June 6, 2023 • 51 mins
To kick off Pride Month, we could not be prouder or more honored to share Rosie's conversation with multi-award-winning actor, Holland Taylor. Together, Rosie and Holland traverse their storied lives: from psilocybin trips, to the work that goes into acting, to how Holland wrote and produced her one-woman show "ANN," to never even being asked about sexual preferences back in the day, and to present day loves and life experiences.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hey, everybody, it's me Rosie O'Donnell. And guess what, it's
June all month, as my nana would say, it's Pride month.
It's Pride month. And for a very long time, my
family would go into the city. And I remember one
year when I was about twelve, we were in the
city and there was the Pride Parade, which is now
(00:31):
a march, actually not a parade at all, but back
then that's what it was called the Pride Parade. And
we went in and there were a bunch of like
dikes on bikes and motorcycles and people walking with them
because they go very slow, and giving out flyers. And
this woman came over to me. Now I'm in my
overalls and a backwards hat and converse sneakers, so I
(00:51):
don't necessarily think she was a psychic, but she came
over to me and said, here, I thought you might
want this. And I remember, at twelve feeling so exposed,
used and seen, and yet a little part of me
felt happy, like, oh, these are my people, you know,
which is hard to believe now that I have a
ten year old And I remember myself being twelve so
(01:12):
vividly and having these strong feelings about myself and my
life and just discovering that I was a gay person
and moving on from there. It's been quite a journey,
I have to tell you, from nineteen seventy four till
now me twelve and up right. Well. Pride Month is
(01:34):
celebrated in June and it honors the nineteen sixty nine
Stonewall Rebellion, which most people I hope know about probably
did not learn about it in school sadly, but it
was a tipping point for the gay and transgendered people
who were relentlessly terrorized, beaten, and murdered for being who
(01:54):
they were. And here in twenty twenty three, we find
ourselves at a tipping point once again, where lives are
literally on the line. Gay, trans queer we have become
the scapegoat of a faltering GOP who are latching onto
a fascist playbook of blame and division. At Stonewall, we
stood our ground with our allies and rose up together.
(02:17):
We were not silent, and we will continue to do
so until we have equal freedom without exception, and we'll
do it every year. In the month of June we
highlight it, but for us it's every day. It is
gay Pride. It's very upsetting as a sixty one year
old gay woman to see what's happening to the trans
(02:39):
community with over five hundred different bills, one hundred and
fifty of them specifically transgender people other targets. I really
hope that we can make a change in the current
pop culture political zeitgeist, that we can take a look
(02:59):
at what the far fringes of the right wing are
doing to human beings in this country because they think
they can. It's very depressing, I have to say, But
I believe in this new generation coming up. I believe
in the millennials. I believe that the gay people who
(03:23):
have been around forever and will continue to be around forever.
You cannot legislate us out of existence. And that's the truth.
So in honor of Pride Month of June, we're going
to have all gay people and gay allies this month.
How's that? And the first person we interviewed for this
wonderful month of gay pride and celebration is the one
(03:46):
and only Holland Taylor. Now, I love Holland Taylor. I've
always loved her. What an amazing actress. She is an
activist and beautiful woman, person soul. She's pretty phenomenal. And
you know, usually when I come in here and get
on the headphones and sit on the zoom thing and
get everyone ready, we start at this, you know, right away,
(04:10):
like the countdown counts down, and then we go well,
I started talking to Holland once I saw her beautiful
face on the zoom and we started chatting, and then
we sort of got into the interview. But it starts nowhere. Okay.
We were talking about our skin conditions and the things
that older women talk about. Perhaps we were talking about
(04:31):
when we were kids and how we used to get
in the sun all the time, and then we sort
of start the car. It's a weird beginning, that's basically
what I'm telling you. It's kind of a weird beginning,
but it's a wonderful conversation. And I'm so happy that
we get to have Holland Taylor to kick off our
Gay Pride Month celebration. And I know it's really lgbt
(04:53):
QIA Pride Month, but you know, us older gays, we
just say gay and it's queer inclusive everybody, everybody. So
that's what we have today, a conversation with Holland Taylor,
and I hope you enjoy it. Stick around here comes
(05:21):
I think if you're over fifty, we grew up with
no sunscreen. I know, right, baby oil? Did you do that?
Baby oil on your face?
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Oh? And tench foil reflecting things? Yes, me too, around
your face, so that you really just brutalized your face.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Those were the days.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
So but since the pandemic, I didn't do anything.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Well, thank you for being here.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
It's a pleasure now.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
I didn't either. In fact, during those three years Holland
during the pandemic, I think a lot of us didn't
take care of our normal things because we were so
thrown off.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
You know, well you can't. I mean, were you going
to go to a dentist? I never did.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
I didn't either.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
I mean I took really good care of my teeth,
but I didn't go to a dentist.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Right.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
I really am walking around occasionally feeling I think I'm
kind of bruised by the whole experience as to life itself.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
I agree, because I think.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
We felt a vulnerability that was unlike any other. And
I remember when I hike, or I used to hike,
and when the pandemic first really set in, I felt
the air was dangerous. I worried about the air, and
I didn't feel safe anywhere, even way up on the
top of my hill overlooking the whole city. I thought
(06:31):
I just told a sense of vulnerability that well, I'm
sure can't compare with people in wartime, but it's just
strange different, But it was close, yeah, strange. And also
the world was no longer a peaceful place. I mean
it's like dangers lurked, yes, but there are so many
peoples and nations that have been in all kinds of
(06:54):
danger for millennia. So for them it's like, please, it's
just one more thing I would.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Imagine, right, But you know what got me during it
was first of all the intense loneliness that I didn't
realize how much I needed just normal human interaction. That
was that just sucked out of your life.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Absolutely, I completely agree. And you know, like if I'm
in a crowd and you know, I'm looking jostle somebody
and you sort of hold their shoulder to let them
know that you're there, and you're just going to ooch
your way around them, Yes, I mean that kind of
I've always been very not touching, feely, but in contact
with people, and if I'm going to thank somebody for something,
(07:35):
I have my hands on their shoulders or I hold
their hands, and I just felt a lack of humanity,
particularly in LA I actually worked a lot during the pandemic,
which is kind of amazing because I have to say
the stress, the stress of getting sick and causing work
a stoppage which never happened. But you know, I revived,
and I did my final run of an here at
(07:56):
capacity in the playoffs.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Yes, I do know.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Of course, I wanted to do it on the West Coast,
so I thought I'd done it in every theater capital
in America, I should do it on the West Coast
myself and then release it. You know, it's a lot.
It is a lot. It's ten years since Broadway. Then
it's you a member of the size of the polace, right,
so doing it was already its own test. But the
(08:20):
COVID theear that theater. It cost them four hundred and
eighty thousand dollars to mount it, and I'd gotten sicker
in the run that we've lost the entire amount. This
trace was just right, just trrendous. And I think people
go on movie sets feeling the same way. Yeah, like
I could cost this movie studio a half million dollars
in three days, you know, correct.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
I did two filmings during the pandemic, and first of all,
the first one just took forever because it was started
at the beginning and everyone didn't know what to do,
and so it ended up, you know, taking like a
year and a half to film the ten episode series.
And yeah, but everybody was panicked as well, and you
didn't get that thing that I love about sets where
(09:04):
you talk to the grip guy and he's just had
a baby and you get to know everybody. But you
couldn't even talk to people who were not in zone
one right, right, And it felt very different than the
movie making experience.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
I agree. I've done television series and the movie and
that play and few other things and flying to New
York to do billions. I mean, it's been wild, and
I guess it's essentially over in that people are released
from the strictures. But of course it's not over in
the sense of I know two people who got it
in the past couple of weeks unexpectedly, probably because they're
(09:38):
letting their garden down.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Yes, I went to the doctor today and she told
me to get a fifth booster. Right, So she said
to me, you know you're sixty one, go get it.
You know, don't mess with this, go get it.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
So you had your first wive like in September or
October or something, the one for omicron, right, they don't
getting anything else.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Now, I had that one, and now you need another.
Me too, exactly, me too.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
I had mine in September.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
I also got my shingle shot two days ago.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
I've gotten that.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Yeah, shingle shot is good. It's funny as you get older,
you know everything, Like I realize I see a doctor
like every two months, a different doctor, but you know,
maybe different. But as you get older, this is what
you do. You know, you try to stay as healthy
as you can and you try to get as plugged
in to your doctor. So you know, what's going on.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Every two months isn't bad, right, compared to some people
that go every couple of weeks. Well, you know, it's
it's getting older. As an offer, siss Bet Davis said,
and it's really true. It's a challenge. I feel like
I've been let off lightly compared to so many of
my friends who have really serious challenges. It's life.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
You know.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
It's almost like you have to be older to be
wise enough to withstand what happens to you an agent.
It's so true, and the ultimate agent, which is that
you fall over and the croak. You know, and you
have to you have to come to some degree of
acceptance of that or you can't enjoy the day. I
sort of discovered that as a bargain this year. I
(11:06):
haven't achieved it, but I've discovered that that's the bargain
I have to strike. Okay, I accept I am going
to die, yes, and it's not going to be a
long time from now. Yes, And so I've got to
enjoy the day. And I've always been one who let
worry and stuff just fuck the shit on my days.
And I just guess, can't do it. Can't do it
(11:27):
me too, Holland can't do it anymore.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
No, we'll be right back with Holland Taylor. And you
(11:56):
know it's funny. I turned sixty a year ago, so
I'm now sixty one, and I was like, what do
I want to do for myself? I'm sixty My mother
died at thirty nine, and I thought, this is a
huge accomplishment, you know, I imagined following her footsteps to
be gone in my forties or something. And so I
turned sixty and I rented a house on the beach
(12:16):
in Malibu. Great, and I got a chef. I lost
some weight, I got healthy March, I did more therapy.
I did some EMDR with the eyeball thing.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Oh really, that's interesting. What is that EMDR.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
It's for trauma. It's an eye movement therapy, and they
show you sort of it. It's you don't have to
do anything particularly, they lead you through what you're supposed
to do, and it unleashes trauma that you had locked
inside of you that you weren't aware of. And it's
something in the brain.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
But you work with someone, you work with a person.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yes, you work with a person.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Have you done any of the psychedelics, Like, have you
done psilocybin?
Speaker 1 (12:55):
No, I'm totally afraid, Holland.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
I did psilocybin. If you can belive in that our
trip where I could literally had to be walked. I
couldn't walk without support after it, and it was wild,
and I think pardonly the benefit of it is that
I had the sense of having done it, you know,
having risked something, and that it was a very interesting experience.
(13:18):
So like in my case, I went because I said,
I have a lot of fear and dread. I mean,
who does it? They have a lot of fear and
dreaded because I'm eighty I just hearned eighty. So I
have twenty years on you.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Yes, so big birthday and.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
So they you know, the indigenous peoples call it medicine
because it treats what you need treated. And so basically
my experience on psilocybinal was full of fear and dread.
It's almost like, yes, you fear, fear and dread, so
here it is, this is what you have to face.
(13:54):
And it was wild. I will do it again. I
think it's something people could do every couples. It's too
big a deal to do like often, but it's wild.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Yeah. I have a lot of friends who did ayahuasca,
not for me, not for me.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
They are nothing that involves puking. Nothing involves puking with others.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
That's what I said. I'm not throwing up in public
and pooping my pants in a tent on a cot.
I'm not doing it.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
We're in private. I'm not joking impromitting exactly, not as
an elective.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Choice, not as something you volunteer for.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Correct exactly. There might be that, you know coming for
other reasons.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
They say if you're on antidepressants, that you should not
do ayahuasca, that it does something to the serotonin levels
that you're already kind of trying to keep in your
brain with taking an SSRI. So yes, I don't know,
I just but I'm never I've never done anything besides
marijuana and beer. Those are my two big vices right there.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Marijuana is kind of a downar for me.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Ultimately, Yeah, you don't like it, so.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
I don't do it. I don't hardly drink anymore. I mean,
it's just like I think, you know, no at.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
One one, No, because I don't want to miss a
day and I want to feel well. Yeah, exactly. The
next day you wake up and you know, I have
a ten year old here, and she's got a lot
of questions. And so from the time I open my eyes,
I'm engaged. You know, she's asking me things like what
is her name? Her name is Dakota, she has autism.
(15:19):
She's ten years old.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
My name is Dakota, and I have questions? How divine?
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Yes, she has lots of questions and She told me
about a month or two ago that she was non binary,
and I said, oh, that's fantastic, whatever you want to be, honey.
And then she told me last night that she was asexual,
and I said, honey, you're ten. Everyone's a sexual, right.
You got to wait till you're in the teenage year, sixteen,
(15:46):
come on this stuff. But you know, she's so smart, Holland.
She's so smart it would be just blow your mind
what she asks people and what she thinks of. What
are her thoughts here?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
You know, she's curious, Well, are you out in Malibu
now or are you from New York.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
I'm in Malibu. I moved here to do a series
two years ago. And the school that she is attending,
it's like the number one school in the country for
neurodivergent kids who also have learning disabilities. So she also
had dyslexia. When we came to the school. In third grade,
she couldn't read it all. And she used to bring
her books to school in New York and pretend to
(16:24):
be reading them at lunch because she felt so shamed
that she couldn't read. And now she's reading Harry Potter
in one grade year.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
She was able to read a whole Harry Potter book.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Fantastic. That's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
That is wonderful. Yeah, it's just great.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
So we're out here. We're out here now, and it's
such a different way of life. I lived here for
ten years early on in my career, and then when
I had my first child, I moved back home so
that they could be with their cousins and whatnot, and
then we moved out here for her schooling and for
my work. So I don't know, it's kind of hard.
I have five kids, you know, I missed the other four,
(16:59):
but they're own and out, so it's not like they
were hanging at home with me, you know.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
I mean, look what you've done, really, Yeah, wasn't achievement.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
I know sometimes I think, wow, that was a lot
of that was a big bite to take, o'donald, you know,
but I've loved every minute of it.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
I've done a lot of good work during the period too.
Amazingly enough, while you were raising those kids, Yeah, we
did a lot of things.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Did you ever want to have children? Was that part
of your growing up? No?
Speaker 2 (17:26):
I never did. No, I might as well have been
the only child because my sisters were considerably older and
they were away at school, so I was left to
my own devices a lot, which I didn't find. I mean,
it was benign neglect, as they say, and so I
had to entertain myself. But I have add and so
entertaining myself was really a challenge. I mean, I didn't
(17:46):
know what to do with myself. I had a lot
of things that I was interested in, but I didn't
know how to wish to do first and how to
pick it, and I could not realize my time. It
was really kind of helpless in that regard. But I'm
used to being on my own, not being unhappy with it,
but just being a little bit like Ladi da di da,
ladi da? What shall I do?
Speaker 1 (18:08):
And were your parents busy working like people in that
time or were they just not very emotional creatures.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Well, it was a really different error. I mean you're
talking the forties and fifties now, that was a different error, right,
And I don't think parents felt they were neglecting their
children by leaving them in their room to play, right,
you know. I think I was a playpen baby because
when I was very little, as I say, my sisters
were away but my mother had her own things that
she had to do, and so I was safe in
(18:37):
her playpen. But I'm using myself and then in my room.
And also in that day and age, from a very
young age, I just wandered out in the whole laborhood. Yeah,
I just wandered around. Little kid wandering around, but they
would think anything of about it. In the forties or fifties,
kids are out playing, go out and play.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Yeah, in the sixties, my mother would say, everyone outside
and home when the streetlights go on.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
That's so great.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
So we would be out, five kids, yeah, all day
until dinner.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Yeah, my mother didn't ever say that, but that's essentially
what happened. Yeah, And I think I can sort of
vaguely remember having ways to remember where I walked so
that I could find my way home. We had a
stream that I walked up that was behind my house.
There were railroad tracks and I walked along.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
You know.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
There were just different neighborhoods I wandered in that were interesting,
in little woods and stuff like that. I meant, you
were no more letter churel fact today than fire.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
No. I don't even let her go to the movies
with their friends. Don't. I don't let them get on
my sight, mostly because it's so terrifying. Ye know, well
it is, I.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Mean, today's earld. It's just almost unbelievable. Really, if you
and I had been told as young people what this
would be like now, we would simply not believe it.
But then if you you know, I don't want to,
we could just scream about politics and both of them
go mad. But if January fifth of twenty twenty, if
you had told me what was going to happen January sixth,
you said, not on your own life, not in this country,
(20:03):
not what happened?
Speaker 1 (20:05):
And do you remember watching it that day? Partly? And
I with a kind of.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Awe and a kind of shell shocked doom, like I
can't believe this is even happening. It was pinched me.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
It looked like a movie. It looked like a movie, said,
it didn't look like it was real life. I remember going,
what the is happening?
Speaker 2 (20:25):
And so violent?
Speaker 1 (20:26):
So violent? And then to try to pass it off
to us as a normal day of tourists. It's ridiculous.
Don't believe what you're seeing?
Speaker 2 (20:35):
You know, it's really shocked.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
I know, really we shouldn't even go there. Do you
remember You probably don't. Do you remember the first time
we met.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
That we met, guy? It must have been a very
long time ago, Rosey.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
It's a very long time ago. It was at Norman
Lear's house, oh my, in Malibu, I believe, and he
used to have these gatherings of people. And I walked
in and you were on the couch and I walked
by you and I'm like, oh my god, that's Holland Taylor.
And I don't even know if I introduced myself to you,
but I remember vividly that was the first time that
I was in your presence well, And like Sarah Paulson,
(21:11):
I was also struck by your beauty. Oh my god,
you were very very I was very struck. I was
captivated by how you looked. I was like, look at her,
you know, and you're such a phenomenal actress. I had
known you for forever doing what you do best. You know.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Well, I feel like we've known each other all our
professional lives. I guess not quite all, but most a
lot of it. I remember you doing something so extraordinary
for Anne in Chicago, and you know, this was a
production of play and research a written play and a
series of like eight or nine runs which have been
(21:47):
absolutely blessed, like you know, magic and a bottle. I
mean the blessings, the good fortune that has fallen on
that play, as if by magic. Being invited to do
the Kennedy Center at the Commuty Center right after you
right became that huge theater in Chicago, the Schubert, the
Old Schubert, which is then called the Bank of America Theater.
(22:08):
Give me a break. But Newsweek, Tina Brown was then
publishing New Sweep. The great Tina Brown, one of the
great women of all time, great media person, great writer,
a great publisher and promoter of things. And she got
wind that I was doing this play, and I guess
(22:29):
she heard about earlier productions of it in Austin, and
she assigned. At first it was Marie Brenner, and then
it was another writer who I adore in my company.
I've forgotten the names go first, as you know I do. Anyway,
to do a big piece on ann before it came
to New York. The interviews were before Chicago, So I
(22:50):
said for a piece in Newsweek about my play. Yes,
so in Chicago we had that that was going to happen.
We got invited to You're shown you came to see
the play, which was an incredible shot in the arm
for the play. We're going to be sold out. I
think we did sell out chicag good and also but
it was a wonderful interview because you're interested, you're interesting,
(23:15):
and you're interested, and it was wonderful to be able
to speak nationally for the play. And that was the
first time I did until the Gounty. Second.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Well, what an amazing job as a writer, never mind
as a performer. You were channeling Anne Richards, channeling her.
It was one of the most magical things I've ever
seen on Broadway. I've ever seen on live theater, and
you were her. It was so unbelievably lovely to feel
her presence again, well for me too because I was
(23:46):
friendly with her and yeah, yes, and to get to
but you were doing it, so I don't know if
you could feel the awe like I was like, she's
back from the beyond, She's back. There she is, you know.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
I think a loved people felt that way. Uh well,
each iteration of it, I got closer and closer, and
I always continue to polish the text, improve the text, polished, polished, cut, cut,
ad add polish and polished cut right through to Pasadena.
This last up and by Broadway, I was a notch
(24:19):
better than Chicago. And I had done DC after that,
and then after Broadway, I did it two years later
in Austin. That's where it was filmed, and that's where
it's It's still on PBS and Broadway HD day performances.
And then this last run, missus Seal came and Alan
came and they said, you've arrived. This you could not
(24:42):
this is just risen to such a level, and it was.
It was the first time I felt that very interesting feeling,
which was you was I only speak this way because
you're an actor, and you know what I mean. If
I did another run of Display, yes it would improve.
It would always improve, because you always grew. You're always
on your own shoulders. But this particular run, which was
(25:05):
advertised to be my last and has to be, I
could not do it again. One of the very last
performances I walked off stage was a matinee. The audience
was particularly keen. It was like a Chicago audience. And
I walked off and I had been really on the ball,
and I said out loud in the wings. I am satisfied.
(25:26):
Oh I have never felt that way or said that.
And I said to myself walking down the stairs to
a dressing room, I could do it better. If we
were going to run more, I would do it better.
But I am satisfied that was good enough.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Do you think that you knew you couldn't do it
again because just physically it's too taxing, or because you
did feel satiated and you did feel maybe I'm done
with this for now.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
You know, I announced it as the final run of Van,
And because the fact is to do a run a
VAN is a five to six month thing, I have
two months to learn it and be drilled with it.
You know, you have to be able to literally stand
up and say it without a pause, without not everything.
She's not in a prospective. You can never stop and think.
You must drive the play. You must drive it, and
(26:16):
you do drive it. And so to know something that
well requires quite a preparation. And that is how well
I knew it. And I was very pleased that I
could know something so well at eighty or then I
was seventy nine. Yeah, yeah, so it's yeah. So I thought, well,
all right, I'm happy with that. And I suppose, you know,
if some I don't know what circumstance it would be
(26:39):
where I had to give another half year of my
shorter and shorter life to do it. I suppose I could,
but I don't have any desire to. And I've already
said that was the last time. And I don't know
what city I would do a dinner. I've done it
in DC, I've done it in Austin. I've done it
on Broadway, you know, I've done it in Chicago, a
great theater city. And i've done it in Los Angeles,
(27:00):
so and sam Antonia that was a great theater.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Yeah, it's just a brilliant play and it's a brilliant performance.
And everyone who has seen it is lucky. I saw
it many times because I saw it in New York
twice and saw it in Chicago. Of course.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Well that's so just wonderful of you.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Well, just to watch it was like a masterclass, you know,
in that role, it was pretty astounding.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Well, I felt I just said this to somebody. I
felt that it was a mission and a gift to me.
I'm not a particularly spiritual person. I don't pray, I
don't think of you know, the divine, But that absolutely
fell on me from the heavens to do it. I
mean I have never I spent three years literally not
thinking of anything else to search that and to write it,
(27:46):
and then after that I hardly thought of anything else.
I was helping produce it. I was buying props on eBay,
I was getting dialect lessons, I was doing, you know,
so many things. I remember the name of that journalist,
Nancy Hu Nancy Hawswerth, the greatest piece in Yeah. So
after that thing with you, Yeah, Newsweek comes at this,
like this huge four page spread in Newsweek about the
(28:10):
I mean so yeah, things like that were happening all
the time to the play, and so it was I
feel I don't take any of that onto me. I
feel part of the thing that was gifted, you know,
to our culture to keep that particular American hero alive
in our culture. That is one way that she will
stay alive in our culture. Yes, I mean, I think
(28:31):
PBS is going to, you know, continue to carry it,
always be available on BBS, and people are doing it.
The rare intrimid actress wants to do it well, and
it does get done somewhat, but it's an enormous. It's
a it's a hell of the thing to decide you
want to just do.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Do you have any desire to write another even if
it's not for you, if it could be for someone else.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
No, I don't think so. I mean I might write
something else, but I don't think of play. I didn't
want to write play. I didn't want to right to
one person show. I wanted to do something creative about
Anne Richards. And that turned out to be the most
obvious and the most obvious thing to do. And it
did start with the thought, oh, I could play her,
(29:15):
And I thought in the movie of the week or
something about her life from the time she became sober
to the times she became governor. It was a very
interesting ten years. And I thought and thought about that,
and I never did anything about it. I was literally
chastising myself for not doing anything about it. I was
driving to work, I was driving to an f met
and I literally hit me like a thunderbolt. I've told
his story so many times, probably to you, that Oh,
(29:39):
I'm not doing anything about it because it should be
a play. Yeah, it's a one person show, for sure.
She's dealing directing with the audience that is for sure
what it is, and then they just didn't look back.
I didn't look back, and I researched for the family
and with her closest administration, which are also her closest trends,
and those most women are now women or my friends
(30:01):
in the matter, in my life too. So it's like
a gift to me.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Yeah, to all of us, Yeah, to all of us.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Can I ask you what it was like for you
when you were younger and figuring out your sexuality. Did
you have a moment like I did? You know, Oh,
if anyone finds this out, it's going to be bad
for my career. But in my real life I was
out like you were out, Like Yeah, I would always
go to the Emmys with Kelly, and you know, I
would always like But people didn't ask back then, which
(30:30):
people don't believe now when they say they didn't you
have a stady, I go, well, first of all, no
one asked me.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
They didn't, And you know, I wonder what I would
have said, because, as you said it, I did not
hide my relationships. I mean, I think I was about
thirty before I had one, but I think that at
that age I was aware so me thirty was what
in the seventies, for Christ's sake, And I think that
(30:56):
I was out in the world. But I was so
much out in the theater world, like I didn't well,
you know, I'm at work, right, I don't take my
lover partner to work obviously, so of course, but I
think I thought if I run in the social circles
of the theater, I can't because I thought it would
(31:17):
hurt my career. Absolutely, I thought it would, and of
course it wouldn't now, but it might have then. And
in the case, I didn't spend a lot of time
thinking about it. I think it was depressing, and I
think it was something that I just ticked off the box.
Don't go out in the theater world with a girlfriend. Yeah,
there wasn't always with someone. I spent a lot of
(31:38):
time not with anybody, so right, that didn't matter, right,
So but I think that I did worry that it
would hurt my career. Yeah, And nobody did ever rest
because then I was older and people were not about
to ask an older person, you know, like they always
placed such strong characters. I'm sure they're afraid that they
could meet with a strong rebuff of course, I am
nothing like the characters, like.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Exactly, how are you parents about it? Did you ever
discuss your parent it with your parents or was it
sort of don't ask, don't tell.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
No, it was sort of don't ask, don't tell for
a while, and my mother said a few things that
made me worry that she would be judgmental. And it
was actually about a male friend of mine who was
clearly gay, and she was upset about him being that way.
I thought, Mother, I mean, we're in trouble here. Exactly.
(32:28):
I think there was probably a period of I don't like,
maybe five years or so where it was don't ask,
don't tell. But then, you know, I don't think she
was happy talking about it. But then, over the course
of many years, two of the people I was with
she absolutely adored and that really turned her around.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Yeah, changed things.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
And then we still didn't talk about there because my
mother was not terribly direct when the subject was very personal.
She want't directed about herself either. My two sisters that
I begged her to write the story of her early
part of her life, and she did find me and
even it was quite restrained and polite. Yeah, she just
was She was a different era a different epoch, right,
(33:09):
at a different manner.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
That was the times too, right, the times. That's how
it was.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Yeah, people don't really realize that when I was even
growing up and knew I was gay from when I
was like twelve years old. You know, I didn't necessarily
have a word for it, but I knew that I
did not want to have a boyfriend ever. Ever, Like
I knew that at twelve years old.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Well, I did have a couple of boyfriends. I had
a boyfriend in college that we went continued on for
a while after college, and he actually died a few
years ago. Was unbelievably upsetting to speak of him no
longer on planet Earth. Right. And then I had a
few in the theater my first years and near ronal
Leeman was one of the like doored Ron Leieman as
(33:57):
a person and as a man and director friend. But
as I say, I was about twenty nine or thirty,
I just you know, I had this experience, had got
into a close relationship with a woman, and I just thought,
I didn't think this is it, this is the way
it's going to be. I thought, this is certainly something
I'm going to do now. Then I just you know
(34:17):
it became I think what happened is I think the
problem with the theater was that I did not go
to or did not hang out, and did not do
a lot of theater things, because if I did, I
would not have been able to bring the word I
was involved with. So I when I was not in
a relationship, I hung out in the theater and went
to the theater hangouts and hung out with my theater friends.
(34:37):
But when I was with someone, I did not. So
I think that I felt I sacrificed a lot of
conviviality with actor friends and there were my people, right.
I did that for a while, yeah, but not forever.
You and I.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
I've read a quote of yours where you said something
that I have always thought and said in different words.
Yours were more eloquent. But that doing Broadway is almost
as good as the dream of show business. Oh that's
the place where it's closest to what you imagine.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
That is closely And I like the life. Although I'm
a little old. No, I mean it's very hard. It's brutal,
that schedule, yes, but I like the life.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
I like that.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Thus, two three four hours you have after a show
in the barn to knight, which is really your own time.
You cannot be interrupted nobody. You know, it's two with
the morning. You know you're free. You've dispatched your effort
for the day, You've had a completion, and you're going
to renew it and begin the next day. And I
love the conviniality of it. I love the family at
the theater. I love knowing about it. I mean, I
(35:39):
read a lot of theater biographies when I was younger,
so that was just a life that I imagined being
a wonderful life. And then you have periods of time
where you worked with me where you could renew yourself.
And you know, I had that life for a number
of years and I valued it very much. Yeah, you know,
and I did a few shows since Anne, So it
goes on. You studied with Stella Athla, the legendary late.
(36:02):
I studied with her late. You know, when I first
came into New York, I went to her studio, and
the registrar so intimidated me that I never went back.
And then about when I'd been already working like fifteen years,
I worked with a wonderful Canadian classical actor named Nuie
Tran who has since going to his reward, I'm sure,
and he said, you all people should be studying with
(36:23):
Cella Avers. So I went and auditioned, and I actually
I had met with her. She didn't make an audition,
and I went to her classes and the first class
I was at, the penny dropped, and I thought, Holy God, almighty,
because I had been working for fifteen years, so that
everything she said was the penny dropping everything, because I
already had the reality in my so fully so that
(36:46):
I mean, I looked at the young people around me
who were new young students at newbies, and I thought,
they're they're not understanding what gold is it. They're not
understanding that what she's saying. And she had because she
had a real technique, and you can understand a lot
of it in her books. Her book is very good
because she was a tremendous intellect and a tremendous charismatic person. Yes,
(37:10):
I've had it really changed my life so much so
that I was on a soap opera, the only one
I was ever one, and I quit after one year
because I wanted. She was eighty at the time, and
I had studied with her very much for and I
took every class she offered for two years. I was
in every class. I was like a college student there.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
And then I got prison buddies in that, you know,
and that was that for a while.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
Yeah. How long have you and Sarah been together?
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Now? We just had our eighth anniversary in January.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
How wonderful and always? Is it like the biggest gift
of a lifetime to love again?
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Absolutely, the relationship of lifetime. Well, we've been through a
lot together. Adjusting and our age difference causes a lot
of problems, not problems, but I mean it's something it's
an aspect that creates issues that we have to cope with.
She puts up with a lot because you know, I
don't have the energy that W used to. But I
think we're actually very well balanced and the kinds of
(38:11):
things we enjoy and the way we talk about things
that we do together and see and we're well lashed
in some ways and not well in another story.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Everybody is, I guess, yeah, just like life.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
So but it's in working out those things that you
really find each other, you know, working out the places
that you are rough edges Shafe. So eight years is
a pretty good period of time. And we have a
shorthand it's.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
A pretty good run. Honey, you go and keep going.
I love when you grabbed her zipper at that fashion
thing or whatever. You grabbed her by the zipper. I
was like, this is you. Guys look so happy all
the time, which makes me so happy to watch pictures
of you or videos.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
She has wonderful high spirits, and you know, she's irresistible
and she's so fun. She's a very playful personality and
I tend to be more are an inward, and she
draws me out. So we have a good conversation. And
we were just in fratce a couple of times, and
that was just unbelievable, so thrilling.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
I read that when you watch her in precarious positions
on Horror Story, it's not it's an upsetting for you. No,
it wouldn't be for me too.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
I can't there's some things I cannot watch, And when
she's in jeopardy, I just can't watch it. First of all,
she really prows herself into those things, and she looks
vulnerable and she's exhausted. Sometimes those things are hard to
play and sometimes you think, yeah, but all of this
is expense of spirit in the name of what I mean.
It depends what the project is, of course, of course.
(39:41):
And you think about actors making enormous emotional sacrifices and
you think, well, but they're playing hamlets, so yes they should. Yeah,
but you have to think sometimes what what is the material?
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Right? Yeah? Sometimes I think that too. I'll go on
something and I'll be doing something and I don't think, now,
why did I think I had to do this again? Like?
What why was I trying to prove? Taking this part?
Speaker 2 (40:06):
At what we're used to giving up our will and
giving up our self protection a lot, and in some
ways it brings great things to us because we're very willing. Yeah,
And you know, I tend to like actors going a bit.
I think actors admire the cliche things people think about actors,
that they're jealous and suspicious of each other. Actually, I
don't see that, I see I don't see it either.
(40:29):
I see actors being very supportive of each other. And boy,
if I love an actor, the.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
No, exactly same with me. If I love someone's performance,
I'm gonna shout it through the streets because Marco Martindale's
Oh she's fantastic, you know, I just saw Sean Hayes
Sean Hayes and good night.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
Ask oh I hear that's extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
It was one of the most brilliant performances I've ever
seen by a guy on a stage. I was absolutely
blown that's in New York, now, right New York. Blown away.
I was completely blown away.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
We're about to go. I will make sure we see that.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
You must see it.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
I heard that it's one of the greatest son No
performances ever.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
It's extraordinary, it really is.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
Yeah, I want to see it for sure.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
You have been delightful. I thank you so much for
coming on this.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Rosie. You're the best.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Oh honey. I just love getting to talk to people
I admire so much, and I admire you your whole career.
The way you carry yourself in the world. It's a
brilliant thing, really is Alan.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Taylor, Rosie, thank you. You know I think the world
of you.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
The world. Okay, well, thanks for doing this and I
will talk to you soon.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Holland Taylor will be right back with questions from the
audience at Holland Taylor fantastic. I mean, I just love her. Hey,
(42:03):
we got some questions from you guys. Here they come.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Hi, Rosie.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
My name is Anne. I'm from Missouri. I am a
longtime fan and loving your podcast. These interviews are a
lot of fun and the highlight of my week to
listen to. I am also a librarian and I love
to read and love to give book recommendations, and so
I was wondering what book you might have read lately
(42:28):
that you would recommend, or if there's just a book
in general that you think everybody should read.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Thanks well, thank you, Ann, what a great question. I
love to read, I really do. I mean, I don't
find as much time for it now as I used
to when I was younger. But I did just finish
John Irving's book The Chair Lift, and it's a big
old book. It's like a thousand pages, and you know,
I love all of his books. The Cider House Rules
(42:55):
had a profound effect on me when I was a
young reader, and Prayer for Meanie and Hotel New Hampshire.
There were so many John Irving books that totally stayed
with me and had a really profound impact, as I said,
on my growing up and my perspective on the world.
And I read that he lived in the Hampton, So
(43:17):
when we were going out to go to the nightclubs
there and the Hampton's like Obi, which is the Oak
Beach Inn, I used to look for John Irving everywhere
I went. I also thought he was one of the
most handsome men I had ever seen in my life.
So I'm so happy that in his later years now
he has written another wonderful, beefy, beautiful novel. And I
(43:40):
would say he's one of my favorite authors of all time.
Another one of my favorite authors is Pat Conroy. Any
and everything that Pat Conroy wrote I adored. He was
such a voice of the South and so beautiful in
his prose. I just feel like a book you can
get of Pat Conroy you should get. And another one
(44:03):
I'm going to just pick out of the Air and Rice,
who I adored as a person and a woman and
I love as a writer, and I used to wait
in line to get her to sign my books. But
there's one book that she wrote that I thought was
just spectacular, and it's called Feast of All Saints. It's
(44:25):
just a story about the creole culture at New Orleans
and it's absolutely riveting and I loved it so much.
I mean, there are so many books that I memoirs,
that I will consume memoirs voraciously. I just can't get
enough of memoirs. But for now I would pick those
and thank you for being a librarian. And you know,
(44:47):
you guys have the fight coming up with you know,
the radical people who want to ban books and knowledge.
I mean, boy, and we going backwards. We are really
going backwards America, and we got to stop this. It's
too it's too reductive, and it's too bigoted.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
It's too.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
A sleep frankly, and nobody wants to go backwards. Nobody
wants to do that. So thank you librarians, you, Anne,
and every librarian across the country who has a love
for books and a desire to protect them. And read
band books people, that's my recommendation, read band books. Thank
you Anne very much for the question. And I think
(45:30):
we have another question today. Hit it, Hey Roe.
Speaker 4 (45:33):
My name's Jill calling from Long Beach, California. I've been
a fan of yours for a really long time, since
a League of their own when you were best sees
with Madonna, because I too was besties with Madonna in
my mind, and now I listen to your podcast every
week and that's been super fun, So thank you for that.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
I'm calling in because my wife and I have a.
Speaker 4 (45:54):
Six year old and a three and a half year old,
and my six year old was recently asked by one
of her classmates how she could have two moms, and
she's sort of froze. She didn't know how to respond.
And we've been, i think, preparing her for these types
of questions her whole life indirectly. And you know, we
(46:18):
have a fantastic group of lesbian moms with their kids
who are all around the same age, and we get
together several times a week, go to the beach, we
have dinners, we have dance parties, we do lots of
fun stuff. And she knows that it's totally normal to
have two moms, totally normal to have two dads, same
(46:40):
thing for a mom and a dad, or being raised
by grandparents, or she knows that there's all types of
different families, but she's never had to defend her family.
So just wondering if you ever dealt with that with
your own kids, and what sort of advice you gave them,
and how to answer those questions without feeling defensive or
(47:04):
feeling like your kids were singled out or you know,
different thinks through love you.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
Thanks Jill. That's such a great question. And I think
it's wonderful that you have a lot of other gay
families in your orbit, so that your kid can see
the normalcy that it's not simply her, but she is
different than most of the kids in her class in
that she has two mommies. And when Parker asked me that,
I think he was five right around that age. He said,
(47:33):
how come I don't have a daddy? And I said,
because you have a mommy who wants another mommy, So
if there was a daddy, you wouldn't have me as
a mommy. We're a two mommy family. And some people
have a mommy and a daddy, and some people have
two daddies, and some people have two mommies, and some
(47:55):
people have even more. There's step parents, there's bonus parents,
there's all kinds of ways. But what I told my
kid was just the fact, you know, if I was
your little girl, I wouldn't be defensive. I wouldn't be
I would just say, oh, because I have the kind
of mommies that don't want to marry a daddy. They
want to marry mommy. So they fell in love and
got married and they had us. You know. I mean
(48:19):
it's as simple as that. When they're kids, you know,
they don't need big, long discussions. I think they just
need something that they can say.
Speaker 3 (48:26):
You know.
Speaker 1 (48:26):
My kid also asked me that when they were little,
my kids about you know, why was I adopted? You know?
And I said, well, there was only one thing that
your tummy mommy knew, and that's that she wasn't ready
to be a mom. And so God looked inside and
he found your right mommy, and that's me, and we're
a good match, you know. So I would give them
(48:46):
kid like answers that would seem to satisfy the brain
of another six year old. So so that's what I
would do. I would just say that, and it seemed
to have worked. My kids definitely used that. I heard
them telling kids that sometimes when we had playdates, like
you know, when kids first started coming over when they're
(49:08):
five or six, and they go, you have two moms,
And I remember Blakey going, Yep, isn't that cool. It's like, yeah,
it is kind of cool, but you know you are
going to be different. Listen, if you're gay in society.
You're considered different because you're not the majority. They say
ten percent of the population is gay. I believe it's
a lot higher than that, but that's what the statistics show,
(49:31):
and there are going to be different or singled out
because of that, especially in the culture as it is now,
where there's the vilification of anyone gay or different, and
it's it's very scary and tragic. But I would say
to the kid, just what I told you. I got
a mommy that wants another mommy and they fell in
love and they got married and that's all okay. So
(49:55):
I hope that works for you, and good luck to
you and your family and your and just raise them
in the light, raise them in the truth, tell them
what's going on, and understand their feelings. You know, it's
not easy to be different in your first grade class,
So have compassion as we move on through raising them. Right.
(50:18):
That's my little grandmotherly advice. I hope that you liked it.
Thanks for writing in, Jill. I appreciate it. And if
any of you want to leave a voice memo, just
like Anne and Jill did, I would love to hear
from you. We pick a couple of questions every week
and we do them here on our podcast. So all
you have to do is write to Onward Rosie at
(50:41):
gmail dot com and leave a little voice memo for
me and we might put it on the program here. Hey,
thank you everybody. Guess who's up next week? One of
my favorite favorite favorite shows on TV is Somebody Somewhere.
It's on HBO and it stars Bridget Effett with a
stellar cast, perfectly cast show, a beautiful, beautiful show on HBO.
(51:06):
And Bridget who is an lbgt QIA queer ally and
always has been her whole life and career. She made
a living for a long time as kind of a
body cabaret singer and now she's killing it as an
actress on HBO. So, Bridget Everett, we'll be on the
podcast next Tuesday. Look for that on Onward right here
(51:29):
and iHeart thank you everybody. We'll catch you next week.
Hey, everybody, it's me Rosie O'Donnell. And guess what, it's
June all month, as my nana would say, it's Pride month.
It's Pride month. And for a very long time, my
family would go into the city. And I remember one
year when I was about twelve, we were in the
city and there was the Pride Parade, which is now
(00:31):
a march, actually not a parade at all, but back
then that's what it was called the Pride Parade. And
we went in and there were a bunch of like
dikes on bikes and motorcycles and people walking with them
because they go very slow, and giving out flyers. And
this woman came over to me. Now I'm in my
overalls and a backwards hat and converse sneakers, so I
(00:51):
don't necessarily think she was a psychic, but she came
over to me and said, here, I thought you might
want this. And I remember, at twelve feeling so exposed,
used and seen, and yet a little part of me
felt happy, like, oh, these are my people, you know,
which is hard to believe now that I have a
ten year old And I remember myself being twelve so
(01:12):
vividly and having these strong feelings about myself and my
life and just discovering that I was a gay person
and moving on from there. It's been quite a journey,
I have to tell you, from nineteen seventy four till
now me twelve and up right. Well. Pride Month is
(01:34):
celebrated in June and it honors the nineteen sixty nine
Stonewall Rebellion, which most people I hope know about probably
did not learn about it in school sadly, but it
was a tipping point for the gay and transgendered people
who were relentlessly terrorized, beaten, and murdered for being who
(01:54):
they were. And here in twenty twenty three, we find
ourselves at a tipping point once again, where lives are
literally on the line. Gay, trans queer we have become
the scapegoat of a faltering GOP who are latching onto
a fascist playbook of blame and division. At Stonewall, we
stood our ground with our allies and rose up together.
(02:17):
We were not silent, and we will continue to do
so until we have equal freedom without exception, and we'll
do it every year. In the month of June we
highlight it, but for us it's every day. It is
gay Pride. It's very upsetting as a sixty one year
old gay woman to see what's happening to the trans
(02:39):
community with over five hundred different bills, one hundred and
fifty of them specifically transgender people other targets. I really
hope that we can make a change in the current
pop culture political zeitgeist, that we can take a look
(02:59):
at what the far fringes of the right wing are
doing to human beings in this country because they think
they can. It's very depressing, I have to say, But
I believe in this new generation coming up. I believe
in the millennials. I believe that the gay people who
(03:23):
have been around forever and will continue to be around forever.
You cannot legislate us out of existence. And that's the truth.
So in honor of Pride Month of June, we're going
to have all gay people and gay allies this month.
How's that? And the first person we interviewed for this
wonderful month of gay pride and celebration is the one
(03:46):
and only Holland Taylor. Now, I love Holland Taylor. I've
always loved her. What an amazing actress. She is an
activist and beautiful woman, person soul. She's pretty phenomenal. And
you know, usually when I come in here and get
on the headphones and sit on the zoom thing and
get everyone ready, we start at this, you know, right away,
(04:10):
like the countdown counts down, and then we go well,
I started talking to Holland once I saw her beautiful
face on the zoom and we started chatting, and then
we sort of got into the interview. But it starts nowhere. Okay.
We were talking about our skin conditions and the things
that older women talk about. Perhaps we were talking about
(04:31):
when we were kids and how we used to get
in the sun all the time, and then we sort
of start the car. It's a weird beginning, that's basically
what I'm telling you. It's kind of a weird beginning,
but it's a wonderful conversation. And I'm so happy that
we get to have Holland Taylor to kick off our
Gay Pride Month celebration. And I know it's really lgbt
(04:53):
QIA Pride Month, but you know, us older gays, we
just say gay and it's queer inclusive everybody, everybody. So
that's what we have today, a conversation with Holland Taylor,
and I hope you enjoy it. Stick around here comes
(05:21):
I think if you're over fifty, we grew up with
no sunscreen. I know, right, baby oil? Did you do that?
Baby oil on your face?
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Oh? And tench foil reflecting things? Yes, me too, around
your face, so that you really just brutalized your face.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Those were the days.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
So but since the pandemic, I didn't do anything.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Well, thank you for being here.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
It's a pleasure now.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
I didn't either. In fact, during those three years Holland
during the pandemic, I think a lot of us didn't
take care of our normal things because we were so
thrown off.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
You know, well you can't. I mean, were you going
to go to a dentist? I never did.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
I didn't either.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
I mean I took really good care of my teeth,
but I didn't go to a dentist.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Right.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
I really am walking around occasionally feeling I think I'm
kind of bruised by the whole experience as to life itself.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
I agree, because I think.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
We felt a vulnerability that was unlike any other. And
I remember when I hike, or I used to hike,
and when the pandemic first really set in, I felt
the air was dangerous. I worried about the air, and
I didn't feel safe anywhere, even way up on the
top of my hill overlooking the whole city. I thought
(06:31):
I just told a sense of vulnerability that well, I'm
sure can't compare with people in wartime, but it's just
strange different, But it was close, yeah, strange. And also
the world was no longer a peaceful place. I mean
it's like dangers lurked, yes, but there are so many
peoples and nations that have been in all kinds of
(06:54):
danger for millennia. So for them it's like, please, it's
just one more thing I would.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Imagine, right, But you know what got me during it
was first of all the intense loneliness that I didn't
realize how much I needed just normal human interaction. That
was that just sucked out of your life.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Absolutely, I completely agree. And you know, like if I'm
in a crowd and you know, I'm looking jostle somebody
and you sort of hold their shoulder to let them
know that you're there, and you're just going to ooch
your way around them, Yes, I mean that kind of
I've always been very not touching, feely, but in contact
with people, and if I'm going to thank somebody for something,
(07:35):
I have my hands on their shoulders or I hold
their hands, and I just felt a lack of humanity,
particularly in LA I actually worked a lot during the pandemic,
which is kind of amazing because I have to say
the stress, the stress of getting sick and causing work
a stoppage which never happened. But you know, I revived,
and I did my final run of an here at
(07:56):
capacity in the playoffs.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Yes, I do know.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Of course, I wanted to do it on the West Coast,
so I thought I'd done it in every theater capital
in America, I should do it on the West Coast
myself and then release it. You know, it's a lot.
It is a lot. It's ten years since Broadway. Then
it's you a member of the size of the polace, right,
so doing it was already its own test. But the
(08:20):
COVID theear that theater. It cost them four hundred and
eighty thousand dollars to mount it, and I'd gotten sicker
in the run that we've lost the entire amount. This
trace was just right, just trrendous. And I think people
go on movie sets feeling the same way. Yeah, like
I could cost this movie studio a half million dollars
in three days, you know, correct.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
I did two filmings during the pandemic, and first of all,
the first one just took forever because it was started
at the beginning and everyone didn't know what to do,
and so it ended up, you know, taking like a
year and a half to film the ten episode series.
And yeah, but everybody was panicked as well, and you
didn't get that thing that I love about sets where
(09:04):
you talk to the grip guy and he's just had
a baby and you get to know everybody. But you
couldn't even talk to people who were not in zone
one right, right, And it felt very different than the
movie making experience.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
I agree. I've done television series and the movie and
that play and few other things and flying to New
York to do billions. I mean, it's been wild, and
I guess it's essentially over in that people are released
from the strictures. But of course it's not over in
the sense of I know two people who got it
in the past couple of weeks unexpectedly, probably because they're
(09:38):
letting their garden down.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Yes, I went to the doctor today and she told
me to get a fifth booster. Right, So she said
to me, you know you're sixty one, go get it.
You know, don't mess with this, go get it.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
So you had your first wive like in September or
October or something, the one for omicron, right, they don't
getting anything else.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Now, I had that one, and now you need another.
Me too, exactly, me too.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
I had mine in September.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
I also got my shingle shot two days ago.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
I've gotten that.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Yeah, shingle shot is good. It's funny as you get older,
you know everything, Like I realize I see a doctor
like every two months, a different doctor, but you know,
maybe different. But as you get older, this is what
you do. You know, you try to stay as healthy
as you can and you try to get as plugged
in to your doctor. So you know, what's going on.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Every two months isn't bad, right, compared to some people
that go every couple of weeks. Well, you know, it's
it's getting older. As an offer, siss Bet Davis said,
and it's really true. It's a challenge. I feel like
I've been let off lightly compared to so many of
my friends who have really serious challenges. It's life.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
You know.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
It's almost like you have to be older to be
wise enough to withstand what happens to you an agent.
It's so true, and the ultimate agent, which is that
you fall over and the croak. You know, and you
have to you have to come to some degree of
acceptance of that or you can't enjoy the day. I
sort of discovered that as a bargain this year. I
(11:06):
haven't achieved it, but I've discovered that that's the bargain
I have to strike. Okay, I accept I am going
to die, yes, and it's not going to be a
long time from now. Yes, And so I've got to
enjoy the day. And I've always been one who let
worry and stuff just fuck the shit on my days.
And I just guess, can't do it. Can't do it
(11:27):
me too, Holland can't do it anymore.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
No, we'll be right back with Holland Taylor. And you
(11:56):
know it's funny. I turned sixty a year ago, so
I'm now sixty one, and I was like, what do
I want to do for myself? I'm sixty My mother
died at thirty nine, and I thought, this is a
huge accomplishment, you know, I imagined following her footsteps to
be gone in my forties or something. And so I
turned sixty and I rented a house on the beach
(12:16):
in Malibu. Great, and I got a chef. I lost
some weight, I got healthy March, I did more therapy.
I did some EMDR with the eyeball thing.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Oh really, that's interesting. What is that EMDR.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
It's for trauma. It's an eye movement therapy, and they
show you sort of it. It's you don't have to
do anything particularly, they lead you through what you're supposed
to do, and it unleashes trauma that you had locked
inside of you that you weren't aware of. And it's
something in the brain.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
But you work with someone, you work with a person.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yes, you work with a person.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Have you done any of the psychedelics, Like, have you
done psilocybin?
Speaker 1 (12:55):
No, I'm totally afraid, Holland.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
I did psilocybin. If you can belive in that our
trip where I could literally had to be walked. I
couldn't walk without support after it, and it was wild,
and I think pardonly the benefit of it is that
I had the sense of having done it, you know,
having risked something, and that it was a very interesting experience.
(13:18):
So like in my case, I went because I said,
I have a lot of fear and dread. I mean,
who does it? They have a lot of fear and
dreaded because I'm eighty I just hearned eighty. So I
have twenty years on you.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Yes, so big birthday and.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
So they you know, the indigenous peoples call it medicine
because it treats what you need treated. And so basically
my experience on psilocybinal was full of fear and dread.
It's almost like, yes, you fear, fear and dread, so
here it is, this is what you have to face.
(13:54):
And it was wild. I will do it again. I
think it's something people could do every couples. It's too
big a deal to do like often, but it's wild.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Yeah. I have a lot of friends who did ayahuasca,
not for me, not for me.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
They are nothing that involves puking. Nothing involves puking with others.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
That's what I said. I'm not throwing up in public
and pooping my pants in a tent on a cot.
I'm not doing it.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
We're in private. I'm not joking impromitting exactly, not as
an elective.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Choice, not as something you volunteer for.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Correct exactly. There might be that, you know coming for
other reasons.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
They say if you're on antidepressants, that you should not
do ayahuasca, that it does something to the serotonin levels
that you're already kind of trying to keep in your
brain with taking an SSRI. So yes, I don't know,
I just but I'm never I've never done anything besides
marijuana and beer. Those are my two big vices right there.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Marijuana is kind of a downar for me.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Ultimately, Yeah, you don't like it, so.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
I don't do it. I don't hardly drink anymore. I mean,
it's just like I think, you know, no at.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
One one, No, because I don't want to miss a
day and I want to feel well. Yeah, exactly. The
next day you wake up and you know, I have
a ten year old here, and she's got a lot
of questions. And so from the time I open my eyes,
I'm engaged. You know, she's asking me things like what
is her name? Her name is Dakota, she has autism.
(15:19):
She's ten years old.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
My name is Dakota, and I have questions? How divine?
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Yes, she has lots of questions and She told me
about a month or two ago that she was non binary,
and I said, oh, that's fantastic, whatever you want to be, honey.
And then she told me last night that she was asexual,
and I said, honey, you're ten. Everyone's a sexual, right.
You got to wait till you're in the teenage year, sixteen,
(15:46):
come on this stuff. But you know, she's so smart, Holland.
She's so smart it would be just blow your mind
what she asks people and what she thinks of. What
are her thoughts here?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
You know, she's curious, Well, are you out in Malibu
now or are you from New York.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
I'm in Malibu. I moved here to do a series
two years ago. And the school that she is attending,
it's like the number one school in the country for
neurodivergent kids who also have learning disabilities. So she also
had dyslexia. When we came to the school. In third grade,
she couldn't read it all. And she used to bring
her books to school in New York and pretend to
(16:24):
be reading them at lunch because she felt so shamed
that she couldn't read. And now she's reading Harry Potter
in one grade year.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
She was able to read a whole Harry Potter book.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Fantastic. That's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
That is wonderful. Yeah, it's just great.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
So we're out here. We're out here now, and it's
such a different way of life. I lived here for
ten years early on in my career, and then when
I had my first child, I moved back home so
that they could be with their cousins and whatnot, and
then we moved out here for her schooling and for
my work. So I don't know, it's kind of hard.
I have five kids, you know, I missed the other four,
(16:59):
but they're own and out, so it's not like they
were hanging at home with me, you know.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
I mean, look what you've done, really, Yeah, wasn't achievement.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
I know sometimes I think, wow, that was a lot
of that was a big bite to take, o'donald, you know,
but I've loved every minute of it.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
I've done a lot of good work during the period too.
Amazingly enough, while you were raising those kids, Yeah, we
did a lot of things.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Did you ever want to have children? Was that part
of your growing up? No?
Speaker 2 (17:26):
I never did. No, I might as well have been
the only child because my sisters were considerably older and
they were away at school, so I was left to
my own devices a lot, which I didn't find. I mean,
it was benign neglect, as they say, and so I
had to entertain myself. But I have add and so
entertaining myself was really a challenge. I mean, I didn't
(17:46):
know what to do with myself. I had a lot
of things that I was interested in, but I didn't
know how to wish to do first and how to
pick it, and I could not realize my time. It
was really kind of helpless in that regard. But I'm
used to being on my own, not being unhappy with it,
but just being a little bit like Ladi da di da,
ladi da? What shall I do?
Speaker 1 (18:08):
And were your parents busy working like people in that
time or were they just not very emotional creatures.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Well, it was a really different error. I mean you're
talking the forties and fifties now, that was a different error, right,
And I don't think parents felt they were neglecting their
children by leaving them in their room to play, right,
you know. I think I was a playpen baby because
when I was very little, as I say, my sisters
were away but my mother had her own things that
she had to do, and so I was safe in
(18:37):
her playpen. But I'm using myself and then in my room.
And also in that day and age, from a very
young age, I just wandered out in the whole laborhood. Yeah,
I just wandered around. Little kid wandering around, but they
would think anything of about it. In the forties or fifties,
kids are out playing, go out and play.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Yeah, in the sixties, my mother would say, everyone outside
and home when the streetlights go on.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
That's so great.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
So we would be out, five kids, yeah, all day
until dinner.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Yeah, my mother didn't ever say that, but that's essentially
what happened. Yeah, And I think I can sort of
vaguely remember having ways to remember where I walked so
that I could find my way home. We had a
stream that I walked up that was behind my house.
There were railroad tracks and I walked along.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
You know.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
There were just different neighborhoods I wandered in that were interesting,
in little woods and stuff like that. I meant, you
were no more letter churel fact today than fire.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
No. I don't even let her go to the movies
with their friends. Don't. I don't let them get on
my sight, mostly because it's so terrifying. Ye know, well
it is, I.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Mean, today's earld. It's just almost unbelievable. Really, if you
and I had been told as young people what this
would be like now, we would simply not believe it.
But then if you you know, I don't want to,
we could just scream about politics and both of them
go mad. But if January fifth of twenty twenty, if
you had told me what was going to happen January sixth,
you said, not on your own life, not in this country,
(20:03):
not what happened?
Speaker 1 (20:05):
And do you remember watching it that day? Partly? And
I with a kind of.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Awe and a kind of shell shocked doom, like I
can't believe this is even happening. It was pinched me.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
It looked like a movie. It looked like a movie, said,
it didn't look like it was real life. I remember going,
what the is happening?
Speaker 2 (20:25):
And so violent?
Speaker 1 (20:26):
So violent? And then to try to pass it off
to us as a normal day of tourists. It's ridiculous.
Don't believe what you're seeing?
Speaker 2 (20:35):
You know, it's really shocked.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
I know, really we shouldn't even go there. Do you
remember You probably don't. Do you remember the first time
we met.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
That we met, guy? It must have been a very
long time ago, Rosey.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
It's a very long time ago. It was at Norman
Lear's house, oh my, in Malibu, I believe, and he
used to have these gatherings of people. And I walked
in and you were on the couch and I walked
by you and I'm like, oh my god, that's Holland Taylor.
And I don't even know if I introduced myself to you,
but I remember vividly that was the first time that
I was in your presence well, And like Sarah Paulson,
(21:11):
I was also struck by your beauty. Oh my god,
you were very very I was very struck. I was
captivated by how you looked. I was like, look at her,
you know, and you're such a phenomenal actress. I had
known you for forever doing what you do best. You know.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Well, I feel like we've known each other all our
professional lives. I guess not quite all, but most a
lot of it. I remember you doing something so extraordinary
for Anne in Chicago, and you know, this was a
production of play and research a written play and a
series of like eight or nine runs which have been
(21:47):
absolutely blessed, like you know, magic and a bottle. I
mean the blessings, the good fortune that has fallen on
that play, as if by magic. Being invited to do
the Kennedy Center at the Commuty Center right after you
right became that huge theater in Chicago, the Schubert, the
Old Schubert, which is then called the Bank of America Theater.
(22:08):
Give me a break. But Newsweek, Tina Brown was then
publishing New Sweep. The great Tina Brown, one of the
great women of all time, great media person, great writer,
a great publisher and promoter of things. And she got
wind that I was doing this play, and I guess
(22:29):
she heard about earlier productions of it in Austin, and
she assigned. At first it was Marie Brenner, and then
it was another writer who I adore in my company.
I've forgotten the names go first, as you know I do. Anyway,
to do a big piece on ann before it came
to New York. The interviews were before Chicago, So I
(22:50):
said for a piece in Newsweek about my play. Yes,
so in Chicago we had that that was going to happen.
We got invited to You're shown you came to see
the play, which was an incredible shot in the arm
for the play. We're going to be sold out. I
think we did sell out chicag good and also but
it was a wonderful interview because you're interested, you're interesting,
(23:15):
and you're interested, and it was wonderful to be able
to speak nationally for the play. And that was the
first time I did until the Gounty. Second.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Well, what an amazing job as a writer, never mind
as a performer. You were channeling Anne Richards, channeling her.
It was one of the most magical things I've ever
seen on Broadway. I've ever seen on live theater, and
you were her. It was so unbelievably lovely to feel
her presence again, well for me too because I was
(23:46):
friendly with her and yeah, yes, and to get to
but you were doing it, so I don't know if
you could feel the awe like I was like, she's
back from the beyond, She's back. There she is, you know.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
I think a loved people felt that way. Uh well,
each iteration of it, I got closer and closer, and
I always continue to polish the text, improve the text, polished, polished, cut, cut,
ad add polish and polished cut right through to Pasadena.
This last up and by Broadway, I was a notch
(24:19):
better than Chicago. And I had done DC after that,
and then after Broadway, I did it two years later
in Austin. That's where it was filmed, and that's where
it's It's still on PBS and Broadway HD day performances.
And then this last run, missus Seal came and Alan
came and they said, you've arrived. This you could not
(24:42):
this is just risen to such a level, and it was.
It was the first time I felt that very interesting feeling,
which was you was I only speak this way because
you're an actor, and you know what I mean. If
I did another run of Display, yes it would improve.
It would always improve, because you always grew. You're always
on your own shoulders. But this particular run, which was
(25:05):
advertised to be my last and has to be, I
could not do it again. One of the very last
performances I walked off stage was a matinee. The audience
was particularly keen. It was like a Chicago audience. And
I walked off and I had been really on the ball,
and I said out loud in the wings. I am satisfied.
(25:26):
Oh I have never felt that way or said that.
And I said to myself walking down the stairs to
a dressing room, I could do it better. If we
were going to run more, I would do it better.
But I am satisfied that was good enough.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Do you think that you knew you couldn't do it
again because just physically it's too taxing, or because you
did feel satiated and you did feel maybe I'm done
with this for now.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
You know, I announced it as the final run of Van,
And because the fact is to do a run a
VAN is a five to six month thing, I have
two months to learn it and be drilled with it.
You know, you have to be able to literally stand
up and say it without a pause, without not everything.
She's not in a prospective. You can never stop and think.
You must drive the play. You must drive it, and
(26:16):
you do drive it. And so to know something that
well requires quite a preparation. And that is how well
I knew it. And I was very pleased that I
could know something so well at eighty or then I
was seventy nine. Yeah, yeah, so it's yeah. So I thought, well,
all right, I'm happy with that. And I suppose, you know,
if some I don't know what circumstance it would be
(26:39):
where I had to give another half year of my
shorter and shorter life to do it. I suppose I could,
but I don't have any desire to. And I've already
said that was the last time. And I don't know
what city I would do a dinner. I've done it
in DC, I've done it in Austin. I've done it
on Broadway, you know, I've done it in Chicago, a
great theater city. And i've done it in Los Angeles,
(27:00):
so and sam Antonia that was a great theater.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Yeah, it's just a brilliant play and it's a brilliant performance.
And everyone who has seen it is lucky. I saw
it many times because I saw it in New York
twice and saw it in Chicago. Of course.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Well that's so just wonderful of you.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Well, just to watch it was like a masterclass, you know,
in that role, it was pretty astounding.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Well, I felt I just said this to somebody. I
felt that it was a mission and a gift to me.
I'm not a particularly spiritual person. I don't pray, I
don't think of you know, the divine, But that absolutely
fell on me from the heavens to do it. I
mean I have never I spent three years literally not
thinking of anything else to search that and to write it,
(27:46):
and then after that I hardly thought of anything else.
I was helping produce it. I was buying props on eBay,
I was getting dialect lessons, I was doing, you know,
so many things. I remember the name of that journalist,
Nancy Hu Nancy Hawswerth, the greatest piece in Yeah. So
after that thing with you, Yeah, Newsweek comes at this,
like this huge four page spread in Newsweek about the
(28:10):
I mean so yeah, things like that were happening all
the time to the play, and so it was I
feel I don't take any of that onto me. I
feel part of the thing that was gifted, you know,
to our culture to keep that particular American hero alive
in our culture. That is one way that she will
stay alive in our culture. Yes, I mean, I think
(28:31):
PBS is going to, you know, continue to carry it,
always be available on BBS, and people are doing it.
The rare intrimid actress wants to do it well, and
it does get done somewhat, but it's an enormous. It's
a it's a hell of the thing to decide you
want to just do.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Do you have any desire to write another even if
it's not for you, if it could be for someone else.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
No, I don't think so. I mean I might write
something else, but I don't think of play. I didn't
want to write play. I didn't want to right to
one person show. I wanted to do something creative about
Anne Richards. And that turned out to be the most
obvious and the most obvious thing to do. And it
did start with the thought, oh, I could play her,
(29:15):
And I thought in the movie of the week or
something about her life from the time she became sober
to the times she became governor. It was a very
interesting ten years. And I thought and thought about that,
and I never did anything about it. I was literally
chastising myself for not doing anything about it. I was
driving to work, I was driving to an f met
and I literally hit me like a thunderbolt. I've told
his story so many times, probably to you, that Oh,
(29:39):
I'm not doing anything about it because it should be
a play. Yeah, it's a one person show, for sure.
She's dealing directing with the audience that is for sure
what it is, and then they just didn't look back.
I didn't look back, and I researched for the family
and with her closest administration, which are also her closest trends,
and those most women are now women or my friends
(30:01):
in the matter, in my life too. So it's like
a gift to me.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Yeah, to all of us, Yeah, to all of us.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Can I ask you what it was like for you
when you were younger and figuring out your sexuality. Did
you have a moment like I did? You know, Oh,
if anyone finds this out, it's going to be bad
for my career. But in my real life I was
out like you were out, Like Yeah, I would always
go to the Emmys with Kelly, and you know, I
would always like But people didn't ask back then, which
(30:30):
people don't believe now when they say they didn't you
have a stady, I go, well, first of all, no
one asked me.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
They didn't, And you know, I wonder what I would
have said, because, as you said it, I did not
hide my relationships. I mean, I think I was about
thirty before I had one, but I think that at
that age I was aware so me thirty was what
in the seventies, for Christ's sake, And I think that
(30:56):
I was out in the world. But I was so
much out in the theater world, like I didn't well,
you know, I'm at work, right, I don't take my
lover partner to work obviously, so of course, but I
think I thought if I run in the social circles
of the theater, I can't because I thought it would
(31:17):
hurt my career. Absolutely, I thought it would, and of
course it wouldn't now, but it might have then. And
in the case, I didn't spend a lot of time
thinking about it. I think it was depressing, and I
think it was something that I just ticked off the box.
Don't go out in the theater world with a girlfriend. Yeah,
there wasn't always with someone. I spent a lot of
(31:38):
time not with anybody, so right, that didn't matter, right,
So but I think that I did worry that it
would hurt my career. Yeah, And nobody did ever rest
because then I was older and people were not about
to ask an older person, you know, like they always
placed such strong characters. I'm sure they're afraid that they
could meet with a strong rebuff of course, I am
nothing like the characters, like.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Exactly, how are you parents about it? Did you ever
discuss your parent it with your parents or was it
sort of don't ask, don't tell.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
No, it was sort of don't ask, don't tell for
a while, and my mother said a few things that
made me worry that she would be judgmental. And it
was actually about a male friend of mine who was
clearly gay, and she was upset about him being that way.
I thought, Mother, I mean, we're in trouble here. Exactly.
(32:28):
I think there was probably a period of I don't like,
maybe five years or so where it was don't ask,
don't tell. But then, you know, I don't think she
was happy talking about it. But then, over the course
of many years, two of the people I was with
she absolutely adored and that really turned her around.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Yeah, changed things.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
And then we still didn't talk about there because my
mother was not terribly direct when the subject was very personal.
She want't directed about herself either. My two sisters that
I begged her to write the story of her early
part of her life, and she did find me and
even it was quite restrained and polite. Yeah, she just
was She was a different era a different epoch, right,
(33:09):
at a different manner.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
That was the times too, right, the times. That's how
it was.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Yeah, people don't really realize that when I was even
growing up and knew I was gay from when I
was like twelve years old. You know, I didn't necessarily
have a word for it, but I knew that I
did not want to have a boyfriend ever. Ever, Like
I knew that at twelve years old.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Well, I did have a couple of boyfriends. I had
a boyfriend in college that we went continued on for
a while after college, and he actually died a few
years ago. Was unbelievably upsetting to speak of him no
longer on planet Earth. Right. And then I had a
few in the theater my first years and near ronal
Leeman was one of the like doored Ron Leieman as
(33:57):
a person and as a man and director friend. But
as I say, I was about twenty nine or thirty,
I just you know, I had this experience, had got
into a close relationship with a woman, and I just thought,
I didn't think this is it, this is the way
it's going to be. I thought, this is certainly something
I'm going to do now. Then I just you know
(34:17):
it became I think what happened is I think the
problem with the theater was that I did not go
to or did not hang out, and did not do
a lot of theater things, because if I did, I
would not have been able to bring the word I
was involved with. So I when I was not in
a relationship, I hung out in the theater and went
to the theater hangouts and hung out with my theater friends.
(34:37):
But when I was with someone, I did not. So
I think that I felt I sacrificed a lot of
conviviality with actor friends and there were my people, right.
I did that for a while, yeah, but not forever.
You and I.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
I've read a quote of yours where you said something
that I have always thought and said in different words.
Yours were more eloquent. But that doing Broadway is almost
as good as the dream of show business. Oh that's
the place where it's closest to what you imagine.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
That is closely And I like the life. Although I'm
a little old. No, I mean it's very hard. It's brutal,
that schedule, yes, but I like the life.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
I like that.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Thus, two three four hours you have after a show
in the barn to knight, which is really your own time.
You cannot be interrupted nobody. You know, it's two with
the morning. You know you're free. You've dispatched your effort
for the day, You've had a completion, and you're going
to renew it and begin the next day. And I
love the conviniality of it. I love the family at
the theater. I love knowing about it. I mean, I
(35:39):
read a lot of theater biographies when I was younger,
so that was just a life that I imagined being
a wonderful life. And then you have periods of time
where you worked with me where you could renew yourself.
And you know, I had that life for a number
of years and I valued it very much. Yeah, you know,
and I did a few shows since Anne, So it
goes on. You studied with Stella Athla, the legendary late.
(36:02):
I studied with her late. You know, when I first
came into New York, I went to her studio, and
the registrar so intimidated me that I never went back.
And then about when I'd been already working like fifteen years,
I worked with a wonderful Canadian classical actor named Nuie
Tran who has since going to his reward, I'm sure,
and he said, you all people should be studying with
(36:23):
Cella Avers. So I went and auditioned, and I actually
I had met with her. She didn't make an audition,
and I went to her classes and the first class
I was at, the penny dropped, and I thought, Holy God, almighty,
because I had been working for fifteen years, so that
everything she said was the penny dropping everything, because I
already had the reality in my so fully so that
(36:46):
I mean, I looked at the young people around me
who were new young students at newbies, and I thought,
they're they're not understanding what gold is it. They're not
understanding that what she's saying. And she had because she
had a real technique, and you can understand a lot
of it in her books. Her book is very good
because she was a tremendous intellect and a tremendous charismatic person. Yes,
(37:10):
I've had it really changed my life so much so
that I was on a soap opera, the only one
I was ever one, and I quit after one year
because I wanted. She was eighty at the time, and
I had studied with her very much for and I
took every class she offered for two years. I was
in every class. I was like a college student there.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
And then I got prison buddies in that, you know,
and that was that for a while.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
Yeah. How long have you and Sarah been together?
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Now? We just had our eighth anniversary in January.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
How wonderful and always? Is it like the biggest gift
of a lifetime to love again?
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Absolutely, the relationship of lifetime. Well, we've been through a
lot together. Adjusting and our age difference causes a lot
of problems, not problems, but I mean it's something it's
an aspect that creates issues that we have to cope with.
She puts up with a lot because you know, I
don't have the energy that W used to. But I
think we're actually very well balanced and the kinds of
(38:11):
things we enjoy and the way we talk about things
that we do together and see and we're well lashed
in some ways and not well in another story.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Everybody is, I guess, yeah, just like life.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
So but it's in working out those things that you
really find each other, you know, working out the places
that you are rough edges Shafe. So eight years is
a pretty good period of time. And we have a
shorthand it's.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
A pretty good run. Honey, you go and keep going.
I love when you grabbed her zipper at that fashion
thing or whatever. You grabbed her by the zipper. I
was like, this is you. Guys look so happy all
the time, which makes me so happy to watch pictures
of you or videos.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
She has wonderful high spirits, and you know, she's irresistible
and she's so fun. She's a very playful personality and
I tend to be more are an inward, and she
draws me out. So we have a good conversation. And
we were just in fratce a couple of times, and
that was just unbelievable, so thrilling.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
I read that when you watch her in precarious positions
on Horror Story, it's not it's an upsetting for you. No,
it wouldn't be for me too.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
I can't there's some things I cannot watch, And when
she's in jeopardy, I just can't watch it. First of all,
she really prows herself into those things, and she looks
vulnerable and she's exhausted. Sometimes those things are hard to
play and sometimes you think, yeah, but all of this
is expense of spirit in the name of what I mean.
It depends what the project is, of course, of course.
(39:41):
And you think about actors making enormous emotional sacrifices and
you think, well, but they're playing hamlets, so yes they should. Yeah,
but you have to think sometimes what what is the material?
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Right? Yeah? Sometimes I think that too. I'll go on
something and I'll be doing something and I don't think, now,
why did I think I had to do this again? Like?
What why was I trying to prove? Taking this part?
Speaker 2 (40:06):
At what we're used to giving up our will and
giving up our self protection a lot, and in some
ways it brings great things to us because we're very willing. Yeah,
And you know, I tend to like actors going a bit.
I think actors admire the cliche things people think about actors,
that they're jealous and suspicious of each other. Actually, I
don't see that, I see I don't see it either.
(40:29):
I see actors being very supportive of each other. And boy,
if I love an actor, the.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
No, exactly same with me. If I love someone's performance,
I'm gonna shout it through the streets because Marco Martindale's
Oh she's fantastic, you know, I just saw Sean Hayes
Sean Hayes and good night.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
Ask oh I hear that's extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
It was one of the most brilliant performances I've ever
seen by a guy on a stage. I was absolutely
blown that's in New York, now, right New York. Blown away.
I was completely blown away.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
We're about to go. I will make sure we see that.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
You must see it.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
I heard that it's one of the greatest son No
performances ever.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
It's extraordinary, it really is.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
Yeah, I want to see it for sure.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
You have been delightful. I thank you so much for
coming on this.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Rosie. You're the best.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Oh honey. I just love getting to talk to people
I admire so much, and I admire you your whole career.
The way you carry yourself in the world. It's a
brilliant thing, really is Alan.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Taylor, Rosie, thank you. You know I think the world
of you.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
The world. Okay, well, thanks for doing this and I
will talk to you soon.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Holland Taylor will be right back with questions from the
audience at Holland Taylor fantastic. I mean, I just love her. Hey,
(42:03):
we got some questions from you guys. Here they come.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Hi, Rosie.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
My name is Anne. I'm from Missouri. I am a
longtime fan and loving your podcast. These interviews are a
lot of fun and the highlight of my week to
listen to. I am also a librarian and I love
to read and love to give book recommendations, and so
I was wondering what book you might have read lately
(42:28):
that you would recommend, or if there's just a book
in general that you think everybody should read.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Thanks well, thank you, Ann, what a great question. I
love to read, I really do. I mean, I don't
find as much time for it now as I used
to when I was younger. But I did just finish
John Irving's book The Chair Lift, and it's a big
old book. It's like a thousand pages, and you know,
I love all of his books. The Cider House Rules
(42:55):
had a profound effect on me when I was a
young reader, and Prayer for Meanie and Hotel New Hampshire.
There were so many John Irving books that totally stayed
with me and had a really profound impact, as I said,
on my growing up and my perspective on the world.
And I read that he lived in the Hampton, So
(43:17):
when we were going out to go to the nightclubs
there and the Hampton's like Obi, which is the Oak
Beach Inn, I used to look for John Irving everywhere
I went. I also thought he was one of the
most handsome men I had ever seen in my life.
So I'm so happy that in his later years now
he has written another wonderful, beefy, beautiful novel. And I
(43:40):
would say he's one of my favorite authors of all time.
Another one of my favorite authors is Pat Conroy. Any
and everything that Pat Conroy wrote I adored. He was
such a voice of the South and so beautiful in
his prose. I just feel like a book you can
get of Pat Conroy you should get. And another one
(44:03):
I'm going to just pick out of the Air and Rice,
who I adored as a person and a woman and
I love as a writer, and I used to wait
in line to get her to sign my books. But
there's one book that she wrote that I thought was
just spectacular, and it's called Feast of All Saints. It's
(44:25):
just a story about the creole culture at New Orleans
and it's absolutely riveting and I loved it so much.
I mean, there are so many books that I memoirs,
that I will consume memoirs voraciously. I just can't get
enough of memoirs. But for now I would pick those
and thank you for being a librarian. And you know,
(44:47):
you guys have the fight coming up with you know,
the radical people who want to ban books and knowledge.
I mean, boy, and we going backwards. We are really
going backwards America, and we got to stop this. It's
too it's too reductive, and it's too bigoted.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
It's too.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
A sleep frankly, and nobody wants to go backwards. Nobody
wants to do that. So thank you librarians, you, Anne,
and every librarian across the country who has a love
for books and a desire to protect them. And read
band books people, that's my recommendation, read band books. Thank
you Anne very much for the question. And I think
(45:30):
we have another question today. Hit it, Hey Roe.
Speaker 4 (45:33):
My name's Jill calling from Long Beach, California. I've been
a fan of yours for a really long time, since
a League of their own when you were best sees
with Madonna, because I too was besties with Madonna in
my mind, and now I listen to your podcast every
week and that's been super fun, So thank you for that.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
I'm calling in because my wife and I have a.
Speaker 4 (45:54):
Six year old and a three and a half year old,
and my six year old was recently asked by one
of her classmates how she could have two moms, and
she's sort of froze. She didn't know how to respond.
And we've been, i think, preparing her for these types
of questions her whole life indirectly. And you know, we
(46:18):
have a fantastic group of lesbian moms with their kids
who are all around the same age, and we get
together several times a week, go to the beach, we
have dinners, we have dance parties, we do lots of
fun stuff. And she knows that it's totally normal to
have two moms, totally normal to have two dads, same
(46:40):
thing for a mom and a dad, or being raised
by grandparents, or she knows that there's all types of
different families, but she's never had to defend her family.
So just wondering if you ever dealt with that with
your own kids, and what sort of advice you gave them,
and how to answer those questions without feeling defensive or
(47:04):
feeling like your kids were singled out or you know,
different thinks through love you.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
Thanks Jill. That's such a great question. And I think
it's wonderful that you have a lot of other gay
families in your orbit, so that your kid can see
the normalcy that it's not simply her, but she is
different than most of the kids in her class in
that she has two mommies. And when Parker asked me that,
I think he was five right around that age. He said,
(47:33):
how come I don't have a daddy? And I said,
because you have a mommy who wants another mommy, So
if there was a daddy, you wouldn't have me as
a mommy. We're a two mommy family. And some people
have a mommy and a daddy, and some people have
two daddies, and some people have two mommies, and some
(47:55):
people have even more. There's step parents, there's bonus parents,
there's all kinds of ways. But what I told my
kid was just the fact, you know, if I was
your little girl, I wouldn't be defensive. I wouldn't be
I would just say, oh, because I have the kind
of mommies that don't want to marry a daddy. They
want to marry mommy. So they fell in love and
got married and they had us. You know. I mean
(48:19):
it's as simple as that. When they're kids, you know,
they don't need big, long discussions. I think they just
need something that they can say.
Speaker 3 (48:26):
You know.
Speaker 1 (48:26):
My kid also asked me that when they were little,
my kids about you know, why was I adopted? You know?
And I said, well, there was only one thing that
your tummy mommy knew, and that's that she wasn't ready
to be a mom. And so God looked inside and
he found your right mommy, and that's me, and we're
a good match, you know. So I would give them
(48:46):
kid like answers that would seem to satisfy the brain
of another six year old. So so that's what I
would do. I would just say that, and it seemed
to have worked. My kids definitely used that. I heard
them telling kids that sometimes when we had playdates, like
you know, when kids first started coming over when they're
(49:08):
five or six, and they go, you have two moms,
And I remember Blakey going, Yep, isn't that cool. It's like, yeah,
it is kind of cool, but you know you are
going to be different. Listen, if you're gay in society.
You're considered different because you're not the majority. They say
ten percent of the population is gay. I believe it's
a lot higher than that, but that's what the statistics show,
(49:31):
and there are going to be different or singled out
because of that, especially in the culture as it is now,
where there's the vilification of anyone gay or different, and
it's it's very scary and tragic. But I would say
to the kid, just what I told you. I got
a mommy that wants another mommy and they fell in
love and they got married and that's all okay. So
(49:55):
I hope that works for you, and good luck to
you and your family and your and just raise them
in the light, raise them in the truth, tell them
what's going on, and understand their feelings. You know, it's
not easy to be different in your first grade class,
So have compassion as we move on through raising them. Right.
(50:18):
That's my little grandmotherly advice. I hope that you liked it.
Thanks for writing in, Jill. I appreciate it. And if
any of you want to leave a voice memo, just
like Anne and Jill did, I would love to hear
from you. We pick a couple of questions every week
and we do them here on our podcast. So all
you have to do is write to Onward Rosie at
(50:41):
gmail dot com and leave a little voice memo for
me and we might put it on the program here. Hey,
thank you everybody. Guess who's up next week? One of
my favorite favorite favorite shows on TV is Somebody Somewhere.
It's on HBO and it stars Bridget Effett with a
stellar cast, perfectly cast show, a beautiful, beautiful show on HBO.
(51:06):
And Bridget who is an lbgt QIA queer ally and
always has been her whole life and career. She made
a living for a long time as kind of a
body cabaret singer and now she's killing it as an
actress on HBO. So, Bridget Everett, we'll be on the
podcast next Tuesday. Look for that on Onward right here
(51:29):
and iHeart thank you everybody. We'll catch you next week.
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