Judith Light Once Told Her Agent, "No Soaps, No Sitcoms"

Tony's and eighteen credits in made for TV movies. There was one period of her life when she couldn't multitask on One Life to Live. She was churning out an hour of melodrama every single day, and her life was the set and her fellow actors. That's how my husband Robert and I met. They saw the chemistry between us and they wrote he was on the show thirty seven

years later, we're still here. Yeah. I know you went to Carnegie Yeah, and and and and before you got on One Life Till if you did a bunch of other things prior to One Life theater, right, and so when you and you said to your agent, no sub snow sitcom. That's right, and you had a multi year both I'm not a person work and you want to hit sitcom. Yeah, that's the way it happened. But what what what happened was I realized that I was really being very part judicial about those two forms of work.

You want one life for how long? Five years? And and how would you describe those five years? Well, you know, it takes up your whole life. And that's what it did. It took up my whole life. And because I had a big story a lot, it took up a lot of my life. And the script in my pocket going out and that's right, that's right on the subway next to some guy who probably had a gun in his pocket, and sure going I love you, Gret God, great, I love you. I love you. Don't you know how much

I love you? And some guy next to me was like, you know, you better shut up. I stab you. This writing is terrible. I might tell me about it, but they started to write. I mean, you know, that's an hour of programming every day. How do you mean? People told me be gentle with them, but it's the toughest job in show. There's no question and daytime acting. If you're in a lot and also you know for directors too, it's like, you know, you don't have you don't have

a life. So the five years was basically no life. And finally Robert said to me, he said, you have to leave. He said, if you don't leave, and he had been out in California. He said, if you don't leave, you're going to be here forever. And I said, I don't want to leave. I love my part, I love this show, I love these people, I love New York. I want to be in New York. And it's like,

he said, you're going to be here forever. He said, you've got to get up the got so when the soap is over and you decide you're gonna move to California right away? Right? Whose decision was that? Well if ultimately became mine. I mean, Robert really was the point person for getting me to get that it was time to go, and that he know he had been on the show, went to l A, did a couple of pilots and then he said, you know, you really need to be out there and I said, why why do I? He?

I said, here, I can do theater, I can do this show. He said, you'll work out there and I said, okay, so we go. So it was really him kind of before he worked well. I did a movie of the week first, and what was that? So awful? In this this is probably one of the worst things I ever did. It was called Intimate Agony. Stop stop leaving at me, Intimate Agony, the Herpies story. I'm telling you that was you.

I remember that it was intimate. They were going to call it Love Sick, but Dudley Morre's movie had come out and we couldn't call it Love Sick. It was I had to tell somebody who I was about to sleep with, I think that I had herpies? Can you recreate that? Now? I cannot? I cannot steve so anyway, So yeah, I did that, and then I did Saying Elsewhere.

I did an episode of Staying Elsewhere. I played a very, very pregnant woman who went into the operating room to shoot the doctor who was supposed to have given my husband a vastsect to me because I ended up pregnant. Were you about to break so? Well, I guess the idea was you molded over and you didn't want the baby to know this. I don't want the baby to see this. This was my back story. This is very good. No,

that was not the back story. But what happened after that was I didn't get work for a long time. My agents called me and said, oh, they want you for this pilot for this series. And then they called me back five minutes later and said, oh, we called the wrong person. Good times. So I was like, okay, it's like my mom bought me a snow globe and I'm home and someone walked up and pulled up in a car, came into my house, grabbed my snow globe and smashed and on the floor. Does that sounds well?

But it's those things that hurt in that way. I always wonder how people, in particular people now of your stature and everybody's like everybody wants you that there's this place where we go to where you got to get rid of that stuff quickly. You can't let it best. You have to let it well. Now you know, you have a family of other things that you you focus on, but there's some there's some way in which it's really important to let go of it and not hang onto it.

I find I always want to know from people who are really successful, how how of course they have those things happened to them, and how do they let it go? Well, it's like it's like years ago networks and movies, they everyone really knew where they were going to go. They sit there and say, we're gonna make this movie, whether the movie was worth it, whether it was good, whether it was going to succeed. They called you up and say we're gonna pay you this fee. And here's the

dates that we all went. It's not like the independent world now where people line everybody up and then we go if we can get the money, and if we don't get the money, sorry, And so you don't really know what you're gonna do. And I've talked to people now.

I wouldn't say anticipating problems, but I would be talking to somebody these days and I'd say, and listen, Bob, if you're financing the film and you find out that someone else comes along, who's better for you to obey his money than me, don't worry about it, like just I'll walk away. And if I do the movie, great, And if I don't do the movie, I couldn't care less.

That's really kind of you. I don't get attached to any of the projects and know that that's the that's I think the larger point about our business in life is that once you're attached to something, there's this sense in which we hold on the things and we don't let them go. This is a business for that. It's a really bad business for that, and I have to It's sort of like, if you're in it, find a new context, find another way of operating within it, because

that's a really gorgeous gesture that you make. And I think it's really wise people to know that that there are people of your stature who are willing to say that to somebody. It's like if you could give that information to people who are young and starting out. It's like, I think from this mind, because it spend a lot of time, waste a lot of time. I think, I know I did just sort of wanting it and needing it and and just let it go. How long were you out there and living out there before you did

the sitcom? We went in January and I got Who's the Boss was the first pilot that I made um shooting the series nine months after you got there. Yeah, you didn't really stress too much in l A. No, but I did. I did. I kept going up for all these auditions. I kept going for nine months. Yes, but but but wait what I where I was coming from was, hey, I just got two Emmys for a soap opera. I mean I had a lot of this

kind of you know, Where's mine? Which is a really bad ademt you realize how lucky you are that I'm here? And yeah, no, that was that was what was going on underneath covered over with Hi, how are you just want to be here? And you know that real bull and people feel it. And I said to my manager at the time, who's no longer alive, I said to her, what's going on? He said, you're enraged? I said, I'm sorry.

What And he said, you're you're furious. You have an expectation that people should just be giving you stuff, And he said it's untenable. People feel it. You walk into a room and nobody wants to be around you. Do you think he was right? I know he was right. Why because he knew he could see something that I wasn't that I was that I was in denial about that. I was unwilling to see that about myself. And so when I walked into the audition for Who's the Boss?

I was in a very different who created that show, Blake Hunter and Marty Cohen. I love talking to you because you remember all this history. Remember when you would go up for a network and you would have different shows that people were interested in you for, and you would have to put them in different positions, like for

a second, third position. Well, I was up three shows at one time at ABC, and the first one, because I had just gotten off the soap, was a thing called Staff of Life, and it was about soap opera writers, and so I put that in first position, and I put this thing called You're the Boss in second position. And then I said to her, I'm not going to go in for your the Boss. He said, why wouldn't you go in? I said, well, you know. I put the other one and it was Jay san Rich, who

was a wonderful director. I said, I want to work with j. This is good. He said, you're terrified. He said, you're afraid. I said, no, I'm not. He said, you're afraid. Pack up your stuff and go do the taped audition with Tony Danta. Just get your ass over there. And I was like, all of these things that were coming up about my myself and the things that I hadn't really looked at before in a really deep way. We're

all surfacing and he was calling me on them. And I went in and I auditioned with Tony and we had the most fabulous chemistry, and it was just when it was camera, yeah, in front of a live audience. But when I did that, I came back home and I said to her, but I said, oh, dear God, I put the wrong thing in first position. And he said, well, you're just gonna have to live with it. You're gonna

have to live with that choice. And what happened was the executives at ABC saw the tape between Tony and myself and they said, were They took care of it. They said, we're going to put her. She doesn't know what she's doing. So they called the head of staff from Life. They were sorry, and they said, putting her. We're putting her. Let go. Had you done the live thing, the four camera thing, done theater? Obviously? What was that like for that transition? It was fantastic. It's the most fun.

It's fun. It's like doing theater. And Tony was so great because Tony said, we're going to do this like a theater. Piece. It's going to be one act play, and that's how we're going to do it. So we didn't go back and do a lot of first series, went back then when it was a real audience. Yeah, exactly exactly, And we came on and they put where they put us was opposite the Cosby line up on Thursday nights. That's where we started. Not a good place for us to be. So they kept moving us around

all year because they had tested it. Remember when they used to really test shows, and the audience would tell them. They said, it tested off the charts, so we're going to find a place for it, and they did, and people found us in the summer rerun. That's how they found it. Came back the second says that he did a year or two years and they weren't doing well. Then finally some famous show got canceled and they gave them that slot. And then it was just like everything

just same with Everybody Loves Raymond. It was the same thing. Phil Rosenthal talks about it all the time. It's like they just they knew they had something and they if you would stick with it, and today they don't really stick with anything, right, So you know, you go to carne email in grade school. You're a very bright woman, very serious about your queer. When you win to Tony, did that feel good? It did? Ivan Ivant won twice. I won first for other Desert cities and then I

won for the Assembled Parties. Yeah, esecutive, it felt well. I mean, I mean, when I want to win one day, you probably won't. But you win an Emmy, you win in a golden globe whatever. SAG awards all lovely, very grateful, not to diminish, but there was something about winning a Tony where you're like, you know, here's the thing. You know what it's like to work in the theater. You have this family, and so it expands out. You have this extended family of people that really are rooting for you.

I was away from the theater for twenty two years. I came back and did WIT, which is where I was naked and shaved my head. So wait for I want to get back Tony Dan. But now we're here. What when you do the when you when you come back to the theater after twenty two years, how does

that decision happen? Well, it happened out of the fact that people only thought about me as an actor who could do the soap op or the sitcom, the blonde girl with the big shoulder pads and the you know, fourteen pounds of blonde hair and extensions, and so it's like and it's funny and it's great and it's an incredible working ex turned a lot. Tony taught me so much about comedy rething practically that I learned I learned from Tony. And then it was like people didn't know

where to put me. I didn't all these movies of the week, I've done all this stuff, and it was like nobody could quite get me. They didn't know how to get me. And I had to come back and show people I'm willing to be here. I want to be happened. Um, I auditioned who directed Derek Anson Jones, who was quite ill at the time, and Leah Gardner, who was his friend at Yale, actually took over and helped to put me into the show. And um, it

was one of those things. It was Bernie Telsey and Daryl Roth and I, you know, I came into audition, I had if memories, so into one else explaining the park. Yes, Kathleen, she was, I was, you know, I came, She's just Angels with the originally so did I write Amazing and Joe Mandela, you know, merely the Music Center before they moved to Broadway, I know, running the gauntlet of gay men massigns saying I'm dying of AIDS. Can I have

your ticket? I'm not kidding. Last weekend at the Music Center before they they were closing, I'm going to move to New York. It was. It was horrible. I mean, the zeitgeist of AIDS and angels. It was that time. And I said, I so appreciate that you have that as part of your context in life and what that was for all of us, what we were doing, and we're talking about the theater and how people are. So I didn't. That's one of my shames that I didn't pay enough attention to it at the time. And a

couple of my friends died and I really didn't. I didn't really get. I was like, you know that somebody said he's sick, and I was like, oh, well, god, I mean, what can I what can I possibly do for him other than just you know, fly back and see And they had two dear friends of mine who died of AIDS and it was all of a sudden they just died, and I was like, what that was? What we were all ready? Then they had a cancer

that was treatable. Then they had that cancer and they were gone and and quickly to very ravaged in rabbage and ravaged the whole community. And that's why GOODN organization like Broadway Cares, Equity Fight AIDS came into being a really took over and really helped. So when you step out there two years after and you do that, how did you feel? I was terrifying. I thought, truly terrible. What do you do? What did you do to overcome that? I didn't. I just accepted it and included it in

everything that I was doing. There was nothing else to do. I mean, it's like, if you're going to take the chance and do that, I mean I hadn't been in front of the New York critics and twenty two years, I hadn't been on a stage. I needed to go back and take take voice lessons. Again. I've been in a studio. You know what it's like to be in a studio. So so I went to an opera teacher and she never let me say. She just taught me how to read again, and it was just this terrifying experience.

I mean it was almost I was almost apoplectic. And I just said to myself, you get out there and you do this. And how long did you run? In? With almost a year? Where was it? It was here at the Union Square Theater, which is no more downtown. And they wouldn't let me do it in New York unless I did it on the road. You've been on the road. I did it in Austin. I did it at the Kennedy Center in Washington. Then I did in Florida. You want to try doing a play like Wit in Florida.

One night, Herb was there and I said to him, what's going on with the sound system? This is what was happening all through the play. He said, what's going on? And he said, all the people with their occident tanks were in the first row and that was the sound that I was hearing. It was really it was that was Florida was a rough place to do it because I think they thought, oh, this, it will be cute. It's called Wit. It's the girl from Who's the Ball.

She's very funny. And they would get up in the middle of the show and it had continental seating, you know continental seating, there's no isle in the middle, and I would hear people say, Okay, come on, she's throwing up, let's go. She thought she was being quiet, but it was he is a hearing problem. Just really to let him. And the other thing that happened was like this character has new tropinia. I mean, she's sick and she's dying

fourth stage ovarian cancer. And so the nurse puts me in the wheelchair and between the wheelchair wheels me over to the bed and she covers me over and I hear somebody scream from the theater given the other blanket. That was what it was like. What was that day like for you? Like you get to the theater when describe your process doing a play, a heavy play. Oh, that's a really great question. I walk from the east side where I am across town, and purposely i'm there

so that I can walk cross town. So I dropped the day. I gotta drop the day and start going over the plane in my head. I usually get to the theater about two to two and a half hours early, right, you do exactly right. Well, if I have to have a wig or such a good idea right, and then you get there and you say hello to everybody, greet everybody. There's the whole thing, and then just get in the

place of the play. Have to be in that space you said, I have to drain the day out of me, exactly what you talked about, holding onto whatever you do to just get neutral. That's right, and then you begin the process of thinking about the entrance. That's right, that's right. I would do yoga exercises. I would do a quick meditation, something that would not put me out but really put me into a centered, active place, and remembering that it is my service. You give a performance. We are in

the business of giving. That's our work. The way I hold it. The very versatile Judith Light another actor who has appeared on successful TV shows, but has also left her mark on the stage. In fact, she prefers it is Laurie Metcalf. I feel more at home. I feel like I know the craft better. And I still to this day, even all those tapings of Roseanne and the movies that I've done, I have a phobia of the camera. The rest of my conversation with Lorie can be found

in our archive that here's the thing, Dot Org. Judith Light is back after this. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. Judith Light's first Tony was for her role as the depressed and very funny failed screenwriter Silda Grauman in John Robin Bases Other Desert Cities. It came just two years after her return to the stage following twenty two years of work on screen. That first role was her brilliant, devastating turn as a professor

dying of cancer in Wit Off Broadway. They were both parts. Her manager, Herb Hampshire, encouraged her to take on. He guided Light as a career adviser, but also as a friend. Hampshire was a clinical psychologist who never worked as a manager before she came along. Despite the professional risk, he supported Lights going all in on theater after sitcom stardom. Other Desert Cities. Was how long after Wits? Oh, it

was quite a while afterward I had done. In between the two, I did a bunch because I came back to Broadway. Tommy Klee, director of Hamilton's, I auditioned for him for this play called Lombardi, which was about Vince Lombardi. Everybody said to me and I don't think you should go up for this, it's too small a part. I'm the girl who hasn't been on Broadway for over thirty years. I'm going in and I'm an audition for this. He gave me the part. In the room, we had his

wife who Lombardi. It was Dan Lauria that the that And it was the first Tony I got nominated for Ellen Barkin one for um the revival No No of of Oh yeah yeah crazy play right that had never been produced on Broadly before? And er what is it? The Normal Heart? The Normal Heart? So I wanted to do audition for that was Joe. Joe was nominated for a Tony and Joe and I saw each other at the Fucking Joe. He's rich, she's smart, He's brilliant, he

said to me before we did Other Desert Cities. He and I had been at the Tony luncheon because we had both been nominated, me for Lombardi and him for The Normal Heart. And we're sitting next to each other. And about a few weeks after that, I get this call that they're offering me the part of Other Desert Cities because I had done a play reading here's the story about Joan River said to me one time we would how Prince's Christmas party. She said to me, we

were alone in the room. She said to me, she was amazing. She said, I say yes to everything. Everything. I say yes to everything. So I get a call from Bernie tells his office. He says, they want you to do a reading of a Richard Greenberg play called on the Babylonline on a Sunday matinee during Lombardi. I think it was yes, Okay, I'll be there. I do it. Joe is there because he and Richard Greenberg are good friends. Joe might be directing this play. Joe doesn't know my work.

I mean, I've just been doing Lombardi, and I do the reading, I leave. But it was the thing that when Joe saw me do that, he got the idea when he saw me at the Tony luncheon, that I could do other Desert cities because I was taking over for Extraordinary Linda Leavin, she was doing another play on Broadway. Are you originated on Broadway? I originated on Broadway? And so after that, Lynn Meadow commissioned Richard Greenberg to write a play for me and Jessica hacked and that was

the Assembled Parties. So one year it was Other Desert Cities and I got the Tony and the next year I got Assembled Parties. But do you make my point here, which is someone gets you in the door at the party, and then what happens after that is up to you.

It's up to you. And you are very successful in daytime, and then you move to l A and you're very successful on a huge comedy, The Migration of That Woman, where you're standing on the set with Joe Mantello directing a play written by Robbie Bates and you're there with Stocker Channing and Stacy Keach. Do you sit there and go, how this happened? What a great joy that is to get there? People don't realize you don't stop journeying. You use the correct word. It's a migration, and it's an

evolution and it's an expansion. And if you hold yourself in that framework, then you can move in those directions. You know, working now more than I ever have in my life. How did that happen? Well? I believe in what you're talking about. All of those young How do I get an agent? How going to get a manager. It's like, that's not the question. You need to stop see king and be curious. Who are you? What kind of life are you going to have? How are you going to be in the world. How do you want

people to see you? Are you kind? Are you generous? Are you available to people? Do you have wonderful children? And do you create amazing citizens in the world. Yes, those are the things that are have great value. You know. The next thing you do is like, okay, it's the next thing you do is your artistic work. It's your service. You give it, you do it to the best of your ability. There's something else that holds that altogether. That's

much greater, much bigger, much more important. But with the rehearsal process and those actors and Robbie sits in the room with you, I wish we were on television. The script is out, Joe is sitting with the script. The two of them are sitting next to each other, and they go forward and back and forward and back and look at it and listen and watch and think is this needed? What about that? Listening to the actor, there was one thing towards the end, and I said, what

is Silda doing here? There's something that needs to be completed here, and so Robbie would be furiously writing and then if he over wrote a Joe would say it's too much, and then we would find the balance. But being with all of them, it's just so special. How did you desert cities from September until right after the Tony's Chill till June? Long time, long long run. Yeah. I mean, there are things that happen you don't even

understand how they happen. It's like that kyar rearguard line, which is life can only be lived going forward, it can only be understood looking backward. Could I have planned this kind of career? That's what I say to young people all the time. I say, you have this thing in your head like I did. It's like I have to do this, and I have to do this, and this is gonna get me what I want. It's like, no, it's not. That's your picture. It doesn't have anything to

do with the with with the real world. I know, anybody sent their crazy range of things. I mean, I have done this, like the farthest reaches of the galaxy. So did you love Orphans? I have to ask you. I mean seriously, let me tell you, let me let me interesting. You know, we had this very difficult um. Yes, probably the fired child aboff and and Ben came in and uh and saved the day and Tom Sturge to

the show got nominated. So Sullivan directs, and you kind of get the impression that this is a case of which he thought he wanted to do something with discovering very quickly that he didn't want to do it. Like he just did not seem you know. I mean at one point turned to me in front of the playwright and say I don't get this play, you know, I mean, like in full audio range of Lyle and to me,

this is very important to me. So I want to take my time and really say this carefully, and I I want to get your opinion of this too, which is in terms of acting with the capital A. I used to show up and be like O, which just was grateful to be there. Tell me what you want me to do. I'm you're I'm a puppet and you're a puppeteer, and well what do you want? I don't want to disappoint you. And then as years go by, I'm sitting there going, well, I mean, here's what I think it is.

I'm coming in and I'm assuming you hired me from my instincts, and I want to take you this is what I think the scenes about. I will give a director everything. I will give them the entire schmoorka sport. I will throw it out. It's like if you want a little you know candis, you want a little brisket, you want a little shrimp, take whatever you want. I'm not wedded to any of it, but I'll do the work and I'll give you everything. My job is to make it about everybody else. It's not about me. And

in this business we think it's all about us. I know, to me, it's always been like music. What's what's the beat? Remember the orphans? I said, you know, just something to me about Because I lost my dad when he was very young. I was and that to cast a tremendous shadow over my life and everything. And so I said, it's about uh, mentorship and just and and and and being a father. Here's a guy who is the last act of his life. And so I said act one.

I wanted to be like a force. And everyone is acting. The characters are acting. Everyone walks on stage and they're interacting with and they're all full of ship and they're all putting on this crazy behavior to manipulate each other. And I'm playing like I'm a gangster and I'm trying to pretend I'm a big shot to intimidate them and control them and get them to do what I need. So I'm there. And then in the second act, I wanted to become completely naturalistic. All that drops away. It's

I pissed the whip the boy. He goes down, curtain, curtain up, and it's like it's like it's like, uh, little house on the prairie. It's me and the boys, and now I'm going to father them. And I wanted him to be very real and take all that we don't have to put on anymore. And I'm trying to do that. And no communication with the director about that at all. No nothing coming back. Nothing. It's like you're hitting a ball and the ball never gets hit back.

And uh. And I'd seen other people, you know, I've seen Orphans. Uh, because all the reviews bury us and they say, well, I mean that the original production Stepping the Wolf and that, and then that was a production of Orphans and it was dangerous and it was edgy and this is like a Alec Baldwin just you know, fucking off up there and doing all the silly comedy, this bad routine whatever. They killed us except this one review,

This one guy wrote. Someone gave it to me. They said, read this review because it's very smart, and I think he kind of got what you were doing and that was what was important. Like you can say that I suck, but say I saw what you were trying to do, and I don't think it worked, but I saw that as opposed to we're not even going to discuss the worthiness of what you were trying to do. And because if there's there's your intention, and there's your execution, there's

your tactics, and there's your strategy. And it's interesting that you say that because I remember somebody was telling me about the berlin Er Ensemble and they did was they invited the critic to come to all the rehearsals. So that isn't that genius? So so that they could say at the end, this is what that actor was going for and whether they executed it properly or not, and that is what you're talking about. To come from a place like that is a very different place. A good

critic has to have that facility. Walter was like that, what are you going for? And how well did you pull off? You can have a movie that the intentions are a name. Yeah, you can do a movie like The Hangover. It doesn't get any stupider than that. However, you pull it off. That's right. You take something that's very slight and you and you nail it. But but but just to finish, because I want to get to you with the with the one more question about the

Bates play. When you were working and with these people, I always found the kind of thrilling year around these black belt actors like Stuckert. But if your context is to learn from them is to watch them and figure you know everything that they're doing and how they're doing it. It's like this is a this is a class. All of a sudden, it's you're elevated. Your whole life is elevated,

and you're you elevate the people around you too. You feel safe, right, I feel safer on stage than I do often it's spart most of us who do this do. I know, don't cry hunt It's okay, yes, because what we have is freedom within boundaries it's like great parenting. And you know this probably better than anybody. It's like when you give your kids boundaries that they have to operate within their free and they feel safe and they feel loved. Well, and I give my kids boundaries and

they laugh at me. Well, satifire in my apartment. That's a that's a whole, that's a whole of the story. But but that kind of safety, that kind of freedom within that space is what we But we also do know that every night is different because you have a different audience giving you back a different kind of energy, but you still know what you're going to say and what the other person is going to say. Two questions I could do go on and on and on. Um,

so what's talking about Hampshire? Meaning when did he die? Three years ago? So what was that life? You have somebody with that, To have somebody who was in your corner in this business, that is rare. He gave me a whole lot of tools before he left, and I have and you're still working with them to the end. Yeah, to the end. And I have in my agents who was very interesting. I mean I was with another agency and then um, Bob Girsh flew out to see me

do with the people that are like that. There's that they stepped in when her passed away in the most magnificent way. And I have new managers now at Birlstein and all of them they've just they just took me and said, Okay, we're here, and so I have that experience with them. Who's your manager? I have three Danny Sassman. Do you know Danny. Yeah, Danny and SHAWNA. Wexler and ken Lee is a good company. Yeah, I'm very pleased to be there and yeah, yeah said it. What happened

very sad. But I mean but even when he was there, even after he left and still a hell of a company. Yeah, I love Bernie. He was so he come see me on Broadway, Bernie Brillstein, come in from l A. Go see shows, write me notes backstage. You a sensational kid. That's what Danny Sman fly in see you, be there

for you. But those are the people you're talking about in this business that when you find them, like Bob Gersh and Jason Coupman at the Gerci Agency, they are one thousand percent there for me, and particularly since Herb died, they just all went okay, rallying the troops all just grabbed onto me. I have great publicists too. It's the same thing. You know, you you know how to have great people because you have great people in your life. I've got some, yeah, yeah, and that that also comes

from you. So do you look back now? I think there's just things that I wouldn't do again. I wouldn't do anymore. And someone came to you with a great for camera half hour, would you do a sitcom again? I never say never about anything ever. I said, I'll never do a soap opera, I'll never do a sitcom, I'll never marry an actor, and I'll never move to California. I am. So it's not really working well for me. So it's like, don't you know the universe is listening.

It's like, what stupid woman at this point in time, in my age, in this career would say, you don't know how it's going to work out. Who would expect that a woman from day daytime television would end up with two Tony's. You can't or strate that stuff. You cannot. That's a migration, got it. But I want to ask you because this is something people say and I don't think about it too much, but it does come up. I said to Paccino once when I I interviewed Pacino

to graduate from college. Love him. I did a play with him. We did. It's an interesting play for you to know about. It's called God Looked Away and it's the story of the last few years of Pasadena Playhouse. What was that? Like? It was he did inside the to studio less again, like we pleased with Ellen Burston interviewing him. They took for two and a half hour. He's just you did that with him? I did? I did?

What was that? Like? I value him so profoundly. I mean I was shooting Transparent at the time, and then it would get in a car and I would go over to the Pasadena Playhouse and do the play. And I didn't come on until the second act, but I would watch him and I would observe him, could not take my eyes off him, and and we would do the scenes over and over and over, and the nuance and the things that we would find and that he would find. And then I would react off of, um,

that's Zoe Ryan Murphy works. I'm doing the politician dropping to men, say that's that's our last topic. Which is how did you get contacted to do the Politician? What what a cast? You're back on You're back doing other Desert Cities with the heavyweights. It's Middler, who else Ben Platt? It's Bet and Me and Ben and Lucy Boyton, a couple of others in this second season, and the first season was worts cast Gwyneth, Gwyneth, jes Lang, Ben Right.

I got it because Bryan Murphy put me in the assassination of Johnny VERSACCEI and I love Ryan Murphy even though he and I did, even even though he made me the greatest promise I was ever made. I played the the the surgeon who the two guys in Niptuck. I was their mentor. He called me up to the phone, goes, I want you to be the Obi wan Kenobi of plastic surgery. I felt the chill grew up my spider and we went in one episode that I never heard from him again. He didn't call me back. But I

still love Ryan. I love you Ryan. He's a visionary. He sees the world very differently, like like nobody else. And Jill Soloway has that capacity as well. There are two of them that I've had the great good fortune to work with also So transparent. How many seasons? This is the fifth seasons, So Transparent over well, you know they say it's a finale, and the look, you know, another finality. You know it's you know, it's my my farewell tour. But you know in every ending, there's a beginning.

That was the very funny, very wise Judith Light. The Transparent Finale and the Politician are both out. Now this is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing, m