Shownotes Transcript
It's time to dazzle the mom who shines in your life this Mother's Day with Macy's. Macy's will help you give the gift of luxury at a great price with makeup and fragrance sets or skincare products from brands everyone likes like Lane Combe, Clinique, Estee Lauder, Shiseido, and more.
And while every mother glows naturally from within, shop the indulgent glow collection of beauty and skincare products that deliver shimmer, shine, and clear, dewy skin. Macy's has the fashion, too, of course. You'll be able to find just the right clothing to match whatever style your mom has. With all the best brands and newness for this season in stores now, it's the perfect time to head to Macy's today.
and make a Mother's Day this Mother's Day. Let Macy's be your guide to gifting for Mother's Day. Shop now, online, or in stores. Summertime's here. The sun is shining. You need powerful sun protection that feels light on your skin. Meet Neutrogena Ultra Sheer Sunscreen. This is...
SPF 70 lotion. Absorbs fast with smooth, dry-touch finish, so you'll forget that you're even wearing it. It blocks 97% of burning UV rays and is water-resistant for up to 80 minutes. Lightweight, effective, and perfect for sunny days. It is just what your summer needs. Neutrogena Ultra Sheer. Sunscreen you can't feel. Shop now at Target.
Today's episode of Literally is sponsored by Lowe's.
Lowe's knows that taking on more projects should be rewarding. That's why loyalty members get more every day with rewards for every home or business purchase. Plus, shop weekly member deals and get access to free standard shipping. So what are you waiting for? Join for free today. Lowe's, we help you save. Loyalty program subject to terms and conditions. Details at lowes.com slash terms.
Subject to change. That was my ticket. They called me a while later and said, we think we want to put you in another movie. So I'm really excited about it. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Literally. Today, I'm always happy to have, back for the second time, the brilliant Kelsey Grammer, one of the smartest, talented people.
accomplished actors I know. And he has written an amazing book. It's called Karen, A Brother Remembers. And it is unlike anything you have ever read. So let's get to the bottom of all of it with Kelsey Grammer.
Where am I finding you in the world today, Mr. Grammar? Sir, I'm at the house in Holmby Hills in Los Angeles. Okay. All right. So you're here in wonderful CA. Yeah, sunny southern. You're in Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara.
In my little studio. I'm so glad you're back. You're a two-timer now. I know. Isn't that something? How about that? I know. This little podcast has survived long enough to have people returning. Or as they say on Saturday Night Live, you're a friend of the show. There you go. Okay. We got to get into your book. Okay. I mean, your new book, Karen, A Brother Remembers. Mm-hmm.
I've never read anything like it. And it is, it's an amazing, no matter what I say about it, I'm never going to come close to setting it up. So I'm going to let you do it. Um, how would you describe it to people? Cause it's, it's as a writer, I was blown away. Oh, thanks man. Thank you. Um, but very kind. I mean, thank you for reading it. Um,
Karen was given to me as a mission through a medium. I mean, I write about it in the book. We said Karen wants to tell her story. And so I was...
Oh, well, how do I do that? And so about three Octobers ago, I started just jotting down notes in a way thinking what would I possibly do? But what does this mean? Am I supposed to tell this to my kids? Am I supposed to just relate it to some friends or whatever? And Karen being your sister. My sister, yeah. Who was murdered. Yeah. And after a while, after about 20 pages of writing down notes, I started to realize, oh, this is a book.
I finally just realized I was going to commit myself to writing her story as I knew it, but as it unfolded through my eyes and as it unfolded through the life we lived together, the life I've lived since her, and the life I've lived sort of with her in my memory and in my heart all the time. And we were very close as brother and sister. And so I wanted to introduce her to the world. I wanted to introduce my sister, Karen.
to the world I know, to the people I know, to the culture that I'm part of, but also for them to get to know her. Some people have asked in the past, you know, why didn't you talk more about this part about yourself and all that? And I said, well, it's Karen's story. It's not really my story, but it's relevant to include myself in it. And so that's what I did. It's definitely a stream of consciousness.
style, which I, of course, rejected when I was 14 years old and I read Part of the Artist as a young man. I thought, James Joyce, please, this is just annoying. But when I started to write, I just thought the only way to do this is to actually just have it spring up out of my thoughts and out of my memory and have the memory just sort of spill onto the page, and that's how it happened. Well, to me, that's the most... There's so many things that wrap in it, but...
your ability to trust yourself to write in that style is an unbelievable accomplishment. It's hard enough to put yourself out there, but to put yourself out in a sort of, it's not even really a,
I don't think it even qualifies as his own genre. So few, so few people write in that style. How, how did you have, you must have at times you're like, Oh my God, I, this has to be more traditional. I have to organize this in with an inciting incident. And I, I, I did not have that instinct. I just thought I have to tell this way. And, uh,
It started to fall into place in my head. I thought, well, I have to go here now. I have to go there now. Stuff like that would happen. I have to plot my next sort of
But then I'd start to write, and then something would pop into my recollection. Like I'd go, oh, I have to go down that road. I have to talk about that. Like when I'm in my old hometown, and I realized the tree in front of my yard is gone, the tree that I used to climb all the time. And I hadn't even really thought of it until that moment. So in that moment, it's just there's an immediacy between me and the reader. There's like I'm holding the reader's hand, and that we're going to take this trip together, and that I've made one condition, I'm never going to lie. And so it just comes out as...
It's just truthful. It's a truthful recollection and a journey into my sister's life, my past with her, and life we lived together today. For those who don't know, give me, as much as you're comfortable with it, it's such a violent, sad, tragic story.
thing that that happened to her walk walk us through what that was like and and and what how she passed away yeah on july 1st uh 1975 karen was abducted by three men who ended up raping her and killing her they killed her about six hours after they took her and uh that's been the the
The prime tragedy of my life. I mean, I always used to say it's Karen's tragedy. It's not necessarily mine, but it was mine too. And I get to discover that in the writing. In the writing, I get to discover that. And I realized I have a right to claim it as mine and to actually try from that
Kind of position to help other people who have been in the same position, who have lost someone the same way. Because it is absolutely surreal and awful. And there's no amount of writing that can actually make it feel okay. There's nothing about it that is easy or simple. It's just the obligation started to be that I had to find a way to try to help people.
get off of the death of their loved one and get onto the life they had with the loved one. That the, that the book had a kind of mission. And then maybe that's what was being channeled to me through Karen. Originally through this, this gal, Esther was a channel. I know who, uh, but first brought me the, you know, the sort of the question or the, or the request to write the story, to tell the story. Um,
I think the motive is actually to try to square at least somewhere the grief with the joy. At least have them sort of stare at one another evenly instead of have that one day so outweigh the rest of it because her life was wonderful and our time together was wonderful and she was a fantastic person. And that's why I wanted people to know about her. Do you feel, it's clear that you do, but do you have that feeling
wonderful thing. One of, one of the, I don't know, the things that makes it easier for people who pass on where you know, you can hear their voice. You can know what they would be saying about literally any subject that comes up in your life. You're like, I like, it's like they might as well be next to you because you know exactly what they would be saying or reacting to. It's funny. I talk about that in the book as well. I say simply like,
Gee whiz, I know I've really liked having her around. You know, I really, it's really been great. I mean, I have turned to her in my thoughts throughout my life and just said, hey, what do you think of that? Isn't that something? You know, so her being here has been a part of my life. I mean, it's the same with my grandparents and my mom and everybody else. They're all, you know,
so-called gone but uh yeah i still carry them with me all the time and i'm always i'm always having this sort of dialogue and that's what it surprised me um i guess what happened was in the very first like 10 pages is the first time karen's voice kind of comes into it and uh that is what happened i just suddenly heard her going like you know that's enough right they get it uh oh
Wow. Oh, this is what we're going to do. I was going to say, who is your editor? Now we know. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. You're the best editor you could have possibly had. Yeah. The truth meter. You've had a long relationship with mediums. Same with me as well. And describe... Because people ask me, well, what is a medium and what do they do? So I know you've hosted shows about them, produced shows about them. Yeah, yeah. But to the like...
person who maybe has never really heard of a medium or thinks it's all hogwash, what would you best describe them as? Well, in my studies, and I did produce the show Medium, so, you know, full disclosure, it's something I really dived into a long time ago, several decades ago. And then part of that was, I guess, a discovery about Karen and just a discovery about things that are unknown to us. But it came to me through a couple of different sources that
Mediumship is meant to heal, meant to help heal people. That's really all it is. Now, there's a lot of people walking around going like, whoa, I think I'm a medium. And you know, you got to be careful about them. You have to be careful with the whole area. I mean, of course, a lot of my more fundamentalist, uh,
Christian friends are, you know, real dubious about it. And, you know, it's probably smart to be dubious about it. It's probably, you know, I get that. But then I'll counter with, well, you know, when St. John was up there with the, having revelation revealed to him, he was in a cave with a bunch of voices. And I thought, well, surely that was some sort of mediumship. Yeah.
uh, so they were rejected sort of out of hand, except when it's holy text, you know, and I think, well, I think, I think there's a real argument to be made for the, the, the Jesus and all sorts of people have, have come through mediums throughout our history in order to help us to help understand things. Uh, when I was doing my investigation into mediumship before we did the show, I had a session with one of these really famous guys and, um,
He explained, oh, yeah, that the aqueduct system in Egypt was channeled because they needed water. It was a drought. And it came from God through a medium. And that sort of makes sense to me. So I've gone down that path a bit. My barometer for whether or not someone's gifted is,
It comes from a woman I knew named Dolores who said, well, you know, if I'm sitting here with a watch in my hand, I'm saying there's a guy here named Jack. And I'm sorry, I'm getting something from him. And you're sitting there going, mm-mm, mm-mm. And the guy's name is Jazz.
She said, knock it off. Give me, you know, give me a little help on this. It's not going to be a crime for me to get jazz or Jack right or wrong. So I started to understand that if there, if you are in a sitting with somebody, a blind sitting where they don't really know anything about you. Now, in our situation, it's hard for people to actually give us blind reading. But if you're in a situation with, if you're in a sitting with somebody who's talented and they're getting 70% of it, right. That's pretty impressive.
You know, that's more than a normal person would just be able to guess. So I'm gentle about it. I'm not a harshly judgmental person about, well, you have to get this exactly right, this exactly right. But if they're in the area and then they start to relay some information or a message about something, like, you know, you got something in your drawer, take it out and finish it. And it turns out you've got a film script in there. I mean, okay. Well, what do you do when they're so right that,
so right. Yeah. They're like, oh, wait a minute. Okay. They somehow have Googled something in my family tree that led them to the, because check this one out. I'm sure you have your greatest tits as well, but
So this is a medium that I've talked to a bunch based on this. So there's a Bob here, Bob, Robert, Bob. I'm like, yeah. And it's the strangest thing. He's dressed like a golfer, but he's holding a bunch of pies. And I was like, my grandpa had seven holes in one.
Wow. And when I would go to, Bob, when I would go back to Ohio to meet him, he owned a restaurant, and he would greet me at the airport with boxes of pies. That's fantastic. That's pretty good. I mean, what do you do with that, right? You just have to roll over and say, okay, tell me more. Yeah, that's pretty impressive. It's always amazing to me the things they...
do you ever have people in your life that you think would come up in readings that just don't make as much of an appearance as, for example, my mother rarely shows up. Rarely. Interesting. And then I, and then I have the, the great actor, Bill Paxton, who was a great friend. And that fucking guy is everywhere. All,
Oh, that's great. He's everywhere. I liked him. I liked him a lot. He's walking out. I heard you and Kelsey on that podcast. You guys are talking about everything. That's great. Wow. Well, you know, you'd think, I mean, I did. I've thought about him some and thought about his energy and how it was probably a real surprise to me. What am I dead? What's happened here?
Exactly. What the hell? I don't know what he was in there for, but it was obviously procedures that was not meant to end up in that way. Yeah.
Yeah. I sure liked his work. I mean, it was so funny. And Aliens, I mean, he was great. Game over, man. Game over. He's so funny in it. He was just a really, really terrific, you know, energy. And I think that I don't know why that would disappear. Of course, it didn't. So, you know, I get that. I get that. I have...
Now, on the other hand of it, I think because you're of my era and you'll know the players in it, my late great manager, who, by the way, also shows up, Bernie Brillstein. Oh, wow. Yeah. Who was nothing if not opinionated and colorful, shall we say. And he famously represented every classic Saturday Night Live person from the original show.
Belushi, Gilda cast. And we once were talking about heaven and he goes, I ain't there kid. And I go, why would you? If it was Belushi would have called. That's pretty funny. That's pretty great. So he's still colorful. Still colorful. Yeah.
Summertime's here. The sun is shining. You need powerful sun protection that feels light on your skin. Meet Neutrogena Ultra Sheer Sunscreen. This is SPF 70 lotion. It absorbs fast with smooth, dry-touch finish, so you'll forget that you're even wearing it. It blocks 97% of burning UV rays and is water-resistant for
for up to 80 minutes. Lightweight, effective, and perfect for sunny days. It is just what your summer needs. Neutrogena Ultra Sheer. Sunscreen you can't feel. Shop now at Target.
Literally with Rob Lowe is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it at Progressive.com, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law, not available in all states. Some pieces just have a way of becoming instant staples.
Quince's lightweight, comfortable styles are the kind that stay at the front of the closet
that you reach for, always on point. Quince has all the things you actually wear, like organic cotton silk polos, European linen beach shorts, and comfortable pants that work for everything from backyard hangs to nice dinners. And the best part? All Quince items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. By working directly with top artisans and cutting out the middlemen, Quince gives you luxury pieces without crazy markups.
And Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical, and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. My producer, Sean, from Team Coco, tried Quince. Here's what he had to say.
Especially with summer right around the corner, you cannot beat the deals at quince.com. I have the chore coat. I have the long sleeve linen shirt. I love it. Elevate your closet with Quince. Go to quince.com slash rob for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That is Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash rob to get free shipping.
and 365-day returns. quince.com slash rob. You have so many people who transitioned past. Well, let's talk about that. And you've spent so much time in this. What do you think happens to us when we leave this earth? I think we have a lot of choices. I look to that Christ line all the time. My father's house has many mansions.
What does that mean? You can go to almost any place you want to go. The one that you've decided is important to you. And the mansions are, you know, your choice. There's a series of choices you're given. Or you just get to take. I don't know if they're presented to you as a series of options. I think once you step off
This place, you get to go discover places. And I think there are some, I've been told there's some folks that go between heaven and here, get to go back and forth. That's what Bill said to me. He literally said to me, he said, buddy, I've been coming back and forth. I've been so busy. Yeah. I was like, oh, okay. I think it's pretty cool. And so you get, the thing I'm pretty confident of is like, God is good. God is love. And there's no way you're not going to be able to be in touch with the people you love.
that that love is always going to be there and you're always going to be able to access them in some way. Now they may, but of course the Gulf is going to seem impenetrable and difficult unless of course you end up finding a reliable sort of mediumship stream where you feel close to them. I mean, in terms of the writing that I did, that became my, my mediumship, that became my connection to my sister. It became a,
it was an effortless connection. It was a extraordinary, and it's been there all along, but it became more specific than it had been before. So you're saying that through the right, writing it, that you now have developed. Yeah. The ability to do it almost yourself without, without a proper medium. Yeah, that's exactly what happened. Yeah. It just was, you know,
You know, and I've messed around with all sorts of things. You know, there's a lot of these people doing planet journeys and all this crap, you know. Yeah, right. Sure. Oh, yeah. You know, looking for the divine feminine. Okay, fine. So, but when I've had crickets during a lot of that, you know, I've tried a couple and I've thought, well, this didn't really work out for me. But, yeah.
In the writing, I started finding like, oh, this is just coming right through. I'm just getting all this. And so that was pretty great. I'll tell you a little sidebar. This is something I realized a while ago. So Kate and I were doing something together. And she sat there and as we were talking to our group we were with, I kept seeing Mary. Before we started this, everybody was saying, we're trying to get in touch with the divine feminine.
And so, but we're in Southern California. And, you know, so Kate says, I kept seeing Mary. And they go, Mary? I mean. What is wrong with you people? The most sort of the quintessential expression of the divine feminine in human form is probably Mary. Yeah. You're like, but I thought we're in Southern California. I thought it would be Katy Perry. It'd be somebody like, yeah.
I just have to giggle and sort of say, you know, it's standing right in front of you. But OK, you don't want to see it's fine. That were you always interested in this? I don't know. How would you describe this type of thinking conversation that we're having? I guess it's a sort of a metaphysical. Yeah. You know, I guess it would have to be that that you kind of you are balanced sort of on the fulcrum, you know, between you.
material and spiritual that you understand that both are kind of walking with you hand in hand and you're, you know, some days you see more of that. Some days you're lost in the other and pulled in another direction. But if you, if you sit, if you have those moments of reflection, if you take a time, time out in your life for meditation, stuff like that,
Those notes kind of play a little louder, I think. And I was always that kind of kid. I mean, I was doing yoga when I was, you know, 14 and surfing and yoga and, you know, sit and try things. And I'd have meditative moments, but I'd feel this extraordinary energy and surrounded by bliss and joy.
You know, that was pretty great stuff. I mean, what kind of meditation did you practice? I started out with Hatha yoga. There was a guy named Richard Hiddleman. Wait a minute. I remember. I feel like I remember here. It's like, well, in those days it was asked when there was so many great sort of came after that time. I remember that guy. Remember that? What's it? Warner Earhart. Yeah. Right. It was like, what the hell? Right. Came and went. And there was a, there was TM for a while.
Yes. Oh, TM is very much out there still. One of my great friends was sitting there, uh,
you know, sort of beyond any working definition of gay. He was very flamboyant. And, you know, he was saying to somebody, so I was talking about my secret mantra, right? And so I finally said, I'm going to tell him. He told like three other people and they all had the same one. No. He was flabbergasted. And they all felt really betrayed by it all. Yeah.
I've always wondered about that. Yeah. Because I... They let the cat out of the bag. Son of a bitch. So, that's funny. Your secret mantra is, you're very hot. Yeah, right. I'm very hot. I'm very, very hot. I'm very, very hot. Was it easy for you to meditate when you first started? Because when I first started...
It was brutal shutting down the radio in my head. Yeah, yeah. It took a while. Yeah. Of course, I was younger then and I did sort of, you know, I kind of left it behind. But prayer became a different, prayer became more what I got into now, you know, in my later years. And that seems to be pretty available. But you just got to take that minute to go still, you know, get your mind still. And that...
That was a muscle I developed actually when I was younger that maybe I guess I can still call on. That's been helpful. But yeah, when I was younger, it took a long time to get there. And then suddenly I just sort of went, oh, there was a great trick that he said, listen, listen to the inside of your ear like a seashell for the sound of the ocean. And I started to get that and that really helped me.
Do you, uh, what's your, do you have like a, a, a ritual you do every day, every morning, every night, or how does it practically work out for you? Not so much. It's just, I greet the day with what happens. You know, I tend to come and have a cup of coffee. No, yeah. I might start reading something. I might read from the Bible. I might read from science and health, which is, you know, a Christian science thing that I grew up with. Uh,
I'll read from Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale, which is a very powerful book and really interesting, really sort of a functional set of things you can practice to just sort of be on your way in each day, which is great. But otherwise, I just sit and listen. And what I've been doing the last three years, of course, was sitting down and writing for a couple hours every day. Yeah.
What was that like? I mean, again, I love writing, but what you wrote is so outside the realm of... I mean, it was a mediumship, really. Yeah. So it's not like you're writing like a traditional author would because you're waiting for the medium... Talk about the muse. You have to have a muse to write. Right. But on top of that, you've got to now have this extra layer of mediumship. How did... Would you...
I don't know. You know what? I'm thinking about this. I once talked to Peter Schaffer. Did Peter Schaffer write Equus? Yes, Equus, yes. Yeah. He was talking about how when he was involved in writing that, he was in the characters. He was in it. He was in it. And at one moment where he said, and I had this revelation that came to me, he said, you couldn't do it, could you? You couldn't do it. That's why you did it. That's why you stabbed the horses.
And I thought, wow, this is... So that was very similar to what I was going through. For instance, when I put myself in proximity of the guy who killed my sister, who was the actual murderer, I had...
I suddenly had insight into what he might have been thinking, which I never had done that before. And that came through the writing, I think. I was just open and available to what might be truth. I think it was true. I think he wanted to impress his friends. That, I'd never thought of that before. Wow. Until I was writing it. You know, like, I want to be like they are. I want to be cool. I want to kill somebody. You know, and that was his motivation. And the first thing he said to his sister when he was done with what happened with Karen, he just walked in and said, I just killed a girl.
You know, it was like somehow I'm like, now I'm, now I'm important. Now I am somebody. And, uh, I never felt that before. And now, now, of course, it's just inhabits me when I think of him. He's still alive and,
He's still alive, yeah. And keeps coming up for parole. Yeah. Every year? Every two years? How does that work? Every couple of years. It was funny. One year, it was like three times he came up for something. It was some sort of halfway house or some sort of this kind of release and that kind of release. And that's when I got the famous statement from the woman who works in the corrections department. She said, it's called the criminal justice system. It's not called the victim's justice system. That's like, yeah, okay. I get it. That's amazing. I haven't heard that one. That's amazing. That was, yeah, I thought...
That really explains it because there's a whole industry around this stuff. Lawyers, all kinds of people. And, you know, whatever their motivation is, I think, well, I think they're not seeing things clearly, honestly, but I do think there's a part of them that is a...
is a kindness, a fairness thing that they believe in, but they never, they never on the side of the victims. No, it doesn't, sure doesn't seem that way. On the side of the guys that killed people. It's so weird. And I think, well, who are you? Why do you, why do you go down that road? And why do you think it's important that you did that? It's a,
Some will say that it's a Christian thing, but I don't really think that's what Christ would say. I mean, he'd say, you'll be with me in heaven, you know, on this day, because he asked for his forgiveness. If the fellow next to him on the cross hadn't asked for his forgiveness, he doesn't say it to the other guy. Didn't turn around to that other guy. We're all going to have a party up there. It's like, no, you'll be with me in heaven.
That's pretty interesting. You've been in the same room with this man. Yeah, I've been in the same room with the guy who was sort of the ringleader. Michael Corbett was his name. He was convicted of the murder because he gave them the gun that they held her with, that they abducted her with. They showed her a gun.
And they said, come with us. I'd never read this before. I'd read it in the police report. And the police report was a mixed bag for me because it was really, really sad and hard. But it was also really enlightening. And I could hear Karen and what they'd written about it from this guy, Larry Dunn's statement that was taken in New Orleans months after the crime. And he said she looked at them and said, for what? Yeah.
It just sounded so much like Karen. I just thought, yeah, that's all right. Yeah, what? What do you want to do? For what? Yeah. It's an amazing, terrible thing to carry. But even more amazing is that you've channeled it into this amazing piece of work that works on two levels. It works on the level of the...
the way in which you wrote it, how you wrote it, but also for people who've suffered grief and it doesn't have to be somebody who's ended in a violent, sad, unexpected. It's just, it could, it works. I think also, I think it also works for anybody who's missing someone who's transitioned on. Yeah. Anybody who loved somebody. I mean, and you lost them, whatever. I mean, you didn't listen, but you know, yeah. Tell me, um, in your day job now, what, uh,
What are you working on? What have you been doing? I mean, because this will consume you. I mean, writing something like this. Yeah, this did. That's a full-time job. When I finally finished, I finished the last word. You can make it out of which wish. This is your story, Karen. Yours forever, Kelsey. That was the last thing I wrote. And I finally turned to Kate and I said, I'm finished. And she said, I've missed you. So, it's a great curl. Thank you.
Where else can you go surfing and skiing in the same day? Or check out a world-class art museum and camp out under a brilliant night sky? Same day. Or hike through the redwoods and get a luxury spa treatment? There's only one answer. California. No matter where you go across this state, you will find a way to play.
Look, I love California. And I have not yet surfed and skied in the same day, although I do do both. So that is on my bucket list. It's the most beautiful place in the world. Discover why California is the ultimate playground. Head to visitcalifornia.com to start planning your trip today.
Literally with Rob Lowe is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.
This is an ad for Active Cash Credit Card from Wells Fargo. Woo! That's a mouthful. But that's because it packs a lot in. Earn unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases with it, big or small. So whether it's buying tickets to the game with your mom or grabbing a coffee with your dog, earn unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases you've made with it. Say it with me. The Active Cash Credit Card.
from Wells Fargo. Learn more at wellsfargo.com forward slash active cash. Terms apply.
Citizens, since we each upgraded to Xfinity in our homes, the Wi-Fi has been booming. It's fair to say our town has officially become a boomtown. Mayor, will I be able to drop into multiplayer gaming battles with low lag? The lag won't be an issue, but your questionable skills may be. And what if I have hundreds of devices on the Wi-Fi? Purely hypothetical. Seems like a lot, but sure. Hundreds of devices all booming together with the Xfinity Gateway.
Yes, friends and neighbors, with Xfinity, the Wi-Fi is booming. Restrictions apply. You will be returning as the Beast in the new Avengers movie. I mean...
Those things are such a... Have you been to Comic-Con and done all that stuff where they reveal you and people go berserk? The years ago they offered me, it was a sizable chunk of change to dress up as Beast and put all that crap on again and go walk around some petrol. I said, no.
That's insane. It feels like a Chris Guest movie, doesn't it? Yeah, right, exactly. It sure does. Oh, that's how it is, isn't it? I have...
I have since done a convention or two for a Star Trek one. Yeah. I was once a Star Trek captain. Won one episode in the second series with Jean-Luc Picard. Yes, of course. Everybody was in that. That cast was bananas. Unbelievable. Bananas. It was like, was Whoopi in there for a minute? Well, everybody was in there. Every guy that's ever been a Starship captain or an alien, you know. Unbelievable.
I didn't think much of it. I don't think I was charmed enough to go back. Did you get to ever say anything fun like launch photon torpedoes? No, I didn't get to do that. But I did get to sit in a chair that was similar to Kirk's. That made me pretty happy. They said, you're back in time. You're a contemporary of Kirk's. And I was like,
Cool. Yeah. I'm like, oh, yeah. Yeah. The velour space suit. Yeah, right. That's amazing. The other thing is, I mean, when I played, I played Beast 20 years ago. Yeah. And when...
We went to Cannes. They previewed the movie there. It was hysterical. I was like on fire. I thought, oh, this is what it's like to be a movie star. Ooh. And then there were women walking around going like this. Hello. Like the director's girlfriend stood up in the closet and thought it was like she'd been in a movie. That's the biggest star there. We were all just having a good laugh. But they came to me and said, like a couple of days into that visit, they said, we have got the greatest new direction for this character.
And they just sort of spat out that they were going to go back in time and it was going to be younger. And I thought, well, that means I won't be doing it. Oh, my God. That's the worst. Oh, my God. Talk about not knowing your audience. It was like a wipeout. Well, good for you. The subsequent films came out. I heard lovely things about the young man that ended up playing Beast, but I didn't really watch it.
No, it's like you're like... I wished that one day I'd get to play him again. And so I did. When they came back from that set of stories, this is... Stop it. This gets ridiculous. I love this. I spoke to Robin on the phone and I said, well, I think B should come back. If you come back to the regular time now, I should be there. And he said, yeah, I think you should too. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to fly into Quebec. No one can know.
and so it was a very funny experience it was like being like a like a secret agent i i was uh i was flown from los angeles to la guardia no no to kennedy and then they sort of whisked me away and took me to a private airfield where there was one of those little jets it was like me and another guy it was like i was flying in that 15 but it looked like that little jet in the janice bond movie i forget which one it is yeah sideways and goes for a hangar door um
And we landed in Quebec about an hour and a half later. And the Quebec, you know, customs guys came on, the Montreal police, whatever. And they escorted me to a place where I was kept secret and quiet. And then they whisked me away to another hotel room where I'd been checked in already. I had to go through the back room to get up there. So no one would ever see me. So, I mean, I thought it was kind of fun. Those fans are bananas. Yeah. It wasn't, as I thought, you know, too important, but okay. Yeah.
But then finally, they did this movie called The Marvels. And somewhere during that shooting, somebody called me and said, would you come down and think about just doing a little, we're going to do a little motion capture with you. And maybe, you know, we're going to put you at the end of the movie in one of those little sort of Easter egg things. And I said, sure.
Okay. And that thing with the GZ's dome, basically, with all the cameras on it. Yeah. Amazing. It's like, try to keep your eyes open. Isn't that, that's amazing. Insane, yeah. Yeah. So then we did the little scene. I did a little scene with the, and then they put the blue on me, and I sort of didn't have to dress up in anything anymore. That was fantastic. And then it showed, you know, they put it in theaters. And the response when they saw Beast was,
was apparently pretty breathtaking. And that was my ticket. They called me a while later and said, we think we want to put you in another movie. So I'm really excited about it. And do you know what, I mean, if you knew, you obviously wouldn't be telling me, but do you know what the, is there a script? I've had a preliminary introduction to the idea. They're still very secretive about the script.
Which is okay. Industrialist. You know, it is 100% industrialist. Oh, for sure. I mean, I did that. I did Sly's movie. Expendables? Expendables, right. Yes. But that one got leaked and it hurt them apparently. Some guy pirated it and released it on the internet like the day before it was released.
you know, premiered somewhere and they took a big hit. Do you have any great sly... I've known him off and on forever. He's so great and funny and quotable. Just, I mean, unbelievable. The last time I saw him, he was trying to convince me that I should be working out my forearms more because...
Because you notice all of a sudden at one point in his life, he started wearing all his shirts rolled up to his forearms, right? And it was that. He's like, well, you know, if you do this, if you do that. I like him a lot. I think he's a fantastic guy. He's the best. I've never spent...
I've never spent enough time to think to myself, although that's a story I'm going to tell one day. I mean, we've just, we've hung out a little bit. I've watched a Pacquiao fight with him once. And that was really fun to like, you know, to get his sort of play by play, uh,
I saw him down in Florida. I saw him in Palm Beach. Because I grew up in Florida, so I go back a lot. And when I heard he was there, we connected on something. We were talking about maybe doing this Tulsa Kings thing. I might do a part in that. Scheduling-wise, it didn't work out. But he's...
He's terrific. And I love how he just keeps pegging away at it. You know, he's still in it fully. And that's, I think that's the key. I'm never quitting. I mean, I want to just keep working, you know. I had a dinner with Michael Caine a few years ago and I was like, tell me, tell me, give me the, give me the code Yoda. And I, he was like, well, you're kind of doing it now, aren't you? You just keep at it. Yeah, he's fantastic. I mean, it's such a,
It's so amazing that we have one of those jobs where we can actually get better and better and better and better and better. The more experience and the older we get. Yeah. Somebody asked me a while ago, when did you think that maybe you kind of had it when you kind of figured it out? I said, honestly, it was about 10 years ago. So that means I did it for 30 years before I even thought I was getting close. Yeah, for sure. It's a wonderful experience. It's a wonderful experience.
Wonderful thing to go through. The only thing is then we look back at the work we did before we figured it out. Well, I never watched it. Oh, my God. I don't ever have the nerve to watch the old stuff. I just go, forget it. No. Just in it now. Yeah. It's fine for now. This is it. This is what I'm doing. I'm in it for now. Well, this is great. I thank you so much for coming on two times today.
Do you ever feel like you would write another book on any other? Now that I've sort of found my voice, I think that style is going to be my style. We're going to do a couple of other things. I've got one thing that's kind of a, it relates to a specific topic.
a men's sort of retreat that I did for Operation Recovered Warrior, which was really fascinating. I was invited to go. I'm not, you know, I don't have that as my, as my baseline. I don't have combat as my baseline, but most of these guys did. And they just invited me to try to give me a window into it. And as a result of that, I'm going to try to write about, write about the experience. And I'm about a hundred pages into that. But then I've got another one about some
quotations that I've heard that have resonated for me throughout my lifetime and maybe still have some information. So I thought maybe I'd work on something like that. And then there's, you know, people want to know when I was writing the Karen book, I thought I'd start down a path and I'd think, oh no, that's for another book. You know, that's more sort of
it was too far off the subject yes we go into that but i think there's i think there's space for another one and it might be i think very similar but about more about what's happened in my career stuff like that you know uh without it being about you know a tell-all book yeah yeah well for sure yeah i there's nothing i i there's nothing better than for me
like fun, interesting bedtime beach, which by the way is not a slight at all where you read it. It's like, what's a good beach book? No slight to anybody. It doesn't, you know, have to be, you know, the Iliad. It is people I admire writing books about their lives and their careers and stuff. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I wrote two of them because I was, I was,
inspired by, you know who's, I'm sure you're aware of it, but I recommend this to anybody who wants to dabble in that area is the great The Moon is a Balloon by David Niven. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Very good. I'm trying to think. A Life in the Theater, Tyrone Guthby, I think. That's a great one. It's a good one. Yeah. They were...
The good ones are really good because they relate to more than just, you know. Yeah. That thing, yeah. And so...
I'm proud of the book. Thank you for reading it. Yeah, it's going to move a lot of people, for sure. I hope that. Thank you, Kelsey. My best to you, your wife, and hope we cross paths in person one of these days. It'd be nice, wouldn't it? Maybe we can get in the sandbox, you know? Yeah, let's meet in the ring. Let's go mano a mano, baby. Pretty cool, yeah. All right, man. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I tried to get some...
some Marvel beast information. The man is a steel trap. He was giving up nothing. And God knows I tried. And, uh, what do I, I feel very, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? Um, honored that Kelsey, um, was so open about his, his journey. What a, what a journey, what a, what a, what an amazing sort of to be able to open yourself up for something that painful to help other people. Super cool. Um,
Anyway, thank you so much for listening and more fun to come on Literally next time we see each other.
You've been listening to Literally with Rob Lowe, produced by me, Sean Doherty, with help from associate producer Sarah Begar and research by Alyssa Grau. Engineering and mixing by Joanna Samuel. Our executive producers are Rob Lowe for Low Profile, Nick Liao, Adam Sachs, and Jeff Ross for Team Coco, and Colin Anderson for Stitcher. Booking by Deirdre Dodd. Music by Devin Bryant. Sports and culture by Devin Bryant.
Special thanks to Hidden City Studios. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time on Literally.
Citizens, since we each upgraded to Xfinity in our homes, the Wi-Fi has been booming. It's fair to say our town has officially become a boomtown. Mayor, will I be able to drop into multiplayer gaming battles with low lag? The lag won't be an issue, but your questionable skills may be. And what if I have hundreds of devices on the Wi-Fi? Purely hypothetical. Seems like a lot, but sure. Hundreds of devices all booming together with the Xfinity Gateway.
Yes, friends and neighbors, with Xfinity, the Wi-Fi is booming. Restrictions apply.