Melissa Errico: From Sondheim to Legrand and the Great American Songbook

Melissa Errico is a Tony-nominated actress, singer, recording artist, and writer. She is known for her iconic Broadway musical roles such as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady and the title role in One Touch of Venus. She is also recognized from her roles on TV series such as Billions, The Jim Gaffigan Show, Blue Bloods, The Good Wife, Law & Order, A Gifted Man, Ed, and Miss Match opposite Alicia Silverstone. In addition to her work on stage and screen, Errico is highly regarded for her recordings of musical theater classics, including albums of songs by Stephen Sondheim and Michel Legrand. Her 2018 album “Sondheim Sublime” was described by the Wall Street Journal as “the best all-Sondheim album ever recorded”. In a review for her 2024 album “Sondheim in the City”, the New York Times described Errio as “one of Sondheim's deepest-hearted yet lightest-touch interpreters.” Errico’s interpretation of Legrand’s music is equally highly praised, so much so that she was asked to write his eulogy for the Times and was the only American singer invited to perform at Legrand’s memorial at Le Grand Rex in Paris. In recent years, Errico has become a contributing writer to The New York Times and served on the National Endowment for the Arts. 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.

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• 1:38Alec Baldwin?

  This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio. My guest today is a Tony-nominated actress, singer, recording artist, and writer. Melissa Erichko has graced the Broadway stage in iconic roles like Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady and the title role in One Touch of Venus. She is also one of the most celebrated interpreters of the work of composers Stephen Sondheim and Michelle LeGrande.

• 2:09Alec Baldwin?

  Her 2018 album, Sondheim Sublime, was described by The Wall Street Journal as the best all Sondheim album ever recorded. In addition to Sondheim, Eriksen's interpretation of Michelle LeGrand's music was so profound that she was asked by The New York Times to write his eulogy, and was the only American singer invited to perform at his memorial in Paris. In addition to her career onstage and in the recording studio, Eriksen is a recent contributing editor to The New York Times, and was the only American singer invited to perform at his memorial in Paris. As a native New Yorker and performer with a long career on the Broadway stage,

• 2:54Alec Baldwin?

  I was curious if Melissa Eriksen was a frequent theatergoer herself.

• 2:59Speaker 06

  Well, I pursued tickets today to Ragtime. I don't go to the theater obsessively. I don't, not in recent years. I don't exactly have a good reason. If it's a Sondheim musical, I never miss it. Like, ever. Nothing. Even a gesture.

• 3:15Alec Baldwin?

  We're gonna get to it.

• 3:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, I never miss a thing. I'm gonna, I'm gonna check out Ragtime. It's merely because I'm a parent, I think. But if it's a have-to, you know, at the Irish Rep, you know, or if Bill Irwin is in it, certain things, I'm gonna check it out. But so, no, not obsessively. A lot of my friends are Tony voters. We're getting to that age where everybody I know is voting, so.

• 3:34Alec Baldwin?

  You obviously started, and you've made a name for yourself doing, you know, the standards. The big ships have rolled into town.

• 3:41Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 3:41Alec Baldwin?

  And when you became famous, and as my recollection is, you became famous when you did My Fair Lady with Chamberlain. That's when you really, really made your name in New York as one of the princesses of the musical theater.

• 3:53Speaker 06

  I did Les Mis before that. I did actually Anna Karenina with the creator of Circle in the Square with Ted Man. And I did make a bit of a stir in that for some reason. Maybe because it was such a misguided show, and I sort of stood out as something that was positive. I remember John Simon saying he wished that the entire cast had gotten hit by the train, and other memorable lines. Way late in my career, he asked me out to lunch, and he started to love my work. That is a little novella in itself. My relationship too. Well, there's always a novella, right? But I could just track that relationship. It's a beautiful, crazy shape. But he came to love me, but boy, did he make life complicated in the early days.

• 4:29Alec Baldwin?

  Who?

• 4:30Speaker 06

  John Simon.

• 4:31Alec Baldwin?

  Simon? Oh, Simon, the reviewer, the critic.

• 4:34Speaker 06

  Oh, sorry, I'm assuming things.

• 4:35Alec Baldwin?

  When you say that about Simon, well, we'll get into critics for a second. And that is, not even critics, I'll never forget this guy who I really adore. He wrote an article about me. He wrote about an article about me in The New Yorker, and he had the greatest line. He said, Alec Baldwin, who resembles an NFL linebacker in his broadcast years.

• 4:56Speaker 06

  That's so good. That's so bad, it's good.

• 4:59Alec Baldwin?

  And I was like, wow, that's spot on.

• 5:00Speaker 06

  I remember the days where I used to, you know, well, first of all, do you remember the days where The New York Times got printed and everybody would run, get it, bring it to the opening night party at Tavern on the Green?

• 5:09Alec Baldwin?

  Do I?

• 5:09Speaker 06

  Right? Oh, my God, do you?

• 5:10Alec Baldwin?

  Do I?

• 5:11Speaker 06

  So I remember those days where they were hot off the press. They would go to 44th Street, and they would run to the party. And you'd be in this unbelievable dress from Bendels, which no longer exists.

• 5:19Alec Baldwin?

  They'd go to the Times building and get the paper.

• 5:20Speaker 06

  They'd go to the Times building, grab the paper, bring it to the party, and you'd just done this $12 million musical. This happened so many times, luckily, and well, unluckily. But in My Fair Lady, I was in a green dress. Tavern on the Green was completely packed. I bought it at Bendels. Fran Weisler came up to me and said, you're going to be a star, like, really quietly. And I guess it said, the beguiling newcomer, like, and then whatever the rest. But they race with their eyes to the, you know, the first assessment, which is, it's a disaster, or it's just, you know, the gut punch is the worst.

• 5:50Alec Baldwin?

  Unfortunately.

• 5:52Speaker 06

  Unfortunately, this show just opened.

• 5:53Alec Baldwin?

  When the show was done in 1943, this and this, unfortunately.

• 5:57Speaker 06

  Exactly. They look for that right away in the first paragraph, and then they just run up to you at the party. So that was a good, a good party. But, yeah, I do remember those days. But there, I also remember the days where the magazines would come out later. So you'd get The New York Times, Stephen Holden, if you were cabaret. Or Sunday. Remember how we used to do the second review on Sunday? You'd get Frank Rich, then you'd get Stephen Holden's of possibly-

• 6:17Alec Baldwin?

  Piling on.

• 6:18Speaker 06

  Piling on. You're telling you a double whammy. You know, Thursday to Sunday, you'd just be dying. Then the magazines, and that's where John Simon was, the magazines. So you'd walk by-

• 6:26Alec Baldwin?

  New York Magazine.

• 6:27Speaker 06

  New York Magazine. And then The Variety. You look for Jeremy Gerard, things like that.

• 6:30Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 6:31Speaker 06

  You know, and I'm definitely not somebody who is like studies reviews. But I was young enough to just want to get the gist. So I would look quickly for one of those unfortunate les or, you know, ouch kind of words. And I saw dishpan face, Eriko. Dishpan face. That was, I think is-

• 6:48Alec Baldwin?

  That's what I think of, what I think of you.

• 6:49Speaker 06

  But later, Tony Walton said, "My face is like a moon. So maybe I have a little flat face. It's good for theater."

• 6:57Alec Baldwin?

  No, don't, don't.

• 6:58Speaker 06

  I've been thinking about this.

• 7:01Alec Baldwin?

  I would employ none of those words to describe your face.

• 7:03Speaker 06

  But as I said, later in my career, he went, got more and more and more complimentary, which I don't remember any of the phraseology. I only remember the bad things, but-

• 7:12Alec Baldwin?

  I did Streetcar, and I go to the party, and I'm going home, and I don't want to read the paper. I just wasn't in the mood if it was, I'm assuming I'm going to get some kicking the balls there or whatever. And I go home and I pick up the paper on the corner. And I get the paper and I'm reading it. I'm like, holy shit. I mean, he was really very kind to me. And my ex-wife turns to me, not the reason she's my ex-wife, but contributing. She turns to me, she goes, "You don't believe any of that, do you?" I was like, "Well, okay, maybe I shouldn't believe any of that at all."

• 7:42Speaker 06

  It's like when my mom says, you know, like, "Well, finally." You know, so it's like, you've got great reviews. It goes, "Are we in a hit?" Well, finally, just sort of puts your entire past in some weird light, just always meant to be a compliment.

• 7:53Alec Baldwin?

  But I think the critics, I'll give you two examples. I think the critics in film and in the theater, here's what's missing, and that is that if you've got somebody who's as talented as you are, you're so talented. You're so talented. And you're so gorgeous and you get up there and you play these parts and you can sing. So if the show doesn't work, it's not your fault.

• 8:14Speaker 06

  No.

• 8:14Alec Baldwin?

  It's the director or the, and they don't want to do, they feel they have to dish out. And in the, and in film, what they do is they pile up on the person who's not, doesn't have that much power. So if the, so if the star of the movie prints money for the studio, they get a little whisper who goes, don't you touch him.

• 8:30Speaker 06

  Don't you dare go near that.

• 8:31Alec Baldwin?

  Don't you dare go near her or him.

• 8:32Speaker 06

  Business of it. Yeah. I don't have a lot of business, you know, like tentacles, like people like pushing away the complexities of these things.

• 8:39Alec Baldwin?

  Protecting you.

• 8:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, I don't have that. So my life has actually been quite natural. I sort of feel like I'm actually in the jungle and experiencing the actual jungle. There's no cages, there's no monitors, which has made it interesting and very lively. To answer your question, by the way, I do go to the theater, like I'll see Audra or I'll go and if I'm in London, I'll go see John Lithgow and go backstage in both cases. So it is friends, but it was also like masters. Like when I feel like there's a master thing, just FYI, I would never miss it. When you called to do a play together last summer.

• 9:07Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 9:08Speaker 06

  What's the first thing I said?

• 9:09Alec Baldwin?

  Well, you said yes.

• 9:10Speaker 06

  Just said yes, right. I made it, I made it happen.

• 9:12Alec Baldwin?

  But I want to lose the opportunity to mention to people here on the show that it was really a big moment in my life in terms of work. And that is you see people, you obviously are, you know, like I said, one of the great, great leading ladies of the Broadway musical stage. And we did Gorgon and I, and I had never done anything with you dramatic.

• 9:31Speaker 06

  Correct.

• 9:31Alec Baldwin?

  And we're doing this thing. And again, I remember going, holy shit.

• 9:35Speaker 06

  I was wrecked by that.

• 9:36Alec Baldwin?

  Like you can do that. I thought you weren't that into that. And it was more musical, musical, saying, saying.

• 9:41Speaker 06

  No, I could even, I could have.

• 9:42Alec Baldwin?

  You were fantastic in that.

• 9:43Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 9:44Alec Baldwin?

  That was tough material.

• 9:45Speaker 06

  Yeah, I connect to things and I have a kind of a unguardedness I always had and, you know, it probably hasn't served me in other ways possibly, though I don't regret it, but I, I do feel like artistically, like I'm available to, that's why jazz is feeling so good and these cabarets and things. The parts that I had for, until I was 46, I was playing all the ingenues, I was playing all the lovely characters.

• 10:06Alec Baldwin?

  Sure.

• 10:07Speaker 06

  And just to sort of tap the tuning fork back to this critics thing, I was always called lovely or lovely appeared in a lot of reviews because I had to be. I was sort of in Brigadoon or I was in My Fair Lady. High society, so many of these shows are the charming, young, sweet character. And I went to Harold Guskyn at one point. Do you remember Harold?

• 10:24Alec Baldwin?

  Of course.

• 10:25Speaker 06

  Yes. Harold is an acting coach who wrote a book called How to Stop Acting. I told him about the reviews. He looked at a bunch of them. Always said lovely, something like lovely. He said, we're going to get the word lovely out of these reviews. I'm going to teach you how to shit on the stage, he said. And it was so gross. I was like, oh, oh, oh, you know, Glenn Close had just left and I like bumped into, you know,

• 10:44Alec Baldwin?

  What show?

• 10:45Speaker 06

  All kinds of people in the lobby.

• 10:48Alec Baldwin?

  What show?

• 10:48Speaker 06

  That particular show would have been Dracula, I think.

• 10:50Alec Baldwin?

  Okay. Who'd you do Dracula with?

• 10:52Speaker 06

  Tom Hewitt was Dracula. He was wonderful. That was a tricky sell for me. I was not sure that, you see, Christopher Hampton wrote it, who wrote Les Liaisons Dangereux, and I loved him and I knew him socially and part of that kind of

• 11:11Alec Baldwin?

  That time in your life.

• 11:12Speaker 06

  Royalty of the British theater.

• 11:14Alec Baldwin?

  That time in your life.

• 11:15Speaker 06

  I knew a lot of people, exactly. And Christopher is such a high vibration. And Frank Wildhorn was a composer and it was unclear where the balance was going to be. There's a bodice ripper kind of, you know, in obviously a Dracula musical, there's also another kind of inferred, passionate, strange, illuminating

• 11:36Alec Baldwin?

  Go ahead, say it.

• 11:37Speaker 06

  Lesbos world, whatever. There's everything. Women walking around in their

• 11:40Alec Baldwin?

  There's just sex coming out of every pore of your body.

• 11:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, you know, like there's just, there's all these Victorian dresses and I was saying to Kelly, maybe O'Hara, maybe we should be attracted to each other over the waiting for the monster. And she was like, she was looking at me like, no.

• 11:53Alec Baldwin?

  You and the monster together.

• 11:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, she just looked at me like, we can't fix this.

• 11:56Alec Baldwin?

  Three way with the monster.

• 11:57Speaker 06

  She was literally looking at me like, Melissa, you care so much. I was reading Bram Stoker in my dressing room.

• 12:03Alec Baldwin?

  Of course you were. You went to Yale, so you're reading Bram Stoker.

• 12:07Speaker 06

  I was having paranormal experiences in the theater. I feel like, this is going to get quirky. I feel like David Blasco full on was aligned with me. Because you know, he haunts the theater?

• 12:19Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 12:20Speaker 06

  Have you heard about that?

• 12:21Alec Baldwin?

  No.

• 12:21Speaker 06

  David Blasco is a lot, is a ghost. He's the most famous ghost in Broadway history. He had an apartment above the Blasco. And so I visited the apartment multiple times with somebody who was Dracula's understudy and had lots of extra time and he got the key. And so we would sneak up there, you know, on between shows.

• 12:39Alec Baldwin?

  You and the Dracula's understudy would see the big what's?

• 12:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, I can't remember his name. He's a big guy. He was a little bit like a linebacker. We'd actually look around for, for signs of the paranormal. He was kind of nerdy in his buff way. We had wonderful times up there.

• 12:54Alec Baldwin?

  Looking for the paranormal.

• 12:55Speaker 06

  It doesn't sound right.

• 12:56Alec Baldwin?

  I think I found the paranormal, dear. It's right here.

• 12:59Speaker 06

  It doesn't sound right.

• 13:00Alec Baldwin?

  Stick your hand in my pocket. It's here.

• 13:04Speaker 06

  This has gone wrong. No, anyhow, David Belasco, I'm sure I saw him. I turned around, looking at my dressing room. I saw a man in a black coat go into the mirror, right next to the dressing room. Not the star dressing room, if you probably.

• 13:18Alec Baldwin?

  He walked through the mirror.

• 13:19Speaker 06

  It's probably your dressing room is the bottom floor. I'm the second, I was the second dressing room. Have you played the Belasco?

• 13:24Alec Baldwin?

  No.

• 13:24Speaker 06

  Okay, so I'm up a flight and there's that really old mirror, beautiful. I saw him walk into the mirror. I saw him walk. I, I know it sounds like I'm making this up. I, I actually turned around. I saw a man walk into the mirror. Another experience I had was we were in previews and the show was not going particularly well. There's a woman in a blue dress who also haunts the theater. And when the previews were happening, they don't know why, but all the pipes broke and there was a flood. Everything was dumping down on millions of dollars of set. And the fire department came and literally I heard these like handsome Irish guys go, David Belasco strikes again, like while they're walking around. They know the place is haunted and weird things happen there. I feel that when I went back to get my coat one day in my L-shaped dressing room

• 14:08Speaker 06

  and I went around the corner, once I got around looking for the coat, it was too dark to see my coat, someone turned on my lamp.

• 14:15Alec Baldwin?

  Belasco strikes again.

• 14:16Speaker 06

  He turned on the lamp. Mm-hmm, I was freaked out, turned it off.

• 14:20Alec Baldwin?

  Christine, Christine.

• 14:22Speaker 06

  Maybe it's all the power of suggestion. I, I, like, I'm old enough now, maybe I'm just cuckoo.

• 14:27Alec Baldwin?

  No, but, but.

• 14:27Speaker 06

  Oh, you're singing the Phantom of the Opera.

• 14:31Speaker 06

  I passed on that role.

• 14:32Alec Baldwin?

  Why?

• 14:33Speaker 06

  To go back to Yale.

• 14:33Alec Baldwin?

  No, but no, wait a second.

• 14:34Speaker 06

  I was a Yale student.

• 14:35Alec Baldwin?

  I want to, I want to, we're going to get there, but let me just ask you this, which is that when you do something, because I'm sure you get offered a lot of things simultaneously, when you do something like Dracula, beyond, because many people don't understand this, a paycheck and I want to go to work. People say to me, why did you do that? I go, I looked at my calendar and I hadn't worked in two months and I was anxious to go to work. This is what I do.

• 14:55Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 14:55Alec Baldwin?

  And so I go and do this movie or this play or TV thing, whatever.

• 14:59Speaker 06

  Like, why did I do it at all?

• 15:00Alec Baldwin?

  Like, we'll pick one, we're gonna pick a couple. So pick Dracula. Why that? Why did you want to do that?

• 15:05Speaker 06

  Well, you know.

• 15:06Alec Baldwin?

  What was the draw?

• 15:06Speaker 06

  Well, I'm getting to my mid 30s at that point. And, you know, I had a ton of positivity around what I was doing in a sort of third revival of my career. And I started super young. I had just finished working with Sondheim and Michelle Legrand and had a Tony nomination. I had really awoken a kind of vision of a sort of intellect meets actress, singing. I actually, it was almost like straight acting, the way I think about things. Forgive me for saying, Barbra Streisand is a great inspiration to me because she, every half-sentence is smart in her prime. There's just no, she's the Gilgood or the Laurence Olivier of music singing. And I was starting to think like that. I was starting to animate music like it was a play.

• 15:50Speaker 06

  And the Legrand thing was so interesting and beautiful. I worked with James Lapine, he was the director. And Jeremy Sams wrote the words. It was beautiful. And obviously, Sondheim was Sunday in the Park with George. I did that. And it was like my brain went wild. It was art history.

• 16:07Alec Baldwin?

  But I'm gonna ask you about Sondheim.

• 16:08Speaker 06

  But that was right after. So it was just like, it was like, there was like a wind pushing me. And I just thought, maybe because it's based on a beautiful novel, maybe because it has so much undercurrent of social, it was actually kind of looking at sexuality and repression. And it is a Victorian novel. And I just thought, well, it's another corset thing, so I'm gonna look all right. And, you know, it's gonna look really nice. I have most incredible clothes. I was, my friend is missing, you know, Kelly O'Hara goes missing. And I'm just so well dressed when I was dressing out.

• 16:38Alec Baldwin?

  I could blame Dracula.

• 16:38Speaker 06

  I came out in these coats with a lamp. I had hats, like, in my, in my dress, looking for her in the cemetery. And she comes out with the glow-in-the-dark contact lenses and snakes in her hair and throwing up. And I was like, so well dressed. I was like, oh, honey, where have you been? You know? It was also silly, but, but it didn't have to be, you see. It was, I was trying to make sense of it, Alec. And so I thought, because it was Christopher Hampton and it was Bram Stoker, I thought there was hope. You know, maybe I-

• 17:02Alec Baldwin?

  What did it turn out to be?

• 17:04Speaker 06

  Complicated. You know, it turned out to be a kind of, like, I was lost in a sort of kitsch maze. And I had to make sense to the audience after lots of weird stuff would happen. You know, I'd be left with- Kelly O'Hara had like sort of thrown up and went down. You know, somebody stabbed her and she was throwing up and she had the snakes and she disappeared. And they're glowing in the gar- she had the fangs and stuff and I had to, I had to do a lot of stuff. And then you respond to things or I had to bite Dracula or some, I had to kill him at the end. But here's the thing, often I'd be left alone. And the way the set worked was they were, instead of sending the set this way or up, like sideways or up, they had a concept that all of these pre Raphaelite style buildings, these large, large,

• 17:49Speaker 06

  double story, 200 feet or something, way down, there's great depth in the Belasco. The set would go down and so we would be left with these precarious holes around us. People were very upset. I actually spun Stephen McKinley Henderson, I spun his jacket in previews and he's, you can look it up. He's, often says I saved his life. It just was odd and dangerous and I felt responsible. And so after all the set would close, you'd feel everything close, I'd be left alone with these solos. That's how it felt. It felt like I'd been left with this weird, like it could be funny, but like I'm gonna try to fix it for you. And I just, you know me, I didn't, I didn't get giggles or phone it in. I just kept trying to fix it. So it felt demanding, you know?

• 18:34Alec Baldwin?

  It's interesting that there were people I know, myself included, where periodically, I didn't do this all the time, but periodically, especially when I was younger, I felt responsible for a lot of what was going on around me rather than keeping the focus on my own performance.

• 18:48Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:49Alec Baldwin?

  Like as I moved along in film, I began to be like, you know, I would do the scene with someone. I said that to Pacino one time. I said, are you doing a scene with someone and you're at the net here playing tennis and the other person isn't that good? Do you go up to the director and say something? And Pacino said, oh, no, no, no, I never go and get involved. I keep my focus on myself. If you're not an equal partner to me, I don't look at it that way. I mean, you're doing your thing, I'm doing my thing. Now, I tend to be much more like, you know, I don't bother. I just, I come to work. You know, when I do a scene, I try not to leave the set when we're doing that scene, till all the coverage is done, then I can take a break. Cruz said the greatest line to me once. Tom said the greatest one, he goes, he said, I gotta give them their money's worth. I said, who?

• 19:31Alec Baldwin?

  He goes, the people that are paying me and the people that are buying the tickets. I gotta give him, and he's hard, everybody knows he's the hardest working person in the movie business.

• 19:39Speaker 06

  He's not totally, he's not wrong.

• 19:41Alec Baldwin?

  Oh, no, yeah, and my point is, I thought to myself, how can I take this to another level of really, really committing to just

• 19:46Speaker 06

  doing my, my thing. Right, yeah, I kinda learned that a long time ago, and maybe not in the most positive sense at first, which I worked with Bill Cosby when I was seventeen. I played a young student.

• 19:57Alec Baldwin?

  Cosby where?

• 19:58Speaker 06

  I was on his television show, it was called The Cosby Mysteries, do you remember that?

• 20:02Alec Baldwin?

  Yes, my friend David Black wrote on Cosby Mysteries.

• 20:05Speaker 06

  I was in it as a teenager, and he used to do his, his part and then leave, and he'd leave me with nobody, a piece of tape or his stand-in, and he'd say, that's what you went to Yale Drama School for.

• 20:18Alec Baldwin?

  He would say that to you.

• 20:20Speaker 06

  You're going to Yale, that's what you're going to Yale for, yeah, and he'd leave me alone, so I'd have to act opposite him, but without him there.

• 20:27Alec Baldwin?

  He didn't give a shit.

• 20:28Speaker 06

  He was busy or something, he did ask me out for lunch, you know, sometimes.

• 20:31Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, well.

• 20:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly, I came to wonder, but I misunderstood a lot of lunch invitations in my career. I actually went to lunch and was a total lady at a million lunches, and I realized I-

• 20:42Alec Baldwin?

  That's why, where you, that's not where you were there.

• 20:44Speaker 06

  I misread so many lunches.

• 20:46Alec Baldwin?

  You didn't wear your, uh, bustier to lunch?

• 20:50Speaker 06

  I didn't even know, I didn't even think of it, I thought people wanted to have lunch and talk. I once had a Saturday night audition called with Harvey Weinstein, and I remember, it was like, why Saturday night? You know, but I went and I wanted it so badly, it was for Neverland, and I thought, I am Neverland, Peter Pan, I'm, get me in there. I just wanted it so badly, and I showed up so prepared, so profoundly prepared, and I ended up being very ladylike and going on about my young family and my marriage. Never heard from him again, so maybe being stranded unfortunately is a little bit of a- Not a familiar feeling. I'm not a victim or something, but artistically, I don't always

• 21:31Speaker 06

  have the Alec Baldwin opposite me. Here's one of the beautiful things. Partnership took on a whole other meaning when I started making my own work. And the 20 years I've been playing with this piano player, Ted Firth, many masters as well are now playing with me. I have about four or five of the most profound musicians you can imagine. But what I've discovered in cabaret and jazz is that we create these shows. I come up with these themes. Everything has an arc, a story, a costume, a feeling. Every show, there's one moment where I stop the band and I just work with Ted. And we have a ballad of some kind.

• 22:14Speaker 06

  Anyone can whistle. I can dream, can't I? Send in the clowns. That's not the best example because it's very hard to reinvent that one. It doesn't need much reinventing. But we do something that the audience is absolutely riveted. And the band, or The Bad and the Beautiful from my noir record, this song, it's actually not called The Bad and the Beautiful. From the movie The Bad and the Beautiful? No, it is called The Bad and the Beautiful. It is in this, it is one of the most difficult melodies I've ever sung. Tony Bennett couldn't learn it, and that's why Bill Evans plays it as a solo on their record. It just stops and it's this out of the blue solo. I'm told it's because Tony was just flummoxed by the melody. And you sing it? Yeah, I love it. I worked really hard on it. It's these moments that are chromatic,

• 22:56Speaker 06

  super difficult, and full of rich, evocative language. It's emotionally improvised, as well as chords and extended bars. And what's happening in my later, you know, sort of in this life process, all the handholding of Barbara Cook, it's your turn. Rosemary Clarence, you're wonderful. All these women who've held my hand and said, just do it. Do it your way. Just do it. Roberta Flack. Putting all that love aside, and there's a lot of it, I sit with Ted in these moments, and I'm not trying to sing a song anymore. I'm trying to sort of let the song teach me something as it's happening. There's so

• 23:35Speaker 06

  much beauty and wisdom in the American songbook, from the 30s through Joni Mitchell, honestly, through Sondheim. And I'm sure if I would just start learning Sara Bareilles's music, there's others. But I am so engrossed in the worlds of Jerome Kern and early Oscar Hammerstein, all the seedbed of what became Sondheim.

• 23:57Speaker 06

  So when I work with Ted, I'm so safe and we don't even talk. It's like you with a great actress or actor, Glenn Gary, all the beautiful movies you've given us that are so masterful. I bet you had partners where you didn't have to talk about it. It was best to come out of your trailer full of life and just face another person who's full of life and don't talk. That's me and Ted. We don't talk at all. I might say something that implies, God, this kills me, or, boy, that's a lonely song, or dreaming saves your life. I'll say like a sentence like that and he'll go like, mhm, and then he'll start playing what sounds like my subconscious, like sounds like a dream.

• 24:39Speaker 06

  Anyhow, so we just made a record called I Can Dream, Can't I? And it's just the two of us doing those moments. It's just an album full of those moments. And I don't know if it's overkill in terms of piano solos and meandering, non arrangements, but it's, that's just what it is.

• 24:58Alec Baldwin?

  When you talk about that, that kind of battery you can have with someone, mine was so unlikely, the greatest example of that, even though there's other things I did where I had this connection with someone, I'm acting with somebody, I'm freely thinking. It usually begins often in the theater where I'm doing the piece over and over again. So when I did Streetcar, and I had to come out, and I had to, and I would, I told Ed Harris, I said, I never loved a woman more than Amy when we were doing, she was Stella.

• 25:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, you lock, you lock horns.

• 25:25Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, you just, that person, you have the same kind of thing going on.

• 25:28Speaker 06

  And it's about the work, actually. You know, I often ask my mother about, you know, oh, is Ted, you know, we don't, we don't talk about business, we don't talk about, you know, it's very hard to get work. Every day is a struggle to get these concerts, to design the concerts, to promote the concerts. I do so much by myself. And sometimes it's just unwieldy and I, then I say, well, Mom, Ted doesn't push it on social media or he doesn't. She says, Melissa, stop looking at Ted, look together at the music. And by the way, my mom's not this, you know, not a Buddha in any way. I mentioned her twice as if she was. But it's the idea of just, we both look together passionately at the music. And I'm sure that's what you mean when you have a.

• 26:05Alec Baldwin?

  Well, and the person, and the person I had the most. Strange connection that way was Julie Harris played my mother on a TV show. And I go to do this TV show, Knots Landing, and I'm like, I don't know, but the show's in the top 10. My agent said, you're going to be a cast addition to a hit show. I go in there and all of them are lovely people and I had a lot of fun. But Julie Harris plays my mother and it was like, you'd sit down with her and do a scene, and she just pulled it out of you. You didn't have to do anything.

• 26:31Speaker 06

  She was Mrs. Higgins for me.

• 26:33Alec Baldwin?

  You had to look her in the eye.

• 26:35Speaker 06

  And there you were.

• 26:36Alec Baldwin?

  And she just took you on this magic carpet. She was so empathic and so beautiful.

• 26:41Speaker 06

  I want to be like that. Please, help me get layer. I want to be like that, yeah, as a person.

• 26:46Alec Baldwin?

  You're largely there already.

• 26:47Speaker 06

  I really want to be that for younger people and for any artistic process.

• 26:55Alec Baldwin?

  Actress and singer Melissa Erichko. If you enjoy conversations with the leading ladies of the Broadway stage, check out my episode with Patti LuPone.

• 27:06Speaker 07

  I knew when I was a kid that I had a Broadway voice. I wanted to be a rocker because I grew up in that era, transistor radios at the beach. You know, The Rascals.

• 27:15Alec Baldwin?

  What music? The Rascals.

• 27:17Speaker 07

  The Rascals. We started in the 50s, Little Anthony and the Imperials. I mean, all through the 50s and 60s and 70s. I knew I didn't have a rock voice, though. I knew I had a Broadway voice.

• 27:27Alec Baldwin?

  To hear more of my conversation with Patti LuPone, go to hereisthething.org. After the break, Melissa Erichko talks about how her two musical North Stars, Michelle Legrand and Stephen Sondheim, shaped her artistic life.

• 27:51Speaker 04

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• 28:23Speaker 02

  Most 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. That last year, finishing that record was the hardest experience of my life. To find your creativity and to believe in yourself, because somewhere in the midst of it, I stopped believing that my voice mattered and that I could find it again. That's a challenge. I was not feeling very confident creatively, only, again,

• 29:05Speaker 02

  defiant in my belief that what this is about is express something honest. Say something honest. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 29:25Speaker 07

  This is Shirley Strawberry from the Steve Harvey Morning Show. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an all-wheel-drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or a Corolla sedan with the latest features and tech. Or test drive a spacious Grand Highlander or adventure-ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid models available, you can enjoy longer trips without all the stops. While Toyota's legendary resale value means you could get more at trade-in, get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for deals and details. Toyota, let's go places.

• 30:09Alec Baldwin?

  I'm Alec Baldwin, and this is Here's the Thing. Melissa Erichko's stage career began with the national tour of Les Misérables, which she joined while a freshman at Yale University. It was the first of many iconic roles, including her star turn as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, opposite Richard Chamberlain in 1993. She earned a Tony nomination for her performance in Michelle LeGrand's Amour in 2003. But it's Erko's later work on the stage and in the studio, interpreting the music of Sondheim and LeGrand, that has truly set her apart as a singular voice in American music.

• 30:51Alec Baldwin?

  Equally praised for interpreting both composers' repertoires, I wanted to know which of the two Melissa encountered first?

• 30:59Speaker 06

  It was LeGrand.

• 31:00Alec Baldwin?

  How did you intersect with him?

• 31:01Speaker 06

  Because I was living in L.A. in a whole long period of my life in which I used to call you as we're old friends and ask your advice and things. And I was doing lots and lots of television pilots. And as I told you, I was, you know, there were about seven of them. One of them involved them cutting all my hair off and firing me the next day, and I had no hair. They wanted me to look like a French actress, they said. But they took 12 inches off my hair and fired me. But I got my hair put back. So I survived all of that, L.A. And I got a phone call while I was living in L.A. That Michelle LeGrand wrote a musical. I was given a fax by my then-manager. And it said that Le Pas Muraille is coming over from Paris. And they're bringing it to Broadway. James Lapine is the director.

• 31:45Speaker 06

  Jeremy Sam's is the writer. And with music by Michelle LeGrand. And it was like the paper was glowing in my hand. Truly glowing in my hand. My father had brought me up to love the music through the Vietnam years. And I knew every song. You have to believe me, I didn't tell the backstory, but I love Michelle. I looked at this paper, I looked at my manager, and I said, Michelle LeGrand. Michelle LeGrand wrote a musical. Like it was like, and she turned to me and she goes, I know, I know, I love her.

• 32:15Speaker 06

  So.

• 32:16Alec Baldwin?

  Michelle is tops in my book.

• 32:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, right. So that's not my manager anymore. But I flew back. I flew back, met the team, got the leading part. But see, James Lapine was the stitch. He wrote Sunday in the Park with George. So right after that, I had a wonderful success. I met Sondheim and James for Sunday in the Park with George. And I just got cast by the meet, based on the meeting. And they didn't ask me to sing.

• 32:41Alec Baldwin?

  When was the original production? When was the?

• 32:43Speaker 06

  The original production. No, I was the Kennedy Center. It was the first major revival in history. It was a very exciting, first time it had ever been seen again. I wore Bernadette's clothes. They added a, like a foot, you know, to the dresses. But I wore her dresses. It was such an honor. So that was a bit back to back. So the two North Stars came back to back. I can't choose between them and they don't always have the highest regard, always for each other. And Sondheim, I wrote Michelle Legrand's eulogy in the New York Times. And I said that he could write, he could turn a melody to a chord that no one else on earth besides him could have thought of. Sondheim quoted that back to me in an email. We had so many emails, asking me, like what? Like what chord?

• 33:29Speaker 06

  Like what was? He was so, he didn't want me to revere him in the same way, you know? I revered them both, but they were the polar opposites. One is a total sensualist with multiple, you know, many women in his life, lots of wives. Michelle is very happy with his now wife.

• 33:46Alec Baldwin?

  Eighth wife.

• 33:47Speaker 06

  Whatever, but they're perfect. They actually, he goes back to the first girlfriend or something. So he's actually back at his true love. But he's just a sensualist and an affirmative French troubadour, really, from the great tradition, Charles Trenet, from even the sound of the old carousel. It's just all the dancing illusions of life. And the, you know, the spirit of the poet lives on. You hear an accordion, you know, in your brain. When he's, it's just beauty itself. Sondheim is asking a lot of questions. It's like your mammoth, it's percussive. It tells you what to, everything is percussive. Every syllable tells you what to think, where to turn a phrase. And it's edgier and it's all about the ambivalences and disappointments in life. You get everything that you want in life and nothing that you want in life.

• 34:32Speaker 06

  That's the sort of Sondheim life. You can probably apply that thought to any song in any character. They both are doomed by their duties and their desires.

• 34:44Alec Baldwin?

  You've been a leading lady in these musicals and these very, in a world of great romance. And what happens when you go out there and you're not that in love with the guy who's your leading man in the show? Not without naming names, meaning what's it like for you to have to go and do? See, when you do a movie, if they do a love scene with somebody that you're not that into as a person, forget about sexually, you're just not, they're not your favorite people, you get through it, the day's over, it's over. When you have to go out there again and again and again at a show and that person isn't your

• 35:15Speaker 06

  Cup of tea.

• 35:16Alec Baldwin?

  Leading man. Have you had that happen?

• 35:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I usually find a way, though. You know, musical theater is a little different than the film because you have to be athletes. You're sharing an athletic task. So if the person can get the athletics, you know, beautiful singing, be there physically for you, be positive, not be ill a lot, you know, when somebody's really ill, it's really a downer. I'm really annoyed when I have a leading man who's prone to like bronchitis or something.

• 35:50Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, he's gone.

• 35:50Speaker 06

  Because he's drinking all night and you know he's drinking all night and then he comes and he's erect and you're like, honey, could you just, just drink water?

• 35:57Alec Baldwin?

  Start drinking at 10:30.

• 35:58Speaker 06

  Just, just stop drinking, you know, and so that you're not sick all the time. So it's things like that, you know, it's more like people catching colds and you want, you want people to be grounded and reliable and friendly. I've never really had anyone that just really repulses me. There was one that's not, was like, it was, it came in just a little too into his like, you know.

• 36:21Alec Baldwin?

  His whole thing?

• 36:22Speaker 06

  Just his clothes or whatever, yeah.

• 36:24Alec Baldwin?

  His clothes, he was very natty. Oh, he was, he was, the clothes were spray painted on.

• 36:28Speaker 06

  He was a little snug and stuff, yeah.

• 36:29Alec Baldwin?

  It was a little Tom Jones, yeah.

• 36:30Speaker 06

  Just a little snug.

• 36:31Alec Baldwin?

  Tom Jones was playing the lead.

• 36:32Speaker 06

  That just bothers me because that's just like he's not thinking, he's just being all like, oh, you know, cod piecey, you know, that's.

• 36:37Alec Baldwin?

  Wow, oh, God, yeah. Well, that's important, I mean, let's be honest.

• 36:40Speaker 06

  No, but I don't find that attractive.

• 36:42Alec Baldwin?

  When I was in the ballet, I had a gigantic cod piece in there. I wasn't gonna mess with it.

• 36:45Speaker 06

  I'm not a cod piece person, like I.

• 36:47Alec Baldwin?

  I went to the cod piece store, they made me a custom cod piece when I was in the ballet.

• 36:50Speaker 06

  Listen, when I had to play in Camelot and I was supposed to be absolutely in love with the guy with the cod piece, right? I can't remember the character, but I was working with King Arthur, who was Jeremy Irons. It was very hard for me to be like, gosh, I'm gonna go off with the-

• 37:06Alec Baldwin?

  Dickhead, I mean, I mean-

• 37:07Speaker 06

  Mr. Codpiece-

• 37:08Alec Baldwin?

  Mr. Codpiece.

• 37:09Speaker 06

  Whenever I would leave you, it wouldn't be in summer. And I'm looking at him like, forget it, Jeremy Irons is like offstage.

• 37:17Alec Baldwin?

  Jeremy Irons was offstage.

• 37:18Speaker 06

  He was offstage.

• 37:19Alec Baldwin?

  He hands signals to you.

• 37:21Speaker 06

  We're like perfect for each other. No, actually, there was one time we had between shows, you know, we're getting notes or something, and the note started, and we realized we had just had a three-hour break, and he goes, "Oh darling, we just had three hours, we should have had sex, but I forgot." Not that I would have said yes, but it was just funny.

• 37:37Alec Baldwin?

  Anne H. did a movie with me, and we're laying there naked on a bed, I'm gonna kill her in this movie, The Juror, that Demi Moore was the star of, and we're laying on this bed together, and we're naked, and we have a sheet over us, and she goes, "Have you done this a lot before, these nude scenes?" I go, "Yeah, I've done a few." And I go, "Listen, do me a favor, like I said, 20 minutes from now, we won't even put the sheet over us, and then we're gonna notice it, the crew doesn't care, we'll be butt naked right here, and the crew doesn't give a shit." So just, I mean, we'll cover up. So we have to do this scene, and we're like going at it, we're like making out, we're-

• 38:05Speaker 06

  But there was a little-

• 38:06Alec Baldwin?

  Grabbing her body.

• 38:07Speaker 06

  Square towel, right?

• 38:08Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, we had a little fig leaf on that.

• 38:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, they have a little thing.

• 38:10Alec Baldwin?

  I had my fig leaf, yeah.

• 38:11Speaker 06

  But you didn't have intimacy counseling back then, right?

• 38:13Alec Baldwin?

  No, no, no.

• 38:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, me neither, because I-

• 38:15Alec Baldwin?

  Anne was my intimacy counselor, because I said to her, "Okay, that's lunch, and I'm gonna go have lunch," and I look at her and I go, and we're like really, really like pulsing here, and I look her right in the eye, and I go, "What do you want for lunch?" And she goes, "You know."

• 38:28Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 38:29Alec Baldwin?

  And I was like, "Okay." Okay, I was married at the time, and I was like, "Okay."

• 38:34Speaker 06

  You know, I wrote an essay about this, about doing my first nude scene for the television show, Billions, and it's called Negotiating Nudity.

• 38:42Alec Baldwin?

  Are you nude in Billions?

• 38:43Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm. I played the wife of the, you know how there were two brothers, the premise of the show is two brothers-

• 38:48Alec Baldwin?

  Yes.

• 38:49Speaker 06

  And the bad friend, rather, survived, and the good man died in the 9/11 disaster. I'm the wife of the good man. I knew all the bad things about Damian Lewis, I know everything, and I'm the wife that says, "I know you're bad, and I'm gonna write a book," and they shut my life down.

• 39:04Alec Baldwin?

  How do you end up nude? That's all I care about.

• 39:06Speaker 06

  I end up nude because I've written a tell-all book, and I sleep with the publisher. I don't know why, I had to sleep with the publisher- If I had a good book, but that's something I should revisit.

• 39:14Alec Baldwin?

  That's creepy.

• 39:15Speaker 06

  What was creepy was that I negotiated it and I wrote an essay about all the negotiations because they ask you about your left bosom and your right bosom and what you're willing to show and your back, this crack and that other thing and the button on your lower back and just all weird stuff.

• 39:29Alec Baldwin?

  You should have been there with me and Anne.

• 39:30Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 39:30Alec Baldwin?

  It all came off.

• 39:31Speaker 06

  Oh, really? Did you have a contract that was specific?

• 39:34Alec Baldwin?

  Oh, I found a- The contract schmone cracked. I'm like, fuck, fuck the contract.

• 39:38Speaker 06

  I found the whole thing so, it's just wrong tempered for me. Like, I just the wrong person to be, you know, navigating all this. It just was crazy. So, I did write this essay, which I think is how my New York Times thing started because that really was, really a good piece. Christina Cuomo actually printed it for me in one of her magazines. And then I got the phone call, that beautiful, famous phone call, famous to me, when Scott Heller from the New York Times said, "We think you're right for the Times." I'm pretty sure that it was that. Christina always thinks that she gave me my first. But, the show was tricky because I had to get, you know, spray painted or whatever for body paint so that you look extra tan, you know, and perfect, your skin. I had worked out, my body was just as good as it was gonna get.

• 40:22Speaker 06

  And I looked at the call sheet. Of course, they never told me who I was gonna be in bed with. It was Austin Pendleton.

• 40:28Alec Baldwin?

  Ah!

• 40:29Speaker 06

  He's so-

• 40:29Alec Baldwin?

  What a waste!

• 40:30Speaker 06

  But Austin is an older man-

• 40:32Alec Baldwin?

  I could have played the puppet, sir. Jesus Christ!

• 40:35Speaker 06

  Austin was my acting coach when I was in my early twenties. And he went to college, he went to Yale, class of 61, with my father-

• 40:41Alec Baldwin?

  61!

• 40:42Speaker 06

  Yes. He was my acting teacher, and so that's what my article is about. Facing your acting teacher in your nude scene, it was really hard. And he was, we were both, I mean, we're, it's really bizarre. It was a really bizarre day. We obviously got the, you know, we did what we had to do, but it was awkward and it created a very funny article. And it was, you know, we had a pile of towels between us, but, ugh, why are we talking about this? But, he was my teacher, and he helped me to get Eliza Doolittle. And he and Roger Reese, they were my coaches when I was young, so you never know who's gonna be on the call sheet.

• 41:17Alec Baldwin?

  We should do a thing, you and I together, called Billions in Concert. And you and I will reenact the nude scene, and then you're gonna get up and sing some songs.

• 41:25Speaker 06

  Oh, my God.

• 41:26Alec Baldwin?

  And we're gonna be Billions in Concert.

• 41:27Speaker 06

  No, I'll have to do my-

• 41:28Alec Baldwin?

  With musical Michelle LeGrand. We're getting it all together.

• 41:30Speaker 06

  What a hot mess.

• 41:31Alec Baldwin?

  Billions, who cares if it's a hot mess?

• 41:33Speaker 06

  All the quirky stuff of our career.

• 41:34Alec Baldwin?

  We're gonna sell out. Actress, singer and writer Melissa Erichko. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on the iHeart Radio app, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Melissa Erichko talks about the great aunt who became a Ziegfeld Follies star and the grandmother who first recognized her talent.

• 42:06Speaker 04

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• 42:37Alec Baldwin?

  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 my friend, John Legend. How does music actually enter your mind?

• 42:59Speaker 02

  I'm not sure why or how the music comes to me, but I think people who love music and write music, our brains are just filled with music. Like, we have listened to so much music, we've been a part of so much music. I think of the story that I want to tell, the mood that I want to create with the music, start playing chords, see where they lead me.

• 43:20Alec Baldwin?

  Sometimes I'm just not even thinking about music, right? And I hear this little thing and I go, oh, that could be this.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  You know, you just have to be ready for when the inspiration hits.

• 43:34Alec Baldwin?

  And it comes. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  This is Shirley Strawberry from the Steve Harvey Morning Show. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an all-wheel-drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or a Corolla sedan with the latest features and tech. Or test drive a spacious Grand Highlander or

• 44:05Speaker 07

  Adventure-ready RAB4. And with so many hybrid models available, you can enjoy longer trips without all the stops. While Toyota's legendary resale value means you could get more at trade-in, get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for deals and details. Toyota, let's go places.

• 44:29Alec Baldwin?

  I'm Alec Baldwin, and this is Here's the Thing. Melissa Erica was born in New York City and raised in Menhasset, Long Island. Her father was an orthopedic surgeon and a pianist, and her mother was a teacher who now works as a sculptor and artist. But the performing arts ran even deeper in her family. Her maternal grandmother was an opera singer, and her great aunt Rose was a successful Ziegfeld Follies star. Erica's own professional career began at just 12 years old on the children's television series The Great Space Coaster. The series led to title roles in Anna Karenina, High Society, Dracula, Amour, Sunday in the Park with George,

• 45:12Alec Baldwin?

  and the Irish Repertory Theatre's Phineon's Rainbow. With such an illustrious career and family history, I wondered who in Erica's family first encouraged her to pursue performing professionally.

• 45:25Speaker 06

  It might have been my grandmother. My grandmother and her sister.

• 45:28Alec Baldwin?

  When did you know?

• 45:29Speaker 06

  I was fascinated by my immigrant history, and I was fascinated that the Italians who came over in the turn of the century went and were seamstresses for World War I. And then my Aunt Rose was a very successful Ziegfeld girl. So I grew up in a house full of the actual Follies girls, just like Sondheim's musical, which he always found fascinating. So I knew her and her friends. I think right away, there was a sense that the actresses, they were the only feminists I was given, women who made money, who got out of the house, who did something that were like pioneers. So I think it was a sense of disposition first, not just a voice, but that I had the disposition.

• 46:10Alec Baldwin?

  I like that word.

• 46:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, I had the disposition to stand on my own two feet, to get out in the world, to get out of a house. I wasn't a house-oriented person. I wanted to, I wanted to be intre- I was intrepid, naturally intrepid. And I was, as I got older and stopped doing gymnastics, where I, I went right away to a theater camp. And the gymnastics gave me a funny body language. So right away, I was, I had high kicks and flips, and I could do cartwheels, and I was getting all the comic characters, Adelaide and Hedy LaRue. And I got all the funny stuff, because I was physically unusual. I had big curly hair, a shapely body, but it was an acrobat. And so I had a sort of boldness about me. And it's a natural style of singing. I wasn't an opera singer. I have none of the background of Audrey McDonald and Kelly O'Hara, all these girls who's trained

• 46:55Speaker 06

  in classical. I'm a little more from the hip, you know, an Italian-American who just-

• 47:00Alec Baldwin?

  You're an actress.

• 47:01Speaker 06

  Ah, but I'm also just a girl doing cartwheels in the lawn.

• 47:04Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 47:04Speaker 06

  Who loves to jump into a play. When I got to Yale, I thought, oh, gosh, I can't be in college for four years. I'm just, I was just chomping at the bit to work. And I, I would look at backstage newspaper and look for another adventure, you know? And I looked, I saw Ringling Brothers audition, Rhode Island Theater by the Sea. And I auditioned for Rhode Island Theater by the Sea. I got seen in the hall by the director of Les Mis, pulled me out of the hall. And it might have even been that day that made me feel like I'm on the adventure. Because they pulled me out of one thing. I'm in the middle of college. They put me in an audition for Les Mis. I opened my mouth and they stopped me. They said, can you start in 10 days? And it was dropping out of Yale, you know, which I was also a

• 47:48Speaker 06

  really good student. And I did that part-

• 47:50Alec Baldwin?

  What was your major at Yale?

• 47:51Speaker 06

  Art history and philosophy.

• 47:52Alec Baldwin?

  Okay.

• 47:53Speaker 06

  But mostly art history.

• 47:54Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 47:55Speaker 06

  I could have gone down that road. That's a little bit of a different topic. I loved my Yale education. But I do have a me-too story that we can put aside for another time. But that was like, a little bit, a little bit-

• 48:06Alec Baldwin?

  At Yale?

• 48:07Speaker 06

  At Yale, with one of the most prominent professors in the world. Yeah, just me-

• 48:11Alec Baldwin?

  He fixated on you.

• 48:13Speaker 06

  He fixated on me. And then it was, there was a bad episode, and it just was just very heartbreaking. I never picked up my thesis. I was at a graduate level in this one thing for graduating. So my intellectual life was kind of- You know, not discouraged, but it just, I don't know what I got, I kind of just froze and just went into the theater. So it was wonderful when, you know, in 2017, when everybody started talking about these things. But I had already been thinking about silence and women, because in 2015, I started this process, this making of my own cabarets. The first cabaret I did was called Sing the Silence. And it was about women and their silences, based on a conversation I'd had with Sand

• 48:55Speaker 06

  Time, where he told me a person can sing the apostrophe of a word. Couldn't, wouldn't. I said, but there's no, there's an apostrophe. And he was talking to me about silences. And so we got into these weird rabbit holes. And I started thinking about silences and all this. So anyhow, that was a kind of a turning point moment, just to go back. When I dropped out of college and left one life as an intellectual or as a kind of a student of the world, I still have that. I treat everything like opportunity for research.

• 49:26Alec Baldwin?

  But you finished at Yale?

• 49:27Speaker 06

  I did, I went back.

• 49:28Alec Baldwin?

  Right, right.

• 49:29Speaker 06

  I did go back, yeah. That was...

• 49:31Alec Baldwin?

  You took a break for how long? How many years were you out of there?

• 49:33Speaker 06

  One and a half, but I did a year as a correspondence student with other kids who were like journalists, or one kid who was at NASA, and I was layman. I called it Yale by mail. We did it all by mail. It was really interesting. So I was a correspondence student, so I didn't have to lose too much time. That's the moment where I think I thought maybe this was going to take me not just out of high school and be a good singer, oh wow, I have a pretty voice, but into the profession, into crazy things where you drop out of one thing and you jump into another life and you pack your bags. That, I love the idea of that, you know?

• 50:06Alec Baldwin?

  Someone once pointed out to me, they said, oh, there's the two ballet companies in New York, and there's two opera companies in New York. And they said, well, one of the group, they dance really well, and their acting is terrible. And he goes, and the other one, their acting is really good and their dancing is so-so. One group, their singing is great, and their acting is so-so. And the thing that I love about you is that you are an actress. Now, you have made your reputation with this huge component, this amazing piston and the engine here of your singing career, and singing in the theater and so forth. But when I did that gift of the gorgon with you, I mean, I'll say this till the cows come home, you were so fantastic. And what I realized was, without mentioning other people, there were these dames in the theater who, their acting is so-so.

• 50:51Alec Baldwin?

  They're acting, so their singing is pristine, their singing is remarkable, but they're not, and you have both.

• 50:57Speaker 06

  Thank you. Peter Schaffer wrote Equus, and that we did the American premiere, you and I. It's the first time it's ever been heard in the, in the US. It was a great, thank you.

• 51:05Alec Baldwin?

  We did Gorgon, yeah.

• 51:06Speaker 06

  We did The Gift of the Gorgon, which Judi Dench says in her book was the ravaged her, that it was the hardest role she ever played, my part. So it's innate to that role is to be destroyed. Like, you wrecked me. I remember waking up the next day, I was wrecked. It was a very difficult relationship. We were playing professors of Greek mythology and philosophy. So we were like two PhD-type teachers. Maybe we could do it again, who knows?

• 51:33Alec Baldwin?

  Well, we should do something again, because I'm really dying to. I haven't done a play in a while. This one guy wrote a review, isn't it funny how people, if they write a review?

• 51:42Speaker 06

  You were wonderful as F. Scott Fitzgerald this summer, really good.

• 51:46Alec Baldwin?

  But the thing about that is that we did, you talk about critics, and one guy wrote a piece in a New Jersey paper that was brought to my attention. And I thought to myself, this guy's been reading my diary. He really, really got what I was trying to do. He go, Mr. Baldwin, this and this and this and this. And he wasn't like licking me to death, but it was very, very much, very positive and, and, and filled with understanding.

• 52:12Speaker 06

  I love that.

• 52:12Alec Baldwin?

  See, I think a lot of times with people who, like Bradley.

• 52:15Speaker 06

  I have a few like that.

• 52:16Alec Baldwin?

  Well, I'll just name it, Bradley. To you, he was great, yeah.

• 52:19Speaker 06

  I was so lucky.

• 52:19Alec Baldwin?

  Bradley was somebody who, like, I just needed.

• 52:22Speaker 06

  He liked you?

• 52:22Alec Baldwin?

  No.

• 52:22Speaker 06

  Oh, all right, sorry.

• 52:23Alec Baldwin?

  Why bother? Why bother getting up there when he's in the, but the point is that Bradley was somebody who I thought, in my mind, he didn't really understand what acting was and what people were doing and why. I really want you and I to find something to do together.

• 52:35Speaker 06

  My twins apply to college in the fall, so I know you're not in that place, but you could do a play here and still be around your family.

• 52:42Alec Baldwin?

  So the older one is in college?

• 52:42Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 52:43Alec Baldwin?

  She's where?

• 52:43Speaker 06

  She's at Duke and she is already recruited at Goldman Sachs, at the most premier premiere. She's brilliant. She's a math major, former tennis star on the team. She's a beautiful human being. All three of my girls, I'm proud to say, have hair down to their waists.

• 53:00Alec Baldwin?

  Yes.

• 53:00Speaker 06

  Just imagine the whole thing, me and these three women. Like, they're with me right now. It's, they're everywhere. As your beautiful, funny, playful children and your gorgeous wife are, like, as I look at you, I see all that life. Do you remember the Bowery Babes?

• 53:13Alec Baldwin?

  No.

• 53:13Speaker 06

  That was a period of my life. You gave me money during Hurricane Sandy. You donated from your foundation to, you didn't know what it was. It was, when I remember when I ran a mother's group down in Soho?

• 53:23Alec Baldwin?

  Yes.

• 53:24Speaker 06

  I have 5,000 families in it. Because when I was in the stage of parenting you're in, but I did this already. This Mother's Day, which is coming up, 2026, I am finishing it. It's 20 years of not-for-profit. We used to have a lot of money. You gave us some money which we did use for diapers.com. I don't know if you remember.

• 53:42Alec Baldwin?

  Yes.

• 53:42Speaker 06

  You provided diapers for

• 53:44Alec Baldwin?

  Do you remember you, yeah.

• 53:44Speaker 06

  The community center. You were, it was called Bowery Babes, actually. It wasn't anything to do with Broadway. It was the Lower East Side. It was a Lower East Side mothers' community that I founded when I was in your parenting phase with all those little children, all that behavior, which we would deal with, you know, actually. We used to have events for how to talk so your kids will listen, and listen so your kids will talk, and, you know, control, but not control, let them be empowered. We're closing it down this Mother's Day, and all of our money, whatever we saved over the years, there's $20,000, we've already given it to Sloan Kettering, which I'm so proud of, to pediatric cancer. So that's closed. We're gonna announce that it's all over. But it was a beautiful and difficult time to raise little children.

• 54:24Alec Baldwin?

  You think Broadway and what's on Broadway has changed a lot since you started?

• 54:28Speaker 06

  Broadway, of course, has changed, because I'm not there. It's changed, but it's still temperamentally the same people, you know. Isn't it Moss Hart who says it's all the unhappy children? I think he says that in his book. You know, there's a lot of people who come to it because they find each other. And that's not a bad thing. It's still a beautiful holding ground for a lot of all kinds of people.

• 54:48Alec Baldwin?

  But in a way, it also links to Sondheim, because from Rodgers and Hart and Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma and all these sunny, beautiful things, some tragedy here and there, but My Fair Little, and then you get into Sondheim, people doing a lot of whining in Sondheim, but it's real, it's honest.

• 55:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, grieving.

• 55:04Alec Baldwin?

  And then you get into shows that are like modern shows, which are very edgy and strange and urban, and, you know, the themes are very, very existential. You know what I mean? The people are really, really doing a lot of

• 55:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, but there's still a community.

• 55:18Alec Baldwin?

  Crying.

• 55:19Speaker 06

  A lot, yeah, a lot of crying and a lot of loud singing. You know, there is some debate currently, as of this week, there's some debate about the demands of eight shows a week. There are some actors who are now stepping forward and saying, eight shows a week under the conditions that we're being asked to, which is to out-scream and out-sing pop stars with no Pro Tools and so on. And so they're being asked to be pristine rock singers, eight shows a week, with orchestras blazing. When we were younger and when I was doing classic shows, the original orchestrations were spare. I would step forward in a Kurt Vile musical, which I've done a few, many of, the orchestra stops, pretty much. And you start going, "Tell me, is love still..." And there's nothing going on, except a little, like, a little, it's just a little something. The orchestra stops. They don't do that now.

• 56:04Speaker 06

  The orchestra's blazing, blaring, the sound systems are, so it's, your vocal cords are being asked to do different things. So I think we're, we're in a time where actors are pushing back and saying that this Marvel comic level entertainment value, the demands are crazy. They're not human anymore. Hopefully, people will start coming to my Simple shows, me and a pianist, me and a small band, back to human-sized work.

• 56:33Alec Baldwin?

  My thanks to Melissa Erco. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeese, and Victoria DeMartin. Our engineer is Isaac Kaplan-Wulner. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.

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