From the Archives: Edie Falco

0:01Speaker 1:This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing, my chance to talk with artists, policymakers, and performers, to hear their stories, what inspires their creations, what decisions changed their careers, what relationships influenced their work.

0:19Speaker 2:You know what I don't understand, Tony? What does she have that I don't have?

0:27Speaker 1:Edie Falco played Carmela Soprano... on the groundbreaking HBO show about an Italian-American mob family from New Jersey. The late, great James Gandolfini played her husband, Tony. It wasn't Edie's big break before The Sopranos' Edie worked with Tom Fontana on the HBO series Oz, but it's safe to say the role of Carmella made her career. TV Guide named The Sopranos the best television show in history.

0:54Speaker 3:I didn't have any sense of the gravity of what we were doing. It might have just been because I was dumb. I didn't realize what, you know, the larger themes at play there. But I just enjoyed it. And it was still a novelty to be working on something that was good, that people enjoyed, that seemed to be well-received.

1:12Speaker 1:Yeah.

1:13Speaker 3:The excitement of being on something good was still very new.

1:17Speaker 1:And I wonder when you did the show, was it fun and pleasant? Was it really tough? Was it work?

1:22Speaker 3:No, it was fun and pleasant because there was a lighthearted atmosphere. The writing was funny. There was a lot of really funny stuff. And it was a lot of these sort of goomba guys who were just— Yeah, cutting up. Felt like family to me and very easy to be with.

1:34Speaker 1:Did you participate in the writing of the— did you just turn that all over? You never got involved in that? Not at all.

1:40Speaker 3:I was not at all interested. I had so much trust in certainly David Chase, but in all the staff that he had carefully chosen, handpicked.

1:49Speaker 2:I felt like they knew what they were doing.

1:50Speaker 3:They had a much better— overview of what the story was about as opposed to what would Carmela do in here you know I just thought it was a huge relief to know that I could just let them do their thing and I would do what I was hired to do I felt completely comfortable with that did.

2:04Speaker 1:They put things about you in the characters I mean Tina Fey when I did 30 Rock was someone who the moment you told a story it was an embarrassing anecdote it was in the.

2:12Speaker 2:Show absolutely Jim said that all the time he's like I can't talk to anybody about anything it's gonna be in the next.

2:18Speaker 3:Episode But I didn't notice it so much for my life. There was nothing going on in my life that was all that interesting. So I didn't see a lot of it in the scripts. But I know they, like I guess every show, to some extent, they start writing for the actors that have been hired. Like Aida's character, Aida Totoro, who played his sister, was supposed to be a very different thing. It was supposed to be more like the mom, sort of cold and calculating and unkind. And because Aida Totoro was doing it, it sort of morphed into this whole other Like Parvati, that phase that she went through where she was sort of like an earth child. So, yeah, I'm sure they were writing based on what they perceived me to be, but I was not entirely cognizant of that at the time.

2:58Speaker 1:Why do you think they hired you for that part? Because you said, I read an interview where you talked about how you went and you just relaxed and said, hey, if this happens, it happens. Right. Which we all go through. Sure. We sometimes sit there and go, I can't stress about another interview. That's right. What do you think they hired you for?

3:14Speaker 2:I couldn't begin to tell you.

3:16Speaker 3:I think probably because of that, because I was completely non-stressed.

3:19Speaker 1:It was a.

3:21Speaker 3:Script that had been bouncing around for a while, but I was doing Oz at the time, and I was working a lot, and I kind of was all caught up in that. It came along and it was called Sopranos and I thought it's about singers or something. And it's an Italian-American woman, wife. And I thought that I never get cast as that. I know who's going to get cast. I figured it's Annabella Shore or Marissa Tomei or some of these women who had played parts that sort of felt similar to that. There's no better place to be in when you walk into an audition than knowing you're not going to get it and not caring. So, you know, I really just sort of enjoyed myself and thought it's just another audition. And if you're in a good head, you can never not learn something from an audition.

4:04Speaker 3:So I just went in and had fun. And you inadvertently present your best self when you're doing that. And I guess, I don't know, I was relaxed and I enjoyed myself.

4:11Speaker 2:So I guess that's what they saw.

4:13Speaker 1:I don't know. And when you got the job, was that something that just floored you? Were you ecstatic about getting the job?

4:19Speaker 2:Well, remember, it's just a pilot you get cast for.

4:23Speaker 3:So at that point, it was whatever it was, two weeks of work, and it was a sum of money I had never seen before, which now seems not all that shocking. But back in the day, it meant I could pay off my student loan. And so I was able to, with that one check, completely pay off my student loan. It was huge. It was a huge occurrence. But again, two weeks of work, and then on to the next panic. thing, you know, about what to do next.

4:45Speaker 1:And how soon after the pilot was shot?

4:47Speaker 2:I think it was a year.

4:48Speaker 1:Were you told? So you waited a year to be told this was going to move forward.

4:53Speaker 3:And David Chase called me and said, I just want to let you know this has been picked up. This is after we shot the pilot. And he said, well, nobody's going to watch this thing, but I'm proud of what we made or whatever. And David was also apparently, he put his head in his hand and said, oh, no. When he found out it was picked up, because I don't think he had intended to have to tell more about these people. I think he was trying to get a movie made. And this was almost like a spec script or something.

5:16Speaker 1:This is a demo reel.

5:17Speaker 3:I don't think he had anticipated this going on like this. So he had his head in his hands. Jimmy's like, what am I doing? And I'm like, I can pay my student loan. And, you know, here it is 4,000 years later. And it just goes to show you, you wake up every day, you have no idea what anything's going to turn into.

5:32Speaker 1:Yeah. We're taking a break. Stay with us. Well, two things that come to mind for me. One, I probably told you this before when I would run into you, but one was I never watched TV. I just didn't have time. And I hit this period toward the last probably four seasons, definitely, maybe five. I don't want to say obsession. But my fondness for you and your character, I remember I'd watch you and go, oh, my God, I've got to be married to that kind of woman who's going to stick by me through thick and thin and make smart choices. Right. And she's a good partner.

6:16Speaker 2:Right.

6:16Speaker 1:Did you sense that when you were doing it?

6:18Speaker 3:I loved it for that reason because it was everything that I was not, you know. I mean, it was a, you know, I was a single woman living in New York, didn't have kids. And here I was ensconced in this life that I saw my grandparents live, you know. Married with kids, deeply entrenched in a community of people. Family gatherings were huge, you know. Everything that, and even with Jim, feeling like I was attached to a big man who would take care of stuff. It was a tremendously invigorating place to inhabit while I was working. It was completely diametrically opposed to what I lived when I left the set.

6:57Speaker 2:And for that reason, I absolutely loved it.

6:59Speaker 1:What did you live when you left the set?

7:01Speaker 3:The life of a single actress in Manhattan. You know, I had a relatively small apartment. I had my dog.

7:06Speaker 2:I had my dates.

7:07Speaker 3:But it was not, you know, at all what other women my age, let's say in the Midwest or certainly in my family back a number of generations.

7:14Speaker 1:Were familiar with. Was everything about work? Work was the primary. Yeah.

7:17Speaker 2:And I loved it.

7:17Speaker 1:Work was your boyfriend.

7:18Speaker 3:It was.

7:19Speaker 1:It was. And you dated other guys on the side. Yes, exactly. But work was the main commitment.

7:23Speaker 2:It was.

7:23Speaker 3:And I was thrilled for it. Thrilled for it.

7:26Speaker 2:Loved it.

7:26Speaker 1:When you grew up, what town did you grow up in?

7:29Speaker 3:I grew up on the South Shore. And Bayshore and West Islip. And then we moved to Northport when I was in high school.

7:36Speaker 1:And when you were growing up, what was your relationship to Broadway, television, film, watching TV? How did you absorb culture and media when you were a child?

7:48Speaker 3:A lot of TV. But, you know, Brady Bunch and Partridge Family, really. All the same, whatever time those shows were on, we would sit around and watch them and match game 74, which is totally different. dating me, but after school.

8:02Speaker 1:Sure. I was addicted to match games.

8:04Speaker 2:Yeah, me too. With, what's his name? Richard Dawson with that crazy long.

8:08Speaker 1:Gene Rayburn with a long antenna. Gene Rayburn, right, right, right.

8:10Speaker 2:That's right.

8:11Speaker 1:Michael looked like an antenna.

8:12Speaker 2:Smoking all the time.

8:13Speaker 1:And they sat there, he said, Lori likes to blank. Yeah. When her husband comes home with a bowl full of blank. You know, and I love that show.

8:23Speaker 3:Blank.

8:23Speaker 2:Me too, me too, me too.

8:25Speaker 3:So yes, I watched it on TV like all kids my age, but It seemed like something far, far away from my experience. It was, you know, I mean, as far as participating in it in any way other than being an observer.

8:37Speaker 2:So it's very crazy. I don't know what happened that I am in here.

8:40Speaker 1:Broadway theater, were you jumping on the bus in school trips to come to New York? Like when I was a kid, same background, trips to Broadway and watching people do it live. Yeah. Oh, my God, how did they do that? Yeah, yeah. The courage.

8:51Speaker 2:A couple of those bus trips from Long Island, for sure. That was thrilling.

8:56Speaker 3:Like Sweeney Todd was one of the first things I saw. where I thought, oh, I got to, I don't know how, but I got to.

9:02Speaker 1:You did feel that way.

9:03Speaker 2:Oh, my God, that one show.

9:04Speaker 1:How old were you when you first had a sense that you wanted to do that for a living, seriously do it for a living?

9:09Speaker 2:Well, I didn't know that I could ever do it for a living.

9:12Speaker 3:I think until I was able to do it for a living, I thought I would just do it as after my waitressing gig, you know. The idea that I could support myself with it was sort of preposterous. But my mom was an actress. She did stuff at Arena Players and Farmingdale and Broad Hollow Theater and Huntington all around Long Island. But she had a job, and she would do her plays in the weekends and at night, and I sort of thought, oh.

9:32Speaker 1:What was her job?

9:33Speaker 3:Many different jobs, but she was a DJ at WGLI. It was a station on Long Island. She was a copywriter, and she did a million different things. She decided she wanted a job, and she would get it. But then at night, she'd do her plays, and I thought that's what you do when you want to be an actor.

9:48Speaker 1:I just didn't think.

9:49Speaker 2:How many siblings do you have? I've got an older brother, younger brother, and a younger sister.

9:53Speaker 1:That's four. Four of us all told, yes. And were any of them also interested in the theater?

9:57Speaker 2:Not at all.

9:58Speaker 1:Even though your mother was an actress.

9:59Speaker 2:Yeah.

10:00Speaker 1:And your father was a musician?

10:02Speaker 3:Painter, artist, and musician when he was younger. But then he went on to do sculpture and painting.

10:07Speaker 1:And your parents got divorced when you were how old?

10:10Speaker 2:I have no idea.

10:10Speaker 3:Because they got divorced... And then they remarried each other two other times. So it's a very complicated childhood with that stuff.

10:17Speaker 1:Oh, they remarried each other?

10:18Speaker 3:Yes, yeah.

10:18Speaker 2:And then divorced and remarried and divorced. And I don't even know what they are right now.

10:21Speaker 1:So if you don't mind my asking, because I want to make a movie out of this, actually. I want to play this. They got divorced. And when they would get divorced, how long were they apart before they reunited? A matter of months?

10:28Speaker 2:No longer. The first time was a number of years.

10:31Speaker 3:And, you know, they kind of, the kids were pitted against each other. And then we found out that parents were sort of hanging out with each other again. It was you know, horrifying for the kids that they would suddenly get together again and then they would have a ceremony and we would witness their wedding. It was, I don't know, led to some psychological issues that I'm working on as we speak.

10:48Speaker 1:But yeah. We'll get to that. And none of your siblings had the bug?

10:52Speaker 2:Not at all. Not, I mean, quite the opposite.

10:54Speaker 1:And so, did this become formal for you only when you go to purchase or had you done plays before you went to school?

11:01Speaker 3:Community theater plays, nothing too, and school plays, you know, but nothing very serious. Um, And then I went to purchase first as a liberal arts person. And I saw some actor friends had gone in to purchase in the program, and I thought I wanted.

11:17Speaker 1:To be there. And that program had grown.

11:19Speaker 2:Yes, each year.

11:20Speaker 1:And now it's become this very estimable program on the East Coast. Yeah. Big time.

11:24Speaker 2:So I auditioned and went the next year as an acting student.

11:27Speaker 1:And did you graduate? Did you finish? I did. I did. And then when you finished, what did you do?

11:32Speaker 3:Well, do you remember the league auditions, that whole thing? So we had the league auditions. And from those auditions, I got a part in a movie where I had to be on set the day after I graduated.

11:43Speaker 2:And I thought, you know, what's everybody talking about? This is so easy.

11:47Speaker 3:I just kind of glided my way into this career. I didn't do anything for five plus years after that, but did a movie called Sweet Lorraine that was done up in the Catskills with the guy's name was Steve Gomer, the director.

12:00Speaker 2:Anyway.

12:01Speaker 1:Who else was in the movie with you?

12:03Speaker 3:Evan Handler, Giancarlo Esposito, Todd Graff, Maureen Stapleton, Trini Alvarado, like, yeah, a bunch of people, yeah.

12:13Speaker 1:Evan Handler, who was in I Hate Hamlet. Yes. Yeah, the legendary production of I Hate Hamlet.

12:17Speaker 2:Yes, that's right.

12:19Speaker 1:And that was your first gig, was that?

12:20Speaker 2:My first gig, yeah.

12:21Speaker 1:How did that go? Did it drive you forward?

12:23Speaker 2:It was dreamy. It sure did.

12:25Speaker 1:Well, it was.

12:25Speaker 3:I couldn't believe I was on a movie set, you know. It was a huge thing. And I had just graduated from school and It was crazily exciting. You know, what the heck were we, like eight weeks up in the Catskills, I think it was, and kind of fell in love with all the boys in the show. You know, it was like being in a sleepaway camp. And I remember when my agent said, I hope you're sitting down. You booked that movie. And you're going to get paid more money than you have ever seen in your life. They're going to pay you $ 2, 000 a week. Which was more money than I had ever seen in my life.

12:54Speaker 1:Had you been waitressing?

12:55Speaker 2:Not yet. No, except on Long Island. I hadn't really had to.

12:59Speaker 1:Right out of purchase, you got the movie. Right out of purchase. So it was after the movie, the waitressing began.

13:03Speaker 3:Oh, yes.

13:03Speaker 1:To try to keep up that $ 2, 000 a weekend. That's right. You were at the Rainbow Room. I was living it up. You were at the champagne counter at the Rainbow Room. That's exactly right.

13:12Speaker 2:Thinking it would be consistent, yes, but no.

13:14Speaker 1:Where did you waitress?

13:16Speaker 3:Oh, gosh, a million places, but formerly Joe's in the West Village, which is gone.

13:21Speaker 1:When you leave those places, you left because you got a job?

13:24Speaker 2:Oftentimes, yeah. I'm trying to remember.

13:27Speaker 3:I mean, one waitressing job I was fired from because I had a bad attitude, I was told. He didn't know the half of it, but I guess, yeah, I guess I got a job or.

13:36Speaker 1:I don't know. Did it last for a long time as a waitress?

13:39Speaker 2:Not really.

13:40Speaker 3:I mean— Not terribly long. I was miserably unhappy. I really tried so hard. I was a good waitress insofar as how many tables I could handle. But if I had to make eye contact with anybody.

13:51Speaker 2:I would fall apart.

13:51Speaker 1:Why was that so hard?

13:53Speaker 3:I just– they were mean and people would– I'd take their order and they wouldn't look at me and they'd be like– just.

14:01Speaker 2:Rude and– There's no connection.

14:03Speaker 1:Nothing.

14:04Speaker 2:That bothered you.

14:04Speaker 1:It was awful.

14:06Speaker 3:I just felt, you know, it was gross. And I had, you know, margarita juice all over my clothes most of the time.

14:10Speaker 2:It was just disgusting.

14:12Speaker 3:Why does any waiter hate being a waiter? I mean, and for the people who like it, God bless them. But I was not one of them.

14:18Speaker 1:What was the job for you that ended that? Like when did you get a job and then you never went back again? You only made a living as an actress.

14:25Speaker 3:I was waitressing at a place called Canyon Road on 77th and 1st. It was the last waitressing job I had. I worked there with Paul Schulze. my friend who has actually been on a bunch of my shows with me, my great actor friend, and he was bartending, and I went off to do a thing called Cost of Living, a low-budget independent thing, and I left, and I was about to come back to the restaurant job, and I just had one of those sort of grace moments where I thought, no, I'm not going to come back. I don't know how this is going to work, but I'm not going to waitress anymore. It really was a total leap of faith.

15:00Speaker 1:I just... I'm going to be homeless.

15:01Speaker 2:Didn't have a plan.

15:02Speaker 1:I'm going to live in a wash machine box. Which seemed— I picked out the box.

15:05Speaker 3:Preferable to taking another order at that restaurant. So, well, lovely restaurant, but just I couldn't do it anymore. So, yeah, and at that point, I don't know, I guess Oz happened shortly after that maybe.

15:15Speaker 1:Talk about that. So what was the experience like working with Fontana?

15:19Speaker 2:You know Tom, right?

15:20Speaker 1:I met him a couple times.

15:22Speaker 2:I love him.

15:23Speaker 3:He was one of those angel guys, you know, because I had done a movie called Laws of Gravity with a bunch of people from Purchase. And it got some attention. It played the sort of Sundance and the festival circuit. Tom saw it and decided he wanted to use me for stuff. And so he put me in a series called Firehouse about EMT workers and fire people or whatever.

15:45Speaker 2:Dean Winters was my husband in that show.

15:48Speaker 3:And then he cast me in Homicide, or maybe it was the other way around. He just kept putting me in stuff when I wasn't really working much. And then he said, I'm doing the series.

15:59Speaker 2:About a prison. I have two parts.

16:02Speaker 3:You can play the nun. Or you can play the correction officer. Which part do you want to play? I said, I'll be the correction officer.

16:08Speaker 2:And that was, you know, and he just decided he was going to take care of me. And he did. And he did for many years.

16:14Speaker 1:You were in his troupe.

16:15Speaker 3:I was in his little troupe.

16:16Speaker 1:Yeah.

16:17Speaker 2:And I was just thrilled.

16:18Speaker 1:How many seasons did you do? Of Oz?

16:20Speaker 3:Yeah.

16:21Speaker 2:Gosh, you know, I have no idea. I actually come to think of it.

16:23Speaker 1:More than a couple?

16:24Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe three or four.

16:25Speaker 1:Did you rape anybody? Didn't you rape, didn't you like sexually abuse people too?

16:28Speaker 2:You know what, I would think I'd remember that. You didn't?

16:31Speaker 1:I did not. You weren't a bad person?

16:33Speaker 2:I was not a bad person. I was a.

16:34Speaker 1:Tough woman in a man's job. Maybe there was another woman who was a matron there. I think so. I'll always remember the great actress who I worked with once, Shirley Stoller. Do you remember Shirley Stoller? Shirley Stoller, who was an opera singer. She was a very large woman. she played like the prison matron on like One Life to Live. She was on the soap and she'd be like, you know, get in that cell, see? She was like this cagney kind of, get in the cell now, see?

16:58Speaker 1:But you were not from the Shirley Stoller.

17:00Speaker 2:School of prison matron.

17:01Speaker 1:I was not.

17:02Speaker 3:I was ineffectual, I think, because I was... I was sort of quiet and I wasn't mean enough. And I was, yeah, I didn't, I think there was.

17:10Speaker 2:No work to be had. Boy, Fontana really liked you, huh?

17:13Speaker 1:Yeah. He skipped you on. Totally.

17:15Speaker 2:I was just so crazy grateful for the work.

17:18Speaker 3:And I remember, it was before cell phones. I remember Terry Kinney was on the show with me. And he was the first person I ever knew who had his own phone.

17:24Speaker 2:I just thought he was the coolest, coolest thing going. Yeah.

17:28Speaker 1:Yeah.

17:28Speaker 2:I don't know.

17:29Speaker 1:It was fun.

17:29Speaker 2:It was really, really fun. And it was great to have a steady gig.

17:32Speaker 1:And after that, what did you do? How long between that and The Sopranos?

17:36Speaker 2:Not long. I was doing Oz. Frankie and Johnny? That was during Sopranos.

17:43Speaker 3:I think that was during two seasons of Sopranos. But I was doing Oz and then I was doing Sideman, a play that I did for a very long time. And I was doing Oz at night and Sideman during the day. And then Sopranos came in. So I was doing– there was a period of time where I was doing– sort of all three of them, and I thought, because they were so great and I couldn't say no to anything, but I was very unhappy because I was exhausted and sick most of the time, screaming my voice out, and it was an embarrassment of riches, but I might have done better to say no to one of them, but be that as it may, it was at a time when I couldn't imagine not doing any of those jobs.

18:18Speaker 1:After all, before donning acrylic nails for Carmella... Edie Falco made money in some memorable ways. She dressed up as Cookie Monster and beckoned people onto the dance floor at weddings. Take a listen to other actresses like Kathleen Turner in our archives. Kathleen told me what she thought about working in television. I just hated the commitment.

18:45Speaker 2:I hated the idea of being that tied down.

18:47Speaker 1:I thought if I had to do the same character year after year, I would definitely slit my throat. To hear more from Kathleen Turner, go to heresthething.org. My guest today, Edie Falco, plays Jackie Payton, an emergency room nurse, mother, and an addict on Showtime's Nurse Jackie.

19:30Speaker 3:All right.

19:32Speaker 2:You know what I would have done in the past? Lied. Sweetie, I have a sponsor. I am going to meetings. I am okay. And I'm going to keep on being okay because I have too much to lose.

19:44Speaker 1:Long before she played a nurse, Edie Falco was a patient. During her tenure at the Surprise, she found a lump in her breast, got a biopsy, and then the news.

19:55Speaker 2:They said, yeah, no, you have cancer.

19:58Speaker 3:And I think when someone said those words to me, like every cell in your body changes shape for a second, and you will never really be the same. You know, they are certainly growing up on Long Island or maybe... Anybody in our generation growing up anywhere, when you heard those words, the next thing you were doing was buying an outfit for that funeral.

20:16Speaker 1:Sure.

20:16Speaker 2:It's the Woody Allen movie.

20:17Speaker 1:He walks out of the doctor. He's like, oh, God. Oh, God. He's like, they tell him he has a brain tumor. And he's walking to the tree. I'm going to die. Oh, God. He just fantasizes about his death.

20:28Speaker 2:That was it, though. That was reality. So, I mean, it's not anymore, thank God. But, yeah, it was terrifying.

20:33Speaker 1:Without getting into any detail. The treatment and such, was it something that was prolonged? Did it interfere with the show?

20:39Speaker 2:Nobody knew about it.

20:41Speaker 3:Except for Eileen Landris, the producer of the show. I had to tell her because they were trying to schedule around my chemo because.

20:47Speaker 2:It knocks you out.

20:49Speaker 1:You had chemo for how long?

20:51Speaker 2:You know what? It's so funny.

20:52Speaker 3:About traumatic things, I remember them weirdly. The whole thing took, I guess, about a year between surgery, chemo, and radiation. I think it took about a year.

21:01Speaker 2:I think that's right.

21:02Speaker 3:A year. Yeah.

21:03Speaker 1:Yeah. And it affected the schedule of the show? No. That show was how many months out of the year?

21:08Speaker 2:It varied.

21:09Speaker 1:It went from four to nine.

21:11Speaker 2:That's right.

21:11Speaker 3:It started as like eight days an episode, and by the end it was like 30 days an episode.

21:15Speaker 1:People would always say that to me. How does that Sopranos work that no one knows?

21:18Speaker 2:Yeah, I ended up getting paid like five bucks an hour towards the end.

21:21Speaker 1:Yeah, right, right, right.

21:22Speaker 2:But during that time, no, nobody knew about it. I showed up. You didn't want people to know about it.

21:27Speaker 1:I didn't. You're very private.

21:29Speaker 2:I'm very privates.

21:30Speaker 1:You are very privates. But also, I don't do well when people are— You're private about your privates.

21:33Speaker 2:I don't do well when people are like, how are you feeling?

21:36Speaker 1:You don't want that attention.

21:37Speaker 3:I was— the truth is we were working such crazy hours that everybody on set looked worse than I did.

21:43Speaker 2:They were just exhausted. Nobody was sleeping. And I looked like the one.

21:46Speaker 1:Who was taking care of myself. I get to lie down in a room while they drip the shit in me. That's right, exactly.

21:50Speaker 2:And somebody's taking care of me and wiping my forehead and all that.

21:52Speaker 1:But is there a part of you that from your childhood or something— because you seem very tough.

21:58Speaker 3:Yeah.

21:59Speaker 1:And you don't want anybody to– you're like– you don't want a lot of sympathy.

22:04Speaker 2:I'm not good with sympathy.

22:04Speaker 1:You don't need a lot of attention.

22:06Speaker 2:You tend to play into it, you know.

22:08Speaker 1:You do?

22:08Speaker 2:You're right. I don't really feel so good.

22:11Speaker 3:If people don't know anything's wrong, I can behave as if things are okay.

22:14Speaker 1:Did you think it was important? Do you feel it was a part of your recovery and your overview of health? Not to feed into it and think too much about it.

22:22Speaker 2:Absolutely right.

22:23Speaker 3:But this is not for everybody. People go through this stuff very differently. But this is what worked for me to keep it private. And only my closest friends knew. And so when I went to work, I didn't– people were like, how are you doing? I'm going about their business. And that is absolutely what worked for me.

22:38Speaker 2:Kept me going. Kept me busy. And I– I don't know.

22:42Speaker 3:If I needed to be taken care of a little better, I saw to it that I was.

22:46Speaker 2:You know, I would go home early or whatever. I was taking care of myself.

22:49Speaker 1:Who was taking care of you at the time?

22:51Speaker 2:Friends. My dear friends. You weren't married?

22:55Speaker 1:No. You'd never been married?

22:56Speaker 2:Never been married.

22:57Speaker 1:Having close?

22:58Speaker 2:Yeah, a couple times.

23:00Speaker 1:And did you get rid of all those men in your life who were in love with you because they wanted to hold the door for you?

23:05Speaker 2:I said, that's enough. Get your hands off me, dude.

23:09Speaker 1:Give me my bag, man. You were like, yeah, I can carry the bag.

23:11Speaker 2:What the fuck is wrong with you?

23:13Speaker 1:I can carry your bag. What did I tell you about opening that door thing? You know how much I hate that?

23:18Speaker 2:I don't know. What can I say?

23:19Speaker 1:Was that the key to getting you in the end? Was it I should just treat you like you were my little brother?

23:23Speaker 2:And then I'm like, exactly. Open the door yourself.

23:25Speaker 3:No, I'm home.

23:26Speaker 1:What do you think I am? That lemonade's not going to walk itself over. Bring it over here. You wanted a guy from back home. But for you, family becomes a chapter. Yeah. If you don't mind my asking, how does that happen? No.

23:41Speaker 2:A bunch of relationships started, were serious.

23:44Speaker 3:And there was a lot of talk of kids and marriage. And then the relationship would fall apart for various reasons. And the kid thing started to grow its own kind of roots in me. Cancer happens. I realize I'm not going to die. I kind of come out of the stupor and realize I want kids.

24:00Speaker 2:And I don't think I'm going to.

24:04Speaker 3:Try to find the right man first, and then I just, this feels more prescient, the kid thing. Also, not to mention, and I hear about this all the time, about women dating, and very early on, they want to know, is this the guy who's going to give me my family that I want? It seemed like a preposterous way to go about things. So I began the adoption process with my kids on my own, once I realized that I was healthy. And that's how my family started. I adopted my son, and then three years later, I adopted my daughter. So it was relatively smooth. I mean, it was completely smooth compared to stories I've heard.

24:35Speaker 1:Was it a difficult thing, did you say? Because as a woman, as you said, had dated men and contemplated that kind of traditional family and those relationships ended for whatever reason. And God knows you're successful. I mean, you're one of the most successful actresses in the history of television. And I'm sure you had no shortage of callers. I was– But when you– I'm not trying to pry, but I'm saying at what point do you sit there and go, okay, I'm not going to wait for that. Boom. I'm going to go make this thing happen on my own. Yeah.

25:05Speaker 1:I'm going to do it for me. When? I think– Was it tough?

25:09Speaker 2:It wasn't tough.

25:10Speaker 3:No.

25:10Speaker 2:Like any decision– You're very self-reliant.

25:13Speaker 3:Well, any decision I make, it means it's gone through whatever it's had to go through to kind of come to the unequivocal answer, which was– Get the paper and start filling them out.

25:24Speaker 2:That's what you got to do.

25:25Speaker 3:And once I'd made the decision, it just kind of the whole thing unraveled on its own. And another thing also is as a child of divorce and as there are so few successful marriages, I can count on one hand, you know, in my life what I would consider a successful marriage. You know, as I was watching friends go through divorce and the sharing of the kids and the fights in front of the kids and the holidays split between the family, it just– I desperately didn't want to give that to my kids.

25:54Speaker 2:I wanted to know.

25:55Speaker 1:And now that you've raised a family this far. Yes. Ten and six? Yes.

26:00Speaker 2:Ten and seven.

26:01Speaker 1:Ten and seven. Are you at this point? I mean, maybe this is being glib, but are you at this point now? You were like, you know, who needs a man? I got this far without one.

26:10Speaker 2:Quite the opposite. actually. Now I realize I've got this whole thing up and running.

26:14Speaker 3:My kids are secure in my love for them, in the family that I've created, which is very unconventional.

26:21Speaker 2:And that's good.

26:22Speaker 3:And now I'm like, I can sit back and like, all right, so where am I now?

26:26Speaker 2:What am I about? And what do I need?

26:28Speaker 3:So I'm, you know, back in this other chapter again. But it's not about the kids. It's not about trying to create a family. Whatever it turns into, it turns into. But What I have right now is really quite workable.

26:41Speaker 2:I'm proud of it.

26:42Speaker 3:Yes.

26:42Speaker 2:It's complicated and it's not perfect.

26:43Speaker 1:Are you going to let them hold the door open for you?

26:46Speaker 2:I've gotten much better. Many, many years of therapy.

26:50Speaker 1:You're the Italian Annie Oakley. Exactly. You're the Annie Oakley from Bayshore, Long Island. I am.

26:56Speaker 2:I can't help it. It's the way I was raised. Very self-reliant. But it has been the death of me at times.

27:05Speaker 1:Hello? Well, I'm trying to think of how to say this. I'm going to write a book. I'm writing a memoir that's coming out in a year. And in the book, I've got some interesting things I talk about. And one of which was I celebrated my 30th anniversary.

27:20Speaker 2:Nice.

27:21Speaker 1:In February 23rd of this year. Wow. I went out to Los Angeles, which was the scene of the crime for me.

27:25Speaker 2:Is that right?

27:26Speaker 1:And can we talk about that? Yeah, of course. Are you on the record about that? Yeah, sure. I was wondering how that affected your career.

27:33Speaker 2:Well, I got sober recently.

27:34Speaker 3:23 years ago, and there was really not much of anything going on at the time, and I'm grateful for that. Also because, you know, the access people have to your life nowadays. I'm just glad none of that was going on. Nobody was interested back when I was a mess. So I was able to get kind of squared with a lot of that stuff before.

27:56Speaker 2:Anything big was happening in my life.

27:57Speaker 3:Me too.

27:58Speaker 2:So I was very— very grateful for the timing of all that.

28:01Speaker 1:And when you walk into a room in AA, there's not a lot of people who have 25 years.

28:04Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right.

28:05Speaker 1:How many people make it that far?

28:06Speaker 3:Yeah.

28:06Speaker 1:I mean, there might be, when they do the hand-raising thing, I met a room the other day in LA where there was 300 people, and there might have been like six or eight of them that had over 20 years.

28:16Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. We're the old-timers now.

28:19Speaker 1:Right, we're the old-timers. Right. Is this still a part of your life?

28:21Speaker 3:I go on my anniversary, which was last week, just to announce it, and, you know, I'm, I'm a Buddhist, which is what I do now.

28:31Speaker 1:You are?

28:32Speaker 3:Yeah, I spend a great deal of time at a Buddhist center in New York where it has given my life a tremendous amount of richness.

28:38Speaker 1:Let me ask you, when did that enter into your life? Because you're not the first person I know who has supplanted sobriety and 12-step sobriety with Buddhism or a Buddhist type of.

28:47Speaker 2:There are a lot of crossovers. I see a lot of people that I know from both places.

28:50Speaker 1:So I see. Yeah.

28:53Speaker 3:Like 20-something years ago, I inadvertently ran into a meditation class, and it was this teacher, and then I kind of— wandered away and then I kind of went back and it was the same teacher I thought I was going to some other thing this happened a number of times and then a good five or six years ago I went back again and here's the same darn teacher in a different place and I've been going consistently for I don't know four or five years as much as I can it feeds me in.

29:18Speaker 1:A huge way so what do you get out of it.

29:20Speaker 3:Well it's not just sort of mumbo-jumbo spiritual kind of it's also it's like a science of the mind really that was established 2,500 years ago. And so they've got history on their side. And I see the people who spend a good deal of time there and the teacher there, they have what I want, you know, the stick with the winners thing. I love AA, but, you know, there are a lot of cuckoos in there. I love them because I understand them. But to be in a place where there's somebody who really has something that I want is very meaningful to me. It becomes harder and harder to find that.

29:53Speaker 2:That's huge, though.

29:54Speaker 1:And for you, what I'm wondering, what did it give you? What did it help you deal with or manage?

29:59Speaker 3:Well, single parenting is not for the faint of heart, shall I say. You know, you live for 40 years where you're the center of your universe. You know, when you want to get a massage, you go get one. And as you know, kids enter the picture and it just turns your whole life– I mean, there's nothing recognizable about it. And it was really a crash course in– not being the center of my universe anymore. And I didn't always handle it great. I spent a fair amount of time just not being okay with the fact that I.

30:28Speaker 2:Couldn't control my environment.

30:30Speaker 3:So a lot of it is about remaining calm, about being patient, about remembering what's important. Patience is, I think, the biggest part of it. I have a short temper that People may not believe, but, you know, in my home environment, yeah, it's not pretty. So it has helped me immeasurably with that.

30:53Speaker 1:Describe your son.

30:55Speaker 2:Cute.

30:57Speaker 1:Lovable.

30:57Speaker 2:He's lovable and blonde.

30:59Speaker 3:He's a spectacularly amazing kid, and he's been through a lot. And he has some learning stuff and also ADD, ADHD, and all those acronyms, which– You know, single parenting under the best of circumstances is difficult. But when you have a kid who's bouncing off the walls and then a kid who's not, who's getting beat up by the kid who's bouncing off the.

31:21Speaker 2:Walls, it's complicated and it's difficult.

31:23Speaker 1:So the little one is. Yeah.

31:25Speaker 2:She's the sort of the survivor.

31:27Speaker 1:The recipient.

31:28Speaker 2:Yes, yes.

31:28Speaker 1:The receptacle of all that energy.

31:32Speaker 3:But, you know, she's a tough kid. She can take care of herself.

31:34Speaker 1:Come on over here. Let's play sword fight.

31:36Speaker 3:Yeah.

31:36Speaker 1:No, no.

31:36Speaker 2:You're the sword. And he's constantly beating the crap.

31:39Speaker 3:Out of her.

31:39Speaker 2:And, you know, she's.

31:43Speaker 3:She's learned to kind of make the best of it. But the fact that she has to is what is a drag. But, you know, we all had our stuff growing up in the middle child. And, you know, everybody, we all have some order in which we were born and the difficulties we had and being the first one or the last one or whatever. And my kids' challenges are not that unusual.

32:04Speaker 2:But, you know.

32:04Speaker 1:When I say to my daughter, my older daughter, I've said to her recently, I said to her, you know, To me, a god or the presence of some kind of force like that in your life manifests itself in the instincts that you have. And I said to her, the minute you get into trouble in this life, in my experience, is when you stop listening to your instincts. That's all we can do is try to get them to listen to that voice in them. Because in the end, they're going to do what they're going to do. That's right.

32:31Speaker 1:We can't make them do what we want to do. It's painful.

32:33Speaker 3:Boy.

32:33Speaker 2:It's painful. Shocking, too. I mean, especially in this industry. We have so many people running around.

32:38Speaker 3:You know, telling you how great you are and, you know, making sure that your every need is taken care of. And then you go home and your kids just couldn't care less. Your kids have no idea who you are. They do, but I think they think everybody's parents have some kind of life like this.

32:51Speaker 2:I don't know. They're exceedingly unimpressed.

32:53Speaker 3:But, you know, just to hang up their damn coat, you know what I mean? They just couldn't possibly care less the way I want the house to look and, you know, all that stuff that used to be so important that I'm learning slowly to let go of.

33:04Speaker 1:Do you see yourself doing this for the rest of your life?

33:07Speaker 2:I have no idea.

33:07Speaker 1:You don't?

33:08Speaker 2:I don't.

33:08Speaker 1:Is there nothing else you want to do?

33:10Speaker 2:I like animals. I always had this fantasy of working with animals. I don't know what. There's certainly nothing that could support the homes that I have. So, you know, I'll probably end up acting.

33:19Speaker 1:You want to keep going.

33:21Speaker 3:I do love the acting part. It's all the stuff around it that is difficult.

33:26Speaker 2:I really don't know.

33:27Speaker 3:I've never known what was going to happen next. If something comes along, catches my eye, it's almost like, oh.

33:31Speaker 2:Look, something glittery.

33:32Speaker 1:How did Nurse Jackie happen?

33:34Speaker 2:Kind of like that.

33:35Speaker 3:Sopranos ended, and I just started reading scripts, and nothing appealed to me. And I thought, I don't know, maybe I'm done. And I think I just wasn't ready, or maybe there really wasn't anything good. And then I read that one. At the time, it was Nurse Mona.

33:47Speaker 2:It was written by Evan Dunsky.

33:49Speaker 3:And I read it, and it was very dark, but there was something about the character I liked, and it kind of came to life that way.

33:55Speaker 2:I was ready.

33:56Speaker 3:The script changed. It morphed into something that felt better to me.

34:00Speaker 2:And that's how it happened. I don't know. But I had similar feelings, like maybe I did what I wanted to do with all this stuff. I don't know. I have no idea. I really don't know what the heck's going to happen next.

34:12Speaker 1:And in the how many seasons? This just finished what season? Seven. Seven. Yeah. Go figure.

34:19Speaker 2:You know, you sign up, you're like, ah, it'll be a couple of years. You have no idea.

34:23Speaker 3:Crazy.

34:24Speaker 1:And then during that seven years and you had the break when you weren't working. Did you always take off? You shot some stuff? You did some plays?

34:31Speaker 2:Yeah, I did a bunch of plays. You did? Yeah.

34:35Speaker 3:Where?

34:36Speaker 2:I did one at Manhattan Theater Club.

34:38Speaker 3:I did one with Ben Stiller, House of Blue Leaves. I did other things which escaped me.

34:45Speaker 1:But in town, you don't want to go away?

34:48Speaker 2:Not if I don't have to. It's different. You have kids in school. It's a different thing.

34:51Speaker 1:What's the most successful thing you've done?

34:54Speaker 2:Professionally?

34:55Speaker 1:Yeah, what do you think? Other than the obvious one, what were the most successful? Is it the obvious one?

35:02Speaker 2:Not necessarily.

35:03Speaker 1:Okay.

35:04Speaker 2:Yeah.

35:04Speaker 3:I mean, for me, the greatest success I've had professionally is the environment that we created at Nurse Jackie, the working environment.

35:13Speaker 1:Really?

35:13Speaker 3:Yeah.

35:13Speaker 1:How so?

35:14Speaker 3:Well, that we assume at a certain level of expertise that the people you're going to hire for your ADs and your camera people and stuff, you know, that they're all, they've been working a long time and they're good at what they do. More important to us was that they were manageable and kind after 16 hours or whatever. So we made a lot of phone calls to people who'd been on sets with them after a long day to find out what they would be like. Because, you know, having been around other environments, I just feel like I've just gotten too old for the craziness.

35:48Speaker 1:That's interesting that, Nurse Jackie, which you're still doing, that's still on the air. That is these epic days. It's long days.

35:56Speaker 2:Not terrible. Actually, I've had way more epic days.

35:59Speaker 3:But even a normal day of 12 or 13 hours is still a long day to an average individual. It's a lot of days to spend doing this one thing. Regardless of the length of the days, you just want to be hanging with people who are nice.

36:12Speaker 2:And you're there so long. Yeah. We really did a great job with Nurse Jackie. I loved the people. They were nice and respectful.

36:18Speaker 1:And I read somewhere that you said you're like Nurse Jackie in some ways and not at all like her in other ways. Well. What are the ways that you are? What are the ways that you are like Nurse Jackie?

36:32Speaker 2:Oh, I don't know.

36:32Speaker 3:I don't recall saying that, but that doesn't mean I didn't.

36:35Speaker 1:Well, then let me be the first to pose to you. What are the ways you are like Nurse Jackie?

36:41Speaker 3:I think she's diligent about her job. I think she takes it seriously. It's important to her to be good at it.

36:47Speaker 1:She's professional.

36:48Speaker 3:Professional, but also competent. She knows that there are very few situations she can't handle.

36:55Speaker 2:I think that's important to her. I think it's important to me, too. I don't know. Other than that, we veer.

37:01Speaker 3:I kind of think it's cool that she doesn't really give a shit the way she's perceived. She gets what she needs done. She gets done without worrying about the ramifications, who she might have hurt. I mean, I spend far too much time thinking about that stuff. It has led me to not good places. So I often thought it would be fun to be more.

37:19Speaker 2:Like her in that way.

37:20Speaker 1:Did you become like any of your characters? No.

37:22Speaker 3:Never?

37:23Speaker 2:Not really.

37:24Speaker 3:I really, you know, took off the nails and the hair, or I took off the scrubs and then it was gone.

37:29Speaker 2:I don't think so.

37:30Speaker 1:Never.

37:31Speaker 2:I don't think so. I mean, maybe other people would tell me otherwise, but I don't know.

37:39Speaker 1:There's a humanness to Edie Falco's characters. No matter how tough their exterior appears, her women are vulnerable and fallible, and we can't get enough of them. This is the seventh and final season for Showtime's Nurse Jackie, After that, we'll eagerly await to see who Edie Falco inhabits next. She told me she's hoping for a new play to come her way. This is Alec Baldwin. You're listening to Here's the Thing.