Transcript of South Beach Sessions - Steven Weber

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Look at you, a bona fide network television star. Those used to matter in this town.

Feast your eyes.

Wings, Chicago Med. I'm glad to be talking to Steven Weber for a number of different reasons, to probe his psyche, but also a lifetime in Hollywood. Has it been what you expected? Because you've arrived at great successes, but I imagine the dream looked different than what— whatever happened when it arrived.

Well, the odd thing is that my dreams were always mid-level. Level. I was raised a lower-middle-class guy, and so my dreams were lower-middle-class. I, I never envisioned kind of a classic Hollywood scenario, you know, glitter and starlets and awards and all that stuff. I always wanted to be a very kind of utilitarian working actor, and that came from growing up in New York and doing early stuff, you know, on a soap opera and seeing the behind-the-scenes having a father who was an agent and manager of comedians, and so I saw the backstage.

Grandfather too, right?

My grandfather too, yeah. So when I came out to Hollywood, I wasn't shocked or aiming for something higher. I came out here working, and so that's— my expectations were always fixed on that level.

Given what your parents did though, you had no shot but to be somebody who was going to be an entertainer, right? Because—

I don't know, I mean, maybe— I don't know. The thing is, uh, I describe my upbringing as being, um, uh, what's it— benignly neglectful. So I could have gone in any sort of direction, but, uh, my proclivities were more towards performing, and so I guess I found my way there. Uh, but I don't know if they— my parents' background— my mom had also been a a nightclub singer in the '50s, necessarily pushed me in that direction, but that was certainly the prevalent kind of flavor in my household, you know.

Benignly neglectful because they were busy working all the time?

Yeah, they were busy working and they themselves weren't schooled in how to parent. I mean, as a parent of sons of a certain age now, they're in their 20s, I realize how woefully unprepared I was to be a parent and everything that entails.

I mean, that's not unique to you though, everybody is.

That's right, that's right. But well, the same way people accept that they must be married or they can have children, it rarely goes beyond that kind of first step or that first expectation. There's so much that goes into the making of you know, let's say a marriage or relationship or being a parent that isn't really spoken of or expected from these young idiots who go into it unknowing.

And you have learned what from parenting? It's a broad question.

It's a huge mistake to even try it. I mean, that it takes enormous effort, and that the irony is, um, I guess as as fit or able physically or maybe emotionally as one might think they are to become a parent, it's a full-time job even beyond feeding and housing this kind of burbling, you know, mass of protoplasm.

Thing that will die if you don't take care of it.

That's right. You have to model a certain kind of behavior, and I didn't understand what that was until late in my being a parent. It's more than just telling them, um, and then living your life apart from rules that you're imposing on, on children, on, um, um, on these kind of malleable blobs. You have to— at least for me, I realized that I had to model certain behavior, uh, certainly for sons. And I think sons are different from daughters and male different from female. And that's a whole other discussion.

Don't get too controversial here. Be careful. You don't want to get aggregated in these modern times.

Their genitals are different.

Yeah. You're talking about something there though, when being ill-equipped to be a parent, anybody can feel that, but you were young and an actor. So I imagine without trying to make too many judgments, you were probably pretty self-involved or at least selfish the way young people can be selfish. I was self-involved.

I don't think to the point of deep narcissism. It was very superficial. I enjoyed the affirmation I got from people, but also I didn't give it that much weight. And part of my issues, my personal issues with that, was that I didn't give a lot of things very much weight. Perhaps I should have. I should have given things more thought. And that goes into my, my profession and the kind of actor I was and am less of now, but absolutely became, which is to say that I liked light entertainment. And I approached life in that same way. And so I had a degree of self-involvement that I suppose one requires to be a performer. But I don't think it was dangerously narcissistic.

So when you say light, then you were fun. You were enjoying it. Putting it in its proper perspective suggests that you are actually interesting and not interested in only the vanities that are provided out here.

I would say I'm pretty interesting. But I am vain. But the thing is that I'm not— I never gave too much import to it, too much gravity to it. And maybe that was a function of, as I said before, the kind of upbringing I had, which I immediately saw what was behind the veil. I immediately saw how human everybody was and how flawed and— can you curse?

Yes.

Fucked up people were.

And wow, that was really liberating for you. That really came from your bowels.

I just shat my pants too at the same time. Um, you know, so again, my, my expectations weren't false. I, I realized that there was a reality behind how show business is, uh, presented.

Did you have other jobs? You started as a— as I— because I thought as a child, your first job as a child actor was as a child actor.

Yeah, I did commercials as a little kid. But even that was very superficially kind of attended to.

I mean, the face you're making suggests that you were deeply bored as a child doing the silliness of television commercials. You're looking down on the child actor you were, and look at this shit, doing commercials.

It was just folded into the routine of living, like I say, a lower middle class life in a lower middle class neighborhood in Queens, New York, and it didn't leap out as anything special. And again, that might be a function of the background that my parents had, that this was their way of life, and they knew a couple of show business types, but they ate dinner and they drove to work and they— you know what I mean? So it wasn't special. They weren't royalty. There wasn't—

You also weren't dreaming of Hollywood as if it was a dreamy thing because it's your normal, right? Or something, something close to— it's not this far away place that's going to take you away from everything as an escape from all your woes.

To me, it wasn't an escape at all. I didn't have anything to escape from because I had a reasonably pleasant upbringing. That said, there was dysfunction all around me, and perhaps my, you know, my attraction to performing or show business was my, I guess, escape, inasmuch as any kid you know, wants anything, has something that they like that they will indulge themselves in, whether it's sports or art or math.

What was the dysfunction that was surrounding you?

The dysfunction was that my parents had a, um, they were mismatched age-wise. My father was 15 years older than my mom. Uh, my father's upbringing was very dysfunctional, uh, came from a very harsh household, uh, in contrast to my mom's, which was very, very loving. Um, and my father was a, uh, a Korean War veteran who had lots of, uh, tamped-down, uh, you know, anger, and, uh, had definitely had PTSD, which had occurred to me years after the fact. Um, so he was quick to anger, lots of resentment and a kind of inability to focus his emotions, his love. I'm sure he had some thwarted ambition thrown in there, and I don't think my mom was at first prepared for all of that, and so that's what was swirling around in my home as a kid. You know, I had a sister who passed away in 1990, And but she's 3 years older than me, and so she was able to, I think, detect more of what was going on around me and actually, uh, have it impact her more, at least in the immediate, I believe. Whereas I was just, just a kid and, uh, loved watching TV and mimicking Alan Funt and commercial jingles of the day and all that stuff.

So that kept me happy and afloat. And I absolutely was present for and glimpsed a lot of the dysfunction, but my head wasn't, you know, I wasn't in it.

Well, it sounds like you're apart from it, but it sounds— I don't know if it's coping mechanism, escapism, or you're accurately describing your childhood when you say all of that is benign. Father with a temper problem, whatever a child is experiencing there, I wouldn't think it's Benign. Maybe because your sister was older, she had some sort of perspective. You weren't mature enough to— but what you're describing doesn't just sound casually like, "Ah, I was, you know, it was good, it was good enough." It sounds like a father with a temper problem and PTSD. It would be something—

It was that, but you know, it wasn't 24/7. It wasn't every minute of the day. I wasn't waking up in some sort of Dickensian workhouse knowing that as soon as I get up, somebody's gonna come at me with a stick. You know, we threw a baseball, we had breakfast, we watched watch TV. We laughed a little bit, but, you know, there wasn't a lot of integration beyond sort of perfunctory expressions of parental love coming my way. Now, that's mostly my dad. My mother was, like I say, extremely loving and fun, but she was fighting a different front, and with her relationship in her relationship with her husband, my father. But again, look, maybe I'm describing something just for dramatic effect, but the reality was that— I describe it as benign neglect. The benignancy, is that a word? The benignness? The benign aspect of that?

I'd say benignity, but I don't know. Benignity? No, I don't think I've got it right either. Now you've got me flustered.

Well, you're from Florida, so beignet, the beignet of it all. That's New Orleans.

Uh, it was my weight. That was Freudian, what just happened there.

That was subconscious.

You attached a beignet to me just by looking.

Your dysfunction. Let's talk about that. You're, uh, you're well proportioned. You're not, uh, your weight. You're fine.

Thank you. I am charmed by you. I've just touch. My glasses have fogged up from you just saying the compliment.

I'm hoping to portion them to a minimum here.

The benignities.

The benign, the benignini, the Benito Mussolini of it all. It was benign, you know. There were moments of— terror is too much of a word, but there were moments of, you know, concern when they You know, when their arguments would get out of control, you know, but I mean, again, it wasn't 24/7, but getting back to the question about, or what we're talking about in terms of parenting, I realize that kids absorb everything. Even if they don't stop and say, "Wow, something horrible is happening," they could be, as I was, watching TV, and you know, imitating, jingles, but there was shit happening on the periphery that entered my consciousness.

Well, it seems like it's clear escape, and it led to your— some of the choices that you made afterward. You also threw something else in there that you sort of skipped by, which is, I'm assuming, the adult in you now can see that your dad was frustrated by being the manager of comedians instead of perhaps being the comedian.

Well, the story there, there was definitely frustration as to the specificity of What it was, I can only believe that it had to do with the fact that his father, a guy named Willie Weber, who's known to a certain generation of older comedians, was a guy that was known for managing a young Jackie Gleason, managing a young Don Rickles, but before that, he had grown up, he was an orphan in Harlem at the turn of the 20th century, and fell in with Jewish gangsters. There were Jewish mobsters that were featured in the show Boardwalk Empire, and a guy specifically named Waxy Gordon. I mean, you can't make it up. And my grandfather was a very tough, probably extremely antisocial dude, and he was a diminutive kind of skinny Jewish kid who nonetheless found himself amongst these, you know, arguably awful guys and role models. And he, in fact, at some point he did time for 2 years in prison in the place of some other gangsters. So he took the fall, and thus endearing himself to mobsters for the coming decades. When he became a theatrical agent, clearly he and my father had no, you know, comic— they had no sense of humor, first of all.

I don't know what kind of creative elements they had in them to spot talent, mold talent. I used to see my father giving his comedians notes afterwards, and I'm thinking now, even at the time, I thought, my father can't even tell a joke. I mean, I don't know what qualified him to do this, but he was able to do it. And his father too. Wo schmeckt's am besten diesen Sommer?

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Uh, so, um, you know, I forgot what we were talking about.

Well, there are a number of things here. That story you told about your grandfather is amazing, just a great story. But I was talking about where you had mentioned your father was frustrated that he hadn't, uh, right, gotten somewhere else in life. And it also made me wonder, as it applied to you, whether he was proud of you or jealous or both.

Uh, so yes, so thank you for, uh, getting me back on track. So I think— I don't think my father wanted anything to do with his parents, frankly. I think he wanted to do other things, but for some reason, and I don't know why, he felt this kind of fealty towards his parents. And his father, my grandfather, was extremely forceful. I think he was even physically abusive, certainly mentally abusive. I'd heard stories that my father wanted to be a park ranger. He wanted to go into the roller derby. The joke that my mother told was that my father had enlisted at the end of World War II and in the Korean War, and they're, you know, 5, 6 years apart, right? Or maybe 4 or 5 years apart, to get away from his family effectively. But it was there in Korea that I'm sure he saw some horrific stuff and came back just, I described, gouged. So I don't know if— so that's what I mean when I describe him as having thwarted ambition. As for me, I think my father was proud of me. He was always able to say the words, "I love you, I'm proud of you," and was able to show it to me in a way that I appreciated.

When I tried, as I got older in my early teens to kind of probe him the way you're doing it now to me, ruthlessly and sick, kind of weird and manipulative way. He did not spark to it at all. I mean, he was from clearly a different generation where the idea of anything therapeutic was like, "What? Are you kidding?" And he would bayonet you.

That's a great word.

Bayonet. But so, you know, again, because I I didn't let anything weigh upon me too heavily until I became an older guy and I realized that there's so much weighty material around me.

So much to worry about. So much to worry about. That you were oblivious to as a 40-year-old airhead chasing these acting vanities.

I kind of was. You know, and plus whatever I was doing was being affirmed by whatever success I was enjoying. So who was I to even worry about it?

Well, what is success? So define it for me now, because before we started, actually, I was just talking to you about how I'm surprised at the number of actors who come on here, not necessarily of your stature, but that the business has changed so much that they always feel like they're failing, even though no neutral observer on the outside would look at it that way.

Yeah. Uh, so I, I guess success for me loosely defined is being able to make a living at what I'm— at my chosen field. Beyond that, anything that brings a kind of affirmation or, you know, respect is too— it's kind of a fancy word, but, you know, basically, again, I'm pointing to my lower middle class roots, anything that allows me to continue living at a nice little level.

Yeah, but you're speaking like a plumber as opposed to a creative. Like, that's—

well, look, in many ways I approached my career as a kind of utilitarian kind of a job, you know, and was almost embarrassed to even tell people that I was an actor. Eventually I lost that embarrassment and I And even being an artist still kind of makes me a little nervous if I say as much, but yeah, you know, it took me a long time to accept that or to admit that.

Makes you nervous to say you're an artist, that you're a creative?

Uh, yeah, because I didn't think that it rose to the, uh, the definition of a kind of a useful, you know, existence, a useful job. I was able to appreciate art, but I— and moreover, I wasn't certain of my own ability to create, and that's why I approached it in a very kind of utilitarian fashion and liked the, you know, the behind-the-scenes approach. I liked seeing the cameras. I liked people, you know, plugging in cables and turning dials and doing all that stuff. That to me was really exciting, the part The actual acting part was, I think, a little daunting to me, which is why I always preferred to think of myself as a light entertainer. Somebody that, you know—

You're describing something though that is somewhere on the spectrum between something close to imposter syndrome and also questioning the worth of what you do for a living because it doesn't have sufficient nobility in it for you.

Why the fuck did I come in here today? For this. I mean, I never thought of it that way. Uh, gee whiz.

But it also allowed you to conquer it though, because if you're not taking it too seriously, if you're concentrating on the details, if you're always wondering, well, am I actually good at this?

Like, well, here's another thing, Doctor El Probo.

That's a great—

you need to have that El Probo. Or at least put that in your—

I hope they do it right now. And I want to— they call me the Grief Eater, right?

The Grief Eater.

I feel like I've graduated to Harvester of Sorrow, but I think Dr. El Probo.

El Probo. You know, you need to be in a white coat with buttons on the shoulder and have one of those reflectors and have your finger up with one gloved little— El Provo. I mean, also, I think part of this, now that I guess we're going to dismantle my childhood— thanks a lot— is that maybe I just wanted to be liked. That's okay.

I was just thinking about the finger being the only part that didn't have latex on it.

Yeah, that's right, because you need to feel. That's right.

You need to feel, sir. Clearly from what it is we're doing here, you need to feel.

Feel— no, you keep your one finger denuded. You keep it nude, you know, because it's the most sensitive part.

Please stop.

All right, I'll stop it.

Um, you've crossed the line.

Have I?

For Dr. Elpro.

This microphone stinks. Rob Corddry must have been here. I could smell his belches on it. Um, uh, look, I, I also think that it was a way for me to be liked When I was kind of performing like a little organ grinder's monkey for my parents' friends, I was able to imitate, you know, Ed Sullivan or, you know, Al Jolson or all that stuff, doing things that I saw on TV. If I watched the— not The Tonight Show because it was too late in the evening for me, but The Ed Sullivan Show, right? And so I was doing that and I was getting a lot of attention from my parents and my parents' friends. So, you know, that's a clue as to maybe what pushed me into this.

Well, you said affirmations, and I mean, everybody needs those. Like, who doesn't need their validations? It's better if they come from within, but applause, laughter, all of those things.

Yeah, but clearly, okay, so if we're gonna go back to the kind of dysfunction that was in my home growing up, This was a way for me to kind of mollify that and to get my parents to perhaps stop fighting and look approvingly not only at me, but this was our home. This was our apartment that we lived in. It was nice. It was fun. There was somebody generating joy.

Why'd you say it like that?

We'll be right back.

Why did you say joy that way? That is like that aspirationally, okay, for everything that I'm doing right now in life is in pursuit of joy and trying to be better at joy, trying to be somebody who more readily finds it.

So I guess what I'm showing or demonstrating right now is that I have a fear of sounding fancy or sounding elevated, which is why I didn't embrace the idea that I was an artist or a creator or a creative. So even as I just sounded out those words—

Is that why you've hit the note lower middle class 3 or 4 times already? Like, you don't want to be a Hollywood elitist? You don't want to be somebody who takes himself very seriously because he does this in Wings?

Yes!

He was a star in Wings! He's a star in one of those Chicago shows.

Yeah, look, you know, yes, yeah, yeah. I don't want people to be mad at me.

Uh-huh. Well, you want to be liked for my superiority.

Yeah, I want to be liked. Yeah, that's right.

It's pretty, pretty basic human need, I think.

You fucking broke me open. I don't, I don't have, uh, you broke me open like a coconut at a, at a low-rent resort.

We're just getting started. All right, we haven't even gotten into the good stuff yet.

Oh God.

As a creative, which of the things do you like the best? Just most enjoyable, like audiobooks, comedy, drama, like, and any of it. Where if I say to you artistically, what do you enjoy? Like, you're most excited to go into work today because blank.

I mean, there's very little that is more satisfying than getting laughs from people on stage or even working with other artists, other people. Look, I like— I enjoy acting. I enjoy feeling emotions. I enjoy expressing clever things that other people may have written or I may have come up with to an audience. So whether it's an audiobook, which I enjoy, or doing a drama or, you know, doing a comedy, they are all actually equally enjoyable. Like I say, I like being in this business.

Oh, but there's— the things you're describing are very different though, right? An immediate laugh like that that validation there, you don't have to sit in a trailer 7 hours to get it. You don't have to wait 8 months for post-production. You don't— I don't know what, you know, playing, doing a voice in a Batman audio series, like, I don't know what is the thing that, like, you're wandering around the house thinking about it before you get to work, just not because you're compulsive, but because you're just enthusiastic about the playground.

Well, look, I began to I do give more weight to doing theater, you know. I haven't done all that much. I've done maybe more than some, but I mean, there are English actors who have literally done hundreds of productions, and I have not done hundreds of productions. But when I do a play or something theatrical that is invariably in front of an audience, that's when I realized that maybe what I do as an actor is different than what— is not utilitarian, that is not just routine, that it actually requires some, for lack of a better word, expertise and experience, and that has probably helped me get work. And yet I didn't focus on that as I was coming up, but it began to occur to me the older I got, and I guess the more aware of my past and aware of my surroundings I became. So, yeah.

You must have enjoyed doing The Producers then. Like, that must have—

Incredibly enjoyable. Incredibly enjoyable. But also, I was still not as mature emotionally and psychologically as I was. I was still treating it like, wow, I'm here and I don't really have to employ that much thought to it. I got here for whatever abilities I have from— and, and I can coast in that way. And it worked. But personally, looking back at that experience, I realized that I should have gone deeper. I should have taken that experience and kind of made more of an effort to dissect it and to understand it and to understand the why I got there, the why of how I got there and what it offered me, what I didn't know. I mean, I did learn a lot and I had an incredible time doing it, but looking back I think I could have had a richer time had I been more disciplined. You know, I went out a lot, I partied a lot, I enjoyed that aspect of being on Broadway, which is as romanticized and celebrated as the actual play itself. It's the drink afterwards. And I realized that I tried to be, in many ways, my whole life, I tried to be like one of those actors I saw on talk shows.

And I loved hearing the backstage. I loved hearing the idea that they went to the bar at intermission, or they hung out with other interesting and storied and, in retrospect, kind of broken men in a way. Now we're getting heavy. And so doing The Producers was a sort of version of that. I had— I was on Broadway in what was then the hottest show ever, and I guess I got there. I guess I got there.

And now you're a beloved talk show guest.

I'm a beloved talk show guest because I let it all hang out.

So yeah, look, that's the lament of age though, to be 20 years past something and say, oh, I wish I'd done that slightly differently because that's was the top of the mountain. I had that thought on the way in here. I did for 8 years a show on television with my father. Our relationship was closer than it ever was in adulthood.

What show was this?

It was highly questionable. It was a show on ESPN that we did. It was sort of aspiring to make him a sitcom dad, and I didn't enjoy it as much as I should have. I was thinking about that on the way in, and my father's still alive. I was just thinking about it because I'm like, man, that was such a precious time. But the cooker of you had to do 8 shows a week on Broadway, we had to do a show every every day and I had to do something else, I just wish I'd done a little more with that time in terms of just sort of like kissing him on the forehead, you know?

Well, clearly that paradox is ingrained in humanity, you know? It keeps us from somehow achieving what we as a species should be able to achieve with less effort and with fewer obstacles, right? It's just— look at how we're living today. It's, you know, as a as a country. I mean, we shouldn't be in this place of such division and everything, but there's something in this, in the human character that just prevents us from understanding when we're young enough of what lies ahead, what we need to do to ensure that we're surviving and thriving. But yeah, it— so, and because this, that's I believe that that's just the natural way of things, but do you think to lean into it and not, not have regrets?

Uh, do you think, uh, and I didn't expect to get here exactly, but do you think that if you'd respected it more or had the wisdom you presently have back when you were doing The Producers, that perhaps you would have then dedicated your life to life in the theater instead of all the other things you did? Because that's the thing that makes you feel most challenged, most alive in these arts?

Well, I would not have eschewed any— I wouldn't have, you know, not wanted to survive. It's hard to be— it's hard to make a life in the theater. Just literally, it's hard. You don't make that much money, and everything's expensive, and living in New York or wherever the hell you want to do it, it's kind of rough. But I was lucky enough to have television jobs, which paid well, which afforded me a kind of a lifestyle and a kind of comfort that I now want to keep. I want to sustain. But on the other hand, had I taken myself more seriously as an artist, as a theater actor, when I really started in my early 20s, I may have had a different trajectory altogether, right? I may have met totally different people. I may have lived a different life, and you can't say if it would have been more fruitful.

I guess I was asking most delicately, instead, you know, you could have been noble thespian instead of guy whose face I want to punch when he's that character.

Right, right.

You could, because you're good at the despicable. You're good at the— and I don't—

Yeah, that's right. I get it. Yeah, no, look, I— Yeah, you're a violent—

Dr. Probo.

Dr. Probo is sad.

He looks on the inside like he can't harm you.

I can't. I must do this.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

That's right. Turn your head and sob.

Oh my God, you twisted that finger. I don't— we didn't— we were going into territory territory now that is too dangerous for television.

Are you kidding? I often turn to people after watching something horrific on TV and say, boy, TV's changed, hasn't it, since the Hollywood Palace. Like, you know, watching— oh my God— watching the most horrific shit ever on TV. And, uh, you know, some of it enjoyable, but some like, oh my God, I mean, this is grotesque.

Its lack of subtlety.

But yes, I mean, I watch The Boys sometimes, but I mostly watch it for the effects and for how outrageous it gets. But holy shit, yeah, when a character shrinks itself down and goes into the urethra of some other guy and we're saying is— you know, I'm thinking, wait a sec, I used to also watch Nanny and the Professor, you know, or Room 222. What the hell is this? Yeah, it's pretty, pretty insane.

But you got— you took us off of point because I was speaking of—

I was being dickish.

The way that your characters— how did you become, for the first time, how did you realize, or did it sneak up on you, oh, they're hiring me because they think I will be somebody who does despicable well?

Well, despicable, again, you're projecting something really deep into this otherwise friendly kind of gathering we're having. No, I don't think despicable ever came into the— people wanted despicable. I was an affable dickhead. So when I was doing Wings, I really think that was maybe the first kind of iteration of that. Where it was again almost an acceptable kind of character in American TV. It was the type of thing that was already in movies. I want to say, like, Tom Hanks sort of played an affable dickhead in— what was it— Bachelor Party or something like that. There was always that guy that was kind of a winky womanizer, but has a gooey interior. That was sort of what I was playing, but I— yeah, I was doing that a lot. It was really the first time that I was doing that, because on stage I was playing interesting, kind of likable, offbeat roles. But for about 8 seasons on Wings, that became my brand in a way, and I rose to it. I did a number of appearances on talk shows which are now crazily cringy to see. To see myself trying to affect the kind of attitudes that I— that was a combination of that character, that brand, but also thinking that I was witty, funny, outrageous like other guests on talk shows that I'd seen growing up that I referred to earlier, you know, like Dick Shawn or Or, you know, the— I'm trying to think who else was on The Tonight Show that were relaxed.

But what a fascinating way to look at that through the timeline of you're the kid who admires those people so much, you go in and sit in those seats, and you're still in costume of the affable dickhead. Like, why would you cringe? Because it's not you? It's— you're— because you're performing not well as opposed to being you well?

I'm seeing somebody, I'm seeing myself, seeing myself not being relaxed. I'm seeing myself performing in a way that I wasn't ready to, even though I'd gotten to that seat, I'd gotten to those seats on those talk shows, I really don't think I was good enough. That became clearer to me a little later on when I made a couple of appearances on what's his name's, Is it Conan?

No, no, no, no, no, no, it was, you know, Real Time with Bill— Bill Maher.

Bill Maher. And I was still being the, you know, I guess nominally witty, funny, affable, snarky guy. And there was one episode where I found myself seated between, I think, Congressman Darrell Issa. And, um, um, Hirsi Ali, uh, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is that her name? I think, sorry. And she is this amazing woman, uh, who was raised in violence and rose to become, I want to say, a Danish MP and was, was targeted by Islamic extremists and for assassination and One of the things I heard was that she had written a book that Theo van Gogh, who is Vincent van Gogh's, I guess, grandson or great-nephew, whatever, was making a film based on something that she had written, which was of course viewed as blasphemous, and Theo van Gogh was killed by an extremist stabbed in the chest, I think, and there was a note in the blade of the knife in his chest, and the note was, I think, again, a death threat to her. So I'm sitting next to her—

affable dickhead from Williams—

and I'm sitting next to Darryl Isa, who, you know, was a lovely guy to me then but has, I guess, a political platform that I have no— I don't like at all, but very articulate, knows what he's doing, a real kind of, you know, stalker, as we say, you know, like a real— yeah, yeah. And, uh, and me. And at one point I realized that I could not say anything, and so I sat there. And I think Bill Maher at one point said, 'And so Stephen Webber, what, you know?' And I said, 'That's right, I'm in the why the fuck is he here chair.' And that— so that was the wittiest thing I could have said. But, but that, in a way—

well, but you can't go with that attitude. It does make sense though that you would as someone who is perpetually walking around asking, "Do I belong here?

Am I good enough?" Well, I realized I was out of my depth and that— what came to me just now was the image of me competing in the Olympics as a swimmer. I can swim, but there's no way I can compete with these other people who are trained, really trained in their fields. But I was like Zelig in a way. I just found myself in these places and was getting the spill from the rest of it and kind of taking it as, "Oh, this is affirmation." The fact that I did The Producers was great and I guess an acknowledgement of whatever talent I had. But I was no Nathan Lane or Matthew Broderick. I was something a little different, arguably less. Still good enough to get that job. But I was enjoying the attention that the show itself was garnering, the phenomenon. You could put— I would say you could have put, you know, two bowls of manure on stage and people would have rolled in the aisles. Wow, this is great! Do you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah.

So I took that and enjoyed that. Again, it was years later when I was able to kind of assess my— the arc of my success and, and kind of look at it just apart from who I was and if I made it happen, that I was, I was surfing. I was surfing on a lot of stuff.

But I could also see though where it is, some of that stuff through a child's eyes or wherever your scars are on not being good enough, where you're noticing that you're less than Nathan Lane or whatever it is, and you're doing the comparison shopping everyone's doing on social media now to make themselves so unhappy. Because even when you're arrive at your stuff, someone else has more stuff.

Right. Well, now that you said social media, I mean, the technology has turbocharged people and has kind of really magnified their neuroses, they've magnified their projections and their ability to avoid, even as much as I did— Excuse me.

Get rid of that. You're really struggling with it. It wants to get out and you won't free it. It's a prisoner and you're— Okay. Listener in your body.

But you see, I want people to like me, and so I don't want them to hear my belch.

It's okay though, this is a free and— we already cracked you open like a coconut, now the coconut makes sounds.

Coconut must belch. The coconut must belch. Um, uh, yeah, I, I, I, I just, um, I, I realized that there were a lot more elements went into my path than I thought. And obviously that's for everybody. That's for everybody. And the thing is that technology has just amplified all that stuff.

Well, your kids is one example. Like, this would remove people generationally. If you talk about what this addiction is and how it's distorted all of us to raise kids kids in a climate where this is all they've known, where you knew Ed Sullivan on the television and 3 channels, like it must be in some ways hard to reach down there and not be a scold about like, do you guys know the infection this thing is? Like it's gonna— it'll destroy your neuroses, it'll make you crazy.

Well, it certainly has made those of us who come from the before time, made us insane because we see the immediate change, the immediate results of living a life with our phone in evidence all the time, which it is in my life, and grabbing these serotonin shots from this kind of artificial and constant, constant stimulation. I think my kids and this next generation are of this particular generation. And so I'm actually hopeful. I've actually seen my sons, who are incredibly gifted musicians and creatives without italicized, you know, without an italics, they are, they're creatives and they know it. They also have technology integrated into their understanding. It's not alien to them. They were born knowing how to do this, you know, kind of enlarge stuff. And so they're also— they are able to utilize technology in a way that freaks me out, but doesn't freak them out. They're able to have and create— they're able to create great art and also play games on it.

You said something really cool. I wonder if you've taken inventory of the job that you have done as parents and you as a father to say simply the sentence coming from where you do, they're creative and they know it. Because it seems like you haven't known it for whatever was happening in your household and you've provided the household where they have the freedom to know that. And what a gift to have that belief. Like that has to be from the— that's not DNA.

No, I think that's a kind of a nurturing That comes from a nurturing environment and with a lot of support. My wife, their mom, has absolutely wanted to raise artists, and we have. The downside is that— my joke is they can't flush a goddamn toilet.

Neither can I.

You can't?

I mean, I'm very bad. I am embarrassed and also turned on by the fact that my wife can walk across a room with a drill and I don't know, like, I just don't know how to do that stuff. It's not something that— no, uh, my father, what my father taught me is to have friends who could fix things. Like, that's, that's what I learned in my house. That's great. So I'm not good at any of that stuff. I can't, I can't fix a toilet either. You said flush a toilet. I was thinking— I can flush a toilet. Yes, I can succeed successfully flush a toilet. I hope so. Thank you. There it is. I was well proportioned when it began, but then Dr.

Provo cracks you open and then this is how you perform. One look at you makes me think that you need to be able to operate a toilet.

This has become unpleasant now.

What's the matter now?

You can't take it? You can dish it out, but you can't take it? I don't want to do this with him anymore.

All right, Dr. Provo.

He's got too sharp a knife. Too sharp. You're hitting in the sensitive spots, sir.

You can't do surgery with a dull knife, baby.

People don't know that you can't fix a toilet. Well, I hope they put this all up in post-production. I hope there's a Dr. Probo here. I hope that there's, uh, some stuff that they do creatively.

Are these kids capable of it? Because guys like you and I would never be able to do it. You need somebody of this world, of this generation.

Um, well, you, you mentioned that, so this is— I don't know, uh, how it is that you wrestle with aging, but, uh, over what has now been a 40-year career in this medium that is competitive whatever content is, uh, yeah, it's much more difficult to keep up with kids or know what it is that the kids want when influencers are trafficking in whatever the, you know, thing of the day is on TikTok. And so in building a media company around some of the things that we're making, uh, it can be confusing to me on how it is to reach young people because as a 57-year-old as a sportswriter, I don't have any sort of understanding of why young people do listen to the things that we're doing. But they are still listening to them. So, like, but it is— it's a constant fight. It can feel like the absence of joy to fight in a space where you're already feeling like you should feel like you're on top, but the fight makes you feel like you're sinking.

Yeah. Wow. Yes. I have nothing to say except yes, you're absolutely right.

I don't know what is next for you in terms of challenges. Like, when you look at the landscape of how much Hollywood has changed, you're on the rare show that now exists 12 seasons, going into a 12th season. That's going to be a bygone thing at some point soon when everyone is just binge-watching television, right?

Yes, I'm in the gratitude portion of my life. I'm very much aware of how rare and lucky I am to be on this particular show. I've also been relatively good at kind of managing, you know, money over the years. I haven't been kind of extravagant. I mean, here and there I've been lucky enough to be able to do that, but I've found a way to maintain a kind of comfortable level. That said, living in LA is incredibly expensive, and, you know, I wish there was a different place that I could conceivably live in. But the next challenge for me is almost a continuation of what we were kind of talking about, maybe indirectly, which is Having a deeper understanding of how to help my children without infantilizing them, how to help myself in a way that isn't, you know, that doesn't include self-loathing, how to be a better person as I get older. You know, more and more people, more of my peers are are dying or getting sick, or, you know, things are happening that I hadn't reckoned with for many years, having to do with one's mortality. I have a son who's— one of my boys is engaged to be married, so that's something that's wonderful and also fascinating.

My younger boy is embarking on a musical journey that he's just beginning to experience, and that's incredibly uplifting to see. And the next challenge for me is to see if I can make it to the end with dignity and some greater understanding.

Oh, Dr. Probo was going to accuse you of just skipping right past mortality, but you got back to it at the end. You're looking to be a better person, is what you're saying, or to realize what are the most important things even more than you have in parenthood, in stumbling out of The Producers, in all the things that you've learned. You are now— I mean, it's not a small one to feel safe in what must feel like an unsafe time out here, right? Like You feel like you're on the last boat, right?

I mean, possibly. Look, I just turned 65. I could live another 35 years, you know.

But I mean the career boat. I meant the career boat. I wasn't— I went from Mortimer— I'm saying you feel like you're on the last boat out of Hollywood.

Possibly. Look, for everything I just described about feeling less than or kind of valuing myself in a kind of a lower way. I'm just light entertainment. On the other hand, I'm still working, and there must be a reason for that besides just dumbass luck. I must have found a way to convince people to hire me. So look, there hopefully will be room for the type of character and the type of actor I am. The type of characters I present, and perhaps I will work more, but oh my God, it's— there's no real science to it. So I guess the— I don't know, the next challenge is not to be overcome by fear of mortality or encroaching age and all that stuff. I mean, I'm definitely noticing changes in myself and in my body and in my mind and in the world around me. I just have to reckon with that without kind of caving under the burden of it.

I don't think a lot of people take daily inventory of that one, right? It's much easier to get into all of the distractions. So you're not thinking about that, the aging process, but you wouldn't be wisened if you weren't. Like you would not be one of the industry's elders and the parent to your artistic creatives who know it if you Warrant thinking about these things because there's the responsibility of how do I be a better dad the rest of the way, or how do I be the best dad the rest of the way?

I guess. I guess. I mean, look, I don't want to mistake— I don't want to— what is it? Equate feeling less than or not embracing certain titles or certain ideas of what makes success with humility. I'm a fan of being humble. I'm a fan of humility. And it doesn't— and that's in no way weakness. So I— we're living in the Noah Wiley chapter of time now. And he, to me, epitomizes someone who is able to navigate and negotiate all the things that our society puts upon somebody who they deem as a commercial success, an artistic success, a show business success. He's able to do it with real humility but an understanding, um, of how to maximize the position he's in without alienating people without being inauthentic. Do you know what I mean? And he's doing it so well that that's in a way what I aspire to.

That's the type of thing. When you ask me, do I know what you mean though, I'm not sure I do because you're making me contemplate the idea. I don't know that I do humble well. I, yeah, like there—

Well, I guess it has to be genuine. In other words, how can you not be humble in a world where there are so many people who go who probably have way more talent than I have, but who go unrecognized, who live lives of obscurity. There's somebody on the street now that has in their head poetry that's deeper than anything, you know, that imaginable, but it will never be, you know, belched onto a microphone.

Well, I would— the only reason I said it, it made me you, you made me do something that I did not want to do, admit something, you made me think about something. Like, I'm like, when you're talking about genuine and authentic humility, I can pretend. Like, I, I can pretend to be humble, but there are certain circumstances. Like, I know I'm a decent interviewer, for example, so I have confidence in that thing. So how— yes, I'm very fortunate to be able to have the ability to do any of this. That goes without about saying, I am grateful in deep and meaningful ways, but I don't think it's because I'm not good at interviewing, you know what I mean? Like, I have— and so if you're asking me questions about interviewing, as an example, or the things that I think that I'm good at, I don't have an imposter syndrome there or a need to feel humble because it pays for everything.

Well, I guess humble isn't something that, uh, you're striving for. Maybe it's something that you that just is, that you acknowledge. Because I don't think you can be humble and still feel a need to be better than somebody else, you know, or to win at someone else's expense, even if you present as humble. That's not what I mean. I just mean somebody that understands that, you know, in the span of a person's lifetime, And compared to everybody else, everybody else's lifespans— what am I trying to say? It comes and it goes. You know, you're a drop in the ocean.

Yes, we are but a dust mote on a beam of sunshine. Yes, we are very small. If the conversation's about mortality, then yes, we all must be humble. Yes, because in the grand scheme of things, all of us are largely irrelevant.

Largely irrelevant. That's right.

That's a good name for a show. I think—

largely irrelevant.

I think we should change the name to the title of this show every week. Largely irrelevant.

Dr. Proko. Or how about a brand of men's underpants?

Yes.

Largely irrelevant. Sounds like a large elephant, but then it also— it's like large— largely irrelevant, meaning means nothing at the end of the day.

I appreciate your candor and your vulnerability.

Thank you so much. You are a wonderful interviewer.

Thank you for playing along.

For letting me express myself.

Uh, you, you want— would you like us to make sure that people know that you're doing, you know, the 12th season of, uh, the Chicago Med is a source of pride, as we were mentioning? Like, I mean, 12, that's, that's not a small thing in the modern age to have something that's on network television for 12 years.

And people like it, you know. And it— and, uh, there are— talk about creatives and artists on that show. And craftspeople. That's— that is a great example of all the people who kind of go unsung but produce something that I guess a guy like me gets credit for. That keeps you humble.

Does it? Because that sounds like a lack of humility right there. A guy like me gets credit for— and you know, the undercurrent— and deserves it. Yeah. And deserves it. We'll be right back.