Transcript of The Best of SBS: Ted Danson New

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Welcome to South Beach I am thrilled. We're not in South Beach this time. We're in Los Angeles, and Ted Danson is here, and he just described himself correctly as dangerously sexy because of the amount that I was sweating, which I may still be sweating. But I'm thrilled to have you here. Thank you for making the time.

You're welcome. I'm still working on the hearing back what I said. Maybe I shouldn't have said that.

You are dangerously sexy. No, you are dangerously sexy.

This is an undercurrent.

It was an undercurrent. When I came here, my wife referred to you as a Silver A Silver Fox. Nice. Yes. You know this about yourself.

Sexy guy with arthritis. That's what a Silver Fox is.

Didn't you start in soap operas? I did. Okay, so come on. It's not like you don't know you're dangerously sexy.

No, here Can I just quickly tell you, it was Somerset. It was a spin off of Another World, and I was hired to be the town... I'm trying to think of another word besides Coxman, but he was the town outrageous, sweep people off. And the first day, I sat down opposite this table where I was supposed to be seducing this woman who had been on the show for years, and this was my first day. I was beyond anxious. I had taken Valium the night before, and I was, Valium makes me sweat.

This? Yes, like that. This? Because I'm just profusely... Give me your handkerchief. You offered me a handkerchief before.

This is yours. Thank you. It's very snappy with your outfit.

This is very intimate, too. I am using a handkerchief that you have never used before because of the amount that I'm sweating. I'm sorry to interrupt you.

No, please. No. Anyway, I was so nervous, speaking of sweat, that this woman who was very calm and been doing this for years, and this was my first day on volume, just having an anxiety attack. It was podcast news sweat. It was just pouring sheets of sweat. And the producer went, No, he's not a leading man. We're going to make him the town sleeze. So I turned all my friends into the Mafia. That was my role.

But this is difficult. First role, if you're already nervous about just starting your career and they ask you to go sensual right off the bat.

Yeah, horrible. I don't do sensual. I do jokes about sensual.

But you started... That's not where you started. You do that now. You've learned how to do that now.

No, but even cheers. You think Sam Malone, da, da, da, da. I only make jokes about being sexual. I do good sexy jokes. I don't do sexy.

How do you do with fear and insecurity? When you started your career, did you get over that?

Obviously, you've done-I never got over it on the soap opera. It was just a nightmare because you can't be funny. There's not a real naturalistic funny moment, at least back then. It was also, to this day, when you started to count 5, 4, 3, 2, I'd get anxious because that was soap opera. Really? Yeah, 5, 4, 3. And don't mess up. It wasn't live, but you had only a few minutes of buffer on either side, so it might as well have been live to get it into the computer.

How did you get into acting? What's the story at Stanford in terms of how it is that you made your path into what became a lifelong devotion?

You have to start with basketball for me because I went to a prep school called Kent, 300 Boys, Kent, Connecticut. And basketball saved my life. I was not an academic. I was a fish out of water. I came from Arizona. And then there I was back east, prep schools, preppy, and it was just not my comfort place. So I was faking my way through school. And basketball came along, and a basketball coach who passed away a couple of years ago, Jim Wood, and just saved my life. I so respected him. If I got into trouble at school, no one would talk to me. They'd talk to Jim to come to me.

Sports are so good for confidence.

If you're good at them. It also set me up for life, which was, it's not about you, Ted. It's about the team. It's about the team playing well. It's not just about you playing well. And that translated into acting. So I went to Stanford. Having passionately loved basketball at Kent, we won the League Championship, which in the big scope means nothing because there were of us, so any decent-side high school would have just kicked her ass. So I went to Stanford with my friend Dwayne, and we decided to try out for a freshman basketball at Stanford, which was the same year that Lou Alcender was a freshman at UCL, just to give you the sense of where the game was going.

Were you walking on? Were you a scholarship player?

No, no, no, no. Oh, good Lord. I didn't even walk I walked to the edge of the court, looked around and went, Oh, shoot. Turned around, didn't even-Not good enough.

You're looking at the court and they're too good, and you realize right away.

Yeah, I was a relatively minor league okay forward at 6: 02. The guards who were on the floor at Stanford were 6: 05 and really fast. It was clear. It wasn't even like a toss-up. I just turned around and lost that dream. And about nine months later was working up the nerve to ask this lady named Beth, who was working in the cafeteria in the freshman dorm at Stanford. And I finally asked her out for a cup of coffee, and she said, yes. And about three minutes into the cup of coffee, either... Well, she wasn't making this up, but I think it maybe came to a relief to her that she... And she said that she had an audition to go to, and goodbye. I said, Oh, can I come with you? Wanting to hang out more and to stay in the room for this audition, for this play. Obviously, I had to do something, and I made one thing up. I can't believe I did this. I heard people laugh. It was like, Oh, wait a minute. It's not basketball, but this is interesting. I got the smallest role in the play that I could get, Bertold Breck play.

And it was just a light bulb went off. I moved my station wagon to the back of the theater, slept in the back of the station wagon, and just never left the theater.

Slept in the back of the station wagon.

Yeah. Well, it was either that or sleep in this... I was in this pre-animal house fraternity at Stanford, but it was animal house, and it was just almost unbearable. So I was sleeping in the parking lot of the fraternity anyway.

For how long were you living like that?

Just about four months before this came out, before I found theater. But Saturday nights, all the people who were freshmen or sophomores or new to the fraternity slept on this huge sleeping porch on mattresses with sleeping bags. Someone would come in and basically throw up on you because they had been drinking all night. So it just was no.

But you wanted to be around something else that felt like team, right? If sports saved your life, you now see this other thing.

All of a sudden, the play is the thing. You're a part of an ensemble. You're part of a team, and you're trying to put this play over in a way that the playwright and the director wanted it to be. And it's not just you hogging the ball. You learn how to work as a team, as an ensemble. And that just, to this day, appeals to me.

But you hadn't considered it before you were chasing seeing a woman from a coffee shop? Correct. And then you're immediate, you walk in and you get the validation of applause, laughter, you're good at this, and you're like... Because that's how it happened. I'm a writer first, and the way that it happened for me in high school is that people told me for the first time I was good at something, so I'm like, I should keep doing this.

Yeah. I think in hindsight, this is why I'm enjoying doing a podcast. This is why I love talking to in this format is because if I'm doing a team sport for me acting or a project of some kind, I relate to people and love it. But otherwise, I'm a bit of a wallflower. I don't collect friends. If you said, Hey, let's go get a beer, I'd go, Eh. I love finding out what makes people tick, and I think that's what acting is also. You're trying to reflect the human condition. And so I'm really curious what it is to be you.

Well, the podcast you do, where everyone knows your name with Woody Harrelson sometimes, that is a long conversations podcast that you were drawn to because Strike, and somebody asked me during the strike, and I went, Oh, well. You weren't working. In other words, there was no work. No work. I need some feedback, some creative curiosity, stimulation.

Right. And then they said, You need a co-host. We need a co-host, and we thought of Woody. Then as soon as Woody's name came into it, it was like, Oh, I want to do this. I want to hang out with Woody. I haven't seen him for 30 years in a deep way. We'd bump into each other. But to hang out and find out, who are you now, Woody Harrelson? Where have you been? Who have you been friends with? Share, share, share.

I would assume that that would bring much friendship, though. I would assume if you're like that, that why are you saying wallflower and I don't do much in the way of-Not wallflower.

All right, let me break that down. I would rather go home to Mary. I love hanging around guys. They're very relaxing, but they're not really where it's at, really. The woman is where it's at.

Deeper.

I don't mean just boy/girl thing. I just mean women are- Just deeper, better, stronger.

Yes.

Challenging. You grow. Whereas I could hang around and not change very much and have a very relaxed fun time with God.

Here we can talk for a while, though. So Mary changed your life, right? And showed you this, my wife has done this for me, just showed me so gently, so many of my blind spots. When you talk about growth, when you talk about the growth that comes with love. Taught me how to love better because I'd like to be better for her. Yes.

And the love part is so important because love means that she's willing to look at her stuff. So when she encourages you to look at your stuff. It comes in you. Even though you may resist and get pissed, you know it's coming from love, and so you grumbly turn the corner.

It's funny that you say that, though, because I do resist sometimes and get pissed. I'm often wrong, but she respects it because if I were a pushover, if I were a total pushover, even if I'm wrong, that would not be attractive. Even though I can be dumb with my resistance on occasion, sit in my resistance, be in it and be like, I'm being dumb here, I can get away with it, at least in part because I will circle back around. And generally, because I love her and because I trust her, I just so often, and I hesitate to say this because I know how men sometimes hear this and they see weakness in it, but I so often just know I'm wrong because she's a little bit wiser than me about how pure love can be. And there's a lot of learning I can there.

Yeah. I'm funny. I never get angry if she's wrong. If she's wrong, it's, Oh, look at that.

Oh, you only get angry when you're wrong, when you know you're wrong.

When I know I'm wrong, then it's like, I don't want to be stuck being this person that you just told me I was, and you were right. I am that person, and I don't want to be that. So no, you're wrong.

That's funny. Then how long does it take you to circle back around and be like, Yeah, I got to say I'm sorry on that one?

Usually, it's like I go around the corner, just however long that corner is a day or whatever, or sometimes it's a lesson I have to learn over and over again. But it's like, Ted, do you really think that Mary Steenberg isn't madly in love with you and just finds you delightful and all of that. And I have to go, No. So why aren't you? I can talk to myself because her love for me is so blatantly clear.

How did that all become evident to you. I've heard from a mutual friend of ours that the way that you met, the way that you came together was an confusing story or a good story.

Yeah, I don't know, confusing. But anyway, sorry. We met three Two or three times over the years, Hollywood, let's say, Henry Winkler's birthday party barbecue in the back of his yard. Hey, I love your work. I love your work. Married to different people in passing. I auditioned also for a film that Mary was the star of called Cross Creek. Marty Ritt was directing it. We both remember the audition where I came in to audition to play her husband. And thank God I didn't get it because I was so half baked. She wouldn't have even really seen me. Then at the end of Cheers, I was offered this film, and she had had her on this film, tracking it for a couple of years, the script. She came to San Francisco to have... We were both working. She just finished something, and I was wrapping something up in San Francisco, and we had this dinner, which they called a chemistry dinner, or can these people get along or whatever. I remember, because I'm shy, basically. And if a woman is beautiful, I don't know where to look. I'm looking everywhere except at them. I went, wait, we're about to work together.

I'm being paid to look at her. What are you crazy? And I looked at her and it was like, Oh, my God. She has one of those smiles. It's like a thousand-watt bulb inside her head. She's just... I She's just captivating. Still captivates me. And then we went in different ways, and then we came back to shoot it. And I was a hot mess. I was publicly a hot mess. I was in the news, a hot mess. And I realized that... I was working very hard on myself. The same time, the surfacey part was the press. The real part was the work I was doing on myself to not be a hot mess anymore and to really stop being a liar and start becoming an emotionally mature adult. I worked very hard on that, or I don't think she would have even seen me. But I was at the point when we met where I was like, Oh, Clearly, I'm not capable of having a relationship. I can mess up any relationship. She was having the same thought, having just broken up with somebody she'd been with for four years. Her phrase was, I know I look like I should be good at a relationship, but clearly I'm not.

So we met with that low expectations of ourselves, and we'll be friends, and I admire you hugely, and we're going to make this film together. At one point, one Sunday, I went, What can we do as a couple that would be good for the film? Because you always, as actors, avail yourself. You share that part of yourself that will be good for them to know for the part. You selectively share stuff. I found this canoe place. This was in Mendocino. There's this called the Big River, I think. Yeah, the Big River in Mendacino. This is a big tidal river, just gorgeous. And there was this canoe place where you can hire a canoe. And this one had a pontoon on the side. It was all wood. It was just gorgeous. And we took a picnic. Some other folks came, but we left them way behind. And that moment of her sitting in front of me and us paddling for four hours, in hindsight, we both talked about this moment, that we would be silent for 15 minutes, just looking at sea otters and blue herons and going around the next curve, or we chatted, and we would paddle in complete...

We were synchronized in our paddle. Everything was effortless and gorgeous.

And the rest of your life at this time is tumult, right? Right.

Tumult, but I wasn't confused. I knew where the problem was, me, and I was I had been working on it for a year, so I didn't feel lost. I just was at the bottom, but knew it and was okay with being at the bottom. By the time we came back, I think there was like, Oh, my.

It's not about chemistry and acting. It's not the chemistry of making the scene right anymore. It's about like, Oh, that felt… But you were probably more ready for it than you had been in a while, right? You're welcoming something because of the work that you're doing that prepares you for it.

I wasn't confused where the problem was. The problem was me.

Well, you gave me a lot to chew on there, so let's start with shy, an odd career choice for someone who is shy. And I'm surprised to hear you say that you're shy.

When you think about it, In life, you make a mistake and it's like, shoot, I have to live with this. I have to think about this for a while. If you make a mistake, you go take two, take three until you get it right. So it's very comforting in a way. Also, you have permission. You're supposed to be an idiot because of the character or angry because of the character or whatever. And that was-The character allows you to hide, I guess, too. Or to explore parts of yourself that you weren't willing to do in life. I was raised very... My parents, I had unconditional love, but we all have foibles. And one of my mother's was, she was brilliant. If the line is positive and below it, negative feelings and emotions and thoughts, she was great at the positive. She was so willing and enthusiastic and caring and nurturing and all of those things. But if she had anything negative, a dark thought herself, it would just wipe her out. So I was trained to be very sensitive, very loving, very caring, all those things. But if you can't allow the dark, your light becomes very limited because you need to really realize how dark you are to choose to not be dark.

Then it's something of value, I think, as a person. I just went off on such a tangent.

It's okay. Good luck bringing me back. No, I'm going to try and bring you back because the shyness still eludes me, though, because that you haven't shaken it. You've been in the public eye.

Oh, but here, I was 6 When I was 12, I was 6 foot and 120 pounds. I was so skinny, missing a chest muscle from birth. So I was such a sight. I want to go swimming, Ted? Oh, no. My knee hurts. I was so unsure of myself.

You had skin stuff, too.

I have skin stuff, too. Now I'm making a lot of money off my psoriasis. Sorry. I'm doing it. Turned it into profit.

Yeah. Nice. Good work. But that'll make you insecure. I remember when I was in high school and stuff, wearing gym shorts. When it would get cold, the skin stuff would get bad. Yeah.

There were many reasons. I was shy, and I was I didn't go through the high school thing. For whatever reason, my father, the anthropologist, archeologist, was more off on that tangent. I never had a dad going, We are men, thing. So I gravitated more towards my mother's thought process than my father's.

And she was a big influence, right? She was the big influence.

Yeah, very much My father's well, just different. And he was always clear how much he loved me and proud of me and all that stuff. So I was overly sensitized, male, skinny. So I was really unsure of myself. Just a little parentheses, when I went back to a 25th or 15th reunion at Kent School for Boys, my prep school, for about a day, I was very rock and roll because of cheers. Everyone and da da da da da. Wow, cheers. Then they got bored with that very quickly. I found myself the second day walking behind this big group of people who were now over the fact that I was playing Sam Malone. I was walking by myself, and I had this realization that I almost had to become a celebrity to earn the right to walk through the door. For whatever complex reasons in my upbringing, in my whatever, whatever. I was that unsure of myself. I have to say, I love the fact that people know me from my work, and I have the excuse to say hello now.

It's a great place to hide. It's a great It's a place to put your identity, too, except when you have to really look at yourself when you're at bottom and you're like, Well, wait a minute. I don't want to be that guy. But you put something next to shy. You said I was a liar.

Yeah, I misbehaved in my second marriage. Yeah. So I was that guy. Instead of emotionally dealing with what was going on and being truthful and going through fear, through anger, through whatever, and being real, I would be surfacely nice and sweet and kind and out the back door. A little bit from my upbringing. But yeah, that was my solution. Clearly not viable. I luckily realized that and was able to change that before I met Mary.

But from your upbringing, what were you seeing in your upbringing that-I don't think my father dealt with...

I don't know the out-back-door part, but he was not emotionally available. My mother was. My father was not that. But yes, that was hard. It was hard and also in a funny way, as far as my relationship with my daughter. Amazing, because I think if my wife hadn't had the stroke, I would have been the husband who was a little bit, I'll follow your lead in raising. I'll follow your lead. You change the diapers. I'll learn how, maybe, or something. But I wasn't. From day one, I was the caretaker, which made for an amazing bond. Between us.

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Or does that not matter? The roots don't matter as long as you get to a better place that doesn't feel like a hole.

I think the roots matter. Some of my roots are things that I won't talk about because they involve other people with your blessing. But it was that how you deal with your emotions or not, I think, is the root. I think if you're familiar with your anger and your dark thoughts and you allow them and realize not to be afraid of them and can communicate them.

Treat them as information. Treat your fear as information.

I think whenever you suppress stuff, even emotions, they become secretive. I think the secrets are the the a trap you fall into.

I would I would say relatively recently married in the last five years, but one of the things that love has lubricated is access to my feelings. I didn't even know where it is that I was pushing things down or repressing them or not good at it.

I think that's why you probably found each other, because there's a trust of, I will look at my stuff and I I trust you to look at your stuff so that when you talk about my stuff, I will look at it. But if you're not going to look at your stuff and you point to my stuff, then it's like, Well, wait a minute. You're not trustworthy. This is going to feel mean-spirited. And I didn't have that until Mary. It was so besides being smitten, which is wonderful, and to this day, I'm smitten. But that trust of we're on the same path, the as far as growing, each person growing, is so important because if you don't have that trust, then you go, Well, I'm not going to share that. Clearly, it's not safe. So what do I do with that?

Oh, it can be used as a weapon. If your relationship has some dysfunction in it, yes, of course, your vulnerability could be used against you. The fact that you're still talking about being smitten and the fact that you have been given a new lease on life here, what a blessing to find that when you found it.

I don't think that word is used lightly. It is a blessing. It is divine. I really do feel like, I don't know what my end of life experience will be like, but if I have the moment to be thoughtful, I will feel so blessed that I got to feel what it is to be human, that that circle of love that zings around. It's not constant. You break that little love between you and your partner zings around. And at times when we're angry with each other, not angry, it's fearful. I'm really going all over the place. But when we're in love, both of us in the space of loving, it is magical. It is the most powerful, astounding divine. It is heaven on Earth. If one of you is fearful and the other one's in love, that's fine, living in the loving place, because then you go, It's all right. It's okay. I get it. I see you scared, and I have empathy, and it'll be all right. If you're both in fear, then it's, No, what about me? No, what about me? No, what about me first? You get into that fearful place. Then that current, that electrical love current, just disappears.

Completely, and it's shocking. I think we see that we have so much of the zinging circle of love that when it's gone, it's like, Oh, no, no, we have to fix this. We have to figure away you first, or whatever. We handle it pretty quickly.

But to be able to grow old with her, too.

Because old is fearful. Old is like there is diminishment. You have to find a way to spend that to gratitude, which you should, and there's a lot to be grateful for. But that diminishing thing is scary. To not have to do that alone brings tears to my eyes.

And this is your happiest, right? You have lived enough things to have learned what it is that you want, so this is your happiest time, correct? Even Even if it's diminished, even if you feel mortality, that, too, a blessing.

The mortality is, if you're into that fearful thing, then it's horrible. If you're into love, the mortality is actually interesting. I actually use the phrase, and then you die, to snap me out of fear. Oh, my God, the world is falling apart.

But also it keeps you present. It keeps you grateful in the moment for every moment you're given.

Definitely.

If you're present and aware and conscious of what a blessing to be in love across from this woman who is going to, We're going to walk each other home.

Yeah. When the world is full of, it's in our face because of technology and social media and all of that. The world is always full of suffering, always has been, and violence and horrible things and all of that. I I think probably always has been part of humanity, but it's never been in our face quite as much as it is now. Sometimes I get overwhelmed with it. It's overwhelming. Yeah. I will talk about later or whatever. I've been an ocean activist and part of a group that's amazing, and we're doing this amazing stuff all over the world, which will be undone in a snap of the fingers by climate change. Everything gets undone by climate change. And then you see people not believing it or pretending not to believe in it or whatever, and you go, Oh, dear God. I become overwhelmed by the sadness and fear of because we're not going to step up to the plate. My little comforting thought is, Ted, and then you die. It's not like if you save the planet, you're going to get an immortality card. No. So just do the best you can, and then you die.

And try Try not to be hopeless. Try to be hopeful. But the fear can grab you, as can the facts. We will talk about all the stuff you do with your activism to save the oceans. I'd like to talk to you a little bit, though, about your career. Is the thing that people want to talk to you most about, Sam Malone and Cheers, or is it something- It's changing a little bit, thanks to a mutual friend of ours, Mike Schur.

I have a lot of young 12 to 18-year-olds coming up because of The Good Place, which still has a life. A show that I think, I don't know if it's on Netflix now, but it was an NBC show, and it was on for four years. It's about how to live a purposeful life. It's about ethics wrapped in a nine-year-old fart sense of humor and with visual magic. So it's just amazing. But you're talking about ethics.

What a great place for you to connect with fans for them, not Not to say, Cheers was a special show, one of the best ever made. But the idea that you would have these life wisdoms that you now have and that you would have young people when you talk about hope connecting in a place like, no, that show has a cult following. That show speaks to me because you guys were doing something deeper. I don't know you can do a lot better than that with television.

It makes me so happy and so grateful that I got to be part of that.

So cheers, though, when you're walking through the halls with your high school reunion friends, they to talk about what there. What are the connection points for you?

For five minutes, because then they want to talk about themselves, rightfully so. Right. But I don't know. That is a long time ago, cheers. I'm still swimming in the water that Cheers created. It was such goodwill. It was so funny. When people see me in the street, there's a smile. It's amazing life that I get to live because basically people smile at me because they're remembering a funny moment that I was part of, and they were part of. I get the goodwill of Cheers to this day. But then now the conversation is a little bit more about deeper the good place.

When you think, I've read you say that comedy is worthless if it does not come from sadness, which I thought- I'm worthless as That's probably something I shouldn't say.

Just pure funny can be also funny. I love a good joke. But my sweet spot is, yes, humor that comes out of... The funny comes out of the human condition, not just the joke. That it comes out, it reflects some part of the human condition, which includes sadness. Sam Malone was a recovering alcoholic. Sam Malone will be lonely forever because he can't really commit. All of those things were a nice, sad human place to work from and then be funny.

It is hard to explain to people that 80 million people were watching that show on one of three networks. It's hard to get your head around what NBC Thursday nights were.

Yeah, that's true. It was different. You have to give a shout out to the Bill Cosby show because Bill Cosby and the show, and I know we're trained now I should try to refrain from talking about Bill Cosby, but his show was absolutely brilliant. It was such a powerhouse. It dragged the entire evening of shows behind it.

What was your life like back then, though? I don't imagine you were in any way prepared for the Fame that came with that, were you? Not that anybody ever would be under any circumstances.

Yeah, I mean, it probably was... Fame is always misleading leading to some degree. It's interesting that I didn't do... I think partly my growing up came maybe the last year of cheers, and I knew that I would need to stop doing cheers and really take a real good look at myself. I think playing Sam Malone, and it was very rock and roll, and people loved it, and all of that celebrity-like thing was not necessarily conducive to wanting to look at yourself.

Why would you?

Why would I? I don't know. We were all so smart enough to know where we were because of Lessen Glenn-Charles and Jimmy Burrows. It wasn't like we were an ensemble that was created by brilliant writing and brilliant directing. We always remembered that. And so group, we were experienced celebrity-ness as a group, which was, I think, very comforting.

Yes, but some of those people were behind the scenes. You were the face of- The actors were the face.

But what I mean is we were a group of actors. We always were a group.

And what was happening in the last year that made you finally take a good hard- All that stuff that I'm dancing I'm not going to bring around.

Okay.

Well, what is okay to talk about and what is not okay to talk about?

Some of the things I'm not going to talk about that are some of the root things. But my misbehavior, and realizing that... I guess I can talk about some things. I had an affair that made me realize at the end of that affair, at the end of that affair, I wanted to stop being a liar. I had two thoughts. I wanted to stop being a liar, and I wanted to be creative. 98% of the rest of my life, I wanted to just be creative. I came back and I worked on that.

Why were you a liar, though?

To allow myself not to deal with my emotions and to go out the back door. To start telling the truth. And if you don't tell the truth about the dark in your life, which we talked about, then you're just... It's more of a façade. My silhouette is not that much different. I was nice and kind and charming. I'm still nice and kind and to some degree, charming or whatever. That hasn't changed, but it's now real because I choose to be that because I know I have dark and I know I have light and now choose to be light.

Why were you pushing down your emotions or not aware of them? Was it just being male? Was it just growing up in a different time? You don't talk about your feelings. What were you doing to avoid everything that was roiling inside of you emotionally? And why were you avoiding it?

I think because I looked at them, two models in my life, my father and my mother, and I went, I have total respect and love my father. Oh, my God. Truly. I'm so blessed by that unconditional love I got from my family. But I looked at my father and went, I don't know. My mother seems more emotionally real. She was emotionally real, but only for the light divine stuff of life, not the dark, scary stuff.

I see similarities in my own upbringing and what it is that you're talking about. I had a father that They're exiles, so there's a lot of fear in the house because they come from Cuba, and basically, you have to work to get to freedom, and that's what we're doing. We're going to work, work, work to get to freedom, and you're just scared all the time. You're in a different country.

Because you know what it's like not to have.

My father There wasn't a lot of joy there, affable enough, but joy in the house. Then my mother was very good on sunshine when everything was good. But there was fear in the house. How could there not be? I see a bit of a mirror in what it is that you're describing. Right. You were beginning to say what you do with the feelings as it relates, so this is how your dad was and this is how your mom was, and so you would just not deal with things?

I went my mom route, but my mom route was just dealing with half the equation, which was joy, not sadness, depression, fear, anger, bitter, all that stuff we don't like to admit that we are as human beings, but we are. And my father, I noticed, didn't deal with it.

Can you explain to me what it is that you got from therapy? You mentioned clinics. I don't know how deep you're going there in terms of just really understanding yourself so that you can find out how to best love yourself, right? Because that's where you got to get.

Just understanding where all of this came from and go, Oh, I get it. And now I can have compassion for why you thought you Why you thought this was a good way to go in life. You can be gentle with yourself. Yeah, you can go, Oh, yeah, I can see where that came from. I understand why, and it does not serve me, and I can change.

Curb your enthusiasm is something, and forgive me for the awkward transition.

That sent me back. That was a very bad time.

No, it's an awkward transition for me because I was pressing on some stuff there. I'm trying to take you to a happier and a funnier place. Curb your enthusiasm. I could never tell. Obviously, when I'm watching it, it's wildly creative and fun, but I couldn't be sure if Larry David's way of being made for a joyful set, the living, the playing with people seemed like it would be fun, but it also seemed like he could be unusual in ways that would be demanding.

No, it was a joyful, funny, giggling set because he's such a misanthroppe. Did I use that word correctly? I think I did. Yes, you did. He's so bad, so inappropriate, that it's very funny to you in the room while you're doing it. Everybody's job basically is to push Larry into the corner so that Larry comes bursting out even more inappropriately Larry.

Okay. Because it seems like he has trouble with happy You seem to not have as much trouble with happy.

Yeah, but I think that's a tickle him in the ribs a little bit, and he'll... And he is in life, certain things that he makes use of in the show. But what he leaves out is the heart of Gold that Larry does. He is so faithfully a great friend. Most of the people on that show were people who came up with him as comedians when he starting out. People he likes and loves, people who like and love him. Mary once said, my wife once said to him, If I ever was really in, for some reason, some deep trouble, he'd be one of the first people I would come to. That's a pretty cool thing to say about somebody. And that's not the Larry, character Larry. That's Larry David.

What can you tell me about that experience that perhaps people don't know?

Larry, just know. I'll tell you what happened to me. Sorry. No, no, please. I had done Cheers and Becker and a couple of other half hour attempts after those two. And I felt like, oh, shoot, I've stayed too long at the half-hour comedy party. Other people are doing it better than I am. I don't find myself funny, and it's just not working. And it feels like we're trying to always redo Sam Malone or something. I actually went to Jeffrey Katzenberg and said, I don't want to do TV anymore. Put me in a film, anything. You don't have to pay me. It can be a one day here, there, or or whatever, but I want to start doing films again because TV is... Which is how I got to be in Saving Private Ryan, I think, came through Jeffrey and then Steven. But I was giving up funny. Then Larry started his show, and we actually watched the pilot in this attic in Martha's Vineyard. In his defense, there was no air conditioning, and the four or five people who were sitting around looking at it on his laptop, a couple of them fell asleep. And my reaction was, oh, jeez, I don't know if this is going to work, but I really like Larry.

Hey, Larry, Mary and I would be happy to play ourselves anytime you want. But truly walked away going, I don't know. And then it became this.

That's great.

First cult hit, then just massive hit. But he did invite us. And going back to work with him, which was so informal, it would be like, Bring your own clothes. It was almost, put your makeup in the car and then come, we'll shoot. No dressing rooms, feeling. It was like Look, comedy.

What freedom. My God.

It was and it rehabilitated my desire to look for the funny in life, to look for the giggle. Holy shit.

What a great thing to have. I didn't realize that must have been a period of great doubt for you to be looking back at your life and be like, I'm not funny anymore. And that was just based on a couple of things. It can be taken away after decades of success. It can be taken away with low ratings on the one next project.

Or just looking at myself and going, it wasn't just low. Low ratings removed the seductive part of, Oh, I have a job and they're paying me a lot. But it was me looking at myself and going, No. And I think I did want to... Because after Kerb really turned something around for me, and then damages came along, which is It's a different funny. I think making jokes, to this day, I don't like doing jokes. I panic. I start to sweat way more than you were.

The expectation of funny is a pressure you don't need. No. Surprising people with funny is much better.

Yes, exactly. Or buried in a tragedy, funny is even better.

That's dark. Yes. That's one of the best.

Yes, it is. I think what I was scared of was telling jokes, and still am. If somebody If I'm in a script and something's a joke, I say, Can we please not do this?

More subtle than that.

It's not that your joke isn't funny. It's just that I'm pouring sweat, making me nervous, making me anxious.

What a gift.

Yeah, it was. Yes, I credit Larry and Will to this day for turning something around in me. And then Damages and Bored to Death had a certain humor. Fargo, all of those things Because it is fun to be the stuff that's not just a light take on life, but digging deep on the dark side of life and be funny. It's just delicious.

What do you regard as the role that was the most fun for you among all of them? Because you've done film and you've done a lot of television. I couldn't believe that before Cheers, that you were on Taxi and Laverne and Shirley, and just basically, you had parts all over the '70s and '80s on just about every B. J. And the Bear. I love digging that one up. There are a lot of good ones there. What do you regard? Let's go through some of the characters. A character you enjoyed playing the most, a character that you are proudest of?

I have to say, and I think this is true, I don't want to do this by road, but I think I really, really do love what I'm doing at the moment, whatever that is. I really do. I'm a little bit of... I love going to work, first off. Just driving through a studio gate thrills me. Being around a crew, acting thrills me still. So even when I was doing things that weren't necessarily my sweet spot, like CSI was hard, but I loved the people, the actors and the directors and the writers. I loved the experience, but it wasn't funny. There was no looking for the humorous side. So that was hard. But even that I loved. So to answer your question, cheers in my early 30s to my mid-40s. It was a joy. It was to be a total idiot in a bar was just spectacular. It was so much fun, and it didn't hurt that it was very rock and roll, and people loved it.

And you knew it was good. You knew that what you were making was good.

We were We were aware that this was not... Well, I don't know if we were really viscerally aware that this doesn't happen all the time. But as soon as we started doing other things after cheer, he went, Oh, yeah.

Wait a minute. You didn't think it was always going to be cheers, did you? You thought you got to that success at your 30s. You think the next 40 years are also going to be that. It's just going to be a rocket ship. This is what happens when you do TV.

Not so. But then I love Becker. I love being a totally different voice, a grouchy, a little bit of a missing throat. Yeah, I loved everything. I loved Bored to Death. See, it's wonderful, and I'm so blessed that I've been around writing that is tackling some phase that I myself am going through. So the rock and roll, young, top of the world ma, thing of Shears was brilliant. Then I was a little older and a little grumpier maybe, or a little had some aches and pains. I was starting to be 50, so I was no longer an adolescent or able to play that thing. And along came Becker, so I could be that slightly grumpy, acerbic character, and it was fun. Bored to Death. Bored to Death was about a guy who doesn't want to be left out by the younger folks.

Mirrors, you'll grab from your life some places where you're- I am blessed that that has come along, that everything has come along to be that way. What do you think with the wisdom of now that you might do differently for the 11 years as a rock star that was Cheers? Looking back as an adult on who it is, nothing?

No. I mean, if you're talking about the wounds of that period in my life. But I mean, that even wounds are... I have many cringing moments in my life, but I don't wish them... It's almost like life tapping you on the shoulder. You need to work on this, kid. I'm going to keep tapping on your shoulder until you do. I wouldn't have missed any of those moments for the world because of where I get to be now.

You're absent regret.

Yeah, I really am. It doesn't mean that you can't point to a billion things and have me go, Oh, my God, what an asshole I was.

There is real peace in having gratitude for the pain that you had to endure in order to get to something. But not everyone has that. To have no regrets, no regrets because you're grateful for even the stuff that hurt because it made it into growth, that's unusual. I don't know if you wandered the Earth and asked a lot of people, Hey, where are you with this? That they'd say they have no regrets because they turned every pain into a gratitude.

Yeah, no regrets doesn't mean that you didn't do bad, stupid, wrongful, hurtful things that you wish you hadn't. But regret feels like... I don't think You get to do that to life. Life is this tube you go through, and you don't come out smelling like a rose. So there are tons of stuff where I'm not smelling like a rose, but I am grateful for my tube that I went through. See how I can spin damn near everything?

Well, good for you. I don't think that your piece or the way that what you're describing, I don't believe it's inauthentic. It doesn't mean that you don't have insecurities, but it means- Or fear or all of that. But it seems like you are both at peace with what life has brought you and who it is that it has formed you into through whatever the tribulations were.

Yeah, most of the time. When I am not, I am married to somebody who will go, You, where'd the gratitude go? Or somebody who will lovingly go, Hey, come back. Don't be over there in fear. It really is true that in life, I think... No, I don't think. I feel positive that you're either in a space of love, loving, lovingness or fear. It doesn't mean that we all don't dip into fear. But if you make decisions out of fear, which leads to anger, you know. Sadness is on the love side. I'm okay with sadness, but fear and anger, it's not a great place to live and make decisions out of.

No, I think a lot of people live there. I do.

I think. Big chunk.

You have figured out a certain number of things that someone needs in the pie chart in order to be happy, not just the things you're talking about now, but that feeling you're talking about if still you love driving into the studio a lot. If you're spending... If you... 98% of your time is spent on creativity because you still love doing that. So many people listening to this are in jobs that don't fill their soul that way. I don't know what I would have to put in front of you in order to say, But that is a thing in my life that makes me unhappy because I haven't made my life exactly what I wanted to be at this point.

I think it's easy to chalk off what maybe you and I both, but certainly, I'll speak for myself, you could chalk off what I'm saying as, Well, yeah, you got a lot of money, you're married, you have kids, you're a celebrity. Of course, you feel the way you do. But I grew up in Arizona around ranchers, farmers, Hopi, Navajo. I have known many people who have very little material who live the same way, who live contented in a space of loving and nurturing-ness. I don't think you can pick any... Well, that's bullshit to some degree, because if you're trying to survive, literally-Correct.

Yes, that will consume your happiness. It'll eat it up if you're always worried about money.

Pretty hard to be philosophical. Or eating or not having a bomb dropped on you. I get that. And so once again, when you look at your life and you go, why? If you try to take credit for why you are here in this space of blessings. I think you just have to say, Thank you. I don't know why or how I got to be so blessed, but thank you.

Did you live in a grateful household? Yes.

My parents look for beauty and joy all the time.

Your mother- And my father, sorry, as an archeologist, an anthropologist, his whole being was this life is not just about you.

There's a lot that's come before us as you sit there digging up bones in an archeological dig, and there's a lot that will hopefully come after us. This time is not about you. It's about your stewardship of what you've been given. I mean, that to me is what an anthropologist feels or knows. I had that, and then I had my mother, who was very much church-oriented and mostly in a healthy way. I like to... This is my two sense about my mother. I think it became even more of a spiritual path than just a church path. I had Unconditional love, which is if you don't have that, not everybody does growing up, that's such a step up in life.

Yeah, to have that support, a united support, it can help in a number of different ways. You lost your mother when you were 57 years old, and I just lost my little brother. It's my first experience with grief. Oh, ouch.

Can't even go there.

It has turned my life upside down I would say in the last couple of years, last year, I've had a great deal of difficulty with just summoning enthusiasm for anything because I did not recognize or know or have experience with what grief is. When you lost your mother- I can't even begin to even say, I understand.

I don't. When I think about my sister who is alive, passing, it almost feels like, Okay, stop the world, game over. Too When you talk about access to your feelings, though, and being 57 years old when you were more adult and had more access to who you are, now these feelings come with your mother, and you do what with them?

What is there to be learned in grief? What can you tell me?

I'll tell you what, I don't think I understood mother until after she died. She came home and chose to die at home. She had pneumonias, she couldn't shake, and they wanted to put her in the hospital with tubes, and she went, No. It was an amazing moment. She had terrible laryngitis from the pneumonium, the aspirating, and all of that, so she could barely whisper, croak, and you couldn't barely understand her. She had macular degeneration, so she couldn't read and really write anymore. Anyway, we took her to this clinic in Arizona, and they said, We're going to have to put you in the hospital. And she said, No. Well, Jessica, if we don't, you're going to die. Thank God. My sister and I were like, Oh, this just shifted. We're now not trying to keep somebody alive. We're now going to go sit and be with somebody who's choosing to be consciously passing. But we came home, brought her home, and hospice woman, lady came, who are pretty angelic. They're pretty amazing, the ones I've dealt with in my life. They were going through the steps with my mother, who was nodding or whatever about how your body takes time for your body to shut down.

This is what will happen. This is what you can expect. Then at some point, if it gets too painful, there are things like morphine. And you went, No. And it was like, Wait, what? And we spent about 30 minutes, maybe I exaggerated, but a big moment, my sister and I, almost playing charades with my mother who couldn't write or talk to what it is. And she kept saying, Burn. I want a bird. And it was like, took us a long time to figure out and realize that in her spiritual path in life, there was It's the thought that if you consciously choose suffering at the end of your life, that you can burn off, I don't know, I'm using all the wrong words.

The joys of religion right there. You've got to suffer your way.

But there are other philosophies besides Christianity that believe you can burn off karma by consciously choosing to be in the moment of suffering. So that's what she did, and that's what I got to be around. I had the night time with her, and it was two weeks. For the first week, it was amazing because we could talk, and people came to say goodbye to her. A lot of Hopi and Navajo and a farmer and this and that would come. Monks came from Colorado that they had been friends with and sang evening prayers. It was the most amazing time. It was the passing, the journey she wanted.

Between two worlds, I felt some of that in my brother's... It was a long ordeal in a cancer ward. It was a lot of months. I felt... I don't know. Without having lived it, I have a hard time explaining to others who haven't lived it what this would feel like. But it felt like my brother was transitioning between the two spaces and in a higher realm because he was close to something that has so much fear and depth in it that I can't even understand it being right next to Right.

I agree. One night when she was really not present, her body was still alive and all of that, but she had disappeared. For the last two or three days, she really wasn't there. I remember looking at her going and realizing all of my philosophical, all of my little educating, my spirituality, all the books I read, all the thoughts and stuff went flying out the window, and I realized, I don't know. Big, I do not know. She may. She may be about to know or is in a state of knowing, but I don't know. That changed my life, getting back to what you asked, a little bit where it's like, all I know now is to try to do the best I can, try to be a little better every day, try to be kind, try to be nurturing, try to be real, honest, all those things. Just try to do that.

It was that clear for you, though? Because I don't know shit. I don't know. I think I know thing. My mind gives me the illusion of control. No, I don't know. I don't know anything. So your life principles get thrown askew because- Or just simplified.

Just try to walk one step in front of the other and try to be a little bit better every day. We all know what better means. We know it. So whatever that definition for you is. Then one last thing, because you asked me what it was like at 57. At first, because you watch the body disintegrate, it's really hard, visually, to lose somebody that way, and I'm sure you went through the same thing.

No, same. This is a vibrant, colorful personality, and you are watching... What you're watching Everything is horrific.

You do suffer post-traumatic stress afterwards.

I would say I've been there for a bit. I would say that anybody who's been watching this for a while knows that I've gone from the physical cortisol inflation of that to something else just because I just wouldn't wish any of that on anybody. But also in referencing what you're talking about, I'm also deeply grateful for having been there for a number of different reasons.

Yes.

It has formed me. It has changed me. I will not be what I was before that.

Yes. I agree entirely. I remember walking on a beach. It took me a month to get to grief because first it was just the shock the visual, trying to get over the visual and what happens after death, and I mean, as far as taking care of business and all that. So about a month later, I finally started to get to the emotion, and I would cry like a nine-year-old boy going, What can I do? How can I go on? This is at 57. Found the love of my life, Mary. Very successful, all of these things. But it was like, I do not know how to go on. And you realize that your mother, especially your mother... I don't have a brother, and I'm sure that there are sibling exact correlation in a way. But my I realized my mother, every breath I took was because of her. Every cell in my body was because of her. You literally realize, oh, my God, mothers give their lives to their children and give life to their children. Literally, I think I never had gotten motherhood or mother.

Oh, you didn't get it until after?

Until that moment. I mean, I knew she loved me. I loved her. I don't know, all that stuff. The depth of it. The depth of what? Mother.

To have that love have gone, the way that she loved you, to have it feel final.

The reason why I get to walk around this Earth is gone. What do I do? I lived in that for a while until that went away.

It did?

Well, that level of what am I going to do? Nine-year-old crying. Yes.

The grief, I've been told anyone I talk to, they say it doesn't go away. It comes back, it visits, it lessens over time. But There'll be a thousand things that make it visit.

One of the things that I noticed was when I stopped grieving over whatever months and having a good cry, went away, I felt a sense of loss. Because what it is, I think, is an intense way of communicating to your brother, to your mother, a huge amount of love. You are relating, you are communicating in in those moments of grief.

Well, that's why it never got... When I said it, I misunderstood what you were saying. I'm saying it went away. There's a piece of me that doesn't want this to go away because it keeps the love alive. Even though it hurts, it's not necessarily It's not necessarily something that I want to go away because I want to be reminded of how I love him.

Yes. Thank you, man. You're so sweet and kind to share this right now. You really are. That's astounding. But this is a whole different conversation that we could have and I would love to have someday. We've been around, my wife and I, people who are mediums that talk to people of pastime. Take that for, that'll separate tons of people who are now going to click off. But I've experienced... Let me not try to build this up. Let me do so we stay in this conversation. I've experienced somebody from the other side telling who had passed, telling their parent who said, The parent said to the child who had passed away, Are you happy? And the child said after a pause, yes, when you are. So yes, stay in the grief. Absolutely. But it's a beautiful way to communicate. But I think you finding your joy is something all of us finding our joy after a loss is something that that person who has passed away wants for you.

Oh, no, it's something my brother very badly wanted for me. Yeah. When he was alive. But when you talk about, because we will lose a lot of people here when you talk about-Well, I'm sorry for their sake.

Visits from the other side.

But you reminded me, and the reason This is affecting me this way because I hadn't thought about this. The last day that my brother was alive, I did not know that he would pass The following morning, obviously. He's calling me into a room.

He did?

Excitedly. Well, he's going to pass the next day, but he's calling me into a room, and he's saying, It's beautiful, Dan. It's beautiful. Come in here. There was a piece of art on the wall that he had made that I thought he was talking about, but it's not what he was talking about. He was already someplace else. I couldn't realize that until after he died, that he was already someplace else. He was talking about how my dad will love it here, and it can be anything there. I can choose to believe anything. It can be the drugs. I can minimize it. But when I was in it, My confusion was because I couldn't translate what it is that he was doing. To lose him the next day, you just stirred it all up. It was stuff I hadn't thought of about the idea that there could be something better somewhere else for the cynical, it seems like. Because if you're not connected to this particular feeling, your cynicism will grab the best of you, and you can always refute it with your mind.

I always think being critical is Fine. Be critical. Wonder and doubt and be curious. Cynical is like, that's a no, no. Don't be cynical. I'm not you.

No, I understand what you're saying.

People in life, it's like, cynical is a big old waste of time.

Oh, but I don't know what you are, spiritually. You're saying you had a lot of access to Navajo life in your teenage years. I don't know what your life view is. Is on connected to something beyond here.

That's the great part about faith. You don't know. You can't prove it. You don't. Faith is, I don't know. Here, let me go back and be clear that I'm still, hopefully, in that place of I don't know. But I think you want to live your life as if I think you try... I don't know. Boy, see, here's it tricky. Here's where I'm trying to be philosophical. I can go off the rails. Here's what I would hope it would be. First off, let me This sounds like I'm being silly. I sure hope that there's at least a campfire where you and I get to sit around and chuckle and laugh and reminisce and go.

Something that's slightly less than final.

Yeah, so that we can... But Come on, even scientifically, our thoughts we now know are energy, right? Not just what we do with our bodies or whatever, that our actual thoughts are energy. So if they're energy, that means they have a weight. It's concrete. They're made up of something concrete, whatever. My science doesn't allow me to go there. And that to me means, well, if you pass away, what did happen to that energy that was you? I get that the cells in your body have gone hurt, but the thoughts, your spirit, your emotions, all of those things that do have weight, you're telling me they vaporize? I don't think so. That would be my wish, hope, thought.

Well, but if your take on things is, I don't know, which is not... If you put a dollup of hope on that, it doesn't have to be agnostic, right? Because I think atheist is one thing, agnostic is I don't know. And if I put a dollup of hope on it, if I remove the cynicism, it can be, I don't know, and you can feel hopeful that you're connected to something beyond here because you don't know.

Well, just go look at a fucking flower or something in nature that is weight. How did that happen? How did that get created? How is it that we're discovering animals are way smarter than we thought. How is it that if you put two plants together and you say angry, shitty things to one plant, it dies, and the other one, if you say lovely things, thrives? How do you explain that? And then doubt whether there's an afterlife. Come on. Anyway, why would you doubt it? Much more fun. Much more fun to think it's there.

Your relationship relationship with the ocean and the environment, it comes from where? What is your fascination with- I grew up in Arizona, desert in the beginning, Tucson, came to visit Southern California.

Cousins in Pasadena, twice a year we would come. It was like from going from, I mean, no sidewalks, living in the desert life to sidewalks and television. I grew up without a TV TV, and my cousins had a TV, and this was all in Southern California, and we'd go to the beaches, and there were beaches and ice cream. Southern California was just amazing to me. There was always that and the joy of going to the ocean and jumping in the ocean. There was that, but we all, most of us feel that way. My father was the scientist, the archeologist. My sister soaked all of that up. I was the dreamer. I was at the back door playing and make believing and having a grand old time preparing to be an actor. But I was surrounded by scientists. I mean, literally, every summer night, we would have scientists from all over the world for dinner. So that was there. Didn't do anything about it. And then during the cheers years, moved to Santa Monica, and they were in the middle of a fight to keep Occidental Petroleum from slant drilling. The neighborhood was fighting them to stop them from drilling 60 oil wells into the Bay.

I joined the fight, became friends with an environmental lawyer. We discovered a way to beat them, and we did. We looked at each other, enjoyed each other's company. I was the actor with the emotional voice. He was the lawyer with that legal, logical brain that most people would prefer to hear than the emotional voice. But combined, it was really powerful. We naively, almost like my father was a barn, let's put on a play, we started an environmental organization called American Oceans Campaign. I think it was just It was partly being around scientists, again. I was always clear that I was a spokesperson. My job was to stand in front of the tent and say, Thank you for watching. Cheers. While I'm signing this autograph, I'd like to introduce you to the marine biologist I'm standing next to. My job was to get people to the tent because I had the microphone. I've always been that way in my environmental work. Then later in life, I realized there's a big part of me that was going, Hey, dad, I'm not like you, but I'm close. I'm standing a bunch of scientists doing this. I think it was trying to connect to that part of my father.

Oh, that's interesting. For Sure. For sure.

The archeology part of it, right? Not the museum.

No, the anthropologist, the scientist. He was a PhD anthropologist.

So what was in your house? You said no television. Were there bones and books?

Books, pottery. The museum, when we moved up to Flagstaff, was a museum of natural history that was partially dedicated The mandate was to support the Hopi Navajo Zuni, Pueblo Indians of the Four Corner area, to support their culture, their arts, and their crafts. So for example, when we moved to Flagstaff, you'd go to a liquor store and they would have glass cases of the most exquisite antique Navajo Hopi jewelry. They would come in and spawn to be able to buy liquor that they couldn't buy on the reservation. It was just sinful. It was so sad. The museum changed all that, and they would have Hopi and Navajo shows where they would bring in all the arts and crafts. My father would go from village to village, to Hogan to hogon to collect things for the show, and then they would make the money. The artists would make the money. What was your question?

Your relationship with the ocean. I was asking you what was in your house. Is what-Yeah, sorry.

It was full of pottery and bowls and wicker baskets and blankets.

But no television.

No TV, books. And I lived in the country. My other friends were ranchers, sons and daughters, so you could jump on a horse, bearback, and run that away for as long as you wanted. And it was back in the day where you better be home by dinner time, otherwise have a great day. And you'd leap on a horse and go riding someplace. So I didn't feel the need for a TV. But boy, my first TV was Stanford University, freshman dorm. Someone had put an old floor console on a street corner getting rid of it. I grabbed it, prayed that it worked, plugged it in, tapped into one of the teachers, craw out on the roof and tapped into a cable that someone else had. And on came the Dick Van Dyke show, a rerun of the Dick Van Dyke show. Who is my hero in life? I love that man so much. Physical comedy, nobody did it better than Dick Van Dyke. And that was the first image I saw on TV. It would call you Forevermore, right?

Forevermore. Just the magic of that.

The poor guy runs away from me whenever he sees me because I just can't stop hugging him and thanking him.

Because of your admiration, he's damn near 100 now. I know. You guys have some temperamental stuff stuff that's similar. I think you and he are kindred. Probably. From afar, there's some kindred spirit stuff. I was very tempted in the spirit of the first awkward transition to go from the grief that we were talking about and me dabbing my tears with what had to become your sweat rag for immediately and awkwardly saying, How'd you end up in that Beastie Boys video? I was going to cut in awkwardly.

I still don't really know. I think my name, because it's probably as close to dancing or dancing or whatever, is useful in the lyric periodically because it's happened a couple of times to me where I... Because I am, Mary, life is about music. She's a songwriter. She's under contract with Universal Music, and this is a big phase of her life. You should talk to her someday. She's absolutely remarkable.

Two creatives enjoying each other's creativity.

But I I couldn't tell you a Beatles lyric, even though I listen to music, I immediately fantasize. I immediately go into some world that that music is creating in my brain. But I don't analyze it, think about it. So the same goes probably for most of the musicians. So this is changing a little bit now that Mary is a songwriter. I do pay attention to lyrics.

But you still don't know how you ended up in the video?

No. Well, Well, they came and asked us to be part of it. And because I think there was my name was part of a lyrik. Okay. Yeah.

Do you have a lot of parts that you missed out on or you turned down? No. Because I have one in mind that I want to ask you about, but I want to know if there are any that got away that you were like, Oh, I could have been that because you could have been the dad in Poltergeist, right?

Oh, yeah. No. But then I got cheers. I'm hoping that this is a true, accurate story. And I think it is. I don't think I made it up, but I may have, over the years, embellished it. I don't really know, truly, honestly. But basically, I did have a meeting with Steven Spielberg before Poltergeist. I think he was interested, but didn't know if he wanted to pull the trigger. And then I got a... No, I had got... I had shot already a Magnum PI with Tom Selleck, and it was his first season. And there was an overhead shot of me getting the stuffing's beat out of me by Tom, and I played a schmucky murderous husband, and he was Tom Selleck, this gorgeous specimen of a human being. It was the first time with this overhead shot that I noticed I was severely going bald on the back of my head. So there was this wimpy guy getting the crap beat out of him and going bald. And I think that put a hole on Steven, who watches a lot of TV's desire to make use of me and pull the gas.

You were learning as well. You didn't even know that that bald spot was there before Tom Selleck was kicking your ass? I knew it.

I had to color it in periodically on doing some theater things years before, but I had no idea. That's the blessing of going bald in the back of your head. You look in the mirror and you go, Looking good.

I'm not I've noticed that, too. I've noticed the same thing. Do you have any particularly memorable anecdotes? You can choose any of them, but the '70s and '80s, you were making your way through all of these wildly popular television shows with parts like this before you become Sam Malone. Anything from that time period? Because you're talking about my childhood. You're talking about my introduction to some of the things on television when we're talking about some of these shows. How do you? I'm 55, but I'm talking about my teenage years. I'm being introduced to some of these things during this time.

A anecdote, which goes to the point of Woody Harrelson and I choosing to do a podcast together. This is my favorite. We're very dissimilar in so many ways and a kindred spirit, and I truly love him, will forever love Woody Harrelson, and I admire him, and I try not to compare myself to him because that's mean to do to anybody, but he takes such a big bite out of life. I just so admire that. He can be maddening with his whimsicleness, I don't carry a phone Woody Harrelson, so trying to get in touch with him is a whole different deal. But this was a great Woody story. Maybe the seventh year of cheers. We had gotten to the point where if you were 15 minutes late for rehearsal, that was on time. If you were a half hour late, it was, well, what the heck? We're 45 minutes late. Something's going on. And Woody was 45 minutes late to our rehearsal, maybe two or three days before we had to shoot it. So it was an important day. And somebody came running in and went, oh, I just heard. I should have told you sooner.

Woody is in Berlin because the wall is coming down and he doesn't want to miss it. Oh, wow. And he got back in time to do the show.

So he lives bigger than most of the people that you've-Oh, huge.

And there's something magnetic He was hectic about it. When he arrived on this set of cheers, this was beginning of the fourth year. Nick Colesando, who played coach, had passed away, and they replaced him with Woody. And Woody was perfect and brilliant and knocked it out of the park on day one, and the whole world accepted. And he became that heartfelt, innocent center of Cheers immediately.

He was getting his break there as well, though, right? You guys were both coming into giant stardom at the same time, right?

Yeah. He had done a couple of plays and a couple of smaller parts of movies. But yes, definitely, Cheers was like a rocket ship. But when he walked through the door, George and John and I, and I think, Kelsey, maybe not Kelsey, he was younger than we were, but we were 37 when he came in at age 25 or 24. And 37 is when, as a man, you realize you're no longer 25. You all of a sudden go, Oh, yeah. Oops. Age. But we saw him come in and we said, oh, we loved him and saw that he was good. But let's take him out to the basketball court and kick his ass because we're pretty good. He clobbered us.

Yeah, he was better.

Couldn't stop him. He was unstoppable. Well, shoot. Okay. Next day, I look outside and I see John Ratzenberg and Woody Harrelson doing leg wrestling. You're both lying in your back. They I'm dry. John has big old, huge, muscular New England fisherman legs, and Woody kicked his ass. I arm-wrestled with Woody, and I still have like, prosythus in my elbow from him. All right.

So he came in And then devastated your set.

Then I went to chess. Okay, let's calm down with this. Kicked my ass in chess. Anyway, he's one of those guys that you want to say practical jokes so you can do it to Woody. There's something about him, and he's horribly, hugely competitive. So he's just the perfect person to bounce off of.

The podcast you're doing with him sometimes where everyone knows your name? With Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson. It's part of the Conan O'Brien, SiriusXM, Team Coco-June 12th. Enterprise. What are you trying to accomplish with that? Because you enjoy long conversations. I enjoy long conversations? What do you want to be doing with that?

The conceit when we started was, Hey, this came to me, Ted, and they said you needed a co-host. So Woody, wow, maybe he'd do it. And we both love the idea of hanging out with each other and spending time together because we zoom in different orbits and we get to see each other and wave at each other once a year. So this was an amazing opportunity to hang out as friends and catch up. So we will reminisce a little bit and catch up with each other. And I will introduce my friends to you, and you'll introduce the friends you've made to me. So there's that. What a cool way, though.

What a cool way for your lives to intersect again after just sharing each other's like, Look at this fascinating person I know. Wouldn't you like to get to know him?

Yes, literally. And he's brought these amazing people into my life and I to him. And what I love about it, I love finding out what makes people tick. It's why I want to be an actor. I love people. I love human beings, even though I'm a little bit of a wallflower. I love finding out what makes you tick. I have had the best time today, Dan, because I have a smidge, a little pinch of whatever you've allowed me to see of you. You're amazing. I'm so grateful that I got to know you. I love that this format does that. It's not, Hey, how are you? Good to see you. Yeah.

It's like, what makes you tick? I'm terrible at small talk. Me, too. I don't do it well because I'm really curious about people, the human condition. I like to know how people became who they became. Me, too. There's so many formative things along the path. You would say to, not that you can do this with any one thing, but the thing most responsible for shaping who you are now, and it's a very broad question, but if I had to pin you down on any one thing, what do you think you would go with? And it can be anything from your parents to love to- It's my wife, Mary. Okay, so it's happened over the last Over the last-30 years.

But it wasn't that I was molded by my mother, my father, my sister, my friends.

I wasn't an adult. I will tell you this, and I will say with a degree of shame, work was so important, and being a Cuban boy was such a specific thing that I was still a child well into my 30s. Well, not an adult. I would pass as an adult, but I was not an adult.

The The silhouette was probably roughly the same, but it wasn't filled in.

No. I get married at close to 50, and what gets opened there by my wife is a portal to, Oh, wait, I can be- Are we lucky, man? Are we lucky? Yeah, I can be a total... There's so much here Well, I thought a lot of people could get to 50. A lot of adult men can get to 50 and just be formed, be what it is that they are. I'm very grateful for the help that I got that I didn't just stop. So you're articulating the It's the same thing. You're basically saying that you hadn't done much growing at all until Mary showed you what was possible.

I think I started it because if I hadn't started the growing up and being truthful with myself about who I was, Mary would have walked down a different hallway. I would never have seen her. I think we both... One of the first things I said to her was, I'm a hot mess. And the male ego said, Stay away. She's going, I wasn't really approaching, but okay, I hear you. I think one of the things that she found maybe interesting in me was I was a hot mess, but it was my fault, my doing. You were owning it? Yes, it was me who was doing it, and I kept trying to approach her from that point of view.

What an interesting thing to show her, though, to show her at the beginning, instead of putting on airs and trying to mask it, which is probably what you had been doing all of your life in the pursuit of others. How do I charm this person with my many manipulative gifts versus not What's in front of you right now is broken, and I'm working at it. But to volunteer hot mess and then to have her meet it with interest, grace, love ends up changing the entirety of your life after that.

Then the sprinkle of divine and magic. How did we get to meet?

The fact that you're still there with the same freshness, I don't know if you're like me on this, but I've been fairly startled that this feeling that I did not know would be available to me can be even greater and grows, like something that I didn't think I would ever arrive at.

With a lot of nurturing, watering, and scrupulous honesty.

And meticulous consciousness, I would say. You have to... I don't know when it... I know that people listening to this when they hear be present or some form of it, you have to be open to the idea of there are so many things that could distract me and push me away from the thing that is my love with her. There's so much interference, so many temptations that can get in the way of that, that I almost feel foolish saying to you that I need the reminders sometimes because it's- Always, always.

We have this great phrase, We were early on dancing together, and I think I was pretty taken with how well I was dancing in this crowd of people. She sweetly came up to my ear and went, Pay attention to your fucking partner. We burst into laughter. It became a catchphrase because it's very easy to be, I will leave this I'm full of whatever this was for me in this moment, but I'll be full of it. I do need to do a little some verbal, something to bring me down to neutral so I can pay attention to my fucking partner.

That is a great way for her to undercut you. It's wildly funny to think of you just full of yourself dancing like, I am killing it right now. I'm killing it. I am so good. I must look so good out here as a confident dancer and her reminding you how full of shit you are.

One of the blessings about being with Mary is she finds me a very silly man and delights in it. She delights in my silliness most of the time?

Sillyness, intentional or unintention, because I don't think there's anything that makes my wife laugh more than me being a fool. Not when I intended to, just by accident. I It's puncturing. But you're going to come up with very few stories. I don't think you're going to do better than dancing and really feeling yourself. I'm at maximum confidence in her having the ability to undercut you and then it becoming a joke that you can then share because she sees who the real you is.

Yeah. The love that comes my way from her is so clear that it makes all things possible.

But it's Also, what's cool about what you're describing is not just that it's clear, but that she loves, she sees you clearly and loves that, too.

The magnificence and the silliness and the idiocy and all of that.

But love Loves the flaws or whatever would pass as flaws if we were dabbling in judgment instead of love. What can you tell me about officiating the wedding of your stepdaughter, Lily?

Oh, my goodness. Where did that come from? That's amazing. I love that you know that. First, when they asked me, I started to laugh like they were making a joke, and then realized I'm very serious, stifled that and was just so deeply touched that Lily, Mary's daughter, and her husband to be Charlie, would reach out to me to ask me to do that. Truly amazing. A lot of pressure trying to figure out what to say. But then, as they should, they guided me through what they wanted to look like and be like. But then to be a foot, two feet away from their faces as they're declaring love to each other in that moment was just such a best seating the house.

The reason I ask you the question is because the idea that you are expanding your family to include love that Mary has taught you. You've adopted a child, you have a biological child, and now you have stepchildren. For you to be the symbol at the middle of that love, I would imagine, would be greatly moving to you.

Very moving. Just to inject a little humor, Mary, periodically would go, Remember, this is not about you, Ted. Which is a very hard concept for me to get.

She knows you well enough to know that she has to say that. That is great. A great way to end. Ted, I really enjoyed getting to know you. Thank you for spending the time with us. I appreciate it.

Yeah. I'll talk to you after this because I have so appreciate it.

Okay. More conversation that you're not going to have any access to. Private conversation.