From the Archives: Marilu Henner Chooses Joy

Actress Marilu Henner is known for a lot of things, from her groundbreaking role as Elaine Nardo on Taxi to her New York Times bestselling books on health and wellness to her amazing, nearly one-of-a-kind memory. But what shines through in every story, joke, and answer she gives Alec is her positivity and joy. Henner is someone who, at every turn, has chosen her happiness, and she’s eager to share her secrets for creating an optimistic outlook with everyone. Originally aired December 21, 2021 See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:36Alec Baldwin?

  This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio. People have different definitions of what makes a star. Is it raw talent, beauty? Or is it simply an X-factor, a certain ineffable quality? Whatever it is, Mary Lou Henner has it, and she has it in spades. Singer, dancer, actor, and wellness expert, Henner is a multi-talented performer who is also simply a joy to be around. She's like a Christmas tree and lights up every room she's in. She's starred in over a dozen films, seven Broadway shows, and two smash hit sitcoms.

• 2:20Alec Baldwin?

  She played Ava Evans-Newton on Evening Shade alongside Burt Reynolds, and perhaps most notably Elaine Nardo on Taxi, a role that earned her five Golden Globe nominations. Mary Lou Henner is also a New York Times bestselling author and recently staged a one-woman autobiographical show. It covered everything from growing up in a large family in Chicago to her preternatural mnemonic skills. Henner is one of about 60 people in the world who can recall nearly every detail of her life, down to the exact day and date.

• 2:59Speaker 00

  It's so funny because, you know, I worked with Trump twice on Celebrity Apprentice. But he used to start every boardroom like, "Mary Lou, if I took you to Vegas, could you cheat for me? Could you count the cards? Could you... Let's go to Vegas."

• 3:15Alec Baldwin?

  I'm sure people assume that this skill you have...

• 3:19Speaker 00

  It's not a skill, but it's, yeah, it's just there. It's weird.

• 3:21Alec Baldwin?

  What do you call it?

• 3:22Speaker 00

  Uh, I call it a gift. People sometimes call it a condition. It's not, and that's why they changed the name. They used to call it hyperthymesia, but then they thought that that was like too weird a name, which it really is. But it's not. They don't call it that anymore. It's H-SAM, Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory. H-SAM. And it's funny you should mention that in my show because I do a song about it in my show that my brother wrote the lyrics to. So I'm going to sing.

• 3:49Alec Baldwin?

  There's a song called "Wait, Don't Tell Me."

• 3:51Speaker 00

  No, no. You know what it's called? It's, you know the Peggy Lee song, "Cause I'm a Woman." You know that song? Okay, so I thought, hmm, "Cause I have H-SAM." So this is what we decided. I'll just do the first two.

• 4:04Alec Baldwin?

  This is what "Packing them in" in Bucks County.

• 4:07Speaker 00

  It was "Packing them in." Yeah, I was like in that.

• 4:09Alec Baldwin?

  "Cause I have H-SAM."

• 4:10Speaker 00

  "Cause I have H-SAM." "Excuse me, mister." It was a very successful number and a very successful run. A lot of fun. They said it was the best show they've done there in seven years.

• 4:19Alec Baldwin?

  Well, let me ask you this. You wrote a biography back in 94. You've written 10 books, I believe, including that book. But when you do a one-woman show, where do you start?

• 4:28Speaker 00

  Well, you need an opening number that sort of grabs people and sort of sets up the tone. And so I wanted everything to sort of connect to something in my life. And I was watching television and, do you know the Cole Porter movie? Not Night and Day, the other one that he did. Anyway, so all of a sudden I'm flicking through channels and there it is. And it's Elvis Costello singing "Let's Misbehave." And I thought, oh, that's the closing credits to Johnny Dangerously. I'm going to sing that song as my opener and then tell a story about Johnny Dangerously. But then say, everything is connected. And then I go into the song about my memory because I wanted to set that up right away because I throw dates around a lot. And then I talk about my childhood, which was so unusual.

• 5:12Speaker 00

  So, you know, and I do a little whole tribute to growing up in a dancing school.

• 5:17Alec Baldwin?

  Well, you know, what's funny, when I think of you, I think of many things. You know, when you do the show Taxi, you're someone who is part of that elite group of people that I know who were on a hit TV show back when tens of millions of people were watching TV. But such a remarkable group of people, all of whom went on to have these, you know, really heavy-duty careers and everything, and movies and TV and theater and so forth. And how did you get that job?

• 5:42Speaker 00

  Okay, this is a good story. I believe that the key to your life is how well you deal with Plan B. Because so many Plan B things, you plan for Plan A and you think this is how it's going to work out and then all of a sudden, forget it. I'd been flown out to Los Angeles to do a screen test for a movie called Blood Brothers. I auditioned for Robert Mulligan. The guy I was testing opposite, he didn't get the job, but they kept me around because they had to find the guy. And then they found him and it was Richard Gere, whom I knew through the Grease family. Because when I, my first day in show business professionally, I was in the first national company of Grease and I walked into that first rehearsal. And it was Jeff Conaway playing Danny Zuko, Jerry Zax playing Kaneki, Michael Lembeck playing Sonny, Judy Kay playing Brizzo, Johnny Travolta playing Doody, and Richard Gere

• 6:27Speaker 00

  rehearsing for the London company to play Danny Zuko. Anyway, so Richard and I crossed paths again because we ended up getting cast in Blood Brothers. So I came out to Los Angeles and then I ended up staying because I had a contract with CBS at the time. And they offered me money every month to stay away from the other networks while they found something for me.

• 6:45Alec Baldwin?

  Sure, holding money.

• 6:45Speaker 00

  Holding, holding deal. I had a holding deal for a few years. Now, all of a sudden, they're starting to audition for Taxi. And Joel Thurm, he really liked me. They wanted a 35-year-old Italian New Yorker because they wanted her to have like a 16, 17, 18-year-old daughter. And because Unmarried Woman and Goodbye Girl, those were all out then, so they liked the mother-daughter dynamic. But Joel said, "I'm telling you, this is the girl." I was 25. He said, "This is the girl because she can hold her own with somebody like a Judd Hirsch. She's one of the guys, but you'd believe her having art aspirations, and I'm telling you, this is the girl." So he kept bringing me back with all these older actresses. But in the meantime, my mom was dying in the hospital in Chicago.

• 7:27Speaker 00

  So I would literally fly back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. So what happened was, they really liked me. And at that point, Paperchase was picked up for a season. Oh, because Taxi didn't have to do a pilot. So Paperchase was picked up for a season. And they said, "Okay, she tested higher than even John Howzman. We have to give her a contract." And my agent said, "Well, there's this other show, Taxi, that, you know, so we have to see." So my agents were able to play one against the other. And I really wanted to do Taxi because the idea of doing a sitcom was more appealing to me. Because it's like a stage play, you know. So Taxi said, "Well, she's too young. We see this teenage girl with a daughter, blah, blah, blah, blah." And they said, "Look, you're gonna lose her to Paperchase if you don't do it."

• 8:10Speaker 00

  And so they said, "Okay, we'll do it. She's Elaine. We'll give her two little kids." So that's what they did.

• 8:16Alec Baldwin?

  So it was Howzman, Paperchase, and what was his name, Timothy something?

• 8:20Speaker 00

  Timothy Bottoms. No, he didn't do the TV show.

• 8:22Alec Baldwin?

  Tim Bottoms did the movie.

• 8:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, that was a good movie with Lindsey Wagner and everything else. John Howzman was a real character. At the wrap party for the pilot, he tried to French kiss me. I mean, he was like one of those guys.

• 8:33Alec Baldwin?

  Wow.

• 8:34Speaker 00

  Well, you can imagine.

• 8:35Alec Baldwin?

  He'd be canceled now.

• 8:36Speaker 00

  I know. Oh, my God. I've got, yeah. I mean, I never had like creepy, creepy things.

• 8:40Alec Baldwin?

  I'm sure you have a few stories of people who probably deserved to be canceled at some point in your life.

• 8:44Speaker 00

  Actually, I was very protective of myself. I've been the kind of girl that I think most, well, whatever. I don't want to say too much.

• 8:50Alec Baldwin?

  You handled it well.

• 8:51Speaker 00

  You know, I had brothers, so I knew men are pigs. So I was like always on the defense. I knew, I was paying attention.

• 8:58Alec Baldwin?

  Some of them are.

• 8:58Speaker 00

  Some of them are.

• 8:59Alec Baldwin?

  You know, it's funny you say that because in that casting holding deal, I went out to LA. I've told this story before, I think, but I'm there and Chris Guest's mother, Jean Guest.

• 9:07Speaker 00

  Oh, Jean Guest. Oh, she's the one who gave me the deal.

• 9:09Alec Baldwin?

  Jean Guest, who I worshipped, loved her. Jean Guest was in charge of casting.

• 9:11Speaker 00

  Incredible.

• 9:12Alec Baldwin?

  Loveliest woman in show. She was one of the loveliest women in show business. And if she really believed in you, she like hung in there with you.

• 9:17Speaker 00

  Forget it, yeah.

• 9:18Alec Baldwin?

  And she brings me into a meeting and they put me on a holding deal because I did a pilot for them that fizzled. And they said, we're going to sign to this holding deal because we really believe in you. We're going to just keep throwing it against the wall until something sticks. And then he says, we want you to be the next Bill Bixby.

• 9:36Alec Baldwin?

  I was like, wow, that sounds great.

• 9:38Speaker 00

  Did you ever honor the deal? Did you ever have to or did you go get something else in the meantime?

• 9:42Alec Baldwin?

  I went to do a pilot and then I did a TV movie for them. I did a couple of things for them. This is obviously a billion years ago in the eighties, in the early eighties.

• 9:50Speaker 00

  The one with Stephanie Zimbalist? You were so good in that.

• 9:53Alec Baldwin?

  That was NBC. Okay.

• 9:54Speaker 00

  Oh, that was NBC.

• 9:55Alec Baldwin?

  My God, yeah.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  I could tell you the day we met and how we met.

• 9:58Alec Baldwin?

  What was the day?

• 9:59Speaker 00

  It was May, May the 22nd of 1985. It was a Wednesday. And this is how we met. I knew Tuck, your roommate. So Tuck and I went to dinner one time in Venice, right where you guys used to live.

• 10:11Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, where we lived, yeah.

• 10:12Speaker 00

  So I went over to your house and now we are both, I'm in New York doing the junket for Perfect and I'm on a bunch of shows and I'm on Live at Five with Sue Simmons, remember?

• 10:23Alec Baldwin?

  Sue Simmons.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. And you're, and so you and I were both in the room, but I didn't see you because I didn't nearly know you. And all of a sudden, you, I could feel you over my, this person over my left shoulder. And then all of a sudden Sue Simmons says, and coming up next, Alec Baldwin and later Mary Lou Henner. And it was like, we looked at each other and I was, oh, my gosh. It was like, oh, my gosh. And you and I actually had lunch the day of the big perfect opening. And you were 100 days sober that day and you showed me your coin.

• 10:53Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah. I have 36 years now. In February, I'll have 37 years. Isn't that unbelievable?

• 10:57Speaker 00

  It's incredible.

• 10:58Alec Baldwin?

  And even last night, I wanted to have a drink.

• 11:02Alec Baldwin?

  Last night, I thought, let me just have a gigantic glass.

• 11:05Speaker 00

  Of what? What would you drink?

• 11:06Alec Baldwin?

  Huge slurpy glass of red wine.

• 11:08Speaker 00

  Oh, red wine.

• 11:08Alec Baldwin?

  To help me go to, because I have horrible insomnia. I've always had horrible insomnia.

• 11:11Speaker 00

  Me too, me too.

• 11:12Alec Baldwin?

  And now with these kids, it's horrible.

• 11:13Speaker 00

  You know, I wrote a book called, I Refuse to Raise a Brat, and I wrote it with a brilliant psychologist, because I had these two kids. And I listened, every time I listened to her, it didn't, the kids, it was all good. And then when I didn't, it was like, okay, it's going to bite me on the ass at some point. But it's so funny, because having so many, I grew up with six, you grew up with six, we had the opposite of you guys, because it was two boys and four girls.

• 11:34Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 11:35Speaker 00

  Which is different.

• 11:36Alec Baldwin?

  And you were, you were third?

• 11:38Speaker 00

  Third, I was third. We came up with this concept, the concept of hamper, you know, because our houses were like a big hamper. So now, to this day, you could have a beautiful silk blouse, but it's got a stain, so you put a pin over it. That's hamper. You know, your glasses are broken, so you put a pin in it. That's hamper. You know, you do, you're...

• 11:54Alec Baldwin?

  Put a paper clip in it.

• 11:55Speaker 00

  Paper clip, your uniform had staples in it, or tape, or something, you know. It's like, I remember growing up, our phone cord was always like, so you had to like, hold it to talk on the phone.

• 12:06Alec Baldwin?

  If you read my memoir, it opens up with how my mother's bedroom was filled with plastic pails filled with laundry.

• 12:11Speaker 00

  Right.

• 12:12Alec Baldwin?

  There was laundry all over her bedroom. Her bedroom was a hamper. She had an ironing board at the foot of her bed, and an iron, and she had like these plastic hampers.

• 12:20Speaker 00

  Right.

• 12:21Alec Baldwin?

  These collapsible plastic things that were just, and they were like falling off of each other. I said, if you, if you came to my house, and you didn't know better, you thought this was an illegal laundry, someone was running out of their house.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  I'm so funny. My mother used to do her laundry on Tuesdays. There was 17 loads, you know, and she always had like 17 loads from all of us. Because when you think about it, a house full of kids like that, the beginning of the pandemic, I was home, my boys were here, my brother, his two children, my husband, we were here. I never did more cooking and cleaning and laundry and scrubbing grout in my life. Because I'm very, you know, I like to be very organized. But we had a rule that everybody...

• 12:55Alec Baldwin?

  My wife hates it. She's really angry with me.

• 12:57Speaker 00

  That you're so meticulous?

• 12:58Alec Baldwin?

  That I'm so crushed by an OCD at that level with my kids. Like, I'm always cleaning my house all day long, and my wife is like, "This is gonna kill you."

• 13:06Speaker 00

  Well, with kids, you gotta let it go. I mean, because I was always, and I was tested for OCD because that was part of the whole memory thing. They take blood, they do all kinds of tests for you. I don't have OCD. I call mine OCO, obsessive compulsive order. Because one kid in the family had to have it with six kids. And my bedroom was off the kitchen and had no door. So people could be on the phone or at the kitchen table and look in at a little girl sleeping. And I didn't care. I was, my oldest sister shared it with me, then my younger sister, then my brother. I mean, but always my room had no door. So I think that's how I ended up in show business.

• 13:40Alec Baldwin?

  I think the same. I'll tell my wife, I go, "Don't you wanna, let's go the opposite way here. Don't you wanna commend me for how neat I am? Would you rather have a husband who didn't wanna clean?" No, no, you have two biological children.

• 13:51Speaker 00

  Two biological children.

• 13:52Alec Baldwin?

  And they're how old now?

• 13:53Speaker 00

  They're 20, one is 27, the other one's 25 and a half.

• 13:57Alec Baldwin?

  And you had them during what phase of your career? What were you working on at the time that you decided to put the brakes on and have kids?

• 14:02Speaker 00

  Oh, well, I had, I had finished, um, okay, so I finished Evening Shade. I do tell this in my Club Act, because I always say, "I couldn't talk about the 80s and 90s without talking about Burt Reynolds, because I did five projects with him." And we never had a thing, which is probably why we were able to work together so often. But I always adored him. And he, one morning, you know, Rob, my second husband, and I were frisky. And then I go to work, and Burt is directing this episode where he has me do a stunt, where I am running, running, running, leaping over like a fence on a, in a, like a football stadium stand. And I land, and then, you know, run up to the team, and he says, "Do it again, do it again, do it again, do it again." So that night, I was sitting in a restaurant, and this is after three and a half years.

• 14:47Speaker 00

  I'm sitting in a restaurant, and I looked at Rob, and I went, "The eagle has landed. I just got pregnant." He said, "What?" And I said, "I'm telling you, contact was made." And sure enough, I was pregnant. So I always tell people, Burt Reynolds got me pregnant, even though he's not the father of my kids.

• 15:01Alec Baldwin?

  He's the spiritual father of your child.

• 15:03Speaker 00

  Spiritual father, yeah.

• 15:04Alec Baldwin?

  And when you worked with him, you did Cannonball Two with him?

• 15:07Speaker 00

  Well, I first did The Man Who Loved Women, and we had such a great chemistry the very first day. But he called me the night that we met, the very night. And he said, I want you to come down to the Dinner Theater in Jupiter, Florida. I want you to do, they're playing our song. He said, and I want you to do Cannonball Run Two, but I want a rewrite of the script. Do you know anybody, any of the guys from Taxi that might be willing to take a crack at it? I was like, OK. So originally, the Cannonball, I've never told this story before. The Cannonball Run Two script was about Dom and Burt sort of rescue this girl who's hiding out in a sanitarium. And she's an heiress, and then they rescue her, and then she and Burt end up in a thing.

• 15:49Speaker 00

  And so then I get Harvey Miller, who was a Taxi writer, the job, and he turns it into Two Women. And then Shirley MacLaine wanted to do it. So then, of course, they put Shirley with Burt, and I was with Dom, which was funny, but it's kind of funny. But I had like one of the best experiences. That movie was so stupid, but there were a couple of days where we had like 23 wagon trains in the desert outside of Tucson, Arizona, because it was 117 degrees. So we started, hair and makeup was at 2 o'clock in the morning, so we could be on the road before 4. And we pulled the plug at 1, but then everybody hung out at the pool at the Arizona Inn. So it was Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin, all these guys, and even Frank for a day.

• 16:32Speaker 00

  And to be with Shirley, whom I had always loved and always idled, to play her friend, and then to have her hanging out with the Rat Pack. It was like, you know, I was this little girl from Chicago who was watching these people at drive-ins and stuff. So it was like a lot of fun, yeah.

• 16:46Alec Baldwin?

  I met him, for those people who don't know this, and I wasn't a big devotee of this, but I went a few times, is that Norby Walters, the famous record executive. Norby Walters had his card game, his legendary card game at his apartment.

• 16:59Speaker 00

  Wednesday nights.

• 17:00Alec Baldwin?

  In West, Wednesday nights in West Hollywood. You go up to that apartment of his near Holloway.

• 17:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, Holloway, Los Angeles.

• 17:07Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, Los Angeles. On your way to Barney's Beanery and on your way to the Sunset Marquis. And you go to his house, and I went there, I went a handful of times, you know, Velveeta cheese, Hershey's Kisses in a bowl.

• 17:19Speaker 00

  Oh, my god.

• 17:20Alec Baldwin?

  And no alcohol. That was the rule, no alcohol. And you bought a hundred dollars worth of chips, and when you were finished, you were done. There was no serious gambling.

• 17:26Speaker 00

  Right.

• 17:27Alec Baldwin?

  And you went there, and I remember sitting there one time, and it was Harvey Korman and Tim.

• 17:31Speaker 00

  Oh, Tim Conway, yeah.

• 17:32Alec Baldwin?

  Conway. The two of them were there at one time. Kathy Lee Crosby would go every now and then.

• 17:36Speaker 00

  Rod Steiger was there a couple of times.

• 17:39Alec Baldwin?

  He was when you were there?

• 17:40Speaker 00

  He was there.

• 17:40Alec Baldwin?

  Bert was there when I went one time.

• 17:41Speaker 00

  Oh, he was?

• 17:42Alec Baldwin?

  He seemed like he was in the throes of his kind of medicated agony, but, but he, but then to the right of me one time was Don Adams. And Don Adams is in a China white jumpsuit, and everyone's waiting for the moment to arrive when someone's gonna just do this and do the Don Adams thing. So somebody puts down two pairs, you know, somebody puts down two pairs, and I put down, I say, I have three kings. I do my Don Adams. And everybody laughed, and he doesn't laugh.

• 18:12Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 18:13Alec Baldwin?

  And then finally, he smiles and nods to me like, okay, good for you. You, you, you saw the opportunity and you took it. But he was very serious and very, really, super antiseptic and very, he was there to play cards. He didn't want to talk about his career or chit chat. He was there to play cards with a bunch of schmucks. We weren't card players. We're eating Velveeta and Hershey's Kisses and drinking Hawaiian Punch or whatever the hell they had there. Yeah, bad popcorn.

• 18:36Speaker 00

  It's funny you're bringing up Norby Walters, because you probably don't remember this, but we were both supposed to be there on, it was, it was June the 7th of 2001. Okay, it was a Wednesday, June the 6th of 2001. Seriously. And you called up and said you weren't gonna make it. He put me on the phone with you, and I said, you said, how are you doing, blah, blah, blah, and I said something about, I'm, I just, I'm filing for divorce. And you said, oh, can I talk to you about divorce? I said, you said, let's meet tomorrow. So you and I went to Sushi Roku on Third Avenue. And you were telling me of all the pitfalls. This was 2001. It was, what happened was, we got together because I was avoiding the process servers.

• 19:19Speaker 00

  Because everybody said, oh, you have to let the woman serve first. Otherwise, it looks like she cheated, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we were having a friendly divorce. We went away that weekend and read about it ourselves in the paper. Rob and I, we're still friends. I know I do things weird. But we're still like really good friends. But anyway, we sat at Sushi Roku for like two and a half hours. And you told me everything that was going on and what I should watch out for. I know.

• 19:43Alec Baldwin?

  You remind me, your energy and my feelings for you remind me of when I was around Streisand once, and I said to her, you know, you and I would be the greatest divorced couple. We would be married, we'd be in love, maybe we'd have a kid. Of course, we'd get divorced. It just has to be that way at show offices. But I'd come over every Sunday, we'd have Chinese food, screen a movie.

• 20:02Speaker 00

  That sounds like my divorces.

• 20:04Alec Baldwin?

  Exactly. And I feel the same way about you. You and I would have made great ex-partners.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  Yes, yeah. We think very similarly. And that we have that big family kind of thing.

• 20:14Alec Baldwin?

  This is a trite word, and this is a trite idea, but not so trite now in the age of the pandemic and beyond. And that is positivity. And you have always been this like staggeringly positive, healthy. What's the secret?

• 20:29Speaker 00

  Well, a couple of things come to mind. I had a really great family. We're still super close. My parents both died tragically, both of them very young. And I think it bonded the family. I did a lot of therapy. I got my whole family involved in therapy. My therapist would put six speaker boxes up in her office in Princeton, New Jersey. And every other Sunday for 10 years, the siblings would do a group therapy. So we've worked out a lot of our stuff. That's number one. But I had an extraordinary childhood, which was totally unusual, with the dancing school in the backyard, a beauty shop in the kitchen, an uncle who taught art at the Catholic Grammar School and lived upstairs with his boyfriend, Charles, and a menagerie of animals. And I just had such an unusual way of growing up. And I always had this mission.

• 21:15Speaker 00

  To make something of myself and to share. I think it's a middle child in me, always wanted to like, if I have a good idea, I want to share it with everybody. I've never been very proprietary over anything. I just always want to share with people. I think it comes from being the middle, maybe. But I also think having my memory has helped because the memory makes you get over things very quickly because you start to see the waves. And also being an actress, you know, every bad experience was like, okay, I'm going to take note of this. What can I do better next time? How can I figure this out? You know, I say to people all the time, they go, how do you do it? And I, it's like this, I go, think of flaps up. And it's like you just close your ears to it. Flaps up. I say that to my kids all the time. You know, smile, nod and move on.

• 21:59Alec Baldwin?

  So you were married three times. You were married twice and you're married again now.

• 22:02Speaker 00

  Third and final.

• 22:03Alec Baldwin?

  Third and final. And so each of these men, to the extent you're willing to say, what did they represent for you? You seem to be such a thoughtful, deliberate, aware. You seem like somebody that all the lights are on. Your, your brain, your mind, your soul is like a house you pull up to. It's like some kind of a Richard Neutra, all glass structure and all the lights are on. You're always on, you know what I mean? And, and alert and aware. So when you married one and you married two and you married three, what were you marrying them for?

• 22:33Speaker 00

  Well, first of all, Freddie and I met at a screen test. And I didn't know that they had added a kiss. And I was the sixth girl screen testing opposite of him for a film called Hammett. And we just.

• 22:45Alec Baldwin?

  For people who don't know, this is Forrest.

• 22:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, Fred, I'm sorry, Frederick Forrest, the Academy Award nominated.

• 22:50Alec Baldwin?

  You can call him Freddie, yeah.

• 22:51Speaker 00

  And so he was so different from anybody I knew. He was a lot older than I was, but he was so different from anybody I ever knew. And I was so fascinated by him because his brain was so different. And he was just, I, I've just never seen anything like a totally instinctive, brilliant actor, brilliant actor, and would transform himself. Every part that he's played, he looks completely different. And he wanted to marry me a few months after we started dating and I said, no, let's live together. He said, no, marriage or nothing. I said, okay, well then, nothing. And then I went to my 10th year high school reunion in Chicago and he went to a wedding and he called me and we were both feeling very sentimental and we said, okay, let's

• 23:33Speaker 00

  get married. I said, okay. And then we ended up getting married three weeks later in New Orleans and that was it. And then coming home from the honeymoon, because the actors were on strike, I was going back to taxi and I thought, what have I just done? I married a total stranger to me. You know, it was like crazy. But he was so fascinating and so loving and so full of demons that if you're not somebody who is exposed to demons a lot, you think like, I'll fix it. I'm gonna take care of it.

• 24:01Alec Baldwin?

  How old were you at the time?

• 24:02Speaker 00

  Twenty-eight. I was twenty-eight.

• 24:03Alec Baldwin?

  And you were very young.

• 24:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:04Alec Baldwin?

  Everything you do in your twenties is a mulligan in my book, yeah.

• 24:07Speaker 00

  No, I have three theories of marriage. The first one is marriage is like making waffles. You throw the first one out, okay? The second one is marriage is finding that special certain someone, you just know you'd love to aggravate the rest of your life. Because marriage is like, eh eh eh, you know, all these little like diggy kind of things. And I said, but no, the real theory, Saint Exoubry wrote something and I added something to it. And that is, you'll have a happy marriage when you realize marriage isn't two people gazing longingly into each other's eyes, but rather looking out over the mountain in the same direction with their hands on each other's genitals. That's the part I added.

• 24:50Speaker 00

  That's the part I added, because you've got to have vision and heat.

• 24:53Alec Baldwin?

  Oh, that wasn't Saint Exoubry, no?

• 24:55Speaker 00

  No.

• 24:55Alec Baldwin?

  Okay.

• 24:56Speaker 00

  I wrote it.

• 24:56Alec Baldwin?

  Sorry.

• 24:57Speaker 00

  So you've got to have vision and heat. So my first marriage was all heat. My second marriage was all vision. And finally, I have vision and heat in my third marriage.

• 25:09Alec Baldwin?

  Actress Mary Lou Henner. If you like hearing about the lives of groundbreaking women in comedy, check out my interview with Carol Burnett. Her hit variety show ran for more than a decade in the late 60s and 70s. And at the height of her success, she had to tread carefully.

• 25:29Speaker 05

  In that era, the only one who really would speak up was Lucy. She was very strong. But it's not in my nature to

• 25:39Alec Baldwin?

  Take over.

• 25:39Speaker 05

  confront or anything. You know, if a sketch wasn't working or something, instead of like Gleason or Sid would say, look, guys, this stinks. Now, come on, you gotta fix it. But, you know, they would do that. I would say, I'd call the writers down into the rehearsal hall and I'd say, you know, guys, I'm not doing this too well. Do you think maybe you could help me out with a different line here or there? Because, you know, otherwise I would have been a bitch.

• 26:09Alec Baldwin?

  Hear more of my conversation with Carol Burnett in our archives at hereisthething.org. After the break, Mary Lou Henner talks about how a change she made in her approach to auditioning completely opened up her career.

• 26:32Speaker 06

  Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by breakout singer-songwriter Alex Warren.

• 26:52Speaker 07

  To this day, Ordinary would not have done anything and I would have not been able to put it out if Book Talk didn't back it up and if my wife and her friend didn't back it up.

• 27:00Speaker 06

  Amazing.

• 27:01Speaker 07

  Pretty crazy how like Just one thing.

• 27:04Speaker 06

  Right.

• 27:04Speaker 07

  I mean, I bet we could point to nine different things in our careers where it's just one thing, all of a sudden, if that one thing didn't happen, then I wouldn't be here.

• 27:11Speaker 06

  What you're talking about right now is what I've been talking about since the beginning of my career. There's these things outside of you that make everything happen. These other forces somehow came into contact with each other and helped propel you to this place.

• 27:29Speaker 07

  It's just insane.

• 27:30Speaker 06

  Experience before the moment. A Lincoln Original Series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 28:10Speaker 08

  Hi, I'm Jenna Ashkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 28:24Speaker 09

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 28:35Speaker 08

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 28:40Speaker 10

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 28:46Speaker 08

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 29:09Alec Baldwin?

  I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Mary Lou Henner is passionate about encouraging people to take charge of their happiness and well-being. She's written several bestselling books on living a healthy lifestyle, often sharing lessons that changed her own life.

• 29:27Speaker 00

  What happened was, I went with Jerry Katzman, who was the head of William Morris at the time. He said, "You have to write a book. I'm hooking you up with Judith Regan." So Judith and I met at lunch and we like hung out together all day and everything. I had a book deal. So I started working on my autobiography.

• 29:43Alec Baldwin?

  She's a character.

• 29:44Speaker 00

  She is a character. And when she started her own imprint, she said to me, "You have to write a health book because you're in such good shape, you're this, you've changed so much since, blah, blah, blah. Every time I have anything wrong with me and my kids, I call you and you always seem to know the answer." So I was doing the show Chicago on Broadway and one of the guys said, "Oh, why don't you give us like some lectures?" I was like, "Okay, so in between shows, I would do these seminars and I'd have a little, you know, like tape recorder and I'd be, you know, talking to them. And then I'd be putting on my eyelashes like "The evils of dairy products," you know, as I'm putting on my eyelashes to go do Roxy. And so then I worked with somebody who was like a real crafts person in terms of like books. And I was so revved up from all the Fosse.

• 30:26Speaker 00

  And my boys were very little, so I could like give them a bath, go to the theater, be revved up, go to an office and work on the book. And a few weeks after the show ended, the book came out and it went on the New York Times Bestseller list and I sold over a million copies of that first health book. But then got a contract to keep going and going and going. So then I've done 10.

• 30:46Alec Baldwin?

  What's your biggest health concern? You know, growing up in my lifetime, everybody was always saying, you know, "Don't smoke." And then when I went through my drug phase, people said, "You gotta get sober and stop taking all these drugs and drinking," which I, you know, had a very relatively brief but white-hot period of that for a couple of years in the 80s when I was very young. And then as I've gotten older, you know, the thing that shocks me, that is the utter poison in my life is sugar. Because I was prediabetic and now I'm full diabetic.

• 31:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:19Alec Baldwin?

  And I'm, which has been so crushing for me and demoralizing for me.

• 31:22Speaker 00

  Thank God we married.

• 31:23Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah. What's your health concerns now? Like what do you say to yourself? I never eat. I sometimes eat. Every now and then I cheat and I allow myself to eat. When you want to treat yourself to something that you know isn't the best possible thing for you. Is it something sweet?

• 31:37Speaker 00

  No, no, no. I'm a savory person. No, I would say probably sushi is like my own, my last, not so guilty pleasure. Yeah. But I haven't had dairy since August 15th, 1979. It was a Wednesday. I gave up dairy and I've never had dairy since. And it changed my life. So I'm always trying to get people off of dairy.

• 31:54Alec Baldwin?

  What was the impact?

• 31:55Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh.

• 31:56Alec Baldwin?

  Sinuses and congestion you hear about?

• 31:58Speaker 00

  Well, that's a lot. But, you know, sore throats and stomach aches all the time. When I lived in New York, I'd live near Zabar's and I would go pick up cheese ends. You know, at Zabar's where they'd cut the cheese a certain way. And then they have the little rind and stuff. And I'd buy these little cheese bags, cheese ends bags on my way to unemployment. And wondered, why am I not working when I'm fat, constipated and have pimples, you know? I mean, my whole stomach changed after I gave up dairy.

• 32:22Alec Baldwin?

  I used to be an ice cream addict. I was like Brando. And they say that Brando would sit with like a half a gallon of ice cream and watch TV. And he'd have like a big jug of ice cream and lay in his bed and just with a spoon and eat like a half a gallon of ice cream. That wasn't that bad.

• 32:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:34Alec Baldwin?

  But it was not that bad.

• 32:35Speaker 00

  Dairy is always the first thing I talk to people about. Always. That's been on my, that's my soapbox speech immediately with people. Especially, I can read people's faces and tell that they're like allergic to it or something like that, or they've had trouble. But the big killer right now, I think for everybody, is the whole stress management. People really, you know, I say three things. Learn to love the food that loves you and we know what doesn't love us. Learn to love the food that loves you. It's very obvious what does, dairy did not love me. Meat did not love me. Sugar does not love me, nor does it love you, obviously. So I say, learn to love the food that loves you. I say, motion is the lotion. Because we've got to move, you know? Your cat stretches, your dogs, you walk your dogs, your hamster's got a wheel. With this beautiful human animal, you've got to walk, you've got to do, you've got to move.

• 33:20Speaker 00

  Move, move. Motion is the lotion. And then I also say, you better fall in love with your stress or it's going to kill you. Because if I, when I go all over the country.

• 33:31Speaker 00

  You better.

• 33:31Alec Baldwin?

  I can't fall in love with my stress.

• 33:33Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, I mean, it's, but no, you have, I always say, because I give speeches all over the country, I'm always like asked to give, you know, could go to different things, seminars and stuff, and I always say, if every one of you in this audience wrote down your problems on a piece of paper, and I collected them, and I started reading them out, and you had to pick some problems that are on a list, you'd all take back your own, because you know the beast, you know how to handle it, you just might not be doing it.

• 34:00Alec Baldwin?

  Well, I always tell people, whenever I'm, especially when I'm speaking to people in this profession, number one, find out how much you love acting itself, because you're gonna get to do so little of it.

• 34:09Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 34:10Alec Baldwin?

  The life of the actor is all this other bullshit, you know, the rest of the year, and you're in front of a camera, what, forty-five minutes a day, an hour a day, the rest is sitting in your room, you do the show, it's two hours at night, if you're inclined to do theater, and I said, you need to find out how much you love it, and number two, if you're in, get into it, don't do what I did, which is to be like, fuck LA, and fuck you, and I think you're all full of shit, and, you know, this whole thing is just, this business is full of shit, be a part of it, join the academy, go to the screening, be a part of the business, and don't be cynical about it, and if not, then get out.

• 34:42Speaker 00

  Get out, I always say, if something-

• 34:44Alec Baldwin?

  Do it or don't do it.

• 34:45Speaker 00

  If something can talk you out of it, let it, because otherwise, you have to really, really want to do it, and also, I always say to people, look, fall in love with auditioning, because it might be the only ten minutes you have that job, so if you do it, you know what I mean, then, then, then it's like your job for ten minutes, and maybe-

• 35:03Alec Baldwin?

  I do remember all these people from the TV star shelf that we always talk about, Gregory Harrison, who did an interview once that changed my life, Gregory Harrison.

• 35:11Speaker 00

  He and I, we did the Jack Nicholson, Anne Margaret parts in, in Carnal Knowledge at the Pasadena Playhouse, we played those parts, so we saw each other naked in a shower, yeah.

• 35:23Alec Baldwin?

  Oh, my God, I'm sure you both looked pretty good.

• 35:25Speaker 00

  We did, we did, we still do. I see. I see Gregory on the side.

• 35:31Alec Baldwin?

  He did an interview once years ago, it was a million years ago, like TV Guide or some stupid thing. And he did an interview where he said, basically, I'm paraphrasing, he was like, you know, his whole energy changed, his whole career changed when he walked into auditions and his attitude was like, how can I help you? Like, you called me here.

• 35:46Speaker 00

  Right.

• 35:46Alec Baldwin?

  I didn't put a gun to your head and make you come audition me for this part. I have something you want.

• 35:51Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 35:52Alec Baldwin?

  You're looking for something and whether, and then, once he stopped giving the energy of like, oh, and being fawning and obsequious with them, everything changed.

• 35:59Speaker 00

  It's so funny you're saying this because I tell a story in my show, again, about how I auditioned for 40 commercials before I got one. And the reason I finally got one, and then I booked 72 in two and a half years. It was like crazy, I was doing commercials constantly. But it took me 40 auditions to get my first one because on the 39th, a friend of mine called me in, it was for Mr. Coffee, I still remember the jingle and I had to sing it. I was so wrong for the part, but he called me in. And he called me that night and he said, he knew I was having trouble with auditions. And he said, are you this way, the way you were today with me in your auditions? And I went, oh, my gosh, no, are you kidding? I was just so myself because you were there. He said, we almost changed the whole concept of the commercial because you were so original.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  He said, that's what you have to do every time you go into an audition. Stop giving people what you think they want. Just go in there and it's gonna hit, it's gonna hit. And he was right. And then I booked one right after the other. And I became this body parts model. And it was just like crazy that I did a lot of different parts of the body. I was, uh...

• 37:00Alec Baldwin?

  Which parts of the body did you do, Mary? The which parts?

• 37:02Speaker 00

  This is in my show. I said, I did four Playtex bra commercials, you know, it's got sash here and seamless support, two Playtex panties commercials.

• 37:11Alec Baldwin?

  And you were wearing a bra, you were a bra model.

• 37:13Speaker 00

  I was a bra model. But sometimes I had like a shirt on, you know, and you could see certain things, but it was just like, I'm what you call well developed. Exactly. And then I did two Playtex panties commercials. Or all you saw was my butt and my crotch.

• 37:25Alec Baldwin?

  And they were separate. These were separate commercials.

• 37:26Speaker 00

  Separate.

• 37:27Alec Baldwin?

  The bra and the panties were separate. These were separate shoots.

• 37:31Speaker 00

  Separate shoots.

• 37:32Alec Baldwin?

  Because if I was the producer, that's what I would have said. I said, now, we need to shoot these separately.

• 37:35Speaker 00

  Yes, totally.

• 37:35Alec Baldwin?

  And we need to shoot them over five days.

• 37:37Speaker 00

  So I did four and I did two. Yes. And then I said, but all you see is my butt and my crotch, walking my dog, walking around Lincoln Center, getting on a bus. The Polarites, when you walk into the audition for a panties commercial, it's amazing because you see all these Polarites of just people's crotches and butts and side views and everything else.

• 37:55Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 37:55Speaker 00

  And then I was even the Fruit of the Loom pantyhose girl inside of a giant apple with my legs sticking out. And so I did like different parts. But then I also did, like, I did an Exxon Bicentennial Minute where I played Annie Sullivan. I got a Clio nomination for that. And I did everything from Reese's Peanut Butter to Glean Toothpaste, so many different types. I was the Ponderosa Steakhouse Girl, the Samsonite Luggage Girl. So I just kept doing it and doing it and doing it. Because every time, and I learned this the hard, I mean, I learned the hard way, you walk in and you bring something to it, like Gregory says, how can I help you? Let me show you something like I would do with it.

• 38:30Alec Baldwin?

  But what did you study at your Chicago? You studied theater?

• 38:33Speaker 00

  No, they had a theater department, but they had no theater degree. So even though I was very popular.

• 38:38Alec Baldwin?

  What kind of courses did you take?

• 38:39Speaker 00

  So I took, no, I was a political science major. And so, and the first two years is mostly the core curriculum.

• 38:44Alec Baldwin?

  So where did you learn to sing and dance?

• 38:46Speaker 00

  Well, I grew up in a dancing studio, and I always sang because my two older sisters were in choir and stuff like that. So I'd go to their practices and stuff. And it was just something I always wanted, you know, I was on stage at two and a half at a father-daughter breakfast.

• 38:58Alec Baldwin?

  So was the leave of Chicago like a pinnacle for you? Was that a big dream come true in Chicago?

• 39:01Speaker 00

  That was a big dream. They called me on March the 14th of 1997.

• 39:05Alec Baldwin?

  Was it Walter?

• 39:06Speaker 00

  Walter, whom I knew from the Grease family. And they called me and they said, Annie Rankin is leaving Chicago and she thinks she'd be a good replacement. What kind of dance shape are you in? And I said, oh, I haven't had my legs up over my head except for childbirth or a good weekend for about five years. So I better get my ass back into class. So I went to class for 10 days and then I went to audition. And then he said, go home, work on the Fosse. And I did. And I went back and there were like 27. Potential actors in the room and they kept eliminating, eliminating until they told me I had the job. So I did 408 performances.

• 39:44Alec Baldwin?

  On Broadway?

• 39:45Speaker 00

  Broadway, but I also did Vegas because they asked me to come to Vegas. And I was like, no, I don't want to go to Vegas. And then my agent said, well, let's have some fun with your quote. And then he called me back. He said, they made you an offer you can't refuse. You're going to Vegas. It was like, okay. So I went to Vegas. But my favorite Vegas story, because people always said, what's the difference between Broadway and Vegas? Although it's not this anymore. I'd say, oh, yeah, cup holders. Because back then you could, this was 99 and 2000, you couldn't, you could drink in Vegas, but you couldn't do it on Broadway. So I'd been there two weeks and they said, we love you here. I said, really? You've seen the show? And I was like all excited. And he said, no, I haven't seen the show yet. But your crowd drinks a lot more Belvedere than most people.

• 40:28Alec Baldwin?

  We like you.

• 40:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:32Alec Baldwin?

  I'll never forget, someone was in, connected to like one of these big fizzy musicals. And they were doing like some kind of a cast replacement and they wanted all this stunt casting with somebody famous. And this actress walks in to audition for the lead role. She's this famous actress. And she comes in and she does her audition. And she leaves and everyone's just kind of standing there slack-jawed after she leaves. And the director turns everyone and goes, she can't sing, she can't dance, she can't act. She's a star, damn it. You know, like, we're gonna hire her, even though she has, she gets a D or an F in all three categories, based on what they saw there in that room that day.

• 41:07Speaker 00

  It's so funny, because there's all these stories that, you know, that sort of shape your life, like that one, you know, and you just write, you hear it and you understand it and you, you know it right away. When I was first on Taxi, somebody at ABC came and he goes, I've got a movie for you, Mary Lou. I said, really? What is it? And he said, sizzle. I said, what's it about? He said, who cares? Sizzle. So Johnny and I always used to say, we would like joke, like, people were like, you know, who cares? Sizzle. You know, it's just that thing that you do.

• 41:37Alec Baldwin?

  New York Times bestselling author, Mary Lou Henner. If you're enjoying this conversation, be sure to subscribe to Here's the Thing on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we return, Mary Lou Henner talks about finding lasting love the third time around.

• 42:09Speaker 06

  Hey, it's Nile Rodgers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by Miguel.

• 42:27Speaker 11

  Man, I'm a Black and Mexican kid from San Pedro, and I grew up in Inglewood as well. I never liked to be boxed in. Both of my parents colored outside of the line. I mean, even them being together at the time in L.A. was just not typical. And so I think that has always been a part of my DNA. There's a defiant something in me that feels like what we get to do with what we're given that's greater than us is to maybe connect people to ideas that they wouldn't naturally, you know, connect to. That's really me. I'm just kind of like defiant with love, though.

• 43:03Speaker 06

  Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 43:12Speaker 02

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 43:42Speaker 08

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 43:57Speaker 09

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 44:08Speaker 08

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 44:13Speaker 10

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 44:19Speaker 08

  So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 44:42Alec Baldwin?

  I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing. Mary Lou Henner recently developed and performed a one-woman autobiographical show. It's filled with songs and stories from her remarkable life.

• 44:55Speaker 00

  I sing a song about my sons and show a video of like pictures of them in little videos. Oh, it kills me every time. If I watch it, I'll cry just thinking about it. I cry. And it's a mashup between Nick of Time because, you know, it's funny, Nicky took me three and a half years to get pregnant. Joey, like immediately, I didn't even get my period. It was like bam, I'm pregnant again. So, and he, and so I do Nick of Time and Happiness is Just a Thing Called Joe, and that's it. And also, I sing a song about Freddie, my first husband. I do desperado because that's kind of who he was in my life. And that song always gets to me, too. So it's like telling some of those type stories. And talking about Bert was very emotional, too, a couple of times. So it depends, you know, it depends on the crowd.

• 45:36Alec Baldwin?

  When you come and you're going to camp, is your husband going to come with you?

• 45:39Speaker 00

  He comes, yeah.

• 45:39Alec Baldwin?

  Does he travel with you?

• 45:40Speaker 00

  He's great. Oh, that's, he's another whole story. You know, we wrote a book. We got together. He was my roommate's boyfriend. I didn't dare twinkle in his direction. But then when he called me out of nowhere, six months after my divorce from Rob was final, we got together within a week, we're saying, I love you. We're going to spend the rest of our lives together. And two months later, he's diagnosed with two cancers, bladder cancer and lung cancer. And we ended up doing a whole protocol for him that didn't involve chemo or radiation. They wanted to remove his bladder, his prostate, run a hose up his penis, and we could pump it up six times if we wanted to have sex. They were, they were pushing all of this. I was like, no. And we always say that-

• 46:16Alec Baldwin?

  Is he done with the penis pump, by the way? Is he finished with that?

• 46:18Speaker 00

  Oh, well, we do it for fun. No, he doesn't need the pump at all. No, my husband, please. No, no, not at all.

• 46:24Alec Baldwin?

  What a hearty endorsement that is.

• 46:26Speaker 00

  He saved all of his organs. He saved his organs. And he's been in remission. It'll be 18 years, November the 24th. It's pretty remarkable. And he didn't- He did immunotherapy, but he went completely vegan and he went, got rid of, I mean, he did everything. He shot himself with Ischidor, which is extract of mistletoe. He got rid of all of the mercury fillings in his mouth, chelation therapy, high colonic lymphatic massages, infrared saunas, and he stays on this protocol and he has been in remission almost 18 years. It's pretty remarkable, you know, pretty cool.

• 46:56Alec Baldwin?

  When I went to the doctor and he was gonna do the anterior hip replacement process, and he says to me, now I want to just review with you that you know that, that when you do the anterior procedure, when you go in the front as opposed to the side, it's the quickest to heal, but there are some complications. There's like 0.02% that we're gonna nick some nerves in there, or there's some arterial damage. I said, what nerve? And he took his finger and he went like this.

• 47:17Speaker 00

  Whoa, no!

• 47:19Alec Baldwin?

  And I turned to him and I said, oh, you can just tear that out, just rip that nerve right out. I'm done. You can just yank that, get a pair of pliers and just snap it right the hell out of there.

• 47:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, but you're not done with sex, come on. You and, we have an expression in my family, PF, okay? We have this expression. My brothers and I made it up. And it's like measures the sexual corrosion of things, like, oh man, there was so much PF at that party, or, man, I saw that movie. No PF between the two of them. And PF stands for pussy factor or penis factor, right? Cause things have PF, you know? And I don't like BDE for big dick energy, cause that is sexist and sizeist. Do you know what I mean? But you and Hilary obviously have tons of PF, obviously, six kids, but, but you, you still wanna have, you're still gonna have PF even if that thing is cut.

• 48:00Alec Baldwin?

  No, no, no, I don't want, yeah, I don't want to retire from that, but I don't understand. But six kids, it's really been, it's been like a tsunami. It's overwhelming.

• 48:06Speaker 00

  Well, six and eight years is, yeah.

• 48:07Alec Baldwin?

  Six kids in seven years.

• 48:08Speaker 00

  In seven years, in seven years. Oh, that's right, seven years. You know, I don't know if you remember this day, but we were all, all the kids, cause Ireland is close to my Joey's age. He's born November 12th, 1995. So she's like the month before, isn't

• 48:22Alec Baldwin?

  she? She's October 23rd, 95.

• 48:23Speaker 00

  Right. So we were all at a meet, cause Joey was like the real athlete in the family, but Joey was at this meet, and Caitlyn Jenner was there, and, and her kids, and, you know, Ireland and my Joey, and they were all doing their sports thing. And you walked up to my son Nick, who was about 13 at the time, 14 at the time, and you said, and what are you going to be besides a Ralph Lauren model? Because he's very cute.

• 48:47Alec Baldwin?

  What is he doing now?

• 48:48Speaker 00

  He's a director. He's a director. He's, he went to Columbia, and he directs all these videos, and he directed this short that has now been bought by Will Ferrell's company, and he's turned it into a two hour movie, and he might be directing it, we'll see. But it looks good. Can I just say what my son Joey's doing too? Because he's

• 49:05Alec Baldwin?

  Yes, yes, of course.

• 49:06Speaker 00

  Because I said about Nick. So Joey lives in Brooklyn. He does his improv troupe that they do whatever. But he's an international bridge player. He's one of the top bridge players in the world under 25. And he became a life master at 24. And he has all these women that he plays bridge with. And they pay a lot of money to play with him because he's so cute. And he's writing a script called Bridge Gigolo. Because

• 49:29Speaker 00

  I have a comedy writer and I have a director.

• 49:32Alec Baldwin?

  I love it.

• 49:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:34Alec Baldwin?

  You should tell him he should read Jonathan Ames's book, The Extra Man, that was made into a film with Kevin Kline and Paul Dano. And that's your son, the Paul Dano character.

• 49:45Speaker 00

  Oh, he is a character.

• 49:46Alec Baldwin?

  Because it's about a boy that meets like a guy who's like a walker. He's like a male prostitute.

• 49:51Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 49:52Alec Baldwin?

  And he doesn't necessarily sleep with the women. But he like takes all of these old biddies to like Palm Beach cotillons and all this shit.

• 49:57Speaker 00

  Well, I hope they The women listening are thinking that my son is talking about them as old biddies. Because, you know, someone

• 50:03Alec Baldwin?

  No, no, no, no, not his bridge partners. Not his bridge partners.

• 50:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 50:07Alec Baldwin?

  Anyway, my love to you and I look forward to seeing you in New York.

• 50:10Speaker 00

  Okay, give my love to Hilaria and all your kids.

• 50:12Alec Baldwin?

  I will, I will.

• 50:13Speaker 00

  And your little one, sometimes it's called Mary Lou. I know, so.

• 50:16Alec Baldwin?

  I can't believe you said that. I forgot that.

• 50:18Speaker 00

  I know.

• 50:19Alec Baldwin?

  We literally, my wife calls her Mary Lou.

• 50:21Speaker 00

  I know she does.

• 50:22Alec Baldwin?

  Maria Luthia, but my wife calls her Mary Lou. My wife calls my daughter Mary Lou. It's eerie.

• 50:27Speaker 00

  It's on the back of her little high chair.

• 50:29Alec Baldwin?

  Of her chair, of her high chair.

• 50:30Speaker 00

  I know, see, I pay attention. My name is Mary Lucy Denise Cecilia Henner Forrest Lieberman Brown.

• 50:38Alec Baldwin?

  Good luck.

• 50:38Speaker 00

  Vision and heat.

• 50:39Alec Baldwin?

  Good luck on that chair.

• 50:40Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 50:40Alec Baldwin?

  My love to you, sweetie. We'll talk to you down the road, okay?

• 51:28Speaker 12

  She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolaire, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

• 51:41Speaker 13

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• 52:26Speaker 13

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• 52:28Speaker 14

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• 53:09Speaker 15

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• 53:37Speaker 06

  Hey, I'm Niall Rogers. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, meeting some of today's coolest and most fascinating artists. We'll explore the stories before the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the moment where it all began. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 54:08Speaker 00

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