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Hey guys, you hear that creak in the door? That's the opening to the cold. Oh, what the hell? The cold open, right? Stop trying to explain the cold open every time we do a cold open. Yeah, there's a creak in the door. Are you guys up for a podcast record? Yeah. We got a great guest today. Whose guest is it? I don't know, but I can't wait to talk to Bruce. It's gonna be amazing.
Somebody fire up the music. Welcome to a new Smartless. Smart. Less. Smart. Less. Smart. Less.
Did you go late last night, Willie? How's it going? Listener, we're in the second day of what the business tree calls principal photography on Will's project. And so far, so good. That's what I'm thinking. So far, so good, man. You know, who knows? Who knows? So far, so good. I love it. Yeah, but you know a lot. Like if something's going to be sideways, you can smell it on the first day.
Yes. And no, it feels good. I mean, you know... Do you want me to take a look at the footage? Sure.
Do you mind? Yeah, happy. Happy to do a pass. Email it. Yeah, I'll just... Email it and then a minute later, couple things. Already? Wait, JB, how's your thing going? How are you feeling down there? Great, great. How about that? Oh, that's good. But I'm back home with the kiddies and the mommy and I saw Franny's doing a musical, her last show at her school and...
When is it? Tonight is the final night. They're doing Mean Girls that Tina Fey did with her husband. The book and music. With Jeff, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would have loved to have gone to see that. And it's really good. Oh, wow. What a great show. I wish I would have seen it on Broadway, too. Does she have a big part? She does, yeah. That's great. I'm very proud of her. Will I see you tomorrow, Jason? Yes, you know, Jason.
Okay, great. Great. No. Well, wait. Yes, you know. Are you going or are you... Oh, you're going to the little gathering, a little party thing. Yeah. What are you going to do? I'm going to skip that and I'm going to go to our friend's house. Oh, you're going to go to that gathering, JB? Yeah. Yeah. Now, Willie, what are you going to do for the big... Listener, we're talking about...
Hollywood's self-congratulatory evening of the Oscars. Yeah. Right. Right, right. We're taping this on the eve of the Oscars, right? Yeah. So, Willie, you going to watch with some friends at all or are you going to study your lines and go to bed early? I think that if I had been there, I would have gone with you guys to that. Yeah. I wouldn't have skipped. I would have come with you. I probably would have come in the car with you and Amanda like we've done before. Yeah. Yeah.
And Sean and Scotty, but I guess Sean is too big for that now or something. Yeah, he's huge. Well, he wanted Tony, and then he's like, I don't have time for it. I need a follow van.
Yeah, yeah. No, you guys, I drove you guys last year. Who's going to carry my shoes? Oh, you did. You did. No, remember we met at my house. Last year we met at my house and I came down because I was still putting on my tux or whatever it was. And I just hear Jason rummaging through my pantry looking for stuff to eat. And also rummaging through my nose. He pulled my nose hairs out. Oh, yes. You know, there was a lot of cameras on these nights, you know. It's not a radio thing. I know, thank God.
He really did. You know what? It's funny that we're talking about this big night because our guest today... Oh, let's just get to it, Will. What do you got, a lunch? Well, no, but normally we... Normally you're like, oh, what's the segue? And this couldn't be more perfect. Like the moment you mentioned it because... Well, first of all, he's been nominated for two Academy Awards. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he's been nominated for, I don't know, 12 Emmys. He's won six Emmys.
Oh, this isn't some garbage guest. No, no, no. Buckle up, you guys. This is... A garbage guest. Every once in a while, we class it up over here. Yeah. And this, to me, is like gold standard. Class it up. Actor's actor. I mean, this is one of those guys that I... Every performance of his, I adore. I love watching him. And we all have over the years. He won a Tony in his Broadway debut, Sean, so take that. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, so he's got you licked. And then he...
He's gone on to have so many more awards and nominations that it's countless. I think he's got like two or three Golden Globes. He's got all sorts of, I mean, it's just incredible. And we know him from, he won a Tony for The Changing Room. He was nominated for The World According to Garp. We loved him on Third Rock for The New Sun. I loved him as Mr. Churchill. Oh, this is John Lithgow. It's John Lithgow. Oh, woo!
Gentlemen, gentlemen. This is so exciting. John, you just got cast in Harry Potter, your Dumbledore. There's all sorts of news, gentlemen. So much stuff to talk about. We were just talking about you yesterday. This is so bizarre. Oh, God. Sean, Sean, Sean, I'm going to, John, first of all, welcome to Smart List. What an honor to have you on the show today. That honor is completely mine, you guys. It's a fantastic pod.
Truly, truly, truly. And I was excited, and we're all excited, but I know Sean's been excited because, John, you were quite literally raised in the theater. Yeah. Is that true? Well, yes, it's true. I was a theater rat from actually the first acting I ever did. I was about two years old, one of Nora's children in a doll's house with my father playing Torvald.
Wow. And I remember absolutely nothing about it, but I'm told I was very good. That was the beginning of things. You set the bar high at two. There were no supporting actor nods back at that age.
Did you get a chance to see Doll's House Part 2? Yes, of course. How great was that show? Fantastic. I love that show. I love Laurie Metcalf. So then was there any other thing that ever got into your head that you might be doing with your life? Or was it just like that was it? From a very young age, I thought I should be an artist. I wanted to be an artist. I sort of had a...
a facility and parents that encouraged that and bought me wonderful art supplies and I had great public school art teachers and I was very serious about it. Did it start with drawing? Drawing and painting and printmaking. But meantime, just as like my dad produced summer Shakespeare festivals.
And that was my summers, was hanging around, watching rehearsals, being in the plays as like a fairy in Midsummer Night's Dream or a foot soldier. In fact, by the time I was a teenager, I was playing bits and pieces in Shakespeare in repertory, like seven plays a summer, a
crazy childhood in Ohio. Now, you might not be the right person to answer this, but I've always had a fear of even trying Shakespeare because I think that it would be almost impossible for me to learn the lines because it's basically a different language. But since you started so young, was that a hurdle for you? How difficult a thing is that?
Not at all. I mean, you're right. I had the great good luck to just hear that language all the time. But it is learning another language. Or at least...
feeling that it is a natural way of communicating. - Yeah. - Right. You certainly can't paraphrase. - No. - Right? - You have to be precise. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. You're not throwing a lot of like, "I mean," and "Um." - Right. - You know. - Like, yeah. - You know. - Although, you know, there's wonderful Shakespeare that completely breaks all the rules. - Yeah. - There was a wonderful production of "Much Ado About Nothing" in New York in my 1970s theater days.
with Sam Waterston and Kathleen Widows. And it was set in Teddy Roosevelt's America.
Oh, interesting. It was kind of ragtime music. It contemporized the dialogue a bit? Yeah, coming back from World War I. And it captured the spirit of Shakespeare better than most productions. Yeah, I've seen a few of those. Yeah, sometimes you see those. I remember seeing a production. What was it at Guildhall I saw in London? It was like, and everybody's on motorcycles and stuff. And then, of course, Ray Fiennes, when he did Hamlet on Broadway, it was incredible. I really loved that back in the 90s. I thought that was...
Pretty remarkable. But so, John, so you grew up, so your dad produced theater and your mom was an actress. Is that right? She was a retired actress? She was, but I never really knew her as an actor. She retired early and just sort of kept track of the family. I mean, we literally lived in about eight different places. Wow. We were like a vaudeville troupe, except it was Shakespeare. Hmm.
That's pretty cool. Which is just in your blood. And then you go, and then you graduated from high school in New Jersey, I think from, in Princeton, New Jersey, right? Your dad was there working. That's right, Princeton High, yeah. Princeton High, and then you went to Harvard. Yeah, nice. And you can,
I know. And you continued your, and you were there and you were studying what at Harvard? English, history and literature. Very scholarly major. But I fell in with the theater gang immediately. And that's when it happened. That's when I decided.
You know, I was already like a seasoned actor by pure osmosis. Right. I had just been around actors that I and my siblings were like best friends with all these young theater actors, mainly sort of graduates from Carnegie Tech who'd come down to do my dad's Shakespeare festivals. I had lived in that world. So it just came very naturally. Yeah.
And I was a campus star at Harvard. And if you're a star at anything at Harvard, you'd better go with the flow because that is a competitive place. I wasn't good at anything but acting there. What about your siblings? Did they go into the same field? No. Both my sisters were teachers and wonderful teachers.
And they directed student theater. Oh, really? And my older brother was an airline pilot there.
Wow. Who then retired and worked for the FAA. No way. Wait, did he fly big commercial planes? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my God. Charter flights. Wow. I was never in an airplane that he was piloting. No? Wrong purpose? Maybe that was against the rules. I don't know. That would unsettle me. I like that whole sense that I'd never really see the pilot pilot.
You do love that. Yeah, because I just don't feel like it's something humans should even be able to do. It's so specialized. To fly a plane. Yeah, it's just like, how do you do that?
If they become human to me, then all the playables go along with it. But wait, but as you board it, you pass. Do you just not look into the cockpit? Yeah, I just look right. I look right. Jason, John, you have to understand something about Jason. He has very interesting ways of compartmentalizing things and putting them in.
things in certain it's always right Sean it's always fascinating it's amazing to me and you're such an Jason you're such an easy flyer too as these guys know I get quite nervous and Jason just like you never get phased you're like you give in to the
Right once you're on there. I do. I hit fuck it real quick. Well, my mom was a flight attendant for Pan Am for 30 some years. So I would always get nervous when she'd leave, but she always came home. And I'm like, well, you know. I would always make sure I flew the first flight out in the morning so I didn't sleep. So when I got on the plane, I was so exhausted. I didn't care what happened.
Oh, oh, oh. I thought you were flying the first one out because you thought that one had the best odds of landing. Well, that's true. First flight. Yeah. My favorite airline pilot story beyond my brother's many, many stories, when I was in World According to GARP,
playing Roberta Muldoon. I know, amazing. Way ahead of its time. I wasn't cadging for applause, gentlemen. No, you're going to get it. No, but there's the audience here. I love it, that car. It's amazing. Well, at a certain point early in the flight, the flight attendant came back, this woman in a Delta pilot's uniform, and she crouched next to me and said how much she appreciated me as Roberta Muldoon and said, Roberta and I have a lot in common. Ah.
And it was one of many amazing transactions with trans people way back. This was 40 years ago. John, do you remember? Just while we're on the flight thing, John, do you remember we met on a flight?
Uh-oh. And you probably don't remember it, and I think that I dropped my, or you dropped your license, and I found your license, and I handed it to you. Do you remember that? Yes, of course I remember that. Years ago. Yeah. I would have kept that. In fact, I always regretted that I hadn't recalled that when we actually worked together.
because we did work together. We sort of did and didn't when we did live in front of a studio audience. When we did, exactly right. Oh, which one were you on? I was on the same evening as Will and Jason, although they were in The Facts of Life and I was in Different Strokes. So we...
We didn't really interact except at the parties. I did it all in the family, and it was really fun. Wasn't that great? Wasn't that fun? Fabulous. It was so fun. Now, if I had found John Lithgow's driver's license, I would have kept that. Yeah. That would have just been a great little thing, just keeping my wallet. Well, he was across the aisle, so I couldn't really, you know, and I would have felt bad. No, but that was the first time we met. Yeah. Yeah.
And Sean, you and I used to be neighbors on the lot at Radford. That's right. Third Rock. Yeah. Back in the day. There were so many great shows being shot there at that time. All on one lot. Yeah, it was kind of amazing. All yelling distance from each other. Did you like doing, John, you had such a facility, obviously because of your intense theater background and your upbringing in the theater. Did you like, and Sean, I'll go to you and also Jason, because all three of you guys have such storied sitcom careers. Yeah.
All of us, you too. And I did too. But what did you... Did you like that experience of making a multi-camera show? I absolutely loved it. Just, you know, I consider those... It was like the six happiest years as an actor. Yeah. Just interacting with...
This great writing staff, the Third Rock staff, was so terrific and it was so inane. Just spending all your time figuring out the funny and entertaining a studio audience on just like three days rehearsal. Right, and you get a fresh script the next week. Yeah, and Third Rock, of course, was just flat-out nutball farce. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was great. I never thought I would do that.
In fact, something happened and I forgot it ever happened. I was asked to be Fraser on Cheers. Oh, wow. Oh, my God. I didn't know that. And I turned it down out of hand. I honestly didn't even remember it had happened until Jimmy Burrows reminded me years and years later when he directed Third Rock. Just because at that point...
You know, I had a few movies under my belt. I had a couple of Oscar nominations. Yeah, sure. It was so beneath my dignity. I was such an asshole, a pretentious asshole. But, you know, I worked on Saturday Night Live. I hosted Saturday Night Live three times in the 80s. And two of those times, Bonnie and Terry Turner were on the writing staff. They pitched it to me.
And when they pitched it to me, suddenly it seemed like so much fun. Right. And I was the only person they could even imagine playing Dick Solomon because it had to be –
an alien who is completely clueless but could try anything. Yeah, yeah, that's so great. And what a catch, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and-- Oh, it was a wonderful-- --Kristen Johnston, yeah. Jane Curtin. Jane Curtin, of course. Yeah, and the long process of casting it was so exciting because-- Was it? Did it take a long time? A long time because in each case, we had to figure out just what is this comic idea? Right. You know, a general who has to inhabit the body of a woman became Kristen Johnston.
A little old man. If you went to pitch it, John, well, if you went to pitch that idea, it's pretty high concept. You're like, what's the show? Okay, so here it is. And the network would be like, wait a second, what? Well, they had already, it was already a go. They came to me to pitch it. And that's exactly what Terry Turner said. He said, well, it's about this family of aliens.
And, of course, I had been sort of tricked into the meeting. I thought I was just having a meeting with my friends, Bonnie and Terry. But Carsey and Werner, they were all there. And I thought, my God, how do I say no to this fast enough? But in five minutes, he had brought me around. It just seemed...
Suddenly, like, what in the world have I been waiting for? Did you have any idea that it might go as long as it did? Or did you think it was kind of going to be a pilot and out or maybe half a season? Well, it was a freaky situation because when we finally produced the show, we had done the pilot and it was picked up all right by NBC, but it was picked up as a mid-season replacement. So we had done 13 of them before anybody had seen it.
And, you know, well into this, we had realized, "Oh, my God, we really have something here." We felt like we had the Hope Diamond in our pocket. I mean, you know how cocky you can get when you have been working hard enough on something, you persuade yourself it's great. - You're in your bubble. - But we were able to sort of frontline all the great episodes. We had had those 13 episodes to figure out the funny, to figure out what this show was.
You know, in so many cases, you go back and see the original pilot episode of a great show like Seinfeld, and you realize they hadn't found it yet. - Yes. - Yeah, right. We had 13 chances to find it, and it was released mid-season in January, and bam, just hit like that. You know, there's a sort of a freedom in that, in the sense that, yes, you can feel that you have something,
But there is an absence of ego because it hasn't been received yet, right? So there's a purity to that. And I remember on a smaller scale, but when Jason, when we did Rest of the Velmen, we shot so many before it aired. And I remember in that time, in that bubble from sort of
from July till November. We were just making this thing and there was nobody watching us. And there was a freedom in that of nobody watching, right? You don't have to protect anything. Yeah, you don't have to protect. You don't have anything to lose. Well, it's a high wire out. You can take chances and you're not worried because there's...
There's nobody watching. Do you know what I mean? It just gives you a chance to find it. And you had the added challenge. We at least had a studio audience. And when they laughed, we knew we were funny. Right. You know, so in a sense, you were flying blind until people actually saw it. And we will be right back. You know how people say sleep is the cousin of death?
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And now back to the show.
So here's an interesting, so you leave Harvard and then you go on a, I think like a Fulbright scholarship or something to Lambda. Is that right? That's right. Yeah. And I mean, so you go and I've always marveled that, you know, we have plenty of really amazing talent that comes out of the UK that comes and works over here. And they've all been really well trained and they're very respected. Yeah.
And it's a difficult thing to go the other direction, I think, that there's a little bit, right? I think it's a harder, it just is, or at least the perception is that it is. And I thought that it was, you know, it's a real testament to your ability as an actor and as an artist. I hate to break it to you. You said you're not going to be an artist. You are an artist. Yeah. And you went over there and really, yeah.
you know, just sort of jumped right into that and being a performer over there overseas. And you did a lot of theater over there as well. You did Shakespeare in England as an American. Yeah, that's got to be wild. Well, as I say, I did have this head start with my curious upbringing. Yeah. And it's true that a lot more people flow in our direction than the other way around. But I think it's because...
Shakespeare really is the spine of the English school of acting, and I had done a lot of Shakespeare. And that's not true of many American actors. Right. But in the other direction, there's plenty of American culture. I mean, you get Australian actors and English actors who you can't believe how authentic their language is. They don't even need a dialect coach by now. They've been watching...
They've been watching Friends all their whole lives. But at the same time, but then you go and you do, and I wanted to get to this, which was, you've so many amazing performances that I've just really enjoyed and adored like everybody else over the years. But you go and you take an iconic character in The Crown, you play Winston Churchill, which I think, for my money, and this is no disrespect to anybody else who's ever played Winston Churchill. To me, it's the defining Winston Churchill. And I...
I was so riveted by it.
Right? It's incredible. Amazing. Jason, I know you haven't watched The Crown. You have to see it just for John. It's mind-blowing. Yeah, it's an incredible performance. You can't get more iconic for an English character than Winston Churchill. Well, it was kind of astonishing that they even asked me to do it. But, I mean, so much of it was the way they situated Churchill in that story. It wasn't a historical drama. It was like...
almost a family drama. It was an extremely intimate and personal look at Churchill with all of his eccentricities and infirmities and insecurities. And that's very much what I took off from it.
Must have been daunting, though. It was very scary, except that all the English actors welcomed me in. They had more confidence in me than I had in myself. And I just went to work at it. I found, you know, the most interesting thing I did in all my research, what I found was reading all about him as a child and as a boy and as a young man.
tremendously insecure, growing up a failure with very neglectful parents and just feeling like a screw-up, like there had been so many expectations of him that he would, so that so many things in his life were pure overcompensation. So you approach your old age and to me, all the characteristics you had in childhood kick in. I sort of worked from that. And I think that's what people thought was kind of new about it.
That is interesting. And he had such a childhood and his adult life was varied in the things that he did, right? Sort of head of the admiralty and all that kind of stuff. But so many huge successes and colossal failures and kind of constantly recovering one from another like a parabola.
You know, I asked Stephen Daldry, the director, why he had cast me. I said yes, and we sat down for breakfast. And his first response was, well, Churchill's mother was an American. And that's true. She was this Baltimore aristocrat. That's right. So there was as much difference between...
an American Winston Churchill and Englishmen who are not Winston Churchill. He was quite an anomaly, and I think that came in handy. That's so interesting. What about, was it as challenging as playing the Reverend in Footloose?
That was a challenge in its own way. Just because... Are you bummed you didn't cut loose? Jay hated that one. I felt like, you know, it was actually footloose. I go back and look at Footloose now and I think, that was a really good movie. It was a great movie. I loved the movie. There was so much meat on the bone.
Herbert Ross, the director, and Dean Pitchford, who wrote it, they really took this story seriously. And I felt I had to take this character, Reverend Shaw, more seriously. And I, who have virtually no religion in me, I actually sought out
Oh, really? In the yellow pages, I looked up an assembly of God ministry and called up and sought spiritual advice. Wow. Wow. Hey, would you share that contact with Jason? That'd be great. You could use it. But I felt I had to find someone who truly believed what he was doing if I'm going to imitate it. Yeah.
Well, and then I'm sure you apply that to Conclave and you were amazing in Conclave. Yeah, just incredible. What a beautiful movie. That was a fabulous job. That was two months in Rome with Stanley Tucci and Isabella Rossellini. Amazing. I love that movie. How do you... I would imagine that you are flooded with...
or opportunities or conversations about parts in so many different things and genres because you have done so many different things, different genres. No one could say that you are...
a television actor, a film actor, a stage actor, comedy, drama, big parts, small parts. You've just done everything and it's such a high level for so long. How are you able – what's the main thing that drives you towards your decisions? Well –
Look, Jason, we're all actors. You know perfectly well we don't do nearly as much choosing as everybody thinks we do. That's true. You just wait for good things and good people and good writing. And it's very rare. I honestly feel like almost all the roles that you just rattled off, almost embarrassing, it's so complimentary. Yeah.
But none of them are things that I sought out or even knew about. I was somebody else's brainstorm. And it's like, I remember Jonathan Demme did a little television film years ago called Who Am I This Time?
about some hapless community theater actor whom everybody kept coming to to play the roles have always been a surprise to me right and it's a testament to your talent that that you're able to craft your your your take on the character in such a way where you're able to play it really well you know it's like it becomes you're like okay so this is the opportunity i'm being given
this month or this year, and so I better figure out a way to play it well because it's the only part that's coming down the pike. Yeah? I mean, it's sort of an overly humble way. Well, kind of. And I'm game. I guess I'm best known for being ready, willing, and able. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's no small thing, by the way. And it's very cockeyed. I just saw the premiere of a film I did with Jeffrey Rush last year called The Rule of Jenny Penn.
which I urge you to look up. It's about to be released. It's a very narrow release because it's a very bold and crazy film, a psychological suspense thriller, in which I play by far the most outrageous character I've played since Dr. Lizardo.
And he is the monster in a horror movie. He really is. He's a crazy guy who's out to torment Geoffrey Rush in a senior care facility in New Zealand. I mean, this is a crazy film, and it is great. I read that script. You know, this wonderful young director in New Zealand named James Ashcroft, he said, I've got to have you play this part.
And I was terrified of doing this. Yeah. I'm like, God. But I reminded myself, it's the things that you're afraid of that... Yeah. But what is that thing that you do? What is that moment of fear when you were able to turn, when you read it and he says, it has to be you. And you look at it and you say, oh, I don't know. I don't know what this is. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I'm... Maybe I'll fail. What is the moment? What is the thing that the voice that says...
take the jump off the cliff? I think it usually comes from a conversation or a Zoom call with the filmmaker. If there's a matter of trust, you do it. And I've been wrong before. God knows we've all been wrong before. But this, like, I read Jenny Penn and I thought, this is horrific. Who in the world is going to want to see this? And I spoke to this guy, James Ashcroft, for an hour and a half.
And he just was so persuasive. I just saw so far beyond my first reaction to the script. It's just a matter of being wide open to trusting somebody and being ready to take a chance because God knows there are plenty of times when it doesn't work out. But you've got to be bold. Does the criteria change for you now at this stage? Like I notice as I'm getting older, the...
My decision to, in terms of working, this again goes to kind of everybody, your mindset changes. The things that are important to you change. Is that true or no? Is there sort of a guiding light for you? Is it, I want to do something that challenges me or I want to do something that's fun or I want to do something that fits my schedule or does that shift? I mean, you know what I mean? What is the criteria? I just think there's so many factors in every case and it always surprises you one way or another.
It's basically, is this going to be good? Is this going to be fun? Are people going to want to see this? And am I working, is it good writing with good people? I always say the only hard acting is bad writing. Yeah.
Or shitty people. Having to share 12 hours a day with a bunch of jerks is not fun. And you just try to steer clear of that. Sometimes you can't avoid it. Sometimes you take things for the wrong reasons and you pay for it. How do you factor in where does family, friends, location, all that stuff, how does that all factor in? Tell us a little bit about your, I don't know anything about your personal life.
Tell me all the things you don't want to say.
So sweet of you to ask, Jason. That's a huge factor. I've been married 43 years to my wife, Mary, who's a UCLA professor of history, economic and business history. We are an unlikely couple. You know, God never meant professors and actors to get married because our lives are so different. She is constantly having to adapt to
to these crazy right angle turns I keep taking. I mean, just think, being asked to play Dumbledore is contemplating literally years in England. Yeah, I know. And that just disrupts everything. Right. We have two kids. I have a third by my first marriage and I have three grandkids with another on the way. And...
You know, going to England, how are we going to go back and forth? Their lives are very installed here. Family is hugely important to me, and it's quite—we are quite exclusive. You know, we're a kind of quiet little family, and we get wrenched all over the place. So for a long time, when I was asked to do a play in New York—
My first reaction was, where are we going to live? I was so used to house sits and sublets and apartment hotels. We finally just splurged and bought a beautiful New York apartment. Just so I won't have that reaction. I can think of living a wonderful life in New York when I'm doing a New York play. And I never want to stop doing that.
By the way, Sean, I have to ask you, are you going to play Oscar Levant again? Because I missed it. And at the Barbican this summer in London. I will see you. I will see you. Oh, good. I will be there. That'd be great. I will be there in the first weeks of Dumbledore. Oh, that's great. And I'm doing a play in the West End that you will be able to see. It's called, I did it at the Royal Court in the fall, and it's moving to the West End in April. What's it called?
It's called Giant, a play about Roald Dahl, in which play I play here. Oh, wow. Great. Which was a smash hit at the Little Royal Court Theater. But I will finally be able to see. That'd be great. You will not be disappointed. It's just so cool. No, because I saw little clips of it and heard so many friends rave about it. I was so upset I had missed it. It's on my list of those things that I kick myself. Well, that's very nice of you. I appreciate that. Yeah, come see. We'll have dinner or whatever.
He won a Tony for it. Of course. We mentioned it earlier. He won a Tony, which gets, Sean, don't be, watching him act embarrassed is so embarrassing. Yeah. You think he's good and then he tries to play embarrassment. And then he tries to play, and he's,
It's so terrible. But John, I mentioned you won a Tony, your first outing on Broadway. Which was for what? What was it for? It was for The Changing Room, an English play. Oh, The Changing Room. Sorry, sorry, you said that. By David Story, which incidentally was first produced at the Royal Court Theatre. Oh, wow. Where we did this play, Giant. So this was full of coming out. That's wild. That's cool. Full circle. But I mean, imagine coming out and your first...
your first production on Broadway, you win at Tony, you're sort of, you're shot out of a cannon, as it were. You must think like, okay, it's like, it would be like, to try to, for Tracy, it'd be like winning the Super Bowl your first year in the NFL. Right, right. I'm going to win a Super Bowl every year. Right. Right. Was there a little bit of that?
Well, it was astonishing. I mean, The Changing Room, it was a play that we did. It was the American premiere of this extraordinary play about an English North of England rugby team. It takes place in their changing room. Sort of super realistic. I'll read for that. Yeah, it's a great play.
A great thing that we did at the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven. And it got a lot of national press and moved to Broadway. Until then, I had done rep both for my dad and I had actually started directing just because nobody would hire me as an actor. I was actually doing just fine as a director. Wow.
I'd been hired to be the artistic director of Baltimore Center Stage, and I had accepted. Cool. What else? I've got to work. Wow. And I pulled out after two weeks when I was finally offered a job
to be a member of the resident company at Long Wharf. The second show was Changing Room, and it was brought to Broadway, and two weeks later, I won a Tony. How about that? That's crazy. I didn't sleep for about two months. I was so excited. Yeah, that's really cool. That's amazing. It really did. It's very hard to get into that inner circle. I mean, in theater in particular, in New York, because nobody thinks of you as a successful actor until you're a successful actor.
Right. Well, speaking about that, having done it so long and at such a high level, do you find yourself still teaching yourself new tricks? You work with that incredible cast like you just did in Conclave. I imagine it's impossible for you not to absorb that.
Are you still putting little pieces on your talent? Does it still change? I feel like there's nothing I haven't done yet. I mean, Third Rock itself was like flying in all directions for six years. It hasn't stopped me from the terrible insecurity of what do people think of me in the first couple of weeks of rehearsal. Sure.
That helped us concentrate, though. You know, to be honest, even doing live in front of a studio audience, I was nervous as hell that night. Were you? I don't know whether you guys had that experience. Yeah, for Tracy, those were, I know we said it already, but Jimmy Kimmel and Norman Lear put together on ABC these recreations of old sitcoms, and we did them live. Yeah.
It's the one thing all four of us have in common. That's true. I always brag to people that I've worked with Jason and Will. But I would imagine, though, that you work across someone like Ray Fiennes, and how do you avoid...
not being distracted by watching somebody with that kind of talent and try to see what they're doing and maybe try it on a little bit. Do you find yourself at all being influenced by folks that you're working with? I mean, in the case of Rafe, it was just extraordinary, the interaction. I worked, listen, over the last two,
two years I've done roles with Ralph Fiennes, Olivia Colman and Jeffrey Rush.
And in big parts, big intense scenes, in each case, they give you so much. No performance is created by one person. There's a minimum of two. Because it's all about the interaction and playing off each other. And I just feel...
I mean, thank goodness. When I act with someone, they're pretty familiar with me, and I tend to be familiar with them. And if I'm not, I make myself friends with them. I just go right ahead and say, come on, you guys, let's connect. Let's get to know each other. You have to do that. We'll be right back. Last year, Americans ate 32 billion chicken wings. Who knows just how many helpless sides of celery were heartlessly thrown away?
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What's the role that people stop you for the most? And when you're walking down the street, when you're on an airplane and you drop your license, what is the thing that people say to you? I would say probably Third Rock, Dexter, and Winston Churchill. Yeah, yeah. But it tends to be the thing that is most current.
I mean, an awful lot of things. Well, get ready because the Dumbledore and the Harry Potter series, it's going to be massive. You know, this is already, can you believe this has already started? And the deal was only set like 48 hours ago. And in airports two weeks ago, somehow or other people had gotten wind of this and they were stopping me in airports. Oh, yeah. Do you, have you, where are you in your process of educating yourself on the history of the whole thing?
Well, I seem to be behind everybody. I'm just... I'm halfway through the second of these seven novels. Yeah. The overall concept of this entire reboot of Harry Potter is an entire season is devoted to a single novel. Oh, that's really cool. Have you guys read those? I read the first one when it came out because it was... I mean, it was a little... It was... You know, I wasn't a kid anymore when it came out and they were...
Obviously, they were huge with children at that time, etc. And then, so I was like, well, I got to read it because I want to see what everybody's talking about. So I read the first one and then I didn't go any further. And then once I had kids of my own, I ended up reading all of them out loud to my boys. Oh, that's amazing. And I've never seen the films before.
I've only read all the books. You're my audience. Will, you're my audience. Yes. They're so well made. They are. Really quick story. So do you know Darlene Hunt? She's a good friend of mine. She's a writer. She created The Big C.
show. Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. But anyway, she's a great writer. And her girls were reading the books when they were really little. And she goes, well, we watched the movie after we read the book, right? And she goes, we're on book four or something like that. I go, why don't you come over and we'll watch the book. We'll watch the thing for you with your family. So she's like, great, I'll pick up a pizza. We'll come over and blah, blah, blah. So I go, you know what? We're going to just...
go balls out. We're going to make butter beer for your girls. We're going to play the music when they walk in. Scotty dressed up as Harry Potter for Halloween once. He's going to put that stupid costume on for your girls. Like it'll be, we'll make them feel like they're coming in, right? The thing. And so she pulls up with a pizza dressed as Maggie Smith in the big pointy hat and
You know, Professor McGonagall with a huge cape and she's all in black and she has a pizza in her hand and she walks in. She's been to my house a million times. She walks in and she sees this dog. She's like, that's weird. And she walks in further. I don't remember that dog. She walks in further and this guy is sitting at the kitchen table and goes, can I help you? And she goes...
Isn't Sean and Scotty liver? And he goes, no, they're next door. So she walked into the wrong house dressed as a witch with a pizza. And the guy must have been like, what the fuck is going on? And she may have thought that the dog was a wizard. It was the funniest, most embarrassing story ever. This is another segment of Sean's called Loser Friday Nights. Hey, listen.
Wait, John, so speaking of this job, this gig that you're going to have for many years, and we talked a little bit about it before, how are you going to do back and forth, and how are your living situations? I mean, do you have to be gone the whole year? Are you gone like three months at a time? I honestly don't know the answer to that, Sean. I mean, I was over in England for eight months for The Crown.
and barely came back. I think I may have come back once or twice. I imagine that I can come back much more. You know, Dumbledore, he's kind of the nuclear weapon. He only goes on very, very occasionally. And I don't think it's going to be that hard a job. And we'll just go back and forth. Where do you like to live? Where do you like to live when you're in London? What's your favorite place?
Well, I've lived in, we lived up near Primrose Hill on the Crown. We lived near the Royal Court in Chelsea this past fall when I did the play.
And I've had... Oh, God, they found a wonderful house for us when I did The Crown. And we just lived like Londoners right down the street from Derek Jacoby. I love Derek Jacoby. I love that. So, I mean, it's a wonderful thing to contemplate. I mean, the logistics are a little bit scary. I really did have to think hard about whether to take it on. But I also thought, well...
I'm about to turn 80, you know, next year. No way. I'll turn 80. Is that true? That's the new 50. You look phenomenal. People ask me for my secret sauce, but I'm beginning to feel like 80. And that means that if this indeed is a seven or eight year long job, it's a wonderful way to grow old as an actor. I mean, the alternative is to just...
be hauled out once a year to play an Alzheimer patient. Or, you know, someone... To play a wise old wizard. An awful lot of death scenes with weeping middle-aged children, you know. John, let me just say this. If you played an Alzheimer patient, I'm sure your performance would be unforgettable. Ah,
By the way, you did in Planet of the Apes. You were great. You were an Alzheimer's person. Sean, I love you. I didn't have to bring that up myself. Yes, of course. Of course. Yeah. Now, does your wife have to be at UCLA every day teaching class? Oh, no, no. She is retired from teaching. She still researches and writes and goes to conferences. She travels more than I do. She travels all over the world. Okay.
I'm a trailing spouse on many occasions. Is home base still Los Angeles though? It's more LA than New York, but we've split our time between the two and now we're triangulating really with London. What a dream. That is my absolute dream. That dream. And Mary's from Montana. We have a little cabin on a lake in northwestern Montana and that's kind of our runaway place, which is just absolutely beautiful. That's great. My God.
Um, now if you leave this podcast today without me asking a funny, if you have a funny theater story, these guys are killing me. Um, out of all of them, uh, because out of all of our guests, because you have such a theater history and I, I love, uh,
When things go wrong or people are getting a line or somebody having a heart attack or something. Oh, Sean loves a heart attack. I may have said this one to you guys before, but I don't remember. So stop me if I have. But in high school, they created these thespian awards at the end of the year. And they had this award called the Gold Crutch Award.
And it goes to who's ever the clumsiest, whoever made the biggest mistakes or whatever. And that's a whole other story why I got it. But so I go up to accept the Golden Crutch Award in front of everybody. And I thought, you know what might be funny is if I trip when I get the award. Sure. So I had it in my hand and I tripped and I knocked the tooth out of Missy Vogelsinger's mouth. Oh, my God.
My God. I swear to God. Missy Vogel's singing it to this day. And she's standing there shaking and bleeding, and I'm going, oh, God, and the whole audience reacts. And I go, should I do a speech, or do I take care of her? And like a true actor, I just gave the speech. Speech, of course, the speech. Of course.
Did you try to reassure everybody that this was a joke? This was fine. Oh, God. And the blood was coming down, and I was like, oh, my God. And it was one of the most embarrassing. By the way, that's why I got the golden crutch. Yeah, well. I guess the most curious mishap, I mentioned the changing room.
Yeah. On Broadway, which took place in a rugby team's changing room. 22 actors of whom... Cool it, Sean. 15. 15 were players. And we, at a certain point, we stripped completely naked, got our uniforms on, off into... We played the match, then came back at the end...
Halfway through, my character, there was a scene that won me that Tony Award.
I was brought off the pitch halfway through the match, covered in mud and very, very badly injured. Smashed nose, blood running down my face. I was taken offstage to an offstage bathtub, scrubbed all the mud off and was brought back onstage by the equipment manager. I was stark naked and wet and glistening.
He toweled me down and dressed me up like I was a baby. A long scene in silence. All you heard was the sound of the crowd roaring off stage. And at a certain point, he hoisted me to my feet and hauled my underpants up. These sort of pathetic briefs, you know. We were all these working class clods, really.
But it was a very moving scene. This character was completely out of it. I was like inert, could barely see. And one night he hoisted me up
I tugged up my briefs and my dick was sort of hanging out, just out the bottom, just like, in front of, you know, 800 people, all sort of stricken in silence. And I thought, how in the world am I going to do this? I'm supposed to be completely inert.
And I just sort of, thinking nobody would notice, I sort of reached down and sort of flicked it inside my pants. And I would say that was by far the most embarrassing. That's a good one. After the voting period had already laughed. So...
I would remind you, I was given a Tony Award for that. Yeah, there you go. No wonder. What we have to do. John, we've taken up too much of your time, but I want to ask you one last question because as Jason mentioned, I imagine over the years, and I know...
A lot of it is what comes our way, but a lot of stuff I mentioned over there has come your way. And you mentioned Frasier on Cheers. Is there a role that you have ever regretted, other than Frasier Crane perhaps? Is there a role that you regretted and thought afterwards, oh, I should have said yes? Oh, yes. There are lots.
I ordinarily don't tell people out of regard for the ones who ended up playing it. You don't need to. But I would say I must have the record for the most Tony Awards won by actors in roles that I turned down. Wow. There are literally, I think I'm in double figures by now. Wow. And a couple of those do indeed completely torment me. Yeah.
But I have to think that I played a few roles and had great acclaim. And others have turned it down. John, you know what? Maybe you can look at it like this. You allowed and you gifted passing on the genius writing and whatever that play was to allow somebody else to have it. And what an incredible...
What an incredible positive thing to be a part of. Will, you are so much a much better person than I am. I doubt it. You caught him on a good day, John. Eat my heart out, you know. No, but you're absolutely right. That is a beautiful way to look at it.
And as I say, I never tell people that I play Roy. You know, actually, I got a Tony, sorry, an Oscar nomination for Terms of Endearment replacing another actor. Huh.
Wow. They had shot a couple of scenes with Deborah Winger in terms of him, and they had to let him go because it just wasn't right. Yeah. Right. He just didn't feel okay about Deborah Winger having an adulterous affair. So they came after me thinking I'm the perfect adulterer, apparently. Yeah.
And I have never revealed this actor's name just out of respect for him. Even though there were perfectly good reasons that I just explained why he wasn't right for the part. At that point in your life, you were the seediest person. They were like, we need somebody seedier. You know, when we did Third Rock, we had something that I called the Lithgow Rules. If anybody was ever replaced...
or dropped from the script if the part was written out or whatever, that actor would have to get two phone calls, one from me and one from our producers, just to say, it wasn't you. Here are the reasons why.
Because, you know, it just has happened so many times in my experience that people are just cut out of films or dropped from... And they don't hear from anybody. They don't hear anything except from a casting director calling an agent, calling an actor and saying, it didn't work out. Yeah. And that's so crushing. Yeah.
it is you know it's just because there's always 10 re 10 perfectly good reasons for some for things like that that have nothing to do with the talent yeah yeah and we and we actors we can take it we know there's reasons for it yeah right so there's no but we're soft we're soft we need to it is that i've been well i've been you guys probably have too i mean i've been fired from jobs before or my character was written out and i've had and then there have been people who were really kind of mentioned before
casting director, she's not really doing it anymore, Deb Borilski, and I got fired from a pilot that went to series. And I heard nothing. And the show got picked up, my character was written off, and I was, you know, I wasn't young. I was 32 at the time, and just thought, oh, fuck it. And I was feeling really shitty in New York, and Deb Borilski wrote me a card. I got it in the mail, in my mailbox here in New York.
I got a card saying, you know, they made a mistake. It wasn't you and blah, blah, blah. And it was one of the kinder things. And a few months later, she cast you in Arrested Development and made your career. Actually, a few months later, she begged me. I was doing a play in New York and she said, you have to come. I said, no, I'm not interested. I'm so jaded. And she goes, you have to read for this thing, Arrested Development. I said,
Oh, my God, but a great story. And it changed my life. Yeah. And it happens to everyone. I would say this to young actors over and over. It happens to all of us. And it never happened to me. But I was finally, oh, my God, I went to the premiere of a film in which I had seven lovely scenes.
And I went to the premiere. I was just in New York and I saw, oh, there's a premiere of this film that I'm in. I'll call them and go to the premiere. Well, I sat down and watched my first scene and it was cut in half. And I thought, well, that's too bad. Well, we'll wait for the next one. The next one was cut from the film. The next one was cut. The next one was cut.
All that was left of my character was about the 30 seconds of my first scene in which I had stated the premise of this romantic comedy. But it was enough to trigger residuals. And I sat there with my two kids. Oh.
And just experienced what I'd always told actors. It happens to all of us. Yeah, yeah. It's true. It's such a wild thing, isn't it? It's so wild. John, what an absolute incredible delight having you here today. Oh, you guys. It's real. I've always loved this show. I was very honored to be on it. It's so nice of you to join us. You're a real angel. Thank you so much. Well, I'm sure I'll see you in the next 48 hours at something.
Yes, you'll see Jason. You'll see Jason for sure. And we're going to come and see you in London. We're going to come and see Sean and JB. Sean, I'm going to see Oscar. Good night, Oscar. The great news. That's what I take away from today. Thanks, Kyle. Thank you. All right, John. Thank you. Oh, and I haven't told you about my history with Bennett. I haven't told you about my history with Bennett.
I was going to go do a deep dive on Bennett Barbecue. Yeah, look at that. Here's the portrait by John Lithgow. You did that? That's my painting of Bennett. Isn't that pretty good? Wow, that's fantastic. You look more like the painting than ever. It's like the portrait of Dorian Gray. I was John's muse. How are you guys connected? Wait a second. So Bennett Barbecue, who works with us on the show, who's here now,
How do you and Bennett know each other? Bennett was like one of my daughter's very good friends at Seeds UES School when they were about seven, eight, nine years old. And I know Bennett's folks all these years. Wait, wait, Bennett, you went to lab school? I sure did. Before it was called lab school, yeah. And yeah, and both my kids, my older kids, both my older kids went to lab school, John. Amazing. Circles within circles. But his parents...
I put up for a fundraising dinner, I offered to paint a portrait of your child.
And they bid and they won. And so I painted Bennett's portrait. Oh, wow. That's crazy. It took me about seven years to paint it. It was a source of great guilt. But I finally showed up. That's amazing. How cool is that, Bennett? When people come over, you go, look at that. John Lithgow did that. It says JL at the bottom, yeah.
Bennett, your mom and dad love you. You see, I told you I always wanted to be an artist, and it turns out it's not too late. Pretty good one. It's never too late. That's amazing. Thank you for that, John. That's amazing. Oh, well, thank you, Bennett. I'm glad we squeezed that in. Yes, absolutely. So good to see you, John. Okay, you too. Bye-bye now. Bye, guys. Bye-bye. Bye, John.
Now, we have had some assholes. We have had... Jason, Jason, hold up. This son of a bitch. Jason, Jason, hold up, man. What a delight. My God. Jesus, I know. I feel like I've known him. I feel he's a good, good, good guy. Wow, I can't believe he's...
He's almost 80. He looks younger than Jason. It's fucking crazy. I know. I got to see him play that killer because I can't imagine him ever being nasty. I know. I want to see him. Ever being angry. You can. You see through it. You think it's all bullshit. No, no, no. I don't mean it that way. I don't mean it that way. I mean that he is such a versatile. He has such facility as an actor. I mean, he has played. I'm trying to think. He's played like some. Raising Cain.
Yeah, he's played some scary characters. And he's still doing theater. I mean, how about he's like, yeah, I'm doing Dumbledore. Oh, I'm going to do this play, though. I'm like, God, doesn't slow down. It's very inspiring. I know.
But anyway, it's a great, great call getting him. I love him. I love him. We were supposed to have him on before and there was a thing and it was messed up and it was so, but we had a technical error or whatever, episodes that didn't work out. And I was like, oh my God, are we ever going to get him back because he's traveling all the time and he's working all the time. And I just thought, God, I'm so happy that we were actually able to make it happen. Yeah, he's great.
I mean, he's just, I'll bet you could rattle off at least a dozen movies that you go, that's right, he was in that. He's just always got some great part in some great project that you forget about. Oh, dude, he's been in everything. Right, right. You know? Yeah, I mean, if you take them all. Boy.
All his films. It's the pause. It's the pause. That's what it is, Jason. It's the pause that he takes. You can also hear the engine start. Yeah, that's true. If you take all of them and put them together, it's such an incredible body of work if you take them all and you come... Bye! Bye!
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