The HoneyDew with Ryan Sickler - 343: Joe Mantegna: Acting Meets Autism Advocacy

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

Sponsor: BetterHelp -The HoneyDew is sponsored by BetterHelp. Visit https://www.Betterhelp.com/HONEYDEW  to get 10% off your first month My HoneyDew this week is actor Joe Mantegna! You’ve seen Joe in Criminal Minds, and you can check out the book The Long Branch by his assistant Dan Ramm. Joe joins me this week to Highlight the Lowlights of battling rheumatic fever as a kid, his father losing a lung to tuberculosis, and the premature birth of his first daughter, who was later diagnosed with autism. Joe opens up about how his daughter’s autism has become part of their family dynamic and fuels their passion for research and advocacy. SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE and watch full episodes of The Dew every toozdee! https://youtube.com/@rsickler SUBSCRIBE TO MY PATREON - The HoneyDew with Y’all, where I Highlight the Lowlights with Y’all! Get audio and video of The HoneyDew a day early, ad-free at no additional cost! It’s only $5/month! AND we just added a second tier. For a total of $8/month, you get everything from the first tier, PLUS The Wayback a day early, ad-free AND censor free AND extra bonus content you won't see anywhere else! http://patreon.com/RyanSickler What’s your story?? Submit at [e-mail] Get Your HoneyDew Gear Today! https://shop.ryansickler.com/ Ringtones Are Available Now! https://www.apple.com/itunes/ http://ryansickler.com/ https://thehoneydewpodcast.com/ SUBSCRIBE TO THE CRABFEAST PODCAST https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-crabfeast-with-ryan-sickler-and-jay-larson/id1452403187

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I am Ryan sickler. I want to thank you guys as always thank you for supporting this show thank you for supporting anything I do. If you got to have more than you got got to check out the Patreon. It's called The Honeydew with y'all and it is this show with y'all and y'all have the craziest stories on the internet. All right. If you or someone you know has a story that has to be heard, please submit it to honeydewpodcast at gmail.com. We'd love to do your story. All right. That's the biz. You know what we do. We highlight the low lights here. I always say that these

are the stories behind the storytellers I am very excited to have this guest here with us today. Ladies and gentlemen first time here, please welcome I'm stoked to have you here buddy. Thanks brother before we get into your story here, please promote anything you would like Well, God well, look, I've been doing criminal violence for, this was here for me, year 17. Is it? And season 19 for the show. That show's been on 19 years. This is our 19th year as the show. And we're still going strong, doing very, very well. And I love it. I enjoy, love the people. So we're still doing that. I've been doing a show called Gun

Stories on the outdoor channel, which sounds ominous, but it's really just we trace historical firearms. We've been doing that for about 15 years. I'm producing, my assistant who runs my company, he's been with me for 24 years now, Dan Ram, wrote this novel called Long Branch. He's a wonderful writer. And we're getting a lot of play in this, turning this into possibly in series and stuff. Can you quickly tell us what it's about? What is this about? Yeah. In a nutshell, it's about him being working for me for that long. Certainly it's put him in the... The guy started as a roofer, started in a roofing business, had his own roofing company.

He put a roof on a couple of houses that I own. Is that right? Yeah, it really did. But it turned out this guy was so sharp and I could tell he wanted to move on to try to do something else in his life. You could just tell he was a jack of all trades in many ways, had a lot of talents, and writing being one of them because he had a thing going for the rat pack. I thought a young guy like that, it was like in his 30s at the time, I thought this guy's into the rat pack. He likes the music I like, this is pretty cool. So anyway, he started working for us, for my wife and I, working at some of the houses. But it turns

out he had this writing ability. And so working in the business with me as long as he has now for 20 plus years. He has the scenario for the novel of this guy is a former actor who had like a drama show, a Western kind of type show back in the day. He's older now, not getting a lot of work because that show was, think of maybe the old Maverick show, Sugar Food or whatever. Maybe another guy just kind of doesn't have a lot of money thinking, well, maybe I'll go sell the house I built for my late mother in the town where I grew up in, go back there, fix it up, sell it. Don't worry about show business. Well, turns out he goes back there. And of course, in that small town, he's meeting all his old high school buddies, this, that, and he's still that guy, that TV sheriff that

he was or whatever it may be back in the day. And all of a sudden you find out there's this whole intrigue that happens because you find out that the girl who had stood him up kind of for the prom kind of a thing had been murdered, which he never knew about. Always wondered what happened to her. So this turns into this whole, whole story. So TV cops going real life detective. Yeah. All of a sudden these things merge and all of a sudden they meet old friends. It's pretty

interesting. It's one of those books when you start reading it, you go, wow, you want to see what this is going to have. And then I wound up doing the audio version for it, which I've done audio books for many years. So it's available right now? Yeah, it's available right now. You go to, I think you check it out, I guess everything on Amazon. Amazon. You go look for it. I've done audio books for many years. So it's available right now? Yeah, it's available right now. You go to Amazon, I guess everything on Amazon. You go look for it. It's called Long Branch. Or you can get the audio version or you can just also buy the actual hard well, soft cover of it. I see I've got my quote on the front of it. But anyway, it's really, really a good book. And I'm not just saying it because the guy works for me. I hear you, but also congrats and kudos to you

because a lot of people don't see that in someone and they miss that. So you saw a guy on a roof and saw, hey, this guy has possibilities. Without question. And everybody else has seen it too. A lot of people miss that. No, no, you're absolutely right.

You need those people in your life. So this is a guy, I mean, once I knew his backstory, and this guy had been kind of making his own way, once I knew his backstory, this is a guy who had been kind of making his own way since he was 15 years old, working for a living and really doing different, he was a chimney sweep, he was this, that, he was the other, so a self-made guy, you know, then running his own business as a young man. I thought, no, this is the kind of guy you want working for you. And so he's been a real value to my family, to all of it.

So anyway, this has culminated for at least for him for now in this book and he's already writing a sequel for it because we're getting so much good play. He just won an award for best novel through this one organization. I'm so bad with these names of the different things, but it just won this award as the best novel for this one organization and I understand it. I'm not surprised. That's great. So that's pretty current. And like I said, my day job is criminal mines for now. I had black hair when I started on that show. So it's all good. Life's good.

I can't complain. Let's go back to the beginning for you. Where originally are you from? Tell me about mom, dad, siblings, all that stuff. Well, I grew up in Chicago. Which real quick, I said to you on the way in Tay Chicago was bro, great restaurant. Well my wife, I've always said, I know I'm the front man in the family in a sense of yeah, who's the actor? People recognize me, I get that and all that. But in real life, I'm Ricky to my wife's Lucy. I mean I'm the guy out there playing, Morocco's going yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm the show business

guy but my wife really stirs the drink. And she's got, always has a million schemes going on this, that, and the other, and really handles, you know, we've been together. We're going to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary. Wow. Congrats. So I know in Hollywood, that's an achievement. Yeah, and anywhere that's an achievement. So we've been through a lot together. So, I mean, so there's that. So the

whole thing in growing up in Chicago, she's from Chicago as well of course, and had the idea she always wanted to open a restaurant. So of course once when my career started to kind of take off, but it took a while. I mean, it took about 15 years of me being an actor before things got into the positive category, you know, financially. But I said, you know what? That's your dream. I'm pretty much fulfilling mine. Let's go for it.

So she always wanted to have a Chicago themed restaurant. We did it. We opened it up in Burbank. We had it for 16 years and it was great. The memories were great. I know you were a customer. All the time. Yeah.

I said I would just go get my Jardin Air from there. Yeah. It's just a little spiral. Oh yeah. It's hard to get that stuff otherwise. Where are you going to get your hot Jardin Air from there. It's just a little spiral. Oh yeah, it's hard to get that stuff otherwise. Where are you going to get your hot Jardin Air fixed? That's right. But we had it for 16 years and then it was really one of those things where she realized, okay, you know what, my dream has been satisfied, but now it's really work and the restaurant

business is tough. How bad. It came to where she said, you know what, I think I'm done because we have other issues personal in our lives. We've got our two daughters, especially we have one daughter with autism. So it's this type of thing that, you know what, if you're satisfied, I'm satisfied. We had a good run. So it was just, it was not much as business decisions, a personal decision. It was like, let's just wrap it up. And we had a big, we announced it, we're going to close it in a few months. Come get your last Italian beefs and hot dogs and beefs, pizza, whatever. And it was great. And

we've got tons and tons of memories of the 16 years we were there. No regrets. I was saying, we look at stuff on the internet and who knows what's real, but you suffered an illness when you were a child, is that right? Well, yeah. Well, what would happen is when I was eight years old, I had a really bad sore throat as kids get. Of course, the family doctor checks it out and goes, you know, he's got a strep throat. Maybe you want to check further into this. Well, it turns out I had rheumatic fever,

which was somewhat prevalent back then. We're talking this is the 50s. This is like 1956 maybe. So having that. What is it? What is it actually? It's, that's a good question. I mean, it's called rheumatic fever because it is a thing that can affect partly, it could be your lungs, your heart. Is it like a permanent pneumonia or? To tell you the truth, being eight years old, I never really, I never personally- All I know is I got past it. But the thing is, it was one of

those things that's infectious and, and, and it's prevalent enough that they even had a hospital just for it. And it still exists today. Now it's branched out to more of a regular children's hospital. It was called Lara Bita Rheumatic Fever Sanitarium, which was in Jackson Park on the South side of Chicago. We were fortunate for me being grown up in Chicago. So at least it was not, wasn't close to where we live, but at least maybe within an hour's drive. So I was admitted into that hospital as an eight year old and I was there for five months because the thing about rheumatic fever, they didn't really have a cure for it at the time, all they knew was you needed a bed rest.

So for the first three of the five months, you stayed in bed because they were worried that it could turn into a lot of things that accompanied the strep throat would be, you get a heart murmur and it could affect your heart. And there were instances, I remember there was one kid that used to work, and since it was a children's hospital, you get away with stuff. But do you remember, was it an open room? Were you in there with other kids? No, you'd have like two or three in a room, but the different rooms.

But I remember one kid, he came in and he wanted to keep his cowboy boots on, even when he's sleeping in it, like his pajamas. And they let him do it. And I remember, I'll never forget that one day, we'd of course leave the room for different tests and things. And I remember one day I come back and I see he's not there, because his boots are gone. And I go, where's, and he said, oh, well, he went home and all, but they didn't want to tell us, but he had passed away. Which, which, cause they don't want to necessarily freak you out.

You freak out kids that, you know, by the way, this thing could kill you. But I got lucky. I mean, I did my, my five months there and I, I improved to where I didn't, I didn't acquire a heart murmur and didn't get any heart damage. What I did have to do is that you had to take a sulfur pill, which that was the only thing that they felt kind of maybe could prevent a recurrence of this or whatever it may be. So it's this pill that was probably as big as a dime. And I would have to take that pill every day until I was 21 years old. 20, 13 years. Yeah, 13 years, I took that pill every day.

And it was even in high school, people, they knew about it because they knew that I would take that little baggie out of my pocket and take that pill at lunch every day. Now are they telling you to take it to 21 because that's like the age or were you getting tested and they're like hey you're going to go now? Well you're always getting tested. I'd go in about every six months and get a blood test. Yeah they'd always take but you know to this day I mean you could stick a in me, I could care less because I was so used to it as a kid. But no, I think they figured if it hasn't reoccurred or hasn't been damaged by the time you're 21, you're probably free and clear. And you've been free and clear.

Oh yeah, I mean, that's never been an issue since, which I feel very blessed because like I said, it was fatal for some kids. But I tell you, one of the things with benefits of it was because it was a children's hospital, that Thursday night would be like movie night. So there would be this one guy, usually with some guy that maybe had a little money, he'd come back down, he'd bring an actual projector and he'd all sit in the lobby of the hospital or in the hallway and on a little screen they would show cartoons or whatever. Then there'd be this other, they'd call him Uncle Roland and his wife. And they were this rich couple from Chicago who their job was to, not their job, but what they would do is on the holidays. I was there, I remember for Easter. I think that was the only major holiday I was in

for at that five months. They come in and give gifts to every kid in the hospital, really nice gifts because that was their way of helping out. So I mean, I think of it in my past, I'm like, wow, yeah, I guess that's what happened to me. But look, I got out clean, so I got no regrets, no complaints. I mean, I live by the motto, everybody's got a story and nobody gets a free ride. So, I don't care who you are. So, I'll take the cards I've been dealt. They say all the time, if everybody stood in a circle and we all throw our problems in the middle, you'd grab yours right back. Hell yes.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I'll take mine. Hell yeah. I'd fight for mine. But I think a lot of other people would fight for mine too. Oh yeah. It's a perspective you really don't want, honestly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of people would take my life. I get it. Yeah. And your dad, he had early health struggles as well, right? Yeah, my dad was sick all his life. I shouldn't. Now, is that any, is that the root, the fever? Is any as well. Yeah, my dad was sick all his life. I shouldn't. Now, is that the fever?

Is any of that? No, none of that. No, my dad. It's not a genetic thing. No, my dad grew up on a farm in Oklahoma. His father and mother came over from Sicily back in early 1900s. And my grandfather worked in a coal mines in Sicily, or in Oklahoma, in order to buy land from the Native Americans,

which he did. He bought a 50-acre farm and everybody did that back then. My dad was born and his siblings, he had three brothers and a couple of sisters, grew up on this farm in Oklahoma. But what had happened is my dad was the third oldest and he and the two older brothers all got tuberculosis. They attributed it to something maybe, I don't know, something to do with the livestock or something or whatever. But whatever, by the time my dad was, his father died when he was about 15. My grandmother had to

give up the farm. That's where the Chicago thing happened. She had to move with the whole family to Chicago because she had family there. She held onto the farm, stayed in our family up until actually two years ago. So, she moves to Chicago. My dad's two brothers moved to Baltimore and they became ice men. They deliver ice. Yeah. And my dad went and worked with them a couple of times and I have a lot of family in Baltimore. Oh, you do? Okay. I do. I do. Cockeysville and Towson. Towson, Timonium, Cockeysville. Yeah, I got family there.

But anyway, my dad, he contracted the tuberculosis right when World War II started, so they sent him to a san- so this was before I was born. My brother had been born. My brother was born in 1940. My dad gets tuberculosis. He's killed his two older brothers. They sent him to a sanitarium in New York and they take out one of his lungs and they take out part of his other lungs. It's just crazy to hear the word sanitarium.

Yeah, sanitarium. They take one and a half lungs out? One and a half lungs out. And ironically, I wound up narrating a documentary about those sanitariums, not just maybe five, six years ago about the history of tuberculosis sanitariums in this country. It was called Mount McGregor in New York. So here's my mother, still in Chicago with her parents, with the baby, my brother. I'm not born yet. My dad's in a sanitarium at Mount McGregor in New York. Because back then what they did is they took – you got TB, they took out the lung. They took out part of his ribs even on one side because back then they didn't spread the ribs. They just said, let's get rid of this so we can get the lung easier.

He was there for about three years. Yeah. Because the way to recoup was they put you on your bed and wheel you out. They put you up in altitude. You're up on this mountain, this kind of area because they thought that the mountain air and all that was easier. I don't know what the logic was, who knows. But he didn't even see my brother until my brother was almost three years old because you didn't travel that easily back in those days. And that was during the war. So my dad winds up having part of a lung.

I'm get born, but yet he was an incredible smoker, a chain smoker. Oh yeah. With half a lung. With half a lung. I love that. I love that. I love that. Was a drinker, developed an alcohol problem that finally we cleared up when I was about 15.

We had to kind of institutionalize him, but he beat it. He gave up the booze and never drank again. Did he give up smoking? No. No. I think the reason he drank so much is because he felt compromised physically because I had another uncle, his baby brother, who was younger than him and didn't get the birth. He was a strapping guy, had sons who were big guys and healthy and stuff. Here's my dad

who would just walk him up his flight of stairs, he'd catch his breath and plus he's got a cigarette in his mouth. With half a lung in his mouth. Yeah, half a lung. So finally caught up with him. At 57, he finally, that part of a lung said, you know what, we're done. up with him. At 57, he finally – that part of a lung said, you know what, we're done. Yeah, I bet. So he didn't really die of any disease by the fact that he just couldn't – that lung just couldn't handle it anymore. And he wouldn't give up to smoking. He just wouldn't. I happen to be on tour. My first professional job was to play hair. And I'm on tour with the play

hair. And I was in Pittsburgh when it happened. And then my brother calls because they had to put my dad in the hospital again. He'd have to go in and out different times because of the breathing problem. And I'm sure at this point he's at least aware like doctors or someone's telling him, hey, you should probably quit smoking. Probably, but back then it was just like, I'm not going to do that. But it ain't going to happen. He'd been smoking since he was a kid. They'd smoke corn silk, he told me, on the farm. They'd roll up silk from the corn. Is that right? Yeah, they'd smoke corn silk, he told me, on the farm. They'd roll up silk from the corn. Is that right?

Yeah, they'd smoke that. So, my brother told me even on his deathbed, he was there, laying there. They had an air tube in his neck. And my brother said when the doctor would leave the room, my dad would give him the high side with the eyes and my brother would put the cigarette in the tube. No, no, in the hospital. Yeah, oh yeah, in the hospital. Because he figured, why not? The guy, he really wanted it and he wasn't going to make it. Let's have him go out with a smile. In the smoke. Yeah, smoke and a smile.

So he went out with a smoke. So that was it. So he died young, but like I said, but the flip side of that is my mother lived to be 101. So after my dad died, my mother lived almost another 50 years. Yeah, another lifetime. Another lifetime. Wow. And she was tough as nails. Did she ever remarry?

No, no, Italian ladies, they don't do that. Yeah, I was going to say, my grandmother didn't either. She had a friend down the street named Mr. Fred and they'd go on a vacation every now and then. Exactly. A companion. Exactly. But no, my mother was great though and she didn't die sick, she just died. David told us when she was about 99, they said, look, nothing wrong with your mother. She doesn't even take any medication. They said, but someday something's going to give and she's going to stop. And that's kind of what happened. She just kind of, something stopped and one night she just didn't, one morning she just didn't get up. And then what age do you become a father? I became a father fairly old.

I was 40. Me too. I was 40. Yeah, I was 40. And it's because my wife and I, we've been together for a long time. Like I said, I'm going to be celebrating my 50th wedding anniversary this year. So but I think I knew enough that being an actor, a struggling actor, that this is not necessarily the best scenario to raise a family and worry about security for them. So my wife and I, we put it this way, we said, we got married in 1975, but we didn't have our first child till 1987. So during those 12 years, we kept saying, yeah, maybe when things get better, maybe we'll talk about having a family. And then it got to

the point where things actually started to improve and my career started taking off, things are going well. So it was one of those decisions. And it was one of those things like we weren't always driven like, oh man, we got to have kids. If we don't have kids. That's what I wanted to ask you. Would you both have been comfortable if you never did? No, we were realistic in the sense of it was meant to be as meant to be. So what we decided together was let's not do what people do to prevent having a kid and see what happens. Let's see how the chips fall. Because we knew friends that were like trying like mad

to have kids and couldn't. And so we thought, if it's meant to be, it's meant to be and if it ain't, we'll take it from there. Well, of course, as soon as we made that decision, like 30 seconds later, she got pregnant. And I was like, oh, okay. But the flip side of that was, my daughter, my first daughter was born at 1 pound 13 ounces.

Oh, wow. She was very, very premature. It was all due to a freaky thing. It turned out my wife had an infection that happened on the umbilical cord while she was carrying her. How many months premature are we talking? Well, she was due to be born at the end of August and she was born the 5th of June. So she was two and a half months. I think she was born at 18 weeks or something. Tiny. She was one of the smallest babies born in California that year, under two pounds.

Are you freaking out? Of course we're freaking out because once she goes to the doctor for a checkup, because she felt it coming, the baby wasn't moving. She got a little nervous about it. She had been a couple of days prior but something told her, something's wrong, I'm going to go. It was a Friday, I'll never forget, it was a Friday night. She calls the doctor's office and they said, well, if you come right now, fine, but you probably should wait till Monday because we just saw you. I know you're going to be nervous all weekend, so why don't you just come in and ease your mind. So we had an electrician over and I'm thinking, I'll stay with the electrician, you call me and I'll pick you up. Well, I get the phone call an hour later,

you better come down here. Because when they checked her out, they saw all the ambialic fluid was gone, the baby was in distress. And the doctor said, we have to take it out right now. So all of a sudden, it's June 5th and I'm expecting to be a dad. We haven't even started Lamaze class. Yeah. And now I'm going to become a father that night. Yeah, because she's just, I mean, two months early, she's just started the third trimester. Yeah.

So it was an emergency C-section. They had to go in, but she's born so small. A lot of things could have happened. So tiny. So tiny. You saw my dog. Our dog was three pounds when we got her. Oh, yeah. Half of that. She's about as big as a squirrel. Fit in your hand. Like a little squirrel. Yeah.

And so that's how we started parenthood. Now, they take me to the neonative intensive care unit, and there's my daughter hooked up with all kinds of tubes and stuff. My wife couldn't even see her yet because she's recuperating from this fairly major operation almost because it's unexpected to do a C-section that early. It's really an operation to take the baby out. And I'm looking at this little tiny, doesn't even look human, this little tiny baby in this incubator. But God bless her, she was a tough kid. And a lot of things could have happened. Babies that small, they get lung problems because their lungs aren't developed, they could heart problems, all kinds of things. But she fought through all of those things and got through.

The one thing that happened and it happened at a right, we realized that when she was about two years old is that we could just tell the symptoms, something was going off here, she wasn't behaving like a lot of the other kids that age. And then we realized that she was on the autism spectrum and definitely was diagnosed with autism. Can I ask you a question? Yeah. Is your dad alive at this time when your daughter is born or he's gone?

Oh, no, my dad has long been gone at this time. So you don't have anyone to even talk to. Your mom, but they've never gone. Nobody was born at one and a half pounds. No, no, that was really... You're on your own, both of you. No, we were on our own. This a half pound. No, no, it was early. You're on your own, both of you. No, we were on our own. This is brand new.

Yeah, this is uncharted territory. But yet you go into neonative intensive care unit, you're going to see a lot of incubators and you're going to see a lot of people are going through this. And you learn too from the doctors, they tell you, you got to understand 20% of births, something's off. There's going to be some abnormality. That's not always major like this. It could be just the littlest thing. Why the baby has to stay an extra day or two in the hospital because of that,

that, that, that. What do you noticing in your daughter early enough that makes you guys both raising an eyebrow? Well, there was these things like, you know, her eye contact you could see was kind of all over the place. She would do the repetitive kinds of things. She'd be around other two-year-olds and you could see she was just not kind of engaging. So you know something, you got to remember this is 1990. That's the other thing I'm thinking about.

Yeah, this was 1990. Yeah. So this was 35 years ago. 35, God, no it is. So- You know what I mean? No, it was. 1991. So it wasn't as prevalent in the sense of people weren't as hip to kind of what it was.

It was a little more obscure as to exactly what autism was and how the severity of it and different aspects of it. So we took her to a psychologist, whatever it was at the time. We were in New York at the time. I was actually filming the movie Godfather 3 and plus a Woody Allen picture called Alice at the same time. At this very same time when we realized something was kind of something's going on with Mia, our daughter. So we take her to the doctor, the examiner, and that's when we get the news. They go, well, here it is. There's maybe 10 things, indications that we have of what we would diagnose as autism. Your daughter has about eight

of them. And had you ever even heard of this at that time yourself? You heard the name, you heard the word. You knew this was something out there that other people's kids get. That's what you thought. So of course what happens is your heart drops into your chest and your stomach and goes back up and you go, oh my God, my daughter has autism. Whatever that is, okay.

But like I said, I'm Ricky, married to Lucy. So Lucy's first reaction is, okay, now what do we do? What do we do about this? As opposed to, oh, what was us? Okay. And from that moment on to this day, that's part of who we are, that's part of our family. It's like when people will ask me, what's it like to have a daughter with autism? I go, I don't know what it's like not to have a daughter with autism. Great answer. I say it is what it is. That's the makeup of my family.

Do you just have one child? No, and then we had another. Then about three years later, we have our other daughter, Gia. Now, of course, we had some nervousness of like, is this going to be because it happens. Sometimes it runs that a family can have a couple of kids with the same. And the doctor said, no, you know what? There's no reason for that. The reason she probably, the autism probably was caused because of the

distress of her being, because there's a higher incidence in preemies and all that. So there's no genetic reason why this should happen again, but you worry. You know, of course, but of course, but no, we have a second daughter, Gia, who's wonderful. She's, uh, you know. Of course. But of course, but no, we have a second daughter, Gia, who's wonderful. She's, you know, she's now 35. Mia, her older sister is 38. But Gia is in that unique position of being the younger sister, but has to be in the essence the big sister to the older sister. Because while Mia is 38 and is brilliant in many ways, she's savant in some abilities in terms of her memory, in terms of, and she's socially, the way she engages with people. She's an incredible human being. She's such a sweetest, innocent kind of person you

want to meet. But yet on the other hand, there's a lot of eight year old in her. All she would love to do is spend every day at Disneyland and meet the princesses. You know what I mean? Which is that, in a way you kind of wish everybody felt that way. It'd be a safer, saner world if we all just said every morning, gee, I wish I'd go to Disneyland and play, meet the princesses again. You know, but that's that. This is an ad by BetterHelp. Workplace stress is now one of the top causes of declining mental health with 61% of the global workforce experiencing higher than normal levels of stress.

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We're going to, I know your wife's business. We're going to get at this. So what are you first learning about all of this? We learn everything we can. So while we were in New York, we found out that there was an organization at the time there. It was called NAR, National Alliance for Autism Research. We looked into them, contacted them and said, hey, look, we just found out our daughter's been diagnosed or anything we could – and they were helpful and we were – but they were like a fairly new organization. And please forgive my ignorant comparison here, but in the way that there are different cancers, autism is not just one thing. So you have to learn about this new thing

and then specifically. Yeah, it's a whole spectrum. And it could be as mild a thing as, well, Elon Musk admits that he's on the spectrum, you know, and it makes sense because the brilliant side of him is that stuff that allows him to design cars and do those kinds of things. And then there's the autistic side that makes him be maybe a little eccentric and do some of the weird shit that he does. But you find it and also as you have a shower, as I said, my daughter is 38 years old now, I could see it in other people. I'm sure Einstein was on the spectrum because he was quirky in

certain things. I'm sure Bill Gates might be a little bit have that because I see that little quirkiness. But so in other words, they've been able to kind of reap the beneficial aspects of being on the spectrum of that. It's causing that part of the brain to almost work overtime. They can have special skills, intellect, and maybe have a little quirkiness. Or it could go the opposite way where it's all quirky. It's all kind of not necessarily negative, but it's almost like it is a handicap in a way. And yet there are elements of the other thing. So you have extremes. Luckily, our daughter falls in that somewhere in between. There are things she can never be like by herself alone in the sense of, hey, you want to go to Disneyland? Here's bus fare, go do it. She couldn't do that.

She's an innocent. Somebody might just walk up to her and say, hey, you want to come with us? Right. Okay, that kind of thing. Yet on the other hand, she met you right now. She'd come up to you and say, hey, you want to come with us and okay. You know, that kind of thing. Yet on the other hand, she, she, you know, if, if you, she met you right now, she'd come up to you and say, Ryan, when's your birthday? You would tell her your birthday. And then next year on your birthday, she'll walk up to me and say, today's Ryan's birthday. And of course I'd say, Ryan who?

She'd say, Ryan Sikler. Oh, oh, oh, today's his birthday. Yeah. And then she, she, then she'd run down maybe what that day was that I told her. And she can tell you about what she remembers every day. Oh, yeah, she'll tell me maybe where we had lunch that day. I mean, how have you helped her use that to her advantage as well? I mean, that is like you said, the Bill Gates and all. Well, you said to our advantage. It's like she's our computer. She's like, Mia, what was that restaurant we went to like 15 years ago that we were in

Baltimore or wherever it was? And she'll say that was that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, you know? But I mean, for her, whatever, that's part of who she is and that's part of her, you know, what makes her up and it's great. So, of course, we will provide her whatever is helpful to her, you, so she's always had, you know, she's had different therapies, she's had different, you know, she's always, you know, we're always looking for things that will improve her quality of life. But luckily we're pretty blessed. We're in a position where I can do that, you know, and that's why I'm very active in, you know, foundations

and groups. I mean, we have a foundation. Yeah, tell me about that. Montana Family Foundation. We have this thing coming up. We do this. This is our third annual. Andy Garcia and I, we throw this cigar dinner at the Lakeside Golf Club here in California. Part of the benefits of the Montana Family Foundation where I give out grants to all

these different kind of organizations, most of them smaller local kind of things that do all this great work for special needs children. And then we do that in conjunction with the Fuentes family, which is one of the biggest cigar companies in the world out of the Dominican Republic. And they take care of a bunch of needy children in the Dominican Republic. So this is our third annual thing. Andy Garcia's orchestra plays, it a 15-piece Cuban orchestra. We have Arturo Sandoval, the world famous trumpet player shows up and a lot of celebrities come. It's great. So in a way, it's our way of giving back of like, hey, we generate money for these charities. We help them out because a lot

of them are just going from Ed Asner, for example, like his son, Matt. They have a group because Ed, who I'd worked with a couple of times, a couple of his grandchildren are of autism. But it's not just autism. It could be any sort of, especially mostly geared toward children's charitable organizations. And why not? If you're in a position to do it, everybody's having a good time. If you can do something to generate something for them, it's a win-win for everybody. What are you learning about yourself as a father and a man as you're growing and learning about autism with your daughter?

Well, I think, I think I said, I might've said this off of Mike when I was, I said, I live by the theory of everybody has a story and nobody gets a free ride. That's part of my story and part of not my free ride is like, yeah, no, in the best of all worlds, what I have said to myself, if I could pick the perfect family, I think I would like a kid with autism, I would like kids. Nobody asks for those things. But when they happen, it's what you do.

Now what do you do? How do you deal with it? You know what I mean? Do you dial back the work a little bit or? Well, as it turned out, it's not so much dialing back the work as making it inclusive with them of the work. So what we decided to do was early on was, look, yes, my career was really starting to get on a high gear. In fact, right when Mia was born, like I said, I was shooting Godfather 3, which was now putting me into a category of doing major films, but we realized, you know what? What's important is that we stay together as a family unit. So I would get these jobs. Like I got a movie that was shot in Moscow for just a week. We shot most of it in Canada. For one week, we had to shoot it in Moscow. Now, of course, the movie company is fine with, oh, you're going to have the family with you

up in Canada. Great. Of course, we go to Moscow. There's no need for them to come. I said, oh, no, there is a need for them to come. They're coming. They go, but we're only there for four days. Yeah, but they're coming because I'm not going for the four days without them. I said, it's not even about the money. If you want to cut the salary a bit, we'll do that. But they're all coming. And plus the nanny's got to come too because we have to have an aide to help my daughter. I said, it's that way or the highway for me. And you find out that when you make that part of the deal, they get it. You know what I mean? Because I wasn't asking for too much. I just put it by saying, but if you want meat, that's how it works. And the benefit of that is the family structure was

always the same. So we'd go to Canada, whether we're in Moscow, whether we've been in Australia, been all over Europe doing projects, we always went together. So there's always my wife, the two kids. Sometimes we'd have a nanny. They changed over the years. Usually these young college girls that would come along just to help my wife because there would be – it's a little bit more of a burden with that kind of a family situation. But by doing that, I think it helped the kids too because for Mia especially, we found out other countries had different ways of – I was had different ways of addressing children with special needs. And how worldly she's the education she's getting. I don't have that.

Like in Canada, we learned something early on. Because here very often you go to, when the kids in grammar school may have special needs, they put them instantly in a special class. Like I remember when I was in high school, there was that class and had all the kids that were like, we had infirmities. And it was all of them together. If you were different, you were just here. Yeah, you were there. And a lot of them shouldn't have been in there. Exactly. So in Canada, we found out, I was going to be there long enough time, hey, can we put our daughter into one of your classes here? She has autism and we have a companion,

classes here. She has autism and we have a companion, the college girl who will come and be with her. And he said, well, no, we don't have a special class. We don't do that here. What we do is we'll put in a regular class, but if she needs something to function within that regular class, we'll give her that accommodation. And once we experienced that, especially realized that once we went back to our hometown Chicago, and there was this one school that was located near where we were staying, that this one teacher there was a regular school, but she said she had had a sibling with autism said, no, we'll handle this. It was first grade class. She takes our daughter in front of the first grade class and says, this is Mia. She has autism. She may start talking to herself. She may walk up to the blackboard and draw.

She may say things, we're going to help her out because we all, you know, and the first time we realized that's what it took. You had to like- She built a little community. Build a community. Yeah. Include the kids. Let them know this kid's a little different.

And this is, that's her difference. And once you do that, then you realize that's the way it's got to be from that point on. So all through school here in California, we always insisted our daughter, every once in a while there'd be moments, maybe it's good she just for a day or two just kind of goes into a smaller class with a few kids and a couple extra teachers to kind of work with her on something. But for the most part, she was always included all through high school and it was fantastic because she benefited from it and all those kids benefited from it because they came to

the realization not everybody is the same. And as long as we all kind of work together and help each other, everybody and the teachers benefited because some of them had never been in a situation where they had a child like that in their class. And they left saying, wow, that was a real wonderful experience. And of course, my daughter, she'll talk about those teachers, how much I love Mr. Owens. She remembers their birthdays and stuff. Oh, hell yes, she remembers their birthdays. She sends them birthday cards every year.

Does she? Oh, yeah. That's so nice. Every day she'll hand me a couple of cards that are, you know, handwritten. And my job is to address them and mail them. And I know that their birthday cards for these people in her life, every day there's at least one, some days three, some days five, some days, you know, because every day is going to be somebody's birthday when you're that old, almost. So can I ask you this? At the time, now you're a celebrity,

So can I ask you this? At the time, now you're a celebrity. What point do you say, or do you have a family discussion, or even do you have a one-on-one with your daughter, you and your wife, about like, hey, we're going to make this public, and what are your feelings on that? And as I said to you out there, like I say things on this podcast

where I tell my daughter, well, I told them about this fear you had. And she's like, why would you do that? And I'm like, oh, yeah. I get it. Well, my daughter, she wouldn't pick up on that because her autism is such on the spectrum where if I said that she would probably, you know,

she would just take that with a grain of salt. Wouldn't register it. I wasn't saying anything. She did it because if you ask, you can ask me, say Mia, what is it? What do you have? What do you have? I have autism, but I'm not sure she

really knows what that is, but she knows that that's what that is. But where I first became kind of somewhat public about it was, like I said, I was shooting the movie Godfather 3 at the time. So now we make the movie. Now the movie is being edited. It looks like six months later, after the movie. Now we're really learning what it's like to have a child with autism and realizing, okay, let's watch what groups are there, where can we get help, what should we be doing? I get a call, of course, now they want us to start doing major press for the movie. It's going to come out at Christmas time. This was 19- I remember there was a shootout in the Baltimore theater.

There really was. Yeah. This was Christmas 1990. So, uh, one of the things they wanted me to do was to do an interview. I think it was for People Magazine. It was either People Magazine or Time Magazine. I can't remember. They said, can we have one of the journalists call you to do the interview over the phone?

I said, absolutely. So the, so the journalist calls me. Now we hadn't made the common, it's not like I took out an ad and said, Oh, by the way, we had a child and she has autism type of thing. Because our second child had just been born as well. At the same time, the first one was diagnosed, second child had been born while we were in New York. She was actually born in New York. So I get this call from this woman, I think like I said, I think it might have been People magazine. So she says, da-da-da-da, so what was it like working on Godfather, Papapa, Al Pacino, Coppola,

what's it like, da da da, the normal stuff. And they go, listen, it's come to our attention that is it true that you have a child with autism? Now of course all it would take is one person somewhere and somewhere had said, oh yeah, I think we saw him going there or who knows, it didn't matter. And all of a sudden I realized when they asked, so she said to me in this interview, she was going to write the story. It wasn't like a live thing like now. So she said to me, no, would you mind if you do have a child with autism,

would you mind discussing that, any aspect of that? And if not, that's okay. She was giving me the option. And in that split second, I had to think about that and I thought to myself, okay, if I say no, that I don't want to talk about it, I'm negating my daughter's existence in a way. I'm basically saying, no, I don't want to talk about it. That's like, that's my private, as if that's going to be our private secret in life. I'll be walking down the street and somebody might say, who's that? None of your business. To me, it would be like almost in a way saying that because there's going to come a time, God willing, Mia's not going anywhere. She's only going to go from this point on. So what's going to be our scenario? Are we always going to be like, I don't want to talk about it, I don't want to talk about it? And I thought to myself,

no, I'm going to talk about it. So I said, no, I don't mind talking about it. So we didn't talk about it long, but what she asked me, I remember she said something like, well, how has it manifested itself? I said, well, she says, is there a difficulty? I said, well, one difficulty is you could be in a grocery store. You'd be walking with my wife and we got a little baby and plus we've got Mia who's like at this time around three years old. She'll start maybe hearing a weird

sound and then she had a sound sensitivity then. She'll start going, ah, holding her ears and getting loud. And all of a sudden you'll get looks from the other people in the grocery store, and their look is basically looking, why don't you discipline your kid? Why are you letting your kid do that? And all you want to do is scream in their face, my child has autism. This is beyond our control right now. Please, that's what you want to do. Of course you can't. So you almost have to accept that. So I said, that's tough. Also, you're in a public eye. Of course you're in a public eye. You can't. A regular Joe would even-

Well, maybe. So my point being is I got to kind of suck it up and say, okay, this is what it's going to be like and try not to hopefully be in a lot of situations where it's going to cause attention, where my daughter is going to do something that's going to bring, and of course, eventually she works her way out of this stuff. But at this point, you're worried about it. Well, what really didn't, and I even thought about it after I'd finished and then the article came out. And she did it well. She didn't like exploit it, but she says, and Joe and his wife, they found out their daughter had autism and it's been a factor.

And while they were making the movie, Godfather, this was a big discovery of theirs, plus giving birth to their second child. I get a letter through – must have got through my agency at the time from some woman, and in the letter, basically what she says is, dear Mr. Montaigne, I just want to tell you, when we read that article in People Magazine or Time, whatever it was, it was so comforting to realize that this happens to people like you as well. And it made us feel a little more comfortable about it. Because of course we were going through the same thing and you don't want to have to apologize for your child's

behavior, but you want to scream to the mountaintops, this is the thing here and you just don't get it. And so she was so, it was such a beautiful letter. And I thought to myself, well, that's it. That seals the deal. I will never turn my back on that part of who my daughter is and what she has. Yet on the other hand, it's not going to carry a sign, hey, guess what? I got a kid with autism, hooray for me or something or feel bad for me. No, but it's just like, as I said, that's my story. That's the cards I've been dealt in life, and I'm happy to play them. And you have a foundation now?

We do. We have the Mantegna Family Foundation. When did you begin that? Just recently, actually. Only because we just started, like I said, Andy Garcia and I got together and started talking about, because I'd always been kind of hosting this kind of like a charity cigar dinner for this Fuentes family for quite a few years prior. And their foundation benefited from it because they do such great work with these underprivileged children in the Dominican Republic. After COVID, that kind of went away. They stopped doing these functions. And then all of a sudden,

Andy and I both realized, gee, we're members of this club here in LA and we would get together sometimes at events, whether it was a wedding or some event there. We'd be out there over on one of the fairways smoking a cigar thinking, hey, we should bring back the cigar dinner and bring it back and help, you know, to form these charity. and bring it back and help, you know, to form these charity. I've certainly got all these organizations that I support with autism. It'd be a way of just everybody have a good time and somebody would benefit from it. So it's only been about, I'd say, around three, four years now. So I decided, you know, prior what I would do is I would play like in a golf tournament or somebody would offer me, they'd offer you a certain amount of money to do like an appearance somewhere like, oh, we'll give

you a thousand dollars to do this. And I just say, we'll make the checkout to such and such charity or to this charity or to that charity. This way we figured, this way you know it's all going to happen. It's going to get funneled through this one thing and it can actually, wow, we can maybe delineate it to somebody like groups that really need it. Like I said, when we started with this group out of New York called NAR, there was another group in the West Coast. We came back to the West Coast after I did a film, filmed those movies in

New York. There was a group called CAN, Cure Autism Now, that was started by a director and his wife with their child. So I was part of that group. Then after a while, Bob Wright, who was head of NBC at the time, turned out one of his grandsons was diagnosed with autism. He had the wherewithal inability being the head of a network to take those. He says, look, I work on the East Coast, I work on the West Coast. There shouldn't be two organizations. Let's just join them. I see. And that's how NAR and CAN came together and became one big autism organization. So these kinds of things happen. So my feeling is what I try to do is I look more toward the – with our foundation,

because I'm not a big – our foundation is not huge, like these giant organizations that corporations run. But it's enough that these smaller – especially in this locale in Southern California, there are these organizations that are doing the work every day or doing the – working with these children, working with these young people that could use a grant of $5,000 is a lot to them as opposed to $5 million some other worldwide group might get. So that's what it is. So it's almost like why not? It's a way of, like I said, if we can just kind of- What would you say to new parents who just find out that their child has autism? Well, just this- Now with the education you have and everything in 2025, is there anything that you wish you, you know what I mean? You knew back then that you

found out later. Yeah, a lot of it was, you know, look, back then the incidents was so much, they would say like one in maybe 1500 births was now it's like one in sometimes they say less than a hundred. So I mean, it's a whole different volume, but because of that, there's a whole different more awareness of it and there's more kinds of things out there. And you know, early interventions is the main thing, become aware of it. Don't ignore it. Don't pretend like, okay, well, maybe it'll grow out of it. Sometimes that is all it is. You just got to also be aware that it might just be something that's a delayed thing. Well, my kid's not reading yet or my kid's not speaking yet. Sometimes it is a delay. But if it becomes apparent

that no, something is off here, then you just got to go and they're out there. Those organizations are out there. Like I said. Now, are there any kind of camps you would send your daughter to growing up where they actually tailor to these kids? And they can take them to a day camp or anything like that where she could go get nature or you know. There are groups like that.

I mean, for our daughter it was more like, it depends what their interests were were too. Our daughter was so much into the Disney movies and those kinds of things. So the point of being able to go to Disneyland or places like that, or reading these books to her and things like that, or watching certain TV shows, there's no way of predicting what exactly it's going to be. But you find that out, you know what I mean? And so every child is going to be different. Like I said, there's no blanket thing like say, oh, you do this and this is the right way and this is the wrong thing. It's just everybody's situation is different. Everybody depending where they live, it's going to be different. Like, you know, we're in Los Angeles, we're in a pretty big metropolitan area. Some people are going to be living in Podunk, Arkansas or something and they're going to have to deal with what's available for them.

As long as you have an awareness of it and say, okay, this is the deal, what can we do to make the quality of all our lives better, your child and the family. And does your daughter live with you? Oh yeah, I'm Italian. That's a big part of it too. better, your child and the family. And does your daughter live with you? Oh yeah, I'm Italian. That's a big part of it too. Yeah, good boy. I used to say, hey, if they want to go to college, I'll build one upstairs. But yeah, she still lives with us. But look, we're realistic too. I mean, I'm not the youngest guy in a building. And so my goal is to, of course, my wife and I both, that we want to make sure things are in place.

And also I don't want to have it. The word my younger daughter has to be like, Hey, it's on you now. It's a hundred percent on you. Yeah. And we got to think of that. We got to do what we got to do to make sure that things are in place. That there will be places for Mia to be and live and thrive and function and you know and that the help will be there because she's gonna need it and that's

fun. Are you a grandpa? I'm not. Not yet. I'm just curious what type of aunt you think your daughter would be. Oh she'd be sure she'd be so loved. Would she love kids? Oh she'd love kids. She loves kids, she loves animals and animals sense it. I think they sense a child on a spectrum. We've had dogs, we've had cats, we still do. We're down to one cat now. We've been through dogs, cats, as people do in their lives. But I swear to you, animals in this way can sense. They almost sense, especially the cats, I think. What do you notice? I notice that they sense a certain thing about Mia that she – almost like a camaraderie.

That cats have that little thing of their own kind of – hey, look. My best definition of it is like – I was lucky enough to play Dean Martin in this movie, The Rat Pack. So I did a lot of research on that. And I remember – and one of the things that came away with all my research is that, okay, they were called a rat pack. But if you think of it more as a dog pack, Frank Sinatra was the lead dog and Sammy Davis and Peter Lofford and all the other guys were all like the dogs yipping behind Frank like, but Frank was the lead dog. Dean Martin was the cat because he was the guy that he ran with the dogs, but whenever they would say, hey, let's all go over here, he was the one who went, you know what, I'll be over here

and I'll meet you guys later, that kind of thing. And that was the thing about the cat. The cats are like, I'm okay. I'll let you know when I want to be petted. I'll let you know when I want to run with you. But in the meantime, I'm cool. And I think there's that aspect of, you get that even in people and then with pets. And so with Mia, it's that same kind of thing. I think that the cat in a way that senses in Mia, that she's a little unique and she's a sweet, gentle soul, but she's not going to be the same kind of personalities as perhaps a lot of the other people are like. She's going to be very social and very loving and all, but just going to be a little her own person. That's great. I, um, I want to get you out of here.

I love talking to you. I want to respect your time. No, I will. Thank you, Brian. Well, this is, you know, like I said, I don't know all Ryan, Brian. Listen, do you have any comedians I know personally and don't know my name? I can't even believe you got it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

for some reason, I named Brian was in my head, but I thought, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, make them realize you're not alone out there and that it's just part of life. And then I look around and say, hey, we're blessed because then I see some of the burdens other people have to carry, so much more intense, so much more to deal with and yet not even being in a position to deal with it. So I got nothing to complain about. Like I said, my wife and I both feel very blessed. These are the cards were dealt and I have no regrets and no takeaways, no like, oh, I wish that had been different. It's okay. It's all good. God been very, very good to me.

Yeah, brother. I like hearing you say that. And I've genuinely appreciated sitting across from you having this conversation with you. Before I let you get out of here, how about advice you'd give to 16-year-old Joe? 16-year-old Joe. Yeah, wow. I don't know if I've done that. Probably just, I would say this, follow your dream because that's kind of what I did. Me becoming an actor, might have well said I was going to become a man in the moon or a martian. Where I grew up, there was no actors in my family. Show business was not on the radar. Where I grew up in the West Side of Chicago, you either became a cop or you became the guy they

chased. Those were like your alternatives, it seemed like. But I remember when I auditioned for my first play just on a dare basically, a musical, and I thought, oh, that might be fun because it was a movie, West Side Story. I'd seen the movie and then now they're doing a play. Oh, I tried out for it. I didn't get cast. There's a whole story behind that because my parents changed my birth certificate so they could put me in school earlier so my mother could go back to work. Is that right? So I was always a grade lower than I should have been. So here I was as a sophomore trying out for a play that was too small, too whatever. I wasn't right. But at that audition at 16, when I finished the audition, I realized I want to do this. I really want to do this.

And I've never looked back. I love hearing that. You still wanted to go forward after not getting something. Oh yeah. Absolutely. Because just the experience of doing it, and I got a smattering of applause when I finished the song I'd done. And it was like nobody had ever applauded anything I'd done before. It was like, wow. And I remember that I got some positive reinforcement

where they came up to me and said, look, I want to tell you something. You did a really great audition. You come back next year when you're a little bigger. Yeah. It might be something we could use you for. And of course, and I remember that, I will, I'll pursue that. And I did. And from that day to today, that many years later, it hasn't changed. That moment, I try to equate it to, I bet it was a

thing like maybe Michael Jordan threw a basketball when he was six years old and saw it go in and said to himself, I'm going to do this. I'm going to keep doing this. And you do it. And the enjoyment for me right now doing it at the level I do it is no better than the joy I had that day 16 years old singing that song and hearing that applause. Man, I love hearing that. Oh, you gave me chills. No, but it's true. And I tell that to young people. I say, if you can say that to yourself, then you're in the right business. I says, even when I've been disappointed, when I didn't get stuff. I was going to say you have every right to be bitter about this industry over all these years. Oh, sure.

I mean, it took me a long time to get there. I mean, you know, but I remember when I won the Tony award, you know, back in 1984, somebody had asked me afterwards, what was it like to win a Tony award? And I'd been working as a, as a struggling actor for 15 years. I said, it's like winning the lottery, but I've been buying 15 years worth of tickets. So you work your way up to the hopefully where it pays off. But even if it didn't, the point is, like I said, I'm not enjoying it. It's not like it's not proportional.

Like, hey, man, I'm real successful now. So I'm that much happier than I was when I was only making, you know, we're splitting a box office at this theater company I worked with in Chicago. We're making 20 bucks a week. No, I enjoyed it just as much then as I do now. It's just that, you know, the environment has changed. Yeah. But the enjoyment is exactly the same. And I would think a lot of athletes would probably tell you the same thing. They tell you, hey, hitting the home runs in Little League is no less exciting than it was when I won the World Series.

If you can say that, then you're in the right racket. This has been awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ryan. Before I let you out of here, please promote everything and anything you'd like again. Yeah, Long Branch. Get the novel Long Branch by Dan Ram. Check it out.

It'll probably be, my guess is you're going to be watching it on a screen sometime before too long as well. And then there's audio version that I do as well. If you're, you know, especially if you, if you like listen to audio books as opposed to reading it, but it's a great read. I mean, it's, and I'm not just plugging it cause the guy works for me. I mean, I honestly got it. So it's, it's, it's worth it. Thank you, Joe. You're welcome. Thank you, man. You got it. As always, Ryan Sickler on all your social media. We'll talk to you all next week. Wayfair's Black Friday in July sale is almost here! Starting July 24th, score up to 80% off everything home at Wayfair, plus amazing doorbuster deals, and free shipping site-wide.

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