I am all in all It's just you.
I am all in with Scott Patterson and iHeartRadio Podcast.
Hey everybody, Allen, I am all in podcast. When all of them productions, iHeart radio, iHeart media, iHeart podcast. I smell pop culture. That's what we're doing here. Let's get right out the gate here. I am not Scott Patterson. Okay, I'm sorry. My name is Easton. I am the sound engineer here on the I Amine Podcast. And I know you don't know my voice, but I have been here since the beginning. Okay. My DNA is in every episode of this podcast. My blood, sweat, and tears go into
every megabyte of this show. And I'm so excited to be in front of the microphone this time. We're doing something really cool here on this next era of the show. This is something we're really really excited about. We're going to be taking you beyond the pop culture references. Pop culture is such a big part of Gilmore Girls. We
explore it in depth here on the podcast. We take you deep into what they are referencing in the scripts of Gilmore Girls, how it relates to real life, how it stands in history, the context, the grandeur of all these iconic moments and these people. We're going to take you beyond that. We're going to be bringing the people that created these pop culture moments onto the show. We're going to be exploring them in depth and figuring out what makes a pop culture reference, what is in the
DNA of that? How do you become that? And when I found out that it was something we were doing, I got on my hands and knees and I just begged Scott. I was like, please, Scott, please let me be involved with this somehow, and he is graciously allowing me to host this show. This is very exciting for me. We are starting off with the bang here people. We have a great guest for I Smell pop Culture this week.
This is something I'm really excited about. I know you're gonna be excited about it, And I just ask you one thing. Can you just please pretend with me. Let's play. Pretend we're going to become actors here for a moment. Okay, so close your eyes, Pretend that you don't see the name of the guests on the podcast app Pretend like it isn't in the description. Because I have the biggest reveal in the world of who we got for I
Smell Pop Culture. It's a huge surprise and I'm going to tell you right after these words, iHeart podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app. Wow, those were some incredible goods and services that I can't wait to patronize. Hi, welcome back to I Smell Pop Culture. My name is Easton Allen, and today we are going to be talking to the star of gil Lagaan's Island, Tina Luise. You played Ginger Grant on Gilligan's Island, and if you haven't seen Gilligan's Island,
what the heck is wrong with you? This is one of the most important and iconic television shows of all time, and we're specifically talking to Tina Louise today because she is referenced in Gilmour Girls. She's referenced twice in gilmer Girls. Let's go back to season three, episode ten, That'll do Pig Francie and Rory. Franci is obviously the leader of
the Puffs at Chilton. The Franci and Rory are having a conversation and Francie says, you do not want to be my enemy Marlow Thomas, and Rory says, back, I think I Do Tina Louise Franci, of course has red hair. Tina Louise known for her red hair, especially as Ginger Grant on Gilligan's Island, one of the most iconic redheads of all time. She's referenced again in season seven, episode sixteen, will you be my Laura? Like Gilmore Kirk says, you can be Ginger tolul Lose Marianne Yes. Tina Louise is
an absolute icon. She has had an incredible career far beyond Gilligan's Island. She is the last surviving cast member of Gilligan's Island, and she was in every episode of all three seasons of the show. She was in a ton of movies. She was in the original Stepford Wives. She was in this movie called God's Little Acre that you absolutely have to watch. It's an incredible piece of film. She has written a new book. It's called Sunday, a Memoir, and is about her life as a child going through
an incredibly tough experience at a boarding school. And we're going to talk to her all about that. We're going to talk about acting, We're going to talking about relationships between mothers and daughters. We're going to talk about it all and we are so excited to have Tina Louise here with us.
Welcome my pleasure.
Thank you so much. Your book Sunday a Memoir. It's out now. It's on Amazon and Audible. I've read this book. It is such a compelling story. Thank you so much for sharing it. I have a couple questions about that now. You wrote the book from the perspective of yourself at age six years old going to Ardsley School for Girls, and I found reading it it really puts you in that mindset of a child that's going through these incredible challenges.
And that's what I talked about.
Yeah, you captured that moment. I thought so authentically when you at that age, did you keep a journal or anything.
Like that that was happening.
It's just that it all kept came flooding back to me. Really when my daughter was a similar age.
Yeah, and.
Six or seven or eight, No, not eight. That was kind of the end of it, but you know, six and seven and just I just felt at that point that I could start to write about it because basically,
I've been moving a very fast life. You know, in the beginning, I was just moved from place to place to place, and then when I finally got on my own, which was you know, after eighteen then I started working and when Caprice was born, and at that particular point, it just brought into focus, you know, everything that really had happened to me, and I just felt I had to tell this story and I wanted to make first. I wanted to make. I thought of it as a movie,
an absolute film. And I had this friend who was a professional writer, and he said, no, no, no, it's a little book, Tina, it's a little book. And I said, well, I've never written a book. He said, well, I'm going to tell you how you're gonna You're going to get a bunch of index cards and everywhere you went. When you get a thought, you're going to write it down. And that's what I began to do. And he said,
then later you're going to put it together. You put it in the order that you want, but you can't expect to get all these thoughts like right away just sitting down. And so I did that and it all started flooding back and it became clearer than anything. Wow, it became clearer than any other situation in my life in terms of living with my dad when I finally
got to him. There were things about there. I don't even remember going to school with him, And yet all of these moments, this particular beginning, as I kept getting moved from place to place, about five different places before I went to the school, which was so ugly and so peculiar and so run down and kind of like a prison with all these little angry girls all put in this place. Nobody wanted to be there. They should have been with their parents, but there we were, and
it became like a war, you know. Then they start getting angry at each other. So it's a very unusual situation in that school. And that's what I wanted to film. But as I said, my friend wanted me to write it, and so I did. And if I didn't write it, then it couldn't be a film. Now it could be a film, of course. You know.
There's a part in the book that really resonated with me where you talk about a classmate that was sharpening her pencil, Yes, taken forever. Ye're like, are you done? And then she stabs you in the wrist with her pencil. Yes. I had something similar happened to me where I was in second grade, and a young boy ran through the line with a sharpened pencil and got me right there in the thumb. And you can still see the lead and my lead.
Also, year after year after year, I could see that lead in my wrist.
Yeah, I was just reading. I was like, I have the same experience when you looked, when you would look down at that wound, at that lead in your wrist, what would come to your mind?
Well, how angry we all were, of course, I mean all of the children. They didn't want to be there. Where were their parents, Why were they there? Nobody knew we were imprisoned. We were literally imprisoned. We were in a prison. And the matrons were these two women, a Miss Taylor and Miss Murphy, and they they were not very nice.
You know.
You know, there were spiders on that when you you were told you had to pooh at a particular time, and and then when you were in the bathroom when you close the door, there were webs of spite of spiders, and nobody ever cleaned them away. They just stayed there and when you looked up, they they I guess they were your friends.
They became your friends.
It's it's such a terrifying image that you described that so vividly. The spiders up on the on the ceiling.
Uh, it wasn't their fault. Nobody cleaned them away. They didn't have to be there. Nobody swept them away.
Also, yes, yes, you know, yeah, they were imprisoned as well. How did your relationship with your mother did that? Did that improve as you got older? How did that change?
Well?
I didn't get to her until I was eleven.
Yeah, you know, because I had was with five different sets of people, and then finally I got with my dad.
And as you see, when I said, I.
Hope I can stay here, Yeah, I I hope I can stay I repeated it three times in the recording. And I realized just recently that I really didn't want to leave there. I mean, I had cousins there. It was the first family situation, even though it was a stepmother who wanted me to call her mother, and I didn't want to do that because I knew I had a mother out there. I knew she was out there.
The book is titled Sunday because that's when you were most likely to get visitors, right right, Yeah.
And very rarely do they come.
Yeah, how did that feel on Sunday morning when you were hoping that someone would come visit you.
Not good, Yeah, not good, not good.
I'm so impressed with your courage to share this story. This is something that affects a lot of children still all over the place.
Well, children need one person, They need one person to be there from the beginning, and when you don't have that, it just leaves you with a basic insecurity. Yeah, there's just no other way. You can't get it back. I felt I got a little bit of childhood back when I had Caprice, you know, which was so beautiful, and we had Easter egg hunts and we had you know, I tried to make my home because I split up. I was married and then I was split up, you know,
when the pregnancy was real. Yeah, it's very unfortunate. But the time, you know, I raised her alone, and you know, I tried to make like Thanksgiving, everybody came to our house and Christmas, I had all the friends came over to our house, and I wanted it to be as good as I could make it, you.
Know, for her.
Yeah, And I loved, you know, loved raising her. It was just incredible when she was born.
This podcast is about Gilmore Girls, which the show at its core is about the relationship between a mother and a daughter. And I know you're so close with Caprice, with your daughter, and I wanted to ask more about that, like as you were raising her, considering what you had gone through as a child, how did that affect how you raised Caprice.
Well, I was.
There, you know, I mean, living together, and she was the most important person and she was somebody when she was born.
I knew for the first time what love was.
That I knew that I really loved her, and that I knew I'd take a bullet for her. I'd stand in front of her and happily take a bullet for This sounds strange, but that's how I felt. I mean, I didn't really understand what love was, that you'd lay down your life, you know, for your child, you know, because I didn't have that. I didn't have a mother and a father as a child period. And that's why I wrote the book. So let's talk more about the book.
Of course. Of course, when you were recording you recorded the audiobook. Yes, how did that as you were recording it? Reading it back, did anything new come to the surface for you?
Yes, I became very emotional. I had two breakdowns in the middle of it. I was I surprised myself, you know, with how deeply I felt and what was locked inside of me, because it was all locked inside of me because I was so busy being moved from place to place. And then when I was with my father, there was just a couple of years, and then I was moved to my mother finally when I was eleven, and it was just bizarre.
Yeah, And then when I got to my mother.
Of course, she made it plain that there'll be no talking about the past that didn't exist as far as she was concerned.
So I had to hold it inside.
And also I was told that I had to she made the call, and I had to tell my father I couldn't see him anymore. I mean, I was ordered to do that, Oh my goodness. And I never saw him again until I went to find him when I was twenty twenty one. I never saw him again. And you know, for all I know, Well, why didn't he go to court? Didn't he have rights?
Yeah?
Why why did this all? Why did all this happen?
And why was so much of it on you to you know, it's tragic.
And so I held all of this, you know, and you try to I put it aside. I mean, I did many pieces of work. I worked all over the world, and I just moved. I lived in the present, and I still believe in living in the present. I tell everybody live in the present moment. That's what you've got. You never know what's going to happen next. You never know where you're going to be moved next.
That's great advice. When you finally were able to talk about it, you said that was when Caprice was around six years old.
Well, I didn't talk about it. I wrote wrote about it. Of course, I didn't talk about it.
Was writing. Was that the first time you had really confronted Yeah, it happened.
Yeah.
What motivated that was? It just seemed age?
Just her?
She motivated it.
Yeah, because I was a person that was with her, but nobody was with me.
You see.
Yeah, if not if when this is made into a film, do you have any like have you thought about what kind of film it would be?
Yes, it would be.
There's many things that are not in the book. And that's when it was because it was during World War two, so they were only radios. There was no television. There were no computers. It was World War two when the Nazis had risen to power. Yeah, there's a lot going on in that movie that you know, it's not in the book because these were just the child's thoughts, But the movie is World War two, and so the people, the parents, everybody was going through something else. You know,
an eighteen year old had a daughter. You know, children shouldn't be teenagers, shouldn't be having children, yes, you know, but she was. Her father said get married, you have to get married because her mother had died when she was three years old.
Oh my goodness.
So he wanted to find a place for her, someone to replace him very quickly. You know, he thought he was doing the best thing. It was not the best thing, no way, no. But she struck out. And I understood as an I understand as more as an adult. Her whole life was in front of her. What was she supposed to do? I mean, where was she what was she supposed to do with this baby? You know, it's frightening for her as well. Yeah.
Yeah, and that's something you talk about in that in the forward of this book is the importance of as you say, children shouldn't be having children, No.
And that's why I work with children. Now, that's why I go to the public school and tutor reading, you know, because nobody ever read to me. And as I said to my grandchild Kingston, when he was making noise one night, I said, Kingston, nobody ever read to me, do you know that? And he said, Mommy, quick, read yaya book. And she read me a book. And that was the
first time that anybody ever read to me. So I love, you know, helping the children to read because I love to read, love to read, and it's very important to know how to read. Yes, And I can give back in that way. So I love to go to school and I love to tutor them and to help them. Right now I have children that can't even speak English that have come into the country. I didn't have that before. And the other because I started reading to children in nineteen ninety six.
I'm so impressed with how with your passion for literacy and helping children read, because it's such an incredible power to be able to escape and to learn so much, and to have to be able to experience another person so important.
So it can't really put it into words what it means to me because of everything that I went through, and the fact that nobody ever read to me, and that I can help a child to learn to read because I love to read myself. I love to read, but no mother or father read to me. I could cry, you know, thinking about it. You know it's such a big deal to read to a child. Yes, I love to read to the children. I read three books yesterday to Kingston.
It's fine.
What books did you read to Kingston? Oh?
Whatever they had in their house.
You know, I have tons of books in mind, but you know they don't come to New York as much as I've been there, you know, because I I am in New Yorker, and I do love New York because I was born in that area. Capriest, on the other hand, you know, was born in California. That's where we lived, you know, when she was born. So she wented a way back to California.
Tina Louise is here with us. The book is Sunday, a memoir. I have so much more to talk to you about. We're going to take a really quick break. Please stick around with us. We'll be back in one second. We're here with Tina Louise, the Legend, the Star, the author, of Sunday, a memoir. It's out now on Amazon and Audible. Now, your childhood was so difficult, but then you blossom into this incredible actress. How did you first discover acting? And that was a passion.
Well, that's interesting. I had learned some kind of a little thing there. It was called thoovy you had to lispov and I learned it there. And if you can believe, they were opening the canteen in the high school I lived. You know, I only lived with my mother for two years and then I was sent away again.
But I liked the high school.
It was a progressive educational school and they had a canteen and they say, can anybody do anything? We need people to do something. We were going to open the canteen and I said, well, I know this ridiculous little episode it's called thuv And so I performed it, you know, this little thing, and.
It seemed to be a hit.
You know, I made friends and I realized, you know, you can make friends, you know when you perform something.
So that was the first thing that I did.
And that was that, And then what happened, I don't know, how how would I get into this? Oh? Then in that high school. I would just be in the place, and I thought nothing more than any other child that was in the play. We had a wonderful teacher. In fact, he gave me my middle name. I said, mister Sam, I don't have a middle name, and we're graduating. Everybody has a middle name. You're going to be Tina Louise and I had at that time. I had whatever the last name was of the the man that was married
to my mother at that time. And so I participated in those plays and I thought no more about it than that. And then my mother had taken me when I was fifteen to a resort and I met this young man, and so I think I was going to go to Miami U to college. But she took me to a play and my friend was in the play and it was called and everybody was in the play was seventeen, and so was I. And we went backstage and I saw my friend and I thought, wow, this is so great, you know, And he was just an
adorable boy. And all the kids in they we all had that makeup on, you know, and I was very striking. And then I went to the first six months of the college MIAMIU and I didn't like the acting class there, and I thought, I want to go to acting class. And I told my mother, I don't want to go back to this place, because I decided I want to study acting all day long. And so she found a place and she asked her friends, and she put me at the Neighborhood Playhouse where Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward
and you studied all day long. And she put me in a place that was the Barbizon for girls and no men were allowed. And so that's what I did.
And that was the beginning, I mean the beginning of just such an iconic career. I mean you studied with Lee Strasburg.
Yes, I did get around to that. That was even after I started my career. Yeah, that was after I did God'sker Yeah. Yeah, And that was amazing, And he was the main teacher of my life. Yeah.
Would what would you say is the most the most important lesson you learned from him about the craft of acting?
To relax and be yourself. I think I finally learned how I think I finally learned how.
I love it. I if I may, I have one Gilgan's Island question, What an episode that I love is called All about Ava. You played two roles in that episode. Yes, was that a challenge? What was that like?
Well, you know, I have one side of my face that photographs it a little bit differently than the other, So that was easy in terms of photographic you know. And they were just two different characters, you know, one wanted to be the other person.
Yeah, so.
I played both of them, you know, I just did it. I don't remember what tricks I had to do that at that time, in particular, except you know, photographically I photographed differently. Yeah, and she wasn't me.
I was me.
I was Ginger the character and she was somebody else who you know. And I don't remember it too well.
You know, if anyone's listening, I highly recommend going back and watching that episode. It's really an incredible performance from you.
I always tried to do my best, That's all I can say.
Well, you stand out in every Gilligan's Island episode, especially old that of it that's from season three. So again, this this this podcast is mostly about Gilmore Girls, the show Gilmore Girls. In that show, there's a number of references to you to Ginger.
I didn't know that. Oh well, I had no idea. Yeah, you're the first person who told.
Me that that was That was my question, But.
Nobody ever told me that. Really, I didn't know about that. Wow.
You know there there's a there's a red headed care character and they say, okay, Tina Louis is like that kind of thing.
I didn't know.
Wow.
I mean, how does it feel you You were referenced constantly though, and in all kinds of shows.
I've been told I was an icon.
Yes, I've been told.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, I'm shotting from the rooftops. How I mean, looking back, how does that feel to have held that place in popular culture?
I like it. I have a lot of friends.
I like it, and a lot of people write to me and I really appreciate it.
That's incredible. Which of your roles through, if you can, was the most memorable the when you look back on the most.
That's very easy.
It's my first film, Yeah, because I just identified with it. It was so real. It was the most real film that I did. And I had a wonderful director or a wonderful group of people actors that I worked with. The characters you know, it was a book was Erskine Caldwell's book each Yeah, God, it's the Laker and each character was so clear, and it was just so wonderful
to be a part of that. And that film went into the Venice Film Festival, and that was an amazing experience for me to go to be invited there and to go to let's see, I didn't go to Rome. It was in Venice. Yeah, I'm the Lido. And we stayed in this amazing hotel and it was such an experience and they gave me two dozen red roses.
And the light went on. I said, oh, my goodness, you.
Should be giving this to the director on this film or the writer of this film. And I just was overwhelmed with this kind of attention. Imagine that little girl that nobody paid attention to was in Venice. Wow, how'd she get there? And all that light on her when nobody really cared about her.
I know, I think reading your book, I think about that. So that was so present in my mind. Is I'm like, here's this little girl that was going through such a difficult experience being you know, feeling so insafe, feeling like she had no one to rely on, and then you become this incredible person.
Was it was an overwhelming experience to be at that film festival, let me tell you. Yeah, it was really something. And I got to go to Rome, which I always wanted to go to. I had a lot of friends that were Italian in New York and I always wanted to go back there, and I did. I did go back there and I worked there.
Oh amazing. But that was the most important film that I ever did.
Again, I mean, everyone listening, you really should watch God's Lake or Buddy Hackett is in the movie.
I mean, the Aldo ray was so incredible.
Yeah, just all stars, all stars. I do want to say, lastly, I listened to your album It's Time for Tina. Incredible. I love that album so much.
Thank you.
And I didn't know that you had recorded it until just a few months ago. Oh and it's an amazing work.
Thank you.
And I just want you to know your version of it's a long long time. It's been a long long time. It's really going. It's I don't you know, viral might be the term. There's everyone's discovering that version of it, and it's really exciting to see it kind of come back.
Yeah, that was a wonderful experience. I was just nineteen when I did it, And I don't know if I understood everything I was singing about. I know my tone was good. I did study singing, but I'm glad that you enjoyed it. Yeah.
I was going to ask if music was a passion for you as well.
Like, well, I loved singing. Yeah, I loved studying, you know.
Yeah, I just I used to go to dance class and I had my singing lessons and whatever. I found many teachers. I had many teachers, well, at least a few before I met Les Strasburg, the master.
Yeah, you know.
We used to sit on the of our seats to listen to Lee and his critique of the different scenes. And I was allowed into the actor's studio before I became a member. And it was his wife, his first wife, who said to me one day, Tina, you have to become a member of the studio. You have to try out. I said, oh, no, Paul, I don't want to. I just want to study with Lee. I really don't want to do that. Well, you have to.
You just have to.
And I thought, well, if she said I have to, then I have to try out. She also said something to me that I understand now, which I'll never forget, she said. She told me one day after in the class, Tina, what are you afraid of? And I didn't know. I didn't know, but now I know.
Tina Louise, thank you so much for joining us on I Am All In Everyone Sunday a memoir. It's her book. It is out now. It's on Audible, it's on Amazon, you can get it anywhere. I highly recommend you read it and go watch everything Tina Lewis has been and she's incredible. This has been so much fun. Thank you for coming by.
Thank you so much for listening.
Everybody, and don't forget. Follow us on Instagram at I Am All In Podcast and email us at Gilmore at iHeartRadio dot com