Soul Boom - BONUS: Theatre, Eating Disorders & More (Jeff Hiller)

Episode Date: July 19, 2026

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If you want to dig even deeper into the conversation you're about to hear with your family and friends, download Soul Boom's Discussion Guide at Soulboom.com slash discussion guide. See link in description. I remember the Judd Fry. That was the first time I had ever gone up in a performance. I'd only done a couple of high school plays before that. But I was opening night. Was it a lyric or a line?

It was lonely room singing the song. So I came out, you know, it's a lot, right? The curtains come up. And like it's my, the orchestra play. We had like the little school orchestra, kind of squeaky orchestra. And I come out and I go, The floor creaks, the door squeaks.

There's a field mouse and nibbling on a broom. And then I totally had no idea. So I was like, it's the worst because when you forget, when you forget a line, you can kind of fudge it. But when you figure to get a lyric, it has to be in time.

Yeah. It has to rhyme. It has to. So I was singing nonsense guttural, you know, syllables until I went, Lonely room. And then it kicked.

I had so much adrenaline, coursing through my body. I was higher than a hooker on Coke. And when the next part, I like, I killed it and got like a big standing ovation because I was able to kind of bring it back and knock it out of the park. Do you know Danny Burstein? Yeah. Yeah.

Very, very talented actor, the most Tony nominated male actor in history. And he told me this story about. More than Michael Uri? More than even Michael Uri. Wow. And he told me this story about he was doing follies. And the woman who was singing Broadway Baby, you know, there's that line that says, in my flat, there's just my cat.

I forget what the actual lyric is, but it's like, a blank in my chair. And she said, a stick and a bear. A stick and a bear. A stick and a bear. She just kept going. I think we need to tell more theater stories. We do. They're great.

My favorite one, too, was. I did a community theater production of Oliver. And the little kid came up and was like, there's a famous line where the kid comes up with a bowl of gruel and says, please, sir, may I have some more? And the guy, the orphanage guy, goes, more. You want more? And it's just kind of like, it's a big iconic moment.

And the kid comes up and goes, please, sir, may I have some? Wine. He just stopped at some. And so the guy had to go, you saw all the gears turning in the guy's face. He was like, some? You want some?

That's a good actor. That was pretty good. Worst theater story. I mean, there were some really bad ones that you would do for free, you know, like in a theater that was up several flights of stairs. Sure. Those are rough. You did mostly improv theater. Mostly improv.

But you did plays, though, right? Yeah, I did a ton of, I did a lot of, like, scripted theater, you know, like 10-minute play festivals. But, like, I remember I did this one festival where it was like every play had to have frontal nudity, drug use, and a crime committed. I would see that. Which did you do? Frontal nudity or a crime or? No, I think, oh no. Or you could also have blasphemy and I, it was blast.

I played Mary's sister Sarah and she was pregnant with a baby and I was like, just get it aborted or something terrible. Something awful. You went from a youth pastor and by. camp to doing blasphemous. Yeah, and that was like two years later. Wow. It was one of those things where, you know, it's like the Mormon girl who's playing a hooker on TV because she's like, well, it's a break.

Yeah. But the worst story is actually from the one time I was on Broadway, I had done this show off Broadway called Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and we had this like fight, like a big fight choreographed scene. and we froze in the middle like this, and I had a knife in my hand, and off Broadway it was a plastic knife. When we went to Broadway, they were like, yeah, it's Broadway.

So they made it like a heavy wooden handle and a metal blade. I mean, it wasn't sharp, but it was metal. And when I went like this to freeze, I just went, and the knife just went into the audience. No! Out into the audience. And I didn't know what to do.

I almost threw up. I was so nervous. And I went backstage and I just started crying. And it's a 90-minute show, no intermission. There's no time to cry. But I was like, I just threw the thing. Thank God it didn't hit anybody. It just landed in an aisle.

But it, I mean, it screwed me up for like weeks. Wow. I would be holding onto the knife so hard because, like, I was afraid I was going to slice somebody's head off. That is a true actor's nightmare. Like, that's like we would have a nightmare. I did a, I did, there's a little performed Shakespeare play, little performed for a very good reason called the two noble kinsman. No one's ever heard of it.

He co-wrote it. It's terrible. He co-wrote it. He was like 93 and like, you saw Hamnet. He was still mourning the death of his child, Hamnet. Stupid name. That serves that kid right. He deserved to die.

He deserved to die. He was just a sweet little. actor. And we did an off, off, Broadway production. And you can go to Lincoln Center and it's on in their library and you can watch it. I don't think this particular performance, but there were a couple of things that happened. The person who designed the set also designed the set for

Peewee's playhouse. So we're doing this epic, chivalrous sword-fighting play about these kinsmen and nobility and stuff. And then the This set looked like Pee Wee's Playhouse, because I guess that person had a very limited range as a set designer. But the door was at a slightly raked angle down. Oh, yeah. And it would never latch properly.

And so occasionally throughout the course of the run, we ran for a couple months, the door would just go and swing open. And whoever was behind it was revealed to the audience. And I'm not, no less than 10 times there's someone behind the door. The door goes, and there's people like ready to come in with their props standing there and then they have to like reach it.

And shut the door again. Everyone pauses and then just you just got a barrel. You're not going to improvise in Shakespeare. You're like, not now, Leonius. Darfist Lodge not happen. See, you could do the instant Shakespeare. But there was another one where there was there was a scene where the widows of the war dead were singing a dirge and carrying the ashes of their husbands.

And so these women were dressed like widows and marching down the stage. And then one day, this one of the widows of the war dead in the front tripped and spilled the ashes of the husband on the stage. and all the widows look and they all have their urns and they're all singing Oh, balimau the war dead. And the woman doesn't know what to do and again you can kind of see the machinery

going around behind the eyes. And then she very slowly kneels down and while not missing a beat, continuing to sing, start scooping the ashes of her dead husband back into her urn. Why did they have actual ashes

in these urns? They didn't need to have ashes. They didn't need to have ashes. We can imagine with the Pee-Week Herman set. Anyways, so it's been some fun times in New York theater. And what about, I also wrote a comedic memoir of my life. I noticed it was not on your list of the ones that you read. I actually, I knew you wrote the Soul Bloom book, but you wrote a memoir?

I did. It's called the Bassoon. King. Oh. Yeah. I'm going to read that. I would totally read that. It's I think you'll enjoy it. It's pretty it's pretty funny. It's pretty out there. Yeah. There's some crazy stories. I will say there's one in there that I didn't actually read but I because these chapters named after a yeah, which one? Well, yeah, every my editor. Scrappy little nobody by Anna Kendrick. That one I read. I read. I tend towards women, but. Little girl lost, Drew Barrymore. You definitely read that. I read that one when I was a teenager.

You didn't read the Rob Lowe one. Oh, I absolutely did. Don't stand too close to a naked man by Tim Allen. You did not read that one. That is totally the one. No way did you read the Tim Allen. I got you. Oh, busted.

That is the one. You are so busted. But in the bassoon king by Rayne Wilson, my life and art, faith, and idiocy, I have a short chapter of shitty jobs. Oh, yeah. Because I had so many shitty jobs. jobs in those 10 years in New York City trying to pay the bills.

What was the shittiest? The shittiest job was right before New York City, I was in Seattle. I was going to the University of Washington, but still pursuing acting. And I got a job counting cars on the freeway from a freeway overpass. It was for a project for the Department of Urban Development. And it was me and a young woman, and we each had a lane and we had a clicker. and a clipboard and we had to like every car

that went down the lane I had to click for like a two or three hour. Was it busy? Yeah. So it was just like clip, click, click, click, click. And I had to like notate various time, something about time. I forget it was once on the clipboard and then and I was doing it like all week long

and then there were days it was raining. So I'm sitting on a freeway overpass with a fold, cheap folding umbrella and with a clicker and a wet clipboard, just soaking wet for hours going like this to little cars going on the 520 car, with a carpool lane underneath the bridge. That is definitely a job that will be replaced by AI.

I hopefully. That's one of the, rightly so. That one I'm going to be okay. There were many, many more really terrible jobs. What are some of your worst ones? I'm always looking for ways to save time. I eat breakfast while answering emails. I listen to podcasts at double speed

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restaurants and your waiting tables at the olive garden? Right, right. That's like serving pizzas at Sabaro's pizza in New York City. I would have done that too if they gave me $11 an hour. Yeah, I had heard that the Times Square location added 15% to every bill for your tip. Oh. And so that's why I applied to this new location that was opening. But that wasn't true.

No, they didn't do that. They were like, the Times Square location is for tourists, but this one is for New Yorkers. It wasn't for New Yorkers. There's no New Yorkers in there. Exactly. So all these people from Connecticut would be like, the Italian sampler in Connecticut's $6 cheaper than it is here. So I'm going to take it out of your tip, you know.

How many years did you work there? Oh, I didn't even last a full year, maybe seven months. Yeah. Were you a very good waiter? No, it's terrible. I was awful, yeah. Because I get, I remember so vividly, this woman kept calling me over, and I was just like, oh, God, this woman.

And I was just, I was trying to take care. this other table because I had another needy table and she just kept being like and then finally I went over there and she was just like, can I have a spoon? And she was just sitting with her bowl of soup. No spoon. And you hadn't given her a spoon. But you were like, this bitch. What a Karen. Exactly. Yeah. So I probably deserved that. But then the worst probably was I was a roaming actor at a theme restaurant called the Jekyll and Hyde Club. I remember that one. Is that 6th Avenue and 53rd Street. 57th.

Yeah, but this. Yeah. The one that had, it was like a mansion and had like a big face on the front. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was terrible. It was terrible.

What was it like being an actor? Who did you play? I played Cornelius Shroud, the Butler. Is it on your resume? Yeah. Special skills. Is it on your Wikipedia page? Not yet.

I have no idea how to make Wikipedia happen. Yeah. And it was, that's how I got into the union. That's how I got into actors' equity. You got it into the union from working at a theme restaurant? Mm-hmm. And what did Cornelius Shroud do?

Well... Do you remember any of your lines? Yeah, I mean, you know, it's all improv, and you have to do it in sort of an accent. Did you walk around playing the character? Yes, and I had a feather duster, and I would dust a little child's head and say, ooh, this is especially dirty. It sounded like Joan Plow, right? And, and, like, everybody was, you know, like all the parents were like,

this is, this is unseemly. They did not want to be there. They didn't lie again. And the kids were often, like, terrified of the scary things. It was awful. Yeah. I waited tables at Phoebe's Wine and Dine on the Bowery. Okay.

Do you know where that is? Third and Bowery. Oh. It's a cross from the Bowery Hotel, but it was there before the Bowery Hotel. Oh, Phoebs. It's called Feebbybe. It's Phoebe's, yeah. Okay.

But it's spelled Phoebes, it's spelled weird. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so funny, I just was there. I was doing a reading at the public and we went there for dinner. You went to Phoebe's? Yeah. Did you have the potato skins?

I didn't. I wish I had. Phoebe's was open until 4 a.m. Oh, God. And I lived in the bowels of Williamsburg before Williamsburg was, say, four cool. Right, right. And this was 1989.

Wow. Before they had grocery stores. Yes. It was brutal to take the L train at 4.30 a.m. Oh, my God. And you couldn't afford a cab. No, because that would be like half my tips would be gone if I took a cab ride. Right.

Oh, it was brutal. That is awful. Those were some dark times and I remember getting tipped in a couple of times. I got tipped in baggies of cocaine. That is the 80s. It was 1989 all over again. But it was a cop bar. and a combination cop bar and Chinese mafia bar.

Huh. So you'd have these tables of Chinese mafia with beepers and cuavassier and Heineken and potato skins all around. That was one thing, and little baggies of coke for tips. And then there were cops having, it was the potato skins they came for. That was what united them, I think.

You know what? The world would be so much better if we could all just share in potatoes Right? That could bring the left and right together, shared love. Gay and straight, any, any wound that needed healing. The Iran war will be over once we fry up some taters. The straight of four moves. But I remember once I decided to try out, said Baggy, because what else are you going to do?

It's three in the morning at Phoebe's Wine and Dine. And I came out and it was like all over my face and then the cops came in the bathroom. And I was like, wow, this is complicated. And the cops, the cops kind of looked at me and they were just kind of like, we're going to let this one go, you idiot. Like we're not going to arrest you in the basement bathroom of Phoebe's wine and nine and three in the morning. Yeah, rough times in New York.

That is rough. Yeah. And you did a ton of improv then. You were teaching. I know, I know. I was lovelingly joking. I said, I've done improv for 20 years so I can follow along. And Rain said, yeah, I know.

You mentioned it a lot in your book. I think you mentioned it 420 times in your book that you did improv for 20 years. It's the only thing I had. I did it for free. For all of those years, what made you not give up? I mean, I think you understand this better than anybody. It's like, first of all, while it was terrible to wait tables for the Olive Garden, I would get these little wins along the way, and that's what would keep you going.

Yeah. You know? Yeah. Even something super small, like doing an improv show and somebody was like, that was really funny that bit, you know? And then you're like, I was funny. I was funny. Right.

That'll keep me going. And also, I had done social work before I was an actor, and it was kind of the only other job I could imagine doing. And I was, I was bad at it. I was really bad waiter and a bad social worker? But I'm a good actor. You are a very good actor. Thank God.

It's like my one skill. So I was like, I guess I got to keep going. And a lot of the times I wasn't ever like, when am I going to win my Emmy? It has never like, I want fame and success. I was just like, when am I going to be able to have only one job and the job is acting? Yeah. And like have I earned enough to make health insurance and stuff like that? So there were times where I had that, like when I was on Broadway or when I, a couple, I did

another TV show that nobody saw that where I was making a living. Which one was that? It was called Nightcap. It was this Allie Wentworth show on the Pop Network. You remember the Pop Network? I actually do remember the Pop Network. Shits Creek started on the Pop Network. Exactly.

They were the hit. We were not. I produced a show called Impress Me. That ran for a little while on Pop TV. Yeah. Okay. I know it. Hard to get an audience there.

Yeah. It was very hard. Yeah. Yeah. So that's. They launched this channel right when cable was just dying on the vine. And it was the former TV guide channel. Yeah.

They rep branded that. That's funny. So, but it was still so exciting because I, we got two seasons. I did 20 episodes of a television show and I was making a living. I mean, it was kind of a meager living for TV star. but it was great. Yeah. And so things like that helped me keep going.

And I don't know. I just really wanted to be an artist. And there was, I mean, there were times when, like, you'd talk to your friend from high school and they'd be like, oh, my house, it's like so big. So much to take care of all the- I've got laundry on both floors. And you're like, oh, I got to want a laundromat.

You know, that guy. Sure. Yeah. But for the most part, you know, you just take the winds and you go, keep going. This episode is brought to you by Fetzer. You know, there's this tendency in modern life to believe that every problem has a material solution. More technology, more productivity, more money, more apps reminding you to breathe while you ignore the fact that your soul feels like a raisin. But the folks at the Fetzer Institute believe something deeper.

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And what was going on? And how did you find peace coming out of that? Well, I mean, I wouldn't say that I'm like completely through it. I think it's like a lifelong thing. Which is just that when things are going hard, I think sometimes people lean on booze or they lean on drugs or sex. And for me, it's food. And in a way that's like, you know, lots of sugar,

like too much sugar for your body to function properly. So emotional eating? Oh, completely. Emotionally eating. Benge eating. Yeah. Yeah. And this was a lifelong struggle?

When did this kind of start? Oh yeah, lifelong. Yeah. Yeah. And especially like as a kid, like life was hard at school. And so I would go to the snack bar and get, I had, I would get $1.25 every day and I would buy a nutter butter, a can of soda. And one of those little Debbie. Debbie, snack, rice crispy crackers.

Okay. Oh God, that was like a weird memory. But yeah, I leaned on it too much. And even now, I noticed like, okay. So that kind of got ingrained in you when you were young to use sugar as a crutch to get you through. And I really am so afraid about young people's eating.

I mean, my own eating habits are certainly not great, but young people just like sugar is just in everything. Yeah, totally. And at that time, it certainly was, you know. And that was before you knew, like, peanut butter was just sugar, you know? And so that was healthy as like eating a sugary thing of peanut butter or whatever. I wouldn't say I'm like, it's all good. It's not an issue anymore.

Yeah, it still is. But I think I'm more aware of it now and talk about it in therapy a lot and notice when I'm like, I'm just going to pull in there and get a cupcake and be like, okay, what's really happening right now? What am I feeling right now? Oh, okay. That's what my therapist and I have been talking about doing. Right. Taking a moment to stop and say, not to say like you can't have the cupcake,

but to say, why am I craving this cupcake as I'm walking by this cupcake? Right. What's the story behind the story? Exactly. In other words, yeah. And did you hit bottom with food at a certain point in time? Well, I mean, it's sort of joky in the book, but that time was really, I was really depressed. And I've never really been depressed before.

I don't have clinical depression or whatever. But I had all of these circumstances. My mom had just died. I had moved back from L.A. I felt unsuccessful. I was 40 years old. I was moving back into my husband's apartment because we were living by coastal and we were having like a really difficult time figuring out how I fit into his space.

And so I was, that was kind of like a, a time when I was like, I would go and buy bags of cookies and I would eat the whole bag of cookie on the way home. And that's, you know, 16 cookies is too many cookies. So that was kind of a rock bottom. Yeah. And I started going to like OA and stuff, but I didn't find it. I never found a meeting that was ready for me. So I more just worked on it alone with my therapist.

But also, yeah. that's still totally an issue. Yeah. But I don't want to be the person who's, because I do so for a little, like a lot of times I would do like, I would go crazy. And then I'd be like,

now I'm going to be weight watchers and I'm just going to do. And so we're trying not to have that. Binge restrict kind of back and forth. Right. So we're trying not to do that disordered eating, intuitive eating is the thing that I'm leaning it toward. Nice.

Yeah. But you have to think a lot. You have to be a lot of like, Wait, why do I want that food right now? Am I hungry or am I pushing down some? And it's interesting when you learn how the brain works that these kind of limbic systems at the base of the brain, they want, I want drugs, I want alcohol, I want sex,

I want to shop, I want stuff, I want food, that there's something disregulated. Jonathan Haidt talks about the rider and the elephant that we think we're the conscious person riding, but we're riding this elephant that has these needs and they're big. And it's the prefrontal cortex up here that all the tools of the 12th step put our minds out of that limbic system and up into this prefrontal cortex. Prayer, meditation, journaling, phone calls, you know, connecting with a higher power, meditation, even reading books that are inspiring. They

take us out of that that that base place that just wants kind of like immediate satisfaction and that's that's the human dance baby yeah right there that is the human dance yeah yeah I'm still dancing and you're still dancing we both are the soul boom podcast subscribe now on YouTube Spotify Apple Podcasts and wherever else you get your stupid podcasts now playing on Netflix the Hall From the mind of Will Ferrell, Oh, mama, I'm back. Come in the new original series.

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