"John Lithgow"

Every once in a while we class it up over here: John Lithgow. Acting by osmosis, figuring out the funny, a wizard dog, and a witch with a pizza. Excuse me sir, is this your ID? It’s an all-new SmartLess.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Sean Hayes?

  This episode of Smartless is sponsored by Google Book. You know, I'm lucky to have a lot of friends and having them over is great, but with hosting comes all the tedious stuff. The planning, keeping track of who's coming, managing schedules, making sure everything actually comes together. That's where Google Book comes in. It's a whole new kind of laptop. It comes with Google AI Pro, so you can create custom tasks with Gemini. For example, you can tell it to track RSVPs and manage your calendar, and it does that for you, even when the laptop's closed. So there's more time to focus on the fun parts of hosting. Basically, Google Book works hard, so you don't have to. Visit googlebook.com. Available in the Gemini app to Google AI Pro users

• 0:44Sean Hayes?

  in select regions for 18-plus users. Check responses for accuracy. Supervise closely. Interrupt when needed.

• 0:54Sean Hayes?

  Let's talk about the Idaho Effect. It's a feeling you get hiking the Sawtooth Mountains at sunrise or mountain biking on hero dirt at Silver Mountain Resort, leaving you craving more. It's a feeling where the freedom to roam is real, and it's found in Idaho. Idaho might just be the last authentic place in the West. Once you have this feeling, one that stays with you long after returning home, that's the Idaho Effect. Plan your Idaho vacation at visitidaho.org.

• 1:34Sean Hayes?

  The place you call home is important to you, so it's important to Allstate, because home is where you make all your memories. Things like inviting your friends over for game night and discovering that one of them takes charades way, way too seriously. It's these memories that make a house feel like home. If it's important to you, it's important to Allstate. Switch to Allstate, and you could save hundreds on home insurance today. Not available in every state. Potential savings vary, subject to terms and qualifications. Allstate North American Insurance Company and Affiliates, Northbrook, Illinois.

• 2:10Sean Hayes?

  Being safer on the road starts with the person behind the wheel. That's Mazda's philosophy when designing every vehicle. Their proactive safety features help keep you more aware, connected, and engaged during every drive, which means your car does more than help protect you. It helps make you a safer driver, which helps protect everyone. That's why Mazda has been named Consumer Reports' safest new car brand. To learn more, visit MazdaUSA.com. Consumer Reports does not endorse products or services.

• 2:56Jason Bateman?

  Hey, guys. You hear that creak in the door? That's the opening to the cold. Oh, wow. The cold open, right?

• 3:04Will Arnett?

  Stop trying to explain the cold open every time we do a cold open.

• 3:08Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 3:09Will Arnett?

  The creak in the door.

• 3:10Jason Bateman?

  Are you guys up for a podcast record?

• 3:13Will Arnett?

  Yeah. We've got a great guest today.

• 3:16Jason Bateman?

  Whose guest is it?

• 3:18Will Arnett?

  I don't know, but I can't wait to talk to Bruce. It's gonna be amazing.

• 3:24Jason Bateman?

  Somebody fire up the music. Welcome to a new Smartless.

• 3:45Jason Bateman?

  Did you go late last night, Willie? How's it going? Listener, we're in the second day of what the business tree calls principal photography on Will's project. And so far, so good? That's what I'm thinking?

• 4:00Will Arnett?

  So far, so good, man. You know, who knows? Who knows? So far, so good. I love it.

• 4:04Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, but you know a lot. Like, if something's gonna be sideways, you can smell it on the first day.

• 4:11Will Arnett?

  Yes, and no, it feels, yeah, it feels good. I mean, you know.

• 4:17Sean Hayes?

  Do you want me to take a look at the footage, or?

• 4:19Will Arnett?

  Do you mind?

• 4:20Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, you just send it.

• 4:20Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, happy. Happy to do a pass.

• 4:23Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, I'll just.

• 4:23Will Arnett?

  Email, and then a minute later, couple things.

• 4:28Will Arnett?

  Already? Wait, JB, how's your thing going? How are you feeling down there?

• 4:31Jason Bateman?

  Great, great. Fun, fun, fun.

• 4:33Sean Hayes?

  Oh, that's good.

• 4:35Jason Bateman?

  But I'm back home with the kiddies and the mommy, and I saw Franny's, Franny's doing a musical, her last show at her school as a senior. It's, tonight is the final night. They're doing Mean Girls, that Tina Fey did with her husband. The book and music.

• 4:55Will Arnett?

  With Jeff, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 4:56Sean Hayes?

  I would have loved to have gone to see that.

• 4:58Jason Bateman?

  Really good.

• 4:59Sean Hayes?

  Oh, wow.

• 5:00Jason Bateman?

  What a great show. I wish I would have seen it on Broadway, too.

• 5:02Sean Hayes?

  Does she have a big part?

• 5:03Jason Bateman?

  She does, yeah.

• 5:04Sean Hayes?

  That's great.

• 5:05Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, I'm very proud of her.

• 5:07Sean Hayes?

  Well, I see you tomorrow, Jason.

• 5:09Jason Bateman?

  Yes, you know.

• 5:11Sean Hayes?

  Okay, great, great.

• 5:12Jason Bateman?

  No, well, wait.

• 5:13Will Arnett?

  Yes, you know.

• 5:15Jason Bateman?

  Are you going, or are you?

• 5:16Sean Hayes?

  Oh, you're going to the little gathering, a little party thing?

• 5:19Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, what are you gonna do? You gonna?

• 5:21Sean Hayes?

  I'm gonna skip that, and I'm gonna go to our friend's house.

• 5:23Will Arnett?

  Oh, you're gonna go to that gathering, JB?

• 5:26Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 5:26Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 5:27Jason Bateman?

  Now, Willie, what are you gonna do for the big, listener, we're talking about Hollywood's self-congratulatory evening of the Oscars.

• 5:39Will Arnett?

  Yeah, right, right, we're taping this on the eve of the Oscars, right?

• 5:42Jason Bateman?

  Yeah. So, Willie, you gonna watch with some friends at all, or are you gonna study your lines and go to bed early?

• 5:48Will Arnett?

  I think that if I had been there, I would have gone with you guys to that. I wouldn't have skipped. I would have come with you. I probably would have come in the car with you and Amanda like we've done before.

• 5:57Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 5:58Will Arnett?

  And Sean and Scotty, but I guess Sean is too big for that now, or something. I don't know.

• 6:02Sean Hayes?

  He's huge.

• 6:03Will Arnett?

  Well, he wanted Tony, and then he's like, I don't have time for it.

• 6:06Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, I need a follow van.

• 6:09Will Arnett?

  No, you guys, I drove you guys.

• 6:11Sean Hayes?

  Who's gonna carry my shoes?

• 6:12Will Arnett?

  Oh, you did, you did. No, remember we met at my, last year we met at my house and I came down because I was still doing, putting on my tox or whatever it was, and I just heard Jason, I just heard Jason rummaging through my pantry looking, looking for stuff to eat.

• 6:26Sean Hayes?

  And also rummaging through my nose, he pulled my nose hairs out.

• 6:29Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, well, you know, there was a lot of cameras on these nights, you know, it's not a radio thing.

• 6:35Sean Hayes?

  He really, he really did.

• 6:36Will Arnett?

  You know what, it's funny that we're talking about this big night because our guest today.

• 6:39Sean Hayes?

  Oh, let's just get to it, Will, what do you got to lunch?

• 6:42Will Arnett?

  Well, no, but normally we, normally, normally you're like, oh, what's the segue? And this, couldn't it be more perfect? Like the moment you mentioned it because, well, first of all, he's had, he's been nominated for two Academy Awards.

• 6:54Sean Hayes?

  Oh my God.

• 6:55Will Arnett?

  And, yeah, yeah, I mean, he's been nominated for, I don't know, 12 Emmys, he's won six.

• 7:01Sean Hayes?

  Oh, this isn't some garbage guest.

• 7:04Will Arnett?

  No, no, no, buckle up, you guys, this is, every once in a while, we class it up over here.

• 7:09Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 7:10Will Arnett?

  And this to me is like gold standard, class it up, actor's actor. I mean, this is one of those guys that I, every performance of his I adore, I love watching him, and we all have over the years. He won, he won a Tony in his Broadway debut, Sean, so take that.

• 7:26Sean Hayes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 7:27Will Arnett?

  Yeah, so he's got you licked, and then he, he's gone on to have so many more awards and nominations that it's countless. I think he's got like two or three Golden Globes, he's got all sorts of, I mean, it's just incredible. And we know him from, he won a Tony for The Changing Room, he was nominated for the World According to Garp, we loved him on Third Rock for the No Sun, I loved him as Michael Churchill.

• 7:48Jason Bateman?

  This is John Lithgow.

• 7:49Will Arnett?

  It's John Lithgow.

• 7:52Speaker 03

  Gentlemen, gentlemen.

• 7:54Sean Hayes?

  This is so exciting. Wait, and John, you just got cast in Harry Potter, you're Dumbledore.

• 8:00Speaker 03

  There's all sorts of news, gentlemen.

• 8:02Sean Hayes?

  So much stuff to talk about. We were just talking about you yesterday. This is so bizarre.

• 8:08Speaker 03

  Oh, God.

• 8:09Will Arnett?

  Sean, Sean, Sean, I'm gonna, John, first of all, welcome to Smartless. What an honor to have you on the show today.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  That honor is completely mine, you guys. It's a fantastic podcast.

• 8:20Will Arnett?

  Truly, truly, truly. And, and, and I was excited, and, and we're all excited, but I know Sean's been excited because, John, you were quite literally raised in the theater.

• 8:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:29Will Arnett?

  Is that true?

• 8:30Speaker 03

  Well, yes, it's true. I was a theater rat from, actually, the first acting I ever did, I was about two years old. One of Nora's children in a doll's house with my father playing

• 8:44Sean Hayes?

  Great play.

• 8:44Speaker 03

  Torvald.

• 8:45Sean Hayes?

  Wow.

• 8:46Speaker 03

  I, I, I remember absolutely nothing about it, but I'm told, I'm told I was very good. Yeah, that, that was the beginning of things, but I was, you know.

• 8:57Will Arnett?

  You set the bar high at two.

• 8:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, but there were no supporting actor nods back at that age, but.

• 9:05Sean Hayes?

  Did you see, did you get a chance to see Doll's House Part Two?

• 9:08Speaker 03

  Yes, of course, with Laurie.

• 9:09Sean Hayes?

  How great was that show?

• 9:10Speaker 03

  Fantastic.

• 9:11Sean Hayes?

  I love that show.

• 9:12Speaker 03

  And I love Laurie Metcalf, so.

• 9:14Sean Hayes?

  So then, was, was there any other thing that ever got into your head that you might be doing with your life? Or was it just like, that was it?

• 9:22Speaker 03

  From a very young age, I thought I should be an artist. I wanted to be an artist. I, I sort of had a, a, a facility and parents that encouraged that and bought me wonderful art supplies and I had great public school art teachers and I was very serious about it.

• 9:40Sean Hayes?

  Did it start with drawing?

• 9:42Speaker 03

  Drawing and painting and printmaking. Uh, but, but meantime, just as a, like, my dad produced summer Shakespeare festivals. And that was my summers, was hanging around, watching rehearsals, being in the plays as, as like, a fairy in Midsom Night's Dream or a foot soldier. In fact, by the time I was a teenager, I was playing bits and pieces in Shakespeare in repertory, like seven plays a summer. A crazy childhood in Ohio.

• 10:16Jason Bateman?

  Now, you might not be the right person to answer this, but I've always had a fear of even trying Shakespeare because I think that it would be almost impossible for me to learn the lines because it's basically a different language. But since you started so young, was that a hurdle for you? Or do you think, how difficult a thing is that?

• 10:40Speaker 03

  Not at all. I mean, you're right. I had the great good luck to just hear that language all the time. But it is learning another language, or at least feeling that it is a natural way of communicating.

• 10:54Jason Bateman?

  Right. You certainly can't paraphrase.

• 10:56Speaker 03

  No. You have to be precise.

• 10:58Will Arnett?

  Yeah. You're not throwing a lot of like, I mean, and um. You know.

• 11:06Jason Bateman?

  Like.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  Although, you know, there's wonderful Shakespeare that completely breaks all the rules.

• 11:12Will Arnett?

  Yeah.

• 11:13Speaker 03

  There was a wonderful production of Much Ado About Nothing in New York in my 1970s theater days with Sam Waterston and Kathleen Widows. And it was set in Teddy Roosevelt's America.

• 11:26Will Arnett?

  Oh, interesting.

• 11:27Speaker 03

  Kind of ragtime music and.

• 11:29Jason Bateman?

  It contemporized the dialogue a bit?

• 11:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, coming back from World War I. And it was as spirited, it captured the spirit of Shakespeare better than most productions.

• 11:39Will Arnett?

  Yeah, I've seen a few of those. Yeah, sometimes you see those. I remember seeing, what was it, at Guildhall, I thought, in London. It was like, and everybody's on motorcycles and stuff. And then, and then, of course, Ralph Fiennes, when he did Hamlet on Broadway, was incredible. I really loved that back in the 90s. I thought that was pretty remarkable. But, so, John, so you grew up, so your dad was a producer theater and your mom was an actress, is that right? She was a retired actress?

• 12:03Speaker 03

  She was, but she, I never really knew her as an actor. She retired early and just sort of kept track of the family. I mean, we literally lived in about eight different places. It was, we were like a vaudeville troupe, except it was Shakespeare.

• 12:18Will Arnett?

  Which is in your blood. And then you go, and then, and then you graduated from high school in New Jersey, I think from, in Princeton, New Jersey, right? Your dad was there working?

• 12:28Speaker 03

  That's right, Princeton High, yeah.

• 12:29Will Arnett?

  Princeton High, and then you went to, and then you went to Harvard.

• 12:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:33Will Arnett?

  And you can, I know, and you continued your, and you were there and you were studying what at Harvard?

• 12:40Speaker 03

  Uh, English History and Literature, very scholarly major, but I, I fell in with the theater gang immediately. And that's when it happened. That's, that's when I decided. You, you know, I was already like a seasoned actor by pure osmosis.

• 12:54Jason Bateman?

  Right.

• 12:54Speaker 03

  Uh, I had just been around actors that I and my siblings were like best friends with all these uh, young theater actors. Mainly sort of graduates from Carnegie Tech who'd come down to do my dad's Shakespeare festivals. I had lived in that world, so it just came very naturally and uh, and I was a campus star at Harvard. And if you're a star at anything at Harvard, you'd better go with the flow, cause that is a competitive place. I wasn't good at anything but acting there.

• 13:26Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 13:26Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 13:27Jason Bateman?

  What about your, what about your siblings? Did they do, did they go into the same, same field?

• 13:31Speaker 03

  No, both my sisters were teachers and wonderful teachers. And they, and they directed the, student theater.

• 13:39Jason Bateman?

  Oh, really?

• 13:40Speaker 03

  Uh, and they, they were, and my dad, my older brother was an airline pilot. Uh, who then retired and worked for the FAA.

• 13:50Jason Bateman?

  No way. Wait, did he, did he fly big commercial planes?

• 13:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:54Jason Bateman?

  Oh, my God.

• 13:54Speaker 03

  Charter flights. I, I was never in an airplane that he was piloting.

• 13:59Jason Bateman?

  No, on purpose?

• 14:00Speaker 03

  No, maybe that was against the rules. I don't know.

• 14:02Jason Bateman?

  But that would unsettle me. I, I like, I like that whole sense that I'd never really see the pilot.

• 14:09Sean Hayes?

  You do love that.

• 14:10Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, because I just don't feel like it's something humans should even be able to do. It's so specialized and.

• 14:16Sean Hayes?

  Fly a, to fly a plane?

• 14:18Jason Bateman?

  It's just like, how do you, how do you do that? You know, if I, if they, they become human to me, then all the, all the ponibles go along with it.

• 14:25Sean Hayes?

  But wait, but what, but you, but as you board it, you passed, you're just not looking to the cockpit?

• 14:30Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, I just look right. I look right.

• 14:32Will Arnett?

  Jason, John, you have to, you have to, John, you have to understand something about Jason. He has very interesting ways of compartmentalizing things and putting things in certain. It's, it's always, right, Sean? It was fascinating to.

• 14:43Jason Bateman?

  It's amazing to me.

• 14:44Will Arnett?

  And you're such an, Jason, you're such an easy flyer too. As, and these guys know, I get quite nervous. And Jason's just like, you never get phased. You're like, you give into the, right? Once you're on there.

• 14:56Jason Bateman?

  I do, I hit fuck it real quick. Um, and, and I, well, my mom was a stewardess for, or flight attendant, uh, for Pan Am for thirty some years. So I like, you know, I would always get nervous when she'd leave, but she always came home. And I'm like, well, you know, all those.

• 15:10Sean Hayes?

  I, I would always fly, I would always make sure I flew the first flight out in the morning. So I didn't sleep. So when I got on the plane, I was so exhausted, I didn't care what happened.

• 15:20Jason Bateman?

  Oh, oh, oh, I thought, I thought you were flying the first one out because you thought that, that one had the best, best odds of landing.

• 15:25Sean Hayes?

  Well, that's true.

• 15:25Jason Bateman?

  First flight.

• 15:26Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 15:27Speaker 03

  When I, I, my favorite airline pilot story beyond my brother's many, many stories. Uh, when I was in World According to Garp playing Roberta Maldoun.

• 15:38Jason Bateman?

  I know, amazing, way ahead of his time.

• 15:40Speaker 03

  Wasn't cadging for applause, gentlemen.

• 15:42Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, you're gonna get it on that.

• 15:43Will Arnett?

  No, but there's a, we're just the audience here. I love it, that car. It's amazing.

• 15:48Speaker 03

  At a certain point, early in the flight, the flight attendant came back, this woman in a Delta pilot's uniform. And she crouched next to me and said how much she appreciated me as Roberta Maldoun. And said, Roberta and I have a lot in common.

• 16:04Jason Bateman?

  Ah, wow.

• 16:06Speaker 03

  And it was, it was one of many amazing transactions with, uh, with trans people way back. This was forty years ago.

• 16:14Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, no, I wonder if, would they, would they let?

• 16:16Will Arnett?

  Just while, just, just while we're on the flight thing, John, do you remember we met on a flight?

• 16:22Jason Bateman?

  Uh oh.

• 16:22Will Arnett?

  And, and you probably don't remember, and I think that I dropped my, or you dropped your license and I found your license and I handed it to you. Do you remember that?

• 16:30Speaker 03

  Yes, of course, I remembered that. Yeah.

• 16:33Jason Bateman?

  I would have kept that.

• 16:34Speaker 03

  In fact, I, I, I always regarded that I hadn't, I hadn't recalled that when we actually worked together. Cause we did work together. We sort of did and didn't when we did live in front of a studio audience.

• 16:44Will Arnett?

  When we did exactly right.

• 16:45Sean Hayes?

  Oh, which one were you on?

• 16:47Speaker 03

  I was, I was on the same evening as Will and Jason, although they were in, uh, The Facts of Life and I was in Different Strokes. So we, we didn't really interact except at the parties.

• 16:58Sean Hayes?

  I did it all in the family and it was really fun.

• 17:00Speaker 03

  Wasn't it great?

• 17:01Sean Hayes?

  Fun?

• 17:02Jason Bateman?

  Fabulous.

• 17:03Will Arnett?

  It was so fun.

• 17:04Jason Bateman?

  Oh. Now, if I'd found John Lithgow's, uh, uh, driver's license, I would have kept that.

• 17:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:09Jason Bateman?

  That would have just been, that would have just been a great little thing, just keep in my wallet.

• 17:13Will Arnett?

  Well, he was across the aisle, so I couldn't really, you know, and I would have felt bad.

• 17:19Speaker 03

  No, but that was the first time we met.

• 17:21Will Arnett?

  Yeah.

• 17:21Speaker 03

  And Sean, you and I used to be neighbors on the lot at Radford. That's right, Third Rock. Yeah.

• 17:28Jason Bateman?

  Back in the day, that was so many great shows being shot there at that time.

• 17:32Speaker 03

  All on one lot, yeah. Yeah, all yelling distance from each other.

• 17:35Will Arnett?

  Did you like doing, John, you had such a facility, obviously because of your intense theater background and your upbringing in the theater. Did you like, and Sean, I'll go to you and also Jason, because you, all three of you guys have such, you know, storied sitcom careers.

• 17:49Speaker 03

  All of us, you do.

• 17:51Will Arnett?

  And I did too, but I, but I, what did you, did you like that experience of making a, a, a, a multi-camera show?

• 18:00Speaker 03

  I absolutely loved it, just, you know, those, I consider those, it was like the six happiest years as an actor.

• 18:09Will Arnett?

  Yeah.

• 18:10Speaker 03

  Just interacting with, with this great writing staff, the Third Rock staff was so terrific and it was so inane, just spending all your time figuring out the funny. Yeah. And, and entertaining a studio audience on just like three days rehearsal.

• 18:27Jason Bateman?

  Right, and you get a fresh script the next week.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, and Third Rock, of course, was just flat-out nutball farce. Yeah, yeah, it was great. I never thought I would do that. In fact, I, I, something happened and I forgot it ever happened, I was asked to be Frasier on Cheers.

• 18:46Jason Bateman?

  Oh, wow.

• 18:47Speaker 03

  Wow, I didn't know that. And I turned it, turned it down out of hand. I honestly didn't even remember it had happened until Jimmy Burrows reminded me years and years later when he directed Third Rock.

• 18:59Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 18:59Speaker 03

  Just because at that point, you know, I had a few movies under my belt, I had a couple of Oscar nominations.

• 19:07Will Arnett?

  Yeah, sure.

• 19:08Speaker 03

  It was so beneath my dignity. I was such an asshole, a pretentious asshole. But, you know, I worked on Saturday Night Live, I hosted Saturday Night Live three times in the eighties, and two of those times Bonnie and Terry Turner were on the writing staff. They pitched it to me. And when they pitched it to me, suddenly it seemed like so much fun.

• 19:34Jason Bateman?

  Right.

• 19:35Speaker 03

  And they, I was the only person they could even imagine playing Dick Solomon, because it had to be an alien who was completely clueless, but could try anything.

• 19:45Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, yeah, that's so great. And what a catch, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Kristen Johnston.

• 19:51Speaker 03

  Jane Curtin.

• 19:51Jason Bateman?

  And Jane Curtin.

• 19:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, and the long process of casting it was so exciting.

• 19:56Jason Bateman?

  Was it? Did it take a long time?

• 19:58Speaker 03

  A long time, because in each case, we had to figure out just what is this comic idea?

• 20:04Jason Bateman?

  Right.

• 20:04Speaker 03

  You know, a general who has to inhabit the body of a woman became Kristen Johnston.

• 20:10Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 20:11Speaker 03

  And a little old man.

• 20:13Will Arnett?

  If you went to pitch it, John, well, if you went to pitch that idea, it's pretty high concept. You're like, what's the show? Okay, so here it is. And the network would be like, wait a second, what?

• 20:25Speaker 03

  Well, they had already, it was already a go. They came to me to pitch it. And that's exactly what Terry Turner, he said, he said, well, it's about this family of aliens. And of course, I had been sort of tricked in.

• 20:40Jason Bateman?

  Go on.

• 20:41Speaker 03

  I'd been tricked into the meeting. I thought I was just having a meeting with my friends Bonnie and Terry. But Carci and Werner, they were all there. And I thought, my God, how do I say no to this fast enough? But in five minutes, he had brought me around. It just seemed suddenly like, what in the world have I been waiting for?

• 21:02Jason Bateman?

  Did you have any idea that it might go as long as it did? Or did you think it was kind of going to be a pilot and out, or maybe half a season?

• 21:09Speaker 03

  Well, it was a freaky situation, because when we finally produced the show, we had done the pilot, and it was picked up all right by NBC, but it was picked up as a mid-season replacement. So we had done 13 of them before anybody had seen it. And, you know, well into this, we had realized, oh my God, we really have something here. We felt like we had the whole diamond in our pocket. I mean, you know, you know how cocky you can get when you have been working hard enough on something you persuade yourself is great.

• 21:41Will Arnett?

  You're in your bubble.

• 21:42Speaker 03

  But we were able to sort of frontline all the great episodes. We had had those 13 episodes to figure out the funny, to figure out what this show was. You know, in so many cases, you go back and see the original pilot episode of a great show like Seinfeld, and you realize they hadn't found it yet.

• 22:01Will Arnett?

  Yeah, right.

• 22:02Speaker 03

  We had 13 chances to find it, and it was released mid-season in January, and bam, just hit like that.

• 22:11Will Arnett?

  You know, there's a sort of a freedom in that, in that, in that, in the sense that, yes, you can feel that you have something, but there is an absence of ego because it hasn't been received yet, right? So there's a purity to that. And I remember, on a smaller scale, but when Jason, when we did Rest of the Velvet, we shot so many before it aired. And I remember in that time, in that bubble from sort of that year, from July till November, we were just making this thing, and there was nobody watching us. And there was a freedom in that of nobody watching, right?

• 22:45Jason Bateman?

  You don't have to protect anything.

• 22:47Will Arnett?

  Yeah, you don't have to protect. You don't have anything to lose. Well, it's a high-wire route. You can take chances, and you can, and you're not worried because there's nobody watching. Do you know what I mean?

• 22:57Speaker 03

  It just gives you a chance to find it. And you had the added challenge, we at least had a studio audience. And when they laughed, we knew we were funny.

• 23:06Will Arnett?

  Right.

• 23:06Speaker 03

  You know, so in a sense, you were flying blind until people actually saw it.

• 23:14Speaker 03

  And we will be right back.

• 23:18Sean Hayes?

  Let's talk about the Idaho Effect. It's a feeling you get hiking the Sawtooth Mountains at sunrise, or mountain biking on hero dirt at Silver Mountain Resort, leaving you craving more. It's a feeling where the freedom to roam is real, and it's found in Idaho. Idaho might just be the last authentic place in the West. Once you have this feeling, one that stays with you long after returning home, that's the Idaho Effect. Plan your Idaho vacation at visitidaho.org.

• 23:58Sean Hayes?

  If you or someone you love lives with type 1 diabetes, this is something you'll want to pay attention to. When blood sugar drops, having fast-acting carbs nearby is important. Glow Gummies are glucose gummies made with the fastest carb to raise blood sugar. They're also vegan, gluten-free, dye-free, and full of flavor. Glow Gummies aren't just for people with diabetes. They can provide quick energy to anyone, whether running, hiking, golfing, or on the go. So Scotty, as you know, has type 1 diabetes. Since he was 17 years old, he uses Glow Gummies every day. And I'd be lying if I didn't dip into them myself, because they're really delicious. You know, when I see him react to low blood sugar, I just feel very confident in Glow Gummies that they're going to shoot his sugar right back up, which always happens.

• 24:43Sean Hayes?

  So thank you to Glow Gummies for that. So head to glowgummies.com, that's G-L-O-W-gummies.com, and use code SMARTLESS for 20% off your next order of delicious flavors like mango, blue raspberry, and blackberry lemonade, available in bottles or small, resealable bags that are for perfect on-the-go. HSA and FSA cards accepted at checkout. When you go low, rise up with Glow.

• 25:12Sean Hayes?

  This episode is sponsored by US Bank Smartly Checking and Savings. Smartless, sponsored by Smartly? Well, that's just smart, but it's not just a fun name. You earn rewards, access fee waivers, and get better savings rates from day one. That means less time overthinking your money and more time thinking about other things. And who doesn't need that? Sign up for US Bank Smartly Checking and Savings today at usbank.com/smartly. Member FDIC. Copyright 2026 US Bank.

• 25:47Sean Hayes?

  'Tis the season for family festivities and, let's be honest, a lot of extra spending. Between traveling and preparing holiday meals, the last thing you want to worry about is overpaying for your prescriptions. That's where GoodRx comes in. GoodRx makes it easy to take control of your health and protect your budget, offering savings on cold and flu medications and even your everyday prescriptions. GoodRx is free and super easy to use. You just search for your medication on their website or app, compare prices, and bring the free coupon to show your pharmacist. Check GoodRx to save at over 70,000 local pharmacies nationwide, including Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, Publix, Kroger, and many more. Remember, GoodRx is not insurance,

• 26:30Sean Hayes?

  but works whether you have insurance or not, and it could beat your insurance copay price. Save time and money on your prescriptions. Check out GoodRx at GoodRx.com/smartless. That's GoodRx.com/smartless.

• 26:49Sean Hayes?

  And now, back to the show.

• 26:53Will Arnett?

  So here's an interesting... So you leave Harvard and then you go on a, I think like a Fulbright scholarship or something to Lambda. Is that right?

• 27:00Speaker 03

  That's right, yeah. Two years in London.

• 27:02Will Arnett?

  I mean, so you go... And I've always marveled that, you know, we have plenty of really amazing talent that comes out of the UK that comes and works over here. And they've all been really well-trained and they're very respected. And it's a difficult thing to go the other direction, I think, that there's a little bit, right? I think it's a harder... It just is. Or at least the perception is that it is. And I thought that it was, you know, it's a real testament to your ability as an actor and as an artist. I hate to bring it to you. You said you're not going to be an artist. You wanted... You are an artist.

• 27:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:37Will Arnett?

  And you went over there and really, you know, just sort of jumped right into that and being a performer over there overseas. And you did a lot of theater over there as well. You did Shakespeare in England as an American.

• 27:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's gotta be wild. Well, as I say, I did have this head start with my curious upbringing.

• 27:57Will Arnett?

  Yeah.

• 27:58Speaker 03

  And it's true that a lot more people flow in our direction than the other way around. But I think it's because Shakespeare really is the spine of the English School of Acting, and I had done a lot of Shakespeare.

• 28:14Speaker 03

  And that's not true of many American actors.

• 28:18Will Arnett?

  Right.

• 28:18Speaker 03

  But in the other direction, there's plenty of American culture. I mean, you get Australian actors and English actors who you can't believe how authentic their their language is.

• 28:29Will Arnett?

  I know.

• 28:29Speaker 03

  Their culture. They don't even need a dialect coach by now. They've been watching, they've been watching Friends all these years.

• 28:36Will Arnett?

  Their whole lives. But at the same time, but then you go and you do, and I wanted to get to this, which was, I, you've so many amazing performances that I've just really enjoyed and adored like everybody else over the years, but you go and you take an iconic character in The Crown. You play Winston Churchill, which I think for my, for my money, and this is no disrespect to anybody else who's ever played Winston Churchill. To me, it's the defining Winston Churchill. And I, I was so riveted by it every, right? It's incredible.

• 29:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, amazing.

• 29:07Will Arnett?

  Jason, I know you haven't watched The Crown. You have to see it just for John.

• 29:10Sean Hayes?

  It's mind blowing. Yeah, it's, it's incredible performance.

• 29:14Will Arnett?

  You can't get more iconic for an English character than Winston Churchill.

• 29:19Speaker 03

  Well, it was kind of astonishing that they even asked me to do it, but I mean, so much of it was the way they situated Churchill in that story. It wasn't a history, historical drama. It was like almost a family drama. It was, it was an extremely intimate and personal look at Churchill with all of his eccentricities and, and infirmities and insecurities. And that's very much what I took off from.

• 29:49Will Arnett?

  Must have been daunting, though.

• 29:50Speaker 03

  It was very scary, except that all the English actors welcomed me in. They had more confidence in me than, than I had in myself. And I just went to, to work at it. I found, you know, the most interesting thing I did in all my research, what I found was reading all about him as a child and as a boy and as a young man, tremendously insecure, growing up a failure with very neglectful parents and just feeling like a screw up, like there had, had been so many expectations of him that he would, so that so many things in his life were pure overcompensation. So you approach your old age and to me.

• 30:35Speaker 03

  All the characteristics you had in childhood kick in. That I sort of worked from that. And I think that's what people thought was kind of new about it.

• 30:44Sean Hayes?

  That is interesting.

• 30:45Will Arnett?

  Yeah, and he had such a childhood and his and his adult life was very was varied in the things that he did, right? Sort of head of the Admiralty and all that kind of stuff.

• 30:57Speaker 03

  But so many huge successes and colossal failures. And kind of constantly recovering one for another like a parabola. I, you know, I asked Stephen Daldry, the director, why he had cast me. I'd said yes, and we sat down for breakfast. And his first response was, well, Churchill's mother was an American. And that's true. She was this Baltimore aristocrat.

• 31:21Will Arnett?

  That's right.

• 31:22Speaker 03

  There was this much difference between an American Winston Churchill and Englishmen who are not Winston Churchill. He was quite an anomaly, and I think that that came in handy.

• 31:34Sean Hayes?

  That's so interesting. What about, was it as challenging as playing the Reverend in Footloose?

• 31:40Speaker 03

  That was a challenge in its own way. Just because.

• 31:44Sean Hayes?

  Are you bummed you didn't cut loose?

• 31:48Sean Hayes?

  Jay hated that one?

• 31:50Speaker 03

  I felt like, you know, it was it was actually Footloose. I go back and look at Footloose now, and I think that was a really good movie.

• 31:57Sean Hayes?

  It's a great movie. I love that movie.

• 31:59Speaker 03

  There was so much meat on the bone. Herbert Ross, the director, and Dean Pitchford, who wrote it, they really took this story seriously. And I felt I had to take this character, Reverend Shaw, more seriously. And I, who have virtually no religion in me, had to, I actually sought out a preacher.

• 32:18Sean Hayes?

  Oh, really?

• 32:19Speaker 03

  In the Yellow Pages, I looked up the, an assembly of God ministry and and called up and sought spiritual advice.

• 32:28Sean Hayes?

  Wow.

• 32:29Will Arnett?

  Wow. Hey, would you share that, would you share that contact with Jason? That'd be great.

• 32:36Speaker 03

  But I felt I felt I had to find someone who truly believed what he was doing. If I'm, if I'm going to imitate it.

• 32:44Sean Hayes?

  Well, and then and then I'm sure you apply that to Conclave, and you were amazing in Conclave.

• 32:48Will Arnett?

  Yeah, just incredible.

• 32:49Sean Hayes?

  What a beautiful movie.

• 32:51Speaker 03

  That was a, that was a fabulous job. That was two months, two months in Rome with Stanley Tucci and Isabella Rossellini.

• 32:58Sean Hayes?

  Amazing. I love that movie.

• 33:00Jason Bateman?

  How do you, I would imagine that you are flooded with. Scripts or opportunities or conversations about parts in so many different things and genres because you have done so many different things, different genres. No one could say that you are a television actor, a film actor, a stage actor, comedy, drama, big parts, small parts. You've just done everything and at such a high level for so long. How are you able, what's the, what's the main thing that drives you towards your decisions?

• 33:35Speaker 03

  Well, look, Jason, we're all actors. You know perfectly well, we don't do nearly as much choosing as everybody thinks we do. You just wait, you wait for good things and good people and good writing. And it's very rare. I honestly feel like all the, almost all the roles that you just rattled off, almost embarrassing, it's so complimentary. But none of them are things that I sought out or even knew about. I was somebody else's brainstorm. And it's like, I remember Jonathan Demme did a little television film years ago called, Who Am I This Time?

• 34:18Speaker 03

  About some hapless community theater actor whom everybody kept coming to, to play. The roles have always been a surprise to me.

• 34:26Jason Bateman?

  Right. And it's a testament to your talent that, that you're able to craft your, your, your take on the character in such a way where you're able to play it really well. You know, it's like it becomes, you're like, okay, so this is the opportunity I'm being given this, this month or this year. And so I better figure out a way to play it well because it's the only part that's coming down the pike. Yeah. I mean, it's sort of an overly humble, humble way.

• 34:50Speaker 03

  And, and, and I'm game. I guess I'm best known for being ready, willing and able.

• 34:56Will Arnett?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's, that's no small thing, by the way.

• 35:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it's very cockeyed. I just saw the premiere of a film I did with Geoffrey Rush last year called The Rule of Jenny Penn. Which I urge you to look up, it's about to be released in, you know, it's a very narrow release because it's a very bold and crazy film, a psychological suspense thriller.

• 35:20Will Arnett?

  Okay.

• 35:20Speaker 03

  In which I played by far the most outrageous character I've played since Dr. Lizardo. And he is, he is the monster in a horror movie. He really is. He's a crazy guy who's out to torment Geoffrey Rush in a senior care facility in New Zealand. I mean, this is a crazy film and it is great. I read that script, you know, this wonderful young director in New Zealand named James Ashcroft, he said, I've got to have you play this part. And I, I was terrified of doing this. My God. But I, I reminded myself, it's the things that you're afraid of that.

• 35:59Will Arnett?

  Yeah. But what, what is that thing that you do? What is that moment of, of, of fear? When you were able to turn, when you read it and he says, it has to be you. And you look at it and you say, oh, I don't know. I don't know what this is. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I'm, maybe I'll fail. What is the moment? What is the thing that the voice that says, take the jump off the cliff?

• 36:19Speaker 03

  I think it usually comes from a conversation or a Zoom call with the filmmaker. If, if there's a matter of trust, you do it. And, and I've been wrong before. God knows, we've all been wrong before. But this, like, I read, I read Jenny Penn and I thought, this is horrific. Who is in the world is going to want to see this? And I spoke to this guy, James Ashcroft, for an hour and a half. And he just was so persuasive. I just saw so far beyond my first reaction to the script. It's just a matter of being wide open to trusting somebody and, and being ready to take a chance because God knows, there are plenty of times when it doesn't work out. But you've got to be bold.

• 37:02Will Arnett?

  Yeah. Does the criteria change for you now at this stage? Like I notice as I'm getting older, the, my decision to, in terms of working, this again goes to kind of to everybody. Your, your mindset changes. The things that are important to you change. Is that true or no?

• 37:18Jason Bateman?

  Is it, oh, is there a sort of a guiding light for you? Is it, I want to do something that challenges me, or I want to do something that's fun? Or I want to do something that fits my schedule? Or does that shift? I mean, you know what I mean? What is the criteria?

• 37:31Speaker 03

  I just think there's so many factors in every case. And it always surprises you one way or another. It's basically, is this going to be good? Is this going to be fun? Are people going to want to see this? And am I working? Is it good writing with good people? I always say, the only hard acting is bad writing.

• 37:50Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 37:51Speaker 03

  You know, you guys know that.

• 37:52Jason Bateman?

  Or shitty people, you know? Having to like, you know, share 12 hours a day with a bunch of jerks is not fun.

• 37:58Speaker 03

  And you just try to steer clear of that. Sometimes you can't avoid it. And you, sometimes you take things for the wrong reasons and you pay for it.

• 38:06Jason Bateman?

  Yeah. How do you factor in? Where does, where does, where does family, friends, location, um, all that stuff? How does that all factor in? Tell us a little bit about, about your, I don't know anything about your personal life. Tell me all, tell me all the things you don't want to say.

• 38:23Speaker 03

  So sweet of you to ask, Jason. That's a huge factor. Uh, I've been married 43 years to my wife, Mary, who's a UCLA professor of, of history, economic and business history.

• 38:39Speaker 03

  We are an unlikely couple, you know? God never meant professors and actors to get married because our lives are so different.

• 38:48Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 38:48Speaker 03

  She is constantly having to adapt to these crazy right angle turns I keep taking. I mean, just think, being asked to play Dumbledore is contemplating literally years in England.

• 39:01Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, I know.

• 39:02Speaker 03

  And that just disrupts everything.

• 39:04Jason Bateman?

  Right.

• 39:04Speaker 03

  We, we have, we have two kids. I have a third by my first marriage and I have three grandkids with another on the way. And, you know, going to England, how, how are we going to go back and forth? Their lives are very installed here.

• 39:19Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 39:19Speaker 03

  Family is hugely important to me and it's quite, we are quite exclusive. You know, we're, we're a kind of quiet little family.

• 39:29Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 39:29Speaker 03

  And we get wrenched all over the place. So for a long time, when I was asked to do a play in New York. My first in my first reaction was where are we gonna live? Cause we were, I was so used to house sits and sublets and apartment hotels. We finally just splurged and bought a beautiful New York apartment so we find. So it just, just so I won't have that reaction. Sure. I can think of living a wonderful life in New York when I'm doing a New York play. Yeah. And I never want to stop doing that. But by the way, Sean, I have to ask you, are you going to play Oscar Levant again? Cause I missed it. And at the Barbican and this summer in London. I will see you. I will see you. Oh, good. I will be there. That'd be great.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  I will be there in the first weeks of Dumbledore. Oh, that's great. And I'm doing a play in the West End that you will be able to see. It's called, I did it at the Royal Court in the fall and it's moving to the West End in April. What's it called? It's called Giant, a play about Roald Dahl in which play. Oh, wow. Great. Which was a smash hit at the Little Royal Court Theater. But I will finally be able to see. That'd be great.

• 40:39Jason Bateman?

  You will not be disappointed. It's so, it's just so cool.

• 40:42Speaker 03

  I saw little clips of it and heard so many friends rave about it and I was so upset I had missed it. You know, it's on my list of those things that I kick myself. Well, that's very nice of you. I appreciate that. Yeah, come see, we'll have dinner or whatever. Oh.

• 40:55Will Arnett?

  He won, he won a Tony for it.

• 40:57Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 40:57Will Arnett?

  We mentioned it earlier. He won a Tony and which gets, Sean, don't be. Watching him act embarrassed is so embarrassing.

• 41:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:05Jason Bateman?

  You think he's good and then he tries to play embarrassment.

• 41:08Will Arnett?

  And then he tries to play, it's so terrible. But John, you, you, I mentioned you won, you won a Tony your first time, your first outing on Broadway.

• 41:18Speaker 03

  Which was for what? What was it for? It was for The Changing Room, an English play. Oh, The Changing Room. Sorry, sorry. You said it. By David Storey, which incidentally was first produced at the Royal Court Theater. Where we did. Oh, wow. Where we did this play Giant. So this was full of coming back. That's wild. That's cool.

• 41:34Will Arnett?

  Full circle. But you, I mean, imagine coming out and your first, your first production on Broadway, you win a Tony. You, you're sort of, you're shot out of a cannon, as it were. You must think like, okay, it's like, it would be like, um, to try to, for Tracy, it'd be like winning the Super Bowl your first year in the NFL. And just thinking, I'm gonna win a Super Bowl every year, right?

• 41:53Speaker 03

  Right.

• 41:54Will Arnett?

  Was there a little bit of that?

• 41:56Speaker 03

  Well, it was astonishing. I mean, The Changing Room, it was a play that we did, it was the American premiere of this extraordinary play about a English north of England rugby team. It takes place in their changing room. It's sort of super realistic.

• 42:12Sean Hayes?

  I'll read for that.

• 42:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a great, a great thing that we did at the Long Wharf Theater in, in New Haven. And it got a lot of national press and moved to Broadway. Until then, I had done rep for both for my dad and I had actually started directing, just because nobody would hire me as an actor. I was actually doing just fine as a director. I, I'd been hired to be the artistic director of Baltimore Center Stage and I had accepted, like, what, what else? I've got to work. And I pulled, I pulled out after two weeks when I was finally offered to be a member of the resident company at Long Wharf. The second show was Changing Room and it was brought

• 42:57Speaker 03

  to Broadway and two weeks later, I won a Tony. It was like, I didn't sleep for about two months. I was so excited.

• 43:04Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, that's really cool. That's amazing.

• 43:07Speaker 03

  It really did. It's very hard to get into that inner circle. I mean, in theater in particular, in New York, because nobody thinks of you as a successful actor until you're a successful actor. It's very hard.

• 43:20Jason Bateman?

  Well, speaking about that, having done it so long and at such a high level, do you find yourself still teaching yourself new tricks? Are, are you, you work with, you work with that incredible cast like you just did in Conclave? I imagine it's impossible for you not to absorb something, a little, do you, do you, are you still putting little pieces on your, your, your talent? Does it still change?

• 43:45Speaker 03

  I feel like there's, there's nothing I haven't done yet. I mean, Third Rock itself was like flying in all directions for six years. It hasn't stopped me from

• 43:58Speaker 03

  The terrible insecurity of what do people think of me? Sure. In the first couple of weeks of rehearsal. That helped us concentrate, though. You know, to be honest, even doing live in front of a studio audience. I was nervous as hell that night. Yeah, were you? I don't know whether you guys had that experience.

• 44:19Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, well, for Tracy, those were, I know we said it already, but Jimmy Kimmel and Norman Lear put together on ABC these recreations of old sitcoms, and we did them live.

• 44:28Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's the one thing all four of us have in common. That's true. I always brag to people that I've worked with Jason and Will.

• 44:38Jason Bateman?

  But I would imagine, though, that, you know, you work across someone like, you know, Ralph Fiennes, and like, how can you, how do you, how do you avoid not being distracted by watching somebody with that kind of talent? And try to see what they're doing and maybe try it on a little bit for, like, do you find yourself at all being influenced by folks that you're working with?

• 45:05Speaker 03

  I mean, in the case of Ralph, it was just extraordinary, the interaction.

• 45:11Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 45:12Speaker 03

  I worked, listen, over the last two years, I've done roles with Ralph Fiennes, Olivia Colman, and Geoffrey Rush. Good lord. And in big parts, where the big, intense scenes. You get to see what they do. In each case, they give you so much. It's all, it's, no, no performance is created by one person.

• 45:37Jason Bateman?

  Right.

• 45:37Speaker 03

  There's a minimum of two.

• 45:39Jason Bateman?

  Right.

• 45:40Speaker 03

  Because it's all about the interaction and playing off each other. And, and I just feel, I mean, thank goodness, when I act with someone, they're pretty familiar with me, and I'm, I tend to be familiar with them. And if I'm not, I make myself friends with them. I just go right ahead and say, come on, you guys, let's connect. Let's get to know each other.

• 46:01Sean Hayes?

  You have to do that. We'll be right back.

• 46:07Sean Hayes?

  Let's talk about the Idaho Effect. It's a feeling you get hiking the Sawtooth Mountains at sunrise, or mountain biking on hero dirt at Silver Mountain Resort, leaving you craving more. It's a feeling where the freedom to roam is real, and it's found in Idaho. Idaho might just be the last authentic place in the West. Once you have this feeling, one that stays with you long after returning home, that's the Idaho Effect. Plan your Idaho vacation at visitidaho.org.

• 46:46Sean Hayes?

  This episode is sponsored by US Bank's Smartly Checking and Savings. Smart is sponsored by Smartly? Well, that's just smart, but it's not just a fun name. You earn rewards, access fee waivers, and get better savings rates from day one. That means less time overthinking your money and more time thinking about other things. And who doesn't need that? Sign up for US Bank's Smartly Checking and Savings today at usbank.com/smartly. Member FDIC. Copyright 2026 US Bank.

• 47:21Sean Hayes?

  Start the day strong with Quaker Protein Products. Quaker makes it easy and delicious to get a good source of protein. No matter what the day has in store, Quaker Protein Products give you a variety of ways to reach your protein goals. Oatmeal, granola bars, and rice snacks in flavors you already love, like maple and brown sugar, and blueberries and cream. Quaker Protein helps fuel you to start whatever's next. Get your protein with Quaker, available at a store near you.

• 47:57Sean Hayes?

  And back to the show.

• 48:00Will Arnett?

  What's the role that people stop you for the most? And when you're walking down the street, when you're on an airplane and you drop your license, when you... What is the thing that people say to you?

• 48:10Speaker 03

  I would say probably Third Rock, Dexter, and Winston Churchill.

• 48:16Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:17Speaker 03

  But it tends to be the thing that is most current. I mean, an awful lot of things.

• 48:21Will Arnett?

  Right.

• 48:21Jason Bateman?

  Well, get ready, because the Dumbledore and the Harry Potter series, it's gonna be massive.

• 48:26Speaker 03

  You know, this is already... Can you believe this has already started? And the deal was only set like 48 hours ago. And in airports, two weeks ago, somehow or other, people had gotten wind of this. And they were stopping me in airports.

• 48:41Will Arnett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:42Jason Bateman?

  Do you... Have you... Where are you in your process of educating yourself on the history of the whole canon?

• 48:50Speaker 03

  Well, I seem to be behind everybody. Every... I'm just... I'm halfway through the second of these seven novels.

• 48:59Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 49:00Speaker 03

  I think the overall concept of this entire reboot of Harry Potter is an entire season is devoted to a single novel.

• 49:09Jason Bateman?

  Oh, that's really cool.

• 49:10Will Arnett?

  Have you guys read those? I read the first one when it came out, because it was... I mean, I was a little... It was... You know, I wasn't a kid anymore when it came out. And they were... Obviously, they were huge with children at that time, etc. And then... So I was like, "Well, I gotta read it, because I wanna see what everybody's talking about." So I read the first one, and then I didn't go any further. And then, once I had kids of my own, I ended up reading all of them out loud to my boys.

• 49:33Jason Bateman?

  Oh, that's amazing.

• 49:35Will Arnett?

  And I've never seen... I've never seen the films. I've only read all the books.

• 49:41Speaker 03

  You're my audience. Will, you're my audience.

• 49:44Will Arnett?

  Yes.

• 49:44Jason Bateman?

  So wait, really?

• 49:46Sean Hayes?

  They're so well-made. They are. Really quick story. So, do you know Darlene Hunt? She's a good friend of mine. She's a writer, brilliant. She created the Big C show.

• 49:55Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah, of course.

• 49:56Sean Hayes?

  But anyway, she's a great writer. And she... Her girls were reading the books when they were really little. And she goes, "Well, we watch the movie after we read the book," right? And she goes, "We're on book four," or something like that. I go, "Why don't you come over and we'll watch the book..." We'll watch the... Thing for you. So she with your with your family. So she's like, great, I'll pick up a pizza. We'll come over and blah, blah, blah. So I go, you know what? We're gonna, we're gonna just go balls out. We're gonna make butter beer for your girls. We're gonna play the music when they walk in. Scotty dressed up as Harry Potter for Halloween once. He's gonna put that stupid costume on for your girls. Like it'll be, we'll make them feel like they're coming in, right? The thing. And so she pulls up with a pizza dressed as Maggie Smith in the big pointy hat, you know, Professor McGonagall, with a huge cape and she's all in black and she, she has a pizza in her

• 50:41Sean Hayes?

  hand and she walks in, because we've been to my house a million times, she walks in and she sees this dog. She's like, that's weird. And she walks in further. I don't remember that dog. She walks in further and this guy is sitting at the kitchen table and goes, can I help you? And she goes, isn't Sean and Scotty live here? And he goes, no, they're next door. So she walked into the wrong house, dressed as a witch with a pizza. And the guy must have been like, what the fuck is going on?

• 51:09Speaker 03

  And she may have thought that the dog was a wizard.

• 51:14Sean Hayes?

  It's the funniest, most embarrassing story.

• 51:16Will Arnett?

  This is another, another segment of Sean's called Loser Friday Nights. Hey, listen.

• 51:23Sean Hayes?

  Wait, John, so speaking of this job, this gig that you're gonna have for many years, and we talked a little bit about it before, how are you going to do back and forth? And how are your living situations? I mean, do you have to be gone the whole year? You'd be gone like three months at a time, or?

• 51:38Speaker 03

  I honestly don't know the answer to that, Sean. Is it, I mean, I was over in England for eight months for The Crown and barely came back. I think I may have come back once or twice. I imagine that I can come back much more. You know, Dumbledore is, he's kind of the, the, the nuclear weapon. He only goes off there very, very occasionally. And I think that, I don't think it's gonna be that hard a job. And we'll just go back and forth.

• 52:10Will Arnett?

  Where do you like to live? Where do you like to live when you're in London? What's your favorite?

• 52:14Speaker 03

  Well, I've lived in, we, we lived up in, near Primrose Hill on The Crown. We lived near the Royal Court in Chelsea this past fall when I did the play. And I've had, oh God, they found a wonderful house for us when I did The Crown. And we just lived like Londoners, right down the street from Derek Jacobi.

• 52:40Speaker 03

  You know, so, I mean, it's a wonderful thing to contemplate. I mean, the logistics are a little bit scary. I really did have to think hard about whether to take it on. But I also thought, well, I'm about to turn 80, you know, next year.

• 52:57Will Arnett?

  No way.

• 52:58Speaker 03

  Wow, is that true? That's the new 50s. You look, I'm kidding, I'm not kidding, you look phenomenal. People ask me for my secret sauce, but as I feel, I'm beginning to feel like 80. And that means that if this indeed is a seven or eight year long job, it's a wonderful way to grow old as an actor. I mean, the alternative is to just be hauled out once a year to play an Alzheimer patient.

• 53:27Speaker 03

  Play a wise old wizard. An awful lot of death scenes with weeping, middle aged children, you know.

• 53:34Will Arnett?

  Johnny, let me just say this, if you played an Alzheimer patient, I'm sure your performance would be unforgettable.

• 53:40Speaker 03

  Ah, by the way, you did in Planet of the Apes. You were great, you were an Alzheimer's person. Sean, I love you. I didn't have to bring that up myself. Yeah, of course, of course, yeah. Now, does your, does your wife have to be at UCLA every day, teaching class? She is retired from teaching. She's still, she still researches and writes and goes to conferences. She travels more than I do. She travels all over the world and I, I'm a trailing spouse on many occasions. Is home base still Los Angeles though? It's more LA than New York, but we've split our time between the two. And now we're triangulating really with London. What a dream, that is my absolute dream, that dream. Mary's from Montana.

• 54:23Speaker 03

  We have a little cabin on a lake in northwest Montana. And we, that's kind of our runaway place, which is just absolutely beautiful, so. It's great, it's great.

• 54:34Sean Hayes?

  Now, if you leave this podcast today without me asking a funny, if you have a funny theater story, these guys will kill me.

• 54:42Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:43Sean Hayes?

  Out of all of them, because, out of all of our guests, because you have such a theater history. And I, I love when things go wrong, or people are up.

• 54:52Speaker 03

  Forgetting a line, or somebody having a heart attack.

• 54:54Sean Hayes?

  Attack, or something, in the crowd. Oh, Sean loves a heart attack.

• 55:00Sean Hayes?

  I did think, I may have said this one to you guys before, but I don't remember, so stop me if I have. But in high school, they were giving these, they created these thespian awards at the end of the year. And they had, they had this award called the Gold Crutch. And it goes to whosoever the clumsiest, whoever made the biggest mistakes, or whatever. That's a whole other story why I got it, but, um, so I go up to accept the Golden Crutch Award in front of everybody. And I thought, you know what might be funny, is if I trip when I get the award. Sure. And so I tripped, I had it in my hand, and I tripped, and I knocked the tooth out of Missy Vogel singer's mouth.

• 55:36Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 55:39Sean Hayes?

  Swear to God, Missy Vogel singer, to this day, and, and she's standing there shaking and bleeding, and I'm going, oh, God, and the whole audience.

• 55:47Speaker 03

  It's a bit.

• 55:49Sean Hayes?

  And I go, should I do a speech, or do I take care of her? And like a true actor, I just gave the speech. Speech, of course, the speech.

• 55:58Speaker 03

  Of course. Tried to reassure everybody that this was a joke?

• 56:02Sean Hayes?

  This was fine. And she was, the blood was coming down, and I was like, oh, my God. And it was one of the most embarrassing, by the way, that's why I got the Golden Crutch.

• 56:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, well.

• 56:13Sean Hayes?

  Anyway, yeah.

• 56:13Speaker 03

  I guess the, the, the most curious mishap, I mentioned the changing room. Yeah. That I, on Broadway, which took place in the rugby team's changing room. Twenty-two actors, of whom.

• 56:27Sean Hayes?

  Cool it, Sean.

• 56:28Speaker 03

  Fifteen, fifteen were players, and we, at a certain point, we stripped completely naked, got our uniforms on, off into, we played the match, then came back at the end. Halfway through, my character, the one, there was a scene that won me that Tony Award. I was brought off the pitch halfway through the match, covered in mud and very, very badly injured. Smashed nose, blood running down my face. I was taken offstage to an offstage bathtub, scrubbed all the mud off and was brought

• 57:09Speaker 03

  back onstage by the equipment manager. I was stark naked and wet and glistening. I, he towelled me down and dressed me up like I was a baby. The own, a long scene in silence. All you heard was the sound of the crowd roaring offstage. And at a certain point, he hoisted me to my feet and hauled my underpants up. These sort of pathetic briefs, you know, we were all these working class clods, really. And, but it was a very moving scene. You know, he was, this character was completely out of it. I was like inert, could barely see.

• 57:54Speaker 03

  And one night, he hoisted me up, tugged up my briefs and my dick was sort of hanging out. Just out the bottom, just like, and in front of, you know, 800 people. All sort of stricken in silence. And I thought, how in the world am I gonna do this? I'm not, I'm supposed to be completely inert. And I just sort of, thinking nobody would notice, I sort of reached down and sort of flicked it inside my pants. And I would say that was by far the most embarrassing. That's a good one.

• 58:31Jason Bateman?

  After the voting period had gone, laughs.

• 58:35Speaker 03

  I might, I would remind you, I was given a Tony Award for that.

• 58:38Will Arnett?

  Yeah, no, no wonder.

• 58:41Speaker 03

  What we have to do.

• 58:44Will Arnett?

  John, John, we've taken up too much of your time, but I want to ask you one last question because as Jason mentioned, I imagine over the years, and I know we. A lot of it is what comes our way, but a lot of stuff I mentioned over there has come your way. And you mentioned Frasier on Cheers. Is there a role in that you have ever regretted, other than Frasier Crane, perhaps? Is there a role that you regretted and thought afterwards, I should have said yes?

• 59:13Speaker 03

  Oh, yes. There's, there are lots. I ordinarily don't tell people out of regard for, for the ones who ended up playing it.

• 59:23Will Arnett?

  You don't need to.

• 59:24Speaker 03

  But I would say I must have the record for the most Tony Awards won by actors and roles that I turned down.

• 59:32Will Arnett?

  Wow.

• 59:33Speaker 03

  There are, I think I'm in double figures by now.

• 59:36Will Arnett?

  Oh, wow.

• 59:37Speaker 03

  And a couple of those do indeed completely torment me.

• 59:41Will Arnett?

  Yeah.

• 59:42Speaker 03

  But I have to think that I played a few roles and had to great acclaim and others have turned it down, so.

• 59:50Will Arnett?

  John, John, you know what? And maybe you can look at it like this. You allowed and you gifted, but you know, passing on the genius writing and whatever that play was, to allow somebody else to have it. And what an incredible, you know, what an incredible positive thing to be a part of.

• 1:00:08Speaker 03

  Will, you are so much, a much better person than I am.

• 1:00:11Will Arnett?

  I doubt it.

• 1:00:14Speaker 03

  You caught him on a good day, John. Eat my heart out, you know? No, but you're absolutely right. That is a beautiful way to look at it. And as I say, I never tell people that I played.

• 1:00:25Will Arnett?

  Of course.

• 1:00:26Speaker 03

  You know, actually, I got a Tony, sorry, an Oscar nomination for Terms of Endearment, replacing another actor.

• 1:00:36Will Arnett?

  Huh.

• 1:00:37Speaker 03

  They had shot a couple of scenes with Deborah Winger in Terms of Endearment, and they had to let him go because it just wasn't right.

• 1:00:44Will Arnett?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:45Speaker 03

  They just didn't feel okay about Deborah Winger having an adulterous affair. So they came after me, thinking I'm the perfect adulterer, apparently. And I have, and I have never revealed this actor's name, just out of respect for him.

• 1:01:00Will Arnett?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:01Speaker 03

  Even though they were perfectly. Good reasons that I just explained why he wasn't right for the part.

• 1:01:07Will Arnett?

  At that point in your life, you were the seediest person. They were like, we need somebody seedier.

• 1:01:14Speaker 03

  You know, when we, when we did Third Rock, we had something that I called the Lithgow Rules. If anybody was ever replaced or dropped from the script, if her, the part was written out or whatever, that actor would have to get two phone calls, one from me and one from our producers.

• 1:01:32Jason Bateman?

  I love that.

• 1:01:34Speaker 03

  It wasn't you, you know, that we had, here are the reasons why. Cause you know, it just has happened so many times in my experience that people are just cut out of films or dropped from, or replaced.

• 1:01:46Jason Bateman?

  And they don't hear from anybody.

• 1:01:47Speaker 03

  They don't hear anything except from a casting director, calling an agent, calling an actor and saying, it didn't work out.

• 1:01:52Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:53Speaker 03

  And that's so crushing.

• 1:01:54Jason Bateman?

  It is.

• 1:01:55Speaker 03

  You know, it's just because there's always 10 reasons, 10 perfectly good reasons for some, for things like that.

• 1:02:01Jason Bateman?

  That have nothing to do with the talent.

• 1:02:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, and we, and we actors, we can take it. We know there's reasons for it, you know, so there's no reason.

• 1:02:08Jason Bateman?

  But we're soft, we're soft, we need to be held.

• 1:02:11Will Arnett?

  It is that, I've been, well, I've been, you guys probably have too. I mean, I've been fired from jobs before. Or my character was written out and I've had, and then there have been people who were really kind of mentioned before. Casting director, she not really doing it anymore, Deb Berelski, and I got fired from a pilot that went to series. And I heard nothing and, and the show got picked up, my character was written off and I was, you know, I wasn't young, I was 32 at the time and just thought, oh, fuck it. And I was in, feeling really shitty in New York and, and Deb Berelski wrote me a card. I got it in the mail, in my mailbox here in New York. I got a card saying, it was, you know, they made a mistake, it wasn't you and blah, blah, blah. And it was one of the kinder things.

• 1:02:52Jason Bateman?

  And a few months later, she cast you in Arrested Development and made your career.

• 1:02:55Will Arnett?

  Actually, a few months, and a few months later, she begged me, I was doing a play in New York and she said, you have to come. I said, no, I'm not interested. I'm so jaded. And she goes, you have to read for this thing, Arrested film.

• 1:03:04Speaker 03

  Oh my God, but a great story.

• 1:03:07Will Arnett?

  And it changed my life.

• 1:03:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:08Will Arnett?

  So anyway.

• 1:03:09Speaker 03

  And it happens to everyone. I'm, I would say this to young actors over and over. It happens to all of us. And it never, it had never happened to me, but I was finally, oh my God, I, I went to the premiere of a film in which I had seven lovely scenes.

• 1:03:28Speaker 03

  And I went to the premiere. I was just in New York and I saw, oh, there's a premiere of this film that I'm in. I'll call him and go to the premiere. Well, I sat down and watched my first scene and it was cut in half. And I thought, well, that's too bad. Well, we'll wait for the next one. The next one was cut from the film. The next one was cut. The next one was cut. All that was left of my character was about the 30 seconds of my first scene, in which I had stated the premise of this romantic comedy.

• 1:04:03Jason Bateman?

  But it was enough to trigger residuals.

• 1:04:05Speaker 03

  And I sat there with my, with my two kids and just experienced what I'd always told actors. It happens to all of us.

• 1:04:15Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, yeah. It's true.

• 1:04:18Will Arnett?

  It's such a wild thing, isn't it? It's so wild. John, what an absolute incredible delight having you here today.

• 1:04:26Speaker 03

  It's real. I've always loved this show and I was very honored to be on it.

• 1:04:30Jason Bateman?

  It's so nice of you to join us. You're a real angel. Thank you so much.

• 1:04:34Speaker 03

  Well, I'm sure I'll see you within the next 48 hours at something.

• 1:04:38Will Arnett?

  Yes, you'll see Jason. You'll see Jason for sure. And we should, and we're gonna come and see you in London. We're gonna come and see Sean and JB.

• 1:04:45Speaker 03

  Sean, I'm gonna see Oscar. Good night, Oscar. The great news. That's what I take away from today.

• 1:04:51Jason Bateman?

  Thanks, pal. Thank you. All right, John. Thank you.

• 1:04:54Speaker 03

  Oh, and wait, I haven't told you about my history with Bennett. I was gonna go do a deep dive on Bennett Barbaco. Yeah, look at that. There's the portrait by John Lithgow.

• 1:05:04Jason Bateman?

  You did that?

• 1:05:05Speaker 03

  That's my painting of Bennett, yeah. Isn't that pretty good?

• 1:05:07Jason Bateman?

  Wow, that's fantastic.

• 1:05:08Speaker 03

  You look more like, you're more like the painting than ever. It's like, it's like the portrait of Dorian Gray. I was John's muse.

• 1:05:16Jason Bateman?

  How are you guys connected?

• 1:05:17Will Arnett?

  Wait a second. So Bennett Barbaco, who works with us on the show, who's here now. How do you and Bennett know each other?

• 1:05:24Speaker 03

  Bennett was like one of my, my daughter's very good friends at Seeds U E S School when they were about seven, eight, nine years old. And I, I know Bennett's folks all these years.

• 1:05:37Will Arnett?

  Wait, wait, Bennett, you went to lab school?

• 1:05:40Speaker 03

  I sure did, before it was called lab school, yeah.

• 1:05:42Will Arnett?

  And yeah, and both my kids, my older kids, both my older kids went to lab school, John.

• 1:05:46Speaker 03

  Amazing, circles within circles, but his parents, I, I put up for a fundraising dinner. I, I offered to paint a portrait of your child. And they bid and they won, and so I painted Bennett's portrait. Oh my, that's crazy. It took me about seven years to paint it. It was a source of great guilt, but I finally, I finally showed up.

• 1:06:13Sean Hayes?

  That's amazing.

• 1:06:14Jason Bateman?

  How cool is that, Bennett? When people come over, you go, "Look at that, John Lithgow did that."

• 1:06:17Speaker 03

  It says JL at the bottom.

• 1:06:19Will Arnett?

  Bennett, Bennett, your mom and dad love you.

• 1:06:23Speaker 03

  You see, I told you I always wanted to be an artist, and it turns out it's not too late.

• 1:06:28Sean Hayes?

  Pretty good.

• 1:06:28Will Arnett?

  Never too late, that's amazing. Oh, thank you for that, John, that's amazing.

• 1:06:33Speaker 03

  Well, thank you, Bennett, I'm glad we squeezed that in. Yes, absolutely. So good to see you, John. Okay, you too. Bye bye now. Bye guys.

• 1:06:40Will Arnett?

  Bye. Bye bye. Bye, John.

• 1:06:44Sean Hayes?

  Now, we have had some assholes. We have had, you know, but this son of a bitch.

• 1:06:49Will Arnett?

  Jason, Jason, hold up, man.

• 1:06:53Sean Hayes?

  What, what a delight, my gosh.

• 1:06:56Will Arnett?

  Jesus, I know.

• 1:06:57Sean Hayes?

  He, I feel like, uh, like I've known him, I feel he's a, he's a good, good, good guy. Wow, I can't believe he's almost 80 and he's...

• 1:07:07Will Arnett?

  He looks younger than Jason, it's fucking crazy.

• 1:07:09Sean Hayes?

  Right, I know, I know. I gotta see him play that killer, because I can't imagine him ever being nasty.

• 1:07:14Speaker 03

  I know, I wanna see him.

• 1:07:15Sean Hayes?

  Ever being angry, ever, you can?

• 1:07:17Will Arnett?

  Yeah, no, I can't.

• 1:07:18Sean Hayes?

  You see through it, you think it's all bullshit?

• 1:07:19Will Arnett?

  No, no, no, I don't mean it that way, I don't mean it that way. I mean that he is such a versatile, he has such facility as, as an actor to fight, I mean, he can, he has played, um, I'm trying to think, he's played like some...

• 1:07:31Speaker 03

  Raising Cain.

• 1:07:32Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:33Will Arnett?

  Yeah, Raising Cain, some scary, scary cha- character.

• 1:07:37Sean Hayes?

  And he's still doing thea- I mean, how about he's like, "Yeah, I'm doing Dumbledore, oh, I'm gonna do this play, though," before, I'm like,

• 1:07:42Will Arnett?

  I know.

• 1:07:43Sean Hayes?

  God, doesn't, doesn't slow down, it's a very inspiring. But anyway, it is a great, great call getting him. I love him. I love him.

• 1:07:52Will Arnett?

  We were supposed to have him on before and there was a thing. It was messed up and it was so, it was so, but we had a technical error, one of our episodes that didn't work out. And, and I was like, oh my God, are we ever gonna get him back? Cause he's traveling all the time and he's working all the time. And I just thought, God, I'm so happy that he, that we were actually able to make it happen.

• 1:08:11Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, he's great. Yeah. I mean, he's just, I'll bet you could, you could rattle off at least a dozen movies that you go, that's right, he was in that. He's just always got some great part in some great project that you forget about.

• 1:08:24Will Arnett?

  Yeah. Oh dude, he's been in, he's been in everything.

• 1:08:28Sean Hayes?

  Right, right.

• 1:08:28Will Arnett?

  You know?

• 1:08:30Sean Hayes?

  Yeah. I mean, if you take them all.

• 1:08:32Will Arnett?

  Boy.

• 1:08:33Sean Hayes?

  All his films and all his work.

• 1:08:36Will Arnett?

  It's the pause. That's what it is, Jason. It's the pause that he takes.

• 1:08:38Sean Hayes?

  You can also hear the engine start, like.

• 1:08:40Will Arnett?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:08:41Sean Hayes?

  If you take all of them and put them together and it would be such, it's such an incredible body of work. If you take them all and you come.

• 1:08:51Will Arnett?

  Bye.

• 1:08:56Sean Hayes?

  Terrible. That was terrible.

• 1:09:27Speaker 04

  No two businesses run the same, so banking for your business shouldn't be one size fits all. That's why Atlantic Union Bank offers knowledgeable guidance and tailored solutions designed around your goals. Whether you're managing cash flow, moving money, or protecting your business from fraud, we make banking for your business both personal and easy. Call, visit us online at atlanticunionbank.com or stop by one of our local branches today. Atlantic Union Bank, any way you bank.

• 1:09:58Speaker 05

  This podcast is supported by Nurtac ODT. Remedy Pant. We know you didn't ask for an interruption, but migraine doesn't wait for the right moment to interrupt either. It just barges in, takes your time, and throws everything off. So when migraine takes your time, take Nurtac. It's for the acute treatment of migraine with or without aura in adults. Nurtac can provide pain relief in two hours, which can last up to two days. Ask your healthcare provider if Nurtac is right for you, because your time is for you, not migraine. Don't take if allergic to Nurtac ODT. Allergic reactions can occur even days after use. Get help right away for trouble breathing, rash, swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or throat. High blood pressure and Raynaud's syndrome can occur. Get help for high blood pressure, numbness, coolness, pain,

• 1:10:42Speaker 05

  or color changes in fingers and toes. Common side effect is nausea. For full prescribing information, call 1-833-4-NURTC or visit Nurtac.com. All right, back to your podcast, playlist, or whatever's keeping you going today.