Fresh Air - Harrison Ford

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

After playing some of the most recognizable and beloved characters in cinematic history, Harrison Ford is not interested in retiring. "I really do love the work,” he tells Terry Gross. “It constan...tly changes, and the people change, and the mission and the opportunity change, and it just makes for an interesting way to live your life." The 83 year-old looks back on his big break with ‘Star Wars,’ the challenges of playing a therapist in the Apple TV series ‘Shrinking’ and the infamous 2015 plane crash. To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. Is there anyone who doesn't know who Harrison Ford is? Probably not, not after starring in the original and the sequels of Star Wars, the Indiana Jones movies, and Blade Runner. He's in his 80s, but in the last three years you might have seen him in the final Indiana Jones film, The Dial of Destiny, the prequel to Yellowstone called 1923, and his current series, Shrinking. Three seasons of shrinking are streaming on Apple TV, and it's been renewed for a fourth. He plays a therapist, Paul, who heads a practice that includes two other therapists, Jimmy played by Jason Siegel, and Gabby played by Jessica Williams. Paul is at an age where most people have retired, but he doesn't want to. At the same time, he thinks maybe he needs to. He has Parkinson's disease. At first, the symptoms were relatively minor, but they've progressed. His hands shake
Starting point is 00:00:56 so much it's difficult to put the toothpaste onto the toothbrush. Even more problematic because it affects his work. His shaky hands are making it difficult to take notes when he's talking with patients. Michael J. Fox is in a couple of episodes playing a man who has a more advanced case of Parkinson's and is very depressed. They first meet at a doctor's office where they're both patients. Paul is a gifted therapist, but it's hard for him to express emotion and he has a dark and cynical sense of humor. In this scene from the current season, season three. Paul has returned to work after taking some time off because the UTI was causing hallucinations. So this scene is from his first day back at work. He's telling Jimmy he thinks it might be time to retire. In the past, Paul had asked Jimmy to tell him when he
Starting point is 00:01:44 thought it was time. Now Jason Siegel's character, Jimmy, speaks first. Hey, how's your first day back? Really great. I think it's time for me. me to stop being a therapist. Do you, Paul? I'm not going to fall for that one twice. No, I'm serious. I took going away and coming back to see it. But it's time, Jimmy.
Starting point is 00:02:17 I'm supposed to tell you that it's time. Well, we can do that if you want. It's time for you to retire, Paul. Okay. Not the way I saw this going in my head. I'm going to miss you. You mean so, so much, me. I've always wanted to tell you this one thing and I'm going to say it. Oh, Jesus, Jimmy, please.
Starting point is 00:02:44 I'm not leaving now. I've got patience to notify. I've got referrals to make. It'll take months to wind down this practice. You only get to say goodbye once and it's not today. Come on, I want pizza on the way home. Let's go. Let's go. Harrison Ford, welcome to for a share. It's such an honor to speak with you. Thank you for being here. All kind of you. Thank you for having me. Some people are surprised that you're continuing to act, you know, in your 80s. And Paul says, after his Parkinson has gotten worse, and he's thinking of retiring, he says, I love my job more than anything, and I don't know who I am without it. Do you relate to that, or do you know who you are without your work?
Starting point is 00:03:31 Yeah, I guess I do. But without my work, I really wouldn't know what to do with myself, really. With your time? Well, I suppose I could fill my time, but I don't know what else I might do that would give me the kind of satisfaction and the kind of challenge that the work I'm doing does give me. I really do love the work. I don't blame you. It seems like it would be so fulfilling. Well, it constantly changes, and the people change, and the mission and the opportunity change.
Starting point is 00:04:10 And it just makes her an interesting way to live your life. And I love that you play your age because it's frustrating when like a beautiful woman plays somebody who's ugly by just not wearing as much makeup, but she's never ugly. Or a younger person has to play an older person by putting on prosthetics. Like we have talented people who look like they're supposed to look. Can we cast them, please? Well, I felt that way when I was de-aged in Indiana Jones. But sometimes it works, and I thought it worked in Indiana Jones, that de-aging part. But I'm happy to be the age I am, and I have no impulse to hide it.
Starting point is 00:05:02 Well, speaking of Indiana Jones, so Dial of Destiny was like 2020. it was released. And, you know, you're still, like, super strong and agile in that. And then you had to go from that to not long after doing shrinking. And so in shrinking, you're physically compromised because of the Parkinson's disease. What was it like for you and your body to be action hero strong? And then your hand is shaking too much to take notes. Well, I mean, it starts with the head of the character, what's in his head, what's in his mind,
Starting point is 00:05:47 and I've always aware of this physicalization of a character. And the Parkinson's, or the various symptoms of Parkinson's, do help characterize Paul. And so it's an opportunity to use another means to create the character. Michael J. Fox is in the series, and you meet at a doctor's office. He's really depressed. Did he give you advice about how to play the role? Nope. Really? You didn't ask him for advice?
Starting point is 00:06:29 No. Because every case is different. and my case is not yet described to me fully. My writers present symptomology and characteristics as they are writing. And so I'm sort of living with the symptoms I have been last described as having. Yeah, I mean, the thing about Parkinson's is that it affects everything, but it affects different parts of, like there's a whole long list of things it affects. but everybody gets a different number of them
Starting point is 00:07:06 and a different variation of them. Right, right. Which tremors everybody gets, yeah. So like a true Parkinson's patient, I don't really know what's coming. Oh, that's interesting. You mean like what the writers have in store for you in terms of your symptoms?
Starting point is 00:07:25 Yeah, you know, I have a general sense of how far it goes this. season, but nothing specific yet. And that's just the way our show works. We get a script probably if we're lucky a couple weeks ahead
Starting point is 00:07:48 of time, but normally maybe just a couple of days or a week ahead of time. Did playing the role make you think about your body in a new way and think of what it would be like to not be able to control your movements? Not specifically.
Starting point is 00:08:09 I'm, to be honest, no. There's parts of it I haven't thought through yet, really. And I think that might be similar to how I might react if I did have Parkinson's. I would want to know certain things and other things I would just not want to know. So as to not obsess on them? So as to not be looking for them, just be happy enough with what you got. Paul, your character has a very cynical sense of humor. He's really funny, very dark retorts.
Starting point is 00:08:53 And you have a very funny sense of humor. I heard you on Conan's podcast. And you would make Conan and the whole team left so much and so hard. Do you ever punch up your lines or add, like, funny lines, because honestly, like your sense of humor is so good? Sure, stuff comes up, and we have really good writers, and I love what they have to offer. But, you know, it's a collaborative atmosphere, and I feel free to bring up any idea I have. Can you think of a line that you added in one of your movies or in... Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 00:09:38 I guess the most famous, the one most well-known and perhaps illustrative of where it comes from is the line in Star Wars where Princess Leia tells me that she loves me and I say, I know, I know. instead of saying I love you too, which is the scripted line. Simply the impulse was to be more in character. And George Lucas, who had written the line, was not so happy that I didn't give him the original version. But I really felt strongly about it. So he made me sit next to him when he previewed the film in a public movie theater in San Francisco.
Starting point is 00:10:31 And it got a laugh, but it got a good laugh. And so he accepted it and loved it in. So one has to play another scene from Shrinking, and this is from the first season. I think it's the pilot, actually. So Jimmy, who's one of the therapists in Paul's office, and he's played by Jason Siegel, He's really annoyed with his patience for not changing when he's told them they have to change
Starting point is 00:11:00 and stop doing the thing that's making them miserable. But this is just an expression of his disorientation and grief because his wife died a year or two ago in a car crash. And he hasn't recovered. He hasn't been himself since her death. So this is the scene where he's talking to your character, Paul, and explaining why he's so angry. And also you'll hear Jessica Williams as therapist Gabby and Harrison Ford, you speak first.
Starting point is 00:11:33 Hey, kid. How you doing? I'm normal, you know. It's a normal day, normal day. Doing it, doing it normal style. Hey, you know what I was thinking, Paul? Is it about how you're just doing it normal style? What, what are you thinking?
Starting point is 00:11:49 You guys ever get so mad at your patience that all of a sudden you just, well, We're like, shake them. Well, we don't shake them. No, I know, I know. I'm rooting for them. I am. I'm like, come on, you're a f***ed up person.
Starting point is 00:12:03 You can change. And then they just never do. Compassion fatigue. We all hit those walls. Yeah. You ask questions. You listen. You stay non-judgmental.
Starting point is 00:12:16 And you don't make that face. Sorry. It's just, look, we know what they should do. You know why? Because it's pretty simple. I get sad when I do this thing. Maybe don't do that thing. We know the answer.
Starting point is 00:12:29 Don't you ever want to just make them do it? Great idea. We just rob them of their autonomy, any chance they have to help themselves, right? And we become what? Psychological vigilantes? Oh, my God. I'm, like, sensing the sarcasm, but that sounds kind of badass. I like that scene a lot.
Starting point is 00:12:51 So you haven't experienced, like, the body's symptoms of Parkinson's. even though you have to portray them in your role. But you have experienced a whole lot of injuries that you sustain making movies, including on your last Indiana Jones film in 2023. So I'll run through a list of things that I've read. And you can confirm that you've had this. You ruptured a disc in Indiana Jones
Starting point is 00:13:17 in the Temple of Doom. You tore a ligament in the fugitive. In Star Wars, the Force Awakens, a hydraulic door. closed on you and you broke your leg and injured your ankle. In Indiana Jones on the Dial of Destiny, you injured your shoulder while you were rehearsing. So how are you dealing with pain? Pretty good.
Starting point is 00:13:40 It sounds like I'm accident prone. Oh, not to me. It sounds like you're in movies where you do dangerous things. And of course you'd get some injuries. Yeah. running, jumping, falling down. Yeah, there you go. And I gave it the office.
Starting point is 00:14:02 Let's put it that way. Because they made you do it? No, nobody makes me do it. I make the choices of whether I want to do something. They'll often tell me, no, you can't do it. Like don't do the stunt? Yeah, well, it's not a stunt. If I'm doing it, it's by definition not a stunt.
Starting point is 00:14:23 But that doesn't mean it's not risky. Well, what it means is that I want the audience to be with the character through the activity that we're talking about. I don't want to have to hide the face of the character because it's a stunt guy. I want them to feel the blow. I want them to see the anxiety. I want them to be there when the decision is made or when the decision is missed. I just want them to be there. And it takes me being there to bring them along, I think.
Starting point is 00:14:57 What's the closest you've come in real life to an action scene? I suppose we won't be satisfied unless we talk about the airplane accident. It just occurred to me. That's what you might say, yeah. Well, I've got to face the music, don't I? Let's just start by saying that it was a mechanical. failure. And I'll mention here it was a World War II vintage plane. Yeah, it was a 74 year old airplane, and I was 74 years old at the time. It was a beautiful day, and I had just recovered from an earlier accident and had gone out with a bunch of guys on a mountain bike ride. And I came home and sitting in the hot tub, and I tried to talk my wife into going with me for a ride because it was such a beautiful day. She had to and I had a lunch with my daughter and asked her if she wanted to go and she said no.
Starting point is 00:15:59 So I went by myself and 400 feet in the air above the airport. The engine quit. And it's my home airport and I was familiar with the surrounding terrain, which is cluttered with houses, wires and cars and people. so I turned to a golf course that was there. And when I landed, my seatbelt pulled out of the place where it was secured. And so I got a major blow on the head, which resulted in a brain injury that was described to me that I didn't remember the moments because it was retrograde amnesia, a kind of protective device of the brain. So I don't really remember that much about it.
Starting point is 00:16:47 I remember telling the tower when I declared the emergency that the instruction they gave me was not going to be followed because I didn't have enough altitude to do what they wanted to suggest that I do. Anyway, that's the story in a nutshell. So you said it was a protective form of amnesia. So you wouldn't have the memory of falling and crashing. Are you grateful for that?
Starting point is 00:17:18 I wasn't falling and crashing because I had my, in my ear was the very clear voice of one of my aviation mentors. Bob Hoover, well, a famous pilot, who always when talking about mechanical failures or other kinds of failures. The advice was to fly the airplane as far into the crash as possible. You think about this thing when you're a pilot. You think about the potential, the possibility of it happening. And, of course, you train. So when it happened, it was not really a surprise. And I thought I knew what I had to do to handle it.
Starting point is 00:18:07 So I just started doing the things that needed to be done. So you drove the plane into the ground to fly into the crash? No, I maneuvered the airplane using what gravity was going to give me and what the airplane could do powered only by gravity and to mitigate the consequence came at the ground. So that's what I did. I picked a spot and was in the process of landing there. I had run out of energy to maintain lift, so it wasn't a smooth landing.
Starting point is 00:18:54 It was more of a crash, but I had not landed on anybody else, and I was in a clear space, you know. So I'd done what I needed to do. Did you think you were going to die? No, I did not. When the engine quit, I did not think. No. I just flew the airplane. I don't remember actually being scared.
Starting point is 00:19:20 That's amazing. Weird. Yeah. What were your injuries? They were more than described in the newspaper. But I'm over them all. Thank you. Got my license back.
Starting point is 00:19:39 And continue to fly. Were you afraid to fly at all afterwards? No. No. You're really lucky that you have a mind that can sustain all these injuries and a plane crash and just keep going and not be afraid. I don't think I'm not being afraid. I just, I don't put myself in a situation where I think there's a situation where I think there's, going to be an adverse consequence. I'm not a thrill seeker. I was a very, I am a very conservative
Starting point is 00:20:20 pilot. So, you know, it's not, it's not that I do crazy stuff for the fun of it. This is exactly what I hear war correspondents say, that they, they're careful, they don't take unnecessary risks. Well, it's a dirty job, but somebody's going to do it. Okay, time for a break. I have to reintroduce you for just joining us. My guest is Harrison Ford, and he's now starring in the series Shrinking, which is streaming on Apple TV. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. Hi, this is Molly C.V. Nusper, digital producer at Fresh Air. And this is Terry Gross, host of the show.
Starting point is 00:20:59 One of the things I do is write the weekly newsletter. And I'm a newsletter fan. I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week's shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive. It's a fun read. It's also the only place where we tell you what's coming up next week, an exclusive. So subscribe at w-h-y-y-y-org slash fresh air and look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning.
Starting point is 00:21:25 So you live in L.A., but you also have a ranch in Wyoming where you spend a lot of time. And you've said that when you're asked about religion, you explain that nature is the equivalent of God or religion for you. When did you start thinking of nature that way? When I had to explain why I was not going to accept the invitation to go to Vietnam. You were drafted? I was facing being drafted.
Starting point is 00:21:57 And I hired a lawyer to represent me to the draft board. and I had to explain why I might qualify as a conscientious objector. I explained that I did not have a history of religious affiliation. My mother was Jewish, my father, Catholic, to give me any ethical understanding. I was raised Democrat. So I'm quite happy to accept other people's versions of God. But I found in a Protestant theologian named Paul Tillick, a sentence that said, If you have trouble with the word God, take whatever is central and most meaningful to your life and call that God.
Starting point is 00:23:12 And to me, that was life itself, the complexity, the biodiversity, the incredible integration and complexity of nature. to me seemed to be the same thing as God. And so I prepared a explanation that was probably so unusual that it found the edge of a desk and had a lot of things piled on top of it because it didn't fit a niche. They never got back to me, basically.
Starting point is 00:23:55 The draft board never got back to me. me. So you grew up in Chicago, would you describe the neighborhood? I lived in a neighborhood of apartment buildings, four-story apartment buildings. My father was working in advertising. We were comfortable middle-class kind of environment. My father was a radio actor. a certain point in his life. He did a show on the vaudeville circuit with four or five other guys in a show that was called Gangbusters. And they did a different radio play each week and traveled to vaudeville circuit,
Starting point is 00:24:48 stood around a microphone in tuxedoes and did a radio play. That was his theatrical career. He later did a bit of writing and then became a producer and director of television commercials. Wow. Any ones I'd recognize? Each weekend, because of my father's job, we would go to the Lincoln Park Zoo, where he was in charge of doing live work. commercials for kennel ration dog food.
Starting point is 00:25:32 And so I would go with my dad and I'd spend time with Marlon Perkins who was the... Oh! Who ran the Lincoln Park Zoo and had a program called Zoo Parade, which was on every Saturday.
Starting point is 00:25:48 So I got behind the scenes tours of the animal enclosure and might have been a part of my sensitizing to nature. I think it is. What I want to do now is play a speech when you got the SAG, the Screen Actors Guild, Lifetime Achievement Award,
Starting point is 00:26:16 and it was a very moving speech. So this is an excerpt of it. And this is very recent. In my third year of college, I was a little lost. I was failing at school. I felt isolated alone. And then I found the company of people putting on plays,
Starting point is 00:26:44 storytellers. People I once thought were misfits and geeks turned out to be my people. I found a calling, a life in storytelling, an identity in pretending to be other people. The work I do with other actors is one of the great joys of my life. My career is built on their work, as well as the work of writers, directors, and every single cast member, every crew member I've ever been on the set with. I've had incredible collaborators at every step of the way. And being able to deliver the work we create together to an audience is an honor and a privilege.
Starting point is 00:27:49 And because of that privilege, I've come to know myself. You were tearing up during that speech. Were you prepared for that? No. Not really. I was trying not to do that. Why were you trying not to do it? Just because I wanted to convey an idea.
Starting point is 00:28:22 I didn't want to posture. So you said on that that you thought that the theater people were misfits, and geeks, but they turned out to be your people. What made you think of them as misfits and geeks? I just ignorance, stupidity. I wasn't a student athlete. I wasn't a student, you know, involved in student government. I didn't, I didn't find a place in the college in the college.
Starting point is 00:29:06 culture, you know, environment. I was just mischaracterizing people that I didn't really know. That speech that I wrote was not crafted to be emotional. It just happened to me, and I feel slightly embarrassed by it because I have enough experience with these things to want to want. to be able to manage, not to be overcome. It was nice to see you be overcome, because you were feeling it.
Starting point is 00:29:49 You were feeling it for real. It didn't sound like a phony, you know, a phony award address where you express all these feelings that sound kind of, they can sometimes sound a little, you know, excessive or, you know, you know, not deeply felt at the moment. Yours felt deeply felt at the moment,
Starting point is 00:30:11 and people really responded to it. And people are very generous to me. My guest is Harrison Ford, and he's now starring in the series Shrinking, which is streaming on Apple TV. We'll be right back. This is fresh air. So you were in season 18 of Gunsmoke,
Starting point is 00:30:33 and it had like two more seasons after that. You weren't a regular. You were on, I think, two episodes. So this is in the 1970s already, and there were two more seasons after that. Did you grow up watching Gunsmoke? Not really. Because my dad did television commercials, we had the first TV in our neighborhood. And I remember watching Ed Sullivan and shows like that.
Starting point is 00:31:05 And I'm sure what we did. I don't know if Gunsmoke was on at the time. I think it was Gene Autry that I was seeing on television. I like Gene Orchery more because it has songs in it, he sang. He was a singing cowboy, unlike James Arnais. So in the episode that I'm going to play a clip from, you were one of the villains. You were one of the bad guys coming in gunning from Marshall Dillon,
Starting point is 00:31:36 who is out of town. And, you know, you're threatening people, you're robbing people. You and your gang, you're taking over the town. And you stop in the saloon where, you know, Miss Kitty, who owns the saloon in Dodge City, she's always there. And, of course, she's there when you come in. And you and another of the villains are just kind of like taunting her. And so Miss Kitty is played by Amanda Blake, and she speaks first.
Starting point is 00:32:06 My name's Kitty Russell. My place. Hey, Miss Russell. You haven't have a pack of cards around this here, fancy house? Sam. All right, come on. Let's get the bitten. All right.
Starting point is 00:32:21 So that's you. Oh, really? Wow. You don't recognize your voice? I don't remember any of it. It's temporary amnesia. I see. to protect yourself.
Starting point is 00:32:37 Yeah. And I'd have good reason. So you lost two teeth in gun smoke, one of your early injuries. What happened? I was supposed to be a bad guy, and the sheriff was walking up the stairs. I'm trying to remember now, and I was shooting out the window, and I turned and saw the sheriff, and, Shots were exchanged, and what happened was as I fell to the ground, wounded, the gun dropped and then bounced up and hit me in the teeth.
Starting point is 00:33:18 And knocked out several of my teeth right in the front of my mouth. I was under contract to Universal at the time, and so I went to their dentists. the studio dentist, and he fixed up my teeth. And within about two months, they started falling apart. And the studio didn't do anything about it, so I called his office. And apparently the dentist that had worked on me had left the practice and his partner confessed he had no knowledge of where he'd gone.
Starting point is 00:34:15 So I was stuck with the teeth that were falling out of my mouth and I had to pay for my own replacements. Oh, even though the studio had hired the dentist, you had to pay for a shoddy work? Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. So you work for a couple of studios before them or you breaking the contract, which you always say was a good thing because they were hardly paying you anything.
Starting point is 00:34:44 And they would have been hardly paying you anything for seven years because you had like a seven year contract. And that's when you started working with like Spielberg and Coppola and George Lucas. And what's interesting to me about that among many other things is that you had bad experiences at studios. and they're three of the people who created alternate studios, you know, and they had this vision that they didn't have to work with the existing studios. They could form their own production companies and their own studios. Do you think about that a lot, about how that was like the start of something brand new and you were a part of it?
Starting point is 00:35:27 Yeah, I do. I don't think of it often, but I mean, I recognize that there was a change happening and that these guys were becoming important to the business overall. It was exciting at the time to be, you know, even a small part of what was happening. My guest is Harrison Ford, and he's now starring in this series Shrinking, which is streaming on Apple TV. We'll be right back. This is fresh air.
Starting point is 00:36:04 So after being an episodic TV like Gunsmoke and the Virginian, and I think like the FBI, was that one of them? Oh, there were a lot. Yeah, yeah. So then you got the part in American graffiti where you're somebody who, like, loves to race cars. And it's not a big part, but it's a significant part. And American graffiti kind of tangentially led to Star Wars. You were a carpenter in between because you weren't getting enough work. So you were working for Coppola as a carpenter doing something in his home or his office.
Starting point is 00:36:40 Well, actually, I was working for Dean Tavallaris, who was Francis's art director. And Francis had moved into new offices at Goldman Studios. and Dean had designed an entrance to the offices, and the studio mill wood shop had made all the pieces for this entrance. And Dean needed somebody to install it. And so he asked me if I would do him a favor because he couldn't find a carpenter to get it. installed. I said that I would do the job, I'd be happy to do the job, but I only wanted to work at night because I didn't want to confuse the people in the office about whether I was a carpenter or an actor.
Starting point is 00:37:39 You went to carpentry to be your side gig. You were an actor. Yeah, well, I wanted them to think of me as an actor, not to think of me as a carpenter. So I was there sweeping up. I was just finishing the job when George Lucas walked in with Richard Dreyfus, who had been an American graffiti. We had all of us who had been in American graffiti had been told that we would not be considered for Star Wars because George wanted new faces. and here he is having a, you know, the first interview with Richard Dreyfus. And I'm standing there in my carpenter's work belt sweeping up the floor. But it turned out to be a fortuitous occasion because weeks later I would end up being asked if I would do them a favor and read with the other actors.
Starting point is 00:38:45 who were being considered for the parts. So you'd just be feeding them the lines. That's right. But he was auditioning your partner, not you? That's correct. I never was told that I was ever to be considered. And then at the end of the process, I guess they ended up with two groups of three people
Starting point is 00:39:07 that were in the final consideration. And I've always been amused that in the second group, the character of Han Solo would have been played by Chris Walkin. Oh. I would have, I would have loved to see that. Oh, God. That's so interesting. He's one of my favorite actors.
Starting point is 00:39:32 He's so great. He's fantastic. He's so unusual. Yeah. Yeah. So you were surprised you got the part? Yeah. Thrilled.
Starting point is 00:39:42 So I'm going to play a clip, just so we get. in the moment. So this is a scene from Star Wars, the first one, in which Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker and you as Han Solo, along with Chubaka, are on the Death Star. And R2D2NC3PO are there with you as well. And where you find out that Princess Leia is being held in detention and is likely to be killed and the person, the android breaking the news to you is C-3PO who is portrayed
Starting point is 00:40:22 by Anthony Daniels. I'm afraid she's scheduled to be terminated. Oh, no. We've got to do something. What are you talking about? The droids belong to her. She's the one in the message. We've got to help her. Now look, don't get any funny ideas. The old man wants us to wait right here. He didn't know she was here. We just find a way back into the detention
Starting point is 00:40:42 walk. I'm not going anywhere. They're going to Executor. Look, a few minutes ago, you said you didn't want to just wait here to be captured. Now, all you want to do is stay? Marching into the detention area is not what I had in mind. But they're going to kill her. Better her than me. She's rich. Rich. Powerful. Listen, if you were to rescue her, the reward would be... What? Well, more wealth than you can imagine.
Starting point is 00:41:09 I don't know. I can imagine quite a bit. You'll get it. All right. So what's your reaction? to hearing that? It seems like a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Right. Did the script make sense to you without being able to visualize Chubaka or R2D2 or C3PO or the special effects? You just got what's called the sides, you know, like your part. And you didn't have a larger context, so it was probably hard to.
Starting point is 00:41:46 to actually have an idea of what the film was like. But when you saw the film for the first time, with the special effects and with the Androids, and with the, you know, like stirring music behind it, what did you think? I was blown away. I mean, I was really shocked by the power of the film. When I saw it, you know, we shot.
Starting point is 00:42:16 in England and our English crew were not used to something like Star Wars. And so they were pretty sure that it was going to be a disaster. And we weren't far from that opinion ourselves, the actors. But it, you know, it did well. Yeah, it did okay. Yeah. Elton John once asked you if you were going to write a memoir. I think that was after he wrote his. And you, I've read that what you told him was that you didn't want to tell the truth, but you don't want to lie. And I thought that was an interesting position to take, especially in time when a lot of people share absolutely everything. Yeah. Can you say more about that? Well, I don't think Elton thought I had the best answer because he was brutally honest about himself,
Starting point is 00:43:23 and I'm not prepared to be brutally honest about myself. Is it out of self-protection or protecting other people or both? Probably both, yeah. It's just, I just don't think it's anybody's business. So is it awkward for you to be interviewed all the time, like in this interview, and have things that are like really private? I've tried to not invade your privacy. You know, you've been very gracious. And it's always a struggle, I think, to know how to control this volume of information about yourself.
Starting point is 00:44:09 Well, it's been great to talk with you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you coming back on our show. Oh, thank you. I really appreciate it. And congratulations on getting season four of shrinking, and congratulations on the SAG Lifetime Achievement Award, and congratulations on giving such a great acceptance speech. You're very kind. Thank you. Harrison Ford co-stars in the series Shrinking.
Starting point is 00:44:34 Seasons 1, 2, and 3 are streaming on Apple TV, and it's been renewed for a fourth season. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, we'll talk about how these days more and more Americans are betting on sports, but they're also betting on elections, award shows, and even the removal of foreign leaders, almost everything. Writer McKay Coppins went inside that gambling world for the Atlantic. He'll share what he found and how it changed his perspective on betting. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air.
Starting point is 00:45:10 Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Rie Baudenado, Lauren Crenzel, Teresa Maddena, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yucundi, Anna Bauman, and Nico Gonzalez Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nestor. Roberta Shorok directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross. Thank you.

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