June 1, 2021 • 34 mins
Ali Wentworth is a fearlessly funny actor and comedian as well as a New York Times best-selling author of three books, Ali in Wonderland, Happily Ali After, and Go Ask Ali. She played Jerry’s girlfriend Schmoopie in Seinfeld’s “Soup Nazi” episode, and she’s had roles in a wide range of TV and film projects including Jerry Maguire, Office Space, and It's Complicated. She’s married to George Stephanopoulos and the proud mother of two teenage daughters, Elliot and Harper. She started a podcast in the pandemic called Go Ask Ali which tackles parenting and friendships in unusual times. With Alec, Ali shares her courtship secrets, her approach to work-life balance and the dangers of taking too many sleep aids.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the
Thing from My Heart Radio. Ali Wentworth has a lot
of titles, actor, comedian, New York Times bestselling author, wife, mother,
and podcast host. I'll add another title, one of the
funniest people I know. You may recognize Ali went Worth
(00:25):
as Jerry's girlfriend Schmoopy on Seinfeld's classic Soup Nazi episode,
or from her more than one hundred appearances on The
Tonight Show, or from when she was a correspondent on
Oprah Winfries Show. You may also have read one of
her best selling books, Ali in Wonderland, Happily Ali After,
and the latest Go Ask Ali, which shares a name
(00:48):
with the podcast she launched last year. I have gotten
the biggest get in the entertainment world. It's not Beyonce,
it's my daughter Ellie. It's Stephanopolis. I'm talking about growing
a teenager in a pandemic, and you are a teenager
in a pandemic, and you're my teenager in a pandemic.
(01:09):
Ali and I have been friends for a while, and
I've long admired her fearlessness and poking fun at herself
and at others, including me. Are you taking precautions not
to have more kids, if I may be so bold,
because I feel like there's another eight to ten in you.
My wife and I always struggled with that, which is
(01:30):
you have a baby and you sit, don't go, I
think great? Aren't think so great? What's one more? Yeah?
We do that. We do that with dogs because puppies
are cute, just as cute as babies. So I get it.
I understand. I wish you guys could have some more
for us because one of ours is going to college
in the fall. Let me ask you about that. You
(01:52):
got married when you were how old and you had
your first kid, you in your how old? So it
was not the typical you know, and believe me, that
was the right thing to do. I keep telling my
daughters do not rush into marriage, because everybody I know
that got married and their twenties is divorced. Now, I
don't think you're the same person in your twenties that
(02:13):
you are in your mid thirties. But when you got married,
and you, certainly, I guess from the get go, didn't
rule out having kids. Did you say to yourself, is
going to affect my work? Not? Once you didn't think
about that at all. Now, well, I don't think I
was ever big or famous enough to think that it
would affect my work. And I was certainly not known
(02:36):
for my body, if you know what I mean. So
it never felt like that. What I did was when
I married George, we moved to d C so he
could do his Sunday show this week. And so I thought,
all right, how do I recalibrate everything, how do I
pivot and so that I can have a career. But
I live in Washington, d C. Which is you know,
if you're an actor, it doesn't exist, you know. So
(02:58):
I started writing. I started writing a book, and then
Oprah hired me so I would go to Chicago once
a week, which was a fantastic job. So I tried
to figure out a way to have some kind of
a career. But here at the end of the day,
you know, not to use a disgusting word, but george
career it trumped mine, you know what I mean. It
(03:18):
was really like we had to kind of go where
he went. So no, I mean, I understand, but I
just was thinking that, you know, you are someone and
I don't say this, you know, just to be pleasant
or whatever. I mean, Please do No, but I think
you're really fucking funny. I mean you're funny. Thank you, Alex.
And if someone came to you now and they said
(03:40):
to you, you're gonna do a four camera sitcom in
New York and you're gonna shoot eighteen episodes or twenty
two episodes with the answer byes or do you like
the way things are now, which is you work a
little bit, you don't have to work, I'd say yes,
they're ground, they have their own independent lives. I'm used
for you, No, used for me. They know how to
make a sandwich. I'm needier than ever. And also I'm
(04:02):
faced with mortality. You know, I got my shelf life
is you know, unless they're going to reboot The Golden Girls,
even those girls were like in their mid fifties. Yeah,
So I would absolutely do that. And there are things
that we would adjust. You know, when I did Nightcap,
which you and your wife were on and we're so hilarious,
there are you know. I created a couple of shows
that took a lot of energy, and in one show,
(04:25):
Headcase About, I played a very dysfunctional shrink. We were
shooting in l A and I was going back and
forth in the Red Eye and I got shingles because
I was completely stressed out. And that's when I said
I can't work in l A. I wonder for you.
I mean you've worked and then you raised your kids
and you worked less than you might have because I
mean I view you as somebody who you could just
(04:46):
be working all the time. You could be doing starring
in a show, uh in network sitcom twenty two episodes.
I mean, whatever you want to do, you'd have no
problem doing it. Yeah, although there for me there's a
different thing, which is I just have no like what
the funk is how I think about everything? Now? Great,
if you said to me, right now, let's go do
love Letters at the Warp Theater, I go, great, let's
(05:07):
do it, like I have nothing to lose, and I'm
excited for anything that's sort of new and different and
happy to perform because I'm not so focused on myself
anymore at all. When you did Nightcap, whose idea was
that you? Was that all completely self generating? Yes? And
how many episodes did you do? We did two seasons
(05:27):
of about thirty something and it it mad? Yeah? How
many episodes per season? God? We did? I want to
say sixteen or so, I mean a lot. But the
great thing about that show was I used to do
the Tonight Show all the time. Jay Leno had me
on all like, I did it over a hundred times,
and I didn't necessarily have anything to promote. They would
call me and say, you know, Melanie Griffith has a fluke,
(05:50):
can you be here in twenty minutes? And I would
go in and just tell funny stories. And I'm not
a stand up comedian, so I would really just have
to pull stuff from my life and why I was there.
I would see the most incredible things, like from celebrities,
you know, because I was always the second guest, and
you know, just like I remember one guy came in
movie Star, and his stylists came in with racks and
(06:13):
racks of the same white shirt and the same pair
of jeans, so he was going to decide right before
he went up. You know, just crazy stuff. Or the
publicist and the actress were not coming out of the
wardrobe room because they were having sex, and the p
as are running around going like you know where, And
I just thought, this is the show who gives a
ship with what the actors say or promoting their movie
(06:35):
that whatever is happening behind here is that is the show. Now.
You came from a very proper family, correct, Yes, how
would you describe it? You came from what kind of family?
Dysfunctional but proper, proper? Yes, Yeah, I went to boarding school.
My mother was Social secretary of the Reagan White House.
Only Democrat in the Reagan White House. Yeah. My stepfather
(06:59):
was one of the editors of the London Sunday Times
in chief foreign correspondent, and my father was a reporter
during Watergate for the Washington Post. So I grew up
in that world. And when you went into this business, somebody,
did your family have a different plan for you? Listen
for my family, when I said I want to be
an actor, they thought it was just a phase. I'd
(07:20):
grow out of it. And then I said no, no, no no,
I'm going to be an actor. And then my mother
was basically like, well, then just go be a whore.
Then just go go to a brothel and put your
name on the So they didn't get it at all.
At least Las Vegas is sunny, Yes, go to the
Mustang ranch. It's warm there, yes, and if you can dance,
even better, So I you know, left all that. I
(07:42):
went to l A. I didn't know anybody. I had
no connections in that world at all. And how old
you went to l A right out of college, right
out of n y U. Yep, so four years at
y U. Four years at n y U for what
acting circle in the Square? And somebody at William Morris
came to see me in a play and he said,
you have a nice generic girl next door best friend. Look,
(08:04):
you should go to l A. And I went all right,
all right, sure, yeah, sure, And so I went to
l A. And I thought that I would eventually marry
Hugh Grant or Matthew Perry or one of those guys.
And the head of the studio, Yeah, well if my
boobs are bigger. But then I met George and I,
you know, it was like the Godfather comedian Ali Wentworth.
(08:29):
When it comes to great episodes from the Here's the
Thing Archives, you can always check out my episode with
Mr Ali Wentworth, George Stephanopoulos, or for more funny women
who can really write, my conversation with Paula Pell, who
was a writer at Saturday Night Live for nearly twenty years.
I was always a bit of a class clown, I
(08:51):
really pushed the envelope because I would be funny in
class and I do things like one of my teachers.
I would go by him and drag my hand along
the chuck shelf, and then I'd come over and I'd say,
you know, Mr gracer're just a really great teacher, and
I pat him on the back and I'd leave like
a handprint. He'd let me make him a little bit
the fool for a moment, and then he'd do you know,
he looked like Rob Briner and all in the family
(09:12):
at the big bushy mustache and along there he just
kind of looked a camera three, you know, non existent,
and the audience, would you know, the audience, the class
would crack up. Here more of my conversation with Paula
pell at Here's the Thing dot Org. When we come back,
Ali talks about being set up on a blind date
(09:33):
with George Stephanopoulos. I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening
to Here's the Thing. In the spring of two thousand one,
Ali Wentworth was newly back in New York City and
(09:56):
found herself talked into a life changing lunch. Where did
you first see him face to face in personal at Fred's,
which was the restaurant at Barney's on sixty one to Madison.
That's where we were going to meet. And of course
I knew who he was. He was George Chephanopolis. It
was a blind date ish, I mean I knew who
he was, of course, But who set you up on
(10:18):
the date? An old friend of his that worked in
the White House with him. Why didn't they think that
would be a good match? We were going to swap.
I offered up my older brother who was in l A,
who worked for David Lynch, and she offered up George, thinking,
you know, George was a one date wonder like. He
never got serious, so it was very easy for her
(10:39):
to trade him up because she knew he wouldn't go
on a second date with me. He wasn't married before,
never never lived with anybody. I'm the first person he said,
I love you too, my virgin bride. So when we
were being set up, I was not interested. And George
gives me so much shit about it because he said,
that's not true, that's not true. But I was in
(11:00):
He was not my type. I didn't want anybody from
the political world. I like a tall, Simian looking man
and so he was just you know, I thought, this
will be my you know, my date with George Stephanopolis.
It will be like a New Yorker article someday, you
know what I mean, part of my routine. Yeah, part
of my routine, which it has become anyway. But I
didn't shower it and shut my legs. I wore a
(11:22):
black suit because that meant smart to me. I read
the New York Times, the financial section. I read the
whole thing, and I thought, we'll have a really interesting
intellectual conversation and that'll be that. And I got to
Fred's and there was George in in Armani suit that
was way too big with the shoulder pads, and I went,
all right, all right, don't be shallow. Look beyond it,
(11:43):
look beyond it. And we sat down. The first thing
we talked about was antidepressants. What are you on? What
are you want? And I thought, okay, this is good.
This is the glue. This is the glue. And we
both ordered crab salad. And afterwards he walked me out
and he shook my hand. Now, in l A, where
I was living, if you went out with somebody and
(12:04):
they shook your hand, they weren't interested. If they didn't
drag you by the hair like a caveman into their
gross bachelor pad in West Hollywood, then they weren't interested.
So and George, but it is very nice to meet you,
and I went, oh Jesus, okay, very nice to meet you.
And then that night he called me and said, do
you want to come out again? And I didn't play
the game. I don't know how to play games. So
(12:25):
I said to him, Yep, I'm free to night. I'm
free tomorrow night. Listen. I'm supposed to go away for
the weekend with my mom and sisters, but I'll blow
that off. You liked him, I did like him. What
about him? Did you like? I was attracted to him,
which I did not think I would be. I found
him it'd still do very sexy, and I found his
brain very sexy. And he had smile. And I've written
(12:48):
about it and I've said it's like a good melon.
But it felt like, oh, you're my people, my wife,
same thing, like the way she looked, her hair, color,
her voice, old of it. I was like, oh God,
she's might dream girl. You know. I felt that way
when I met her too. By the way, but you
and my wife had a very intimate moment on the show.
It was really well and I wrote that for a reason.
(13:09):
I wrote, to have your wife's vagina on my face
for about six seconds, and you got, as they say,
and bye bye, Bertie. You got a lot of little
to do, or as I like to say, I got
a whiff and I get it. So so anyway, yes,
all that stuff, all that chemical stuff happened. Chemistry, Yes,
(13:30):
And that weekend I was going to a spa with
my mother and my sisters, and I spent the whole
time on the phone with George. They were all yoga
ing and eating brand muffins, and I was at Canyon
Ranch with my head out the window, chain smoking and
talking to George the whole time. Every once in a
while they come back and they, you know, throw some
almond butter at me. And then we were engaged two
(13:52):
months later, and that felt like it took a long
time he did. It took me two whole fucking months
to close this, like hello, hello. And then he we
went to Greece and I knew that he had a ring.
How did you know his nephew dealt in jewelry? I
don't know what that means, but it sounds shady. But
he dealt in jewelry and George had to go at
(14:13):
breakfast with him the day we were leaving for Greece,
and I thought, there's only one reason he would meet
his nephew. He deals in jewelry, and I it was
in his knapsacks. The whole way to Greece, I kept
hiding his knapsack in the lounge and on the plane,
just because I'd like to see him sweat, really suck
him up. And then we we were in Micanos and
he proposed to me. And I have to tell you,
(14:35):
not ever being a celebrity myself, I had no idea
until he proposed to me in Micaos, and somehow the
press found out about it, and we had photographers all
over the rocks across the water from our hotel, and
we would walk down the street and there'd be thirty
paparazzi all over us, and George's hand would be sweating
(14:57):
and he'd say like, oh my god, I'm so sorry, Ali,
I'm so sorry. I was like, what are you talking? Yeah, George,
could you step back from them? When you're in my light? George,
you wants singles? Guys who wants singles. I mean, you know,
I all but took my shirt off. It was all
very exciting that first time, you know, that kind of
Tom and Nicole moment, and then and then it was horrible,
(15:17):
but it was fun for that day. Now, that magical
moment I'm making us when he finally found the knapsack
that you hit under the rocks and said, oh, some
guy came in. I think that guy in the bicycle
there just stole the knapsack. George run, George run. When
when you did all that at the moment that he
presents you with the ring, were you both on antidepressants
at that moment or did you abstain? I was? He
(15:40):
was off by then. I think the White House really
took it out of him. But then I was still on,
definitely still on. And in fact, the funny you should
bring that up because we went on our honeymoon and
I decided to self regulate and self medicate, and I
decided I didn't need antidipressence anymore. I didn't realize that
you taper off, you know, so I just my cold
turkey and that was bad because I was naked in
(16:03):
the fetal position in our bathroom. It was it was
apocalypse now covered in bird poop. They found you in
the pond with all the cranes covered in crane plamingo
leg in my mouth, and I don't know how it happened.
So I had to get zola FedEx to the Caribbean. Yeah. Well,
it's funny because in my lifetime, if I've ever taken
(16:24):
things which were like sleep aids, I've got horrible insomnia.
And I have all my adult life. I'm thirty five
years sober. I've been in an A thirty this year
was thirty. Congratulations, Well thank you. And I always tell
people that I haven't slept since the day I got sober.
Once I stopped drinking, I couldn't sleep. So I have
really really like at times, I have like crippling insomnia,
Like I sleep like maybe three hours a night, you
know what I mean. And the problem with it is
(16:45):
if I took any kind of drugs and it didn't help,
I woke up tired and groggy. So I got very,
very nervous about any kind of medication because God knows,
if I found one that worked, i'd be I wouldn't
even be talking to you right now. Bueau. Well, I um,
I took ambient once I was in l A and
(17:06):
I come from New York and time difference, blah blah,
block took ambient, went to the Malibu Mart, that shopping
center in Malibu, and BT six genes of the exact
same gene in the exact same size, And I don't
remember doing it. I also got an email the next
day from Pottery Barn Kids asking what address did I
(17:26):
want the Princess canopy bed delivered? Don't remember well. One
thing I would do when I was in the kind
of love craft Ian baffles of my insomnia, I'd sit
there and I'd start to buy things online, like antique
alarm clocks. I'd I'd be like, you know, I'm like,
where's this guy in Germany? They probably have better alarm
(17:48):
clocks in Germany than here. How much does he want
for the alarm clock? Eight dollars? And I could probably
get the same thing at a flea market in Syracuse
for like thirty I don't care, I want it. Do
you meditate? I do now. I do a lot of
deep breathing. I do what's called classical breathing, when you
try to literally fill your lungs up to where you
almost can feel your lungs at the bottom of your
chin if you breathe deep enough. And I do this
(18:10):
very deep breathing meditation thing to sleep, and it does work.
But one time I take an ambient like I work, work, work, work, work,
and it gets to be eleven o'clock at night or
twelve o'clock at night, and I'm like, okay, sleep one
to three sleep, Simon says, sleep, And I can't sleep.
So I take the ambient. Nothing happens. I take another one.
Nothing happened. I take the third one. I think I
(18:31):
took the third and the fourth one. Then all of
a sudden, I'm like, I'm literally living in then and
I'm watching you know, Jimmy Falloner and and my daughter
Ireland calls and I think, like, while I'm on the
phone call she's in California. She was like fourteen, and
I go, um, so I think maybe tomorrow I'm gonna
get a ticket. I'm like your your berver raw. I
(18:51):
go out an Island's going dad, Dad, And I go,
this is a true story. And I go I'm okay
until the pound uh to the pound, and I'm playing
them no I'm like, how in two thousand one they're
disconnecting care delays, disconnecting my circuits. And the next thing
(19:14):
you know, I hear bang Nay nick nick name, nick
name on the service elevator door of my apartment. It's
three firemen with axes, Oh my god, and an E. M. T.
Menic and they're like, we got a phone call, Mr
ball when we're really sorry, we got a call from
your daughter. You have to put your clothes and come
with us, sir, right now, to the hospital. And I'm like,
I don't roll you're joking about, or you a fireman,
(19:40):
or this is this trigger dreat. You want some guarandy,
Like I'm so out of it. They take me, make
me get dressed. I'm in the bathroom, they take me,
they take me to the hospital and I go, okay.
I started to stop up very quickly, and I go
I took one too many ambient because they weren't working.
They were like, uh huh sure, Mr Ballman, Sure, And
(20:03):
I never took another one of those fucking things again.
My daughter called the police because she thought I was odin.
But good for Ireland to know how to do that.
I think ambient is dangerous you do. Yes, Yes, people
have all these crazy ambience stories. I took him away
from George because he was taking them for a while.
He only sleeps like four or five hours anyway, because
(20:24):
of his schedule. Yeah, we go to bed at eight
and thirty and I go with him. That's love. That's love.
Now you go to sleep, or you just lay next
him and you're like on YouTube. No no phones allowed
in the bed and no TV. You're in bed and
you're trying to get eight thirty and he's up. What
time to No? Yeah, he gets up. He reads every
newspaper and here's here's the thing. We start, just started
(20:48):
a production company. So he's up at two thirty, not
only reading all the papers, he's reading scripts, he's reading articles,
he's doing doing all of it, which he loves. He
loves this kind of new thing. He's got this deal
with Hulu and it's all very exciting. So he can't
sleep because of that. You know, he wants to get
up and you know, read stuff starring vehicles for Alec Baldwin.
(21:10):
So he sleeps, I don't know, five hours. Maybe we
just were on vacation and you know, he slept in
because he slept till four, so I never am awake
when he wakes up in the morning. So I have
to go to bed with him at night or we're
not how's the marriage now? What did your family think
when you married George? They couldn't believe it. My mother
hysterically cried. I think she wanted to marry him, but
(21:32):
it was it was okay if I did you know?
She was beyond excited. I was bringing home comedy writers
and then I brought home a French director and my
mother goes, you have an affair with him, you don't
marry him. So they were beyond thrilled when I married George.
I mean still they all love him the most. What
does George want? What does George say? What would George
want for dinner? There's a lot of that beyond the
(21:56):
war room, Burgala and Clinton and Carville and your husband,
beyond all of them. In the promotional lap that you take,
I am always happy to do Good Morning America, and
I will say, can I do it with George? Can
I do my segment with George? Because I'm still admiring
(22:17):
of him and he did my podcast. I will say
one thing to this, which is what I love about
George is he's genuinely curious. It could be anybody. It
could be Chuck Schumer, it could be Zac Efron. If
it's not an area that he knows about, he's interested
to know about. Truly, you know, he doesn't just go oh,
it's an actor who cares. He's like, all right, I'm interested.
(22:39):
What is this person? What can I glean from this?
Which I think is a very interesting trait and a
great trait. Comedian and author Ali Wentworth. If you're enjoying
this conversation, tell a friend and be sure to follow
Here's the Thing on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. After the break, Ali
(23:03):
talks about parenting in a pandemic, her social media rules
for her teenage daughters, and how she learned to be funny.
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
(23:25):
Ali Wentworth as one of those people everyone friends and
strangers alike ask for advice. Last year when she got COVID,
she had the inspiration for her own podcast, Go ask Ali.
We were you know, everything takes forever in this business,
So we were talking. I was talking to Shonda land
about it, and then in the middle of COVID, I
(23:47):
called them and I said, you know what I had COVID.
I'm lying here in bed. I have two teenage daughters downstairs.
I said, I'm ready to do a podcast and it's
going to be how you grow a teenager in a pandemic.
And they're like, great, what's been the challenges for you?
But um, there have been good and bad. You know.
The girls have anxiety like me and George, so they worry.
They worry about school and they worry what's going to happen.
(24:08):
And then we're worried about college. Our eldest, Elliott, is
going to Brown in the fall, but there's no prom.
There's a lot of that now. On the one hand,
there's no fomo, so you're not missing anything, but it's
not natural for two teenage girls to be home with
their parents for a year and not see anybody. On
the flip side, in terms of our family, it was
fantastic to have George have that kind of time with
(24:31):
his kids. We would have three hour dinners where we
had amazing discussions. We as a family, we really kind
of grew and it was fantastic. But it's not good
for them. I kept saying, like, you know, I don't
want them to go drop Molly or give hand jobs,
but they should be out kissing boys and you know what,
having normal teenage experiences they should be living, should be living. Yeah,
(24:52):
making mistakes of it. And then there's the social media
part of it, which is, you know, their whole. I
got sucked into that little social media void which was
their only contact, their only connection, which you know, I
have such specific and strong views about social media. Also,
I don't want my girls to sort of sexualize themselves,
(25:15):
because there's such a dangled carrot about like get likes
be sexy, and I'm like, I don't ever want to
see bikini shots. I don't you know. To me, that's
a whole you're trying to fill, like be substantial. You
have two girls, two girls. Yeah, And I said the
stuff also that you can put on social media colleges,
everybody looks at that stuff, and that stuff can come
back to haunt you. So yeah, I've made my mistakes
(25:37):
on social media because what I realized was I thought
to myself, oh, this is my chance to bypass the
mainstream media and talk directly to my fans. After about
a year and a half, I thought maybe I would
like to have a little membrane between me and my fans.
Lauren Michaels had a great line. He said, you know,
he said, you know YouTube the logo is broadcast yourself,
(25:59):
he said, And one thing we've learned is maybe it's
nice to have a layer of producers and executives between
you and the camera and you and you're broadcasting yourself.
And to a large degree, he's right. Elliott is going
to Brown. And the other one is how old she's fifteen?
She's a sophomore. And let me tell you something. She's
an amazing babysitter, Like she is a baby. I'm not kidding.
(26:20):
She's a baby whisperer. She'll take all seventy four of
your kids at one time. What do you think it
is that? For me? When I was young, I would
watch TV. You had to watch TV and had to
really watch it. There was no pause, nor rewind, no VCR,
no nothing, Szippo network, TV, broadcast TV. So you watched
(26:43):
and you become funny by absorbing what's funny from other people.
And I'd watch anything. I'd watch Bob Hope of your
name it how was that in your life? Like, what
was media like in your childhood? Well, we were only
allowed to watch one hour of television a week, that
was the rule. But I had divorced parents, so when
I went to see my dad on the weekend, his
(27:04):
second wife hated the fact that he had kids from
a former marriage. So she would put me in front
of the TV with one of those heat up TV
trays and I would watch Bob Newhart, Carol Burnett, I
would watch that whole Friday lineup. And that's exactly where
I learned, Oh, that's funny if you wear the curtain
rod on this show, that's funny. That's funny. And it's
(27:26):
instinctual too, because I remember once I had a meeting
with Jodie Foster and she said to me, did you
take classes for comedy? I said, it, never took classes.
I was part of the groundlings when I moved to
l A And she goes, that's because it's instinctual. You
cannot teach it, And she's right, it is instinctual, and
that watching Carol Burnett was an instinctual kind of osmosis
(27:49):
for me. What I think is interesting about you is
that I've worked with people who their actors by and large,
and the concentration is comedy. They're comic actors who themselves
are not that funny off the set. They don't think
of funny things, they don't say funny things. Isn't that interesting?
And you, yourself are funny. You're funny whether you're whatever
(28:12):
the writing is, whatever the situation is. And you're saying
that that came from just osmosis. And then you learn
over the years, you learn, oh, this makes people laugh.
When I was a teenager, I was fat because I
went to Spain and I ate as much as I could,
and my mother walked by me in the airport, looked
at me right in the eye and kept walking, didn't
knows me. You went to Spain when you were a teenager, Yeah,
(28:34):
I went for four months. I love Spain and I
loved the country, the people, the language. And I went
to live with a family who were obese, and they
ate like they ate like six meals a day, like
potatoes and oil sangria, and they fed me like a
fog walk goose. They just shoved food in my mouth.
I gained forty pounds and I couldn't be happier. I
(28:55):
even broke a chicken's neck, you know, the whole thing.
So I came back and I was fat. And listen,
when you're fat in high school, you go all right,
so I'm not. No one wants to hook up with me,
so I'm going to find a different route. So I
was funny, And what ages you were? You were overweight
between what years of your life? Uh, sophomore year in
high school till sophomore year in college. So not that
(29:17):
long five the most formidable years, critical years. But I
still got the guy. But that's all about again, like
honing that comedy thing. And you have an audience of
people at a party or hanging out, and that's where
you learn it. You know, you've learned very quickly what
gets a laugh what doesn't. In same with stories. The
reason I would go do the Tonight Show all the
time is because I had already rehearsed those stories at
(29:40):
a dinner party and so I knew they worked. So
if I got a call, you know, even today when
I go do a talk show, I go, oh, you know,
it was really funny? Was that thing that George and
I just did? And I remember telling my kids that
and they were laughing, really hard. I'm going to tell
that story. So that's why you do. It's like the
little metal box your mother had in the kitchen with
recipes where the index cards went and yours. This is
your brain. You have a file with all those stories.
(30:02):
You tell. How did you lose weight? It fell off naturally.
It just it wasn't supposed to be. It fell off naturally.
She reversed. But you know, I have only had one
scene where I was scantily clothed. I never had a
career where I worried about that feeling of oh, I'm
going to do this film. I gotta get in shape,
I gotta work out. Never Now you have a cadre
(30:24):
of show business chicks that are your great but I have.
I have a little posse. You guys have your own
little club. Yeah you have a posse, Yeah I do. Yeah.
Mariska Brooke Shields dead Messing dead messing. Yeah. When she's
in town. I mean, Marska and I during the pandemic,
we kind of quarantined together like our families. So I
saw her a lot during the pandemic, too much. And
(30:46):
so you know, some of the other girls I haven't
really seen as much. Brook. I have but you know,
now that things are opening up and people are getting vaccinated,
we can be a full on girl power group. What
do you watch? Name two or three things you watched
drama or come that you really really thought were special.
Because I respect your opinion a lot. I watched Lupin
on Netflix. Okay, you say it like, oh, like everyone
(31:08):
knows Lupe. I'm sorry. I thought, well, I'm sorry, I
didn't go to boarding school. What is Lupin? No, these
people in my literary soire and I watched Lupin and
Lupin is fantastic. It's this incredibly dynamic, handsome black guy
who's a thief and whose father was set up to
seem like he was. He was like a butler that
(31:30):
he stole a diamond necklace from a made off type
guy and went to jail and killed himself in jail,
and the sun becomes this international thief and seeks revenge
by stealing this necklace at Southeby's. Anyway, It's it's a
cat and mouth great show. Um. I watched The Promising
Young Woman. I thought that was a great movie. Streaming movie. Oh,
call my agent, you would love it, Alec. It's just
(31:51):
like Nightcap. It's about a dysfunctional agents in Paris. They're
always pandering to their clients in French with subtitles, with subtitles, Yes,
tell me what you've been watching besides Nickelodeon, right, besides
a lot of Powerpuff Girls. I sent him an email
to Owen Wilson and I said, Owen, I said, my god,
these cars movies. I said, you are such a part
(32:12):
of my kids, child, You're such a part of my life.
We've watched these fucking movies. We've watched each of the
three movies a hundred times each. And I can't tell
you how fabulous you are. And this you're so great
these movies means so they have every cars, every Lightning McQueen, bedsheets,
bath towel, slippers, every fucking thing. And he writes me
(32:35):
back and she's like, oh the great great, Oh yeah,
Lightning McQueen was so good for me too. But yeah,
Disney Plus, it's like the Eternal Flame at Arlington. It's
on in my house twenty for hours a day. Disney plus.
But for me, because the Hampton's International Film Festival is coming,
I watch a lot of docks. I watch a lot
(32:56):
of dogs, a lot and there's one that came on
that was really fun if you can, because we look
for like a mix of something serious and topical or biographical.
You know when Susan Lacy did the bio of Jane Fonda.
I love that movie, Loved, Loved, and I'm really well done.
But there's one called Lily Topples the World and it's
(33:17):
about a woman who's the dominoes champion. She's the Chululi
of dominoes. She does arrangements that all radiate out into
patterns that are like Georgia o'keeith painting results from her
tapping one thing. You can't believe this school, this young woman,
what she does. Let me tell you something, You're still
(33:39):
one of the funniest people I've ever met in my life.
I gotta part for you, all right. What do I
gotta do? I hope there's nudity. There is no nudity.
Thank you for doing this with us, Alex, thank you,
My love to you, My love to you. Actor, comedian
and author Ali went Earth. I'm Alec Baldwin and this
(34:02):
is Here's the Thing from My Heart Radio. We're produced
by Kathleen Russo, Carrie Donohue and Zach McNeice. Our engineer
is Frank Imperial. Thanks for listening.
I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the
Thing from My Heart Radio. Ali Wentworth has a lot
of titles, actor, comedian, New York Times bestselling author, wife, mother,
and podcast host. I'll add another title, one of the
funniest people I know. You may recognize Ali went Worth
(00:25):
as Jerry's girlfriend Schmoopy on Seinfeld's classic Soup Nazi episode,
or from her more than one hundred appearances on The
Tonight Show, or from when she was a correspondent on
Oprah Winfries Show. You may also have read one of
her best selling books, Ali in Wonderland, Happily Ali After,
and the latest Go Ask Ali, which shares a name
(00:48):
with the podcast she launched last year. I have gotten
the biggest get in the entertainment world. It's not Beyonce,
it's my daughter Ellie. It's Stephanopolis. I'm talking about growing
a teenager in a pandemic, and you are a teenager
in a pandemic, and you're my teenager in a pandemic.
(01:09):
Ali and I have been friends for a while, and
I've long admired her fearlessness and poking fun at herself
and at others, including me. Are you taking precautions not
to have more kids, if I may be so bold,
because I feel like there's another eight to ten in you.
My wife and I always struggled with that, which is
(01:30):
you have a baby and you sit, don't go, I
think great? Aren't think so great? What's one more? Yeah?
We do that. We do that with dogs because puppies
are cute, just as cute as babies. So I get it.
I understand. I wish you guys could have some more
for us because one of ours is going to college
in the fall. Let me ask you about that. You
(01:52):
got married when you were how old and you had
your first kid, you in your how old? So it
was not the typical you know, and believe me, that
was the right thing to do. I keep telling my
daughters do not rush into marriage, because everybody I know
that got married and their twenties is divorced. Now, I
don't think you're the same person in your twenties that
(02:13):
you are in your mid thirties. But when you got married,
and you, certainly, I guess from the get go, didn't
rule out having kids. Did you say to yourself, is
going to affect my work? Not? Once you didn't think
about that at all. Now, well, I don't think I
was ever big or famous enough to think that it
would affect my work. And I was certainly not known
(02:36):
for my body, if you know what I mean. So
it never felt like that. What I did was when
I married George, we moved to d C so he
could do his Sunday show this week. And so I thought,
all right, how do I recalibrate everything, how do I
pivot and so that I can have a career. But
I live in Washington, d C. Which is you know,
if you're an actor, it doesn't exist, you know. So
(02:58):
I started writing. I started writing a book, and then
Oprah hired me so I would go to Chicago once
a week, which was a fantastic job. So I tried
to figure out a way to have some kind of
a career. But here at the end of the day,
you know, not to use a disgusting word, but george
career it trumped mine, you know what I mean. It
(03:18):
was really like we had to kind of go where
he went. So no, I mean, I understand, but I
just was thinking that, you know, you are someone and
I don't say this, you know, just to be pleasant
or whatever. I mean, Please do No, but I think
you're really fucking funny. I mean you're funny. Thank you, Alex.
And if someone came to you now and they said
(03:40):
to you, you're gonna do a four camera sitcom in
New York and you're gonna shoot eighteen episodes or twenty
two episodes with the answer byes or do you like
the way things are now, which is you work a
little bit, you don't have to work, I'd say yes,
they're ground, they have their own independent lives. I'm used
for you, No, used for me. They know how to
make a sandwich. I'm needier than ever. And also I'm
(04:02):
faced with mortality. You know, I got my shelf life
is you know, unless they're going to reboot The Golden Girls,
even those girls were like in their mid fifties. Yeah,
So I would absolutely do that. And there are things
that we would adjust. You know, when I did Nightcap,
which you and your wife were on and we're so hilarious,
there are you know. I created a couple of shows
that took a lot of energy, and in one show,
(04:25):
Headcase About, I played a very dysfunctional shrink. We were
shooting in l A and I was going back and
forth in the Red Eye and I got shingles because
I was completely stressed out. And that's when I said
I can't work in l A. I wonder for you.
I mean you've worked and then you raised your kids
and you worked less than you might have because I
mean I view you as somebody who you could just
(04:46):
be working all the time. You could be doing starring
in a show, uh in network sitcom twenty two episodes.
I mean, whatever you want to do, you'd have no
problem doing it. Yeah, although there for me there's a
different thing, which is I just have no like what
the funk is how I think about everything? Now? Great,
if you said to me, right now, let's go do
love Letters at the Warp Theater, I go, great, let's
(05:07):
do it, like I have nothing to lose, and I'm
excited for anything that's sort of new and different and
happy to perform because I'm not so focused on myself
anymore at all. When you did Nightcap, whose idea was
that you? Was that all completely self generating? Yes? And
how many episodes did you do? We did two seasons
(05:27):
of about thirty something and it it mad? Yeah? How
many episodes per season? God? We did? I want to
say sixteen or so, I mean a lot. But the
great thing about that show was I used to do
the Tonight Show all the time. Jay Leno had me
on all like, I did it over a hundred times,
and I didn't necessarily have anything to promote. They would
call me and say, you know, Melanie Griffith has a fluke,
(05:50):
can you be here in twenty minutes? And I would
go in and just tell funny stories. And I'm not
a stand up comedian, so I would really just have
to pull stuff from my life and why I was there.
I would see the most incredible things, like from celebrities,
you know, because I was always the second guest, and
you know, just like I remember one guy came in
movie Star, and his stylists came in with racks and
(06:13):
racks of the same white shirt and the same pair
of jeans, so he was going to decide right before
he went up. You know, just crazy stuff. Or the
publicist and the actress were not coming out of the
wardrobe room because they were having sex, and the p
as are running around going like you know where, And
I just thought, this is the show who gives a
ship with what the actors say or promoting their movie
(06:35):
that whatever is happening behind here is that is the show. Now.
You came from a very proper family, correct, Yes, how
would you describe it? You came from what kind of family?
Dysfunctional but proper, proper? Yes, Yeah, I went to boarding school.
My mother was Social secretary of the Reagan White House.
Only Democrat in the Reagan White House. Yeah. My stepfather
(06:59):
was one of the editors of the London Sunday Times
in chief foreign correspondent, and my father was a reporter
during Watergate for the Washington Post. So I grew up
in that world. And when you went into this business, somebody,
did your family have a different plan for you? Listen
for my family, when I said I want to be
an actor, they thought it was just a phase. I'd
(07:20):
grow out of it. And then I said no, no, no no,
I'm going to be an actor. And then my mother
was basically like, well, then just go be a whore.
Then just go go to a brothel and put your
name on the So they didn't get it at all.
At least Las Vegas is sunny, Yes, go to the
Mustang ranch. It's warm there, yes, and if you can dance,
even better, So I you know, left all that. I
(07:42):
went to l A. I didn't know anybody. I had
no connections in that world at all. And how old
you went to l A right out of college, right
out of n y U. Yep, so four years at
y U. Four years at n y U for what
acting circle in the Square? And somebody at William Morris
came to see me in a play and he said,
you have a nice generic girl next door best friend. Look,
(08:04):
you should go to l A. And I went all right,
all right, sure, yeah, sure, And so I went to
l A. And I thought that I would eventually marry
Hugh Grant or Matthew Perry or one of those guys.
And the head of the studio, Yeah, well if my
boobs are bigger. But then I met George and I,
you know, it was like the Godfather comedian Ali Wentworth.
(08:29):
When it comes to great episodes from the Here's the
Thing Archives, you can always check out my episode with
Mr Ali Wentworth, George Stephanopoulos, or for more funny women
who can really write, my conversation with Paula Pell, who
was a writer at Saturday Night Live for nearly twenty years.
I was always a bit of a class clown, I
(08:51):
really pushed the envelope because I would be funny in
class and I do things like one of my teachers.
I would go by him and drag my hand along
the chuck shelf, and then I'd come over and I'd say,
you know, Mr gracer're just a really great teacher, and
I pat him on the back and I'd leave like
a handprint. He'd let me make him a little bit
the fool for a moment, and then he'd do you know,
he looked like Rob Briner and all in the family
(09:12):
at the big bushy mustache and along there he just
kind of looked a camera three, you know, non existent,
and the audience, would you know, the audience, the class
would crack up. Here more of my conversation with Paula
pell at Here's the Thing dot Org. When we come back,
Ali talks about being set up on a blind date
(09:33):
with George Stephanopoulos. I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening
to Here's the Thing. In the spring of two thousand one,
Ali Wentworth was newly back in New York City and
(09:56):
found herself talked into a life changing lunch. Where did
you first see him face to face in personal at Fred's,
which was the restaurant at Barney's on sixty one to Madison.
That's where we were going to meet. And of course
I knew who he was. He was George Chephanopolis. It
was a blind date ish, I mean I knew who
he was, of course, But who set you up on
(10:18):
the date? An old friend of his that worked in
the White House with him. Why didn't they think that
would be a good match? We were going to swap.
I offered up my older brother who was in l A,
who worked for David Lynch, and she offered up George, thinking,
you know, George was a one date wonder like. He
never got serious, so it was very easy for her
(10:39):
to trade him up because she knew he wouldn't go
on a second date with me. He wasn't married before,
never never lived with anybody. I'm the first person he said,
I love you too, my virgin bride. So when we
were being set up, I was not interested. And George
gives me so much shit about it because he said,
that's not true, that's not true. But I was in
(11:00):
He was not my type. I didn't want anybody from
the political world. I like a tall, Simian looking man
and so he was just you know, I thought, this
will be my you know, my date with George Stephanopolis.
It will be like a New Yorker article someday, you
know what I mean, part of my routine. Yeah, part
of my routine, which it has become anyway. But I
didn't shower it and shut my legs. I wore a
(11:22):
black suit because that meant smart to me. I read
the New York Times, the financial section. I read the
whole thing, and I thought, we'll have a really interesting
intellectual conversation and that'll be that. And I got to
Fred's and there was George in in Armani suit that
was way too big with the shoulder pads, and I went,
all right, all right, don't be shallow. Look beyond it,
(11:43):
look beyond it. And we sat down. The first thing
we talked about was antidepressants. What are you on? What
are you want? And I thought, okay, this is good.
This is the glue. This is the glue. And we
both ordered crab salad. And afterwards he walked me out
and he shook my hand. Now, in l A, where
I was living, if you went out with somebody and
(12:04):
they shook your hand, they weren't interested. If they didn't
drag you by the hair like a caveman into their
gross bachelor pad in West Hollywood, then they weren't interested.
So and George, but it is very nice to meet you,
and I went, oh Jesus, okay, very nice to meet you.
And then that night he called me and said, do
you want to come out again? And I didn't play
the game. I don't know how to play games. So
(12:25):
I said to him, Yep, I'm free to night. I'm
free tomorrow night. Listen. I'm supposed to go away for
the weekend with my mom and sisters, but I'll blow
that off. You liked him, I did like him. What
about him? Did you like? I was attracted to him,
which I did not think I would be. I found
him it'd still do very sexy, and I found his
brain very sexy. And he had smile. And I've written
(12:48):
about it and I've said it's like a good melon.
But it felt like, oh, you're my people, my wife,
same thing, like the way she looked, her hair, color,
her voice, old of it. I was like, oh God,
she's might dream girl. You know. I felt that way
when I met her too. By the way, but you
and my wife had a very intimate moment on the show.
It was really well and I wrote that for a reason.
(13:09):
I wrote, to have your wife's vagina on my face
for about six seconds, and you got, as they say,
and bye bye, Bertie. You got a lot of little
to do, or as I like to say, I got
a whiff and I get it. So so anyway, yes,
all that stuff, all that chemical stuff happened. Chemistry, Yes,
(13:30):
And that weekend I was going to a spa with
my mother and my sisters, and I spent the whole
time on the phone with George. They were all yoga
ing and eating brand muffins, and I was at Canyon
Ranch with my head out the window, chain smoking and
talking to George the whole time. Every once in a
while they come back and they, you know, throw some
almond butter at me. And then we were engaged two
(13:52):
months later, and that felt like it took a long
time he did. It took me two whole fucking months
to close this, like hello, hello. And then he we
went to Greece and I knew that he had a ring.
How did you know his nephew dealt in jewelry? I
don't know what that means, but it sounds shady. But
he dealt in jewelry and George had to go at
(14:13):
breakfast with him the day we were leaving for Greece,
and I thought, there's only one reason he would meet
his nephew. He deals in jewelry, and I it was
in his knapsacks. The whole way to Greece, I kept
hiding his knapsack in the lounge and on the plane,
just because I'd like to see him sweat, really suck
him up. And then we we were in Micanos and
he proposed to me. And I have to tell you,
(14:35):
not ever being a celebrity myself, I had no idea
until he proposed to me in Micaos, and somehow the
press found out about it, and we had photographers all
over the rocks across the water from our hotel, and
we would walk down the street and there'd be thirty
paparazzi all over us, and George's hand would be sweating
(14:57):
and he'd say like, oh my god, I'm so sorry, Ali,
I'm so sorry. I was like, what are you talking? Yeah, George,
could you step back from them? When you're in my light? George,
you wants singles? Guys who wants singles. I mean, you know,
I all but took my shirt off. It was all
very exciting that first time, you know, that kind of
Tom and Nicole moment, and then and then it was horrible,
(15:17):
but it was fun for that day. Now, that magical
moment I'm making us when he finally found the knapsack
that you hit under the rocks and said, oh, some
guy came in. I think that guy in the bicycle
there just stole the knapsack. George run, George run. When
when you did all that at the moment that he
presents you with the ring, were you both on antidepressants
at that moment or did you abstain? I was? He
(15:40):
was off by then. I think the White House really
took it out of him. But then I was still on,
definitely still on. And in fact, the funny you should
bring that up because we went on our honeymoon and
I decided to self regulate and self medicate, and I
decided I didn't need antidipressence anymore. I didn't realize that
you taper off, you know, so I just my cold
turkey and that was bad because I was naked in
(16:03):
the fetal position in our bathroom. It was it was
apocalypse now covered in bird poop. They found you in
the pond with all the cranes covered in crane plamingo
leg in my mouth, and I don't know how it happened.
So I had to get zola FedEx to the Caribbean. Yeah. Well,
it's funny because in my lifetime, if I've ever taken
(16:24):
things which were like sleep aids, I've got horrible insomnia.
And I have all my adult life. I'm thirty five
years sober. I've been in an A thirty this year
was thirty. Congratulations, Well thank you. And I always tell
people that I haven't slept since the day I got sober.
Once I stopped drinking, I couldn't sleep. So I have
really really like at times, I have like crippling insomnia,
Like I sleep like maybe three hours a night, you
know what I mean. And the problem with it is
(16:45):
if I took any kind of drugs and it didn't help,
I woke up tired and groggy. So I got very,
very nervous about any kind of medication because God knows,
if I found one that worked, i'd be I wouldn't
even be talking to you right now. Bueau. Well, I um,
I took ambient once I was in l A and
(17:06):
I come from New York and time difference, blah blah,
block took ambient, went to the Malibu Mart, that shopping
center in Malibu, and BT six genes of the exact
same gene in the exact same size, And I don't
remember doing it. I also got an email the next
day from Pottery Barn Kids asking what address did I
(17:26):
want the Princess canopy bed delivered? Don't remember well. One
thing I would do when I was in the kind
of love craft Ian baffles of my insomnia, I'd sit
there and I'd start to buy things online, like antique
alarm clocks. I'd I'd be like, you know, I'm like,
where's this guy in Germany? They probably have better alarm
(17:48):
clocks in Germany than here. How much does he want
for the alarm clock? Eight dollars? And I could probably
get the same thing at a flea market in Syracuse
for like thirty I don't care, I want it. Do
you meditate? I do now. I do a lot of
deep breathing. I do what's called classical breathing, when you
try to literally fill your lungs up to where you
almost can feel your lungs at the bottom of your
chin if you breathe deep enough. And I do this
(18:10):
very deep breathing meditation thing to sleep, and it does work.
But one time I take an ambient like I work, work, work, work, work,
and it gets to be eleven o'clock at night or
twelve o'clock at night, and I'm like, okay, sleep one
to three sleep, Simon says, sleep, And I can't sleep.
So I take the ambient. Nothing happens. I take another one.
Nothing happened. I take the third one. I think I
(18:31):
took the third and the fourth one. Then all of
a sudden, I'm like, I'm literally living in then and
I'm watching you know, Jimmy Falloner and and my daughter
Ireland calls and I think, like, while I'm on the
phone call she's in California. She was like fourteen, and
I go, um, so I think maybe tomorrow I'm gonna
get a ticket. I'm like your your berver raw. I
(18:51):
go out an Island's going dad, Dad, And I go,
this is a true story. And I go I'm okay
until the pound uh to the pound, and I'm playing
them no I'm like, how in two thousand one they're
disconnecting care delays, disconnecting my circuits. And the next thing
(19:14):
you know, I hear bang Nay nick nick name, nick
name on the service elevator door of my apartment. It's
three firemen with axes, Oh my god, and an E. M. T.
Menic and they're like, we got a phone call, Mr
ball when we're really sorry, we got a call from
your daughter. You have to put your clothes and come
with us, sir, right now, to the hospital. And I'm like,
I don't roll you're joking about, or you a fireman,
(19:40):
or this is this trigger dreat. You want some guarandy,
Like I'm so out of it. They take me, make
me get dressed. I'm in the bathroom, they take me,
they take me to the hospital and I go, okay.
I started to stop up very quickly, and I go
I took one too many ambient because they weren't working.
They were like, uh huh sure, Mr Ballman, Sure, And
(20:03):
I never took another one of those fucking things again.
My daughter called the police because she thought I was odin.
But good for Ireland to know how to do that.
I think ambient is dangerous you do. Yes, Yes, people
have all these crazy ambience stories. I took him away
from George because he was taking them for a while.
He only sleeps like four or five hours anyway, because
(20:24):
of his schedule. Yeah, we go to bed at eight
and thirty and I go with him. That's love. That's love.
Now you go to sleep, or you just lay next
him and you're like on YouTube. No no phones allowed
in the bed and no TV. You're in bed and
you're trying to get eight thirty and he's up. What
time to No? Yeah, he gets up. He reads every
newspaper and here's here's the thing. We start, just started
(20:48):
a production company. So he's up at two thirty, not
only reading all the papers, he's reading scripts, he's reading articles,
he's doing doing all of it, which he loves. He
loves this kind of new thing. He's got this deal
with Hulu and it's all very exciting. So he can't
sleep because of that. You know, he wants to get
up and you know, read stuff starring vehicles for Alec Baldwin.
(21:10):
So he sleeps, I don't know, five hours. Maybe we
just were on vacation and you know, he slept in
because he slept till four, so I never am awake
when he wakes up in the morning. So I have
to go to bed with him at night or we're
not how's the marriage now? What did your family think
when you married George? They couldn't believe it. My mother
hysterically cried. I think she wanted to marry him, but
(21:32):
it was it was okay if I did you know?
She was beyond excited. I was bringing home comedy writers
and then I brought home a French director and my
mother goes, you have an affair with him, you don't
marry him. So they were beyond thrilled when I married George.
I mean still they all love him the most. What
does George want? What does George say? What would George
want for dinner? There's a lot of that beyond the
(21:56):
war room, Burgala and Clinton and Carville and your husband,
beyond all of them. In the promotional lap that you take,
I am always happy to do Good Morning America, and
I will say, can I do it with George? Can
I do my segment with George? Because I'm still admiring
(22:17):
of him and he did my podcast. I will say
one thing to this, which is what I love about
George is he's genuinely curious. It could be anybody. It
could be Chuck Schumer, it could be Zac Efron. If
it's not an area that he knows about, he's interested
to know about. Truly, you know, he doesn't just go oh,
it's an actor who cares. He's like, all right, I'm interested.
(22:39):
What is this person? What can I glean from this?
Which I think is a very interesting trait and a
great trait. Comedian and author Ali Wentworth. If you're enjoying
this conversation, tell a friend and be sure to follow
Here's the Thing on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. After the break, Ali
(23:03):
talks about parenting in a pandemic, her social media rules
for her teenage daughters, and how she learned to be funny.
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
(23:25):
Ali Wentworth as one of those people everyone friends and
strangers alike ask for advice. Last year when she got COVID,
she had the inspiration for her own podcast, Go ask Ali.
We were you know, everything takes forever in this business,
So we were talking. I was talking to Shonda land
about it, and then in the middle of COVID, I
(23:47):
called them and I said, you know what I had COVID.
I'm lying here in bed. I have two teenage daughters downstairs.
I said, I'm ready to do a podcast and it's
going to be how you grow a teenager in a pandemic.
And they're like, great, what's been the challenges for you?
But um, there have been good and bad. You know.
The girls have anxiety like me and George, so they worry.
They worry about school and they worry what's going to happen.
(24:08):
And then we're worried about college. Our eldest, Elliott, is
going to Brown in the fall, but there's no prom.
There's a lot of that now. On the one hand,
there's no fomo, so you're not missing anything, but it's
not natural for two teenage girls to be home with
their parents for a year and not see anybody. On
the flip side, in terms of our family, it was
fantastic to have George have that kind of time with
(24:31):
his kids. We would have three hour dinners where we
had amazing discussions. We as a family, we really kind
of grew and it was fantastic. But it's not good
for them. I kept saying, like, you know, I don't
want them to go drop Molly or give hand jobs,
but they should be out kissing boys and you know what,
having normal teenage experiences they should be living, should be living. Yeah,
(24:52):
making mistakes of it. And then there's the social media
part of it, which is, you know, their whole. I
got sucked into that little social media void which was
their only contact, their only connection, which you know, I
have such specific and strong views about social media. Also,
I don't want my girls to sort of sexualize themselves,
(25:15):
because there's such a dangled carrot about like get likes
be sexy, and I'm like, I don't ever want to
see bikini shots. I don't you know. To me, that's
a whole you're trying to fill, like be substantial. You
have two girls, two girls. Yeah, And I said the
stuff also that you can put on social media colleges,
everybody looks at that stuff, and that stuff can come
back to haunt you. So yeah, I've made my mistakes
(25:37):
on social media because what I realized was I thought
to myself, oh, this is my chance to bypass the
mainstream media and talk directly to my fans. After about
a year and a half, I thought maybe I would
like to have a little membrane between me and my fans.
Lauren Michaels had a great line. He said, you know,
he said, you know YouTube the logo is broadcast yourself,
(25:59):
he said, And one thing we've learned is maybe it's
nice to have a layer of producers and executives between
you and the camera and you and you're broadcasting yourself.
And to a large degree, he's right. Elliott is going
to Brown. And the other one is how old she's fifteen?
She's a sophomore. And let me tell you something. She's
an amazing babysitter, Like she is a baby. I'm not kidding.
(26:20):
She's a baby whisperer. She'll take all seventy four of
your kids at one time. What do you think it
is that? For me? When I was young, I would
watch TV. You had to watch TV and had to
really watch it. There was no pause, nor rewind, no VCR,
no nothing, Szippo network, TV, broadcast TV. So you watched
(26:43):
and you become funny by absorbing what's funny from other people.
And I'd watch anything. I'd watch Bob Hope of your
name it how was that in your life? Like, what
was media like in your childhood? Well, we were only
allowed to watch one hour of television a week, that
was the rule. But I had divorced parents, so when
I went to see my dad on the weekend, his
(27:04):
second wife hated the fact that he had kids from
a former marriage. So she would put me in front
of the TV with one of those heat up TV
trays and I would watch Bob Newhart, Carol Burnett, I
would watch that whole Friday lineup. And that's exactly where
I learned, Oh, that's funny if you wear the curtain
rod on this show, that's funny. That's funny. And it's
(27:26):
instinctual too, because I remember once I had a meeting
with Jodie Foster and she said to me, did you
take classes for comedy? I said, it, never took classes.
I was part of the groundlings when I moved to
l A And she goes, that's because it's instinctual. You
cannot teach it, And she's right, it is instinctual, and
that watching Carol Burnett was an instinctual kind of osmosis
(27:49):
for me. What I think is interesting about you is
that I've worked with people who their actors by and large,
and the concentration is comedy. They're comic actors who themselves
are not that funny off the set. They don't think
of funny things, they don't say funny things. Isn't that interesting?
And you, yourself are funny. You're funny whether you're whatever
(28:12):
the writing is, whatever the situation is. And you're saying
that that came from just osmosis. And then you learn
over the years, you learn, oh, this makes people laugh.
When I was a teenager, I was fat because I
went to Spain and I ate as much as I could,
and my mother walked by me in the airport, looked
at me right in the eye and kept walking, didn't
knows me. You went to Spain when you were a teenager, Yeah,
(28:34):
I went for four months. I love Spain and I
loved the country, the people, the language. And I went
to live with a family who were obese, and they
ate like they ate like six meals a day, like
potatoes and oil sangria, and they fed me like a
fog walk goose. They just shoved food in my mouth.
I gained forty pounds and I couldn't be happier. I
(28:55):
even broke a chicken's neck, you know, the whole thing.
So I came back and I was fat. And listen,
when you're fat in high school, you go all right,
so I'm not. No one wants to hook up with me,
so I'm going to find a different route. So I
was funny, And what ages you were? You were overweight
between what years of your life? Uh, sophomore year in
high school till sophomore year in college. So not that
(29:17):
long five the most formidable years, critical years. But I
still got the guy. But that's all about again, like
honing that comedy thing. And you have an audience of
people at a party or hanging out, and that's where
you learn it. You know, you've learned very quickly what
gets a laugh what doesn't. In same with stories. The
reason I would go do the Tonight Show all the
time is because I had already rehearsed those stories at
(29:40):
a dinner party and so I knew they worked. So
if I got a call, you know, even today when
I go do a talk show, I go, oh, you know,
it was really funny? Was that thing that George and
I just did? And I remember telling my kids that
and they were laughing, really hard. I'm going to tell
that story. So that's why you do. It's like the
little metal box your mother had in the kitchen with
recipes where the index cards went and yours. This is
your brain. You have a file with all those stories.
(30:02):
You tell. How did you lose weight? It fell off naturally.
It just it wasn't supposed to be. It fell off naturally.
She reversed. But you know, I have only had one
scene where I was scantily clothed. I never had a
career where I worried about that feeling of oh, I'm
going to do this film. I gotta get in shape,
I gotta work out. Never Now you have a cadre
(30:24):
of show business chicks that are your great but I have.
I have a little posse. You guys have your own
little club. Yeah you have a posse, Yeah I do. Yeah.
Mariska Brooke Shields dead Messing dead messing. Yeah. When she's
in town. I mean, Marska and I during the pandemic,
we kind of quarantined together like our families. So I
saw her a lot during the pandemic, too much. And
(30:46):
so you know, some of the other girls I haven't
really seen as much. Brook. I have but you know,
now that things are opening up and people are getting vaccinated,
we can be a full on girl power group. What
do you watch? Name two or three things you watched
drama or come that you really really thought were special.
Because I respect your opinion a lot. I watched Lupin
on Netflix. Okay, you say it like, oh, like everyone
(31:08):
knows Lupe. I'm sorry. I thought, well, I'm sorry, I
didn't go to boarding school. What is Lupin? No, these
people in my literary soire and I watched Lupin and
Lupin is fantastic. It's this incredibly dynamic, handsome black guy
who's a thief and whose father was set up to
seem like he was. He was like a butler that
(31:30):
he stole a diamond necklace from a made off type
guy and went to jail and killed himself in jail,
and the sun becomes this international thief and seeks revenge
by stealing this necklace at Southeby's. Anyway, It's it's a
cat and mouth great show. Um. I watched The Promising
Young Woman. I thought that was a great movie. Streaming movie. Oh,
call my agent, you would love it, Alec. It's just
(31:51):
like Nightcap. It's about a dysfunctional agents in Paris. They're
always pandering to their clients in French with subtitles, with subtitles, Yes,
tell me what you've been watching besides Nickelodeon, right, besides
a lot of Powerpuff Girls. I sent him an email
to Owen Wilson and I said, Owen, I said, my god,
these cars movies. I said, you are such a part
(32:12):
of my kids, child, You're such a part of my life.
We've watched these fucking movies. We've watched each of the
three movies a hundred times each. And I can't tell
you how fabulous you are. And this you're so great
these movies means so they have every cars, every Lightning McQueen, bedsheets,
bath towel, slippers, every fucking thing. And he writes me
(32:35):
back and she's like, oh the great great, Oh yeah,
Lightning McQueen was so good for me too. But yeah,
Disney Plus, it's like the Eternal Flame at Arlington. It's
on in my house twenty for hours a day. Disney plus.
But for me, because the Hampton's International Film Festival is coming,
I watch a lot of docks. I watch a lot
(32:56):
of dogs, a lot and there's one that came on
that was really fun if you can, because we look
for like a mix of something serious and topical or biographical.
You know when Susan Lacy did the bio of Jane Fonda.
I love that movie, Loved, Loved, and I'm really well done.
But there's one called Lily Topples the World and it's
(33:17):
about a woman who's the dominoes champion. She's the Chululi
of dominoes. She does arrangements that all radiate out into
patterns that are like Georgia o'keeith painting results from her
tapping one thing. You can't believe this school, this young woman,
what she does. Let me tell you something, You're still
(33:39):
one of the funniest people I've ever met in my life.
I gotta part for you, all right. What do I
gotta do? I hope there's nudity. There is no nudity.
Thank you for doing this with us, Alex, thank you,
My love to you, My love to you. Actor, comedian
and author Ali went Earth. I'm Alec Baldwin and this
(34:02):
is Here's the Thing from My Heart Radio. We're produced
by Kathleen Russo, Carrie Donohue and Zach McNeice. Our engineer
is Frank Imperial. Thanks for listening.
Host
Alec Baldwin
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