Speaker 1: Hello, is there anybody out there, just not if you
Speaker 1: can hear me. If so, thank you for finding this podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm a huge Pink Floyd fan. I couldn't help myself.
Speaker 1: I've been plotting this for a few years. I do
Speaker 1: procrastinate sometimes, but finally the time felt right. My wife,
Speaker 1: Jennifer Dempster, is a co executive producer. We've been wanting
Speaker 1: to collaborate on something for a while and the title
Speaker 1: was her idea, who you Got, Because it's a question
Speaker 1: you get a lot in my profession. When I was
Speaker 1: a want to be sportscaster college student, I got the
Speaker 1: chance to hang out with the great John Madden and
Speaker 1: people kept coming up to John, Hey who you got?
Speaker 1: John got grumpy. I made a note avoid that question
Speaker 1: to people in the business, but you do get it
Speaker 1: often and I don't get grumpy. But now when people say, hey,
Speaker 1: foul or who you got, instead of hemming and hawing
Speaker 1: or answering Bama or Clemson, I can say I got
Speaker 1: a roster of guests that you're going to enjoy. This
Speaker 1: is not a sports pod, but a lot of the
Speaker 1: guests you're gonna know from the sports landscape. Sports storytelling
Speaker 1: is going to be a part. I think of most episodes,
Speaker 1: the topics are going to be surprising, intriguing, sometimes inspiring.
Speaker 1: The point of any podcast human conversation. We thought we'd
Speaker 1: make it the topic for episode one, so we invited
Speaker 1: four skilled interviewers and superb storytellers to share some moments
Speaker 1: that ranged from the triumphant to the tragic, the edgy
Speaker 1: cringe e as well as the newsworthy. Now all four
Speaker 1: of them got rolling. So we debut with a jumbo
Speaker 1: double album. I'm not trying to copy Clappton and Derek
Speaker 1: the Dominoes or Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Their debuts were
Speaker 1: both double albums. It just worked out that way. Why
Speaker 1: cut out good stuff, so consume it at your leisure.
Speaker 1: We've got Willie Geist, Maria Taylor, Rich Eyes, Jeremy Shop.
Speaker 1: We had the lead card and we were in traffic.
Speaker 1: By the way people look over and go and at
Speaker 1: one point that everyone's filling with their phones and what
Speaker 1: are you doing this? We're making a movie. It's called
Speaker 1: Willian now and I was like, oh my god, I really.
Speaker 1: I I called my wife as I just need to
Speaker 1: tell you what just happened to have it on the record.
Speaker 1: Remember it was a little bit of a soliloquy, like
Speaker 1: it was like everyone's forcing me to make a comment
Speaker 1: on my quarterbacks and I don't have to do it,
Speaker 1: and I'm not gonna do it, so quit asking. And
Speaker 1: Maria mariaction was just like I hear you, coach, and
Speaker 1: we moved on to the defense or something like I
Speaker 1: knew that we're not barking up this tree anymore. He's
Speaker 1: gonna join us, We're gonna talk, and he's he's ready
Speaker 1: to roll, and he proceeds to call me Rick throughout
Speaker 1: the entire interview. Years later, if you get a bunch
Speaker 1: of us in the room, it's brought up the fame junior,
Speaker 1: say how Rick eisen um uh interview on NFL Network.
Speaker 1: Here i am, I'm twenty three years old, and I've
Speaker 1: got Bob Night in the chair, and I'm I'm I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be tough. You know, I'm gonna ask him all
Speaker 1: the hard questions. So he says, I'll never forget the
Speaker 1: exact words. You were doing very well up until now,
Speaker 1: but now you're in over your head. And I think
Speaker 1: he's I think he punctuates it. I think I don't
Speaker 1: don't this is bullshit. This is all bullshit, and he
Speaker 1: starts threading the microphone out from under the sweater, really
Speaker 1: flattered to have these four friends and colleagues join me.
Speaker 1: They've got great stories to tell you. But I thought
Speaker 1: an episode one I would kick it off with the story.
Speaker 1: By far, the most painful interview I've ever done. You
Speaker 1: never saw it. It never aired. It was that awful.
Speaker 1: Go back to early Winter X Games in Vermont Stratton Mountain.
Speaker 1: You got this young musical artist, not a megastar yet,
Speaker 1: but he's about to break very, very big, and he
Speaker 1: was obliged to sit down with us in a casual
Speaker 1: little set in a converted ski lodge before his ex
Speaker 1: Games concert. He shows up exactly on time. We aren't
Speaker 1: ready get the light, rigs are still being set up,
Speaker 1: we've got crew running around everywhere. We're not even close.
Speaker 1: So I'm the very young host, looking about thirteen in
Speaker 1: the little ski sweater, and I've got to walk over
Speaker 1: to a very punctual and very piste off eminem then
Speaker 1: break the news to him that he's going to be
Speaker 1: made to wait a while to talk to me, a
Speaker 1: total stranger about snowboarding. He did not take that news well,
Speaker 1: and I can't blame him. That news was totally are bad.
Speaker 1: So trying to smooth things over, I asked him, is
Speaker 1: there something I can get you while we wait? The answers, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can get me the name of the mother who
Speaker 1: works for me, who booked me on this interview, so
Speaker 1: I can fire his mass. I mean, I'm I'm just
Speaker 1: yammering and stammering. Well, no, is there anything else we
Speaker 1: can get you? Bottla Hennessey And now we could get it.
Speaker 1: This was a converted bar. It was two in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't going to judge. Eminem has a hendy.
Speaker 1: It does not improve his mood. He felt disrespected. Um,
Speaker 1: we were at fault totally. But finally we'll get the
Speaker 1: lights good to go. We sit down. First question, So
Speaker 1: Eminem here he into extreme sports? No, not really, he says,
Speaker 1: I've been assured by a producer that Mr Mathers was
Speaker 1: into extreme sports, but that was incorrect. Captain Detroit was not,
Speaker 1: in fact a snowboarder. And this goes on like that,
Speaker 1: he's got zero connection to these sports. He's got nothing
Speaker 1: to say about him. We're going nowhere. Most he is
Speaker 1: just looking down when he does bring his eyes up.
Speaker 1: He's got this look. It says to me, you're getting
Speaker 1: nothing from me. I'm in a minute or two into it,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, thank God, we're not live. I knew this
Speaker 1: would never ever see air. I just pulled the ripcord.
Speaker 1: But you hate to do as an interviewer, but at
Speaker 1: that point we had already crashed. I just quickly politely
Speaker 1: thanked him, let him go off to find his guy
Speaker 1: who arranged the interview so he could quote fire his ass.
Speaker 1: I remember thinking, God, I helped this tape is quickly
Speaker 1: bulk erased the eminem interview. I'm a huge fans by
Speaker 1: the way, for many years, love his music, but that
Speaker 1: was the most painful interview ever. In the last interview
Speaker 1: that he and I have done. Never happened to my
Speaker 1: first guest. Willie Geist has storytelling in his blood. His dad,
Speaker 1: Bill Geist, still has a wonderful career as a journalist
Speaker 1: and an author. Willie's the Pride of Vanderbilt. He started
Speaker 1: in sports at CNN, joined Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough
Speaker 1: and Mika Brazinski, has been there for the last thirteen years,
Speaker 1: and Willie's become a star co host of the Today
Speaker 1: Show anchors Sunday Today with Willie Guys in NBC and
Speaker 1: you can catch us Sunday sit Down podcasts, which are
Speaker 1: great fun. Willie Guys, you are so kind to join
Speaker 1: and lend your expertise because you have run the gamut
Speaker 1: in terms of interview style, format, the goals. The Sundays
Speaker 1: sit downs that you do on Sunday Today with some
Speaker 1: of the most famous people in the world are are
Speaker 1: known for being revealing and comfortable and just fun to watch.
Speaker 1: The Morning Joe, different goals, different type of backgrap for
Speaker 1: those interviews, So you really have have spanned the spectrum,
Speaker 1: my friend, in terms of interviews. Yeah, it's a good
Speaker 1: balance because Morning Joe, as you say, Monday through Friday,
Speaker 1: you are in the You were in the mud, You
Speaker 1: were in the weed battling with politicians and partisans and
Speaker 1: everything else. So that Sunday interview is a nice breath
Speaker 1: of fresh air. When you just go to a restaurant
Speaker 1: or bar and sit for an hour with Bill Murray
Speaker 1: or David Letterman, or go out to l A as
Speaker 1: we did a couple of months ago. It feels like
Speaker 1: a lifetime ago now. But with al Pacino and those
Speaker 1: are like, you know that your job is Morning Joe
Speaker 1: and you gotta get to the news. You gotta get
Speaker 1: answers from people. But sort of the luxurious interview is
Speaker 1: that Sunday interview. It feels that way for a viewer.
Speaker 1: We'll get to those in a second. But going back
Speaker 1: to the place for you, Ben since oh seven, I
Speaker 1: believe in Morning Joe, where as you said, it's partisans
Speaker 1: who have an agenda there there to use your time
Speaker 1: for their benefit, their politicians. And you know when you're
Speaker 1: sitting there that every answer has the potential to make news,
Speaker 1: and it being live, there's just no safety net. Have
Speaker 1: you you know, started to sweat through your shirt and
Speaker 1: some of those moments because it can be it could
Speaker 1: be stressful, especially in the early days. It can be.
Speaker 1: But you know in politics that everyone's coming with an
Speaker 1: agenda and you generally know what the agenda is. But
Speaker 1: I enjoy that. And it's as you're good at this too.
Speaker 1: It's preparation. You know, you know everything about that person.
Speaker 1: You're ready for whatever. You know, choose your own adventure storyline.
Speaker 1: They're gonna go down. You can roll with that and
Speaker 1: um and as you say, it is live and so
Speaker 1: sometimes they surprise you and you're not ready for it,
Speaker 1: and that's when the sweat starts to come through your
Speaker 1: shirt as you say I was gonna say, you can prepare.
Speaker 1: But then there are just those moments where it takes
Speaker 1: a sudden turn and either something clicks in their head
Speaker 1: that that says this isn't going right, or I'm gonna
Speaker 1: now press my advantage, or they see that you're too
Speaker 1: ready for the expected game plan, so now they're gonna
Speaker 1: deliberately take it in a different direction and sort of
Speaker 1: hijack the proceedings. And that is difficult when it is live.
Speaker 1: I don't do that many interviews like that, thankfully, but
Speaker 1: there's that sense in your head, oh no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna take our broadcast and and hijack it
Speaker 1: for your own purposes exactly. And some people are more
Speaker 1: creative and better at that than others. Other people literally
Speaker 1: will come with like a piece of paper and whatever
Speaker 1: question you ask them, they're going to the talking points.
Speaker 1: And that's not as fun when the person is a
Speaker 1: skilled combatant and it's a little slicker in the way
Speaker 1: they try to circumvent your question. Then you kind of
Speaker 1: try to pull them back. When somebody's just a talking
Speaker 1: point machine, the audience gets nothing out of that. I try,
Speaker 1: and I get nothing out of that. But when someone
Speaker 1: is smart and willing to fight you in you know,
Speaker 1: in a in a real way and not in some
Speaker 1: theatrical way, and have an actual debate. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: sad to say. It's so much of what you see
Speaker 1: on TV does devolve into theater where it's this person's
Speaker 1: on that side, that person is on this side, and
Speaker 1: now it's so the meat in the middle and fight
Speaker 1: when you actually end up having a real conversation with
Speaker 1: someone you may disagree with. To me, those are the
Speaker 1: best interviews. Really, guys wants a worthy adversary, is what
Speaker 1: I'm hearing from you here. So now I think that
Speaker 1: we're also taught to try to fight and claw to
Speaker 1: make something of it. Even if your internal dialogue says,
Speaker 1: now this isn't going that well, this isn't going like
Speaker 1: I hoped it would for our customers, they're not, as
Speaker 1: you said, getting much out of this, and you do
Speaker 1: your best to try to salvage it. But I've been there.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you have. There's sometimes you go,
Speaker 1: you know what it's it's fourth and twelve. We just
Speaker 1: gotta punt here. I'm just gonna cut this short. This
Speaker 1: is just going nowhere. It's very clear, it's too awkward,
Speaker 1: it's unproductive, and and we're good goodbye, sir, Thank you
Speaker 1: very much. Yeah, no, that definitely happens. And your instinct
Speaker 1: is to push and push and push until you get
Speaker 1: that person to commit to an answer or commit to news.
Speaker 1: And at some point it's the law of diminishing returns.
Speaker 1: When you've asked the question four times subject immediately is
Speaker 1: that your limit? Four you'll go, You'll go four times.
Speaker 1: But if you and you're right, and then it gets
Speaker 1: weird for the audience. You know, they're like, okay, man,
Speaker 1: we wanted the answer too, but we're not getting it.
Speaker 1: Let's move along here, or say about it as a person.
Speaker 1: One of the most awkward interviews I've ever given was
Speaker 1: actually at Morning Joe. Through no fault of anybody at
Speaker 1: the show is but it was an espn PR misstep
Speaker 1: where I was the wrong day. They had given me
Speaker 1: the wrong day, So I'm out in front of my apartment,
Speaker 1: where's the car that the show is supposed to say?
Speaker 1: And it doesn't come It's not an easy subway from
Speaker 1: Upper West Side the thirty Rockers, you know, So I
Speaker 1: get there somehow, get through the lobby of thirty rock
Speaker 1: even though I'm not on the list. I'm up there
Speaker 1: and just the confused look like why why is Fowler here?
Speaker 1: But he is here? So you threw me in the studio.
Speaker 1: Manka if she could have made me disappear with her eyes,
Speaker 1: I mean she she would have. She didn't know why
Speaker 1: the football guy was in here. You guys that roll
Speaker 1: with it did a great job. I felt terrible because
Speaker 1: I knew how tightly form of that show is. I
Speaker 1: would have liked to just gone away and come back,
Speaker 1: but it's we made a threat, end though, I'm glad
Speaker 1: we did, and trust me, I promise you you know
Speaker 1: us whatever we were talking about, we would rather have
Speaker 1: talked about what you had to talk with So about
Speaker 1: the schedule income, No, No, that wasn't your fissue at all.
Speaker 1: I was just I felt terrible about it. I was
Speaker 1: impressed how you guys just roll with it and and
Speaker 1: found time in a tight format with much more important
Speaker 1: things to talk about. But you know what it is
Speaker 1: about our shows. It's a three hour show, so it
Speaker 1: is collapsible and expandable, which is it is a great
Speaker 1: advantage that we talked about interviews. If something's going great,
Speaker 1: I mean we've done interviews where it was slotted for
Speaker 1: eight minutes and it goes thirty five minutes, and we
Speaker 1: can do that and we can bump somebody later and
Speaker 1: or say can you come back tomorrow, or you know,
Speaker 1: skip a segment we're going to do on a different
Speaker 1: topic and do it the next day. So that is
Speaker 1: a real underrated advantage of Morning Joe is we are
Speaker 1: it's mostly unscripted. You know, you will read some prompters
Speaker 1: to set up the nuts and bolts of the story
Speaker 1: and then they thing goes off for an hour and
Speaker 1: we're just time and it's real and if the conversation
Speaker 1: is going well, we just go with it. And that's
Speaker 1: you know, my other life on the Today Show. That
Speaker 1: thing is like you've got hard breaks because of the
Speaker 1: commercial spending and local weather and all these things that
Speaker 1: you've got to get it to the second and if
Speaker 1: your conversation is not over, they're going to the commercial
Speaker 1: anyway and then just go to black on you. So
Speaker 1: that you feel that if an interview on the Today
Speaker 1: shows slated for five minutes, it's gonna be five minutes,
Speaker 1: you know, And on the Morning Job inslated for five
Speaker 1: and minute forty five minutes, and that's that's a great luxury. Behalf.
Speaker 1: You're so skilled at kind of sensing the vibe and
Speaker 1: setting the right tone for your guests on on the
Speaker 1: Sunday Sit Down to the long form recorded interviews that
Speaker 1: then become your podcasts. Have you ever, at any point,
Speaker 1: whether it's in that show or earlier in your career,
Speaker 1: made the mistake of sort of misreading the vibe and
Speaker 1: trying to be overly familiar with the interview subject. I
Speaker 1: had to do that when I was interviewing these X
Speaker 1: Games athletes who I didn't that wasn't my core culture,
Speaker 1: but as hosted the show, they asked me interview him,
Speaker 1: and they would let it be known that although we're
Speaker 1: down with this network TV thing, I want you to
Speaker 1: know that I'm representing the core culture and I'm a
Speaker 1: little too cool to be interviewed by a guy like you.
Speaker 1: And they weren't wrong, but that that that set up
Speaker 1: the idea that they'll participate, but they're not going to
Speaker 1: really open up and give any good stuff or make
Speaker 1: this an entertaining segment for fear that that's going to
Speaker 1: make them look bad with their core group. You ever
Speaker 1: try to overstep and feel like you didn't connect with
Speaker 1: someone that way. You know what I've found and I've
Speaker 1: learned from it, and I hopefully I'm better at it now.
Speaker 1: I think, particularly when somebody's funny, the temptation can be
Speaker 1: to try to be funny with them, you know. And
Speaker 1: so I just thought of this while you were talking,
Speaker 1: as we had Larry David on um. He was on
Speaker 1: Morning Dods and years ago and he came on and
Speaker 1: he was totally Larry David. He was himself. He had
Speaker 1: a Starbucks and had the lid on it with a
Speaker 1: little hole in the top. And we said, hey, a
Speaker 1: new season of Curve and he goes before we start.
Speaker 1: You know, I invented this. I was at tax you
Speaker 1: driver in the late seventies that that comes with the top.
Speaker 1: I poked the hole in the top. I was the
Speaker 1: first guy to do that. I get no credit for that.
Speaker 1: And he went and it was a genuine it was
Speaker 1: really you know, it wasn't some prepared bit. He looked
Speaker 1: at that and he had like a three minute riff
Speaker 1: about it, and so that I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people fall into this trap is Okay, I'm gonna play
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I got Larry David here. I want
Speaker 1: to play the game with him. I want to play
Speaker 1: curb your enthusiasm. And the truth is, those guys don't
Speaker 1: really want to come and have you try out your
Speaker 1: comedy on them, you know. And so I that was
Speaker 1: that's a good let. I mean, you can still be
Speaker 1: funny and clever in your own subtle ways, and they
Speaker 1: pick up on that, and I think they responnd well
Speaker 1: to it. But the job if you're I'm doing Sunday today,
Speaker 1: I'm interviewing Jerry Seinfeld on stage at the Beacon, it
Speaker 1: is not for me to prove to Jerry how funny
Speaker 1: I am. It's to give him great opportunities to be funny,
Speaker 1: which is pretty easy for him to do obviously. And
Speaker 1: so I think that is that's an interesting thought that
Speaker 1: takes great restraint, though. I think you have to sort
Speaker 1: of learn that, because if there's someone you really admire
Speaker 1: for their humor, you want to show hey, I got
Speaker 1: a sense of humor too, and you do. You have
Speaker 1: a great sense of him. You are a funny person
Speaker 1: in real life, but to keep that out of the
Speaker 1: interview when it's their show case you have. You had
Speaker 1: David Letterman on a very a nice long form interview,
Speaker 1: and it's hard not to let Dave no, jeez, I
Speaker 1: was there from day one, and I really admire you
Speaker 1: and exactly exactly, and I don't they want you to know.
Speaker 1: They want to know that you're prepared for sure, and
Speaker 1: they can smell that if you're not, So always be
Speaker 1: totally prepared. But if you start to step over that
Speaker 1: line of you know, I was raised on you and
Speaker 1: you're the greatest, and then they start to go, oh,
Speaker 1: they just take them uncomfortable. You don't want to put
Speaker 1: him in that space. And Dave is a perfect example.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not People always ask me you get
Speaker 1: star struck in these I don't think. I don't get
Speaker 1: star struck. You get a little more nervous for some
Speaker 1: than others. But David Letterman, you're probably the same way
Speaker 1: around the same age was like, he was my introduction
Speaker 1: to what was weird comedy and what was possible and this,
Speaker 1: you know, this could be mass marketed just being silly
Speaker 1: and wild and smart, and so I really obviously looked
Speaker 1: up to him, and you do have to suppress that
Speaker 1: a little bit, you know, because you don't want a
Speaker 1: fan boy out when he comes in. He doesn't do
Speaker 1: a lot of interviews. No, he sort of stepped out
Speaker 1: his you know, his guy stepped out of the ledge
Speaker 1: a little bit to say, all right, we're gonna let
Speaker 1: him do this interview. Um. And so you want to
Speaker 1: to show that you're ready and that you can't hang
Speaker 1: with him a little bit. If he's making fun of you,
Speaker 1: you can take it and get it back. I mean,
Speaker 1: his first it was when he had the beard. It
Speaker 1: was early in the beard, and my first question was
Speaker 1: what's the deal with the beard? And he, like that,
Speaker 1: said what's the deal with your tupe? So like, first
Speaker 1: of all, what an honor that David Letterman gave you
Speaker 1: that insult right out of the gate, and he was
Speaker 1: still as sharp as he's ever been, and that just
Speaker 1: opened the floodgates that I laughed at myself and we
Speaker 1: had a good time. But I think, I think I
Speaker 1: do think about that a lot. And then there are
Speaker 1: other people musicians. You don't want to act too cool
Speaker 1: and talk about all the people you know, and that
Speaker 1: just you know what I mean, Just be prepared, no, no,
Speaker 1: everything you can to know about the person, and they'll
Speaker 1: be impressed by that. You don't have to try to
Speaker 1: play their game. I think is a good lesson. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know you've learned those lessons and calibrated, because it's
Speaker 1: very obvious that people do fear relaxed and comfortable and Okay,
Speaker 1: this guy is not gonna make it about him and
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna try to parry with me. That the
Speaker 1: interview you did with with Bill Murray, which has been
Speaker 1: celebrated a little bit because it was so cool. He
Speaker 1: doesn't do many interviews that you've told the story about
Speaker 1: trying to reach him on the phone and then he
Speaker 1: sort of came to New York. As I've heard the story,
Speaker 1: he kind of asked to be on a Sunday said,
Speaker 1: kind of volunteered for but he doesn't do at all.
Speaker 1: Did you feel the pressure to make that a thoroughly
Speaker 1: enjoyable and comfortably experience for him because it was such
Speaker 1: a rare get Yeah, that was a case like Dave,
Speaker 1: where a life sort of preparation with Bill Murray came
Speaker 1: in handy because for people who don't know he doesn't
Speaker 1: have a manager of publicist. He has no one liked that,
Speaker 1: and celebrities have these layers of people that you go through.
Speaker 1: He still has, all these years later, a one eight
Speaker 1: hundred number that if you want to talk to him
Speaker 1: or get an interview, call and leave a message. This
Speaker 1: is a true story. And for Bill Murray and so
Speaker 1: our bookers say, Hi, this is so and so from
Speaker 1: Sunday Today, Willie Guys would love to interview. And we
Speaker 1: never heard back, so most people never hear back. And
Speaker 1: then he came in to do a live interview on
Speaker 1: The Today Show with Savannah I think one morning and
Speaker 1: he was he's messing around doing what he does with everybody,
Speaker 1: and he's in the green room and our booker was there.
Speaker 1: It's just you're the booker said, yeah, I don't do
Speaker 1: that Willie Guys show. Let's do that today, and they
Speaker 1: went there today. Yeah, let's do it right after this.
Speaker 1: There's no there's a whole thing. We've gotta get it
Speaker 1: set up, an elaborate shoot. It's called the Today Show.
Speaker 1: It's gonna got you read Today for a long format.
Speaker 1: He's like, just do it, why don't we just he
Speaker 1: slides in the chair, after Savannah we do another interview.
Speaker 1: So luckily he was We didn't have time to set
Speaker 1: it up that quickly, but luckily he said, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be in town for another day and all he said,
Speaker 1: let's have him come by the hotel at ten o'clock
Speaker 1: tomorrow morning. Okay, So we set up a shoot on
Speaker 1: the roof of the hotel at a little bar at
Speaker 1: the hotel. Who was staying, set up our cameras ten o'clock,
Speaker 1: the elevator doors open. His hair's messed up, he's in
Speaker 1: new Balance shoes, corduroy pants, some free golf zip up
Speaker 1: he got at a tournament somewhere, probably Taho or something
Speaker 1: like that. And he sat with me for over an hour.
Speaker 1: And that was another one to your point of don't
Speaker 1: be the guy who's quoting Caddyshack to Bill Murray because
Speaker 1: he's gonna smell that immediately. Remember that. And then you
Speaker 1: said this, and then you said that the Dali Llama,
Speaker 1: big hitter, you know, don't don't do that. And I
Speaker 1: think I heard we were talking before the the interview
Speaker 1: about he's a big Illinois basketball fan, and my parents
Speaker 1: went there, so I was raised in Illinois basketball. We talked.
Speaker 1: It's probably on tape. I bet we're recording twenty minutes
Speaker 1: about like the Flying the Line nine versus the two
Speaker 1: thousand Darren Williams d Brown team, and I think even
Speaker 1: from that and that was genuine for me. I grew
Speaker 1: up and then we had trust right there. And so
Speaker 1: then unsolicited he talks about Caddy Shack and we get
Speaker 1: into Ghostbusters and then he starts telling me SNL stories.
Speaker 1: He said, oh, there was this one time Keith Richards
Speaker 1: and I were in a bathroom stall with a bottle
Speaker 1: of Rebel Yell while Mitt was out on stage singing
Speaker 1: some girls and you're just going, oh my. And there
Speaker 1: are those moments you've probably had them where you're always
Speaker 1: doing your job or you're looking across and you know,
Speaker 1: Bill Murray's telling the SNL story. What a gift this is?
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes you just freeze the moment. What a gift.
Speaker 1: And I felt that way with Dave and al Pacino too.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the ones that don't do a lot of
Speaker 1: interviews and you can get to tell you things that
Speaker 1: you haven't heard a million times elsewhere, those are the best.
Speaker 1: Those are the best interviews. Yeah, that's a great story.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I had the gift like Keith
Speaker 1: Richards telling a story quite like that, but that that's
Speaker 1: pretty good. The Bill Murray, Keith Richards nexus is cool.
Speaker 1: It when it happens organically, like you said, you don't
Speaker 1: have to prompt them and those stories just start to flow.
Speaker 1: That's the best. Chris Farley had the bit which viewers
Speaker 1: relate to that the painful interview subject when he just
Speaker 1: basically recounts to the interview. We remember that time when
Speaker 1: when Michael when you when you when you hit that
Speaker 1: shot and you beat the jazz. That was awesome, And
Speaker 1: that's just the sort of no question there, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's just such a cringe e thing. And we've all
Speaker 1: seen interviews where the the interviewer falls into that and
Speaker 1: you just the one with McCartney was great too, exactly
Speaker 1: that that's what he always said. You mentioned these these
Speaker 1: interviews for for Sundays Sit Down, which you're beautifully produced
Speaker 1: and elaborately set up. And I wonder if you've ever
Speaker 1: had the angst that I have that something is gonna
Speaker 1: go wrong technically and these elaborate productions is gonna mess
Speaker 1: with the flow. I told the story earlier about my
Speaker 1: disastrous sit down with a very young eminem because our
Speaker 1: lighting was not ready for him and he was on time,
Speaker 1: which was an upset and we weren't ready, and the
Speaker 1: interview just was was was a disaster and never ended
Speaker 1: up airing. You're I'm sure your crew has never made
Speaker 1: a mistake on NBC. But all the thing, all the
Speaker 1: multiple cameras, Bill that don't know, those are incredibly elaborate setups.
Speaker 1: The lighting takes hours from miking, and these guys have
Speaker 1: a lot and women have a lot of pride in
Speaker 1: each of their jobs. They wanted to be flawless. So
Speaker 1: sometimes you stop, they want you to re ask the
Speaker 1: questions because it wasn't perfect sound. I mean, those are
Speaker 1: the kinds of things I stressed about, is the technical
Speaker 1: things that can break down in a in a basis
Speaker 1: of you as you say that, and cringing as you
Speaker 1: say that. I'm thinking about and I think I won't listenings.
Speaker 1: But there are certain people who are such big stars
Speaker 1: that they have their own sort of criteria for lighting
Speaker 1: and camera angles, and so there are people will send
Speaker 1: them ahead of time, and so we try to do
Speaker 1: everything that they've asked to make them comfortable, and then
Speaker 1: they get there and they sit down, it's all wrong somehow,
Speaker 1: and so we're starting over, which leaves me and you
Speaker 1: as the interview in the position of sitting in a
Speaker 1: chair across with him for thirty minutes, trying to make
Speaker 1: small talk and just keep that ball in the air.
Speaker 1: If it's somebody you know, that's fine or you've met before.
Speaker 1: But if it's somebody who's a massive star and they're
Speaker 1: just sitting there and there's still a little bit upset
Speaker 1: about the lighting because it's down here and it's just
Speaker 1: been right here, and let's start over, and where are
Speaker 1: my people and let's get everybody in here, then that's
Speaker 1: when it gets like I feel your pain. I'm going,
Speaker 1: oh gosh, I'm you know, I'm going through every little
Speaker 1: deep piece of research that I've got that I can
Speaker 1: start a conversation. Usually got material before the interview and
Speaker 1: starts just to keep anything. But you're all in my head,
Speaker 1: I'm going, okay, like what is this costing me by
Speaker 1: the minute in comfort level? And relax? What am I?
Speaker 1: What am I losing from what I'd hope to get?
Speaker 1: Because this thing we are waiting on the technical aspect
Speaker 1: it's a one time now that you mentioned that it
Speaker 1: worked for me. Was I was interviewing Adham Driver and
Speaker 1: we were in a restaurant in Manhattan and we started.
Speaker 1: He was a little reticent at first. He's not like
Speaker 1: that big, overwhelming, outgoing guy, and he was a little
Speaker 1: he was he was great, but he was, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of short answers, and he was, you know, we're
Speaker 1: getting to know each other a little bit. And ironically,
Speaker 1: the big chandelier in the dining room went on. Something
Speaker 1: happened downstairs and it ruined our lighting. We just stopped
Speaker 1: down and they couldn't find the guy with the key
Speaker 1: to the box to turn it off. And again it
Speaker 1: was twenty five thirty minutes. But in that time he
Speaker 1: and I got to know each other, and and the
Speaker 1: minute that thing finally went off, he was a totally
Speaker 1: different guy. So it's almost like that in that case,
Speaker 1: it helped us. We had time, and he's got an
Speaker 1: unbelievable story. He was a marine, and he's got and
Speaker 1: we and he again a guy who doesn't say a
Speaker 1: lot usually about his life. We had an amazing hour
Speaker 1: long conversation that included all those things I hadn't heard before,
Speaker 1: so I guess it can work both ways. But those
Speaker 1: moments it's an already, as you know, an unnatural thing
Speaker 1: to sit down this close from someone with lights and
Speaker 1: a bunch of people over there, and that's not a
Speaker 1: normal conversation. And then when you've got to add thirty
Speaker 1: minutes of light adjustment before the unnatural conversation, it's just
Speaker 1: it can be long, and you're looking down and you're
Speaker 1: looking at and you're trying to catch your producers. I go,
Speaker 1: let's go. You're trying to make sure that that's the
Speaker 1: pr people of your subjects aren't catching there. I going like,
Speaker 1: we got we got stuff here. But yeah, you hope
Speaker 1: they have the luxury of time, as apparently Adam Driver did,
Speaker 1: because someone like a Nick Saban Willie as you know, notoriously,
Speaker 1: and if they're if we're messing with the lights for
Speaker 1: forty five seconds and we're not good to go, I know,
Speaker 1: that's just making my job harder by the second. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he's not giving you much to begin and well,
Speaker 1: we have a great we have a great rapport actually,
Speaker 1: and he's far better than people real is. But he's
Speaker 1: also punctual and he's got an out time and he's
Speaker 1: got folks around him to go, hey, you know, if
Speaker 1: you if you're if you fumble the opening kickoff here
Speaker 1: and you can't get your act together, we're gonna move on.
Speaker 1: And that's I respect you, but I'm out of here.
Speaker 1: And that that when you deal with people who are artists,
Speaker 1: and you've had al Pacino's fascinating guy. But part of
Speaker 1: their brilliance might be they're introverted nature, might be their
Speaker 1: aversion to that kind of interaction you're trying to get
Speaker 1: and and their introspection which gets in the way of
Speaker 1: a good interview, but it's part of their genius. I mean,
Speaker 1: does that bring up the blood pressure to say a
Speaker 1: little bit when you know your job is gonna be tough,
Speaker 1: maybe to get out of them something. He's a Pacino
Speaker 1: doesn't do interviews number one and number two, and he
Speaker 1: does them. He's not known again as an outgoing guy.
Speaker 1: That was a really interesting one. That was in February
Speaker 1: of this year. He had a new series coming on
Speaker 1: on Amazon and they, I guess he did a couple
Speaker 1: of interviews and we read stout and they agreed that
Speaker 1: we'd be one of them. And he lives out in
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills. So they said, he's do it in this
Speaker 1: restaurant he likes. So you go, oh my gosh, how Pacino.
Speaker 1: We let's go do it. So we we fly out
Speaker 1: there and again, yeah, that's like hyper how do you?
Speaker 1: How do you so you've got forty five minutes, let's
Speaker 1: stay with him. How do you narrow down what you
Speaker 1: want to ask Alpaccino in a fourty five minutes? You know,
Speaker 1: how do you get there between Cercco and scar Pace,
Speaker 1: every everything he's done and um, so you sort of
Speaker 1: make an outline in your head. And the good thing
Speaker 1: about him was he came this was like an event
Speaker 1: for him. It was served a little bit of a
Speaker 1: coming out party where he was saying explicitly, I haven't
Speaker 1: done interviews in the past, but now I'm doing an interview.
Speaker 1: So I didn't have to drag that out of him.
Speaker 1: And in fact, if you watched the interview, he said
Speaker 1: that explicitly said I never would have done this even
Speaker 1: a few years ago. He's like, but I'm about to
Speaker 1: be eighty years old. I'm starting to think about my
Speaker 1: life and my career, and it's fun to do something
Speaker 1: like this, to look back and I never in the past.
Speaker 1: I just never wanted to talk about myself in my career.
Speaker 1: And he was so um he was so open. First
Speaker 1: of all, and again just without my asking, tells the
Speaker 1: story behind the set and scenes of the set on
Speaker 1: Scarface and how it was a bomb out of the
Speaker 1: box office and he's so surprised that it's become this
Speaker 1: cultural thing, and he just told the story is unsolicited.
Speaker 1: If I I honestly, if you look at that interview,
Speaker 1: I probably asked like four questions, five questions, because he
Speaker 1: just started telling stories and by and by me going yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it encouraged. And there's a couple of moments in
Speaker 1: there where he said, I'm sorry to go on, are
Speaker 1: you kidding me? I was, I will literally sit here
Speaker 1: all day, and then um, he got so we had
Speaker 1: a great conversation. He was warm and friendly. And then
Speaker 1: the sort of second element of our interview was We're
Speaker 1: going to drive around Beverly Hills in this big boat
Speaker 1: of a Cadillac. It's in El Dorado. I think I
Speaker 1: seventy four El Dorado. That reflected something in the show,
Speaker 1: but also it was the kind of car he had
Speaker 1: in Scarface. Tony Montana had and that could that be
Speaker 1: a little gimmicky for him? He's Alpaccino. Does he not
Speaker 1: want to be riding around into convertible? But he agreed
Speaker 1: to it. So we go outside a car I've never seen,
Speaker 1: let alone driven before. I'm driving al Pacino's and a
Speaker 1: shotgun and we're driving around Beverly Hills with cameras on us,
Speaker 1: and you literally I felt like I was riding through
Speaker 1: a dream. I look over to stop letting go. That
Speaker 1: is happening in my life that I'm driving al Pacino.
Speaker 1: And if he didn't want it to end, he well,
Speaker 1: go up here, take a left. I want to show
Speaker 1: you there's gonna something happen up here. And then by
Speaker 1: the end of it and we put it in there
Speaker 1: and he's like, this has just been great. What a
Speaker 1: joy to get to know you and you know you're
Speaker 1: and give me a big hug at it was just
Speaker 1: like I still think about it and I can't believe
Speaker 1: it had I have to see the tape to verify
Speaker 1: that that day actually took place. You just kind of
Speaker 1: fly back to New York without the plane. I mean
Speaker 1: that that is such a booing feeling you're you're driving
Speaker 1: eleven miles per hour around Beverly Hills in this car leven. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had the lead cards and we were in traffic.
Speaker 1: By the way, people look over and go and at
Speaker 1: one point that everyone's filming with their phones and what
Speaker 1: are you doing? Like we're making a no movie. It's
Speaker 1: called Willie ow. I was like, oh my god, I
Speaker 1: really I called my wife adds, I just need to
Speaker 1: tell you what just happened to have it on the
Speaker 1: record to make sure it did. So those are highlights,
Speaker 1: you know, career life, everything else. Just awesome, awesome days.
Speaker 1: What a collection of revealing and comfortable interviews. Classic stuff,
Speaker 1: But not all of Willie's interviews have been that comfortable.
Speaker 1: He did share one more story about the time that
Speaker 1: he was summoned to interview the great one, Wayne Gretzky.
Speaker 1: So they can't all be gems, and the greatest hockey
Speaker 1: player of all time wasn't It wasn't didn't put the
Speaker 1: biscuit in the basket in that one. Well, no, he
Speaker 1: put the biscuit in the basket. It was me. I
Speaker 1: whiffed on opening it. So this was at the two
Speaker 1: thousand ten Olympics in Vancouver, where he was sort of
Speaker 1: the Grand Ambassador at the Olympic Games meeting Canada, and
Speaker 1: I was at the time, was ten years ago. I was.
Speaker 1: I hosted a show called Way Too Early, which was
Speaker 1: on live at five thirty AM on the remember that
Speaker 1: four Morning go So in Vancouver it's on a two
Speaker 1: thirty AM. So I'm getting into the the IBC at midnight.
Speaker 1: Every night, I'm waking out at eleven PM, going to
Speaker 1: bed at seven or eight, but I'm also out shooting
Speaker 1: things during the day, trying to get on the Today Show,
Speaker 1: just going a hundred miles an hour. And so the
Speaker 1: one night I didn't go out much for obvious reasons
Speaker 1: because everyone was out while I was in bed. But
Speaker 1: I did go out one night, finally got some time out,
Speaker 1: went out with all the NBC people and my phone
Speaker 1: rang early in the morning and they said, nobody else
Speaker 1: is around with Wayne Gretzky wants to do a quick interview.
Speaker 1: And I sort of woke up and it's stupor and
Speaker 1: I was exhausted after a month of this, and let's
Speaker 1: be honest, I was a little hungover, and I wasn't
Speaker 1: feeling I was feeling a little green. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: of course, where do I come to the IBC. We'll
Speaker 1: do it in one of this little you know, this
Speaker 1: little flash studio. And so I was thinking about, all right,
Speaker 1: this is a big deal. You know, Costas is still asleep,
Speaker 1: nobody else is doing It's my turn to do it.
Speaker 1: So um, I put on I put on a shirt,
Speaker 1: and then I thought I'm gonna go for like the
Speaker 1: sweater into the jacket. Look, so basically I had like
Speaker 1: three layers on. Then I put on a blazer, and
Speaker 1: I hadn't slept in a month, and I'm hungover. And
Speaker 1: so I go into this little booth and there's Wayne Gretzky,
Speaker 1: total gentleman, and they say it's pretty hot in the booth.
Speaker 1: I don't. They hadn't fired everything up yet, you know.
Speaker 1: And I've got four layers on, and so they say,
Speaker 1: all right, three to one interview Wayne Gretzky and Chris
Speaker 1: like I've never had on TV or off. Just the
Speaker 1: water works from the forehead down. And if you've ever
Speaker 1: been in that position, the more it happens, the worst
Speaker 1: it gets. You're thinking about it, you're trying to stop
Speaker 1: it with your mind, and for some reason, nobody stopped
Speaker 1: the fight. There are producers in there. I'm going he's in,
Speaker 1: but he's gonna like throw the towel in here right now. Literally,
Speaker 1: I could have used the towel and stop this fight.
Speaker 1: Into his great credit, I'm this close to Wayne Gretzky.
Speaker 1: He's talking about how great it is to have the
Speaker 1: games in his home country. I'm just pouring sweat and
Speaker 1: he just without acknowledging it, he didn't say word, did
Speaker 1: the entire interview and just kind of gave me a
Speaker 1: pat on the back and a wink like, I don't
Speaker 1: know what's going on here, buddy, but I'm glad we
Speaker 1: got through that together. And he walked out like the
Speaker 1: gentleman he is, and my producer came in was like dude,
Speaker 1: and I said, dude, what about you canna help me
Speaker 1: out here a little bit? And of that interview now,
Speaker 1: for all times, has been known as the Sweat Sky Interview. Oh,
Speaker 1: the sweat Ski Interview. I want to search for that
Speaker 1: on YouTube. How great is Willie Guys star? Thanks to him,
Speaker 1: you can follow Willie on Instagram and Twitter, sam handle
Speaker 1: at Willie Geist and check out his Sunday sit down podcasts.
Speaker 1: The baton is now passed to Maria Taylor. Maria has
Speaker 1: become a really important voice in sports broadcasting. She's my
Speaker 1: teammate along with Kirk kerb Street on ABC's Saturday Night Football,
Speaker 1: works the sidelines on all the biggest college games, this
Speaker 1: tremendous job hosting NBA Countdown, and among her many talents,
Speaker 1: she's a gifted interviewer and Maria also has some stories
Speaker 1: to share. Maria Taylor, thank you so much, my friend,
Speaker 1: for joining me on this interesting topic. You have been
Speaker 1: in interviewers supreme and many different fronts, both with NBA
Speaker 1: coaches and college coaches, which I think are in general
Speaker 1: very different personality these So what leads to mind when
Speaker 1: you think about the challenges of conversing with another human
Speaker 1: when they are sometimes not at their best, They are
Speaker 1: in a pressurized situation, their mind is elsewhere and you
Speaker 1: have to try to get something out of them. I
Speaker 1: always joke Chris Um and you know this just from
Speaker 1: because I've seen you be a sideline reporter before and
Speaker 1: have to deal with some of these issues that we
Speaker 1: are on the front lines basically, and a lot of
Speaker 1: times coaches are in the middle of battle ground mode,
Speaker 1: so they're in an aggressive state, you know, there's ten
Speaker 1: thousand things racing through their minds, and it's not just
Speaker 1: what they want to say during halftime. It's like what
Speaker 1: happened on the first play of the game and how
Speaker 1: they want to make sure it doesn't happen when they
Speaker 1: come back for the second half. So the first thing
Speaker 1: I'm always trying to do with a sideline reporter is like,
Speaker 1: big smile, Hey I'm here. This is a different moment.
Speaker 1: Like you're trying to bring them down with your body language,
Speaker 1: Like I'm trying to be calm, But it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you're just gonna be in the way and you're
Speaker 1: and you're just gonna catch one. You gotta stay in
Speaker 1: the ring and come back for more. What I think
Speaker 1: it's interesting in your job you get to see within
Speaker 1: a three and a half hour period a coach, potentially
Speaker 1: three times pre kickoff where he's got the far away eyes,
Speaker 1: he's got the urban Meyer used used to call it,
Speaker 1: the thousand yards. Stare trying to get something out of
Speaker 1: the mayor. As you said, halftime, they're either mad because
Speaker 1: they're losing, or they're on guard because they're winning and
Speaker 1: they don't want their team to let down. And then
Speaker 1: if they win, you're out there in that sea of
Speaker 1: students where they've just been hit with a gatorade bucket.
Speaker 1: They're celebrating a win, and now you're trying to corral
Speaker 1: them because their mind is in a different place. How
Speaker 1: interesting within that amount of time, you're seeing potentially the
Speaker 1: same coach in three different ways. It's like you're riding
Speaker 1: a roller coaster of emotion with them, and you're right
Speaker 1: when they come out for that first interview. I mean
Speaker 1: they're locked in. They've just grabbed their headset, they put
Speaker 1: it around their neck. You know, we've just had the
Speaker 1: coin toss maybe, or I'm standing with him while he's
Speaker 1: watching the coin toss. So sometimes he's like getting together,
Speaker 1: you know, the kicking team or something and giving them
Speaker 1: a last minute instruction. Or he's got a guy he
Speaker 1: wants to tell us me do right before, and you
Speaker 1: guys might be throwing down to us and what I've
Speaker 1: had Dabbo just saying to me, Hey, I didn't know
Speaker 1: you played basketball. This is before the ACC championship. He's
Speaker 1: saying this to me right before we come on, and
Speaker 1: we're just having like a mini conversation. So it does
Speaker 1: depend on the coach's personality. So a dabbo is gonna
Speaker 1: be more lighthearted than when you start a conversation with
Speaker 1: Nick Saban pre kick, because he's already dialed in and
Speaker 1: all the way in Urban Myers the same way completely
Speaker 1: dialed in by the time it's time for that pre
Speaker 1: kick interview, So you kind of have to gauge what
Speaker 1: personality you're dealing with. Each time you mentioned locked in
Speaker 1: and you mentioned Saban, those two things kind of go together.
Speaker 1: Few ares locked in as saving has been. All of
Speaker 1: us who have known Nick over the years have had
Speaker 1: our I think you can call him run ins yours.
Speaker 1: Take us through that whole process and sort of where
Speaker 1: the where the storyline ended in an unexpected place. Maybe
Speaker 1: let's start with your interview with Saban the night before.
Speaker 1: Do you remember this, Chris, because you were asking him
Speaker 1: about the quarterback situation who was going to start? And
Speaker 1: we ran it on college game day the next day,
Speaker 1: and you guys had a pretty good laugh about it, right,
Speaker 1: wouldn't you say? That was the night but that was
Speaker 1: that was not the morning of the game, right, So
Speaker 1: you know, I'm thinking maybe maybe we're gonna be okay here. Um,
Speaker 1: so I have a pre kick interview with Save and
Speaker 1: it's the Louisville game, and obviously the only question anyone
Speaker 1: had is Jalen Hurd's gonna start or will to a
Speaker 1: songo by low start? And so I asked that question,
Speaker 1: and I'm pretty sure it is a response with something
Speaker 1: along the lines of, well, you might as well wait
Speaker 1: until they run out there because we're so close to
Speaker 1: kick off. It wasn't he didn't say it was gonna
Speaker 1: be Jalen was gonna be two or why. I was
Speaker 1: just like, you'll find out in two seconds, you know.
Speaker 1: Um So I knew then, like this is gonna be
Speaker 1: something that we're dealing with the entire game. At halftime,
Speaker 1: of course we're interviewing coach. They're up. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: they were playing very bad. We had seen both quarterbacks
Speaker 1: by this time. Um so it's more just a question
Speaker 1: of assessing quarterback play in the first half and and
Speaker 1: then asking so who, how do you decide who's going
Speaker 1: to get the most reps, you know, in the second half?
Speaker 1: And um he handled that one well. I think the
Speaker 1: first half or the halftime interview was the most happy
Speaker 1: he was because the team was playing well coming off
Speaker 1: of the field and then post game. I should have
Speaker 1: known this because we had um, you guys know s
Speaker 1: I D their sports information directors that worked very closely
Speaker 1: with the coaches and they're constantly in contact and getting
Speaker 1: them ready for interviews. So when I saw Josh walk
Speaker 1: up to coach and act if we could get Jalen
Speaker 1: into it, and coach was not interested, and I was
Speaker 1: having quarterback interviews right after the game, I should have
Speaker 1: known what the attitude was gonna be. So when my
Speaker 1: first question is about assessing the quarterback play, you guys
Speaker 1: all saw the reaction. Remember it was a little bit
Speaker 1: of a soliloquy, like it was like everyone's forcing me
Speaker 1: to make a comment on my quarterbacks and I don't
Speaker 1: have to do it, and I'm not gonna do it,
Speaker 1: so quit asking. And my my reaction was just like
Speaker 1: I hear you, coach, and we moved on to the
Speaker 1: defense or something like I knew that we're not barking
Speaker 1: up this tree anymore. And christ I know that you
Speaker 1: know this. But in those situations like you can't take
Speaker 1: it personal. I like if I would have been like, well,
Speaker 1: don't yell at me, then that would have just made
Speaker 1: it worst we would have all gone downhill, So you
Speaker 1: almost have to like accept it, teflon, don it and
Speaker 1: move on to the next thing. And um, the best
Speaker 1: part about the story though, is I feel like the
Speaker 1: closest one of the best relationships I have in college
Speaker 1: football is now Nick Saban because since then, now we've
Speaker 1: like gone into this Mercedes commercial where we're playing basketball
Speaker 1: and playing horse. And I've heard stories about how much
Speaker 1: he loved playing basketball and how you know that's kind
Speaker 1: of informed the type of coach that he is or
Speaker 1: why he coaches. And I've seen him let his guard
Speaker 1: down even a little bit more. And sometimes you know
Speaker 1: how it is where if you are a kid and
Speaker 1: you're the one that gets yelled at, it's because you
Speaker 1: know they like you and they want you to be
Speaker 1: your best self. That's what I've decided. I'm like coaches
Speaker 1: just coaching me up the sideline. But it was interesting
Speaker 1: when it happened. I just remember going it went back
Speaker 1: up to the booth, and I think Kurt said something like, well, look,
Speaker 1: she handled that was like twelve rounds or something like that.
Speaker 1: She stayed in there and kept boxing. But we all
Speaker 1: knew that was going to be a headline the next day.
Speaker 1: Interesting you say, out of a really uncomfortable situation can
Speaker 1: be one of the most like rewarding and fruitful relationships
Speaker 1: because it's a good guy to have trust with, and
Speaker 1: I think you have he has. You have each other's
Speaker 1: trust now more so. Haven't you had that experience before
Speaker 1: where you go through something where it's like that was
Speaker 1: so awkward and tense, but then it breeds something different,
Speaker 1: like it's it's helpful to the relationships. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you hope that it can be. I mean, over the years,
Speaker 1: have been so many tense situations with coaches and meetings
Speaker 1: where they don't like something you said in a previous
Speaker 1: broadcast or some of their platform, and that comes into
Speaker 1: the meeting and it hangs in the air, and all
Speaker 1: you're trying to do is get stuff out of them
Speaker 1: to help your viewers. We do this for the customers.
Speaker 1: You don't interview Nick Saban for yourself. We do it
Speaker 1: for the viewer, and we're trying to get them to
Speaker 1: open up and give our customers something. And those meetings
Speaker 1: can be pretty tense because those guys then skinned hold
Speaker 1: onto things and take it very personal. You know, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be surprised that down the line you and Nick
Speaker 1: Saban or colleagues, because I think he wants to get
Speaker 1: into this business and that would be interesting because the
Speaker 1: most awkward ten, I would say, openly hostile relationship I
Speaker 1: had when I interviewed a coach with Lou Holtz. But
Speaker 1: he was back at Notre Dame and it was a
Speaker 1: season opener, very big opening game with Michigan, a lot
Speaker 1: on the line for him. We flew three people to
Speaker 1: South Bend from Connecticut back in those days, a crew
Speaker 1: of three traveled to it. And then he wasn't gonna
Speaker 1: come out of his office and do it. He was
Speaker 1: gonna blow us off, and that was that would not
Speaker 1: have been good. So he talked him off the ledge,
Speaker 1: got him into the room, but he wouldn't say one
Speaker 1: word to me or even look at me except when
Speaker 1: the mic was on and the camera was rolling. And
Speaker 1: the minute the cameras rolling, he started smiling and oh
Speaker 1: the lady in the dome and there's a Notre Dame.
Speaker 1: Great at what a rivalry with Michigan. Finished the interview up,
Speaker 1: thank you, coach Mike off him snapped out of the room.
Speaker 1: Not not a word, And it was so we got
Speaker 1: what we needed, but it was so so uncomfortable. And
Speaker 1: later on, obviously Louke comes to Notre Dame and it
Speaker 1: comes to UH from ESPN, and and after leaving Notre
Speaker 1: Dame and we end up being colleagues and it all
Speaker 1: worked out in the end. But I remember how how
Speaker 1: hostile that was for a few minutes and how tough,
Speaker 1: and we have to keep your composure and still realize
Speaker 1: you're there to do a job. You know. Another funny
Speaker 1: one um that happened was the same season. You know,
Speaker 1: John Calipari is hilarious and he's loud, and he's boiterous
Speaker 1: and he's great, and um, it's a halftime interview, so
Speaker 1: we just talked about how coaches are. They're already dialed
Speaker 1: in on something. And it's the Champions Classics, so you know,
Speaker 1: Kentucky is playing Kansas. It's a blue blood game, and
Speaker 1: of course both two really want to win. And he
Speaker 1: was so upset with maybe the way his team was
Speaker 1: playing defense, I want to say, And so I asked
Speaker 1: a question about defense and he like looks at me.
Speaker 1: He's like, I mean seriously, Like I'm telling them what
Speaker 1: to do and they're not doing it. And he like
Speaker 1: grabs my arm during the interview. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've seen this, but he literally drives my arm. You
Speaker 1: can go back and watch this. And he asked me,
Speaker 1: he asked me a question. I was like, coach, I'm
Speaker 1: not one of your players, like, and I was just
Speaker 1: joking with him, like, oh, I'm one of your players.
Speaker 1: He's like grabbing me. He's asking me questions like I
Speaker 1: don't have the answers to your defense right now. You know.
Speaker 1: I wasn't expecting it, But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: like it was one of those funny moments that I
Speaker 1: would want to have on like a lifetime fun reel
Speaker 1: of like the different things that I've happened doing interviews.
Speaker 1: I would put that on there too. What do you
Speaker 1: find is the most rewarding aspect of interviewing? My favorite
Speaker 1: I've always said that being in the moments of say
Speaker 1: in NFL or NBA draft, where you're getting to you've
Speaker 1: seen the entire arc of a player's career, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. They've worked so hard from their freshman
Speaker 1: year to you know, fighting through. Maybe they had a
Speaker 1: little bit of trouble, maybe they knew they needed to
Speaker 1: work harder. Maybe you know, you've heard stories about how
Speaker 1: they became even more active in their community. Then they
Speaker 1: became a captain and they became a leader. You've watched
Speaker 1: them win all the awards, and then on the day
Speaker 1: of the draft. I always think back to the NBA
Speaker 1: Draft two seasons ago, and you're getting you know, you're
Speaker 1: getting the tears from Zion, even though he knew he
Speaker 1: was going to be the number one and overall pick.
Speaker 1: But it's still I mean, I started in South Carolina
Speaker 1: as a kid who's just trying to make it to college,
Speaker 1: you know, and now look at where I am and
Speaker 1: we're talking about the whole city of New Orleans celebrating
Speaker 1: just because my name was called, and I'm overcome with emotions.
Speaker 1: So one of the greatest things is just to even
Speaker 1: be there holding the mic, documenting that moment for a
Speaker 1: player or a person, because we get to be there
Speaker 1: in those moments that they can remember them forever and
Speaker 1: they will look back at that and think about that
Speaker 1: moment and re able to remember some of those emotions
Speaker 1: and hear how they were feeling, and we get to
Speaker 1: share that with them. So that's probably the best part
Speaker 1: of it. Maria the massive events that have shaken our world,
Speaker 1: the COVID nineteen, the George Floyd death and the response
Speaker 1: to it. Black Lives Matter, really has to reshaped the
Speaker 1: landscape for everybody, including college athletes people of that age,
Speaker 1: as you go into a new season, the idea of
Speaker 1: interviewing them with the backdrop of football and a pandemic,
Speaker 1: and football and a within a battle for social justice.
Speaker 1: How do you see, if at all, the equation changing
Speaker 1: when you talk to young people and the necessity or
Speaker 1: not of sort of engaging them on those topics or
Speaker 1: seeing if they have something to say about them. You know, Chris,
Speaker 1: It's interesting because I feel like we're in a time
Speaker 1: where we're seeing a little bit of a dynamic or
Speaker 1: a power shift where the student athletes are really realizing
Speaker 1: that their platforms matter. I mean, we've been able to
Speaker 1: see it with Cuba Hubbard, just one tweet and it
Speaker 1: creates an instant reaction from the head coach from the
Speaker 1: University um kyl and Hill Mississippi State. The ability to
Speaker 1: change the course of history is what the power that
Speaker 1: some of these student athletes have and they're just now
Speaker 1: starting to realize it. So I know that when we're
Speaker 1: interviewing them, especially in long form interviews, these are questions
Speaker 1: that are probably going to come up. We're gonna be
Speaker 1: asking about how the protest was started by the Ohio
Speaker 1: State Athletic Association and which football player initiated it, and
Speaker 1: how many conversations were had to make it come to
Speaker 1: fruition and realizing that every single time they sit down
Speaker 1: or every time they say something, they have to be
Speaker 1: using their platform wisely. And I think that it's going
Speaker 1: to be something that's interesting to watch them suss through
Speaker 1: as the season goes on. But I think it's very
Speaker 1: much still on their minds, and this might be the
Speaker 1: first time that it really is, and it's just been
Speaker 1: a trickle down to front effect. We've seen Deshaun Watson,
Speaker 1: DeAndre Hopkins. If they're tweeting about buildings on campus, then
Speaker 1: you see more Clemson players, you know, piping up and
Speaker 1: saying the same things that they too don't feel comfortable.
Speaker 1: Or the University of Texas has their athletes putting together
Speaker 1: a referendum and asking and making requests and demands of
Speaker 1: their athletic association. That's not going to stop. I don't
Speaker 1: see that stopping anytime soon. And I see really these
Speaker 1: athletes holding people accountable moving forward. I think it's a
Speaker 1: good thing. I think it's great that no longer do
Speaker 1: they feel stifled, UM, no longer than they feel like
Speaker 1: maybe their name is also only it can only be
Speaker 1: associated with the brand of their school. UM. If they
Speaker 1: don't feel comfortable, they feel comfortable speaking out. And that's
Speaker 1: going to be something that we'll we'll have to continue
Speaker 1: to hear and those are gonna be the stories we're
Speaker 1: talking about if we do have a season, if we
Speaker 1: actually do have some competition. But it's going to be interesting.
Speaker 1: I've been enjoying watching players take hold of their power
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to shape their narrative a little bit more.
Speaker 1: Last thing, we all have our lists. The list includes
Speaker 1: some coaches who are going to be honest with you,
Speaker 1: not intimidate you, be expressive. Another list for coaches fall
Speaker 1: short of that criteria. I'm not gonna ask you who's
Speaker 1: on the ladder list, because I know you're still interviewing
Speaker 1: a lot of these same people. But would you acknowledge
Speaker 1: that those lists exist? And how does it shape the
Speaker 1: experience of the preparation for you? When when a coach
Speaker 1: falls in one of those two camps. Okay, so in
Speaker 1: the second camp and just straight dread what you're gonna
Speaker 1: get um and you're like, oh no, that's on the schedule. Okay,
Speaker 1: here we go. I'm gonna have to I'm gonna put
Speaker 1: my taffl on on for this one. And then there's
Speaker 1: coaches like I mean Steve Spurrier, who's not coaching anymore,
Speaker 1: but I would always love it doesn't matter if it's
Speaker 1: a pregame, doesn't matter if it's postgame and pathtime, you're
Speaker 1: gonna get a great quote from spur because he's gonna
Speaker 1: be funny. It's probably gonna be a little bit light harder.
Speaker 1: I don't care if they're down, I don't care if
Speaker 1: they're up. He's gonna make fun of somebody, and it's
Speaker 1: just gonna be interesting. Like you gotta have the old
Speaker 1: ball coach in the first category. And again, I think
Speaker 1: when you're in the second you're just very You're trying
Speaker 1: to keep your questions as neutral as possible, like trying
Speaker 1: to find ways to not have the attack come at
Speaker 1: you if it's possible, and uh, also just knowing that
Speaker 1: no matter what happens, like I'm still a good reporter
Speaker 1: after this, you gotta build your own confidence for those.
Speaker 1: Maria Taylor, you thank her so much more than a
Speaker 1: quote good reporter. She could do it on It's tremendous
Speaker 1: to work with. You can follow her at Maria Taylor
Speaker 1: on Twitter and on Instagram, where she's very active and
Speaker 1: has a great feed. Rich Eisen, Michigan Man Rich and
Speaker 1: I became good buddies when he was a star sports
Speaker 1: center back in the day. Then he became the flagship
Speaker 1: anchor for the NFL Network, where he's been since two
Speaker 1: thousand three, hosting all of the biggest events in NFL network,
Speaker 1: most important sport in America. Also has his own show,
Speaker 1: The Rich Eyes and Show, which features just a bunch
Speaker 1: of entertaining interviews. Every single episode. Rich and I sat
Speaker 1: down and got to swapping stories where the theme became
Speaker 1: mistaken identity. Delighted to have my good friend and interview
Speaker 1: extraordinary man Rich Eyes and join us here. Rich, good
Speaker 1: to see it. Thanks for taking time. I appreciate it
Speaker 1: to see you. Chris. It's been too long, man. You
Speaker 1: do so many interviews and so many great ones, and
Speaker 1: such a breadth of character as that kind of wander
Speaker 1: through your show on YouTube and obviously have years of
Speaker 1: doing sports interviews. So when we look back they can
Speaker 1: all be perfectly crafted. They can't all be exactly as
Speaker 1: we envisioned them. And those awkward moments, which feel terrible
Speaker 1: in the moment, can can often yield a good story
Speaker 1: or two. So what leaps to mind as far as
Speaker 1: one that just went horribly sideways? Oh? Sure, um, let's
Speaker 1: let's see. Let's go with one from NFL Network. Early on,
Speaker 1: you know, we would always, um, you know, try and
Speaker 1: give as much access as possible, and try and get
Speaker 1: as many scoops as possible and utilize the NFL's you know,
Speaker 1: um inside access to our advantage and UM. But you
Speaker 1: know that that comes at a sort of a negotiation,
Speaker 1: just like any other any other news outlet. And I
Speaker 1: remember Ricky Williams, uh, member of the of the Miami
Speaker 1: Dolphins at the time, had some sort of storyline involving um,
Speaker 1: a green plant, UM that he would occasionally light up
Speaker 1: and UH would pretends give him a certain sensation. UM.
Speaker 1: And that's what everyone was talking about. And we had
Speaker 1: the opportunity to interview his teammate, Junior Sayo at the time,
Speaker 1: and the question was you know, you know, Junior doesn't
Speaker 1: want it the entire conversation to be dominated by Ricky,
Speaker 1: and you know, we don't want you to ask him
Speaker 1: at all about Ricky. And we're like, look, come on,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is what everybody's talking about. Uh, we
Speaker 1: gotta ask one question than a follow up. And you
Speaker 1: know that's the sort of song and dance. You've been
Speaker 1: through this before, Chris. And so the song and dance
Speaker 1: is finally handled. And because the last thing I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do is check my journalism degree completely at the door. Um.
Speaker 1: So we went back and forth a negotiat he's gonna
Speaker 1: join us, We're gonna talk, and he's he's ready to roll.
Speaker 1: And he proceeds to call me Rick throughout the entire interview.
Speaker 1: Uh uh yeah, Rick, Uh well Rick, you know, and
Speaker 1: you just said you feel like you could correct him.
Speaker 1: I don't you know what it's it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: what do you do year, especially when it was this
Speaker 1: whole Rigama role setting up that his access was gonna
Speaker 1: be uh in question the entire time, and he called
Speaker 1: me Rick throughout the entire and I just couldn't, like,
Speaker 1: you know, bringing up other than you know, um, how
Speaker 1: do I. It wasn't even on the radio where you
Speaker 1: could reset. You know, hey, I've got Junior say I
Speaker 1: on the Rich Eisen Show was on NFL network. Um,
Speaker 1: there really was no artful way to do it. Do
Speaker 1: you keep you have to keep from laughing were someone
Speaker 1: else on the set? You know, I was initially piste,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, like, okay, like we had
Speaker 1: to go through this whole Rigamar role just to get
Speaker 1: him to agree to do it, get the Dolphins to
Speaker 1: make him available, um, and finally have him do it,
Speaker 1: and then proceed to call me Rick throughout. I go
Speaker 1: from totally piste too, thinking is he trolling me on purpose?
Speaker 1: We had met before, Um, he knew who I was. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then it got to the point where you now it
Speaker 1: works to Chris, it's sort of a happy family if
Speaker 1: everything is um at your workplace, UM right and done right?
Speaker 1: And uh so halfway through the producers in the control room,
Speaker 1: we're having fun. You know, a couple more questions Rick,
Speaker 1: you know, like getting in my ear and so uh
Speaker 1: it was It's it turned into a gag to the
Speaker 1: point where years later, if you get a bunch of
Speaker 1: us in the room, it's brought up the fame junior
Speaker 1: say how Rick eisen um Uh interview on NFL Network. Well,
Speaker 1: on game day, Lee Corso bless his soul, used to
Speaker 1: call your fellow Michigan man and legend, Desmond Howard. He
Speaker 1: called him Dennis one time, and so Desmond became Dennis
Speaker 1: I mean forever. So that's how it goes. That's it,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean how it works. Yeah, it's the
Speaker 1: it's the celebrities who are not in the sports world.
Speaker 1: You kind of I'm a little more age. Earlier, I've
Speaker 1: told the story about eminem which was incredibly awkward. But
Speaker 1: there was an interview that would have been the worst
Speaker 1: I've ever done, except it was called off and the
Speaker 1: interview subject refused to be interviewed buying me on game days,
Speaker 1: So you ended up being interviewed about twelve feet away
Speaker 1: on a small set by leak course. So the story
Speaker 1: starts with backstage to the SPS Radio City. I had
Speaker 1: been presenting on stage back when ESPN talent were presenters,
Speaker 1: back before they got real celebrities to do it. So
Speaker 1: I'm still kind of in that glow exit the stage,
Speaker 1: and now I'm side stage with the big curtains, the ropes,
Speaker 1: the pulleys, the sandbags, in the dark, going one way,
Speaker 1: coming the other direction, heading for the stage. Is this
Speaker 1: group of people I can't really see. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: out of the dark, a huge and hard punch to
Speaker 1: my shoulder. I'm started. I look around. It's Burt Reynolds.
Speaker 1: Come on and know, hey, Birt, I met about Hey Bert. No,
Speaker 1: don't you give me that. Don't you give me that?
Speaker 1: And he's like pointing a finger in my chest. I
Speaker 1: have no idea what he's talking about. I have no
Speaker 1: clue why Burt Reynolds has punched me and is now
Speaker 1: yelling at me. You know what you did? You know
Speaker 1: what you did? Don't give me that. I have no
Speaker 1: idea what what I did. It's got to be a
Speaker 1: mistaken identity. He I didn't. I don't talk about Burt
Speaker 1: reynolds personal life. He claimed that I had when he
Speaker 1: was at his lowest point getting divorced with Lonnie Anderson,
Speaker 1: I had kicked him while he was down. What his
Speaker 1: divorce is not a topic that comes up on this show.
Speaker 1: We talked about him in relation to f s U
Speaker 1: and he was Lee Corso's college roommates, so we told
Speaker 1: old stories about Burt, but it was always in this
Speaker 1: kind of warm, glowing term. So I see him at
Speaker 1: at a Florida State football game. He will not come
Speaker 1: on the set of Corso interviews him. They have a
Speaker 1: fine time. Later on, I walk over on the sidelines
Speaker 1: at Dope Campbell Stadium, f SU legend, and then seventy
Speaker 1: plus year old Burt Reynolds comes over and get some
Speaker 1: my face again on the sidelines. You don't want to
Speaker 1: fight a seventy year old man, He said, no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't burn. I do not want to fight. I
Speaker 1: mean it's a lose lose, right, Either Burt Reynolds kicks
Speaker 1: your ass as a seveny year old man and everybody
Speaker 1: sees it, or you punch Burt Reynolds living legend on
Speaker 1: his home field and now you're now you're a villain.
Speaker 1: I mean, right, how do you There's no win there.
Speaker 1: I never found out Rich and I figured maybe maybe
Speaker 1: it was you, Maybe it was Keith, maybe it was Damn.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was one of those mistaken in any cases
Speaker 1: where somebody insulted Burt Reynolds and mentioned his divorce and
Speaker 1: he thought it was me, and he never forgave me.
Speaker 1: You never, you never found out what happened, I asked, course,
Speaker 1: so I said, would you please ask him what in
Speaker 1: the world he's talking about? I have no He would
Speaker 1: never tell me if finally came out that it was
Speaker 1: about his divorce, and I just I never mentioned Burt
Speaker 1: reynolds divorce. That's ridiculous. The only I love trading these
Speaker 1: stories here. The only thing that compares that, you know,
Speaker 1: I albeit, you know he didn't star in Cannonball run Um.
Speaker 1: But I'm on the set at NFL Total Access at
Speaker 1: the Super Bowl in Tampa between the Cardinals and the Steelers,
Speaker 1: and we're on live TV. And joining us next is
Speaker 1: Adrian Wilson, the Pro Bowl safety of the NFC each
Speaker 1: champion Cardinals, and the head coach Ken wizzen Hunt. And
Speaker 1: if you recall, that team that made the Super Bowl
Speaker 1: had a dreadful final few weeks of the season, dreadful.
Speaker 1: We were, you know, NFL Network. We saw them at
Speaker 1: the Thanksgiving night game in Philadelphia where they got waxed
Speaker 1: a short week trip. This is back when they would
Speaker 1: take West Coast teams and travel them on a short week.
Speaker 1: They didn't care and and they got waxed. And then
Speaker 1: they would go to New England and they got waxed there,
Speaker 1: they got totally waxed, but they turned it on in
Speaker 1: the playoffs and then made a magical run to the
Speaker 1: Super Bowl Arizona versus Pittsburgh. And there we are. We're
Speaker 1: welcoming on Adrian Wilson and um Ken Wizzen Hunt. And
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that we used to do
Speaker 1: all the time, which was introduced them going to break.
Speaker 1: Here they are coming on the set and shaking their
Speaker 1: hands and and I would introduce them. Here they are,
Speaker 1: and there's Adrian and here's a coach wizen on and
Speaker 1: wizzing on stairs through me and on the air just
Speaker 1: as soon as we thankfully this wasn't caught on the air,
Speaker 1: he looks at me because I heard what you said,
Speaker 1: and didn't shake my hand and sat down. And we're
Speaker 1: in the commercial break. I now have three minutes to
Speaker 1: solve this mystery before I'm on the air live with
Speaker 1: a clearly hostile guest who happens to be the head
Speaker 1: coach of one of the teams in the Super Bowl
Speaker 1: and his you know, defensive thumper on the back end,
Speaker 1: who's staring a hole through me because clearly Wizzen hunt
Speaker 1: brought him up to speed on whatever concocted thing I
Speaker 1: might have said. So of course I'm going spending the
Speaker 1: first minute thinking to my what do I say? What
Speaker 1: did I do? And I'm I didn't say anything. So
Speaker 1: I look at coach during the break there's now ninety
Speaker 1: seconds till we're back, and I say to him, I'm like,
Speaker 1: all right, I'll buy Coach, like, what what did I say?
Speaker 1: And he goes, you said we were the worst team
Speaker 1: to ever make the super Bowl, the worst playoff team
Speaker 1: to ever make the super Bowl. And I think, in
Speaker 1: my head, I'm like, first of all, that doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like anything I would say. I'm not like a hot
Speaker 1: tache artist or and it's not anything I would say.
Speaker 1: And then off, you know, on my MICUs open to
Speaker 1: the control room. Here's what he's saying. They get in
Speaker 1: my ear. They said, Chris collins Worth said that on
Speaker 1: inside the NFL on HBO, and I turned to him, um, like,
Speaker 1: Chris collins Worth said that, Coach, not me. I would
Speaker 1: never say that. And he's like, are you sure you
Speaker 1: didn't say that? Three too? Want go back live on
Speaker 1: NFL network. Everybody here we are holy crap, Like he
Speaker 1: didn't threaten to hit me, but they take it very personally.
Speaker 1: I mean, they take that kind of stuff very personally.
Speaker 1: There's been plenty of instances in production meetings, not not
Speaker 1: live interviews, thankfully, where the coaches are staring right through
Speaker 1: you and Matt as hell about something you said on
Speaker 1: a broadcast, but thankfully that's not live TV. And it
Speaker 1: went okay, though he didn't. He didn't. He got over
Speaker 1: leave an interview or whatever, and then you know, as
Speaker 1: he's leaving, he needed more convincing. And I said to him, look,
Speaker 1: I if I would own up to it, and and
Speaker 1: if I'm going to be tagged with it, I'd like
Speaker 1: collins Worth salaries and amount, you know salary, and and
Speaker 1: multiple Emmy awards that he goes along with it. You know,
Speaker 1: I'll take both of them. But I didn't say it.
Speaker 1: But the mistaken had did anything. We all get that.
Speaker 1: We all get that mistaken thing, right. I've had people say,
Speaker 1: you know, the insist that you're Steve Levy, Okay. Then
Speaker 1: I've had people insist that I'm John Saunders, Okay, that's
Speaker 1: harder to believe it, or insists that yes you are,
Speaker 1: you're Mike Terico don't tell me you're not. No, trust
Speaker 1: me as a friend, but we're not. We're not the
Speaker 1: same person. I mean, Rhees Davis and I get get mistaken,
Speaker 1: so I get blamed for things he said, and vice versa.
Speaker 1: But there was a much more of a resemblance. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the fan and and or interview subject mistaken at anything
Speaker 1: is frustrating. But I'd rather, you know, even though my
Speaker 1: story involved a Super Bowl coach, I would rather have
Speaker 1: a mistaken identity at the hands of of Burt Reynolds.
Speaker 1: You sure he wasn't like so addle minded he thought
Speaker 1: like you were Dom Deloise or I don't know who
Speaker 1: you're talking you're talking about, you know, Paul crew That
Speaker 1: I mean the mean Machine, the Longest Yard, original one,
Speaker 1: I mean smoking the bandit Westbound and Down. We're gonna
Speaker 1: We're gonna do what they say can't be done. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm a huge fan. I'll tell you this story.
Speaker 1: So the uh one year UM. This was back when
Speaker 1: at the Pro Football Hall of Fame where they allowed
Speaker 1: UM presenters to speak. Okay, so when you go into
Speaker 1: Pro Football Hall of Fame, you have a presenter, and
Speaker 1: they used to let that person have a speech um
Speaker 1: until um. Steve Young went in and his dad Grit
Speaker 1: introduced him, and literally Michael Jordan's style, spent his entire
Speaker 1: speech running down every slight his son had received in
Speaker 1: his life, from his kindergarten teacher to Joe Montana, I
Speaker 1: mean the whole thing. It was like an absolute airing
Speaker 1: of grievance, as a festivus, without the feats of strength,
Speaker 1: and and it went on forever and ever and ever.
Speaker 1: So they asked presenters for the next year to write
Speaker 1: out their speech and and thus it would be um,
Speaker 1: you know, vetted um, and you would know how long
Speaker 1: the speech was going to be. A few people did it,
Speaker 1: others didn't. This was the year though, that the presenter
Speaker 1: for Ralph Wilson, the owner of the Bills, was selected
Speaker 1: to be our buddy, Chris Berman. Berman couldn't be host
Speaker 1: and presenter, they up they upgraded me to host. I
Speaker 1: actually hosted the Pro Football Hall of Fame ceremony because
Speaker 1: Burman did his thing with Hey, every let's all circle
Speaker 1: of Lackey's right. So there were two others who went
Speaker 1: in in that class. They were Bullet Bob Hayes of
Speaker 1: the Cowboys and Derek Thomas of the Chiefs. They were
Speaker 1: both posthumously inducted, but the presenters were allowed to speak
Speaker 1: on their behalf and were told please keep those speeches
Speaker 1: to five minutes. Just five minutes. Thus, Bullet Bob Hayes
Speaker 1: was presented by Roger Staubach, Hall of Famer navy man
Speaker 1: did it right down to the second, literally five minutes.
Speaker 1: You could click it that it's done. After five minutes,
Speaker 1: sat down. Derrick Thomas was introduced by the time General
Speaker 1: manager of the Chiefs, Carl Peterson, who proceeded to speak
Speaker 1: perhaps five minutes for every sack Derek had in that
Speaker 1: seven sack game. And it went on and on and
Speaker 1: on on to the point where I, as host, was
Speaker 1: able to get up during the speech, go in the
Speaker 1: back to find sweet Joe Horrigan, who was the long
Speaker 1: time UM VP of Exhibits and UM and UH and
Speaker 1: Communication who put on this event, to find him to
Speaker 1: ask him what should I do? What should I do
Speaker 1: about this? He's like, I don't know. I mean, we
Speaker 1: don't have like this long cane to come, you know,
Speaker 1: Like we are like what do we do? And I'm like,
Speaker 1: all right, I guess I'll go out there and hope
Speaker 1: this ends soon as soon as I turned, staring me
Speaker 1: right in the face, sort of like Burt Reynolds like
Speaker 1: did to you without the finger, And the accusation was
Speaker 1: Roger star Back, and he goes rich. I was old,
Speaker 1: I couldn't speak longer than five minutes for Bob. How
Speaker 1: is Carl able to talk as long as he's talking
Speaker 1: about Derek? I followed the five minute rule? Did Carl
Speaker 1: never get that five minute rule? And of course I
Speaker 1: have nothing to do with this. I'm just the m
Speaker 1: C of this because Berman was circling the wagons for
Speaker 1: Ralph Wilson. And I'm staring at this thinking to myself
Speaker 1: two things. One, you know, can I work blue on
Speaker 1: this on this pod? Okay, I'm thinking to myself, holy
Speaker 1: sh it, Like Roger star Back is pissed at me.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what to say to him. And
Speaker 1: the other one is the eight year old who had
Speaker 1: watched the summer all Brookshire calling of the games of
Speaker 1: star Back under center and the offensive lineman, you know,
Speaker 1: getting up and down and watching in my basement in
Speaker 1: Staten Island, New York. And I'm thinking, I said, holy
Speaker 1: sh it, this is Roger star there was a Heisman
Speaker 1: Trophy winner. I've done it for twenty six years and
Speaker 1: there's only one where the voice the year, the year
Speaker 1: piece that connects to you to the truck, which is
Speaker 1: uh was parked way outside, two yards away. But first
Speaker 1: they they suggested, then they urged, and then they demanded
Speaker 1: that I walk out there and hook him. And the
Speaker 1: acceptance speech by this highestman trophy winner, which you just
Speaker 1: don't do. I mean, the show is gonna run long,
Speaker 1: over the top of the hour. Sometimes it's boxing as
Speaker 1: it now. I forget what it was that particular year,
Speaker 1: but the executives got very nervous because this speaker went
Speaker 1: on and he was crying, talking about his family, telling stories.
Speaker 1: You never know. Sometimes you think these guys might be
Speaker 1: really brief. I wasn't sure how long Joe Burrow was
Speaker 1: gonna go this most recent year. He went on forever.
Speaker 1: It was beautiful speech. This was Reggie Bush, and Reggie
Speaker 1: Bush went on and on and on talking about his family.
Speaker 1: Was tearful, and I that's their moment, Richie. You cannot
Speaker 1: walk out there and hook a guy. You can go
Speaker 1: to the edge and maybe kind of like try to
Speaker 1: get his peripheral vision you can. You cannot approach the
Speaker 1: podium or grab him or end it under any circumstances.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the Now they put the speech earlier,
Speaker 1: before the top of the hour to allow for that.
Speaker 1: But I'll be damned, I was gonna walk out there
Speaker 1: and end he had to give the heisman back. But
Speaker 1: you know that's another story. Rich and I also got
Speaker 1: talking about this sometimes thankless roll of m c at
Speaker 1: these various galas. Now he's hosted the NFL Hall of
Speaker 1: Fame Jacket Dinner. This is where the new Hall of
Speaker 1: Famers get fitted with that yellow jacket for the first time.
Speaker 1: It can be emotional. It's a big deal. One of
Speaker 1: those long evenings though with the multi tier days and
Speaker 1: sometimes the program can get a little bit unwieldy. It's
Speaker 1: also the night where the broadcaster gets a moment or
Speaker 1: and the sportswriter gets a moment annually before they get
Speaker 1: into the Hall of Fame. And Myron Cope, the long
Speaker 1: time voice of the Steelers, was being inducted into the
Speaker 1: broadcasters version of the Hall of Fame, the Rosella. You know,
Speaker 1: Myron is the guy who created a terrible talent, terrible
Speaker 1: the Steelers and you know it. And Myron was doing
Speaker 1: his speech, and I think Myron had been overserved, is
Speaker 1: the only way to describe it, because he used his
Speaker 1: speech two call out the hall for not putting certain
Speaker 1: members of the Steel Curtain team in the Hall of Fame,
Speaker 1: as if they've been overlooked, you know, like of all
Speaker 1: they only had a dozen have been there. Let correct me,
Speaker 1: like like you're you're down, You're down to a second
Speaker 1: string linebacker pretty much you know about that should be in.
Speaker 1: And he was talking about Andy Russell, who was a
Speaker 1: linebacker not very well known for the Steelers. Andy Russell
Speaker 1: should be in the hall. And the thing that really
Speaker 1: he went on and on and on and on, and
Speaker 1: I'm wondering, you know when did what? You know, how
Speaker 1: how long is this really gonna go? And um He
Speaker 1: then called out that certain people don't deserve to be
Speaker 1: in over Andy Russell, including that year's UH inductee part
Speaker 1: of the group, none other than Western Pennsylvania's finest Dan Marino.
Speaker 1: I swear to God, said Dan Marino's getting in and
Speaker 1: Andy Russell's not like that's something wrong and dance like
Speaker 1: this is big night. He's about to get his jacket
Speaker 1: he's cutting into the rubber chicken. People start booing and
Speaker 1: they were ready to throw stuff at the stage, at
Speaker 1: which point there's a phone in front of me that
Speaker 1: doesn't ring, but there's a light. Yeah, mimics the ring
Speaker 1: because it can't have an audible ring. That's lit only
Speaker 1: once in the near twelve years that I've hosted this event,
Speaker 1: and it was on that moment from again the aforementioned
Speaker 1: Joe Horgan saying what's going on up there? Like you
Speaker 1: gonna get him off, you know, And like I literally
Speaker 1: went from the top down to the bottom and kind
Speaker 1: of like stood next to him and looked at him
Speaker 1: in the same way that you're referring to, in the
Speaker 1: same way that I guess you would look at somebody
Speaker 1: who's still sitting at your table with the bill paid
Speaker 1: and dessert already eaten, and you're fifteen minutes past your
Speaker 1: reservation time that you start staring at the table like
Speaker 1: you know it's time. And I was so close to
Speaker 1: give him like a little tap on his elbow when
Speaker 1: he finally did subside, and sure enough he sent an
Speaker 1: apology letter to me. What about Dan Marino? That's great stuff.
Speaker 1: The one time the bat phone rings of the NFL
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame Jackets ceremony there. That's awesome. Iron Cope.
Speaker 1: May he rest in peace. Rich always makes me laugh,
Speaker 1: very dear and supportive friend. You can follow him on Twitter,
Speaker 1: where he's got more than one point two million followers
Speaker 1: at Rich Eyes and the same handle on Instagram. Okay,
Speaker 1: anchor like in this four person relay, Jeremy Schap proud
Speaker 1: to say that they have covered many of the same
Speaker 1: events as je me World Cup, Wimbledon, College Championship Games.
Speaker 1: He's the host of ESPNS Outside the Lines, and he's
Speaker 1: sixty the Sporting Life radio show and podcast New York
Speaker 1: Times best selling author for the awards We don't have
Speaker 1: enough time even on a double album podcast, the Peabody Award,
Speaker 1: Edward AR Murraw Award, Robert F. Kennedy Award for reporting
Speaker 1: on social justice and human rights. He's known for his
Speaker 1: way he interviews, and we'll get to Jeremy's sit down
Speaker 1: with Bob Knight and Mike Tyson, among others. But I
Speaker 1: asked him ever been surprised caught off guard by an
Speaker 1: answer in sort of a one of the mill interview.
Speaker 1: I remember once I want to I don't want to
Speaker 1: name him um at this moment because he, uh, it
Speaker 1: would be embarrassing for him. But I remember, just off
Speaker 1: the top of my head, I was talking to a
Speaker 1: famous basketball player and I was I was with him,
Speaker 1: uh um, not at a hotel, not in a public place,
Speaker 1: and his wife was nearby, and he had done some
Speaker 1: controversial things. And I asked him, you know, all the
Speaker 1: stuff that's been going on recently, uh, you know the
Speaker 1: last few years, you know what, what's your biggest regret?
Speaker 1: And he looked at me and he kind of you know,
Speaker 1: was it soda whisper says getting married, as though whispering
Speaker 1: was going to make it less offensive to the other
Speaker 1: party involved in his marriage. Right, No, he just didn't
Speaker 1: want her to hear because she was about five feet
Speaker 1: from us. So I was like, oh, next night, I
Speaker 1: asked Jeremy about the other end of the intensity spectrum
Speaker 1: interview that he did deep in the interior of Brazil
Speaker 1: with the widow of our Turo Gotti. Thunder Gotti was
Speaker 1: one of my favorite fighters ever. Loved to watch his bouts.
Speaker 1: He died in Brazil under mysterious circumstances. So Jeremy through
Speaker 1: the assignment that put him in a very charged situation.
Speaker 1: Certainly one of the ones I remember most vividly, UM
Speaker 1: was interviewing our Truro Gotti's widow. And I don't know
Speaker 1: if you remember the thunder Gotti is one was one
Speaker 1: of my favorite fighters and met a tragic and somewhat
Speaker 1: mysterious demise. Yeah, so we went to investigate his wife.
Speaker 1: Initially had been arrested after he was found dead in
Speaker 1: their hotel room in a resort near Recife. And you
Speaker 1: know he she was from Brazil, and she'd been arrested. Uh,
Speaker 1: But after a few weeks they freed her. UM and
Speaker 1: I went to interview her, and I guess we knew
Speaker 1: that she had, you know, shortly before he died, she'd
Speaker 1: got to see a divorce lawyer and they'd had his
Speaker 1: will rewritten all things you know that Um, you know,
Speaker 1: she obviously wouldn't want to be talking about in that moment.
Speaker 1: And I started asking her about it, and and we're
Speaker 1: interviewing her at I think a relative's home. It was
Speaker 1: about a five hour drive from Bellow Horizonte and and
Speaker 1: we found her and she agreed to do the interview.
Speaker 1: And I think we started the interview at like eleven
Speaker 1: o'clock at night, something like that. And you know, when
Speaker 1: I got to that stuff, she got very upset. She
Speaker 1: got very upset. And you know, you know it's hard
Speaker 1: now all these years later remember was yelling or screaming
Speaker 1: or just but she she got she got very upset
Speaker 1: with me when I brought up to her asked her
Speaker 1: about going to see a divorce lawyer shortly before our
Speaker 1: turo died. So you know, but that's what you're paid
Speaker 1: to do. You're paid to ask those questions. That's an
Speaker 1: exceptance situation. The middle of the night, in the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere in Brazil, asking a boxer's widow about his
Speaker 1: demise is about as challenging as could get. I'm not
Speaker 1: surprised that that got fraught. It got it got, it
Speaker 1: got very fraught. They're all kinds of moments and then
Speaker 1: you know, there are you know, I've had a few
Speaker 1: run ins with guys named Bobby uh Night and Fisher.
Speaker 1: Those those are interesting and and um to say the least.
Speaker 1: I mean, let let's start with Night. Obviously, everybody remembers
Speaker 1: Jeremy the famous showdown interview which you knew there would
Speaker 1: be friction going in back it's been twenty years since that,
Speaker 1: if you can, the passage of time. But but you
Speaker 1: had had to run out, you tell me before before
Speaker 1: that with Night, that was not your first encounter with
Speaker 1: the general, No, it was. It was actually so I
Speaker 1: you know, he and my dad were friends, you know that. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know what it says about either
Speaker 1: of them really, um, but they were ends. And and
Speaker 1: so I've known Bob Knight. It's not like he came
Speaker 1: over the house for dinner and stuff like that. But
Speaker 1: you know, I go to Indianapolis with my dad when
Speaker 1: he was doing peace and we'd spend time with him,
Speaker 1: and we'd hang out with him a little, and he
Speaker 1: was always very generous with his time with me. Here
Speaker 1: i am, I'm twenty three years old, and I've got
Speaker 1: Bob Knight in the chair, and I'm I'm I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be tought. You know, I'm gonna ask him all the
Speaker 1: hard questions. So you know, I'm sure I asked him
Speaker 1: some easy questions for the New York Market about Eric Anderson,
Speaker 1: who at the time was playing for the Knicks. And
Speaker 1: then it's like the story in those days, like n
Speaker 1: was Bob Knight's mellowing. So I figured, I gotta ask,
Speaker 1: is Bob Knight mellowing? Is he still you know, the
Speaker 1: hard ass of you know, season on the brink, fame
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. And so I asked him, I
Speaker 1: somehow someone you know, the courage to squeak a question
Speaker 1: out of my voice box about it, and uh, he deflects,
Speaker 1: But I'm like, I'm I'm going for the follow up.
Speaker 1: So I had no idea what it was. Now, Chris,
Speaker 1: He's been thirty years, but it was a follow up.
Speaker 1: And I'll never forget the response from Bob. I do
Speaker 1: have to give him credit. I was kind of a
Speaker 1: master class and condescension. He doesn't just say you're a
Speaker 1: moron and I'm done with you. He he says, I'll
Speaker 1: never forget the exact words. You were doing very well
Speaker 1: up until now, but now you're in over your head.
Speaker 1: And I think he's I think he punctuates it. I
Speaker 1: think I don't, don't. This is bullshit. This is all bullshit.
Speaker 1: And he starts threading the microphone out from under the sweater,
Speaker 1: and you know, my heart's racing, you know, and pounding
Speaker 1: in my chest, and I'm like, oh no, I just
Speaker 1: mean you know it's you know, I just feel like
Speaker 1: it's a topic whatever kind of you know, um justification.
Speaker 1: I kind of summoned to get him back in the chair.
Speaker 1: And he gets back in the chair. You know, the
Speaker 1: the the tantrum has died off, the intimidation UH performance
Speaker 1: is over, and we resumed the interview. But that one
Speaker 1: got more heated than the one in UH that we
Speaker 1: did on ESPN about seven eight years later. At one
Speaker 1: point in that famous live interview, Night got agitated and
Speaker 1: aggressive because he felt Jeremy was interrupting him. Then he
Speaker 1: got demeaning, delivering what he might have thought was the
Speaker 1: ultimate put down. After a long pause, he told Jeremy,
Speaker 1: you got a long way to go to be as
Speaker 1: good as your dad. You better keep that in mind.
Speaker 1: That got very personal, and you knew it was going
Speaker 1: to get potentially personal coming in because he held your
Speaker 1: dad in high regard, and he he went right after you,
Speaker 1: and and of course ended up looking pretty small for it.
Speaker 1: And and you handled it brilliantly and have to be
Speaker 1: proud of that because you didn't just land the plane
Speaker 1: in in turbulent error. You ended up you know, doing
Speaker 1: I would I would imagine what you set out to do.
Speaker 1: But that had to be again you said, you said
Speaker 1: your pulse had to be going during that. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: it was nerve racking because it was um. As you
Speaker 1: know in these situations, Chris, you know, it's um, particularly
Speaker 1: that one. That one's unique and I think I think
Speaker 1: it's it's probably different from anything else you've done in
Speaker 1: ESPN in the sense of it's confrontational interview obviously with
Speaker 1: a famously cantankerous that's an understatement guy, and it was live.
Speaker 1: You know, there was no margin for error. Um. That
Speaker 1: never happens in those big news making interviews. You know,
Speaker 1: it's always a hotel suite and you've got time to
Speaker 1: kind of relax and get into a moment, and build
Speaker 1: momentum and establish a report during the course of the interview,
Speaker 1: all those things that you can't do with the limitations
Speaker 1: of live TV. Not only UM. You know, every question
Speaker 1: has to be to the point, and but you can't
Speaker 1: waste any time. We had an allotted amount of time.
Speaker 1: Do you think that night knew because it was live,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be no editing out what he was going
Speaker 1: to say. So he seized on that and exploited it.
Speaker 1: That was why he insisted on that format and UM,
Speaker 1: and that's why we did it that way. So it
Speaker 1: certainly increased the degree of difficulty. And you know, I
Speaker 1: had I was thirty one. This was by far the
Speaker 1: biggest thing I've ever done in my career, probably still is.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's a sad statement, but it's true. And you know,
Speaker 1: everybody was watching, and there had been UM, there was
Speaker 1: a lot of pressure. And I prepared, you know, and
Speaker 1: I talked to a lot of people. UM, and I prepared,
Speaker 1: But you know, there's nothing that can really prepare you
Speaker 1: for that moment. You mentioned other eccentric figures Bobby Fisher
Speaker 1: and Mike Tyson, not usually lumped together in the same sentence,
Speaker 1: but you have had famous interviews with both of them.
Speaker 1: When you're dealing with some world champions from Brooklyn Chris,
Speaker 1: there is a connection. They are linked, I stand corrected.
Speaker 1: Other than that, I don't know. I don't know about
Speaker 1: Bobby Fisher's facial tattoos or or or different kind of warfare,
Speaker 1: different kind of battle that he was involved in, also mental.
Speaker 1: But but those two guys, where you know that they're eccentric,
Speaker 1: to say the least, could be especially in Tyson's case
Speaker 1: volatile and that any word or even inflection could kind
Speaker 1: of send it in a certain direction. I mean, what,
Speaker 1: what do you remember most about the the kind of
Speaker 1: the charged atmosphere around talking to Tyson always interesting talking
Speaker 1: to Mike if that we're doing a show now, we're
Speaker 1: putting together a show, um which is kind of a
Speaker 1: compendium of Mike Tyson pieces and interviews that I've done
Speaker 1: over the years, and so I've been thinking about it lately,
Speaker 1: and he's certainly the guy WHOVE interviewed the most over
Speaker 1: the years, and he's certainly the guy that I thought
Speaker 1: was the most compelling and the most willing to kind
Speaker 1: of explore his own psyche and to let you attempt
Speaker 1: to um in a way as an amateur analyze him,
Speaker 1: which which may which is why you know, Mike Tyson
Speaker 1: interviews are interesting, and you know people people will say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, Mike Tyson is a vo little god guy.
Speaker 1: Obviously we've seen rage over the years, and we've seen
Speaker 1: moments like that in interviews from him in press conferences.
Speaker 1: But with Mike, I I never had the feeling that
Speaker 1: he was going to blow up on me because we
Speaker 1: had this rapport going back a long way now at
Speaker 1: the beginning, m you know, twenty years ago, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: I did think that was gonna But there was just
Speaker 1: something about the way that um Tyson I interacted where
Speaker 1: I felt like he respected you more if you asked
Speaker 1: him the tough questions. Did he try to intimidate you?
Speaker 1: Because intimidation is a theme these interviews. I know that
Speaker 1: Night tries to intimidate people. I looked about eleven years old,
Speaker 1: interview him a few times early on, and it was palpable.
Speaker 1: He was trying to intimidate. He tries to intimidate a
Speaker 1: room full of parters. Mike. My My attitude always was, well,
Speaker 1: if you break down the reasons why you should not
Speaker 1: be intimidated, they are a can he get you fired? No?
Speaker 1: Is he going to punch you know, because that could
Speaker 1: be a career ending Now, Tyson, you don't know, he
Speaker 1: might just haul off and try to if it. If it,
Speaker 1: if you catch him in the wrong day with the
Speaker 1: wrong question, I would never get onto. I never considered
Speaker 1: that a possibility with Mike. I gotta tell you there
Speaker 1: were a lot of like average major league pitchers who
Speaker 1: I thought were much more sensitive to tough questions than
Speaker 1: Mike Tyson was. And I think and it's not a
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say it's a ruling boxing because I've met
Speaker 1: a lot of fighters as well. I've covered fights a
Speaker 1: lot who who are sensitive to what you ask. But
Speaker 1: there there are fighters who I think what they do
Speaker 1: is so hard. What they do literally is risking their
Speaker 1: lives when they get in the ring. And so for
Speaker 1: a guy like Mike Tyson, I think, you know, he
Speaker 1: can be set off. We've seen that in certain ways.
Speaker 1: But but I think again, because we had this rapport
Speaker 1: and because he respected my father, Um, he he kind
Speaker 1: of came um to our interactions with a different viewpoint,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, I thought, you know, it was
Speaker 1: interesting though, because again I've interviewed him dozens of times
Speaker 1: in many different situations, after big fights, before big fights,
Speaker 1: in this second and third acts of his life, all
Speaker 1: that stuff, and Ralph, initially, I think I was more
Speaker 1: confrontational with him, and you know, I wanted people to
Speaker 1: remember that that you know that Mike um had done
Speaker 1: horrible things and he was a convicted rapist, and and
Speaker 1: that you know, it wasn't all just fun and games,
Speaker 1: which is what it's kind of become and I remember though,
Speaker 1: Ralph Wiley, the late great Ralph Wiley, was a mentor
Speaker 1: to me too. He said, you know, I'm watching what
Speaker 1: you're doing with Mike. And Ralph wrote beautifully about boxing,
Speaker 1: as he wrote about so many things. He said, I
Speaker 1: watched you know, your interactions with Mike, and all I
Speaker 1: want to tell you is, you know, you should you
Speaker 1: should try to make an effort to understand him so
Speaker 1: that your audience understands him. You know, I understand you know,
Speaker 1: being the tough guy and confrontational and all that, but um,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to be the interviewer. Um. And you know,
Speaker 1: he told me basically bear that in mind, and it
Speaker 1: it kind of shaped the way that not only I
Speaker 1: approached Mike in the future, but a lot of interviewing.
Speaker 1: You know, there are moments where there are tough questions
Speaker 1: you have to ask, and you've got to nail it
Speaker 1: down and you've got to be willingness. But you also,
Speaker 1: you know, we're dealing a lot with people, um, whose
Speaker 1: lives are interesting to our audience, and you want to
Speaker 1: get them to a place where they're going to talk
Speaker 1: in an emotionally honest way about themselves. And sometimes Obviously,
Speaker 1: confrontation is not going to produce that response. And so, um,
Speaker 1: I think over the years, if if if you were
Speaker 1: to stack up all those moments I've had with Mike
Speaker 1: Tyson in interviews again, dozens of them, I think, Um,
Speaker 1: you found that we found places where he really does
Speaker 1: reveal himself. That's wonderful advice that Wiley gave you that
Speaker 1: because we're so used to the sparks and the heat
Speaker 1: coming from confrontation, but just taking the time to to
Speaker 1: learn about him a little bit as much as you could.
Speaker 1: And we're in times right now where we're so divisive
Speaker 1: and you're trying to connect with people and understand where
Speaker 1: they are. And I think without awareness, there can be
Speaker 1: no empathy or compassion, there can be no greater depth
Speaker 1: of understanding, which is what an interview really should be about.
Speaker 1: That that's just good advice and I wish more people
Speaker 1: employed that. And it's great that you took that lesson
Speaker 1: from from the prep for that interview and applied it
Speaker 1: later on. Yeah. No, and and again there have been
Speaker 1: moments though, I mean where there have been flare ups.
Speaker 1: I interviewed him again, This is all fresh in my
Speaker 1: mind because we've been talking about this project. But you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to bore you with the whole details.
Speaker 1: But I was interviewing him when he was starring on
Speaker 1: Broadway and the one man showed that Spike Lee was
Speaker 1: directing we're talking about And the story at that time
Speaker 1: was it's three years after the hangover. Mike Tyson, you know,
Speaker 1: the baddest man on the planet, the guy who you
Speaker 1: know went to prison convicted of rate was now, you know,
Speaker 1: a funny man, and he was the star that one
Speaker 1: of the stars of this franchise. And people were um
Speaker 1: processing their relationship with Mike Tyson in different ways. I'm
Speaker 1: asking about this and we you know, I talked about, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, how does it happen like that you were
Speaker 1: convicted rapists become this guy that you know, people love
Speaker 1: to have on late night talk shows and laugh and
Speaker 1: all that stuff, you know, And he's and he you know,
Speaker 1: and he said, well, my lawyer was and he started
Speaker 1: talking about Vince Fuller, who had been his lawyer, and
Speaker 1: and um I heard him say this many times. He said,
Speaker 1: you know, Vince Fuller was a terrible lawyer. He was
Speaker 1: a tax attorney. And Don King set me up with
Speaker 1: this terrible lawyer. There's no way I could win words
Speaker 1: basically those words in so many words. And I said, look, Mike,
Speaker 1: I've heard you say this a lot. Vince Fuller was
Speaker 1: not a tax attorney. He was a extremely eminent, prominent
Speaker 1: criminal defense attorney. He defended John Hinckley when John Hinckley
Speaker 1: attempted to assassinate the President of United States killed the
Speaker 1: police officer, I believe it, and paralyzed James Brady. And
Speaker 1: and he won um acquitto by reason of insanity. You know,
Speaker 1: he's not a tax attorney. And nobody, the best of
Speaker 1: my own if nobody had ever called him on that before.
Speaker 1: And I was sick of him misrepresenting it. And he said,
Speaker 1: I don't care what he was, and he starts, you know,
Speaker 1: getting very angry um about my pointing out that Vince
Speaker 1: Fuller was not a tax attorney, the application being that
Speaker 1: he was wrongly convicted representation. Don King had had messed
Speaker 1: up the whole thing by getting him that attorney anyway.
Speaker 1: So there are moments like that, and then they're you know,
Speaker 1: they're unpredictable moments Like I told you, this story wasn't
Speaker 1: an interview, but it was before the way In for
Speaker 1: the Clifford Etten fight in two thousand three, The Waynes
Speaker 1: in Tunica, Mississippi. The fight was in Memphis, and I'd
Speaker 1: seen Mike a couple of weeks earlier in Vegas. I
Speaker 1: got out to interview him as like a preview for
Speaker 1: this fight, his first fight in a year since Lennox
Speaker 1: Lewis laid him out. And and I come into the
Speaker 1: hotel or into the parking circle. I get out of
Speaker 1: the car with our producer Louie b Lynn, and first
Speaker 1: person we bumped into his Mike, and he's with his
Speaker 1: entourage and he's in an incredibly friendly moved like he
Speaker 1: was often very friendly with me, but even like over
Speaker 1: the top. Uh, you're my guy. It's great to see you.
Speaker 1: Anything you want, Jeremy, you know you want to come
Speaker 1: up to the suite, you know, are you thirsty? Like literally?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, that's my my things so much. I
Speaker 1: gotta get ready for the live show. I'd love to
Speaker 1: interview you, you know, during the way and of course
Speaker 1: whatever you want. You're my guy. And I say to him,
Speaker 1: I say, Mike, I gotta ask you. I saw you
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago. Everything seemed fine, you seem
Speaker 1: to be in a good frame of mind, and and
Speaker 1: you went off and you tattooed half your face. This
Speaker 1: is like a few days after the tattoo, and they
Speaker 1: had to postpone the fight because it was healing all
Speaker 1: that stuff, as I recall, And I said, Mike, why
Speaker 1: did you do it? He said, oh, you know, and
Speaker 1: he got serious, like I hate myself. I hate looking
Speaker 1: at myself. I don't want to be reminded of who
Speaker 1: I am. I mean, it was like this deep psychological
Speaker 1: stuff and he was going down the self loathing path
Speaker 1: at that point that um, you know, I just wasn't
Speaker 1: prepared to deal with in that moment. I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, well we'll talk later on the show. And
Speaker 1: you know, he's got all these all these guys standing
Speaker 1: around him, and it just seemed like a weird moment
Speaker 1: to have that talk. So I say to him, though,
Speaker 1: you know, what what does it mean? Though, Mike, what
Speaker 1: is the tattoo? I want to know? I want to
Speaker 1: be able to tell people. He said, well, it's a
Speaker 1: you know, it's um a New Zealand thing. Um. I
Speaker 1: don't know if he's said, well, yeah, it's a Mauori thing.
Speaker 1: He and I said, I say, oh, it's a Maori
Speaker 1: thing from New Zealand. And he's he says, yeah, I say,
Speaker 1: and I think. I say, like, well, David Tooa's um
Speaker 1: from New Zealand. You know, the fighter David two is
Speaker 1: from New Zealand, the heavyweight that people thought he would
Speaker 1: fight with. Something like that. And he said, I don't
Speaker 1: give up blank about David Toua, just like that, I
Speaker 1: don't give a about David Toua. I'm like, okay, he
Speaker 1: like he did like a one a d I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god. So Bobby Fisher, So yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: weird one. So the Bobby Fisher thing is the most
Speaker 1: intense experience I've had asking questions of another human being.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't an interview per se and the normal
Speaker 1: sense because it was a press conference, but it kind
Speaker 1: of devolved into an interview one on one between the
Speaker 1: two of us, and a long story short, Bobby Fisher,
Speaker 1: the Great World Chess Champion, fugitive from justice. Two thousand five,
Speaker 1: he becomes a citizen of Iceland, which allows him to
Speaker 1: be freed from prison in Japan. I fly to Iceland
Speaker 1: because I'm hoping there might be a moment as he's
Speaker 1: getting off the plane where I can talk to him,
Speaker 1: and then he's going to go back into seclusion. It's
Speaker 1: he's been the white whale for generations now of people
Speaker 1: in the business, and not just in sports. Why he
Speaker 1: never defended the championship? What went wrong with him? Why
Speaker 1: shut up all these people? Why says all these hateful things?
Speaker 1: And and uh, to my uh, to my enduring surprise,
Speaker 1: he has a press conference the day after he gets
Speaker 1: to Iceland. I've seen him at the airport the night before,
Speaker 1: and then it becomes just this confrontation between me and him,
Speaker 1: and I really thought going into it. You know, he's
Speaker 1: he's been acting so radically for so many years. And
Speaker 1: I mentioned my father to him the night before, with
Speaker 1: whom he had been very close from the age of twelve.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if he remembered him. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what do you remember? But of course a chess champion
Speaker 1: you have to have an extraordinary memory, you have to
Speaker 1: have one of the great memories. To be the greatest
Speaker 1: chess player ever, you have to have almost super human
Speaker 1: powers and memory. Anyway, he did, and it became his
Speaker 1: very ugly confrontation, and he said anti Semitic things and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, just wild things. And I was put in
Speaker 1: a position where I had to, you know, I kept
Speaker 1: asking him questions. Meanwhile, the rest of the press corps
Speaker 1: there from all over the world, they're asking him these
Speaker 1: totally innocuous, anodyne questions about whether he's gonna learn the language,
Speaker 1: if he's gonna go whale watching. You know nothing about
Speaker 1: none of the real questions. I'm not making it up,
Speaker 1: none of them. And so I'm put in the position
Speaker 1: of being the only one and m and the setting
Speaker 1: in needon have been awkward had you been given a
Speaker 1: one on one interview. You you're pressed in now into
Speaker 1: having to do this in a situation where for you
Speaker 1: and for him it becomes increasingly awkward because you've got
Speaker 1: the world press sort of looking on and as spectators
Speaker 1: to this evolving train wreck. And it got very ugly
Speaker 1: and firm point like I couldn't just continue asking questions.
Speaker 1: I had to basically defend my family's on or if
Speaker 1: you want to put it that uh that way, um
Speaker 1: and uh, but you were bringing around a whale watching
Speaker 1: at the end, or did you? And when Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was Bobby by the way, Yeah, will you be eating
Speaker 1: the minky whales like everyone else here. I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed this debut double album. I appreciate and applaud your stamina.
Speaker 1: I love it if you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. And I'm so grateful
Speaker 1: to Jeremy shapperd Chuse, and Maria Taylor and really guys
Speaker 1: for sharing their stories, and to this podcast co executive
Speaker 1: producer Jennifer Dempster and the producer Jason Whitehill for his
Speaker 1: ideas and editing skills. I'll talk to you again soon.
Speaker 1: M