October 24, 2023 • 54 mins
This week on JOY, Craig’s dear friend Adriana Trigiani. Adriana is The New York Times best selling author of 20 books in fiction and nonfiction, award-winning filmmaker, and host of the blockbuster Facebook Live show, “Adriana Ink”. She now hosts the “You Are What You Read” podcast, deep, surprising, and humorous conversations with the great cultural figures of our time about the books that built their souls. EnJOY.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Craig Ferguson's Fancy Rascal Tour continues in November twenty
twenty three. For the full list of dates, please go
to the Craig Ferguson Show dot com slash to her website.
My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast
is Joy. I talk to interest in people about what
(00:21):
brings them happiness. Meet Adriana Triggyani. Adriana is my friend.
She's a writer, she's a director, and she's a great cook.
But you'll have to take my word for the last
part unless you know her, in which case, why you
listen to this?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Just call her? I have said in a little chemistry
between you and ject Now I like it.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Yeah, it looks like a young apputuno to mean, it's
not a bad look. That's a good look. That's a
look you hold on to. But I want you to
look at his recent birthday party pictures and plan ahead
of Yeah, yeah, you really have to plan ahead.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
What about getting older?
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Yes, there has to be a plan. If there's no plan,
you're flailing.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
What is your plan for getting older?
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Well, I do have one, but I heard.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
You say your daughter, I'll be a burden.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Okay, so every night from the time she was born
in the crib, the last thing I say to I
say I love you, Lucia, and then i'd say I
will be a burden.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Good night.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
And I said it every night. And it's a family joke.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Now, will you do that?
Speaker 3 (01:31):
While you want?
Speaker 2 (01:33):
You should? You should? I mean, come on, I'm saying she.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Wants to look after me. Last night we watched a
man called Auto. Have you seen that movie?
Speaker 4 (01:40):
No?
Speaker 3 (01:40):
With Tom Hanks, I know, not your favorite.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I don't say that.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Well I heard you say it once and I'm just
defending your position.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
No, that's not that's not true.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Okay, Well I hope he comes.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
He's the greatest that drive ever.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
No, No, let me tell you something. We're as great
as the material always. So people don't even want to
hear that because they think it looks like it was
made up on the spot.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
When it's good, when it's a good actor, sure, and.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
When it's a good material, yeah, a great actor can
triumph over bad material, though I've seen it many times. Yeah,
but not for this sustaining whole narrative. There'll be a
scene where you go, WHOA. Okay, yeah, maybe you see that,
but over the whole narrative. To hold the logic of
it together takes the writer.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Hold on a second though.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
A great actor maybe, but a great movie star doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter. Like Sean Connery, even in Zone, he
just wanted.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
To walk in the room. Yeah, I stand there with
his tips and he could destroy the world with his gaze, just.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Like sure, I'm waiting a Mangini and it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
It's just that. So listen. I want to. I want to.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
We're gonna go on a journey because the name of
the podcast is joy. Oh you bring me joy.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Okay, you bring me.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Jo, your your friendship brings me joy.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
That makes me.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
But I want to. I want everyone here to get
to know you a little bit.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Okay, So we're going to start with little baby Adri
but it's still gonna be long. I mean, you're not
gonna be a baby for a long part of the conversation.
We're going to start with little baby Adree. Right, yeah,
so close your eyes.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
You're in the creb. Now where is the crib?
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Okay? We're in Banger, Pennsylvania, near Rosetta, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Right, which is it doesn't help anyone.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
It does. It does because this is the town in
the United States that they sent doctors and medical whole
groups teams of people to study these Italian Americans that
didn't die heart attacks if you stepped one step outside
of Rosetta. This is where my father was born, my
grandfather was born and raised, and he was the mayor
of the town. And in the sixties they came in
(03:46):
and studied everybody, the babies, the old people. Because if
you stepped over the line of the town into what
was called bangor right, which is where the Welsh were
the Johnny bulls, because they came and owned the slate
quarries and the Italians worked for them.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
The Wells should see the welshould drink.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
They do well. There's a lot of drinking. Yeah, But
the Italians, with all the bad health habits that they
could discern, making blood pudding, eating sugar, that the stress
of being in a quarry, all of that the dangers,
this little community didn't stuffer from any anxiety. There wasn't cancer,
(04:25):
there wasn't heart attack, and they couldn't figure it out.
So this team of doctors came in. They wrote books
about it. I'll give them to you, and Dean Ornish
put it in his study. Malcolm Gladwell put it in
a book of his eye made a little documentary about it.
What we found out when they completed the study in
like nineteen sixty five, the doctors concluded that the people
didn't die of heart attacks because they felt emotionally safe.
(04:49):
Really so they women worked in the blouse factories. My
grandmother owned a blouse factory with my grandfather, I mean
a bloss factory. Blas said. They were yeah, sartorial stuff,
you know, you made close. They made clothes right, and
they came up my grandparents. My grandfather was a machinist
and my grandmother was a four lady at fourteen. So
I come from real workers.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
I know you do it, but you're a worker.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
I don't rest. But on the other side of the family,
same thing. My grandfather Carlo I wrote a book about
you know, fictionalized and Shoemaker's Wife where they went to
Minnesota and he was in the iron ore mines and
he brought my grandmother there from Hoboken, New Jersey, Italian immigrants.
But he got his citizenship in World War One by
fighting for American World War One and denounced a citizenship
(05:34):
and then they became Americans and he started the Progressive
Shoe Shop. He was cool. You would have loved him.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
What's the progressive?
Speaker 3 (05:40):
I never knew.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
I want to know about you, but just before.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
We I know everything.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
This is what you do. I know you though, this
is what this is what you do.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
I can't. I'm going to get to me because when
I'm there, because because it's really fascinating what happens. I
mean my mother and father. My mother was a librarian,
but she was also brilliant, so she started the architecture
library at the University of Notre Dame when she was
twenty one years old. Lord she graduated from Saint Catherines
in Minnesota. They have to understand something. My grandfather died
(06:10):
when he was thirty nine. Carlo boniclly wait. I thought
nobody died different times. He got gassed in World War
One and got cancer. They all did in his platoon.
All came home and died before. They said, you won't
see your fortieth birthday. And my mother told me the
story she remembered when he came back from the Mayo
clinic and he dropped his bag and he said to
his wife Lucci. I'm gonna I'm going to be dead
in a year. He just had a backache. Yeah, yeah,
(06:34):
So he was so cool and I found out lots
and lots about him. Anyway, So he was in the
iron ore mindest when he couldn't breathe because of the
guest gast. But he was also a shoemaker, but he
would have been a shoe designer. That was his goal
was to design shoes as much as make them. But
when you work in a mining town, you're adjusting people's
(06:55):
foot infirmities basically, and you're fixing their shoes and boots
and all that stuff. So that's what he did. But
he was very ambitious, My mom told me, very ambitious.
And he called his shop the Progressive Shoe Shop.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
What does that mean? Progressive shoe shop?
Speaker 3 (07:09):
You know what I meant to him. I think I'm
an American and you're getting Italian artistry. Yeah, you know,
kiss my Italian American ass.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
That's what he was saying.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
All right, So little baby Adria is growing up in the.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Catholic baby boom. All right, okay, yeah, my parents were
married in the late fifties. My mother had many many
so you have five girls, two boys. Right, Okay, I'm
in the middle.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Right.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
And I found a letter recently that my grandmother wrote
to one of her children about my birth, my auspicious birth.
And this is the two words that were in the
letter another girl. Oh wow, I just found that. I
think that's a great title.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah, this is good to do.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
But anyways, so but I never felt that from the
time I was little, I saw the dramatic possibilities of everything.
I thought it was a movie I was watching, having
never watched a movie. You know what I'm saying, Yeah,
I do, because I was in it. I was in it.
There was a train moving and I jumped on it
and wow. And I was fascinated by my father and mother.
(08:21):
I mean every picture of me as a kid, there
was a sea of children. But looking up at my mother,
I would look at my mother like I was looking
at the blessed mother. I mean like and I was
Bernadett and lords. I just was looking at her.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Like I was gonna ask you abolism. Because because the imagery,
I was always jealous of the Catholic kids when I
come on over.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Well, no, not that jealous.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
But I was jealous of the guy because we were Protestants.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
So we just like we had like.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Well you do the stripped down version.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
It just it's a white wall and you know they read.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
From the Bible and listen. I'm a Protestant lover, but
it's like there's no hush in the Catholic church. You
go in, they put on a different robe in every season,
and we decorate the statue. It's Tuesday night. My aunt
is crowning the Blessed Mother for may Queen. I mean
my aunt. I don't think she can get up on
the step stool. My aunt. I love her dearly, but
(09:11):
she's like nothing in bestive. But you know she's going
to crown her. We do these things, say the Rosary,
we do these rituals, and this is the secret, right,
don't peak under the curtain of that church. Don't peak
under the curtain of any institutions. When you do, you'll
be disappointed and you will be a part of nothing.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Well, see, that's why you're at heart probably a Protestant,
because you know it's theater. That was what the whole
argument was.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Yes, I have a problem probably with all of it
on some level, but.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
I have a friend.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Let me tell you to my friend Phil my friend
Phil from Philly is an Italian Catholic, and I said,
hey Phil, he said, because I was interested in the
Catholic thing, I said, hey, Phil, do you believe in transubstantiation?
He said, what's that? He said, it's when the biscuit
turns in to the body of Jesus during the Eucharist.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
And he's like, I never heard of that. It's the
whole basis of the Catholic faith. He's like, uh no.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
And there's always people don't know about that, and they
always conflate and confuse the Blessed Mother and the assumption
and the ascension and.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Let's you're still religious.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Oh. I prayed like a you know, I just went
Sunday and got.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
A treat and all that.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Well, my guide died. The priest that you know talking about.
We were talking about Alan Alder earlier. He looked just
like Alan Alden. And in the seventies I would just
they stopped the box confession. And you have to understand,
I grew up in Appalachia, where the Catholic Church was
less than one percent of the population, so it was
like the island of misfit toys. There was the former
(10:51):
this and the this, and the the families were from
the coal region, so you had, you know, Czechs and
Polish people who still had their accent, and we were
the Italians. But the Italians that were in Appalachi prior
to us changed their names, so we'd have to dig
around to find them, right, But you'll find enclaves wherever
there's mining. You're going to find immigrant people here. You're
(11:13):
always going to find that. But yeah, So the Catholicism
I grew up with was very open and very welcoming,
and the priests we got and the nuns that we got.
In fact, when I was like ten years old, the
nuns quit. They just said, we're not wearing these habits anymore.
We're scaring the kids. And they became their own force
(11:36):
for social order. It wasn't really in order. It had
nothing to do with the Catholic Church. It was just
about doing good works. And there was a woman down there.
She's still alive. I think she's in her nineties now,
a woman named Katherine Rumschlag, Sister Catherine, that was the
mother superior and that don't you know, she cut you.
She was all business. She now lives in community with
(11:58):
a group of the ex nuns and some of the families.
There was a noun, a beautiful nun who left the order.
I mean she was gorgeous, Yeah, and got married and
not that it has anything to do with anything but
just having to picture her, but just this beautiful woman
and she had children and now she lives in that community.
She's retired and she lives with these the ex nuns.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
All right, So you come from a very warm, Catholic immigrant,
safe emotionally environment and yet you live now right now,
you're a New Yorker and you've got a long journey
from Appalachia to your sophisticated life that you have now.
(12:41):
With your sophistication, Yeah, you're pretty sophisticated.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Like you write books and your.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Well, I write books, but to me, writing books is
what my grandmother did call peace work in a factory.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Yeah. But you didn't just start writing books, right, You
were a writer.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
In television, that's right, comedy writer, right, So how did
you get from Appalai to write in comedy?
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Okay? So you know there were key moments where I
made decisions, and the big one was I'll never forget this.
I was in the principal's office and you know, for whatever,
delivering something from my teacher, like the absentee list or whatever.
And this man comes in, Nae Mark Holyfield, and he's
(13:21):
talking to the school secretary who was smoking. Everybody smoked then,
like smoking a way Patsy Arnold, who I loved because
you could give her the dish and then you get
at something back, you know what I mean. Loved her.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yeah, anyway, so that's why are you going so well
with Megan? My wife?
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Oh hey, yeah, we get we get We got the
job done in five minutes and now best he's okay.
So so this man comes in and he says, look,
I'm looking for I need a reporter from my radio
show and paying her thing. And I'm listening to this
now I'm making money. I am the town babysitter. I
am the I don't like to use this sword, but
I would say, like it was almost like a ring
(13:58):
I was running because I they'd call my house and
I go, yeah, and I have four sisters and I'd
book them.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Right.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
I didn't get a kickback, but I would take the
best job.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Like, so you're running a babysit and syndicate.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
I'm running a city. I'm very entrepreneurial. I'm sorry to
tell you so anyway, and you know, people loved when
the Italians came because we also cleaned, went to kids
to bed and we cleaned the house, and to women
like getting two for one fifty cents an hour. Okay,
So I would like to say not that any of
them needed their houses clean. You know they needed it
and ain't got a bunch of kids you need it.
(14:29):
So anyway, so I hear this guy and he says, uh,
he says, I need a report. And I'm fourteen years old.
I'm thinking, here's the thing about me, and I think
you know this, I think I could do anything like
if I walked past the television said, and somebody's ice skating.
When we went to the ice show when I was
little in Knoxville, Tennessee, I wanted to be that. I
(14:50):
wanted to be that girl with the big head dress
who skated over to the side and like did this
did you ever do it? I've never had on a
pair of ice skates in my life, but my kid
has the time. No, now, I'll break my back anyway.
So anyway, so oh, I was in amorateur ice skating
and my mother I skated her whole life, and my
father I skated, but we didn't because there were no
(15:11):
ice drinks or anything like that. Right, So when I
found out that we need to qualify for the Olympics,
you gotta do a three minute routine for like three years,
I'm like, I got to make up funny stuff every day,
you see.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
All Right, So the guy's looking for a report, or
you're fourteen, you think maybe ice skating is not for you.
So do you approach this guy and say I want
to be a reporter or mister Hollyfield?
Speaker 3 (15:33):
I said, I'm a writer and I would like to
have that job. And he went okay. He said can
you drive? No, but I'll get somebody to drive me. Okay,
what kind of things do you? Right? I said, well,
I'm on school paper.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
You were on the school paper.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Now what he didn't know is that I was in
trouble at the school newspaper because I would write what
they called the gossip column, blind items. Okay, and I
got called and you have done and you know I'm somebody.
You know. You know I have a good heart, Yes
you do. But I wrote a joke that's haunted me
to this.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
I'm going to tell you the joke only one, because
I've got like a bucket loads of that stuff.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Well, you know, at that time, you had a homeroom teacher,
and then you were to make sure you were in school,
and then you were farmed out to your first period class. Sure,
there was a teacher named Bobby Jane Cooper and I
saw her first thing every day. And she was an
interesting looking woman, kind of like an animated character, sort.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Of like O lave oil Are we talking?
Speaker 4 (16:34):
Or no?
Speaker 3 (16:34):
The other extreme?
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Gotcha?
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Okay? Kind of like if you put the Liberty bell
in a skirt. You know what I'm talking about. Okay. So,
and she wore really red lipstick, which I thought was
kind of cool. Well, I started keeping track of her
outfits just for my column, you know, so that I
could say and so this was the joke. And I
got called in and I was so ashamed of this joke,
(16:57):
but it worked on paper. Which home room teacher with
the initials b j C. Has worn the same blue
wool skirt six school days in a row, which means
she went on Monday to Friday. And I think, now
I would do that, now, sure I would think nothing
(17:17):
of it. Of course I got called in. It was bad.
It's like the insensitivity of this comment. And they made
me go apologize to her, which was so humiliating.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
You got canceled on Twitter and I.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Said, you know, I'm so sorry. I said, I just
you know, I have to come up with this material
and I thought it would work and I didn't mean to,
you know, she said you had use my initials. She said,
I hope you've learned your lesson. We don't make a
lot of money as teachers. We're here because we love
teaching before we're wearing And I was like, oh, oh
(17:52):
my god, that's is that the worst story I ever heard? Okay,
so now everyone hates me within the sound of my voice.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
No, no, no, no, I just feel awful. I just feel
awful for everybody.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Now here's the other part of this though. This was
the slow crawl to journalism wasn't for me till the
big story when I was okay, I was getting five
bucks a story and that was pretty good, right, And
they ran me at the top of every hour and.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
I it's a radio show.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
It's a radio show. And I decided and I'd tape
them the night before. The engineer would like in a break,
would tape my stories and I went to the town meetings.
I did a really good series about a coal mining
strike that was but I went to meet with the
women and I got a real sense of that. You know,
it wasn't. Listen, the jokes I was writing wasn't because
(18:35):
I was rich and I was sitting on a throne.
It was because I was trying to like be funny.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Yeah, I get it. So and also, you're a kid.
What are you fifteen years old?
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Yeah, I'm fourteen fifteen. Yeah, but that never mattered in
my family. You do the wrong thing, you put on
the rack. But anyway, so I decided doing this. They
kept calling me in. My boss kept calling me in. Mean,
his name was mister Stallard. He was Holyfield's boss, and
I remember being in his office and he was smoking
so much Carly see the guy, right, He said, to
(19:05):
tell you the future of this business, it's going to
be a black woman, and it's going to be television.
He predicted Oprah like before Oprah. Right, Okay, so I'm
just throwing that out there. So anyway, because so he
knew what he was talking about. I respected him. But
he said to me, he said nobody cares about what
you think. You just tell us what happened. We don't
care about what you think. You are not the thing.
(19:25):
The story is the thing, Because I would.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
It's been completely forgotten in it in life.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
If I did that now. Yeah, See, I have a
hard time when I watched the news because I don't
want your opinion. I don't care what you think.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
There is no news, says all opinion.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Tell me what happened. Yeah, And interestingly enough, in my family,
my great uncle, priest journalist, ran the Leco di Bergomo
for forty years and I've had his stuff translated. And
it's so simple and it's good. It works in drama too,
or comedy. It's that simple narrative. What's what happened, How
did it happen, When did it happen, and why did
it happen?
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Oh out, Johnny Carson, you still say, tell them what
you're going to do.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Do it. Tell them what you're doing, and then tell
them what you did.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Who's gets who trained me as a play right? If
they don't know within two minutes while they're in that chair,
you've lost them. They got to know. That's exactly what
Johnny Carson.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Saying, I Craig Ferguson will be on the road once
again this fall, bringing the Fantasy Rascal to or two
your region. For tickets and full list of tour dates,
go to my website, The Craig Ferguson Show dot com
slash tour. Come and see me live or don't. I'm
(20:35):
not your father. So you're doing the reporter for the
local radio right with this sense?
Speaker 3 (20:49):
I want to just I got to get out of here.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Right, Well, that's a small town mentality for it.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Look, if you have an artist's brain and art is
hert and artist soul, would you do? Would I? And
you grew up in a small town, which I did?
You're like, I, I gotta get out of here. I
had decided that I was going to change my name
to Al Shapiro and live in New York. I was
ten years old, and I wanted to be apparently an
Italian taxi driver and living you. I wanted to be
(21:17):
Al Shapiro and live in New York. And I was
going to wear leather wristbands for some reason.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
That was another thing I was going to do.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
And you know what, I might still do it. But
the point is, you want to get out of town.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
Yeah. Oh oh, And then other things started happening that
were really bad. What the girls I ran with, two
of them got pregnant.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Ah, I see the sex starts coming along.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Well, they had the eighth graders with the twelfth graders
in the same school.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
That doesn't sound like a good idea, all right, So
you so.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
That was another motivator.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
So you leave because you don't want to get pregnant.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
No, don't, let's not. Let's not act like I'm some
talented you are that left town. No, no, no, no no.
I did a radio show down there, and then man
said the year the confirmation of the power of the
C grade, Like, because I wasn't any I wasn't distinctive.
I was funny, but I wasn't distinctive.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Funny is distinctive. I wouldn't have you dismiss funny is
not being distinctive.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
It ist.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
No, we know that now. It's a talent's a gift,
it's all that stuff. But back then that didn't you understand.
In Appalachia people are hilarious and their characters and so
it's the birthplace to me of all art because it's
an around me. Were people that were funny or smarter better.
I agree that too, But they didn't have this. They
(22:40):
didn't have the Al Shapiro, Escape Shapiro, and they didn't
have the I gotta get out of here.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Right, So how did you get up?
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Okay? I have two sisters ahead of me that are smart,
and the one that's directly ahead of me is very smart.
And my father and mother met at Notre Dame. My
mother's brother, remember the immigrants from Minnesota. Mmm. He was
a basketball star at Notre Dame, complete free ride. I
know that's hard to believe. I'm a big athlete in
(23:08):
my family, but he was incredible, Orlando Wonna Chellie. And
so he was in college and his sisters were graduating.
My mother's a twin. There's they call ada Ida and Irma,
and they went to Saint Catharine together, both librarian science.
Library science, went all the way through, you know, like
now it's considered a master's by the way, right, And
(23:29):
they needed jobs. They weren't going to go back to Chisholm,
and their mother didn't want them to come home. They
wanted she wanted them to fly okuds. And my mother
was the second twin, the shy one they didn't even
know she was in there, right, Okay, So Orlando goes
to the head librarian.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
It was your basketball playing uncle, uncle.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Right, So he goes to the head librarian at Notre Dame.
You know that touchdown Jesus they call it. My mother
was on the committee that designed that.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Wow. Okay, yeah, it's exciting.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
It's very exciting. So I mean, if you had you
met her, now she's in have him. But if you
had met her.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Loved you, I'm going to marry because I'm I'm a
Scottish Protestant and you're an Italian cat. Like this, it's
a whole different Afterwall, I'm going to a very cold swamp.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
The great that, the Great Bernadette Canny said, there's no
labels on the other side. Don't forget that. That's all
bull anyway.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
So the origin of Alexandria, I said, everyone is forgiven.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
Of course, Well what would be that? What's the point
You put us in the sewer and then you're not
Now you're not going to forgive us. What's the basis
of that? Anyway?
Speaker 2 (24:28):
They excommunicated him for that exactly.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
Everybody's welcomes gates down, all right, So she got a
job there and that's where she met my father, and
my father we don't have time for him on this podcast,
but he was an interesting cat, very very very I
wrote a joke about him. I mean he was a
fascist with us. I mean no, he never went back
on something, even when he was wrong. I'm a tough parent,
(24:54):
but I'm not that parent. You didn't want to tell
the guy the truth because you'd pay right. I became
a fantasist, I would say, based on that. I just
was like I could make something up to get around something.
But big things they ignored. They didn't notice at all.
When I planned a wedding when I was fourteen, Ady,
how are we getting you out of out Palasia? Well,
(25:15):
my two smart sisters got into Saint Mary's, which is
the women's college in South Bend, Indiana, across the street
from Notre Dame. But it's it's it's a powerhouse place,
incredible place. And so my sisters got in and they
weren't going to take me. And I wrote that note
a letter and I just said, you have to take me.
I have to get out of here. Like I had dreams,
(25:35):
like when I look at catalogs of going to Columbia.
But I did not have the grades and also not
the interest in getting the grades, and there were so.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Much I want to study. What did you want to study?
Speaker 3 (25:44):
The journalists?
Speaker 1 (25:44):
You want to study journalism? And you did you get
accepted for journalism in this place?
Speaker 3 (25:49):
No, you just are an undergrad. But the first thing
I did when I walked in and I keep in
mnd have been a reporter for a couple of years, right, yeah,
really young. I go to the head of the theater department,
doctor edge Bain, and I said, I want to be
a theater major. I am a playwright.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Everybody direct your story has good. The name of a character,
Reg Bain, it's just like, my name is doctor Reg.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
Bab married to a woman named Georgia. And I and
he had like really black hair that he'd have to
flip back all the time.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
And so you go to reg Bain and what do
you say to Regiment?
Speaker 3 (26:18):
And I said to rege Bain, I'm a freshman. And
I walk in there, freshman with glasses this thick. I
just held up the water bottle and I'm like, you know,
and I go in and I go, doctor Bain, I
just want you to understand something right up front. I
am going to be a theater major. And he looked
up at me and he said, nobody ever comes in
here when they're freshman says they're a theater major. He said,
it doesn't worry like that. He said, you can change
(26:39):
your mind. I said no, no, no, you don't understand.
I want to take every class you offer in the theater,
every single one. And he said, well, we have three concentrations, acting, directing,
and writing. And I said, but I want to start now.
And he said, all right, I'll put you an intro
to theater. I'll put you in history theater, put in two.
(27:01):
He said if you don't do well, we're not having
this conversation again.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
And I was like, okay, so you had to study.
He made you study.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
He made me study. But I was so unsophisticated, Craig.
I mean, it's like other kids had read books, and
I was an avid reader, but there's books you need
to read sometimes. So then I became that person. I
was a hoover reader. I read everything, but I didn't
then drill into my area. So I drilled into the
(27:27):
area and I started my concentrations, and I.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Would did you write plays?
Speaker 3 (27:33):
I wrote plays like right away, and I had written
plays in high school that I was very proud of.
And I worked on crew for the town musical, which.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Is your whole Edita put getting.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Storyteller. Why did you have? So? Then I go to
South Bend, Indiana, which compared the Big Stone Gap is
a big city. Loved it so. But my sisters were
there in case I needed them, but they were studying
in Rome. They would go buddy in Italy for a year,
so I was kind of And then the sister under
me came there too, So there were four of us there.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
What do you say girls studying?
Speaker 3 (28:07):
The oldest one government, the second one was pre law.
I think she was in English. I don't even know
what a mage was. And the one under me was business.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
This is a fascinating story of these women from Appalachia
who are all these heavy hirs in these is amazing
when you think about it. Yeah, yeah, you look at
that picture of these women coming out there. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
And then there's the baby who went there too, But
she wasn't there when we were there. We were going.
By the time she got.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
There, what does she do?
Speaker 3 (28:35):
She runs my sister's law office and she has four kids,
right so a nice husband.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
So you have a nice husband. I met your husband.
He's a dog.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
Oh yeah, I mean he's not going anywhere, no that
we know of. You know tomorrow, if you take this,
could be sitting here crying.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
No, I think it's going to be okay. I think
you guys have I think you going to be all right.
I don't know. I'm not a bet in mind, but
we'll see.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Anyway.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Look, you're there, let's let's go graduate.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
You're graduating, now, I'm graduating. I come straight to New York.
It's straight New York. Straight. Oh. I had no place
to live. I knew no one except this my senior
year at Saint Mary's that grege Bane. I was called
in because I demanded, because I'd taken every course study.
(29:23):
I begged, demanded, put it out there. I want to
write and direct on the main stage of your theater.
Now that was reserved for revivals and professionals that came in,
like Frank Canino from Canada. Come David Hare. We did
his play. Okay, okay, so major people had come through,
but I said, give me the slot.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Did you get it?
Speaker 3 (29:43):
I got it for a play had written?
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Did you direct?
Speaker 3 (29:47):
I pitched the play. I didn't tell it. I wasn't finished,
and I said, this was my senior year, the ball
of my senior year. Right, let's to get in there.
I'm just keep in mind at the eighties, said everybody
picture the eighties. I remember them, so they were good anyway.
So I had this idea for a play, okay, but
I wanted to be an extravagance and I want to
be bigger than big.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
And you surprise me.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
It's called Notes from the Nile and it's the rewritten
story of Cleopatra, except that Cleopatra was so beautiful no
one could look at her.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
I brought Julius Caesar back from the dead and because
he had an affair with her, and then you know
the whole story Cleopatra. But then I what I did
is I infused it with what has happened since Cleopatra's reign.
So I had Debbie the fish wife, and tap she
did tap routines. I had Eddie the fisherman who she's
having an affair with in the palace. Who was Eddie
(30:40):
Fisher Elizabeth Taylor had you see, I conflated everything, Yeah,
and then the handmaidens were just like Docile. I made
them the handmaidens that eventually Mark Margaret Atwood wrote about
they were dopes and the handman.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
So this is magical realism, sort of a war.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
There's a warn Egypt mm hmm for Cleopatra and okay,
she says, okay, you can have your word, but you're
going to fight it with hershey kisses and cotton balls.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
So weapons were made and intermission and it was all
environmental and crazy.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Did you put this play on?
Speaker 3 (31:16):
I wrote and directed it.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
That's great, and that's the play that you bring to
New York.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
That's a play I'm hoping to bring to New York
and like, get to it. I get to New York
and now we're like in the mid eighties, and you
realized if you were in theater and you came from
Saint Mary's, ain't happening for you, honey. I was doing
stage ratings with major actors. I mean, I could get
any actor to read it play because actors. I love actors.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Proper actors want to work, they want to act.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
They also are always looking in material for what's the pith,
what are we doing here? And and then as a writer,
you can once I heard their voices. I could write
for them, which is how I got into television. But
I just I could hear them. I could hear them.
But I was doing the club circuit with my comedy trip.
(32:06):
I had a comedy trip with girls.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
What were you called?
Speaker 3 (32:08):
The outcasts?
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Uh? Yuh? What did you do? Sometimes?
Speaker 3 (32:12):
Sometimes we were good? Sometimes it was sketchy.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Yeah, everybody started, But I was.
Speaker 4 (32:17):
I was.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
I was the pet barnum of it, like I wrote
and directed it, and I was in it. And the
only reason I was in it because I one night
at the Horn of Plenty. You remember that club.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
I don't know, the Horn of Planting.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
It's on Bleaker and Charles right. It was run by
this man who just tried to get in the in
our dressing room, which was his office between costume changes.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Okay, well he was PARV and you surprised me. There
was a pair of in New York in the nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
And I just I would like hold the door, you know,
I said, don't worry girls, it's all fine. And then
one night I had to send him out into the
bar to fill the room. He started to get onto it,
like I don't just need your act in here. I
want to make money. So it was there was a
two drink minimum, which was the standard of the day,
but I had to get them drunk men in from
that room into this room. So one night, this is
(33:02):
how I'm just telling you, this is why I never
became a performer per se, except I am performing now.
I still got up there to do our act and
helping the show, and a guy stood up and he
flung a Swedish meatball from the free snack bar out
my head and it hit the thing went down the
back and something. I'm not this type of person, but
it made me angry. No, and I said, hey, mister,
(33:24):
and the room went dead. You know what, I don't
appreciate that. I said, we work in offices all day,
we're exhausted. We're coming in here trying to entertain you,
and you're throwing food at us. And he got up.
He's drunk, he's gripping the table and he said, he's
dead silent. Here he goes he is stink and I thought, well,
(33:44):
maybe he's right.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
No, maybe he's right.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
All right, So the outcasts are That leads me to TV, though.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Now, how do you get to TV from there?
Speaker 3 (33:55):
The two girlfriends. I'm gonna name them Ruth Palmer and
Susan and Geluxy. I always say this to my kid,
and I'm sure you say it to yours. You graduate
with your class, So the comedians you came up with
will become a little black or whoever you were with,
they become your that's your team. Now, to the public,
it looks like we're all competing. We're not competing, though
(34:15):
we're trying to all. Just come on, everybody, pull that wagon,
you know, pull that wagon.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
He doesn't just.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Keep moving, get up there, you know. So I had
this posse and they'd come and see the show, and
they go, you need an agent. I said, what's an agent?
That's how I was unsophisticated. Of course I knew there
were agents. I read books. I knew about agents.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
He didn't know how to get one. I understand that
did know how to get one. Who's your agent? Who
did you?
Speaker 4 (34:42):
Who did you get of the same agent? Is it
still Nancy Joseph's, the legendary Nancy Joseph's She was at
ic M. Yeah, her dad founded ICE.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
And we know. Yes, I'm glad you're telling that to
the listeners, because you know I still I just saw
her in LA but she said she she's a good
one for you too. But this is the thing about her,
she knew she was dealing with something weird with me.
No I'll give her so she said, I'm gonna put
this guy, this guy, move you around and you know,
do all that. But she was always my person. How
(35:14):
do we get her though? Is the key thing. These
two girls, Ruth Palmerence and Suzanne Glock. Ruth was in
the mailroom at William Morris and Suzanne was like a
junior assistant at ICM. They grew up in New York together,
which already makes them to me goddesses because they grew
up in New York and right, they're sophisticated, educated, they
(35:36):
know the lay of the land. They're like, we're gonna
get you meeting. Here's a list of meetings. You're gonna
meet all these people. I went to the first meeting
at ICM, set up by Suzanne. The next one was
set up by Ruth, and so it went. I meet
this guy named Wylie housem young agent, and he looked
at my stuff and he said, okay, if we're going
to craft a theater career, we're going to do this.
(35:59):
And he said if we do television, we're going to
do this. And I said, what do you mean TV?
And he said, well, you know like write for sitcoms.
I said, how do you do that? You have to
write a specscript? What's a specscript? Can you give me one? Well,
I don't know if we have any land around. Let
me try to find you one. He said, but I
have this tape and I can give you to listen to.
Said okay, So I didn't. I couldn't tell him I
(36:19):
didn't have a television set or a VCR. Right, I
didn't have one.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
That that was the thing. It was tapes.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
It was all tapes. And by the way, how many
tapes of comedians would come over the transom for me
to write it? Once I got into the racket. But anyway,
but I loved them watching those. But anyway, so I
call a friend and I go, I need to borrow
your thing and watch this thing because because what happened
in the meeting was the first meeting I have. He
said I'll be your agent and I said, well, where
do I sign? And when I signed, he said, okay,
(36:48):
I'm your agent. He said, we're going to craft this.
He said, no, I don't have any money. I need
a job right now. Right then, he said, then you
got to write a specscript. And he said, you know,
take it. Some people take a few months to do that.
I said, by Monday morning, I had a specscript.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Who'd you write it for?
Speaker 3 (37:04):
Roseanne?
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Did you get the job?
Speaker 3 (37:06):
Not only did I get the job, I didn't go
to Roseanne the show, but I met Matt Williams, who
I'm still friends with right, who went on to create
Home improve and all that. He gave me a deal
in the nineties. But he was like my guide. I
couldn't see the picture Craig of the thing. I had
to listen to it. And I got every big character right,
except Becky because she'd go be icky and I thought
(37:28):
she said Betty. So in my script it says Betty.
I wrote this crazy script.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
I knew they never made the script though, right.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
No, But Carcy Werner hired me and I went on
a different world as a story editor.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
Nice. So now you're in a different world.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
Now. Not only am I in a different world, I'm
doing pilots all over town. Nancy would always say, don't
tell people how many pilots you've written. I wrote, could
but he banked it. Yeah, you know, we're in the
middle of a strike. Now, I saw the land land there. Hey,
there's going to be sometimes you ain't working, you better
bank it. And that's what I did.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
So you write these pilots and you ended a different world?
Speaker 3 (38:01):
Is that?
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Were you on that for a long time?
Speaker 3 (38:03):
One year? Then I then I went to I came
back to New York because I wanted to be in
New York because my grandmother was alive and all that stuff.
I want to be near Pennsylvania, so I came back here.
I also am just more in tuned here. Yes, I
love it out there. I loved when I was there,
but and I loved Los Angeles. There's a lot to
recommend it, but you know, ultimately it wasn't going to
be a place for you. It wasn't a fit for me.
(38:25):
And even now worse because you have to drive everywhere
and it takes hours, so and I just don't want
to spend time in a car. I don't like cars.
So then I get back here, and so in succession
I got jobs, so I would get pilots, and then
I would get I got Bill Persky hired me on
a show called Working It Out with Jane Curtin. What
he's like my mentor, mentor, like family mentor, he's like love.
(38:48):
Bill Persky's still with us, he's ninety two. Then there's
Alan's Wui Bell hired me as to replace Monica Johnson,
the only female writer on Good Sports, starring Farah Fawcett
and Ryan O'Neill.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
I'm not familiar with that short, but I wish I
had seen it.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
It was It happened during the Gulf War, and I
don't know, it just disappeared. But it was a good
concept and I loved those two and we could talk
off camera about them then, both of them, Fair and Ryan.
Then I did City Kids, which I was a showrunner for,
which was shot in New York, which is very avant
guard you could still watch it and go. It was
with the Jim Henson company. Oh okay, and they had
(39:25):
a thing then called TGIF.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
I used to live above Venier's Bakery. I love that
and every night but two am I used to hear
this woman walking by and she would sing beautiful operatic
arias and it was amazing. I mean she was she
could really sing and I was like, I look out
the window and she was a young one and she
(39:58):
would walk by singing these areas. And I eventually I
met her and she was a waitress and her shift
finished at one am, and she said, you walked down
the street singing operatic arias nobody comes near you.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
That's so funny, gig.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Yeah, so that she had, that was her pillow that
she would she would sing like every thought she was crazy.
Did you run into any of that because you're a
young woman working, did you get did you Were you
aware of that? You're a very forceful personality. I don't
know that that makes a difference or not. Were you
aware of.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
That kind of I'm a funny person. Yeah, I'm always
aware of my safety wherever I am. Like when I
moved here, I was very aware, like you gotta be careful,
and I did things that you know. I got in
trouble at my boarding house. I lived in a boarding
house and I took a throw pillow and just pretended
I was pregnant on the subway late at night, coming
home from a gig. So I figured nobody's going to
(40:52):
hit a pregnant woman or kill a pregnant woman. But
I got in trouble for stealing the pillow, but I said, no,
I brought it back. I'm bringing the pillow back.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
I give birthday.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
But I was that kind of person, and I'd say
to the girls, take those glasses. You know, we'd use
some sketches. I said, we're I'm on the subway. You'll
be all right, and we're going to come at you
if you're you know, I'd get out of things joking too.
I get out sticky situations by being funny and just
you know, the only way to get a man who's
intent to bed you off of it is to entertain
(41:21):
him and get him off the subject. It works, but frankly,
it was like working a third shift and who needs that.
But you know, the girls in my group we talk
about this too. Many of them fell in love, got married,
left the group, left show business and stuff. And there
wasn't anything that was going to keep me from show business.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
It was just a different person.
Speaker 3 (41:41):
I just just like, how could he possibly be that
interesting to you? How could he ever be this other thing?
Speaker 2 (41:48):
So then you meet Tim. What happened? Because you meet
Tim and Tim is a great life.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
Yeah, he's well listen, I'm giving you the story here
like as truthfully as I can, because you know, anybody
that I was ever interested in, it was. I kept
him at a distance. I wasn't getting involved him different.
I don't know. I just liked him. I just thought.
And I also saw this too. When you work in Hollywood,
(42:16):
you see those beautiful executives and they don't have a man.
And if you had any interest in a man, which
I did, you say the windows closing. And my friends
would still laugh about me going the windows closing. Girls,
you got to get on this. Let me tell you something.
Ten years for a woman, it's one hundred years a
bad road. And if you don't, this is now or never.
It's now or never. And they never I mean at
(42:39):
the time they were just women who said I But
I said, no, you know if you want that. So
when they complained to me, now, I said, I told you.
I said, it's a window. You can have somebody now,
but it's going to be a different thing.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
And I just you know, So what happened with Tim then?
How calm he was different? Did you make a decision
that all right, this this is the one for me,
this is it.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
I was doing plays in Pennsylvania. This is before television
because I met him before a different world, right, And
he wasn't ever going to live in New York. He
didn't want anything to do with this, and I thought,
so funny for you. And he's still. Every once in
a while, I will give me a gig and I say,
you can dig all you want, but you're here. You
might as well make it work. You know.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
I think he's doing okay, he's okay.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
He's doing fine. But no, he came here and he
hit the ground running. I mean as a lighting designer,
he just he's really he was trained by Emerol Fiarantino,
who did the Kennedy Nixon debates. I mean, he really
learned on the job and now he's you know, he
does great. And she won an Emmy.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
I don't have an Emmy. I have no I got
a couple. You can have one money okay, all.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
Right, I need one for the other side of the mantle.
Said to my husband, can you win another one? And
need some synergy here? You know?
Speaker 2 (43:54):
I cold my mom. I said, I want an Emmy.
She went daytime Emmy. Oh man Jabi, so tell me this.
You go to Italy now, love huh A Lot. Why
(44:14):
is that?
Speaker 3 (44:16):
Well, I find you know, I had an experience there.
I think I told you about this where I was
on the mountaintop and the Alps where my grandparents on
the Bone and Cheli side are from, and I it's
a piece I've never known. So that's probably where I'm gonna.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
End up going back to the old country.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Yeah, but I loved working with you in Scotland. That
was really fun. So I'd like to write and direct
over there, and I'm working on stuff in order to
do that.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
I think Scotland and Italy are very similar countries.
Speaker 3 (44:46):
We really have to talk about that, because I knew
you liked Italians immediately, even though you were a very
stone cold to me on the phone. The first time
I talked.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
It was just garden myself. I was in Italy when
you called me.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
I know you were I'm in Italy and I was like,
mister Ferguson, and then I just and you said, okay,
call me in forty eight hours. Nobody ever said that
to me in my life, not even a credit card company.
So I was like, what is this? Okay? So I
hung up the phone and I called Kathy Lee and
I said, I don't know. I mean, I got to
work this guy over a little more here. And she
(45:18):
if you look up determination in the dictionary, her little
head's there like buday. She like her. But anyway, so
when I called you, I thought, and it wasn't like
there were edges like of warmth there either, like or
I could kind of wheedle in. I said, okay, well
we'll talk about this, and all right, I'll give you
forty eight hours. And so then I think I called
(45:41):
back and begged you to.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
Do it, didn't I Yeah, you did.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
And then you say, okay, tell me about this script.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
Yeah you did.
Speaker 3 (45:48):
So I told you about the script and then you know,
all right, all right, you weren't happy about it, but
I said, I don't care. He doesn't have to be happy,
just has to be good. And then I was stunned,
and how brilliant you were.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Yeah, we don't need to talk about that though. What
we need to talk about.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
It, Well, I'm only here because of that.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
We have to talk about how Scotland and Italy. I think, yeah, let's.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
Get them together. Okay. So you know, my last novel
was about the internment of the Scots and the destruction
of Scots during World War Two, Italian.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Scotts, Italian Scots yeah yeah, and the.
Speaker 3 (46:20):
Maker Italians and rallys. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
You know the Glaswegian Italians even now because there's like
a huge Italian community in Glasgow, but they have Glasgow
accents but they kind of talk Italian. Yeah, so they go, hey,
what's the comedy you you're coming over to here and
you come to my house and maybe we watched the
football and then it's this weird accent and it's fantastic now.
Speaker 3 (46:42):
And then you start scratching around and you'll find it
Anna Maria and you go oh yeah, oh yeah, I'm Italian. Yeah,
and you'll find like a Patro and you go, oh
Daniello okay, well, and it's huge.
Speaker 1 (46:54):
In Glasgow, I mean in Glasgow in particular, it's huge.
Speaker 3 (46:56):
Italian people are like, why don't we know this? Why
don't we know this? Because of this get out. That's
how the immigrant feels every day. They don't talk about
their experiences. Even when people blow up in a boat,
they're not going to talk about it and talk about it.
Seventy years had to pass before it was even mentioned
or there was a shrine belt in uh at St
Andrew's Cathedral in Glasgow.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (47:16):
But in the Orkneys, do you know that, I know
all about the paper church.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
Yeah, the Orkneys. The President of War, they Bill a church.
He's still there.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
Your wonderful film in Scotland. You have a great film
commission and they came to New York to ask me
to direct a movie about that.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
Why didn't you do it?
Speaker 3 (47:34):
Well, because there's things I had deadlines and stuff, But
my sick we still do it.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
Yeah, you do it.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
I'll do I'll do a kind of the Italians came
over and I'll do it. I'll do Bill Patterson's voice,
and unless you get Bill Parson then it'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
Oh, for goodness sake, flea bag, what are you up to?
Speaker 3 (47:51):
You know that's so funny. That would be great.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
No.
Speaker 3 (47:54):
I read the book and I was enchanted by it,
and then yeah, all the islands. What happened was Churchill
made a really big mistake. But I had a ball
touring sixty cities with this novel to say this to
everybody that I come in contact with, which is basically
they till the soil of propaganda, thirteen years of it.
In the British newspapers, anti Italian sentiment. Now people look
(48:17):
at a room with a view and Ianforster and all
that stuff, and they go, oh, the Brits are the
Scots love the Italians. They do, and they were intermarried.
But when Mussolini declared war, get out. That was the
only thing. Churchill panicked because he didn't even know, because
there wasn't sonar yet how much activity was going on
under the sea. There this guy gun through preen, had
(48:40):
U boats everywhere. It was like snakes on it. I
describe it as such in the novels, like snakes at
the bet of the ocean. They were going to take England.
They were close. This wasn't even a joke. So he
didn't know. Churchill didn't know what to do. Now, I
want you to keep in mind, what was the propaganda.
It's the same trope you here because the immigrant faces
(49:01):
the same fight always. You can't come in. Now that
you're here. Here's the jobs. You're all service jobs because
most of your battalions, your Glasswegian Italians were doing service jobs, waitering,
made or d They're good looking, they have an accent.
That worked at clarages and the big hotels, and the
women did the cleaning. They did the laundry and the
(49:23):
pressing and the tailoring and this artorial stuff. Okay, great,
so you had that going then.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
But at the same time, though, because just my family
or Scottish my people were doing those jobs too, you know,
working class people were doing those jobs too.
Speaker 3 (49:39):
And but this was what the working class people were against.
They felt the Italian immigrants were bringing their people over
and taking.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
Their take on the job.
Speaker 3 (49:47):
And they want to keep and they want to keep
in shipbuilding, all of the great stuff that goes on
in Glasgow. But what I found out was that, you know,
without that propaganda, Churchill wouldn't made that decision. I had
to pay thousands of dollars and I get it to
this day for this article written by a man named Gunther,
not the famous gun Through historian, another guy or Boswell,
not not the theater guy John Boswell in the mirror,
(50:10):
I believe, and it was so reprehensible. I said, I
can't recreate that. I'm gonna pay to put that in there.
But then it was one of thousands and thousands of
articles against Italians in.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Britain during the nineteen thirties forties.
Speaker 3 (50:22):
You know, I said, I said, you know, they said
I talked about them making the fish and chips and
the gelato and stuff. And there were Italians that got
very rich making the Jelya. They put the factories up
outside of Glasgow, but most of them were peddlers and
working class people. They were not elevated in that way however.
And I would say this people, people go fish and chips.
(50:43):
That's British, that's Scottish, that's calamari.
Speaker 2 (50:47):
Yeah, it's Italian. It's calamari the Italians, right.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
You know what? It was funny when I grew up
because I was working class and SCHOOLU teach and grew
up as much.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
Hungry for it. Right now, save fish and chips.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
But here's the other thing.
Speaker 1 (50:57):
But the time was and this is the weird thing
with being a Glaswegian growing up in Scotland. At the
time I was four years old, I knew exactly what
a cappuccino was and I wanted one because Italians ran
the caffe's in their Dini family.
Speaker 3 (51:11):
You got Italian, did you get your thing done? He's
hartly Italian.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
Everybody in my family thinks there is some kind of
has to be. It has to be, I think, So
I'm very comfortable when I go to Italy. I think
Italy is like Scotland, with much better weather and much
better food and slightly friendlier people. Sometimes they sound friendlier
because my Italian is so bad.
Speaker 3 (51:35):
I know when you're trying and everybody's trying. Yeah, yeah,
well you speak. There's affinity. When I get there, I
get good, but I'm not like is this morning, I'm terrible.
I'll make it and that's it.
Speaker 2 (51:48):
Italian a very little.
Speaker 3 (51:53):
But the thing is, I think there is an affinity
between these folks, between Scotland and Italy. I really do.
There's a and I think some of it like it's
particularly for part of my family that's from the mountains.
I'm also Venetian and farmers from outside of Venice. And
then people that live in mountains or people that live
in rough terrain or rough weather, they're they're built a
(52:14):
certain way, like goats. They're strong and they don't expect
everything to go their way because they're not in control.
Do you agree with that, because it's just America that way.
Speaker 2 (52:28):
I'm amazed, goes wow, that was really unbelieved. I cannot
believe that.
Speaker 3 (52:33):
In the same way, I think there's just no way
this is going to work out, and then when it does,
it's like, Okay, well that was luck. I never think
it's like coming my way.
Speaker 2 (52:42):
Do you know?
Speaker 1 (52:42):
What's great is that we've been talking for either the
best part of an hour, and now we've got to
stop talking because we do have to stop talking, you know,
you and I have to stop. It is awesome, it's joyful,
it's fantastic. I'm delighted to be your friend, and I'm.
Speaker 3 (53:00):
So happier in my life.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
Craig Ferguson, you are you are a job. But you know,
but we.
Speaker 3 (53:04):
Also get I get Megan.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
You get I get Liam ye, all.
Speaker 3 (53:09):
Your crazy ancillaries that I love so much.
Speaker 5 (53:12):
Your friends, you get Linda, you I got them all,
you know. Yeah, But I get Tim and I get Lucci,
and you know, I get your sisters at the casino
gigs and I meet everybody.
Speaker 2 (53:24):
It's all good. It's all good. And what we should do.
Speaker 3 (53:29):
Is that another movie.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
No, we should go to Italy. We should just all right,
what do you.
Speaker 3 (53:33):
Want to go? Let's talk and we'll go because the
apps are my thing. And then and then Venice, I'm
pretty good at that. You're my favorite ton of itally
right now, Trevisa. Yes, how did you know that? Did
I tell you that because I'm psychic? No, my people
were from That's where all our paperwork is. Also because
the farm is right outside of there.
Speaker 2 (53:52):
Oh, that's crazy.
Speaker 3 (53:52):
I think Treviso is it hidden jam And we shouldn't
have told everybody about it? All right, because it's
Speaker 4 (53:58):
Okay, all right, not all before
The Craig Ferguson's Fancy Rascal Tour continues in November twenty
twenty three. For the full list of dates, please go
to the Craig Ferguson Show dot com slash to her website.
My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast
is Joy. I talk to interest in people about what
(00:21):
brings them happiness. Meet Adriana Triggyani. Adriana is my friend.
She's a writer, she's a director, and she's a great cook.
But you'll have to take my word for the last
part unless you know her, in which case, why you
listen to this?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Just call her? I have said in a little chemistry
between you and ject Now I like it.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Yeah, it looks like a young apputuno to mean, it's
not a bad look. That's a good look. That's a
look you hold on to. But I want you to
look at his recent birthday party pictures and plan ahead
of Yeah, yeah, you really have to plan ahead.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
What about getting older?
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Yes, there has to be a plan. If there's no plan,
you're flailing.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
What is your plan for getting older?
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Well, I do have one, but I heard.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
You say your daughter, I'll be a burden.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Okay, so every night from the time she was born
in the crib, the last thing I say to I
say I love you, Lucia, and then i'd say I
will be a burden.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Good night.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
And I said it every night. And it's a family joke.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Now, will you do that?
Speaker 3 (01:31):
While you want?
Speaker 2 (01:33):
You should? You should? I mean, come on, I'm saying she.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Wants to look after me. Last night we watched a
man called Auto. Have you seen that movie?
Speaker 4 (01:40):
No?
Speaker 3 (01:40):
With Tom Hanks, I know, not your favorite.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I don't say that.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Well I heard you say it once and I'm just
defending your position.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
No, that's not that's not true.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Okay, Well I hope he comes.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
He's the greatest that drive ever.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
No, No, let me tell you something. We're as great
as the material always. So people don't even want to
hear that because they think it looks like it was
made up on the spot.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
When it's good, when it's a good actor, sure, and.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
When it's a good material, yeah, a great actor can
triumph over bad material, though I've seen it many times. Yeah,
but not for this sustaining whole narrative. There'll be a
scene where you go, WHOA. Okay, yeah, maybe you see that,
but over the whole narrative. To hold the logic of
it together takes the writer.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Hold on a second though.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
A great actor maybe, but a great movie star doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter. Like Sean Connery, even in Zone, he
just wanted.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
To walk in the room. Yeah, I stand there with
his tips and he could destroy the world with his gaze, just.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Like sure, I'm waiting a Mangini and it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
It's just that. So listen. I want to. I want to.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
We're gonna go on a journey because the name of
the podcast is joy. Oh you bring me joy.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Okay, you bring me.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Jo, your your friendship brings me joy.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
That makes me.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
But I want to. I want everyone here to get
to know you a little bit.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Okay, So we're going to start with little baby Adri
but it's still gonna be long. I mean, you're not
gonna be a baby for a long part of the conversation.
We're going to start with little baby Adree. Right, yeah,
so close your eyes.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
You're in the creb. Now where is the crib?
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Okay? We're in Banger, Pennsylvania, near Rosetta, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Right, which is it doesn't help anyone.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
It does. It does because this is the town in
the United States that they sent doctors and medical whole
groups teams of people to study these Italian Americans that
didn't die heart attacks if you stepped one step outside
of Rosetta. This is where my father was born, my
grandfather was born and raised, and he was the mayor
of the town. And in the sixties they came in
(03:46):
and studied everybody, the babies, the old people. Because if
you stepped over the line of the town into what
was called bangor right, which is where the Welsh were
the Johnny bulls, because they came and owned the slate
quarries and the Italians worked for them.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
The Wells should see the welshould drink.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
They do well. There's a lot of drinking. Yeah, But
the Italians, with all the bad health habits that they
could discern, making blood pudding, eating sugar, that the stress
of being in a quarry, all of that the dangers,
this little community didn't stuffer from any anxiety. There wasn't cancer,
(04:25):
there wasn't heart attack, and they couldn't figure it out.
So this team of doctors came in. They wrote books
about it. I'll give them to you, and Dean Ornish
put it in his study. Malcolm Gladwell put it in
a book of his eye made a little documentary about it.
What we found out when they completed the study in
like nineteen sixty five, the doctors concluded that the people
didn't die of heart attacks because they felt emotionally safe.
(04:49):
Really so they women worked in the blouse factories. My
grandmother owned a blouse factory with my grandfather, I mean
a bloss factory. Blas said. They were yeah, sartorial stuff,
you know, you made close. They made clothes right, and
they came up my grandparents. My grandfather was a machinist
and my grandmother was a four lady at fourteen. So
I come from real workers.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
I know you do it, but you're a worker.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
I don't rest. But on the other side of the family,
same thing. My grandfather Carlo I wrote a book about
you know, fictionalized and Shoemaker's Wife where they went to
Minnesota and he was in the iron ore mines and
he brought my grandmother there from Hoboken, New Jersey, Italian immigrants.
But he got his citizenship in World War One by
fighting for American World War One and denounced a citizenship
(05:34):
and then they became Americans and he started the Progressive
Shoe Shop. He was cool. You would have loved him.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
What's the progressive?
Speaker 3 (05:40):
I never knew.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
I want to know about you, but just before.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
We I know everything.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
This is what you do. I know you though, this
is what this is what you do.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
I can't. I'm going to get to me because when
I'm there, because because it's really fascinating what happens. I
mean my mother and father. My mother was a librarian,
but she was also brilliant, so she started the architecture
library at the University of Notre Dame when she was
twenty one years old. Lord she graduated from Saint Catherines
in Minnesota. They have to understand something. My grandfather died
(06:10):
when he was thirty nine. Carlo boniclly wait. I thought
nobody died different times. He got gassed in World War
One and got cancer. They all did in his platoon.
All came home and died before. They said, you won't
see your fortieth birthday. And my mother told me the
story she remembered when he came back from the Mayo
clinic and he dropped his bag and he said to
his wife Lucci. I'm gonna I'm going to be dead
in a year. He just had a backache. Yeah, yeah,
(06:34):
So he was so cool and I found out lots
and lots about him. Anyway, So he was in the
iron ore mindest when he couldn't breathe because of the
guest gast. But he was also a shoemaker, but he
would have been a shoe designer. That was his goal
was to design shoes as much as make them. But
when you work in a mining town, you're adjusting people's
(06:55):
foot infirmities basically, and you're fixing their shoes and boots
and all that stuff. So that's what he did. But
he was very ambitious, My mom told me, very ambitious.
And he called his shop the Progressive Shoe Shop.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
What does that mean? Progressive shoe shop?
Speaker 3 (07:09):
You know what I meant to him. I think I'm
an American and you're getting Italian artistry. Yeah, you know,
kiss my Italian American ass.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
That's what he was saying.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
All right, So little baby Adria is growing up in the.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Catholic baby boom. All right, okay, yeah, my parents were
married in the late fifties. My mother had many many
so you have five girls, two boys. Right, Okay, I'm
in the middle.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Right.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
And I found a letter recently that my grandmother wrote
to one of her children about my birth, my auspicious birth.
And this is the two words that were in the
letter another girl. Oh wow, I just found that. I
think that's a great title.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah, this is good to do.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
But anyways, so but I never felt that from the
time I was little, I saw the dramatic possibilities of everything.
I thought it was a movie I was watching, having
never watched a movie. You know what I'm saying, Yeah,
I do, because I was in it. I was in it.
There was a train moving and I jumped on it
and wow. And I was fascinated by my father and mother.
(08:21):
I mean every picture of me as a kid, there
was a sea of children. But looking up at my mother,
I would look at my mother like I was looking
at the blessed mother. I mean like and I was
Bernadett and lords. I just was looking at her.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Like I was gonna ask you abolism. Because because the imagery,
I was always jealous of the Catholic kids when I
come on over.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Well, no, not that jealous.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
But I was jealous of the guy because we were Protestants.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
So we just like we had like.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Well you do the stripped down version.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
It just it's a white wall and you know they read.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
From the Bible and listen. I'm a Protestant lover, but
it's like there's no hush in the Catholic church. You
go in, they put on a different robe in every season,
and we decorate the statue. It's Tuesday night. My aunt
is crowning the Blessed Mother for may Queen. I mean
my aunt. I don't think she can get up on
the step stool. My aunt. I love her dearly, but
(09:11):
she's like nothing in bestive. But you know she's going
to crown her. We do these things, say the Rosary,
we do these rituals, and this is the secret, right,
don't peak under the curtain of that church. Don't peak
under the curtain of any institutions. When you do, you'll
be disappointed and you will be a part of nothing.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Well, see, that's why you're at heart probably a Protestant,
because you know it's theater. That was what the whole
argument was.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Yes, I have a problem probably with all of it
on some level, but.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
I have a friend.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Let me tell you to my friend Phil my friend
Phil from Philly is an Italian Catholic, and I said,
hey Phil, he said, because I was interested in the
Catholic thing, I said, hey, Phil, do you believe in transubstantiation?
He said, what's that? He said, it's when the biscuit
turns in to the body of Jesus during the Eucharist.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
And he's like, I never heard of that. It's the
whole basis of the Catholic faith. He's like, uh no.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
And there's always people don't know about that, and they
always conflate and confuse the Blessed Mother and the assumption
and the ascension and.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Let's you're still religious.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Oh. I prayed like a you know, I just went
Sunday and got.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
A treat and all that.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Well, my guide died. The priest that you know talking about.
We were talking about Alan Alder earlier. He looked just
like Alan Alden. And in the seventies I would just
they stopped the box confession. And you have to understand,
I grew up in Appalachia, where the Catholic Church was
less than one percent of the population, so it was
like the island of misfit toys. There was the former
(10:51):
this and the this, and the the families were from
the coal region, so you had, you know, Czechs and
Polish people who still had their accent, and we were
the Italians. But the Italians that were in Appalachi prior
to us changed their names, so we'd have to dig
around to find them, right, But you'll find enclaves wherever
there's mining. You're going to find immigrant people here. You're
(11:13):
always going to find that. But yeah, So the Catholicism
I grew up with was very open and very welcoming,
and the priests we got and the nuns that we got.
In fact, when I was like ten years old, the
nuns quit. They just said, we're not wearing these habits anymore.
We're scaring the kids. And they became their own force
(11:36):
for social order. It wasn't really in order. It had
nothing to do with the Catholic Church. It was just
about doing good works. And there was a woman down there.
She's still alive. I think she's in her nineties now,
a woman named Katherine Rumschlag, Sister Catherine, that was the
mother superior and that don't you know, she cut you.
She was all business. She now lives in community with
(11:58):
a group of the ex nuns and some of the families.
There was a noun, a beautiful nun who left the order.
I mean she was gorgeous, Yeah, and got married and
not that it has anything to do with anything but
just having to picture her, but just this beautiful woman
and she had children and now she lives in that community.
She's retired and she lives with these the ex nuns.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
All right, So you come from a very warm, Catholic immigrant,
safe emotionally environment and yet you live now right now,
you're a New Yorker and you've got a long journey
from Appalachia to your sophisticated life that you have now.
(12:41):
With your sophistication, Yeah, you're pretty sophisticated.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Like you write books and your.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Well, I write books, but to me, writing books is
what my grandmother did call peace work in a factory.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Yeah. But you didn't just start writing books, right, You
were a writer.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
In television, that's right, comedy writer, right, So how did
you get from Appalai to write in comedy?
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Okay? So you know there were key moments where I
made decisions, and the big one was I'll never forget this.
I was in the principal's office and you know, for whatever,
delivering something from my teacher, like the absentee list or whatever.
And this man comes in, Nae Mark Holyfield, and he's
(13:21):
talking to the school secretary who was smoking. Everybody smoked then,
like smoking a way Patsy Arnold, who I loved because
you could give her the dish and then you get
at something back, you know what I mean. Loved her.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yeah, anyway, so that's why are you going so well
with Megan? My wife?
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Oh hey, yeah, we get we get We got the
job done in five minutes and now best he's okay.
So so this man comes in and he says, look,
I'm looking for I need a reporter from my radio
show and paying her thing. And I'm listening to this
now I'm making money. I am the town babysitter. I
am the I don't like to use this sword, but
I would say, like it was almost like a ring
(13:58):
I was running because I they'd call my house and
I go, yeah, and I have four sisters and I'd
book them.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Right.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
I didn't get a kickback, but I would take the
best job.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Like, so you're running a babysit and syndicate.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
I'm running a city. I'm very entrepreneurial. I'm sorry to
tell you so anyway, and you know, people loved when
the Italians came because we also cleaned, went to kids
to bed and we cleaned the house, and to women
like getting two for one fifty cents an hour. Okay,
So I would like to say not that any of
them needed their houses clean. You know they needed it
and ain't got a bunch of kids you need it.
(14:29):
So anyway, so I hear this guy and he says, uh,
he says, I need a report. And I'm fourteen years old.
I'm thinking, here's the thing about me, and I think
you know this, I think I could do anything like
if I walked past the television said, and somebody's ice skating.
When we went to the ice show when I was
little in Knoxville, Tennessee, I wanted to be that. I
(14:50):
wanted to be that girl with the big head dress
who skated over to the side and like did this
did you ever do it? I've never had on a
pair of ice skates in my life, but my kid
has the time. No, now, I'll break my back anyway.
So anyway, so oh, I was in amorateur ice skating
and my mother I skated her whole life, and my
father I skated, but we didn't because there were no
(15:11):
ice drinks or anything like that. Right, So when I
found out that we need to qualify for the Olympics,
you gotta do a three minute routine for like three years,
I'm like, I got to make up funny stuff every day,
you see.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
All Right, So the guy's looking for a report, or
you're fourteen, you think maybe ice skating is not for you.
So do you approach this guy and say I want
to be a reporter or mister Hollyfield?
Speaker 3 (15:33):
I said, I'm a writer and I would like to
have that job. And he went okay. He said can
you drive? No, but I'll get somebody to drive me. Okay,
what kind of things do you? Right? I said, well,
I'm on school paper.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
You were on the school paper.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Now what he didn't know is that I was in
trouble at the school newspaper because I would write what
they called the gossip column, blind items. Okay, and I
got called and you have done and you know I'm somebody.
You know. You know I have a good heart, Yes
you do. But I wrote a joke that's haunted me
to this.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
I'm going to tell you the joke only one, because
I've got like a bucket loads of that stuff.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Well, you know, at that time, you had a homeroom teacher,
and then you were to make sure you were in school,
and then you were farmed out to your first period class. Sure,
there was a teacher named Bobby Jane Cooper and I
saw her first thing every day. And she was an
interesting looking woman, kind of like an animated character, sort.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Of like O lave oil Are we talking?
Speaker 4 (16:34):
Or no?
Speaker 3 (16:34):
The other extreme?
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Gotcha?
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Okay? Kind of like if you put the Liberty bell
in a skirt. You know what I'm talking about. Okay. So,
and she wore really red lipstick, which I thought was
kind of cool. Well, I started keeping track of her
outfits just for my column, you know, so that I
could say and so this was the joke. And I
got called in and I was so ashamed of this joke,
(16:57):
but it worked on paper. Which home room teacher with
the initials b j C. Has worn the same blue
wool skirt six school days in a row, which means
she went on Monday to Friday. And I think, now
I would do that, now, sure I would think nothing
(17:17):
of it. Of course I got called in. It was bad.
It's like the insensitivity of this comment. And they made
me go apologize to her, which was so humiliating.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
You got canceled on Twitter and I.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Said, you know, I'm so sorry. I said, I just
you know, I have to come up with this material
and I thought it would work and I didn't mean to,
you know, she said you had use my initials. She said,
I hope you've learned your lesson. We don't make a
lot of money as teachers. We're here because we love
teaching before we're wearing And I was like, oh, oh
(17:52):
my god, that's is that the worst story I ever heard? Okay,
so now everyone hates me within the sound of my voice.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
No, no, no, no, I just feel awful. I just feel
awful for everybody.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Now here's the other part of this though. This was
the slow crawl to journalism wasn't for me till the
big story when I was okay, I was getting five
bucks a story and that was pretty good, right, And
they ran me at the top of every hour and.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
I it's a radio show.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
It's a radio show. And I decided and I'd tape
them the night before. The engineer would like in a break,
would tape my stories and I went to the town meetings.
I did a really good series about a coal mining
strike that was but I went to meet with the
women and I got a real sense of that. You know,
it wasn't. Listen, the jokes I was writing wasn't because
(18:35):
I was rich and I was sitting on a throne.
It was because I was trying to like be funny.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Yeah, I get it. So and also, you're a kid.
What are you fifteen years old?
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Yeah, I'm fourteen fifteen. Yeah, but that never mattered in
my family. You do the wrong thing, you put on
the rack. But anyway, so I decided doing this. They
kept calling me in. My boss kept calling me in. Mean,
his name was mister Stallard. He was Holyfield's boss, and
I remember being in his office and he was smoking
so much Carly see the guy, right, He said, to
(19:05):
tell you the future of this business, it's going to
be a black woman, and it's going to be television.
He predicted Oprah like before Oprah. Right, Okay, so I'm
just throwing that out there. So anyway, because so he
knew what he was talking about. I respected him. But
he said to me, he said nobody cares about what
you think. You just tell us what happened. We don't
care about what you think. You are not the thing.
(19:25):
The story is the thing, Because I would.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
It's been completely forgotten in it in life.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
If I did that now. Yeah, See, I have a
hard time when I watched the news because I don't
want your opinion. I don't care what you think.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
There is no news, says all opinion.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Tell me what happened. Yeah, And interestingly enough, in my family,
my great uncle, priest journalist, ran the Leco di Bergomo
for forty years and I've had his stuff translated. And
it's so simple and it's good. It works in drama too,
or comedy. It's that simple narrative. What's what happened, How
did it happen, When did it happen, and why did
it happen?
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Oh out, Johnny Carson, you still say, tell them what
you're going to do.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Do it. Tell them what you're doing, and then tell
them what you did.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Who's gets who trained me as a play right? If
they don't know within two minutes while they're in that chair,
you've lost them. They got to know. That's exactly what
Johnny Carson.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Saying, I Craig Ferguson will be on the road once
again this fall, bringing the Fantasy Rascal to or two
your region. For tickets and full list of tour dates,
go to my website, The Craig Ferguson Show dot com
slash tour. Come and see me live or don't. I'm
(20:35):
not your father. So you're doing the reporter for the
local radio right with this sense?
Speaker 3 (20:49):
I want to just I got to get out of here.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Right, Well, that's a small town mentality for it.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Look, if you have an artist's brain and art is
hert and artist soul, would you do? Would I? And
you grew up in a small town, which I did?
You're like, I, I gotta get out of here. I
had decided that I was going to change my name
to Al Shapiro and live in New York. I was
ten years old, and I wanted to be apparently an
Italian taxi driver and living you. I wanted to be
(21:17):
Al Shapiro and live in New York. And I was
going to wear leather wristbands for some reason.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
That was another thing I was going to do.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
And you know what, I might still do it. But
the point is, you want to get out of town.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
Yeah. Oh oh, And then other things started happening that
were really bad. What the girls I ran with, two
of them got pregnant.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Ah, I see the sex starts coming along.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Well, they had the eighth graders with the twelfth graders
in the same school.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
That doesn't sound like a good idea, all right, So
you so.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
That was another motivator.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
So you leave because you don't want to get pregnant.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
No, don't, let's not. Let's not act like I'm some
talented you are that left town. No, no, no, no no.
I did a radio show down there, and then man
said the year the confirmation of the power of the
C grade, Like, because I wasn't any I wasn't distinctive.
I was funny, but I wasn't distinctive.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Funny is distinctive. I wouldn't have you dismiss funny is
not being distinctive.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
It ist.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
No, we know that now. It's a talent's a gift,
it's all that stuff. But back then that didn't you understand.
In Appalachia people are hilarious and their characters and so
it's the birthplace to me of all art because it's
an around me. Were people that were funny or smarter better.
I agree that too, But they didn't have this. They
(22:40):
didn't have the Al Shapiro, Escape Shapiro, and they didn't
have the I gotta get out of here.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Right, So how did you get up?
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Okay? I have two sisters ahead of me that are smart,
and the one that's directly ahead of me is very smart.
And my father and mother met at Notre Dame. My
mother's brother, remember the immigrants from Minnesota. Mmm. He was
a basketball star at Notre Dame, complete free ride. I
know that's hard to believe. I'm a big athlete in
(23:08):
my family, but he was incredible, Orlando Wonna Chellie. And
so he was in college and his sisters were graduating.
My mother's a twin. There's they call ada Ida and Irma,
and they went to Saint Catharine together, both librarian science.
Library science, went all the way through, you know, like
now it's considered a master's by the way, right, And
(23:29):
they needed jobs. They weren't going to go back to Chisholm,
and their mother didn't want them to come home. They
wanted she wanted them to fly okuds. And my mother
was the second twin, the shy one they didn't even
know she was in there, right, Okay, So Orlando goes
to the head librarian.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
It was your basketball playing uncle, uncle.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Right, So he goes to the head librarian at Notre Dame.
You know that touchdown Jesus they call it. My mother
was on the committee that designed that.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Wow. Okay, yeah, it's exciting.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
It's very exciting. So I mean, if you had you
met her, now she's in have him. But if you
had met her.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Loved you, I'm going to marry because I'm I'm a
Scottish Protestant and you're an Italian cat. Like this, it's
a whole different Afterwall, I'm going to a very cold swamp.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
The great that, the Great Bernadette Canny said, there's no
labels on the other side. Don't forget that. That's all
bull anyway.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
So the origin of Alexandria, I said, everyone is forgiven.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
Of course, Well what would be that? What's the point
You put us in the sewer and then you're not
Now you're not going to forgive us. What's the basis
of that? Anyway?
Speaker 2 (24:28):
They excommunicated him for that exactly.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
Everybody's welcomes gates down, all right, So she got a
job there and that's where she met my father, and
my father we don't have time for him on this podcast,
but he was an interesting cat, very very very I
wrote a joke about him. I mean he was a
fascist with us. I mean no, he never went back
on something, even when he was wrong. I'm a tough parent,
(24:54):
but I'm not that parent. You didn't want to tell
the guy the truth because you'd pay right. I became
a fantasist, I would say, based on that. I just
was like I could make something up to get around something.
But big things they ignored. They didn't notice at all.
When I planned a wedding when I was fourteen, Ady,
how are we getting you out of out Palasia? Well,
(25:15):
my two smart sisters got into Saint Mary's, which is
the women's college in South Bend, Indiana, across the street
from Notre Dame. But it's it's it's a powerhouse place,
incredible place. And so my sisters got in and they
weren't going to take me. And I wrote that note
a letter and I just said, you have to take me.
I have to get out of here. Like I had dreams,
(25:35):
like when I look at catalogs of going to Columbia.
But I did not have the grades and also not
the interest in getting the grades, and there were so.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Much I want to study. What did you want to study?
Speaker 3 (25:44):
The journalists?
Speaker 1 (25:44):
You want to study journalism? And you did you get
accepted for journalism in this place?
Speaker 3 (25:49):
No, you just are an undergrad. But the first thing
I did when I walked in and I keep in
mnd have been a reporter for a couple of years, right, yeah,
really young. I go to the head of the theater department,
doctor edge Bain, and I said, I want to be
a theater major. I am a playwright.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Everybody direct your story has good. The name of a character,
Reg Bain, it's just like, my name is doctor Reg.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
Bab married to a woman named Georgia. And I and
he had like really black hair that he'd have to
flip back all the time.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
And so you go to reg Bain and what do
you say to Regiment?
Speaker 3 (26:18):
And I said to rege Bain, I'm a freshman. And
I walk in there, freshman with glasses this thick. I
just held up the water bottle and I'm like, you know,
and I go in and I go, doctor Bain, I
just want you to understand something right up front. I
am going to be a theater major. And he looked
up at me and he said, nobody ever comes in
here when they're freshman says they're a theater major. He said,
it doesn't worry like that. He said, you can change
(26:39):
your mind. I said no, no, no, you don't understand.
I want to take every class you offer in the theater,
every single one. And he said, well, we have three concentrations, acting, directing,
and writing. And I said, but I want to start now.
And he said, all right, I'll put you an intro
to theater. I'll put you in history theater, put in two.
(27:01):
He said if you don't do well, we're not having
this conversation again.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
And I was like, okay, so you had to study.
He made you study.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
He made me study. But I was so unsophisticated, Craig.
I mean, it's like other kids had read books, and
I was an avid reader, but there's books you need
to read sometimes. So then I became that person. I
was a hoover reader. I read everything, but I didn't
then drill into my area. So I drilled into the
(27:27):
area and I started my concentrations, and I.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Would did you write plays?
Speaker 3 (27:33):
I wrote plays like right away, and I had written
plays in high school that I was very proud of.
And I worked on crew for the town musical, which.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Is your whole Edita put getting.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Storyteller. Why did you have? So? Then I go to
South Bend, Indiana, which compared the Big Stone Gap is
a big city. Loved it so. But my sisters were
there in case I needed them, but they were studying
in Rome. They would go buddy in Italy for a year,
so I was kind of And then the sister under
me came there too, So there were four of us there.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
What do you say girls studying?
Speaker 3 (28:07):
The oldest one government, the second one was pre law.
I think she was in English. I don't even know
what a mage was. And the one under me was business.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
This is a fascinating story of these women from Appalachia
who are all these heavy hirs in these is amazing
when you think about it. Yeah, yeah, you look at
that picture of these women coming out there. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
And then there's the baby who went there too, But
she wasn't there when we were there. We were going.
By the time she got.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
There, what does she do?
Speaker 3 (28:35):
She runs my sister's law office and she has four kids,
right so a nice husband.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
So you have a nice husband. I met your husband.
He's a dog.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
Oh yeah, I mean he's not going anywhere, no that
we know of. You know tomorrow, if you take this,
could be sitting here crying.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
No, I think it's going to be okay. I think
you guys have I think you going to be all right.
I don't know. I'm not a bet in mind, but
we'll see.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Anyway.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Look, you're there, let's let's go graduate.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
You're graduating, now, I'm graduating. I come straight to New York.
It's straight New York. Straight. Oh. I had no place
to live. I knew no one except this my senior
year at Saint Mary's that grege Bane. I was called
in because I demanded, because I'd taken every course study.
(29:23):
I begged, demanded, put it out there. I want to
write and direct on the main stage of your theater.
Now that was reserved for revivals and professionals that came in,
like Frank Canino from Canada. Come David Hare. We did
his play. Okay, okay, so major people had come through,
but I said, give me the slot.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Did you get it?
Speaker 3 (29:43):
I got it for a play had written?
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Did you direct?
Speaker 3 (29:47):
I pitched the play. I didn't tell it. I wasn't finished,
and I said, this was my senior year, the ball
of my senior year. Right, let's to get in there.
I'm just keep in mind at the eighties, said everybody
picture the eighties. I remember them, so they were good anyway.
So I had this idea for a play, okay, but
I wanted to be an extravagance and I want to
be bigger than big.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
And you surprise me.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
It's called Notes from the Nile and it's the rewritten
story of Cleopatra, except that Cleopatra was so beautiful no
one could look at her.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
I brought Julius Caesar back from the dead and because
he had an affair with her, and then you know
the whole story Cleopatra. But then I what I did
is I infused it with what has happened since Cleopatra's reign.
So I had Debbie the fish wife, and tap she
did tap routines. I had Eddie the fisherman who she's
having an affair with in the palace. Who was Eddie
(30:40):
Fisher Elizabeth Taylor had you see, I conflated everything, Yeah,
and then the handmaidens were just like Docile. I made
them the handmaidens that eventually Mark Margaret Atwood wrote about
they were dopes and the handman.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
So this is magical realism, sort of a war.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
There's a warn Egypt mm hmm for Cleopatra and okay,
she says, okay, you can have your word, but you're
going to fight it with hershey kisses and cotton balls.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
So weapons were made and intermission and it was all
environmental and crazy.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Did you put this play on?
Speaker 3 (31:16):
I wrote and directed it.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
That's great, and that's the play that you bring to
New York.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
That's a play I'm hoping to bring to New York
and like, get to it. I get to New York
and now we're like in the mid eighties, and you
realized if you were in theater and you came from
Saint Mary's, ain't happening for you, honey. I was doing
stage ratings with major actors. I mean, I could get
any actor to read it play because actors. I love actors.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Proper actors want to work, they want to act.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
They also are always looking in material for what's the pith,
what are we doing here? And and then as a writer,
you can once I heard their voices. I could write
for them, which is how I got into television. But
I just I could hear them. I could hear them.
But I was doing the club circuit with my comedy trip.
(32:06):
I had a comedy trip with girls.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
What were you called?
Speaker 3 (32:08):
The outcasts?
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Uh? Yuh? What did you do? Sometimes?
Speaker 3 (32:12):
Sometimes we were good? Sometimes it was sketchy.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Yeah, everybody started, But I was.
Speaker 4 (32:17):
I was.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
I was the pet barnum of it, like I wrote
and directed it, and I was in it. And the
only reason I was in it because I one night
at the Horn of Plenty. You remember that club.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
I don't know, the Horn of Planting.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
It's on Bleaker and Charles right. It was run by
this man who just tried to get in the in
our dressing room, which was his office between costume changes.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Okay, well he was PARV and you surprised me. There
was a pair of in New York in the nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
And I just I would like hold the door, you know,
I said, don't worry girls, it's all fine. And then
one night I had to send him out into the
bar to fill the room. He started to get onto it,
like I don't just need your act in here. I
want to make money. So it was there was a
two drink minimum, which was the standard of the day,
but I had to get them drunk men in from
that room into this room. So one night, this is
(33:02):
how I'm just telling you, this is why I never
became a performer per se, except I am performing now.
I still got up there to do our act and
helping the show, and a guy stood up and he
flung a Swedish meatball from the free snack bar out
my head and it hit the thing went down the
back and something. I'm not this type of person, but
it made me angry. No, and I said, hey, mister,
(33:24):
and the room went dead. You know what, I don't
appreciate that. I said, we work in offices all day,
we're exhausted. We're coming in here trying to entertain you,
and you're throwing food at us. And he got up.
He's drunk, he's gripping the table and he said, he's
dead silent. Here he goes he is stink and I thought, well,
(33:44):
maybe he's right.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
No, maybe he's right.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
All right, So the outcasts are That leads me to TV, though.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Now, how do you get to TV from there?
Speaker 3 (33:55):
The two girlfriends. I'm gonna name them Ruth Palmer and
Susan and Geluxy. I always say this to my kid,
and I'm sure you say it to yours. You graduate
with your class, So the comedians you came up with
will become a little black or whoever you were with,
they become your that's your team. Now, to the public,
it looks like we're all competing. We're not competing, though
(34:15):
we're trying to all. Just come on, everybody, pull that wagon,
you know, pull that wagon.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
He doesn't just.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Keep moving, get up there, you know. So I had
this posse and they'd come and see the show, and
they go, you need an agent. I said, what's an agent?
That's how I was unsophisticated. Of course I knew there
were agents. I read books. I knew about agents.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
He didn't know how to get one. I understand that
did know how to get one. Who's your agent? Who
did you?
Speaker 4 (34:42):
Who did you get of the same agent? Is it
still Nancy Joseph's, the legendary Nancy Joseph's She was at
ic M. Yeah, her dad founded ICE.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
And we know. Yes, I'm glad you're telling that to
the listeners, because you know I still I just saw
her in LA but she said she she's a good
one for you too. But this is the thing about her,
she knew she was dealing with something weird with me.
No I'll give her so she said, I'm gonna put
this guy, this guy, move you around and you know,
do all that. But she was always my person. How
(35:14):
do we get her though? Is the key thing. These
two girls, Ruth Palmerence and Suzanne Glock. Ruth was in
the mailroom at William Morris and Suzanne was like a
junior assistant at ICM. They grew up in New York together,
which already makes them to me goddesses because they grew
up in New York and right, they're sophisticated, educated, they
(35:36):
know the lay of the land. They're like, we're gonna
get you meeting. Here's a list of meetings. You're gonna
meet all these people. I went to the first meeting
at ICM, set up by Suzanne. The next one was
set up by Ruth, and so it went. I meet
this guy named Wylie housem young agent, and he looked
at my stuff and he said, okay, if we're going
to craft a theater career, we're going to do this.
(35:59):
And he said if we do television, we're going to
do this. And I said, what do you mean TV?
And he said, well, you know like write for sitcoms.
I said, how do you do that? You have to
write a specscript? What's a specscript? Can you give me one? Well,
I don't know if we have any land around. Let
me try to find you one. He said, but I
have this tape and I can give you to listen to.
Said okay, So I didn't. I couldn't tell him I
(36:19):
didn't have a television set or a VCR. Right, I
didn't have one.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
That that was the thing. It was tapes.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
It was all tapes. And by the way, how many
tapes of comedians would come over the transom for me
to write it? Once I got into the racket. But anyway,
but I loved them watching those. But anyway, so I
call a friend and I go, I need to borrow
your thing and watch this thing because because what happened
in the meeting was the first meeting I have. He
said I'll be your agent and I said, well, where
do I sign? And when I signed, he said, okay,
(36:48):
I'm your agent. He said, we're going to craft this.
He said, no, I don't have any money. I need
a job right now. Right then, he said, then you
got to write a specscript. And he said, you know,
take it. Some people take a few months to do that.
I said, by Monday morning, I had a specscript.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Who'd you write it for?
Speaker 3 (37:04):
Roseanne?
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Did you get the job?
Speaker 3 (37:06):
Not only did I get the job, I didn't go
to Roseanne the show, but I met Matt Williams, who
I'm still friends with right, who went on to create
Home improve and all that. He gave me a deal
in the nineties. But he was like my guide. I
couldn't see the picture Craig of the thing. I had
to listen to it. And I got every big character right,
except Becky because she'd go be icky and I thought
(37:28):
she said Betty. So in my script it says Betty.
I wrote this crazy script.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
I knew they never made the script though, right.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
No, But Carcy Werner hired me and I went on
a different world as a story editor.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
Nice. So now you're in a different world.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
Now. Not only am I in a different world, I'm
doing pilots all over town. Nancy would always say, don't
tell people how many pilots you've written. I wrote, could
but he banked it. Yeah, you know, we're in the
middle of a strike. Now, I saw the land land there. Hey,
there's going to be sometimes you ain't working, you better
bank it. And that's what I did.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
So you write these pilots and you ended a different world?
Speaker 3 (38:01):
Is that?
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Were you on that for a long time?
Speaker 3 (38:03):
One year? Then I then I went to I came
back to New York because I wanted to be in
New York because my grandmother was alive and all that stuff.
I want to be near Pennsylvania, so I came back here.
I also am just more in tuned here. Yes, I
love it out there. I loved when I was there,
but and I loved Los Angeles. There's a lot to
recommend it, but you know, ultimately it wasn't going to
be a place for you. It wasn't a fit for me.
(38:25):
And even now worse because you have to drive everywhere
and it takes hours, so and I just don't want
to spend time in a car. I don't like cars.
So then I get back here, and so in succession
I got jobs, so I would get pilots, and then
I would get I got Bill Persky hired me on
a show called Working It Out with Jane Curtin. What
he's like my mentor, mentor, like family mentor, he's like love.
(38:48):
Bill Persky's still with us, he's ninety two. Then there's
Alan's Wui Bell hired me as to replace Monica Johnson,
the only female writer on Good Sports, starring Farah Fawcett
and Ryan O'Neill.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
I'm not familiar with that short, but I wish I
had seen it.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
It was It happened during the Gulf War, and I
don't know, it just disappeared. But it was a good
concept and I loved those two and we could talk
off camera about them then, both of them, Fair and Ryan.
Then I did City Kids, which I was a showrunner for,
which was shot in New York, which is very avant
guard you could still watch it and go. It was
with the Jim Henson company. Oh okay, and they had
(39:25):
a thing then called TGIF.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
I used to live above Venier's Bakery. I love that
and every night but two am I used to hear
this woman walking by and she would sing beautiful operatic
arias and it was amazing. I mean she was she
could really sing and I was like, I look out
the window and she was a young one and she
(39:58):
would walk by singing these areas. And I eventually I
met her and she was a waitress and her shift
finished at one am, and she said, you walked down
the street singing operatic arias nobody comes near you.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
That's so funny, gig.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Yeah, so that she had, that was her pillow that
she would she would sing like every thought she was crazy.
Did you run into any of that because you're a
young woman working, did you get did you Were you
aware of that? You're a very forceful personality. I don't
know that that makes a difference or not. Were you
aware of.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
That kind of I'm a funny person. Yeah, I'm always
aware of my safety wherever I am. Like when I
moved here, I was very aware, like you gotta be careful,
and I did things that you know. I got in
trouble at my boarding house. I lived in a boarding
house and I took a throw pillow and just pretended
I was pregnant on the subway late at night, coming
home from a gig. So I figured nobody's going to
(40:52):
hit a pregnant woman or kill a pregnant woman. But
I got in trouble for stealing the pillow, but I said, no,
I brought it back. I'm bringing the pillow back.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
I give birthday.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
But I was that kind of person, and I'd say
to the girls, take those glasses. You know, we'd use
some sketches. I said, we're I'm on the subway. You'll
be all right, and we're going to come at you
if you're you know, I'd get out of things joking too.
I get out sticky situations by being funny and just
you know, the only way to get a man who's
intent to bed you off of it is to entertain
(41:21):
him and get him off the subject. It works, but frankly,
it was like working a third shift and who needs that.
But you know, the girls in my group we talk
about this too. Many of them fell in love, got married,
left the group, left show business and stuff. And there
wasn't anything that was going to keep me from show business.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
It was just a different person.
Speaker 3 (41:41):
I just just like, how could he possibly be that
interesting to you? How could he ever be this other thing?
Speaker 2 (41:48):
So then you meet Tim. What happened? Because you meet
Tim and Tim is a great life.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
Yeah, he's well listen, I'm giving you the story here
like as truthfully as I can, because you know, anybody
that I was ever interested in, it was. I kept
him at a distance. I wasn't getting involved him different.
I don't know. I just liked him. I just thought.
And I also saw this too. When you work in Hollywood,
(42:16):
you see those beautiful executives and they don't have a man.
And if you had any interest in a man, which
I did, you say the windows closing. And my friends
would still laugh about me going the windows closing. Girls,
you got to get on this. Let me tell you something.
Ten years for a woman, it's one hundred years a
bad road. And if you don't, this is now or never.
It's now or never. And they never I mean at
(42:39):
the time they were just women who said I But
I said, no, you know if you want that. So
when they complained to me, now, I said, I told you.
I said, it's a window. You can have somebody now,
but it's going to be a different thing.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
And I just you know, So what happened with Tim then?
How calm he was different? Did you make a decision
that all right, this this is the one for me,
this is it.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
I was doing plays in Pennsylvania. This is before television
because I met him before a different world, right, And
he wasn't ever going to live in New York. He
didn't want anything to do with this, and I thought,
so funny for you. And he's still. Every once in
a while, I will give me a gig and I say,
you can dig all you want, but you're here. You
might as well make it work. You know.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
I think he's doing okay, he's okay.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
He's doing fine. But no, he came here and he
hit the ground running. I mean as a lighting designer,
he just he's really he was trained by Emerol Fiarantino,
who did the Kennedy Nixon debates. I mean, he really
learned on the job and now he's you know, he
does great. And she won an Emmy.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
I don't have an Emmy. I have no I got
a couple. You can have one money okay, all.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
Right, I need one for the other side of the mantle.
Said to my husband, can you win another one? And
need some synergy here? You know?
Speaker 2 (43:54):
I cold my mom. I said, I want an Emmy.
She went daytime Emmy. Oh man Jabi, so tell me this.
You go to Italy now, love huh A Lot. Why
(44:14):
is that?
Speaker 3 (44:16):
Well, I find you know, I had an experience there.
I think I told you about this where I was
on the mountaintop and the Alps where my grandparents on
the Bone and Cheli side are from, and I it's
a piece I've never known. So that's probably where I'm gonna.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
End up going back to the old country.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Yeah, but I loved working with you in Scotland. That
was really fun. So I'd like to write and direct
over there, and I'm working on stuff in order to
do that.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
I think Scotland and Italy are very similar countries.
Speaker 3 (44:46):
We really have to talk about that, because I knew
you liked Italians immediately, even though you were a very
stone cold to me on the phone. The first time
I talked.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
It was just garden myself. I was in Italy when
you called me.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
I know you were I'm in Italy and I was like,
mister Ferguson, and then I just and you said, okay,
call me in forty eight hours. Nobody ever said that
to me in my life, not even a credit card company.
So I was like, what is this? Okay? So I
hung up the phone and I called Kathy Lee and
I said, I don't know. I mean, I got to
work this guy over a little more here. And she
(45:18):
if you look up determination in the dictionary, her little
head's there like buday. She like her. But anyway, so
when I called you, I thought, and it wasn't like
there were edges like of warmth there either, like or
I could kind of wheedle in. I said, okay, well
we'll talk about this, and all right, I'll give you
forty eight hours. And so then I think I called
(45:41):
back and begged you to.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
Do it, didn't I Yeah, you did.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
And then you say, okay, tell me about this script.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
Yeah you did.
Speaker 3 (45:48):
So I told you about the script and then you know,
all right, all right, you weren't happy about it, but
I said, I don't care. He doesn't have to be happy,
just has to be good. And then I was stunned,
and how brilliant you were.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Yeah, we don't need to talk about that though. What
we need to talk about.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
It, Well, I'm only here because of that.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
We have to talk about how Scotland and Italy. I think, yeah, let's.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
Get them together. Okay. So you know, my last novel
was about the internment of the Scots and the destruction
of Scots during World War Two, Italian.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Scotts, Italian Scots yeah yeah, and the.
Speaker 3 (46:20):
Maker Italians and rallys. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
You know the Glaswegian Italians even now because there's like
a huge Italian community in Glasgow, but they have Glasgow
accents but they kind of talk Italian. Yeah, so they go, hey,
what's the comedy you you're coming over to here and
you come to my house and maybe we watched the
football and then it's this weird accent and it's fantastic now.
Speaker 3 (46:42):
And then you start scratching around and you'll find it
Anna Maria and you go oh yeah, oh yeah, I'm Italian. Yeah,
and you'll find like a Patro and you go, oh
Daniello okay, well, and it's huge.
Speaker 1 (46:54):
In Glasgow, I mean in Glasgow in particular, it's huge.
Speaker 3 (46:56):
Italian people are like, why don't we know this? Why
don't we know this? Because of this get out. That's
how the immigrant feels every day. They don't talk about
their experiences. Even when people blow up in a boat,
they're not going to talk about it and talk about it.
Seventy years had to pass before it was even mentioned
or there was a shrine belt in uh at St
Andrew's Cathedral in Glasgow.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (47:16):
But in the Orkneys, do you know that, I know
all about the paper church.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
Yeah, the Orkneys. The President of War, they Bill a church.
He's still there.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
Your wonderful film in Scotland. You have a great film
commission and they came to New York to ask me
to direct a movie about that.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
Why didn't you do it?
Speaker 3 (47:34):
Well, because there's things I had deadlines and stuff, But
my sick we still do it.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
Yeah, you do it.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
I'll do I'll do a kind of the Italians came
over and I'll do it. I'll do Bill Patterson's voice,
and unless you get Bill Parson then it'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
Oh, for goodness sake, flea bag, what are you up to?
Speaker 3 (47:51):
You know that's so funny. That would be great.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
No.
Speaker 3 (47:54):
I read the book and I was enchanted by it,
and then yeah, all the islands. What happened was Churchill
made a really big mistake. But I had a ball
touring sixty cities with this novel to say this to
everybody that I come in contact with, which is basically
they till the soil of propaganda, thirteen years of it.
In the British newspapers, anti Italian sentiment. Now people look
(48:17):
at a room with a view and Ianforster and all
that stuff, and they go, oh, the Brits are the
Scots love the Italians. They do, and they were intermarried.
But when Mussolini declared war, get out. That was the
only thing. Churchill panicked because he didn't even know, because
there wasn't sonar yet how much activity was going on
under the sea. There this guy gun through preen, had
(48:40):
U boats everywhere. It was like snakes on it. I
describe it as such in the novels, like snakes at
the bet of the ocean. They were going to take England.
They were close. This wasn't even a joke. So he
didn't know. Churchill didn't know what to do. Now, I
want you to keep in mind, what was the propaganda.
It's the same trope you here because the immigrant faces
(49:01):
the same fight always. You can't come in. Now that
you're here. Here's the jobs. You're all service jobs because
most of your battalions, your Glasswegian Italians were doing service jobs, waitering,
made or d They're good looking, they have an accent.
That worked at clarages and the big hotels, and the
women did the cleaning. They did the laundry and the
(49:23):
pressing and the tailoring and this artorial stuff. Okay, great,
so you had that going then.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
But at the same time, though, because just my family
or Scottish my people were doing those jobs too, you know,
working class people were doing those jobs too.
Speaker 3 (49:39):
And but this was what the working class people were against.
They felt the Italian immigrants were bringing their people over
and taking.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
Their take on the job.
Speaker 3 (49:47):
And they want to keep and they want to keep
in shipbuilding, all of the great stuff that goes on
in Glasgow. But what I found out was that, you know,
without that propaganda, Churchill wouldn't made that decision. I had
to pay thousands of dollars and I get it to
this day for this article written by a man named Gunther,
not the famous gun Through historian, another guy or Boswell,
not not the theater guy John Boswell in the mirror,
(50:10):
I believe, and it was so reprehensible. I said, I
can't recreate that. I'm gonna pay to put that in there.
But then it was one of thousands and thousands of
articles against Italians in.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Britain during the nineteen thirties forties.
Speaker 3 (50:22):
You know, I said, I said, you know, they said
I talked about them making the fish and chips and
the gelato and stuff. And there were Italians that got
very rich making the Jelya. They put the factories up
outside of Glasgow, but most of them were peddlers and
working class people. They were not elevated in that way however.
And I would say this people, people go fish and chips.
(50:43):
That's British, that's Scottish, that's calamari.
Speaker 2 (50:47):
Yeah, it's Italian. It's calamari the Italians, right.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
You know what? It was funny when I grew up
because I was working class and SCHOOLU teach and grew
up as much.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
Hungry for it. Right now, save fish and chips.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
But here's the other thing.
Speaker 1 (50:57):
But the time was and this is the weird thing
with being a Glaswegian growing up in Scotland. At the
time I was four years old, I knew exactly what
a cappuccino was and I wanted one because Italians ran
the caffe's in their Dini family.
Speaker 3 (51:11):
You got Italian, did you get your thing done? He's
hartly Italian.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
Everybody in my family thinks there is some kind of
has to be. It has to be, I think, So
I'm very comfortable when I go to Italy. I think
Italy is like Scotland, with much better weather and much
better food and slightly friendlier people. Sometimes they sound friendlier
because my Italian is so bad.
Speaker 3 (51:35):
I know when you're trying and everybody's trying. Yeah, yeah,
well you speak. There's affinity. When I get there, I
get good, but I'm not like is this morning, I'm terrible.
I'll make it and that's it.
Speaker 2 (51:48):
Italian a very little.
Speaker 3 (51:53):
But the thing is, I think there is an affinity
between these folks, between Scotland and Italy. I really do.
There's a and I think some of it like it's
particularly for part of my family that's from the mountains.
I'm also Venetian and farmers from outside of Venice. And
then people that live in mountains or people that live
in rough terrain or rough weather, they're they're built a
(52:14):
certain way, like goats. They're strong and they don't expect
everything to go their way because they're not in control.
Do you agree with that, because it's just America that way.
Speaker 2 (52:28):
I'm amazed, goes wow, that was really unbelieved. I cannot
believe that.
Speaker 3 (52:33):
In the same way, I think there's just no way
this is going to work out, and then when it does,
it's like, Okay, well that was luck. I never think
it's like coming my way.
Speaker 2 (52:42):
Do you know?
Speaker 1 (52:42):
What's great is that we've been talking for either the
best part of an hour, and now we've got to
stop talking because we do have to stop talking, you know,
you and I have to stop. It is awesome, it's joyful,
it's fantastic. I'm delighted to be your friend, and I'm.
Speaker 3 (53:00):
So happier in my life.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
Craig Ferguson, you are you are a job. But you know,
but we.
Speaker 3 (53:04):
Also get I get Megan.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
You get I get Liam ye, all.
Speaker 3 (53:09):
Your crazy ancillaries that I love so much.
Speaker 5 (53:12):
Your friends, you get Linda, you I got them all,
you know. Yeah, But I get Tim and I get Lucci,
and you know, I get your sisters at the casino
gigs and I meet everybody.
Speaker 2 (53:24):
It's all good. It's all good. And what we should do.
Speaker 3 (53:29):
Is that another movie.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
No, we should go to Italy. We should just all right,
what do you.
Speaker 3 (53:33):
Want to go? Let's talk and we'll go because the
apps are my thing. And then and then Venice, I'm
pretty good at that. You're my favorite ton of itally
right now, Trevisa. Yes, how did you know that? Did
I tell you that because I'm psychic? No, my people
were from That's where all our paperwork is. Also because
the farm is right outside of there.
Speaker 2 (53:52):
Oh, that's crazy.
Speaker 3 (53:52):
I think Treviso is it hidden jam And we shouldn't
have told everybody about it? All right, because it's
Speaker 4 (53:58):
Okay, all right, not all before
Host
Craig Ferguson
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