A Conversation with Alan Rickman, Revisited

In 2012, Neil deGrasse Tyson interviewed Alan Rickman for a 2-part show about the craft of acting, the education system, and much more. We’ve selected our favorite parts from those episodes for this look back. Chuck Nice co-hosts, with guest Charles Liu.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City. And I also serve as Director of the Hayden Planetarium. Come check us out sometime. I got with me in studio, the one, the only, the inimitable Chuck Nice. Yes. Welcome back, man. Hey Neil. Love having you. I love being here, man. And you get into all kinds of stuff. First you're tweeting at ChuckNiceComic. ChuckNiceComic. Other Chuck Nices were taken, I'm told. Yeah, screw the rest of those Chuck Nices. You were just slow.

• 0:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the comic on there. Also, I was checking your bio in progress. You're doing a show where you're just invading people's homes. Which sounds creepy. Yes.

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Imagine that. A black man home evasion show.

• 1:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's called Home Strange Home, man. Home Strange Home. Me going around to some of the weirdest and most unique homes in America. And calling them out. And calling them out, yeah. And what network? HGTV. Home and Garden Television. Home and Garden. That is my sister's favorite network. I love her. Every speed dial button goes to that network. My kind of woman. So, I'm not gonna tell her. She's gonna find you by accident. Fantastic. And she's there. I got with me also my friend and colleague Charles Liu.

• 1:36Charles Liu?

  Great to see you.

• 1:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Professor Liu. Excellent.

• 1:38Charles Liu?

  Thanks so much for having me.

• 1:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. Astrophysicist at the City University of New York on Staten Island.

• 1:43Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 1:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I've got you here because we're featuring my interview clips with Alan Rickman. Yes! Alan Rickman. Alan Rickman. By Grand Star's hammer, you shall be avenged. No, I didn't. Galaxy place. I didn't know this in advance. That was it? Yes, you did. Is this good or bad?

• 2:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll find out. Good reference, bad impersonation.

• 2:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Alan Rickman, you may know him from his role in Harry Potter. He was snake creepy, defined the word creepy. He's it. In Harry Potter, of course, he was in Die Hard, one of the greatest villain roles ever. Yes. He was in Galaxy Quest, as it can't be a movie as there ever was, in Dogma, many other films, and he was also in Bottle Shock. Yeah, yeah, wine film, a big fan of that. And, you know, for folks who are sort of A-list guests like that, I always like knowing what role science might have played in their lives. It's not always good. So I just like knowing, just so I know what I'm dealing with, you know, in the interviews. Let's find out what Alan Rickman tells us about his life experience learning science.

• 2:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Alan, I have to ask, because you've been in some intriguing science fiction films like Galaxy Quest. I always wonder, do people who end up in those roles, do they have some science background that leads them to it? How has science flavored in your life, in your years in school?

• 3:12Speaker 02

  Put it this way, when I did my very last physics exam, I got 4%. That would be four marks out of 100.

• 3:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  96 because you lost 4.4.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  I got 4 marks.

• 3:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  4 in your physics.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  And I think they used to give you 1 mark for getting your name right on the top of the paper. And the teacher wrote a hysterical paper, and he didn't mean that it was funny.

• 3:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's the corresponding year in school in America that that would be?

• 3:45Speaker 02

  That would be when I was about 15 or 16, something like that. Yeah, and it's before you choose which subjects you're gonna do what we call A-level when you're 17 and 18, and then you go to university. So physics was, or science was never, ever gonna be part of my life.

• 4:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that when you said, "Maybe I should be an actor."

• 4:06Speaker 02

  Well, at least I had an option.

• 4:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Makes me wonder, like, had you done well in physics, we would have never had you as an actor. I don't know what these four, how these forces operate, but.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  No, actually, there was somebody in my year who, because it was, it was, it was a good school in that sense. They didn't kind of try to trap you or type you, and somebody in my year did.

• 4:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is a very UK thing to do, right?

• 4:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I know about UK, it's world over, you know, get a label on people as quickly as they can. This guy in my year did for his three A-level subjects, i.e. leading up to university, did physics, maths and art. And he wound up being an art teacher.

• 4:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 4:43Speaker 02

  And I'm sure all the better for having had science in his life.

• 4:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, so, yeah, we got four percent on his physics. I'm not gonna ask you what percent you got on your physics. Chuck, I'm turning to you on this one.

• 4:56Chuck Nice?

  I, uh, that's funny he says that because I remember, now, we had physics in the ninth grade.

• 5:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 5:04Chuck Nice?

  The school that I went to.

• 5:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, was it private school?

• 5:06Chuck Nice?

  It was, it was a prep school.

• 5:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Prep school, okay.

• 5:09Chuck Nice?

  And it was academically advanced.

• 5:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:12Chuck Nice?

  I was not academically advanced.

• 5:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 5:14Chuck Nice?

  And so I failed physics and.

• 5:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, now, now it comes out.

• 5:20Chuck Nice?

  But what it.

• 5:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's when he said, I think I'll be a comedian.

• 5:24Chuck Nice?

  There.

• 5:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And hope fun on a physics radio show, yeah.

• 5:26Chuck Nice?

  But I, I loved science and I really felt like, man, I can't believe I'm, I, I failed this class and I blamed the teacher. But I had. That is the right thing to do.

• 5:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, Chuck.

• 5:38Chuck Nice?

  I have so in favor.

• 5:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I blamed the teacher. So you're, you're an educator.

• 5:41Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 5:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, as am I, of course, but you, you're, you think a lot about this. So I, I'm intrigued that he could fail a class.

• 5:48Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 5:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But still embrace the meaning of science, because when Alan Rickman said he got four percent, he wasn't bad-mouthing science.

• 5:54Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 5:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He just got four percent.

• 5:55Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 5:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all he was saying.

• 5:56Chuck Nice?

  One thing that he said that was so telling, he said that most places in the world, you get trapped into places. Oh, you must be the science guy. Oh, you must be the art guy.

• 6:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 6:04Chuck Nice?

  But the bottom line is, especially in this modern world, you can love anything and be anything at the same time. The information.

• 6:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Without the metrics of an exam to tell you whether you should do either.

• 6:16Chuck Nice?

  The information that used to have to be forced into you as.

• 6:19Charles Liu?

  For something is no longer that constrained in the classroom. You can get it anywhere, like all over the world, online.

• 6:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so we live in a time where the teacher is not the sole source of your enlightenment.

• 6:30Charles Liu?

  So the teacher's role becomes whether or not you learn how to think about things in a positive light, whether you understand things in a way that makes sense for you in your life. If the teacher fails to do that, it is the teacher's fault. It is not the student's fault. So I tell all my students, I might teach astronomy, you know, I say, look, if you don't like math and science by the end of this class, don't blame math and science, blame me. Right. And I'm totally comfortable with that. I'm really glad to hear it.

• 6:58Chuck Nice?

  What did it for me, though, was.

• 7:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you were burning effigy recently.

• 7:03Charles Liu?

  That's fine.

• 7:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you do well in any science class?

• 7:05Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, I did well in most of them. I just really, I don't know what it was, I don't think we had a communication thing. But then another, my chemistry teacher gave me a book called Introduction to Astronomy.

• 7:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chemistry teacher.

• 7:20Chuck Nice?

  My chemistry teacher gave me this.

• 7:22Charles Liu?

  Good for your chemistry.

• 7:22Chuck Nice?

  Because the chemistry, the chemistry's teacher said, there's no way you can be doing this well in chemistry and failing physics. And when I started, this book was really fascinating.

• 7:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the teacher figured something else must be operating on that, yeah?

• 7:36Chuck Nice?

  And I found the book so fascinating that it inspired me to continue going.

• 7:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's great, and you became a comedian.

• 7:46Charles Liu?

  But astronomy is often a gateway, science.

• 7:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back, we've got more of my interview with Alan Rickman, the actor extraordinaire. And I've got in studio Chuck Nice, Charles Lud, we'll be back in a minute.

• 8:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. Startalk Radio. By the way, you can find us three ways. First, just simply on the web, it's startalkradio.net. We have an archive of all of our old shows, check it out. But there you can also download us as a podcast, as you can on iTunes. We're also in video form on the Nerdist network of YouTube, so find us there. And not only that, we're on broadcast radio. And so Chuck, with a lot of roots in broadcast radio, it's so great to have you participate in this adventure. Yes, yeah, I feel the same way. And my roots are deep in broadcast radio. Yeah, yeah, so thanks for that. And Chuck, you were a radio broadcaster in college. Yes, I was. Excellent, so let's put on our radio voices. Yeah, we're good, alright.

• 9:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I did punk rock once in a while, so it was like, "Oh, how you doing?" It's a little hospital. Punk rock. So in this edition of Startalk, we've got my interview clips with Alan Rickman, who's actor extraordinaire. I mean, when he speaks, you can only just be silent and listen to the words as they come out of his mouth. First, he's got the British accent, which means he has access to vocabulary that Americans can only dream of. And just the roles he's played have been so compelling and so absorbing. And in this next clip, it came off of our discussion of his exposure to science and what about science might intrigue him. He didn't do well on that physics class, he got 4% out of 100. I thought it was 4% off, 4% in. So yes, that's bad, that'd be an F minus.

• 9:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Minus, minus, minus. So does that influence what roles you might play? Is it good or is it bad? Is he still curious? Turns out he's quite interested in human physiology. Who isn't? But to know that an actor is brings an extra dimension to it. Let's find out what he tells us about that.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  About watching somebody play the piano, I don't know how that's physically possible. How do people retain that information? How do they then not look at what their hands are doing? And how is that message going from the brain to 10 fingers and dividing that information up? And also, um, operations now where the edges get blurred whereby people can operate with a tiny camera inside people's bodies. And apparently, the way they train themselves to do that is by getting really good at computer games.

• 10:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, yeah, I mean, that's a fascinating frontier. So I'm curious then, I mean, you're intelligent, you're a deep thinker, we've spoken earlier, you even think philosophically about the world. It seems to me that that could and would play some role in what drives the roles you select in your acting career. I mean, why wouldn't they? If someone had an idea, they say, "We're gonna cast doctors." Consider, was it in the 1960s, that movie, that Ozymor Asimov story, Fantastic Voyage, where the vessel, the proteus, I think it was called, shrunk, there's some important diplomat that has a brain tumor, and he might die, but they found a laser that could fix it, but they have to shrink down the laser and get inside and do it.

• 11:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they take this vessel, put people in it, shrink it down to the size of, it can fit in a syringe, and then you go inside the body. And then, the whole movie is what is inside the body and what they see, and the red blood cells, and the ventricles of the heart, and the veins, and the arteries, and they get to the brain, and they pull out their laser, which was a big thing back in the 60s, and I'm just curious, those sound like intriguing roles, and if you feel that...

• 11:51Speaker 02

  It just means I have to do a lot of background work to catch up.

• 11:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so...

• 11:57Speaker 02

  That's all right, no, that's enjoyable too. I like ambiguity in roles, because that's interesting, because it means there's no rules, and it means you can pull people into a private storytelling space, and they're not being manipulated by outside forces. Their imaginations are allowed to work along with mine, but at the same time, I did actually do a film playing a heart surgeon, and I was on really big catch-up there, because I was now forced to try to understand how the heart even works, and then to mime doing a heart operation, because it was about Alfred Blaylock, who did the first Blue Baby operation.

• 12:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 12:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so when you're an actor, you don't know what you're gonna be called to do. And there he is. First, he's intrigued by the moto-neurokineticism of a piano player. Who is it? Did you play the piano, Troy?

• 12:54Charles Liu?

  I do play the piano.

• 12:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course you do.

• 12:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you play the piano too?

• 12:58Chuck Nice?

  Uh, no longer.

• 12:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No longer?

• 12:59Chuck Nice?

  I did, I took lessons for a little while, but I sucked.

• 13:03Charles Liu?

  No, my daughter's way better than I am.

• 13:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 13:05Charles Liu?

  But the reality is that indeed, when the human body programmed itself, the reason we practice is that we're able to train our bodies to do things beyond our ability to think consciously. It's the same for playing piano as it is for say, a football player. If somebody's coming in and trying to sack you as a quarterback...

• 13:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have you run the other way? What kind of training does that take?

• 13:26Charles Liu?

  But you literally don't have enough time to think to move. Your body has to know to move before you even think, "Oh, somebody's gonna come hit me." So, you're training yourself all those years. You think, "Oh, I can play quarterback," or "Oh, I can sack the quarterback." The reality is, your body has to react faster than you can think and command your body to react in order to be successful.

• 13:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's, so you're training?

• 13:48Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 13:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you train, so, so...

• 13:50Chuck Nice?

  I feel the same way at the Source Awards.

• 13:54Chuck Nice?

  It's like if you hear "pop, pop," you don't even think, you just "whoa."

• 13:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you, you've done this, this has happened so often.

• 14:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your moto-neurokinetic response.

• 14:07Chuck Nice?

  You would think that it would occur to me just not to go to the Source Awards.

• 14:12Charles Liu?

  Hundreds of hours, thousands of hours of that kind of practice. But what is very cool is that the human brain, even with a few hours, can make it so that other humans looking at that person suspect that there's the appearance of ability, even though the true ability is not yet revealed.

• 14:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so the actor doesn't have to then be the 20,000-hour expert?

• 14:32Charles Liu?

  Precisely.

• 14:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They can just...

• 14:33Charles Liu?

  Be the 20-hour expert, right. And again, that takes...

• 14:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they have to know how to mimic.

• 14:37Charles Liu?

  Exactly. And that itself has its own brain, not a neural cognitive thing. So, different people are good at different things. It could be, for example, that the maestro piano player particularly can arrange his or her fingers to become very good at playing the piano, whereas the actor or the comedian has the moto-neuro ability to find a way to reach those specific aspects that appear to be excellent to others and be able to communicate.

• 15:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, when I was hosting Nova Science Now on PBS, we did a segment on your brain... Learning while you're asleep of something you had done the day before.

• 15:14Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 15:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you do a task that you've never done before. And you, it's hard at first and you get a little better at it. And you keep getting better, but there's a point where you're just not getting better. You, you, you fatigue, I guess, is how you, we would normally describe it. You go to sleep, wake up the next morning, kick in, you start at a higher level than you left off the day before.

• 15:33Charles Liu?

  Because your brain has added the information.

• 15:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It kept going. And it's not just knowledge, it was adding kinetic of memory of what you were doing. And so when they say, sleep on it, that it actually has meaning.

• 15:46Charles Liu?

  Okay.

• 15:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and, and I was able to confirm that. I did this with multiple, I did it with a video game that required kineticism. I did it with a, a typing sequence. I did it with a, a memory sequence. The next day I was better. And so, um, the brain is working.

• 16:01Charles Liu?

  So is your brain like making new neural pathways so that you're better at that?

• 16:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what they used to say, Charles. But you're, you're, it's just, I mean, we're not growing new neurons, right?

• 16:12Charles Liu?

  It's just the rearrangement of the chemical pieces that we picked up. It all kind of settles in during that time when you're not doing anything else.

• 16:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So all just sacks of chemistry is what you're telling us.

• 16:23Charles Liu?

  Oh, chemistry, alchemy, magic.

• 16:29Charles Liu?

  But as well you know, Neil, all scientists throughout history who have reached intractable things have at first ascribed them to perhaps magic or divinity. But knowing that that's just a gap until we fill it with more knowledge.

• 16:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's interesting is it works that way historically and there's the famous edict or adage from Arthur C. Clarke. Where any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

• 16:56Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 16:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ah. Yeah. And so, so, so.

• 16:59Charles Liu?

  Take an iPhone back to colonial America.

• 17:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, take it back 10 years ago. You'd still be, you'd still be burned at the stake. Right, right. Uh, so what for an actor to learn to be another whole person. Um, I'm intrigued to, and, and heartened, well, of course, because we see it and it's real. Actors who are good, pick it up, they capture the essence of it to the point where you, the viewer. Even if you're an expert in what they're acting, you think that they are what that is. You want them to be that.

• 17:33Charles Liu?

  On the other hand...

• 17:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I watched The Big Bang Theory and I'm certain those actors are experts in all the fields that they talk about.

• 17:39Charles Liu?

  On the other hand, doesn't it rankle you when, I don't know, maybe Chuck, you know this, when you're watching somebody pretending to play the piano on the movie and their hands are over here and you know that the sound is coming from there. You're going, "Oh, forget it, man. Yeah, I'm twitching the channel."

• 17:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not taking you to the next.

• 17:55Charles Liu?

  Or the next taping of Big Bang Theory.

• 17:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and some actors will actually want to learn the piano so that, you know, like, they want to be that real. Or they'll gain the weight or lose the weight.

• 18:04Chuck Nice?

  No, you're right. Denzel Washington played a trumpet player in Mo Berra Blues and literally learned the fingering, not to play the trumpet, but the finger.

• 18:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you checked the cheek to see if it was... More of our interview with Alan Rickman when we come back to StarTalk.

• 18:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk. Today we are featuring my interview with Alan Rickman. Listen to that guy all day. No, that is not a good imitation of Alan Rickman.

• 18:45Chuck Nice?

  He sounds a little smug when he talks.

• 18:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but then you want that, you know?

• 18:53Charles Liu?

  But his last line in the last movie, "You have your mother's eye, such pathos." You just want to shed a tear for the dude.

• 19:01Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I wanted to shed a tear for that impression.

• 19:05Charles Liu?

  That's why you're the comedian and I'm the astronomy professor.

• 19:08Chuck Nice?

  No, I'm glad you did it because mine sucked, but that was...

• 19:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, he's in a lot of movies. The movie I'm thinking of right this minute is he was one of the lead characters in the movie Bottle Shock, which chronicles an episode in the history of American ornology.

• 19:24Chuck Nice?

  Ah!

• 19:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's one of those OE words.

• 19:26Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 19:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ornology, yes.

• 19:28Charles Liu?

  Well, Neil, I hope it's okay that I reveal to the world how much of an enophile you are. This man, folks, is one of the, maybe two or three, most knowledgeable people about wine in the whole world.

• 19:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that he knows. In the whole world that I know. I know. You have to let me finish my sentence. Okay, fine. But the bottom line is. Well, thank you for that, for those gudos. But I'm just saying, so, so I had to go see that movie. And I found out neither of you saw that movie. Did not. Do all the talking this segment. Didn't see Sideways either. Yeah, so Sideways is another good one. So I'm just impressed that there are these, that there's a wine movie out there. And it chronicled the, this chapter in the history of American winemaking, where California is trying to make a name for itself. Right, it's got the grapes of the classic wine-growing regions of, of France, from Bordeaux and especially Bordeaux in this particular case. And, and so they grow their Cabernet Sauvignon grape.

• 20:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so the most expensive wines ever at auction from France are this grape. You put the plantings here in America and they're trying to compete. And there was a contest in 1976, our bicentennial year. It was all up with America. And the French said, let's have a contest. You guys are so uppity. Let's put in some of your wines against some of our wines. And some people were a little skeptical that maybe the French were trying to embarrass us on our, because, because by the way, the only way you can conduct that experiment is if you taste the wine blind. Right. Right, you can't know in advance because then you don't trust the judges. Especially the French.

• 21:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why don't we have a contest where you bring your still?

• 21:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so you gotta work that and play it right. And so, so Alan Rickman plays, was he one of the ju, I forgot the exact role, but he was there as part of this, this contest that would be conducted. And so, let's check out this clip and we'll talk more about wine when we get back.

• 21:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so you study your roles as, as any good actor does, which tells me then in Bottle Shock, you had to do a lot of wine tasting.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  That's not so difficult.

• 21:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Had to do your homework for Bottle Shock.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  Uh, no, well, the real problem with that was we were shooting it all in Sonoma. And, uh, and so when we came to the scene where there's a, it's about a blind wine testing between French, a true story, between French and American wines.

• 21:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where you taste the wine and you don't, you're not told in advance anything about it.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, uh, and this was set up in Paris thirty odd years ago by the character I was playing to publicize his wine academy. And this all happened and his judges were very eminent, um, French, all French chefs and, um, wine experts.

• 22:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And snobs, basically.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  They knew what they were talking about. Uh, horror of horrors, the American wines won.

• 22:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's an extraordinary story.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  But it was the departure from anything to do with the reality is when we shot that scene of the actual wine tasting, it was in about ninety degrees of heat outdoors, uh, in Sonoma where, of course, you couldn't possibly have done that because it would have ruined all the wine.

• 22:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, right, right, right. But it was, it was visually stunning. Right, yeah, look, it, it, it looked good. Yeah, so, so there he was. So, uh, he was the, sort of the British merchant who organized this tasting in France. And, yeah, America won. And in fact, I have tasted the wine that won that contest. The nineteen seventy-three Stag's Leap. Stag's Leap? Cask twenty-three. Wow. There's Cask twenty-three. Was it actually that good? Stag's Leap, uh, nineteen seventy-three. Now, now, back then, and still, uh, California wines tend to mature sooner than, than French wines. So, when the French lost this contest, they would then say, oh, well, the American, because it's nineteen seventy-six was the contest, these American wines.

• 23:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The other Cal, uh, French wines were in the early seventies, right? So they would say, oh, ours has not shown well yet. Come back in three years. We will see who wins then. Big.

• 23:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But by then it was too late. Genie was out of the bottle. Wow. Uh, Time Magazine was present at the tasting and they ended up writing about it. No other American press was interested in covering it. You know, there is a California wine called Rocket Science. Yes. In fact, I had some of that yesterday. As good as Stag's Leap? They're coming along.

• 23:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But actually, I'm a sucker for a wine label that has cosmic themes. Yeah. And there's a lot of them. In fact, I think cosmically themed wine labels are like second behind like nature stuff, like flowers and cute animals. Okay. Just check it out. There's some with moons and planets and stars. All night. Yeah.

• 24:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the Lucky Charms of Wine!

• 24:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Yellow Brick Road, that's the next one. Yeah, so I'm quite sure that cosmic themes have infused the wine making. People might have done well in their Astro 101 and it showed up on their labels. When we come back, more of my interview with Alan Rickman. Alan Rickman. Alan Rickman.

• 24:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that was more.

• 24:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back with StarTalk Radio, featuring my interviews with Alan Rickman. Alan, and both of you guys cannot imitate the man, I'm sorry. Okay, you're right. My host. Doesn't stop us from trying. Doesn't stop you from trying. And we just came off of that segment with a bottle shock. We're at American Wine, won this prestigious French competition, set up to showcase how far California had come. And you know, the science of wine is fascinating. In University of California, Davis, there's an entire school there that specializes in the science of wine. Yeah. And so what I like is that the Americans were saying, whatever you guys do in France, because you want to raise it to an art. In California, they're saying, we're gonna bring it down to a science.

• 25:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We will kick your ass with science! We'll blind them. What's right, blind? Drop some science on them, sir!

• 25:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Snap!

• 25:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Alan Rickman didn't only do Bottle Shock, he also did one of the campiest, funniest movies ever, Galaxy Quest. Doctor Lazarus. Yeah, I don't know how many people out there saw the film. I don't think it was like a number one in the charts, but definitely it's certainly like a rentable film. And it was about a TV characters from a science fiction show. That actual aliens came who had to protect their civilization or something, want them to help them. Because they thought it was real, because they got the television signals from, that went out into space.

• 26:26Chuck Nice?

  We have seen your historical.

• 26:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was every Trekkie's fantasy come true. Yeah, as a Star Trek fan. Every Star Trek fan. Because you wanted to be real and the aliens thought it was real. So Alan Rickman played Doctor Lazarus, right, in the Galaxy Quest TV show. Grab Thor's hammer, you shall be a man.

• 26:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's go straight to that clip.

• 26:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just asked him, what, how does this fit into your, your, your acting repertoire? Let's find out what he said.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, of course, in Galaxy Quest, I'm trying to think if I've done any others, but that was very particularly about a bunch of actors.

• 27:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's what's good.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  Who were all trapped in a really bad TV show.

• 27:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right. You were portraying an actor on that, that just didn't occur to me to think that that was.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Possibly a bad actor.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  Who, who had, you know, aims of having been in Shakespeare and found himself in a sci-fi show, which then finished 12 years ago, and now these actors just go to conventions.

• 27:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, because, so, and the real aliens showed up, right?

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Real aliens showed up unnoticed in the crowd of people wearing my costume.

• 27:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The premise is just so crazy. I mean, it's a fun, crazy premise. And I'm glad you did it, because it was, it's there.

• 28:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is in his portfolio of acting roles. You know, I just remember on my notes, forgive me, I had to reference my notes. The aliens in the movie called the Thermians and octopoidal creatures, right?

• 28:21Charles Liu?

  Yeah, humanoid form.

• 28:22Chuck Nice?

  But they had humanoid form when they were interacting with us. But when you saw them in their true form.

• 28:28Charles Liu?

  They were disgusting.

• 28:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they did it for our benefit, so that we wouldn't completely.

• 28:33Charles Liu?

  No, they're awesome.

• 28:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Completely freak out. So Alan made an interesting point, that there are actors there who may have trained in Shakespeare and find themselves on a hit TV show that has nothing to do with Shakespeare.

• 28:49Charles Liu?

  Rickman played that part to perfection in a sense because.

• 28:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He looked a little grumpy in that role, right?

• 28:54Charles Liu?

  Yes, he was supposedly Sir Alexander Dane, a distinguished Shakespearean who winds up on TV and now looks like a moron. In one scene in the movie, he had to go stand in front of a Walmart-like box store with his friends and say, "By Grabthar's hammer, what a savings."

• 29:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the store.

• 29:13Charles Liu?

  Yeah, and so the whole point of it is that you can take a role and play with it as much as you want, or you can disdain it and say that's not part of you, right? In modern Star Trek lore, people are still going around doing exactly the same thing.

• 29:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In my one cameo on The Big Bang Theory, I chatted with the Raj character, right? Because he's the astrophysicist on the show. And I said, "Oh, so what is your background?" Like, he's classically trained in England and he studied Shakespeare. And then I thought to myself, did he ever imagine that he would be best known for like a geeky science kid in a TV sitcom? And so I guess surely it all folds in, but maybe you've got to go where the, you've got to roll with it.

• 29:57Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you do, and you hate every minute of it until you get a check. Funny how that just makes everything okay. Oh, I'm just really selling my soul here. This is awful. There is no artistic integrity to any of this.

• 30:16Chuck Nice?

  My God! I'm stealing money!

• 30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  More of my interview with Alan Rickman when we come back to StarTalk.

• 30:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk. Find us on the web at starTalkRadio.net. Charles, I brought you on the show. You're an astrophysicist, but you're also like a total expert in so many other things, including the analysis of Harry Potter.

• 31:01Charles Liu?

  Look, Harry Potter's most important relative in the series is named Sirius Black. Sirius, of course, the brightest star in the night sky. Sirius has a brother named Regulus Black, who was also-

• 31:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Another very bright star in the-

• 31:14Charles Liu?

  Another relative, a female-

• 31:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sirius is in Canis Major, it is the Eye of the Dog.

• 31:18Charles Liu?

  Ah!

• 31:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Regulus is one of the stars in the constellation Leo.

• 31:22Charles Liu?

  It's in the paw of Leo the Lion.

• 31:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Paw of Leo.

• 31:24Charles Liu?

  And they have another relative named Bellatrix.

• 31:27Chuck Nice?

  Bellatrix, let me guess, Dog Anus.

• 31:31Chuck Nice?

  No?

• 31:32Charles Liu?

  No, no, no, she's probably-

• 31:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Generally, stars in constellations are not, don't identify the anus. They try to use the bright name, if it's a bright star, it's the Eye.

• 31:39Chuck Nice?

  Eyes, belts, no-

• 31:41Charles Liu?

  That's right. Now, Bellatrix is one of the stars in the constellation Orion the Hunter. And it means Amazon, or Woman Warrior. But of course, Bellatrix has a sister named Narcissus, which has no star name. And just a, Narcissus is of course, based on a plant. It's a flower that grows over the side.

• 31:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I once tweeted all the names in Harry Potter that derive from cosmic sources or star names, and there's quite a few. So J.K. Rowling must have had Astro 101, or knew her mythology, there's something. So that's good, when people know their science.

• 32:11Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 32:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It informs their art-

• 32:13Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 32:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And enriches storytelling.

• 32:15Charles Liu?

  Absolutely.

• 32:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's go to my next clip with Alan Rickman about how science literacy can enrich storytelling, particularly in the sci-fi genre. Check it out. I think it's not an accident that some of the most popular movies of all time have had a science fiction foundation to them. You look at the movie with Pandora in it, Avatar. You look at E.T. You look at, you look at these stories, it enables you to reach for places to tell a story that you couldn't maybe tell convincingly to just ordinary people.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  But they need great writers and they need great stories. It's very easy to just kind of sling the ingredients together and call it a film. And I think there's a danger of that. When I, when I think back to a film like Alien, which I think was an extraordinary experience to see that when that first came out. And just sit in a movie theater and be genuinely terrified.

• 33:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is there some role, science fiction role, that you think you could or should play or want to play as we go forward?

• 33:18Speaker 02

  I'm here, ready, willing and able to play anything, anybody, in any story as long as it's well-written. And what does that mean? As long as it uses language well, as long as it's got ideas, as long as it's got a point of view, as long as it's not insulting the audience, as long as it's taking them somewhere. And, and as I say, that's a mysterious process. I'm, I'm a good editor of a script, but I have no idea what it means to sit down with a blank piece of paper and come up with a story. But I'm, I'm the servant of it when it arrives. So sure, it absolutely would be something that would fascinate me.

• 33:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's Alan Rickman getting...

• 33:58Charles Liu?

  That's pretty noble of him.

• 33:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what I liked about what he said is he doesn't want the script to insult the audience, but he didn't at, at for a moment say that the script couldn't insult him as an actor. He'll play any role.

• 34:11Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 34:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Provided that it serves the audience. And that was good, it'll take anything anywhere.

• 34:16Charles Liu?

  That's really important. And science fiction is a tremendous way, just science in general, because there's so much unknown. It's the frontier and yet there's enough reality in it that we can relate to this unusual environment.

• 34:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you're saying is there's enough palate that has been undrawn upon

• 34:32Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 34:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For you to go places that where otherwise you'd be constricted here on Earth.

• 34:37Charles Liu?

  That's right, that's why you

• 34:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I put words in your mouth, but I think that's what you're saying.

• 34:40Charles Liu?

  You're exactly right, you explore the human condition in other worldly environments and it allows you to distill the story that you really want to tell.

• 34:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We can't be the only ones thinking this, Chuck. You look at the eight out of the top 10 grossing films of all time, they've been sci-fi. Jurassic Park, E.T., Avatar, Star Wars, you just go on down the list.

• 34:57Chuck Nice?

  It's all sci-fi, well because it also it excites the imagination.

• 35:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I thought I was biased because I'm a scientist and of course I like sci-fi, but like other folk are into this too.

• 35:08Chuck Nice?

  No, because I mean it's it's the ultimate fantasy, think about it, to be able, how many people have left this atmosphere and yet you get to go to another galaxy or or beyond, I mean, and then pretty much

• 35:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  14 people have left the atmosphere.

• 35:23Chuck Nice?

  14 people have left, that's all?

• 35:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's all.

• 35:26Chuck Nice?

  God, that's crazy.

• 35:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, left to to another destination.

• 35:29Chuck Nice?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 35:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 35:31Chuck Nice?

  Not just been up and back, not just circle around.

• 35:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Driving around the block.

• 35:34Chuck Nice?

  Driving around the block.

• 35:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 35:36Chuck Nice?

  Who actually have left to another destination.

• 35:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got their GPS and went somewhere else. Yeah, 14 people.

• 35:40Chuck Nice?

  So I mean, I mean, of course, people look at sci-fi and go, wow, I mean, this would be cool if this could happen.

• 35:46Charles Liu?

  Isn't there incredible comedy and humor in science fiction too?

• 35:50Chuck Nice?

  Well, without a doubt.

• 35:51Charles Liu?

  Being able to just laugh about things that you otherwise couldn't because it's too close to home.

• 35:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like Kirk getting Alien Tale, where he goes in the

• 35:58Chuck Nice?

  Or whatever, whatever unnamed crewman goes down with him is going to die.

• 36:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the red shirt.

• 36:07Charles Liu?

  With the red shirt.

• 36:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  More on Alan Rick with my interview with Alan Rickman when we return on StarTalk Radio.

• 36:32Speaker 02

  In these lessons, I will attempt to penetrate your mind. You will attempt to resist. Prepare yourself.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  Let gentlemen...

• 36:48Speaker 02

  Feeling sentimental.

• 36:53Speaker 04

  That's private.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  Not to me. And not to the Dark Lord if you don't improve.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  Every memory he has access to is a weapon he can use against you. You won't last two seconds if he invades your mind. You're just like your father. Lazy, arrogant.

• 37:14Speaker 04

  Don't say a word against my father!

• 37:16Speaker 02

  Weak.

• 37:17Speaker 04

  I'm not weak!

• 37:18Speaker 02

  Then prove it! Control your emotions. Discipline your mind.

• 37:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Radio. And we've been featuring my interview with actor extraordinaire Alan Rickman. Every role he plays, he owns it.

• 37:32Chuck Nice?

  That's true.

• 37:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't even imagine anyone else approaching the roles that he portrays in his films.

• 37:39Chuck Nice?

  He really does make them all his own.

• 37:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I guess that's a good thing for directors. I should have brought a director in here to get them to react to this. But, so what I wanted to know from him in my interview was, does he approach a role with any kind of philosophical... Like, what's his muse as he goes in? And are there roles that he feels more comfortable in? Or is, as an actor, he'll take on any challenge at all? I just wanted to find out, so I asked him. Let's see what he says.

• 38:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you have larger philosophical goals in how you portray it? Or do you stay focused just on that character in the context of everything else that happens?

• 38:20Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I want to be part of a story, so I suppose I would say...

• 38:27Speaker 02

  I don't know how to play a part that isn't involved in a wider context. I need to know who they are and why they are. So, yeah, and I would rather what I do doesn't diminish the audience.

• 38:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I mean, that's an important statement because in all the roles that I remember seeing you in, you were in a way bigger than yourself. Not in any bravado way, obviously, but just it's like, yeah, I mean, I feel that. I see it. I know somebody kind of like that. And I and, you know, whereas there are others, they come on set and they leave and I only remember that they were there. And so so you're putting something in there that I don't, you don't get with every performer and and I see that.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  Well, it's a mysterious mechanism, acting and theatre and storytelling. It's mysterious.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  And it involves, you know, you make a choice to be an actor.

• 39:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But is it still mysterious to you? You're in it. You're accomplishing. It's mysterious to me. I tried it. I have two cameo roles and it's like, this is hard stuff. And I was playing myself. That's and so so it's, I think it's a mystery to people who don't understand it. It's just that that what's going on there, he's pulling it off and he's making it happen. Just let it run.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  It is a mystery to actors as well, to a large extent. When you feel it, you know, they on film, they go, okay, that's

• 40:02Speaker 02

  let's move on, cut, move on when they've got it.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  It's often mysterious as to what has happened, if it'll work.

• 40:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there are people who study emotions. They've just learned this, that they've they've divided up emotions into seven categories.

• 40:23Chuck Nice?

  Only seven? Wow.

• 40:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, seven and all are

• 40:26Chuck Nice?

  Let's try and get them now.

• 40:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are combinations of others. So happiness, sadness.

• 40:31Chuck Nice?

  I got eight.

• 40:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear, disgust, and contempt.

• 40:39Charles Liu?

  Wait, disgust and contempt are very similar.

• 40:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, I don't have contempt of food in which I'm disgusted for having eaten.

• 40:46Charles Liu?

  Oh, okay.

• 40:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I think you can make maps of how these would combine. And a good actor presumably can summon these at any instant. But what's interesting, when you study these across cultures, there's extraordinary similarity. An angry person in one culture looks like an angry person in another culture, right? There's no one smiling out of anger in one place and showing their teeth in another. I mean, there's a commonality across cultures.

• 41:12Charles Liu?

  Are you sure?

• 41:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, there's a, there's a, that was a creepy face, Charles, don't do that again. I don't, you're scaring me.

• 41:19Charles Liu?

  Did that create disgust?

• 41:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't, this is eighth category here, Charles freaking out.

• 41:23Chuck Nice?

  Is creepy a category?

• 41:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Creepy, creepy, we need creepy here.

• 41:27Charles Liu?

  But his comment, his comment about the mystery of acting is so dead on.

• 41:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's only a mystery because we haven't studied and understood it.

• 41:33Charles Liu?

  Are you sure?

• 41:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not because it's, not because it's mystical or anything.

• 41:37Charles Liu?

  Well, in the same sense that you still really can't tell which painting is more beautiful, this Renoir or that Monet, there's an aesthetic to it. Sure, we can try to quantify it scientifically, but is there a part of it that will never, ever be able to be quantified, like into these?

• 41:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't think so. I think we, one day we'll put electrodes on Chuck's head, and when he says angry, and I'll see what part his brain lights up. When he says I'm happy, that wouldn't be useful, the whole brain lights up.

• 42:05Chuck Nice?

  Oh my God, his brain is one big giant light bulb, what happened?

• 42:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just one organ.

• 42:09Charles Liu?

  We won't like him when he's angry.

• 42:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I mean, it's just, it's an intriguing fact, that an actor can summon these emotions on command, deliver them, be convincing about it, and they're not even feeling that unless in any, in any derived way.

• 42:25Chuck Nice?

  See, a lot of them will say they are feeling that.

• 42:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so nothing external to them created the stimulus.

• 42:30Charles Liu?

  Right, but they create the stimulus in us.

• 42:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 42:33Charles Liu?

  They themselves, whether or not they feel it, can convince us that they feel it. That's a scientific thing in the receiving side, not just a transmission side.

• 42:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which makes the really good, which means they're really good emotional liars. I wonder, I wonder what it is to be married to an actor?

• 42:47Chuck Nice?

  Awful.

• 42:49Chuck Nice?

  Can't trust him for a second.

• 42:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't know, are they lying or are they telling the truth?

• 42:53Chuck Nice?

  Of course I still love you, honey.

• 42:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, it's like, nah.

• 42:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've got to start wrapping this up. My gosh, oh, this was fun. Such a good time. Chuck and Charles, Charles and Chuck. Thanks for being on Start. You've been on Start Talk before. Yes. This will not be your last time. Thank you so much. And Chuck, I'm going to find you on Friday night. My sister, who loves Home and Garden Television, she's going to find you by accident. That's right. She's going to call me in panic.

• 43:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Will it be creepy? No, it won't be creepy, only if I actually came in your home. You've been listening to Start Talk Radio, worked you in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. Give it up for the NSF. Yes. I'm your host, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, and as always, I bid you to keep looking up.