
Speaker 1: We're saying I love you. We're going to spend the
Speaker 1: rest of our lives together. And two months later he's
Speaker 1: diagnosed with two cancers, bladder cancer and lung cancer. And
Speaker 1: we ended up doing a whole protocol for him that
Speaker 1: didn't involve chemo or radiation. They wanted to remove his bladder,
Speaker 1: his prostate, run a hose up his penis, and we
Speaker 1: could pump it up six times if we wanted to
Speaker 1: have sex. They were they were pushing all of this.
Speaker 1: I was like, no, and we always say that the pump,
Speaker 1: by the way, don't do it for fun. No, he
Speaker 1: doesn't need the pump at all. No, my husband, No, No,
Speaker 1: not at all. He saved all of his organs. He
Speaker 1: saved his organs and he's been in remission. It will
Speaker 1: be eighteen years November twenty four. It's pretty remarkable. And
Speaker 1: he didn't he did immunotherapy, but he went completely vegan,
Speaker 1: and he went got rid of I mean he did
Speaker 1: every thing. He shot himself with iscadoor, which is extract
Speaker 1: of mistletoe. He got rid of all of the mercury
Speaker 1: fillings in his mouth, kulation therapy, high colonics, lymphatic massages,
Speaker 1: infrared saunas and he stays on this protocol and he
Speaker 1: has been in remission almost eighteen years. It's pretty remarkable,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty cool. When I went to the doctor
Speaker 1: and he was going to do the anterior hip replacement
Speaker 1: process and he says to me, now, I want to
Speaker 1: just review with you that you know that that when
Speaker 1: you do the anterior procedure, when we go in the
Speaker 1: front as supposed to the side is the quickest to heal.
Speaker 1: But there are some complications. Is like point zero two
Speaker 1: percent that we're gonna nick some nerves in there. There's
Speaker 1: some maarterial to heverage. I said, what nerve? He took
Speaker 1: his finger and he went like this, and I turned
Speaker 1: my mind and said, oh, you can just tear that out,
Speaker 1: just that nerve. Right, I'm done. You can just yank
Speaker 1: get apparel of pliers and zax come on you. And
Speaker 1: we have an expression in my family PF. Okay, we
Speaker 1: have this expression. My brothers and I made it up
Speaker 1: and it's like measures the sexual quotient of things like
Speaker 1: oh man, there was so much PF at that party,
Speaker 1: or man I saw that move No PF between the
Speaker 1: two of them. And PF stands for pussy factor or
Speaker 1: penis factor, right, because things have PF, you know. And
Speaker 1: I don't like b D for big dick energy because
Speaker 1: that is sexist and sizest, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: But you and Hillaria obviously have tons of PF. Obviously
Speaker 1: six kids, but but you you still want to have
Speaker 1: You're still gonna have PF even I don't want you.
Speaker 1: I don't want to retire from that. But but six kids,
Speaker 1: it's really been. Its been like a six and eight
Speaker 1: years is six kids in seven years and seven years
Speaker 1: and seven years? Oh that's right, seven years. You know.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember this day, but we
Speaker 1: were all all the kids because Ireland is close to
Speaker 1: my Joey's age. He's born November twelve, so she's like
Speaker 1: the So we were all at a meat because Joey
Speaker 1: was like the real athlete in the family. But Joey
Speaker 1: was at this meet, and Caitlyn Jenner was there and
Speaker 1: her kids and you know, Ireland and my Joey and
Speaker 1: they were all doing their sports thing. And you walked
Speaker 1: up to my son Nick, who is about thirteen at
Speaker 1: the time, fourteen at the time, and you said, and
Speaker 1: what are you going to be besides a Ralph Lauren model?
Speaker 1: Because he's very cute. What is he doing now? He's
Speaker 1: a director. He's a director. He's he went to Columbia
Speaker 1: and he directs all these videos. And he directed this
Speaker 1: short that has now been bought by Will Ferrell's company
Speaker 1: and he's turned it into a two hour movie and
Speaker 1: he might be directing it. We'll see. But it looks good.
Speaker 1: Can I just say what my son Joey's doing too?
Speaker 1: Because he's because I said about Nick. So Joey lives
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn. He does his improv troupe that they do whatever.
Speaker 1: But he's an international bridge player. He's one of the
Speaker 1: top bridge players in the world under twenty five, and
Speaker 1: he became a life master at twenty four. And he
Speaker 1: has all these women that he plays bridge with and
Speaker 1: they pay a lot money to play with him because
Speaker 1: he's so cute. And he's writing a script called Bridge Giggalow.
Speaker 1: Because I have a comedy writer and I'm a director. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm telling me he should bead. Jonathan Ames book The
Speaker 1: Extra Man that was made into a film with Kevin
Speaker 1: Klein and Paul Dano and that's your son, Paul. He
Speaker 1: is a character because because because it's about a boy
Speaker 1: that meets like a guy who's like a who's like
Speaker 1: a walker. He's like a male prostitute, and he doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily sleep with the women, but he's like he takes
Speaker 1: all of these old biddies to like Palm Beach, Cotillions
Speaker 1: and all the shops. I don't think I'm thinking that
Speaker 1: my son is talking about them as old biddies, because
Speaker 1: you know, someone who know not not his not his
Speaker 1: bridge park. Anyway, My love to you, and I look
Speaker 1: forward to seeing him in New York. Okay, love to
Speaker 1: after and you're one. Sometimes it's called Mary lou I know,
Speaker 1: so we actually said that. I forgot that. I know
Speaker 1: we literally they My wife calls her Mary lou. I
Speaker 1: know she doesn't Maria Luthia, but my wife calls her
Speaker 1: Mary Louke. My wife calls my daughter Mary. It's on
Speaker 1: the back of her little high chair chair chair. I know,
Speaker 1: see I pay attention. My name is Mary, Lucy, Denise, Cecilia, Hannah, Forrest,
Speaker 1: Lieberman Brown, good luck, vision and heat because up on
Speaker 1: that chair. I love to you, sweet. We'll talk to
Speaker 1: you down the road. Okay actress and author Mary Lou Henner.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Kathleen Russo, Carrie Donohue, Maureen Hoban,
Speaker 1: and Zack McNeice. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. I'm Alec Baldwin.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio