Wild Card with Rachel Martin - Rob Delaney loves to fail

Episode Date: August 22, 2024

Rob Delaney has experienced great success as a comedian and actor. He created and starred in the acclaimed TV series Catastrophe and he's been featured in blockbuster movies like this summer's Deadpool & Wolverine. But he's also experienced tragedy, including the death of his son. He talks to Rachel about loss, failure and why he kind of wants a meteor to hit his house.To listen sponsor-free, access bonus episodes and support the show, sign up for Wild Card+ at plus.npr.org/wildcard See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

What is a failure you still think about? A failure. The thing is, is I love failure now. I love it. I smash it up into a powder and I snort it. It's so good. I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wildcard. The game where cards control the conversation.

Each week, my guest chooses questions at random. them from a deck of cards. Pick a card one through three. Questions about the memories, insights, and beliefs that have shaped them. If somebody tells me, I'm the worst thing that ever happened, and that happens sometimes, I have access to the internet, it's not true, you know? By the same token, if someone tells you're the best thing that ever happened. Also, not true.

When I left news and started the show Wildcard, I thought back over the many years of interviews I had done, and I did a sort of mental inventory of people, I'd like to go back and talk to again in this way, through this game. Not everyone is good at this, right? You've got to be honest about your own life, and it helps if you don't take yourself too seriously. And when I thought about who I'd want to hear, answer these questions, I immediately thought of Rob Delaney. He's a comedian and an actor, and he's known for creating and co-starring in the show Catastrophe, and he's currently in the new summer blockbuster Deadpool and Wolverine.

I first talked to Rob in 2022, right after his memoir came out. It's called A Heart That Works. And here's where I tell you that Rob has lived through the worst of things. The book is about the death of his two-year-old son from brain cancer. But believe me when I say that I have never read a book that made me laugh as much as it made me cry. I've thought a lot about that conversation with Rob since then. I'm a parent, so it's inevitable that a story would stay with me. But specifically, I feel grateful to him because he gave me this ridiculous image when we talked about what happens after we die.

I think, you know, weird ingredients in the big stew and we'll be mixed into, you know, I don't know, dinner for some cosmic Godzilla. I don't know. And he, in turn, will metabolize us and then, you know, belch us into his next, you know, incarnation. This is now what I teach my children about the afterlife, by the way. And I need more weird Rob Delaney metaphors to inform my parenting. So it is my great pleasure to welcome Rob to Wildcard. Thank you for being here, Rob Delaney. Thanks, Rachel.

Good to be here. And yeah, my weird metaphor machine is always cranking. So. Ready to go? Sweet. So I'm going to start with a parenting question. Okay. Are you going to let your kids see Deadpool and Wolverine?

My older two boys, I will, even though that's illegal. They're 13 and 11. And the reason I will let them see it is that a lot of their friends will see it. And I want them to be prepared for how and why their friends make fun of their father. So it's just for their own ammunition. Are you prepping them with the pushback? Because, I mean, you have now attained superhero movie status, but you're the dude without superpowers in the movie. Yeah, yeah.

Well, they know that. They've seen the second one. Right. Again, I didn't show it to them. I think they saw it like a sleepover at somebody else's house. It's always the other parents who are falling short. Yeah, it's never us. Yeah, no. So they know, they know the tone. And as such, they're very excited to see Deadpool and Wolverine. So I talked to you pretty early on in your book tour for your memoir. And it is one thing to put that kind of grief down on paper in a book. But then after that, you've got to keep talking. talking about it. I've been meaning to ask you, like, what have the last couple of years been like? Well, that's a great question, and you said that it's important to be honest on Wildcard.

So here goes. Writing the book was good for me. I enjoyed, I can't think of a better word than that, as weird as it might sound to hear. I like writing about Henry. I like to spend. time with him in that way and thinking about him. Your son, Henry, was your son, yeah. Yeah, I liked seeing the picture of my wife and my other sons that emerged as well. They really shone. And I knew that, you know, intellectually, but to just kind of set down on paper how wonderful they were throughout really made me fall deeper in love with them.

So that was great. Writing the book was good. The book being out there is magnificent. I mean, it's so great to have added one little tile to the mosaic of things that can help other bereaved parents and siblings. But promoting the book was awful. Yeah. Really hated it. Here, I'll do a metaphor for you.

Like I was in either The Matrix or Minority Report. What is important is that I'm submerged in some type of sort of amniac. gel and there are tubes hooked up to me. But instead of putting things in me like they are in the matrix, there are more minority report tubes which are sucking things out of me that I really need. And so it was hard and weird and unnatural to promote the book. But I recognized it as necessary because how the hell else am I going to get the book out there? You know what I mean? How is the guy, you know, who lives, you know, in a... tiny town in Minnesota who's lost a child going to learn about the book if I don't promote it.

So I know I had to do it, but it came at a cost, and I felt like I aged about 12 years in the few months that I was promoting it. Does doing a movie like Deadpool and Wolverine restore any of those years, just to be in something so fantastical and light? and, you know, there are happy endings. Or is it just like what you do? Yeah, it really genuinely does. I mean, also sitting in a chair doing nothing is also great. But yes, doing things that are fun and nourishing and exciting and entertaining help as well. Are you ready to play this game?

I'm ready. Let's go. So, this is how it goes. Rob DeLingy. I have a deck of cards in front of me. Each one has a question on it that I would love for you to answer. Okay. I'm going to hold up three cards at a time, and you're going to choose one randomly.

Okay. Okay. There are two rules. You get one skip. Okay. If you're just not vibing on a question, you can skip it. If you use the skip, I will swap in another question from the deck randomly. Okay.

And you get one flip. So you can put me on the spot and ask me to answer one of the questions before you do. If you're so inclined, you don't have to. No fun. But it buys you time, basically. Terrific. We're breaking it up into three rounds. Okay, memories, insights, and beliefs with a few questions in each round.

And because it's a game, there's a prize when you make it to the end. Ooh, exciting. It's so exciting. Okay, are you ready? Yeah. Round one, memories. Looking back at things that have shaped you. I'm holding three cards in my hand.

Pick a card one, two, or three. Two, please. Two. What was your form of rebelling as a teenager? Rebelling. Gosh, I mean, I drank a lot of beer. Oh, did you? Did you know? I listened to a lot of loud music. So the classics. The classics. Yeah, I was a pretty classic team. Nothing really remarkable. Did you get in trouble for those things? Oh, big time, yeah. I drank, I would say, alcoholically from an early age. I didn't really have like a honeymoon period. So when I started drinking, I just wouldn't stop.

So it really wouldn't be, yeah. So people would be like, hey, what's he doing? And my friends would be like, would appear he's in the fetal position in the corner, been there for an hour and a half. Or I think he's on the roof. You know, that would be the type of answers people would get when they say what's he up to. So, yeah, that's how I did it. I mean, all joking aside, you did, I mean, you've had your own experience with addiction and recovery. So it's funny, but it's not so funny.

Yeah, it's super funny for others. For me, a deep well of pain that I tap into as needed for various creative projects. Three more cards still in memories. Okay. One, two or three. Two again, please. Two again. What's a moment when a stranger made you feel loved?

Oh, my gosh. You've really... I don't, I want to be honest with you now, but I, you know, I have some memories that I've never told people before, not ever anyone. And it's not that they're so intense, but they're just sort of like these touchstone things that I can revisit when I'm like sad or angry to think about people's goodness. And one is so strange. It's a snowy day. I'm in elementary school, maybe fourth grade. And I remember I was in a hallway at my school.

I don't know if I'd gone to the bathroom or something. And an adult woman who didn't work at the school, I don't know who she was, but came in and like snow came in with her and was, you know, swirling around her. And it was like a couple of maybe the last day of school before Christmas. And I remember she looked at me and she just said, I hope you have a Merry Christmas. And she made eye contact with me and I'd never seen her before. And it just felt so nice to have an adult stranger look at me, a stranger boy, and just say something, you know, just nothing remarkable, but just a sweet thing. And that's like one of the larger memories of my crazy life where you would think I would. to have more, but I just remember this woman doing that.

And it just oddly touched me. I think she might have been an angel, I think. She might not have been a human woman. Do you actually think that's always? Yeah, because why does it stick with me for so many years? So it's one of those things where, like, there was something deeper happening in that moment than just the words and just the eye contact. So, yeah, I think she was a special person who visited me. And I also feel nervous that I told you about it because that's like one of my sort of special memories.

So please anyone listening, forget you heard this. Or alternately, please treasure it like I do. Thank you for sharing that. I think what I love about this question is that I think that's a particular kind of love. Like that for me, like when strangers do stuff. It just kills me when someone who, they could just move on with their day, but when they choose, like, look at you, recognize you and say something in a moment that it just destroys me. It opens me up in a way that if someone, my best friend or my partner or a kid, if anyone else said the same thing, it wouldn't have merely the impact as a stranger seeing you in that moment. And I love those experiences.

They're the best. Yeah. They really, really are. When we come back, Rob tells me about his organizational ineptitude. Like you look at my closet and you're like, oh, he's not well. Now we're moving to round two, which is insights, things you're working through right now, things you're learning about yourself. Okay. Three new cards. Pick a card. Pick a card. One, two, or three?

Three, please. Three. Okay. What's a quality you're drawn to that you do? don't possess? Organization structure. Like, I was recently in a office for a few weeks writing a TV show.

And I just observed myself and I was like, I love to blast out silly ideas. And And I really not only don't know where or what order to put them in, but I don't even think I care. So I really love to work with people who are like, yeah, maybe that sort of introductory concept. What if we put that, say, near the beginning can be very helpful for me. So these are people that you need in your professional life, clearly.

We need them. Love them. What about your personal life? Is your wife organized? She's more organized than me. Let me tell you how not organized I am. Okay. And this is, we're talking, this is congenital, weird.

You're going to be like, oh, God. Whenever I see somebody on the news and they're crying, and there's like a siren in the background and smoke and they're crying because they're house burned down. Yeah. This is what I think. why are they crying? That's amazing. Now they don't have all that stuff. I like wish that my house would burn down. Whoa. That would be like to not be home one day and nobody's home. And a meteor hits my house. And they're like, oh, it's all gone. That would be so freeing. So that tells you organization wise. Like you look at my closet and you're like, oh, he's not well. I mean, I get it. I like deleted my whole email once. Like the whole.

count. I was just like, I can't deal with this. But I haven't done that in the real world with things that are in my house. Yeah, like I would probably do best in like a halfway house where I can go to work and do normal things and be around people, be sociable and fun and all that, but then just go home to like a bunk where they're like, you get one drawer. I would do better in that kind of world. Learning so much. All right. We're still in insides. Three new cards. One, two, or three. Let's go with one.

What is a failure you still think about? A failure. The thing is, is I love failure now. I love it. I smash it up into a powder and I snort it. It's so good. The first pilot I made after catastrophe. Catastrophe, like, did well as a show.

It ran for four seasons. It won awards. Yeah. I mean, it was. Thank you. And then the pilot I made after that, every network was like, get out. This stinks. Really?

And I was like, yes. Like, do you think that's got to stop me? You know, like now I know that the staircase to six. The only thing you can build it out of his failures. So I'm glad that I still fail. How did you get so wise on that? Like you couldn't have just, you know, come out of the womb that way or maybe. No, God, no, I didn't. I think I, I mean, the death of our son has got to be a big part of that. Like, oh, the big network didn't want my show. So what? You know what I mean? Like, so I'm not really phased by. certain things that I used to be. And then also, if you're going to be an artist of any value,

you really have to guard and cultivate your humility. And nothing contributes to that like a solid failure. So, yeah, now when I feel I'm like, oh, cool, the next thing I do will be better. If that's how you feel about failure, are you as, are you as, I don't know, unfazed by success? Is it kind of the same deal? Oh, that's a great question. Yeah, because you want to be, right? You know, if somebody tells me I'm the worst thing that ever happened,

and that happens sometimes, I have access to the Internet. I have children. You know, like, if someone says that to you, it's not true, you know? By the same token, if someone tells you, you're the best thing that ever happened. Also, not true. Right. So I just try to hold it all. lightly, keep putting one foot in front of the other, be kind. You can't control the outcome.

In a moment, we'll get to the Beliefs Round, and Rob explains why the second decade of his marriage has been better than the first. Round three. Last round, three, more cards. One, two, three. This is Beliefs, I should say. This is the big Beliefs round stuff that shapes the way you see the world. You still have a skip and a flip. Don't have to use them. Okay. One, two, or three. Two. Two. Was there a bedrock truth in your life that you found out was not true? Yeah.

I mean, it would be with my son Henry and the near simultaneous death of my brother-in-law. You know, my son died, and then my sister's husband died. and there was a very brutal humbling that happened in my immediate and extended family that taught me that, yeah, you just, you do not know what's coming down the pike. And your idea that things that you lean on and depend on and people that you kiss and change their diaper or, you know, in my sister's case, she didn't change her husband's diaper, but she held his hand, you know, in bed at night and they would. watch the wire, which is the equivalent. And we loved those people so much, and then they were gone, both of them. And so I think, yeah, I believe that everything will, you know, generally be all right, and things can't break that horribly in one direction and more than one at a time. I mean, you know, but of course it can, and it's very easy to flip on the news and, you know,

find stories that are exponentially worse than the one I just told you. You know, people lose entire families, you know, in an instant. And, you know, yeah, and that, and so that restructured sort of my grip on reality for sure. Yeah, I remember when I was little, I used to have this thing. I don't know. I always play, since I was a kid, I would play around with worst case scenarios. And I don't know what that says about me, but I would imagine that if something really bad happened, that I would then inoculate myself, that bad thing happening would mean that no other bad things would happen.

And for some reason, that gave me solace. And then you grow up and you realize, oh, that totally is not true. It's not like I fulfilled my quotient of bad things and now I'm protected. Well, I would love to go back. I'd like to time travel to that sweet little girl and hold her hands and look in her eyes and say, you're wrong. You cannot depend on that belief. Then I would take her for ice cream.

Yeah. So it's not pure, pure monstrosity. Oh, God. Okay. Three new cards, stolen beliefs. Yes, one, two, or three? Two. Two.

Is there anything in your life that has felt predestined? I do feel, it's not, I don't feel predestined, but I do feel very lucky that I am doing for a career what I wanted to do as a child. I feel very, very lucky. You know, for example, the premiere of Deadpool and Wolverine was at Lincoln Center. To get there, I had to walk by Juilliard, which I auditioned for in 1995, and I didn't make it past the first round. Like I did my, you know, 12th night monologue, and they were like, thank you. And then now I walked by there and, you know, waved at the window as I walked into the Deadpool and Wolverine premiere, you know. And so that was an interesting through line and how great.

Thank you, Juilliard, for not accepting me. Not that I'm not saying it's not a great school. I'm not saying that wonderful people haven't come out of there. But, you know, that was one blow I had to absorb as a youngster. And, you know, you got to absorb, you know, a lake of those things. If you have a big crazy dream that you're following, you got to put a straw in that lake and sip down to your toes. Was that a metaphor? I'm counting.

But what? So I'm going to lead us back to this question because if you don't, like, not feeling like anything is predestined leads me to the next question, which is, is there? But is that even a concept that resonates with you, the idea of fate, of things, of a pattern of things happening in the way they were supposed to happen? I mean, I'm imagining sort of like a laser or perhaps a thin, long, but not disgusting tentacle coming out of my forehead and going miles into the future, right? Okay. The utility of the tentacle is that it can wrap around something way ahead of you and then reel back in and pull you towards it. Or perhaps if it's a laser, it has a tractor beam element, except you're getting pulled forward. So I do think it is useful to cast your mind and your heart forward towards things because that works.

I don't know why, but that has real value. So you can exert some influence. You know, it's not totally up to you. Again, the meteor that I've fantasized about hitting my house could one day hit me on my bicycle. And then, you know, there's no more premieres at Lincoln Center, for me at least. Maybe they'll do an opera about it because that's kind of a sort of a cool concept. But, you know. But it feels like chance.

Things are chance more than. You know what it's like is like curling. You can throw the cheese stone, I believe it's called. And God knows where it's going to go. You can gently influence by running after it in your bowling shoes and polishing the ice with your broom. of it. You know what I mean? Yeah. That's about, that's how much influence we can exert is a guy with a broom in Duluth. Yeah. I'm into that. Yeah. Okay. We are on the last set of questions. Last set of cards. Okay. One, two, or three. Three, please. Do you think people can really change?

Yeah, I do think that people can really change. I have changed. My wife and I just, celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary. We've been together for 20 years. And I've really enjoyed the second decade of our marriage more than the first. And the mantra I've tried to employ, and that I repeat to myself, is old dog, new tricks. You can always be learning. You can always be sort of tending the flame of your humility. And it's always good to apologize. It's always good to examine your own behavior. And so if I do something stupid or selfish around or toward one of my children,

I can apologize. I can say, you know what? I, uh, that wasn't even about you. I was thinking about something from work and I was tired and, and you, and you got caught in the crossfire. And I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that. And kids love that, you know, and I enjoy doing it. So you won the game, Rob Delaney. Thank you.

So you get this prize. Yay. The prize is a trip in our memory time machine. So you go back in this time machine and you get to revisit one moment from your past. This is a moment you wouldn't change anything about. You would just like to spend a little more time there. Which moment do you choose? Well, I'm going to try not to cry for radio,

but it would be taking a nap in my son's hospital room while he took a nap when he would fall asleep in his hospital bed because he was two when he died and, you know, two-year-old still nap. So in the afternoon, you know, if we'd been doing whatever we were doing in the morning and had lunch and nap time rolled around, you know, I'd set him up for his nap.

And, you know, we were usually in a chemo ward and I would lie down on the bed that they have for the parent in the room there. and put on a little music and take a nap with him, and we would sleep in the same room, and we would dream together and be there. That's what I would pick. Rob Delaney, I'm so glad I got to talk with you again.

It's been such a pleasure. Rob Delaney, actor, writer, comedian, Henry's dad. You can see him in Deadpool and Wolverine. Rob, thank you. Thank you so much. If you want more from Rob Delaney, we've got a bonus question with him for our Wild Card Plus segment this week.

What feels unreachable to you? I guess any guarantee of peace or happiness or health, you know. Really? Yeah. You can listen to that bonus episode and every one of our episodes, sponsor-free, when you sign up for Wildcard Plus at plus.npr.npr.org slash wildcard. Next week on Wildcard, Jeff Goldblum plays the game. It was an experience.

Memories like the car, da, da, da, da. Or there's a jazz tune that goes, I remember you, you're the one who made my dreams come true. This episode was produced by Lee Hale and edited by Dave Blancher. It was fact-checked by Ida Porosad, Barclay Walsh, and Will Chase. It was mastered by Robert Rodriguez. Wildcard's executive producer is Beth Donovan. Our theme music is by Romteen Arabuoy.

You can reach out to us at Wildcard at npr.org. Please do. We love to hear from you. We'll shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. See you then.