How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S15, BONUS EPISODE How To Fail: Rob Delaney on the death of his beloved son, Henry

Episode Date: October 20, 2022

Today, in a very special bonus episode, I bring you an interview it was an honour to record.Rob Delaney is a comedian, actor and writer, known to many of us as the star and co-creator of the hit Channel 4 sitcom, Catastrophe. But behind the public smile, he has dealt with unfathomable private tragedy. In 2018, Rob and his wife's beloved son Henry died at the age of two-and-a-half of a brain cancer. Delaney’s memoir of this time, A Heart That Works, is published today. It is an astonishing, honest account of the darkest possible human experience: the story of what happens when your child dies, and of everything you discover about life in the process.This is not an easy listen, but it is also an episode full of hope, insight and - yes - even humour. Listen to understand a little more of what it is to be human. Listen to make Henry's acquaintance. Listen to hear a first-hand account of love at the extremity of experience.Rob: thank you so much for trusting me. Henry: this one's for you.--Rob Delaney's A Heart That Works is out today and available to buy here: https://linktr.ee/aheartthatworks--How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted and produced by Elizabeth Day. To contact us, email [e-mail]--Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayHow To Fail @howtofailpod Rob Delaney @robdelaney Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and

journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. Rob Delaney is a comedian, actor and writer. He grew up in Massachusetts, studied musical theatre in New York and was one of the first stand-ups to share his material on social media with Rolling Stone magazine, naming him one of the funniest people on Twitter. It was on Twitter that he first met Sharon Horgan, with whom he went on to create the hit Channel 4 sitcom, Catastrophe. Delaney and his family moved to London and the show became an instant hit. The story about a couple who discover they're pregnant after a six-night fling, get married and make a go of family life together is so recognisable to any harassed parent or spouse that it sometimes appeared more documentary

than drama. An impression heightened by the fact that Horgan and Delaney's characters are called Sharon and Rob. Catastrophe ran for four series and won a BAFTA. Delaney went on to have roles in Deadpool 2 and Bombshell. But although his professional career was in the ascendant, Delaney and his wife Leah faced a private loss of excruciating magnitude when their beloved son Henry was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour. He received extensive treatment, but in January 2018, Henry died at the age of two and a half. Delaney's memoir of this time, A Heart That Works, is published today. It is an astonishing, honest account of the darkest possible human experience, the story of what happens when your child dies and of everything you discover about life in the process.

Maybe it's because I write and perform for a living that I can't help but try to share or communicate the biggest, most seismic event that has happened to me, Delaney writes. The truth is, despite the death of my son, I still love people. And I genuinely believe, whether it's true or not, that if people felt a fraction of what my family felt and still feels, they would know what this life and this world are really about. Rob Delaney, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you so much for having me, Elizabeth. It's good to see you. It's good to see you too. Thank you for doing me the honor of coming on this podcast. I wanted to start by asking how you are today. I'm doing okay, thank you. I just went for a nice

swim and that always starts the day off nice. It's cold out now. So that's my favorite kind of swimming. But I'm also, you know, pacing myself emotionally, because this book coming out into the world is such a massive thing. You know, I'm thinking about our son Henry constantly, and I am sharing him with the world. And so that comes at a cost. There are, of course, also benefits to it. I get to meet other bereaved parents and siblings, and that is a wonderful thing. It's why I wrote the book, but right now there's a lot coming out of me. And, you know, if people read the book and like it, then there'll be stuff coming back to me. But in the meantime, I do feel like I'm being sort of eaten by kind people who don't want to hurt me, but they're eating me nonetheless. I feel like that might not actually sound crazy. I feel like, you know, you're nodding.

And so, you know, I'm totally nodding. Yeah. So that's how I feel. I feel like, you know, you're nodding. And so, you know, I'm totally nodding. Yeah. So that's how I feel. I feel like I've done the right thing and it hurts and that's okay. Yeah. It is a viscerally extraordinary book, the account of it. And I'm sure it will be greatly beneficial to other bereaved parents. And the thing that struck me most about it was its brutal honesty. But I imagine that you felt you couldn't be any other way. I really appreciated hearing that you don't think things happen for a reason. How could you when this horrendous thing has happened? And I appreciated hearing that. So could you give us your philosophy of life post this event, post Henry dying? You know, the title of the book, A Heart That Works, you'll see when you open the book is that that's the second half of a quote by Juliana Hatfield, a wonderful singer-songwriter from Boston that I grew up listening to.

And the full quote is, a heart that hurts is a heart that works. And that really is my philosophy. Life, as the Buddha said, or as the Buddha discovered, rather, and elucidated. So clearly, life is suffering. And if we are born into human form, we will suffer. There will be pain. You know, we spend a lot of time running away from that, especially in the modern world, especially in British culture and American culture, which raised me.

You know, as we get older and suffer more, we hopefully learn the only way out is through. And so why does my heart hurt? Because it works. And the funny thing is, is when you have some of these more somber realizations that might not be pleasant to accept, then after that, you can be a more genuine happy, I believe. But you do have to really grapple with the price of admission to these bodies and this world. You describe emotion as being like a rainbow. Will you tell us more about that? Sure. Yeah, I'm glad that just kind of spilled out of me at one point, especially with grief, you know, with intense emotions.

I think it's a good idea to listen to the things that just spill out of you without any thought or preparation. The rainbow of emotion was kind of a metaphor that I came up with or recognized, I guess, which is that, you know, we all have all these emotions. I don't know which color corresponds to which emotion. That doesn't matter. That's up to the individual, I guess. But when our son died, we either had put into our rainbow or we discovered the truth of a color that's in all of our rainbows that we might not see yet. I don't know. But I said, you know, we've still got the red, orange, and red through purple and all that. But then we have a new band of black in our rainbow.

And the reason that I mentioned that was because there's a whole new suite of emotions and feelings that we feel. All the other colors are still there. We still laugh. We still get excited. We still get passionate. We still get excited. We still get passionate. We still get angry. We still get, you know, small minded and vengeful and focus on the trees instead of the forest. We've got a new thing in my family that we feel and can't ignore. But the other stuff is all there, too.

So, yeah, the reason I started thinking that way and talking about it was because people say like, well, do you still, is there still happiness in your life? Yeah, of course there is sadness, definitely anger. Yep. Excitement, you know, all that stuff is still there. And then something new and massive and huge and frequently painful. It doesn't crowd everything else out permanently. In the beginning, of course it does, but it's not forever. Please, can I ask you, if you don't mind, to talk about what Henry was like? Oh, I would love to talk about that. So in the beginning, before he started to show symptoms of having a brain tumor, he was the third of three boys. We had a boy, then another boy, two years later, not even two years later,

and then another two years later came Henry. So he was basically born into a zoo. And his approach was to just be very sweet and lovable and magnetically attractive. So he was a calm, smiley baby that just drew you to him. That was really lovely. So he had a unique personality out of the gate. Yeah, so we just were crazy about him. And was really lovely. So he had a unique personality out of the gate. Yeah. So we just, this just, we're crazy about him. And so we're his older brothers and anybody, it was just wonderful. He had the most gorgeous blue eyes and I'm probably biased, but I've put pictures, there's pictures of them that you can look at. His eyes are, I think more beautiful than your average. I'm not saying the rest of it, know you can it's up to you when his eyes were such a wonderful they had dark blue and light blue in

them and like webbing in the cornea like he had weird hauntingly beautiful eyes that even as a baby we were like jesus just wanted to stare into them and then he got sick, and that was terrifying, you know, to watch a baby lose weight because they can't keep food down. You're in a panic. So we're going from doctor to doctor, hospital to hospital, and specialists, and trying to figure it out. And a tumor is hard to recognize in a small child. One special symptom that I kind of like to talk about, just in case anybody ever witnesses this, if it can help them figure it out a little faster, is the effortless vomiting. Elizabeth, when you vomited last night, there was retching, you know, and then, oh, God, and oh, here it comes, you know, and you know, and that's what happens when I vomit later. That's how I'll do it. You know me so well. I know. But if you have something in your head crowding space and it pushes on your hermetic center, the vomit just up and out. There's no warning or discomfort. So that was like the weird symptom. And one older doctor who I think just from being old and having seen a lot more kids was like, he just said, you know, let me ask you

something. When he vomits, is it effortless? And I said, you know, yeah, now that I think about it, yeah, it is. And he's like, oh shit. And then we knew what it was quickly a few days later after the MRI. Then he was just, you know, it was like a hand grenade blew up in the back of his head when they did the surgery. And wonderful doctors doing a great job. But if you've got to get a malignant tumor off of a brainstem, you're going to damage cranial nerves. The brainstem is going to be disturbed. So he awoke from surgery with disabilities.

He was unable to swallow. We all swallow like a liter or liter and a half of saliva each day unconsciously. If you can't do that, you'll aspirate and get pneumonia and die. So he had to have a tracheostomy. A tracheostomy is incredibly difficult to take care of, especially in a little kid. So he had that, and then his motor skills were cut more than in half. And so he had to relearn how to do all the things he'd been learning to do in the first year of his life. So he was quite disabled.

But the tumor was in the back of his head. So his frontal lobe, you know, his enjoyment of Mr. Tumble and playing silly tricks on us and nurses and having fun with his brothers and his desire to communicate through language, which he learned sign language, forgive me, Makaton quite quickly. Makaton is like a speech technology. It's not technically sign language, but it's signs and words at the same time. And it's incredibly helpful for young kids with disabilities and for their parents to learn. And so he was so hungry to communicate and funny and mischievous and the delight. So he was very, very interesting and a pleasure to be with for the second and third, almost, you know, he didn't make it to three, but I mean, I just loved waking up every morning

and seeing him and kissing him and playing with him and helping with his physical therapy and all that stuff and doing the myriad care things we had to do for him and had to learn how to do which were quite difficult so yeah he was a wonderful wonderful kid and personality so yeah that's a little bit that's the tiniest little bit about Henry. Thank you Rob it's so beautiful to hear about him. And I know that he was the first person you told that you and your wife were expecting a baby and that he would be a big brother. That's a beautiful passage in the book. Yeah. But like a lot of two year olds, he wasn't like, wow, this is so profound. You know, he was like, oh, great. Oh, cool. Yeah. Exciting yeah exciting but yeah he knew he was the first one during this trauma you were writing and filming catastrophe and your character in catastrophe gets increasingly intense and almost sort of angry towards the end of the final two series and i wondered if that was a reflection in some way of what you were going through.

Oh, yeah, without question. Series three was written and shot with Henry in the hospital. And then series four was written and shot after he died. So in three and four, yeah, those scripts are suffused with a lot of anger and fear, which I think are incredibly good building blocks for comedy. So I am really grateful that there was an existing framework in my life. And an existing creative project. Where stuff could go. And would fit and make sense.

In a story. So I think three and four probably would not have been as good. If like real life hadn't come a calling. In a violent aggressive manner. It would be better if Henry were alive. And three and four sucked, but I am grateful that the career that I have had sort of a clothes horse that I could hang stuff on, you know? Before I move on to your failures, I wanted to ask you about this moment in time where you describe in the book, Rachel, one of Henry's carers, her response to being told that Henry's cancer had returned and that it was fatal.

And for people who haven't yet read the book, because it's only out today, can you describe her reaction and why that was important for you? So I took her aside and told her that Henry's tumor had returned and that it would kill him and that there was not further options for trying to stop it. She immediately just went, oh, Jesus Christ. No. Oh God. No. But louder than that. I don't want to ruin your hearing. You know, she just was like screaming, Jesus Christ. Oh God. No. You know, like she'd been punched in the stomach. It was the best. It was so much better than whatever our peer group who would be like, Oh, you know, tragedy and oh, goodness, you know, and it was so naked and raw. And I just felt like, thank you for saying what's happening inside of me and giving it voice, you beautiful, glorious human being. That's what I want to hear. If I know someone now,

and they don't know about Henry, you know, I meet somebody some years later, and it gets to the point where I tell them I heard his son die. I would rather they be like, fuck, what? Are you serious? How? You know, and ask like pointed questions. How? Why did he die? How? You know, not Oh, I'm so Oh so oh goodness i can't even imagine fuck off you know what i mean yeah i mean don't fuck off you know i'm just saying it's it's okay to have a messy loud bodily response that's that's gonna make the person telling you that's gonna make their day so that's so it great. And I remember going and telling my wife about that and she was like, yeah, rock on Rachel. That's what we want to hear. And so that

was very special and very educational for me. And for the rest of us, thank you for sharing that because I think possibly the worst thing anyone can do is not say anything. But if you are going to say something, reach for the swear word rather than the placid. Yeah, absolutely. So we are going to move on to your failures. Great. But not without my acknowledging how profoundly appreciative I am of you talking to me in that way about Henry. Thank you. Oh, hey, my pleasure. And I tried to pick failures that would like dovetail with this. So it wouldn't be like a one show transition where they're like, and now there's a flood in Hampshire where a bunch of rubber duckies have escaped from

a truck, you know, whatever. Yes, I know. I mean, it is still a little bit of a step change. So I apologize for that. But I'm super intrigued by each of these failures and what you're going to say about them. And your first one is that you got kicked out of an improv group at 26. And you said to me, literally motivates me to this day. What happened, Rob Delaney? I improvised at the Improv Olympic in Los Angeles, which is no longer there. The Improv Olympic in Chicago is where the Upright Citizens Brigade came from, who produced such luminaries as Amy Poehler, Matt Walsh, and lots of Tina Fey, and a tiny group of amazing people. a tiny group of amazing people. So I was so crazy about improv and really loved it and went through their whole training program and started my own shows and would go there every weekend night,

hoping to somebody would like not show up so I could go be in a show. And I was just crazy about it. And then I got put on like a house team. It was actually my second one that I'd been on. And after some weeks together, maybe a few months, one of the members asked me out to breakfast. And it was the only member who I was actually like friends with. She said to me, she said, the group has come to a decision that I disagree with. but because I'm your friend, I wanted to be the one who told you they don't want you in the group anymore. The rationale was that in an improv group, they, I believe, felt that I was violating one of the more cardinal sins of being a bit more controlly and showboaty and trying to be in too many scenes and stuff like that. So it's an okay reason to not want

someone in your group, but I think maybe they could have said, hey, here's an idea. think maybe they could have said, hey, here's an idea. We feel that you, you know, they could have given me a double secret probation or a regular probation or just spoken to me and said, because I was just like a puppy dog. I was so excited and so passionate about it, as demonstrated by the fact that years later, I'm the only one of those like eight or nine people who does comedy, except for the woman who told me she's a very successful show creator, writer and runner. So the only one who had the strength, compassion, whatever to tell me is the only other person who is also making a living doing this because she's so good at it and so passionate about it. But when that happened, I was like, oh, I guess I've been kicked out of

comedy forever. That's it. Meanwhile, these are just like kids in their 20s who don't know what they're doing. Not that I did. That's not I'm not denigrating them for that. But I was so hurt and so horrified. I was like, I guess, well, that's it. The doors of comedy are closed to me. So I really stopped for a while and I got a job in internet marketing with benefits, you know, because you have to get a job to get health insurance in America. And I started to study for my real estate license. And these things that I was like, I guess this is... And I tried to tell myself, no, it's okay. This is what I want to do.

And then a couple years later, I was like, fuck this mayonnaise. And then I just started doing stand-up, which was a much better fit for me. This group could have either said, you need to be more of a team player or you should just do stand-up. And when I found stand-up, it was great because I could just be my own boss. I didn't have to wait for a group and make sure we all had equal amounts of motivation. I was the director, producer, writer. And then that's when my drive was like, not dependent on anybody else's. And that's when things started to happen for me. So it's great that they kicked me off. And I'm grateful to them. And it hurt. I would much rather have been hit by

a car at the time. I'm very interested by a couple of things about this story one is that you described yourself as a bit controlly and I wonder if you would still describe yourself like that do you think you have a need for control no I don't and I'm ultra collaborative I love to have other people direct the stuff that I write. I love to write with partners. I loved being the executive producer of Catastrophe, but I also love being like an employee actor in totally somebody else's thing. I do when it's scripts, my rule for a script is you should read it and then hope that it gets produced but if it didn't you had a totally mature experience that they didn't need to like figure out on set or in the edit I want my scripts to be airtight and so on that I'm crazy but in a nice way because I just

want to make something people want to watch I'm'm not mean or weird, but I am exacting definitely. Okay. And the other thing I wanted to ask you was about improv itself. So I had Deborah Francis White host the Guilty Feminist on this podcast years ago now. And she talked about, yeah, she's amazing. She talked about improv and what it taught her about failure because it taught her that failure is essentially data acquisition so when you fail on stage you have learned something necessary about the audience and what you need to do differently next time yeah did improv teach you about failure how about no I won't try to shoehorn my like I might later realize oh yeah it did but i can't think of anything but what i will say is i now i love failure are you kidding me you can't reach the raw material to build the

staircase to success is failure oh my god yeah i love when people now now after having had some success when i write something and people like no we don, we don't want it. I'm like, you know what I mean? Like, try and stop me, you clown commissioner. You know what I mean? Literally, it's the same thing as if they handed me like a 10,000 pound check. Awesome. I love failure now. Oh, I luxuriate in it. You genuinely mean that? That's amazing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, you just made me stronger. Whoops, too bad. You should have commissioned my stupid thing, but now you just made me dangerous. Have you always had that? Or is that something that you've

learned having been battered around a bit by life? I have to be battered around. You see the gray in my beard. Yeah,, like, yeah, it happened through repeated failure that I did not seek out, but then you have to make the mental adjustment. It's good. It's all good. Success is great. Failure better. I need that on a t-shirt and I need to merchandise it for this podcast. You can get the commission. So if you're looking for a home for your worst opinions, if you're a hater first and a lover of pop culture second, then join me, Hunter Harris, and me, Peyton Dix,

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Listen and follow Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. let's move on to your second failure because the other person who emerges so so strongly in your book is your wife leah who sounds utterly incredible and your second failure is that you did a shitty job as a husband for a good stretch in the early years of our marriage. Yes. Tell us about that, but start by telling us how you and Leah met. Okay, so we met at a camp for people with disabilities in Massachusetts 18 years ago. A lot of people have cerebral palsy and they're teenagers and adults.

So you're one-on-one with your camper. And we each had campers who had cerebral palsy. It was on an Island, Martha's Vineyard off of Massachusetts. And we were both just like in transient periods of our life where we're like, Oh, I guess I'll go do this for the summer and happens to meet each other. She was in the process of moving from Mississippi to Washington, DC. And I.A. at the time. So neither of us had any reason that you saw coming to be in Massachusetts. And that's how we met, with watching her take care of a teenage girl who had cerebral palsy.

And I had a 12-year-old boy who had cerebral palsy. And she was in a bikini, and it was summertime, and we were swimming, and she was in bikini and it was summertime and we were swimming and she was so funny and beautiful but you know obviously kind and strong it was a pretty good commercial for her as both a person and a partner I was 27 she was 24 so you were in your 20s and you got married. And then why were you doing a shitty job as a husband? I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do or I hadn't admitted it yet. Meaning she met me. I was like, yeah, I'm getting my real estate license and taking investing classes at like UCLA Extension. Just stuff that is not me.

And she was like, oh, okay, I guess that's him. And, and then I was like, No, I, you know, a couple years in, I was just like, I can't do this. And she was like, Oh, all right. So she was the breadwinner as a school teacher, while I'm going to doing stand up on unemployment or worse making less than unemployment when I'm working at like telemarketing near the airport. And so it definitely was like a bait and switch, not on purpose, but in function. I totally was like different than who the guy she thought she was marrying. And then even when success started to come, like with catastrophe and stuff, I was just such a total workaholic. The reason I mentioned it is because it didn't occur to me that a marriage could improve in strength and the joy that you derive from it and your ability to like do kind, consistently good

things for the other person. You know, another big adjustment I made is I realized I didn't know that you had to work really hard on your relationship with your spouse after you'd had kids. I felt like, oh, we've had the kids, they're children. So you have to feed them and clothe them. You know, we had to have kids for a while before I was like, oh, wait, I have to give the amount of attention that I give to each kid to her as well. Really? And at first I was like, that's insane. She's a grown up. I like her and I enjoy seeing her when I want to give the amount of attention that I give to each kid to her as well. Really? And at first I was like, that's insane. She's a grownup. I like her and I enjoy seeing her when I want to see her, you know, and I assume that's

how she feels, but no way, man. Oh my God, does that not work? And so being able to realize that was like a huge, amazing grace blast. I think big helps have been like being sober and applying some of the lessons of sobriety to my marriage and then also Henry dying and being sick. We realized every member of the family is going to need not less love now but more and more attention and more touch and stuff like that. It's sort of crazy and like so wildly immature and crazy to think that I was like, no, my wife is a nice person who I quite like. I find her very attractive and she's a good friend. We sleep in the same bed, but I don't

have to, she doesn't need that much. Does she seriously? Do I really? Because we're already married and we have some kids. Like, really? And when I discovered that the answer to that was like the biggest, loudest yes in the world, then of course she got happier, but I did too. So whoops. And then another lesson is that your marriage can get better after a period of doldrums or neglect. That's pretty cool. Because I think people love to pull the ripcord on relationships. What if you didn't?

Sometimes you should. I'm not saying everybody needs to hit freeze on wherever they are in their life right now and stay with, you know, a crazy person or whatever. But in our case, I enjoyed the second decade of our marriage considerably more than I did the first. Wow. And you describe it as a moment of grace. Was it actually that? It wasn't that you went to therapy or that a friend sat you down and said, Rob, you're behaving like a douchebag. It was actually just a thunderbolt of grace. Well, I don't take a lot of credit because Henry got sick. that changed things super dramatically there is a alternate timeline where we're not together because i didn't get my act together

so what i credit it to is henry getting sick my wife said i'll divorce you if you don't change how you operate in this marriage and i was like oh, Oh, well, I don't want that. And then I was like, okay, I'm going to make some fundamental changes. And I did truly begin to implement them, but then not much later, Henry got sick. And then it was like, Oh God, thank God. I listened to my wife and started to make some changes so that the barest groundwork had been laid for what we're going to need to do now, which is going to be the fucking Olympics of marriage difficulty.

That's what I credit you. You can put that under grace, but unfortunately, and the big ingredient in that grace is Henry's illness, which would turn out to be fatal. I've used the word grace myself. Is it the best word for it? Will I be using it five years from now? I don't know, but it's surely an ingredient in the whole thing. And you write about how during Henry's illness and all of that extensive invasive treatment he went through, you religiously stuck to date night with your wife and you were very aware of how important that was because so many bereaved parents don't stay as a couple yeah a big thing that I thought was if I say I love this Henry if I'm acting like I love him, telling people I love him, how would he feel if I didn't give his mother all of me?

How would he feel if I neglected his brothers that he's so crazy about? So for me, it was like it's proof in the pudding time. Yeah. Do I love him? Then I fucking well better take care of his mom and love her to death and his brothers. Or I'm full of shit when I tell him that I love him. Do I really love him? Then I better give myself to the people that he loves most. That was a big part of it. That is so fucking powerful. And you and Leah have another

son now. How has that been for you? So great. I thought I was broken. Notice I almost said we. I thought I was broken and that all my parental love had been allotted and that this new guy would be like an addendum or something, or that I would take care of him, you know, but I don't have the capacity to love again. And that immediately we were crazy about him from the second we saw him. In fact, Henry's older brothers were present when our youngest was born because they'd seen so much medical stuff with Henry that they asked if they could be here when the new guy was born. So I was like, okay, sure. You know? and uh when he came out my oldest was like it's another boy we all laughed and he goes it's another boy and we're gonna love him that's what the how old was he then seven so yeah our youngest i'm bananas about i just can't get enough of him

and he's henry's brother you know know and now that he's four he asks about Henry all the time and talks about him and having our youngest has just been the best there's this beautiful passage in your book and I'm going to embarrass you I think because I would like to read the whole thing and it's about why you're not worried about your own death because of the joy of birth. And you write, whenever someone tells me they're expecting their first baby and they're nervous, I tell them the following. Oh my goodness, that's wonderful. I'm so happy for you. Listen, of course you're nervous, but here's the deal. You're ready for all the bad stuff. You've been very tired before. You've been

in pain before. You've been worried about money before. You felt like an incapable moron before. You've been in pain before. You've been worried about money before. You felt like an incapable moron before. So you'll be fine with the difficult parts. You're already a pro. What you're not ready for is the wonderful parts. Nothing can prepare you for how amazing this will be. There is no practice for that. There is no warm-up version. You are about to know joy that will blow your fucking mind apart happiness before this ha mystery lol wonder fuck off you are about to see something magical and new that you have no map for none this is it are you ready for that are you no no you're not also please let me babysit when you're finally ready to let someone else hold your beautiful little nugget first time time's free. Second time is 15 pounds an hour. And the reason I love that so much, Rob, is clearly you're making a profound point about death as well, saying that that's

a great adventure that we, who knows there might be joy there. But as someone who I've had recurrent miscarriages and I've seen lots of people have babies and there is so much cultural noise about how difficult that is and how exhausting and like roll on gin o'clock and there's not enough about the joy and it's just so wonderful to hear that to hear a man express it so I just want to thank you for that oh yeah well thank you and thank you for telling me that and I'm sorry that you've had to go through that that's incredibly difficult I can't say it better than I did there I think but that is absolutely how I feel and then yeah I do sort of flash it forward to well if we can't be prepared for birth and birth is so magical then you know we can't be prepared for death and everybody's doing

it so no need to worry it's the latest thing death is having a moment yeah before we get onto your third failure i wanted to ask you about your boys and how you manage what must be the very very human impulse to feel so fearful for them and to feel naturally overprotective and how you kind of manage to balance that with being a parent who allows them to explore and have adventures? I know the limits of my power. I've had a child die. It wasn't up to me. We did everything that we could. So I think there's a little bit of self-deception when a parent thinks that they can choose if their child's going to get hurt or die or not. Yeah, of course we put up guardrails where we can, but I don't know. I mean,

I don't want to wrap them in cotton wool. They've had a terrible thing happen to them at a young age. I don't want to compound it by smothering them. So that's one factor. Also, my wife is a hillbilly and is an outdoor crazy enthusiast tree climber. So my partner would definitely be like, what are you doing? You know, if I said, boys, wear a helmet when you go up a flight of stairs or whatever, you know, so I think we're a pretty good couple in that sense. And then we're outnumbered. There's three boys here. So maybe we're getting some like exposure therapy from the fact that they're always getting hurt and, you know, getting their heads, you're getting a note from school, they're coming home from school with a sticker on their jumper that says I've had a head injury today, you know,

all that stuff. So sure, I could be some smothering person. I get the urge, but we just don't do it. A big cultural enemy of mine is the helicopter parent of the modern age. Very prevalent in London, very prevalent in Los Angeles, where we came from. And I don't like those people. I don't like the way that they parent. I don't want to be like them. So independence, the big thing we're trying to encourage because that's such a gift to them. We show our kids what to do by good examples. We show them what not to do with the bad examples we give them. And then giving them the freedom to figure out some stuff. That's a real gift to give your kids.

So nobody wants their kids to get hurt or have unnecessary bad things happen to them. But my wife and I have been humbled brutally, and we know we can't protect them from everything. So we just do our best. Let's go back in time now to your childhood, because your third failure is not one we've ever had before and I'm really no I'm really really interested and also thankful that you've chosen this your third failure is your failure to control your bladder while sleeping until about age 11 or 12 why did you choose this, Rob? Because the feelings that you feel as a boy that age in 1988 or whatever are shame and fear of discovery by friends. And that was such a sort of heavy blend of emotions to feel in adolescence. And many people do feel similar things for different reasons, you know, different secrets, different things about their home life

they might be embarrassed about or ashamed of, or who knows what. That was a big ingredient of who I was at that age. So like hiding, secrecy, planning, cleanup, suitorfuge were all like things that I really worked hard on at those ages. And now I know that just like I don't hate failure now, I now know that that stuff was an ingredient in making me who I am. So I don't hate it like I did back then. I now know that, oh, you know, just like they put, I'm told, in perfumes, you know, they'll put in like one weird element to like unlock the other smells in it. And so, okay, great. Like my mom very much encouraged me to do chores around the house. And so I'm good at those now when I choose to do them or independent or driven, but also there's a part of me now that understands shame, secrecy, fear being caught out and discovered. And I wouldn't

change that. That kid was not a bad kid all our brains develop at different rates you know and who gives a shit you know what i mean nowadays and even when i was getting to throw in the washing machine make the bed for that night who cares you know so the idea that it was a shameworthy historical thing michael landon, famous American actor, as a kid, his mom would hang his wet sheets out of his bedroom window so people could see them. So he would run home fast from school so that he could take them down. And he became like a state champion runner. And that's how first people began to know who he was. he was, I can relate to that on an unbelievable level. I mean, if I do something now that's funny

or people see the fear in my eye that makes a joke funny in a movie or whatever, like where the hell do you think I learned how to do that? In the grand scheme of things, it's not huge, but at that age, it felt that way for me and it's colored who I am now and thank you thank you bladder brain network for that totally fascinating and I think one of the other things that maybe links brilliant performers and artists is an ability to know and to not even to remember but

still inhabit what it was to be a child. And it sounds like you really have that. You can remember with immediacy. Yeah, that stuff was sort of seared into me, definitely. You know, having a gaggle of adolescent boys find out that I'd wet the bed on a camping trip or whatever, which absolutely happened. And just, I mean, oh God, if you just could evaporate, that's what I wanted to do. What were you like as a kid aside from this? What were you like as a child? I always enjoyed creative stuff. I loved drawing. I loved comics,

Mad Magazine, Garbage Pail Kids, collectible cards, anything weird, anything creative, anything musical. So the arts I always loved. Yeah. It wasn't a very good athlete. I mean, I played sports and stuff and I had friends and things like that, but happiest for me was, you know, doing creative endeavors as a kid, you know, being in chorus, being in a play, making my own comics, making up funny little skits and stuff like that. So yeah. Oh, and I read a lot. And then at age 12, when I discovered alcohol, then I guess that might've been the end of my childhood because then I really began to have problems with that from really age 12.

And thank God that only lasted until I was 25 because I still continued all the creative stuff and I still participated in life. But the alcohol issue metastasized and really got in the way of a lot of stuff. of a lot of stuff. But I don't know. I'm more sensitive to people who get swept up in drugs and alcohol now with some years of both life and sobriety. You know, it's hard. It's hard to have all these feelings. You know, if there's something you can put in your body that'll make you feel fun and happy and cool temporarily, I get it. But it's fleeting. It's an illusion and it can really hurt you, you know? Well, it's interesting to me that you say you discovered alcohol when you were 12 and that was also the age that you stopped wetting the bed. So do you think there was something about that,

that it numbed you and so relieved you of that anxiety or whatever it was that was triggering that? Do you think that's connected? I don't know, but here's the thing. I think I was stopping to wet the bed at that age. And then when I didn't drink, I never wet the bed again. But with alcohol, I would routinely drink until I pissed myself until the age of 25. So there's a little fun fact. You know, it would be fun because we're getting near the end of the podcast. If that was like an Easter egg, you're like, for super fans, you're like,

for super fans, you can learn that he wet the bed till he was 25. It's actually a very good idea. I'll put that behind a paywall. You're right there. We are nearing the end. And I can't end it on that note, because I cannot recommend your book highly enough for anyone who is going through the shit storm of grief, but also for anyone who thinks they understand it, but doesn't. And for anyone who wants to help a person that they know who might be going through something, because it really does dismantle this beast of grief from the inside out. And I know that you've said elsewhere in a previous interview that you feel a bit of a responsibility being in the public eye to show people what grief looks like is that still accurate you feel that responsibility

yeah because being in the public eye or being famous or whatever is kind of like having the keys to a big crane truck, one of those ones that they have to stop traffic so it can get around a corner. So it's not good or bad, but it is a massive responsibility. That crane truck could build a school if operated by someone who knows what they're doing. But if it's operated by somebody who doesn't know what they're doing, it could run over a bunch of kids on the way to a different school. So it's a responsibility. And I think it functions best when it's treated like that. So what do I know better than most? You know, grief at this point. There's a few other things, but grief is one of them. So if I'm here in the public eye, and I have amassed some coping mechanisms and skills that I never wanted to have, but I got

them, then I do feel a responsibility to try and share them because of what other people have done for me. People have helped me immeasurably by sharing their experiences and letting me in. So yeah, you got to return a favor. That's just sort of how life works. You know what I mean? It's like emotional hygiene. You got to let this stuff pass through you or you get blocked up and explode or easy come, easy go. I think I was given something. I give it to you. And Rob, will you be writing more books? Because I would really like it if you did. Rob, will you be writing more books? Because I would really like it if you did. Thanks. I'll tell you what, I enjoyed writing this book so much more than I enjoyed writing the one I wrote nine years ago. So this is my second book. I enjoyed this one a lot more.

I feel like I know more about writing books now, go figure, after having written the second one. So I don't know. I don't have any ideas for one right now, but after this one gets out there into the world, if something strikes me, then I will listen. So it's entirely possible. I mean, I guess, hey, probably, right? If I write two, might as well write three. And I wanted to ask you, it's actually, it sounds like a boring question, but I promise you it's not. It's about what you're working on now. But the reason I want to ask you that is because I wonder how your creativity was affected by Henry's illness and Henry dying. I'm writing stuff like for TV that I hope will get made. So I always have irons in the fire there. So scripts and stuff by myself and with

others. And then I've been acting a lot and there's a bunch of stuff in the can, some of which was delayed by the pandemic and stuff that is now filtering out. Yeah. I just had a movie come out called the good house with Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kline. And that was tremendous fun. That just came out in the US. I don't know if that's here yet. Aren't I a great promoter? I just finished a show called Bad Monkey that shot in Florida. That's me and Vince Vaughn, Meredith Hagner, Jodie Turner Smith, Michelle Monaghan. Bill Lawrence made that. He made Ted Lasso and he adapted a wonderful Carl Hyasson novel called Bad Monkey. So that's the biggest thing I'm sitting on. I think that'll be on the springtime. And then parts and movies that are

coming out in the coming months. So did it affect your creativity? Did you find acting almost easier because you don't have to be yourself it sounds strange to say i definitely feel like a better writer now that i've been through terrible grief i guess it might have made me a better actor that's for other people to decide what it did do is it made me realize actors gravitate between thinking they're like the most important people in the world, or they're just human garbage that should just be steamrolled and then scraped off the pavement with a skillet and thrown into a second molten lava.

Like actors either hate themselves or love themselves. You know, I don't do either of those things anymore. Now I'm like, Oh, it's a job like any other job. It's not ridiculous. It's great.

Who doesn't want to watch TV shows and movies? It's awesome. I love them. I love to watch them. But it's also not like the people don't deserve the money and the awards. That's insane. So it's made me approach acting as just more of a craft that you learn, work at, get better at, go to work and be nice and kind and not have some crazy attitude my favorite thing these days is to get hired by a director or a producer for a second time that's when I'm like yeah you know so just anytime I can put one of those beads on the string because I showed up on time was nice was prepared you know what I mean So I love to just be like a worker bee, big time. Well, Rob Delaney, you are nice and you are kind and you have made this

such a special interview in so many ways, but there is real generosity on your part at the core of that. And thank you for that. And we're so grateful that you are that crane truck delivering a necessary public service. So thank you so, so much for telling us about Henry and for coming on How to Fail. Well, let me say to you that while we were experiencing some tech issues earlier, we, I, while I was experiencing some tech issues. I was like, and I looked into our direct messages on Twitter and there hasn't been one for a very long time, years. But the last one was you writing me when Henry died. And that's so wonderful that you did that because we don't really know each other well, you know, and you reached out and

you said something and that was so kind of you. So just doing that, you know, and like, you know what, when you sent it, I didn't see it because of course I was, my admin skills, I didn't answer an email for six months. And so, but I just saw that today and I thought it made me so happy to dive into this interview to know that it would be with someone sensitive and kind like you. So whoops. You didn't know you'd be finding out you're a wonderful person today, but you are. Oh, Rob, you're so lovely. I totally forgot we DM'd each other. I'm going to go back and read them all. You are a treasure. Thank you so, so much. if you enjoyed this episode of how to fail with elizabeth day i would so appreciate it if you could rate review and subscribe apparently it helps other people know that we exist