Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - William H. Macy

Episode Date: January 27, 2019

When people think of William H. Macy, they often think of his Oscar-nominated performance in the movie “Fargo” or his nine-season run on the hit TV show “Shameless.” In this week’s “Sunday Sitdown,” Willie Geist chats with the actor about those iconic roles, as well as many others he’s had throughout a long career in Hollywood. He also opens up about the man who was the biggest influence on his career and the secret to his 21-year marriage to fellow actor Felicity Huffman. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. My guest today is a personal favorite, hopefully one of yours as well, a guy who's been around acting on stage and on screen for nearly 50 years now, William H. Macy. When you hear William H. Macy, what's the first thought that comes to your head? Probably Fargo and Jerry Lundegarde. He got an Oscar nomination for that, or perhaps more recently, shameless jumps to mind. We're in the middle of season nine of that great show on Showtime, where he's starred for nine. seasons as the unapologetic addict and deadbeat dad Frank Gallagher. We talk about that. We talk about a long road to success from what he describes as a hippie college up in Vermont, where he met his

mentor and fame playwright David Mamet. They've been working together ever since. That's almost 50 years ago. Talks about auditioning for Fargo. We get into Fargo. Hilarious story about auditioning for the Cohen brothers. He read that script, knew he wanted it, and wait till you hear the links he went to land the role that most certainly changed his career and changed his life. We also talk about his 21-year marriage to fellow actor Felicity Huffman, how they've supported each other on this long road through Hollywood and how they've kind of risen together in the business, how much fun that's been. Man, a lot to talk about with a guy who's done it all, the great William H. Macy right now on

the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Thank you for doing this. I appreciate it. My pleasure. I'm so pleased to be here. So season nine picks up sort of, we took a little hiatus here for a few months. We're back now. For fans of the show, remind us sort of where we pick up, where we find Frank, where the show's going now.

I guess this is Katie Seagall's entrance. For Frank, he was, you know, his liver fell out a couple of years ago, and he's got a new liver, and he's taking anti-rejection drugs, and Medicare won't cover them anymore, so he has to take a generic and one of the side of fernic. is a loss, complete loss of libido. And it just sends Frank up the wall. He doesn't know what to do. And he's in the hospital again.

And he sees this crazy woman. Katie Segal plays the character. And she's just, she's bipolar and off her meds. And she tricks for her meds. Frank into coming in saying, I've got a couple of I get in in my pocket. You can have one of them. And then she headbuts him and

knocks him unconscious. And in purely shameless fashion, Frank looks down and his libido is returned with a vengeance. It turns out he just loves crazy women. So she did about four or five shows. It was just

delicious acting with her. And in the first episode back, I think I can say, because this will air after it's already been on the air. They're trying to have a kit. Well, she wants to have a child, and she needs Frank's assistance, but here comes that libido problem again.

Yes. Yes, there's a very funny scene where he goes to collect, where they're going to collect his sperm, and he is really upset with the quality of the visual aids in the room they send him to. We were talking about he names off all these parts. He's very specific tastes.

Yes. He's a smart guy. He's well studied. He comes up, said, do you have anything from the 90s? The 70s aren't really working for me. No. And so is Frank ready to be a father? I mean, there's a twist in this.

We won't give the whole thing away. But is he ready to be a father? I don't think so. No, he has no interest in that. But it's interesting. They've taken into a the fact that Frank's getting older and worrying about his future. I mean, his family certainly can't stand him,

and he's not an idiot. He knows they'll never take care of him, and he's starting to think, what am I going to do when I need help? And he's worrying about his future. It's from a shameless perspective, certainly, but I love that they're taking that into account. I mean, what could be worse than poor and old?

Right. And he's made a run here recently. It's sort of trying, at least trying, to go to account. clean himself up a little bit and get to a better place. Is there any hope for that in Frank Gallagher? Can he clean himself up? I don't think so. I don't think so. I think he's committed to his self-destruction.

It's a way of life. I think he's turned it into an art form. I always fantasized someone would say, but Frank, don't you realize you're killing yourself? He would say, I'm not an idiot. I know I'm killing myself. So are you. I'm just having more fun.

How much fun is that character to play? And we were talking, it's been almost a decade now. It's the time you signed on to do it now, as we're in season nine. What do you get out of playing, Frank? That's unlike any other character maybe you've played. Well, it's fun being the rascal. It's fun being able to say the outrageous things. I don't have to worry about how I look.

You know, the challenge of it has been, for whatever reason, I'm good at taking an otherwise despicable character and putting a human face on the character. It's done me very well in my career. And I feel like one of the challenges with Frank is to figure out all the stuff he does and translate it in some way that it's something I can believe in. It's just a trick of technique, really, because he's done some despicable things.

Also, it's physically a lot more demanding than you would think. I mean, I have a stand-in and they have stunt doubles for me, and I'm totally willing for them to do as much as they want. I've suggested they do entire episodes, but they won't let me do that. But still, I do a lot of that stuff, and I go home black and blue. Do you really? Yeah. From the falls and everything else that comes with it? Falling down and running from people.

I've been proud to have outrun all my, all the people chasing me so far. You spend a lot of time on the floor, I think you would confess. I do. I actually went back and watched the very first episode of the series, so eight, nine years ago now. Spend a lot of time on the floor. You're right there on the floor, and here you are again in season nine, still on the floor in the kitchen. Well, there's nowhere to fall. fall when you're on the floor and you can get some rest. Yeah, it's physically quite demanding.

And so far I'm up to the challenge. So why do you think the show has resonated with so many people? Why has it been successful? We were talking before we started here. For a show to last nine seasons, it's doing something exceptional, something extraordinary. What is it about the show? At its core, it's about the family. And their love. for each other. It's about family values. And I think it resonates with people that, because they didn't have a mother and they've got this pariah as a father, all the kids have bonded, and they are ferociously protective of each other. And that's very appealing. I think the fact that they're always striving, you know,

they're not just sitting around waiting for the welfare check. They are sitting around waiting for the welfare check, but they're also going out and trying to scam people and cheat and lie in steel to make money. In other words, they're entrepreneurial. I think it's an important element that they're one paycheck away from homelessness.

That makes the comedy a little bit more acute for some reason. And then finally, it's really, really well conceived. I've seen a lot of shows that come along and you watch it and you go, this is magnificent, but where are you going to go? This does not have legs. And in fact, they do run out of steam after one season, two seasons. They've told all their stories.

The way this thing is conceived with the family and the kids growing up, there are many, many more stories. And John Wells, the Grand Puba, Shameless, says he's nowhere near finished with the stories from his family alone. Actually, we're starting to worry about John Wells. The more stories he brings in from his family, it's interesting that he's not sitting in a tower someplace with a rifle. I don't know how he escaped it

because he brings in some up stories from his family. The well's a little too deep for me. It's interesting to hear you say that the family's one paycheck away from homelessness because it is a show about poverty. Wells once said that Shameless is not a blue-collar show, it's a no-collar show. This isn't even Roseanne, really. It's something else completely, and it shows poverty in a different light.

Was that important to you to speak to the way a lot of people in America live right now, frankly, and do it in an honest way? Yes, yes, I think it's important. I wasn't particularly looking for that. When I decided to throw my hat in the TV ring, I was just looking for a good script. Boy, did I get lucky. I'm good at reading scripts, but, yeah, for a script to appeal to me, I think it's got to say something about the human condition.

I mean, I've enjoyed something that's completely fluff. It has no redeeming values whatsoever. But that's a harder target to hit, I think. It's interesting. I mean, airplane is one of the great movies of all time, and I don't think it was striving to change the culture. No, but it did. I just watched this as spinal tap, although that might be deep.

Yes, that is. Actually, that is. And that one lasts. It rings today the way it did then. It really does. It holds up. Yeah. It's, we were talking about John Wells,

having a deep well of personal stories to feed into this series. Definitely a season 10. for Shameless. Do you have sort of in your mind a horizon for how long this show lasts, or are you just going to ride it as long as it'll take you? I don't. I don't. And I'm not sure John has an idea yet. But I did hear him say one time that he feels that when Shameless is over, it's as if the camera just moves from that house to another house and we'll start to watch their story, that there's no big...

explosive finale to this thing, it just keeps going, which seems true to me. Seems truer somehow. I should say, I don't think they've announced a season 10, but you hope for a season 10. We're hoping. I've already spent the money, so I'm really hoping we get to do it. Okay, that's very important. It was fascinating to hear you say in this character, who hopefully is nothing like you would realize, you have to find something true, you have to find something yourself. What is that exactly? How do you relate to a guy who's a dead, and a drunk and not something you would aspire to be, obviously, ever. How do you find that? I think the answer is technique.

You know, most nuts people are not trying to be nuts. They're just out of adjustment to reality. And I think evil people aren't trying to be evil. They're just out of adjustment. They don't get the whole picture. So you sort of, you take this story and you figure out what his objective is what he's fighting for. And then you just sort of reword it a little bit so you go, yeah, I can hang my hat on that. That's the trick of it. Also, it's just compelling to see someone

striving for anything. You don't have to endorse what the person is striving for. That's a compelling thing to watch. And the Gallagher's work hard. Frank is a very hardworking guy. He's got something cooking all the time. And he's got a great sense of humor and he gets the irony in his life and he's smarter than you would think and well read and he's a movable party i like him a lot we've just answered my next question which was he shouldn't on paper be a likable guy but he is yeah and it's all those reasons i think you just listed yeah yeah striving really helps yeah i'm curious going back to your your youth hopefully this is not the show shameless isn't reflective of anything you experienced as a child.

Okay, good. Good. When you first remember performing and when you said to yourself, oh, this is something that either gets me some recognition or attention or something I'd like to do with my life. Do you remember the first time you performed and what you got out of it? The senior class play was Camelot, and I played Mordred. And when people laughed the first time, I thought, oh, yeah, I like this.

I was hooked. I had a folk singing group, and my brother went away to college, came back playing a guitar, and taught me to play the guitar. And that's really sort of what got me into showbiz singing in this little Peter Paul and Mary knockoff group that I had. And, you know, I have a memory. in church, I had my, I was young, I guess I was seven or eight or something like that. I had my head in my mom's lap, and I was listening to the pastor. And it just passed through my head.

I don't know what he's saying, but he's not telling the truth. It was just as clear as can be. I thought, this guy's singing it. I don't know what he's talking about, but he didn't believe it. It was, I've remembered that my whole life because when you, you can hear bad acting. You can just hear it from the other room. And conversely, it's thrilling when you hear something and you say, what's going on in there?

And it turns out it's acting. And you were fooled. Nothing better than that. Do you have a sense as a seven-year-old of what it means to? The truth. The truth. The truth. The big change of my life, I went to a very liberal arts college.

It was a hippie college. Goddard College. Goddard. It still exists. And Dave Mamet was my teacher. He had graduated from Goddard and come back as a teaching fellow. It was a hippie school, so we had no... You could create your own curriculum.

And before Dave, my curriculum was... women in getting stoned, but he changed my life. He walked in. He's just a little older than me, but he's the smartest guy I've ever met. And I hope this resonates, but one of the first things he said in class was, we had to be on time. And we were outraged. You know, this was the 70s.

We're hippies. What do you mean we have to be on time? And it turned out on time was about 10 minutes early. He locked the door. And he's the first guy that told us that I heard that it's an honorable way to make a living. That the theater is one of the places we go to hear the truth. That if you're not ready to teach, if you're not ready to treat the theater as a church, he invited us to leave his class

and he taught me everything I know so what did that mean to you be on time does that mean this is a profession and you will be a professional if you pursue this and it's not just some hobby you're floating in and out of yes and more I mean he floated the idea there are no mistakes

so if you're not on time it's because you don't want to be there and if you don't want to be there it's because perhaps you don't want to act and make no mistakes it's an insult to your fellow cast members. And there were just these immutable laws and they were hard to argue with. If you don't know the lines, because you didn't learn them.

Maybe you should think about why you didn't learn the lines if you want to be an actor. And I see that still to this day. I know I've been in the room where these people are saying, if I could just get a shot, if I could get my shot,

I know I could do this, I know I could do this. And then those very same actions, actors will get a guest star and they'll show up and they don't know the lines. It's biblical how we shoot ourselves in the foot. And that's not being professional and being committed the way Dave Manit taught you to be. And Dave also, he was great at taking acting, which is a very complex thing to do. And I think we must agree there are more than, there's more than one way to skin a cat,

but he took all the mysticism out of it and all the fakery out of it. And his technique was one that was mundane. So he even boiled it down. He basically said, don't worry about the big things. The way to be correct in the large things is to be correct in the small things. Take care of those and the rest will take care of itself.

And he was right, and it really changed my life. That's for life. That's not just for acting. Ain't it? Sure. Yep. So the partnership with David, goes much further than teacher-student. You all opened a theater together,

have worked together over the years. What were your years in New York City in the 1980s? What was your life like? You're doing off-Broadway, constantly doing shows. What was that lifestyle like for you? It was troubled. It was difficult. It was frightening.

It was exhilarating. I'd spent many years in Chicago, and we started a theater company there, we being Stephen Shactor and Patricia Cox and Dave and me, and it was wildly successful. David just written American Buffalo, and it's the first play we did, and I was in it. So we were out of the gate with a bang. So I was BMOC in Chicago,

and moving to New York was quite frightening. I did get work. But I was scared all the time. It's the big apple. They don't call it that for nothing. And I did everything. I worked as hard as I could. And some of the successes were the highest highs I've ever had.

I just loved it. There's nothing like being in a hit play in New York. A hit play on Broadway in a great role, there's no up from there for an actor. That's the top. It doesn't get any better than that. It was a wild time. There was really good work being done.

Because of my relationship to Dave and the work I'd done in Chicago, I was known for doing new plays, so I got to do a lot of really interesting stuff. Pete Gurney's first production of a dining room, which is a wonderful play. I ran that for a year. And Chris Durang was cranking him out, and I did a bunch of his stuff.

and Dave's plays also. It was an exciting time. It was exciting. You say frightening. Is that because how do I pay the rent? Where is this career thing going? What's the scary part of that time? I was young enough that I did not have control over my emotions,

and so the highs and lows were so crazy. And I just worked too. hard. I think it was a lot of people. I took it all too bloody seriously. And it takes miles and time for you to calm

down and just do your work. They don't care if you're hemorrhaging inside. Doesn't make the work better. No one cares. And as you're having this career in New York and you're doing these acclaimed plays, are you thinking, I also now, need a lot of

to get on TV. I need to do film. Is that part of the picture? Are you happy being successful here in New York? I guess for every actor, yeah, sooner or later you're going to have to start doing films. And there's the very mundane thing of you can't make a living in the theater. I mean, you can make a living, but it's very difficult. I mean, I know a lot of stalwart New York actors who are great. They've never been stars, but they raised a family. and sent their kids to college, and they got a place in the country. But you've got to work pretty hard.

You've got to do everything. You've got to do every play that comes along, the occasional Broadway, commercials, industrials. You've got to work hard. Right. And you thought to yourself, I don't know if I want that life. Let me look to the next chapter.

Everybody wants to become... There's that step. You do something, and it gets... national attention, you get good reviews, you get nominated for some stuff. The big demarcation is when you don't have to audition anymore. Right. And that's right up there with having children and getting married. I don't have to audition anymore. Interestingly, just at the point where I finally got kind of good at auditioning,

and now I'm at the point, please let me audition. I can do that. I know you think you know me. Let me try. Right, right. So what's the, I mean, I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but it seems to me that ER is a huge moment for you. Professionally, obviously, and then also meeting John Wells, which sort of draws a line to what we're talking about here today. Was ER, did that feel like a big breakthrough for you? No.

Or if not, what was the breakthrough? Well, I left New York and moved to L.A. For the same reason as most actors, some broad had dumped me, and I'll show her. I moved. when I got to L.A., I hit the ground running. At that point, I had enough credits and enough people knew me that I was working. I was guest stars, the occasional TV movie.

I was getting real roles, though, and some nice roles in big features. And ER came just at that time. I had done a pilot with John, and we were shooting I think in Portland or something like that anyway. He casually came on, he said, I'm doing this other thing back in L.A. And you're off those days. You want to go down and play this Dr. Morgan Stern?

It's a hospital thing. I said, sure. My whole career, I pretty much said yes to everything. It's rare that I say no. And they were good as gold to me. ER became ER. And I was on it for three or four years as a recurring. And if I was off doing a film,

they would save up two episodes and they'd shoot them when I got back or they'd shoot something ahead of time and it was a nice paycheck and it was sort of every year I had that in my back pocket well I've got four or five ERs or six or seven ERs that I can do it was a good time I was working all the time I could I could smell it yeah you know and then finally I got Fargo and And interestingly, it was, it takes about two years after you do something like that. And Fargo got magnificent notices, and I got a lot of notice for it, as did the whole cast. But then the Oscars came and went, and it was about a year and a half later that I said, oh, wait, I can feel this. I'm at the grown-ups table now.

It took a while for it to happen. Everything I read about you auditioning for Fargo says you really wanted that role. You knew what that movie could be and you pursued it with the Cohen brothers pretty hard. What did that entail exactly? Well, first of all, I flatter myself. I'm pretty good at reading scripts.

I think maybe Dave Mamet had something to do with that, but I try to read them in one sitting. I skip the stage directions because they're nonsense anyway. I hate stage directions. So I read the dialogue and if you do that, you can pretty much read the movie in real time.

Movies are an hour and a half. If you skip a lot of the stage directions, you can read it in an hour and a half so you see the movie in your mind's eye. And I have a trick. I prefer not to know who they want me to play. I just try to see the whole movie. Oh, wow. Because my whole thing has been, I'd rather do a good movie

in a smaller role than a bad movie in the lead role. That's not going to do me any good. So you're reading the script for Fargo and you don't know they have Jerry in mind? No, they didn't. It was for, I knew it was for a cop, but there were a couple of cops,

and I didn't know which one. And I went in and I read, and Ethan said, that's real good. You want to go out and look at Jerry Lundergard? And I said, yeah. So I went out in the hall. I came back in. I read it again.

They said, that's real good. That's real good. Thanks. Do you want to go home and work on it? come back tomorrow? I said, yeah. I called every actor I know. They were with me all night. I worked the whole script, every single scene that I was in.

I was almost off book by the end of that night. I went back and I read it. And I knew this was a great script, and I knew I was born to play that role, even though it described a much different looking man, a little older and portly and balding, but I thought, nah, this is my role, man. So I read again, they said,

That's real good. They're like two hippies that someone gave a lot of money to. They're just having fun. All that pressure that I was talking about. They don't feel that. If they do, it doesn't show. Talented hippies.

Oh, man. And then I found out that they went to New York. So I got my jolly, jolly ass on an airplane, and I crashed the audition, and I walked in, and I read again. They were open to that. And, um, I took a shot.

I said, I'm scared you're going to screw this movie up by casting somebody else. I'm going to help you. I said, Ethan, you give this somebody else. I'll shoot your dog. He'd just gotten a dog. I don't recommend that, folks. That's not a good thing to do. Don't pre you actors.

Don't do that. But it struck his sense of humor. So the dog story is true. The dog story is true. Thank God he laughed. And, oh, Lord, it was two weeks later that they made. made their decision. I was about to tell you, I've got this little, I went to school in Vermont, and I just loved that state, and I had a little cabin up there out in the woods, and I was there

when I got the phone call. I was all by myself, and my nearest neighbor is two and a half miles away. It's way out in the woods. I was ricocheting off the walls. I knew my life had just changed. Really? Yeah, absolutely. I knew my life had changed. It's the Cohen brothers. Even then, everybody in the business would see it. The first time I read the script, I totally got it. I totally knew how to play it. And when I got the call, I was beside myself.

Well, your instincts are good. You knew it was going to work. I read shameless, and I thought this is going to go. I flatter myself, I'm pretty good. I have made mistakes, but I think I'm relatively Catholic tastes and so if I like it I think everyone's going to like it. So you talk about it sort of sinking in not till a year and a half after Fargo. You get the Oscar nomination. Once it starts to sink in, what do you feel it meant to you?

What did it mean to your life? What did it mean to your career? What was that thing that sort of exploded at the center of your life? Well, at the time I thought of it is another one. another rung, another milestone. I mean, as an actor, you start off worrying, how am I going to get in the unions? How am I going to get an agent?

And then at a point, you go, how I'm going to make a living? How can I do this full time without working at the bar? I used to make this joke that when I started my career, I wanted to know, what does this say about the human condition? And then later in my career,

I said, how much will I get paid? And now I just ask, well, I have to get wet. You put yourself in a position just to have to ask. Yeah. I think I realized that I was at the grown-ups table, the aforementioned auditioning. That was interesting. I had read Boogie Nights. I was shooting somewhere, and they sent me the script.

And the original script, or the script that I read originally, was even raised. And I call my agents and I said, are you punking me? This is an X-rated film. What are we doing? They said, no, no, it's not. It's contractual. It'll be an R-rated film. It's this young guy, Paul Thomas Anderson.

And so I came back to L.A. And I saw his film Hard Eight. And I thought, I'll do anything this guy wants to do. He's a genius director. I saw it immediately. And so I really wanted to do boogie nights. And I met Paul at the Formosa Cafe. And I had done my thing about thinking about the character's through line,

what the bigger story was about, what it resonated. I had all my ducks in line to pitch myself for it. I couldn't get a word in edge-wise. I mean, Paul started talking about I was going to shoot it and everything. And it was one of the great moments of my life. I went, oh, dear God. I'm not auditioning. He is.

I've got this role. I've got this role. He's pitching me. And I just sort of went back in my seat and let Paul talk on, you know. But it was, that's when I thought, okay, things have changed. And that was born of Fargo. Yeah. Yeah.

But again, it was a couple of years later. It seemed like a couple of years. Joe Montania, after Fargo and after all of that hoopla, sent me a note saying, welcome, welcome to the inner circle or whatever. Joe had made it. He had done Speed the Plow and The Godfather and done all these big movies. And he sort of said, welcome into the next echelon. I really got what he was saying.

Yeah. Oh, that's so cool. It is cool. Welcome to the Colossack. Welcome to the club. I mean, what are the odds to make a living doing this? They're slim. You choose roles well, though.

And one of the best compliments I can pay to you is when I said before we start, which is when your movies are on, you're flipping through the menu on cable, you still stop, and some of them it's been 20 years or more. Whether it's Fargo or Boogie Nights or the list goes on, you've got an eye for something that's going to last, Something that's going to be meaningful. It's good to know, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I've certainly had my flops. I wrote some of them. I even directed some of them. But, you know, I credit Dave Mamet. He set the bar very high and taught me a whole lot about storytelling. I've got a terrible question to ask you. Do you have a favorite role of your career? I know it's like choosing a favorite role.

child, but I'll ask anyway. Certainly, Frank Gallagher's going to be in the list. Dave wrote a film called State and Maine. I just, I had the best time in that. I play a director,

and it's a showbiz thing. Alex, Alec Baldwin's in it, and Sarah Jessica Parker, and it's all the inside jokes. and Sarah and Sarah Jessica and I had a scene in a little tiny bathroom where I'm trying to talk her into taking her shirt off for the movie

and we had to kick Dave out. He kept snorting and laughing. I said, this is hard enough, get out. He had to go sit at the monitor. We couldn't have him in there. But that film, it just loved it. He was, I just had the best lines. I did this thing called Door to Door

that I wrote with my friend Stephen Shachter. It was a made-for-television movie about a guy named Bill Porter who was born with cerebral palsy and became a door-to-door salesman. Not just a door-to-door salesman. He worked for the Watco company and he outsold everybody in the... He sold so many, so much stuff they stopped holding the contest, particularly after we did this film. And it was the first makeup piece that I'd ever done. My whole face was rubber. serious character, voice, look, everything. And I was really proud of the writing.

And it just slayed. It was difficult but exhilarating, and it had a great ending. We won all the Emmys that year, so that was... I like your list because they're not the obvious choices. People would say Jerry Lundegart for sure. Sure. But there's a long list of them that you've been proud of.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a good thing to be able to say about your career. That is a good thing. Right? And the ones I'm not proud of, we just pretend they never have to. Exactly. We will whitewash them and edit them right out.

I'm good at that. Your wife, Felicity, is she central into the way you pick characters and scripts and do you talk through those kind of things? As another actor, you obviously respect so much? Yes, we talk about showbiz a lot. We talk about our rules. We give each other notes. It's not.

something everyone should try. Is she tough on you? Yeah, she can be tough, and I can be tough too. But we met in the theater, and that's really at the core of our relationship, telling stories and acting, and we both love it in the same way. And there's not a jealous bone in her body.

She only wants me to succeed, and I can truthfully say the same back to her. and the gods have been good to us. I mean, she's ascended the highest highs in the business, and I've had my highs too. And, you know, now we're older, and we know it goes up and down and up and down. Boy, one year, I have unlimited respect for my wife.

in one year, she did a film called Transamerica, and it was the first year of Desperate Housewives. That was all in one year. So she went to every single award show. She was in hair and makeup every single week. We had two kids, three and five. And it was, Harvey Weinstein had done the transamerica. He bought it.

his campaigns for the Oscars were huge. So she was out every single night and she kept it together and raised the kids. It was magnificent. Only a strong person could have done what she did. And isn't it fun to meet someone so early in your careers and sort of rise together? Yeah.

And to watch the struggles and celebrate the successes. Yeah, it's... Our marriage is sort of a fairy tale marriage, I got to say. She's, I loved her the second I saw her, and it's just been fabulous. Life's good. So we were talking about shameless and how long that may go. Hopefully it goes as long as you want it to go. Do you think about other kinds of movies, other roles?

Is there something that's sort of burning a hole in your creative brain that you'd like to do? Yes. It's been a long time. It's hard to remember before Shameless. I know it's coming to an end, and I've started to think about life post-shameless. I went to see Aaron Sorkin's play To Kill a Mockingbird, and I thought, oh, I want to do that.

I've seen a bunch of plays here, and so I'd love to do some more theater. I think I've always, I'm best in theater. I think that's where I belong. And I've seen a lot of films, I thought, maybe I could have gotten that role. So I'm excited. I don't think I'm finished yet.

I think I'm in my third act for sure. And it turns out I'm really good at doing Fuckle. I can do nothing for a long time, which is new for me. I used to have to do something all the time. But I can just sit still and be quiet for a long time now. So maybe a little break after Shameless. Yeah, maybe do some theater. And I'd like to do some more feature.

your films. The idea of a new project figuring out a new character, it's exciting to me again. Maybe the Cohen brothers, get you back together, just threatened to shoot his dog and you get the role like that. I've got a number if you could call them. I'd love to work with them again. I love everything they do. Me too. Thank you so much. Thank you. My thanks to William H. Macy for spending some time with us, you can catch new episodes of Shameless every Sunday at 9 p.m. on Showtime. And thanks as always to all of you for tuning in to hear more of the full-length conversations with my guests every week. Be sure to click subscribe and listen for free to the Sunday Sit Down podcast.

And don't forget to tune in every Sunday on NBC to Sunday today if you want to see these interviews and not just hear them. I'm Willie Geist. We'll see you right back here next week on the Sunday Sit Down podcast.