Bonnie Bartlett Meets World

I have a rant. I have a I have a kids these days style of I.

Love a parenting rant.

Okay, actually this isn't apparent rant, well kind of, this is this is my video game rant I. I don't play video games that much, Like I never got into it. I played computer games when I was younger, but like console games like sitting down and like playing. And I realized, like what I liked back in the day, like the only times I really enjoyed console games were GoldenEye, okay, and Mario Kart and street Fighter too, and uh, Blades

With one other person.

Yeah, you these do not exist anymore. And I am so like, and what that's what I want to do with my son, Like I don't want to play video games where like I'm watching him play a game or he's watching me play a game. And if you look online you try and find games, there are literally only like four of what they call couch co op or couch multiplayer games.

Couch co player everything online with other people.

Yes, that's the thing. It's like now there's there's multiplayer games. You get to play with people, but they're all sitting on their own screens with their headsets. And maybe that's like a fun social experience, but to me it seems so isolating. So I am giving a shout out to there's there's like one game designer who I've discovered who makes great uh couch games. His name is Joseph Farre.

It's like a guy, it's not really one.

Guy, and he has made the greatest games. He started. He made this game called Brothers, a Tale of two sons, and you get to play Brothers, and the whole point of his games. And then he made this game called It Takes Two, which Indian I became obsessed with. You

Think we all played a great one when we were dating, called A Way Out.

What's that?

It's a game where you are are you brothers in it? Jensen? Are you just friends? I think you're friends?

Okay, you're friends, but maybe you're in jail and you have to break out of jail together and it's the two of you up against everybody else and it's what we had so much fun. So oh yeah, we played it for a long time. Untill we beat the game.

There has to be like, there should be more games like that right now.

It kind of really is.

It was a story together. It's so fun.

Oh.

Also, Danielle, when we first started dating, my friend Justin, shout out to Justin and I stayed up all night long playing Until Dawn, which was that like horror game that we loved.

Yes, I remember I'm a movie, but that was really fun too.

So there's another one for you to check out, right that's too horror? Yeah, so maybe, but A Way Out wasn't horror, but it is. You know, you're getting your breaking out of jail. There's a jail break and you know it's Yeah.

Also, so much did you finish Brothers because I don't want to tell you what happens. Oh, it's pretty tragic. And Indy was like devastating. He was like emotional. He was like he was like really sad about it, and I'm like, oh, I didn't realize this game was going to get this emotional. But that's what I like about all because also it takes two you know, it's kind of grown up. But Indy, because you're a doll, but like, you know, I don't know, like it's It was a really cool way for him

Well this, uh.

We recently started playing a wrestling game with Adler. It's not it's not a story based game, but it is a game where two players. You don't have to play with two players, like he can play against the computer if he wants to, but it's it is a game where Jensen and Adler or Adler and I can play against each other.

I want to play. I want to play.

Ww E two K twenty five ww two K twenty five.

Okay, So and you get to play real wrestlers, like real characters from.

Yes now that we are WrestleMania. Now he's gonna have some expertise in it. I think he's really gonna like it. We should also let all of our dear listeners know mister Wilfredell is not joining us for today's episode.

He had a previous.

Commitment he needed to do, and so we we are. We miss him, but it's a he probably would have been a a good person to ask about video games today, although I don't know that he plays modern games.

Yeah, I don't think he does anymore. Welcome to Pod meets World. I'm Danielle Fischel, I'm right strong, and there's no seat four C.

As the duo of pro wrestling experts we now are, it is easy to compare this week's guest to the infamous barbershop incident of nineteen ninety one with Brutus the Barber, Beefcake and the Rockers Sean Michaels and Marty Jeannetti.

You of course know what I'm talking about. Writer.

You see, the Rockers were the most promising young tag team in the then WWF. They were former champs, undeniable babyfaces, but they were never seen apart, always seen as a team. But it was on the set of this barber shop interview segment where that all changed. Shawn Michaels, signaling the duo's breakup and the start of his own legendary heartbreak kid character turned on his best friend Marty super kicking him through a plate glass window.

Now do we see this week's.

Guest turning on her internationally beloved ninety eight year old husband and sending him through plate glass No, but we are ready for her Shawn Michael's close up. With an acting career that spans seven decades, our guest has done it all, from her early work in daytime dramas to roles in classic TV series like Little House on the Prairie, Golden Girls.

And Home Improvement.

She became a go to actor when you needed a real pro, and that resulted in two Emmy wins for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama For Saint Elsewhere, where she played missus Ellen Craig alongside her real life husband William Daniels, known to this podcast as mister Feenie. And then she join us all on Boy Meets World, starting in season five and culminating in four episodes of season six as the Penbrook Dean Lila Bolander. She's also an author, a mother, a grandmother.

An icon.

She is the Sean Michaels of Boy Meets World. This week, we are talking to Bonnie Bartlett. Yeah, there you're there, Bonnie.

It's so lighter enough, like can you see me?

I can see you. You look fabulous as always.

I'm young old.

We're so sorry. Will is not here today.

He had an appointment with his wife that he couldn't miss, and so he's not joining us for this episode. It's just going to be writer and I today to talk with you.

You know, I got a note from Will's father. He's done some legal work for me, even in Canada.

So he got.

A lovely birthday, Bill birthday, and nice to his Father's a lovely.

Guy, isn't he thought the Captain.

Yeah, he's the best.

So great, well, Bonnie, We are so happy to have you back on our podcast, this time by yourself, so we can focus on only you for season six and the emergence of Dean Lila Bolinger. Right, so let's start with your origin story. When did you first find yourself wanting to be an actor?

I think I was born that way. I was really born that way. I was imitating all of the May West and all those blondes, you know, the movies, and I was very busy imitating them, entertaining people with stories, you know, and stuff like that. And I my father had been an actor. We just we watched stuff together on we listened rather radio to all the LUNs and Helen Hayes.

And all those wonderful people. And I was there from the start. I can't remember when.

I didn't want to be an actress, but I wanted to go to New York. I didn't want to be a movie actress. I wanted to be in New York.

Oh wow, you want to do stage?

Yeah, I want to be on the stage.

How did you find out you were any good? Did you get to do like theater school in school?

Because I think it was in junior high school, the beginning of junior high school.

And we had a little class of some kind.

And and I read from I did I'm a good.

Girl, I am my fair lady.

Yes, but the play, the play that it came from, was and I did the whole play for them and the class.

It wasn't meant to be a performance. It turned out to be a performance.

They all laughed, they loved it and everybody, and I thought, oh boy, this is neat.

And then I started to do any play that was around.

Was your father supportive of you following in his footsteps?

Or did he?

Yeah?

Did he warn you about all the hardships.

Oh I knew about all that. Yeah, I knew about all that.

But he he really wanted me to just be a wife and mother. He did a teacher, want me to be a teacher, and he didn't want me to go into the business. And but I did.

Yeah, you did it anyway.

He didn't want me to go to New York when I was eighteen, so I went to Northwestern, Okay, which was good because that's where I met Bill Yes and did a lot of bit wonderful plays there and just.

Did you have to audition to get into Northwestern?

At Northwestern did you audition?

Yeah? Oh yeah, yeah, well.

You had to do audition as a matter of fact.

My freshman year, well, first of all, we did a play where you did a little workshop thing that everybody that the famous acting teacher said, wow, that's an actress. And then I got the lead in a play called Dark in the Moon, played Barbara Allen, and I got the I won all the awards and it.

Was perfect part for me. At that time. I was just it was a great little show.

So I won the fresh even though I was a freshman, I won the Acting award, which is very unusual.

Wow, you know, Charlotte Ray was.

There and she she was doing a wonderful thing, and she said, ah, you beat me, you got the.

She was a.

Senior and she always Charlotte and I are good friends. But I mean she's gone now, but she always had a little bit of a space there because yeah, I beat her or something.

You know, we will.

We we're an all competitive but good friends, good friend.

She was wonderful.

When you moved to New York, you found yourself studying with the legendary Lee Strasburg when you moved. When you moved there, So for listeners who don't know about that method, what did you take away from studying with him?

Well, I was with him for so long, and I was also his personal friends of the family and so forth.

When I get away from him, pro and con Yeah.

He could be very destructive to an actor, or he could be amazingly constructive.

It depended how. I don't know what he was. He had an amazing.

Ability to help you discover your problems as an actor and help people that.

It was very intuitive and very amazing with Bill.

Bill always says, because Bill I dragged him into later then he always said, Strasburg said to me, I don't know what to do with you.

I look at you, and I don't know what to do with you. Let's find out who you are.

And that was extremely helpful to Bill, who had all the early you know, fake things that they teach little kids. You know, he was performing, and so he learned to be very fake because that's what they did in those days and right, so that even at Northwestern he had he still had some of that. He was a wonderful character actor Bill. At at Northwestern his best parts were old men.

He was wonderful at that.

But anyway, so Strasburg, I would say, helped Bill enormously in.

A very quick time, very quick time. With me.

I had to go through a lot of emotional problems I had to go through. I was also in therapy at the same time, so they helped.

The therapy and Lee. The therapy and Lee.

It helped, painful, sometimes hurt, hurting. He could hurt me, but he also was trying to help me get rid of a lot of problems that I had with my father and so forth.

What was your first TV role? What was the first job you booked on TV?

It was on a Pilco playhouse and I played the part.

It was a nice part, and.

I remember I was on a bus and having conversations with.

People on a bus.

Okay, and my whole family around the country turned into Philco that night. And now the first really good part that I had. I played a lot of little stuff.

Philco. We had Robert Montgomery Presents, We had.

All those shows then, and I did a lot of little stuff on that, But that Philco was the first that. And then later I got a lead on a soap opera and that was too much work.

Was that called Love of Life? In nineteen fifty five.

Love of Life?

Wow? There was that a New York or was that in.

La New York, New York?

And it was very well paid and Bill wasn't making any money, so we could certainly use that money. It bought us the apartment. And but you know, it's no, it's not good acting. It's not acting.

You don't have any time.

I'm just going to say, how could how could it be good?

When you're doing multiple episodes in a day or in a week, it's no good.

You just do it, you know, and you you get facile, very facile. And finally they brought in Teleprice. I couldn't use teleprompters.

It just only time I could use tell.

If I had a telephone conversation, I could use the teleprompter because read it off there.

And nobody would know.

Right, I can't do that.

But some of the men that I worked with use teleprompters. I don't know how they did it, but you know they were I don't know how they did it, but they did, and I guess it didn't. It wasn't bad.

So were you miserable the whole time you were doing the soap opera? Were you just like waiting to get off of it?

Yes?

Yeah, yeah, I needed the money, but it doesn't At that time, really good actors in the theater like to be on a soap, but they didn't want to sign a contract. You know what I mean that we would have wonderful actors who would come in to do a week, pick up some money. They would come in to pick up some money, but then they their theater was the main thing. So we had some one especially character people, wonderful character people who would come along for a week or a little short timent.

No contracts.

See, And when I left the soap, I said, I'll do a soap, and I think I did a couple after that, but I said, no contract, no contract.

So how many years were you on Love of Life?

Three and a half, three and a half too much, too long?

And then on a larger nighttime TV scale, you played Gray Snider Edwards on the incredibly popular Little House on the Prairie.

When I came to New York because many years later, yes, I didn't work because I had the two little boys, and I did some theater.

But when we came to.

New York, I mean California, Bill's agents because Bill was by that time, he was working a lot making all these interesting movies. Yeah, And his agent sent me over to Michael and he said, it's just a general appointment. But as it turned out, he hired me that day. He met me and he said, I've got a part for you and starts, and I did it in the next couple of days and turned into Grace. She was not she was never a.

Michael Landon You're talking.

To Michael, Yeah, nice guy, really nice guy. And and he he hired me for that, and I was always on the show. I never had a contract, which was fine with me, but I didn't know that that was a good thing in Hollywood. Yeah right, I didn't know that it makes a difference in the money.

But I was happy. I was so happy to do that show. I loved the part.

And so what year was that that you because you said you had two small kids. I would love to talk to you about the decision you made and when it was When did you have your first child? And and and what was that you decided to take some time off from work, and what was that like for you.

It was the best time of my life. I just loved it. I didn't miss acting. I forgot that I was an actress. I didn't miss it at all. It was just two boys that you know, I had lost a baby, and so maybe maybe that's why I treasured it more because I lost a son right after birth, and I've had a hard time getting pregnant ten years before I got pregnant the first time.

And I said, the doctor said, oh.

This was just a mistake, and it'll you won't you'll get pregnant. I said, no, I won't. If I didn't get pregnant for ten years, this is the first.

Time it's not going to happen.

I was in the mid thirties and so I said, no, we'll They said, we'll wait. I said, I waited a little while, and then we adopted. I always I'm good at making the right choices, you know, when something happens, and that I knew, I knew what I wanted and we got two wonderful boys.

And so how long did you take off of work? And was it an adjustment for you?

Ten years? It was like I was in.

I did a couple of little things. I ran down to to do a show in Florida just overnight that great actor Jackie Gleeson.

I went down.

I did one of his shows quickly, and I during the time when they were I did a play. I went out to do Lanford Wilson's first play and it was with Charlie Derning and Chris Walking and they were marvelous. It was a wonderful experience. But I missed the kids. I would get on a bus and come home over, you know, just to be able to get them up in the morning and off, you know, brek get them off in the morning to school, and then get on a bus back back to Buffalo or wherever we were.

Where were you like this?

To Mama, where did you go?

Well, yeah, that's all.

I needed, That's all I needed, and I stopped.

I just stopped, and I spent time going to school with them and doing all the things at school. I actually lived at their schools. And Michael was very independent, even as a six year old, very independent in New York at that time.

Do you believe it? He could come out of the apartment, go downstairs, go across the street, take a bus down there, take another bus all the way to the east side, and then walk to school.

You couldn't do that today. And he was great. He was a big boy too, so he was great, very very independent. But he now he loves la he loves living.

Yeah, so getting back to a little house on the prairie.

Did you enjoy working on that show?

It was pure pleasure.

I mean, I have been so lucky that I have rare other than the soap. I have never been in a movie or play or anything that I didn't enjoy.

And I liked all the people and it was just wonderful. I've been blessed, blessed with wonderful directors, just delightful, delightful. My career has been delightful.

You have appeared on so many classic TV shows, Gun Smoke, The Patty Duke Show.

Heart to Heart.

Did it feel like you were making it in Hollywood?

Were you?

I never thought of that. I never thought of being nor did Bill. But we just liked the work. Yeah, you know, we didn't have a career. We wanted to work. We wanted to make enough money to send our kids to school.

And things like that. There was no.

Thought at that time people went into the business just to work. I don't think they went into the business to become stars.

Yeah, it's not the reason for it.

I think a lot, you know, a lot of people now kind of jumped the gun.

That's fine.

That's the way the world is because everything changes. As we know, everything changes. So but we we have really been blessed.

We really have so sweet.

Did you even when you even when you were winning Emmys for Saint Elsewhere, you guys weren't like, oh we've arrived, like we have definitely established never.

Felt that, you know, winning an award is nice, but it doesn't get you anywhere really except that forever you will be described as an Emmy winning activate right, you will be described as a or or Oscar winning if it were an oscar.

You know.

Yes, that comes with the territory. It's good on your resume. It is good on your resume, but it doesn't who whip you into a lot of people who have won Oscars who've disappeared.

You know, well, my as writer mentioned in nineteen eighty two, you then booked the job of a lifetime, Ellen Craig on Saint Elsewhere, a role that would bring you two Emmy Awards for Best Supporting Actress and a Drama Series.

Did you always know that that character was special?

I knew that the show was special. I knew that the writing was extraordinary, and I knew. They just brought me on to play with Bill for a brief moment and they picked up on it, and then they wrote and wrote and wrote for us.

They all said that we.

Reminded them of their parents in many ways, you know, So they kind of wrote.

That stuff, and uh, we just it just flowed. It just came out.

We never worked at it, We never rehearsed there's a place where you didn't have to rehearse or very little. We never rehearsed at home or anything. He learns lines one way. I learned him another.

You know, so, uh, how do you how do you learn lines?

I just learned them in a block. I learned to do that in the soap. Okay, I learned him in a block. Bill learns some and and I might, I might change a little bit, and it's okay, you know, but I but I learned it in a in a block, a paragraph at a time. And he learns them by learning lines, by the pool, learning lines. And he had a lot of scientific stuff. Bill has always been a lawyer or a doctor. Some he just learns them by going over them and learning them.

That's what he does.

I can learn them in my head, right, I don't as a matter of fact, I don't like to go.

Over them too much.

I'm very curious because you know, my wife is an actor, and we met acting and but we meet a lot of people who, you know, they couldn't imagine two actors being together. What was it like for you guys? Did you ever?

Did you?

I mean you say you didn't learn lines together? Could you give each other notes, could you give each other?

Fee each other very much? Not so much?

Well, there was a play where she was very special. She was very Anyway, he came up and he watched the rehearsal. He said, where'd you get the funny voice? Well, I knew Tom right then. That's all he had to say. And I knew myself. In other words, I was imitating her, imitating the actress who had been done the play in the first place, because I was getting stuck, and that's all he had to say, where'd you get the funny voice?

And then I knew right away? But I was on the wrong truck. Start.

I do this my wife Alex, we do this all the time, and it's it's actually the voice is the main thing. Like when she is insecure about an audition, I can always tell because I'm like, what's you're doing? The voice thing? It's like she goes a little too high, and I'm like, you don't need to do that, make it yours. And then she and once in the second I say, she's like okay, and then it's a million times better. But it's like whenever she's just a little off, I'm like, oh, it's your director.

La.

I don't even know if most people would know it as well, you know, but it's like I know her so well and I know exactly that tick, and I could just like, no, you're going up, you're going up, You're doing your thing, and then she's relaxes and it's right, and.

I could your playing to the house, you're playing to the balcony. And then he come down and he would get back. One time he was doing h one floor over the Cuckoo's List, And when I went out town to see him and he said, what do you think?

He said, it's like you don't want to be a the stage. And that was true.

He didn't want to be there, Douglas and the part he didn't like, and he didn't like and he you know, so he immediately knew what I meant because he didn't want to be on the stage, right.

But he didn't know that. Still, I said, it looks like you don't want to be on the stage.

Wow.

And then he was like, you know, I'm not enjoying this.

Wow.

There were so many heavy hitters on Saint Elsewhere, so much talent, so much success. With something like that, did you run into a lot of egos? Or does everyone kind of wrangle it in because they've got great material.

Everybody wanted to be on the show. He called the producer.

Very prominent actors would call the producer and say, please put me on the show, you know, try to find something for me because they all everybody knew that it was so well written. Yeah, it was so well produced. I mean, you know, and all these wonderful actors were on it. So what we had Denzel was just a kind of beginning movie career, so he kind of had

But she did a good job. But she said, I've never been so nervous in my life.

Wow.

Yeah, that's so crazy nervous. And you know, Betty boy, yeah, you know, I mean, how could she be nervous.

I know, you'd think nothing would make her nervous, but.

After all she'd done.

Yeah, I knew her in New York when she was doing live commercials and she was wonderful. And I think that's the hardest thing in the world to do live commercial.

I don't even what is a live commercial?

What is that? A live commercial? Spokesman? And you just come on and you.

Have a little uh QVC like QVC.

No, But I mean you're you're you're pumping a product and you're talking and you talk.

For a minute or two or whatever it is. It's all you talking about the product. And it's the hardest thing in the world.

I think, yeah, because you're not a character, you know, but some people Betty, Betty was great at that.

But Betty could do that.

She would go out to the audience, you know, and talk to them and all of that. And I had a friend Georgia Ane Johnson, a wonderful actress who's no longer with.

Us either, but she could do those.

She made a lot of money in New York doing those long live commercials. Woo hard. I was good at it. I had to do a couple in Woo It was a challenge.

What what what are you really good at? What has always been like your specialty? Is there a certain type.

Of le being a good character. I'm a character actress. I go into it. The whole point is not to be me. I have to learn how to well, that's what Strasberg is all about. You learn. You have to be you, but you want to be somebody else. But you have to be you first, and then you take on all the other character things. But don't you have to have you? Like you talked to your to your wife.

You have to find it. They have to make it your version of humanity.

Your humanity has to be there, right, you know, no matter what the character is. But for me, I love see jumping into another person's skin.

I love it.

Yeah.

I never wanted to be, you know what, a star, a movie star now that even though I used to imitate them all and I love them all.

Honey girls, Jean Harlow, people like that.

I don't you don't even know the names, but I would imitate all, you know, very sexy stuff. Yes, come out and see me sometime.

You know, when I was a little girl, see me. Sometimes I would imitate them all because.

You were also part of a generation that really shifted acting.

Yes, I think I learned from all of the wonderful actors. One of the first play I saw in New York was Julie Harris in Member of the Wedding. Was a great lesson in acting because she was playing a fourteen year old girl. But it was Julie, you know, and she was wonderful, and everything that she would do after that was anything I saw her in. I thought she was wonderful all the Oh, of course, the greatest of all Zudah Hagen, I mean you could, of course she taught.

Thoughts right Virginia Wolf? Right, she was the first. Who's who's afraid of Virginia Wolf? Wasn't she?

She was?

Wasn't she Who's afraid of Virginia Wolf? She was the first? Oh great she originated it, right, But that's so.

Yeah, that's the uh. Yeah, she was absolutely superb. Huh yeah, really superb. I mean, I don't mean to disparage it, but if you saw to see Elizabeth Taylor in.

That part, is nothing compared to what she was doing to the play.

I mean, she was good, she did a good job for her, she did a job, but none of the depth.

Udah Hagen was superb actress.

Our audience will also recognize you as Mary Anne Benedict.

In the movie Twins.

You played the mother of Julius and Vincent, the mother of unlikely twins played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

And Danny DeVito.

Please tell us everything you remember about working with the two of them.

But they were darling, both of them in different ways.

I liked Arnold a lot, and Arnold's a very smart guy, smart guy, and at one point I said to it. I looked at him and I said, you know, I could be your mother. I could be your mother. He said, my mother, my lover.

The flirt.

Very flirtatious and Danny I knew, of course, from a lot of television, so I sort of knew about him.

But when I went to the reading and I saw this.

Guy and clothes that didn't fit him, the first you out what is this all about?

I don't want to do this movie.

And I made a huge mistake, almost left the movie, but my agent made me go to see the director and he said.

Well, what do you what? What's the matter? What? What don't you like about this?

I said, well, and I went through the whole thing and I said there should be something here, so there should be something and then if she could do And then he said, well, I'll.

Tell you what I'm going to do, Bonnie.

I can't make you do this movie, but I'm going to use all of your suggestions.

And you want you to know that, Wow, how do you leave?

That?

You don't you stay? You stay? I don't know got into me.

I just I didn't realize the I probably am not that good at comedy.

So I didn't realize.

The h how could this could be? I didn't realize it at all, and I was very surprised. And after I went to a screening afterwards and Arnold was there with his wife, who was Kennedy. I said to her, aren't you proud of him? And she said, oh, yes, you know.

He said, should I go to New York and study and be an actor?

I said, no, no instincts for an actor. Just do what you're doing. Just keep going on track, So don't worry about it. Don't don't don't worry about being a theater actor. You don't want to do that.

And others will remember you as Barbara Thorndyke on The Golden Girls.

That was so much fun, you know. That was a little part that I took that. I thought, oh, it has been amazing people.

I know it's only you only appeared in one episode, but it is a fan favorite.

It is, and.

It's because I was such a nice you know what I mean, I was like such a terrible I that was my mother. I based that whole character on my mother. I've made that, you know, and not thinking.

That this is a terrible person at all. She was.

She would smile and say something like that, smile say I'm so sorry you can't come right right.

I mean she would do that.

She could do that in a minute, be anti semitic, but be very sweet about it. You know, she'd be very sweet about it.

After you did that role, did anybody ever mistake you for that character? Like, did you ever feel like people would meet you and then think of you as.

Kind of being a villain?

I don't think so.

Okay, so I don't think so.

But I was surprised at how it's the most watch of the Golden Girls shows.

Yeah, it's a real fan favorite. You're it's a fan.

Favorite, and I'm delighted. But I was surprised. Yes, I was surprised.

When I went out to the I had been on Saint Elsewhere, so I want to well the beginning of the show and the audience and the audience, Oh there's.

Ellen Craig, you know one day Ellen Craig.

And then after the show and I walked out and they booed, you knew.

You got them?

That's great, And I, oh, Bill said, don't if if you want to play anti so many characters, that's what you're gonna get. Yeah.

Wow, that's so cool.

It's great. It's great that the audience is so percested.

You got them.

Bill always says that the audiences will tell you what you got.

Yeah.

So that's like you guys, uh and you guys and mister Feenie, that's why you guys have this huge audience and it goes on and on because it's the audience that tells you what they like and onto and fortunate.

You're fortunate as we have been.

We really are.

Do you remember any roles you almost got and then were so bummed about, Like any movies or TV shows that feel like the ones that got away?

Well, there was a Blay.

We're gonna not remember the name, but there was a play in New York that I was up for and I thought I got and they they done away ended up doing it and it took her to Hollywood and it was a part I surely did want and she was wonderful.

And I didn't get to do it. So that was one.

And then there was a time when I was asked to do a play edit all big play and it was in stock somewhere and I wanted to do it very much.

It was the wife.

In one of the plays, a very complicated part, and I wanted so much to try that, but a television show came up where it's a lot of money, and so I decided not to do it.

I've always regretted that.

They said you can come in a little late, you could come in a few days late, but I thought, no, No, I need that rehearsal to do that.

You just don't walk into an Edward All play.

And you got a rehearsal. You can't just walk through that. And I but I've always regretted it. I wish I had done that. I mean, we were out here where Nick Boys were fine, I could have. It was just a mistake that I made in favor of money, really television, where I should not have taken that television.

I should have gone and done the play there for.

Me, right for me and my native pursuit.

I never got to play that part, and it's a perfect part for me to tackle.

Yes, there you go.

Well, let's talk Boy meets World a little bit.

Obviously, Bill was on the show since moment one playing our mister Feenie, and we know Michael broached the idea with him about having you join the show. And obviously we all had already known you. Did you have any reservations about joining the cast.

I don't think he did broach it to Bill. Oh no, I think he called me. Michael Jacobs called me and said, Bonnie, would you come on the show. It'll be your regular salary and come on the show two with Bill and you know? And I said, of course, I'd love to. And then they made the arrangements. And if Bill knew anything, you know, Bill never knows anything that's going on. He really never knows. He never knows what's going on in

Last It wasn't the last season.

It was season You came in in season six and we did season seven, okay.

All right, So then he didn't know. I guess he just wanted to bring Bill a friend. Yeah, he thought, well, let's bring both.

He brought you in for one episode in season five, but then you had the recurring role in season six, okay, where you spent four episodes with us.

Did you have any reservations joining it or was it just like no.

Except I I was.

I wasn't as comfortable in sitcoms as I was in drama, so I did have a but I I knew if I worked with Bill it would be okay.

Is it ever difficult to work with Bill? If you guys have wow?

I love and he loved He teased me in front of the sets everybody, and I love it. I didn't mind it at all because I knew where it came from. But he loves to tease, and that's what he likes me around because he can't tease another.

Actress, right right, only you? Did you like performing in front of a live studio audience having grown up with theater you're used to, You're used to it.

Did you like it in nervis I'm a nervous actor on stage. I'm nervous when I go on and.

Until I feel comfortable, and so.

It was, uh, yeah, that's a challenge for me. Let me put it that way. I learned when I went with Home Improvement.

Mm hmmm.

The first show I did, I was a wreck. I was a wreck, and Tim and Pat were wonderful, but I was a wreck. But and then I was on that show about six or seven times. By the end of the time I was on it, I was just getting to know how to do it. Yeah, you know, so that I was very pleased. The last show that I was on, I thought, there, Now that's it, you're there. I was at the right level, you know, for comedy, reality and comedy.

I mean I was able to do that. You know, do you know what I mean?

Yes, it's a weird.

It's a tough needle to thread because you have to bring energy. You have to bring you know, you have to get the laughs. But you also don't want to be just a yeah, you know, you have to find the reality in it. Yeah, it's very hard.

And I remember one time that Tim uh said, look, you do this, and you do.

That, and you say that, and you tell them the kids that are there.

I said, right in the show he said it, and I said, I can't do that.

That's shick. He said, just do it.

And I got three big laughs and he said, now didn't that feel good? Yep? Said yes, you know, because but I don't. I don't know how to orige it. I just did what he told me to do right, and he knew it was a funny thing.

And there you go. And Michael Jacobs is the same. He knows where the.

Lafts are and he wants to make sure that you do it so you get the left Yep.

Sometimes it's just it's just music. Sometimes it's like you have to hit the rhythm and yeah, it tells the audience that it's funny, they know. Yeah, yeah, Well.

We have been to a lot of conventions with you and Bill, and so many people are pleasantly surprised to find out that the Dean really is married to mister Feoenie. And I think it's because a whole new generation of people are discovering the show.

You know, and you guys had such long careers before, but for the new thirteen, fourteen.

Fifteen year olds who are coming to it now, to them, it's all new boy meets world.

Mister Feenie, yes or Bill, it's all it's all about. And he and we are going to do it. We're going to be doing a convention with you, I think in Long.

Beach, yes, and in August.

Yeah, so we'll see you guys. He misses everybody, you know, he really misses everybody.

He miss you guys.

You know, he he's never been attached as much to a group. You know, he stayed elsewhere, everybody was went their own way, you know what I mean.

He's never been as a but he feels attached to you guys.

Well, we've definitely come a long way with him.

He's seen us through you guys have seen us through lots of different stages of life.

Yes, and he really loves you all. And of course it's been very lucrative.

And we have a store online store, very successful so far, and it's called the Bill and Bonnie Bill and Bonnie Daniels dot com. Great online store. We sell all kinds of things. Poor Bill, I make him sign books. The books are going like crazy and they were out of proof. We had to make.

More books and wonderful.

Yeah, it's been very successful and it gives my son something to do. And I wanted that I wanted people to still be able to get stuff from Bill.

Yes, Bill and Bonnie Daniels dot com. Just to promote it one more time. But I also want to talk about some of your modern work because it is also incredibly impressive. You have been on parks and rec better call Saul Key and Peel and they are all such great shows. Do you and Bill still watch TV together? And do you have any current favorites?

Do you know what Bill watches what every night?

Seinfeld, really Seinfeld, and he sits there and loves it because it's all physical comedy, you know, I mean, he he loves that. He loves to He thinks that girl, he thinks is the funniest thing he ever saw.

You know. Yeah, he just thinks she's great.

And he always said, if you're if you're a pretty girl, pretty actress, and our funny, he says, that's.

Golden, that's golden. You know, a pretty girl who.

Can be fund Barbara Harris, you know that his idea of a superb comedian.

In twenty twenty three, you released your memoir Middle of the Rainbow, How a wife, mother and daughter managed to find herself and win two Emmys. It's a wonderful book. Did you enjoy the process of writing It was painful?

Yeah, the writing was hard.

When I did the the audio I had, I loved it. I loved doing the audio because I was acting, I was performing. But to actually bring up all this, I had a very good friend who helped editor and helped me with Lauren Lester and and.

He says, said, put it all out there.

Just write and write and write and write and write everything.

You remember everything, everything.

So gosh, hmm brings up a lot.

It brings a.

Lot that.

Ingrid Bergmann said the best thing you can do for a long for a long.

Life is to have a poor memory.

Yeah, but you know, which is kind of an interesting way of putting it, you know. And that's Bill, that's Bill. He remembers nothing but I remember, which is great if you're writing.

A book, right exactly. It helps.

Then you know, you got to put it all out there. You can't just put out pieces to write at all.

That's me.

That's my approach to life period. You know, you got to if you're going to do it, you got to put it all out there.

You faced a little of what we face on this podcast quite a bit, which is the clickbait headline. You had tons of interesting stories, hundreds of pages in your memoir, but everyone seemed to want to focus on one small moment in the seventies where you and Bill tested the idea of an open marriage. Were you surprised by that reaction and do you have any regrets with anything you shared.

I was very surprised.

Yeah, I was very surprised because you know, it was at a time in New York when everything was everything, you know. I mean it was a wild time, right, and not that happy a time, but it was a wild time.

Yeah.

I don't think it made anybody happy.

And then what stopped it all was AIDS. All of a sudden, there was AIDS and all that action stopped, right, you know.

But yeah, I I didn't.

I didn't not like it, and I didn't like it, and I was very happy when it was over.

I was very happy.

I was much more comfortable when you wrote about it in the book, and then that seemed to be the thing that people were focusing on the most. Did you have any regrets sharing so much?

A little bit?

A little bit?

Yeah, I thought, Oh, I didn't think everybody would. I didn't think everybody would take it so seriously because I was part of a whole.

Group of people and they wouldn't.

Things have changed, yeah, things always do change. Yeah, and then COVID changes everybody. I mean, you know, things whole things now have changed, and God knows what will happen now. Those little things that I wrote about in the book that's nothing.

That's nothing.

That's just a long marriage to actors in a position. If we were somewhere else, we wouldn't have behaved that way. It's just you behave the way you're allowed to behave, you know. And it was part of the part of the routine. It was routine.

Well, we know our audience and really the entire world recently celebrated Bill's ninety eighth birthday recently, and I know everyone including us, would love and update.

How is Bill doing well?

As I told you, he watches Seinfeld, he raises New York Times, and he's at a place where as he's never remembered things, so that that's always been there, but now it's more. He's very forgetful. He's very he will forget people. He had a very close friend who just died and he can't.

Cope with that.

He can't, he said, I can't believe it. I can't believe he's no longer here. He was a guy that he helped him a lot when he was the president of SAG and that all the deaths are hard for him, and most of them are men. Yeah, and his men friends are all gone. So that's very hard for him.

Yeah, but he just went out.

This morning for breakfast with a guy who was a friend from SAG. You know, he helped him there. He got very close to a lot of people at SAG. He had a lot of enemies, and it was very hard because you had a lot of enemies. But he made some very close buddies, just friends, not actors, just you.

Know, commercial people not in his field.

Necessarily interesting. Interesting.

Well, Bonnie, we love seeing you every time. I'm very excited that we get to see you at the end of August. Thank you for coming, yes, and thank you for coming and spending a whole hour of your time with us.

It was so great.

As much as we love Bill, it's so nice to have an entire hour dedicated to you and your accomplishments and all of the contributions you've made to the field of entertainment and to our lives and to Boy Meets World. So on, behalf of our entire audience. Thank you so much for spending your time with us.

You you're so dear, dear, Thank.

You so much, thank you so good to say.

Thank you, Bonnie.

Great to see you too.

We'll see you in a couple months.

Okay, good bye bye.

All is so great talking to her.

H yeah, I you know, one of my one of my friends, David Pressman, his dad, Lawrence Pressman, is a older actor who knew them back in the theater days. Yeah, and he's he's younger than them by about ten or fifteen years. And so we have these lunches where he tells, you know, we just talked, talk about those days. And it's the same thing as like these names. I'm like,

Me too.

I love anytime we're with them and they tell us those stories. It's always so fascinating.

Everybody was a drunk, That's what I love. Like every one of the stories is like, yeah, oh Bill was doing so and so it was horrible, drunk, horrible. I'm like, Bonnie, was there anybody who was not drinking? She's like, well, those theater it was how you survived.

And it is really interesting.

I did think it's so funny that, like for us who grew up doing TV, and I know you obviously you started in theater too, but like when we talk about projects that we missed out on or whatever, we always think of movies and TV. And any time you talk to Bill or Bonnie about their careers, theater, theater, the role, the parts in theater, the stories of the theater, like it was the.

Things that's the actors medium. It's like the ultimate.

Yeah.

I mean, even when we asked her about her book, it was like when she got to read it, when she got to perform it, you know, it's like when you're that essentially an actor, it's like it's just so cool.

Well, and her biggest regret being that she took a job she she wanted. She wanted a TV job and it was good for the money, but she really wanted and what would have been good for her soul? She's like, I should have done it for me.

Oh so cool, so cool.

Well, thank you all for joining us for this episode of Pod Meets World. As always, you can follow us on Instagram pod Meets World Show. You can send us your emails pod Meets World Show at gmail dot com and writer, We've got merch.

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We love you all, pod dismissed. Pod Meets World is an iHeart podcast producer hosted by Danielle Fischel, Wilfredell and Rider Straw. Executive producers Jensen Karp and Amy Sugarman. Executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo, producer and editor, Taras Who, producer, Maddie Moore, engineer and boy mets World Superman Easton Outen. Our theme song is by Kyle Morton of Typhoon. Follow us on Instagram at podmets World Show, or email us at podmetsworldshowat gmail dot com.