Dustin Hoffman and Edie Falco

the Turner Classic Movie Film Festival in Hollywood. At the festival, we screen some of the greatest films of all time and then discussed them in front of an audience. We decided to show this movie about Lenny Bruce at eleven thirty in the morning. We're gonna show TUTSI at midnight. We thought we mix it up a bit here at

the Customer. In two thousand fifteen, we selected Lenny, four, film in which Hoffman portrays the groundbreaking but troubled commute and social critic Lenny Bruce, who had died just eight years prior of a drug overdose while battling ongoing obscenity charges. Lenny, shot in black and white by director Bob Fossey was nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director for Fossey, Best Actress for Valerie Paine, and Best Actor for Dustin Hoffman.

We're all the same, schluck, and it just cracks me up that we try so desperately to be unique when we're all the same. Canies and Howard Kennedy Johnson me. When you make films like this, I mean you've worked. You've made so many great films and work with so many great directors. Was Fossey some of them without a goal? For you too? To work with Fossey? No, how was it to work with Fossey? Tough? Tough? Uh? Bob was originally a choreographer, and choreographer don't have dancers coming up

to them saying, what's my motivation? They dances, do what they're told, you know. He tried to be in a sense to collaborate, but it was tough for him and it was tough for me. We had a tough time. Did he like to do a lot of takes? Yes, both of us did. The script. I thought it was problematic,

so I wasn't that anxious to do it. We went into rehearsal with the principal actors with the wonderful Valerie Paene extraordinary performance and with Valerie myself and you know, Jan Minor and I think Stanley Beck were in New York in the room and it's going rough the rehearsal, and after five days we started Monday. After five days, we're rehearsing routines, rehearsing scenes. And on Friday, Bob Fosse says, we don't have a movie. We don't have a script.

See on Monday, rehearse two weeks or three weeks, and we thought it was gonna be shelved. When Hallman came back Monday and he says, I solved it, and he interspersed it. He says, I'm going to intersperse it with interviews because he scenes there's no connective tissue to them. They don't connect. So Stanley Beck, who was wonderful and at my manager, Valerie Pete, thank you. Uh uh. Stanley

and I were close friends since we were beginning actors. Uh. And Valerie Preen and Jan Minor are going I think that's all it is, isn't. Those three are going to be interviewed throughout the movie, and He'll and I'll have an easier time of shooting it. And when when you make a film like this or any of the films you've made, I should say, do you have any kind of unique relationship or a specific relationship with the cinematographer?

Surtise This film was not manated for six Academy Awards and in every one of the major categories you would imagine Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Screenplay, and cinematography for Surtees, who made his reputation shooting a lot of Clint Eastwoods films for many, many years. Bob Surtees was one of the great cinematographers Robert Surtees, he was the cinematographer the graduate Bruce is a son. No, we were going with the father and son tense when

you should have filmed. Do you have a specific relationship with cinematographers when you make a film? Or no, No, I don't uh. I don't want to know uh where the cameras In terms of uh, I do ask about lenses sometimes if I want my hands to do something, and I say, where are you cutting? Where's your bottom frame? Because if if it's here, also I'd have to have my hands up here to have it in the shot.

Other than that, I don't really want to know. It's interesting that you say that, Alec, because one of the things I objected to with with Bob is that he posed me, and when you see it, it's gorgeous. So he was right. It was wrong. But you know, i'd be up there, and I worked so hard on these routines. Uh, I had never seen Lennie Bruce. Bob had never seen Lennie Bruce. Mike Nichols, who I talked to before I

did it, because we'd done the graduate. He and Elaine May were acting upstairs on Sunset Boulevard was it called a duplex or something nightclub, and Lenny Bruce was downstairs and in between their acts they would come downstairs and watch Bruce. Because no comedian, they said, would do a whole show improvising. You know, sometimes you do two minutes, three minutes and the rest is yours is your stuff. But Lenny would come out and not know what he

was going to say. I think the only two comedians I know since Lenny that that do that one was Robbed Mumbles, Robin Williams, and the other one was a wonderful Billy Connolly, and neither of them many times would just they would just go uh and that that takes a lot. What was the question? Um the sorry, we're talking about cinematographers and oh yeah, me and I worked hard.

I got the thirty three rpm s that Lenny had made us what we called him that we didn't call him finals and U I'd lay down on the floor and I would play. I had three months. I had about three months and I did every you know, I wrote down longhand every single line he said in all the records, and he even the ones he did over, he would always deviate and I would write them down.

And then I would go to Bob Fossie and I'd say, geez, I like what he did here because he used these sentences, are used that And I was promised, and I think that's what I got so upset about that I would be able to shoot it. We were going to shoot it, and I think that's what Bob wanted. We were going to shoot it in different clubs in Florida and with live audiences, and that's what I wanted. I want to be able to really feel like I'm doing it with

the real audience. And He'll have whatever three or four cameras at once. He agreed, and that's what we were supposed to do. And then it's probably money wouldn't allow it. So it was quite laborious sometimes to do these routines over and over again. And he would tell the camera. He would he'd be like, where you are and I'd be on the stage. He'd said, okay, now look a little bit this way, and I'll look up, now look down. Okay,

now do the routine from here to here. And you know, it kind of broke my heart because I was trying to be the guy. You know. The Foster was a great, great artist, and uh, it's funny because I just saw a him recently with that Alfred Hitchcock directed with Carrie Grant, and uh carry Grant said he had never worked with Hitchcock again after the first picture because they didn't get along because Hitchcock didn't like to collaborate. But then they

made up and they made more movies. And that Lenny Bruce was not someone you had been a fan of or had a big awareness of before them where you had no no, I just I was in New York. I just never saw him. We couldn't have, uh, you know. I mean before I was successful, we couldn't afford to go to nightclubs, you know they it was expensive. And uh, I love the jazz is what's so extorting? It was next to jazz never dates. Jazz is the same now

as it was that. It's god, dude, the score. Oh and uh and I had time no I and I had never seen him. I had never seen I don't think any comedian. I didn't go to nightclubs much. And I went out to l A because they said. Someone said to me, if you want to know Lenny Bruce, uh, you gotta go see Sally mar his mother who was alive. And I went. She was very friendly. Uh. She introduced me to one of his best friends who used to shoot up with and he in turn introduced me to

friends with Lenny. And I had a tape recorder, you know, like a wallet, not a walan is like a pearl tape recorder. And I taped everything. And she says, you want to go to Vegas because they're all there, all his friend Buddy hack It other people. And I said, oh my god, yes, And I was taking all these notes. It was the best time of research I've ever had. They all said the same thing. Uh, except Buddy Hacket. Um. Uh. They said, you know, you know Broadway, Danny Rose, I

think Willia Allen did you. And they used to get together to commit Indians, Lenny and these guys when they were you know certainly what it was, I don't know, cantors or and they said they'd sit around, do what they did and bro down, you know, tell jokes, and I studly look around. And he was always very quiet. And suddenly he's gone because he wasn't shy guy. And he's gone, and they look around. I don't know where

he is. And then they find him in the kitchen talking to the people that work in the kitchen to help. He loved to just talk to the people and and ask questions and find out stuff. I think he originally this is the stuff I had heard. Uh. They kind of say it in the movie. The musicians were more important to him than the audience, because when you do show after show after show, he if you noticed the musicians, they're always sitting like that, you know, because they rash

of a fon Monroe and uh and Lenny. Uh. Then he felt that if he could crack up the musicians, then he was getting somewhere. I think he wanted to be in Hollywood. We wanted to be an actor. Also, I had heard you shot this movie where we shot a lot of it in Florida. The nightclubs, the stage work. Yeah, one nightclub. Basically, I think the scene and when we were sitting next to each other, the scene up there

where I'm in my raincoat. And yes, when I came back after my three months, I had all this stuff to give Bob. You gotta put this in, You gotta put that in. You gotta put that. And the one thing that he kept was that scene. And the reason he did is when I was memorizing it wasn't then. You know, this is before the kind of media. You know,

you had cell phones and all the texting. Some guy heard I was doing the movie and he had been a student somewhere in Chicago, and he sent me found out my business address in New York, and he sent me a cassette and I played it word for word. It's that scene. And I got piste off at Bob because when he shot the master from upstairs, right in the back, and when I saw it, I said, he

didn't cut in. You didn't cut in and he says, no, So that's eight minutes, you know, being up there just in one shot, one shot and again he was he was right. Uh, it's nice of you to admit that. Actually, it's very generous. I've met a lot of stuff forty years later. But but do you think do you think in your I mean, obviously you're someone who when you I mean, I don't believe anything I read. But I mean, but but people really I try to minimize that in

my life and time. But but the but, but for you, obviously you know very fastidious and very very lots of questions and lots of seeking and so forth in the work you were doing. And what do you think that comes from? In terms of all the films you've made from Graduate on into Cowboy and everything like that, where you just seem so what's the word? I mean, you're so Jewish? Is that it? I'll convert If that's the thing. Is that simple, I'm gonna convert tomorrow. That's what's gonna

get me into your statusy it? But the but, but but the thing is you you just seem like you always have something to prove a lot of people got where you got and they did what you did, and you scored with these performances and the originality. But then you keep going and you still feel like you have Did you feel that way? You still have something to prove again and again and again. What drove you? I guess the same thing that still drives me. Kobe Bryant

was interviewed recently. It was before he, you know, had a step out for the season, because he heard himself. I saw the interview and I wrote it down. I told my son Jake was basketball, same question. You know, all these years of great basketball playing and he still spend so much time practicing and playing whatever. Why And he said, I guess for the challenge of every day. It's beautiful, sons. I have only one slight personal connection to Lenny Bruce and that and that was that Marvin

Worth was a dear friend. He died. Producer. He produced this some he produced to Malcolm X with Spike. He produced a lot good and he was Bruce's manager. Marvin Worthy was from Brooklyn and his wife Joe, and they were from Brooklyn. And he had the more the heaviest New York accents I've never heard in my life. His voice was down. We got a very heavy accent like this. And he said to me, I'm gonna revive Letty on Broadway, and I want you to do play Letty. I go,

what and he said, uh, he goes. I got a thousand hours of tapes of Lenny. I got thought, Julian Barry, We've got so much material and Lannis. He said, there's so much stuff we can put in there. I don't worry about that. It's all gonna work like a child. And I go and he goes in the Dusty equals to Dusty. Dusty's not the only one who could play that part. By the way, you got the only person who coul played up on him. I got huh, Sara. And he goes and he goes, He goes, and I go,

but what about the other thing? He goes, one other thing? Yeah, what about the other thing? Was one other thing? One other thing? One of the thing. I go, I'm not Jewish. He said, you're from Long Island, right, I said, yeah. He goes, You're You're half way there. The rest of them take care of its something like that. And he would have been wonderful. But when you did this film, how involved in your films? Warn you before then? Later in the casting. Oh, I have to tell your gun

glad you're asked me. Another example of Fosse's genius, uh, is that I met Honey Bruce. Uh and uh uh which came first? I met? He cast Valerie Pain before he met Honey Bruce, and then he met her, and then I met her. We you know, not together. And I couldn't believe Honey Bruce that Valerie was the reincarnation of Honey Bruce. Literally, I mean it could have been like mother and daughter. I was and I said, Bob, you had to have met the Honey Bruce before you

cast Valeries as No, it was just this intuition. I had nothing to do with any of the casting except except Stanley. He was not enough to have Stanley in it for my manager and all my films. Uh. Yeah, I mean the graduate. They've been trying for two years to cast it, and Katherine Ross and myself were the

last two two screen test after two years. And I heard that they were sitting in the screen room not particularly excited about our screen test, and I said, well, either we go with them or we don't do it. And it was that kind of a that they said that in interviews. I think Larry Terman said that the producer and uh Midnight Cowboy. Uh he uh he cast Uh, he didn't cast John Voyd. He cast some someone else

and they wouldn't let him out of his contract. And after that happened, I said, please see my friend John Voyd. We weren't close friends that we've been off for all and he says no. John Sessinger said he read for it and he doesn't have that Texas accent. He was from Yonkers. I said, yeah, but he's an actor. He can get it, you know. And John immediately went down to Texas forgot where with the tape recorder and spent whatever time and came back and and read for it

and he got the part. But he was the second choice. Kate Jackson was the first choice for Cramer versus Kramer. She was in Charlie's Angels and they were saying, oh, the film will pay back itself before we started shooting because they were so popular. And then the studio wouldn't let her out. So I kept telling them about this Meryl Streep. I had heard about it, uh, and they saw and they saw her. So there's been a few I've suggested, I've I've never demanded or you know, I don't.

I don't think that works actually unless you're directing or producing. Well, some people there, some people to have these approvals of casting and they and they utilize that in whatever way. And those are the people who they just don't get involved. They just like they just let it that all take care of itself, and that it doesn't really change what they do. You know, de Valent Hackman and I knew each other from the early days. They're much older and

and uh, we never worked together. And suddenly I'm doing this thing a few years ago. We're shooting in New Orleans a runaway jury and I have a I think a supporting part, and Gene Hackman has a leading part. And the director finds out that we knew each other. We went to the past seeing the playhouse together to kicked out after three months they're not having any talent and uh, oh my god, you guys know each other for all those time, dirty years. Yeah, we gotta do

a scene. So they wrote a scene. It's it's one of the last scenes in the movie. Takes place in a public bathroom. It's like an eight page dialogue scene. And afterwards it was lasting they shot in the movie it's over and Jean and I said, let's go out and get drunk. And we go to an Italian restaurant in New Orleans and we're getting drunk, and Hackman says, were you scared? I said, I was so scared. Man, I thought, I'm gonna I'm gonna forget my lines. He

said he felt exactly the same way. You know, because you are what you are at the beginning, you don't really change. We were unemployee actors for ten years, and he said to me, and one of the great things ever said, we were this close to each other. He says, do you feel the same way I do after you finish a movie? And he probably made a hundred twenty movies. I said, what do you feel like You'll never work again? Of course, every single time. But that's it. My conversation

with Dustin Hoffman continues after the break. You can hear from other actors in the Here's the thing, archives like Julianne Moore, who shares her special technique for getting ready to play a scene. I'm very chatty. I'd like to talk all the way up to action. I do, I do, And if you can't talk to me. I'm really disappointed. Then I get lonely, and I want to be lonely when I'm working. I want to be with my buddy. I'm going to talk to me. You talk to me, friend,

Let's be buddies. Talk to you. What did you do this morning? What do you have for dinner last night? What are you doing later today? Are you cold? Do you like that sweater? Did you like my sweater? What are you doing? Action acting? I love it. That's my favorite parts. You get this great connection with other human being, and then the scene is like, comes alive. Take a listen and here's the thing. Dot Org, this is Alec

Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. Dustin Hoffman has been nominated for the OSCAR for Best Actor seven times. He's won the award twice. Actors strive for depth and range in their work. Dustin Hoffman makes this appear effortless. There's obviously roles you played like Crame versus Cramer and all the President's men, and you seem it's I don't know what word to use. It seems closer to who you are, your voice and your appearance, and you're the

psychologic stuff that you're paying playing a contemporary character. You're not playing somebody with some disability or what have you. It's not rain man or someone who's damaged and broken like Cowboy and so forth like that. But you've done both. There's a there's a theatricality of the roles and a vividness to them, and you're not afraid to do that. Where does that come from? From being in the theater? Yeah? I mean I where are you from? I told you

from long for a long island. So how first of all, I wish we lived in the same city. How old were you when you started studying act? And when they sent you out? They sent you out for certain kinds of parts, young leading man, the young guys who I had a lot or whatever. I'm the short Jew and uh still with some acne, and I come to New York to study and they always said leading men, young leading men, juvenile's character juveniles. That's what I was designed as.

I couldn't get an agent. And that's just code for Semitic, you know, because in those days, the leading man was white Anglo Saxon Protestant, and the ethnic person was character juvenile or character Janews. It really was that way anyway. So I went out a few times. I could, you know, go to open auditions, because if you're not equity then you can't go to a regular audition, and you can't go to a regular audition until you get your equity card, and you can't get an equity card until you get

a job, so you know, catch twenty two. So the few times that I could go, it was the character juvenile and by Hooker Crook. Uh Nichols casts Katherine Ross and I in a graduate and I'd been just starting to get somewhere off Broadway doing you know, my own style of stuff. Hunchbacked German gay guy with a limp. You know, the first thing that I got mentioned for in the in the New York Times, and uh Nichols had heard about it, and uh and I got to

you're not kidding. You played a hunchback German homosexual with a limb. Ronald Ribbon. What was the production Harry Noon and Night. And the other actor was what was his Joel Joel Gray? Sorry Joel? Uh, yes, that was accurate. So uh he brings me out to test me, and I didn't want to test. I was doing for the first time in my life doing well off Broadway. I won an award and I thought, oh, I'll have a career. You know, I'll do off Broadway. And you know this

as well as I do. Uh. You know, if God has said, look alec uh, you'll never be in a movie, you'll never get leading roles. If you're struggling for years, you won't even be on Broadway. I will guarantee you a good part off Broadway for the rest of your life. You'd sign, you would, you know? Uh? And so would a hackman who moved furniture and down, you know, six flights and do val who worked midnight to eight in the post office. And I was doing waiter jobs and

a little acting teaching if I could. And it's you know, it's never changed as actors. Here you know the pain of that. Um and uh. Here he is now taking me out into l A and testing and can we do anything about his nose? I remember, And I mean, well the guy is he said, you don't and he couldn't believe it. I mean, he's the hottest director from Neil Simon Broadway and also Virginia Wolf. He did. Uh, there was no hotter director at that moment. In time he was Spielberg and he said, what do you mean

you don't want to do this part? I said, I read the book of Mr Nichols. Was on the phone. He'said, Alam in New York doing a play. I said, Benjamin Braddock in the book. He's five ft eleven, blonde hair. I says, it's Redford. I said, you don't want me and he said no. He says, I I would like to test you. He said, you mean he's not Jewish. I said, right, it's Benjamin Braddock. And he said something I've never forgotten. He says, well, maybe he's Jewish. Inside

years later he's from Berlin, Mike. He came here in the early thirties, and uh, he had his own pain because he didn't have a lot of hair. He had scarlet fever. And uh he not too long ago, just a few years ago. I read in the paper that he never understood why he cast me, and then he finally did through the analysis or something, and he said, because I was like an alter ego of him. He felt like he was me in uh, you know, on the periphery, you know, out of it, and he was

casting himself the funny looking guy. Do you know that that movie was shot and I went back to New York to collect unemployment. It was a lot, because you know, it's fifty bucks a week is getting the mostly to get and they're cutting the movie again. I read this in the newspapers and Lawrence Turman, I think it was

a New York carrents a producer. They're showing it all over the bel Air circuit, every Hills Belair, Brentwood on a movie theaters they have in the homes and over in a over again Urman said before it opened, and over and over again. People in the industry would come up to Larry, Why brilliant film you almost had if you hadn't a miscast the lead. And that was the perception.

It's interesting because speaking of that casting thing, he and I have had a little There was a whiff of this, of this, of my appreciation of his career, and you wind him mind. I remember this. I doubt you remember this.

But I go to the old Westwood Marquis Hotel because I get called to go an audition for the movie Hero and Stephen Friers is the director, and the phone rings, and this is back when I was making films in the nineties and everything, and I'm lighting one off the other and I'm gonna meet this guy and I'm gonna I'm in my car. I'm like, God, masically gonna go to the Westwood Marquis, and they just lay out the facts are like, you know, snap out of it. You're

gonna go to the Westwood Marquis. You're gonna be Steen Friars and you're gonna have a meeting with Dustin hop And I'm like, I love this guy. I want to be this movie where this guy and all of a sudden, like twenty minutes goes by and Stephen Fiers. If you know the movie Hero, where someone commits this actor, there's a case of mistake in identity, and Andy Garcia played the other role, so there has to be this case of mistaken identity between the two actors. Stephen fears literally

twenty minutes in. I mean, my dream is just taking flight, my wings. I'm flying over the west Wood Blocky Hotel. I'm gonna make my first movie with Dustin Effin Hoffman, and Stephen Fiers looks at me and goes, you know, I just realized that you don't look anything like Dustin at all, and it was like there, I'm flying. Also he shoots my balloon, my crash onto Westwood Boulevard. I'm dead on the highway there. I'll never figure to talk about. Yeah, I'm not. I'm not. Our dreams are dreams, how they

how they escape us. But I'm called the Emma right right right. But the when you do, when you show up and you work with Lessinger and you do Cowboy, do you you come up with all that and you show him did he help you? Did you Cowboy? Very briefly, he didn't want It's very similar to Freers and you. He did not want to see me because he had seen a graduate and that's the only thing he'd ever seen me in. And he was an artist. He give a ship that I was in a big hit and

suddenly an instant star. He wanted the right person, and he refused to see me. And I heard about this, and I had read the book. I thought the script was okay. It was Waldo Salt. He actually came in a room with John Votnit when we did it, and he had a wall inside tape recorder. We improvised everything. Everything was Lessener was great at that and he would go home, Uh, wald as well and write the improvisations

into the scenes that he had already written. Anyway, he wouldn't see me, and I said, please, you know, I gotta see him. He's got to see me. And he agreed. I know we're running out of time, so I go quick. Uh forty second Street. What are they called those things where you you go when you put the quarter in? I can't remember the automat, thank you, And I said, the automat. I'm gonna direct the movie of him playing

a car. You all heard it, go ahead? And I used to go there and we all did you know, to three in the morning whatever, uh, and get coffee or whatever. And it was all kind of trance people there. And I said, I'll meet him in the automat, and I want to do it about one or two in the morning, because you know, and I'll dress accordingly, which is what I did. It kind of like I wore in that scene that rain Cole and I didn't shave

a few days and I greased my hair. I was auditioning and I came in and I just said, met him there, sat there and he looked at me, and he looked at you know, sparsely crowded, you know, people around he says. Oh, he says, yes, I think you'll do quite well. So the voice and all of it, you just throw that out there. You come up with that. Oh well, yeah, you keep trying. You mean, my friend Will Daniel, My friend Will Daniel, you're too comes. Where

do you find this? You get desperate? Um, but I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. That's my father. I wasn't desperate enough. No, And uh, we were rehearsing and then uh, Lesson has to shoot some exteriors before we start shooting, uh, principal photography because he's got winter and he needed winter. So John Voight and I go and he says, you don't have to talk. I says, I don't have a character. I don't have a voice. I said, I can't. I barely have a walk. No, we've had the camera cross

the street. You guys just gotta walk. We're not starting for a month, but we just need the weather, you know, the smoke coming up. Whatever was right? Okay? So John and I were walking. John Voight and I knew each other for years. I was the assistant director, which is like you know, sharpening pencils in the off Broadway when he was in From the Bridge with Bob du Valle. He was brilliant and he was up and coming star, and uh, and you know we were competitive. Actors are

always competitive. And uh, you know, if you're walking down the street, you got a script, you have a reading, or you did the read, you see another actor coming up, You've always put it behind your back, you know. Said but no, it's just something, you know, because you don't want the competition. Uh. Anyway, so we're across the street walking and says after this, I said, yeah, but I'm supposed to cough. Were at that point in the movie where you know he's got You're gonna find out the

S T B or whatever. He says, yes, says this, says, already, you do some coughing and do something not going, but you don't have to talk. Okay, I'm rehearsing out of panic, you know, trying on these limps or whatever. And uh, I said, it shouldn't be shooting. We got a month ago. I haven't found him yet. And suddenly we're walking and we paused, and I'm trying a cough and I threw up literally on John Voyd's Cowboy boots and afterwards sus

and just I think we've got it. You did, and John because he's an actor and you know we're competitive. He Passenger told me later he went up to pless and Journey said, John, let me just ask you something. Is he going to do that all throughout the Jesus because I'm not even in the scene. If he does, well, let me just say this because obviously, I mean, I got another forty five questions I could ask, but they do have a schedule here for the festival. But I

do want to say. I mean, as as as sadly as this sounds on behalf of everybody here, I want to say thank you to you because I mean, I really, from the bottom of my heart, from the bottom of my heart, you are one of the greatest movie actors that has ever lived. And this happen really actress ever, I mean, there's somebody great ful. Please help me in

a thanky Dustin everyone. Dustin Hoffman has accrued a lifetime of knowledge about acting and the entertainment industry, and despite turning seventy eight this summer, he's now embracing a very new way to share it. He's teaching an acting class online The description reads, quote Dustin teaches you everything he wishes someone had taught him unquote. You can sign up at master class dot com. Coming up actress Edie Falco Sweeney Todd was one of the first things I saw

where I thought, oh, I got it what. I don't know how, but I got it. Oh my god. That one show, This is Alec Baldwin and you were listening to hear is the thing. Edie Falco played Carmelo soprano on the groundbreaking HBO show about an Italian American mob family from New Jersey. Falco now has two kids herself, but when she was playing Carmela, she was a single woman living in New York. In this clip, we hear Falco with the late great James Gandolfini, who played her

husband Tony. You know what I don't understand, Tony. What does she have that I don't have. I did not carry on an affair with the cousin, and I will take a damn polygray effect. I want you to leave this house, Tony, please, I want you to leave me alone. TV Guide named The Sopranos the best television show in history. It's safe to say the role of Carmela made her

but Edie Falco didn't sense that. At the start, I didn't have any sense of the gravity of what we were doing, and might might have just been because I was dumb. I didn't realize, what, you know, the the larger themes at play there. But I just enjoyed it. And it was still a novel TV working on something that was good, that people enjoyed, that seemed to be well received. Yeah, that was the excitement of being on something good. Was still very new, and I wonder when

you did the show, was it fun and pleasant? Was it really tough? Was it work? Now? It was fun and pleasant because it was There was a lighthearted atmosphere. The writing was funny. There was a lot of really funny stuff, and it was a lot of these sort of goomba guys. It just felt like family to me and very easy to be with. Did you participate in the writing of the did you just turn that all over? You never got involved, not at all. I was not

at all interested. I had so much trust in certainly David Chase, but in all the staff that he carefully chosen, hand picked. I felt like they knew what they were doing. They had much better overview of what the story was about as opposed to what would Carmela do want here? You know, I just thought it was a huge relief to know that I could just let them do their thing and I would do what I was hired to do. I felt completely comfortable with that. Did they put things

about you and the characters? They got me, Tina Fey When I did thirty Rock with someone who the moment you told a story, it was an embarrassing It was in the show. Absolutely. Jim said that all the times, like I can't talk to anybody about anything, It's gonna be in the next episode. But I didn't notice it so much from my life. There was nothing going on in my life that was all that interesting, So I

didn't see a lot of it in the scripts. But I know they, like I guess, every show, to some extent, they start writing for the actors that have been hired, like, um, I eat his character right A tour that who played his sister was supposed to be a very different thing. It was supposed to be more like the mom sort

of cold and calculating and unkind. And because I ate a Tour was doing it, it's sort of morphed into this whole other like Parvody, that phase that she went through where she was sort of like an earth child. And so yeah, I'm sure they were writing based on what they perceived me to be, but I was. I

was not entirely cognizant of myth. Think they hired you for that part because you said I read an interview where you talked about how you win, and you just relaxed and said, Hey, if this happens, it happens, which we all go through when you sometimes sit there and go, I can't stress about another interview, that's right. What do you think they hired you for? I couldn't begin to tell you. I think I think probably because of that,

because I was completely non stressed. It was a script that had been bouncing around for a while, but I was doing odds at the time, and I was working a lot, and I kind of was all caught up

in that. And it came along and it called Sopranos, and I thought it's about singers or something, and it's a you know, Italian American American woman wife, and I thought that I never get cast as that I know who's going to get cast I figured it's you know, Annabella Shore or Marissa Tomay or some of these women who had played parts that sort of felt similar to that.

There's no better place to be and when you walk into an audition then knowing you're not going to get it and not caring, so, uh, you know, I really just sort of enjoyed myself and thought, it's just another audition and if you're in a good head, you can never not learn something from an audition. So I just went in and had fun. And you inadvertently you present your best self when you're doing that, and I guess,

I don't know. I was relaxed and I enjoyed myself, so I guess that's what they So I don't know. And when you got the job, was that something that was just floored you? Are you ecstatic about getting the job? Well, remember so you just just a pilot you get cast for you know, So at that point it was whatever.

It was two weeks of work, and it was a sum of money I had never seen before, which now seems not all that shocking, but back in the day it meant I could pay off my student loan and so I was able to with that one check completely pay off my student loan. It was huge. It was a huge occurrence. But again two weeks of work and then onto the next panic thing, you know, about what

what to do next. So soon after the pilot was shot, I think it was a year you told, so you waited a year to be told this was going to move forward. And David Chase called me and said, I just won't let you know this has been picked up. This is after we shot the pilot. And he said, well, nobody's gonna watch this thing, but I'm proud of what

we made or whatever. And David was also apparently he put his head in his hand and said, oh no when he found out it was picked up, because I don't think he had intended to have to tell more about these people. I think he was trying to get a movie made and this was almost like a spec script or something, you know. I don't think he had anticipated this going on like this, So he was had his head in his hands. Jimmy's like, what am I doing?

And I'm like, I can pay my student alone. And you know, here at his four thousand years later, and uh just goes to show you you wake up every day. I have no idea what anything is going to turn into? So well, two things that come to mind for me. One and I probably told you this before and when I would run into you, But one was I never watched TV. I just didn't have time. And I hit this period toward the last probably four seasons, definitely maybe five.

I don't want to say obsession, but my fondness for you and your character. Remember I watched him go, oh my god, I've got to be married to that kind of woman through thick and thin and smart choices, and she's a good partner. Did you sense that when you

were doing it? I loved it for that reason because it was everything that I was not, you know, I mean it was you know, I was a single woman living in New York, didn't have kids, and here I was ensconced in this life that I saw my grandparents live, you know, married with kids, deeply entrenched in a community of people. Family gatherings were huge, you know, everything that and even with Jim feeling like I was attached to

a big man who would take care of stuff. It was a tremendously um invigorating place to inhabit while I was working. It was completely diametrically opposed to what I lived when I left the set, And for that reason, I absolutely what did you live when you left the set? The life of a single actress in Manhattan? You know, I had a relatively small apartment, I had my dog,

I had my dates. But it was not you know at all what a lot other women my age, let's say, in the Midwest are certainly in my family back a number of generations. Primary and I was your boyfriend. It was when you dated other guys on the side. Was it was? And I was thrilled for it, thrilled for it. I loved it. How old were you when you first had a sense that you wanted to do that for a living? Seriously, do it for a living? Well, I didn't know that I could ever do it for a living.

I think until I was able to do it for a living, I thought I would just do it as after my waitressing gig. You know, the idea that I could support myself with it was sort of preposterous. Um. But my mom was an actress. She did stuff at arena players in Farmingdale and broad Hollow Theater and Huntington's all around Long Island. But she had a job, and she would do her plays in the weekends and at night, and I sort of thought of your job many different jobs. But she was a she was a DJ W g L,

I was a station on Long Island. She was a copywriter, and she did a million different things. She decided she wanted a job and she would get it, but then at night she'd do her plays. And I thought, that's what you do when you want to be an actor. I've got an older brother, younger brother, and a younger sister.

It's four four of us all, and were any of them also interested in the theater, not at all, even though your mother was an actress and your father was a patriot artist and be with musician for when he was younger, but then he went on to do sculpture and painting. And your parents got divorced from your how old. I have no idea, because they got divorced and then they remarried each other two other times, so it's a

very complicated childhood with that. They remarried each other and then dovorris and remarried divorce And I don't even know if because because I want to make a movie at us, I want to play this. They got divorced. When they would get divorced, how long were they apart before they were united? A matter of months, No longer it was for the first time, it was a number of years.

And you know, they kind of the kids were pitted against each other and the right against And then we found out the parents were sort of hanging out with each other again. It was, you know, horrifying for the kids that they would something get together again. Then they would have a ceremony, we would witness there. What it was, I don't know led to some psychological issues and I'm working on as we speak, but we get to that. And none of your siblings had the bug, not at all, not,

I mean did the opposite. And so did this become formal for you only when you go to Purchase or had you done plays before you went to school? Community theater plays nothing too and school plays, you know, but nothing very serious. Um. And then I went to Purchase first as a liberal arts person, and uh, I saw my some actor friends had gone into Purchase in the program, and I thought that wanted to be there, and that program had grown, Yes, and now it's become this very

estimable program on the East coast, big time. So I auditioned and went the next year as an acting student. And did you graduate? Did you finish? I did? I did? And then when you finished, what did you do? Well? Remember the league auditions? That whole thing. So we had the league auditions, and from those auditions, I got a part in a movie where I had to be on set the day after I graduated, and I thought, you know, what's everybody talking about? This is so easy. I just

kind of glided my way into this career. I didn't do anything for five plus years after that, but did a movie called Sweet Lorraine that was done up in The Cat's Skills with the guy's name was Steve Gohmer, the director. How did that go? It was? Well, it was I couldn't believe it was on a movie set, you know. It was a huge thing, and I just

graduated from school and it was crazily exciting. You know what the heck were we like eight weeks up in the Cats Skills I think it was, and kind of fell in love with all the boys in the show. You know, it was being a sleep away camp. And I remember when my agents said, I hope you're sitting down. You booked that movie? And you're gonna get paid more money than you have ever seen in your life. They're going to pay you two thousand dollars a week, which

was more money than I had ever seen. And waitressing not yet, I uh no, except on Long Island, I hadn't really happened. So it was after the movie the waitressing. Yes, in to try to keep up weekends the Rainbow Room. I was ane, thinking it would be consistent. Yes, but now what was the job for you that ended that? Like? When did you get a job and then you never went back again? You only made a living as an actress.

I was waitressing at a place called Canyon Road on seventy seven, and first it was the last waitressing job

I had. I worked in with Paul Scholzy, my friend who has actually been on a bunch of my shows with me, my great actor friend, and he was bartending, and I went off to do a thing called Cost of Living, a low budget independent thing, and I left and I was about to come back to the restaurant job, and I just had one of those sort of grace moments where I thought, no, I'm not going to come back. I don't know how this is going to work. But I'm not gonna waitress anymore. I really was one. It

was a total leap of faith. I just I'm going to live in a washing machine box, which see nicked out the box preferable to taking another order at that restaurant. So I couldn't do it anymore. So yeah, and at that I don't know. I guess um oz happened shortly after maybe. So what was the experience like working with fontana Um? You know Tom right? I I love him.

He was one of those angel guys, you know. Because I had done a movie called Laws of Gravity and it got some attention and played the sort of sundance and the the festival circuit. Tom saw it and decided he wanted to use me for stuff, and so he put me in um series called Firehouse about e MT workers and fire people or whatever. Then he cast me in homicide, or maybe it was the other way around. He just we kept putting me and stuff when I wasn't really working much. And then he said, I'm doing

the series about a prison. I have two parts. You can play the nun or you can play the correction officer. Which part you want to play? So I'll be the correction officer and that was you know, and he just decided he was going to take care of me, and he did, and he did for many years, and just you were in his troop. I was in his troop. Yeah, and I was just digital of oz. Gosh, you know, I have no idea actually, come to think of it, more than a couple. Yeah. It was just so crazy

grateful for the work. And I remember it was before cell phones. Remember Terry Kinney was on the show with me, and he was the first person I ever knew who had his own phone. I just thought he was the coolest, coolest thing going. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. It was fun, It was really really fun. And it was great to have a steady gig. And then after that, what did you do? How long between that and the Sopranos? Not long I was doing you know, I was doing uh

that that was during Sopranos. I think that was during two seasons of Sopranos. But I was doing ODZ and then I was doing Sideman play that I did for a very long time. And I was doing Odds at night and Sideman during the day, and then Sopranos came in and so I was doing there was a period of time where I was doing sort of all three of them, and I thought because they were so great

and I couldn't say no to anything. But I was very unhappy because I was exhausted and sick most of the time, screen me my voice out and it was an embarrassment of riches. But I might have done better to say no to one of them. But be that as it may, it was at a time when I couldn't imagine not doing any of those jobs. Hello, Well, I'm I'm trying to think of how to say this. I'm going to write a book. I'm writing a memoir

that's coming out in a year. And in the book, I've got some interesting things I talked about, and one of which was I celebrated my thirtieth anniversary in February this year. I went up to Los Angeles, which is was the scene of the crime from that, right, Can we talk about that? How are you on the record about that? I was wondering what that, how that affected

your career? Well, I got sober twenty three years ago and there was really not much of anything going on at the time, and I'm grateful for that also because you know, the access people have to your life nowadays. Um, I'm just glad that none of that was going on. Nobody was interested back when I was a mess um, so I was able to get kind of squared with a lot of that stuff before. Yeah, before anything big was happening in my life. I was very, very grateful

for the timing of all that. When you walk into a room in a a there's not a lot of people who have twenty five years. Yeah that people make it that far. Yeah, they might be when they do the hand raising thing. I'm in a room the other day in l A where there was three people and there might have been like six or eight of them that had over twenty years. Yeah, right, where the times right,

there's still a part of your left. I go on my anniversary, which was the last week, and just to announce it, and now I'm I'm a Buddhist, which is where what I what I do now? Yeah, I spend a great deal time at the Buddhist Center in New York, were has given my life a tremendous amount of when when in because you're not the first person I know who has supplanted sobriety interest and twelve steps sobriety with Buddhism or Buddhists of crossovers. I see a lot of

people that I know from both places. So I see, yeah, uh, Like twenty something years ago, I inadvertently ran into a meditation class and it was this teacher, and then I kind of wandered away, and then I kind of went back and it was the same teacher. I thought I was going to some other thing. This happened a number of times, and then a good five or six years ago I went back again, and here's the same darn

teacher in a different place. And I've been going consistently for I don't know, four or five years as much as I can. It feeds me in a huge way. So what do you get out of it? Well, it's not just sort of mumbo jumbo spiritual kind of it's also it's like a science of the mind really that was established years ago. And so they've got they've got history on their side. And I see the people who spend a good deal of time there, and the teacher there.

They have what I want, you know, the stick with the winners thing that I love a But you know, there there are a lot of cuckoos in there, and you know, and I love them because I understand them. But to be in a place where there somebody who really has something that I want, it's very meaningful to me, but comes harder and harder to find that that's huge And and and for you, what I'm wondering, what did it give you? What did it help you deal with?

Or manager? Well, single parenting is not for this faint of heart. Uh, shall I say? You know, you live for forty years where you're the center of your universe. You know, when you want to get a massage, you go get one, and as you know that, kids enter the picture, and it just turns your whole life. I mean, there's nothing recognizable about it. And it was really a crash course in in uh, not being the center of my universe anymore so, And I didn't always handle it great.

Spent a fair amount of time just not being okay with the fact that I couldn't control my environment. So a lot of it is about remaining calm, about being patient, about remembering what's important about patients is I think the biggest part of it. I am. I have I have a short temper that people may not believe, but you know, in in my human environment. Yeah, it's not pretty. So it has helped me in measure believe with that, Describe

your son, cute blonde. He's uh, spectacularly amazing kid and he's been through a lot, and uh he has some learning stuff and uh also a d D a d h D and all those acronyms, um, which you know, single parenting under the best of circumstances is difficult. But when you have a kid who's bouncing off the walls and then a kid who's not who's getting beat up by the kid who's bounced off the wall, it's complicated and it's difficult. Yeah, she's the sort of the survivor, yes, yes, so,

but you know she's a tough kid. She can take care of herself. Let's play sword fights. Yeah no, no, you're the sword and he's constantly beaten the crap out ever and she's learned to kind of make the make the best of it. But the fact that she has to what is a drag so um. But you know, we all had our stuff growing up in the middle child and everybody we all have some order in which we were born and the difficulties we had and being the first one or the last one or whatever, and

my kids challenges are not that unusual. But you know, I say that my daughter, my older daughter, I said to her recently. I said to her, you know, to me, a god or the presence of some kind of force like that in your life manifests itself in the instincts that you have. And I said to her, the minute you get into trouble in this life, in my experience,

is when you stopped listening to your instincts. That's all we can do is try to get them to listen to that voice in them because in the end, they're gonna do what they're gonna do. We can't make them do what we want to do. Is painful, it's shocking too.

I mean, especially in this industry. We have so many people running around, you know, telling you how great you are, and you know, making sure that every your every need is taken care of, and then you go home and your kids just couldn't care less what you're asking they do. But I think they think everybody's parents have some kind of life like this. I don't know, they exceedingly unimpressed, but you know, just to hang up the damn coat, you know what I mean? It just couldn't possibly care

less the way I want, the how's the look? And you know, all that stuff that used to be so important that I'm learning slowly to let go of. There's a human nous to Eadie Falco's characters, no matter how tough their exterior appears. Her women are vulnerable, fallible, and we can't get enough of them. You were listening to Here's the Thing, produced by Emily Botine and Kathy Russo with Melanie Hoops, ed Herbstman, Zach mcnee's, Dan O'Donnell, Christ Ripple,

Joel Werner, and Mallory Schwartz. This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing,