Episode 1090 - Brian Cox

Episode 1090 • Released January 20, 2020 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucksters what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast welcome to it my guest today is uh the the amazing actor and veteran actor a guy's been at it for many like many years 60 years maybe

00:00:28Marc:He'll tell you.

00:00:29Marc:I can't remember what exactly he said, but Brian Cox is here.

00:00:31Marc:His most recent incarnation is the incredible character Logan Roy on the HBO series Succession, which is spectacular.

00:00:41Marc:And obviously, you know him from everything else he's done.

00:00:43Marc:For me, it's really I remember him from Manhunter and adaptation.

00:00:47Marc:And then it just kind of fills itself in.

00:00:50Marc:He's like, oh, yeah, he's in that, too.

00:00:51Marc:But

00:00:52Marc:But I was really excited to talk to him, and he was into talking, so that's happening.

00:00:57Marc:I hope you're well.

00:00:58Marc:Are you well?

00:00:59Marc:Are you okay?

00:01:01Marc:We're ready.

00:01:01Marc:We're braced.

00:01:04Marc:We're strapped in here to wait to see.

00:01:07Marc:If this country actually, I think really this impeachment trial or whatever this circus is going to be or however it unfolds, though not being political, just observational here.

00:01:18Marc:This is not a political show.

00:01:20Marc:I'm an observational comic and an observational person.

00:01:24Marc:And I base my observations on logic and personal experience.

00:01:27Marc:But if they somehow manage to stifle any witnesses,

00:01:31Marc:or introduction of documents into this trial and also stifle the press from having access to the trial itself.

00:01:38Marc:It seems that this is the not the test, but this will be a transition into an authoritarian government so that so we should know within a few weeks.

00:01:51Marc:how America's gonna go, really.

00:01:53Marc:That aside, how's everyone doing?

00:01:56Marc:I just wanted to put that out there because whatever you may think of whatever I have to say or however you react to the very few sort of instances of me engaging in political discussion,

00:02:08Marc:I do it so I'm on record out loud of saying what I've said, whether you agree with it or you find it tedious or boring or you think I'm wrong or it's not necessary.

00:02:20Marc:I need to know that I spoke my heart on this particular thing.

00:02:24Marc:So when many of us have to leave, I was like, I knew that I knew that was happening.

00:02:29Marc:Or look, I am perfectly willing to be proven wrong.

00:02:35Marc:God, I want nothing more than to be called a fucking idiot at the end of this because I was so off base because I'm willing.

00:02:44Marc:to step out there and i'm willing to make mistakes and i'm willing to say things that i feel that may turn out not to be true speaking of things i found out about myself from uh back in the day how about all the way back five or six generations i'm my episode many of you know that i was on finding your roots uh the pbs show with henry gates i recorded that a while back and

00:03:09Marc:And it's going to be on.

00:03:11Marc:It's going to be on tomorrow night, Tuesday night, January 21st.

00:03:14Marc:I know it's on PBS out here at 8 p.m.

00:03:18Marc:I don't know where it airs near you.

00:03:19Marc:Probably the same time.

00:03:21Marc:But the the episode features me, Jeff Goldblum and Terry Gross.

00:03:28Marc:So initially, when I heard Terry was going to be on, I thought that the show, the theme was interviewers.

00:03:34Marc:But now it's just I think that the subtitle of the show is three Jews or look at the Jews and we go back with the Jews.

00:03:45Marc:But it's similar.

00:03:46Marc:The title is similar to that.

00:03:48Marc:It's actually Beyond the Pale.

00:03:50Marc:The Pale of Settlement was a part of Russia where almost every Ashkenazi Jew has roots.

00:03:58Marc:So I'm very excited about this.

00:03:59Marc:I have no idea how.

00:04:01Marc:I mean, I spent almost like three to four hours with Gates and with this large book that they put together with through amazing research.

00:04:09Marc:almost investigative research i would say yes investigative research and they were able to trace my jewish roots further back than they had ever before i was told with my dad's fought paternal line into russia they had they found documentation like i think six generations back not necessarily information but they they got names they got the names going all the way back

00:04:34Marc:There's some great names, too.

00:04:36Marc:After it airs, I will share some of the spectacular names.

00:04:41Marc:Fucking beautiful.

00:04:43Marc:Anyways, admitting mistakes in terms of wanting to be proven wrong.

00:04:48Marc:Subject line, say it ain't so.

00:04:50Marc:Dear Mark, I've been a fan for a long time.

00:04:53Marc:On one of my first trips to New York, my dad handed me a copy of the art section from The Times and asked me what play our family should see.

00:05:00Marc:Recognizing your name from your Conan appearances, I said that we should see the Jerusalem Syndrome.

00:05:05Marc:My dad responded with something like, I'm not taking you guys to see some Jew talking about his Messiah complex in an off-Broadway one-man show.

00:05:14Marc:We're seeing Les Mis.

00:05:16Marc:When I moved to New York, one of the first things I did was go to a taping of one of your comedy specials.

00:05:20Marc:It was great, and getting to see you for free made me feel like moving to New York was the right decision.

00:05:25Marc:Some years ago, I took some friends to see you at a basement in Park Slope.

00:05:29Marc:You read divorce papers for half the show, and I tried to explain to my friends that you were going through a rough time.

00:05:36Marc:You know, like, did I do that?

00:05:38Marc:Did I read from them?

00:05:39Marc:I can't remember.

00:05:41Marc:I feel like he's conflating...

00:05:43Marc:Lenny Bruce reading his court documents about his obscenity trials and me reading my divorce papers, but I'll take it.

00:05:51Marc:In dark moments, not sold out used to give me some solace in a way that your podcast does now.

00:05:56Marc:And the album still comes on when I put iTunes on shuffle.

00:05:59Marc:There is a joke on the album where you say something like, quote, now that I'm 35, there's not going to be any new growth from here on out.

00:06:07Marc:It's all decay management, unquote.

00:06:09Marc:When I was in my 20s, I thought this was hilarious.

00:06:12Marc:Now that I'm in my 40s, it's a little less hilarious.

00:06:15Marc:Over the past decade or so, I've listened to you finally find the audience you deserve and become completely self-accepting.

00:06:21Marc:And personally, I saw my own self-improvement really pick up steam around age 38.

00:06:26Marc:So the evidence is there that middle age growth is possible and that it is occurring for both of us.

00:06:31Marc:It would just help me out to hear you say that it was just a joke.

00:06:35Marc:You were wrong.

00:06:36Marc:And despite the two steps forward, one step back nature of personal progress, middle age growth is not a mirage.

00:06:44Marc:Thanks for all the laughter and entertainment.

00:06:46Marc:OK, it says, please exclude his name.

00:06:49Marc:So I will.

00:06:50Marc:Well, nameless man.

00:06:52Marc:OK, I'll admit it.

00:06:54Marc:I was wrong.

00:06:56Marc:I was.

00:06:56Marc:There is definitely many possibilities, almost constant possibilities for growth at any age in at least one or two areas of of your being.

00:07:08Marc:And I think that the cynicism involved in that joke was what I felt at the time.

00:07:14Marc:And it did take me another took me a while to acknowledge growth or to feel growth or to manifest growth.

00:07:20Marc:I think that at that time it was I was at a crossroads there.

00:07:23Marc:There might not have been any growth, but it turned out there was.

00:07:27Marc:So, OK, see, now I'm just justifying.

00:07:30Marc:Yeah, I was wrong.

00:07:31Marc:And also it was a fucking joke.

00:07:34Marc:Sometimes jokes are there to create relief for me and relief for you, which it did.

00:07:38Marc:And we're happy I turned out to be wrong, right?

00:07:41Marc:Nameless gentlemen, we're happy.

00:07:43Marc:Yes, we are.

00:07:44Marc:Also, folks.

00:07:47Marc:I got a couple of shout outs.

00:07:50Marc:Can I do that?

00:07:51Marc:Can I do shout outs just that aren't ads, but they are, you know.

00:07:55Marc:I want to thank the people at Chewy.com.

00:07:58Marc:Chewy.com sells pet stuff.

00:08:01Marc:They sell the, you know, pet food, pet toys, everything pet.

00:08:05Marc:But it's like the Amazon for pet stuff, Chewy.

00:08:08Marc:Chewy.

00:08:08Marc:And I've been buying my cat food there and my litter, and the folks over there sent me a nice little gift package over Christmas, and I neglected to.

00:08:16Marc:I didn't want to.

00:08:17Marc:I don't know.

00:08:17Marc:I don't know what to do.

00:08:18Marc:I know that some people want me to, hey, man, post this, show this.

00:08:22Marc:You like this, do this.

00:08:24Marc:But I think it was just a nice gesture, and I didn't acknowledge it.

00:08:27Marc:So thank you, people at Chewy.

00:08:29Marc:Now let me ask you a question, a business question.

00:08:31Marc:Can I exchange some cat food that my cats no longer eat for food that they do eat?

00:08:36Marc:You know what?

00:08:37Marc:I'll just look on the website.

00:08:38Marc:You don't have to answer that.

00:08:41Marc:Also, Parkman Woodworks just made me a beautiful table.

00:08:45Marc:Parkman Woodworks, at Parkman Woodworks on Instagram, made me a fucking stunning table from out back.

00:08:52Marc:Now I got to get a grill.

00:08:54Marc:Do you guys know what grills to get?

00:08:55Marc:I'm not a big grill guy, but I'd like... And I'm not... I don't plan on evolving into a big grill guy, but I'm a pretty good cook, and I've never really had...

00:09:05Marc:An easy grill to just go out and grill with, you know, I used to have like the Weber little one, the little, you know, semicircle one.

00:09:13Marc:What do they call that?

00:09:14Marc:You know, the little one that basically is about the size of a slightly large wok and you just cook on the ground.

00:09:21Marc:But I think I'm stepping up.

00:09:22Marc:I'd like to get a grill.

00:09:24Marc:that's more accessible, that's better, that's maybe propane or wood pellet.

00:09:29Marc:And I'd like to just have it so I can cook on it without even thinking twice about it, where it's not an ordeal.

00:09:35Marc:And I'd like it to be big enough to where I can entertain people for a couple of reasons, not just because I want to grill.

00:09:40Marc:outside but I you know it gets really hot in the kitchen if it's hot outside so be nice to have that option whatever the fuck I'm talking about all I'm saying is not I'm not gonna become some sort of grill bro or pit master I just want a nice propane grill for the back and if anyone's got any anything they want to tell me about grills

00:09:58Marc:tell me all right just tell me you can you can tweet at me or you can uh you know email me at uh what is it wtfpod at gmail.com now look this was actually a good note and i and i think that i'm gonna do i'm gonna try it this time because i yeah i talk about my tour dates a lot but i've been putting the date first which is logically dumb

00:10:20Marc:Because if you're listening in your car or wherever, and I say the date, a lot of times, who's going to register a date?

00:10:25Marc:And then I say the name of the city after, and you're like, oh, that's me.

00:10:29Marc:What did he just say about the date?

00:10:30Marc:So this guy suggested I switch him, and it's fucking genius.

00:10:34Marc:And why would I do it otherwise?

00:10:37Marc:Anyways, Cleveland, Ohio at the Agora Theater, January 30th.

00:10:41Marc:That's a Thursday.

00:10:42Marc:I'll be in Grand Rapids, Michigan at the Fountain Street Church on Friday, January 31st.

00:10:47Marc:I'll be in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the Turner Hall Ballroom Saturday, February 1st.

00:10:52Marc:I'm just going to say the date.

00:10:54Marc:Fuck the day.

00:10:55Marc:I'm going to be in Orlando, Florida at Hard Rock Live on February 14th.

00:11:00Marc:I'm going to be in Tampa, Florida at the Strass.

00:11:02Marc:I'll be at the Strass Center February 15th.

00:11:06Marc:I'll be in Portland, Maine at the State Theater on February 20th.

00:11:09Marc:I'll be in Providence, Rhode Island at Columbus Theater February 21st.

00:11:14Marc:I'll be in New Haven, Connecticut at College Street Music Hall on February 22nd.

00:11:19Marc:I'll be in Huntington, New York at the Paramount Theater February 23rd.

00:11:23Marc:Go to wtfpod.com slash tour for links to all the venues.

00:11:27Marc:Can you dig it?

00:11:29Marc:So...

00:11:31Marc:I'm back from Atlanta, obviously.

00:11:33Marc:I was there for a week being sedentary, being on set.

00:11:36Marc:Had a nice scene to sort of finish out most of the work I'm going to do on the Respect film.

00:11:42Marc:Had a nice scene with Jennifer in the last day in her mansion, in a mansion that is being presented as her mansion.

00:11:51Marc:And I got one more day to shoot the big concert.

00:11:55Marc:I'm going to be part of that.

00:11:57Marc:The Amazing Grace concert from, I think it was 72.

00:12:00Marc:And I just have one more day of shooting, and it was great.

00:12:03Marc:Although I didn't do much, and I've been trying to take care of my back.

00:12:05Marc:I'm going.

00:12:07Marc:I'm going to go.

00:12:08Marc:I'm going to a chiropractor for the first time in my life tomorrow.

00:12:13Marc:I'll let you know how that goes.

00:12:14Marc:I was just trained not to believe them.

00:12:17Marc:Almost as if they're witch doctors or snake oil salesmen or just hustlers of a sort.

00:12:26Marc:Guys with a racket.

00:12:27Marc:A racket.

00:12:28Marc:There's a lot of rackets.

00:12:29Marc:A racket.

00:12:31Marc:But I'm going.

00:12:32Marc:And then I'm going to go to the regular doctor two days later.

00:12:34Marc:And I'm just going to average it out.

00:12:37Marc:And I'm going to read a thank you note.

00:12:40Marc:Hi, Mark Marin.

00:12:40Marc:Just a quick note to say that you're talking about the loss of La Fonda was really a huge moment, vulnerable and generous of you.

00:12:48Marc:For all of our talk in podcasting and public radio about driveway moments and storytelling, as a listener, this just felt like the simple, powerful moment of one person living life.

00:13:00Marc:One microphone in a little room, not live on stage, and the truth.

00:13:04Marc:It was that lightning in a bottle moment in radio broadcasting that I've heard so many people describe throughout the years.

00:13:11Marc:It's hard to know when that moment occurs in podcasting because they're currently just under 11 billion people making podcasts thrice daily, which is great in so many ways.

00:13:21Marc:But it does mean that the collective conversation among listeners is fragmented, to put it mildly.

00:13:26Marc:So I just want to say that personally,

00:13:28Marc:I've had to do in life.

00:13:43Marc:I'm stumbling around here with words, but I just wanted to tell you that the reason people make things really exploded in my brain that night while I was listening to you.

00:13:52Marc:It felt like the kind of explosion Ginsburg described when he wrote about how certain words with enough distance between them causes a synaptic spark.

00:14:01Marc:He was defining how poetry works or resonates at its best.

00:14:05Marc:Thanks for the work you do.

00:14:06Marc:Thanks for making things.

00:14:08Marc:I'm sorry for your loss.

00:14:09Marc:Here's to all of us humans on Earth trudging the road of happy destiny, occasionally keying the mic on the walkie to let each other know what we are seeing along the way.

00:14:19Marc:Best, Dan, New York.

00:14:22Marc:Thank you, Dan.

00:14:24Marc:That was a lovely email, and I appreciate that you had that experience with what I do.

00:14:29Marc:I've had that experience with what other people do, and I'm...

00:14:35Marc:I'm grateful for it when it happens to me.

00:14:37Marc:Thank you for listening, buddy.

00:14:39Marc:I hope you're okay.

00:14:41Marc:Brian Cox is a great actor, and he just won the Golden Globe Award for his performance in HBO's Succession.

00:14:49Marc:The show has been renewed for a third season.

00:14:51Marc:I believe that...

00:14:53Marc:I recorded this interview maybe like the day before the Golden Globes.

00:14:59Marc:I believe that I think it was.

00:15:02Marc:I want to check that.

00:15:03Marc:But I believe we recorded this interview when he was out here for the Globes the day before the Globes.

00:15:10Marc:I flew to Atlanta, Georgia the next day and I was sitting at a Whole Foods.

00:15:15Marc:I told you about that in Atlanta.

00:15:18Marc:in Midtown, at the beer bar in the Whole Foods, eating a salad out of a box next to a guy wearing a camo hat, a camo shirt, and camo pants, all different shades of camo, with sunglasses on, drinking a six-pack of Mexican beer in cans.

00:15:38Marc:I sat there and watched Brian Cox win, and I said, I just talked to that guy.

00:15:44Marc:I just talked to that guy yesterday.

00:15:47Marc:To nothing.

00:15:52Marc:So this is me talking to Brian Cox to you, for you, from the day before he won a Golden Globe.

00:16:01Music.

00:16:03Marc:I was just in Ireland for two weeks in Northern Ireland.

00:16:11Marc:Yeah.

00:16:12Marc:It's fucking beautiful.

00:16:13Guest:It's stunning.

00:16:14Guest:It's absolutely stunning.

00:16:16Guest:And Scotland is more stunning.

00:16:17Marc:That's what I hear.

00:16:18Guest:It's more stunning.

00:16:19Guest:I mean, my family originally, in the mid-19th century, we're called Mi'kmaqs.

00:16:27Guest:We're Irish Scots.

00:16:28Marc:Okay.

00:16:28Guest:So we're actually Irish descent brought up in Scotland.

00:16:32Yeah.

00:16:32Marc:Now, is that like the Mi'kmaqs looked at in a positive light?

00:16:37Guest:Well, the Irish were never looked at in a positive light.

00:16:40Guest:The Irish had the... I mean, I did a program a few years ago on the television, which is... It was called From the Workhouse, which was the English way of saying, which was rather polite.

00:16:54Guest:But actually, the Scottish way, it wasn't called the workhouse.

00:16:57Guest:It was called the poorhouse.

00:16:58Guest:And you could only get... You went into the poorhouse because it was the only way you can get any medical help by registering the poorhouse.

00:17:08Guest:So I discovered that my great-great-grandfather, who was born in Derry, this was on my mother's side.

00:17:13Guest:He was called... In Ireland.

00:17:15Guest:Yeah.

00:17:15Guest:He was called Patrick McCann.

00:17:17Yeah.

00:17:17Guest:And he, at the age of 39, entered the poorhouse with his six-year-old son, Sam, having lost five of his eight kids, including his wife.

00:17:27Guest:Oh, my God.

00:17:28Guest:To what?

00:17:29Guest:Everything.

00:17:29Guest:And he was a canal worker.

00:17:33Guest:Yeah.

00:17:34Guest:And he injured himself.

00:17:35Guest:And he did eventually become a drunk.

00:17:38Guest:But they moved like in the last year of...

00:17:43Guest:his wife's life, they move something like 10 times.

00:17:48Guest:And they used to do these what they call midnight flits, so they would get out paying the rent and they would just move.

00:17:53Guest:And I kept saying, well, what about the structure of the families?

00:17:59Guest:Wasn't there a support?

00:18:01Guest:And then this woman, this young woman said, oh, I'll show you the structure of the families.

00:18:05Guest:Your great-great-grandmother was called Sarah Maguire.

00:18:08Guest:And I said, oh, okay.

00:18:10Guest:She said, and I'll show you where she lived.

00:18:13Guest:In fact, I'll show you the entrance in the Mitchell Library.

00:18:15Guest:So I went to the Mitchell Library, and they showed this entrance, and it said, Sarah Maguire lives on a stair in Calcadans.

00:18:23Guest:Wow.

00:18:24Guest:And they took me to this place, and they said, this is where she'd live.

00:18:30Guest:And they showed me a step, and that would be it.

00:18:32Marc:No kidding.

00:18:33Marc:Yeah.

00:18:33Marc:And this is some sort of like, it was a show based on your family's roots.

00:18:37Guest:It was like finding your roots.

00:18:39Guest:They did a few people.

00:18:40Marc:Right, right.

00:18:40Marc:They do that here, the finding your roots.

00:18:42Guest:Yeah, it's that.

00:18:43Guest:And the fact that my beleaguered great-grandfather, his eldest son, his youngest son, and his middle son survived.

00:18:55Guest:All the other kids, five of them died.

00:18:58Guest:Yeah.

00:18:58Guest:All the girls died.

00:19:00Guest:And he was desperate to get it.

00:19:03Guest:He was in Glasgow.

00:19:04Guest:This was in Glasgow because he was working there.

00:19:07Guest:And the Irish really got a rough time.

00:19:09Guest:They were not treated well.

00:19:11Marc:But when you find out that stuff about your family, how did it affect you?

00:19:15Marc:I mean, knowing that.

00:19:16Guest:Well, you know, you realize you've got all this information in your DNA.

00:19:21Guest:Right, yeah.

00:19:22Guest:You kind of go... When you try to sort of... When you become conscious of it, you realize you're...

00:19:31Guest:That's where little anxieties come from.

00:19:35Marc:It's right.

00:19:36Guest:It's there.

00:19:37Guest:It's right.

00:19:37Guest:It's passed through the generation to generation.

00:19:41Guest:So it kind of, in a way, I think it's sort of...

00:19:49Guest:Being responsible being the man who I am.

00:19:52Guest:I think I'm, in a way, I have a kind of gratitude towards it, whereas it's also a burden.

00:19:59Guest:I mean, I also had a pretty difficult time as a child because my dad died when I was eight and my mother was institutionalized.

00:20:06Marc:Really?

00:20:07Marc:Now, the people you found out about were like four or five generations back.

00:20:11Guest:No, they were my mother's grandfather.

00:20:14Guest:He was my mother's grandfather.

00:20:16Guest:My grandfather was a mysterious figure.

00:20:20Guest:We could never find his war records.

00:20:22Guest:He was in the First World War.

00:20:25Guest:My mother always said he was a 21-year service man.

00:20:28Guest:Yeah.

00:20:28Guest:But I couldn't find him.

00:20:29Guest:He was a drunk as well, of course, which went with the territory.

00:20:32Guest:And he was the eldest son of this Patrick.

00:20:36Guest:And Patrick eventually ended up in an asylum.

00:20:38Guest:And I got the last, in 1910, wandering the wards of the asylums, still thinking he was a 14-year-old boy from Derry.

00:20:48Marc:This is your mother, your grand... Yeah, my mother's grandfather.

00:20:52Marc:Oh, wow.

00:20:52Marc:Yeah.

00:20:53Marc:So the mental illness you could track... That's right.

00:20:56Marc:...pretty far back.

00:20:57Marc:That's right.

00:20:57Marc:What was it specifically?

00:21:00Guest:You know, stress.

00:21:02Marc:Oh, yeah?

00:21:02Guest:I mean, stress brings on all kinds... I mean, my mother, she couldn't deal with the death of my father, and she felt horribly guilty for it because she...

00:21:13Guest:He had a shop.

00:21:14Guest:He was the youngest son of a family.

00:21:19Guest:And his sisters took care of him, like my sisters took care of me.

00:21:23Guest:They made sure he was going to be all right.

00:21:26Guest:So his elder sister, I mean, there were 13 of them all together.

00:21:32Guest:Oh, wow.

00:21:33Guest:His elder sister made...

00:21:35Guest:After the war, she had a pension, and she bought a little shop.

00:21:39Guest:Yeah.

00:21:40Guest:And my father worked in the mills, and our hometown is Jute Mills.

00:21:44Marc:Jute Mills.

00:21:45Marc:Yeah.

00:21:46Marc:What do they make?

00:21:46Marc:Is it a fabric, a rug?

00:21:48Marc:Yeah.

00:21:49Guest:I know jute.

00:21:50Guest:Well, you know a covered wagon?

00:21:51Guest:Yeah, sure.

00:21:52Guest:That would be made in Dundee.

00:21:54Guest:Oh, okay.

00:21:55Guest:Whenever you see a Western.

00:21:56Guest:It's almost like a burlap.

00:21:57Guest:That's right.

00:21:58Guest:Yeah.

00:21:58Guest:That's what they did.

00:21:59Guest:That's what they did there?

00:22:00Guest:Well, they discovered it through what they did.

00:22:03Guest:How they discovered it was that-

00:22:05Guest:You know, the east coast of Scotland is a great weaving community.

00:22:10Guest:And they discovered this thing called jute.

00:22:13Guest:And they also discovered it because Dundee was a whaling city.

00:22:18Guest:So they discovered that if they dipped this yarn in whale oil, it extended.

00:22:23Guest:The jute.

00:22:24Guest:The jute extended.

00:22:25Guest:Yeah.

00:22:26Guest:So that's how they set up the jute industry.

00:22:29Guest:And that's why we also supplied the tents for the Confederate Army as well.

00:22:34Guest:It's an extraordinary story.

00:22:36Guest:In the States?

00:22:36Guest:In the States, yeah.

00:22:38Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:22:39Guest:Dundee, my hometown, had the highest child poverty and the richest people ever.

00:22:44Guest:in the world at one point.

00:22:46Marc:Now, is this something that you've grown up fascinated with, or is this all, like, something new for you?

00:22:52Guest:No, no, it's something I've been aware of, because, you know, I'm aware of my roots, and I think of, you know, the people who get the top end of the bath in my life, you know, so I've been sort of constantly aware of that, and I did a couple of programs, I did a couple of documentaries on, I did one on Jute, I did one on the... On Jute?

00:23:11Guest:Yeah, on my family's, you know, because my...

00:23:14Guest:What happened in the 1850s, the people, this is my father's family, they all came from Ireland, and there was no work from them for the men.

00:23:25Guest:The men were known as kettle boilers.

00:23:27Guest:That's a phrase based on what?

00:23:31Guest:Making tea.

00:23:32Guest:Okay.

00:23:33Guest:boiling the kettle.

00:23:34Guest:This is not a positive thing.

00:23:35Guest:They were like house husbands, except without any of the care or responsibility.

00:23:39Guest:And, of course, that's when, you know, illegal, well, not illegal alcohol, but blended alcohol came in.

00:23:49Guest:And that's where in the early 1840s, 1850s, the alcoholic rate in Scotland was something like 45%.

00:24:00Marc:It's crazy.

00:24:01Marc:I was there briefly, and I saw more public vomiting than I'd seen in Glasgow.

00:24:06Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:24:07Marc:And that was a few years ago.

00:24:08Guest:No, yeah, that's a tradition.

00:24:11Guest:Public vomiting is a big Scottish tradition, which we keep up, and we do it rather well.

00:24:16Guest:Very well.

00:24:17Guest:Yeah, the Northeastern people do, because they bring Newcastle Brown Ale, they do lateral vomiting.

00:24:22Guest:Yeah.

00:24:22Guest:You know, you can't, it comes out laterally.

00:24:25Guest:Yeah, straight.

00:24:27Guest:But in Scotland, we bend over.

00:24:28Guest:We have the decency to bend over.

00:24:30Guest:But keep moving.

00:24:31Guest:But keep moving.

00:24:32Guest:Don't stop.

00:24:33Guest:Yeah.

00:24:34Guest:So anyway, that was the history.

00:24:36Guest:And so jute was the thing.

00:24:38Guest:So when they brought them over in cattle loads in Irish and Highlanders, Highland families as well, predominantly Catholic, and they came over and it was the women.

00:24:50Guest:The women had been, you know, they'd weaved and they'd spin from stuff.

00:24:56Guest:They'd done that all their life.

00:24:58Marc:They know the tools.

00:25:00Guest:They came into the big industry of the jute industry.

00:25:03Guest:And it was 80% of the working population of my hometown were female.

00:25:08Marc:Wow.

00:25:09Marc:So the strong women, matriarchal women?

00:25:12Guest:Very matriarchal.

00:25:12Guest:Very, very... I mean, they did the most amazing things.

00:25:17Marc:And this was your mother or your grandmother?

00:25:18Guest:This is my grandmother.

00:25:19Guest:This is my grandmother's generation, even my great-grandmother's generation.

00:25:23Guest:And they did extraordinary things.

00:25:25Guest:They were literally...

00:25:26Guest:You know, they were Catholics and they built, they gathered the money.

00:25:32Guest:I don't know how they did it, but they built six of the most incredible churches where they brought an Italian designer in and Hanson who designed the Hanson cab.

00:25:42Guest:Yeah.

00:25:43Guest:He designed one of the churches, the church where my parents were married.

00:25:46Marc:This is in your hometown.

00:25:47Guest:Yeah.

00:25:47Marc:Yeah.

00:25:48Marc:Yeah, I mean, the Catholics have always been good at building stunning churches to make sure that the rabble understands who's in charge.

00:25:56Guest:That's right.

00:25:56Guest:I mean, it's a kind of, yeah.

00:26:00Guest:Awe-inspiring.

00:26:01Guest:Yeah, and sort of law of diminishing returns as well.

00:26:04Guest:It seems like it now.

00:26:05Guest:Yeah.

00:26:06Guest:You know, but it was very strong, and there was a thing called the Mother's Union, which was very powerful.

00:26:12Marc:So you grew up pretty Catholic?

00:26:13Yeah.

00:26:13Guest:I was part of the old Tridentine.

00:26:17Guest:That's my theatrical sense.

00:26:19Guest:It comes from my Catholic ritual.

00:26:22Guest:I love Catholic ritual.

00:26:23Guest:I don't believe in any of it now, but I love the ritual.

00:26:25Guest:You still like it?

00:26:27Guest:I like the ritual.

00:26:28Guest:Yeah, I do.

00:26:29Marc:The swinging, smoking, robes.

00:26:31Guest:Yeah, I can go to midnight mass.

00:26:34Guest:And of course, the great thing about Catholicism is confession.

00:26:37Marc:Yeah.

00:26:37Marc:I just watched, I started watching that Two Popes thing.

00:26:41Marc:I've always been sort of fascinated with confession, but I'm a Jew.

00:26:44Guest:Yeah.

00:26:45Guest:Well, that's why you have Freud.

00:26:47Guest:Yeah.

00:26:48Guest:You see, he picked up that Catholic confession was a good idea.

00:26:50Guest:I know, but he confused everything.

00:26:51Guest:He did.

00:26:53Marc:The Catholics keep it pretty simple.

00:26:54Marc:Yeah, that's right.

00:26:55Marc:Yeah, that's bad.

00:26:56Marc:Say this.

00:26:57Guest:Don't do that again.

00:26:58Guest:But that's also a Jewish thing, confusion.

00:27:00Guest:Yeah.

00:27:00Guest:Confusion, absolutely.

00:27:02Marc:Ongoing dialogue with our problems and whoever will listen to them.

00:27:06Guest:Exactly.

00:27:07Marc:We have that kind of relationship with God.

00:27:09Marc:Yeah, no matter who he is.

00:27:10Marc:Why?

00:27:11Guest:No matter who he is.

00:27:12Guest:Exactly.

00:27:12Marc:But you found in your life confession useful?

00:27:18Guest:And when I was a kid.

00:27:20Guest:Yeah.

00:27:20Guest:I mean, I did because it was the way of offloading any angst that you had.

00:27:26Marc:Yeah.

00:27:26Marc:And there was plenty.

00:27:27Guest:There was plenty.

00:27:28Guest:And you didn't have any.

00:27:29Marc:So there was alcohol and confession.

00:27:30Guest:Yeah.

00:27:31Guest:Alcohol and confession, you know.

00:27:33Guest:And that was, that was.

00:27:34Guest:The closed circle kind of.

00:27:35Guest:Yeah.

00:27:35Guest:That was, that was the root of it.

00:27:36Guest:And it was the women, you know, the women, they kept it going.

00:27:39Guest:They were the ones who, you know, I mean, my father was not a good Catholic, but my mother made him a good Catholic.

00:27:45Guest:Right.

00:27:45Guest:You know.

00:27:46Marc:And what, how did your father pass away so young?

00:27:48Guest:He was 51.

00:27:49Guest:He had pancreatic cancer.

00:27:51Guest:Oh, my God.

00:27:53Guest:And it was a... That's the worst.

00:27:55Guest:It was a hell of a blow to the family because he was a very loved man.

00:27:59Guest:You were eight?

00:28:00Guest:I was eight.

00:28:00Guest:And he was kind of... I mean, my father... It's a problem I've had with fatherhood.

00:28:05Guest:I'm a terrible father.

00:28:06Guest:You think so?

00:28:07Guest:Oh, yeah, really not good at all because my father's mythic.

00:28:11Guest:Yeah.

00:28:12Guest:Obviously, you're comparing yourself.

00:28:13Guest:Yeah, so how can you be, you know, what have you got?

00:28:15Guest:I mean, everybody bases their thing on their dad.

00:28:18Guest:Trying to do better or trying to do different.

00:28:20Guest:Do different or having a sort of.

00:28:21Guest:Not doing what that guy did.

00:28:23Guest:Not doing what that, exactly.

00:28:24Guest:Well, I didn't have any of that.

00:28:26Guest:My father was like, he was like a saint, so I kind of thought, and I thought, there's no way I can live up to this, so I just abandoned it.

00:28:32Yeah.

00:28:32Guest:And when my kids came along, I just said, listen, sorry.

00:28:37Guest:Do what you can.

00:28:38Guest:You're banking on the wrong person.

00:28:40Guest:I said, you know, it's not going to work.

00:28:42Guest:It's not going to happen.

00:28:43Guest:How are they turning out?

00:28:44Guest:Well, they're turning out actually okay.

00:28:46Guest:But my wife keeps saying, because she had a similar background to me.

00:28:51Guest:She had hippie parents who let her do everything.

00:28:53Guest:So she says, boundaries, boundaries, boundaries.

00:28:55Guest:Oh, yeah, boundaries.

00:28:56Guest:And I go...

00:28:57Guest:I don't know anything about boundaries.

00:28:59Guest:I don't know how to say you cannot do this or you cannot do that.

00:29:03Guest:I'm hopeless.

00:29:03Marc:Yeah.

00:29:05Marc:Well, that's interesting because usually I guess not knowing how to have boundaries is better than to be shut down.

00:29:11Guest:Exactly.

00:29:11Guest:Yeah.

00:29:12Guest:I mean, it's hard when you go, it has to be like this.

00:29:16Guest:And I go, well, who says?

00:29:17Guest:That's my thing.

00:29:19Marc:Can we negotiate this?

00:29:21Guest:Exactly.

00:29:21Guest:It's in a way that we can just, you know, and I talk to my boys and I say, you know, but they're horrible hormonal kids.

00:29:28Guest:How many do you get?

00:29:29Guest:Well, I have, from a previous marriage, I have my eldest son who's coming up to being 50.

00:29:34Guest:Wow.

00:29:35Guest:I was a child bride at one point.

00:29:37Guest:Yeah.

00:29:37Guest:And my daughter, my crazy, wonderful daughter who's 40.

00:29:42Guest:And then I've got two boys.

00:29:44Guest:And the weirdest thing about my boys is they're...

00:29:47Guest:I mean, you know, I'm not very tall, but I always wanted to be tall when I was a kid.

00:29:52Guest:My wife is quite petite, but we have these six foot three sons.

00:29:56Marc:How'd that happen?

00:29:57Guest:I have no idea.

00:29:58Guest:In fact, there was a paternity suit we talked about at one point, but apparently they are my children.

00:30:05Marc:You're still married to the woman?

00:30:07Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:30:08Marc:She's here.

00:30:09Guest:She's back at the peninsula waiting for me.

00:30:11Marc:So now this shop your father had, what was the shop?

00:30:14Marc:It was a little grocer shop.

00:30:15Marc:And you remember the shop?

00:30:16Guest:Oh, very well.

00:30:17Guest:Yeah, I remember it.

00:30:18Guest:And my father, that was the problem because he was in a...

00:30:21Guest:A ghetto community.

00:30:23Guest:And he gave everybody what they called tick, which was credit.

00:30:26Guest:And nobody paid their bills.

00:30:28Guest:So he was left holding the baby.

00:30:30Guest:And he's got the food.

00:30:31Guest:Yeah.

00:30:32Guest:And this is what happened.

00:30:34Guest:So when he died, he had 10 pounds in the bank and all this debt.

00:30:40Marc:And there were, what, five girls and one boy and you?

00:30:44Guest:There was three girls and two boys, me and my elder.

00:30:47Guest:My other brother buggered off.

00:30:49Guest:I mean, my only brother buggered off.

00:30:52Guest:As soon as my father died, he joined the army because he couldn't cope.

00:30:55Guest:I mean, he was actually... And in many ways, my brother was more traumatized.

00:31:00Guest:Everybody thought I was the one who suffered from my brother.

00:31:04Guest:But actually, I think looking back, my brother was the one who got brutalized by it all, joining the army and...

00:31:09Marc:Oh, really?

00:31:10Marc:He just couldn't handle it?

00:31:11Marc:Yeah, he couldn't.

00:31:12Marc:And then you were with the three women.

00:31:14Guest:I was with the three women, and they kind of looked out for me.

00:31:17Guest:And your mom?

00:31:18Guest:I'm a mom.

00:31:19Guest:And my mom, you know, my mom was very troubled by it all.

00:31:23Guest:And she was very, she was an interesting, she was so typical of working class women in that part of the country, in my part of the country.

00:31:32Guest:You know, she went into service in Canada when she was a young woman.

00:31:35Guest:She came back and married my, she met my father and married him.

00:31:39Guest:And she always regretted the fact that women, they had a bad rap.

00:31:45Guest:They had a particularly bad rap.

00:31:47Guest:So it was tough for her.

00:31:49Guest:And my father was very generous.

00:31:51Guest:And my mother's great cry was, charity begins at home.

00:31:54Guest:So there was a tension there.

00:31:57Guest:And it also played on him.

00:31:58Guest:And I think it contributed to his demise because I think he just thought, oh, fuck it.

00:32:02Guest:I'm out of here.

00:32:04Guest:I can't deal with this anymore.

00:32:06Guest:Your body, do something to me.

00:32:08Guest:Oh, okay, you got me.

00:32:08Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah, you think so.

00:32:10Marc:Oh, really?

00:32:10Guest:You've screwed the pancreas, right?

00:32:11Guest:Okay, I'm out of here.

00:32:12Marc:And that's a quick one.

00:32:13Marc:That's a quick one.

00:32:14Marc:Three weeks.

00:32:15Marc:Three weeks?

00:32:16Marc:Three weeks.

00:32:16Marc:After diagnosis?

00:32:17Marc:Yeah.

00:32:17Marc:Wow.

00:32:18Marc:And so you were brought in, and your mother started to waffle mentally immediately?

00:32:23Guest:Yeah, she, well, she, you know, I mean, I witnessed, I came home one day from school, and

00:32:30Guest:She was cleaning the oven.

00:32:33Guest:Oh, really?

00:32:34Guest:Yeah.

00:32:35Guest:And I thought, Ma, what's going on?

00:32:37Guest:She said, oh, I'm just cleaning the oven and we clean.

00:32:39Guest:I said, oh.

00:32:40Guest:I said, but what's that smell?

00:32:42Guest:Oh, God, I must have left the gas on.

00:32:44Guest:Wow.

00:32:46Guest:And you saved her.

00:32:47Guest:I saved her.

00:32:47Guest:At that time.

00:32:48Guest:Well, I didn't even know that's what I did, but I realized later on that I'd saved her.

00:32:52Guest:Oh, my God.

00:32:53Guest:Yeah.

00:32:53Marc:So your brother goes into the army.

00:32:57Marc:Is this where you start wanting to act?

00:33:00Guest:No, no, I started wanting to act because my dad used to make me do Jolson impersonations when I was two.

00:33:05Guest:Oh, yeah, singing?

00:33:06Guest:Yeah.

00:33:06Guest:With blackface?

00:33:07Guest:No, not quite blackface.

00:33:09Guest:I did sit on a coal bunker, but I didn't do blackface.

00:33:12Guest:But I did all the actions.

00:33:13Guest:I did Mammy and Tootsie.

00:33:16Marc:And you were good at it?

00:33:17Guest:Yeah, it was amazing.

00:33:20Guest:And of course, our great festival in Scotland is Hug Money, New Year's Eve.

00:33:25Guest:It goes on for days.

00:33:26Guest:It's still going on now?

00:33:27Guest:Yeah, it's still going on now.

00:33:29Guest:It'll be still going on.

00:33:30Guest:People will be dying from drink and what have you.

00:33:33Guest:Still vomiting in the streets of Glasgow.

00:33:37Guest:So no, that was the background.

00:33:40Guest:And when I got that sense of...

00:33:44Guest:approval.

00:33:45Guest:I thought, wow, this is good.

00:33:47Guest:And you made him laugh?

00:33:48Guest:Yeah, I made him laugh.

00:33:49Guest:I made him enjoy, and it was good.

00:33:51Guest:And I thought, wow, this is something I held on to.

00:33:54Guest:And I always was the class clown.

00:33:59Guest:This is the way I could deal with the violence, because it was innately violent.

00:34:03Guest:I remember one time, there was a guy who was probably autistic.

00:34:09Guest:We know that now.

00:34:10Guest:He was called Harry Carey, we called him.

00:34:13Guest:And he was a sweet kid, but he was very, you know, quite clearly.

00:34:19Guest:And these other guys in the school made me fight him, you know.

00:34:23Guest:But you're not a fighter?

00:34:24Guest:I'm not a fighter, no.

00:34:25Guest:So I ended up beating myself up.

00:34:28Guest:In front of him?

00:34:28Guest:Yeah.

00:34:29Guest:And all the kids realized they were dealing with a crazy guy.

00:34:33Guest:Because I was hitting myself.

00:34:35Guest:Really?

00:34:36Guest:Yeah.

00:34:37Guest:I thought, how do I get out of this?

00:34:39Guest:Wow.

00:34:39Guest:I can't beat up Harry Carey.

00:34:40Guest:It was when I go, oh, I'll beat myself up.

00:34:42Guest:So you freaked them all out.

00:34:43Guest:And I freaked them all out.

00:34:45Guest:And they never bothered me again.

00:34:46Guest:The crazy kid.

00:34:48Guest:The crazy kid, yeah.

00:34:48Guest:Wow.

00:34:49Marc:It's sort of interesting.

00:34:50Marc:I mean, the sort of psychological dynamics of like, you know, understanding how powerful, you know, putting on a show or entertaining is because, you know, your father who kind of carried a heavy load.

00:35:01Marc:Yeah.

00:35:02Marc:And was not necessarily that happy.

00:35:04Marc:No, no, no.

00:35:05Marc:I mean, he could entertain him.

00:35:06Marc:I have the same relation with my dad.

00:35:07Marc:I can make him laugh and he was a depressive fuck, you know.

00:35:10Guest:Well, my dad was rather shy.

00:35:13Guest:He was a rather quiet man who was put into a position by his sisters.

00:35:18Guest:And he sort of tried to live up to it.

00:35:20Guest:And he did.

00:35:20Guest:I mean, my dad, when he died, something like 300 people came to his funeral.

00:35:27Guest:Wow.

00:35:27Marc:He was an important member of the community.

00:35:29Guest:Yeah, and he was.

00:35:30Guest:And he was loved.

00:35:31Guest:He was really loved.

00:35:32Guest:And my mother was frustrated by him because he was just...

00:35:37Guest:He was too generous, you know, to a fault.

00:35:39Guest:And my mother, you know, and she'd had a drunken dad.

00:35:42Guest:She did this drunken Irish father, you know.

00:35:44Marc:Right.

00:35:45Marc:So she ended up like kind of a control freak?

00:35:47Guest:Yeah.

00:35:48Guest:She tried to keep control.

00:35:49Guest:Yeah.

00:35:50Guest:She tried to keep, but she wasn't really a control freak.

00:35:53Guest:Right.

00:35:53Guest:Because she, it snapped her.

00:35:55Guest:Yeah.

00:35:55Guest:But she wasn't boozy?

00:35:57Guest:No, no, no, no.

00:35:59Guest:She drank, at the end of her life, she would drink fortified wine.

00:36:06Guest:The stuff you get in the pharmacy.

00:36:10Guest:You know, that fortified stuff.

00:36:12Guest:She became slightly addicted to that.

00:36:14Guest:I'm trying to find this photo.

00:36:15Marc:Of the store?

00:36:17Guest:Yeah.

00:36:18Guest:It's a nice photo.

00:36:18Marc:Is the storefront still there, the building?

00:36:21Guest:No, the building all got torn down.

00:36:23Guest:They destroyed my city, which was horrible.

00:36:27Guest:We had a very corrupt city government in the 1960s, and the guy...

00:36:33Guest:They went to jail eventually.

00:36:35Guest:One of them was in the demolition business, and they demolished the city.

00:36:38Guest:Really?

00:36:38Marc:To rebuild as a commercial development?

00:36:41Guest:Yeah.

00:36:41Guest:And it was this beautiful little medieval town.

00:36:44Guest:And they tore down buildings, which if it had been Edinburgh, nobody would have ever done it.

00:36:49Marc:So when did you start actively getting involved with theater?

00:36:56Guest:I started getting involved with theater when I was, okay, my education was a total disaster.

00:37:06Marc:Well, you were running around beating yourself up.

00:37:08Guest:Well, yeah, or the other thing I was doing when I was at primary school, I would go for what we call in Scotland messages, what you would call errands.

00:37:19Guest:So the great time for me was when the Marist brothers, we had Marist brothers who taught us first, and they were great, and then they took them all away.

00:37:27Guest:It was when they did a little bit of social engineering, when they broke up communities and put them in these horrible housing schemes outside the city.

00:37:35Guest:Like projects almost?

00:37:37Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:37:38Guest:Horrible.

00:37:38Guest:Yeah.

00:37:39Guest:So we were not affected by that.

00:37:43Guest:We managed to stay where we were.

00:37:44Guest:We lived where we were.

00:37:45Guest:Eventually, we went to one, but it wasn't a major one.

00:37:48Marc:What, the four or five of you?

00:37:50Guest:No, my sisters were all married.

00:37:52Guest:I mean, I did spend time.

00:37:54Guest:My sisters lived in these grotty old tenements.

00:37:56Guest:I mean, my eldest sister, who's now 89.

00:37:58Guest:The one who's here?

00:38:00Guest:Yeah.

00:38:00Guest:Yeah, not the one here, the one back in Scotland.

00:38:04Guest:I mean, she lived in two rooms with sharing two bathrooms on the stair.

00:38:10Guest:Yeah.

00:38:10Guest:And that was five people, five flats.

00:38:14Guest:Yeah.

00:38:14Guest:So I stayed there a lot with her because she kind of, she didn't look after me, but actually what was more important is she looked out for me rather than after me, which was actually at the end of the day.

00:38:26Guest:At your back, yeah.

00:38:27Guest:Yeah, exactly, more valid.

00:38:28Marc:Were you... Did you need... Well, I mean, were the streets tough?

00:38:35Guest:I mean, was there like a situation where you... No, the school was tough.

00:38:39Guest:There were a few murderers, you know, a couple of them.

00:38:42Guest:Yeah.

00:38:43Guest:You know, there was guys who used to go and, you know, 11-year-old boys used to go and terrorize old people.

00:38:48Guest:Right.

00:38:49Guest:You know, I mean, it was a lot of thuggery.

00:38:52Marc:Was it just a miserable, poverty-ridden...

00:38:54Guest:There was an element of poverty.

00:38:57Guest:We got quite poor, my mom and I, because she had no money.

00:39:01Guest:My dad had died.

00:39:03Guest:She had a job.

00:39:04Guest:She was a cleaner in the school.

00:39:05Guest:I mean, she had a widow's pension, but she wouldn't get that till Friday.

00:39:10Guest:And Thursday night, we'd maybe have a tough time of it.

00:39:13Guest:Not every Thursday, but I would occasionally have to go across to the local fish and chip shop and say,

00:39:18Guest:could we have some batter bits?

00:39:21Guest:Batter bits were the things at the end of the pan.

00:39:23Guest:After they shake out the fish.

00:39:25Guest:That's right.

00:39:25Guest:That would be our dinner.

00:39:26Guest:Oh, wow.

00:39:28Guest:Batter bits.

00:39:28Guest:There's a name for it.

00:39:29Guest:That's what's disturbing.

00:39:30Guest:Yeah, batter bits.

00:39:31Guest:Can we have some batter bits?

00:39:32Guest:That was a common thing.

00:39:34Guest:It was, I think, more common than people let on that we did it.

00:39:40Guest:And they were very good.

00:39:40Guest:They used to give it to us.

00:39:41Guest:It didn't happen all the time.

00:39:43Guest:I just remember a couple of occasions when it was desperate.

00:39:46Guest:So did you finish up school?

00:39:49Guest:Well, what happened was I went to, I mean, as I say, the headmaster who came in after the Maris brothers used to make me go for errands.

00:39:57Guest:So I missed a lot of school because I would be down shopping for styluses for his gramophone and doing stuff like that.

00:40:04Guest:And no pay for that.

00:40:05Guest:No pay.

00:40:06Guest:But I could wander off and spend the day doing that.

00:40:10Guest:Right, right.

00:40:11Guest:And miss school.

00:40:12Guest:Which is great.

00:40:13Guest:Which is great.

00:40:14Guest:So I'd come back.

00:40:15Guest:Or the other thing I'd do is I'd go to the cinema.

00:40:18Guest:Yeah.

00:40:18Guest:I'd go to the cinema in the afternoon.

00:40:20Guest:Right.

00:40:20Guest:And I'd sleep right through till the following morning.

00:40:23Guest:Really?

00:40:24Guest:Yeah, so I used to break out of the cinema at 4 o'clock in the morning.

00:40:28Guest:My sister, my younger sister, the one who's here, she was my younger sister.

00:40:33Guest:My two elder sisters eventually created this situation where she could emigrate to Canada when I was about 11.

00:40:40Guest:Your youngest sister?

00:40:41Guest:Yeah, when I was about 11.

00:40:42Guest:She was 21.

00:40:44Guest:Yeah, and I was 10.

00:40:47Guest:And so she emigrated.

00:40:49Guest:But she was looking after me, and she was 20.

00:40:53Guest:I mean, she was a kid.

00:40:55Guest:It was ridiculous looking after this boy.

00:40:57Guest:But she would panic because I was missing.

00:41:00Guest:So the police were out looking for me, and I'd be running past.

00:41:03Guest:Four o'clock in the morning, I'd be running down the high street in my hometown.

00:41:07Guest:From the cinema.

00:41:07Guest:From the cinema, the Greens Playhouse, which is a huge cinema.

00:41:10Guest:And I break out.

00:41:11Guest:I find a way of breaking out.

00:41:12Guest:I break out.

00:41:13Guest:I think there was two movies I slept through.

00:41:16Guest:One was Hell in Frisco Bay, and the other was Giant.

00:41:19Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:41:19Guest:So I kind of slept through it.

00:41:21Guest:That's a long one.

00:41:22Guest:Yeah, it was very long.

00:41:23Guest:Yeah.

00:41:24Guest:Put me to sleep.

00:41:25Guest:Anyway, so I'm running down the street and suddenly there's this, you know, the Doctor Who, you know, the TARDIS.

00:41:31Guest:Yeah.

00:41:32Guest:Well, those are all police boxes.

00:41:34Guest:That's what they were originally.

00:41:35Guest:So I'm running past and suddenly this voice comes out.

00:41:37Guest:Where are you going, young man?

00:41:39Guest:Terrifying me, this thing speaking to me.

00:41:45Guest:And the policeman, he wouldn't come out.

00:41:47Guest:He just stayed in his box talking to me, saying, we've got to get you home.

00:41:50Guest:And eventually he came out and took me home.

00:41:52Marc:And your sister was relieved.

00:41:54Guest:Oh, my sister was even somewhat annoyed as well.

00:41:57Guest:So anyway, what happened was that I, my school, you know, I didn't, I failed my 11 plus.

00:42:02Guest:I went to a very good school.

00:42:05Guest:I mean, it was a Catholic secondary modern school.

00:42:07Guest:It wasn't a very good school.

00:42:08Guest:It was okay.

00:42:08Guest:Yeah.

00:42:09Guest:And, but I, there was a couple of guys, there was a couple of teachers there who could see that I was a fish out of water.

00:42:14Guest:And they knew that I was a tricky kid.

00:42:19Guest:But I had wit and I had humor.

00:42:23Guest:Class clown.

00:42:24Guest:And all that.

00:42:25Guest:And they really liked me.

00:42:26Guest:And they looked after me.

00:42:28Guest:They looked out for me again.

00:42:30Guest:I was being looked out for.

00:42:31Guest:Not necessarily looked after, but looked out for.

00:42:33Guest:So they encouraged me.

00:42:35Guest:And I did little plays and stuff like that.

00:42:38Guest:And then I got, then by sheer stroke of good luck, a guy called Bill Jewell, who was one of these guys looking after me, he had a student who had been working at the local repertory, the Dundee Rep, which was a pretty powerful rep throughout the country.

00:42:55Guest:It was people where, you know, a lot of actors, Glenda Jackson started there and people like that, you know.

00:43:01Guest:Nickel Williamson.

00:43:02Guest:And this kid called Frank McGrath, he was...

00:43:05Guest:He was leaving.

00:43:06Guest:He was going to drama school.

00:43:07Guest:So his job was available.

00:43:08Guest:And his job was basically taking assistant to the secretary and taking money to the bank every morning.

00:43:17Marc:Another messenger job.

00:43:18Guest:Another messenger job.

00:43:20Guest:Or, yeah, which I did.

00:43:22Guest:Took it to the British Linden Bank.

00:43:23Guest:Used to take the takings and they were pitiful.

00:43:26Guest:From the theater.

00:43:27Guest:Yeah.

00:43:27Guest:and mop you know cleaning the stage but you were in i was in yeah and i used to mop the stage at the end of the day and then i graduated to doing scene shifting but you could watch all the shows i could watch it and were you doing that yeah i was loving it it was great yeah i know i mean i'd been you know my thing would be movies because i i used to spend you know we had uh double features and we had in my hometown we had 21 cinemas

00:43:53Marc:They were trying to keep you off the streets.

00:43:56Guest:Yeah, and they were great.

00:43:58Guest:And it was double feature.

00:43:59Guest:You're going at 6, you're going out at 11.

00:44:01Guest:And it was a three-day program, so I could see as many as eight movies in a week.

00:44:05Marc:And that was your thing?

00:44:06Guest:That was my thing.

00:44:07Marc:Now, did you feel like you wanted to be in movies?

00:44:09Guest:Yeah, all the time.

00:44:11Guest:That's what I did.

00:44:11Guest:I acted in movies.

00:44:12Marc:And who were your favorite?

00:44:14Guest:Who were your guys?

00:44:15Guest:I veered from Jerry Lewis to Marlon Brando.

00:44:18Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:44:19Guest:The full spectrum.

00:44:20Guest:I had a range.

00:44:22Guest:I developed an early range.

00:44:24Guest:So it was a great time.

00:44:25Guest:It was blissful.

00:44:28Marc:So you move up from sweeping and taking money to the bank to setting up scenery?

00:44:33Guest:And stage managing.

00:44:34Guest:I was the worst stage manager ever.

00:44:36Guest:I mean, it was terrible.

00:44:36Marc:And you were learning all this just by paying attention to whoever was there.

00:44:40Guest:Yeah, by paying attention.

00:44:42Guest:And people liked me.

00:44:43Guest:And you were under 20 at this point.

00:44:45Guest:I was 15.

00:44:46Guest:Wow.

00:44:47Guest:Wow.

00:44:47Guest:I was 15.

00:44:48Marc:So when do you get your big break?

00:44:49Guest:Well, what happened was there was, you know, and I was sort of, I kept my eye open on stuff about actors that came out of the various institutions, you know.

00:45:00Marc:You're aware of it.

00:45:01Marc:I was aware of it.

00:45:02Marc:This guy's from here.

00:45:03Marc:He's a big shot.

00:45:03Guest:He's a RADA guy.

00:45:04Guest:He's a Central School guy.

00:45:06Marc:Oh, really?

00:45:06Marc:What were the differences?

00:45:07Guest:Well, there was just a difference in... What's RADA?

00:45:10Guest:A Royal...

00:45:11Guest:Well, there was a bit of entitlement that went on.

00:45:14Marc:What does that stand for?

00:45:16Guest:Royal Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

00:45:20Guest:And there was this other school called Lambda, called the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

00:45:26Guest:And there was a Canadian guy who actually...

00:45:30Guest:became famous later on as the smoking man in the X-Files.

00:45:35Guest:Oh, OK.

00:45:35Guest:Yeah, called Bill Davis.

00:45:37Guest:And he was this young 24-year-old director who directed the company.

00:45:41Guest:And there was some very good director.

00:45:42Guest:In Dundee?

00:45:43Guest:In Dundee, yeah.

00:45:44Guest:And he was very, you know, he invited me to a voice lesson.

00:45:49Guest:And I thought, what?

00:45:51Guest:He said, come, we're having a voice lesson.

00:45:52Guest:I didn't even know what, I mean, I had no idea what a voice lesson was.

00:45:55Guest:And there's this woman who was there who came and said,

00:45:59Guest:She's, you know, became quite famous as a voice teacher.

00:46:03Guest:But she was this young 24-year-old woman.

00:46:05Guest:And she's now gone home.

00:46:06Guest:She comes from Orkney in Scotland.

00:46:08Guest:Yeah.

00:46:08Guest:And she's gone back.

00:46:09Guest:And her name was Kristen Linklater.

00:46:10Guest:Uh-huh.

00:46:11Guest:And I thought, I want to go where she is.

00:46:14Guest:Yeah.

00:46:15Guest:And, of course, as soon as I got to the school, as soon as I got into Lambda, I was 17.

00:46:20Guest:She left.

00:46:20Guest:She buggered off to America.

00:46:22Guest:She came here.

00:46:22Guest:Oh, really?

00:46:23Guest:To work?

00:46:24Guest:Yeah, to work.

00:46:24Guest:Yeah.

00:46:24Guest:And lived here for 40 years.

00:46:26Guest:Doing voice work?

00:46:28Guest:Teaching at Columbia, teaching.

00:46:30Guest:She started a theater company called Shakespeare and Company up in the Berkshires, you know, in Massachusetts.

00:46:39Marc:So when you're watching all these people come in, you can tell the difference in their styles from the institutions they were part of?

00:46:45Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:46:45Guest:And I could tell, you know.

00:46:48Guest:And the Lambda actors were always a little more thorough just in terms of their...

00:46:53Guest:So the Royal Academy, they were a little entitled?

00:46:58Guest:They were a little entitled and talented, but there was no structure to them.

00:47:03Guest:I mean, that's unfair.

00:47:05Guest:There probably was a structure to them.

00:47:07Guest:But the Lambda thing was because it was— Thorough, you said.

00:47:10Guest:Much more thorough.

00:47:12Guest:And it was very influenced.

00:47:13Guest:It turned out that I realized later it was very influenced by a man called—

00:47:17Guest:Sanford Meisner.

00:47:19Guest:Sure, yeah.

00:47:20Guest:Oh, really?

00:47:20Guest:Yeah.

00:47:21Guest:And that was what was employed.

00:47:23Guest:That was what I learned when I went to school.

00:47:25Marc:So it's not a classical training.

00:47:28Guest:Yeah, well, it is a classical training in one sense because you're doing classical stuff, but you're using...

00:47:33Guest:You're using subject, verb, and object.

00:47:35Guest:I mean, the thing about it was I learned to read at drama school.

00:47:39Guest:I learned how to go subject, verb, and object.

00:47:41Guest:What is the subject?

00:47:42Guest:What is the object?

00:47:43Guest:What is the intention?

00:47:45Guest:And then you transferred that to niceness technique.

00:47:48Guest:Why am I doing?

00:47:49Guest:What am I doing?

00:47:50Guest:Where am I going?

00:47:51Guest:And it kind of fitted perfectly well.

00:47:53Guest:There was a great teacher who's passed now called Vivian Matalon.

00:47:56Guest:Uh-huh.

00:47:56Guest:And Vivian was there.

00:47:57Guest:He was this very kind of- At Lambda.

00:48:00Guest:At Lambda.

00:48:00Marc:Yeah.

00:48:01Guest:And a great influence.

00:48:02Marc:Yeah.

00:48:03Guest:Great influence.

00:48:03Guest:So I had a very good time there.

00:48:05Marc:And you were there when you were 17?

00:48:06Marc:17, yeah.

00:48:08Marc:So you would now, I get the sense, like, whoever I talked to, I talked to, like, Ian McKellen.

00:48:13Marc:Yeah.

00:48:14Marc:You know, about Shakespeare.

00:48:15Marc:I don't, like, I'm not a Shakespeare guy, which makes me feel small.

00:48:19Guest:No, no, no, you mustn't feel that.

00:48:21Yeah.

00:48:21Marc:And I'm not well-versed at all.

00:48:27Marc:And he did it to my face.

00:48:28Marc:He did Shakespeare right to my face.

00:48:31Marc:And I got it.

00:48:32Marc:It wasn't too unfortunate?

00:48:33Marc:No.

00:48:35Marc:It was amazing to see a Shakespearean actor do it so you understand it.

00:48:39Marc:I think that's people like me who grow up watching Sam Shepard plays or whatever the hell, American theater, a little bit.

00:48:46Marc:The language is hard.

00:48:48Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:48:49Marc:And it takes a type of vigilance I don't have.

00:48:51Marc:Yeah.

00:48:52Marc:Now, I always assume that people from the UK who train there are immediately doing Shakespeare.

00:48:58Guest:Well, we do Shakespeare because he's the master of the English language.

00:49:04Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:49:05Guest:And he's a great playwright.

00:49:06Marc:But what I was thinking, though, before you came over here is that even dealing with somebody like the new character, like Logan Roy, right, on Succession, which is great,

00:49:16Marc:that it struck me that as you go through the catalog or whatever they call it, the entire Shakespearean... Your canon.

00:49:24Marc:Your canon, that there was a lesson to be learned both emotionally, theatrically, linguistically, in almost every page.

00:49:32Guest:Yeah, absolutely.

00:49:34Guest:Yeah, I mean, I was lucky, and I've been lucky in relationship to Logan because...

00:49:41Guest:30 years ago, in my 40s, I did it with McKellen, funny enough.

00:49:46Guest:We did this tour of Richard III, which he played Richard III, and King Lear, which I played King Lear.

00:49:51Guest:And he played Kent.

00:49:52Guest:I played the Duke of Buckingham with him.

00:49:55Guest:And we did this tour.

00:49:56Guest:And that was exhausting, because it's such an exhausting part, Lear.

00:50:02Guest:And it's very interesting, because you know,

00:50:05Marc:And you're young to do it at that point.

00:50:07Guest:Yeah, I was young to do it.

00:50:08Guest:But I'd had a success doing a play which is not very often done in Shakespeare because it's a tough one.

00:50:16Guest:But I kind of made it my own, and that was Titus Antronicus.

00:50:20Marc:That's like the big bloody play, right?

00:50:22Guest:Yeah, that's right.

00:50:23Guest:But it's blackly funny.

00:50:25Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:50:25Guest:Yeah, and it's really, and that was the thing I went for because, again, my humorist thing.

00:50:30Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:50:30Guest:I went for this kind of black.

00:50:32Guest:But I learned, you know, you learn on the job.

00:50:34Marc:Why is it not done that much?

00:50:36Guest:Well, because people get it wrong.

00:50:38Guest:They don't understand the ludicrous nature of it.

00:50:43Marc:What is the plot of it?

00:50:44Guest:Well, the plot is that this Roman general returns from the wars to find that the state of Rome is in a bit of a state of flux.

00:50:54Guest:There's a guy who's now taken over who's not very responsible.

00:50:59Guest:And there are these Goths are brought on, and he's going to marry one of the Goth women.

00:51:04Guest:And this soldier, he's an old soldier.

00:51:09Guest:He's lost most of his kids to the idea of Rome.

00:51:14Guest:And the idea of Rome becomes suddenly wanting.

00:51:17Guest:And he's left in a kind of state of like Hamlet.

00:51:21Guest:And when you look at the plays, you look at the later plays, you see that Titus Andronicus is all the tryout stuff.

00:51:30Guest:He tried out a lot of the ideas for later plays.

00:51:34Guest:Hamlet's Madness, Fake Madness, he tries out.

00:51:38Guest:The Iago figure, he tries out.

00:51:41Guest:The Othello figure, he tries out.

00:51:43Guest:So all of that's tried out in that play, and it's raw and rough and ready.

00:51:47Marc:So it's emotionally, mentally raw.

00:51:49Guest:Yeah.

00:51:50Guest:And it's hugely funny if you allow it to be.

00:51:54Guest:Now, a lot of times when Brooke did it, he curtailed the humor because he felt the humor was- Brooke?

00:52:02Guest:Yeah.

00:52:02Guest:Peter Brooke.

00:52:03Guest:Okay.

00:52:03Guest:Yeah.

00:52:03Guest:He felt the humor was detrimental.

00:52:06Guest:But actually, it's the opposite.

00:52:07Guest:The humor to me is what, you know, because I think life is ludicrous.

00:52:12Guest:Yeah.

00:52:12Guest:I don't think life is, I don't think it's tragic or funny.

00:52:15Guest:I just think it's ludicrous.

00:52:16Guest:And the older I get- You personally?

00:52:18Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:52:19Guest:And the older I get, the more, I mean, I think the human experiment is extremely disappointing, you know.

00:52:26Marc:Yeah.

00:52:27Marc:There is a problem with the ending.

00:52:28Guest:Yeah.

00:52:28Guest:Yeah, there is.

00:52:29Guest:And there's no validity to it, you know.

00:52:32Guest:Right.

00:52:32Guest:So I have a real problem with it.

00:52:35Guest:Yeah.

00:52:35Guest:But of course, it serves me as a creative person.

00:52:38Marc:Well, sure.

00:52:38Marc:I mean, I think that is the void that Shakespeare sought to fill.

00:52:42Marc:That's right.

00:52:42Guest:Well, Logan Roy fills it brilliantly.

00:52:44Guest:Right.

00:52:45Guest:Because Logan Roy is, you know, everybody says he's right wing.

00:52:47Guest:Yeah, he's right wing.

00:52:48Guest:But he's a nihilist.

00:52:49Guest:Right.

00:52:50Guest:Secretly, he's a nihilist.

00:52:51Marc:He doesn't- Wants to burn it all down.

00:52:53Guest:Burn it all down because he doesn't believe any of it.

00:52:55Guest:Yeah.

00:52:55Guest:And particularly his own children.

00:52:57Guest:He says, they're fucked.

00:52:58Guest:These children are fucked.

00:53:00Guest:And of course they're fucked.

00:53:02Guest:And I'm responsible, but fuck them.

00:53:05Marc:Well, it's interesting that when you really think about it, that it's not even really about power.

00:53:12Marc:I guess that seems to be what it's about.

00:53:14Marc:But it is about...

00:53:18Marc:There's just this eternal sort of, I guess, existential darkness and nihilism at the core of all of it.

00:53:25Guest:An absence of principle.

00:53:27Guest:Principle just gets in the way.

00:53:28Marc:Well, what we're learning now is that most structures that we thought were there to protect us are really just based on, like, you good?

00:53:37Marc:Are we okay?

00:53:38Marc:There's nothing holding it together.

00:53:40Guest:There's no roots to it.

00:53:42Marc:Against immorality.

00:53:43Guest:And we're certainly seeing it with our present administration.

00:53:45Guest:That's for sure.

00:53:45Marc:But when you're doing Titus, which you were known for, right?

00:53:50Marc:Yeah.

00:53:50Marc:That was your big break theatrically?

00:53:52Marc:Yeah.

00:53:52Marc:What year was that?

00:53:54Marc:1987.

00:53:54Marc:Yeah.

00:53:56Marc:But you've been working a lot all through it.

00:53:58Guest:I've done a lot.

00:53:59Guest:I really, really have a very fortunate career.

00:54:05Guest:I've worked with a lot of great people like Lindsay Anderson and

00:54:08Guest:A wonderful director called Michael Elliott who died far too young.

00:54:11Guest:I did, you know, when I was 36, I took over from Pat McGoon and played Captain Ahab in an extraordinary production of Moby Dick.

00:54:19Guest:So my practice was always for these kind of big scale things.

00:54:24Guest:In theater.

00:54:25Guest:And from Lambda, how long were you there?

00:54:28Guest:I was there only, I was only there because we were such a disastrous year.

00:54:32Guest:They didn't do the full three years.

00:54:34Guest:I only did two years.

00:54:36Guest:So I was out working.

00:54:37Guest:I mean, I got my first job afterwards.

00:54:40Guest:I went back up to Scotland, and I was a founder member of the Royal Lyceum Theatre Company in 1965.

00:54:51Guest:And where you grew up?

00:54:52Guest:Well, it's south of Edinburgh.

00:54:54Guest:It's in Edinburgh.

00:54:55Marc:Oh, it's in Edinburgh.

00:54:56Guest:I grew up in Dundee.

00:54:56Marc:So you were part of the beginning of that, and it's still there now?

00:54:58Marc:Yeah, it's still there now.

00:54:59Guest:In fact, I did the 50th anniversary of it.

00:55:02Guest:with my great pal.

00:55:04Guest:Have you seen Fleabag?

00:55:05Guest:Yeah.

00:55:06Guest:Well, do you know the guy who plays the father?

00:55:09Guest:Yeah.

00:55:09Guest:He's a wonderful actor.

00:55:10Guest:Yeah.

00:55:10Guest:Bill Patterson.

00:55:11Guest:Yeah.

00:55:11Guest:Bill's a genius actor.

00:55:13Guest:Yeah.

00:55:13Guest:He's a genius, but he's very west of Scotland.

00:55:15Guest:Oh, he's great, yeah.

00:55:16Guest:He's very, oh, dear, it's all kind of like that.

00:55:18Guest:He's all very, oh, I don't know.

00:55:19Guest:And he's so brilliant in that show.

00:55:21Guest:So it's a very funny story.

00:55:24Guest:So I ring him up and I say, Bill, it's the 50th anniversary.

00:55:27Guest:He said, oh, what?

00:55:28Guest:He said, it's the 50th anniversary of the...

00:55:31Guest:They'll always see him, oh, that's good, that's good.

00:55:35Guest:I said, yeah, he said, you know, they want to do something, and I've suggested that you and I do Godot together.

00:55:42Guest:You play Go-Go, and I play Didi, the sunny one, and you play the poor me, because it's so west of Scotland.

00:55:49Guest:He said, oh, that would be interesting.

00:55:51Guest:He said, you know, but Brian, I'm worried about my legs.

00:55:55LAUGHTER

00:55:55Guest:And I said, well, I'm sure we'll be able to deal with your legs.

00:56:01Guest:What's the matter with the legs?

00:56:05Guest:He's a year older than me.

00:56:06Guest:So when we did that, he was in his late 60s.

00:56:09Guest:So now, because of my newfound success,

00:56:12Guest:People saying, you know, you want to do theater stuff.

00:56:16Guest:And I said, yeah, I turned down a few theater things.

00:56:18Guest:And then somebody came back with the idea.

00:56:19Guest:What about reviving Godot?

00:56:21Guest:And I said, that sounds great.

00:56:23Guest:Five years since we did it, we're a bit older.

00:56:26Guest:Can I remember the lines?

00:56:27Guest:So I ring Bill again.

00:56:29Guest:And I say, Bill?

00:56:30Guest:He said, yeah.

00:56:32Guest:I said, you know, we're...

00:56:33Guest:You know, the Godot.

00:56:35Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:56:36Guest:They said, well, we're thinking about, you know, maybe reviving.

00:56:39Guest:Oh, really?

00:56:39Guest:Oh, well, I'll look at the lines, you know.

00:56:43Guest:But you know something?

00:56:44Guest:I'm worried about my legs.

00:56:48Guest:After five years.

00:56:51Guest:It's like you're doing the play already.

00:56:52Guest:Yes, exactly.

00:56:54Guest:Exactly.

00:56:55Guest:He's fantastic.

00:56:56Guest:He's just fantastic.

00:56:57Guest:Are you going to do it?

00:56:58Guest:I hope so.

00:56:59Guest:It would be great because we also did it very Scottish.

00:57:02Guest:And I'm from the East.

00:57:07Guest:And the East is all light and sun and 24-hour sunlight where everybody goes wacky in a different way.

00:57:13Guest:And the West is rain, drich, poor me.

00:57:18Marc:And it really manifests itself in the culture?

00:57:21Guest:Oh, it does.

00:57:21Guest:It does.

00:57:22Guest:It's so deep to the culture.

00:57:24Marc:That's so wild, man.

00:57:25Guest:Yeah, so deep to the culture.

00:57:26Guest:When do you start doing film?

00:57:29Guest:I started, my first film was in, oh, way back in the early 70s.

00:57:33Guest:My first film was Nicholas and Alexander.

00:57:35Guest:Oh, my God.

00:57:36Marc:I saw that when I was, like, too young to see it.

00:57:38Marc:Yeah, probably.

00:57:38Marc:That's where they, like, at the end, they line them all up against the wall.

00:57:41Marc:Yeah, they shoot the film.

00:57:42Guest:I remember that part of it.

00:57:44Guest:Yeah, no, it was pretty horrific, that.

00:57:46Guest:And I played Trotsky.

00:57:48Marc:I kind of can picture that.

00:57:50Marc:I can see you as Trotsky.

00:57:51Guest:I played Trotsky.

00:57:52Guest:And it was my first film job.

00:57:54Guest:How'd you get that?

00:57:55Guest:Well, it's funny.

00:57:57Guest:It's a very funny, again, a very funny story.

00:58:00Guest:So it was Sam Spiegel, the famous Sam Spiegel, the director who produced...

00:58:06Guest:African queen.

00:58:07Guest:And he was known as Sam P. Eagle at one point.

00:58:11Guest:An old studio guy.

00:58:12Marc:He was an old studio guy.

00:58:13Guest:He had dancer's legs.

00:58:15Guest:I always remember that.

00:58:16Guest:He had the legs of a dancer.

00:58:17Guest:He was very nifty, but he was quite old.

00:58:19Guest:So I was doing a theater job, and I was up country.

00:58:26Guest:And in those days, it took you forever to get to anywhere.

00:58:29Guest:So I had to come down to London on several occasions for this

00:58:33Guest:And I was summoned.

00:58:38Guest:I was doing the play, and I was summoned.

00:58:40Guest:I thought, how the hell am I going to get there and get back?

00:58:42Guest:So I had to get up at something like half past 4 in the morning, get a train to get down, then get my interview, and then get back for the 7 o'clock show.

00:58:53Guest:And I've done a whole series of meetings with them.

00:58:56Guest:So I go down and I was up for... I'd been up for Kerensky, the part of Kerensky.

00:59:02Guest:And he said, okay.

00:59:06Guest:So I came down and they were talking about Trotsky.

00:59:10Guest:So I came down and I walked in the room and they said...

00:59:14Guest:What are you doing here?

00:59:16Guest:And this was Frank Schaffner.

00:59:17Guest:We don't want to see you again.

00:59:19Guest:I said, oh, I'm sorry.

00:59:22Guest:I said, I was just told that.

00:59:24Guest:No, no, no, no.

00:59:24Guest:We've seen you.

00:59:25Guest:We've seen you.

00:59:26Guest:It's fine.

00:59:26Guest:It's good.

00:59:27Guest:It's fine.

00:59:28Guest:And I said, what do you mean?

00:59:29Guest:He said, it's fine.

00:59:30Guest:It's fine.

00:59:30Guest:And then Sam Spiegel said, yes, it's fine.

00:59:33Guest:You're in the picture.

00:59:34Guest:I said, oh.

00:59:36Guest:I said, really?

00:59:37Guest:He said, yes, you're in the picture.

00:59:38Guest:I said, so am I playing Kerensky or Trotsky?

00:59:45Guest:He said, Kerensky, Trotsky, you're in the picture.

00:59:50Guest:You didn't even know the characters?

00:59:54Marc:Did you have a good part?

00:59:55Guest:Yeah, it was a small part.

00:59:57Guest:I mean, they gave me these pebble glasses, which I couldn't see out of.

01:00:00Guest:So, I remember at one point when I had to find the handle of the door and I couldn't get out.

01:00:06Marc:But then you only did a couple of films then, and then there was a big chunk of time.

01:00:11Guest:Yeah, well, the point was, I mean, to be honest with you, I was always motivated by the movies.

01:00:17Guest:I mean, that was my thing as a kid.

01:00:19Guest:It was movies.

01:00:20Guest:And also, it's also to do with my culture.

01:00:22Guest:I'm a working class kid from Scotland.

01:00:24Guest:Sure.

01:00:24Guest:I'm not English.

01:00:25Guest:And, you know, none of those English movies.

01:00:27Guest:I mean, I love them now, but they meant nothing to me.

01:00:30Guest:All those English, you know, Alec Guinness's, you know, The Lavender Hill Mob or Doctor films in Doctor in the House and all that and those terribly, terribly English films.

01:00:41Guest:They meant nothing.

01:00:41Guest:But what meant something to me was...

01:00:43Guest:You know, the Bowery Boys, Jerry Lewis, Spencer Tracy, because he was a Catholic.

01:00:50Guest:So my mother always made me go and see Spencer Tracy.

01:00:53Guest:She loved him, huh?

01:00:54Guest:She loved Spencer Tracy.

01:00:55Guest:And of course, I love Spencer Tracy as a result.

01:00:58Guest:In fact, he's my very favorite actor of all times.

01:01:02Guest:And then Brando, you know, Brando and Dean, you know, and seeing them.

01:01:05Guest:And that was the 50s.

01:01:06Guest:And it was a fomenting time for me.

01:01:09Guest:Yes.

01:01:09Guest:So that's what I wanted to do.

01:01:10Guest:I wanted to do movies.

01:01:11Guest:And the theater was like an alien place to me.

01:01:14Guest:But you were doing a lot of it.

01:01:15Guest:Well, I was, because that's what we do.

01:01:18Guest:And I worked at the Royal Court and worked with people like Lindsay Anderson.

01:01:21Guest:So that was a great influence for me.

01:01:23Marc:Well, it's interesting, because you were able to integrate some of this.

01:01:26Marc:Because I had no idea about the kind of infusion of Meisner into any of the schools in Britain.

01:01:34Guest:Oh, no, no.

01:01:34Guest:It was.

01:01:35Guest:It was...

01:01:37Guest:What's the word?

01:01:38Guest:It was subliminal.

01:01:40Guest:Yeah.

01:01:40Guest:You know, very much so.

01:01:41Guest:But it was a kind of, it was, it basically taught me how to read.

01:01:46Marc:That's really what I liked about it.

01:01:48Marc:So, and like, do you find when you do it, like having done so much theater and you've done a lot of Shakespeare?

01:01:53Marc:Mm-hmm.

01:01:54Marc:That your approach is, you know, what tools do you sort of rely on to build the character?

01:02:00Guest:Well, I just, the internal mechanism, really.

01:02:03Marc:Yeah.

01:02:03Guest:I mean, it's who the guy is.

01:02:05Guest:Yeah.

01:02:06Guest:And I mean, don't worry.

01:02:07Guest:I mean, you know, when I was a young guy, I mean, Olivier was around.

01:02:13Guest:And, you know, Olivier was just incredibly impressive.

01:02:16Guest:Yeah.

01:02:17Guest:Because of his audacity.

01:02:18Guest:Yeah.

01:02:18Guest:To see Olivier play Othello, which is unheard of now, he couldn't do that and get away with it.

01:02:23Guest:Right.

01:02:23Guest:But it was audacious.

01:02:24Guest:Yeah.

01:02:25Guest:And it was fantastic.

01:02:26Guest:And then seeing Nicole Williamson, for instance, who's the first actor I ever met because he was having a punch-up as I walked in the stage door for my job.

01:02:34Guest:Yeah.

01:02:35Guest:And you got to see them all work.

01:02:36Guest:I got to see them all.

01:02:37Guest:I saw them all as a kid.

01:02:38Guest:Yeah.

01:02:38Guest:And we used to go from school, from drama school.

01:02:41Guest:We would go down there to a dress rehearsal, and we would turn up.

01:02:44Guest:Yeah.

01:02:44Guest:We saw Maggie Smith.

01:02:46Guest:I mean, Maggie Smith doing Hay Fever with the great Dame Edith Evans.

01:02:52Guest:So that was a phenomenal period in my life.

01:02:55Guest:So I really began to love the theater.

01:02:58Guest:But I still had the cinema.

01:03:01Guest:Sure.

01:03:01Guest:When I did that cinema, you know, and I held out.

01:03:06Guest:I mean, I did a lot of theater.

01:03:08Guest:I went off and I learned my job.

01:03:09Guest:I learned the job by doing theater.

01:03:12Guest:But I always had this thing about the cinema hanging over me.

01:03:15Guest:And then I did two plays.

01:03:19Guest:One was Moby Dick, which was a big success for me personally, and then I did two plays after that.

01:03:27Guest:which was I did a play called Strange Interlude, which was a Eugene O'Neill play, and that's a long, long play by Eugene O'Neill, which is never done.

01:03:36Guest:I did it with Glenda Jackson, and we transferred that to Broadway.

01:03:40Guest:Now, in the interim term between transferring that to Broadway, I did another play in London called Rat in the Skull,

01:03:46Guest:which was about the Northern Irish conflict.

01:03:48Guest:And I played this Protestant guy who turns this take, this Catholic terrorist.

01:03:55Guest:And it's a really, really good play.

01:03:57Guest:It was a very powerful play.

01:03:58Guest:This was 84.

01:04:00Guest:So I ended up doing both those plays.

01:04:03Guest:But I ended up both going to America, coming here.

01:04:06Guest:So I came to America.

01:04:07Guest:I was in my late 30s.

01:04:10Guest:And we did them.

01:04:13Guest:And there were big successes.

01:04:15Guest:And Rat in the Skull was a huge, huge success.

01:04:18Guest:And this casting director called Bonnie Timmerman came to see me in it.

01:04:23Guest:And she invited me to go and meet her.

01:04:27Guest:And I met her.

01:04:29Guest:And I did an audition.

01:04:31Guest:The pal of mine was my other partner in the scene, partner in the scene, and it was Manhunter.

01:04:38Guest:So she's so eccentric, Bonnie.

01:04:41Guest:She said, do you mind?

01:04:43Guest:I don't want to see you.

01:04:47Guest:I said, I'm sorry.

01:04:48Guest:She said, I don't want to see you.

01:04:50Guest:She said, because when I got to the theater, I could only hear your voice because I didn't have my seat properly.

01:04:55Guest:I didn't have the proper seat.

01:04:56Guest:So could you turn away from the camera?

01:04:59Guest:And I said,

01:05:00Guest:I've never been asked to turn away, but I said, fine.

01:05:03Guest:So I did this, and then, of course, eventually I did turn into the camera.

01:05:06Guest:And I got the job.

01:05:07Guest:You were the first Hannibal Lecter.

01:05:09Guest:I was the first Hannibal Lecter.

01:05:10Marc:I remember.

01:05:11Guest:Yeah, and I got that job.

01:05:12Guest:And that was my calling card.

01:05:15Guest:So what happened was I... Who was the killer?

01:05:18Guest:Noonan?

01:05:18Guest:Tommy Noonan.

01:05:19Guest:Tommy Noonan, yeah, fantastic.

01:05:21Guest:It's Dollar Hyde.

01:05:22Guest:It's a great movie.

01:05:23Guest:It is, yeah.

01:05:24Guest:And Michael, man, who's nuts, but very talented.

01:05:28Guest:And anyway, what happened was that I did that.

01:05:33Guest:And I was in America.

01:05:34Guest:And then my marriage, my first marriage, fell apart.

01:05:38Guest:And I was sort of on the point of moving to the States.

01:05:42Guest:But I realized I had these two kids.

01:05:45Guest:I had a teenage son and I had a very young daughter who was very affected by a divorce.

01:05:51Guest:So I couldn't move.

01:05:52Guest:I had to stay.

01:05:52Guest:So I had to get a job.

01:05:53Guest:So you're a good father.

01:05:55Guest:Pardon?

01:05:55Guest:You're a good father.

01:05:56Guest:Well, okay.

01:05:57Guest:But I had to get a job.

01:06:01Guest:So I got this job at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

01:06:06Guest:And it's the last place in the world I thought I wanted to go.

01:06:09Guest:I mean, I had worked in the late 70s at the National Theater, and I hadn't enjoyed it.

01:06:15Guest:I didn't like Peter Hall.

01:06:17Guest:He ran the place?

01:06:18Guest:Yeah.

01:06:19Guest:I just couldn't get on with him.

01:06:20Guest:And he was very good to me, but it never clicked.

01:06:24Guest:So then I finally went to Stratford, and I went to the London end.

01:06:27Guest:So I started off in London, and I did no Shakespeare plays.

01:06:31Guest:And then Terry Hands, who ran the company, said, I want you to come up to the Stratford proper.

01:06:37Guest:This was at the Barbican, where it was the London base, and I was working there.

01:06:43Guest:And he said, well, come up.

01:06:45Guest:He said, we want to do Titus Andronicus.

01:06:50Guest:And there were all these directors who wouldn't touch it.

01:06:55Guest:They didn't want to know.

01:06:56Guest:And he kept saying certain directors.

01:06:58Guest:And I said, I'm nearly 40.

01:07:00Guest:I said, I've got nothing.

01:07:04Guest:I said, I don't want to play safe.

01:07:06Guest:I want to push it.

01:07:08Guest:I want to push the envelope.

01:07:10Guest:So what happened is we found this young director, this young female director called Deborah Warner.

01:07:15Guest:who had been had a success with her own company but the company had gone you know she had lost the grant yeah so we got her in and she took over and directed and then the rest was you know that was it so this interest so you you have this break in movies but you know the family thing you know you kind of lived you you manned up to your responsibilities came back yeah and

01:07:38Marc:And then you get brought in to this historical position and do this amazing version of this thing.

01:07:45Marc:That's right.

01:07:46Marc:Turned it inside out.

01:07:47Guest:Turned it inside out.

01:07:47Guest:And then I stayed on and I went to do the Lear at the Stratford and I did a lot of touring.

01:07:52Guest:We did a world tour of Lear.

01:07:54Guest:We did a tour of Titus before.

01:07:57Marc:Now, Lear, like in terms of like, so it's funny because I read somewhere that when you were doing Lecter, Hopkins was doing Lear.

01:08:06Guest:When I was doing Lecter, Hopkins was doing Lear.

01:08:09Guest:When I was doing Lear, he did Hannibal.

01:08:12Guest:Are you guys friends?

01:08:14Guest:Yeah.

01:08:15Guest:We never talk about that, though.

01:08:16Guest:Oh, you don't talk about that?

01:08:17Guest:Yeah, that's a taboo subject.

01:08:18Guest:We never talk about it.

01:08:19Guest:Oh, the Lears?

01:08:20Guest:The Lears.

01:08:21Guest:No, no, no, the Lectors.

01:08:22Guest:Oh, the Lectors.

01:08:23Guest:We'll talk about the Lear.

01:08:24Guest:I mean, I'll gladly talk about the Lear because he got a lot... He had a tough time on Lear, you know.

01:08:28Marc:And what is it like?

01:08:29Marc:Because, like, you know, being someone who doesn't know about the nuances of it, there seems to be some analogy to be brought with Logan Roy and Lear, but not really.

01:08:41Guest:Not really.

01:08:41Guest:I mean, there's an element of...

01:08:43Guest:There's an element of... Because Lear has a heart, right?

01:08:47Guest:Well, Logan has a heart.

01:08:50Guest:It's very deep in his body.

01:08:52Guest:Embedded.

01:08:53Guest:But the thing about Lear is that Lear's giving it all away, and Logan is trying to take it all back.

01:09:02Guest:He's not giving it away to anybody.

01:09:04Marc:Well, there's that thing.

01:09:05Marc:It's like when you say that about nihilism and just this idea because we are living in this world where these older boomers are really... The narcissism is that if I'm going to end, the world's going to end with me.

01:09:23Guest:Well, there's an element of that.

01:09:25Guest:Yeah, I think that's true.

01:09:26Guest:I'm not sure of...

01:09:29Guest:I'm not sure if Logan feels he's going to end.

01:09:35Guest:I think he's also smarter.

01:09:38Guest:Yeah, it's a great character.

01:09:40Guest:He's so much smarter than our present POTUS.

01:09:42Guest:I mean, he's such a dumbass.

01:09:44Marc:Well, he's one of the guys that runs this type.

01:09:47Marc:That's right.

01:09:47Marc:An owner of politicians.

01:09:48Marc:That's right.

01:09:49Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:09:50Guest:And he does that.

01:09:51Guest:I mean, that's what he does.

01:09:52Guest:And it's very interesting because you get this kind of thing about...

01:09:59Guest:About people in power and people of wealth.

01:10:02Guest:People of wealth.

01:10:03Guest:I look at these latecomers to the democratic race like Thomas Dyer and now Bloomberg.

01:10:10Guest:And it was so funny.

01:10:11Guest:Bloomberg came to see the show.

01:10:13Guest:Oh, I don't know.

01:10:14Guest:Which show?

01:10:16Guest:Well, I've just been playing Lyndon Johnson.

01:10:17Guest:Oh, okay.

01:10:18Guest:I was the smallest Lyndon Johnson ever, but it was all done with- The one that Cranston opened?

01:10:24Guest:Yeah, well, I did the second play, which I just did on Broadway, called The Great Society, which is really the tragedy.

01:10:31Guest:It's the great story of Lyndon falling apart, Lyndon trying to keep-

01:10:36Guest:these programs going and dealing with Vietnam, which turns into be the biggest shit show of all time.

01:10:45Guest:So that was fascinating to do that.

01:10:47Guest:And in the process, Bloomberg came to see it.

01:10:51Guest:And he was very nice, very civilized man.

01:10:56Guest:But he was a little bit of a giveaway, which is this thing about power and this thing about being entitled

01:11:06Guest:And it was a very subtle thing, but he said, we were talking about, he said, oh, yeah, Vietnam.

01:11:13Guest:I was very nearly involved in Vietnam.

01:11:15Guest:It nearly happened.

01:11:16Guest:I said, I was on point to become, of course, I would never have become a private.

01:11:27Guest:I was on point to become a lieutenant, a lieutenant, he said.

01:11:30Guest:And I thought that's such an interesting idea, the fact that you can't think of yourself as a private soldier, but you can think of yourself as a lieutenant.

01:11:38Guest:So you're already thinking this is your mindset.

01:11:41Guest:This is where you're going.

01:11:44Guest:And, of course, eventually he didn't go because whatever happened.

01:11:47Guest:Sure.

01:11:48Guest:I wonder what that story is.

01:11:49Guest:We'll find out.

01:11:50Guest:We'll find out.

01:11:52Guest:But again, it's this thing of entitlement.

01:11:55Guest:You go, wow.

01:11:57Guest:It's so naked and so unconscious.

01:11:59Marc:Well, that's the amazing thing about the way the Roys are portrayed.

01:12:03Marc:Because when you get the hang of the show, you realize, I'm not sure that this is how people really talk.

01:12:09Marc:But there's a language here that sort of dances around the emotions of these type of people.

01:12:14Marc:That's right.

01:12:15Marc:There's a poetry to the thing.

01:12:16Guest:That's right.

01:12:17Guest:It's poetic.

01:12:17Guest:And it's highly political, too.

01:12:19Guest:Yeah, for sure.

01:12:20Guest:You know, because that's Jesse.

01:12:22Guest:I mean, Jesse is a great, great, you know, modest, but a real, you know, he writes in satirical terms.

01:12:29Guest:I mean, he wrote this great series called The Thick of It, which was done back home.

01:12:33Guest:But it's really about power.

01:12:34Guest:It is about power.

01:12:35Marc:Yeah, but it is interesting that the way you see Logan is this nihilistic vacuum who is playing a game, really, right?

01:12:45Guest:That's right, and I said that.

01:12:47Guest:In the first series, I said it's a game, and the kids don't get it.

01:12:50Guest:Yeah.

01:12:51Guest:They think it's a matter of life.

01:12:53Guest:They don't get the fact it's a game.

01:12:54Guest:They're taking it too seriously.

01:12:55Guest:You know, they take it too seriously, and they don't get it.

01:12:59Guest:And, of course, Logan, like all games, he takes it really seriously.

01:13:02Guest:But they don't get the game, so they can't get on to the game.

01:13:08Guest:And, of course, at the end of the— It's a generational thing.

01:13:10Guest:It's a generational thing.

01:13:12Guest:But at the end of the last series—

01:13:14Guest:The youngest boy, because he's my eldest of my second family, my heir apparent, Kendall, he's pushed him and pushed him and pushed him.

01:13:24Guest:And he's pushed him to such a point that he's actually going to have to make some... It's a great ending.

01:13:29Guest:You know, some time.

01:13:30Guest:And of course, he's a proud father.

01:13:33Guest:That is the beat at the end.

01:13:35Guest:Yeah.

01:13:36Guest:He's a proud father.

01:13:37Guest:He said, oh, look, the kid did well.

01:13:39Yeah.

01:13:39Guest:He's going to screw me.

01:13:41Guest:But he's not.

01:13:43Guest:Yeah, we don't know what's going to happen.

01:13:44Guest:We don't know what's going to happen.

01:13:45Guest:But he goes, come on, bring it on.

01:13:46Guest:What a great ending.

01:13:47Guest:Finally, finally, we've got something.

01:13:49Guest:Because he made such a screw up previously with the bear hug, you know, and all of that.

01:13:55Marc:Such great acting on everyone's part.

01:13:57Guest:Oh, I know.

01:13:57Guest:They're fantastic.

01:13:58Guest:I mean, Jeremy is amazing, amazing as Kendall.

01:14:02Marc:Culkin's good.

01:14:03Guest:Oh, Culkin's extraordinary.

01:14:05Guest:I mean, they're all extraordinary.

01:14:06Guest:Matthew McFadgen as Tom.

01:14:08Guest:Yeah.

01:14:09Guest:It's too much.

01:14:10Guest:And what's her name then?

01:14:11Guest:And Nick.

01:14:12Guest:And then the lovely Sarah.

01:14:13Guest:I mean, she's amazing as Sinead.

01:14:17Guest:Well, I think what's also...

01:14:19Marc:great about the show is it's a real ensemble piece everyone's working together it's so much an ensemble piece and it's so nice to see that because see that was my question is with all this come this drive early on in your career to do film there's really nothing more boring than film acting no no no so what

01:14:37Guest:Exactly.

01:14:38Guest:I mean, that's why I have to get back into the theater.

01:14:42Marc:Right, and this show seems like at least there are scenes where it's like you're doing it.

01:14:46Marc:Yeah, that's right.

01:14:47Marc:You know, like with doing films in my limited experience of it, it's all bits and pieces, and you can't really get going.

01:14:53Guest:No, you see, that's what they do wonderfully well, the writers and the directors.

01:15:00Guest:Of succession.

01:15:01Guest:Of succession.

01:15:02Guest:They let scenes run.

01:15:03Guest:So you can play them through.

01:15:05Guest:So all the big scenes are played one or two times, but we play them through.

01:15:09Guest:So we play it like theatrical pieces.

01:15:12Guest:Oh, that's great.

01:15:13Guest:Well, at least you get to stretch out a little bit.

01:15:16Guest:You do the job, right?

01:15:17Guest:Yeah, I mean, it's very gratifying.

01:15:21Marc:And it seems like it's weird because when I saw you in succession, like I've seen one, maybe one of the Bourne movies, but you know, you got a good gig with that.

01:15:31Guest:Right.

01:15:32Marc:Yeah.

01:15:32Marc:And, but I remember you from like adaptation was the first time where I was sort of like, who the fuck is that guy?

01:15:37Marc:Yeah, yeah.

01:15:38Marc:How did you like working with Kaufman with his script?

01:15:41Guest:Oh, it was fantastic.

01:15:42Guest:Right?

01:15:43Guest:I mean, fantastic.

01:15:44Guest:I mean, it was- It's a Spike Jonze movie?

01:15:46Guest:And Spike.

01:15:46Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:15:47Guest:And Spike is just great.

01:15:48Guest:I mean, I did Her as well, the movie about the- Which one?

01:15:53Marc:Oh, yeah, Her.

01:15:54Marc:Yeah, absolutely.

01:15:55Guest:When he falls in love with the IRS.

01:15:56Marc:That's great.

01:15:57Marc:Who were you in that?

01:15:58Marc:I played Alan Watts.

01:15:59Marc:Oh, yeah.

01:16:01Marc:Great.

01:16:01Marc:Yeah.

01:16:02Marc:Yeah.

01:16:03Marc:A real guy.

01:16:04Marc:And the adaptation guy was kind of a real guy.

01:16:06Guest:Well, yeah.

01:16:06Guest:He was Bob McKee.

01:16:08Guest:Yeah.

01:16:08Guest:And Bob McKee, I know.

01:16:10Guest:I mean, it was Bob McKee that got me the job because they were suggesting, oh, yeah.

01:16:13Guest:They said, what about Michael Caine?

01:16:14Guest:He went, I don't think so.

01:16:16Guest:Yeah.

01:16:17Guest:Right.

01:16:17Guest:He said, I know who should play it.

01:16:18Guest:Because he'd seen me do, I did Skylight, the place Skylight at the Mark Taper.

01:16:23Guest:Yeah, here.

01:16:24Guest:That's a nice theater, huh?

01:16:25Guest:Yeah, it's a lovely theater.

01:16:26Guest:And he came.

01:16:28Guest:He doesn't like David Hare, but he said, well, I liked you.

01:16:32Guest:And he's become a friend over the years.

01:16:35Guest:And yeah, he suggested me for that part.

01:16:39Guest:And I knew, because one of the great things, when I decided, it was a decision I made in the 90s, having had a pretty good career, I still wanted to do movies.

01:16:51Marc:Yeah, you make good choices, though.

01:16:52Marc:Braveheart, you were great.

01:16:53Guest:That's right.

01:16:55Guest:The thing about it was that, you know, in England or Britain, it's an English thing, but there's this sort of strata.

01:17:02Guest:You go, oh, I'm doing that.

01:17:04Guest:And I went, I don't believe in any of that nonsense.

01:17:07Yeah.

01:17:07Guest:If the part works, the part works.

01:17:09Guest:I mean, I have played one of the most successful roles ever, which is Manhunter, and he's only on the screen for 10 minutes.

01:17:16Guest:Yeah.

01:17:16Guest:And the less you do, the more you want it.

01:17:21Guest:People go, oh, who's that guy?

01:17:22Guest:And then when is he coming back?

01:17:23Guest:Oh, he's got, oh, he's got, oh, that.

01:17:25Guest:And that's so exciting.

01:17:27Guest:So when I decided, and it was Michael Powell, I read Michael Powell.

01:17:33Guest:He wrote, who's a great filmmaker, and he said, in his biography, he said, you know, in movies, there are no big parts and small parts.

01:17:41Guest:He said, there are only long parts and short parts.

01:17:44Guest:You're on the movie for a long time or a short time, but you get the focus.

01:17:50Guest:For that day, the day player, which is the hardest thing to be in movies, you get that focus.

01:17:56Guest:Sometimes it's too much because you have to deliver because you've only got a day.

01:18:01Guest:But I thought that was a very good angle to me to restart my career in the mid-90s here, because I moved here.

01:18:10Guest:I just decided that's what I'm going to do.

01:18:14Guest:I'm going to be a character actor in movies.

01:18:16Guest:And I remember having this discussion with the late Nigel, well, Christ, names go...

01:18:23Guest:He was a very famous, actually South African, but known as an English actor who did this TV series, which was very successful.

01:18:31Guest:And he'd just done a film with Sly Stallone.

01:18:35Guest:And I met him on a plane.

01:18:36Guest:And he was going, he said, I can't do that.

01:18:38Guest:He said, I can't play those parts anymore.

01:18:42Guest:I'm a leading actor.

01:18:43Guest:And I said, you know, Nigel, forgive me for saying this, but that's absolute bollocks.

01:18:48Guest:I said, you know, you've just worked with Sly Stallone.

01:18:50Guest:I worked with Steven Seagal, for Christ's sake.

01:18:53Guest:Just imagine what that was like.

01:18:56Guest:And it was fine.

01:18:57Guest:Because you just learned to do the job.

01:18:58Guest:I said, and it really is.

01:19:00Guest:Where'd you work with Seagal in?

01:19:02Guest:Pardon?

01:19:03Guest:Where were you in?

01:19:03Guest:Oh, it was a thing called Glimmer Man.

01:19:05Guest:And he's such a, we haven't got enough time to talk about him.

01:19:11Guest:I mean, actually, he's very complex.

01:19:14Guest:There's something very sweet about Stephen, which I'm, you know, but anyway.

01:19:18Guest:So anyway, so I said to Nigel, I said, look, it doesn't really matter.

01:19:22Guest:You know, you go in and, you know, and I, you know, when I first came to Hollywood in the mid-90s, I saw careers like Andy Garcia and Michael Keaton, who are magnificent actors.

01:19:34Guest:Yeah.

01:19:34Guest:But I saw them all being judged by that opening weekend.

01:19:38Guest:Right.

01:19:38Guest:You know, trying to get the film past the opening weekend.

01:19:40Guest:They got to pull the people in.

01:19:41Guest:They got to pull the people in.

01:19:42Guest:And I did a film called Desperate Measures, which was well named.

01:19:46Guest:Yeah.

01:19:46Guest:Desperate Measures.

01:19:48Guest:And that was Michael and Andy.

01:19:51Guest:It was a big break.

01:19:53Guest:Yeah.

01:19:53Guest:And they were big owners.

01:19:54Guest:And after that...

01:19:56Guest:Their careers went in a very odd way because of the onus that was on them to sell tickets.

01:20:04Guest:And I just thought, I don't want to be in that position.

01:20:08Guest:Oh, fuck that.

01:20:08Guest:I never want to be in that position.

01:20:10Guest:I just want to keep working.

01:20:11Guest:It's not on you.

01:20:12Guest:And actually, television is much kinder that way.

01:20:15Guest:Because television, because you can stream it, you can do it.

01:20:19Guest:And in a way, it's much more of an egalitarian process, too.

01:20:24Marc:And also the outlets are there.

01:20:26Marc:There's a need for content.

01:20:27Marc:That's right.

01:20:27Marc:And it really seems that if you're given the right environment now, you can make a great thing.

01:20:32Marc:That's right.

01:20:33Marc:And people will come to it.

01:20:34Marc:After the first season of Succession, I'd heard some about it.

01:20:38Marc:But it's one of those things where it's like you got to be a real... When you get the hang of that show, how are you not going to fucking watch it?

01:20:47Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:20:47Guest:Exactly.

01:20:48Marc:And then you got a good gig for at least four or five seasons.

01:20:51Marc:Yeah.

01:20:51Marc:Right?

01:20:51Marc:Health coverage.

01:20:52Guest:Hopefully.

01:20:53Marc:Huh?

01:20:53Marc:Hopefully.

01:20:54Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:20:55Marc:They can kill me off any minute.

01:20:57Marc:Well, yeah, I think you got it.

01:20:58Marc:No, I don't think so.

01:20:58Marc:Not yet.

01:21:00Marc:Not yet.

01:21:01Marc:But also, like, you know, doing the movies, like, you were, was it a Spike Lee film?

01:21:06Marc:Was it 20?

01:21:07Marc:Was it 25?

01:21:07Marc:25th Hour.

01:21:09Marc:Yeah, that was a sweet part.

01:21:10Marc:That was a wonderful film.

01:21:10Guest:Right?

01:21:11Marc:And you work with these, as a support, you get to really do great acting on your own, but also work with these heavy hitters, like in The Boxer.

01:21:21Marc:I mean, that was not, right?

01:21:22Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:21:23Guest:No, I've been very lucky that way, and the parts have served me well.

01:21:28Guest:There's not one single role.

01:21:30Marc:In LIE, that was heavy.

01:21:31Guest:Oh, LIE, well, LIE was a very amazing film.

01:21:35Marc:So when you look for these projects, even if they're smaller movies, when you read the scripts or when you get offered them, how do you make the decision to play a guy who's this kind of complex pedophile?

01:21:46Marc:Well, yeah.

01:21:47Guest:Who's a sympathetic character, right?

01:21:48Guest:Yeah.

01:21:49Guest:And again, that's the sort of thing where people said, you've got to watch it.

01:21:52Guest:You've got to watch it with that role because you don't want to get identified.

01:21:56Guest:I never get identified with any role just because I keep moving.

01:21:59Guest:The thing about it is don't stop.

01:22:00Guest:Right.

01:22:00Guest:Don't stand still.

01:22:02Guest:Be a moving target.

01:22:03Marc:Yeah.

01:22:03Marc:And also, as a character actor and as somebody that has the chops that you do, to not be a movie star and have everything be related back through who you really are, that's a gift for you.

01:22:16Marc:to be able to just sort of transform.

01:22:18Guest:That's right.

01:22:18Guest:And it's also what I call acting.

01:22:23Guest:It's what to me is the essence of acting.

01:22:25Guest:That's the job.

01:22:26Guest:The job is to be different people.

01:22:27Guest:Yeah.

01:22:28Guest:And I've been very lucky that way.

01:22:29Guest:I mean, LIE was a great example of something which...

01:22:33Guest:you know, hit a nerve and people went, wow, that's an extraordinary thing to do.

01:22:37Guest:And I've been very blessed.

01:22:39Guest:You know, it's been frustrating.

01:22:42Guest:My wife feels sometimes, oh, you don't get the credit you deserve, but she's changed her mind recently.

01:22:47Marc:Well, no, I mean, it is sort of an exciting thing that you have, you know, this amazing body of work and that people will, you're one of those people where, you know, once you start telling them the movies, you're like, oh, yeah.

01:22:59Marc:Exactly, exactly.

01:23:00Marc:But that's the plight

01:23:02Guest:of the character actor but that's but but that's also the joy of it sure the joy of it is that they go oh you of course right you know you go wow you know you're that good that you know you're not you're not associated with you but with the characters that's right that's right and that's that's the bliss of it yeah

01:23:20Marc:So like with this, what I'm finding interesting is that, you know, that this character of Logan Roy sort of speaks to your roots somehow.

01:23:30Marc:Yeah.

01:23:31Marc:Not until talking to you do, I realize when you're walking through Scotland, going through.

01:23:35Guest:Well, that was what happened.

01:23:36Guest:You see, that was the other thing that happened, which was so extraordinary.

01:23:41Guest:So in the first season, right at the very beginning, right to my first conversation with Adam McKay, who was directing the pilot, and Jesse.

01:23:53Guest:And I suggested at that point, I said, you know, I could play this character, Scots.

01:23:58Guest:I said, it might be interesting.

01:23:59Guest:And Jesse said, no, I want an American.

01:24:01Guest:He's got to be an American.

01:24:03Guest:He has to have an American voice.

01:24:04Guest:Adam McKay was a bit more inclined that way.

01:24:09Guest:And I said, OK, I'll play an American.

01:24:11Guest:So I ended up initially playing, not American, but I played, well, I didn't know that.

01:24:16Guest:But until I, I mean, I, I played a Canadian.

01:24:19Guest:He was Canadian and he was born in Quebec.

01:24:23Guest:So in the first episode, the first episode, there's this big birthday party and they celebrate my birthday.

01:24:29Guest:And he says, born in Quebec, Canada.

01:24:32Guest:Well,

01:24:33Guest:episode nine yeah I've done nine episodes and I'm you know you know I'm doing my stuff and doing my shit and what have you and suddenly Peter Friedman who's playing the Frank who I keep firing and rehiring he comes in says you know I just done some ADR on on the show he said they've changed your birthplace I said what do you mean they've changed my birthplace he said you were you're no longer born in Quebec

01:24:58Guest:I said, what do you mean I'm no longer born in Quebec?

01:25:01Guest:He said, no.

01:25:02Guest:He said, you're born.

01:25:03Guest:He said, oh, I can't remember where you're born.

01:25:05Guest:He said, well, let me look it up.

01:25:06Guest:And he goes like this.

01:25:08Guest:Oh, he said, yeah, you're born in somewhere called Dundee, Scotland.

01:25:11Guest:I said, that's where I'm born.

01:25:13Guest:That's where I come from.

01:25:14Guest:And I went, what?

01:25:15Guest:You know, I was kind of completely... Why would they have told you?

01:25:19Guest:And I went up to him, and I went up to Jesse, and I said, Jesse, what is this?

01:25:25Guest:Oh, he said, we thought it'd be a little surprise.

01:25:26Guest:I said, it's a hell of a surprise, you know.

01:25:29Guest:I've just recorded nine episodes.

01:25:31Guest:And, of course, in the second season...

01:25:33Guest:We do an episode.

01:25:35Guest:Of course, I'm now my favorite son of my hometown because we did an episode called Dundee.

01:25:41Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:25:41Guest:Which not a lot of people have heard about the place.

01:25:43Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:25:44Guest:And we filmed in the beautiful... Oh, so now you are.

01:25:46Guest:You're actually... Now you're the favorite son now.

01:25:48Guest:That's it.

01:25:50Guest:And of course, it was very odd to go back to Dundee.

01:25:53Guest:I mean, I go back to Dundee on a regular basis, but not in such a public way.

01:25:58Guest:So to go back to Dundee and play Logan, who has these bad memories for him.

01:26:07Guest:And, of course, I have mixed memories about Dundee.

01:26:09Guest:On the whole, my memories are quite good.

01:26:11Guest:I mean, I had a very blissful childhood until the point my dad died.

01:26:16Guest:I mean, it was fine.

01:26:17Guest:And then it was tough.

01:26:18Guest:It was tough.

01:26:18Guest:But I still have such admiration for the people of my hometown because they are...

01:26:22Guest:You know, they've been shot on, like, you know, from Winston Churchill onwards, they've been shot on.

01:26:29Guest:But they've survived, and they've built this rather beautiful thing now, which is, I mean, they still have the biggest heroin addiction in Scotland.

01:26:37Guest:Oh, it's a problem, huh?

01:26:38Guest:A whole fifth generation.

01:26:39Guest:I mean, it's really bad.

01:26:40Guest:Oh, it's terrible.

01:26:41Guest:But anyway, the town is getting some focus.

01:26:43Guest:It's getting some, you know, attention.

01:26:46Guest:Yeah.

01:26:46Guest:So I'm going back, and I'm doing all this Logan Roy stuff, and...

01:26:51Guest:And Danny Houston, who's a lovely man.

01:26:54Guest:I haven't interviewed him.

01:26:55Guest:He's a good guy.

01:26:56Guest:Oh, he's a great guy.

01:26:56Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:26:57Guest:He's a great guy.

01:26:58Guest:Tremendous guy.

01:26:59Guest:And he said, well, never mind old Logan Roy.

01:27:02Guest:He said, what about you?

01:27:03Guest:Yeah.

01:27:03Guest:I said, what do you mean, what about you?

01:27:04Guest:He said, well, let's do you.

01:27:06Guest:I said, what?

01:27:06Guest:He said, well, I want to see where you, your background.

01:27:10Guest:I want to see where you went to school, where you went.

01:27:11Guest:So I got a bus.

01:27:13Guest:And there was about four or five of the cast came.

01:27:17Guest:And I took them around town.

01:27:18Guest:My memory lane.

01:27:22Guest:So it's so odd in a way that that has come to me in a sense.

01:27:27Guest:And it's kind of bizarre, actually.

01:27:30Guest:There's something really bizarre about it.

01:27:31Guest:But there is a sort of closing the circle in a way, which is kind of odd.

01:27:38Marc:Yeah, and also I think the opportunity to sort of inform the character with that much of your real memory, but having the character have gone a very different way.

01:27:53Marc:That's right.

01:27:54Marc:It's got to be sort of interesting.

01:27:55Guest:Yeah, it is.

01:27:56Guest:It is interesting because you go, you know, I mean, the whole Logan thing.

01:28:02Guest:I mean, just his language.

01:28:05Guest:Yeah.

01:28:05Guest:His cursing.

01:28:06Guest:Yeah.

01:28:07Guest:I mean, which is just.

01:28:08Guest:They're all doing it.

01:28:09Guest:I know.

01:28:10Guest:I mean, people, I get people coming up to me in the theater.

01:28:12Guest:People would come up, you know, I would come out at the stage door and these kids, you know, teenage boyfriend and girlfriend and say, could you tell us to fuck off, please?

01:28:20Guest:Oh, fuck off.

01:28:20Guest:And I'm going, what?

01:28:22Guest:Can I film you saying fuck off?

01:28:24Guest:And I went, fuck off.

01:28:28Guest:But the worst, the worst, the funniest was, I went, I did this movie with lovely Rosanna Arquette, and she's quite political, Rosanna.

01:28:38Guest:She said,

01:28:38Guest:would you come to a, we're having a Me Too, we're doing a book launch for Ronan Farrow.

01:28:44Guest:And I said, well, I'd love to come.

01:28:45Guest:I really admire what he's done.

01:28:47Guest:And he particularly, he helped a friend of mine who had a thing with Moonves.

01:28:52Guest:So he was very, very, you know, he's given her a lot of stuff that she'd lost in terms of her own self-respect.

01:29:02Guest:And so I thanked him.

01:29:04Guest:And at the end of it, and then suddenly I was surrounded by all these women.

01:29:07Guest:And they were coming up to me and going, and not all of them, but a couple of them were quietly saying, could you tell me to fuck off?

01:29:15Guest:And I'm going, is this wholly appropriate in a Me Too event?

01:29:19Guest:It's appropriate.

01:29:21Guest:And then it just goes back to full circle to how disappointing human beings are.

01:29:25Guest:They can't hold on to anything for five minutes.

01:29:29Guest:That's right.

01:29:29Guest:The ludicrous nature.

01:29:30Guest:The ludicrous nature.

01:29:32Guest:So what does it mean to be a CVE?

01:29:34Guest:A commando of the... Well, there's another word for it.

01:29:38Guest:A sea of the British Empire.

01:29:40Guest:It's something that I did... Is it an honor?

01:29:47Guest:Is it given to you?

01:29:48Guest:It's an honor.

01:29:48Guest:No, the queen, they recommend you get it.

01:29:52Guest:They recommend you get it?

01:29:53Guest:Yeah.

01:29:53Guest:The queen does.

01:29:54Guest:What is it?

01:29:55Guest:They recommend it to the queen.

01:29:56Guest:But you're not a knight.

01:29:57Guest:No, I'm not a knight.

01:29:58Guest:I'm not sir.

01:30:00Guest:I'll never be sir because I...

01:30:02Guest:I mean, I did it at a time when I should have thought better, but I accepted it because I'm fickle.

01:30:12Marc:Well, also, like, it's weird that, you know, that shit runs deep, man.

01:30:15Guest:I know.

01:30:15Marc:That's the problem.

01:30:16Guest:Intellectually, you can think whatever you want about politics, but, like, when the queen offers you something, you're like, okay.

01:30:23Guest:You know, this is the thing.

01:30:24Guest:I mean, it's like this big weekend coming up with the Golden Globes.

01:30:30Guest:You know, you're going, ah, come on.

01:30:31Guest:Yeah, really.

01:30:33Guest:And then you go, oh, isn't this nice?

01:30:36Guest:You know, you're caught on the horns of a horrible dilemma because you really think it does your head in.

01:30:41Guest:I mean, I'm sitting here thinking all the time thinking, this is uncomfortable.

01:30:46Guest:What, the Golden Globes being nominated?

01:30:47Guest:Yeah, it's uncomfortable because I'm having to deal with my own greed and my own, you know, my own.

01:30:53Guest:You want to be humble.

01:30:54Guest:I want to be humble at the same time.

01:30:55Guest:You're caught on the horns of a horrible dilemma.

01:30:59Guest:Is that a Shakespeare?

01:31:00Guest:line?

01:31:00Guest:No, I just made it up.

01:31:02Guest:I like it.

01:31:03Guest:It sounds like a Shakespeare line, doesn't it?

01:31:05Guest:Yeah, it's probably influenced by that.

01:31:06Guest:But it's true.

01:31:07Guest:It's a very hard thing.

01:31:09Guest:And so when I became a CBE, I have a royalist sister and I have a Republican sister.

01:31:15Guest:So I thought, well, my royalist sister will be happy for that.

01:31:18Guest:And what does it mean?

01:31:19Guest:She doesn't give a shit.

01:31:20Guest:She doesn't care.

01:31:23Guest:But that was my justification.

01:31:25Guest:Yeah, for you, the rationalization for you.

01:31:27Guest:But now I would seriously think about becoming a knight.

01:31:30Guest:I wouldn't want to do that.

01:31:31Marc:Yeah?

01:31:32Marc:What does it entitle you to?

01:31:34Guest:Nothing.

01:31:35Guest:I think you can get married somewhere, like St.

01:31:38Guest:Paul's Cathedral or something.

01:31:40Guest:Or you might be getting buried.

01:31:41Marc:What does it recognize?

01:31:43Guest:It recognizes your service to the arts.

01:31:46Guest:I mean, that's what it recognizes.

01:31:47Guest:I mean, I'm recognized for my service to the arts.

01:31:50Guest:CBE is usually a precursor to getting a knighthood.

01:31:53Guest:Okay.

01:31:54Guest:Well, I got my CBE a while ago, and because I've been so active in Scottish independence, even though we are determined to, well, they are determined to keep their queen, she goes with the whole nine yards.

01:32:07Guest:Yeah, sure.

01:32:08Guest:We don't get rid of her.

01:32:10Yeah.

01:32:10Guest:Anyway, that's another question.

01:32:12Marc:So, like, even if you do, you know, you take back Scotland, you keep the Queen.

01:32:18Guest:Yeah, oh, yeah.

01:32:19Guest:Well, she has a house in Balmoral.

01:32:21Guest:And also, she is partly Scottish.

01:32:23Guest:She is half Scottish.

01:32:25Guest:I mean, she comes from one of the oldest families, the Bowes-Lyons, which is her mother.

01:32:31Guest:Yeah, it's complicated.

01:32:33Guest:But even so, you know, it will never be a proper republic for...

01:32:39Guest:Right.

01:32:40Marc:Yeah, because it's mired in.

01:32:42Marc:Well, that's the thing.

01:32:43Marc:It's like so many things it seems even in this country about what has just become accepted that I don't think any of these, like Scotland's not prepared to go to war.

01:32:53Marc:No, no.

01:32:53Marc:We can't go to war.

01:32:54Guest:We get beaten very badly.

01:32:56Guest:I know.

01:32:56Marc:So, all right.

01:32:57Marc:So the Globes are, when are they?

01:32:59Marc:Are they tomorrow?

01:33:00Marc:Tomorrow.

01:33:01Marc:Oh, wow.

01:33:02Marc:Yeah.

01:33:02Marc:So you got tux and everything?

01:33:04Marc:You ready to go?

01:33:05Marc:Yeah, I've got all the crap that you have to put on.

01:33:07Marc:But it should be a good night.

01:33:08Marc:You like Ricky Gervais?

01:33:09Guest:Yeah, you know, I mean, he's a bit home counties for me.

01:33:16Guest:What does that mean?

01:33:17Guest:Well, he's English.

01:33:17Guest:Yeah, I don't know.

01:33:22Guest:I mean, I don't mind that.

01:33:23Guest:I love a lot of English humor.

01:33:25Marc:I don't know what to do with him sometimes.

01:33:27Marc:It seems like a gimmick.

01:33:28Marc:He's a gimmick now.

01:33:29Guest:Yeah, it is.

01:33:30Guest:It's odd.

01:33:31Guest:I mean, he created this amazing thing called The Office.

01:33:34Guest:Great.

01:33:34Guest:And it was astonishing.

01:33:36Guest:Great.

01:33:36Guest:Astonishing work.

01:33:37Guest:And then it was kind of hard to know where he went.

01:33:39Guest:I mean, I thought Extras actually was even better.

01:33:41Guest:I loved Extras.

01:33:42Guest:I thought Extras was a great show.

01:33:43Guest:It was good, yeah.

01:33:44Guest:And I think he's a talented man, but I think he has...

01:33:47Guest:I think he's got a few demons.

01:33:49Guest:Sure.

01:33:49Marc:Yeah.

01:33:50Marc:It's interesting to me that somehow or another, did you manage to avoid the demons?

01:33:54Marc:You don't seem to, you're not a boozy guy?

01:33:56Guest:Yeah.

01:33:57Guest:No, I mean, you know, when you grow up the way I grew up and you saw so many demons around you, you're very happy to get rid of them.

01:34:03Marc:I guess that's one way to go and to not succumb, to be like a lesson learned.

01:34:08Guest:Yeah, the lesson, I'm very blessed.

01:34:11Guest:Yeah.

01:34:11Guest:Because I saw, you know, I went to school with some of the guys who were

01:34:16Guest:you know, really psychotic.

01:34:18Marc:Yeah.

01:34:19Marc:From booze or just in general?

01:34:20Marc:Pardon?

01:34:21Marc:From booze or just in general?

01:34:22Guest:Oh, no, these were kids.

01:34:23Marc:Yeah, oh, right.

01:34:24Guest:I mean, I'm talking about 10-year-olds.

01:34:25Guest:You know, and there's nothing more psychotic than psychotic 10-year-old.

01:34:30Guest:And they're scary.

01:34:31Guest:Yeah.

01:34:31Guest:Because they have no, there's no moral kind of...

01:34:36Guest:No lessons weren't.

01:34:37Guest:No, no.

01:34:38Guest:So they're just fucking.

01:34:39Guest:They just, they do.

01:34:40Guest:I mean, and they used to do some horrible things.

01:34:42Guest:Kill cats and whatnot.

01:34:43Guest:Oh, yeah.

01:34:45Guest:And terrorize old people.

01:34:47Guest:That was the other thing, which was pretty horrible.

01:34:49Guest:Well, I'm glad that you missed that.

01:34:52Guest:Yeah, I'm glad I missed that.

01:34:53Guest:So that was, you know, that was, I think my growing up and, you know, there's nothing more cruel than the school playground.

01:35:01Guest:Oh, yeah.

01:35:02Guest:You know, there's nothing more cruel than that.

01:35:04Marc:And it turns out, judging by our president, that it can last well into your 70s.

01:35:08Guest:Yeah, exactly.

01:35:09Guest:Well, exactly.

01:35:10Guest:It never has to stop.

01:35:11Guest:No, no.

01:35:11Guest:I mean, I think he's classically an abused child.

01:35:14Guest:Classically.

01:35:15Guest:Or an abandoned one somehow.

01:35:16Guest:An abandoned as well.

01:35:17Guest:Abandoned and abused.

01:35:19Guest:And that way, I have a certain empathy.

01:35:22Guest:Only a certain, but I have a certain empathy for him in that one.

01:35:25Marc:I guess empathy is healthy in all cases.

01:35:27Marc:I think so.

01:35:28Guest:I think we've got to understand, you know, we have this great expression in Scotland called we're all we're all Jock Tamsin's Bairns.

01:35:35Guest:What does that mean?

01:35:37Guest:It's Jock Tamsin is like him.

01:35:39Guest:Yeah.

01:35:39Guest:And Bairns that we're all his kids.

01:35:42Guest:Yeah.

01:35:42Guest:So we're all we're all born.

01:35:44Guest:Right.

01:35:45Guest:You know, under the sun.

01:35:46Guest:We're all the same.

01:35:48Guest:Yeah.

01:35:48Guest:And I kind of believe that to a certain extent.

01:35:51Guest:It's what you make of it, and it's what you don't make of it.

01:35:54Guest:Sure.

01:35:54Guest:And I think that that's, you know, everything is up for grabs after that.

01:35:59Guest:Yeah.

01:35:59Guest:But fundamentally, and it's a thing about, I mean, sometimes it goes too far in Scotland, you know.

01:36:05Guest:My mother's greatest praise would be, oh, that was quite nice.

01:36:08Guest:Yeah, right.

01:36:10Guest:You go, can I just have a little bit more?

01:36:13Guest:That's it.

01:36:14Guest:That's it.

01:36:14Guest:But that was it.

01:36:15Guest:But that keeps you level.

01:36:17Guest:It keeps you down.

01:36:18Marc:It keeps you humble.

01:36:19Guest:It's a bit puritanical, but it does work.

01:36:21Marc:Yeah, and it also guarantees that you never feel quite great.

01:36:25Marc:No, you never feel quite great.

01:36:26Marc:Always humbled.

01:36:27Marc:If she's not going to do it, you'll do it to yourself.

01:36:29Guest:Exactly, exactly.

01:36:31Guest:And of course, it means the chip on your shoulder just gets bigger.

01:36:34Guest:Yeah, because you deserve it.

01:36:35Guest:You deserve it.

01:36:37Guest:And it's a healthy chip to carry around.

01:36:39Guest:That's right.

01:36:39Guest:Great talking to you, man.

01:36:40Guest:It was lovely talking to you.

01:36:42Guest:Thanks for coming.

01:36:42Guest:You're welcome.

01:36:44Marc:What a great guy.

01:36:49Marc:What a great actor.

01:36:50Marc:What a great conversation.

01:36:52Marc:Remember, Succession on HBO.

01:36:55Marc:It's been renewed.

01:36:56Marc:Go catch up.

01:36:57Marc:It's really satisfying.

01:36:59Marc:And he did just win the Golden Globe for his performance in that show.

01:37:02Marc:And don't forget, watch me tomorrow night on Finding Your Roots.

01:37:07Marc:Also, go to wtfpod.com slash tour for the upcoming tour dates and the cities I mentioned earlier.

01:37:15Marc:I could mention them again.

01:37:16Marc:Would you like me to?

01:37:17Marc:Cleveland, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Orlando, Tampa, Portland, Maine, Providence, New Haven, Huntington, New York.

01:37:24Marc:Now I will play three chords for you, and I'm making you a promise out loud.

01:37:29Marc:So I have a witness, and it's on the record.

01:37:34Marc:I'm going to learn some new chord progressions, and I'm going to bring them here, but not today.

01:37:43Guest:Wow Wow Wow Wow Wow Wow Wow Wow Wow Wow Wow Wow Wow Wow Wow Wow Wow Wow Wow Wow

01:38:09Guest:.

01:38:10Guest:.

01:38:11Guest:.

01:38:18Guest:.

01:38:38Guest:Boomer lives.