Sandra Bernhard: Post-Modern Entertainer

clubs in l A in the nineteen seventies. Soon she caught the attention of the likes of Paul Mooney, who became a comedy mentor. She calls herself a postmodern entertainer, but you should never underestimate Sandra Bernhardt's career as a legit actress. In her three breakout role in Martin Scorsese is The King of Comedy, Bernhardt held her own opposite Robert de Niro and Jerry Lewis. Bernhardt says she never wanted to settle for just telling jokes. She always wanted more,

a bigger stage, a louder voice, a wider audience. Born in Flint, Michigan. Sandra Bernhard was raised in a conservative Jewish family. She moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, and spent eight months on a kibbutz out of high school. She moved to l A in nineteen seventy four at age nineteen and enrolled in beauty school. My entire higher education costs three hundred and forty dollars. My dad wrote a check and left town. I was like, you got off easy, my dear dad. And then I was on my own.

I got I got a couple of jobs, and then I landed on my feet at three one North Cannon Drive at c C I a si a hair salon. That was the name of one of the Um hair guys who owned the salon. And I was there for five and a half years, and I and I a year later, I started performing at night at clubs. What was the Jewish identity thing for you? You're growing up in Flint and you moved to Um and you've up

in a very conservative Jewish household. So was it understood you'd go do the kibbutzing at some point go to Israel for si No no no I had. I just had tons of family who when they left Russia, they went to Israel and we came to America. So my brothers had all gone to work on kibbutzim and in the seventies was like it was a great fun thing to do after high school. And they welcomed everybody's you know, help, and they didn't pay you anything, but they fed you

in clothes. You and what did you do? What were you doing? I did several things. I worked picking um, grapefruits and oranges, and then my main job was working in the slaughterhouse. It's called the mashta, and I was on the line, the assembly line with chickens come down. Everybody took out different parts. My main thing was pulling out the oh, the lungs. Actually I vacuumed lungs out

of chickens. I know, you look at me, lengths of that. Yeah, picking fruit, something very clean and wholesome and sweet, and then ripping the lungs out of vacuuming out of do you just did what they asked you to do. And if, of course, if you were if that was something that was you know, not comfortable for you, they wouldn't force

you to do it. You work like from seven to like twelve, and then you have the afternoons off and you'd stay up late and hang out with all the other kids from all over the world, and you get to know people and have fun, and you know, it was like an international experience. It was incredible. Working yourself to death. No no, no, no no, because you're one of the great Cavellas of all time. In my mind, I going to see you. They're turned into somebody going how

much longer have I have to go? Have to vacuum out these lungs. I mean I never complained. I'm a worker. I like to work, and when I have to do it, I do it. I like I like manual labor. Yeah, I like to clean. I like to do laundry. I like to wash dishes. So I mean, if everything the bottom fell out, I'd be fine. I think that is why do you think you like? I'm taking seriously, you like, Manu, what is it about? Because it's it's it's freeing, you know, it's and nobody is there to tell you to do it.

You know, if you're doing something right, you know, if you're cleaning a toilet or you know, a shower or a sink, or or washing a dish, and drawing it. I mean, it's just it's it's liberating. You're doing a load of laundry and it does it's it's it's meditative. It's funny you say that because my wife is constantly uh badgering me, because we'll have dinner and we'll cook dinner, or even if we order food in and played it for everybody and eat uh here in the city or

out on Long Island where we live. And when we're done, I'll say to everybody, get out of this room, take your wine bottles in your glasses, and go in the other room. And I want to be left completely alone here to clean this kitchen. And there's a tremendous sense of compersixation when it's over in the kitchens gleaming and all the dishes are put away, and I feel what a people who need to occupy themselves that way. I

take your mind off there. I think it's I think it's an escape from you know, the intellectual and I go beta, I don't think so much. I'm just gonna relax. It's relaxing. It is. It's totally like focused on that. It's a freeing experience. You come back from and you go to l A harmony. How do they influence you? Well, they believed in me, and they thought I was the

funniest thing they'd ever seen. And you know, I just thought I was adorable and fresh and crazy, and you know, nobody had seen a five ft ten, you know, nineteen year old, you know, wearing a Safari jacket, Safari short, some lace up espadrill's a little hat, you know, just full of like vim and vigor and pissing vinegar. And I was just like, I was like a wild, a wild card. What's the first club you got? You did open mic? This was at the Little Club in Beverly Hills.

They had opened mic on Monday night. Is also where Joan Rivers used to break in her new material back in the day. So I got up and I did my first joke, I'm I'm a medium. I understand you're a small you're an extra large. Um. That was my first joke, and then it just kind of went out from there. And then I started incorporating my singing, you know, which was really my first love. I really wanted to

be I really wanted to be another Bette Midler. I wanted to be like a wild singing edgy, crazy entertainer, a post modern entertainer, which I became in my own way. I did at least a year of you know, the little club or UM Rusty's Bagel. This guy named Rusty Blitz. He was actually had a little part in UM Young Frankenstein and he had a little storefront where he had served bagels and you'd get up and do your five minutes. So there were a lot, lots and lots of little

clubs like that. And then within a year I started going to UM the Improv and the Comedy Store, and UM that's where you know, I started getting my chops together, and um, you know, and I started getting I did the Richard Pryor TV show because of Paul Mooney. He did a short lived show on NBC, last six episodes. Well you know, it was sketches. I was a regular and you can see it. It's disavailable. People come up quite often and say, oh, well, you you know a

durable that we did a roast. We roasted Richard. I was one of the people who roasted him. So that was like that, you know, again, just thrown into like this major situation, and I just, you know, you just learned how to stand on your own two feet. You know. It didn't really involve acting school or you know, I never really studied anything formally. It was just all my sort of you know, fascination and imagination that you know,

carried me through at every different juncture. But when you're with someone like Prior and you're young, described to me, is Prior calling all the shots with some producer, writer, director to know it was. It was Bert Sugarman, I think was the executive producer, which was I don't know, it was just sort of like incongruous, you know, some of the people involved with it. But Paul Mooney was the head writer, UM Robin Williams. It was his first

big gig. It was like a lot of people that familiar faces, um now and so Paul would write little parts for us or a little you know in the sketches and we just did it. And Prior was just like beyond. He would just stand there and like laugh at everybody. You know. He he was a fish out of water. He didn't like that format at all. He didn't like being under the thumb of NBC or being censored, you know. So that's why it only lasted for six shows that I can't do this no more. This is

this is the sad news. Prior is very bottled up. You wouldn't see much emotion from Richard Pryor. It was all done in you know, the dressing room. But he was very supportive of yea and always he just he loved to laugh at at young up and coming entertainment and totally not threatened, no need to control. If he had a suggestion, he would whisper it to Paul. It was very all, very subtle. And then what happens after that, Well, you know, I'm just performing during the day, I'm doing gigs.

You know, I'm all not how would you see your performances are changing? Well, they opened a room at a comedy story called the Belly Room, which was for only women performers. So it was the woman who owned it, Mitzy Shore, who's still around barely. She was very like she was. She was like a segregationist, you know, she separated the men from the women, and she loved the men, she didn't like the women. She didn't think women really

belonged in comedy. And it was now very strange. So but I got a lot of confidence in this Belly Room because people came to see women and they weren't expecting you to do male driven comedy, and it was just different. So it freed me up to to do what I did, which was very completely postfeminist. I refused to be self deprecating and nobody had done that yet, No, no woman comedian performer hadn't done something where she was like, oh, you know, I'm so ugly or this roun that and single.

And I was really young, so it wasn't like I didn't feel like, what am I? Why would I do that? You know, I'm I'm hot, you know. Yeah, that was my attitude. And of course I was always nervous, but like everybody starting out, but I covered it up by being this sort of character, you know, the super areadite, sophisticated, groovy, swinging you know, uh huh yeah, all over it. So that's that was the direction I kept going in, and

I did. I did a couple of little movies, little parts, little bit, little of this, and then I auditioned for um, The King of Comedy, UM the Robert Your Jerry Lewis Martin Scorsese vehicle, along with a lot of other people. And you know, at that point I was like, I didn't even think about it. I just did it. They wanted somebody who could improvise, which I did, and after like about a month or two of auditioning, several several auditions for a different levels, um, I got the part.

And that was, you know, a game changer for me. And after that, I I didn't have to perform at the comedy clubs anymore. I would I would miss that. No, I didn't. I never wanted to go back to the comedy club because I didn't like that scene. You didn't know that wasn't That wasn't for Sandy. Now then I could start, you know, playing rock and roll clubs and

doing concerts and like that. Even if it's just like a rock and roll club, it has a different connotation because then I have my band and I could sing and do all the things that I do, because I wanted to do a whole performance, a whole evening, not just like you say that. Scorsese and the people involved with the film. I guess auditions several people for quite a while to get down to casting you, What was your interaction with him? Did he work with you a lot? Did you go in and see him a lot? And

working material with him a lot. Yeah. Well, I mean my initial audition was for Siskorm and the casting person and she was like visibly stunned by me, and I didn't know what that meant, but she's, I think Marty needs to see you. She had me back the next day and and and Deborah Winger was driving a Volkswagen. And I had known Debora Winger because she was a waitress at the improv and she said, Sandy, it's me Debbie, and I look, I said, I'm like, yeah, hi, Tim.

So then I got nervous and I thought, was she must be up for the film too. I'm sure she was. It was up at the um Chateau Marmont. That was all the all the auditions in l A were at

the chateau. So the next day I went back and I read for Marty and he loved it, and then he brought me back to read for him and Bobby de Niro and yeah, they just kept and then they came to see me perform at the Comedy Store and Richard belzer Um did a little improv with me, which was really sweet because then they could see how I interacted like with somebody who was you know, sort of like the movie was going to be, and they loved that. And then I didn't hear from anybody for a month.

And then they flew me to New York and I stayed at the Mayflower Hotel, which is now you know that bigot. Where was all happening to me? Biddle Barrows was her name, Yes, madam, Yes, I don't know that from I don't have her business card in my well. But the hotel a lot was happening, I can tell you that much. I mean every action. Remember that they sold the contents of the hotel. They tore down the hotel, and before they did, they offered people a chance to

come in and buy the contents. They sold like an estate auction, the drapery and the furniture. It was the worst stuff in the world. I mean, it was like from you know, from from a million years ago, but it was it was a fun place to be. And then that was the audition where I was going to read with um Jerry Lewis. Now, yeah, what was that like? Oh?

I think it was great, but I was that That was the only time I was really nervous in the whole audition process because of Erry Lewis, and he's an intimidating yeah figure, you know, and when I met him, he's kind of a no nonsense guy. Well he's no nonsense and he knows everything. You know, he's like the

no at all. But it's interesting how you Um, I don't consider myself a comedian, but I've done a lot of comedian comedy programming and I'm around these eighth degree black belt comedy people, and some of them are it's almost inconceivably dry and very droll when you meet them in person and their own persona a couple I'm thinking of is very ANTIQ and very nutty and silly, and then you see them backstage and they're like, you know, you think that you're talking to a politician, Yeah, the

Prime Minister of England and you were not going to state visit or something. They're very proper and buttoned up and no jokes would have and he strikes me that way. He's pompous, imperious, very imperious. What I think, Well, yeah, I mean it's clear everything has been said that there is to say about Jerry Lewis something until now. I mean, he's still he's still unbelievable he's still that same person.

And he hadn't really worked with a woman like me before, he don't, you know, he used people like Stella Stella Steven's sour name is sort of like, you know, foil a foil. You know, women weren't there to actually hold their own there, Margaret Dumont and that woman from the from the Mark Brother the Foil exactly. But when you're there with him, um, you know, that's Marty in and around in Raging Bullet came out a little bit before that, just a couple of years before they get in like

nineteen or something. You know, that's Marty right, questing at the peak of his power, making this film with you. And I'm wondering, does de Niro and Marty obviously have and I can't even define it, their own legendary kind of battery between the two of them and how they work and the unspoken and the spoken and so forth. But I wanted to someone like Lewis to see defer to Scor says he discussed. He didn't know Scor says

he deferred to him. He wanted he had to do very self directing, yeah, self tracking, but also Marty would like I guess, humor him in a certain way and say well what do you think about this scene? And and to be handled a certain Yeah. So Jerry was made to feel like he was his expertise, he was

the eminence, perfectly said. But the scenes, and I mean, I've been in films before with people and some of it this um dichotomy with them, I don't want to say tension, but some of that relationship with them resulted in a really good film for Stage Place, and sometimes it didn't. People always say, oh, you you this kind of crackle that you create. There's a magic that happens, and there's something that happens that's palpable on screen. I don't always buy that. However, you and he, it is

mesmerizing you and he on screen together. I can't think of who's going to break a glass and shove the jagget edge? Whose neck first? Yes, well that's you know. That was because I just stayed in the moment, and as intimidated as I was, didn't. I didn't. I didn't relent. I held my ground, which you know, was he expecting you to relent? You think? Was he expecting you to kind of break down? Maybe weaker on the film need you to Be and that, and then that kept rising

the temperature, you know, for him. I was respectful and slightly in awe of Jerry Lewis. You're in a movie and you more than with your own. I mean, you were right up there delivering the goods in the film with Robert de Niro and Jerry Lewis in this quirky, weird movie that everybody loves I know who no knows that movie and loves you in it, and the weirdness of it, you know, you and him, everybody all taped up and everything in the way you had all that done.

Uh what happens after that? I mean, does everything just change for you? Well, it did change for me. But at the same time, I don't know if I was savvy enough at that time to like things were different. I mean, now you're like every young actors are like they they're plugged in like that. You know, they've got their machinery all ready to go. I got a team, and back then it was just sort of more like, Wow,

I just did this great movie. But now I want to kind of just go out in the road and do my shows and you know things, Yeah, things, of course, we're at a different level, you know. But looking back, had had it been now, I guess I probably would

have been more craven in a certain wors. Yeah, but I feel like I feel like young actors are they're just so like everything is just like a machine, like I said, a machinery, Like somebody grabs you, and there's you know, there's the public system, and there's the agent, and there's the manager, and then there's the handler, and then there's you know, and everybody's just like kept, you know, in a certain sort of position where they're not really

free to like move and be like totally outrageous or groovy. You know. Well, I think that there's certainly people who in my life, to myself included who and this is a big swing here. I don't don't necessarily think you're gonna mind agree, but I tend to think that years ago, when I was first making films, and I don't mean small parts and films in the eighties, but playing lead roles in films in the nineties, You do a movie

and it was over. Yes, you shared about I want to go on the road and do my show and what have you. But I had much more faith in providence about what was going to happen. I kind of lead back and I go, well, I'm gonna go do a play. I'm gonna go do this. And I thought, well, only a fool thinks you can really manage this whole

thing and make yourself successful. That's that's luck. And I get a script sent to me, and I would evaluate the script based on the instincts I had, and I've been scripted and I go, I don't think this is very interesting. And my agents would call me up and go, hey, man, you need to come in here and read the script again. In my office, I have a special lamp I have on my desk and we're gonna put that on the script.

And the lamp is a lamp that projects onto each page the amount of money you're going to be paid for this movie, because it's some millions of done. And now I feel like people have bought so many young people have they're making movies they don't want to make. They're making you they don't even know if they want to make, but they've been sold on the idea that this is the movie they should be doing to stiff

in their career. Right. Well, Also there's there's a many films now that you know, the big you know, um, either sci fi or you know, or the superhero. It's just it's a different time. It will never be what it was in the eighties and nineties. Let's face it, though, you and I we chopped one of our hands off to be in one of these Marvel movies. You know, I think and I think we'd both be great. I think I'd be a great kind of evil. Um. So yeah.

So then I after that, you know, I did did a little bit television, I did a little bit of film, and then I did a lot of performing, and then I sort of, you know, really broke out as a

live performer. I did my first one woman show here in New York without You I'm Nothing, which was legendary and became an actual film, not like a special, but we made it into a film that was quite interesting and you can still see it um and it was sort of like a breakthrough performance film that a lot of people try to emulate and copy because it was it wasn't just a well. I was collaborating at the

time with this um, this artist named John Boskovic. He had directed the show, the live show, and then somebody gave him, gave us some money for him to direct the movie. And Nick Rogue, who I had done a film with called Track twenty nine, he was the executive producer and he just sat on the set and kind of oversaw, you know, the shots and everything, and we turned it into this sort of like um, very very

crazy commentary on performance films. It was sort of like, you know, kind of went in on itself and nobody had ever seen anything like it, and so that kind of established me in a whole other way too, and that, you know, that was a great stepping stone for me in terms of like being you know, an iconic live performer, and that's kept me going throughout the years when other things weren't happening coming up. Bernhard talks activism and empathy and why she never wanted to be the poster girl

for just one cause. Explore the Here's the Thing archives where you can hear my conversation with another iconic New York artist. I was an attention getter, but I didn't want to be Eve Arden. I really didn't. Okay, Okay, that's a good point. Why Well, because I don't want to be a funny girl. That's just cracking wise cracks or staying up with the you know, with the rollers in her hair. Take a listen to Elaine stretch a Here's the Thing, dot Org. This is Alec Baldwin and

you're listening to Here's the Thing. Sandra Bernhardt got her start in comedy clubs in the nineties seventies, but she quickly moved on to television and movies, and today she still performs live regularly. She doesn't prefer one form over the other. Well, I think everything feeds for the other. I mean, you know, if you're not if you're not on television, you're not doing films, it doesn't support your live performing. You've got to have a certain amount of exposure.

And it's also good to mix it up and be collaborative and not always depending on your own you know, creative source, which sometimes you need a break from that because you can't I mean, you know, writing a show, writing material, it's it's it's it's a big undertaking. You can't always. I witnessed that other people I did. I didn't do it, but when I worked with Tina even witness you know, yeah, yeah, I'm sure that, I'm sure that show is I mean that's a whole different ball game.

That was you know, it was her producing, end righting, writing and starring. Yeah, I'm sure, but but you know great, you know the results were great for her and for everybody. In the end. You left l A. And when you left, you moved to New York. That was weird. Never I mean for for years I just went back and I kept I kept a house out in l A in

the valley. You got your first home here. We're in the valley North Hollywood, like Blex, between Kling and Clump off of Riverside, my little Spanish bungalow that I bought six for like just about I lived in the valley. I lived up above Taft High School and Woodland Hills with my ex wife. I was there for ten years and I was with my ex wife with her and married to her, and then for but seven years. A little bit after I was divorced, I went back there

and rented a house around the corner from them. So if my daughter forgot something, which was very common, she could go back home and get it. The valley has its like do you like that? I love the valley. What do you like about the valley? It feels like you just somewhere else. I like the valley because it's just unpretentious. Yeah, that's what I mean. It's not l A. It's not you drive down the Bulevard and all that

shitty architecture. It's wonderful. You become comforted, Yeah, because you don't feel like you have to come up, you know, you know, to rise up to anything. There was a no, there is no pretense in the valley. Let's do our valley. Let's let's valley off right now. Where would you go? Where would you go? Well? Back then, I mean, you know there's Umjinkies for breakfast, the mainly breakfast place. Yeah, breakfast places, pancakes on the boulevard over near and in

Roja for sushi over there, cold Water Canyon right. Well, like New York, like any place but New York. You can get quicker, you know, to you know, if you want to go for Italian, there's you know, you can go downtown, uptown, you can stay in Midtown. I mean, there's a million places to go. But l A, it's like, you know, it's a big schlap. Well, as my friend Ken Paige told me, the great Ken Paige, who worked on Broadway, Forever and cats and different shows like that

Ken page it to me, he said, uh. He said, New York is a river and l A as a lake. He said, in New York, you step out the door, there's a current that pulls you in a certain direction. You just go. If you walking down the street with your friends smoking a cigarette down Columbus Avenue, you're doing something and you certainly land much somewhere, he said. And you'll land somewhere, he says, l A. You gotta put your oars in the water and a son of a gun to where you want to go. You have to

make plans, tests, friendships. Yes, so you know. So I never really left l A until I guess until my daughter was you know, five or six, and it was school became more serious, and then we stayed here most of the time. Now you're are you married? No? No, essentially, But my girlfriend and I she's your partner. She's very much so. And she's someone who, if I read her bio correctly, she basically did one show. Did she do the show with you? Does she continue to write or

she's not writing anymore? She writes, she know she's never written. We've written, We've written scripted projects for a TV but to no avail so far. But she worked with you, didn't you know? Okay? I met her. I met her when she was working at Harper Bazaar. She wrote a show on IMDb. It's like the Sandra Bernhard Experience or something. No, she that was my my short lived talk show on any and she she was she was on it as my side. She didn't know how the hell she ended

up there. She was like, if the show gets picked up, I'm not doing this anymore. She's a very She's from St. Louis. She's no nonsense. She's like, she's not she's not in it, you know, for the for the fame or the attention. She's just the opposite, which is so refreshing. You first got your first home here when um, well, we bought our place in two thousand in um West Chelsea. What's changed for you about New York? Well, I mean it's home now, for better or for worse. Since two thousand,

which is sixteen years ago. What's changed, um emotionally? Or the city? Well, the city is you know, as as we all know, it's become sort of a Hackney conversation. Is not the city we all loved in the eighties and nineties. I mean it's you know, start breaking. Yeah, it's it's lost. It's um it's some core, you know, it's lost its ability to to welcome people, um who are just starting their careers. They can't. You can't afford

to live here. You know, years ago there were pockets of communities of affordable housing which were very often u utilized by artists. And the artistic community here seems to have left slowly, whether it's visual artists, everybody's left. And I mean and and you know, yeah, I guess some people moved out to Brooklyn and Queens and but you know, if you're starting out and you are like literally like a visual artist, like a painter, I think people are

going all over the places. Are going to Detroit, They're going to Pittsburgh, going down south. You you got to go someplace where there's a community, but where you can afford to have I mean, you can't. You gotta if you're painting, you need space. You can't painting like you know, one tiny little room and lived there too. Was The city has changed, uh, in hand in hand obviously the people who live here is changed. And it's like that's

what I find is that New Yorkers themselves. Yeah, well there's still people, you know, there's still people that you know had rent control, so there's still you know, there's still a few of the old you know, the kind of Woody Allen asked New Yorkers that you see that you think, oh, they'd be great and Woody Allen film, you know, like the older Jewish couple, or you know, just the sort of you know, interesting, flamboyant people that populated this city when I first used to come here,

you know, and now there ums of them, yeah, you know, and every time one of them sort of leaves or dies, you go, it's, you know, we're closer and closer to see. It's a creative extension, you know, and and it's it's it's you know, and yeah, I don't know. I still prefer living here than l A at this point. I love to go to l A. I like to spend time there. I guess if they call me and said you're gonna come do a TV show in l A, I'd run as fast as I could because I want

to work. And I'd be fine because I have a lot of friends out there too, and there's lots of things about l A that I still love, but I don't know. Everything is different, The world is different. We're on the precipice of total craziness, you know, the the band aid's been ripped off the wound the Republican Party. We see what people, a big swath of people in this country really feel. The racism, the fear, the xenophobia,

the misogyny, um on and on and on. The morning for a way of life, this ending, that's that's been American supremacy and the fact that we're going to go into other countries and interfere with their lives, and we're going to exert our military power in every corner of the world to our advantage, to our standard of living, to keep our standard of living. It isn't working anymore.

It's the time, plocks, It's the time of change, and it's the time of you know, in a certain way, of anarchy, you know, on both sides of the of the of the aisle. And you're not sure how it's gonna all shake down. Do you write every day? Are

you well? Especially now that I have my own radio show on Andy Cohen got his own channel, it's called Radio Andy, and he asked me if I would do a show every day, and I said, yeah, I'll do it because you know, I'm here in the city most of the time or a lot of the time, and I thought that would be fun. And it's really been great, and it's really been, you know, very like I've been to do a show every day, do a show five

days a week, live, live, twelve to one. Now, do you find you've been very um, this is such a tired way of putting this out the other way, but you've been very supportive and very up front of the LGBT community and your work. And do you find it's like, are you glad you came? You came and I came out, but you lived your life bisexually or whatever ever wait at the time you did, or do you wish you were here now? You don't know because I was never

It was never really about that for me. You didn't care. No, of course I care, I can. I want, I want rights for everybody. I want everybody who's unique to be comfortable in that setting. So that was always my from my point of view, like if you are a freak, fly your freak flag and be comfortable and know that you're gonna be fine because I can't always hold your hand through it. Because I was of the belief in

the lgbt Q. The thing really blew up. It was like kids, we all have to buck up, you know, we all have to be soldiers, we all have to be more. You were there, You like that you were there for the fight, so to speak, No, because I wasn't there for the fight. I mean now, I believe that the fights an individual fight, and I'm not this is this is like a whole, you know, this is a very I'm just paring it down. Of course, I stand in solidarity to everybody, you know, and that goes

for everybody who deserves support. But what I'm saying for myself personally, I never needed that. I wasn't like, you know, validate me except me. I'm I feel comfortable. I was always comfortable in my own skin, and I liked who I wasn't it was. I didn't define myself by my sexuality. I defined myself by my desires and my imagination and all the things that looked you know, like a buffet.

I like a buffet. I don't like one dish. So you know, sometimes I'm dating boys sometimes I was dating girls when I first moved to l A. And then over the years, I had you know, I had relationships, but I was always just like, whatever I was into

my career, I wanted to have fun. So until I met my my present um girlfriend, Sarah, who was amazing, and she wouldn't take it any other way because she's you know, she doesn't she doesn't take any prisoners, and she shouldn't, um, but she's done so like she's like, this is how it is, the world needs. Everybody needs to buck up, get tough. So I've just never been one to like, oh my god, let me hold your hand, oh my baby, sweet. You know, it's like, and I

understand some people are born into circumstances. If you're transgender, or you're you're you've been thrown out of your home because you're gay. It is the worst possible thing in the world. Of course, I have wells of empathy, and I've done, you know, and I will do and I have done benefits to raise money to be there, and I'm a vocal spokesperson. But I also see people on the train. I see, you know, people of color, I see old people, I see all kinds of people. Who

are just barely hanging on. So my empathy is like from one end of the rainbow to the next, and it's never been specifically LGBT. It's like we're all in this fucked up soup together and everybody who doesn't have enough is suffering. So you've got to spread the shift around and you've got to spread the empathy, and you've got to also say to those who are a little bit like take care of me, Like, Okay, you gotta take care of yourself right now that I'll circle back

to you when I have time. I'm over here right now trying to help you know, this person, because it's just there's too much going on. What was it like for you being a mom and raising your daughter amazing? Well, you know, also we're it's a rarefied atmosphere. You know, we have help, we have people that are there. You know, we have a support system. Yeah, I got to keep working, but um, it was it was a leap of faith

for me. I mean it wasn't like I was like I didn't grow up thinking oh I've got to have a kid. But suddenly, like when I was four days, I think I just better do this because I think I'm gonna regret it, and I would have regretted it. And it's a work in progress. I mean, you know, you have an older kid, and I'm sure that there are times when she still calls on you and you're like, uh, because you want you want, you want them to just That's what I'm gonna do now from now on, when

Ireland calls me my daughter. If you're listening, i'm gonna call her. After this is over, I'm gonna say Ireland when you call to go. But sometimes, you know my daughter, yeah, exactly. My daughter just started college, so I can't mean, of course she's still a baby. She want to study, she wants to write television, trants to write comedy. I don't name the school, but if she go East Coast West Liberal Arts, great college. She got in. She did it.

That's cool. So you know, I got no complaints. Now, um, you ever thought about doing a drama, like a one hour drama? Or is that too much work? I'm ready, honey, while you got something in mind for me, call me up. I think I do. Actually call me. I'm ready to go to work, infancy. I'm ready to go to work tomorrow. I'll work the long hours to York. Honey, hallelujah. I'll be there. I'll be there with bells on. Speaking of being there with bells on, you are at the sorting

room at the Wallace. It's called the Wallallis Annenberg Performing Arts Center in Beverly Hills, December eighth night, two shows a night, and then I'll be back here. It's called Sandra Monica Boulevard, Coast to Coast. I'll get back in my car, drive back to New York. Joe's Post, Joe's Romance of It, Joe's Pub December twenty six through New Year's Eve. It's My, My, My, My holiday tradition. Two shows a night, twelve shows, six nights. I take no prisoners,

We kick ass. We have a ball. I collapse at the end. And it's a new Year. I'm going to ask my wife. Now here's a real thing I got going on. My wife is what you would call a queer dear. She's encrusted in gay man. All her friends are gay man. So we're gonna bring a whole gang of them. Yes, yes, coming the jockstraps. Is that what people do they do? Is there like a thing? There

was a theme. Now there's no thing. Okay, I thought, maybe it has a really cool now, But I like if some drag queens still come dressed, you know, in full regale, you know like they used to in the old days to pay homage, maybe I'll pay homage. And I don't think I want to see you in drag want soon, like white cream colored nigh that I wouldn't mind. Just don't, just don't wear a wig. Thank you then, um,

thank you. What a pleasure. Sorting room at the Wallace Annenburg in Beverly Hills December and December through New Year's Eva Joe's Pub, rocking, rolling, kicking ass, still loving it. I'll see you on the set of your new show. We're gonna be playing Prosecutors, Honey, Sandra Bernhard. She'll be performing live later this year. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.