Stephen Root is the Quintessential “Stephen Root Type”

0:02Speaker 1:This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio. When my guest today first walked into the studio, I instantly learned just how gifted an actor he really is. I was expecting someone as wacky and eclectic as the characters he plays on screen, but ultimately I was struck by how calm and sincere Stephen Rut is in person. Root is an Emmy nominated actor who was amassed over three hundred film and TV credits. A revered character actor, Rude is known for his iconic roles in films and TV series such as Office Space, News Radio, King of the Hill, Dodgeball, Idiocracy, and five Coen Brothers films. Rude is perhaps most recognized for his two recent Emmy nominated roles on the hit HBO series Barry and the new Apple TV series Widow's Bay. Stephen Root has become known for playing carrotaracters who are, among other things, aloof and overlooked. His role as Monroe Fuchs on Barry was the first time Route was able to really explore what became known as the Stephen Root type character.

1:13Speaker 1:I was curious if they wrote the Fuchs character on Barry, specifically for him.

1:18Speaker 2:They did not. I came in late in the process. He said, would you come in just to show me what you probably not not an audition audition, but just if you want to show me what you.

1:28Speaker 1:Do with it. So I did that.

1:30Speaker 2:We did the pilot and it was totally rewritten. My part was because I had They started me at eleven and they wanted to start me much lower so that it became more of a buddy thing between me and him. But when we did the pilot, he had me screaming and shouting through the whole thing and he said, nah, it's not going to work. And fortunately they kept me on for the real Yeah, for the real pilot. Yeah, so it worked out great. But I think it was a much better show if we were buds and then you see it develop into what it did.

2:05Speaker 1:I thought the character was like Yosemite Sam. It was constantly blowing up.

2:10Speaker 2:He was he was in the area covered with smoke and throwing laptops around and stuff. But no, what was so great was like Widow's Bay. You get to walk the line between comedy and real real violence, you know. And and that's the first thing Bill said to us he said, they're not going to mix them. We're not going to mix the violence and the comedy. There's going to be one in one because you dilute either one if you do that. And that was the smartest thing I think he did.

2:40Speaker 1:I'm doing a show now. We're doing the show for Koppleman and Levine who did Billions, and they're going to do the show set in a Las Vegas casino and I'm the boss. I run the casino, and Oscar Isaac is one my vice president, and his wife is played by Betty Gilpin and Betty Brilliant. I saw her do Oh Mary, and I just wish I had seen that. I couldn't believe my eyes. How inw Brechtian and insane this thing wasn't so the energy you had to put out to project this madness. Yes, and then you see her in person and she's like Barbara Stanwick and she's this beautiful, bleeding, steady well.

3:21Speaker 2:Having her on Widow's Bay was like the biggest get in the world. Him and Hamish Link later great actors doing amazing script.

3:30Speaker 1:When you do these things, I mean, I've been asked, I would guess I don't think that much about this, But I would guess for me in the last few years, to do Trump was the externalization of something nutty and loopy and crazy. You don't seem nutty and loopy and crazy.

3:46Speaker 2:I'm not. I'm probably the most boring burthon on Earth, and my wife Rommel Rosemont will tell you that.

3:52Speaker 1:But you find these characters.

3:54Speaker 2:Yeah, I think any good character has some of them in their back pocket that they can take out and go. I can use part of this, and I can use part of that. And so I had done a lot of Southern theater comedy, driving Miss Daisy, that kind of stuff, and I think that's gotten me in good stead.

4:13Speaker 1:You know, your character. To me, the Barry character was a combination between Rod Steiger and Jonathan Winters.

4:21Speaker 3:That's ystero, just so good masculine, yes, and you in person, everything you do, there's that masculinity, sensitivity, intelligence.

4:32Speaker 1:You know, this is the stuff that.

4:33Speaker 2:The script is good.

4:34Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll look like, what do you do with the script's not good?

4:38Speaker 2:Not do the project? I mean, these days it's you know, I'm in my early seventies now and I want to do projects that are amazingly well written because I could start there and then give it something you know, and.

4:51Speaker 1:You find you find that literally even in the past, in your earlier days, you've been working NonStop since nineteen fifty two something. They just work working, just a lot of stuff, but not all of it was something that was Oh God.

5:05Speaker 2:No, I like every other actor that came out of New York and a starving boy who did the waitering and bartending and all that stuff came out of off Broadway and Broadway finally, and then some film in the eighties in New York because I was still there. And then I did a two year tour of Driving Miss Daisy with Brock Peters. No, yes, Brock Peters and Julie Harris the greatest acting class for two years on the road that you could ever have, watching those two every night.

5:38Speaker 1:And I did Not Slanding, and Julie was my mother. I did the soap opera Not Slanding, right, and I read that's that was my mother. She was unbelievable, and so was Brock. And Brock was having a hard time at the time because his wife had cancer and it was and he what a trooper Peters, Brock Peters the voice, just the voice, right, So Anyway, we did that tour.

6:02Speaker 2:And moved to LA in the nineties and then did TV. You've been in LA since, been in LA since, But we just recently because I missed it. I missed New York City and I had done something to play rights about a few years ago, and I said, I want to be a presence in New York again because I was here from seventy six to ninety and that so stats, this still feels like my home even though I live in LA. So we got an apartment where happily ensconced in it. You know, you're hanging three or four months out of the area.

6:32Speaker 1:Great, if I read your biographical material correctly. When you were a kid and your father was a businessman that moved around a lot.

6:40Speaker 2:He was an engineer. He did construction projects, he did steam power plants. Wow, they would take a year and a half ton. We had to know what he was talking about. He was one of those guys that never went to college but became an engineer, you know, through just just doing it.

6:57Speaker 1:Wow.

6:58Speaker 2:And he was one of the last ones that that did that. And he ended up in an atomic plant at the end of his career where in Hanford Hamford, washing Washington. Yeah, yeah, the Tri Cities area there.

7:09Speaker 1:I've been involved with anti nuclear.

7:12Speaker 2:So was I for years for years, yeah.

7:15Speaker 1:Anti nuclear utility. I don't get into the weapons thing sticky, but the but the utility thing. But you lived in Woodland Hills lived. I lived in Woodland Hills for ten years.

7:28Speaker 2:Yeah. We high school, Yeah, we we did there and then we finally I finally got into uh Sherman Oaks, which I really like. There's a lot of actors and writers who lived there. Very very nice and quiet, great place. But yeah, no, when I was growing up, I was year and a half Sioux City, Iowa, a year and a half months of Indiana, year and a half Kansas City, MO. Glen Rock, Wyoming, Fort Lauderdale, and then back to k C.

7:55Speaker 1:That that was That was my life.

7:57Speaker 2:I didn't think it was weird until I got to Abouthigh School and I don't freaking know anybody. It's it's like, people don't do this. But I think it was good in terms of me being a gypsy as an actor, because that's what we are now.

8:10Speaker 1:I'm always fascinated when I made that joke about Rod Steiger and Jonathan Winters, I'm always fascinated by people who access that really brilliant and really very real mania, you know what I mean. And to me, it's literally like music. It's like you're blowing notes. Is that how it feels to you? Yeah?

8:26Speaker 2:Well, I think I think for me to be any good, or for any character actor be any good, you've got to put enough of yourself and your empathy for people in it so that they can always empathize with your character, whether he's you know, bizarrely strange or just not at all. So I always feel like I have enough of me in there that I you know, I can always draw on that. But I'm a people watcher, like all character actors. You watch the people. You go, you see that guy going down during the Yeah, I can use that, and you put it in your back pocket and you go.

9:01Speaker 1:You're in a restaurant, you watch some guys proposing to his girlfriend.

9:04Speaker 2:Walks and walks are big because what what you're wearing on your feet and how you walk. As for me, is a big part of whatever character I'm doing because it kind of your your body adjusts to that guy. Then, whether he walks slow, he walks fast, he's he's he's a drunk, he's not whatever.

9:24Speaker 1:You know, when I was starting in this business. When I started, my dad was still alive. My dad was so funny because I went to college for something else. I'm at George Washington University, going to go to law school. I changed and go to n YU at the Buzzer and my dad one time he says to me, he goes, you know where this acting thing you want to do? He said, Uh, so you got to come up with a walk. He said that he like John Wayne and I.

9:46Speaker 3:Like aip over John Wayne.

9:50Speaker 1:Yeah. I think John Wayne was more likely to get away with that.

9:53Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, But for me. Sometimes, you know, the clothes, clothes make the character.

9:57Speaker 1:You know.

9:58Speaker 2:Sometimes you go outside in, you know, go what am I going to wear with this? What do you think? What did shitty look like? I just did a little indie down in Birmingham with my wife and we were gun shop owners and at one point they put a band down on me. It looked like I was doing Rambow two. So that changes your whole complexion. Then you put on something like that, you know, so sometimes it goes outside in. Sometimes you go the other way.

10:27Speaker 1:No, you've been nominated for Widow's Bay. And what's on the air now is they just finished streaming season one?

10:35Speaker 2:Yes, Season one is done ten episodes, and you're going to go back and do Hopefully we're officially picked up, but there's no news about when we're going to do it. We're hoping, I'm hoping, and we're all hoping to do it a little earlier than we did last year, which we started in late May, so we went through kind of a hot season in Massachusetts, which is where we shot it. So we're hoping to start maybe earlier, maybe in April, but that's in Katie dip Old's mind, and I'm not I'm not allowed in Massachusetts.

11:03Speaker 1:Yes, that's where the whole thing is filmed. How do you like being up there? Loved it.

11:08Speaker 2:I didn't get to do that part of the country when I was moving around with my dad, So it's really beautiful. All the little towns there. It was fantastic. And we would shoot, you know, some of the main coasts, but about really about twenty minutes from Concord. There's a couple of studios in Devon and we shot there and locations all around.

11:30Speaker 1:When I would go to locations if I wasn't playing the lead in the film. When you're the lead in a big film, you don't have much time off. It's about you, basically your character. And I didn't get to see London or Paris or Rome or whatever. And then I started playing smaller roles in films. I had a lot of time off. Yeah, so I can go with My friends used to call me the horror of may There. So I'd be walking down Mount Street in London, smoking my cigars and sawders and going to my church was on that street, and I would really get to see the town and do some traveling and most saying, as opposed to years before when I was too busy.

12:05Speaker 2:So that's the great part of being a character actor. You walk in, you do your thing, hopefully knock it out of the cark, and then say see Thursday, because I've got to go do something over here.

12:15Speaker 1:Name for me among let's say movies. It was the great writing for movies that you just said, I gotta do this movie.

12:22Speaker 2:Oh brother, we're an You're going to do it for them. Just just love those guys.

12:32Speaker 1:And uh, no country for all men, No country I worship, I worship VI.

12:37Speaker 2:So did I and the poor guy throughout the whole film would come over to everybody, everybody including extras, and go, my hair look weird. It's my hair weird. It is actually said Javier, you're totally frightening. Don't touch it, please, please don't please leave it alone.

12:56Speaker 1:But when you're with the Coen Brothers, like do people when they work with you, because they realize so funny obviously, and that's a very valuable currency. You've ever worked on thilms where they asked you for your opinion about lines and ideas, and they're so storyboarded.

13:10Speaker 2:They storyboard everything to the instagree. Then when you're when you're there and you're doing the thing, of course they'll do you know, go have fun. What do you want to do with this?

13:20Speaker 1:You know at the end.

13:21Speaker 2:But they were very very rigid in terms of that, so there's not a lot of improv going on. But in your final take of that scene, you could you could play around her a little, which was great, and we did.

13:33Speaker 1:Who was the head writer for Barry alec Burg.

13:36Speaker 2:Alec Berg and and Bill wrote wrote wrote a lot. It was It was a good They lose.

13:41Speaker 1:With that too. Do they want you to let you burn? It a take.

13:43Speaker 2:Bill was very loose, you know, because obviously it came from improv and I didn't. I mean, I came from National Shakespeare Company back back, so I was like, I don't know if I can. But Bill made it very easy to do for me to be come better at that kind of thing, better better at improv, because he directed the whole fourth season and he just wouldn't spend a lot of time that day. Stopped, stopped insane, take off the hat, put on the hat, and he'd go go to the insane and go it was that good enough, okay good and then then he'd go direct, but he would let you play around a lot there. I remember there was there there was an episode where my hands got stuck on the wheel of the car. We did a scene after that that didn't work, and Bill said, now we're gonna throw that out. We're gonna go over here to this, over here to the park. We're going to improv. You know what happened after that scene, And we did that and that's what ended up in the in the piece. So it was it was much different in that in that way for me, since I came up through shakespeare and stuff like that. I found if I knew everything backwards, knew it so well, then I

14:56Speaker 2:felt like I could play within the structure of what it was, not necessarily change the line, just just play within the structure. And that's what's helped me so much, is knowing things backwards, knowing exactly what's coming up, and then then you can go play and change it and whatever.

15:15Speaker 1:But you have the base. You have the base to do it. Actor Stephen Roots. If you enjoy conversations with intrepid character actors, check out my episode with Dan Ackroyd.

15:30Speaker 4:I love writing more than anything.

15:32Speaker 1:You're left alone.

15:33Speaker 4:You know, you do three hours in the morning you're write, you need to have lunch, and then three hours in the afternoon, go pick up a kid from school and write at night, and after nine hours you come out with seven pages and then you're moving on. It's just your own devices, the air, the air around you, and your mind and a blank screen or a blank piece of paper. That's really what I'd like to be doing more of and always did.

15:55Speaker 1:Enjoy. To hear more of my conversation with dan acroy go to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Stephen Root tells us how good scripts keep him from becoming the laziest actor he knows. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here is the Thing. Now known for countless roles in film and television. Stephen Root got his start in a traveling Shakespeare troupe. Before completing his senior year at the University of Florida. Route left school to join the National Shakespeare Company. He spent three years traveling and performing classic works such as The Winter's Tale in Romeo and Juliet. I wanted to know some of the roles Route performed during his Shakespearean apprenticeship.

16:50Speaker 2:I think the first thing that I loved so much we did National Shakespeare was a bus and truck twelve actors. We did three plays is in every college in America for nine months, so you were at least double cast in a play.

17:06Speaker 1:Where were they headquartered out of.

17:08Speaker 2:Out of New York right on fifty first between nineth and tenth. But I think the very first one that we were going to rehearse in seventy six, I think it was was a Wintersdale, one of my favorite things, and I played the clown in it.

17:22Speaker 1:So I got there.

17:24Speaker 2:I'm completely off book, ready to go, just going crazy and rehearsal, and the director comes over to me and says, wonderful, wonderful, ninety percent less, And so as well as I was prepared, I could then go down to that.

17:43Speaker 1:You know, I never had a chance to do as much Shakespeare as I wanted to. I did Scottish play in ninety eight at the Public with Angela Bassett, and that was a tremendous experience. It changed my life. Yeah, I really was, because it made me want to do more. Although for me memorization wise, I'd fall asleep with the thing on my chest, sure, and I wake up in the morning with it. And I mean I was just nice watching I had my notes in that book. Oh god, damn dar Yeah, what's another role you played? Oh?

18:11Speaker 2:I played a Groomio and Tame You of the Shrew, which I loved very very much. But these are all comic. They are mostly all comic characters off no king there from me. I did get to play Demetrius as a young lover, but most of my stuff was with you know, I would be Audrey with balloon Titch.

18:32Speaker 1:You know, sorry, I know it was.

18:36Speaker 2:It was tremendous performance, but yeah, mostly comic stuff. Back when I was, you know, in my my twenties. That's what they wanted me to do, and I did that didn't get we we did Hamlet, and we did you know, all all the all the dramas. But I'd get to play ancillary characters.

18:52Speaker 1:And though you work a lot, Yeah, you work a lot. I do. And was there a period of time where you did that because you had to in terms of sure to make them living. Yeah, because we're cobbling together things in the beginning to make a living and then the next you know, you go to another level and another level and you find that it's just to happen. Now you like to work a lot.

19:14Speaker 2:I know. I'm the laziest actor that I know. I just happen to get some good scripts. I mean, you're not going to turn down Barry because.

19:22Speaker 1:The scripts were brilliant with.

19:23Speaker 2:The con Brothers and or the Coen Brothers or or Widow's Bay because it's just too good. I mean, I hadn't in my seventies, I hadn't ever planned on signing on as a regular to another show. But you got those scripts and Katie Dippold and hero Maria Hello, I have to do it. I feel compelled.

19:44Speaker 1:But you say the laziest actor, meaning do you see yourself. I mean a lot of people, I know, they get to the point you're at now where they have all the work they need. Yeah, you're constantly offer things all the time. Sure, and they say to themselves, so I'm going to do this until it ends. I'm going to ride this way. Get that.

20:00Speaker 2:I get that you want to retire monetarily. I don't need the money at the moment, so I just want to go for quality, quality control, and no retirement. I don't think there's any reason to really. Yeah, no, I don't think. So I could go do five projects this year and maybe four the next year and dwindle down to one in my eighties and nineties. Yes, but that's okay, you know, that's that's all right if I can have fun doing it. And this this INDI that I just did with Romeo, I had fun.

20:31Speaker 1:You know.

20:32Speaker 2:I didn't do it for money. Did it to be able to work with my wife and have fun.

20:36Speaker 1:Well, the reason I found at one point indies. I mean I've had a tough time, meaning great people, lovely people, pleasant people, some good scripts, some good scenes and moments. I mean you know. Yeah. I think it was Nicholson who was quoted to sitting there saying what was the metric? Like, well, how did you choose the script? And he said three good scenes, two good lines, that's about right, And I thought, well, that's an inch way to look at it. I ask a lot of actors this question, what do directors have to offer you? Now? With all your experience, A good director does what?

21:09Speaker 2:A good director lets you do your gut, what your gut read that you think for this guy is, and then nudges you forward or backwards with in terms of intensity and style. But I think it's a good director. You've cast this person to do this role, so you must have an idea of what he does well or she does well. Less is more for me for a director, tell me, am, I in the right direction? Good, I'm not okay?

21:43Speaker 1:Which way? That way? Okay?

21:46Speaker 2:But then let me do my gut. Once you've given me the direction, let me do my gut and if we're close, great. But I think less is more.

21:56Speaker 1:Have you ever been interested in directing? Never? Ever? Why? I'm the same way.

22:02Speaker 2:The laziest in the world.

22:05Speaker 1:The lazy bastard. I like to pet the dog and go to the pool.

22:09Speaker 2:No, that's not I'm not really a type a personality I like to I like on the ensembleness of it all, but I do I want to direct the ensembleness of it not so much. I think it would be more fun for me if, in my later years to produce get and put people together, Put people together.

22:29Speaker 1:And go back to being a lazy best. Yes, you will have that absolutely well. When I directed one movie, I hated every minute of it, And when the part I hated most dealing with the actors. Yes, trying to cajole them into doing what I want to done. Babies, Yes, why don't you shut up and.

22:46Speaker 2:Say the lines?

22:47Speaker 1:Say this way? Yeah. But I've done movies with people where they were less experienced. It was enjoyable because they realized that they wanted to collaborate with you and maybe get some ideas from you. Because I'm always figuring how do we make it more cinematic, Like let's have a shot of you, and I'm big on the walking scene, the horseback riding scene, and we're weigh in the distance and we can loop the lines later on say whatever we want to say. It doesn't matter what the lines are the days.

23:14Speaker 2:The nicest space if you could take space visually in a movie, and that's the cinematographer's job, take space and time and and not rush it. That's why I love the Coen Brothers movies because it goes at a pace that it should go. It doesn't go too fast, doesn't go too slow. It's just telling the story of people.

23:35Speaker 1:The business has changed greatly since you and I started, Yeah, and it's kind of it's crazy. Now, what's one of the biggest changes you've noticed in this business.

23:44Speaker 2:I've noticed it because my wife is still going through it. They don't want to see people in person anymore, and that makes me freaking crazy.

23:53Speaker 1:I can't believe the union isn't stop them.

23:56Speaker 2:That's that's insane. How first of all, you can send in a tape. It's probably brilliant for the character that they want to see, but can you be directed. No, you can't tell that from a tape. You have to see the human being in the room to be able to do it, and they've gotten rid of that. And that makes me angry because then you can't win a role in a room. That's what I did when I was younger. I want to roll in the room because you could see what I was doing and I could be directed in either direction. But doesn't happen now. And that's one of the main things that I really hate.

24:29Speaker 1:I would tell people that when I first started and I went out to LA because I was in New York and I went out tell her to kind of introduce myself to people out there, so to speak. And you know, one good example was Jane Jenkins and Janet Herschinston. Jane and Janet we called him back then, and they were these big casting directors who'd bring me in and you knew that when you left, or you learned later on, essentially that when you left, they were like, he's not right for Bob in this movie, but he's right for stun Pots on the show at the same time. Absolutely, And they want you want to be in that room so they can smell you, you know what I mean.

24:58Speaker 1:They want to get a smell. And that's gone now, which I find horrendous. That's so bad.

25:04Speaker 2:And plus people are going to off roadway shows like they used to define new actors and how are you going to train the league the act Yeah, and how are you going to train these actors? If you don't give the meaty parts as they're coming up, and they're just giving it to stars. You know, some of them are good for that role, but most of the time they're not. You're not getting the best actor for the role. I don't love that either. The argument for them is that we can see more people that way, and that's entirely true. You can see more people. What you can't do is see if they're directable, and that's the whole I haven't thought of that.

25:39Speaker 1:Yeah, I always say the same phrase I said. They're in search, have always been in search of, and remain in search of, the risk free entertainment business. Absolutely, and there's no such thing as the risk free entertainment business. If you don't take risks, then you're going to be sure. And now we're fully, fully in the zone of risk free entertainment. I look at people who are actors now and I think acting couldn't be less important than it is now.

26:04Speaker 2:Well, we're widgets. We're widgets with the bean counters count.

26:09Speaker 1:You put the costume on, put the cape on, and put the gloves on, and anybody can wear the gloves in the cape. Let's just get you know, yeah, just get fitnesses stardom. Now, yeah, fitness is stardom. And I mean in old school acting, your talent is never going to be devalued. It's never going to go out of style. You're always going to work. When they want something, they want real talents.

26:30Speaker 2:Well, I appreciate that. I've just been in this so long. I mean, I don't know about you, but most of the people that were in the business when I started or not there anymore, right, And that's that's what I tell young actors say. Longevity is just staying in it. That's half of it.

26:48Speaker 1:Actor Stephen Root, if you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Stephen Root talks about what kind of project he would like to do next and what he loves about Widow's Bay and Barry. I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the Thing. Stephen Root's big break was on the nineteen nineties sitcom News Radio, where he acted alongside comic heavyweight Phil Hartman. Root has worked with countless Hollywood icons from Arnold Schwarzenegger to the Kohen Brothers. Having had such a diverse career, I was curious if there was one actor in particular who has stood out to throughout his impressive career.

27:43Speaker 2:I have to say Matthew Reese, just because we had worked together before on Perry Mason for HBO, and Perry Mason was not funny, but Matthew Reese his hysterical. He's one of the funniest people ever and he hasn't had a chance to do that for him to be able to do it on Widow's Bay and he does silent acting, silent comedic acting, which is really big, and he does really tiny, tiny, wonderful, subtle stuff. So I have to say Matthew. Back when I was doing news radio, Phil Hartman, Oh my god, oh my god, the best, Miss uncle Phil so much. But that was a whole group of great people. They fully and more Tyranny more. Tyranny is one of my heroes. She what a great, great great.

28:32Speaker 1:Phil Hartman is the only person that made me crack up on us and now live no kidding. Yeah, we're doing a scene and I played Marlon Bando and take us to the movie. We're lamputting his calls the environmentally sensitive one and I'm running off with his daughter Victoria Jackson when one of his aides comes in and says to what number three blue boss, what are we gonna do? And Phil Hartman's line was take me with you? Like he changed his mind. He wasn't gonna reject me. Now he wants to leave with us and escape. Do you think?

29:02Speaker 1:And literally during the during the air show, he goes tell her number three blue boss, what do you want to do? Phil hart looks, he goes, take me with you. He just says this wine inside the line that he never did, And of course I start spinning up and laughing on the show.

29:19Speaker 2:He nobody has has made me laugh harder than that, or Caveman, caveman, lawyer.

29:25Speaker 1:Lord, come on, your ways are strange to me.

29:28Speaker 2:But yeah, fantastic loved him.

29:31Speaker 1:It was for me. It was Tony Hopkins. Oh and Meryll. When I got a chance to do It's Complicated with Meryll, amazing, I was. I was thrilled to do that. That was a real pleasure to that was a great honor to work with her.

29:43Speaker 2:Right, I would say John Lithgow as well. I mean I we got to work with him, both Matthew and I did on on Perry Mason and I just seen I don't know whether you saw a giant in you know or here astonishing.

29:55Speaker 1:I'm going to see Salesman tonight. Yeah.

29:57Speaker 2:Yeah, Salesman is great, but John performance in that is yeah, phenomenal.

30:04Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sorry, miss because I love John.

30:05Speaker 2:The man's you know, he's almost eighty. If he isn't, and he's he's doing it a h What do.

30:11Speaker 1:You think about that in terms of success at that age? Success at your age? You know, things are going really well for you right now they are in the in the latter part of your career.

30:22Speaker 2:I think I've worked more in my sixties and seventies than.

30:25Speaker 1:I worked to that. Yeah, exactly.

30:29Speaker 2:But I think it's just you hang around long enough and people remember you, and hopefully work begets work and you get to work with some of the same people, which has happened a lot.

30:40Speaker 1:What's the part you want to play? Is there a play you want to do?

30:44Speaker 2:The last play I did was Marjorie Prime, which was a four person play about and this was before AI. This is like twenty fifteen. This was about a holographic AI taking care of old people by talking to them in a projected way, so that maybe their husband was thirty years old and they're ninety now and they're talking to this AI projected and the AI learned more about him as they talk. And this was ten twelve years ago. But an ensemble piece interests me more than anything else.

31:18Speaker 2:Do I want to get up and do lear Not so much, as I said, I'm very lazy, but an ensemble piece.

31:25Speaker 1:Yes. Chris Stack is an actor that I know from the actor's studio, and Chris invited me to come see Stereophonic when it was aw that.

31:31Speaker 2:I loved that at Playwrights, Yeah, I saw Playwrights unbelievable.

31:35Speaker 1:And then they went to Broadway and what I loved was they were all like musicians in the symphony. They're all doing the same thing. I thought that was great directing to get everybody to do the same thing. Absolutely, And that's what I try to do now, is I don't need the thing to be about me. I'd rather be a part of that.

31:51Speaker 2:It can go for the gold exactly exactly what I love. And that's why I love Widows Bay. That's why I loved Barry, because everybody in it, from the tiniest role was perfectly cast with great actors, and you can't have any more fun than that on a project if you're working with great actors in a great script.

32:10Speaker 1:I dare ask you this question because I'm not quite sure I would do it in the nude. Yeah, go ahead, you would do it. I'm tard and feathered. Yes, But what are your hobbies? What do you do when you're not acting?

32:23Speaker 2:I like to play with my I don't play an instrument, but I love putting music together like I'll have and it's very specific. I want to put together t Bone Burnett and Elvis Costello and nic Low from nineteen eighty four and make a playlist of that that I'll do that. I play golf badly with a lot of other character actors and writers, and I try to rest mostly right. Yes, rest is good.

32:53Speaker 1:Well, we would used to say years ago we were entering the judge phase of our career. So the jobs you would do, shou'd have the ropes, but underneath were your tennis closed.

33:03Speaker 2:I was a judge, unjustified, and I had a speedo.

33:08Speaker 1:That's all. I have my tennis clothes and you sit there all day long, go out of it. The jury will disregard that statement by the prosecutor and they shoot you last right now. Off of Space is a cult classic? Yeah, were you were aware at the time that it was a cult when it was due when you were doing it, do you go it's gonna be a cult classic? No?

33:27Speaker 2:I knew it was a really good, funny be comedy because there are good people in it, and it's Mike Judge, who I've done King of the Hill with forever, and I thought it was a fun little thing to do. And it has become a cult, I think because everybody was good in it, like everybody. Everybody was cast well, it's like doing a really big performance very small. You know, you're you're making a big swing, but you're doing.

33:57Speaker 1:It very very, very.

34:00Speaker 2:Very tiny, almost nothing. And I think that that's that's why it was good. I would totally had my thapler.

34:11Speaker 1:I just want to say in the time we have the moment we have left, which is that I am such a fan of yours. I watched that Barry like I was smoking crack. I couldn't wait, what do you mean? I gotta wait undo the week to watch.

34:24Speaker 2:Came up to me after the third season and said, look, I wanted to go this way and I want you to do this guy, which is the total opposite of what we've been doing for three years. He's coming out of prison, he's tattered up, he is you know, a yeah, he's the raven. And I said, really, I would never get cast as that motherfucker, but I'm more than happy to give it a shot. And it was some of the most fun I've ever had because it was very freeing to be something I would never be cast as you know, built up, tat it up, violent, violent guy.

35:05Speaker 1:When I did thirty Rock, they would give us the We do the read through on a Wednesday, and they had those cameras and then had a pipe out to burnback. So we're in New York at Silver Cup and we have a dais of the cast.

35:15Speaker 2:And Jimmy Burrows is directing. But go ahead, right right, I wish I wish, no.

35:19Speaker 1:No. We had great directors. We had Antina in the cast, everybody on the dais, and then the writers and the crafts people, all the crew out department heads in the audience. So they have like sixty people in the room and we sit there. They give me the script at the call, and I sit in the makeup chair and get my seventhing done, and I'd read the script and I think to myself, you know, thank God for great writing. That was the greatest time of my life.

35:40Speaker 2:Yeah, but you're not going to be great unless unless you're doing something that you're scared of as well.

35:46Speaker 1:Right, I'm gonna remember you said that.

35:48Speaker 2:Okay.

35:50Speaker 1:My thanks to actors Stephen Roots. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. Were produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNee, and Victoria De Martin. Our engineer is Isaac Captain Woolmer. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.