Play It Again: Jeff Daniels

Today, for your holiday week, we’re returning to one of our favorite 2024 conversations with actor Jeff Daniels. Daniels is always writing. Plays, songs, a script or two. Even in interviews you get the sense the Michigan native is trying to relay the stories of his life in a way he’d find compelling as a reader, or listener. Bystander — as a viewer. We sat in April around the latest chapter of his crime series American Rust https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.ed5c00e5-14c1-4c8a-b7fb-907f1a3872be?autoplay=0&ref_=atv_cf_strg_wb (12:30), reprising his role as Police Chief Del Harris. It’s a performance inspired by his midwestern upbringing in Chelsea, Michigan (16:06) and the formative teachings of theater director Marshall W. Mason (21:20). Then, Daniels reflects on his arrival to New York City in 1976 (24:06), performing in Lanford Wilson’s play Fifth of July (27:20), and his early on-screen roles in Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild (31:10), Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo (34:20), and Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale (44:20). On the back-half, we walk through his years making The Newsroom (51:48), working with screenwriter (and then playwright) Aaron Sorkin (53:20), and how the two of them reimagined Atticus Finch and To Kill a Mockingbird for both Broadway (59:49) and what he calls “a country at a crossroads” (1:05:33). To close, we sit with the utility of good writing in this fraught era (1:10:30), and a musical tribute to his late father, Robert (1:15:32). Thoughts or future guest ideas? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:12Sam Fragoso?

  Pushkin.

• 0:30Sam Fragoso?

  This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Fragoso. Welcome to the show.

• 0:47Sam Fragoso?

  Today, I'm joined by actor, songwriter, and playwright Jeff Daniels. I've been hosting Talk Easy for eight years now, and one of the byproducts of making something every week, at least for me, is that I have a lot of friends and family, especially my mother and father, that will send text messages to the effect of, "How's it going? Where have you been? Are you gonna take three weeks to respond to all 37 of my very funny memes? How come you don't call more?" These are all very fair and justifiable questions, especially from my mom and dad. And I have to imagine, for most people listening, this is a typical refrain you've had from your parents, or if you are a parent and have

• 1:32Sam Fragoso?

  kids, you've probably sent that text, had that call. And so I've come up with a solution to this, which is, what if I could solve this very real problem I'm having in my life through the show itself? What if, instead of taping a typical intro for Jeff Daniels, I just try calling up my father and have him guess who's coming on the program this week? This is just an experiment. We may not do this every Sunday, but I thought, after eight years and 400 episodes or so, why not try something a little bit different? I should note that my father has, and I mean this, he has no idea that we're gonna try

• 2:16Sam Fragoso?

  this. I've not prepped him. There's been no debriefing. I'm not even giving him a heads up that I'm calling. So why don't we try him and just see how this goes?

• 2:28Sam Fragoso?

  He loves Jeff Daniels, so he'll probably get this pretty quick. But let's see what happens. By the way, this is gonna be the one time he doesn't pick up his phone.

• 2:41Sam Fragoso?

  Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. Oh, God.

• 2:47Sam Fragoso?

  Okay, so for listeners, we've made an edit. I've called him. I've called him six times. He hasn't answered. I'm gonna try one more time. He's gonna think something is terribly wrong. I know. He's gonna think like, something bad has happened to me. Okay, we'll try one more time. If not, we'll call my mom. Here we go.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Hello?

• 3:12Sam Fragoso?

  Hey.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  What are you doing?

• 3:13Sam Fragoso?

  This is your son, Sam.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Jesus Christ.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  What the fuck is going on?

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Pulling you up for a hostage or some shit?

• 3:25Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, I'm a hostage in this closet.

• 3:29Sam Fragoso?

  So I don't know if you know, but we have a very special guest on the show.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Wait a minute. Am I on the show right now? What the hell? What? That you're calling me? Some nonsense. Oh, my God. Not again. Oh, man. All right.

• 3:47Sam Fragoso?

  So let's see if you can guess this, and I'll let you guess it.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  All right.

• 3:50Sam Fragoso?

  Our guest is someone I've been trying to have on the show for a long, long time. He was born and raised in Chelsea, Michigan. He still lives and works there, running the Purple Rose Theater Company.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:05Sam Fragoso?

  He fell in love with theater in college at Central Michigan University. He's also, I think, the university's most accomplished college dropout, because he never actually finished school. Instead, he left for New York City in 1976. Now, when he was a young actor trying to make it, Jack Lemmon once gave him some words of wisdom. He said, "You gotta be different. Everybody's the same. They walk at the door and they're all the same actor. You gotta be the one who's different. And sometimes, that gives you choices." And so sure enough, he took Lemmon's advice and made a career out of it.

• 4:47Sam Fragoso?

  I'm gonna read some credits, and then maybe you'll have a better idea who this is. His early work includes Terms of Endearment.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 4:55Sam Fragoso?

  Heartburn, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Speed, Dumb and Dum-

• 5:00Speaker 01

  I already know.

• 5:01Sam Fragoso?

  You already know. Dumb and Dumber, I thi- isn't that one of your favorites, Dumb and Dumber?

• 5:05Speaker 01

  It's fine.

• 5:06Sam Fragoso?

  What about, what about Arachnophobia? Do you remember that one?

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Spider's cool.

• 5:11Sam Fragoso?

  My personal favorite is a movie called Something Wild by Jonathan Demme. Have you seen that?

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're talking about Jeff Daniels.

• 5:19Sam Fragoso?

  Wow, you guessed that quick.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  I mean, I, I had it, you, you, what is that line? You had me at, uh-

• 5:25Sam Fragoso?

  Hello.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Uh, at, no, but-

• 5:28Sam Fragoso?

  Chelsea, Michigan?

• 5:28Speaker 01

  One of the movies. No, I was getting there, but more with Terms of Endearment.

• 5:35Sam Fragoso?

  Terms of Endearment. Okay.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:37Sam Fragoso?

  He's also done a whole lot of theater. He's been nominated for three Tonys, uh, his latest being for his betrayal of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, adapted for the stage by Aaron Sorkin.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 5:49Sam Fragoso?

  The last performance, I think, I just want to highlight, The Newsroom. He played Will McAvoy.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:54Sam Fragoso?

  The moderate Republican anchor hosting a fictitious show called Newsnight. He won an Emmy for that. It was his first Emmy win. Were you a Newsroom guy?

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Big time. Yeah, we used to watch it when you were, when you were a young lad.

• 6:09Sam Fragoso?

  You've never said the word lad.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  Lad. So, the big thing for me, that, the speech, everybody knows the speech.

• 6:18Sam Fragoso?

  Hmm. The America used to be, um-

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Great speech.

• 6:20Sam Fragoso?

  Used to be great. Yeah, we're not number one anymore.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I play that for my students so they can get a perspective of that we're not the shit. We can be. And so that speech, it's just, it's riveting. I mean, I, I played for certain classes who can get it. And so my deal is that, look, in four years from now, all, every single one of you have the opportunity to vote. And you, you can change everything. Your generation can change everything. So what you do with it- It's your future.

• 6:51Sam Fragoso?

  I'm glad we're hitting this political point because in the last decade, Daniels has made a pretty strong commitment to making work about politics. There's the Comey rule, the looming tower, American Rust, or even playing Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird post 2020 and all the protests that happened. Before we go to Jeff, what do you like about Jeff Daniels, the actor?

• 7:19Speaker 01

  He's authentic. And I think that, you know, his roles, especially lately, I mean, looming towers to me is just amazing. I've been trying to get you to watch it because I've seen it like four or five times already. He's authentic and I think he wants, he wants a change. I think he sees a generation screwed up a lot of things and he's calling them out. That's amazing. You're going to have him on the show.

• 7:47Sam Fragoso?

  I know. It's been, this has been a long one. This has been a long time in the making.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I've been throwing out that name, Kevin Costner, you know.

• 7:56Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, we don't need, well, look, we don't need the short list of people that I've tried who have not agreed to come on the show.

• 8:04Sam Fragoso?

  That's always my favorite thing. When I call my mom, she's like, you know what'd be great? Have you thought about Brad Pitt?

• 8:12Sam Fragoso?

  At least on this one, we have someone that I really do love. And I think started asking to come on like five or six years ago. And so with that, here is actor, playwright, songwriter, devout Detroit Tigers fan.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Al Kaline, baby.

• 8:33Sam Fragoso?

  Exactly. Jeff Daniels.

• 8:54Sam Fragoso?

  Jeff Daniels. Nice to meet you.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  Nice to be met.

• 8:58Sam Fragoso?

  Is it? How are you? How are you feeling today?

• 8:59Speaker 02

  Uh, good. Fine. Terrific. Yeah. Good.

• 9:02Sam Fragoso?

  I'm sensing some ambivalence.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  No, I'm, I'm, uh, I've been on a family vacation with five grandkids. So it's been kind of, and I just got in back yesterday. I kind of left it. And so, uh, yeah, it's, it's like, this is like a different experience. New York City versus, you know, Florida in a house with the kids, which are great, but it's, it's, uh, I'm re-entering the atmosphere.

• 9:23Sam Fragoso?

  So am I offering you a vacation from your vacation?

• 9:27Speaker 02

  No, I don't want to say that. I don't want to say, because it is enjoyable. We, we do enjoy it. But, uh, yeah, suddenly it's just much quieter.

• 9:35Sam Fragoso?

  Well, I'll try to keep vaguely quiet. The show is called Talk Easy.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 9:39Sam Fragoso?

  After all. We're taping this together in New York City. Neither of us live here, but season two of American Rust is about a part of the country in southwest Pennsylvania, often ignored in films, TV shows, policies even. When the first season debuted in 2021, you said that the show speaks to the crossroads this country is in, to the people who've been abandoned, left behind, as jobs go elsewhere and the American dream fades. So here we are, three years later. Do you still see the show and the country in those same terms?

• 10:17Speaker 02

  The Midwest has always been flyover country for a reason. You know, the people on the coast, they don't want to go there. It's boring. The people aren't interesting. They're simple. They aren't sophisticated enough.

• 10:30Sam Fragoso?

  I haven't met my uncle or grandmother in Michigan, then.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  Exactly. And, and, you know, I grew up there and then after 10 years in New York, and when we moved back there, we raised the kids in Michigan. And so when the chance to do American Rust came up, Based on Philip Meyer's book, it's set in Pittsburgh and I'm reading the book and I know these people. I live around these people and in some ways I am of these people. I just thought it was so authentic and even the pace of the show, the season, that small town pacing. They're just simple people, but what the show does and what Philip did and then Danny Futterman and Adam Rapp did, the writers, you have simple on the outside but complicated on the inside. And they were able to write a story, based on Philip's

• 11:17Speaker 02

  book and then extended it and then made it really complicated so that it was something that people would want to watch. You know, suddenly there are bodies dropping and things like that in season two. So that's, that ain't Andy of Mayberry.

• 11:31Sam Fragoso?

  I'm hoping that's not happening in Chelsea, Michigan, where you live.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  No.

• 11:35Sam Fragoso?

  I mean, not often, at least.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  No, not often, not often. And certainly not like this. And that's where it, you know, goes beyond just, you know, trying to do a documentary of what it's like to live in a small town in the Midwest. It isn't that. I do like the people. I like the characters. They're recognizable. They have stuff underneath what they're saying. They're saying one thing and thinking another and all that stuff that you see in the Midwest. We don't, we don't, as a rule, kind of tell you what we're thinking all the time. I mean, you asked at the top of this interview, how are you doing? Really? You're a little ambivalent. No, I'm just from the Midwest. You just don't get to read me. I'm not transparent. I'm not like over in your lap telling you exactly how I feel. That's, that's kind of, I remember

• 12:21Speaker 02

  coming to New York and being of the Midwest and having to learn how to like drop all that, you know, how to, how to, you know, repress that kind of close to the vest, that kind of don't let anybody know what you're really thinking thing.

• 12:35Sam Fragoso?

  I'm born and raised in Chicago, so this is very familiar to me.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  Definitely the small town thing, kind of, don't say anything and let them do all the talking, kind of thing. So when I came to New York in the seventies, I was, I was on an island. They kept going, Jeff, get up, do something in the acting class today. Anything. Please. You cannot sit in the chair and be silent anymore.

• 12:58Sam Fragoso?

  And did you say to them, well, less is more? I read that in a book.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  I didn't know what that meant. No, no, I didn't know. I didn't know anything. I was 21 and I just, I didn't know what I was doing.

• 13:07Sam Fragoso?

  But in the sense that this show is part of you, that you recognize yourself in the character of Del Harris and the community of American Rust. You know, you grew up in Michigan, the eldest son in a working-class, moderate Republican household. Your father ran a lumber company in Chelsea, a company he planned to pass down to you. But the first indication that lumber may not have been in your cards, was not going to be in your cards, came, I believe, in sixth grade when a music teacher named Diane Elroy got incredibly bored on a Friday afternoon and instructed students to do what?

• 13:45Speaker 02

  "Today, we're going to do a skit. We're gonna do a bunch of skits. We didn't even know it was improv. She didn't even know it was improv. She was bored, it's a Friday, we're gonna do skits." So she had a kid get up and do something, and then another one. And about the third one, she said, "Jeff, you're a politician who is giving a speech and your pants are falling down. Go ahead." And I got up in front of the class and had the presence of performance mind to not just go right to the pants are falling down. I started with whatever I was talking, a sixth grader thinks a mayor might say, you know, at the open ribbon coveting ceremony.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  "I'm glad here today, the firehouse," and I would tug at the belt, just a little. "The firehouse is the best firehouse we've ever built in our town." Tug at the belt again, and then I kept, and then it was, now we're, now both hands are tugging the belt, and I keep talking about the firehouse. And then by the bottom, I'm gonna guess, seemed like five minutes, but about minute and a half in, I'm holding up my pants as if they've got 400-pound weights on them, trying to get to the floor. So it's this struggle to hold my pants, and the classroom.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  Was cracking up and she went to my parents and she said, keep an eye on this one. There's something going on.

• 15:06Sam Fragoso?

  When your teacher went to your parents, I wonder how much she relayed about the skit itself, because you were playing a mayor. Your father was elected mayor of Chelsea in 1961. And so when I heard that story, I thought, no wonder this kid knows how to do a stump speech. He probably has seen his father.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  No, never saw dad. No, none of them. No, he went to.

• 15:28Sam Fragoso?

  You didn't, you didn't support him?

• 15:29Speaker 02

  No, the mayor thing, he just went to meetings. He just went to meetings on Tuesday nights and we, then he came back and he was still the mayor. We didn't know, we didn't know. Now that had.

• 15:38Sam Fragoso?

  That was a tough, demanding job. Don't, you can't put that down.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  Not in a two stoplight town, it wasn't. But my dad also was the guy that when the Kiwanis Club did their annual pageant, I remember this, I was five or six, they played Swan Lake. And then he came out in a pink tutu, a ballot with a wig, probably a pink tutu and black high top Converse sneakers and did his version of Swan Lake. And everyone was cracking up. That comedy that my dad had, I remember when they would have bridge club and they'd have eight couples and they're all playing bridge and it's a Saturday night

• 16:22Speaker 02

  and we're downstairs and you can hear them and all of a sudden you hear my dad talking and it's loud and you know, the martinis are flowing and I, you crawl up the stairs and you look and there's your dad standing up in front of all these other couples, telling a 10 minute story and they're all cracking up. I remember seeing that. It didn't click like, I'm going to be an actor, but it was that, that's in me. Those genes are in me.

• 16:52Sam Fragoso?

  You remember seeing that and thinking what and feeling what?

• 16:56Speaker 02

  What is that? What is?

• 16:57Sam Fragoso?

  How does he do that with all those people?

• 16:59Speaker 02

  That's not the dad I know.

• 17:00Sam Fragoso?

  You saw a different person?

• 17:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, didn't know it, didn't know what I was seeing, but I was seeing something that. Clicked and then the sixth grade thing with the classroom and the mayor's speech. And then when I was a sophomore in high school, they were doing musicals. The same teacher, sixth grade teacher was now doing the high school musicals, which they would do once a year. And she'd pick one and she'd get all the kids from chorus. She taught chorus. I was in chorus because I could sing and but I was also on the basketball team because if you could, you know, walk in a straight line, you were athletic.

• 17:36Sam Fragoso?

  The team was five and 12 that year.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  We were, thank you. It was, it was grim.

• 17:40Sam Fragoso?

  The last game you played, I think you lost by 30 points or something like that.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Is that, is that true?

• 17:44Sam Fragoso?

  Yes. I mean, I don't have the stat sheet in front of me, but something like that.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 17:47Sam Fragoso?

  You actually, I have your field goal percentage if you want it.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would love to see that. I was either, I'd either score 21 points or three, but I would shoot like I was going to score 50.

• 17:57Sam Fragoso?

  You're shooting like it's your last game.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. I was walking after a very, after a very bad basketball practice where all we did was run. I walked by the high school auditorium as a sophomore and she was waiting for me, that same teacher. She said, get in here. I said, what? We're doing auditions for South Pacific. I need sailors. Get up on stage. I was like, God damn it. So I went up and I, you know, whatever that kid did in sixth grade, he did again in that audition and got, now I'm, now I'm hooked. Now I'm in.

• 18:29Sam Fragoso?

  In your audio memoir, Alive and Well Enough, you said that, quote, "I've always thought that art is what gives us wings. Sometimes it's a teacher." So Diane clearly did that for you.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:43Sam Fragoso?

  But so too did acting teacher and guest director Marshall W. Mason, who first cast you in a production of Summer in Smoke in your junior year of college, I think it was. What do you think Mason saw in you at the age of 20?

• 18:58Speaker 02

  I think Marshall saw that thing maybe that I saw at the top of the stairs when my dad was telling that big story in front of all those people. He saw someone who could become someone else. He saw raw talent with self-taught technique that was guessing right and that whatever I was doing, I could become someone else seamlessly. Not to the degree that I could if I actually, you know, moved to New York and got into his circle repertory acting classes, which I eventually did. But that's where he gave me the technique and that kind of internal playbook that you use.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  To get you where you need to go, whether it's onstage or in front of a camera. I still use it today.

• 19:42Sam Fragoso?

  For those unfamiliar, what are the tenants of that technique?

• 19:46Speaker 02

  Well, I mean-

• 19:47Sam Fragoso?

  To the extent that you still find them useful?

• 19:48Speaker 02

  As I tell directors, five words or less. If you can't tell me what you want in five words or less, stay in the chair. It was a descendant of Stanislavski, who then Strasberg at the Actors Studio took it, Sandy Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse, kind of. They all took versions of what Stanislavski had discovered and kind of morphed it into their own thing. And I think Marshall was certainly a fan of Sandy Meisner and Sanford Meisner, and put together his version of that. So it really was kind of a descendant of that Stanislavski method, without all the personal trappings of, please call me by my character's name. It was really focused on listening, on using the other actor.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  You know, half your performance is in the other actor, which is not what we're taught in Hollywood. In Hollywood, you're talking, you know, I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille. You act in front of a mirror. And he was kind of very, no, make it about her, make it about him, make it about that other person. And then suddenly, it's tennis back and forth, and the audience goes in. You know, and a lot of, and the Fifth of July was a play that I did in 1978, where that quiet kid in the acting class got a part where he didn't say much in the play. And Lanford Wilson had written that for me. And I listened a lot, and I learned how to listen doing that play, which I did in three different productions.

• 21:14Sam Fragoso?

  So when you got cast in that play, you had been in New York for about two, two and a half years at that point.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:19Sam Fragoso?

  But I just want to hold the drive over when you did decide to move from Michigan to New York. September 1st, 1976, at 2:00 PM in the Holland Tunnel. Some clothes in your car, a guitar, and the $4,500 your father planned to spend on your senior year of tuition. When you clocked it was 2:00 PM, and you were no longer in Kansas.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:42Sam Fragoso?

  What was racing through your mind?

• 21:46Speaker 02

  Fear. I'm here for a reason and I'm gonna give it, I mean, I'm gonna give it some time. Marshall thinks I'm good. I have one person in the city who thinks I'm good. I remember that. And he stuck with me. He wouldn't let me leave. After a year, I was ready to leave. I was done. I'm just gonna go home.

• 22:05Sam Fragoso?

  You called back home?

• 22:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:07Sam Fragoso?

  Right?

• 22:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was about a year in and I, you know, I was living in one room on 23rd and 7th and it was just one of those, you know, horrible apartments and man, not happy and, you know, Off Broadway was great, but you know, I wanted to go home. I was done. I'll go back to the lumberyard. I don't need to do this. I was never invested to the point of, I wanna be a star. I want, this is my dream. I have to fulfill it. I was just told I was good at it. Okay, I'm here because I'm good at it, but it's not happening. So I think I'm gonna call the parents and I'm just gonna tell them I'm gonna come home. And my dad was, well, you're, it's your decision, I guess. He's starting to think lumberyard

• 22:46Speaker 02

  again now. And mom was on the other end of the phone and was silent and he talked for a few minutes and then he goes, Marge, what do you think? And she goes, find a way to stay and hung up. So I stayed. I'm not going back to that. And I stayed and she was right. It's like toughen up.

• 23:04Sam Fragoso?

  Were you surprised she said that?

• 23:06Speaker 02

  Uh, my mother? No. No. She was tough. She was a farm girl tough.

• 23:11Sam Fragoso?

  Tougher than your father?

• 23:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. Dad, dad was, you know, dad was strong in his own ways and, you know, could, could talk to anybody and basically persuade people into thinking that what, what he thought was right was the right thing to do, because it usually was. I kinda grew up with Atticus Finch. You know, that's what dad, his reputation in town was. Mom suffered no fools, especially with her children.

• 23:34Sam Fragoso?

  When you spoke as a kid, did she stare at you with her arms crossed the way you do when I speak?

• 23:41Speaker 02

  I don't know where to put them. I can put them here. I'll put them here. No, there's a microphone here. I can't. Oh, no, I'll do. I'll just hang on the side.

• 23:49Sam Fragoso?

  Look you give when someone else is speaking. It's very compelling.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  I listen. I listen.

• 23:54Sam Fragoso?

  Yes.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  I listen. There's not a lot of active listening. There's a lot of very direct kind of listening. Yeah, she would do that.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  Dad would. Dad would move around. But she would. She would.

• 24:09Sam Fragoso?

  He was more animated.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  She would stare at you and wait for you to stop talking. And then here's what you're going to do. Someday I'll play my mother in a movie.

• 24:16Sam Fragoso?

  Since Dumb and Dumber, we're wondering, when will you finally challenge yourself?

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Harry.

• 24:22Speaker 02

  Harry Dunn's mother.

• 24:25Sam Fragoso?

  So you stuck it out. You listened to her. You stick it out. You get that role in Fifth of July by Lanford Wilson. Was that the first time that you felt like a writer saw you, that a writer wrote for you?

• 24:36Speaker 02

  Definitely was the first time a writer wrote for me as I was at 22, 23, sitting in the back of the acting class, not wanting to do anything. Scared to do anything, scared to make a mistake. All those, you know, dredge up some personal memory and sob in acting class and then let everyone discuss it after you're done, you know? That's it was, you know, it was like therapy in an acting class. It was, oh, that's where we're gonna go. I don't get to do what I do in musicals, which is chicken wings and kind of.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  No, we're not doing that here. Okay.

• 25:08Sam Fragoso?

  Anti-therapy is very Midwestern, I'd say.

• 25:11Speaker 02

  Oh, God, yeah. Yeah, we don't need help.

• 25:14Sam Fragoso?

  That's what we say to ourselves.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  Well, we say it or to anyone who happens to ask. Yeah, no, we're fine. We don't need help. You're the one with a problem.

• 25:20Sam Fragoso?

  Thank you for looking at me when you said that.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what acting class felt like was like, okay, we're gonna open you up. And again, I'm in a Midwestern, moderate, soft Republican household where being, except when Dad got a couple of martinis in him, being extroverted was, why do you have to be so noisy, you know? And in New York, you come to learn how to, if it's on your mind, it's out of your mouth and you're up on your feet and you're. You're out it comes. You have to learn to come out with those emotions instead of, you have to unlock them. And that's what Marshall taught me was how to unlock them. He was one, he was the first one to teach me that.

• 25:58Sam Fragoso?

  While you're performing on stage, you're also auditioning for commercials, films, et cetera. In the early eighties, before you land that breakout part in Terms of Endearment, casting director Juliet Taylor told you to be, quote, "less defensive and less angry at auditions. You've got to be more personable." What does getting defensive and angry at an audition look like?

• 26:24Speaker 02

  You're not gonna give me the part, so why am I here? I mean, what do you want?

• 26:28Sam Fragoso?

  And that didn't work?

• 26:29Speaker 02

  No, I can't believe that didn't work. Well, you gotta understand, this was several years now of, Terms of Endearment was seven years in of commercials and off-Broadway and, you know, the dream of can I be in the movies? Can I, is Broadway even an option? Is having a career, making a living as an actor even an option? You know, when I talk to college kids brought in, I start out with rejection because that's the one thing that the academics can't teach you.

• 26:59Sam Fragoso?

  I have here, you tell actors that rejection is gonna be part of it, and so are antidepressants.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, we're, the highs are high and the lows are really low. It's how we're wired. I mean, I'm not the only one. I mean, Clapton wrote, you know, talked about it. Eric Clapton talks, every artist is, because there's no sameness. And then when you do get in a hit, whether it's a play or whether it's a movie, it's temporary. Fame is fleeting. And you have to understand that now they're gonna be focused on someone else and something else. And it's no longer, you're no longer the number one movie in the country or the number one show on Broadway. And now what? And the trap is trying to sustain that somehow with being famous and being seen and being all that stuff, which I just is like a poison to me.

• 27:50Sam Fragoso?

  Was it a poison to you then?

• 27:51Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, it's always been. Yeah. I just wanna act. Why do I have to do anything else? Well, you have to promote yourself. Well, you have to be out there marketing. Well, you have to sell your personality. You have to be a brand. Gable was a brand. Tom Cruise is a brand, you know? Jimmy Stewart was a brand. You go to see Jimmy Stewart being Jimmy Stewart. I don't want that. I wanna be, I don't, I wanna be other people. That's all I wanna be.

• 28:16Sam Fragoso?

  In those early films, I'm talking about Something Wild and The Purple Rose of Cairo. I want to start with the Jonathan Demme movie. When Something Wild came out, there was an article in the LA Times by a writer that described you as, quote, "The guy with the face like a hundred dollar cotton flannel shirt." To be clear, that was in the 90s. I didn't adjust that number for inflation. He also wrote, "Daniels was born to picnic table, bred for family portraits. The station wagon was invented with him in mind."

• 28:45Speaker 02

  Okay, this is the LA Times talking about the Midwest. Okay, I'm just, let me just start with that.

• 28:52Sam Fragoso?

  It's a stand-in.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for labeling me and based on one performance, and that's who I am, and that's what my face is. Yeah.

• 29:00Sam Fragoso?

  Norma Mailer wrote that for it.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  Look, It was, Something Wild was Jack Lemmon and Dick Van Dyke had a baby, and it was named Charlie Driggs, and that's what I played in the movie. I loved Lemmon. I loved Dick Van Dyke growing up. Those were my influences going into that. I said, just do what they might do and just bounce off all, everything that was, Demme was throwing at me.

• 29:22Sam Fragoso?

  Which parts of each of them did you take, Lemmon and Van Dyke?

• 29:26Speaker 02

  Uh, they were both physical. If it was on their mind, it was out of their mouth, which is the opposite of what I went to New York with. I was, so now it's, here are guys that are out.

• 29:36Sam Fragoso?

  The opposite of the Jeff Daniels from Chelsea, Michigan.

• 29:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so that's fun. That's where the fun is. So, you know, Dick Van Dyke, the physical comedy that, that he did, well, I mean, I would sit in my living room and watch that show, and, and probably that made it into some of those high school musicals. I just loved what he did, and he was funny, and he was fast, and he talked fast. Jack Lemmon was the same thing. Jack did some dramatic roles, but both those guys were kind of, you couldn't see the script. And it wasn't that they were ad-libbing so much. Certainly Jack Lemmon could, I call it the Jack Lemmon stutter start, which, yeah, well, I'm, okay, I'm, look, all right, if you want me to, sure, I'll answer the question. When the line is, I'll answer the question. That's what Jack would do on that, so.

• 30:24Sam Fragoso?

  Would, by the way, would be incredible. If you did the rest of the interview as Jack Lemmon.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I mean, you sure. Thank you. Yeah, no, but it was it was kind of a way to loosen me up.

• 30:35Sam Fragoso?

  That's a dead on impression.

• 30:37Speaker 02

  It is not.

• 30:38Sam Fragoso?

  That's done. I mean, not doing the voice, but the man that that the way.

• 30:41Speaker 02

  The mannerism here. I yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, they were just so.

• 30:45Sam Fragoso?

  This is an audio medium, so that's tough to play.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  That is tough. I hope you can see that at home. It was tough. It was it was it was fun to dive into that. Every role, you're looking for a key thought, the one that you grab and then that launches you and that you can hang on all the way through the movie.

• 31:02Sam Fragoso?

  What is that key thought? What does that mean?

• 31:04Speaker 02

  It's the thing. Again, this is boiling down what Marshall Mason taught me. I have to have a key thought that I can tape to the inside of my forehead.

• 31:13Sam Fragoso?

  And for Something Wild, that was what?

• 31:15Speaker 02

  Jack Lemmon, Dick Van Dyke, you know, just the two of them right there and then just kind of go through that. So that that you look for that in every role that kind of it's Cliff Notes. It's a cheat sheet.

• 31:27Sam Fragoso?

  The key thought for Purple Rose of Cairo was what?

• 31:30Speaker 02

  Everything I have ever learned, please let me remember now.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  That was Woody Allen at the height of his Woody Allen-ness as a filmmaker. And I get that role and it's two roles, two leading roles in a Woody Allen comedy and you start on Monday.

• 31:48Sam Fragoso?

  So the first role is the matinee idol in a 1936 movie.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 31:53Sam Fragoso?

  Then when you step out of the screen, you're a standard neurotic actor.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  Gil Sheppard, the standard neurotic actor and Tom Baxter was the safari wearing one dimensional young hero in a black and white film that really probably wasn't very good.

• 32:09Sam Fragoso?

  Did the training at Circle Rep prepare you to star in a Woody Allen movie?

• 32:13Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. You know, again, back and forth, back and forth, that tennis thing. And I was reminded of it on Purple Rose of Cairo when Woody, because I was about a week in shooting it and I just.

• 32:25Sam Fragoso?

  You had replaced Michael Keaton.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, they had mutually decided that it wasn't working after two weeks and then he went on a screen, he screen tested about, well, probably four or five of us and I got it. And about a week in, I just went to Woody, I go, Woody, I'm not Errol Flynn, according to the LA Times, I'm just a guy who could sit at a picnic table somewhere outside, you know, Columbus, Ohio.

• 32:49Sam Fragoso?

  Glad I could re-traumatize him.

• 32:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I remember that crap. And he go, Errol Flynn, he goes, I don't need you to be Errol Flynn. He goes, you've got Mia Farrow off camera, just adore her. And it was like, oh, so the, and that, that led to, again, listening and going, using the other actor and all that stuff that we're not taught, Circle taught it, but we're not taught. And that, so the closer the camera got, and I stayed with this forever, all that extreme close up where it's like Darth Vader is a foot away from your face and you're worried about every little pore in your, no, that's when, that, the closer it gets, the more you make it about the other person. And by doing that, this thing happens where the camera can go in.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  The camera will now go in and see your thoughts and feel what you're thinking in a way, because you, subconsciously, you've let that all go, you've let the filter and the blockade go of that kind of, here's the camera, it's really close, and that's all gone and now you're pouring it into her and the camera goes in.

• 33:50Sam Fragoso?

  Demi and Allen, is there any commonality between the two of them besides both being great?

• 33:56Speaker 02

  Jonathan had a spirit that was just, he could have 10 grand to make the movie or 100 million, he'd be the same.

• 34:04Sam Fragoso?

  And the film would be the same.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  And it would have his stamp on it, definitely. He was a filmmaker, that was, so was Woody. They had that kind of confidence in where to put the camera and what they saw and reflected on this shot and you knew you were in a Jonathan Demi movie and you knew you were in a Woody Allen movie, just by where he put the camera. The commonality was that even though we had a script on Something Wild, Jonathan encouraged me to just use this as an outline. I had never taken an improv class, but I. Somehow was able to kind of, you know, loosen it up and say some things. And then he go, great, keep that. Don't say that. But now maybe to talk about, you know, it was that loosening up from take three to four to five to six. Woody was similar.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  I mean, I went into Purple Rose of Cairo with that script. And going, okay, just, mm. And I'm not going to change a word. He goes, no, no, no, no, no, no. If you want to say it a different way, go ahead. It's not the Bible. You know, if I need you to say it a certain way, I'll, I'll, I'll ask you to do that. But he was very nice about it. And, and that just makes you want to make what he wrote, you know, work even better. And, and as a writer, I kept going back to Getting Even and Without Feathers, those books he wrote, that were like master classes in comedic writing. And so now I'm with him and I'm going to improv on top of them. Nah, not so much. But he did, there's a scene in Purple Rose where I'm at on the porch. I go to Mia Farrow's house, Cecilia's house,

• 35:33Speaker 02

  as the neurotic actor. And Woody kept saying, just ad lib about what it means to be a star.

• 35:41Speaker 03

  I've struggled my whole life. And now I'm finally beginning to break through and my whole career is going right down a drain.

• 35:47Speaker 04

  You don't have to worry about that. You, you'll always be a great movie star.

• 35:52Speaker 03

  Oh, well, that's, that's very nice of you to, to us. But technically, I'm not really a star yet, Cecilia. Don't, um, you know, I mean, I try to carry myself like, well, you know, I do the best I can as far as that. But star? That's a big word, isn't it? Star? Yeah. No, no, no, star.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  And I would go for like a minute. And I could see Woody off camera laughing, you know, snorting. And I'm going, yes, I made Woody laugh, you know? That was cool. That was cool. But they both had this kind of, yeah, loosen it up kind of thing, which, you know, was, I didn't expect.

• 36:29Sam Fragoso?

  After The Purple Rose of Cairo came out, you appeared on the cover of GQ magazine. In that profile, Woody said of you, he could be the next Cary Grant. He's got that sophisticated comedic style. He could do that stuff. The question is, will there be sufficient literature to accommodate him? In most interviews you've done, the journalist likes to point out the Cary Grant line. But they never read the question that he poses at the end, which to me is the whole, that's the whole story. And so as you move out of New York and back to Chelsea to raise a family, did you find there to be sufficient literature to accommodate you?

• 37:12Speaker 02

  Occasionally, but the move back to Michigan after 10 years in New York and with a two year old boy, you know, Kathleen and I said, let's just go back home because the career's going to end. It probably peaked at Purple Rose of Cairo and Something Wild and that's it. And so that's just because they all end. Fame is fleeting. It's going to end. I was so fatalistic. And I finally had the chance to go home.

• 37:34Sam Fragoso?

  Why so fatalistic?

• 37:36Speaker 02

  I didn't trust it for a second. Didn't want it.

• 37:39Sam Fragoso?

  Didn't trust or didn't want?

• 37:40Speaker 02

  Both. Didn't want, don't, I go to Hollywood for a meeting. I would fly from Detroit on the 9 a.m. plane, land 11:30 L.A. time, rent a car, do the meeting, hang out maybe, or get the 5 o'clock, or get the red eye back home. I never took my coat off. I was worried that whatever I had that got me to people like Jonathan Demme and Woody Allen would be taken away. It would be-

• 38:07Sam Fragoso?

  Contaminated.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  Yes, by the stardom thing. And I didn't know how to do it. I didn't know how to schmooze. I didn't know how to suck up. I just wanted to be that actor that you saw in something and now you're hiring me to do this thing for you now. I wanted to get there to that. So I went to Michigan and waited and sustained a career. You know, there are a lot of movies in there that are just paying for the lifestyle, you know? 101 Dalmatians, My Favorite Martian, you know, there was stuff in there where I'm just trying to stay in the business and waiting. And then when the kids finally got out of school and were off, then it became about chasing the writing. And that's where Woody was, was right.

• 38:49Sam Fragoso?

  I read that quote from Woody because of the literature comment, but I also read it because- When you go back to Michigan and you're living there through the 90s, you had this quote, and it's just, it's been nagging at me since I read it. And so I have to ask you about it. You said, "I was bored, I was playing golf, I was playing too much golf. Creatively, I was going to sleep. Above all, I went home and found out I was an outsider." When you look at those years, what did it mean to be an outsider when you went back home to be at home?

• 39:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think I naively thought it would be the same. And in some ways, it is the same, but you're not the same. That's what I think Wolf meant by the quote. It's different, but you're also different. And it was great for the family. That was the number one reason. I don't know how to raise kids in Hollywood. You can, it's done successfully all the time, but I didn't know how to do it. And New York was too expensive and the career is going to end. So why don't we just go back for the family's sake? And I'll just commute to wherever I'm gonna have to go. But yeah, I did, I was there and creatively, I had been awakened through Marshall and Circle and being an actor.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  And that whole imaginative world that we live in, once you tap into it, whether you're acting or writing or songs or whatever you're doing, performing, that's, it's, it's a drug. It's a very heavy drug. And if you're able to hit it and bring it up, suddenly it's there all the time. And that was still swirling. And so I would go home and around folks that weren't of that. I had to go to New York to learn how to do that. So that became a problem. And so I created the Purple Rose Theater Company, partly to give myself somewhere to go creatively, gambling that I could maybe do a version of what Circle Rep was in my own hometown,

• 40:50Speaker 02

  with no long-term plan or anything, just let's see if this can work. And so that, that helped, and it still helps to this day. It was either I'm gonna get out, or I was picking up a guitar a lot in like 2000, 2001. I thought, well, maybe that's what I'll do now. Because what I'm not gonna do is be the asshole father standing on a set in a sitcom while some 22-year-old is making 10 million a show and he's an hour late and he doesn't know his lines. I'm not gonna be that guy. I'll quit. And if I don't get what I, you know, that challenges me, I'll get out. And way back when, suddenly there's this movie called The Squid and the Whale. And there's this young writer, nobody's heard of, Noah Baumbach.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  And I read the script and I, I said, this, what's this? This, how can I get this? And they'd been out to a couple of big stars and who, of course, wanted changes. And then I flew to New York. I was doing Because of Winn Dixie, which was this little family movie that was just, give me a job. And I flew to New York and met with Noah. And I went through the script. I said, this is funny. Page, page, page. This is funny. Page, page. This is funny. This is really funny. And he looked at Laura Linney and he said, him. Squid and the Whale was one of those starts where we, my agent and manager and I made a conscious effort to, let's chase good writing. Let's try to be known as a really great American actor. And if we don't make it, we don't make it.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  When my first novel came out, I had a lot of opportunities. I was with your mother, so I didn't partake.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  And I've never had an affair with a student, though many have come on to me. That's why you might not wanna be attached to your age. But it sounds like Sophie's good for now. What'd you all, goddammit? I burned myself.

• 42:39Speaker 05

  Totes are great. Did you hear from that agent?

• 42:41Speaker 02

  Hmm, not yet.

• 42:43Speaker 05

  But if he likes your novel, then you get it published, right?

• 42:46Speaker 02

  Basically. What happened to your old agent, Fred? Pissed me off. Made a disparaging remark about the Knicks at a party.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  Thought they played like thugs. I found it really offensive. Kind of a jerk. I think it was important to your mother that I achieved some sort of commercial success. And when I didn't meet her expectations in that area.

• 43:10Sam Fragoso?

  The writing of that film, as someone whose parents split early and often, I've seen it a whole lot of times, countless times, maybe too many times. And the last time I watched it, I never understood how you got to that angry place. But hearing this chapter that you were in, you know, before that movie, did you see yourself in some of the anger of that character? This was a mercurial novelist who's frustrated that he's not being read enough, not being considered enough. Did you see some of yourself in that?

• 43:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that was the key thought. I remember with Noah in rehearsals and just go, I know what it is. I know what it is.

• 43:54Sam Fragoso?

  Because it's about his father as well.

• 43:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, but as for playing Bernard and the underappreciated.

• 44:00Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 44:01Speaker 02

  The guy they aren't looking at in the room. When Norman Mailer and you are standing next to each other, they're gonna look and talk to Norman Mailer. You're not good enough. You're not as good as they are. I tapped right into that, right into that, yeah. And then let yourself go, slide down, which is where Bernard goes. It just, you know.

• 44:19Sam Fragoso?

  How did it feel to do that?

• 44:22Speaker 02

  I mean, it was, it's not like you come out of it going, you know, get me in therapy, but it's like.

• 44:27Sam Fragoso?

  As we know, that's never the answer.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  Never the answer, completely unnecessary. But when you get a guy and you can become him, and that's the other thing that Marshall Mason's thing led me to, which in my head means I need to be able to think like the character in here, the part that you don't hear. And if I can think like the character, then everything else will kind of fall into play. If you've done the prep work and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, you want to be able to think like Atticus Finch or think like Harry Dunn. You want to be able to get in there like that. So then you're just riding impulses. You're just riding instincts. And when you get that key into whatever the character is, then it's jump off the cliff and go.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  And whether with Bernard and Squid and the Whale, it was, yeah, if we're gonna go dark, let's go dark. But that led to God of Carnage and that led to Newsroom. And I remember doing God of Carnage on Broadway with Jim Gandolfini. And, you know, the movies were drying up and it just wasn't, you know, I wasn't getting anything that I wanted to do. And I said, Jim, I think I'm thinking about television. He goes, get yourself a good writer. I said, I got David Chase. And luckily for me, Aaron Sorkin wanted me. And then, when you've got the writing, is what he said, when you've got the writing, you can write it. You can write it. And they'll challenge you too. The writers, the good writer will challenge you.

• 45:52Speaker 02

  And that's what I, from that 2009 on, I've been fortunate to have good writing come my way. And that's kept me not only in the business, but interested in the business.

• 46:07Sam Fragoso?

  After the break, we talk about Jeff's unexpected second act, as written by Aaron Sorkin. Stay with us.

• 46:17Sam Fragoso?

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• 47:45Sam Fragoso?

  When it came to the newsroom, Aaron Sorkin was looking for an actor that could express that rage, that could tap into an anger. He did not think that you entirely had that at first. Is that right?

• 47:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, he had been, there was nothing really in film or TV that showed what he needed. That kind of knee jerk rant that McAvoy needed to go on. And he just, Aaron needed to be able to see that before he cast me. And then I got a tip, a heads up on that that's what he needed to see. So, we were sitting at a breakfast table in The Four Seasons in New York. I was meeting Aaron Sorkin for the first time, and Scott Rudin, the producer of Newsroom, was sitting across the table. And I told a story about where I had lost it. And then I banged the table, and the orange juice glasses rattled and

• 48:40Speaker 02

  jumped, and coffee, and people at the other tables were turning around, looking. And Aaron's going, "Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. I think I, yeah, no, no, no. Good, good, good." And I was halfway through the story, so I was gonna finish it. So, because I wanted this part. And so, it just became more and more.

• 48:55Sam Fragoso?

  So you strong-armed him into giving you the role?

• 48:57Speaker 02

  I auditioned. I had to show that I could get there, and that it might be uncomfortable and embarrassing. You know, that's all I knew. I didn't have any, I didn't know Mac, I didn't know anything else, except it's a show about a newsroom. And so, that was, "Well, if he needs to see this, here's my best version of it." And by the end of the breakfast, they said, "You've got the part."

• 49:17Sam Fragoso?

  When we started this conversation, we talked about American Rust being representative of the crossroads this country is at. Do you see the newsroom and what you and Aaron Sorkin were going for to be a kind of prelude to America post-pandemic?

• 49:32Speaker 02

  I think that one of the great strengths about Aaron's writing is that he's ahead of his time. There are things that he said, not just in the big Northwestern speech, that will outlive both of us. Every episode, there are things that are said, that are opinions, that are dropped into conversations that the characters are having, that now, post-COVID, and you look at cable news, and you look at that, they didn't listen at all. Not that they were supposed to listen to Aaron Sorkin in a newsroom, and maybe, hmm, take some notes. But he's really good at predicting what might happen. And like a lot of things in this world today, you can't stop it.

• 50:13Speaker 02

  And if there's money at the end of it, whether it's MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, and they can get more eyeballs going in that direction and that's more money, welcome to news.

• 50:24Sam Fragoso?

  In the pilot episode, of course, there's that monologue you just mentioned, where your character explains how America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.

• 50:34Speaker 02

  Why isn't America the greatest? Not the greatest country in the world, professor. That's my answer.

• 50:41Speaker 02

  You're saying? Yes.

• 50:44Speaker 02

  Let's talk about- Fine. Sharon, the NEA is a loser. Yeah, it accounts for a penny out of our paycheck, but he gets to hit you with it anytime he wants. It doesn't cost money. It costs votes. It costs airtime and column inches. You know why people don't like liberals? Because they lose. If liberals are so fucking smart, how come they lose a goddamn always? Hey! And with a straight face, you're gonna tell students that America is so star-spangled awesome that we're the only ones in the world who have freedom? Canada has freedom. Japan has freedom. The UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium has freedom. So 207 sovereign states in the world, like 180 of them have freedom. And yet you, sorority girl, just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day, there's some things you should know. And one of them is, there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that

• 51:29Speaker 02

  we're the greatest country in the world. We're 7th in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, 3rd in median household income, number 4 in labor force, and number 4 in exports. We lead the world in only 3 categories. Number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies. Now, none of this is the fault of a 20-year-old college student, but you nonetheless are, without a doubt, a member of the worst period, generation, period, ever, period. So when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Yosemite?

• 52:12Sam Fragoso?

  I believe I'm part of the worst period, generation, period, ever, period, that you're referring to in that speech. I'm gonna not-

• 52:21Speaker 02

  But you've come out of it nicely, I think.

• 52:23Sam Fragoso?

  Really?

• 52:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:24Sam Fragoso?

  Thank you. That's, that's kind of you to say. I, I think that, that comment is rooted in a kind of misplaced contempt. I, I don't think that's fair to our generation, frankly, but-

• 52:33Speaker 02

  Not all of you, no.

• 52:36Sam Fragoso?

  Any other shots?

• 52:37Speaker 02

  No, that's it.

• 52:37Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 52:38Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 52:38Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  Look, McAvoy isn't right. McAvoy isn't, he isn't, he isn't, he didn't care about reading right. He just cares about telling you what you need to know.

• 52:48Sam Fragoso?

  Yes.

• 52:48Speaker 02

  And based on just what he thinks. And I think that's, that's kind of where we came at it. And, you know, as Sarkin wrote at the end of that season, "There she is again. There's a sorority girl, and we hire her because she's exactly the kind of person that we want here," you know? And, and so he brings it around.

• 53:09Sam Fragoso?

  Beyond me joking about it, I've always been moved by the monologue and your delivery of it. And you've called the speech "The One I've Been Waiting To Do For Thirty-Five Years." That word "waiting" stuck out to me because I'm wondering, were you waiting for thirty-five years? Or did you perhaps need those thirty-five years that we've been talking about and discussing today? Did you need them to do that scene as effectively and passionately as you did?

• 53:39Speaker 02

  Absolutely needed it. Had I done it twenty years earlier, not as good. It's the thing about getting older. You know more, and you've seen more. And you're hearing people, you know, give opinions that you don't agree with, and you're getting it. And it was just, yeah, it was like a, a perfect time for me to, uh, plant my feet and, you know, unload that speech. Yeah, I didn't have to act much in that. That just kind of, once you learned the speech, you could just kind of let it out, you know? Let it out and let them cut it together. That's the great thing about getting older is that, you know, unlike athletes, whose bodies slow down and all of that, is that actors, it's an accumulation.

• 54:24Speaker 02

  You know, you come out of every show you do, hopefully, a better actor. You know more. You applied everything that you've ever learned, whether you consciously know it or not, into this scene. And especially if the writing's good. If the writing is good, then you have to remember everything you've ever learned. And you have to be able to call that up and use it to now take you into a place that's a little, someplace you've never been before. And you can't do that when you're younger. And I think you're right. I think like that newsroom speech was like a, not only was it a, the speech that's never handed to me, it's handed to someone else, you know? And you spend a lot of films doing supporting roles.

• 55:08Speaker 02

  He gets the speech, she gets the speech, and you're just there listening at the defense table or something. This was Aaron Sorkin handing me an Aaron Sorkin rant that I had seen on West Wing, that I had seen those guys. And I know that Marty Sheen and all those guys were getting speeches from Aaron's typewriter and whatever. And they were, had the same feeling I did when they got handed something that had a lot of meat on it. And that, I went right home and started pouring that into my head.

• 55:37Sam Fragoso?

  Before we go, can we talk about the accumulation in all the life that you brought to To Kill a Mockingbird by Aaron Sorkin? You said, "Before I played Atticus Finch, I knew him. I grew up with him." You said in the beginning of this talk that there was a lot of your father in Atticus. And we've been talking about him intermittently throughout. And I wonder, what did you make of your performance on Sunday, June 16th, 2019?

• 56:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was a, that was a special one. Uh, my dad died in 2012 and we, I don't know, with 2019, we're doing Mockingbird on Broadway. And I'm in it for a year. I had been in it for, I think, seven months at that time. And it was Father's Day. And you're always looking to do the perfect show. Oh, I just fumfered that one line. Okay, all right, go, go, go, go. And you get through it. And then the next night, you don't fumfer that one, but you screw up something else. Or you're a little late on the something, everything. There's something, there's always something that you wish you could almost got it perfect, you know? And it hadn't happened. Seven months, a lot of great stuff, but always something. Sunday matinee, out I go, Father's Day.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  And I'm not religious, but I'm going, well, you know, this would be the time that I see a light, you know?

• 56:55Sam Fragoso?

  God, if you're there.

• 56:57Speaker 02

  You know, God, if you're there, you know? And if you see my dad around there, you might want to, you know, position him somewhere I can see him. Cause then I'll, I'm with you.

• 57:04Sam Fragoso?

  Give him a good seat.

• 57:06Speaker 02

  Right. So we go into the show and the show is great and every laugh is there and da, da, da, da. And it's rolling and I'm in the closing argument and it's as alive as it's ever been. And I'm about near the end of it and I'm going, this is probably, wow, this was there. It's a perfect show. And I would imagine him, you stand on stage, there's the orchestra section and the aisle goes up. And there's that space back there where the people walk and there's a light and the usher usually sits there. And I imagined him walking in to that light, being brought in. And you could see the usher tapping him going, no, there's your son. There's your son right up there. And he turns and he's wearing the clothes that he would wear at the lumber company. And he would turn and look at me.

• 57:50Speaker 02

  And so I'm doing, I'm at the end of the show that day and I'm looking into that light and he's not there. Okay, well, I tried. So dressing room, done. I go outside and there's autographs. And so I do the autographs and I'm starting, I get the pen and a woman, an old woman gives, has an envelope and shoves it in my hand. And I'm going, oh, and the security jumps right in. I go, no, no, she's okay. I, I, thank you. I'll, I'll just thank you. I'll put it in my back pocket and they, and she turned, went. So I do the autographs and then I go back home, the apartment, and I pull that letter out and it's a letter from a woman. Who was at the church in Chelsea that my dad went to.

• 58:33Speaker 02

  She was an associate pastor or something, the Methodist church. And she said, I knew your father. And I, I remember a big, long letter about how proud she was of me, but also that, she said, I remember asking your dad, aren't you proud of your son? I mean, he's famous, he's in movies, he did it. He goes, I'm not proud of him for that. I'm proud of him for the person that he is. And I'm reading that at the apartment and I'm just going, oh, maybe he was there. First time I've ever told that without crying. What does that mean, doctor?

• 59:10Sam Fragoso?

  Look, this, this is merely a consultation. We'll have to come back another time for that.

• 59:14Speaker 02

  Oh, so this is free?

• 59:16Sam Fragoso?

  It's all been free.

• 59:17Speaker 02

  Oh, good, thank you.

• 59:19Sam Fragoso?

  Are you glad you didn't cry in telling you?

• 59:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's been, it's, it's, it's, uh, it would have meant a lot for him to see that one. And he always knew I made the right decision just because of, I was able to stay in the business and he saw enough and Woody Allen and other, he saw a lot. But that would have been, that's the kid who drove to New York in 1976. That's what I wanted to see him do.

• 59:47Sam Fragoso?

  I don't know if you thought about this and I could be off, we can move on from it. You drove to New York September 1st. Thirty-eight years later, your father passes away on September 1st of 2012.

• 1:00:01Speaker 02

  Same day.

• 1:00:02Sam Fragoso?

  What do you make of that?

• 1:00:04Speaker 02

  I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't think it's... I don't know. I don't know. I can still remember driving away, looking out the rearview mirror. I could see him standing at the top of the hill, watching me go. I still see that. Here's another thing. I was doing American Rust, season two, and we were shooting a scene with an old woman at the crack of a door, and we're trying to get information from her. And she's trying to think of the name of somebody that we're looking for. And we're in take one, and the woman says, I don't know, in the script, I think the name was Smith.

• 1:00:49Speaker 02

  Say the name was Smith. And I think his name was Smith is the line. And take one, and we're going, and she goes, I think his name was Ferguson. I'm sorry. Can we cut? I don't know why I said that. I don't know. And we stopped shooting, and I'm looking at her. My mom had died two months earlier. Her maiden name was Ferguson. What do I make of that? Is that them going, we're okay? You've heard that? I'm okay. We're okay. Is that letter from that associate pastor, Dad? That's Dad saying, I'm okay? Or I see? I don't know. I don't know. But if you want to believe in hopeful things, it feels good.

• 1:01:29Sam Fragoso?

  And speaking of hopeful things, both The Newsroom and To Kill a Mockingbird, to me, I see them both as extensions of a kind of American hopefulness and American idealism, I think, at their best. A fundamental belief that the moral universe is long, and it bends towards justice, and all the things that Will McAvoy may say.

• 1:01:53Speaker 02

  And that are being challenged today.

• 1:01:55Sam Fragoso?

  And on the right day, I believe in Atticus. I believe in Will McAvoy. I believe in your father. On the wrong day, on most days these days, they feel like potentially relics of a bygone era, naive about the goodness of us as American people. And when you came back for one last go at To Kill a Mockingbird in 2021, you said, we have an opportunity in this country right now to welcome in a new America. What did that mean to you then? And what does it mean to you now in 2024?

• 1:02:33Speaker 02

  Every generation changes things. Dylan wasn't wrong. Times, they are changing. They're a change in every 10 years, every generation.

• 1:02:40Sam Fragoso?

  Even the worst ones, my friend.

• 1:02:42Speaker 02

  It was just a character in a television show, Sam. Let it go. Okay? Let it go.

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's the other thing. You get older and suddenly the younger generation is telling you everything that you aren't and why you're, you know, you should die. Can you please die? Can you please die soon? You know, that kind of wave up, but that's not what they're saying.

• 1:03:03Sam Fragoso?

  That's not in my notes, by the way.

• 1:03:04Speaker 02

  I know. But that's not what they're saying. And that new America is coming. And the doors are opening wide. White blindness is suddenly something we, oh geez, I had no idea. Because you're so busy trying to just, you know, survive yourself. And so we get hit with that. And I think that was certainly in the second time coming around with Mockingbird. Atticus Finch facing his white blindness. And that we are a better country if we try all not to, you know, dance like Mike Pence. If we're not stuck in the 50s where white people, right or wrong, ran everything. And everybody else go sit in the back of the room. You know, that's not us at our best. And you're right. The McAvoy's

• 1:03:47Speaker 02

  and the Atticus Finch's come from that and hearken back to the goodness that was there. But there was a lot of badness and a lot of stuff that that needs to be changed. And it is changing. You know, Ron Brownstein wrote that book about 1974 being a pivotal world in music. And he said, you know, the culture changes before the politics. And that's what you see in culture, is that we are a better country if we're opening the door to everyone. You know, we cannot continue to shove people to the back of the room. Because that little black kid in Alabama who's eight years old, who's got a brilliant

• 1:04:28Speaker 02

  mind, but we're not going to educate him because of his color. He's the kid that if you actually gave a shit about him, and gave him the opportunity so that he could get educated in a way, suddenly he's now at John Hopkins, and he's the kid who later on cures cancer. We're not going to get there if we're just doing it with white people. We're just not. And I think it's taken 400 years for everyone around to kind of, you know, oh, yeah, maybe we are better. And that's One of the great things about this younger generation is they aren't going to stand for anything less. And at the end of the day, I think everyone who is wants this more open new America

• 1:05:09Speaker 02

  still has to hang on to what's right, what's wrong, what's good, what's bad. And that doesn't change. And the rule of law, by the way. Those things which may have been important to McAvoy and Atticus Finch, I see them being as important to this younger generation and this new America as well. And you got to hang on to that because look out, here comes human nature and greed and power and all the things that take people down. So it's, it's, it still can be a great country. It still can.

• 1:05:42Sam Fragoso?

  My last thing for you. In the last 20 years, you've made a point to fold politics into your work. I think that's fair to say. I mean, there's the newsroom, there's the Comey rule, there's the looming tower. I mean, there's a long list, there's To Kill a Mockingbird. But what it comes back to, I think in the end, is writing. Your songwriting, your plays, the plays that you've written, scripts given to you, and the first person that saw you as a writer is Lanford Wilson. He passed away about 11, 12 years ago now. When the play Fifth of July is published and you take your physical copy and you get it signed by him, do you remember that day?

• 1:06:27Sam Fragoso?

  And do you remember what he wrote to you?

• 1:06:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I remember that day. And I, he signed it and he wrote, "This play is at least half yours." And he had dedicated it to his partner at the time. He, you know, he just was in love with me. So since I wasn't going to go there, I can write for him. And then he wrote for me. And then I turned out to be more than just a boy, a cute 22-year-old kid from the Midwest. And he was the first star I ever met. That's what he was. I had done Hot L Baltimore at Eastern Michigan University that Marshall had guest-directed. He came out to pick up a check. And we had done Lanford's play Hot L Baltimore. And I remember seeing by Lanford Wilson on the cover.

• 1:07:13Speaker 02

  And then four months later, I'm standing in the office of Circle Rep. And there's Lanford Wilson splayed out in a chair going, hey, doll. How are you? And it's nice to meet you, Mr. Wilson. And he was, he was trying to rewrite a second act. And he loved actors. He loved all the actors at Circle Rep. And he loved to write for actors. And then later on, he wrote Fifth of July for me. I never wanted to be a director. I don't care about it as much, that control. But I, I thought I could write. And I, I started The Purple Rose, start partly to, to try to become a playwright. And then when I brought Lanford out, I, I actually sent Lanford a play I wrote called The Vast Difference. I think it was the third play I wrote. And he said, I can hear your voice, which was a writer thing.

• 1:07:58Speaker 02

  You want that. You can hear Lanford and Lanford's work. You can hear Aaron Sorkin and Aaron Sorkin's work. I, I like that. You can hear Patty Chieski in the scene and network between William Holden and Faye Dunaway. Patty Chieski is in the room, too. I like that. That's the theater. And so I wanted to learn how to do that. And Lanford was my inspiration for that and also my kick in the ass. Now I know how to do it. I've written 22 plays.

• 1:08:27Sam Fragoso?

  He also wrote in the book, whatever you do, make it matter.

• 1:08:30Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, that.

• 1:08:31Sam Fragoso?

  Make it count. My last question for you, I mean, I guess the only question, do you think you have?

• 1:08:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. Lanford wrote in, in the book, in the script, whatever you do, make it matter. Make it count, which is don't sell out. Don't become some, you know, whatever. You're better than that. And again, that goes back to Woody Allen and the literature and, and, you know, and then now that to me, that's go just chase the writing, chase the good writing. It's hard to make everything matter and everything count as for your artistic integrity. As they say, one for you and one for them, them being the family in the bills. But the longer you go, if you can hang in there. And then get that one where you get actors coming to the show going, how did you do that? That's the award.

• 1:09:23Speaker 02

  And it's because of the writing that whether it matters and counts as an actor with your peers, or whether it matters and counts with an audience that changes their lives and they go away changed forever. I don't know. I mean, you try to reach for that. And then there are things like Mockingbird and the speech in Newsroom that did that. Years later, decades later, I think I've turned it into, don't settle. Don't just repeat yourself and do something and then expect people to tell you that you're great because you're not. If you don't settle and you can continue to get the material, I don't care if it's on stage or in an indie film or in a big movie or big TV show, if you can get the writing

• 1:10:04Speaker 02

  and get the writers, then you still have a chance to make this particular project matter and this particular project count. And I've been fortunate, ever since Newsroom in particular, that bought me 10 years of good writing from good writers. The good writers came. Scott Frank came. Danny and Adam and on and on and on. Aaron coming back with Mockingbird. Yeah, it still matters and it still counts. I dread the day when it doesn't, which is probably the day I'll quit.

• 1:10:34Sam Fragoso?

  May that never come. And on the subject of things mattering, this talk has mattered a whole lot to me.

• 1:10:40Speaker 02

  My arms are still crossed.

• 1:10:41Sam Fragoso?

  You want to uncross them?

• 1:10:43Speaker 02

  I'm comfortable now.

• 1:10:44Sam Fragoso?

  Why don't we play one of your songs for the road?

• 1:10:47Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:10:48Sam Fragoso?

  Jeff, thank you for the time.

• 1:10:50Speaker 02

  Thank you, Sam.

• 1:11:39Speaker 02

  You stood out in a crowd.

• 1:11:40Speaker 05

  Sometimes no matter how I try, it don't matter at all. This time, all it took was for someone to say, "Is that..."

• 1:12:01Speaker 05

  Your grandfather's hat.

• 1:12:42Sam Fragoso?

  And that's our show. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to leave us five stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever you get your podcasts. I want to give a special thanks this week to the teams at Rogers and Co. And Amazon. I also want to thank Ian Chang, Kira Posey, my father, and of course, our guest today, Jeff Daniels. To find the new season of American Rust and his upcoming Netflix series, A Man in Full, we've included links in our show notes at talkeasypod.com. For more episodes with other great actors, I'd recommend Michelle Williams, Alison Pill, Sam Waterston, Dev Patel, Oscar Isaac, and Tom Hanks. To hear those and more Pushkin podcasts, listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen.

• 1:13:27Sam Fragoso?

  You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, at Talk Easy Pod. If you want to purchase one of our mugs, they come in cream or navy. You can do so at talk easy pod.com slash shop. Talk easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Janix Bravo. Today's talk was edited by CJ Mitchell and mixed by Andrew Vastola. It was taped at I heart media in New York City. Our music is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Chris Shanoi. Photographs today are by Jenna Jones. Research assistance from Sharia Iran K. Graphics are by Ethan Seneca. I also want to thank our team at Pushkin, Justin Richmond, Kerry Brody, Jacob Smith, Eric Sandler, Kira Posey, Jordan McMillan, Tara Machado, Sarah Nix, Malcolm Gladwell,

• 1:14:11Sam Fragoso?

  Greta Cohen, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Sam for Goso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next week with another episode. Until then, stay safe and so on.

• 1:14:32Speaker 05

  I'm Dan Heath. On What It's Like to Be, I interview people about their jobs. Here's a married couple that drives a long haul truck together.

• 1:14:40Speaker 06

  We backed up and they loaded fresh dead rats.

• 1:14:43Speaker 05

  I mean, how many rats would you guess were back there?

• 1:14:46Speaker 06

  There were 32,000 pounds of them.

• 1:14:48Speaker 05

  32,000 pounds of frozen dead rats.

• 1:14:52Speaker 06

  That's it.

• 1:14:54Speaker 05

  Find out what it's like to be a long haul trucker, a couples therapist, or an FBI agent, all on the podcast, What It's Like to Be.

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