Jeff Daniels Was Supposed to Take Over the Family Lumber Business

His life changed when he was spotted in a summer program by Marshall Mason of New York's Trailblazing Circle Repertory Theater Company. Plucked from a life in lumber, he never waited tables. Jeff Daniels was a working actor from the start, even if it meant a few years of doing commercials mashed potatoes. That's unusual, so I tried tater tots. Daniels has always balanced stage and screen. He took on the lead role in A. R. Gurney's The Golden Age on

Broadway the year after his Hollywood breakthrough. In James Brook's Terms of Endearment, He's back on stage now. In his brilliant reimagining of Atticas Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he's been nominated for a Tony Broadways schedule is brutal, and Daniels has been fighting a cold, but he is firmly in the school of the show must go on. When you're above the title, there's a responsibility

and an obligation with that. And especially with Atticus Finch and mocking Bird, there are people who have bought tickets three months ago, and I know the choy. I know, I know what they do. I mean, if you're the star of it and you can't be a hundred percent and there might be Tony voters out there, you bag it and you just let everybody know. And you just got I'm not going to go out there less than my best. And I've gone out there and I you know,

and this is this vocal thing. It was a mucous thing. It was two weeks long, and there were there were shows. I sounded like Bill Clinton in a close up. I did the whole closing argument in a close up, and and and I found a way to make it work for them, and they forgive you. They can see that you're struggling most of them go he went on versus the understudy, which which is bad for the understudy. But I've said the only way I'm not going on is if I'm bleeding out. Well, first of all, thank you

for doing this on your one day off. Hardly heavy lifting. But but as every call on that one day off either you had ninety things to do or you did nothing. You ran about a million guys have come to absolutely nothing. Nothing. But what I'm what I want to begin by asking, was what was the genesis of you in the play? How did that start? In terms of you playing this part.

I had done news Room with Aaron Sarkin. I had done the Jobs movie with and and it was similar with then the news certain thing was a meeting with Scott Rowden and Aaron, and by the end of the breakfast meeting I had it. Um Jobs was Aaron turning me and turning to me in the third season in the Newsroom and going, look, I'm doing jobs. Do you want to play John Scully? Sure you know, send of the script when it's ready, But I was already you know it with Aaron, I'm at It's the same thing

with Mockingbird. We were doing press for Jobs and uh. Aaron and I were both there, and he just turned to me and he said, Scott Bruden is finally after years gotten the rights, and um, would you like to play at it? His finch on Broadway? I should read the book, was my response. But inside I was going, what just happened? And how hard did you have to think about that? I didn't blink. I'm too old to

worry about it. And and I and I've said, you know, the last five years, ten years, maybe it's I'm not challenged, then good night. I'm done, especially in the theater anywhere anywhere. That's why I think Netflix and Amazon and Hulu and all these were all the writers are going, Oh thank god. Otherwise I'd be out. I'd be out. And so this was immediately I knew it was a great challenge, and it was Broadway, and it was Aaron back to Broadway

and Scott Ruden's world class producer. And I said, I'm in. I'll figure out how to do it from now on. And Gregory Peck and and everything that he accomplished with the role, not only you know, the Oscar and all of that, but also in people's mind hearts and minds. I was ready to just take that on and figured

out a way to do it now. Sorkin, who I've I did this movie Malice years ago that he wrote in the early stages of his career when he was doing a lot of writing for Castle Rock and uh, and I was going to do another project that he was involved with recently that fell apart. A few Good Men live on TV for NBC everyone do it Live, but that didn't happen. But I mean, he's known as somebody who's very you know, very demanding. You know, he

likes everything. His way was Newsroom. The first time you worked with him, met him at the meeting, and you know, first day on the set was a day one. What do you think someone like Sorkin, who, let's assume he could pretty much have anybody he wants. What do you the key season you? What does he wanted you for

these parts that you've played for him? You know, I live in the Midwest, your knee deep in decency and honesty and respect for other people and all that kind of repressed kind of Protestant and um, yeah, I don't know, maybe that that permeates me. I don't know what it was about news Room. They did ask he and Scott asked.

He said, I've never seen you angry. So I told a story where I ended up getting angry and I banged the table in the four seasons, you know, breakfast and people turned in look, and I had the part. I also can handle his dialogue. So there's the whole technical aspect of that. Was Sorking in the room during the rehearsals much? Uh, yeah he was, he was around. It's painful for the playwright. Um, but he deferred to the director. Oh yeah, he had and he would they

would bring him in and uh. There were no sessions with Scott Routen and bart Shire and Aaron. I think every Saturday morning or Saturday mornings when I mean I love to have been at with a documentary camera. Oh my, Scott, eight in the morning. Yeah, there were there were, and you we got rewrites November one, first preview, previews, December opening and we had rewrites, Um, lots and lots of rewrites, restagings.

It was November was a tough month. Did you do a lot of research did you feel you had to do a lot of re search to play the partner? Now? Um, I I read the book and then I read the book again and highlighted the Atticus stuff and then put it down and never looked at it again. And for people who don't know, who haven't read the book, how different is the book from the film? Um? She goes all over the place in the book, and the film

is a lot more streamlined. Um, it's told. The movie is told from the kid's point of view, looking up at Atticus, the great white Savior, the white protagonist in the civil rights movie. Yeah, you know, that was one of the things that Aaron talked about. In the movie. He loses the case to Tom Robinson and then as he's packing up his briefcase, he goes out and the colored pastor stands up and tells everyone to stand up.

Your father's passing. And you know, growing up, Aaron and said, oh, what a what a scene, What a scene, what a scene. But today, no, no, they wouldn't. Thanks for all for trying really hard. And he's going to go to the electric chair now. But thank you, thanks for trying. You're one of the good whites. I wouldn't cut it. So that's something you didn't miss. You everybody was of one mind. Why were the play changes dramatically from the book and

the movie. I just was thinking before you got here, we're trying to think of one of the things in the movie that are not in the play. Yeah, and that's one of them. And then we go on what would basically be the act three of a play, and in in a lot of different directions, we take at it. We basically slap Atticus around until he realizes that maybe there isn't goodness in everyone, right. You know they say the N word a lot in this play. I mean they lay it out. Was there a lot of discussion

about that or no? Um? Not really? Uh, I mean sure it was. There was some sensitivity training, you know, in early rehearsals. But basically it's actors and this is what may all. That's how she refers to him, is how bob you over for is how the shaff hectit refers to. It's common. So you know, as actors you kind of slide into that, you know, and and when you know, when you're on stage doing it, that's when

it's used. And that's the only time it's used. When I did street Car, we said, you know, I'll begin to do the play or we gonna do a revisionist version. Of the play because I'm gonna smack my wife across the face and within five minutes she's back in bed with me. What are we gonna do? I'm gonna do that.

You know, we're not easy to play that. Now, we get that too, We get we get a reaction from from the audience today when certain parts of the play are, you know, kind of thrown out there, and it's it's normal for four Alabama, but you can hear the reaction a little bit sometimes. So if we are going to go back in time a little bit, how come we didn't take over the lumber company? What happened? It involved caring about wood in a way that I wasn't capable of.

I wasn't wired that way, and god knows, my dad tried for four summers. I drove truck in the yard. Get there seven thirty in the morning, go till five thirty. You're taken sixteen foot pieces of dry wall upstairs around corners, and when they snap, you have to take it back on the truck. You're driving around corners with two cement block on the back of a flatbed. You're listening to the Almond Brothers on your little am FM. You know,

seventies action version of a boom box. And you go around and you see out of the side mirror two hundred cement blocks rolling on a guy's lawn that you had just taken the corner a little too hot. I just didn't care. I just couldn't care. He put me in algebra, he putting me in trigonometry. I would study with him, we'd pull a d It's just what about your brother? What's he like? What does he do? Your brother? He runs them, He runs them, and he got quite well. Thanks.

He's more of a kind of a gambler. He's kind of he understands money bar better than I do. Uh And and it should be his, it should be fate. Fate helped out my dad, so the lumber company continues on despite my dad's efforts. It would have been it just would have been one of those you're a dreamer. I I don't. It's just my mom studied majored in art at Eastern Michigan University. So that's where I get it. It's that I got to create. I gotta create. You

can't the job. I can't. Once you start to understand you're creating a character in a musical in a community theater or college or whatever, and boom boom you start to go down that road. It's like the sharks. You gotta keep moving. Whether I'm doing acting or guitar or writing a play for my theater company, I know that's what I'm supposed to be doing and and luckily have

done it for decades. So when you get summoned where you can describe it, to go to circle rap to a program they have in the summer, that was your first sojourn into that. Yeah, I had done musicals in high school. I had done That's all they did that. We had a summer theater program run by the same high school director where we do more and more musicals. I did Harold Hill, I did Fagan and Oliver. I did t have you Unfiddler on the roof. O God, I would have killed to see that. If only no no,

I was Big Julie and guys and dolls. Big Julie walk out stand there with the arms crossed, legs spread big, you know, guys in dolls, suit, got a fedora, got a fake cigar, and then walk off stage. Intermission, the director comes up and says, your zippers down to this day, I'm triple checking that flying. So I went to Central Michigan or University basically to do dramas. I kept being told it, you're good, you should chase it. Okay, well, let's go to Central. Because I didn't have the grades

to get into Michigan or Michigan State. I just and a friend of mine was at Central and he needed a roommate and I'd want some awards there. And then I was in the library one day and I am had. I was reading the CM Life Daily newspaper student paper auditions at Eastern Michigan University downstate at Ipsilanti for play rep Festival, and the kids from all over the state auditioning. Okay, let's go see how I do. So I'll go there,

fail not get in. I got tickets to the Red Wings that night anyway in Detroit, so I'll go to Detroit, get drunk. It'll be great. And then I got called back, and I remember one of the Central Michigan guys said, uh, where are you going. I said, I got Red Wing tickets. Well you were called back, yeah, but my roommates are waiting, He goes, you idiot. You one of the directors is

from New York. His name is Marshall W. Mason. He's out here, you're I came to find out doing a favor for the guy who runs the theater department Eastern. He used to go to college with a guy. The guy said, come on out direct some college kids, pick up a check. Marshall said, okay, you're called back for the lead in his play. You're not going to a hockey game, okay, went in auditioned. People would stand there

with the scripts, you know, very presentational. And then Marshall said, yes, I'd just like to see one person, Jeff Daniels, come on up and um you We pointed to the girl. Okay, sitting two chairs three ft apart face each other, read the scene, you know, close ups, and I, you know, instinctively knew not to play it to a room of a hundred kids, and just played it to her. She played it to me and Marshall said thank you, said we're done, and cast me in the lead in Tennessee

summer and small and Ipsilanti college kids. And and by the time we were heading up to the first performance, he took me out. I going take you out for a second. Talk to you. I'm sure yeah. I mean it's the New York director. And by this point I knew um that he was the artistic director of Circle Rep in New York City, where Lanford Wilson was, where you know, we had done one of the four plays was Hot to Baltimore, Tanya, but but it was that legendary New American play place, and I was, oh, wow,

this guy's something. And he took me out and he said, basically, you know what you should do with your life, don't you. I said, well, you know, I'd like to be an actor. He goes, you should come to New York and be an apprentice the Circle Rep. I'm not promising you anything. There are no obligations, nothing, but you you have the talent to try. You decide. So I went home to my lumber yard father and farmer housewife mother, but they could see that there was something going on, and they

were told there was something going on. He turned to my mom and looked at me and said you should go, which meant no senior year at Central Michigan, getting the car and go to New York. I did. And you see how in your career you play what you're asked to play. The young guy, the innocent guy. You play flap, you play uh, you know the part where you're not putting all the pieces together, you're not the sharpest guy in the room, whatever, and then you turn around and

you're playing attic A S. Finch On. There's there's a there's a way we moved toward a kind of integrity. There's a kind of a I don't like the word gravitas. I think that's but but there's an author of course, and a lot of it was gravitas has been you got you know, I remember some guy, I mean Maron Maxwell for Gettysburg, just I gotta find out if you got the balls the authority, and it was I really

studied Jack Lemon, I really studied Dick van Dyke. They were early inspirations for me that pushed me towards the guy who walks into the wall and now is you know, dizzy and the guy who's was trying to figure out things that not the hero, not the guy with the square jaw standing there doing that. I was always that's who influenced me, and so that's what I would attack things with. Something wild is Jack Lemon and Dick Van Dyke had a baby and it was called me, that's

what it is. And and and there's no gravitas in that, you know, or at least what I interpreted from them, and and ran with and I remember having those conversations with agents and stuff, and you know, and then the news room came along, which is probably the first one, probably probably the first one where you were asked to play. I mean there were others, you know, maybe certainly Gettysburg the guy came to have that kind of steel. Um. When it was definitely it took it. It was I

was comfortably in the flawed hero. It goes all the way back to Flap, the flawed character, which is what all we played off Broadway. Nobody played a rock square jaw tom cruise hero. You know that you would kick that auto offer. So one of the first times you made was with me Losh in Ragtime. Did you have much of a relationship with him at all? He was very nice to me. It was my first movie. Must have been scared to death. Um Um. The only direction he gave me was you move your mouth. You're moving

your mouth. You when you're not talking on a speaking moving the mouth. Don't move your mouth. That that was it. And it was you know nerves. It was lip movement, it was you know, smirking. I don't know what I was doing. It was just a nervous twitch or something. That was cool because it was to watch me Losh get the performance out of Cagney in his early eighties. He didn't want to do it. Woody two movies with Woody didn't talk much to you, like when I worked

with him. No, no, what he no talking well? Good to hear personally it was now there was and you were told that going in. Don't try to be his friend, don't try to tell jokes, don't try to make him laugh. Don't you just do your job. Got it? And you know, and you get the script which no one can see, and you realize you're playing two leading roles in a Woody out My god, Okay, everything I've ever learned, please let me remember now go. There was one thing though,

on Purple Rows. They hired me so quickly. Michael Keaton had been doing it, and I mutually agreed to not do it anymore, is what I was told. So fine. I came in auditioned, got it on a Thursday, was shooting on a Monday, fully prepared to be fired in a month wasn't, wasn't wasn't wasn't. Two months in with a month ago. Now we're in. Now they can't fire me. We do a sing where I'm singing a song in a music shop with me. No one had asked if

I could sing. Jeffrey Curlin cost him director designer. Came back to the dressing room before we were going to shoot the scene or even rehearse it that morning, he goes, by the way, can you can you sing? You can sit? And I'm going they don't know, they don't know. So I went out in the rehearsal and I couldn't find the note ki of A. I'm in B flat, I'm in E flat again. I'm gonna get fired. Michael Keaton

was a better singer than you. By this point, they're going no. By this point it was like he can't the guy you can't sing? Okay, well lips think it? What what he's over there going? I'm Alabama'm Alabami bam bam bound bound Where is it there? It is? Yeah? Thanks once more, please once more? And then you know, once they had sweated enough, having made me sweat for three months. Now I'm Judy Garland now you're bing Crosby. I'm bing Crosby. Yeah. Well, the the thing with him

when I did I did Blue Jasmine. I had a small part in Blue Jasmine. And we're doing a scene that he later cut from the film where Kate Blanchet and I are in the kitchen, a big, big fancy kitchen of of an estate on Long Island, and uh, he says to me, and he wanted me to add lib something he said, you know, say to huh, you know, perhaps you should go back to that doctor, go see that doctor that she had been seeing, you know before. Uh, you know, just say some name and I go Dr

Fetterman and he went, nothing funny. And so when you're with him, it's the church and state. It's funny or it's ain't funny. Drama not funny, not funny. He didn't want anything funny. I mean, Kate Blanchett smokes a cigarette or I don't even know if she smoked, but that's what my memory tached down to. Espresso comes in and we have a fight, a physical fight, and he says kind of goes, I'm really sorry, but you know he's supposed to be at your wits end. He's supposed to

becoming a pot and I'm just not seeing it. Take two, both a couple of espressos. But she's clawing at me. I'm throwing around the couch for having a physical fight. I'm really sorry, darling, but I'm just not getting it. You're really supposed to be Look, you're going out of your mind here. And he made her do it again and again. She's like nine times, and by the ninth and tenth time, you know, we needed a straight jacket for her. She was so septemp and she won the Oscar.

You know, she won the Oscar for Best Actors. They are the good ones are merciless. The good ones are merciless. They really are. What about Brooks? Uh madman, genius, in love with the next idea, in love with writing. He thinks like no one else thinks. He was one of the great writing minds I've ever met. Yeah, that that I remember just being wowed by him. Uh that brilliance which went all over the place, I mean, and sometimes

in a crazy way. And then he comes back and it's only Jim Brooks would think of this, do that. There's a lot of big personalities on that film. Here was he how good was he at marshaling all those people on the set or didn't even bother trying? Um? I think he did the absolute best he could in a situation where you had two titans, one at the peak of her career Deborah Winger and surely who still had it going on but was further down the road and was you know, it was about whose movie it

was gonna be. I mean, this is all stuff as an off Broadway actor in one of his first movies. And just shut up and listen. Who gets the close up? You know when they put that tape measure in the old days on the close up on you and it's four ft eight inches and then turn around on her and it's three ft six even thought about the girls knew those things, you know. But I think also with Deborah Merciless, she was not going to do some gauzy

mother daughter relationship. It was gonna be love hate and her style of working is that, Um, if that has to occur off camera as well, then that's what we'll do. Yeah, I do too. She Shame a Mockingbird a couple of months ago, Very very nice of her. And she's not the only one who does that. I mean She was the first one that I was confronted with with who

used that approach. I've since been around some other people who will do something in the first week of a twelve week shoot to jar our relationship without giving names, for example, how do you jar the relationship you surprise them with? And this happened to me my first day on the set. They've been shooting for two months already, and this other actor we have an adversarial relationship in the movie, and we were doing a big group photo and I put my hand on his shoulder and said,

how you doing. You don't ever touch me again, and blah blah blah blank blank. I mean, just in front of about ten people first day. What was his problem? He's method, he's got he had some missues. But but I was also it was I'd read that he was a method and all that, so I so I didn't know which it was. He's either got anger issues or both, or or it's you know, and I a method asshole, but that's the relationship in the movie. And I said, you know, done, good, thanks for the help. I said

it was just a joke and walked past him. Didn't speak to him for two months on the set in the makeup trailer, I'm walking down towards hair. You need to move, you know, just walking towards him. And he would go out the other door and then come around the other door and go into the makeup je I used it, and so did he. And if that's if that's if that's the rule on this movie, that's the rule I've had the opposite with Nichols. Nicholas was so

kind to me. He was so kind to me. And really the scenes, he he loved them and seemed to take time with them. What was your experience with him? Another genius? Uh, it was a scene with Meryl and and and and Mike, you know, like as he should those. It was Meryl's movie in Jack's movie was called Hartmurk and so I was supporting in it and that that, and so he was He was very kind, very respectful, and but it was about Meryl, and I knew it was about Meryl. And don't don't don't I have a question.

You don't have a question, No, you don't. Um uh So, but to be around him and just to listen to him, work with Meryl in a two shot and try this, try that, try that, and it's the same thing that that Jonathan Demi had, that Jim Brooks had, and would he has that that you would you you only they would think to do that. Only the great directors think of that thing. You've thought of everything, and then they think of something and go try this, and you wouldn't

have thought of that. And that's the one that's the choice. Nichols was like that. And to see Mike and Meryl try things and miss swing and miss. What an education? The great gift do you mentioned? What do? What do you learned? Supporting Wills? The great gift you get is what you just said, is to observe, to watch other people observe, learn how to behave on camera and off and time get it into and if you can get

it in one even better. And the two shot with Meryl and heartburn, when we're both on the couch and she can't figure out what to do and it's Mike is not working and Mike's going, I know it isn't and what it is and it's six and at seven and you're sweating bullets because you know the two shot we're gonna use. The take we're gonna use is the one where she's great. So you've got to be great eight times, she's got to be great once. This is film acting class, folks. Jeff Daniels says there are both

challenges and opportunities in playing second fiddle. Besides Heartburn, he also took us porting role in The Hours, starring Julianne Moore as a miserable housewife and mother. I spoke to more about her own very different experience of motherhood. We have an incredibly tolerant business toward women with children. I have to say thank goodness for the movie business. I

remember my son was when I was doing Psycho. As a matter of fact, my son was nine months old and I was still getting used to having a baby, and he was always with me and stuff, and he was hysterical in the trailer One day and I was nursing him and trying to him to calm down. They knocked the trailer door and they said, you know, we need you. And I was like, come, and this adorable p a said, no, worries, man, take your time, and I was like, holy cow, I'm the luckiest woman in

the world. The rest of that interview at Here's the Thing dot Org more Jeff Daniel's Coming up. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. Jeff Daniels and I both worked on The Looming Tower, Alex Gibney's series about the lead up to nine eleven. Each episode had a different director, something Daniel said he was used to. I think I learned it on Newsroom because I knew there was a revolving door of directors. Five

words or less. If you can't tell me what you want in the next stake and five words less, stay in the chair, don't come near me, because I'll do it. I've been a supporting actor. I know how to direct myself. I'm gonna come in with some choices that I think this might be what it is, and you might want to see those. I'm not gonna talk about him. I don't talk about them. Well five words or less and they did that, And I'll do anything you want. You want me to get angry on take four just to

see who knows. Absolutely all you'll hear from me is okay. Oh, don't ever say to me. Give me one that I don't want to do, just so I can have it. And then I said, well, what have you? You? Is it? You know what I mean, there are directors I've worked with who I would do. I would acquiesce if Wood he tell me, I would do whatever would he asked me. I do whatever Marty asked me. But there are directors who they haven't earned that. And I'm like you, you know, I want you to have what you want. I want

to get it. I want to get your part on Newsroom and Looming Tower and God, listen all that tuff. I come in ready. I come in prepared. So usually if I've done my homework and and prepped it and all that, it's kind of what it should be in the first one or two or three, and so then it's just a matter. And I want to usually get is do you want to do another one? No, I'm done. I'm done. And the best ones are that takes that you don't remember what you just did, where it's you

chasing impulses. I don't. I really don't try to freeze it. I really don't try to. Even mocking bird Is moves around and bart Share the director has given me some little latitude on that. Um uh, don't deviate from the story or the direction, but stay in the lane. But you can weave around a little bit and I do. And that's film one is different than two, is different than three, than different than four. That comes from not being in the editing room. How do I control that?

I've seen stars go yeah, yah, yeah, I need to see I need to see the cut. I need to see all right, I know I'm not sure. Video playback, playback, good god. I remember doing a movie and she the star, you know again. I'm was brought in to help make her better, and um, take one and then she goes to playback and it's three minutes and take two, and then she goes to playback and it wasn't going well anyway. And she came back. She was, why didn't you go

to watch playback? I said, we don't have playback on Broadways. I love playback, and we're flipping a car. But it's between and and editor. They're all going to decide it's not gonna be where we think it is. Any of gourney Weaver told me that great lesson the movie you have in your head is not going to be the movie that you see. And the sooner you learn that, the easier this career will be. Um the Farrelly Brothers and he won the OUs exactly exactly. There either is

a god or there isn't. I don't know what that means. You're going, you guys are Harry and Lloyd. You're Harry and Lloyd. I would work with him again tomorrow. Sure, their energy, Pete and Bobby's energy on a side. It's just it's just a great day on a great day at work when you go with them. In number two, I walk into my trailer and all of a sudden there's Bill Murray sitting in my trailer. Bill, how are you? Yeah, yeah, I'm coming in here to do a cameo. Are you hey?

We're sharing a dressing room? Yeah, yeah, Well now he would just being nice. And then he went over and but we went in and it's it's Harry and Lloyd back in their apartment and the worm farm and all of that. But the kitchen has now been turned into a meth lab, and there's Bill Murray and a has met suit. You can't see him. Great came the cameos, going to get de Niro for a cameo and letting him play a dead guy on the sidewalk with his face down on the sidewalk. That's what the Fairly Brothers

were doing. Now you moved back to Michigan, you had a two year old, and what was the thinking? Where were you at career wise? Then? I didn't want fame. I didn't want stardom. I was scared. What do you mean by that? That demands an explanation. I wasn't comfortable in situations with a lot of famous people making career moves. At a party, I couldn't schmooze. I was the guy against the wall. Just put me in the audition room and I'll beat you. But I can't do fame you.

I can't out fame. I can't. I can't do this. So now I get to quit or I I think I just realized that if that's what it takes, then I'm going to go back to the lumber company. But that's that's essential. So at the time you move back, what had you just made and what was the impact you just shot? What I had just shot? Uh and probably been released. The Purple Rosa Cairo in terms of

endearment was out. Maybe Marie was sissy space, right, So you want to streak movies that we're making your career, Yeah, movies that were making your career. And like although many people myself included, have that failure is much more familiar to me than success. So when everything is going really, really well is when especially you sit there and go, I don't think I really really want this. I didn't want the start. Um, I didn't want to fame. I wanted to be a really good actor. That's all I

wanted to be. I knew that was I later learned that's all I could control. I can't control all this other thing. I have a wife, I have a two year old boy. What'd your wife say? She's from Michigan. Both of our families are back there in this little town. We had gone back the previous three summers leading up to the move back. We went back for a month in the summer. The next summer, went back from Memorial Day to Labor Day. The third summer, I was there

mid April Patrick's almost Halloween October. I said, we just spent six months in Michigan. And I answered the phone and occasionally I got in an airplane, went to New York and met somebody, Um, why do I have to live in New York where I can afford the apartment? And m M, what did your wife think about what you were doing she's your wife who you've been with. Either one of us knew she supported you. Yeah. And and more importantly, the agents supported me to ask you that.

The agents said, you want to what I said, Yeah, I want to move to Michigan and just do the movie career out of there. Now you can't, okay, okay, you know I wasn't you know, I wasn't like, you know, Tom Cruise on the cover of news Week. But there were offers. They said, if you're willing to get on an airplane at your own expense from Detroit to l A just to do meetings and we can couch him in a week, then okay, live wherever you want. I said, okay, deal.

And early on, for about three years, they came my way. To have movie people sitting on my little boat on this little lake, you know, driving around trying to talk me into doing a movie. Was like wow. I remember getting a FedEx from Woody Allen script for radio days. Wow. Wow. Yours is a very dramatic version of this, which is there's people who they self immolate. People will ask me about commerce versus the artistic, and I'll say movie started

missing for everybody. But a lot of people. Then they stay in l A and they stay there where someone's walking up, pulling your pants down, sticking a thermometer if you're asked, and taking your temperature of a fifteam and say how hot you are or not, which is why I don't want to live there, why I don't want to live there, And I just can't handle you know that. And then the l A drives me insane that way. But but but the actually happens, by the way, I've

got video footage to prove it. But but my point is for you, when you decided that you wanted that change, you didn't want to chase that thing, and you move and you're still there. You still live there. I do. We have a wonderful apartment here in New York. But that's it. That's that's that's the two of them, the families back there, what are your kids? Didn't trust it. I didn't trust Hollywood. I didn't trust the movie career.

I had three four great movies there, movies that were you know, of importance and um, but I didn't trust that it would last. You know, Goodman, I've read somewhere John Goodman said the limo that you're riding in tonight is rented. You know somebody else's ass is going to be in it tomorrow. And I always you know it was all so temporary. Well, I mean, I said this in this book I wrote I started making movies in eighty six, because I go through the eighties, I'm getting

to be four or five years sober. All of it has the width of like of getting high. It's another high. I'm chasing, very intoxicating. Look at social media. Now, look at the YouTube stars. Now, look at all the people. You can just see them chasing, and see them wanting, wanting, wanting, wanting, and you learn as you grow older. I'm off and asked,

when did you know that you made it? One of my answers is it's when you're at the Golden Globes for Purple Rows and Michael J. Fox is up for Back to the Future and you're both up in the same category, and I don't want to be there. I'm I got the guard up. I just I'm like, this is the last place I want to be. I want to be. This is everything I don't want um And I'm sitting there and Michael J. Fox and there's a few stars that have done this walked across and said, Hi, Michael,

nice to meet you. Oh yeah, nice to meet you. Goes. I said, you're you're what back to the future. How great for you? And he goes, I'm the star, but you're the actor, you know, And that's not on a billboard, That's not something you're gonna see, you know, uh in the star school book of how what what you mad? How what making it is? And Michael's a terrific actor. And but but for him to say something like that, you know, that mattered, and then it, you know, went away,

And then I just scrambed. When did it go away? In your mind? I made a bunch of movies no one saw for the dough No no scool as you believed in and not even you know, later on Squid in the Whales, things like that, This would Love Hurts with Bud York and nice Comedy that Bent went belly up checking out with David Leland. Joe Westerhouse wrote the first draft of it, and you know, nine great Little Independent. I fell in love with independent movies and they didn't

make any money. And so then I had to scramble, and I said, I need to do a movie that someone sees and we got a rachnophobia. Frank Marshall directed. It was his first directing thing. Uh. You know, the studio didn't think it would do much, and then it tested great and they said it's gonna make a hundred

million and then huh you and John right Goodman. Yeah, John was in it, and um he brought star power to it and uh and then it ended up making about eighty million, and you know it was like enough back then, it was enough to like get back in. But then I was still scrambling, and uh, I got Gettysburg, which was really just a four hour to night TV thing Ron Maxwell. But then it was I need to shake this up. And that's when I went out and I auditioned for about three movies, one of which was

Dumb and Dumber, which made two fifty million dollars. Yeah, something like that. I'm to felt good. That was the transition from going through an airport from who are you to Jeff Daniels. Suddenly they knew my name. And when you came back to do the sequel to that, which was how many years later, I think it was twenty. Whose idea was that we were like, how did the sequel I did come up twenty years later and they get the two of you to do it, well, you have a lot going on. They get Jim to do it.

I'm like, call me when you're ready. So I love the Fairlies. I love Jim. So with me, it was just, uh, we were doing Newsroom I think second season, and uh, all of a sudden is real and it's comment. Now we're doing deals and it's like, okay, and we're gonna shoot it this summer or in the fall. Whenever it was gonna shoot. I'm going, I'm all in. This is great, this is great. I won the Emmy, the surprise win surprise.

Why why do you say that? Up against you had Spacey and House of Cards, you had Damian Lewis and Homeland, you had Brian in uh breaking bad? Who am I forgetting Jon Hamm Madman and they cancel each other out. I don't know. But Newsroom and HBO said, just be glad, you're going just just be really, you know, enjoy the fact that you get to go sitting in the balcony. You got a nice seat. Enjoy the seat because you know Candelfoeni not until the third year did he win.

So just it's your first year. Just don't get your hopes. I've got it, got it, and the winner is yeah, and did you want it? On a Sunday night, was on a plane Monday morning for Atlanta and was dressed as Harry Dunn in Dumb and Dumber Tuesday morning, day one of shooting. That's this business. Yeah. Do you feel that in some sense everything you've done and the choices you made and the things you didn't do have led

to where you are now with this play? Yeah? Everything, it's the role of Atticus Finch is the role of a lifetime. And in order to pull off everything that the entire team pulled off, including me at least, having someone at a version of Atticus Finch that isn't beneath Gregory Pecks, doesn't stand next to him. That's all I ask um, everything you've ever learned, all the stage technique that's taken decades to learn, when to how to pull an audience in, when to push him away, the timing,

how to read different audiences or you're listening tonight, got it? Quiet? Right? I'm gonna pull you in even further. It varies, it changes, and the other actors watch. You know, there and they go with me, you know, and this it can only come from having done this for decades decades. What's the toughest part of the play for you acting wise? What's the part of the player where you think, I really

gotta find something here. There are a series of scenes that start with the closing argument that become this kind of um tumble down the hill towards the bottom for Atticus, where he finally gives up and says, yes, I know you're all right and I'm wrong. So that's a tumble, but it's it's the part of the play I enjoy the most because I don't know what I'm gonna find. The closing argument is different every night. Every night. It's been wildly ferocious, it's been quiet. I chase impulses inside it,

and that's when that's when acting is fun. That's between action and cut. You are you. It's pulling you this way, and you go, and you chase it, and you go and you go. Now you're with Tom Robinson. Now you're turning to the other lawyer and you're chewing him out. Maybe you might want to think about what you're doing for a living, because this isn't a shame on you you know, and then you talk to the audience and

you you know, and it's it's alive. It's a line almost six months into the run and it's still that way. I'm fascinated to see if it sustains for the year that I'm in this. I'm so appreciative of what the opportunity I've got. Everybody wanted this part. Everybody, they made phone calls everybody. How great that you could do it for a year. That's amazing, that's right, old school do it for a year. Yeah, it's Atticus finch Haw Fonda did Mr. Roberts for a year. Lee Jacob did Death

of a Salesman. I think for over. I mean, that's what the old guys used to do. And I've done those eighteen weekers, you know, which is that's terrific. But this one kind of demanded that you stay in it at least, you know, seven months to get to the because you know there's going to be a drive for the Tony's uh. And so now you're seven months and the Mockingbird Summer Family Show. Yeah, if it wins Best Play and then I can okay, all right, summer in

New York, why not? But in all your nine months, and let's not let's make it a year and see if you can do it, see if you can sustain it and keep it alive without veering all over the road in months six, seven, eight nine. I'm interested to see that there is there something you need to do physically, are you there's some kind of regimen you're doing. You're on your feet the whole goddamn think it's almost three hours. Well, there's that. That's so, there's the half hour walk. You

don't need to do. It is an endurance test, and so that means you have to treat it like an athlete. You have to not train so much physically. But your voice needs to be able to last eight weeks eight shows a week, So how do we do that? And you work with the vocal thing and you have learned how to throw it up in nasally and all that like singers do. Even though we're miked. Um, you eat right, I don't go out. I don't drink. I'm trying. I'm worried about September and October. You never go to dinner

after the show, No, you don't. I go home, go home, that's it. I go home. It's the obligean. I can't. I'm I'm glad. I don't drink. I don't come in hungover and try to get you know, and get through it. You know. And they're paying how much a ticket? Well, what do I care? A lot? Yeah, a lot. And and you know, we do student matinees. We've done a couple of them where it's four hundred kids and that

it's a whole different show. They listen, they're great. Um they you know when I have a fight scene with Bob Yule later on and I grabbed him by the hair. Um, it's thirty seconds of whoa, whoa, oh oh oh kick. That's a big change from the med. Yeah, and it's but they're into it. But there was also the student I don't have to do those. I can call in, Let Tom do it, let the understudy do give me a chance to do it. But I do the student matinees. And part of the reason I do it is not

just for the kids, but the teachers. My daughter is a public school teacher, and those teachers are bringing these kids. They can't afford a Broadway ticket, and this is their chance to see Mockingbird. On a Thursday at one o'clock, at a student to forget it rock and roll? Who can you know? Everybody be quiet for a little bit, audience, and you do it for them. They're never going to forget it. No, young people, they take them to the theater, they never forget it. I'm the first place I saw

when I was a kid. I'll never forget it. And these kids in the last third of the play, they're right with us, right with us, so they're listening. It's pretty cool. I did street Car on Broadway, and I'm in my room and I never thought about Brando, never, And then Opening night comes at the mid my room

and I go, what the fuck have I done? And Greg Mosha walks in and says, Marlon Brando is three hundred pounds and he's in the house up on Muholland Drive, and he's not coming down here to do street Car on Broadway tonight. Because if this audience that pay these tickets wants to see street Car on Broadway and see have Live, it's you you're at now, and for a whole generation of people, You're going to be at kas Finch, which is kind of a cool thing. How do you

feel about that? Honored? I really am, Thank you I'm honored to that means I pulled it off with his fresh, subtle, and emotionally grounded performance. Jeff Daniels does indeed pull it off. Do you hear that, Tony Voters, I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing, M two