The New Yorker Radio Hour - John Goodman, Jeremy Irons, and Keegan-Michael Key

Episode Date: February 17, 2017

Three actors in conversation at The New Yorker Festival. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. We've got a very special lineup for you today, three of the great actors in film and television, all of them recorded live at the New Yorker Festival. Now, later in the hour, we've got Jeremy Irons and John Goodman. But let's begin with Keegan Michael Key, who's best known for his collaboration with Jordan Peel. Their sketch show, Key and Peel ran five seasons on Comedy Central and won a Peabody Award. One sketch, already a classic, starts off in the mode of gritty realism, with a black man provoked and arrested by a white cop for no reason at all. Look, there is no reason for you to get upset, sir. I'm not. I'm not. All right, that's it.

Put your hands on your head. Put your hands on your head. The officer shoves him in the back of the car so hard that his head smacks on the doorframe and he's knocked out cold. Get in the car. Duck your head. And like a Black Lives Matter version of the Wizard of Oz, He comes to in a candy-colored fantasy musical.

Where are we? Just be patient, and I'll show you. Your suit change. Follow me to a place I know, and there ain't no pain, ain't no sorrow. It's a place to be if your skin is brown. I'm talking about Negro Town. Negro Town? What, like Atlanta?

Almost. Now, be quiet while I sing. There's no shortage of comedians. doing smart work about race in America right now, but Key and Peel the show had a kind of range and ambition that's really hard to top. Last year, they did their first film together,

and in the fall, Keegan Michael Key, the tall one, spoke with my colleague, Henry Finder at the New Yorker Festival. Oh, man. Oh, man. I thought, instead of introducing you, I could maybe kind of pull it out of you,

you're more of an expert on it. than anybody else. So this is like the origin story. As I see it, you were raised in and around Detroit. You went to college there. You got a master's degree in the dramatic arts. You studied the technique of dramatic acting. Seems to me you should be playing Leonid in the Cherry Orchard. Instead, you became hilarious. Kegan, where did things go wrong? I know, I've been on this 19-year odyssey, this detour. I had every intention of being very poor and fulfilled. That was my intention.

I was just going to do regional theater for my whole life. And I was making a film, an independent film, back home in Detroit. I went to graduate school in Pennsylvania and then came back home. And I met this merry band of people, and they were working at the Second City Improv Theater. There was a Second City Improv Theater at that time in Detroit. So I went and auditioned for that, and it was as if I was getting another degree. It was like getting a degree, and I love learning. So I was getting my master's in comedy.

And so that just ended up lasting for 19 years. Second City, Detroit, is that like Al-Qaeda Iraq? Yes, it is. It's an offshoot group, yes, exactly. So I was there for four years, and then I ended up at the Second City in Chicago, and I was there for two years. And then made my way out to Los Angeles to do Mad TV. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Mad TV, there's kind of a, in the garden of forking paths, which is a human life. Sure. There's SNL. There's Mad TV. I mean, there's decisions that you made. Right, right.

It was, I think what took place was when I was told that I was going to make more money at Mad TV, that fork got real easy. No, it was, I mean, every sketch comedian, it is, it is your dream. The brass ring is to do Saturday Night Live. But there was something, there were people working. at Mad TV at the time that were friends of mine and I wanted to collaborate with them creatively, Jordan being one of them. Jordan is someone that you met there or you'd-

I met Jordan in Chicago. A mutual friend of ours who ultimately ended up on our writing staff, she introduced us. She said, you guys, you must meet, you must meet, you're both biracial, you're both from single parent homes, you're both comedians, you're gonna love each other. So we met and it was comedy love at first sight and I saw him from, perform, and I just thought he was just amazing. And his writing, the way in which he's clever, and the way in which he observes things was just I had never seen before. And we went to a diner, and we stayed that diner until about five in the morning talking about Monty Python. And it was just

fantastic. Then serendipitously, he ended up on Mad TV, and then they hired me to be on Mad TV. And then Jordan, in all of his infinite wisdom, said, now you know why we're both here. We're competing against each other. So what I think we should do is we should write all of our sketches together, and then they can't pull us apart. So we'll just be the yin to each other's ying, and then it's just like it's a package deal. So, and so that's how we, that's kind of how we started working with each other. So at that point you become, you know, you're at the early phases of what's going to become one of the classic comedy duos, you know, hark back to Nichols and May. I mean, there are thousands of examples, but...

I'm going to cry, Nicholson. Man, you're up there. That's the best. Is that a confinement as well as a liberation? I mean, tell me about that experience, being part of that dyad. I've never thought of it as a... I've never thought of it as a confinement. I think sometimes in confinement one finds discipline.

So that kind of confinement, if you will, it was helpful, if anything. It's an oxymoron. We were kind of liberated by the confinement. Right. And then at this point, you were already known for, like, Coach Hines or certain characters that became indelible from the mad TV phase of your career. You listen to me.

When a drama teacher had heart attack and Principal Lanestein gave media responsibility for directing this production, Oliver, I told him I'd rather saw my own nads off with a kite string. I am a coach for Pete's dragon, all right? What the hell do I know about musical theater except for that I hate it? 164% and so should you! Okay?

Now who the hell is playing my Oliver Twist? That's me, Cod. They did it all for me? What created the show? What was it in the culture that said we need to have Key and Peele on their own? I think that we both, we both strongly feel that if Barack Obama was not the President of the United States, we would not have a television show. I really believe that to be true.

He helped us out. Thanks, Obama. But I think, yeah, yeah, thanks, Obama. All right. He became such a potent part of the zeitgeist. And it was interesting to watch the leader of the free world be a person who had a similar background to me and my friend, and the rest of the world was just learning it at the time.

This was just our experience. But I think that had a lot to do with why, Comedy Central had an interest in pursuing the show. And you talked about Obama, and of course, one of the iconic characters you created was Luther, the anger translator. And on an event sometimes called nerd prom, i.e. the White House Correspondence Dinner, you actually did it not with Jordan Peel, but some other guy. Possibly President Obama. Possibly, yeah, it might have been him. What was that experience?

It was, it was, it was glorious. It's, it was one of, one of the greatest moments, certainly one of the greatest moments in my entire life. From an artistic standpoint, what's so interesting is that you, I was trying to get Jordan into the sketch. So I'm saying, Jordan, we should, you know, maybe we should have a dueling Obama's thing. And he said, Keegan, Keegan, do, no.

He's like, no, you've got the guy. I can't do it better than him. You know, so let's, how about you? It's just, I'm in high bar. Yeah, and so it was an interesting experience mostly in that the rehearsal, there's something, there's something very, he's so cool. He's cooler than you think he is. He smells great. He's warmer, he's sharper, and he has an avuncular quality about him that I wasn't expecting him to have.

I always thought he'd be super, super cool, and he's much warmer. He's very tactile. Tactile, like, touches you. But he gets right in there and hugs, and then you're freaking out. You're like, oh, he's hugging me. He's hugging me. No red dots, please.

He's hugging me. He just gets it. And he, and, I mean, I remember he just came right in the door, and he's like, there he is, King. There's my boy. I'm here. And he said, and he says to me, and he says, no, no, listen, no, we've got to keep it together.

We got to, can't be laughing out there. We've got to do it right. And I was like, yes, sir. Absolutely, sir. Absolutely. So he reads the first line of his lines. I do my first line, and then he cracks up. And he's like, I'm having a hard time keeping a straight face.

So we had a, it was just, we had a lovely rehearsal. Was he good at taking notes? Very good, yeah, actually. He was very good at taking, knowing where to cut things and cutting jokes. Like, he wasn't cutting them on the fly, but right there, I mean, he gave a couple notes. I'm like, you should be on our writing staff. And then the actual event itself, because you're in a room with about 2,600 people

and the lights in your eyes, and you can't see. It's a cavernous, cavernous room, and you can't really see. But I was so nervous beforehand, I made sure that I learned his lines and my lines. And then I got out there, and when we started doing it, I started to almost get thrown at how great his timing was. How great his, he can stoneface a moment. and when you watched, and when I watched the video later,

he just seemed like a consummate professional in that regard. I was going, what can't you do? It was really quite amazing. In our fast-changing world, traditions like the White House Correspondence dinner are important. I mean, really? Because despite our differences, we count on the press to shed light on the most important issues of the day.

And we can count on Fox News to terrify old... It's such a tightrope that he has to walk. You know, he couldn't win. And that's why we created the character of Luther because we were feeling of frustration as well. If he gets angry, he's the angry black man. If he doesn't say anything, he's uppity or ineffectual. It's like the guy couldn't win, you know.

So that's where this kind of raging id standing next to him of Luther was founded. Is there a sense, just thinking forward, that the secret to Donald Trump's success is that he's the white Luther, that he's the anger translator for the conservative mind. Yes, in a manner of speaking, because it's funny in interviews, people will say as they'll say, so what are you going to do? You go, now the show's that,

you're going to be Trump's anger translator? What are he talking about? But he's pure id. He's nothing but id. Yeah, and so, yeah, he would be out of a job. I mean, yeah, I think that, that id is, makes some segment of the population. It makes, it makes you feel a sense of liberation.

There's a person who's feeling a sense of liberation through him. I don't know that it's healthy, but that's what I think the phenomenon is. Now, the comparison with Mad TV is... Matt TV was done in front of a live audience, right? Sometimes. On tape nights, we would tape some of the sketches in front of live audiences. Is there a difference to you as a performer when you're filming for a camera crew and when you're filming for an audience? Absolutely, yeah.

There's two different challenges, and they're both equally exciting. The challenge with being in front of my audience, of course, is that there's a fluidity and it's live and you're getting instant feedback. And you have to manufacture that in your mind, especially comedically. You have to manufacture that in your mind when you're on camera. And you know, or working up emotion is very an interesting thing. It's like it's piecemeal. So you kind of have to, you're thinking about something. You start getting really emotional.

And they're like, you guys, roll, roll, roll, roll. So that because it's a pastiche, right, a film, you're putting it together. It doesn't matter what I'm crying about. You're watching the film in a particular context. So you're going to be, you're going to think I'm emotional for that reason. Whereas those emotions come organically when you're on stage. And what kind of delay was there? I mean, with the Key and Peel seasons, I mean, there's often a real sense that it was responding to things in the culture, Negro land,

example, in the wake of cop. shootings, you know, which is a hilarious and sort of heartbreaking. Yeah, yeah, a Negro Town, yeah. A Negro Town, sorry. We learned as a group that we have to write things that are evergreen, this is a term that we use, meaning it's not specific to now. So we're the opposite of Saturday Night Live. Everything they do is topical, and what we do is Evergreen.

So what we would do is we try to make sketches and scenes about the human condition. so that we, because we would write for 13 weeks and then start shooting the sketches, so we could never be topical, but necessity is the mother of invention. So it allowed us to understand that we had to be in a place where there being a tenuous relationship between African American communities and cops. That's nothing new. There's just been an uptick of certain behavior recently. So we thought, well, we can make this scene and it will fit into the overarching zeitgeist

of what we're doing here in the United States of America. But we can't hit very particular things. Right, right. Now, dream roles for you. Dream roles. I really, I mean, I would love to play The Moore. And I would love to play, I would love to play Hamlet. Okay.

You just have to. Because if you do it, that's like, that's the gold medal. Just if you get through the thing. All those roles, all the roles that everybody wants to play, I want to play. So I want to do that. Yeah. And then, of course, when I'm 72, I want to do Lear and hope it doesn't kill me. And who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?

That would be fun. Ooh, that's a tough one. That's a tough one. I'd do that one. I like Albi. I would do that and almost, I'd do a delicate balance, too. The tough, like the tough ones. The ones where you go home and you just got asleep for 10 hours before you go back to the theater, you know.

Staying in character for you in the past means staying in 23 different characters. Right, exactly. It's been very fun recently playing one character. Imagine that, just playing one guy. And in Keanu, it was very fun to play one guy. But ostensibly, we didn't. That one guy, yes, but again, that was kind of a motif of your work, which is the code switching moment. Code switching, which we got over there, which is, you know, the very first sketch in Key & Peel. In Key & Peel. It's about code switching. And that is, it's deeply relatable because everyone in some form or another death. Everybody does it. Everybody code switches. Yeah.

Everybody, we don't know what code switching is. You don't. Okay. Code switching is when you make typically a vocal, a vocal change to fit where you are in a moment. So right now I'm speaking to you in a general American dialect. But when I go home and visit friends of mine in Detroit, I often talk like this because it makes them feel more comfortable. So I'm actually speaking a different dialect of English. I speak different dialects of English for people to make them feel comfortable.

No, actually, I'm lying to you. It makes me feel comfortable because I don't want to feel like the outsider in that particular situation. So I'm code switching. Let's just go checking out. What's the worst that can happen? One beer, please?

I'll take a white wine specialist. Clarts, clarts. What? You can't talk like that. You sound like John Ritter all the time. You're in the right place? Yeah, we're in the right place. I'm Tectonic.

Nice. My name is Shark Tank. Oh. Thank you all. Thank you, Kagan. Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody, for coming. Thank you. That's from the movie Kiannu, starring Kean and Peel, which is not about Keanu Reeves, it's about a kitten. Kegan Michael Keith spoke with the New Yorkers, Henry Finder, at the New Yorker Festival last fall. You're listening to the New Yorker Radio Hour. The reporter Lawrence Wright has reported

on some scary people in his time, including senior officials in Scientology and members of Al-Qaeda. but I'm still not sure he's ready for this guy. They say I'm a madman part, but I'm not mad at anyone. Honest I'm not. Most guys, I just feel sorry for. Charlie, why me? Why? Because you don't listen!

You're listening to The New Yorker Radio Hour. In a minute, we'll be back with John Goodman. Stick around. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Today we're bringing you three events from the New Yorker Festival and extravaganza that we throw together every year with leading lights in politics, entertainment, the arts, technology, absolutely everything.

John Goodman is a guy with huge range. For a lot of us, he's still the beleaguered and lovable Dan Connor on Roseanne, a show that brought a new kind of realism to sitcoms about working class families. He was incredibly funny and sad in the legendary film The Big Lobowski, as one of Jeff Bridges' sidekicks, the volleyball. little one. But he's even better playing dark, really dark, like the psychopath in last year's 10 Cloverfield Lane. Maybe it's that contrast that made Larry Wright, a staff writer at the New Yorker who's known for his coverage of terrorism, want to talk with John Goodman.

It's such a pleasure to have this opportunity to talk to you. Thank you. I was looking through your credits and beginning with commercials, theater, television, movies, and animation and video games. You've been a character actor and a leading man. This is a really singular profile. Because you can do everything. And I couldn't think really of how many other actors have spanned all that.

And it occurred to me that there is a memoir in here somewhere. Ghost written. Yes, OK. But there are. Posthumously. There are some editors in the audience, including my own editor. And I thought that while we're sitting here, we would just construct this memoir. And it turned out, in one of your interviews, you already postulated a wonderful title.

I'm so goddamn sorry I did that by John Goodman. Sounds great. All right. So chapter one, I am born. I am born. Where were you born? St. Anthony's House. Hospital, Grand to Chippewa, St. Louis, Missouri, June 20th, 1952.

Okay. Four something in the afternoon, or no, 1032 in the afternoon, or in the morning. And your parents were? Born to Virginia Goodman, Virginia Lusmore Goodman, Leslie Goodman, who was a postal worker. And you never knew him? No. He died a month before my second birthday. So tell me about your mother.

Tell me about your mother. She took in laundry, babysat children, what today would be referred to as a daycare center, I guess. And just did odd jobs and got a job as a clerk and a drugstore was a waitress, did all kinds of things. Well, it seems pertinent because I think whenever I see you acting, There's experience there that I think can't be translated, can't be faked. You come from a background and I see that in your work.

Do you feel like it lives still in you? It's all relevant. Relative to other things, I really didn't realize we were as poverty-stricken as we were because I want this, I want that, I want this. But later on, I became... extremely introverted and just dwelt in my imagination and in my own head, which has served me well in a career but not so well in life. What do you mean by that?

Well, it's not one of the causes, but it's a symptom of alcoholism to just not really relate to people that very well, and it leads to selfishness. posture, I don't know. But it fueled the creativity, which thankfully I found an outlet for. Well, you know, when did you awaken to the idea that there was a world that you could be a part of? In college. I had dabbled in acting.

For some reason, I was always attracted to plays. I'd get kicked out of a class and they'd send me to the library for lack of office space. And I would replays. I had no idea why. I had a taste of it in eighth grade and then later in my junior and senior year of high school. And I had nothing else going for me. I was a terrible student. The theater department was a natural attraction.

and I felt good at it. I felt comfortable at it. I was drawn to it. So chapter two, the New York years, what brought you here when you came right out of college? I thought my very last year of college, my very last semester, that I could try to make a living.

And that's all I want to do is make a living as an actor. What was your experience? when you first got here. I was scared. I was terrified, but I had to do it just. The main reason I came, main motivation was that I wouldn't kick myself

in the ass for the rest of my life, beat myself up for not trying. I had to take a shot. And if I failed, fine. I'll try to get on at Anheiser Bush. That was a dream job in St. Louis. That was the job to get.

So you're, Let's move on to chapter three, which is theater. Theater. Theater. Play practice. Okay. Alec Baldwin, you worked with him. Yeah.

And streetcar. And he said you were the best Mitch that he had ever seen. And he wanted me to ask you about your experience on dealing with Mitch. I talked my way into that production because Jessica Lang was doing it. She was a friend of mine. And I was with a very powerful agency at the time, and I think they pulled some strings. And as soon as I got into it, I said, what have I done? I'm far too fat to be playing Mitch.

I chose to use an unfortunate accent, which is hard to understand what we in New Orleans call yet. Yeah. Yats. Where a yet. It comes from way yet. It's a standard greeting. And I just felt it was wrong. Even though I was in it and doing it, I just never felt comfortable with it.

That's my streetcar story. So then I think probably the most acclaimed role that you had was in Waiting for Godot in 2009. This is one of those landmark productions in the theater. Everyone in that production was so good. Yet, you know, I can see that you were heavy then. And Bill Irwin, who was also in that production, said you were in pain a lot of the time that you were in that production. Yeah, my knees.

This before, I surgically altered my knees. Yeah. Some people get Botox. I get knee surgery. So the next chapter is Roseanne. A big moment in your life. And perhaps the first real steady work, that you had, but it also made you famous.

Yep. It was the residual fame of Roseanne was such a tabloid magnet because she'd say anything. I didn't think that they liked a heavy outspoken Jewish woman. So they were all set for her. And so I was like residual target of that. What do you mean? If they couldn't get her, they'd try stuff on me.

I walked out of a place one night with a friend of mine and his girlfriend, and he was right behind us. I was in front with just talking to her, and it wound up on the cover of the National Inquirer that I was getting a divorce and taking off with this woman who I knew enough to say hi to. Just that kind of stuff, printing rumors is fact. And for me, that was fame. And I kind of turned into a jerk for a little while. I just all defense.

At the time, it was the worst thing that happened to me, was being famous. But I was doing a job that I loved. It was a lot of fun for a while. Stop. We're going out to dinner. No, I don't want to eat with those girls. I just want to have dinner and go to bed. They're not coming.

I'm punishing them. Whoa. Yes? And having to eat my chili is just the beginning. Come on, we'll decide the rest of their punishment over dinner. Let's get changed. But they hate me, right? No, no, that's the beauty part.

They hate me. Oh, Dan, that's just great. Happy Mother's Day. It was a difficult period of time in some ways. I mean, for one point, you walked off the show. No, I didn't walk off the show. Well, I tried to until I figured out that ABC could own my house. All of my property.

That took some sense, but the time that I made that phone call, I was drunk. And then I did leave the show because in the last year, I just felt that it had run its course. That wasn't my call to make, but I just wanted to move on. Let's go back to the drunk part. Okay. You were drinking a lot in that period of time. Yeah. And I think what I'd like to understand is how you escape that.

I bottomed out. I was supposed to go to California for an award show and accept and present an award. I had been on a golf trip about a week before that in the Missouri Ozarks with some friends and I stayed loaded until it came time for the rehearsal

for the award ceremony and I had the phone in sick and by the time the next day rolled around I reckoned that I'd need to be hospitalized and do I want to just go to a hospital or do I want to take care of this? And I just didn't want to do this anymore. I get tired of the lying, just feeling rotten all the time unless I had what Williams,

Tennessee Williams called the clique, which lasted about an hour and then you're just feeling rotten again. And I was getting DTs and I didn't want to live like that anymore. And I lived like that for 20 years, and I've been drinking heavily for 30. The first five were fun. And I called my wife, which is kind of like Osama bin Laden calling Navy SEALs. But I was drunk enough to call her. And I'd say, you know, I need some help.

and they got me into a facility. And I just relearned things. I don't miss that life a bit. You once woke up while you were driving, right? Yeah, I was on the crossbox expressway doing 60 miles an hour in a VW Beetle. Well, how do they get here? Yeah, not pleasant.

That's terrifying. I'm sorry, you had that story. Yeah. So let's move on to the Hollywood chapter. I guess the movies that you're most associated with are the Cohen Brothers movies. And they're so wonderful. So Ethan Cohen once said about you, he's normal but crazy. Like everyone else, only more vividly.

How did you get hooked up with the Coens? I was doing, let's see, Big River. And then I left Big River to do a David Byrne film, of all things. And in the middle of The Big Easy, a film called The Big Easy, I was in New York and got sent over to an office to meet Joel and Ethan Cohen. Did you know where they were? No, I didn't know anything. They had one film, which I hadn't seen, Blood Simple, which is great.

It's a great film, which they made for nothing. And I went in there and just started goofing around with them. They were funny. Midwestern guys. They had said at one point that we're all provincials. And just had the best time not auditioning. Like, yeah, okay, I read the thing. And it was for Raising Arizona.

And I think the reason that they cast me was because I had a pudgy baby face. And the theme of the film was babies. There were a lot of baby movies made in the mid-80s. This is the most twisted. Yeah. I think. We don't always smell this way, Ms. McDonough. I was just explaining to your better half here that when we were tunneling out,

we happened to hit the main sewer line. Dumb lucked that. And we followed that to... You mean, you busted out of jail. No, ma'am, we released her sheds on our own recognizance. Whatever here is trying to say is that we felt the institution no longer had anything to offer us. My lord, he's cute. He's a little outlaw.

You can see that high. Now, listen, you folks can't stay here. Ma'am? You just can't stay. Now, I appreciate you being friends of high and all, but this is a decent family now. I mean, we got a toddler here. Say, who wears the pants around here, H.I. And after that, you didn't audition.

They were writing the parts for you. Yeah, they started writing parts for me until they... I guess they hit a wall with it because they wrote another part for me. It's too much like John Goodman's stuff in our other movies, so they gave it to somebody else. Perhaps your most famous role is in the Big Lobowski where you play Walter Sobjcac. Tell me how you approach that role. Thank you to all my reactionary fan. It was all on the page, which I've found.

The only Coen Brothers film I went into with a plan was raising Arizona. I wanted to play a guy that was a criminal genius with a two-digit IQ. Everything is right on the page. And I find that I'm in better hands if I trust material like that. And I don't think too much or bring too much to it. Excuse me, sir. Could you please keep your voices down this? a family restaurant. Oh, please, dear. For your information, the Supreme Court has

roundly rejected prior restraint. This is not a First Amendment thing, man. Sir, if you don't calm down, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. Lady, I got buddies who died face down in the muck so that you and I can enjoy this family restaurant. I'm out of here. Hey, dude, don't go away, man. Come on, this affects all of us, man. They're basic freedoms! I'm staying. I'm finishing my coffee. Enjoying my coffee. Big Dan Teague and old brother,

Where Art thou? This year the Cyclops and the U.S. The U.S. drama that underlies all this. And you really do get to club George Clooney. This is probably one of the great moments in cinematic history. Yeah, it kills me.

I don't think I know what you mean, Big Dan. George, I knew George was. in the first year of Roseanne, and he had great hair and a great attitude. And we all, boy, he made me laugh. It was so funny. And it's interesting the trajectory that his career has had. Is he working? Maybe.

He might be a good kid. I don't think he works as much as you do. He doesn't have to. Yeah. And then Roland Turner and the inside Lewin Davis, where you play? Roland Turner. The jazz musician, and after we wrapped,

after the film came out, Joel and Ethan were discussing what instrument I played. I think Joel thought I was a trumpet player. Ethan thought I played sax, and I thought I played piano. Who cares? Do you play any of those instruments? No, I was accused of playing harmonica for a while, while. Yeah, when I was in high school, I got into blues.

Nobody has a blues like a suburban white kid. I suffered, baby. You have so many movies that are out now or just coming out in recently 10 Cloverfield Lane. Tell me a little bit about that experience. Well, it was great because I got to shoot at home. Uh-huh. Yeah, New Orleans for a while was a hotbed of film due to some liberal tax credits, which we no longer have. Now, you mentioned New Orleans, and that brings us to another chapter in your memoir here.

Part of the attraction to New Orleans was music? Yes, it's everywhere. No matter what part of town here, somebody has a real. radio on or they're playing live music. It allows you to keep an arm's distance from a lot of the craziness in the business. Yeah, that's primarily why we moved there. I wanted to get out of town, out of Los Angeles. The business was all consuming.

The news was all about entertainment. And I was getting fed up, and I wanted to get out. Since my wife is from Bogalusa, Louisiana, which is a stone shore from New Orleans, I decided to move there so she could be near her family when I was, because I knew I'd be gone a lot. So we come to the epilogue. And you've been, it's not quite that far, but you've been very reflective about, you've been very reflective about your feelings about your immaturity and your alcoholism, your weight,

all those things. It seems to me the reason that I think that this is a worthy memoir is that you've come to, I think, a really good place in your life. It seems like you have overcome all of those things. And it's been a struggle from out of poverty, out of alcoholism, out of, you know, obscurity. How did you get to where you are now? I stopped whining. It was actually a benefit of being an alcoholic.

I don't know why I am, but I'm grateful for what I've learned in the process of becoming sober, which is a day-to-day process. Alcoholism is a disease, inherited, defective gene. I don't know why, but it is. and the acceptance of that and not wanting to go back into drinking again, I learned more about myself, I guess, but more about acceptance and love and maybe not being as angry as I had been in the past,

which I find makes me less funny. Oh really? Yeah. There was a nice benefit to being that angry, which was, but I don't feel like I have to be funny all the time. the class clown. I think he's put him to rest.

But alcoholics who strive to be sober, I think become better people. I don't know if that's the case or not, but I'm working on it. And it's something I never did before. Yeah. It was the consideration of

an acceptance of other people. I'm so goddamn sorry I did that by John Goodman. Thank you. Thank you. John Goodman. He talked with Lawrence Wright, a staff writer at the New Yorker Festival. Next week on the show, I'll talk with Stephen Hayes,

who's taken over one of the leading journals of conservatism, right at the moment that the meaning of conservatism is really up for grabs. And the New Yorker's theater critic Hilton Alls talks with a unique voice in comedy, Lily Tomlin. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour with more to come. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Today, one more conversation from this special edition of the New Yorker Radio Hour, in which we're talking to three great actors

recorded at the New Yorker Festival. Last but certainly not least, here's Jeremy Irons talking with New Yorker staff writer, Rebecca Mead. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about where you're from. You're sort of the picture, I think, for Americans, of the Urbane English gentleman.

And yet because I'm also English, I know that you grew up in a place that's a total cultural backwater. Yeah. I mean, it's literally an island off the coast of a total cultural. backwater. Which is you think of.

Well, yes, and the south coast thereof, which is also where I'm from. So tell us... Where are you from? I'm from Dorset, Weymouth. Oh, and I went to school in Sherbourne, which is just a little bit north. Yes, I know, yes. It's close. We could just chat about...

Very posh school. Why didn't we ever meet? Well... Well... You probably weren't born when I was there. Yeah. I wish I had been. That's all I can say.

Um... Moving swiftly on. So what was the Isle of Wight when you were there? It was idyllic. Really? It was idyllic. I would go to my preschool on a steam train. I walked down the hill to the harbour,

walk just round the edge of the harbour, get on this steam train, which would go up the embankment to the school every day. And often we were the only people on it, so sometimes you'd sort of let me pretend to drive it. And for a long time, I wanted to be an engine driver after that. It was an idyllic childhood, and I stayed there till we were, I suppose, I think I was about 14, and my dad was on another job.

We worked in the aircraft industry. So we moved to north of London, to Hampshire and left the Isle of Wight. And middle-class people in England would send their children to private school, which we call public school. Why? it was a sort of hangover, sort of class thing, really, from the days of the empire, where your children were probably all going to go and have to work out in the colonies. So you wanted to get them to be self-sufficient and stand up on their own two feet as soon as possible and get used to living without much familial comfort or even physical comfort, actually, I think to remember.

This course, by the time I came along, we had no empire, but we still had the system of schooling. So you were being trained to run the non-existent empire, yeah. Which I'm still prepared to do, but I don't think it's much sign of it at the moment. Well, we could have a clip. We could have a clip of the man who knew infinity, which is sort of relevant here. So can we have a little clip? Listen, I'm hard on you for your own best. benefit so that you can be published. But, sir, you can publish the notebooks and my prime number theorem.

You've had them since I arrived. There's nothing I'd like more, but if I was to publish them in their present state, I'd be sent to the lunatic asylum. You don't understand these. I don't think about this the same way you do. These steps you want, what you want, I do not know how to do. Well, you can just begin by trying your best and see if you don't surprise yourself. Sir, do you know something I don't? Apparently not.

Oh, no. God and I don't see exactly how do I. I do I. So if I prepare for rain, then it won't. So far so good. I am Hardy and I'm spending the afternoon in the Wren Library. Now we're sure to have sunshine. You see, I'm what you call an atheist. No, sir. You believe in God. You just don't think he likes you. Oh, really? Listen, I wasn't going to give you this just yet, but I took the liberty of doing some of the your proofs myself just to show you what together we can achieve see you've been published I sort of happen I have an image of the people making this movie sort of sitting around saying who can we get who will look really good walking across a

quadrangle well it's a court because it's Cambridge but who look really good in that setting oh I know who Jeremy I don't recommend films often it's really awfully good it's got a wonderful to it. It's a most extraordinary and unlikely story. It's advertised as being about mathematics. Well, Ramanujan, the Indian, played by Dauphatel, was pretty well uneducated, and certainly not university educated in India. And so one way and another came to the attention of G.H. Hardy, who was a great mathematician at Cambridge at the time. The film is about the relationship between these two disparate man.

And it's also about the xenophobia and racism with which he is met. In a place like Cambridge, which is so racist at the time. I mean, you know, the Indians were wogs. And they were, you know, look at Reed Kipling's poetry. That's what the Indians were to the English.

We, you know, saw anyone on the dark skin certainly shouldn't have a place at university. But with that sort of wonderful English precise charm, so that it wasn't actually spoken out, but it was there in bucket loads. And so Raminujan had to fight against that as well. And do you think that that kind of British racism

is as pervasive as it was then? Do we still have to... I think it's still there. You only have to read the newspapers to know that. I mean, there are awful people in the world. Not many, thank the Lord, but they make an awful lot of noise. and their attitudes tend to shine out of the dailies.

Let's have the Klaus von Buello. Let's have the reversal of fortune. I did not notice if my wife was in bed. I did not notice if the light was on under the bathroom door. Had it been on, I wouldn't have given it a thought. I did my exercises, shard. And then I called Deborah Knowles. Well, I mean, it's stable and it's profitable.

Can anyone really believe if I was trying to murder my wife that I would spend an hour going over a tedious set of figures? Asteak piece of work. Um, did you ever meet him? Yeah. Before or after? I met him after. I didn't want to meet him before because it's very, you know, if you're playing someone, what your preparation is, is to get into that person, to be that person. And I didn't want to be confused by meeting someone else who thought they were classed on beauty. You first appeared on the scene with Bride's Head as this sort of very winning sympathetic character.

But you've played throughout so much of your life a lot of nasty pieces of work, like this one here. Is it your choice or is that what you get brought, get offered? How does it happen? It's very difficult. Is it the chicken or is it the egg? It's hard to tell. Are you evil? Or are you just asked to play evil?

That's basically what I'm asking. I think I've got a good amount of evil hidden away in me, like everybody else. I mean, I always think that we're like grand pianos, you know, and we choose in our lives to play certain sort of chords. But all the other strings are there if you want to examine them. I mean, the murderer lurks within all of us. I read somewhere that there was a study a few years ago in Britain of the ideal male voice. And it was the winning voice was you tied with Alan Rickman.

Yeah. Yeah. I know. So when you heard that, well, yes, of course. Or what was your reaction to having the ideal male voice? I was surprised and delighted and slightly. cynical, which is how most things hit me. John Hurt. You know John? Don't know John, but I'll call him John just like that. But you know him as an actor? Of course, yeah. Well, John Hurt and I were

neighbours when I was around 30, I suppose. And we were having coffee in my house one morning. And he said, if you noticed how many rather good young actors seemed to be. And he said, he said, appearing and there were actors. It was a really good crop and I said we were you know 30 beginning to feel maybe we were last year's tomatoes and I said yeah I had noticed John he said do you know what I do when I meet an actor who I think's rather good and might be a problem in the casting steak I said no he said I say to him you've got a wonderful voice have you ever listened to it And the actor's fucked for good.

So when I see that I have a whatever sort of voice, I just throw it out of the window. Forget it. Speaking of the late great Alan Regman, you impersonated him for a Harry Potter spoof. Yeah. Not very well, but I'm not really good. You were quite good.

But it did make me think you are the only British actor. I can think of who's not in Harry Potter. Is that a sore point? Well, it's not really, no. I've done other things. But how did, I mean, what? I don't know. You just, that never happened.

Just never, the call never came. No. Well. I mean, I was too old. for the chap with the glasses. I know. Yeah, right. Their loss.

Their loss. There you go. Thank you so much. It's been a great audience. And thank you for everybody else. Jeremy Irons, the star, okay, not of Harry Potter maybe, but of more great movies

than I can begin to name here. He spoke with Rebecca Mead. Next week, Lily Tomlin talks with Hilton All's and I'll look at Old Guard conservative politics in the era of Trump, the conservative populist. And we'll see where cartoonist Emily Flake finds her inspiration.

I'm David Remnick. Thanks for joining me today. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garpers of Tune Yards with additional music by Alexis Quadrato. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Rianne Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, David Krasnow, Sarah Nix, Michael Rayfield, Mifili Rowe,

Stephen Valentino with help from Rhonda Sherman, Alexis Goldberg, Sarah Edwards, David Ohana, and Becky Cooper. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.