Jason Alexander: Bat Mitzvah Limousine
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Oh, look, who decided to show up with his shorts and his biceps and his, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Looking fabulous. Yeah, I know. I know, Mr. Atkins. I know. I know. It's Dr. Atkins to you, sir. Dr. Atkins. Hello, everybody. Did that sound like someone else? I was trying to kind of sound like someone else. Just to change things up a little bit. I'm literally...

Jason Alexander's with us today. The legend Mount Rushmore of TV characters, George Costanza. I mean, I don't know what else to add after that. It just simply does not get any better. But he's a great guy. He's a good friend of mine. He appeared on The Grinder with me, my beloved little show that not enough people saw that I love. If you haven't seen The Grinder, go watch it.

Please. I think it's on Hulu somewhere. You can find it. But Jason and I fell in love on The Grinder and he's here with me now. We're going to do a deep dive on all things theater, movies and acting. So stay tuned.

I like the lighting, Rob. This is very... Does it look like I'm in a spaceship, though? It looks a little bit, yeah, or a disco, one or the other. No, no, we like it. It's space disco. Yeah, I like it. In the 70s, everything was either space or a disco. Once Star Wars came out and disco was happening, it was like space. So it's great. I'm in my wheelhouse of references that are aged.

And beyond the purview of most of the audience. Indeed. Indeed. I'm going to work in an Evelyn Champagne King reference. Oh, my God. Huh? I am old. Okay. Come on. No, we like that. We love it. Oh, wait. Now. Oh, jeez. Oh, that vibe. Okay. No, no. Go back to the blue. The blue light is very Bat Mitzvah limousine. Okay.

Right? Isn't it? That is correct, sir. You are correct. Right? You just need a little string of runner lights and you're there. Yeah. It's very, very good. The star field. I'm good. Are you back in, you're in the East Coast, right? Or no, where are you? No, no, I'm LA. You're LA all the day. Yeah.

I think people forget, not forget, or they're just not really, they don't realize like, dude, you are the man. You, you, you're a true thespian. The boards are your second home. You've, I mean, you've done Sondheim, sir. Yes, I do know Stephen. I call him Stephen. By the way, Stephen Sondheim, how old is he? I think Steve just celebrated his 90th. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think so. Um,

I have very mixed feelings. Let me see if something very unpopular. I'm a sucker for a simple melody. Yeah, sure. And he can be a complicated... He's complicated, don't you think? He is. You know, what's interesting about Steve is he can write anything he wants. You know, the show that I did with him is actually...

one of his most accessible scores, despite the fact that it was one of the least accessible shows. Was it A Little Night Music? What is it? It was Merrily We Roll Along. Merrily We Roll Along. Yeah. So, you know, Steve is also the guy who wrote Forum, Funny How I'm On The Way to the Forum, and you don't get more... People forget that. ...wide open Broadway musical than that. But I think what...

What motivates Steve is the puzzle of it all. You know, where does the story take place? Who are these characters? What are their backgrounds? They should sing the way they speak. And he gets... And he is so...

otherworldly knowledgeable about music and its possibilities, that I think he just goes where that particular muse tells him to go. But his ability to write to any style, and especially some of the stuff he's written that you don't realize is him. He had, I think, an Oscar-winning song in Dick Tracy, Sooner or Later, You're Gonna Be Mine. Jeez, that's right. So his ability to do that stuff is off the charts.

I agree with you. When you get into a score like Passion, which I found, you know, I had to listen to it many times before I started to go, oh, okay, now I'm comfortable. Here's my thing is, am I just a simpleton? Am I like a Rube from Ohio who's wandered into the Great White Way and goes, if I can't, if I'm not humming something coming out of that show. Yeah.

Well, you know, you're not a simpleton. That used to be the mandate for a Broadway score. But as Broadway scores became less about here's the book and here's a song and here's the book and here's a song, when the score became a more integrated element of the show. Right, right, right.

Those hummable verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, verse, chorus songs just kind of disappeared. They went out of vogue. And for me...

The show that turned it was Sondheim's. And you can either point to... Company. Company had great songs. Company had hummable songs. Yeah, but if you then go to Sweeney, Sweeney Todd, or you go, here's the one that really changed it all. And I got to tell you, first time I heard this score, I went, oh my God, come on. And then it's one of my favorite scores, Sunday in the Park. Yeah. Well, Company for me, I saw Company when I was like, it must've been awful because it was a

And listen, no disrespect. They do have an amazing theater program and have for years and years. And they're a big part of me becoming an actor. But the Wright State University version of Company. Yeah. I was probably, I don't know, I was nine or ten. Yeah. But I remember it vividly, vividly, vividly, vividly made a huge impression on me. And then I was lucky enough to see the gender swapped version that was in London. Oh, you've seen that. Yeah, I've seen that. It is fantastic.

I'll bet. And I'll tell you something, you can't imagine it

Any other way, once you see it. Yeah. That director, and I think her name is Marianne Phillips. She's amazing. She did Curious Incident of the Dog. That's right. Which was stunning. She was the co-director of War Horse on stage. I mean, this woman, I met her one evening and I said, if you need an actor just to come on and walk across flaming glass, please, I'm your man. I just want to get in a room with her.

The staging of it, every single element of it is amazing. And the cast was extraordinary. And the actor, Rosalie Craig, is spectacular. I wish she was coming to Broadway with it. Well, I know in the States, it's Katrina Lenk. Who's great, obviously. Yeah. But I'm looking at the upcoming Broadway schedule and I don't see company on it.

As far as I know, it's coming. It's coming, but I haven't seen... Yeah, the guys that I'm talking to, the producers I'm talking to, they're all trying to figure it out. And you and I may have chatted about this a little bit before, but if you're the producer of Wicked, the operating cost of running that show, I believe they must sell...

eight shows a week at about 80% to just hit the running cost. And if New York truly doesn't have a tourist trade come the fall,

You have to assume everyone in the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut area that wants to see Wicked has seen it three times. I don't know if they're coming back. So do you reopen that show knowing that you may not even be able to make your running costs? Or do you roll the dice and go, no, it's a field of dreams. People will come, Ray. They'll come. And nobody knows. And to reopen that show is several million dollar commitment. You got to rehearse it again. You got to

recast it. You've got to clean up all that mechanics and all that computetry and start your merchandising and marketing routines up again. It's no small commitment to roll that dice. What was the first big show you saw and that you remember in your life? I

I think I only remember it because my parents told me I remember it. I know that drill. But I saw, and I would have been four or five years old, but I saw Zero Mostel do the original production of Fiddler. I think that was my first Broadway show. And my parents were avid theater goers, and we went a lot. But I know the show where I went, oh, my God, I got to do this. I got to do this, because I had not been...

I'd never thought of myself as a performer. And then I moved from one town in New Jersey to about five towns over when I was 12, knew nobody. And the first kids that picked me up were the theater kids and dragged me into a show. And they became my little group. And we used to go into the city all the time and see Broadway stuff. And we saw an early preview of Pippin when it was first opening in 72. I'm so jealous. Oh my God. And Vereen came out with the, we got magic to do. And I lost my shit. I went, that's,

I want to be him. I want to be that guy. And then I got serious. I had the cast album of Pippin. Oh. But I never saw it. Glorious. Never saw it. Unbelievable. Well, if you want to see Vereen, there was a pretty good production that was videotaped and is available everywhere with William Catt as Pippin.

Um, I get that. And curly, cute, blonde and does a nice job. And Ben Vereen. And you really do get, you know, what Ben was doing up there. Um, does Pippin, is Pippin incredibly dated now? Um, in some ways, yeah. In some ways, no. Um, the music, the songs are killer. The, the music was, you know, cutting edge when it came out in 72. Now I guess it would be considered a little bit pastiche, but, um,

The story holds because it's basically a story that every guy our age and anywhere from, I would say, 40 up goes through, which is, isn't life supposed to be better for me? Aren't I supposed to be living in a bigger, more potent way? And that's really Pippin's story as a guy who...

believes he was born to extraordinary purpose and goes looking for that purpose in art, in war, in politics, in romance and all these different things and finds out eventually that what he really was most contented by was a simple life on a farm with a woman and a child.

And is that a compromise? And what I learned, it took me seeing Pippin 21 times and then going to therapy for 20 years. But that's, for me, that is correct. Because the highest highs, while glorious, don't sustain. And then by comparison, you drop to the lowest lows. But when you burn this even line right down the middle of contentment...

It rarely fails you. By the way, that was also a great ad for Zoloft. Absolutely. That was just amazing. Absolutely. Side effects may include. Menstrual cramps for men. Menstrual cramps and beheadings. Yeah. I saw The Wiz. Original cast? The original cast with Stephanie Mills. Mills.

And Hinton Battle and Andre the Shields. Look at this. Ted Ross. Look at you. Yeah, I'm that guy. I'm the only straight man theater queen I know of. Look, well, there's two of us now. She was, I think Stephanie was like 15 or something. Yeah, easily. She played Dorothy. And I can't imagine the phrase, you know, bringing down the house. I just cannot, I don't think I've ever seen still, and I've seen a lot of great stuff since,

anything other that will surpass her every night in that. I can give you one. What do you got? Well, actually, I could probably give you more than one that are equal. Give me your top three. Jennifer Holiday in Dreamgirls. Oh, yeah, right. Forget it. Was like stupid. Cynthia Erivo in Color Purple. Stupid. Yeah. I forgot about it. The Dreamgirls throwdown. Yeah. Forget it. That's the one. You're right. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm telling you I'm not leaving. That's the one, isn't it? And I am telling you, I'm not going. Not going. She's not going. And every actress, bless them, that has assumed that role afterwards has had to approximate the Jennifer Holliday footprint because it...

That song, without that performance, it's a nice song, but it doesn't rise to, you know, killer act one curtain unless you invest it with the commitment, the ugliness, the passion, the musical pyrotechnics that Jennifer Holliday was able to do. And I remember when Jennifer Hudson did the movie role, she graciously said,

I am just trying to do my best homage to Jennifer Holliday. That woman set the standard. So do you, and you've, you've created roles and then you've come in on producers. You came in, correct? Marty Short and I took over the, they were on tour and then they were going to sit down in LA and they wanted two names on the marquee. So Marty and I did it here. So, but when you come into something, I, I only did it once. I did it once.

With a few good men. And right. Thinking about I'm telling you, I'm not going is like there. There are certain things where you go, fuck, man. They just knew that's just the way to do it. That guy, that gal. They like when I got to you can't handle the truth. That whole thing every night. It was like, I'm going to make it my own. I'm gonna do my own thing.

And then what you realize in rehearsal is like, no, you know what? There's a reason fucking Jack Nicholson and Tom did it that way. Yeah. Because that is the way. Yeah. It's, yeah, it's hard to get away from it. The Producers was very much that kind of show because The Producers is just a joke fest. I mean, there's nothing to bite into other than can we get the laugh? Right.

So you also, I mean, Mel Brooks is a very specific rhythm to his comedy. You step outside that rhythm, the joke doesn't land. So there's just, there's not a lot of ways to say I'm wearing a cardboard belt without doing, you know, zero must now I'm wearing a cardboard belt. If you don't do that, you don't get the laugh. So that's right. Yeah. Nathan did it. And you know what Nathan did that was so amazing was,

is Nathan and Matthew were just fearless about going outside the show.

They became, it's a party with Nathan and Matthew. So they would play around and they would do stuff that nobody wrote, nobody directed, and the audience ate it up with a spoon. Marty and I, mostly Marty, did a little bit of that, but we were more, I don't want to ruin anything here. I don't want to mess anybody up. So we kind of stayed to the straight and narrow. But to watch Nathan and Matthew do that show, especially late in their run. Like what did they do? Explain this to me. I'm fascinated with this. Like what...

Like, what kind of stuff would they do? Well, Nathan, at one point, Nathan, there's a great moment, and you can make of it what you will, where Matthew's character says, so how much money do we put into the show? And it's supposed to, you know, give Max Ballastock a bit of a heart attack. And he goes, how much money do we put in? Two rules of producing. Number one, never put your money in the show. And number two, never!

I'm putting your money in the... But Nathan's heart attack, I mean, at one point... Was five minutes long. Absolutely. I mean, he went out the window of a supposed six-story building and came back in the door. I mean, just madness and changing lines and playing with the audience and, you know, schticklech to just crack each other up. Marty would do that to me, but it was very contained as to where he would do it. And it was always...

really the same spot every night that would become the Marty Short Show. And I loved it and the audience loved it. But for the most part, we stuck to the play. Marty, who I've known a long time and we've worked together sporadically in weird areas like, you know, Jiminy Glick. I've done a lot of stuff with Jiminy and he's been on the show and I've seen him in, you know, crush at dinner parties like no one's business and talk shows and all. But have you...

I can't imagine going on stage every night with Marty when he gives you that crazy... Oh, yeah. The look. The look, yeah. The look. I'm not crazy, right? He gives you the look and you go, oh. Oh, it's the look of, we're going to play now. Yes. The look. Yeah.

Yeah. Marty, thank God for Marty, because I will tell you, because of the reason I shared with you, that there isn't much to bite into on the producers and you can't really vary it very much or you blow the jokes. Right. So it is the only show where straight repetition has been more called for than anything else I've done on stage. Other stuff, as you know.

There's enough variation and enough nuance night to night that it doesn't feel like you're just repeating the same thing eight times a week. But producers very much did. And if it wasn't for Marty and his attitude about it all, Marty...

I kind of, I dragged Marty into that production. I was offered it first and they said, who do you want as a Leo? And I said, well, the first guy I can think of is Marty Short. And Mel said he doesn't want to do it. Apparently they had offered him Leo many, many times and he had turned it down. How'd you get him to do it? I just, I called him two or three times and I could tell that there was something in his voice. And he was very honest with me the third time and I really appreciated it. And he said, you know, it's just, I feel like Leo's the second banana and I don't want to be a second banana. And I went, well,

Oh, for God's sakes, are you crazy? It's Leo's show. Leo is the guy who makes the transformation. Leo gets the girl. Max stays the same. I said, you have all the dance numbers. Max is, is it billing? Take the billing. I don't care. I mean, I don't give a crap. And I think something in that conversation made him go, oh, maybe he's not the second Ben. You know, maybe he felt like it was more of an equal footing or even, you know, that Leo was potentially...

you know, the featured role. And he came on board, but he would come into my dressing room every night before the show in his robe with that imp face and go, Jew, you Jew, you Jewed me into this show. And we, he had a clock. He, no, no. I'm, what am I talking about? He gave me a clock on opening night, a digital clock that counted backwards for,

weeks, days, hours, seconds to where the final curtain on our last performance would be. That's hilarious. And he would come in and go, it's not moving. Hold that thought. We'll be right back.

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Qualifying plan required. Wi-Fi were available on select U.S. airlines. Deposit and Hilton honors membership required for 15% discount terms and conditions apply. So when Seinfeld happens, what's that ride like? First of all, people forget...

It was almost canceled. What was the first season? It was six episodes, wasn't it? No, four. Oh, four. Oh, sure. It was the confidence order. How? I mean, now people order four all the time and fancy streaming services, but a network only ordered? Why didn't they just say we don't want to do it? Well, they did. We did the pilot. They said no.

We're not going to pick up the show. And the reason there may be some other reasons I'm not aware, but I think the mythology that as I understand it is that was back in the day when networks would, you know, fill an empty half hour by showing their dead pilots. So they aired the dead pilot of Seinfeld and the TV guide critic wrote it a love letter.

Just this extraordinary view. And Brandon Tartikoff was running NBC at the time. And he was a Seinfeld fan. He liked Jerry a lot. And he thought, well, maybe we misjudged this. Maybe we're not looking at it the right way. But they had picked up their season. They couldn't do anything else. So a guy named Rick Ludwin, who was the head of Late Night and Variety,

He really ran The Tonight Show. That was his job. He said, well, I've got some money in my summer budget for summer specials, and we don't have anything. So we picked up four episodes as a summer special series. And that was ostensibly our first season. And that's why it was four. When no one was watching TV in the summers. Absolutely. Literally nobody. And for the first two and a half years of Seinfeld, if you were a fan, you had to go find it.

I think we did three or four different time slots on different days. And, you know, it was constantly shifting without any hoopla. Well, when did it explode and how? Somewhere in the third season, I think. Again, you know, my memory at this point. But I think it was the third season where they finally put us on after Cheers. And that was the sink or swim spot because Cheers had the top ratings for NBC. Yeah.

And so they delivered you an audience. If you could hold the audience, you were okay. If you lost the audience, then they figured, well, nobody's interested and you'd get canceled. And we held. And then eventually, by the time we did the contest, the masturbation contest episode, we actually topped their numbers for the first time. And that's when we were solid from that point on. But until then, we did not know. Every three weeks, we'd go,

I don't know. I don't know if I got a job next week. So the, just the notion that a show could go three seasons before finding its destiny.

It makes you wonder how, and by the way, I know the answer is there are very few, but how many Seinfelds were out there that don't get the three-season chance to find their voice? Absolutely. And the thing that I talk to people about all the time, about that process of waiting and finally getting the nod for success, I can't tell you how many times Jerry and Larry David have

were told by the network or told by their overlords, you got to change what you're doing. You can't, this is not working. We're not building. And they went, you can put us on, you can take us off. Don't tell us how to do the show. Love it. And they held to their vision and they held to what they believed in and it caught on. Do you remember, I would love to know,

What the network's notes were like, if they could have, do you know what I mean? When they said it's not working. Cause I promise you was followed up with, and this is what would work. Possibly. I do remember they showed us on the hundredth episode, they gave us a framed copy of the initial testing results for the pilot.

And it was things like too hip, too urban, too Jewish. I thought, that's interesting. Where is that on the questionnaire? How many Jews would you like to see in this? Yeah, right. It was one of the big questions they asked. On a scale of one to 10, too Jew-y is a 10. One of the comments was Jerry Seinfeld not believable as a stand-up comic. That was a comment. That's amazing. The only one that was spot on was the supporting cast is annoying. And we went, well, that's true.

That is true. That's well noted. Yeah. That's me. That made me true. Um,

And Julia Louis-Dreyfus has to have the highest batting average of anybody in television, right? You bet. You bet. It's not even close. With the exception of, and it's arguable that even this was a limited success, but she had one short series with Day by Day and one with Watching Ellie, which was the show she did right after Seinfeld. But other than those two...

Everything that girl has touched is gold. She's the queen Midas of television. It's unreal. Yeah. Deserved, but that doesn't make it any less unreal. Absolutely. But for something like Veep, where initially it seemed like that was all on her shoulders. Yeah, she had a great supporting cast, but that show's sitting on her shoulders forever.

Everything has to fall into line. The timing of that show, the writing of that show, the style, the direction, her performance as Selina. Again, Julia does an extraordinary job being winning at characters that are hard to get behind. Christine, old Christine was a bit of a...

You know, in some ways, not a Karen, but she was like this privileged white woman who didn't quite understand how she was privileged. Selina Meyer is certainly, you know, a not enviable character. Hilarious character. And yet you get behind her. It's extraordinary. There's a lot to be learned from her, I think. I just think she's got...

I mean, she's, by the way, she's my neighbor in Santa Barbara and I never see her. I lived in Santa, I lived in Santa Barbara for 26 years and her husband, Brad Hall is like a fifth generation Santa Barbara. Yeah. Never see them. They must love. I think they have been going out of their way to avoid me. Well, they have many, many houses. They have many homes. That's many, many. And so at any given time, God knows where she is. But, um,

Yeah. And Julia also, I think it's, it's why part of why she's done so well, Julia, you know, she does what you have to do to be a star of her level, but she doesn't, you know, she's not out there hyping it. She's not, she lives a very private life. She, I'm sure she would say the thing that was most important to her was her family being a good mother, which she absolutely was.

And her relationship with Brad. And, you know, she's not really – she likes to work. She doesn't really care about much of the rest of it. I mean, that is the thing about where Santa Barbara, those of us who come up here, really, we just – that's kind of the drill. We raise our kids and, you know, we parachute into L.A. when we have to, when we can. Jerry, I have recently gotten to know. I've never really spent any time with him. He's got me into T.M.,

Are you doing it? Yeah. I am doing, I'm doing transcendental meditation and I'm loving it. I have to say. And I start my, my mantra is thank you, Jerry Seinfeld. That's turns out that was my mantra. I don't do TM and it's mine too. Every day when you serve, survey your, your domain, my domain. And I thank you, Jerry Seinfeld. Thank you, Jerry Seinfeld.

And did you come to the realization that really George was Larry David? Yeah, it happened. And I wish I could remember the episode. But we, you know, the early episodes of Seinfeld, before we understood what these guys were building, they were strange for us, too, because it didn't conform to the norms of what was considered science.

television writing at the time, or even, you know, they would write conflicts that would come to a critical mass at the middle of the show and then never resolve. And I go, well, aren't you going to

Aren't you going to finish this story? He goes, it's not funny after that. But you've left George and Jerry angry at each other. It doesn't matter. You know, it's just things that didn't compute to me. But we did a table read of some early episode, and I just thought there was a preposterous situation that George was in. And I remember going to Larry and going, Larry, can you help me with this? Because, I mean, this would never happen to anybody. But if it did, I don't think anybody would react like this. So what are you thinking? What's in your head? Yeah.

And he said, I don't know what you're talking about. This happened to me and it's exactly what I did. And I went, oh, and that was the moment where I went, I think he may be writing an avatar of himself. Do you remember what it was by any chance? I don't, I don't remember the episode. And it would have had to be in that second season somewhere when we did 13. Yeah.

So I should probably just go through the episodes and see if I can figure out which one it was. But that's what... I had been doing a sort of very loose Woody Allen in my head up until that point. And then when I realized Larry was kind of writing an alter ego, I very deliberately started to try and work some of Larry's mannerisms into the character and some of what I perceived his worldview to be and his sense of humor. And then...

We never talked about it, but very shortly after that, he knew that I knew that he knew that I knew. And there was a great... The writing for George in the first seven years when Larry was there was off the charts good. I mean, the writing was good after he left for me, but nobody understood George like Larry, so... He's so talented. I mean... Oh, it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. Yeah. I mean, Curb Your Enthusiasm...

is just one of the greatest shows ever imagined. Absolutely. And look what he's getting away with. Doesn't have to write. It's fantastic. He just shows up and does his thing. Yeah. And also goes, you know, I don't feel like I want to do this show for the next four years. I just want to, now I'd like to do it again. Yeah. Amazing, right? Amazing. I mean. And writes a Broadway play, gets it on Broadway, winds up starring in it,

And then I took over for Larry. I had a feeling I might get a call one day, but he...

He got out of his contract early. What a surprise. Because he just couldn't, the eight a week was killing him. And he called me when he was going to go into rehearsals for it. And he said, you're Mr. Broadway, talk me through this. What's it going to be like? Am I going to like this? And I talked him through from the day one of rehearsal until like, what would he, what would he would feel like on a Thursday afternoon, five weeks after he opened? And,

Tell me, wait, wait, what did you tell him? I'm curious to know. Well, I said, you're going to go in on day, you know, well, because he was also a part of the putting it together. I said, you're going to love that. You're going to have casting. It's all the stuff, you know, you're going to cast that you love, right? You're going to go on a rehearsal. If you like your director, everything's going well. You're going to laugh first week. You're going to laugh. You're going to have such a good time. You can't believe it's going like this.

Second week, things are really falling into place. You see the show. Third week of rehearsal, it all falls apart. Nothing's good. Nothing's funny. Nothing works. Why? Why does that happen? Nobody knows. Could be just that you're getting used to it and so it all starts to feel not fresh, but don't worry about it. Don't overcompensate for it. Anna Shapiro's your director. You're going to be fine. She knows this. You're

You're going to go through that. Then you're going to get into the theater. And at first it's going to be very exciting because there's the set and there's the costume. It's all complications. And it's not about you anymore. It's about the lights and the sound and the thing and the thing. And you're going to, I forget the show. I don't remember the show. I'm only doing clothing changes. And I don't panic. Then you're going to get into dress rehearsals.

The first two are going to be horrible. Everything's going to go wrong. You're not going to get through it. Then you're going to get through it. Then it's going to get a little better. Then you're going to bring in a preview audience. If the preview audience comes in, you're going to be very excited. If they love it, you're going to be floating on clouds. It's unbelievable. You'll tinker by day. You can't wait to get to the theater. You're going to get through your previews. Everybody that acts should have an opening night on Broadway. It's the greatest thing in the world. You can't believe it. It's better than, I'm sure, the Oscars. It's just the greatest night ever.

If the reviews are great, you're going to be just walking on air, walking on air. You come in the next day, the curtain goes up, the audience goes crazy. They love it. They're giving it to you. Fantastic. You can't wait. You do the first week, you do the second week, the third week, it's like, yeah, I'm doing it. I'm doing it. The fourth week, it's like, I'm doing it. I'm doing it. I said, somewhere in the fifth week, like around Thursday of that week, you've done your first four shows.

And around 3.30 in the afternoon, you're going to sit there and realize you'd rather put an ice pick through your own eye than have to go down to that theater and do this goddamn thing again. And I said, the trick is you got to get to the theater. Once you're at the theater, your cast is there. Everybody has the energy. You feel the audience coming in. You'll get the mojo again. But the hard part is getting out of your house and going to the theater. And then you're going to realize in week five that

you're a vampire. You're not awake during the day. You're sleeping during the day. You're awake at night. You're not seeing your friends. You wake up every day going, do I have a voice? Do I have a voice? Am I tired? Am I sleeping? Am I sick? And I said, you'll be able to do it, Larry, for maybe 12 weeks, and then you're going to want out.

And I missed it by a couple of weeks. I think he did it for nine weeks or 10 weeks. And then I got a call saying, you got to get in here. And we'll be right back after this.

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Do you remember getting that place in Iran?

I felt like it was somewhere north of 100 shows where you could start thinking about your laundry list and things you need to do in your life while you're actually giving the performance. It's frightening. It's frightening. Yeah. And it's not actually that you're on autopilot. I actually teach actors now, and I talk a lot about...

Getting your performance into your body. Yes. Because you can't rely on your emotional honesty all the time, but you can always rely on your physical honesty. And if you're doing something, if you're performing an action, you'll find that there's an emotional connection to those actions. So your body is your best friend. And it's true. You get to that point, and you're right, about 100 performances in where your body can do it without your brain.

And do it well. And do it really well. You're not phoning it in. You're just not quite completely there. And then what I also experienced happily only a couple of times is you can kind of come to when you're in that, whatever mode that is. Yeah. And going in and out of the modes, if you're not careful, can fuck you big time. That's where I used to get anxiety attacks on stage because I would...

of realized I was not in my body. Exactly. And I suddenly went, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And the sort of disassociation of, wait a minute, I'm on a Broadway stage. I'm doing this thing. Part of me is there. Part of me is not. And I would freak out a little bit. Same. That's exact. It's so funny. I've never talked to anybody about this before, but that's

Exactly. Yeah. Isn't that the fun of it? All the stuff that goes, what's the craziest thing you've ever seen, heard, or done during a run?

Marty and I often, the computer machinery of the producers would break down. And Marty and I once did, and I'm not a stand-up, but we did 25 minutes for the audience of just silliness. So there was that kind of stuff. Not the craziest thing I ever did. It's the craziest thing I managed to avoid doing. But when I was doing the Neil Simon play...

When my character put his foot on the stage, it was going to be about an hour and five minutes before the intermission curtain. And I went on one night and my bowels just went, here we are. And I went, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. I can't do an hour like this. I can't do five. I don't know if I can do five minutes like this. And your mind is just going, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? What am I going to do? And I...

I deliberately was jumping as many lines as I could, if I thought it wouldn't affect anything. And my pace was, and I just, you know, the sweat was running off me and the worst part. And I knew it was going to be the worst part is there was a section of about six or seven minutes where Jonathan Silverman's character and my character go to sleep on our beds. And there's a big dramatic scene downstairs with the parents and, and, you know, you can't move because you're totally visible, but you, you,

You don't want to distract. And I'm going, how am I going to do this? How am I going to do this? And as we got to that scene, this is what went through my head. You know, the set is a house. It's like if you took a house and you cut it down the middle from roof to floor. Right. So there's a bathroom. Yes.

It's got muslin walls, but there's a wood that you can see through and a wooden door and there's a toilet and a sink and a bathtub in there. No plumbing. And I actually thought, am I there? Is this it? Is this it? Is this what I'm, is this what I'm reduced to? Am I going to go into that thing and just let go with God knows how much, you know, sound effects and what else. And honestly, I think the only reason I didn't do it because I was so desperate was I did know that

that anything else I ever did in my life or career, I would never get past the reputation of being the guy that took a crap in a non-working toilet on a Broadway stage. So I managed to hold out. Couldn't you have just said, oh, no, because, yeah, you're in the house. That's right. Would have been great if the bathroom in the house, there was no bathroom in the house. You had to go outside to the outhouse. That would have been fantastic. Sure. Yeah. In retrospect, I go, why don't I just say instead of lying down, why don't I just say I'm going to go take a walk?

I could have done that. Why did I do that? Never thought, because my brain wasn't working. That's why. But that's the best. That was hard. That was hard. But I've seen crazy things. I've seen, oh my God. Remember the play Sleuth? Yeah. So as they're messing up the house in the first act, they knocked over the thing that had to get shot, that explodes, to establish the gun. Oh no. And the two actors, Patrick McNee and Brian Murray, they froze. They just, huh. Yeah.

And the stage manager came on and said, we're so sorry, folks. We're going to bring the curtain in, clean up a bit, but go back a few pages in case the illusion wasn't totally shattered. We're going to go back a few pages. And they reset the stage. I saw, oh, God, things in the magic show with Doug Henning that didn't work. I mean, that's the greatness of theater is when you have that human moment and you go, we shared a thing, audience and stage, right?

that nobody else is going to share. It's a once in a lifetime experience. To people who come into it new or who don't understand it is that the audience love, they love the screw ups. Oh, sure. They love them. Yeah. Absolutely. Then, you know, it's real. And like you said, they've shared something. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. There was a great moment that my, Larry Moss, my acting teacher used to talk about that Gene Simmons, the actress, not the drummer from Kiss, but Gene Simmons, was in a play on Broadway in previews and she came through the door. She knocks on the door of the set and this other actress goes, oh, hello, someone. And

Simmons froze and then she came all the way down to the audience and went, I'm terribly sorry. The play is in terrible shape. We don't know what we're doing. You're in for an awful time and we apologize. Honestly, we apologize. All right, let's continue. No! And then we're back through the door. Yeah, yeah.

Oh my God, that's amazing. I didn't say that, but that's amazing, right? That's where you go, holy crap. And it reminded me of this one other show that ran for about three days on Broadway, which is the greatest idea ever. And so bad. It was called We Interrupt This Program. It had no real...

You knew very little about it going in. And the curtain goes up on a sort of Victorian drawing room comedy. And about eight minutes in, the doors of the theater fly open and these guys dressed in military fatigues come in with automatic rifles and they're holding the audience hostage. And for about 15 seconds, you do exactly what you did. You go, holy shit. And then they start talking and you go, oh.

this is the play. We interrupt this program. I get it. And then the play was so bad. You know, you're, you are relying on the audience to play along with the situation. And I remember a guy got up to go to the restroom and one of the actors put a gun on his face. Sit down, sit down. And the guy went, get that fucking thing out of my face before I, you know, and the illusion is over. So, you know, it's, uh,

There's been some great nights in the theater, I have to say. But I hope it comes back. I hope it does. Well, September 14, I believe, is the opening of Phantom again. And then in quick succession, there's a whole bunch of stuff. I know six...

Lion King is opening. Wicked is opening. I think Chicago is reopening. Mockingbird is going to open in December, back with a lot of its original cast. Who's playing the lead? Jeff. Jeff Daniels is going back in. Jeff's coming back, so it's not Ed Harris. No, and Celia Keenan-Bolger is going back in as Scout. So...

That that's exciting. That was, that was a pretty great night. I have to say. Um, so yeah, the plans are there, there's stuff and you know, uh, you, you know, cause I came after you hard. Um,

And we've got to play War of the Roses that we're currently trying to put our cast together. I know. It's going to be so great. It's going to be great. Wow. And I know that I'm going to come on opening night and just beat my own self over it. But listen, it wasn't like it was an issue. Well, you didn't turn us down. You're too goddamn busy. I'm just too busy. You work and act, are you? I literally... That's what everything you're doing. I went to the producers of Lone Star and was like...

How can we do this? And they said, let me see if we get this straight. You want to shoot an hour action network drama, take three days off and do the War of the Fucking Roses on Broadway and come back and start shooting with two days off? You're a mental...

person. That's hard. That's hard. It would have been hard. And we have the guys, we're looking for the gals. We're trying to get the ladies. So the gals are going to be, it's a great re-imagining of the, of the show. It's it, and it's, it's great. It's going to be so much fun. Do you have the theater yet? No, we have to, we have to get the cast to get the theater, right? You know, that's, that's the way this stuff works. Now there, there was a time and you know, it's interesting. I was talking about it to the producers every now and then you get a show where the show is the star, right?

Something like The Play That Went Wrong. You know, nobody cares who's in it. They just hear that this is a laugh riot and the stage falls apart, you know, and the play becomes the star. There are very few of those. Even Mockingbird. If Mockingbird didn't have Jeff Daniels at its helm when it first opened, even with Aaron Sorkin behind it and Bartlett Scherr, they probably would have struggled a little bit at the box office. And it's just this weird alchemy now of...

Actors, title. And I get it because, you know, the New York audience doesn't know me as a director and they don't know Peter Tolan as a writer for the stage.

So there's a lot of leap of faith that has to be done and they, they want to anchor it with, with something that they, and even if they went, Oh great, we got Jason, but I don't show up eight times a week. So the audience never sees me. So they want to know what the audience is showing up for means something to them. When you, when you direct this show, are you, okay, it's up and running. It's opened. The reviews are in, it's going. When do you come back? And under what auspices? Back to look at it again. Uh,

Boy, having never done one like this, I don't know. I would imagine, you know, I think you'll understand this. There's real value for the director to get out of Dodge. 100%. Because the thing has to grow and change. You rely on your stage manager to go, look, here's the blueprint. We know what the intention of the show is and it's different moments. Yep.

As long as it's serving its intention, let them discover stuff. Let them find things, you know, through the repetition of it that we never thought of. And yet. But I do remember, you know, there's a great theater story of George S. Kaufman coming back to see one of his shows on Broadway. Yeah.

And leaving a note on the sign-in board that said, rehearsal at 2 o'clock tomorrow to take out all the improvements. Exactly. I would imagine it's a thing that you visit every 10 to 12 weeks and just go, hey, even if it's just to go, fantastic, you guys, what a great job you're doing. You've got to show that you're still invested in it and care about it and appreciate the effort that everybody's making. I found that in an ensemble...

There's always going to, no matter how great they are, there's always going to be one that just over the, just like, like water eroding into the Grand Canyon. Yeah.

Over the course of time, that performance will become un-fucking-recognizable. There is a tendency, especially because War of the Roses is predominantly a comedy, but in comedies and musicals, there's a tendency to go, well, if you liked that, you'll love this. God damn it, I'm so bummed you're not directing me. You're so smart. Oh, thanks. Fuck, this is heartbreaking because you so get it.

Well, you know, having been on the actor side of it for so long and learning to appreciate great direction and what that can be. And I got to say, the guy that I give it up to all the time is Joe Mantello. Is he as good as everybody says? Absolutely. What makes him so great?

Joe is pretty much the whole package. So he can talk to a writer. He understands dramaturgy and construction. He's got a great bullshit meter and he's got a great schmaltz meter. So he doesn't let performances get schmaltzy.

Um, because he's an actor, he speaks actor, he speaks performance and he can do it in a really perfunctory way, or he can do it in a very inspirational way. Um, and he speaks design and, and, you know, Joe's idea of how to accomplish the house in the stage version of Love, Valor, Compassion by making it a doll's house, um,

was brilliant because they were thinking they have to build this extraordinary, you know, lake cottage and they didn't have the money for it. And so his understanding of the stage and what is possible and,

He's just, he's just, he just gets it. Most directors I find have an area where they're really good in an area where they're not so good. Like if you ask me about lighting, I go, I don't know, make it pretty. I don't know. I don't, I don't understand lighting. I can talk about mood. I can talk about tone. I can say it's a little dark over there or, you know, or I want to highlight this. I want to make sure the eye is going somewhere, but I technically, I don't know a damn thing about it. So,

The guys that just have all-around knowledge and can speak to it in informed ways are pretty extraordinary. But especially for actors, there is such a thing as an actor's director. It's the person who can say to you, look, here's the event. Here's what we're trying to build. And, you know, how can I help you? Do you need...

What do you need? Can we do it with tone? Can we do it with a prop? Can we do it with your costume? Do we need to do some sensory work? Do we need to do... How do we get you there so that you reliably own this moment? And the people that have those skills are pretty extraordinary. Because at the end of the day, it's about the script and the cast. It's the words and who's saying them. I remember when I first realized that actors had microphones. Yeah. And then I remember also...

Teleprompters have been creeping in. Have you noticed this? I haven't seen prompters. I do know about the vocal feed into an earpiece where somebody's offstage feeding you your lines. And that's usually for older actors that are having memory issues. And that's, that's, I, I, I get, but I, there was one show and I can't, if I knew the name, I wouldn't say it.

The good news is I don't remember what the name was, where they had prompters built into the set. Like in the kitchen, like when she would, somebody would be washing dishes, looking, but there's a prompt, there's a screen there. Yeah. And then there were screens in the wings and there were screens in the, and I'm, so you, listen, you, you have, you're much more in this world than I am. It's not, it's not becoming a real thing, right? No, no.

No. In fact, the quickest way to lose a career as a stage performer is to unfortunately have memory issues. Oh, yeah, you can't do it. It's the very rare exception where somebody is so extraordinary. I remember when I saw Angela Lansbury just a few years ago in Blythe Spirit. Wow. We heard through the grapevine she had an earpiece. But honestly, it was just a backup. She knew that part. She knew it.

It was just, you know, could she maybe go up on a line where if somebody just went, it's, you know, forgive me, Cecily. Oh yeah. You know, and she'd be in, but, but I, I've also heard of actors that, you know, I won't name names where they have to be fed every line, but their ability to hear it and do it is so good.

that you kind of put up with it. But most of us, the minute we can't hold some lines, it's, oh, that's a shame. And off we go. Why is it then I can still do all that stuff? I mean, I'm not that old yet, but I can't remember, like, I can... When I get really tired, I can look at a fork on a table and go, honey, pass me the... The word retriever? And literally, I'm looking at a fucking fork. Yeah. And yet I could do...

A one-man show. Well, I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why I believe it. And this is what I teach as well.

So when we're performing, they're not just words. They have focus, they have an emotional attachment, and ideally, they have a physical action behind it. And again, your body does the action. You go, well, if I'm doing this action, these must be the words. Yes. As opposed to if I'm sitting at the table and I'm just going, hey, I need the... It's just words. They have nothing. And for me, it's...

Like if I was trying to think of you and for some reason I'm going, we're going to get... Oh, and I'm looking right at you in my head and I'm going, hey, Ray.

Yeah. It's good. The movies and the thing. And it would take me, you know, three minutes to go. Rob Lowe. Yeah. You know, and then I get mad at myself. Is that why? Is that why then also during the long run where you have the blocking, you've been doing the blocking forever. If you have the instinct, because I had it all the time to change it up. Like I, for the life of me, I'm going to make that same fucking cross.

On that same line, no matter what I want to do. That's what you're talking about, right? Is that why I couldn't do it? Very possibly. But I remember, and here's what's fun, and here's what I'm sure you do, and you either know you're doing it or you're doing it without being conscious of it. But I was working with a younger actress in New York on my last theater piece, and

And she said, isn't this awful? We've only been performing about four weeks, but I feel like I'm just getting stale, like I'm just doing it by rote. And I don't know what to do to get out of that feeling. And I looked at her and I said, make me do one thing that I haven't done in the scene before. Even if it's just a smile or a pause. Make me do something different.

And watch what happens. And she did. And she went, oh, that was so much fun. That was fun. I said, yeah, that's really, that was a play, not the actress I'm talking about, but the star of that show was Sherry Renee Scott, who I adore. And Sherry had this really unknowable part, very mercurial, kind of all over the place emotionally and the actions that the character has to do.

And I would say to her, I got your back. You go where you want. I will follow you. And that was our ritual. And that was the great fun of that show was she was so available and so imaginative on stage. And we had such a nice rapport that we really could do that. And she would try something every night, a little different. And I go, oh, that's great. That's fun. Let's do that. And so I...

I was, I worked with Christopher Walken on, and he's like that. He, he on stage, he just does whatever the hell comes into his, it doesn't matter if he's doing Anton Chekhov. Right. If it comes at which we were doing, he, he would, he would say whatever the hell he, I mean, it wasn't that he would change, he wouldn't change the dialogue, but he, you know, he famously takes the punctuation out. Yeah. So,

I think Chekhov had a pretty specific idea of where the sentences were, the commas in the period. Yeah, I think he did. Yeah. Not with Chris Walken. No, the other guy, I remember seeing the final Broadway performance of Pillow Man that Jeff Goldblum was in. Oh yeah. And Jelko Ivanovic and they played partners and,

And I didn't know Jeff, but I knew Jelko. And I saw him after the show and I went, oh, it's great. Oh, my God. I said, man, I don't know what Goldblum's doing, but you guys look like you don't know what he's going to do next. And Jelko went, we don't know what he's going to do next.

Which was very exciting. From the audience side, very exciting. It's amazing when people are like, Malkovich was like that when I saw him. I saw the early, when he was in Burn This back in the day. Sure. Every once in a while, you'll see something like that and you go, oh, this is a whole other. Yeah. It's that dangerous ability to...

fly without a net you know the rehearsals are blueprints and everybody kind of goes okay you know we're this is what we're building we're going to build this every time and then you get somebody that goes yeah well what if we put this room over here still a house right and everybody has to go okay and and it's thrilling as long as you've got an ensemble that can handle it the minute you get somebody that goes i don't know what you're doing i uh that's not what we prepared

Amazing.

Amazing. Well, this is great. Thank you for coming on. This has been so much fun. Well, first of all, you look so good. Do people see you when they listen or watch this? No, they don't really. Can I just say, ladies and gentlemen, this man is sitting in a black, sort of black, dark blue, black studio, beautifully lit. The top lighting is this night blue, and he's got this little lavender pink shirt

glow from the front lights and it's his arms are ripply and the hair is perfect he's everything we've come to expect from Rob Lohan Moore I think I look like I'm in a bat mitzvah limousine with the blue track lighting and every Jew dreams that they look like you in a bat mitzvah limousine oh Mr. Mister thank you so much see ya Jason how fun was that I love him

I, I'm not a big fan of acting coaches per se. They do a lot of good for a lot of people. I just never really found in my performances speak for themselves. I've never found one necessarily that could help it. He would be a great acting coach. I mean, if you're an actor out there, there was a lot of good nuggets out

Coming out of Mr. Alexander's mouth there. And one of the great guys. And I thank him for being here. All right. It is time for the lowdown line. Hello. You've reached literally in our lowdown line where you can get the lowdown on all things about me, Rob Lowe. 323-570-4551. So have at it. Here's the beep. Beep.

Hey Rob, this is Dominic from Orlando. Love the podcast. Listen to it every week. So I'm watching The Grinder, which I feel like is one of your underrated shows. Kind of flew under there. It's really good. Do you personally have any moments or any movie shows that you actively liked? That was pretty good, but really flew under the radar. And you feel it's underrated.

Hey, buddy. Again, thanks for the podcast. Hope all is well. Bye. Hey, Dominic. Thank you for calling out the grinder because I love the grinder. I it's it's prop and listen, I love Parks and Rec. And, you know, I've been fortunate to be in some other stuff like Wayne's World and Tommy Boy and some some comedies that people love a lot. And I'm happy to be in them. I got to tell you, if I could show one thing of mine, it's a comedy. It would be the grinder.

So hopefully more people can seek it out. And it had a very short life because it was so weird and funny. And it's a miracle that it was on network television. A miracle. I didn't think they would put it on. It was so insane. So instead of feeling bummed that it only ran one year, I actually kind of feel lucky that it ran at all. If it had been on a streamer,

It would still be on, but it was just before streamers really became a thing. So anyway, I'm glad that you like the grinder. And, you know, that's I have you pick the one man you pick the that's the one that's the one that got away. That is truly the one where I was like, I can't I it made me actually go from the grinder into drama. I went back into dramas again because I was like, I can't do a better comedy.

And it didn't work on network television. And I can't do any better. So I better do something different. So that's what led me to the 911 Lone Star. But yeah, and that's the way it goes. You just never know. I just had a guest on the show that said, just because something's popular doesn't mean it's good. And it's really, really true. And the grinder was not necessarily popular, but it was good.

Thanks for calling in. I will see you all next week. Thank you for listening. More fun to come. You have been listening to Literally with Rob Lowe. Produced and engineered by me, Devin Tory Bryant.

Executive produced by Rob Lowe for Lowe Profile. Adam Sachs and Jeff Ross at Team Coco. And Colin Anderson and Chris Bannon at Stitcher. The supervising producer is Aaron Blairt. Talent producer, Jennifer Sampras. Please rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts. And remember to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. This has been a Team Coco production in association with Stitcher.

At Ashley, you'll find colorful furniture that brings your home to life. Ashley makes it easier than ever to express your personal style with an array of looks in fun trending hues to choose from, from earth tones to vibrant colors to calming blues and greens. Ashley has pieces for every room in the house in the season's most sought after shades. A more colorful life starts at Ashley. Shop in store online today. Ashley, for the love of home.

All set for your flight? Yep. I've got everything I need. Eye mask, neck pillow, T-Mobile, headphones. Wait, T-Mobile? You bet. Free in-flight Wi-Fi. 15% off all Hilton brands. I'll never go anywhere without T-Mobile. Same goes for my water bottle, chewing gum, nail clippers. Okay, I'm going to leave you to it. Find out how you can experience travel better at T-Mobile.com slash travel. ♪

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