Hello everybody, This is Craig Ferguson letting you know that my Fancy Rascal Tour continues throughout the fall of twenty twenty three. For a full list of dates and tickets, please go to my website, the Craig Ferguson show dot com slash tour. My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy. I talk to interest in people about what brings them happiness. Here's d Drich Bader, a great actor who's been in everything you've ever liked.
I'm not kidding. Wasn't it this Enjoy when ddrig when I, Yes, I know it.
Yeah, It's not about me, it's about you. It's about you, and I'm just I will say no, it is because I want to tell you. I want to start with this because when we were working together on the Drew Carey Show and you were paying oswood Lee Harvey, which is still maybe the best name for a characters.
I think it's great. You gotta laugh every time, Well, because it's funny.
It's stupid and funny and stupid and funny gets funnier the longer you say. But oswood Lee Harvey, which is on a par with count Al. You card as a stupid name, but you were playing that fairly early on in the run. Now, I'm gonna say, because you were the only person that I had heard of when I started that show, because you had done The Beverly Hillbillies. You played Jethrow in the Beverly Hillbillies and you were really good at it.
Well, thank you. And that was a hit movie, wasn't it. No, that was a bomb. Otherwise I wouldn't have been on the Drew carry be a major movie star, Yeah, I don't know.
I mean you you can be a movie star and being a boat. You are a movie star. You're in everything.
No, it didn't make enough money to be attractive to hire me. Success breeds success, and only people only want to be associated with success.
Yeah. Yeah, that might explain my life a little bit. My friends, so people, I see, that's why I have no friends.
But you you only one i'd heard of. And I remember.
Do you remember when we did the full Monty episode of the Drew Carey Show, Yes, of course, and we all got naked, yes, And then we went to Las Vegas and Tim Allen's plane, Yes, and everyone got trash.
I got incredibly dry.
You were the drunkest. I like, remember I'm saying this and I'm Scottish. You're one of the drunkest people I've ever seen.
The fact that I could stand was. I was amazed at how drunk you were.
But you were like walking around being loud with very scary eyes. You were very scary dancing. And then you threw a plastic bottle.
I was remembering that this morning.
Yeah, you threw a bottle off the like the top floor of a hotel and it landed on the swimming three stories up.
It was normal.
I was like that And I remember saying, Kathy, because the only other person I was like that could have killed someone. Cathy, She said, I know, and then we agreed we were the lamest people in Lesson Hagis. I was so dumb.
Well, you totally took care of me. By the way, There's no way I would have made it into a hotel room. I was scared. We slept together, were well, I was. There wasn't a lot of sleep in there.
Nobody slapped at I think I slapped a little bit. Yeah that's a couple of hours. Yeah, but I mean, how did you guys do that?
Give him the fight.
No one was on cocaine as far as I knew, Or where are you guys on cocaine?
Oh no, No, Sow wasn't into drugs, just booze. No, he was just a booth and as much of a boozer really. No, he was kind of a lightweight. But Ryan Styles is the Keith Richards of the unbelievable.
He has a hollow leg. Yeah, he and my problem that drank. Oh yeah, my problem was that time and every time you did see me drunk was when I tried to keep up with Brian. I'm not blaming. I take responsibility for how much I drank totally, but I see, I remember you being drunk that much. But every time, every time you were drunk, because you're saying it's that I was trying to keep up with them. Yeah, just
as the kind of a guy thing. And once you get into it, then you're like and then he's just pooring and he's fun, as you know, he's really very very fun.
But here's this trick when he gets drunk and even when he's not drunk, doesn't move that much of you know, it's he just kind of.
Oh my gosh, stands that's totally his trick.
Yeah, it is his trick. Is he doesn't try and move his legs. No, he doesn't or even face. Yeah, he just like says funny things a little bit and it's hilarious and it gets funnier and he's very improvy. Yeah, he's very good at that. Yeah, he's very good. Did you do that improv who's laying?
Is it? Anyway? I never did, but I will say, yeah, the funniest comedic improvisation that I have ever seen, and I've seen a lot, right, was when we had the final Drew Carey show dinner and you were invited. We had it on last at some fancy restaurant. Oh got like a private there was a private room room. And it was at the end of the ninth season, which you were not on. I was on that I was making Saving Grace. You were amazing that you showed up. But at that point the cast had gotten so fractious.
Only Ryan and I were speaking to each other. I think Kathy and I were those ye. No, no, no, But I mean as far as everybody that was there, we were still talking to Kathy, but there was a lot of acromy ten. It was like family at that point. It was like family, that's my point. And Craig, you were so funny. There was something about the awkwardness of
the situation. You literally were the funniest person. Don't see it speaks about this, My wife speaks about this all the time, really as being the funniest comedy set anyone who's ever done, because there was something about the awkwardness of it that sparked you. And everything we said that was passive aggressive to each other you picked up on and made a joke out of and it was hilarious. It was like you were trying to make things better.
That's exactly like my family life when I was a kid.
You were just trying to make things better.
I was just trying to make things better. I swear to God. Through congression is the Scottish thing. Yeah, so it is like, Oh, and the interesting thing is I also don't remember my childhood and I was sober.
Yeah, right that most of your childhood.
Well not all of it, but a fair amount of my childhood. Your childhood is very different though. You're like, you're d C right, you're like government family and with your father spy or something.
Yeah, I guess I can say that now, Yeah, he was in the CIA, and he was in the CIA, right, yes, yeah, and he was chief of Sabbath Center Foreign Relations Committee. He ended up being Assistant Secretary of State during the Clint administration.
So was he like, did he do black holes and stuff like that?
Was he you know, away from you know him, he did go away from home. All of the stuff that he did in the field was before I was born. But then he always kept a hand in and he oddly enough, he was on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, better known as the Church Committee, and really went after the CIA, And because he was in the CIA at one point, he was able to use his contacts for those that were within the CIA who were upset with the way the agency was going.
So the implication being that there is some corruption and the intelligence community, because should they find that hard to believe that anywhere that humans have power, that there would be any kind of form of corruption is unbelieving.
Yeah, And I think his greatest claim to fame, The thing that was brought up in his obituary was that he was the person that supplied Senator Fulbright, the Senator from Arkansas, with the information about the Gulf of Tonkin, which made Robert McNamara retire that it was a lie. Wow. That was in his obituary.
So that, I mean, that's a very impressive resume and a very kind of specific world.
Yes, And I was always.
Kind of intrigued, is how you Why you weren't drawn into that? It feels like like the gravitational pill of that kind of thing would be very strong, were you tempted at that point.
I just never never tempted. I think because I saw how the sausage was made. The thing that it did prepare me for in Hollywood was something that you had alluded to earlier in this podcast, which is the cyclical nature of a career, right, the shifting sands. My dad like to call it the magic hat. So if you have the magic hat on, everybody loves you, but it's not you. It's the hat.
Yeah, And that's very Hollywood. That's all it really is as well. But I mean your career is I mean, you have had a stellar career, Thank you. I was quite jealous as I watched you.
How is that even possible? You're you were on great shows.
You're on Beep, which is an amazing show, bo Jack, which is like Salminal.
Yeah, I mean it's it's like rewriting them. That's truly a game. Yeah, is it something I would say Better Things was also I don't know if you saw it, but Better Things is also a good show.
I didn't see better Better Things is a very solid, beautiful show. So the kind of thing that there's always been a great depth to your work, which I don't think you were used. And I feel this a little bit a couple of actors. Actually, I didn't see that you get used that way in the Drew Carey Show when you were playing Oswood Lee Harvey. It was a very it was a fun show, but it was kind of too dimensional in many ways.
Well it was entirely two Yeah, we were like hothouse flowers. We weren't real people. We were just vehicles for jokes. That said, I totally enjoyed it. Yeah, me too, Well, not totally, but a lot of it. I think I enjoyed it more than you did. I think you probably did.
I think that it's funny I remember, and I.
Don't think it was because of the size of the part. You had a good part, and you were you were a rock solid performer, like you fucking kicked ass every week and it like rock star every week. So I don't think it was the size of the part. I think it's because you were more ambitious than me.
Definitely I was. I don't think I still suffer from that, but I did. I did have at that time. Yes, definitely, And from my perspective, I'm not no.
I think no. I think you're right.
I think that I was looking at you guys, and I felt like you were all doing better than me, which is what ambitious people always think, like everybody's doing better than me.
And that's such true.
It's like a fucking stupid yeah.
And then like after I had gotten maybe I don't know, I was about eighteen months and doing the Late night Show and I ran and I think it was Jerry, the director. Jerry used to do the show, and he said, wow, yeah, if ever a guy you know, it was him. And Drew said, if ever a guy needed a show with his name on it, it's you, Craig, and I went, really, So I'm standing next to Drew Carrey from the fucking Dru Show for nine years.
He's like, yeah, it's different.
I was.
You didn't suffer from that ambition to did you not feel that, Like, I mean, you were coming off like the Beverly Hillbillies, big giant movie.
Did you not feel was your.
Ambition not burning hall at that point?
Well, I was disappointed by the reaction of the Beverly Hillbillies. I thought I was going to be a movie star for a brief time, and then I dipped back into television frankly because I ran out of money. And then I only did the Drew Carey Show because I was trying to drive. I never told you this story. No, I don't know this story. So the Drew Carey Show was my second pilot of the season. I was on the revamping of Margaret Chow's show, but then about I
didn't believe in the show. About halfway through the show, my agent like came and said I have to go, and I was with the Drew care Show Margaret, and then I said, how do I get off this show? And he goes, you're halfway through the pilot. I was like, yeah, this is really a mistake. Everybody knows it, you know, and and he goes, okay, well, so you know we're going too second position something. So I was like, okay, great, and I tested for a pilot called Partners. Tate Donovan
did it and John cry got my part. Okay, but anyway, they low balled me over at Sony I'm working for right now. Actually unlucky Hank, you know totally I'm working for that too. Sony's great. Yeah, I love to be my favorite people. Yeah yeah, but they totally low balled me. And so I called my agen and I was like, that's I mean, our quote is there. I mean, they
just have the quote and they're not coming back. And he goes, well, you know, you gotta get something else and we'll just fight them off and use it as a bargaining tea. Yeah. So he goes, there's a show a stand up if you order Drew Carry and I was like, no, no, and he goes, well, he did well on this other stand up show and I don't watch that stand up show. Yeah, and it was such a TV snap if you remember. Like, I'm much better now that I have a kids. And it's like, you.
Are one of the people that I would say grew the fuck up since I met them. I mean you, honestly, I mean you were never you were always a very nice man, but no, you were but like you grew up. It's so patantly obviously when you had your kids, you're like, oh no, wait a minute, ye resay.
But anyway, so I went on the Drew Carey Show pilot and they wanted to test me, so we put him against one another, and Sony did come up to my quote, and so did the Drew Carry Show. But and I just showed up for the test and I did it like blah blah blah, because my test for the Sony thing was the same day. So I just was like, Okay, yeah, this is the morning thing. And then I'm going to go like some people would have a cup of coffee and a ship, and I was like, I'm going to test for a show.
But the Drew Carrey show was kind of like a cup of coffee and the ship was the whole idea, the process.
Yeah, yeah, the circle of so. And then I went off to the Sony thing. And then I didn't get this sonything, and I got the Drew Carry Show. And my agent called me to tell me I got the Drew Carry Show and I yelled at him. I was like, what have you done us? That's crazy? And then the show was.
Yeah, nine years nice fucking years. I didn't do the last year. I didn't do the first year either. You didn't do the first year. Yeah, I joined after that. I was gonna maybe in for like three episodes or something.
The first year wasn't good. And I hope I'm not crushing fans of the show, but I really didn't like the show. I actually tried to get off the show. In my defense, I had done seven pilots before the Drew Carrey Show, so I thought, I'll just get another show and I'll be back, Okay. Yeah, So yeah, they didn't let me off, and I wasn't crazy. I love Drew and I loved Ryan, and Kathy was great, but I didn't love the scripts. I didn't love my part. And I thought, this is to speak to what you
were saying about the ambition. I thought, like, I'm a second banana on a show. I should be the first banana, and I should get off the show. Bruce didn't let me off the show, and I'm very grateful for that because the showrunner. Yeah, the second year off the show was so much better, and that was trapped.
Yeah, and also I had arrived and.
And I'm not joking about that. It actually made the show happen because you were a great antagonist to him. What it made his work? Sheer fucking hell, you're right, there's more sticks to throw the protagonist. The voiceover thing. It's nothing against Kevin Pollack. He's a great actor. Yeah, he's great. So but he was a voice. Yeah, we saw him at the end of the first year. It was a dumb gimmick. Well he was.
If anyone doesn't know, he was Drew's voice. He was Drew's boss in the first year of the show, but you never really saw him. It was just on a kind of like speakerphone, that's right. And then he turned up for the last episode. But at that time, and Kevin said this to me himself, he said, I was too expensive at the time.
They couldn't afford me. So I was doing a lot of movies. Yeah, yeah, it was a legit movie start at the time. Yeah.
I think they offered mister Wick to Hugh Laurie as well. No kid, Yeah, I believe so. I think you said no. I wow, I'm better than that.
That would have been a mistake. I don't know.
I think he'd been pretty good. I don't get me wrong, he's amazing.
Yeah, but I think that that wouldn't have worked. I think that you were I think personality wise.
I think for me, the Drew Carey Show was that its best in that second third fourth.
Those were the good years. Yeah, when we were like doing.
The live episodes and doing the like big musical numbers and all that.
And also the episode that you were talking about, the full Monty episode, that's a that's an excellent it's a great episode. Yeah, it's really that scene when we're all on the couch and you come in and you talk about your addiction to the ponies and Oswald thinks that you sleep with ponies. It's very good.
It's memory John Carol Lynch and Drew dancing to the Heart music to Windy as well. It's like, and but these you look at John Carroll Lynch as well, that guy who's going on to like direct these serious movies, and he's like big, and you've done that too. You you carved a legitimate career after after the after the show, I think, thank you.
Well, it's true.
I mean, but none of us were part of that kind of whose lying improv world.
I mean, Ryan did it. It was kind of Ryan and Drew really or who's like, really Ryan, Yeah, Well, Drew was funny because he.
Laughed, and it was funny because he laughed, and he liked being around everybody doing it, and he's genuinely fun guys.
Yes, he's a nice guy. But Ryan's the improv genius. Oh my god, he's a genius. Yeah, he's truly incredible. No, they asked me to do the show a number of times. I'm sure they asked you.
No, I don't really. I don't think they ever did, or maybe they asked me to do it once. I don't know sure.
I like, because I'm school teach I to go. They never asked me and they left it. But I don't think they did. Levett and they probably in.
The dark, but I think they probably did ask me, and I would be shocked.
If you didn't. I don't know. I was.
I was never that comfortable, and weirdly enough for what I did later on. I was very uncomfortable with improv, very un comfortable with that group improv. I always felt I can't really do It's a different beast it is. Yeah, I mean, did you like? Did you like the experience of doing it? One of my favorite parts about acting is knowing what I'm going to say.
Yeah, isn't that great? I love it? Yeah, I don't know what I'm gonna say right now. Yeah, And so it's a little unnerving.
But if you get to practice what you're going to say a high voice to it.
Wow, this is gradation actually say. Seeing what you're actually saying as opposed to what you're saying all of that, all text analysis, all that kind of stuff you can really dive into that doesn't happen in life. And like we just blurted out.
I think I think I just realized why you've done so well as an actor Because you say words like text analysis and stuff like that.
I'm like, oh God, he's a fucking real actor for good. He's a proper actor that does things.
This is an official invitation to the Fancy Rascal Stand up Show. I Craig Ferguson will be performing this fall in your region. You can buy tickets and check out the full list of dates that the Craig Ferguson Show dot com slash dour see you there or not?
I've trained you you had? Did you train? Yes? Where did you go on train? I went to North Carolina School of the Arts that's in Winston sale Mor. That's pretty fancy, isn't it. It's fancy dancy. Yeah, it fancy? Is that?
So did you come to Hollywood straight after that or did you go in to a theater.
I was going to go into theater, and then I got a pilot in between my sophomore and junior year, a Western. We were on vacation in Santa Fe met a casting director to dinner party. Short story, long story short. I got cast in this pilot and then in western in a Western, my fucking dream. It was really fastern, Honest to god. I was going to be a stage actor before that time, but it was so much fun
to dress up like a cowboy. Yeah, And that was Sag and a lot of my friends that had graduated, who I thought were much more talented than myself, that were in New York and trying to be stage actors. They're having a very hard time and.
It's very difficult, this stage world.
So it is. My father's idea was that I move out here because I'm already Sag, go like solon to a five year plan and then move to New York if it doesn't work out. And I thought that was a pretty good idea. So I did that.
So your dad, who's this very interesting government figure, was cool with your going on the show. But his idea, it was his idea for me to drop out of North Carolina School of the Arts and just get started.
See.
He was kind of out the box thinker then, wasn't he.
Yeah, And I think he knew me. Yeah, and he knew that I was going to be on I mean, you know his thing when you know, when he brought up the idea, he said, you know, you got a job at a dinner party. I think he'll be okay. And then he paid my rent for the first two years, which really really helped that does how So, Yeah, because I didn't need to get a straight job, I worked
enough where I could feed myself. This is after the first three or four months when I tried to make it completely on my own and I had trouble at the beginning. I got a job in two weeks, my second pilot. But I went through the money really really fast because I thought I was made. I thought I picked my dues. It's been two weeks. Yeah, you know that. That's a common thing.
Though we used to say, like the best time to buy a house in La Is just after the TV season starts and shows get start getting canceled, and.
The actors who thought that they were going to be Yeah.
No, I just burnt through it. Yeah. And you know, I bought every type of thing that you could put into your body, and as you know, like you run out of money really quick.
Yeah.
But you were never like a druggie around weed and a lot of booze.
Yeah.
I never even saw you with much in the way we not like the way weed is now, Like the entire you didn't smells like weed.
All the time. I know, Well, I just shot in Vancouver. The Vancouver is so much weed. Like I smelled cigarette smoke, and I was like, what the hell is that?
Yeah, it's weird. It's like it's like a flashback when you smelled just tobacco. Yeah, I know. I mean New York smells like we. Most of la smells like we. Chicago, Denver. Yeah, oh my god, that's just like you can get high just going there. So complained and you're like.
The reason that you didn't see it is that I quit. I had told Dulcie when we first real life, to my wife of twenty six years.
I was going to say, you guys get married when we were doing Drew Carey right right, and yeah, between the.
First second and in the third season, Yeah, she wanted me to quit. And that was basically like if we go forward, because I smoked a lot, she just like put her. It was basically like, she's a very sensible person. Yeah.
El see, I always very one of those I mean, look, you're married her, you know better than me. Yeah, But she always seemed to me with someone who had their shit together. It was kind of like an impressive Yeah, organized.
More than anyone else has helped me with my career because of just not just being encouraging but also pushing me in a way and disciplining me. See.
I think that that is very important in her career because I was much more scatter show and much more ambitious until I met Megan, who we've been together eighteen years and and you knew me before that, And all I could think of was the success must be it must be success, and success is a big hit and money. It's not creative fulfillment. It's not there's no other side. It's a two dimensional thing, and so one or a zero. And I understand that though yeah, I think for.
Young people, I think it's okay. And also it's it's what Hollywood tells you.
Yeah, there was somebody I talked to. I think it was Peter Medak. Do you know the director Peter Meadow, I know his name, Peter. He directed a lot of episodes of The Wire. Yeah, but he made he made a couple of great movies, a movie about the craze, and he made a movie called The Ruling Class with Peter o'tool back in the Day.
Yeah, it's a great movie, rantastic. I think that's his first movie.
D Yeah.
And he talks talks like you know, it's sort of for my purposes. He talks like a you know, an old Nazi from nineteen fifties movie.
He doesn't talk like this at all, but that sort of version of this.
Okay, He's like, well, you know, see it's the singer's crierk.
You know, the movie Twister makes one hundred and fifty million dollars, So movie Fanny and Alexander.
Makes I don't know what fifty dollars.
Therefore, the movie Twister is a better movie than Fanny and Alexander. Yes, oh no, of course the outside is no and.
You get that. I like guys like that.
I like guys like that who who kind of see And I think that that comes with agent experience and wearing the hat and not wearing the hat.
So that's right. Yeah, do you've messed? Yeah, if you have a career where you have worn the hat and then you don't wear the hat and then somebody gives you the hat again, Yeah, and that's when you're really appreciative of the that's next to have a bag.
Yeah, I think of it. It's kind of like the Sean Connery zar Doors. Yeah, we bring it up all the time. Yeah, but Zarch, But that's like Sean Connery. Yeah, and yet he's in a MANKINI one point he must have been thinking, what the fucker will the fucking MANKINI fucking jobs?
Now. I know that some people love.
The movie Outdoors, but I don't think Sean loved it. We were talking about Sean Connery the other day. We were right, because when did you me?
I met him at an awards saying he was getting
a Lifetime award. This is during the right before The Hillbillies came out, and I had a publicist because it felt like I should understand and so I went to a bunch of parties and one of them was this award that he was given and f Maria Brown told the story about the director of Name of the Rose, who was supposedly very abusive to basically everybody and the crew and the actors and really just awful and would lose his shit continually, which is really a terrible thing
for him. That terrible thing. You're the one who's supposed to be in control. That's the you're not allowed that he really shouldn't. But anyway, Connery said nothing through the entire time to this guy. He just did his job and he talked to the actor. He was fine, but he just did his job. He didn't say anything to
the director. And then the director took a big stick and was about to hit a horse that he wasn't doing what he wanted the horse to do right, and Connery grabbed his wrist and pushed it down, and you could tell that the director really was like fighting. But Connor is a big fella, mister universe. Yeah, so he's holding him down. He goes not the horse fu line you just yeah, okay, just.
I was telling you my wife we had only been dating a short period of time and I had to give an award to showing at something call he would do all the time. He was getting him every week, and I was giving him this award. I gave him the award and then we get introduced afterwards, and Megan's wearing a dress and went over and I said, yeah, he said, gets very nice to me. Yes, thanks for the alt that was very pleasuant. What you shad?
Thank you?
And I said, thank you very much showing This is my wife Megan, and he's it very nice to meet you. Megan and her tit's blush, not even physically. I didn't even know that tits could blush. She she just went oh and they lit up like it was fucking Halloween.
Like I didn't even know these things could do that. Well, they don't do it for you, but that Sean Tom. I was like, oh my god, he could make the women sweat blush. Yeah, that's that's that's quite a sky.
He was fucking great. Yeah for me, he was.
He and Belly Cornley were kind of like the Jackie Robinson thank you?
Do you know? What I mean?
For you was, what did you watch when you were a kid and you go want I want a piece of that. I want I want to be able to do that.
My origin story, yeah, is that we were living in Paris. My dad was a European matress. We were living in Paris. We were he was a European representative for the Ford Foundation. This is shortly after he brought down Robert mcnamura. He was told to basically get out of town.
Right, not like and you know, have the hat, but you better get the fuck out of him for a while.
Yeah, you really lost the hat. Yeah it's rolled down the street. You're not gonna get that hat. Ended up being fine, but yes, that we he was definitely out. But anyway, I basically just learned English. I was little, and then there was French, right, and so I was really deeply alienated by the whole thing and kind of a troubled little kid, little loner, weird kid. At this point, I am about three and a half four, three and a half four, okay, And my mom paid for my
siblings to take me to the movies. And I very quickly figured out that that was the deal, because my sister would bring all over Stone friends and they would, you know, we would go see Fred Astaire movies. Which I totally love. But I really loved Charlie Chaplin. How interesting, and there was something about the combination of the path I was the physical comedy and just the warmth that I really love the sweetness. Now a lot of people think it's too treauily. Buster Keaton is probably for the
hardcore fans, and I'm a huge fan. Don't get me wrong. The hardcore fan. He's just comedy. It's it's very little sentiment. But for me, I love the sentiment. Yeah, it was a little kid, you know. And the first one I saw it was the kid. So I was like, this guy this is and I could hang with this guy. He hangs out with kids, and I wreaked up my little I worked up a little Charlie Chaplin act in my room in our apartment, and then I guess about
a year later, we went to the theater. My fake auntie, Auntie Shure took me and I was my fake you know, my mommy, But anyway, she took me. This one theater that I loved the most because there was a live musical accompaniment. The guy improvised music to whatever was playing. And it was my favorite because it was just like being in the theater in the original.
It's weird because it I mean, this sounds like you grew up in the nineteen twenties.
It is like, this is what nineteen seventies, seventy yeah, yeah, yeah, seventies someone around there anyway, So the film burned, got caught and burned. He went on fire, yeah, and and everybody booed, and the lights came back, and I ran in between the audience and the screen because nobody boos Charlie Chaplin. Like, I just wasn't going to allow that to happen. So I jumped in between and I did my little Charlie Chaplin. The organ player played, and you
did it for the audience. Did it for the audience and the French audience. That's good, they love you. I got a standing ovation. Jesus, that is so great.
Now, I think we have to make a movie of your life because that is such a good origin story.
Don't you think it's crazy?
It's lovely?
Yeah, it's funny. Yeah. Do you actually have memory of it? I mean, I you know, there's so many questions about recovered memory. I actually did recover this memory by watching Chaplain, the biopic with Robert Downey junior. There is a scene in it where his mother, who's played by Charlie Chaplin's actual daughter Geraldine Chaplin in the movie, plays her own grandmother, grandmother who has a nervous breakdown on stage when Chaplain
himself is about three or four. That's right, she was very ill, she was, And anyway, she had a nervous breakdown on stage and everybody started a boo, and he thought, no one is going to boo my mother. So he jumped on stage and started doing a panamime act because he had no act. It was the only thing that he can think of. And I was sitting in the theater and I was like, she for freak.
That's amazing, that's amazing, And your family remember it.
Yeah, that's crazy, Yeah, but typical of my family. Like I called my mom. I was crying. I called my mom and I just want to check something because I had this incredibly powerful experience. It was like an epiphany for me, and I just want to double check and make sure that it actually happened and that I wasn't making it up. And she went, oh, yes, yeah, yeah, And I go, did you ever think about telling me
that you know that? And yeah, Auntie, Sure she took you and I go, yeah, that's right, Yeah, that's right. I thought that.
Do you know the story about Chaplain and Michael Kay and Michael Kain told me the story, which is what they were both from the area the Elephant and Castle in London, like a very poor slum area in London, and in the nineteen late nineteen sixties or seventies they were knocking down it must have been in the seventies, actually, they were knocking down the Elephant and Castle.
The area in London.
It was called that because it was it was in the Middle Ages. It was called Lanflon de Castile, but the Londoners couldn't pronounce that elephant castle.
Oh that's hilarious. And it was a big children. Yeah.
So they were knocking down this area and Michael, who grew up there, was walking around it and you know, he thought, I'll go and see it before they knock it down.
So very early in the morning.
Yeah, one sunday's walking around the Elephant Castle. It's all kind of deserted and stuff. And he comes around the corner and fucking Charlie Chaplin is there, old man. And he said, mister Chaplin, what are you doing yet? I can't do Charlie, Charlie chutlerman. But and then you came up, but he said, well, I thought i'd come around to look at the old neighborhood before they knocked it down.
In the two of them, it's there's something wonderful about that two huge, huge, my god, and from obviously very different eras.
Yeah, but still, but then walking around together sharing a childhood. That's really fascinating both of these people.
And this is kind of where I want to lead you a little bit, is that both of these people, for me, I never met Chaplin. I presume you didn't either, But I've met and spent time with Michael Kaine, who is a fucking diamond of a human being.
He's just amazing. I'm really delighted to hear that.
And what's great about is that he's one of the few people I've met that retains the mystique. I know how films are made, I've made them, you've made him. Moving on him, I know how the sausage is made, but he keeps the glamour. I wondered for you, is there still an area of this business because you've I mean,
you've really proved yourself in this game. Is there still any kind of like, you know, the feeling you used to get when you would see the star's handprints that used to I used to kind of get that, and I don't anymore. I'm like, Yeah, it's the guy Pin's end in concrete than matter. You hear stories about people. Is there anyone who still does it for you?
Did I get starstruck or that I'm.
Just any starstruck or just retains the mystique who kind of still has the glamour on either personally or but I'm thinking more personally like interacting with people. No, No, it's funny, that isn't it. No, I have yet to see the glamour of this business. I too totally worshiped it from an outsider's perspective, right. I used to go to Men's Chinese when I had a particularly intense audition.
Before I would go, and I would stand in Jimmy Stewart's shoe prints at Men's Chinese and just look up at this Guy'say, show me the magic, to show me the magic? Yeah, because he was my favorite of the speaking actors.
Yeah, this is so cold talking that a little catcho on never but I have yet to see glamor. I mean, one moment I think was fairly ground glamorous in early screenings of Miscongeniality Too. I went to with AlSi I should say, we went to a theater way out in like Glendale or something. I can't quite remember right now, but anyway, we went up to where the projectors were,
right because that's where Sandy was. And there was Sandra Bullock in the middle of the room on her phone, looking amazing and like a star, waiting for the lights to go down so she could join the audience. And I think that was the one moment where I was like, that's actually pretty cool.
Yeah, it's funny that I it does go away.
Yeah, because there's just a lot of desperate people trying to work.
I just went you know, what did it to me was late night because every night you met everybody, giant star comes out. Not every night, but a lot of times. Giant stars come in. Giant stars come in, Giant stars come in, and the douche to mens ratio is the same as anywhere else in the world.
World.
Yeah, it's just like, oh yeah, some guys douches, some guys mention and that's just the way it is. But there are people for me still who kind of transcend it a little bit. Okay, who's that Well Robin Williams did that for me a little bit. Even although we became friendly, there was still like there's it seemed to me he had a magic.
Maybe it's genius. Maybe that's what it is. It's not really.
About glamour and show business, but it's about.
The next level of real talent.
Yeah, or when you see somebody doing a thing like every now and again, I would see that I could even do. I could do and I'm not saying I could even do it with you, but I can do it with you. Like there were times when I would, like when I was watching BoJack, when you turned up in BoJack as the agent, Yeah, I was like, Oh, that's fucking gorgeous.
And it was great. It was good. I mean that show for me, I'm such a fan of that shows.
A really great show. It's a very dark, strange, right, Yeah, and I don't think there's been a darker comedy.
Yeah. I mean, who was it you were working with on that? Bob the creator of the show, and I did a show together called Save Me Right that was a total piece of shit, okay, and he knew it at the time, and I knew it at the time, but he couldn't say anything. But I just talked about it all the time.
So he appreciated that, yeah, and couldn't wait to get you into it when he had his own show.
Then he brought me in and he was like, your candor was so like refreshing that there was somebody who knew that they were on a piece of shit while they were in it.
And it was one of those shows, BoJack, I thought that you lived in terror of your name turning up in it.
Has he skewered everybody? Yeah? Mine dead? Oh really? Yeah. I was watching it one day.
I was like, I think it's like it's deep into the season with BoJack's way the face and the reporters are looking for Bojacks huh And they go to an a meeting Yeah, and they say have you seen any celebrities and a meeting some I thought, Craig.
And then the reports that trying to be thranked by Association are you?
And I was like that was good that yeah for Acially, since you're not anonymous, you're recovering and you're pretty clear about it. But the AA.
Thing is anonymous. I don't, I can't, and you wouldn't, of course.
But what I mean is that he picked the one like he was in recovery.
He was up, and then there was a there was a whole bunch of people left that as well. He just ran less than a fucking dishbag. Fucking celebrities that have gotten sober included, and I kind of loved it. But as as a skewing, it wasn't bad. It wasn't a skewing at all. Okay, I think if you're an actor, the way you're an acte, which I admire greatly, is that I don't see you being you everywhere.
Well, I don't think of me anywhere. I hope not. I'm really trying to be somebody else every time. I work really hard at that, in breaking up my own rhythms and tried to pick up the rhythm of the with the writing. I really work hard on that. I mean, That's why I mean, some people don't even know I'm in Napoleon Dynamite because yeah, god those pants. Everybody else. My one regret in show business is that I the
greatest I picked. I'm out of a lineup. Jerusha, who was also the co writer but was the wife of Jared the director, was also the costume director. Right, that's a small thing. Right, She saw me three different pairs of pants and I was like, no, they are amazing.
So, but is that a thing that you do when it comes to like publicity because you're you're happy you sat here and this is you.
I know you.
Yeah, yeah, I haven't seen you do a ton of like you did my talk show, but I see I haven't seen you do a ton of them.
Do you do in purpose?
Are you not so into I mean, it's strange to say this as an actor, but I'm not so into talking about myself.
I'd not rather talk about a specific project. And if I do that, then Twitter has kind of changed this, Like I feel like I you're quite president on that. Also, it is a side of me, It's the it's the funnier side, the kind of goofy your side. But sometimes I open up about the things that I'm actually feeling. But most of the time I try to be light and airy. I try to be a positive force, right, And in Twitter that's particularly difficult because it's a it's a dark place. It is it is a dark place
it used to be. It was funny.
I was talking to Josh Robert Thompson recently about who's the guy who did the robot and the Late night show? Who was fucking genius? Yeah, and he was. We were talking about how early on Twitter was was kind of great. It was fun, it was light, and it went very dark and I think probably was the politics of twenty sixteen and that that kind of.
Yeah, I think appreciated that a little bit. But I think as you were alluding to earlier, it's it's the ratio, and you know, you get a lot of responses from being negative, and so tend to, yeah, be more negative, I think, just to get the attention. They equate negative attention and positive attention.
Has been the same way. Yeah, I don't do that, No, No, it's so strong. Negative attention is deeply stressed.
Well because we're performers, right, so there's a part of us that wants the audience to lat we want that love, right.
That's also that if they don't like you, and you're out of business exactly.
And it's also like if we were to stand on sedge and people were to literally boo and we got the same feeling out of that. That would be strength, that would be that would be good.
Thank you so much, Oh bless you all for coming hang him throw cabbages exactly.
Obviously this is if it was a visual medium, I would have thrown a cabbage.
Gbages of course.
What about directing, Oh, sometimes I think about it, but other times I'm just so satisfied with what I do. You know, I think I'd like you to think about it more than really, yeah, because you have a very good personality for it. I mean even talking about it, Like, first of all, you're positive, and you also you see things and you do things like text analysis, which a
lot of fucking directors could do well doing that. But I think also you have this thing I'm going to do a massive name him drop fantastic.
All right. So I was.
Directing this movie, yeah, and I did a very bad job on it. But I was talking to h Warren Beatty before I At lunch we wore in Beatty boom, yeah, yeah, there he goes. And at lunch we wore and Beaty because somebody had set us up lunch so he could help me. Because I was in the movie and I was directing the movie and so he was I said, I need to talk to guys. He's supposed to be astonishingly bright. He's amazing and clever. Man, that's what's on every waitress that serves.
That's fucking ridiculous.
It's crazy.
I don't think he even knows he's doing it.
He's like, you know, you look fabulous, that this is the greatest omelet I've ever seen. I was like, I forgot, but shameless, unbelievable, Like I don't even know, I conscious, I don't even know.
I don't think he is hitting on these people. I think he's just so.
Kind of just as warmingly anyway, whatever it is. But he he was talking about directing. The number one thing he said, don't try and impress anyone. The less you say, the more they're going to be impressed. That's interesting, he said, because they turn everybody turns up when the movie set, and they've all got a call sheet. And on that call sheet is written bold type right at the top director.
And then your name. So they're already impressed. All that's going to happen is you're going to disappoint.
They're like, oh, and I think that you I wouldn't have said this about you.
When we were doing the Drew Carrey, I was out of control. You weren't out of control.
You were younger.
Yeah, and you were a nice guy. And I don't I will, you know, I don't want to hold with any idea that there's anything wrong.
It was none wrong with you.
But you clearly are a human being who's made a transit, who grew up. And I think that you have stories to tell. And even when you when you told the story of you as a little kid in Paris, that's fine.
Better visual we think about it, thank you. I will all right.
Well, so when you're making your movie, I would like to be angry Parishian these keyd my movement there.
I think it would be fine. I think I could do it. I could throw a mustache. Yeah.
But just acting, then, you don't you don't see it as a well, that's the wrong thing, is I don't mean just acting you Oh, I know what you're saying, right, Yeah?
No, I mean I find my job very complex and it never gets easy in a way where I kind of stop thinking about it. I find every day interesting. And you know, I'm on this new show called Lucky Hank And with Bob Bob bobble Kirk and an incredible cast, right, And we did one episode, episode five, where we're all together. It's a bottle episode. For those people that aren't in show business, it's basically when the show the studio tells you that we have no more money, and so they
do an episode where everybody's caught together. Right. The snow dead episodes not in episode or something. You'll see it on TV shows all the time. In show business, they're called bottle episodes. That's just the short thing. So the writers of Lucky Hank, who were exceptionally good, had all of these characters out in the show in the first four episodes, and they were kind of like just a lot of strings, and you didn't know if Hank was the thing that pulled it together or why they were
necessarily connected. And in this one episode, they just pulled the string and they realized that it's been there the entire time, and it pulls everyone together with them. And there's a scene where it's twelve pages at a table and it's a loss of time, very long time. It's like twenty five minutes, yeah, and so we're just sitting there, yeah, talking and it reinvigorated my sense of my profession and
the beauty of it in one day. It was so beautiful to see all these actors in our act and create something new every single take, to push each other but also push the reality of what we're making get deeper and deeper every take. And one of the things that drives me completely bonkers about those that don't take our mutual profession seriously is when they're off camera and they stop acting. It drives me completely bonkers, like I would prefer you not to be there and I can
act to tape. And I have asked for this before, because actors will just like, you know, they're just going to the longer or whatever.
The camera's on someone cameras on the other actor.
They're sitting off camera and for looks basically so that your look looks like but they're they're not acting, and they barely know their lines or they don't know their lines and they're just reading it. It's so distracting to me that I would prefer to have a piece of tape and I have the script supervisor read, and I will look at something that it's like, you're the best actor ever. I will make you look good at us to God, but don't be here right now because you're
not doing it right. And this ensemble with Bob as the lead, every single take was great, even when it was coverage of like you know, just one person had two cameras on them and there was their close up and there are ten actors in the scene. Everybody acted their heart out. Bob was crying off camera. Yeah, that's
that's just a waste of fee shows. He had already done his close up, but somehow he tapped into something and he just kept going it, just kept tapping into it right, and he was just one hundred percent there and everyone was right there. It felt magical.
But that's part of the attraction, like at the very beginning for a lot of people, I think is the collegiate band brothers fields of what it's like to be in an ensemble cast.
That's exactly right.
When you and I were talking going back to those early days of the Drew Carey Show, that second season, third fourth season run about that period, maybe the episode twenty five Persuit of one hundred, there was a time when I think we were in that space.
I completely agree with it, and that I think we lost it probably about mid fifth season, and then we were just doing a job. But for those it's like the rock and roll movies when they, you know, the band gets together and they have their peak hits and they're really great, and then they just keep playing. Yeah, and they keep playing and they're playing in the then the inevitable happened. The drum is always gonna But when it's good, it's really beautiful. You're like, oh, this is
rock and roll. This is really good. If one person is off, the band is off. But when they're all together, it all clicks. It's amazing.
Yeah, it's beautiful. And I think that that's kind of odd. Even as a viewer when you watch shows, you can see like there are shows that just come out of the gay and they're amazing, and then you know, season ten, they're like, now, really when they introduced was it the Simpsons did the dog with sunglasses on theboard, Like, okay, yeah.
But I think that there is a kind of lie.
Carrie Fisher used to say this, and I think it was a brilliant thing to say, amongst many brilliant things. That smart, she was wonderful. Did you know I knew a little bit, Yeah, she was.
She was very for me.
When the Late Night Show started. I had just written a book and she read it, and.
She American on purpose. No before that.
It was a novel I wrote called Between the Bridge and the River and it was a kind of magical realist thing and it's never going to make any money or anything like that, but I really wanted to write it, and she read it and she was very positive about it and really kind of introduced me in a way to Hollywood that hadn't been before. She was just amazingly supportive. Wow, she did that for tons of people. That's so cool.
Like she had this kind of like artists colony at our house, and you would go up and you'd meet, like I meant, the weirdest people. I'm like about Courtney Love up there, and you mean, like not the Corney lovel but she has a little weird I think I would say that she was.
Here, but I don't think that's a big surprise. No, it's no. But but I just met a lot of a wild array of different people and lovely.
But she said, when I put on that metal bikini when I was twenty four, I didn't realize I was making a pact.
With the universe to look like that for the rest of my life.
Wow. Yeah.
And I you know, it was like, it's a moment in time. Why can't you let it be that?
Yeah? You know.
And I think that with a sitcom when it all comes together, or a movie that all comes together. That that's why, you know, when people talk about AI AM like, it doesn't frighten me because, you know, because it's still got there's too much a for the eye, tomor you know what I'm fucking mean, it's like, why is it you know, like.
Papa been around a very long time.
Yeah, I think that you know, this is going to be funny because the robot says it's funny.
Yeah, good fucking luck robot. Whitney Balier says, the jazz is the sound of surprise, and that's fucking great. I would say the comedy.
Is that, And Robin Williams used to say that good comedy was jazz.
No, there we go. It's good, Dick, You're a joy. It is beautiful to talk to you. More Powerty.
I'm really looking forward to seeing Lucky Hank.
Thank you, well done, Thank you