Inside Hollywood's Secret Conservative Club & If Hollywood Is Over | Patricia Heaton

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1:46That was the heyday. You had Seinfeld, you had Friends. So there was all these great comedies, and we got to be a part of that. That is probably not coming back now since the advent of streaming, which blew up the whole system. Where we shot The Middle, which is on Warner Ranch, which is around the corner from Warner Brothers. And it used to house, like, the Walton House and the Lethal Weapon House. And the Friends Fountain was all there, and that was all raised to the ground. and they built a ton of sound stages. And then pandemic happened and the strike cellar all happened. And on the Paramount lot, there's just a bunch of empty sound stages there now.

2:22A really veteran comedy writer said he was in a writer's room where a bunch of the writers were in their 20s. And they had a character that was like a Marine and he didn't like to hug anybody. He didn't want guys hugging him. He would like tense up. And one of the young writers said, well, that's really homophobic. We can't write that. And so there's a certain wokeness, I think, in some young people. That you're Catholic? Pro-life? You're pro-Israel? How much of that were you talking about sort of publicly way back when versus now you're extremely outspoken, obviously? The thing that I think a lot of people outside of Hollywood have a misconception about, even though actors, myself included, will state our political opinions, when you're working, you're just trying to make a show successful.

3:04And that you should be conscious that there might be somebody who has a different opinion. You know, you have Tilda Swinton and you have Mark Ruffalo and you have Benedict Cumberbatch and all these folks who live a very privileged life. Because the same people who were standing up in Hollywood against what Israel was doing in Gaza stayed silent when Boko Haram in Nigeria were murdering Christians.

3:37All right, Patricia Heaton, you're not getting a proper intro read off the teleprompter because I can describe you as legendary actress, cookbook author, activist, Twitter fighter a little bit lately. but mostly you are like an old friend to me somehow, even though we've only known each other for a couple of years. It burned very hot in L.A. before we both escaped. You went to Nashville. I came here, but it is great to see you. Well, and now that I have all your old outdoor patio furniture, we're forever connected. I'm forever in your debt. You literally, we were moving. I had all this extra stuff.

4:13You were like, my kids will take it. I kind of thought you were kidding. You all showed up five minutes later, and the Heaton children are enjoying my Home Depot furniture. Correct, yes. And it's all still there. It's all still there. It's really great to see you. We became good friends very quickly in L.A. and then we both fled, as I said. There's so many things I want to talk to you about in limited time. Let's do a little bit about just comedy and acting and all that first before we get into all the political stuff. You guys just did the reunion show for Raymond. How did that feel to you? I mean, I know it's like the most cliche question I can ask in some sense, but to get back there with everybody or at least whoever was still around.

4:54Obviously, you guys have lost some people over the years. And just be part of that, again, such a legendary thing. Well, they reconstructed this set. Yeah. And it was sort of a Twilight Zone vibe because it felt so deeply familiar. Spent nine and a half years on that set. Over 200 episodes, right? And so it was like, it's like a weird kind of like, we're here, but we're not really here. But it was so great. You know, we all had kids while we were on the show. There was the show, and then there was all our lives that were happening. And all the crew came back. And so that just shows you kind of what a family this was.

5:37I remember every crew member's name. I don't remember my kids' birthdays, and I remember every crew member's name. and to see everybody again. It was very, you know, very formative years. And you just realize what a rare thing it is to have that kind of chemistry among the actors with that level of writing. And because it's on a network, you're limited to the things you can say. You can't curse. There's certain things you can't show. And so I feel like either it's going to get really dumbed down because of that, or it gets really elevated because the writers have to work extra hard. And that's what happened on Everybody Loves Raymond under the leadership of Phil Rosenthal.

6:23And the other thing that made it ring so true is because every story was from Ray's life, Phil's life, or the writers' lives. Phil has famously said, go home and fight with your spouse and then come back and tell us about it and we'll do an episode. So that's why it's so universally acclaimed, you know, and I remember I was doing some charity work for this organization, World Vision, and I was in Rwanda, and the fellow, the Rwandan that worked for World Vision there and I were in a car driving around, and we were just talking about his weekend plans, and this is in rural Rwanda. He lives on a farm and he said, oh, I have to go to a wedding of someone my wife works with and I don't want to go.

7:15I just want to stay on the farm. And I thought, even in Rwanda, marriages are exactly the same as they are in the United States when it comes down to relationships and husbands and wives and their differences. And that's why Raymond works because the show even is relatable in Rwanda. How much of it do you think was also just the special timing, sort of culturally, even technologically, obviously things have now shifted, the online thing and everything else, that that type of sitcom could really work then? It almost seems like, I mean, I guess some people would say Big Bang Theory, but Raymond seems like, what year did it go off there?

7:54It started when Sam was three. I think it started in, oh, I was pregnant with Joe the first season. 97. It started in 97. Nine years. So nine years into 2006. That seems like probably the last great old school sitcom. Now, you did the middle after that, which was also great. But middle was like a single camera. But it was single camera. It was a different thing. But as a multi. Yeah. What do you make of that? Because it's so special for people of a certain age, those sitcoms. Yes. I don't know. I mean, because after that, Everybody Hates Chris was on it. And that was a really funny, funny, funny show at the same level.

8:33But it was single camera. The middle was single camera. And all comedy kind of moved into single camera at that time. And so getting back to that kind of writing, it requires a certain kind of energy. Like I say that single camera comedy is like Brie and Chablis and multi-camera is like beer and broth. There's a Midwestern vibe to it. There's a theatricalness to it where the punchlines have to punch. Yeah. And so that you get this laugh out loud quality to it. And I believe that that takes people who grew up with that. And I think a lot of kids today and younger writers maybe didn't grow up with that.

9:22And they grew up with comedies that had more subtle humor, more ironic humor. Yeah. And so I think that's what we're seeing. and... Do you think it can come back? I think there's a way. I don't know exactly what it is. I just know because when I still watch, when I watch Raymond, when I watch Seinfeld, when I watch Golden Girls, I mean, you know, the laundry list of shows that I love, like, it still works. So there's got to be a way it can translate. It's about the translation. Yes. And I wonder if there's something about like a Midwest sensibility, a Jewish sensibility. I think you still had like a Borscht Belt humor that stand-up comedians still had a little bit, and that a lot of the writers grew up with that kind of thing, and so that was kind of in their DNA and that you don't have it as much anymore.

10:16So how you get back to that, I'm not 100 % sure. I know a really veteran comedy writer said he was in a writer's room where a bunch of the writers were in their 20s. and they had a character that was like a Marine, and he didn't like to hug anybody. He didn't want guys hugging him. He would, like, tense up, and they were writing this character, and one of the young writers said, well, that's really homophobic. We can't write that, and they said, listen, how does a character change and evolve unless they start in some place? So why not just have him start there. And we see by the end, maybe grudgingly, but by the end, he accepts a hug.

11:01Like you can't have that ending unless you have that beginning. So there's a certain wokeness, I think, in some young people, although there might be even a backlash against that now in this era that we're in. I remember you telling me a couple of years ago that you were in a writer's room for a show that I think maybe never aired, where you basically felt they had to hire this diverse cast of writers and they were basically fighting the entire time over what was offensive. Right. Yes. That's obvious, but it's crazy. Right. That's yeah. Cause the, you know, the first thing I heard was like where they came from or what ethnicity they were or what sexuality they identified as, as opposed, and I kept thinking, yeah, but can they write comedy?

11:41You're like, great, you're a lesbian. Right. Exactly. You know, so, so I think it can come back, but, um, and I'm trying, we're taking stuff out and pitching it. So we'll see. Do you think some of it's also just economics that like, you know, the old things can be so cheap now on an iPhone and with little, you know, what do they call black magics or whatever, that getting a studio to sit there and you got to feed those people and do how many takes would you guys usually do? Well, Raymond was very efficient. It was like two takes. Phil didn't like to keep the audience too long and have them get tired out.

12:14But in the world of producing half-hour comedies, sitcom is pretty cheap. And it's even cheaper now because they don't pay anything. And they're not producing 22 and 24 episodes. They're doing 10. Right. Does that seem crazy? Yes. I mean, you know. Long seasons, but. I'm telling you, Dave, I and my Dave, I, as you know, we have many Daves in our lives. Yes, we do. We're both married to Dave. Yes. It's true. And so we realized, like we were thinking about this during the pandemic that, I mean, I used to like literally kiss the ground every day I stepped out of my car on the Warner Brothers lot because both were shot in the middle and Raymond were at Warner Brothers.

12:56I never imagined I would have this kind of career. But I look back. So I was always grateful. But I look back on it now and I'm like, that was the heyday. You had Seinfeld. You had Friends. Even going back to a show like Wings when my first son was born in 93. I watched Wings was so funny. So there was all these great comedies, and we got to be a part of that. And whenever you would go, either at ABC or CBS, to, you know, one of these Television Critics Association events, you know, and all the casts would show up and you were like, we're all on shows. Isn't this cool? You'd see your friends from other shows.

13:45And we realized that is probably not coming back now since the advent of streaming, which blew up the whole system. Even when HBO came onto the scene, you still had the major networks. It was the three plus Fox was sort of there. And then you had HBO. And that was kind of it. It's not that anymore. And I realized, my goodness, we got to do that. Like, I look, I always was grateful, but I look back on it and I thought, we really didn't realize that we were in this golden era of television. One of the last great things that I did in L.A. was my last birthday there. You guys came out to dinner with us with Bob Saget and his wife, Kelly.

14:27And here I am sitting with two of, like, the legends that I grew up watching. And Bob was talking about how, you know, they had rebooted or they had, you know, basically brought back Full House. Full House. house on Netflix, but he was going on and on about in the old days, what we got paid to do this. And he's like, now I just sit there and we don't get residuals. I know it's kind of crimey river in some sense for whatever. But just to describe what that was like and the upfronts, they'd fly the whole cast out and you're in this fabulous hotel on Central Park West. And I remember for one of my birthdays, I got out, you know, a weekend at the Montage in Laguna and you'd get, I mean, just the money was flowing then, you know, and it ain't anymore.

15:12And it ain't anymore. Well, let's actually let's talk about L.A. for a little bit because we did both flee. And it's partly it wasn't directly, at least for me, because Hollywood was kind of changing. It was all the other decay that was happening around COVID and everything else. But you guys left right after us and you were more deeply connected to that world than I was. Yeah. Yeah. We had filmed a movie called Unexpected, which is available on Amazon Prime for anybody who'd like to see it with Anna Camp and Joe Mazzello. A true professional. Yeah. But we filmed it in Oklahoma and then we were filming something somewhere else and it was outside of L.A.

15:51And we just thought that the taxes are high, the crime is high, the homelessness is high. And we're not working in L.A. as much as we're working outside of L.A. So why don't we leave? Let's just leave our boys. We'll abandon our children. By that time, we're pretty much on their own. And they'd have my furniture. And they have your furniture. And so we just said, let's go to Nashville because we were familiar with it. We had friends there. And, you know, we really haven't looked back. And when I go back now, I think, does it feel different to me because I'm not working here anymore? Or has it really changed?

16:33And I think there is a little bit of a sadness about it that I think is real. And it's not just because of my experience. And we have just got an email from a writer saying, you got out at the right time. And a lot of the writers I know from Raymond and the Middle have left. They went back to their hometowns with their families. I did a couple episodes of Frasier last summer with Kelsey Grammer and on the Paramount lot, and it was only Frasier and Kathy Bates' Matlock that were on the lot. And now there's, I think now Matlock is the only one on that lot. Wow. Yes. So those sound stages are just empty?

17:18And where we shot the middle, which is on Warner Ranch, which is around the corner from Warner Brothers. And it used to house like the Walton house and the Lethal Weapon house and the Bewitched house and the Friends Fountain was all there. And that was all raised to the ground. And they built a ton of sound stages. And then the pandemic happened and the strike cellar all happened. And there's just a bunch of empty sound stages there now. God. I know. They could do a zombie movie. They could. Yeah. That would probably be it. Let's talk a little bit about your beliefs in general, because you're also a little bit of an outsider in a Hollywood perspective in that you're Catholic, you talk about it.

17:59Pro-life. You're pro-life, you're conservative, you're pro-Israel. I mean, there's a bunch of stuff here that doesn't quite fit in the system. I mean, how much of that were you talking about sort of publicly way back when versus now you're extremely outspoken, obviously. I was pretty outspoken back then. I think I remember when I was interviewing for Linda Bloodworth Thomason to do a part on a spinoff from Designing Women called Women of the House, where Delta Burke's character, her husband in Designing Women had been a congressman or a senator, and then he dies. And so she takes over his seat.

18:37Did it do a season? It's just a season and a half or something like that. It was me, Delta, Terry Garr, the wonderful Terry Garr, and Valerie Mahaffey. And I sat down with her and I said, I just want you to know I'm pro-life. So I don't, because the show is slightly political. And I said, so I don't see myself really doing any pro-choice character, you know, unless there's another pro-life character on the show that makes an equal argument. And she said, there's nothing funny about abortion. We're not going to do that on this show. And I'm like, okay. But so I was clear about those things. And I think people knew, okay, I don't know if I ever told you this story, but my very first show with Linda Lavin was called Room for Two.

19:34And we played mother and daughter where I produced a morning show. And she ends up having an opinion thing, like an Andy Rooney thing on my morning show, much to my character's chagrin. Right. And so that was during the time where Clinton was running against Bush. And everybody was for Clinton and she was doing a lot of work for Clinton and whatever. And it's really because of the pro-life thing that I was like, okay, I'm voting for Bush. It's not like I had a big commitment to Republican ideals necessarily. But when the Democrats put abortion in their platform, that is a game changer. If it's not in the platform and there are some Democrats who are pro-life and some who are pro-choice, then you could still be a Democrat.

20:14But when it's in the platform, then as a Catholic, you're out or I'm out. And so I never said anything. But it was just getting to the point where they were just saying terrible things about Republicans just freely because they assume that everybody thinks like they do. Right. And I'm new here in town. So that was my first sitcom. So I see a friend of mine outside of work had a little bush quail button, right? I said, give me that button. Give me the button. I'm going to wear it to work. I'm not going to say anything I'm just going to wear it to work. So I put it on my jacket lapel. And I was like, I had my handbag over it.

20:53I'm like, I don't know if I really should be doing this. And finally, we sat down for the table read. It was the first day of the week. And the director saw it. who's, by the way, these are all wonderful people who are all my friends. And he said, are you wearing a Bush quail button? And I'm like, yeah. And he goes, I mean, we got to get started on this table read, but could you tell me what, can you tell us why in like a minute? And I didn't really have an answer. I was like, well, I said, I'm pro-life and blah, blah, blah. And I tried to make up something. Well, Clinton doesn't have any experience in international affairs, which I was just pulling out my bum.

21:28You know. You should have said, well, Dan Quail is really smart. Yes, he's a good speller. But so, and there was like, everyone was staring at me. And there was another guest actor who had been on the previous week who I had completely hit it off with, who was staring daggers at me after I said this. And he said, I can't believe it, but I am just hating you right now. And I said, well, and we had had long, deep conversations prior to that. And I said, well, it's probably because you hate your dad and your dad's voting for Bush. And then God bless Linda Lavin, who passed away last year, who was my dear friend for life.

22:13And she said, it doesn't matter because Clinton's going to win. Now let's do the table read. And that was just a beautiful way to handle it. But afterwards, after we finished the table read, the script supervisor, who's also a liberal, came over to me. She goes, you're the bravest person I've ever met. And then Linda's assistant, who is a gay woman, married, probably not married at the time, but had a partner with a kid. She comes down from Linda's office and said, my partner and I don't agree with most of your views, but we absolutely defend your right to say it and have your views. And I was like, OK, refreshing.

22:50And then another writer came down, a guy and was like, I heard about your button. This thing spread like wildfire through the show. But, you know, I wasn't meaning to share my political opinions, but I just wanted people to be aware that not everybody shares your political view and that you should be conscious that there might be somebody who has a different opinion. So when you're walking around freely like crapping on every person that has a different political opinion, it might be your friend standing right there that you're talking about and you don't know it. Just like for my pro-life views, I don't ever talk about that in a makeup trailer or on the set because many, many people have had abortions.

23:39And it's a sensitive subject. And I would never want to introduce that, especially into the workplace. Right. And the thing that I think a lot of people outside of Hollywood have a misconception about, even though actors, myself included, will state our political opinions, when you're working, you're just trying to make a show successful, right? And you're going in there and you want to be nice to the crew. You want to know your lines, hit your marks, not complain about anything, show up. That's really what it's about on a day-to-day basis. We're all people who have families that we're trying to support.

24:15And so we want the show to be the best it can be. And that's really the focus. So even though I have political opinions and a lot of my dear, dear friends have very differing opinions, we're really united, first of all, in just friendship and admiration and respect for each other, but also the fact that we're just trying to make it work in this really, really, really difficult business. Well, you're also not awful about it. And what I mean by that is there are so many actors now, like, you're probably friends with him, so you don't have to nod either way. I'll try to read your eyes. But like De Niro, he's done so many incredible things.

24:50I just watched Godfather 2 again the other day, and it's like so amazing to see him so young. And I know we have a slight disagreement on the one they did for Netflix. I really didn't like it. You loved it, The Irishman. Irishman. Yeah. I just, it doesn't matter. But like, I now am starting to have trouble separating the art from the artist. And I, and I hate that. And it's, I, when I find that I watch something where I don't recognize anybody, I find it the most authentic in a way. Because we know too much about these people. Yeah. And that, you know, I probably, I, I admire actors who have chosen really to just keep it separate.

25:25It's a real discipline because you're pressured to really be out there publicly, not necessarily for your opinions, but to have social media and to push projects and create this image and all this stuff outside of your work. So there's pressure for you to do that as far as selling a show and being a good player, a good employee for whoever's producing a show. And, you know, I'm just such an opinionated person and sometimes I just cannot not say anything. So that's my own fault. And there's probably people who don't want to watch me because they don't like my opinions. And that's the price. Yeah.

26:07And I do admire those folks who just you don't know anything about what they believe and they just do their job. I do admire that. And I think there's freedom in that. But I say like I would say, especially in the Israel Palestine space, like Mark Ruffalo, is very opposite, right? I still watch him. I know. I don't. Well, I also don't think he's a good actor. Oh, well, Task was really good that was just on. And we just rewatched You Can Count on Me, which is one of his very first movies with Laura Linney. It's so good. So I still, I don't know. I don't have a problem watching him. And I think...

26:47Have you chatted? I've never spoken to him. So you're incredibly pro-Israel. I'm very, very vocal about it. Yeah. Again, you're Catholic, not Jewish. Yes. You can support Israel and not be Jewish. Yeah. So have you had any interactions with him? Because you guys are on like—because he's like—it's not that just he's like sort of pro—it's not even Palestine because it doesn't make sense. But he's not even that he's pro-Gazan, let's say, or something. He's like hardcore Israel hate. Yes. I don't know him at all, and I've never spoken to him, so I haven't. And I'm trying to think if I've had, I don't think I've had any interactions except with, no, I haven't had any interactions with people who are on the other side.