Girl on Guy with Aisha Tyler - girl on guy 184: tony goldwyn

Episode Date: May 13, 2015

join actor and director tony goldwyn of scandal and aisha as they tear through enthusiastic fans, truculent executives, resistant parents, relentless producers, naked auditions and the power of perseverance. plus tony lives through the family business and survives. girl on guy is walking on the moon.

This episode of Grow On Guys brought to you in part by LuteCrate, the box for geeks, gamers, and pop culture nerds. For less than $20 a month, you get a box of gamer and pop culture stuff like final figurines, comics, shirts, and much, much more. Go to lootcrate.com slash Aisha and enter code Aisha to get 10% off any new subscription. You get cool stuff like an EWalking Dead t-shirt. That's right, The Walking Dead, but with Ewox, a booklet on how to survive a sharknado and much, much more. This month's theme is Unites, you'll get swag from supergroups like the Avengers Team Fortress and many more cool things. Go to loot crate.com slash Aisha and enter the code Aisha to get 10% off your subscription. That's lootcrate.com slash Aisha. Check it out.

This is Girl on Guy. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Girl on Guy, 184. Welcome to the show. Such a good show for you right now. Sorry, I'm losing my voice. Busy week. I'm actually traveling. The talk is in New York. It's always fun here, but also it's a lot of late nights and early morning. So I sound as if I was punched in the throat by the Hulk. Or maybe it sounds great. I don't know. But either way, I'm going to muddle through this episode of the show and get you to the good stuff as fast as I possibly can. No shows coming up, although we did have a really fun show this past weekend at Brooklyn Academy of Music at the Bamfest.

If you made it there, then you're an awesome person. You're not an awesome person if you didn't come. are, hooray. It was a very fun show, and one of the few stand-up shows I'm doing this year. But you know, you can go to a show at a comment to find out when I'm going to be appearing live in the upcoming months and year. There are very few live shows this year. But we are going to be doing the listener appreciation event at Comic Con, a big, fat, happy fan event that's coming up in July and we'll be giving tickets away when we get closer to the date. So make sure that you stay tuned, whatever the digital equivalent it is of tuned to this show for information on that.

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to get 100 Birchbox points with the purchase of your subscription. That's $10 to spend towards your new favorite products that you will discover as you explore Birchbox Man. You know, when you support our advertisers, you're supporting the show because you're letting them know that advertising on Girl on Guys is a meaningful choice for their company. So check all this out, Birchboxman at birchbox.com promo code girl on guy. Check it out. All right, this episode is with Tony Goldwyn. And if you are a scandal fan, of course you know that he plays President Fitzgerald Grant on the massive hit show scandal. But you know him from a million things. He is an actor and director who's been in so many films, most notably in Ghost, The Last Samurai, and just so many

other films and television shows. And more than that, he is a lovely dude, thoughtful and smart. He's a film director. He directed a walk on the moon and among other things. And we'll be talking about all of that when we get into this conversation. But he's just, he's just a delightful guy. And I think you're going to love, love this conversation. I know I did. And it was just thoughtful and wide-ranging, and he's a really interesting, really smart actor and artist, and he has a really, really interesting mind, and I know you are going to love this show. So if you're a scandal fan, you're probably crapping your pants, but even if you're not a scandal fan, you may become one after you listen to this show.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Girl and Guy 184 with the actor and director, Tony Goldwyn, of Scandal and 1,000 other films and television shows coming at you straight out of the girl and guy bunker. and right into your face. Tony Goldwyn, welcome to my show. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. I'm really excited to have you. I'm really excited to have you. You are one of those guests where I cannot,

and I will not be able to be encyclopedic about all the things that you've done. I always feel like when you're as prolific as you are and you've worked for as long as you have in the business, people all know you from something completely different. I mean, now you're on a big show. But everybody feels like they know you. And I imagine you also even get the thing where people feel like they know you personally. Like they come up to you and they're like, hey, and you're like, we haven't met.

Do that happen? Yeah, that happens less now because of scandal. Right. But for years that happened. Yeah. I've had people from, you know, coming going, what, you go to high school? You know, are you from Detroit? Right.

No, no, no, no, you are. I mean, what did you work there? And they're insistent that they know me or that I worked in a bar or something like that. And then as soon as almost. unfailingly, as soon as I said, well, you know, I'm an actor, so you've probably seen me. I can't think of one instance where a person did not say, no, I don't watch movies or TV. I don't, no, that's not it. I'm like, okay.

Okay, sure, sure. I had one guy, another one, I was doing a movie some years ago in Oregon, and I was in line at Starbucks and a guy standing behind me and he says, with his girlfriend, and he says, hey, excuse me, excuse me. And I'm thinking, oh, God. And I was in like one of those moods where you just don't want to be recognized. You know what that is.

You'd like to be a person for one day. Yeah. Yeah. The worst is, I'm sure you find in line when you're in line for something. Because you're trapped. You're trapped. Yeah. And it was one of those, I just was not in the mood to chat with people anyway. So the guy goes, she's like, yeah, hi, hello, yes. He says, you're reading Quinn, aren't you?

I go, well, this will be easy. Yeah. No, I'm not. Yeah, easy, right. Done. No, no, no, no, no, you are. Come on, man, you are. I know you're Aiden Quinn.

I said, no, really? I'm not Aiden Quinn. I respect Aidan Quinn. I think he's great. Right. Not me. Right. Okay, all right.

Come on, I don't know why you won't just admit it. I mean, I don't give a shit. I'm just saying, you know, you don't have to, hi. Like, what do I care? I said, no, real, I swear to you, I'm not Aiden Quinn. By the way, but you do care. You do care, because you're wearing me up. Yeah, I'm like, in an argument with the guy.

I'm, like, you know, I'm just trying to get a cup of coffee. So then he's like, yeah, whatever, man. And then he's talking to his girlfriend. I hear them like talking to each other. And she's like, why wouldn't he get married? He's like, he fucking is. It's definitely him. I don't know what his deal is.

It's a, when he was in ghost. Oh, my God. This guy's confused. Beyond. Beyond. Yeah. I just got my coffee and raced. Right, credit, wrong guy. So I've gotten all kinds of all kinds of.

But now pretty much people know that I'm, at least know, an actor. Right, right. That also, and we'll circle back to him, but that also, in a way that I honestly, even though we have these movies that make a billion dollars worldwide and they can be very big and kind of these phenomena, phenomena, somehow Ghost felt like such a part of like American culture at a time when we didn't have that many viewing choices. Like we had a lot of feel like it was like everybody had seen that film and it was kind of, I don't know, strangely maybe reached more people then and felt more like a fabric of American culture than some things that everybody watches now. I don't know why.

I think that's really true. It's one of those iconic films that was a piece of people's lives in so many various ways. And I feel so lucky to have been a part of the fact that it started my career, but it's a rare thing to be part of kind of cultural, a piece of like American pop culture in it. That was so many people's first date movie. That was a number of people to say, I got. got laid for the first time after Steve goes. One guy I was doing a Broadway show a few years ago and it was a Broadway musical

and one of the dancers in the show this brilliant dancer who was a young guy who was in his 20s. He they made everyone made a video on my birthday where the whole company like recorded funny stuff and they played it

and had a party for me and they played it was just a fun wonderful thing. Anyway this guy in his video he said Tony, I am gay because of you. He said, when I was nine years old, I saw the movie Ghost. And when you poured coffee on yourself and took your shirt off, I knew at that moment, I was gay. So I thank you, Tony. You've changed my life in a meaningful way.

And he said, I'm not kidding. It's really true. It was the seminal experience of my identity. That's lovely. You've touched a lot of Americans lives. Wow. Okay. I accept that.

so yeah there's one of those movies and also and then I do want to go back to the beginning because I'm excited to hear about how all of your work started but I don't even know how I'm going to articulate this perfectly because there are a couple of guys including you and I

I just thought of David Conrad but I feel like there's another actor who for a long time and I may be wrong about this so please correct me much like you corrected the guy behind you in line who kind of had who were able to kind of make a career out of playing villains.

I mean, that was like a really like a seminal villain in that film. It's so interesting because now you're not really playing a villain, although you have a villainous tendencies, but so does everybody on scandal. And I wonder if people reactive in that way, like if people come up to you and they're, what's the right word? Hostile? Yeah, combative or intent.

They used to be. Again, now scandal has, you know, for 20 years, it was always about ghost. You know, it was like, you're the bad guy from Ghost. Right, right. I hated you and ghost. Right, right. So in one sense, it gave me a career,

but it also definitely, like, I was indelibly embedded in the American Congress as that guy. Terrible person. You know, which was a great part. Right. And quite different from me, you know. Yeah, absolutely. So now that's changed, really now,

scandal's so dominant, the cool thing about fits is he's both. Yeah. He's got, he's got more, you know, more sides to him. Right, right.

So, um, but anyway, uh, to answer your question, it ranged from people going, I hated you in that movie to when I was doing it. Uh,

it's a funny story where, when the movie came out and it was my first experience of ever being recognized. Uh-huh. And the movie, the movie, no one had any awareness of that film at all until the day it opened. It was the weirdest thing. Like I'd say, it was a big break for me. And I was like, I'm in this movie. I'm one of the leads in this big thing. We're like, what? What is that ghost? Right. Ghost Dad? Because there was a movie

opening the same month with Bill Cosby called Ghost Dad. And that was getting all the publicity. Oh my God. You know, no, no, no, it's not the Bill Cosby movie. So it's Patrick Sway and Wiffie Goldberg. So anyway, I was doing a play in New York. And when the movie was in the theaters and I had a break. I think I was in rehearsal and I had a break and I went to I was in the village in New York and I go into this restaurant to get some food and it was empty and the waitress wouldn't seat me. She was like I said excuse me and I had an hour. Yeah. I tried to go back to work and she wouldn't excuse me you know she's ignoring me the one's in there. I said excuse me I really can I can I just sit down? Fine sit wherever you want. Oh.

And I sit down and then she wouldn't take my order and she would not come over and like, what is this woman's problem? You know, I kept trying to flag her down. And I had to get up and go over to her, excuse me, I'm sorry, I'm in a time thing. Can I take my order? She's like, yeah, whatever. And she comes over and tell her what I want. Then I get my food and she's staring at me. And she was, you know, actively hostile to me.

Yeah. What is this girl's problem? Surreal. And she comes over to me and she said, excuse me, are you an actor? I said, yeah, I am. and she goes, oh my God, I'm so sorry. I've been so rude to you. And I didn't realize you were an actor.

And you're in that movie the time. And I said, when you came in here, I knew I hated you. And I couldn't figure out why. And I thought you were a guy that I had slept with who treated me really badly. And I'm just so sorry I was, you know, throwing shade on you. What I love about that story is that she apologized. But what I love even more is that she'd had so many bad experiences of men that she couldn't figure out which one you were.

It was like, one of the guys I fucked with him, didn't call me. Oh, my God. That was, Alswell that ended well. It did, yeah. I didn't end up sleeping with her, although I probably could have. You probably could have.

But the damage is already done. Yeah, exactly. Let's start at the beginning now. You were born here? Are you born here in Los Angeles? I did. Yeah, yeah. I was born in L.A.

Yeah. Because you're from this film dynasty family, right? Your grandfather is, Samuel Goldwyn? Yeah, my grandfather Samuel Goldwyn, who for people that don't know, was really one of the founders

of the business. Metro-Goldwyn mayor? Yeah, well, he started the company that eventually became MGM, but he was never associated with MGM. Okay. He got into the movie business

in 1913. Wow. Made the first feature-length movie ever made in Hollywood. Incredible. He was in New York, and there were some issues like location issues in New York,

and they decided to go out west to shoot a western. And it was the first time, you know, there'd been a couple of long movies. T.W. Griffith had made Birth of a Nation and there were a couple of others. But he, they had optioned a successful Broadway show, which is where the stars were in those days. Right. And decided to make the play into a movie. And so they came in a movie called The Squaw Man in 1913, and it was a big success. And they, you know, rented a barn in Hollywood, which was an orange grove at the time.

made this movie. And so he started and was part of a couple of, come to that company, he was partnered with his brother-in-law, was called Famous Players, and that became Paramount. Oh, okay. But he was a guy who could never get along with partners,

and so he got pushed out of that. And then started a company called the Goldwyn Company. Okay. His name at that time was Sam Goldfish. Interesting. And he partnered with these theater owners on Broadway, theater producers called the Selwyn Brothers, W-1.

buy in and they started a company called Goldwyn Pictures. Okay. And he then changed his name to Samuel Goldwyn and they sued him. Oh wow. Because that made it look like it was his company. Yeah, right. So he won the suit and that partnership from Goldwyn Pictures ended up being bought by another

company and became Metro Goldwyn pictures and then he got kind of ousted from that because he couldn't get along with the management there and essentially became an independent producer and he was really the first as I the first independent producer

in the movie business where he started his own studio, his own production company and for 40 more years made um you know I don't know how many hundred hundred and some movies that got nominated for you know and won many

Academy Awards he went two Academy Awards himself and um uh sort of climaxing in the he won best picture in 1946 for a great film called The Best Years of Our Lives. And then his last movie was 1959, Puerto Union Best. So he spanned 1913

and 9859. Incredible. So that was my granddad. Did you know your grandfather when you were growing up? I did. Yeah, I was 14 when he died. Was he as kind of prickly and intense in his private life as he was in his work? Not well he, I think you know I caught him in his quieter days. Yeah. He was lovely

to me. I was really close to him. He was, he was, yeah, a very doting grandfather to me. And, you know, there was no question that he was an important guy. Yeah. The world kind of revolved around him in our in your family. Yeah. And he and my grandmother, who were just fabulous people, lived a life that was very different from the life that I lived. You know, my dad and my mom, were obsessed with normalcy and having us be normal. So we lived in West L.A.

We didn't live in Beverly Hills or Bel Air. We lived in a really nice but normal kind of house. Right, yeah. I never met a movie star my entire upbringing. Really? I met actors who were close friends

of my parents, but a lot of them were from the theater and if they were famous, I didn't know it. Right. which I'm really grateful for. You know, and then on the weekends, we'd go and, you know, so I'd spend the weekends with my grandparents, but that was just hanging out of their house.

And if we had a, went to a dinner party there, or often we would go on a Sunday to dinner, it was quite a formal experience. You know, they lived in old Hollywood in a way. You know, they lived in a, it was crazy. You know, they lived in,

it really was out of another era. What part of town did they live in? They lived in Rivley Hills, and they had a lovely house, which is big, but by today's standards, not that. Right, right. But very elegant. And they had a staff.

It wasn't huge, but they had a staff. Yeah. That's how they did. They had a chauffeur, and they had all that stuff. And he was this old German guy named Hans, and he'd pick us up when we'd go to it in there, and you'd have to be dressed out for a coat and tie. Yeah.

Wow. And you'd show up, and it was all very formal, and it was like, but it was fantastic. It was always exciting and fun. And, you know, as soon as they'd, show a movie because they're you know they had a room that converted into a screening room and it was all but I was I was I was excited by it because it was it was um it was exotic in my life yeah you know yeah that's what movie we're watching the night right it was always um special and um

fun and and um it was an event yeah and it was a little different than if I was just going over there to hang out it was very casual right uh Yet they lived a rather formal life. So anyway, that was kind of what it was. And, you know, my parents were determined to keep us away from show business, not as a profession, but as an environment for a child. Right, as an influence. Yeah, because my dad really grew up in the Red Hot center of the Golden Age of Hollywood. And I don't think it was a great environment for a kid.

You know, really he had to, you know, constantly put aside being a kid. for being Samuel Goldman Jr. Right. And I imagine not just being the son of Samuel Goldwyn, but having his name. At a time when the galaxy of Hollywood was much smaller, tighter. I mean, maybe less scrutiny,

or a different kind of scrutiny than we have now because of the internet and everything like that. But just, you know, everybody knew everybody. Absolutely right. And their world, my grandparents, their world revolved 100% around. show business and around the movies and around, you know, they had four or five nights a week, they had dinner parties at their house. And as, you know, my granddad's biographer, Scott Byrd,

said, you know, your, I think it was Scott, your position in Hollywood, you know, your career was defa, you know, what's the word, your status, the stature of your career at any given time was very apparent depending on where you sat at the Goldwyn dinner table. Wow. You know what I mean? Like they would have these dinner parties almost every night with everybody who was anybody. And it was a great kind of, you know, thank my grandmother was a great hostess. So there was all that with all these amazing people, you know, every week.

And that's super cool. But, and my father was very close to a lot of those people because they were my grandparents' best friends. But, you know, he would have to eat in the kitchen. and it was not a place for a kid. Yeah, gosh. He was determined that that not be our experience. Did he express that to you?

Did he? No, it just was the way it was. He didn't really talk much about it. The only thing he talked about it is don't ever think you're special because you have a famous last name. Right. That was like drilled into our heads. Right. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Your name is something that you can be proud of and that you'll all have. Ultimately, some they have to live up to, but it does not make you special. Right. And, yeah, so I'm really, my parents were really smart about that. I'm a little less, I'm easier about it with my kids, although I raised them in Connecticut, away from Hollywood. All the way away, yeah.

For kind of the same reason, you know? Yeah, yeah. Because they can understand it, I mean, especially now they can understand it in a national or global context anyway. I mean, they see it. They can see it. It's almost unavoidable. but they don't have to be immersed in it. You know, they can, and even a way, like,

if you have a kid that goes to school here and you're in the business, I imagine, it would be very difficult now as opposed to when you were growing up to just send them to, like, the local public school. You know? Yeah, and even when I, I mean, I went to public school for a part of my education,

and the LA public schools are not great. No, they're not great. It was terrible. Yeah, yeah. So you couldn't kind of choose that for your kids, you know, even if you wanted to. Yeah. You mean now?

Yeah, now, I mean, I think that, you know, you'd want them to have the best possible opportunities, but then separately, I mean, I think the reason some people in the business send their kids to, like, a business, you know, like whatever, like a private school, is that at least contextually, they're not going to be singled out as being, you know, the kids of, you know, the kids of, you know what I mean? Because, yeah, because there's a bunch of other famous people's kids there, so it normalizes them a little bit. But then they are surrounded in a different way by the context of the business every day. I think that's really true. You know, and I hear it from my daughter. Both my kids are grown now. But, you know, they went to public school in Connecticut,

and albeit we lived in a nice place, you know, so it was hardly a bed of diversity, which I, you know, had real concerns about it, but we made this because it was a great school system. Right, of course. At least our kids were in public school. Right. But, you know, the kids, I know the kids that have my generation that grew up in and went to school in Hollywood.

It was a very insular group because all the parents were in show business, everyone knew where everyone's career was at. Right. And I sense that in my daughter's generation now, you know, she's a young writer and just got out of the film school. And so now I'm meeting a lot of those people. And I sense that that's still very much the case. Right, right.

When you, I mean, what's interesting also is that despite, or not despite maybe because of your father's experiences as a kid being so immersed in this world, but then somehow also kept apart from it in a different way than you were kept apart from it. I mean, you very much are a part of, you know, you have a family business. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. He went into the same business as his father. Was that reluctant? For me, it was reluctant, yeah. I mean, what's beautiful about it is it's sort of organically

evolved into a family business, into a real legacy or dynasty, I guess you could call it. it's not the family business in that there is a business that we all share together. Everybody does their own thing. But, no, I was really reluctant. You know, one of the things about having a famous last name is you want to find your own identity apart from that. So I was like, I don't want anything to do with that. I was tired of kids coming up to me and going, what movie stores do you know? And then I was like, oh, I don't know any.

I'm as disappointed as you are. So I wanted nothing to do with it. But then when I was in high school and I started, I never knew what I wanted to do. I was never particularly good at any one thing, you know. And I started acting in plays just because it seemed fun and my big brother did it. And I wanted to be like him. And I immediately was addicted to it and thought, oh, God. I think this is what I want to do with my life.

So the fact that it was in show business was an obstacle I had to overcome. personally. There was a lot of baggage associated with that for me, so I knew that, okay, I got to figure it out. I got to, I got to, I got to, that's my problem to overcome.

Right. You know, and, yeah. Was your, you know, your father who was so kind of actively trying to keep you guys as normal as possible, but you were saying he didn't try to dissuade or encourage, did he? No, he didn't, you know,

I think it troubled him a lot. when I said I wanted to be an actor. So he was on the surface supportive and said, you know, you've got to do what you want to do. My mother had been an actress for kind of until I was born, mainly in New York in the theater. So she was excited by it. She was happy, but my dad was terrified, honestly. I think he sort of thought of me as I was the youngest of, there's six of us, but the first four with my mom and dad. than I have a half brother and sister who much younger.

So I was the youngest of the first batch. And I think he thought I was sort of a kid with my head in the clouds. Right. You know, you don't want to see your kids go through pain. And he knew how hard it was. So he worried a lot and expressed that worry to me like, you know, you better, you know, this is, he was pretty rough. Yeah, was he?

Was he? Critical of your work or just critical of your work? or just critical of the choice. No, more just like looking at all the things that are going to go wrong. Right. This isn't going to work. It's probably going to work out.

You better face the fact that if you're not a big movie star by the time you're 25, it's over. Literally, I remember having that conversation with him. Wow. He said at that time, when I was a teenager, it was like 15, maybe 16, something like that, 17. And really serious about it. And at that time, John Travolta was the biggest movie star in the world.

Saturday I have fever and he was like that he was everything and and I was like you know if you're not Travolta by the time you're 25 it's kind of over I was like wait that can't be right that can't be true so I just sort of internalized then I remember literally having that thought of like well he's that's his perspective okay but I know that's not true right but that you know weighed on me oh it would stick with you I would imagine so um but at the end of the day you know what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and um you know, there was this flip. So in my 20s, when I was really struggling,

there was a lot of anxiety from him. And it was, it was hard. He was very judgmental about it. So not about, of my work, but of like how I was going about things and what a... Right. Did he offer help? I mean, did he offer help?

I wonder, because he seems like he was very much about self-sartorship. Like, you're going to have to do this on your own. He did not offer, he did not offer help. And I was fine with that. I didn't want help. Yeah. It was very much, you know, there's not much you can do for an actor.

That's the thing. It's not, you've got to be able to, if you can't, you've got to walk in the room and you've got to get the parts. Right. You can't. And the few, I can only recall one meeting that he facilitated for me. It was a movie, his company was producing, and it was a great script. And I think I asked him to get me an audition for it.

Or somehow I, but I'm going into his company's office and auditioning with this part, which incidentally, Aidan Quinn got the part, as I recall. Now that I mentioned it. And I went and it was one of the worst auditions I've ever done because there was so much pressure and the director was very aware that I was Sam's kid and the casting director was in comfort. It was just awful. And I was like, oh, right, never doing that again. Yeah.

So no, he didn't. And I don't want to be too hard on my dad Because when I started Finding success First of all he came to everything I ever did And he You know It was the first one to leap up in a standing ovation

Whenever I was going to play in Newark or something And when I started up success No one was more thrilled than my dad Particularly when I became a director And you know So there was a real You know 180 once sort of to work out and he admits, you know, he passed this year, but he admitted that he, you know,

whenever he said something wasn't going to work out and I made it work out, he was the first one to go, I told him it wasn't going to happen, but look what he did. So he was really, um, thrilled, you know, for me. I also wonder if, um, being, and you may have the same sense or a sense similar to this being a parent of, you know, a parent now and having a daughter who's in the business of, um, almost wanting to say to you, vocalize all of his worst fears about the worst things that could happen to you to toughen you up.

But also, I imagine being on the production side of things. I mean, I can't, I mean, this year with the Sony hacking scandal kind of verified for all of us, you know, on the other side, like our worst suspicions of how actors are seen. You know, I mean,

it's not like everybody in the business these actors is interchangeable, as pawns, as stupid, is whatever, you know, all the things that kind of came out. But I do think that, like, he had to have been privy to some of the worst worst conversations people could have about actors.

Oh, yeah. And how, you know, if you're not John Travolta, and even if you are John Travolta, but if you're not John Travolta, we could be seen as just interchangeable, just pieces. Oh, God, it's so true. You know, I remember casting my first film, A Walk on the Moon,

which was a very difficult experience for me to be auditioning actors to begin with. For whatever 10 or 15 years at that point, I had been, you know, the guy in the chair auditioning, and suddenly I was auditioning actors, and it was very painful for me. They'd come in, and I'd be so apologetic. Oh, God, yes.

Like, where'd you want to sit? Are you? Which chair would you like to sit? And you know, what? And finally, an actor turned to me. He was like, you know what? This is stressful enough. You tell me where to sit, and I'll sit there. I'm like, oh, right.

But my point was, you know, I remember producers, this producer that I was working with saying, a guy could come in or rebut, I'd be talking about it. His career is over. He's over. Or a girl will be like, yeah, no one wants to fuck her. And I'd be like, you know, or, yeah, I don't know.

He's okay. But, you know, he's like, he's over. That was the big thing. Old, done, whatever. The career is over because you're always trying in casting to find who's the hot person. Who's the new thing? Right. What's the, you know, because people want to ride that gravy train.

Right. And he was, so the constant comment was, yeah, they're over. He's, you know, she's too old. This, all these negatives. And I finally said, you. cannot, you may not speak about actors like that in my presence. Yeah. You cannot. Yeah.

And I made a rule. I was like, I won't hear it. God, that's so good. And so, yeah. You know, my dad being a producer, not only heard that, but I'm sure spoke in that sort of commoditized view. And it is how people talk about actors. And I've learned now being a director for, you know, now over 15 years. and cast a lot of stuff was beautiful about it

and being an actor for longer was beautiful about it and having experienced it myself as an actor we all have multiple lives so there is no such thing that's bullshit when people say she's over

no one you know people said that about me plenty right right I guarantee it they said when I started out you're not you're not gonna make it I don't see anything there

you know you get rejected all the time And then, you know, when the movies I did after Ghost didn't perform the way Ghost did, they were like, well, that's career's over. And then, you know, it's like this is a business and life is a business of self-reinvention. You know, so and the great joy that I've found is when you embrace that. it stops being about how can I like be successful in other people's eyes again like how do I how do I get back there it's like I don't look at life at all like that now I look at how do I um change it up for myself I've done X how do I like now I want to do this how do I or I love doing

that and I want to do it again so I got to figure out how to make it happen for myself but more it's like what you know what how do I up my game for myself and my own creative and business life. Yeah. You know, whether it's financial or creative, it's like, so that's the truth. And we always have to, you know, this kind of circles back to a family thing because one of the, if I've inherited anything being a part of the Goldwyn family, it's, the idea of self-invention and self-reinvention.

And my grandfather, you know, who was a Polish, a Jewish immigrant from Poland who left Poland, dirt poor at 16 years old or 15 years old, on foot with one suit of clothes on his back. Wow. And made his way to America and, you know, survived that to become a leader of an industry. you know and even in the movie business constantly was you know rejected convention to do things his own way and ended up having a career that lasted for 50 years um you know he embodied independent spirit and defining oneself apart from the convention so um you know, that fits right into what I'm saying about what I've learned about life is, you know, I don't know, I forgot how we got into this, but it's a, it's become a, you know, recurring.

Yeah, just that idea that I think that, and even, it's interesting, because I was going to say that that felt more like a modern expression or a modern condition of the business, but it's not that we can reinvent ourselves now or over, let's say, the last two decades has afforded artists. and actors, but all artists, like, more opportunities for reinvention than ever before, right? Because technology, the expansion of just the ways we can reach people and the power we have to create things on our own without asking permission from a studio and having, you know. But then I was thinking about your grandfather and the fact that he kept getting forced out of these companies and just kept starting over. I mean, that's kind of relentlessness in the most positive sense of like this is who, I am, right? So I can let you define me from an exterior position, which is like, you're done,

but you know, fuck you. I'm done when I say I'm done. You know? That's exactly right. And knowing that you have something else inside you, you know, that you're a bottomless font and you have to know that about yourself because everyone's going to tell you that you aren't, that you just had that one performance in you, that you just had that one, that one movie, that one opportunity, that was it, that was your shot, which is so not true. Yeah. But for anyone, you know, I I guess they got to this, you know, we got to this, we got to this, we're talking about casting. And so the irony is, yeah, I think to get back to your earlier point, my dad did have that perspective on actors. Yeah.

And yet, in a much deeper way, he communicated, you know, bestowed upon me and my siblings, this sense of life is about fighting for your own path. Yeah. And it's about surviving. Yeah. You know, like, and he did say that to me a lot when I was young. You know, this is a Survivor's game. It's not about being on the cover of People magazine at 25 years old. See, he contradicted himself.

Right, right. He said it's not about, it's not even about winning the Oscar. It's not about getting in him. It's not about being the hot guy. He's, it's about being in your 50s and still in the game. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, my 50s are a long way away. You know, now I'm my 50s.

these and I'm like, wow, that was so true. Yeah. And, and, you know, now I'm at a point where I have reinvented myself multiple times and feel that I've so much still to look forward to. I, you know, I sometimes feel like I'm just getting started. And I have so many friends who have as well, you know, so, and whom I've worked with, you know, I tend to now work with the same people over and over again because we've all hung in there and people's work is better than ever. You know, whether they be another actor

or a writer that I'm working with or a director, uh, um, that's a really beautiful thing. But, but I, what I see most often is people who have defied that, um,

tendency of human nature to put you in a box. It's a weird thing that we do to each other. Just the way the brain works though. You have people, you know, we, our brain naturally just categorizes just to organize the world, right? And it's easier. it's easier to dismiss, you know, and sort, you know, good, bad, right, wrong, you know, hot, cold. Yeah.

Because his brain's not very good at complexity, I don't think, you know. I suppose that's right. And we want certainty, we want to know, we want to, we want to put people in categories. I mean, it's what's wrong with, you know, our whole attitude, you know, about race and social stratification. Right. Money, gender, sexuality. Sexuality. We want to know what you are.

Yeah. Yeah. What are you? Okay, so you're black, you're straight, you're gay, you're this. Because then I have a whole bunch of associations with making me feel like I know what I'm doing. What I'm getting into. And I'm as guilty of that as of anyone. I mean, I have to talk myself out of it as soon as I do it.

And you know what's amazing is like you can think about it from like quote unquote if we get into like socio political terms like the dominant culture. But it happens as much as like the other culture as well where you have, you know, speaking on behalf of friends of mine, but like, you know, my sister is a lesbian. Well, she was married for a long time and then she got a divorce and she came out. But, you know, her, if she does something

that isn't like dogmatically lesbian, her friends are like, you're confused, you don't know who you are, you know what I mean? Like everybody, even when you're the other group, you want everybody to define themselves in a way that fits your categorization of your culture. You know, if I listen to heavy metal, people like, you're not black enough.

I mean, I was born this way. I can't really change it. Like, this is who I am. My brother's the same. I have a gay brother. and who was married for years and as a grown daughter and came on, you know, and thank God. Yeah, God, thank God. But that was that identity thing of like, okay, well, wait a minute.

I'm who I am in the world. I'm still the person I am. I'm now supposed to be part of some other culture that I may or maybe come to with certain parts of an embrace and others I don't. Exactly. But we just, we have a rigidity that I think is built into the way our brains function. And like you said, we have to constantly be like checking ourselves. Yeah. Um, let's talk about, well, we won't talk about ghosts.

We have, but I mean, I think, well, I will ask you one question about it. You were in New York and you were doing theater? Was that what was happening right before you got that? Or were you here? No, I was here. You know, I had been an actor about six years before I got, not quite. Wait, it was 1980 when I got cast on that. So, yeah, 80, I guess I started working and I got out of school in 84.

So, yeah, I'd been an actor. for five years. I started out working in New York in the theater. I went to acting school in London and wanted to work in the classical theater and worked in the theater for a couple of years and was, you know, doing okay. And I realized that if I wanted to make a living, it would be a lot easier if I could get some film and television. And also, I realized that as I started to go up for bigger parts, I was losing those parts

two people who had either film or TV names. So I thought, you know, I need to be. And I was getting pressure from my dad. It was like, what the hell are you doing sitting in New York when the business is out here? Right. Whether he was right or wrong, I migrated a little bit to L.A. I ended up doing a play out here, which brought me out here and I was able to get some visibility because I was doing something.

Right. But I really then struggled for about three years out here. What I did was the first stuff I was. I got a tiny part in a horror movie in one of the Friday the 13th movies where I got killed in the first two minutes. But I was very grateful to the job. And then I did a small part in a beautiful sort of artie movie that not very many people saw. And then, but I really, the jobs I got were guest stars in television shows, which is a great

way to learn to work in front of the camera, which is very different from working on stage. And terrified me when I first got into a set. and had this thing staring at me in the face and no audience and I just froze up you know so and also I think TV but the pace of TV is so good it's so fast that if you could manage television everything else feels super languid like you go back to a film and they're doing like three-eighths of a page in a day and you just did seven you know yeah so so that was good the difficulty I I found at that time in the 80s was you kind of referenced this before it's changed so much but in the 1980s And into the 90s, if you worked in television, that was it.

Right. You were a TV actor. You could not work in movies. And movie actors who migrated to television meant their career was over. Right. And they were slumming. Right. And TV actors, no matter how brilliant they were, just, you know,

it was the real outlier of someone who broke through. I mean, Clint East who it had after Maverick. Right. You know, when I was, one of the real game changers was Bruce Willis. Yeah. getting, after moonlighting, getting diehard. And he was, you know, he only got that part because I forget who it was. You may know, the movie was like in production and the star dropped out and they couldn't find anybody.

Was it like Stallone or somebody? It was a big star. And they couldn't get anybody. And, you know, kind of at the last minute, Arnold Rifkin, who was his, Bruce's agent, you know, slammed him in there and he got paid more than an actor had ever been paid before. And it, like, changed the whole game. And Bruce is a movie star. He just is a movie star. Right, right, exactly.

And that was around, what, 87, 88. So that started to shift it a little bit. But again, that was the other. So I couldn't get auditions for movies. I would go, they say, you know, he's a TV actor. And my agent was more of a TV agent. And I got ghost because my wife, Jane, is a wonderful production designer and was much more successful than me in those days.

and she had done a lot of big movies and was the designer for Ghost. Wow. And she kept coming home going, they haven't cast that part. You've got to bug your agents. And I was like, they're not going to cast me on the leads in this movie.

Are you crazy? She's like, oh, I just tell you, they can't find somebody, and you should get it. So I'd call my agents, they'd be like, we can't get you and we can't get you in. And I literally just bugged that shit out of my agents. Yeah.

And the assistant to my agent, honestly, in those days, my agent wouldn't even return my phone call. I was at ICM and he just I went to a screening and my own agent didn't recognize me Oh my God I've been so many friends who have had that story

He thought I was my brother who was a, my brother John's was a very successful studio executive and now a very successful producer But at the time he was kind of a hot guy in Hollywood Right right So my agent was like I go hi Brian he's like

Hi John In front of all these famous people And I'm like oh it's Tony I'm your client and he went Oh right Tony yeah how are you You know, I was like, oh my God. What I love is he should have been like, oh my God, I'm such an asshole. That's the only response to you.

No, he wasn't. He was like, oh, yeah, how are you doing? You know? Good to see you. Worst. Oh, my God. But he was my, what was I going to do? You know, at least I had an agent.

So his assistant, who was this great guy who went on to become a very successful agent and manager himself said, I'm going to get you in on that thing. I said, okay. So he got me an audition. And I went in on tape. The director wouldn't meet me. And I went on tape. and read, and I knew I did a good job, you know, but that was over. Anyway, that spring, I was getting really worn down of being an actor here.

I just, it can be soul-destroying when you just feel. Even though I guess I worked a lot more than most people, but when you work as a guest star on television, you know, you work every few months. Yeah. So at the end of the year, you've been in a lot of TV shows, but you haven't worked up. much. Right. Because you work for a week. Making a real living. No, you make a few thousand bucks. And it was, I was able to make a, I was able to, I mean, I, Janet never have lived lavishly.

And, you know, you've got to be smart in this business. And at that time, we certainly weren't. But we were, I was able to make ends meet, thank God. But, um, it was, uh, it was kind of soul crushing. And, uh, you go and you work for three days. And then you're out of work again. And you got, and then the next month. And you're just trying to make a breakthrough. Like, I just want, you know, and I had some good parts. And I, and I had some good parts. And I, and I, I had some stuff that I was kind of proud of, but it was hard. And I tested for a pilot that year for a new series, and you go through this process where you go and have to audition multiple times and go to the network.

And the final things, you audition in front of all these network executives in a room, and they're all stone-faced. And testing for pilots is like legend among actors. The crazy process of you, when you go to network for a test. It's this terrible. We talked about on the show before. And, you know, you, it's so, so, you can go and be so confident through every step of the process. And testing should be the moment where you feel the best about yourself because you've made it this far.

They've narrowed it down to just a couple of people. I mean, I've never flop-swetted so hard of mind. Like, I feel sweat moving down the sides of my body. And then you've already gone through the whole process of negotiating your contract for the show. Yep. So in your head, you're kind of already spending the money that you're going to make. I mean, not in a ridiculous way, but, like, you kind of, you've already, like, worked out your life for the next seven years, but you don't have. but you don't have the job yet.

And then you know that this is it. I could fuck myself out of this today. Right. So there was this show called Equal Justice, which ended up starring Joe Morton, who was in scandal, and whom I've worked with Joe. He's one of those people I've worked with many times

in the theater and movie and whatever. So anyway, Joe was the lead. And I was up for one of the other leads. And an old friend of my Jane Casmeric who was a brilliant actress. You know, Jane and I were testing. And God, there was like, we show up at aviation.

and there were like 20 actors testing because it was an ensemble legal show. A lot of pieces. Thomas Carter was directing it. Oh, wow. And anyway, they kept winnowing out people and sending people home. And at the end of the like test, we were there for eight hours. And then it was like me and another guy, I can't remember his name. I got it.

It's a really good looking guy. Aiden Cren. There was not a, Aiden was a movie idea when you tell him you. So we had to do like this act off where you'd go in the room and they'd do different combinations and it was me and this other guy. It was like, it was torture. The worst. So we leave and I was like, oh, my God. But, you know, obviously you get to wanting the thing so bad.

Yeah. I'm like, so I get a funny phone call from Jane Casmeric the next morning. The next day I think it was on my answering machine. She's like, Tony, it's so exciting. We're going to work together. Isn't this awesome? You're like, I'm so excited for you. And, and, um, because Jane again was one of this, but I'd worked with a bunch, and we'd started

out together. And, and then, she goes, and I mean, I know you, you did get it, right? I mean, of course you got it. Like, why would, of course, they'd be crazy to catch you. I mean, I just, I mean, I hope you did. Oh, God. I'm sorry. Well, I'm just going to assume you did, because you didn't call me, but I was like that.

Oh, God. So I was a click and I hear this and I go, hmm, I didn't hear anything from my agents yet. So I called the agents, I found that I didn't get the part. Oh, no. And I thought, you know what? I'm done. Yeah.

I'm done. I can't do this anymore. Yeah, I can't do that again. And I was offered a play back on the East Coast for the summer at the Williams 10 Theater Festival where I'd worked a bunch. And I was rehearsing in New York and I thought, I'm just going to go work in the theater. They want me.

And I don't care if I don't, I'll make ends meet. figure it out. Right. Jane makes good living and we'll figure it out. Yeah. But I can't do this anymore. And I literally left L.A. I quit.

Who knows what I would have done, but I went back and thought I'm just going to work in the theater. I can't do this anymore. And we were sort of bicostole and it was crazy and expensive. And I just went and I was rehearsing this play. And I was very happy. And I get a call from my agent who never called me. And my break, they got a message from Brian.

I'm not going to say that one. because he's a very good agent, a very reputable agent. But you got a call from this guy. And I was like, why is he? He never called me. So I call him up on my break, and he is, Tony, hey, how are you? I'm like, great. So remember that movie Ghost?

They want to screen test you. I said, what? Because it had been over two months since I had audition. He said, they saw your tape, and they really liked it, and they want to fly you out to L.A. for a screen test. And those were in the days when you actually did screen tests, which you don't really do anymore. Rarely. So I had one day off.

off. I fly out to, they fly me out to L.A. First class, which I'd never before. Ooh. Yeah. And I put me up in a hotel and I go to Paramount Studios. And I remember, like, I had a night, I had one nice suit and I wore my blue suit and I show up at this thing. And it was on a stage and they put me through hair and makeup and they had like a little set that they were borrowing from some other movie and some other movie. And it was like a film camera. And, you know, DeMey wasn't there, but I read with a casting assistant. But other than that,

the director was there and the producers and they had a whole thing. And they filmed it and it was thrilling. It was about a, it was almost, it was like a half a day of working. And it was just so exciting and fun. And you did like, you were saying about TV, you know, you do a test option and they make your whole deal. And so I got paid peanuts, but I didn't care. And, yeah, it was, and I went back to Russell and I, I didn't know what was going to

happen, but it was a thrilling experience. Yeah. And, um, the opposite of the one you would just had testing for this show. Yeah. Because there was, like, it was a movie, they were really wanted me to do well. Yeah, they wanted to make it like the best possible conditions for you to do the best work. And they liked me, so they wanted to present this to the studio. And I remember the director and I, Jerry, and I had this argument about the character

because he said, you're playing him too sympathetic. I need to know that you're evil. And I said, I'm not doing that, Jerry, because the audience, you have to invest the audience in this character and make them hopefully fall in love with them. And then the betrayal will be that much worse. You want to believe that I'm like their friend. and he's like, yeah, but they won't want you to die and I have to want you to...

So I stuck to my guns and the Elton was like, you know, you were right. And that was the way that I played the part. So anyway, I got... Well played. Also, by the way, like an really elegant bit of confidence at a time when most actors would just be like, the director knows what they want.

I'm just going to give them what they want. You know what I mean? Like, I think you could really get in this trap where you walk into a room and you are trying to please everybody rather than sticking with your own instincts and a lot of actors would cave, which is not a criticism,

we just want to make everybody happy. Yeah, well, you know, I had learned at that point, because as I said, I've been doing it for about five years, that you don't, you can only lose in that other way. Yeah. You know, something I say to young actors, a lot about auditioning, you know, you have to have a point of view that's yours. Yeah.

And the irony is, this is getting completely out of this, but this is an important subject for anybody who's interested in acting. Mm-hmm. The irony is, you know, if you are going into an audition, in my view, when you go into an audition with a mindset of what do I think they want, you haven't worked hard enough on the audition. You haven't prepared enough. Because the fact is, I always work on an audition as long as I have to work on it so that I know absolutely what I want to do with it. that it's, I own it, it's mine. And when I do that, I walk into the room and what they want is not irrelevant, but it's

what they want. I can't help them. It's an unknown, by the way, too. It's an unknown. I can't control that. I have no control. All I can do is go, guys, here's my perspective on this. Maybe it fits with what you're thinking, or maybe it doesn't.

I have no control over that. But when you do that, you then walk in, and it's always a nerve-wracking experience to audition. but, you know, I then know I'm going to do my work here and I know what I'm doing. Right. And it's relaxing and I find I have learned to, I have then very little investment in whether I'm going to get the job or not. Yeah. Whereas when you have that insecurity, it's all about am I going to get it? Do they like me?

Did I do good? Did I fill the order? Did I fill the order? Am I going to get the job? Right. I learned when I started taking that approach to it, I end up not careful. caring that much if I get the job. It would be nice. And if I don't get something that I really think is cool, it's disappointing. But it's not fundamentally demoralizing in the way when I was

younger, it was. And you feel that you kind of gave a piece of yourself away because you wanted them to like you or something. So anyway. No, and it's, I always feel that way. I knew that. Yeah. Yeah. Then I'm going to do what I'm at least when I leave here regardless of the result, I'll know that I did what I wanted to do. I gave like my best performance. You just reminded me of something when you were talking earlier about auditioning. I've only ever, I mean, I've done like lots of shorts, but I've only, I had a pilot once that I was, you know, attached. It was like my show and I got to be. And it was the first time where I realized like I saw lots of actors come in and I saw four or five people all turned in performances that would have been equivalently fantastic.

You know what I mean? Like that would have been great. That would have been great. And then in the end for this show at this moment with these conditions, there was just this one person who was the guy. And they weren't the guy because they were more famous or just one guy came in and kind of gave the thing that we were all looking for. But any one of those people would have been amazing. That was so freeing too. Me too. I had that when I directed my first film. That was a total revelation to me that I kept auditioning these amazing actors and going, God, there's so much. First of all, I was like, I don't know how I ever got a job with this many great actors in the world. But on the other hand, there's only one person who's right for the part.

and also great actors would come in and do shitty auditions. Oh, all the time. And I just feel their pain. And it happens to me when I go in and read for something sometimes, I just have an off day. I can't dial in. Tired, anxious, a million different things. You just have bad days.

And people that would just do bad work. And I go, wow. And sometimes I've cast people who I knew didn't do the best audition. Right. But I just know they're the right person. I know what they're capable of. or they just have this chemical thing that is the right thing for that point. Right.

So that, yeah, like you, that was very free for me. Liberating, God, because you used to think, okay, all I can do is give my best performance. Right. I have no control over anything else. And I remember thinking, well, these two guys were great, but it's not like this guy could have done something differently. And all of a sudden, he would have been, yeah, which was just also like, well, if I just done this? I know, right? No, the friend of mine calls it the 405 drive of shame.

and I can go back from an audition to beating themselves up about what they should have done. Repeating the lines and get in the car even though they're of no use to you anymore. That part of your life is over. You're never going to say those words again.

So you get, you test for this movie and you get the part and it shot in New York. It shot in L.A. primarily and then we shot like, God, it was a long, so it was like six months.

We shot several months in L.A., and then we had like six weeks in New York, five or six weeks. and everything like that. And obviously it was maybe like the biggest, the biggest movie and the biggest role you had gotten. But we were just talking earlier about the fact that there was not necessarily an expectation that this was going to be a huge film or the phenomenon that it was.

I mean, look, it is a massive part of American popular culture. But it was also a weird fucking idea. It was. Like weird and... And the people that were in it, you know, no one's career was doing very well. Patrick had been in Dirty Dancing, which had been, you know, just massive. And then the movies he did after that, it didn't do so well. You know, there was Roadhouse.

Yeah, I forgot about Roadhouse. Which is a cult classic now. Yeah, not at the time. It is. It is, but, you know, there were other things that did not work. And Whoopi as well, you know, had, you know, the color purple had launched her out of nowhere. and then she'd done a bunch of comedies, but there was fatal beauty

and there was things that just didn't, you know, weren't working in the box office and everyone knew she was a genius, but she hadn't, that, it happens to all of us. You know,

like she'd been for a few years where the movies had now worked so well. And there was like a tonal dissonance, too, for her specifically because the movie was this romantic drama with this like death component, but she was kind of comedic. I mean, it was really like one note off.

Yeah. One note off with that film. and it wouldn't have worked at all. It wouldn't have worked. And to me was essentially, I know, she'd been in St. Elmo's Fire and those movies, but hadn't ended up at last night. To me, was one of those people who everyone in the business knew she was going to be a movie star, but she hadn't had her shot.

Right. And that was her shot. And so there was no anticipation of like, oh, so, but it just goes to show you when the material works, it doesn't matter. Right. When people are cast right, the audiences find it. Yeah. It's just, and that movie was, it was the weirdest, almost like a metaphysical experience.

I remember they had a sneak preview of the movie, and they paired it with Days of Thunder, which was another Paramount movie. Racing movie. It was a racing movie with Tom Cruise and Mark Kilmer, which opened at the same time as us. And then, you know, doing okay, but not being like ghost. But they piggybacked us on Days of Thunder to try and bring audiences in. and they the sneak preview audiences I guess they had

showed Days of Thunder at 8 and Ghost at 10 or something like that I don't know something like that not many people showed up for Days of Thunder and Ghost was standing room only in a sneak preview

where no one knew what it was but there was just something about the movie the idea or something that people want I want to see that and every single preview they did was

packed out so that by the time it opened it was an overnight smash hit and it didn't even get great reviews like it they were dismissive of it right so it was a it was a weird thing I was um I've never been a part of anything like that yeah scandal a little bit right you know the people just found it right and it became such a phenomenon so quickly yeah yeah you have this big film and and I you know like we were talking about earlier everybody kind of first First of all, I don't think you like have a thing that makes you and then, you know, the momentum is unsustainable in any business. And in this one specifically, you can be on like a sine wave, you know what I mean? But it's almost impossible to kind of sustain.

Right. And I think that there's a machine, like the tools of how to sustain, we may understand them better now than we used to. I don't know. But I wonder if when you came off of Ghost, you're previously unresponsive agent, had a plan. or if you had a plan of like how to take advantage of that film. It was very difficult time for me. I mean, it was an exciting time because suddenly I was not toiling in obscurity. I was hot.

But I didn't know what to do with it. I kept looking to people going, okay, what happens now? Yeah. Right, guys, you guys tell me you're the experts. You have a plan, right? Yeah. You tell me how to do it. And, you know, that agent, I thought, well, now I've given them something to work with.

I did not have one audition for nine months. Jesus. For nine months. Unbelievable. It's like leading a bag of money in the street. I mean, on your agent's part, you know, like just this open door that's slowly closing. It was crazy. So I switched agents.

I switched agencies. And then I got all these calls from that company going, how could you, we worked so hard for you? How could you have left us? This was your big, we were so invested in you. And I was like, you haven't done anything. Really? Okay. Well, I wasn't seeing the results.

And no one was telling me with all the great things you were doing. Exactly. But, you know, sadly, that's the lot of actors. You know, what I learned, you know, myself. And then even, you know, now I'm with CIA, and I think it's a great company, and I've been with them for 20 years or more now. That's impressive, by the way.

It all depends on who's working with you at any of these big companies, and the volume that they have to deal with, you know, and, of course, their priority is to pay attention to the people that are their biggest earners and that they have all that pressure on them. and at the end of the day, we are in charge of our own careers. We need to provide our representatives with guidance and say, no, this is what I expect to have

happen. This is what I want to do. This is what I need to do. And I find it very difficult to articulate sometimes, you know. I just assume everyone understands what I want. And I go, of course, we want to do this. Right. But I've learned that I often have to think long and hard, and I still struggle with it every day to try and formulate, what do I want?

What do I want to have? And what's the next move? This is what I'm looking to do. And I found that my agents and my managers, they really respond well to that. Because after all, they are more fundamentally business people and their sales people. Right. They're not, some are very creative, but they're not the creative artists. So I think it probably makes them really nervous.

When I go, well, what do you think I should be doing? You know, obviously if an offer's coming to their desk, that's the best. They can call it, well, Spielberg wants you, but that doesn't happen every day. You know, so, you know, it was a very freakish thing that I got a call saying Shonda Rhymes wants to offer you this part. in the show. You know, I was like, what? It was like that, that people may think that's the norm,

but that's not the norm. No, not even close to the norm. You know, so, you know, I've learned, you know, you're really the president of your own company. Yeah. If you're a freelance person, and particularly if you're an artist. Yeah.

So how did we get on this one? Oh, we were talking about the fact that you went for nine months without an audition, and then you moved and did this new, Because I'm really curious about your life between ghosts. Because you have worked consistently in film intelligence since then. And I'm sure that there were periods of your life where you were feeling very creatively satisfied in times when you were like, this is not. Struggling.

Yeah. No, it was hard. So here's what happened. I kept saying what's going on, what's going on, what's going on, what's going on. And there was nothing happening. And I thought, something's wrong with this. But I made the mistake of expecting that they were supposed to tell me. what was going to happen.

Right. And that, of course, now they had this massive thing to work with that they would just make it happen. I mean, it's an Oscar nominated a film. We have multiple awards. Yeah. So, yeah, so I switched over to CAA. And that was good for a bit because I was a new client and they wanted to show that, you know, so I got more opportunities.

But still, well, what I did was I went and did a play in New York, which ended up being very successful. It was counterintuitive. because I was in a hot movie and I should have just did in Hollywood but I was like, you know, I really scored in this. I'd done it at this theater company in Williamstown, the summer theater where I'd worked

and we were moving to New York and I thought, this could be really good in terms of giving breadth to my people's perception of me now. And it was a great role and I won awards doing it and the show was a big head. And I think it was a good thing. And Richard was a smart move. Right.

And then I thought, well, I won't, OB award and I got all these amazing reviews and now they'll really have them not going to hit movie and I hit play and like okay guys what happens now crickets and not to trash them but I didn't say

I kind of was waiting for them to bring it right and so then the next movie I did was about a year later it was I think honestly not a very good comedy called Cuffs which was kind of funny it was a Christian Slater

and it was a music And it was a funny part. And I thought, well, I'll do a comedy and that'll be different. But it was not, it was a very slight movie. Certainly not what I, you know, and I did, while I was doing the play, I went and I got offered a job to do a mini-series, a cave for a TNT about the Iran hostage crisis. And it was a funny thing, you know, I was in this play and they gave me some time off to do it. And I was like the fifth or sixth lead. It's like a very supporting part

and sort of a high-minded piece of television but what the hell was I doing? I just started in a movie. It was a massive hit. Yeah. They just won a bunch of awards on Broadway. Less than six months later, the first job I did was a very supporting part in a cable movie when cable TV was not what it is now.

Right, right. And so that sort of, I don't know, and I got, but they offered me what I thought, I remember I got offered $65,000 to do this cable movie, and that was a fortune. I was working for $500 a week off Broadway, you know, and I thought, I can't turn down $65,000, I can't. And it's a job, and I'm still of the mind.

Someone offered me a job, I take it. And so I wasn't very smart in that way about career you're finding, you know? You're probably at that point in your life where you didn't have the luxury of passing. There's like, you know what I mean? It was like... No, and I didn't yet... I was still grateful to get offered a job. You know, the scars of being an unemployed actor for a number of years were still...

You know, I still had PTSD from that, but I would never work again. So I was not very smart about it, and so I did cuffs, and it didn't do anything. And then I think that lowered my stock a little bit because, you know, it's just so tricky. You know, and then I, again, waiting for auditions. And then I did a movie that... that it was not, this was a movie for my father's company that ended up, he asked me to do, and I felt like I owed it to him to do it. It was a, terrible.

God bless the good people involved, but it was just not a success, and it was not very good. What was the film? It was called Traces of Red. It was a cop movie with me and Jim Belushi, and I was, it was just, it did not work, do. I was not very good in it, and it was, again, another thing that people are looking to see what you do next, and it was not the smart thing to do. Right. And so my stock became quite diluted.

And as you say, I worked all the time, thank God. And I was able to make a nice living. And, you know, the financial pressures were kind of off, Jane and me for a while. And we had started a family, and I knew I could support my kids. And so I was grateful to be working steadily. I continued to work in the theater, and that was, you know, successful.

And so I was a working, a successful work. working actor. But so for about three or four years, you know, and then I did some bigger movies playing villains. I kind of decided, okay, I'm not going to do any more movies that I don't think are going to be any good. Right, right. So I did the Pelican.

Regardless if it's the lead, regardless if it's something. I just was sort of taking every job that was offered me because I felt like I needed to and I realized that was a mistake. So then I did some bigger movies. I did The Pelican Brief. I did Kiss the Girls. I did some odd, interesting little movies that I just thought were super cool, you know.

And I made a rule for myself that I would only work on projects that met two of three criteria. They were, I was being paid a lot of money. I was working with people that I thought were really impressive that I wanted to work with, and it was a role I thought I could do something with,

big or small. Right. that there was a role I thought I could score in. And if it met two of those criteria, I would do it. Yeah, that's a great rule. So if I got paid nothing and I was working with Denzel Washington in an interesting role, I would do it. If it was, you know, getting paid a ton and I felt like I could do well in the role and it was kind of crappy, I would do it. You know what I mean?

Yeah, no, that seems really fair. That's a good thing. So I did, and that really started. Then I started to, things got better. So by about like the mid-90s, I started feeling that I could hold my head up. with what I was doing. And so for those, and as I was doing that in those years, I started to feel that I was getting tired of having,

and I see, you know, in your career, you've really taken control of your career in a similar way. I started to feel that in 10 years' time, I didn't want to just be an actor hoping someone gave me a job. And I, in having worked in film a fair bit at that point, I started to become fascinated with the process and I thought, you know, I want to be more self-determining so if I'm ever in a hit approaching ghost again,

I'm not sitting around going, okay, well, what do I do now? I'll have projects that I can say I want to do this. So I thought I'd develop, start developing scripts as a producer that I could act in. And then even if it took years to get them made, I would know what I wanted to do. So I started looking for that, and I found one that I fell in love with

that I didn't particularly feel right to act in, but I loved the writing, and I met with the writer, and she said, well, would you produce this with me? Because I just love your ideas. And so we started to work on it. And for like two or three years, we worked on this script. And in doing that, I thought, I want to direct.

I think I want to. I never wanted to be a director, but I thought, I sort of have a knack for this. And I think, you know, and I didn't think I'd necessarily direct a feature, but I couldn't get a director attached. And I ultimately said, you know what, I'm going to do this myself. Yeah. And so that, you know, I kind of threw down and declared that and told my agents that I wanted to do this.

Were they supportive? Yeah, they were, I mean, they were like, great. Of course they were supportive. You know, they didn't quite know what to do with me, but they were supportive. They were like, good, go do it. And again, every time I said, here's what I want, they're like, how can we help? Right, right. And sometimes they were helpful and sometimes they weren't.

But yes, and in fact, you know, there's an agent at C.A. John Levin, who's great, and John called me out of the blanche. and we didn't know each other very well and he said, you know that project? You want to direct that, right? That script. Well, Dustin Hoffman wants to read it. I said, what?

He said, well, I was talking to him and we were talking about scripts and he had heard about this project years before because the script had been laying there for a while. And I told him you were attached and they wanted to read it and so they want to read it

because he's just put together a deal to finance independent movies and so I was like, that's crazy. Crazy. And so I said, all right. and I printed out a copy of the script and sent it to them and I got a call a couple days later from his head of Development

One, don't show this somebody else please we'd like to make a deal with you. So suddenly I'd worked on this project for three years at that point and I meet with this older guy, this wonderful guy who had been a successful playwright in the 16thes was Dustin's best friend and now his kind of story ended up

one of the people that wrote Tootsie and Murray goes kid, you know Dusty loves that you want to direct this? I said, I do He said, well, Dusty loves actor-director, so you should. You know, and how much do you think you can make it for? And I was trying to get the budget under $2 million. He said, you think you could do it for $6 million? I said, yeah, I think I could probably do that.

And, you know, six months later, we were in production. And I was suddenly a movie director. Yeah. So that was like, you know, by then that was sort of the late 90s. And I was doing, I was very happy with where my career was at. You know, like 1995, I did an Oliver Stone movie. It was a small part, but a really great part in Nixon, and I was in a play on Broadway with Laura Linney that was a big success,

and I was doing, you know, I did the voice of Tarzan in the Disney movie, and I was doing work that whether I was a star or not, I was just into it. And so I had a kind of cool rhythm going. And, you know, out of the blue, Tom Hanks asked me to play Neil Armstrong in this miniseries from Earth to the Moon about the Apple for HBO. And that again, I just got a call from Tom. going, would you do this? Yes.

So all of that started to roll. And so I, I, I, I, and then the miracle of becoming a director, I just suddenly realized diversification in this business is everything. And I, that opened a beholden. And then I walk on the moon, while it wasn't a big box office hit, it was a big critical. People really done that. I remember that. It was a great kind of it.

We got into Sundance and I feel like it kind of reinvigorated. It was like the thing that put Diane Lane back in play completely. And Vigo was really. And Vigo, exactly, you know, really, and Leav Schreiber and, you know, Anna Packwin was still a teenager. And so it really, it kind of redefined me and people's perception of me in the industry. Because by that time, I'd been an actor for, you know, it was almost 10 years. It was nine years since Ghost. The movie came out in 99 and Ghost had been 90.

Yeah. And people are like, oh, Tony Goldman's not just the guy from Ghost, you know. So suddenly acting opportunities started coming my way. And, yeah, so then I went on to, you know, to direct three other movies over the next 10 years. And done a bunch of television as well. And then, yeah, you know, and then movies are the same thing. My second film is a feature director because The Walk on the Moon had been so well received. Right.

It was all this pressure like, what was I going to do next? Yeah. And I ended up doing a romantic comedy for Fox, which is a sweet movie. It was fun, you know, it was fun, called Someone Like You with Ashley Judd and Hugh Jackman and Greg Kinnear. And, but it wasn't a passion project for me, but it was, the studio was offering me this greenlit movie and I was feeling a lot of anxiety about what, like I had to get into the movie made, just like I did after goes. Yeah. And I kind of took this job because it had been a year or so after I walk on the moon. And it was almost, you know, and the movie did fine, but it sort of underperformed.

And it more than that, it wasn't a further expression of me. me as a filmmaker and the way that I sort of, it was a job. And it made it harder for me as a director. You know, so then I had to grow all of my things and go, okay, no, no, no, I got to really develop stuff that I really care about whether they succeed or not. So I had to go through the same kind of process as a director. Meanwhile, I realize, you know, I work and develop these movies and it's very difficult, as you well know, to get movies off the ground. It's just, it's a miracle every time one happens, a miracle. And I thought, I'm not going to be a very good director if I only direct every three or four years.

Right. And I started getting offered television, and television was really changing. The Sopranos had changed the game, Oz, what HBO was doing. And I got asked to do the L-word. Showtime. Showtime movie about the lesbians, you know, with Jennifer Beal and this great cast. And it was in their first season. And I thought, what, this writing is fantastic.

And I'm kind of interested in, like, what is this? And one of my agents at TA said, you can't do television. It'll really hurt your career as a feature director. And so at first I stayed a wave, and then I thought, you know, I don't buy that. That's bullshit. This is good writing, and I'm interested in trying it out.

I'm done acting out of fear. So I went up and did this show, and it was a blast and a great challenge and a great workout and you have to shoot in seven days. A great workout, right? Like so much, so compressed. Yeah, you shoot in seven days, and you have a few days to edit,

and it's not like doing a movie, but it's really great work. workout for a director. I loved it. And also, maybe coming onto a moving train, just being really confident about your choices, having to make them a lot more quickly than you would on a film. It's a good learning curve, and you work with different actors, and it's not precious. It's an episode, and it's an hour of television,

and then you're done, you're on the next thing. Right. So I did several of those and started directing TV, and, you know, I directed one or two mainstream network shows, which weren't as interesting to me because some of them were more formula, you were supposed to fit into a formula, and they didn't really want a director. They don't want you to come and make new creative choices. And that's not all network shows in particular that's changing now.

But there was one I did that I felt like I'm just, they just want a traffic cop. Right, right. I became more choosy about what I did, but I just had some great experience. That's how I'm at Shonda, because I directed the third episode of Grey's Anatomy. Oh, wow. I read this amazing pilot and saw Peter Horton and directed the pilot for that, and I was like, this show's great. Yeah. And they wanted me to do it.

And I think all I had done was the L word. Maybe I had done one L word. And I thought the actor, and I always loved Patrick. DEMC, and we knew each other a bit, and I just thought he was such an underrated actor, and we'd always wrote auditions together and stuff. And Ellen, I'd seen in movies, and always thought, who's that girl?

She'd been in a number of movies in the Moonlit Mile, was it Back to School? What was it, the comedy with Will Ferrell? Oh, it was back to school, I think, and she was like the girl, and she didn't have a big part, but I was always like, that girl's so charismatic. Anyway, so I did Greys, and that was fabulous. I met Shonda,

So I started in addition to developing the movies I was doing. And so for almost, for several years, I really didn't act too much. I took jobs that they interested in me and they were offered to me. But I barely ever auditioned. Is that freeing in some ways? I mean, it was. It was. I just got too busy.

And I was really into directing. And it was freeing, but I missed it. Right. So I did some interesting projects. I did, what did I do in those years? You know, I did a movie, like one or two movies a year, and then if I got offered an arc and a guest start thing, I'd take it if it was interesting or a cable thing.

And I kind of felt, well, maybe I'm just not an actor. Maybe I'm more of a director. And my confidence as an actor kind of went into a space of like, well, maybe I was a good actor, but not a really fabulous actor. Like maybe this is what I meant to be doing more. Yeah, interesting. And whenever I did act, I really enjoyed it. And then I, you know, like the last movie I did Conviction,

which was a movie with Hillary Swank and Sam Rockwell, you know, that movie took eight years to get off the ground. And I was very committed to it. Because they play brother and sister. Yeah, that's right. He was a true story. I was wrongfully convicted and spent 18 years in jail for murder and committing. His sister became an attorney to get him out of jail.

Went to law school, everything just to get him out. And she was like, had never gotten through 10th grade. Right. went back to school. And so I got, you know, was very invested in that. And I had done another movie called The Last Kiss before that with Pazac Brath, a comedy that also was great fun to do. And, you know, it was just I was over worrying about what the performance of something was.

That was a fun, great experience. And conviction was really something from my heart. And things were great. You know, things were great. And then the year conviction came out, I got offered a Broadway musical, and I thought, I've never done that. So I did a musical on Broadway called Promises Promises with Kristen Chenoweth and Sean Hayes.

And just, we did that for a year, and that was just a blast. Oh, wow. And that was the your conviction came out. So I was finishing conviction, sort of editing it and finishing it up while I was on Broadway. And it was just a magical time doing, it was a fantasy little. I was going, doing a Broadway show at night, and during the day, going to the editing room to finish up this movie. And it was just incredibly fulfilling on every level.

fulfilling. Right? Like every part of your creative life, your brain being used. Yeah. It was magic. And it was like, again,

the thing about, it was all, you know, it wasn't about, I was so long over, how do I get hot? How do I get to be like that guy? How do I get to be,

win the award? You know, I didn't win a Tony Award. I think I was really good in the show. I got good reviews, but it wasn't, I didn't even read,

I didn't even read the reviews. I don't, it didn't, it was totally irrelevant. Yeah, yeah. It would be nice, fun, exciting, but then the next day, well, put that on a shelf, now what? Moving on, yeah. So it wasn't about getting magazine covers or being in a, that show happily was a hit.

Conviction, sadly, wasn't a hit, but I'm super proud of the movie. Right, right. You know, and it was a huge piece of my heart going into that. So then I finished conviction, which everyone had high hopes for. ended up not doing very well at the box office. And so I found myself the show closed on Broadway and I came out here and I was like, whoa, it's going to be hard. I've got to now roll at my sleeves

and the climate of independent film has really changed. I would never get conviction made today. It just is so hard to put movies together. I thought, wow, am I, okay, I got to roll back. What am I doing? What am I going to do now? And I thought maybe I should consider doing a television series as an actor. now.

Doing the play on Broadway, I fell in love with acting again. Seeing it play for a year, I really fell in love with acting again because I sort of felt like maybe that's not my path. And so I called my age and said, you know, we should consider pilots. Yeah.

And you hadn't done that in forever. And they were like, really? I never wanted to because I knew it would keep me from directing a movie. And a series that eats your life. It eats your life. And a movie, you know, I could direct television, but directing a movie is a year.

and a half minimum. And you just keep, so if I show, luck is a hit. So I thought, you know, but I need to be open and flexible. And I'd always said no. And so they started sending me material. And I flirted with a couple of things, and then I got a call out of the blue. A month

later, saying, Shonda Rimes, Sean and Betsy have this project called Scandal with Carrie Washington, and they want you to play the President United States. And that was it, they were like, and they want you to play the president. There's an offer. Like, everyone else had to test. I think we in Columbus were the only people we didn't have to test.

Shonda just knew she wanted us. Yeah. And which I was grateful for. And, you know, my manager, Jason, just said, you say yes to this. Yeah. You because I was like, well, it's great. And what do you think? And he's like, no, no, no, no.

You just say yes. And I had been desperate to work with Carrie. We were friends. And every time I saw Carrie in a movie, I just, her work blew my mind. She's so, has so much range. And I had been really hoping to work with her. So the combination of her and Shonda, and then the president, no one knew where the story was going to go, you know.

Yeah. I didn't know if I'd end up, I called Shonda. I was like, well, my only concern is that, you know, I know if you're going to write it, it won't be this, but I would really not be happy in a show that was where I was just playing the philandering jerk. Right, right. I don't want to do that. I don't really, that doesn't interest me.

I played that character in a way. And, you know, and she's like, no, no, no, that's not what I'm thinking at all. And I'll give you the flexibility. however much you want to do or not do if you want to do just a few episodes if you want to be in the whole thing let's just see how it goes I was like awesome

and then we did the pilot and Carrie and I had this kind of it was when I read that last scene in the pilot where they're in the Oval Office and you find out that they've been lovers and they kiss and I was like oh that's good that's good that could really go interesting places yeah I mean what has been

so there's been Scandal is such a well done show for so many reasons. And there are three things. I'm going to start with three more by way back to one. Three things, the third thing I find most interesting about scandal is how extreme the scenarios are without ever feeling unreal to me.

I mean, you know what I mean? I feel like, you know, scandal is a constant like, you know, credits, ho shit kind of show. But it never feels like broad or kind of clowny. You know what I mean? When you recounting. recount it to somebody like, that's crazy. But it never feels that way when you're watching the show. No, it's true.

I mean, Shonda, you know, we talk about that all the time. And she said it. She won a Peabody Award last year. And she couldn't make it to New York, so Jeff and I accepted it for her speech. She said, you know, I write scandalous, what is it? She said something like often operatic and sometimes, you know, absurd. Yeah. But, you know, and always extreme.

But what it is is it's emotionally, she said, what I really try for is to make it real. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So in my view, it's emotionally honest. Yeah. The show, so even though the situations are outrageous. Crazy. And sometimes melodramatic and extreme, hyperbolic.

Yeah. The emotional reality of it is very authentic. So people, you know, people, that's what's delicious. about it. You know, like last night's, have you seen last night's movie? No, I'm not cut up, but spoil it. I'm not going to spoil it for you.

But it gives it, but it's really, last night's episode is really good. I'm in the middle of a very intense binge from, behind a little bit, it's been good. It's like a giant bowl of ice cream. Last night was, to me,

um, it was like quintessential scandal because there's a lot of really outrageous shit that happens. Yeah. But it's ultimately about the emotional relationships between the people. Yeah. And it,

in all ways it goes into these crazy directions, but it's very incredibly entertaining, but very moving too. You're connected to these people. And emotionally confronting, you're like, oh, that's real. You're connected to the outcomes for these people in a way that makes the show feel intimate and small. Do you know what I mean?

Intimate and I don't mean small like puny. I mean small, like personal. That's right. And so that was number three. Number two is the pragmatism with which, Shonda has approached love, relationships, and fidelity. And I don't

I don't mean like I've been married for 20, my husband was 25 years. Have you? Wow. We'll be 21 years married in May. Wow, I'll be 27. And yeah, you know, and it's, my understanding of marriage now

is not what it was. Before I got married or five years into my marriage or 10 years into my marriage. And I think the things that I would have been really reactive towards in this show when I was like a newlywed just feel super different to me now and like one of the interesting things about the show and this is not advocacy,

apology or negation but it's just like I used to always feel like the relationship between Fitz and Melly was about power and I do think it is but I actually think there's this weird underlying fundamental love between the two of them which is I made a deal to be with this person

for the rest of my life. Sometimes that looks wonderful. Sometimes it looks fucking ugly. But I understand this person in a way that makes this situation tenable for me because it's not always about like a bunch of simple

Western ideas about marriage. There's just something very interesting about their relationship. And when, you know, Fitz and Olivia have been separated and then Mellie has been like, look, your life only works when she's around. It's just, it's made all these questions come up for me in very interesting ways, just about marriage and about how complex and

wonderful and difficult and elevating and challenging it can be. Yeah. No, I feel the same way. And in many ways, it's been such an interesting thing playing this part in scandal, being in a long, complicated marriage myself. You know, thank God my marriage is not as extreme. Melian fits as is, but, you know, Mellie and Fits are evolving into a very dear and kind of mutually supportive relationship that's not sexual at all. But it is loving. But it's loving. And you know what it is?

The thing I feel about Melly, and there's aspects of this that I feel about my wife, Jim, luckily Jane and I have a more well-rounded relationship. But the sense of... knowing someone at their core, like knowing someone's essence and someone's true potential. I mean, I think the thing that Fitz feels about Mellie right now with her whole, like, wanting to be a politician and all of that, is Fitz sees, appreciates Mellie's gifts in a way that even she doesn't.

Right. And he's taken it upon himself to help her, to foster that, to help her realize those things. thing so that she can come back, be redeemed from all of the pain that she suffered often at his hands, you know, from, you know, starting with the rape by his father, which Fitz isn't responsible for, but Fitz feels responsible for. Incredible guilt, yes. You know, and also, I think any spouse would be like, how did I not see it?

How did I not know? How did I not see it? How did I not know? Yeah. And, you know, and then that, you know, served to deteriorate their marriage. And that was really what drove their sexual death of their marriage. Right. that knows that, you know, it's like, and then, of course,

and then, of course, the death of their son. Angry probably with her for all these years, because they weren't having sex and not, yeah. As he should have been. Right, right. Ten years of celibacy. Right. God, it's amazing he made it as long as he did. Yeah, nobody could.

And so they now are at a point where they forgive each other. And I must say in my marriage with Jane, we're at a point in our relationship where we forgive each, not only do we forgive each other a lot. Mm-hmm. We, it sounds like just a weird thing to say, but we appreciate each other for our frailties. You know what I mean? God, it's so good what you just said. We like, she laughs at me and I laugh at her for our foibles or our weaknesses or she'll give me shit about some pretty dark stuff, but we can laugh about it, you know.

Yeah. And so, you know, and we'd gone through having, raising kids, you know, a substantial period of sort of discommunication. You know, where you get so invested in your children and in your work life and your professional life that you literally don't communicate with each other about you. Anything meaningful. You're not, you're not the priority. We're not the priority. Okay, we're fine. We'll get to that.

We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. And it's a very dangerous thing in relationships. And thankfully, we, you know, found our way to the other side of that and are sort of rediscovering that our kids, you know, our youngest is now in college. And it's like, oh, wow.

But so I'm finding a lot of commonality. And so it's, I feel very privileged to explore those things in scandal. And it's always honest, you know? Yeah. And it just, in all of the relationships, but in that one specifically, where you're talking about, the idea about like forgiving someone, for being frail. Like, and I don't think you can do this in the beginning of a relationship.

I think it only occurs over time where you get to a point where you see your partner, not as like this idealized person or this fantasy that you have, or you see only their good qualities and ignore the bad ones, but you really embrace the entire person as like wonderful and flawed and damaged and ridiculous as they are. And then the marriage is a place where you can be fully human. That's right. Fully human.

And that means like for Melian Fits that they, say things to each other that like in some ways would be unforgivable you know but but but but they realize like this is just one aspect of who this person is right now and people are weak and they're angry and they're selfish and and and they're needy and they're and then they're wonderful and they're transcendent all of those things but you don't get one without the other and they also come back from being unspeakably horrible to each other cruel to each other yes um like in olivian fits do too you know there's And we do that in our marriages. You know, we hurt those, they're cliche.

You know, we hurt those we love the most. But you cannot... They just tend to be in the firing range. Well, it does. You cannot coexist with someone and not hurt them. Yeah. You know, and you recover. Yeah.

If both people are motivated to do so. Right, right. And you get, you can move beyond the most amazing things, you know. And so the things that Fitz and Melly have said to each other and done to each other are, I mean, in Shonda fashion, they're monumental. Like, no one could survive.

She stole the election. Right. She, you know, I can't even. Yeah, he was having this, like, ongoing, one grand affair, but a bunch of other multiple, like, you know, like satellite affairs. At least one other one. Right.

And then she, that we know about. But I think that implied a depth there. There was before. And then she gets one boyfriend and he immediately wrecks it for. Exactly. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. I mean. So they behave very bad. Sadly, and yet, I don't know, there's this great speech in a Tom Stopper play The Real Thing. I don't know if you know that play. I don't. He's this guy who's, you know, it's about a man who gets, he's a playwright, and he gets divorced, and, you know, is in love with the younger woman, and then marries her, and he has a teenage daughter,

and it's about relationships and art. Anyway, and the daughter's 14, and when he's sort of recently with his new wife, there's this scene between father and daughter, and she's had a really rough time with this whole thing, and she's asking him about love and what it means. And he says it's about, he has this great speech that he says it's about knowing and being known. And I thought that's so right. Wow. That that's, you know, when you know somebody on a deep level, that is the thing that we all crave in life to be seen and known and to know another in that way.

And it's the same thing about, I think it's the same thing in falling in love with someone new when you really fall in love, not just being sexually hot for them or having an erotic relationship. But when you get that other thing, too, the thing I've always felt like, I know you. Like I look in your eyes and I know you. I see you. And you don't know anything, really. And some of it may be projection of fantasy and all that. But it is that feeling of like, whoa, we know each other. we're we've always known each other in some way right yeah how crazy is that that's a mystery

um and sometimes that reveals itself not to endure um but when you get into a mature relationship and you really do you know i'm finding at this stage of it and i'm guessing it you know of 20 some years you feel the same thing you start to be the beneficiary of that of like oh wow really there's real real value. Even though there's, you know, there are difficulties. No, yeah. I mean, persistent difficulties too. And who knows? Who knows? Like I never, yeah. I don't take any for granted. And you got to still fight for it. Work for it. Make it make it be. Yeah. As opposed to going, I mean, that's one of the traps. It's like, we're good. We figured it out. We're good. We're cruising now. We're great. No, because the other assumption inherent in that, and it's interesting,

we've been talking about the idea of like reinvention. And, you know, your father's saying to you, well, you know, part of the gig is to be working in your 50s and you're thinking that was a million years of the way and now you are in your 50s, that like the idea that in your 50s, you would have figured it all out and you would be on cruise control as an artist,

which of course you wouldn't. Of course you wouldn't. So why would you be in your marriage? Like we've worked it all out and the marriage is just going to crew. I mean, like, I mean, I think the worst possible outcome would be that you hit a certain age and think, well, like, this is as far as I'm going to go. This is as much as I'm going to evolve and grow.

It was my great terror of marriage. I mean, even in my marriage, the thing that terrified me was, and I saw it in other marriages, that think of like, well, a sort of stasis. Like, okay, we've arrived. This is comfortable. We're not changing. It is what it is. Just accept it.

That was when I got into trouble. And I was like, wait a minute. I can't. I'm going to die. I can't do it. I will die. I will die. And the same way that I think creatively, if I, that's why I've never been able to like a nine to five job.

You know, the idea of not that you can't be creative in nine to five jobs, but that represented to me something like doing the same thing every day. I thought I'd go crazy. Right. And I think to find a marriage that can tolerate, can tolerate individual growth and change is so important because the fact of the matter is some people don't grow because they're worried it's going to upset the dynamic of their relationship. Yeah. It's scary as hell, and it's scary to, it's very easy, and we all go through it in every relationship, but I know of whom I've talked to. You go through periods where you don't realize it's happening. And then you're like, wait a minute, we're disconnected and I don't know how we got here.

And everything is so loaded because of your history together. So it's very difficult to confront it. It's terrifying. I have a problem. I don't have a problem. What's wrong? You're judging our whole thing. Well, what?

It's sex? You don't, when we go alone like having sex with it? me or you know like what or this is a problem or the way that I do that or the way I'm parenting or what there's no problem it's usually one person saying I got a problem and the other person saying well the problem is me you're the problem right yeah you think I'm the problem you're the problem you know right so it takes a lot of courage to face that stuff down yeah fight through it yeah um but uh I've you know we've learned that that's the gold you know to kind of call it out as soon as you can that's I think that's the work

We're going to run out of road, but I have one more thing I want to ask you about scandal, and then we'll do self-inflicted wounds. And I think that what was doing my little three, two, one, and my number one was also related to relationships, but it was like the scenario that Shonda created for fits of someone who is the most powerful person in the world and should ostensibly be able to get whatever he wants, but honestly can't get the one thing that he wants, which I find very interesting. kind of conceptually to play. And I think we've all experienced that,

not that we've all are the most powerful people, but wanting something and wanting to will it into existence and not being able to do that and how kind of inherently frustrating it is just like on a human level. But he's also the most scrutinized person in the world. And sometimes I think about the parallels between Matt and like just the entertainment business,

that this is a person who is engaging in private behavior in, it has no privacy. But we live in a culture where we, you know, at least in the entertainment business, I think actually culturally everybody now because of the internet has no privacy either. I don't know. Well, I don't know if that's a question so much. It's interesting to me because this is just a business where, like, you're just scrutinized constantly and criticized and kind of picked apart and things that maybe 20 or 30

years ago wouldn't have an impact on your career do now. I don't know. That's not really like question. It's just interesting to me. It's an interesting area. It's really true. And it's something, you know, what I've learned, and I think Fitz understands this. And I really learned it from Carrie, Carrie Washington.

The public, when you're a celebrity, when you're a public person, the public projects a fantasy image of you. that may be a lot about who you actually are, but it's also not. And I rebelled against that for a long time. I kept feeling this and be like, no, I'm not that. I'm this, I'm this. And then I thought, no, that's okay. Because the very function of being,

white people need celebrities in their lives is that they want to project their fantasies onto public people. Whether they're athletes, whether they're politicians, whether they're actors and actresses. And we cannot get attached to those fantasies. That's a slightly different thing. But, you know, I mean, you know, you and I are very different sitting here than we are if we've been through two hours of hair and makeup. Yes, exactly.

Or when we're on the carpet or whatever. And looking like our fantasy selves. Right, right. You know, and I think it's getting very confusing. You know, you think you need to be like that all the time. So I've kind of made my piece with an understanding and embracing like, no, that's okay. That's an important thing. And it's good.

It's fine. But that fantasy person gets attacked, gets insulted, gets unduly praised. Right, right. You know, all of that. But that's not, that's that's that. So there is, I think it's important. important to maintain perspective on that. And, you know, the thing about the lack of privacy, that's just a drag.

Right, right. I love, like, you know, this Bill Murray quote or someone quoted Bill Murray, you know, saying, people say, God, what's it like? It must be amazing being rich and famous. And he's like, why don't you try being rich and see if that's not enough for you? You know, because it is the lack of private. It's lovely to get the attention and the positive affirmation from people, but the fact that, you know, I can't go to the gym without getting.

my picture taken. Right. You know, it's just like, in a way that probably never occurred for you because, I mean, not the last time you've worked consistently for such a long time, but the last time there was a phenomenon in your life was pre-

pre-all of this. It didn't exist. And that, even the biggest movie in the world, even the biggest movie in the world, and maybe there's like 10 big movie stars right now, even those guys, people don't see them every single week. Don't get this, like, weird, intimate attachment

to every little moment and outcome and see you as your character in a way that they don't see, I don't know, Vin Diesel is the guy from Fast and Furious. And you're adding to it, the social media thing of where, you know, like on Twitter, especially scandals, been so active, tweeting live, tweeting with fans, is you actually have a relationship with your fans in a funny way.

And I try to be very much myself on Twitter. And yet we're not friends. We don't know each other. So I find it confusing sometimes when I run into fans, and they feel like, there were buddies, you know, and I, and I appreciate them and want to be, I want to connect with them and be respectful of them, but at the same time, I'm like, I don't know, we don't know each other. Right, right. So it's a weird thing of people that seem to feel they have total access to you.

And it's a one-way intimacy, even though you've been kind and you, there, yeah, they, you know, and God bless them because they're why we, you know, A, they're communing on a creative level, and they're the reason why we're able to be out there. So it's a very confusing thing. But, I mean, I cannot imagine if I, like, if I were having an affair, how do you do that? How do you do it? How do you do it? How do you? How would I do? How would you do it? No, you couldn't. Can you imagine? By the way, you could not have an affair and somebody would decide that you were having an affair. Of course. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. The pictures or, you know, I remember, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was producing this wonderful television show last year called The Divide, which sadly did not get picked up.

Oh, I remember it. Yes. Yes. I think I talked to you about it before. I was so proud of it. Anyway, our brilliant lead actress, Marin, Ireland, was in it. And I was here in a play on Broadway, and we were walking from the theater to dinner or drink afterwards, and we were walking, and I had my arm around her. And I suddenly thought as I was walking with her, and she's this beautiful blonde, young woman, And I thought, I probably shouldn't be doing this. Right. Because someone's taking a picture of this and then it's going to be like a thing. And then I'm going to have to go explain to Jane.

I know Marin and I in the picture. And then it'll get it. And even if Jane doesn't suspect that there's anything going on, it'll be uncomfortable because people will go. It could be a tabloid headline or something. Yeah. It's crazy. Well, then you're not able to just live your life in a normal way. I mean, just so you don't feel, just so you have, you know, like a parallel.

I have a best friend who I've known since college, and he's like, I've known him, you know, my whole adult life. We met freshmen our very first day of school. And he lives in New York, and he's gay. And I spend a lot of time with him, and we're, like, incredibly affectionate with each other. You know, and we're absolutely not having sex. But, you know, he's like my gay best friend. We hug, we hold hands.

And I think, I'm like, you know, yeah, like, people could decide a hundred things about this relationship. But sometimes I do it in defiance because I'm like, I just want to be a person. I don't want to constantly be wondering about how things are going to be perceived. It was very frustrating. You know, and this is off-piece, and then we'll do some afflicted wounds, but two years ago, I feel like it might have been Gwen Stefani's husband, Gavin Rostale, is that right? I'm a terrible person, and I'm not very good at gossip. I don't follow her.

He was on a hike with a woman, and they were walking, and he put his hand on her lower back to help her up the hill, and then these photos got, like, propagated everywhere. And everybody was like, oh, he's having an affair or even if he isn't, it's super inappropriate contact and blah, blah. The woman was his sister. Wow. So you know what I'm saying? And everybody jumped on, including, by the way,

I was, May a culprit here. I think our show did, not in a shitty way. Because I'm always the one is like, we don't really know what's going on with these people. And people are physically in a movie with each other in a million ways that have nothing to do with their marriages. And we don't even know what, you know, we don't know what's going on. I constantly say that.

And also, it's none of your fucking business. But, you know, later it was like, you know, womp, womp. And I don't know. I mean, just, and I just think people are so complex, and we are the spectator, we're these spectator critics now where we know everything about everybody based on a photograph, and we're immediately jumping to a conclusion. It's an interesting concept to be examining on a show where you have someone again who's as

scrutinized as he can possibly be. And it puts tremendous pressure on all the relationships in that show. Right, right. We're new, except for Fulficti Boons, but the last thing I'm going to say is you're on this massive hit show, which I imagine is not going anywhere for a good amount of time. And you talked about the fact that you didn't want to do TV because you felt like it would keep you from directing film. And now you're on this show and it's huge and doing really well. And I would never say this about scandal, but I do know having been on series as an actor,

that shows can feel like a gilded cage, even when you're incredibly creatively satisfied because, you know, you love your job and you love going every day, but it eats every bit of your life for most of the year. And so I wonder if you're thinking, at this point, I'm going to go do a film or I'm going to have to wait or how you're satisfying that part of yourself creatively. Yeah, well, what I'm doing is, you know, thank God we're in an incredible age of television right now, where many of the stories that I would want to tell as movies, you can't get made as movies right now.

They're happening on television. So what I've been doing, putting my energies into as a producer and a director are developing television series. Awesome. So, like we did the divide last year, which was incredibly fulfilling experience. Because on Scandal, we're an ensemble show other than Carrie, and so, you know,

I generally work half the time on the scandal. And so I can't, I need to fill that the rest of my time. So, you know, last year I directed the first couple of the divides and then I was doing, you know, sort of my partner, Richard, was the writer and he was there on set and I was here running the editing room and it was busy, but really creatively

exciting. And now, you know, we have another project and a couple that we're developing together. I have a project with my brother John, who's a producer that we have at HBO. That's a potential, you know, we're waiting to see if that's going to move forward, a pilot that would be a series. And so, you know, I'm developing television. And now starting to think in movie terms, I'll be able to direct a movie when scandals over.

So now that's probably a few years away. Right. So I'm starting to think, like, okay, movies take a long time to get off the ground. So what do I? You know, I'm in that way, well, what do I want to do? and what material do I want to do? I better get to work now. Right, right, not wait.

And not wait. And have those things waiting for you. Yeah. And, you know, and then you also have that weird pressure of being on a hit show like scandal and playing this great part where, and you have these two months off in the hiatus of other jobs as an actor, you know, to try and maximize the potential. And diversify. Yeah. Exactly.

Like, okay, well, because that's also an important part of the component of the business is that you're not just, just like one thing. Yeah. So that's also the other thing. I'm like, well, what kinds of roles do I want to go after and how much of my time to my head is? Do I want to, you know, be in a movie? So I'm doing all that as well, which is fun.

And, you know, so anyway, that's really how I'm doing it. But it's very satisfying. And even as a director and a producer, it's funny how being on a hit show gives you. just access, right? People, you know, want to be around it. It's where it's, you know, there's no, people are interested in being in business with people

who have something exciting going on, even if it has nothing to do with that thing. So that's, you know, I'm, you know, mindful of that and grateful for it to take an advantage of it. Leverage the shit out of it. Trying to, until it's over, because it will be over. Like everything else, right? Yeah.

A series of moments, right? Yeah. A series of moments. Okay. Do you have a self-inflicted boon story that you want to Tell? Did something come to you? I probably have so many self-inflicted moons. Well, the one that comes to mind is an actor story.

When I was first starting, before I was starting, when I was still in school, I, you know, I really wanted to go after cause. I wanted to go to, you know, a top drama school. And so I said, you know, if I'm going to go to acting school, I want to go to one of the top ones. So I'm just going to apply to the best ones. And if I get in, great. If I don't, I'll go just be in streets of New York and be an actor, you know. Right. So I applied, one of the schools I applied to was,

to Juilliard School in New York, which is sort of, Juilliard and Yale, or kind of, they were the two American schools that I applied to. And to me, at that time, they were like the top ones. Yeah. And so, and then I applied to some couple of schools in London. And so my audition for Juilliard, which is very classical, you know, Shakespeare and was,

I was super nervous. And the way you do it is you go in and there's about 100 kids auditioning maybe more. Right. Any given on the day. Yeah. And the process is you go in and you have a preliminary

audition and then if they like you, you get called back and they call back a small percentage of people every day for Joe. And then you go back and you go in front of the whole faculty for your callback. So I go and they make, I feel they make you so nervous. You do this great group warm-up

with 100 people warming up together in the dance studio and the head of the school. is like, well, I just want you all, you'd like, oh, you just warm up. And it's so crowded, you can't even do anything. And everyone, of course, is showing off how much, how well they warm up. Right. I'm so limper.

Oh, my God. La, la, la, la, la. This is a show comedy about it. And the guy who was running the school says, well, you know, I just want you people not to feel, you know, that this is too important and it doesn't mean everything. And in fact, there are some students who got rejected from Jewel. You probably won't get in because we accept no, you know, this percentage. And there are people who, you know, you know, this percentage.

And there are people who. haven't gotten any who have gone on to have careers and I was like, wow. So anyway, I go and I do my first audition and it went really well. I, I was the head of school and this other woman who was one of the people that ran it and I went in and they had me do my, you do a Shakespeare piece

and a contemporary monologue. And it went really well and I could tell they liked it. And they said, well, if we call you back, you might want to think about the following things. And I thought, well, they're going to call me back. So I was very sight and I felt like I did what I'd want to to do. And I go on and you wait for a couple of hours and then they post the list of callbacks. And there's everyone rushes to this call board. And my name was on the list. I was like,

oh my God, I can call back to Julia. So I have a very close friend who is still my best friend and godfather of my child and best man at my wedding. And we were young actors at the time. And he's a couple years older than me. And he, I called him up because I went to college in Boston I was in New York for the day for this audition. So I said, hey, you want to grab some lunch? I had like three hours. I have this callback at 4 o'clock, but I got a few hours to go. You want to grab a hamburger or something?

He's like, yeah, sure. So we meet and we're talking. And I was really excited. And this man, Michael, who was the head teacher, he said, oh, yeah, I studied with Michael. And so tell me, what did he say? And I said, well, he said, why don't we work on your pieces? You know, I can help because I know what he wants. You know, I know what he wants.

I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah, we'll work on your audition pieces and I'll help you out. And I was like, great. So we go in the middle of Lincoln Center outside in a park. There's always people around. And I'm doing, he's supposed to do your Shakespeare piece. And so I do my Shakespeare monologue. He's, no, no, no, that's all wrong.

You got to change. You've got to completely change it. And so we spend like two hours. And I allow my friend to completely change everything I was doing. Completely change it. And so the scenario of this thing was it's from this play called Henry the Sixth, part three. It was my decision to find the one Shakespeare monologue that no one

had ever done before. Right, right. Well, they haven't seen this one, so I found this obscure speech about a guy in a civil war who kills a guy in battle and then is robbing him and realizes it's his own father. Oh, wow. That's the setup of the piece.

And he grieves over his father. Yeah. My friend goes, you know, you got to set it up with like the fight. You got to like do battle with this guy. and kill him. You gotta be physical. And I'm like, really?

Yeah, before the speech starts, like, you know, attack him and do the fight and, like, kill him. And he said, use your jacket or something. So I'm like, oh, okay, that's great. And he said, and then you need a moment before you start speaking where you see the battle in front of you. Like you see the battlefield and you have to visualize it in your mind, you know, so it's real for you and see that. That's what they want to see. Because Michael loves that. He's going to love that.

And I was like, really? Okay. So I start this thing. I put my, I'm like, and I attack it. And then so I go, and so then we go, and then the contemporary piece that I had was a guy who's trying to talk himself into asking a girl out on a date. And he's like, I'm going to, and this is what I'm going to say, and it's sort of a conversation with a guy getting him to ask a girl on a date. And he's like, you have to give yourself a physical context.

So you have to have an activity. So you need to be looking in the mirror and you should be dressing, like something in the morning, like dress during, you have to have an activity. Because you got to have, it doesn't have an activity. I'm like, oh, activity, yeah, that's an acting word. I need to do that. So he says, so just. So here's what I do. So I leave them. And then I'm out of time.

I have to rush to my other day. I get there. I walk in. Anthony Goldwyn, they announced me. I walk in and there's like 30 people. And they're all stonefistering. I did like a network. And this guy, Michael's in the front. He's like, Tony, and come on in.

And I said, hello, thank you. And I'm my horse. And so I start to do my piece of all, the first time to do such and such, and remember the six part three. Thank you. And I take my jacket and I place it very carefully on the floor. and I attack it

I attack the jackets and beat me shit out of the and they can tell as I'm doing it everyone's going what is he doing like you didn't even know what I was doing

and then I stop and I look to form the battlefield in front of my mind and I'm just staring at all these faculty people looking at me like I'm insane and I haven't spoken a word yet and I look and I go oh my God

so then I start my speech and I completely go up I can't remember the speech Right, right. Somehow I stagger through it. I'm bright red, completely. Because you had a moment where you think, oh, God, this is wrong. Oh, I knew.

Oh, I knew. In the beginning, I knew I was dead. And then when I looked out and I couldn't form the battle, I realized it was all a mistake. And then I forgot the lines because I was so flustered. And I somehow staggered through it. And Michael, this man, Michael Kahn is looking at me like, what did you do?

What happened? And then I go out, how many of my contemporary piece? But I just need to prepare one second. and I pull a table over and I take off my clothes. I had a sweater and a shirt and I had my shirt and I lay it out and I had my shirt, a buttoned down shirt,

I unbutton it and lay it out like preparing because I was going to get dressed during the speech. But I had never practiced this because we ran out of time so I just was an idea and then I was like the mirror, okay? I could create a mirror for myself staring out at the audience. Again, same thing.

I'm just staring at all of these faces waiting for me to do my thing and I look and I freeze up because I could not envision. myself in the mirror. So then I start to do the piece. Yeah. And I somehow, I'm, I get through it, but then I realized I forgot to get dressed. So I got undressed, naked. I mean, I had pants on, but I'm staring at these people. They don't know what I'm doing, looking at them. I'm sort of looking in the mirror, but I didn't do it. Yeah. And why did he take his clothes off? And so then I realized I'd totally blown it. And I went, oh, I forgot to get dressed.

and then quickly go oh that's unfinished then it takes me a minute to get dressed again and they're all waiting for me standing there afterwards and it took about like oh my god and I said thank you very much thank you thank you and I got out of there and needless to say I was not

admitted to the Juilliard school self-inflicted him that is a perfect story and also what I love is I imagine they were all thinking why does this kid hate his clothes so much? He tried to murder your jacket and when you're like is he proud of his body or something?

Yeah, too. Like, what was, yeah, anyway. That's a great story. It's a great story. And also, it's a great example of how actors, we don't always trust our own instincts.

You know what I mean? Like, just like, stick to, like, you, and then you were just talking about you. I was doing just fine. Yeah, you were doing great. This was such a great conversation. Thank you so much. I loved it.

Thank you. All right, that was Tony Goldman. That was such a great, great, great episode. I knew it was going to be good before we sat down, and it exceeded my expectations in every way. he's just a lovely guy and he was so present and thoughtful and open and it was just such a good god such a good conversation such a good conversation uh i hope you enjoyed it there's no upblosure for this show other than this this month i have been so busy so buried in work that

the show's been posting a little late and thank you for your patience with that as you know i am a one woman band and so sometimes when i get overwhelmed with work the show uh goes up a little late because It's just me cutting it and putting it online, but I really appreciate all your support, all the emails that you send me. And you know you can send me an email by going to growlingai.net and clicking on the little envelope. I save all the best letters for the annual all listener question show, but I do read every single one. So send me a letter if you've got something to say.

And thank you. Thank you for being an ongoing supporter and member of the Growing Guy Army. You are brilliant. You are badass. You are extraordinary. And you were a legion. I'll talk to you on the next one. Late.

Girl on Guy is a production of Hot Machine, blowing shit up since 2009.