Happy Sad Confused - Patrick Stewart

Episode Date: April 18, 2014

Patrick Stewart is THE man. Agreed? Good. The X-Men/Star Trek living legend stopped by MTV News to talk to Josh about his new film, “Match,” plus show off what Jean-Luc Picard would have sounded like with a French accent (horrible) and so much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hey guys, welcome to a new episode of Happy, Sad, Confused. It's Josh Horowitz here coming at you from the confines of my wonderful little apartment in New York City. Apologies for the delay, guys. We got off to a really cool start on this podcast on the last month with a bunch of cool episodes. And then I had to take a little break because MTV Movie Awards is an overwhelming experience. Just this past Sunday, I got a chance to... to be out in L.A. and co-hosts the pre-show and do backstage interviews, and it's always an awesome time, but also, frankly, it's a crazy busy time. I hope you guys checked out what we were up to on MTV and enjoyed the awards and enjoyed all our shenanigans. Check them out on MTV.com. All the videos are up there of my backstage conversations with the likes of

Zach Efron and Channing Tatum and Josh Hutcherson and everybody and anybody in anybody. It was a lot of fun, but kind of exhausting in the best possible way. But the good news is I'm back home in New York, and the Tribeca Film Festival is underway, which means loads of cool people are in town and strolling by the MTV offices in Times Square, including, damn it, this is a cool one. Patrick Stewart came into my office today in Times Square. Patrick is somebody that I have been trying to get. to come in for an interview, for a comedic bit for after hours, for anything and everything for so long, and it was such a thrill to have him in today for what was just an awesome conversation. We talked for about 50 minutes, 5-0, about his new film, which is debuting at the Tribeca Film Festival. As I tape this on Thursday night, it's debuting Friday night at

the festival. It's called Match, and it's a really good film. starting him and Carla Gugino and Matthew Lillard. And we talk all about this really cool kind of dramatic piece from Patrick, as well as a slew of other stuff. Yes, we talk X-Men. Yes, we talk Star Trek. There's a lot of funny stuff in here. He does accents and has amazing stories,

and he's kind of everything you would hope Patrick Stewart would be. So I'm going to let the interview speak for itself and let you guys hear it and enjoy it this was a really special treat and I'm thrilled to share it with you guys as always hit me up on Twitter at Joshua Horowitz check out all our cool stuff on MTV.com

and afterhours.mtveevee.com and keep on listening and rate this podcast by the way subscribe to it on iTunes tell us what you think give it a few stars give us all the stars and review it and spread the word

we're having a lot of fun with it and I hope you guys are enjoying it as well here he is the awesome Patrick Stewart thank you again so much for stopping by the the pluses and minuses that is Times Square in New York City I appreciate it

we've talked about that I'm delighted because this is my first opportunity to talk about match and how I feel about it and of course also to hear something of what you feel about it because you've seen it and they're one of the handful of people who have I mean a really handful.

I feel privileged. It's a great piece of work. It's as we take this today, this is premiering at Tribeca, which is an honor in of itself. And it's a great acting piece for both you and Carla and Matthew. It's really a three-hander of a film. It is. It's an ensemble piece. It just so happens that I seem to do a lot of talking in this film.

But good quality talking, that's what makes it worthwhile. Definitely. So what is the source? I'm just curious because, like, it, I mean, obviously it works as a film, but also watching it, it feels like it could be an excellent stage piece as well. Was there ever, was it derived from any other source material? It was. Okay. You're very sensitive. Well, my job. It was a stage play. Okay. A Tony winning stage play by the director, Stephen Belber, and Franklangella played Toby on the stage. I think about 11 years ago. Gotcha.

And Stephen himself did the adaptation into a screenplay, and it's really nice that you only suspect that it might have had a history with its feet on the boards because it had. It's also one of those issues with stage plays that you can feel the set and the walls and the conventions of theatre. Exactly. But then the temptation is sometimes to so blow those apart that you lose some of the qualities that made it an interesting piece of work. In this case, a certain claustrophobia in that apartment because Except for, one, spectacularly, we don't leave that apartment.

Right. And it's, you might say it's three people talking in a room. And it is about dialogue. Right. And exchanges. But the dialogue is not always about what it seems to be about, which is always, I have always found that an intriguing part of any movie, when, in fact, you're only getting part of the same.

story. Right. And either you have to work it out or else you wait for the characters to work it out. To realize that something is wrong here. So we don't want to give the whole kid and commoodle away, but the character he plays Toby, who's a choreographer in the city, basically a couple comes to do ostensibly an interview, some secrets of the past are revealed. A couple things that are interesting to me is this character very set in his ways,

has a routine, comfortable where he is. I mean, it's interesting to me because, you know, I feel like generally speaking, we learn, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, in your own experience, that our lives kind of get more predictable and stayed as we age. We fall into patterns. Relating to your own life, I feel like you're going

in the opposite direction. The last couple years, you've obviously got married. Congratulations on that. And just there's newer and newer things to your life, obviously becoming a New Yorker. Has that surprised you? And can you relate that a little bit to the character? It has surprised me, yes, because 10, 11 years ago,

I left California, L.A., after 17 years of being a resident and imagining that I would spend the rest of my life, perhaps in Southern California. But then things came up, some work-related things, some social things, and I saw an opportunity to to get out the back door not that I'm aware California has a back door

has a back door for getting into but maybe not a back door for getting out of and I took it and when I took it and when I found this house which is still my UK home in the countryside very bucolic

nothing but agricultural land all around me and I thought this is it I can, in fact, I remember when I saw this house with the realtor, as I drove away, I had a completely non-morbid thought, which was, I can die in this house. Well, with contentment and... Yeah, I found the place where I would be happy to say goodbye. So what happens now?

I live in Parkslow, Brooklyn, and I'm newly married. Right. And I have acquired another family. My wife's family, who are fantastic, who are from Realtzing. Nevada. Yeah. And so when we go to visit them, we don't just, you know, go to Connecticut or upstate. No, we fly to Reno and we go out in the country.

We ride and we ski. And I became a skier four years ago at the age of 69. I mean, I am told, a pretty good ski. You're not on the green bunny slopes? No, I always, every time I go back, I start out there. I say, listen, you're going to leave me for 15 minutes, because I'm just going to go back and see if I remember. Right. And then, of course, you do.

And I love what I've taken to it. And I ride with them. I mean, hence, these boots that I have to show you because the first day I went riding with them. I got my sneakers all. I've ridden for years. And they said, what are you wearing? And I said, well, what I always wear when I ride in sneakers. And they said, not in Nevada.

So they hauled me off. So now I'm a cowboy boot wearing Brooklyner. Amazing. When I thought that 12 years ago, I was just going to settle deeply into the English countryside and watch soccer. So what accounts for this? I mean, besides meeting a lovely woman, is that probably the biggest factor of opening up your world a bit? It's why I'm in Brooklyn. She had lived there for six years when I met her five years and loved it and didn't want to leave.

And over the time that we were getting to know one another, I began to fall in love with the place. I never was a big city kid. I grew up in a very small, 9,000 population town in the industrial part of the north of England. And I hardly ever went to London. And I went to, my training was done in Bristol, beautiful but provincial city. And I never felt at home in London, not for years. Funnily enough, New York always had more of an appeal to me than London had. And so what I found in Brooklyn was a, if I say provincial, it'll sound pejorative, and I don't mean it to be pejorative at all.

But I am part of a community. Yes. And, you know, I know the names of my neighbors. I know people in the market on the corner. I know the people in my hardware store. An illustration of this was that after we'd opened out two plays in rep. six months ago. I went into the Hardway store one morning, and they said, oh, we read all your reviews. Congratulations. And I said, you mean you read the New York Times? No, we read all of them. They're fantastic. Congratulations. Well, I can't think of any other place where I've ever been where that might happen. And that was my phone. Yeah. Your neighbor is probably heading you up right now. Yeah. I am about to disable.

Just to return to Match, if I can. Yeah, all this new stuff, including more exposure to comedy than I've ever had in my life before, which I've been enjoying perhaps, along with my marriage, as much as anything. And one of the charms for me about Match was that Toby is funny. He has a somewhat caustic sense of humor and a rather shocking and surprising sense of humor at times. But he chooses to live in a corner of Manhattan that not many Manhattan has no, I would imagine, inward. Exactly. I mean, you go out on the street and say, where's inward?

And the chances are that they wouldn't tell you, well, you get on the subway and you go to inward. If you ask them where the cloisters is, they would get some idea maybe. So he lives in this small community in a part of northern Manhattan. And actually, if I can correct you, he no longer directs ballet for opera, which he did as a career. Right. He was a dancer, got an injury, ended his career, and he went into choreography specifically for opera. No, he's a teacher, distinguished an important classical ballet teacher at Juilliard. So there's another New York strand as well.

exactly the movie opens with a sequence that i i have to confess i have watched over and over again because it's it's toby taking a class and we have the young people uh third year students at julia down students actual students from julia yeah yeah and they're they are sensational and of course i got to spend a whole morning watching them work while i walked around and you know it's a great sequence also because it's the only opportunity that we're were able to see him in his elements and you sell it and obviously there's like any jobs in craft there's the particular language of the job that you know 30% of it is lost on laypeople like myself but it feels authentic and it sells the rest of the film I hope it looks authentic

my character is actually based on someone who has like that I don't want to be too specific because you may not wish to be identified but it meant that I had an open event invitation to go as an observer into class at Juilliard pretty much whenever I wanted. And so I watched these young people going through the most intense, rigorous discipline. I mean, I remember the first time I heard the teachers say, okay, kids are going to take a break. And I thought, great, that's fantastic. I'll go across the Starbucks and get a couple. This break was one minute long.

And they were back at the bar. So you get a taste of what Toby does, how much he loves it, how much it means to him, in fact, that it is his life, and it identifies who he is that work. So when these two people show up, and at first apparently in a completely authentic and pleasant way want to ask him questions, He talks about his job with passion and enthusiasm and good humor until it goes wrong. Right. There's some great moments in the film, particularly, where things get a little more tense, where, you know, Toby's a character that doesn't, I guess, like to look back perhaps too much, and he's taken to task for some choices he's made by particularly Matthew Liller's character.

And I'm just curious, like moments where a character is in your face. and other actors in your face, and indicting you, the character, rather, for mistakes you've made and choices you've made. Do you get lost in a moment like that when the acting is working and some of the dialogue you could probably apply to your own life in certain ways? Oh, certainly. But when you're in a situation like that with an actor like Matthew Lella, do you pay attention? Because he's intimidating. Yeah, big guy. He's a big guy. He has a lot of

level of intensity that is, you know, right up there. It's 99%. And, but furthermore, Matt completely loses himself in what he's doing. So, I mean, there's a moment in the move when I flinch, and I remember I flinched because I thought he was going to, I thought he was going to wipe me out. But it's, but working with people like that and with Carla Goudino who gives an extraordinary movie. There's a point in the film I watched it with people

when I always keep an eye in them and I see the tears go like that, start out. It's exactly the same moment when Carla does something and so the three of us were in this apartment, not in in Wood, as it happened. But shot in New York, presumably.

Oh, yes. It's absolutely shot in New York now. But Inwood was not an option. And Given that I live in Brooklyn, I was really great for that. And being directed by the author, which is not always, in fact, I was speaking with a colleague I ran into, in all places, Granada, Spain, three days ago, who said, I'm doing a movie here, and it's an author director, and he doesn't want to change a thing and doesn't want to talk about it. And he can be. Usually, it's terrific because you have either the man there to talk about what you don't understand or listen to ideas that you have that would loosen something up or change it or deepen it or whatever. And in this case, that was how it was with Stephen.

I'm curious also, like, what's pleasurable to this and one of the many pleasures of something like this is to see you on the big screen in something that, well, I adore the genre fair if we want to categorize it as that, the X-Men. and the Star Trek movies, et cetera. Frankly, in recent years, I feel like you concentrated a lot on brilliant stage work. And I feel like, I mean, do you feel like the better, the parts with more range for you, particularly in the last decade, have come on the stage and has it been difficult to find, again, outside of Professor X, et cetera, interesting work in film? Absolutely.

And why is that? I mean, what do you account for the... When I returned to England, as I mentioned, 10, 12 years ago, I didn't know if I could kickstart my stage career, which I had virtually abandoned for 17 years. And for six months, it looked like it wasn't going to happen, and I was beginning to regret having sold my house in Pacific Palisades. And then, as they have done in the past,

the Royal Shakespeare Company held out their hand and said, hey, why don't you come up to Stratford and do Anthony Clipatra and The Tempest? and I took those invitations. And I remember we opened that season with Anthony and Cleopatra, and in this production, Anthony was the first character to appear on stage. He's not in the play, but we had tweaked the beginning a little bit. Well, like all, opening nights, they always go up late, but they still call you down. So I'm standing alone behind some doors, because I make an entrance where nobody else could be there.

with time to think. And what I began to think was, I know exactly what the reviews are going to say tomorrow morning, which basically would be, who the hell does he think he is? You think 17 years doing television and film in Hollywood is enough of a preparation by coming back to the Royal Shakespeare Company and playing Anthony in a clubbacher?

No, it's not. Get some time. And was that come to pass, were the reviews somewhat like that? The reviews were wonderful. And it was the start of this marvelous eight years of stage roll after stage role, after stage role. And I was able to cement that because that had always been my life. Inbar Bergman was once asked about directing movies or directing theater because he had his own theater company in Stockholm. And he said, I love the cinema.

but the theatre is my life and it's a kind of banal answer when I repeat what he said that it's absolutely true but I'm now hoping that having had a big culminating in these five months on Broadway with Ian McKellen

and Billy Crude up and Shula Hensley that I can now do the same with the movies so I'm looking for projects and they are beginning to appear that do not have their roots in space or, you know, or something with six panels on a page or... Exactly. As much as we both love them.

Yeah. There's room for everything. And, you know, I have no reason to be anything, but terrifically grateful. Both for, of course, next generation and X-Men. They, next generation, changed my life and every area of my life and I would not alter, even though I was told that it would only be one season and then it would be cancelled. Guaranteed, everybody, you know, what Goldman said about in Hollywood, nobody knows anything. Right.

Well, I was told, don't worry about sign a six-year concert. You know, you'd be lucky to make it through the first season. You can't revive an iconic series like that. And seven years later. My one start your question, why did they not just make... Don't ask me anything. Please don't ask me what a warp core breaches, because I don't know. Why do the tribles go?

No. Why didn't they just make a British the first day, Jean-Lac Picard? Why, it's an easy fix, just change the name the first? I mean, it's not like it was any detriment to the character either way, but... I never asked Gene that question, and now I can't. But, of course, there was a Picard, who was a French. explorer right he he was one of the first people to develop I think they call it the bathosphere or bathers it was at that a big ball and he went down into the

ocean and he's crazy amazing and he was he was very very adventurous also a bit of an astronomer too there is somewhere buried in the vaults at Paramount pictures a piece of film of me doing a scene from the pilot every So before we started shooting it with a French accent. Is that right? How was your French accent? Do you want to hear it? Yeah.

Space, the final frontier. These are the stories of this dashy bed. Well, I sound like Peter Salas. If that worse than Peter Salas. Make it so. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

Engage. Now that word does lend itself to the French. It kind of does. Yeah, indeed. And they sat and finally, this taping just ended in gales of laughter and everything. Forget it. We had a deal. I had a deal with Gene that I could use my own accent, but technical words, I mean, for instance, although they made one big concession that we call data data and not data, right? That would have been, can you imagine, seven years calling him data? Although, every now and again, I used to manage to write in the line, do your duty, Mr. Data.

Just to amuse yourself. But, and recognizable technical term would have an American pronunciation. Other than that, it's like Gene was asked in his first press conference when the new series and the casting were announced. They said to him, I mean, you've got a ball guy playing the captain of the enterprise. Surely by the 24th century, male patent baldness would have been cured. And Gene said, by the 24th century, nobody will care. And, of course, you see the way things are going now.

He was ahead of his time in so many respects. He absolutely was. And there was some, I think, not to choose too hard a word, disgust and horror, that there wasn't an American actor sitting in the captain's chair. But then there had never been an American actor sitting in the captain's chair. That's right. How surprised were you to get the call, what, probably a year or so ago from Brian, that you were going to be doing Professor X at least one more time?

There'd been moments. In fact, with something like that, it's impossible to keep the murders down. Sure. And I just hope the call would come. Ian and I got on the phone and said, hey, have you heard? And because they'd left a window open for Magneto and Xavier to come back. That is, if you stay to the end of the credits of Star Trek. No, you'd be amazed how many people didn't.

They go, there was what? Oh, yeah, thanks to all these Marvel movies, nobody gets out of their chairs. If there's one great thing from these comic movies, people know. Yeah, absolutely. Leave it your peril. Exactly. So there were murmurs on you. Yeah, and I was hoping that the murmurs were true

and that there would be a way we could come back because there were such grand experiences. I mean, we started out as an ensemble, perhaps, you know, like with Star Trek, we had two star actors in that original cast, only actors that really had got a reputation, well, Lavar Burton, and what was the kid's name? I always forget. He was Wesley Crusher. He wasn't called Whiteley Crush. Oh, that's right. That's stand by me, kid. Mr. Whelton. Quill, Wheaton. Yeah, they were the two people that had heard of. Well, Halle was a big and weighty name right then when we began the first one.

And you barely got it even into the cast. We've been shooting for a couple of weeks when this nice-looking Australian guy turned up and said, oh, I'm here, I'm doing a screen test. You're never going to see it. When he came back, I remember him saying he did the screen test, came back to have another cup of coffee with us, and he said, well, you're never going to see me again.

Amazing. Thank goodness he was totally wrong about that. What an amazing career. What an amazing actor. Is your sense that, obviously, they're going to do yet another X-Men film that's already been announced that you're going to be back for another one? This thing, Armageddon, is it cool? Is it a apocalypse? Apocalypse?

Yeah, kind of means the same thing. Apocalypse. I don't see why not. That is one of the blessings about fantasy and science fiction. You're never really dead and certainly. So, you know, I would love to come back and do some more. And there might be something else. A little bird has whispered that there might be something else Star Trek related.

There'll be nothing else Star Trek related, but something X-Men related. But, yeah, it's, it was great a year ago when it was November, December, when we filmed Match, to be wearing trousers and shoes and sweaters and shirts. and making cups of coffee and ordinary life. And that had been absent for too long in my career. Not having to think in these huge epic terms always, or huge epic language, for example. Speaking everyday ordinary, although very nice dialogue.

Absolutely. I'm curious, the last you mentioned, this amazing run of you and Ian had the last five or six months here. You two, the world fell in love with the two of you as a couple, like I've never seen before. It must have shocked you and must have amused both of you to no end. We didn't expect that. We hoped we would attract attention to what we were doing. Sure. But obliquely, I mean, you cannot say it was a hard sell that we, you know,

It was, in fact, a number of people said, what is this, Go Go and Didi do, NYC? I don't understand this, because that's the name of our character. Right. We wanted to experiment, and it was an experiment. I don't think anything quite like this had been tried before, to open up the idea of our two plays in rep to a wider and bigger audience. And people who would know us from Magneto and Xavier,

and what's that other? Lord of the Rings Oh, that Gandalf and Picard. Might be intrigued that the same two actors were on a stage, right there on 48th Street. Okay, maybe doing one play

people had heard of, but not the other one. And all I can say is that when every night when we came out to the stage door and it was amazing. A lot of people there, a lot of young people, every night we would remind one another of how many people from Australia, from Brazil,

from China, had come to see these plays from all over South America. And there's no way of knowing that what part our little Twitter campaign had in letting people know, this is what's going on. But we had fun doing it. It was my wife's idea.

She dreamed up the idea of Gogo and D-D-D-D-D-2-N-YC. And we were about to go out. We went to a favorite Mexican restaurant in Park Slope. And with a couple of margaritas inside us. Then the whole idea of the iconic places that they are actually essentially tourists, rather naive tourists, who are going to see all the famous sites.

They just happen to have these. holler hats with them of course. Of course. There were some photos we never managed to take. It was our real ambition to go to the Met and stand in front of the famous Magritte painting, the guy with the bowler hat, flooding bloc. We never actually got to do that. And I was also convinced, I said, this will take off in such a way that after three weeks,

Bloomberg will know he has to invite Go-Go and Deedy to the mayor's parlor for a company. And after that, it's the whole. it's the white house we're going to the moon we're thinking this all the way the pope those those things never came about

but we had a lot of fun and it was about fun and it was that much about fun and that much about saying hey we're here right well it came through and it probably drew a lot of people as you said I mean

I think to your credit you've done this throughout your career I mean, when you brought a Christmas carol to the stage many years ago, I was a teenager here in New York, and I hadn't seen much theater. And through Star Trek, I probably went to see. I wanted to see what Patrick Stewart was doing. And that was one of my early exposures to the theater. Really?

Yeah. Brave man. It was a great performance. I saw it many times. Wow, thank you very much. There is a strong possibility if other things don't get in the way, that there might be just one last farewell appearance. I'll be there.

In New York, and thereabouts. Amazing. This year. Yeah, I thought you were going to ask something else, and I had a really clever answer for it, but then you didn't ask it. Oh, no. What was the question going to be? What was your clever answer was going to be? It was then you brought up a Christmas carolids.

I derailed us. I apologize. Any further thoughts on you and Ian doing anything else together? Have you considered, I mean... We did some talkbacks while we were doing No Man's Land. On a Thursday night for five weeks, the four of us would appear on stage and once with our director, Sean Matthias. And the audience would ask us questions. We decided to make it about the Pinta because that was the least well-known play.

And people had, there were a lot of things they felt didn't make sense and they wanted to know. Ian when people would say why why these two plays and Ian had this great response to this which was a truthful one that there are lots of plays with one great male role and if you're lucky one great female role right there are very few plays with two great male roles and of course our loss but there were no female roles in either of our two people plays now if we'd been uh mark rylans we would have we would just put on away again we would have put on skirts anyway um and uh that was one of my regrets that we i never got to see mark shows that while another genius actor he's phenomenal so um we've talked about this there there is another play that has that in fact john gilgood and ralph richardson also did together who they created the roles that i and i played in no man's land a play called Home.

It's about people who live in a retirement home. And as Ian has pointed out, that would be a very appropriate for the two of us to do. Please never retire, sir. I don't know. What I do know is that this experience of these past, because it was a 9-10-month commitment longer because we also co-produced the play

and were investors in this. We broke the cardinal rule. Don't put your own money in? Don't never put your own money into your own shows. The whole relationship, because we decided very early on, we want to do this with American actors. We don't want to have four Brits coming over saying,

this is how we do it. We do it like this. So we got two fabulous, brilliant actors. We were an ensemble in a company, and I miss those two guys. Ian, I will see, because we live on opposite sides of the river in London and them. But doing these plays cemented our friendship, and partly prodded along by the bromance of the Twitter campaign. And it's a wonderful thing in your 70s to find that there is someone.

You can grow that close to, which is an entirely platonic relationship, although I love the guy. And it would be nice to think that we would find something else to do. Well, maybe it'll just be one more X-Men movie. Let's make it happen, please. Coming out of Match, talking about the film career. So is there a criteria? Are there specific roles, projects that you're looking for? or are you mentioned also another new part of your life

in the last five, ten years, even more recent is this comedy career, which is amazing. I think back, I don't know what you consider the turning point for that, was it? I mean, I think back to extras, which still makes me. I think you put your finger on it. When that call came through, and I did actually get a call from Ricky Jervais,

and I was in the market doing some shopping, and I have a good friend who does great impersonation. Oh, I haven't said, Hello, it's Ricky. It's Ricky. Listen, you might know, I'm doing this show about her. All he used to do is giggle a lot on the phone. And I knew a little about what he was doing

because I'd been working on a series with the actress who played his friend. Right, movie. And he explained what he said, there's no script, I can't show you anything. But if you say you'll do it, then we'll write a script. But you're just going to have to take you. on trust because

we'd like to shoot it next week and that one morning well I actually worked two mornings but the scene in the trailer was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life I had watched Ricky in the office

and I'd never seen a style of comedy like that that was so essentially serious right nothing there's no wink to the audience no No, nothing at all. Deeply serious and deeply real, truthful. Right.

And I thought, uh-huh, well, maybe this is the tone that we need to take here. Which was fine for me, but not for Ricky. You've probably seen the outtakes of him. It was a night. Stephen Merchant finally, he was ordered out of the trailer, and Stephen read the lines off camera because we were getting nowhere. He said, I said, listen, I said, Ricky, Ricky, knickers, knickers, knickers, knickers, knickers, knickers, knickers.

funny anymore and he said no no it's funny because it begins with K and I said what he said it's words that begin with K I said but it's pronounced niggins it doesn't matter it's so funny I think it was I watched that and thought oh maybe there's something here that I can do and then I did I did one funny or die thing about the Olympics that I really enjoyed. And then John Stewart has asked me to do a couple of things with him. And then Stephen Colbert had me go in and do this crazy Southern guy about Obamacare. And then, of course, how can I not mention American Dad and Seth MacArthur?

So there is a project quite far advanced. about which I cannot speak, but which I hope maybe in a month or so might finally be announced, which would be indeed kind of with the seriousness

of extras in the office, but with an undertow of absurdity and comedy that I'm hoping comes about because I've never done a half hour. Except as a guest. I did.

Actually, you know what it was? It was actually Frasier. You guessed it on Frasier. I did. What about L.A. Story? I think about your character on that. That was a great moment. You sing with the bank account like yours.

You can have the duck. You can have a piece of bread and salad. You have no idea what you've just done for me. It was a funny movie. Oh, my God. That was a very funny movie. Yeah, the Maitre D from Hell. Yeah.

Oh, I think I might start crying. Yeah. Brilliant. Brilliant movie. And then I got this invitation. Again, a very straight role in the last season of Frasier. Right. And it was terrifying, actually.

I mean, a live audience. And all those guys, they've got it all nailed so brilliantly, and I was, blah, blah, blah. So these things have accumulated. Does anything frighten you? Does anything like, you mentioned being in front of a studio audience, what, probably 15 years ago, for Frasier, and maybe, you know, getting you a little bit on edge.

But you've done so much stage work. You've obviously been in some of the biggest movies ever. What, if anything, does put you on edge? I can tell you I am scared about tomorrow night. Opening night of a premiere. Yeah. I have never had a movie in a festival or a cinema in which I have been the principal character,

around which the film hangs. I know what the film is. I know what it's like. I know how it works. I don't know what people will make of it. And tomorrow night I'm going to be sitting, hopefully, with a lot of other people, I hope. And I will find out.

But find out when there's nothing that I can do about it. Either way. And I email Carla and Matt this afternoon and said, Hey, guys, I'm really scared. Can I hold your hands all the way through? Can we just sit there and hold hands all the way through the movie? Because it is that feeling of helplessness. It's done.

And, you know, it's like I used to watch, I have always made myself watch work that I've done on film and television, particularly at the beginning, because in my day, as a drama student, they didn't teach film technique. they didn't teach television because really nobody expected to work in film or television

you know that was a rarity you were trained to be in the theater so I made myself watch things and if possible watch them with people who were more experienced and have them critique what I was doing I mean Brian Singer is one of the I remember in the first movie he kept saying

shh shh quiet we can hear you you don't have to be so big. And it's, I feel, I feel I'm learning still about cameras. Interesting. I, you know, I sit and watch my acting,

I give myself notes and I think, shh, next time you will not do anything like that, Patrick. And, you know, it's, well, I think there's, with a character like that and a story like this, there's a more vulnerability to what you're putting on screen. I mean, with these kind of ginormous films, even if you're the star, you're part of such a mechanism. And you're, and you can, not to hide behind something,

but you are part of a bigger machine. Yeah, and your role is kind of very clearly, and I mean this in the best possible way, narrowly defined. You have a function. It's a function, yes. As Xavier, I have a function in the film. And you wouldn't want, nobody, Lawrence Hula Donna, Brian wouldn't want you to depart from that role.

You can't experiment. No, you know, there are parameters to it. I don't mind the exposure. In fact, often when I'm most comfortable on camera is when I can experience things and know that I'm experiencing, them truthfully and honestly and relate them to my own life and world and so forth. It's not that. They're mostly technical.

Right. Huh. I've got a habit of fiddling my fingers, and there's one really important scene at the end of the movie. I mean, Stephen should not have let me do this, and the camera is cutting round about my wrists. So my wrists are kind of twitching. What you can't see is that because of the scene I'm playing, I'm very nervously playing with the nervously playing with my hands, but all you can see are these twitching wrists. And I should have asked, you know, where's the bottom of the frame?

Right. And I didn't. It's like we were watching the cyclist Lance Armstrong the other day being, you know, the wonderful documentary. Yes, Armstrong and why? Gasly. Yeah, yeah. And there was one interview he did where he was so controlled and calm and everything was going well for us. Everything was going well for, and his hands were doing this,

were absolutely just going to push him around. With something, with intense emotion. But you've got to know when you can use that and when you can't. So there's a lot of technical stuff I have to learn. In our remaining moments, I had this weird creepy Indiana Jones hat full of random questions. Would you indulge me, sir? Grab a question or two?

Absolutely. Let's see. Let's hope they're good. If they're not going, just throw it away. There we go. Patrick Stewart, diving into the indie hat. What do you like on your hot dog? I assume that's not a euphemism. Take it however you wish.

Okay. This says a lot about a man. I'm talking about actual hot dogs. Okay. How much does it say about a man if he tells you that he really doesn't like hot dogs? That's okay. That's fine. It makes me non-American, doesn't it?

Get out of my city. You know when you go for yourself? citizenship test. One thing you do is eat a hot dog. Is that part of the fish test now? You eat a hot dog and peanut butter. I would fail both of them. Oh no. How sad. If I have to heat a hot dog.

English mustard. Coltman's mustard. Interesting. Okay. I have introduced my wife to Coleman's mustard. She's a great cook. I'm not familiar. Serious foodie. What kind of a mustard?

It's yellow. It comes in a jar with a... Why know what mustard is? But this is really strong. Really powerful. Like a Dijon mustard? No, no, Dijon is kind of girly. This is man's mustard.

Then it's bourbon in it. I swear to you, she is so taken to this. She will look at a menu, and I know what she's looking at is, what would go with mustard? Because she'll first say, do you have mustard? Okay, good. I'll choose something there, actually. She's brought New York to your life, you've brought mustard to hers. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings.

No-brainer. Wait, wait. Only only because I did try to read the Harry Potter books and I really struggled. Lord of the Rings, in fact, and The Hobbit were books I read again and again and again. Did they ever come to you for any of those roles and World of the Rings? No. Sorry. Or did they come to Ian McAllen?

But he went after it? What? He just showed up on set? No. I, but Ian, Ian's not in... Oh, you mean, Lord of the Rings? Sorry, I was thinking Harry Potter. Oh, okay, got it.

Not that I'm upset about not being in Harry Potter, and nor is Ian, I can speak. But you would have been nice to be asked. For we asked, at least, you know. People. No respect. And just think of the audiences. It actually would have made money, maybe.

Because they were struggling. Oh, Lord, I used to know a lot of Danny Kay movies. Which movie do you know by heart? My brother and I were obsessed with Danny Kay movies. Sure. Like Walter Mitty and... God, I suddenly can't think of what I'm Danny Kay. Oh, Walter Mitty is a good one.

The court jester. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, sure. The vessel with the pestle has the pellet with the poison. The chalice from the palace is the brew that is true. Isn't it amazing the things that still stick? On the waterfront. Changed my life when I was 13. Ilya Kizan.

That's a piece of genius. Did you ever meet Brando? I was invited to meet him. Somebody worked on Star Trek, who was a friend, and I was telling her I was obsessed with this movie, and I'd managed to meet Eva Marie Saint and Carl Mulden and work with... Come on, help me out.

So for the actors in the film, Ivory St. Moran Brando, Carl Maldon. Oh, Rod Steiger. Rod Steiger. The first time I ever saw a film camera I was shooting a scene with Rod Steiger in the back of a car in which I had. Is that weird?

That's amazing. Was he an intense presence, Mr. Steiger? He seems. He was, he is my benchmark for intensity. Really? He shot me in the scene. It was a very short. We had a struggle over the gun.

He shot me. I died, slumped him in the back seat of the car. There was a moment's pause when he got the driver to stop. And then he leapt out of the car. Moments before he moved, as I was lying there dead, I felt this energy coming off him before he went for the door. Something else wonderful happened on that movie.

Can I tell you this? Please. It was my first movie. I had a tiny role. I'm in a scene with Rod Steiger. And we filmed all morning in the back of this car camera. and the assistant director said, okay, Rod, that's a wrap on you for the more.

You can go to lunch, and we'll just finish off here, and then we'll pick up. We start with the next scene after lunch. And Rod said, what about Patrick? He said, oh, no, no, it's okay. We're doing his coverage. Somebody will read in. And Steiger, he was sitting in a chair.

He was sitting in a chair, caught up, and said, What the fuck do you think I am? You think I walk my trailer and let this... And he raged and raged. And it was all over me, so I felt responsible for this. Like, practically a day player just helping out. Yeah, I mean, literally a day player. And he said, how dare you send me to my trailer

when I've got off-camera lines for this actor? He called me an actor. And anyway, so when we shot the scene, he said, what are you doing for lunch? And I said, And, oh, I'm, you know, I've got a class service. And he said, bring it to my trailer. Come on. And so I had an hour of his company, and I decided, okay, this may be the last opportunity.

So I said, can I just ask a couple of questions about. And he was the kind of person that didn't mind being asked questions. So I grilled him about his role in. And also about the pawnbroker, which is one of my favorite. In fact, turned out, I said, which role matters most to you? And he said it was the pawnbroker. Amazing. It's wonderful.

Well, I feel like the shoes on the other foot today. I feel like I snuck you into my trailer and picked your brain for about an hour. I'm sorry. And this was meant to be a sort of three-minute interview. No, I can't thank you enough. Match is a great piece of work. Oh, thank you. And I know people will, you should have no nerves.

You will be among friends, and I know people are going to love your work and the work of the others. My wife has promised me up value. if I'm really good. Thank you very much. American history is full of infamous tales that continue to captivate audiences, decades or even hundreds of years after they happened. On the infamous America podcast, you'll hear the true stories of the Salem Witch Trials and the escape attempts from Alcatraz, of bank robbers like John Dillinger and Pretty Boy,

of killers like Lizzie Borden and Charles Starkweather, of mysteries like the Black Dahlia and D.B. Cooper, and of events that inspired movies like Goodfellas, Killers of the Flower Moon, Zodiac, Eight Men Out, and many more. I'm Chris Wimmer. Join me as we crisscrossed the country from the Miami Drug Wars and Dixie Mafia in the South, to mobsters in Chicago and New York, to arsonists, kidnappers, and killers in California, to unsolved mysteries in the heartland and in remote corners of Alaska. Every episode features narrative writing and cinematic music, and there are hundreds of episodes available to binge.

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