Stephen Graham (acting as Eddie)
Appearances
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
But it's like, no, you're not going to play in the NBA. Sorry. I didn't have the confidence. And that's a big deal. Fortunately, down there, there was a professor. And I took one writing course. And he said, you have it. You have that. And he was a real conservative southern guy. And I was the hippie with the long hair and the whole whatever. I wish I had the long hair now, but you know.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
And that was a big confidence builder. That was huge for me, huge, to have a professor, to have a published novelist say, you have. Peter Taylor was another one. Peter Taylor, he read some of my stuff, but you have it. A really good short story writer who was at the University of Virginia.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
Yeah, no. You know, yeah, something, some connection that, you know, certainly the idea that things are bigger than me, which I think, That isn't necessarily religious, but I think it probably has its basis back in growing up Catholic. And there are things more important than you. And whether that's a society or whatever the heck it is, or your family. So I've always had that.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
You were an altar boy. I was. I served mass every day for like two years in a row. This is when I don't know how old I was, nine, ten years old.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
Well, I think in those days, and I think like a lot of kids, I thought about maybe I'll be a priest. That might be an interesting thing to do. I certainly respected the priests and the brothers and the nuns and what my mother taught in the school. We had priests and brothers in our house all the time. They wrecked two of our cars. Oh, really? A little too much wine, whatever. I don't know.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
Not yet, honestly. Oh, he hit a fire hydrant. Okay, that's okay, Father. No problem. Okay. And we didn't have money either. I mean, that was the other, like, oh no. And my father was not Catholic, so he was especially not keen on that.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
I don't know, but the other piece of it, which just to your point, no, no, no, to your point is I get the nicest notes from people. Of all the things I do, they'll send these notes, and yeah, some of them, you know, like For the first time in three years, I gave my parents presents this year because, or I went to the dentist because of the, you know what I mean?
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
And it's real and it's honest and they're so appreciative. And so that's a nice thing.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
Hi, I'm Stephen King. I'm here to honor James. I love the guy. What can I tell you?
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
You think you do. No, I do. Until the voices won't stop. And they keep you up at night. You know, it's an interesting thing. You talk about voice. All these books have a different voice. The father book has a voice. The autobiography has a voice. Alice Cross is a different kind of voice. The kids' books, different voices. I've learned not to get up in the middle of the night anymore.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
No, I didn't do that. But I was in graduate school. I was at Vanderbilt. And I was kind of wandering around thinking about what I... It was during Vietnam, so it was a scary time for anybody in school or not in school. And I decided to go up there to... And I just kind of showed up.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
It's kind of interesting because the Trappist monks, they're not supposed to really talk, but they have one... Yeah, they don't talk.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
They have one priest or brother who will greet people that come in. And... I remember I talked to, he said, well, why are you here? And I said, well, you know, I'm doing a little too many drugs and, you know, whatever, and I just need to kind of straighten my life out a little bit. And he said, James, you know, life is like a game of football.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
And you run down the field, but if you step out of bounds, you know, the score doesn't count. And at that point, I just wished that he had maintained the silence rather than giving that, but they did let me stay. They let me stay for about 10 days. And I left there saying, okay, if I want to be a writer, I have to do certain things and I'm going to do this somehow or I'm going to try to do it.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
But I needed that 10 days to really sort of think it through and focus on it. And focusing is a big thing. You mentioned the autobiography. And especially at my age, I think it's semi-interesting, interesting to me anyway. And I wrote it during COVID, but I became a better writer. writing that autobiography.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
I concentrated on the sentences more than I had in a while, which is really important for me.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
kind of opposite from like the attention to silence in the monastery so it seemed so different from I just wanted to think and I mean they're not in totally silent I mean they sing it's a fascinating life I mean they go to bed at like 7 30 they get up at three or so They have a mass or whatever, and they sing a lot. And they're all very healthy, at least they were in those days.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
And then they go out in the fields, and then they come back and have these very Spartan meals. And I just found it was a time to really put my mind at peace and ease and think things through.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
No, I, well, no, my job there was not to take drugs. And it wasn't that I was a massive drug user, and I pretty much always had things in control. but it just seemed to me that if I really, and my grades are always good, but I needed to just focus more, was the main thing. But at the Phil Morris, I also was at Woodstock.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
Now, everybody I know my age says they were there, but they weren't, because I looked around, and... But the Fillmore East, I did that for a couple of years. And actually, Robert Mapplethorpe was one of the ushers.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
No, no, no. I knew him a little bit back then. And actually, one of the stories in the book, which was so great, after one of the doors, after one of their shows, and they were all sitting in the front. I think there was two shows that night. And they were sitting there with Graham, who ran the Fillmore East and Fillmore West. And a bunch of the ushers, we were sitting behind them a few rows.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
And Jim Morrison, he looked, it was a three-story theater. And he looked up and all these lights were hanging over the seats in the front. He said, Bill, this is really dangerous. Those lights would come down and kill people. And Graham's going, Jim, just relax. The lights are not coming down. We're going to be fine. And then Morrison just stormed off.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
And about 10 minutes later, we hear this voice. And somebody's screaming. You look up there. This is a true story. And Morrison is hanging from the lights. He goes, you're right, Bill. It's OK. These lights are off.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
Well, that's part of the answer. Part of it is you love to do it. Somebody said you're lucky if you find something you like to do, and then it's a miracle if somebody will pay you to do it. But even before people were paying me to do it, I just loved, and actually it was working at McLean, the hospital, which is when I started writing.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
I would go into Cambridge and buy, I went to a Catholic high school and they just gave us a lot of books that none of us liked. But when I moved up there, I started reading a lot of stuff, the kind of stuff I hadn't read before. And I was loving a lot of plays, short stories, and a lot of novels. And then I started scribbling. And I loved it. I just loved telling stories.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
And I grew up in the woods. And I used to, as a little kid, I would go out in the woods and tell myself stories. Story after story after story after story. And I think that... And I remember, actually, when I used to get down to Vanderbilt, I would drive down there from Massachusetts. It would take, like, 26 hours or whatever.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
And they used to write Broadway musicals in my head, driving down and sing songs. It was crazy, but, you know... You might notice a pattern here.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
Well, yeah, I mean, sort of the music, yes. Yeah, yeah, I would always put a tune to it, whatever I was, you know... And the storyline, whatever the heck it was. And it would just, you know... I don't know, but it was fun, I liked it.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
Yeah, you know, I don't know why people find it so extraordinary. First of all, in advertising, which I hate to go back to that prison, but in my mind, it's very collaborative. And you generally, you work with an art director and maybe a producer, and the two or three of you will sit in a room and you create these little stories, little films usually. And that is collaborative.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
You know, Sistine Chapel, all these, you know, some famous doing this thing on the, you know, 510, whatever number. collaborative, my own theory is if we're gonna save the world, we'll have to somehow figure out how to be collaborative, or AI will probably figure it out for us, and either save us or destroy us, depending on the mood that day.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
It just seemed a natural thing to me, and the first one actually was a little golf book, and it was a guy that I knew from the advertising days, and after we played golf, we just started chatting about a story that I had, and we said, well, let's just try this, and we wrote Miracle on the 17th Green, And then after that, I just said, you know, I can do this. This will be an interesting thing.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
And I don't remember the first one. It might have been a woman's murder club where I collaborated, the second or the third book. Andy Gross, a wonderful guy who just died, who was so tragic.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
Oh, my God. You know, just such a healthy looking man, you know, and a wonderful person. At any rate, that was very sad for us. And obviously, it's tragic for his family.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
Doing several drafts. On this tour, I'm working on three outlines.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
Where do you see what happens to Alice Cross? I've got to tell you.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
Yeah, no, I didn't. I mean, a lot of times, especially in the beginning. Am I compartmentalizing too much? No, I would go in and do two or three drafts in the beginning. Not as much now because most of the people I'm working with, they kind of know the joke. But I'll still come in and rewrite.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
I mean, the most insane thing was when I did the book shots, which were novellas, which I still think was a very valuable thing to do. So the stores would have these, you could read these books in a couple of hours, like a movie. They were novellas, 100 pages, 100, whatever the heck. And I think it's a useful thing.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
The publishers were afraid of it because, oh my God, people are going to buy these $7 books and they won't buy, well, they will buy longer books, but you're just going to have more people and some of them, that's all they have time for. They have a couple hours and they want to, you know, it's like, It's like a movie, you know?
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
But the year I did that, I wrote 2,400 pages of outlines in addition to two full books. And that's one of the things that people are looking at what I do, and they go like, well, and they always project their own situation. And people are sort of funny that way. Like with the dad book, How to Be a Better Dad in One Hour,
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
I'll talk to these various people who interview you, and they go, what's the one idea? And I go, there isn't one idea. The whole idea of this book, there's so many things dads can work on, and they just need to figure out the things that pertain to them. And the reason it's one hour is because most dads will not read the 400-page book.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
So what I did is just try to, and that's not a joke, but it's serious, I mean, because I wanted to be pragmatic about it. And what I've heard, and I've never had this experience before, but especially women who read the book and they'll say, I'm giving this quite seriously to my husband, quite seriously to my dad, and quite seriously to my two goofy brothers who are dads and really need help.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
My dad, the only time, and this isn't totally true, but my only hug I ever got from my dad was on his deathbed. And he apologized and he cried, which he never did.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
He apologized for just not being as close as he thought he should have been. And I just said, you were a great dad. You were a great dad.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
Look, he grew up in the Newburgh poorhouse. It was called the Pogie. His mother was a charwoman there. His father had disappeared. He never knew his father. And he didn't have the experience to be a dad. So that's fine. And I did therapy for one year, and I got in touch with... And I just don't blame him. It was fine. He did the best he could.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
I have a friend, his whole thing is doing the best you can religion. You're doing the best you can, okay, that's good. God bless you. You're doing the best you can, okay.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
Well, he, the last thing he did after he retired, he retired in 60, 61, he actually wrote a novel. It didn't get published, but it was pretty good. It was pretty good. And that's what he wanted to do. He went to Hamilton, which is to go from where he was, the poor house, and to get into Hamilton, leap, unbelievable leap. He was a bright guy. He didn't have a lot of confidence.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
He just didn't think he could. He sold insurance and then he actually did well. He worked for Prudential. He did well in the insurance stuff. But he didn't have the confidence. He didn't instill confidence in myself or my sisters either, which is unfortunate, but my grandmother, she was the one, she said, listen, I'm gonna be real about this stuff.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
You're not gonna play in the NBA, so forget about that. You don't go to your left very well. You're good. I could dunk in high school. There's a little white guy that could dunk. But you're not going to make it. But you are going to be able to do stuff. And she had one of the lines, which I use it on Substack, is hungry dogs run faster. That was one of her things.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
And the other thing was just go out and chop wood. Do it. Do it. Stop talking about writing your book. Go write the damn book. Seriously.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
No. And I, somewhere in there, I think it was when I read Vanderbilt, I read, and I didn't read a lot of books. commercial novels at that point. But I read Day of the Jackal and The Exorcist. And I went, ooh, these are cool. I like these. And maybe I could write something like that. The novel that had knocked me out, A Hundred Years of Solitude, and I said, I'm not capable of that.
Fresh Air
Author James Patterson On The Art Of Collaboration
I thought I could write a literary, you know, an okay novel. But I said, I don't really want to do that. I don't want to write for those people, honestly. I'm not interested in those kinds of stories. But I said, maybe I could do something like Day of the Jackal, maybe. But I can't do 100 Years of Solitude. I don't have it in me. And that's what I'd like to do.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
Yes. Ryan Enos and I wrote a series of columns in the Crimson that were pretty widely diffused. And we organized a letter signed by 800 faculty members calling on the administration, one, to publicly denounce attacks on other universities. We found it unconscionable. that other university leaders were silent when Columbia first came under attack.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
We called on the university to refuse to acquiesce to the kinds of demands that you just read. And we called on the university in the letter to work with other universities to try to build an opposition to these attacks. What the current administration is doing is a deliberate effort, an authoritarian effort and an illegal effort, I should add,
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
to weaken universities, which is something that autocrats do really almost invariably. Autocrats of the left, like Hugo Chavez, autocrats of the right, like Erdogan and Orban, invariably go after universities. And that is precisely what the Trump administration is doing. So there are a number of reasons why the university ultimately said no to the Trump administration's demands.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
But faculty are really concerned, particularly those of us who not only teach here, but who study authoritarianism and have seen these kinds of assaults elsewhere.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
I think that the administration blinked. I think it realized that this was not going well. Harvard's resistance gave a real burst of energy and encouragement, not just to other universities, but to civil society across the country that's been waiting for the more powerful actors, the more prominent actors in our society to get off the sidelines and begin to fight back.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
I know that Harvard's leadership was concerned that Harvard's public image is not great right now. It's viewed as very elitist and that there was a concern that the public would rally behind Trump against Harvard if there was such a conflict. That did not happen. To the extent that anybody rallied, the public rallied and was beginning to rally behind Harvard.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
And I think the administration realized that this fight was not going well and wanted to reset the negotiations. And I think they realized that they asked too much. And the danger now is that they'll come back and offer or demand 60 percent of what they demanded before. And I don't know what the university's response will be.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
I think the Republican Party has a crucial and really underappreciated role in all of this. It would be pretty easy to put the brakes on what the Trump administration did. It would only take a handful of Republicans. It would not take a majority of Republicans. It wouldn't even take a large faction of Republicans.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
Freedom Hustle scores range from zero, which is the most authoritarian, to 100, which is the most democratic. I think a couple of Scandinavian countries get scores of 99 or 100. The U.S. for many years was in the low 90s, which put it broadly on par with other Western democracies like the U.K. and Italy and Canada and Japan.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
It could change the dynamic and put the brakes on what is a pretty radical authoritarian turn in the last four months. But the party now, now sort of purged of its last Adam Kinzinger's and Liz Cheney's, is almost uniform. in backing an openly authoritarian figure or at least acquiescing to an openly authoritarian figure.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
Unlike 2016, 17, there's no serious debate about Donald Trump's authoritarianism. He openly attempted to overturn the results of an election and he tried to block a peaceful transfer of presidential power.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
The fact that the Republican Party, knowing that, knowing that their leader attempted a coup, would nominate him and would give him the blank check that they have given him in the sense of allowing him to place somebody like Kash Patel in charge of the FBI.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
and allow to basically abdicate authority while the president engages in illegal behavior and appropriating congressionally approved funds is shocking to me, even though I wrote those words a couple of years ago in Tyranny of the Minority. It's
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
Astounding to me how far mainstream Republicans are willing to go to avoid a conflict with Trump and how far they're willing to sacrifice democracy in order to preserve their jobs or their social standings.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
In effect, it is. However, I think there's always a lot of ambiguity, a lot of gray area when it comes to whether or not the administration is openly challenging or disobeying the court. Both sides have an interest in... in avoiding the appearance of outright violation of court orders. And the Trump administration will say it's complying. It will try to appeal in various ways.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
It will claim sort of a different interpretation of the ruling. There are lots of ways to fudge. And it will be up to the Supreme Court to kind of escalate if it needs to. If the court is truly concerned that the administration is not complying with Supreme Court rulings, Justice Roberts is going to have to be much, much clearer and much more public in his language.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
And the thing is the Supreme Court also doesn't want that kind of confrontation. Right. Few things could weaken the court more than being openly undermined by the executive branch. That would be a crushing blow to the legitimacy and the authority of the court.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
But it slipped in the last decade from Trump's first victory to Trump's second victory from the low 90s to 83, which placed us below Argentina and in a tie with Romania and Panama. So we're still above what scholars would consider a democracy, but now in the very low quality democracy range comparable, again, to Panama, Romania and Argentina.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
So the court has an interest in fudging things as well, which allows the president, if he wants to, to kind of play chicken with the court and threaten and threaten and threaten. And you will find in some instances and to some degree, courts will back down.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
So a lot of abuse, a lot of violation of the rule of law can occur before we're all convinced that there's been an open rejection of a Supreme Court ruling. I hope it won't come to that. But if Justice Roberts were to draw a red line and Trump were to cross it, yeah, then I think we're in at least temporarily a situation of dictatorship.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
I think it's part of a process in which this kind of nativist leaning government is abandoning our longstanding, certainly since World War II, commitment to the world, commitment to international development. Commitment to democracy, which has been very strong in this country since the 1980s.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
And commitment to sort of build and sustain soft power in the world, which many of us think is pretty consequential. So this administration not only doesn't really care about reporting on or perhaps addressing human rights in country X or country Y. but actively dislikes it and is withdrawing from it. Those human rights reports were very good and were widely used, including by scholars.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
Those were pretty systematic reports that came out each year and which were quite credible. This is since the 1970s. And, you know, it's not the end of the world that they disappeared, but I think the world is worse off as a result.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
Yes and no. So it is not the case, at least according to the evidence that I've seen, that the Biden administration or the Democrats as a national political force weaponized the DOJ. That's a really important point. So Donald Trump has openly weaponized the DOJ, falsely accusing the Biden administration of having weaponized the DOJ.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
I do think that the Manhattan hush money case, first of all, it was a case of weaponization. And I think ended up being very problematic because the other cases against Trump were by virtually all sane accounts, real and serious. These are the January 6th case and the documents cases. Those were not weaponization cases. Those are cases where Donald Trump by all means ought to be investigated and
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
But the Manhattan case was – those similar charges would not have been brought upon most politicians. So that is a case of weaponization. It's a local case. I think what they were trying to do and the reason why many opponents of Trump –
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
accepted it even supported it is it was basically an Al Capone play so this was an effort to to nail him for something small because maybe they wouldn't get him for the other stuff but I think it was a mistake and it did it did give legitimate grievance to to Trump and Republicans and allows them to say hey this is a case of weaponization because it was a case of weaponization
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
Oh, yeah. Freedom House has annual reports for every country. The rise in political violence, political threats, threats against politicians, refusal to accept the results of a democratic election in 2020, an effort to use violence to block a peaceful transfer of power are all listed among the reasons for why the United States has fallen.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
Not that I can find. When Luca and I wrote our foreign affairs piece, it was published in February, but we wrote it in December before Trump took office. And so it's a speculative piece. And I think we really nailed it in a bunch of areas in terms of the weaponization of government and its deployment against critics. But one thing we did not anticipate, didn't even mention – was Musk.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
This is an entirely new dimension that all of our studies of authoritarianism elsewhere had really provided us no comparable example. I still don't fully understand exactly what Musk is after, but I consider it probably the most dangerous element of the whole process the last few months. I've never seen, never remotely seen,
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
a concentration of economic, media, and political power as we see today in Elon Musk. That is just way too much power for anyone to have. It's almost unthinkable that our regulations and our politics failed to prevent that from happening.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
Even in sort of the best case scenario in which this is mostly just corruption, the amount of self-dealing, unchecked self-dealing that's going on is beyond the pale. But the information collection, the illegal and frightening information collection and centralization that's going on, we still don't know to what ends that's being put. And in a country that prides itself –
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
on institutional checks and balances that we could permit this sort of, first of all, concentration of political, economic, and media power, and then unchecked and illegal behavior that could, in the worst case scenario, serve as a basis for a very authoritarian project. Musk is going to hurt a lot of people. And Musk's breaking of the state is going to hurt a lot of Trump voters.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
And dramatically downsizing the government, if that is the end, is not necessarily compatible with building a working class populist base for MAGA. So again, I have to confess, I don't yet fully understand what Musk is after and what Trump is after by letting Musk loose.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
The parallel that I see to Putin and I don't want to draw it too far because the regime in Russia is very authoritarian, much, much more so than anything the United States I think even could become. But the parallel I would draw to oligarchs in the Putin case are more the Zuckerbergs and the Jeff Bezoses. Putin is the guy in charge.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
I should say that even in the first four months of the Trump administration, it's quite certain that what's happening on the ground in the United States is likely to bring the U.S. core down quite a bit.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
The oligarchs are able to make a lot of money, but Putin made it very, very clear soon after he became president that the deal was these guys could make money through legal and illegal means, but the one rule was that they had to stay out of politics. If you finance the opposition, you were done. And that's what happened, for example, to Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
So Bezos and Zuckerberg kind of acquiescence getting on their knees to Trump that I see that parallel. Musk, though, is much more Trump's partner. He is thus far not behaving as if he is a subordinate to Trump. And there's no equivalent. independent oligarch in Russia. Nobody who can stand up to Putin and sort of independently partner with Putin the way that Musk has.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
I think the way the debate goes these days, I'm still somewhere in the middle. I'm very pessimistic in the short term. In fact, I would go as far as to say that today, we are no longer living in a democratic regime. I think we have already crossed the line into competitive authoritarianism. Very quickly, in a democracy, there should not be a risk or a cost to publicly opposing the government.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
And I think now it's pretty clear just in four months with the weaponization, the attacks against law firms and the threats against CEOs and media and universities and NGOs and individual critics of the Trump administration that today there is a cost to publicly opposing the government. One runs a credible risk. of government retribution if one opposes the government.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
So people, individuals, organizations all over this country today have to think twice about engaging in public opposition because they know there's a credible threat that something will happen to them. They're not going to be jailed or killed or exiled, but they may face some pretty difficult circumstances if they oppose the government. That to me, the fact that there's a price on
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
that there's a cost to opposing the government means that we are already in an authoritarian situation. It's mild compared to others. It is eminently reversible. But we're not living in a fully democratic regime today. And so I'm very pessimistic about our ability to revert that in the short term. Our society, our very muscular civil society has not stepped up for the most part.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
There are signs that this is changing, but we've been very, very slow to respond. And the wealthiest, most prominent, most powerful, most privileged members of our civil society have for the most part remained on the sideline. And that's allowing Trump to do much more damage than I expected him to be able to do.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
Again, in the long run, I think we continue to have a number of institutional channels to contest Trump, and we continue to have the muscle, the organizational, financial muscle in society to sustain opposition.
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
I think the most likely outcome is a slide into what Luke and Wei and I call competitive authoritarianism. These are regimes that constitutionally continue to be democracies. There is a constitution, there are regular elections, a legislature, and importantly, the opposition is legal, above ground, and competes for power. So from a distance, if you squint,
Fresh Air
America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
It looks like a democracy, but the problem is that systematic incumbent abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition. This is the kind of regime that we saw in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez, subsequently become a full-on dictatorship. It's what we see in Turkey under Erdogan. It's what we see in El Salvador. It's what we see in Hungary today.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
Most new autocracies that emerged in the 21st century have been led by elected leaders and fall into this category of competitive authoritarianism. It's kind of a hybrid regime.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
Right. And because the leader is— Usually, freely and fairly elected, he has a certain legitimacy that allows him to say, hey, how can you say I'm an authoritarian if I was freely and fairly elected? So citizens are often slow to realize that their country is descending into authoritarianism.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
Yeah, it was much more so prior to Watergate. Again, throughout history, you can always find cases of certainly politicization, people using government agencies either to help their friends or to help their party. No democracy has ever been completely free of that.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
In the United States, there were lots of it, particularly at the local and state level, but even at the federal level, the use occasionally of the IRS to go after presidents, political enemies, the use of The FBI to spy on sometimes political rivals, more often political activists, usually in the left or in the civil rights movement, notoriously in the mid 20th century.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
So this some of the stuff is not new. But after Watergate, which was one of the most sort of notorious case of a president actually getting caught. engaging in this sort of weaponization, there were a series of reforms that pretty dramatically limited the politicization of key government agencies and ushered in what I consider far and away the United States' most democratic era.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
Between 1974 and 2016, there was very little weaponization of the state.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
I mean, in theory, this can't be done. It's also a violation of the rules for the president to order the Justice Department to investigate critics or people he doesn't like. And Trump just issued an executive order instructing the DOJ to investigate former Trump administration officials Miles Taylor and Christopher Krebs.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
Taylor was the author of the so-called anonymous op-ed in 2018, which stated that there were, in effect, adults in the room who were aware of the danger posed by Trump within the Trump administration and who were working to constrain him. And after leaving Trump.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
The government – Taylor became a vocal critic of the Trump administration and Christopher Krebs was in charge of cybersecurity in the 2020 election. Did a – by really all accounts, an extraordinarily effective job of ensuring that the 2020 election went off relatively smoothly. His crime –
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
in air quotes, was contradicting President Trump and declaring that there was no significant fraud in the 2020 election. And for that, he is now the target or will be the target of a DOJ investigation.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
Well, conviction is not easy. We still have a very powerful and a quite independent judiciary. And so it's pretty unlikely that any of these cases will end up with the target landing in prison. at least as things stand now.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
But that doesn't prevent the FBI from investigating folks and the DOJ charging people with what may be dubious, difficult-to-prove crimes or what may be very petty, meaningless infraction of the rule. Almost certainly, these charges won't end up with the target in jail. But you can force... targeted individuals to spend a lot of money lawyering up.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
You can force them to take a lot of time away from their job or to be distracted from their job, in some cases to have to leave their job. And you can cost them and their families months, sometimes years of anguish and lost sleep. So you can do a lot of damage. You can do a lot to harass and to punish your critics, even if you fall short of putting them in prison.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
We're seeing a lot. It turns out that government agencies, nominally independent and fair government agencies, regulatory agencies in particular, have a lot of power. over businesses and other organizations' ability to make money or to do their jobs, to operate, whether it is tax-exempt status, whether it is anti-monopoly rulings.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
whether it is access to government contracts, government concessions, critical waivers from regulations, high-level bureaucrats have a lot of say over major CEOs or major companies' ability to continue to make money over their profit margins.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
And that's why it's so important that these agencies be independent of the executive branch, that they not be political loyalists who are doing political work for the executive. But if the executive weaponizes these agencies, whether it's the SEC or the FCC, they can turn into not only weapons to punish, say, businesses or media companies they don't like, but to induce them to cooperate.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
So if there are millions, billions of dollars at stake and businesses know that key regulatory decisions are going to be made with politics in mind, then businesses and CEOs are going to behave accordingly. They're going to cooperate with the government. They're going to try to get on better terms with the government. That is exactly what we saw with Jeff Bezos.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
Jeff Bezos is not known to be a Trump supporter, Mark Zuckerberg, other major CEOs who very, very publicly gave money to Trump's inauguration, showed up very publicly at Trump's inauguration, praised Trump because they know that politics is now suddenly behind key regulatory and business decisions that affect their bottom line.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
Well, studying democratic backsliding, studying authoritarian terms in other countries, we've learned that there are certain things that make it more or less likely that autocrats will succeed in the long run. in establishing an autocracy like, say, Putin did in Russia or Chavez and Maduro did in Venezuela. Those are consolidated autocracies. Two factors that matter a lot.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
One is the popularity of the president. A president with an 80% approval rating, 75% or 80% approval rating, like, say, Bukele in El Salvador, like Hugo Chavez had, like Modi had for a while in India, can do much, much more damage than a president with 40, 45% approval rating. That's not fully prohibitive, but it helps to slow down the degree to which to which an autocrat can consolidate power.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
But more importantly than that, the degree of what I would call organizational and financial muscle in society matters a lot. It's much easier to consolidate an autocracy in countries with a pretty small private sector, with a weakly organized, maybe fragmented opposition, and with a relatively underdeveloped civil society. The United States has none of those things.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
The United States has a very large, very wealthy, very diverse private sector. Even with people like Zuckerberg and Bezos kind of moving to the political sidelines, there are still hundreds of other billionaires in the United States, and there are literally millions of millionaires in the United States. There's a lot of money out there in society.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
There are a lot of organizations with high-powered lawyers out there in society. There are many, many well-organized organizations Foundations and civic organizations and the opposition, for all of its flaws, the Democratic Party represents a unified, well-organized, well-financed, electorally viable opposition.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
So compared to societies elsewhere, our civil society and our opposition is pretty well equipped to resist Trump.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
What that passage is saying is that the government is demanding the right to dictate to a private university who it can hire and not hire and effectively what it can teach and cannot teach. That's the end of academic freedom. That is completely incompatible. with a democratic society. And I know of no democracy that's ever permitted that sort of intervention.
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America's Path To 'Competitive Authoritarianism'
I know of many authoritarian regimes that didn't permit that level of federal intervention into the internal life of a university.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
I will tell you, it's it's relaxing for me. That's that's what I want to do on a Saturday afternoon. If I've if I've got a moment and I've got it to myself, especially if there's a farmer's market in town or something like that, I want to go get a. a pork belly and just start marinating that or start, you know, you know what? I've got some brioche. I've got eggs.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
I can't speak to your experience because that's your experience, but certainly for the business that I'm in, this is one of the more normative jobs you can have because you know where you're going and you know when you're coming home. And the hours may be long, but at least you can plan your life.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
I'm not in Sarajevo shooting Game of Thrones. Unless they want to cast me. And then to hell with all of this TV stuff. I'm a star.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Honestly, people go, you're nice and everything, but I love her. Oh, that's funny. Yeah.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
I've never done an almond bread pudding before. Let's try that with maybe the crispy top. Ooh, I'll make a cartouche on the top and sort of steam it in a bain-marie first and I'll take it off. And ooh, what about a bourbon caramel? So like I get, and I don't, what drives me crazy sometimes is that then I don't eat it.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. I don't think because our – or I'll just speak for me. I don't think because of who my father was, was I expected to be a model child. I think the same – I mean, first of all, I think we were all 11 children in the family. I think we were all held to the same standard.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
I think I had a slightly different relationship with my dad than my other brothers and sisters did because I was the last. They – They used to say, I can't believe dad took you to the carnival. Like dad hates carnivals or I can't believe dad went to the beach with you or something like that. But my father had a sense that, you know, this is his last bite of the apple.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And to do those fatherly things with me because my father died when I was young. It's not so much I was held to a standard that I had to match him. It's that when your parent dies when you're young, they become Olympian. Or there's something much larger than life, which of course is how a child sees their parent. But you never get to move beyond that. So as you get older, they also get larger.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
So as your view of the world or what you believe is asked of you to be an adult, at least for me, my father inflated ahead of me and became even grander in a way. And so – If there was any standard placed on me, it was placed on me by myself. My mother was not asking me to be a certain person because of who my father was. I did it to myself because of the person I perceived my father to be.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And I actually don't think I'm very far off. I think he was an extraordinary man. But I think that's self-imposed on my part.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Right. I love process. I love one thing becoming another thing. Well, it's kind of like doing the show. You get there in the morning and there's, I don't know, maybe nine stories that are generally dominating the conversation over the last 24 hours. We have good pitches on six of them and three of them then dominate the monologue because we've boiled it all down.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And for me, because I wanted to know my father, even though I was robbed of that ability to move beyond the childhood view of him, because I wanted to know him, I grabbed onto the little things that I did know about him. For instance, my father's idea of fun was to read books He really would enjoy sitting down with Jacques Maritain or Léon Blois or other French Christian humanists.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And so that's what I read. I read a lot of books. I knew that he had lived a life of the mind. So that's what I wanted to do. It was important to be smart. My father was a dean, an assistant dean at Yale Medical when he was 29. He was a full dean at 31. And so he was this academic superstar, which I never was, but he was this academic superstar and a deep thinker.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And I aspired for that in hopes of knowing him. And often it was religiously based. He was Jesuit educated and my mother and my father both – profoundly dedicated to their Catholic faith in different ways. My father more intellectually and my mother more sort of mystically in a way, though she also read a great deal, but more Dorothy Day.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And I think I was most influenced by the little bit I knew that I used as a thread to pull on to try to understand him.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
I think it was spring of 97. So what is that? 27, 28 years.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Well, what I do – is a little odd. And the shows that I've been involved in are a little odd. They're a little bit outside of the normal title shifts of the rest of the industry, I think. People often say like, oh, do you have a lot of famous friends? Like, no, because I've kind of worked the same place. You really become friends with other people when you do a whole bunch of different projects.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
But over the last 25 years, I've done three projects, essentially. I've worked on The Daily Show, I've done the Colbert Report. I've done the Late Show. And there have been a few side things, but those have been my career over the last 25 years, which is a pretty long time to be working essentially without a break.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
We've taken – that's why I like the show Chopped because they take – You have these baskets at the beginning of the show where there's like – you have octopus and licorice and you have smoked salt. Here, make an entree or whatever. That's what doing the show is like. And kind of you have to love process to do a show on a daily basis. And that's related to – food for me.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And those kind of shows still flourish, generally speaking, relative to the rest of the industry, live same day. I'm not saying viewership hasn't gone down for TV, but things like sports news and late night shows, which are kind of dependent upon watching it that day because they're like unrefrigerated shrimp. They're no good tomorrow. So they still have like a – what is it called?
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Like an appointment audience on a daily basis. So what I do right now, The Late Show, and you and I have never – I don't think we've ever spoken about The Late Show, Terry. But one of the things that I discovered when I did it – That is definitely not true. Have we spoken in the last 10 years? Yeah.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Here's the thing, Terry. I miss you so much. It feels like even a day feels like 10 years. I apologize. I feel terrible. I don't know why I felt that way.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
It is. That's why. No, please accept my apology. But I guess the reason why is I don't think we ever discussed this part of it, which is when I took this job, I originally thought, well, I want to do this different than anyone's ever done it before. the same way that when I did the Colbert pour, I wanted to do something nobody had done before.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And besides trying to find your feet when you're first starting a show like that, I eventually realized, oh, I actually like the form that pre-exists. And I just have to fill it with my wine. It's an old bottle. I just have to fill it with my wine. And That is, to answer your question, I live in such an old medium, in such an old stadium, which is CBS, in an old theater, which is the Ed Sullivan.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And I am doing a form that is still got in literally an old audience, but also an audience that is coming for an old reason, which is this thing happened today. We're making jokes about it. So, yeah, TV has changed enormously. And I think that. It's highly likely that cable will go away completely because streaming now fills that position. If you want something specific, you don't need to go to –
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
A&E or Comedy Central or BET, like all of that exists in a very siloed and very specific way in various apps. So I think there's going to be an enormous change, which has been coming slowly, and I think it'll come quite rapidly. You see how NBC or Comcast has decided to sell off all their cable assets. I think that's a harbinger of what's to come. But strangely... CBS is doing really well.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Like the network is doing really well. So while I perceive it in the landscape, oddly, there's a little bit of dry land left. Even though the audience isn't what it was for like Johnny Carson, there's an odd stability in our little pocket of the business.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
One thing becomes another thing with a little care, a little love, and a little imagination. And I find it incredibly smoothing. Smoothing. It's also smoothing. It's also bloating. But it's also incredibly soothing to me. And then I'll just try to go give the food away.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Sure. Conan was there. Jimmy Fallon was there. Chris Rock was there.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Well, first, if I could just back up just slightly here, I'm willing to talk about my own faith if my guest asks me about it. I don't like to proselytize. And I'll make any jokes about the Catholic Church. You know, they deserve a lot of them. And I am deeply Catholic in that it is combed into my being, but I don't know how deeply devout I am.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
I know people who are really deeply devout, and I wouldn't want to put myself in their league. I just am in... I'm integrally Catholic, if you know what I mean. And I do love my church and I still go to church and I do have a faith. I just don't want to confuse myself with someone who is a very devoted Catholic, a devout, I mean.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
But I have become friends with Father Jim Martin over the years, who's sort of like the Broadway priest in New York. And he's the editor of America Magazine. And he was the chaplain of the Colbert Report on the old show. And, you know, we've become dear friends over the years. And he just wrote me one day.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
I actually got the email right before I went on stage at the Late Show one night saying, hey, the Vatican has asked me to put together a list of like 20 comedians because the Pope wants to meet with some comedians. Would you mind helping with that? And I was like, yeah, sure. Yeah. So I put a list together of 40 comedians. They sent me back a list of 15 or 20, something like that.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Like they made their selects of my selects and with a few of their own. And Jim Gaffigan and I called everybody on the list and we said, hey, we don't really know what this is about, but the pope wants to meet comedians. Because he thinks that comedians do something valuable in society and he just wants to meet us. Now, I thought we were going to go to Rome and like hang with the pope.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
I don't know why I thought that. I thought that maybe we'd like sit there and we'd have coffee or tea with the pope and he would ask us some questions. Then we would get a photo and leave. It turns out that these were comedians from all over the world. It was like from 60 countries. And the pope had a meeting in the Apostolic Palace with us.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
There was – I think altogether it was like 110 comedians. And we all didn't know what was going on. And we all sat there and the pope came in and he gave – A beautiful speech about comedy that we did not understand at all, that we read later, that was about how – Because it was in Italian? It was in Solamente in Italiano. And it was about how comedy, I think, eases people's day.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And it is like the social lubricant. And it's okay to make fun of God and the church and the pope and all that kind of stuff as long as, like, you do it with a smile and there's some intention to make people feel better. And what struck me was – It's like your philosophy.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Yeah, I would like to think so. And what struck me is that we're in this room, which is about the size of the Sistine Chapel. And it's actually down the hall from the Sistine Chapel. And it's more Rococo than it is, you know, late Renaissance. But it's beautiful. It's like you're in another Sistine Chapel. And we're all sitting there in our Sunday best, as it were, waiting for the Pope to come in.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
But comedians are all iconoclasts. We're all people who have a pretty jaundiced view of authority. Right. And I know that some of the people there weren't Catholic or weren't meaningfully Catholic, at least by their own description, anymore. And the minute the pope came in, we all leapt to our feet. Like, the iconoclasm went out the door.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
We all just leapt to our feet and started applauding and, like, screaming. I thought, wow. That's the effect the Pope has on 110 comedians. Like it was almost like an autonomic response because you've spent all this. It's like the location. It's the red shoes. It's the white outfit. It's all like the guys with the sashes around you, the Pope's gentlemen who all look like butlers and everything.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
I was sort of shocked that we all kind of gave into it immediately. Yeah.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
I did. I did. I memorized something in Italian. I went up and I said, you know, Sancte Padre, you know, Holy Father, my name is Stephen Colbert, and I am the reciting – I'm the voce recitante. I'm the reciting voice for your memoir life because he had released a memoir of his life in the spring.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Well, I'm experimenting. I'm imagining what it's going to be like, and you know. Sometimes it doesn't work. Things don't always work out, Terry.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And I had gotten a call from my manager to say, baby doll, you're not going to believe who wants you to do their audio book. Right. And I'm like, who? And he goes, just guess. I'm like, I don't know. Barbra Streisand. No. And he goes, the f***ing Pope. And I go, does it pay? And he goes, you better believe. So anyway, so he negotiates with the Vatican for my contract. And I read the Pope.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
So I just said, I read your book. You know, I thank so much. I was reciting a voice for your book. And he said, ah, and kind of used his hand to guide me to the side. So that was it. That's all I got. It wasn't that. It was very nice. And he gave me a rosary. We all got rosaries blessed by the Pope.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Exactly. One of the hallmarks of Presbyterian is we are not Catholic.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And I remember when I told my mom I was going to ask Evie to marry me. I had told my mom the night before that I was going to ask Evie to marry me the next day. And I said, and I'm not going to ask her to convert. And she looked at me for a while, and she goes— I think your dad would be okay with that. Which was a big thing for her to say. And it, you know,
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
I love my church and I love Evie's church too. There are priests in Chicago. A guy named Father Jack Wall is a wonderful priest in Chicago. He used to be at Old St. Pat's. I don't know where Wall is now. But he said, you know, you're going to have to be a Presbyterian Catholic and you're going to have to become a Catholic. And I have, you know. I read Protestant theologians as well.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And all I care is that our children have a relationship that feeds them in ways that my ancestors gave me.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Well, most of the book is comfort food. It is. There's a lot of butter. Yeah.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
I've got so many in there. It's probably the red rice. You know, growing up on the coast of South Carolina, just anywhere in the south, there's so much red rice and it has its roots in Jollof rice of West Africa. But it's it's super jammy and a little spicy and salty. And I had it almost every day growing up at Stiles Point Elementary School.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And there were just barrels of it being cooked every day by those lunch ladies. And I never got tired of it. And right before this book, I actually found a way to make it based on an Alison Roman recipe. That I said, ooh, that sauce she's making for the pasta actually has the flavor I remember as a child from this red rice. And I tried it and it worked.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And that discovery of being able to get that flavor back from my childhood, those carefree years is what that rice gives me.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And that's what COVID did. We were back there in Charleston on that island with our families, with the people who had taught us to make these recipes. and made these for us when we were children, and with those ingredients from that field and that creek. And it was a terrible time that had in it this gift to us, for us to slow down, go home, and remember.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Which we had been so afraid to do, or at least I had been afraid to do, because I was so nervous the first time Evie was on that she wouldn't have a good time. It's actually made it to air, her going, oh, my God, you're trembling. I'm like, I'm afraid this is going to be a bad experience for you because I'm bossy.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And an enormous amount of work, and I just could not be more – I could not have more admiration for the people who do this for a living because we had no idea what a huge undertaking it is to do one of these books.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Six ways to Sunday. It went through us. We'd make it many times. And then through our niece, Lucy.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Well, they had to make everything because I had a ruptured appendix. Oh, that's right.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
We had to go through and read every recipe again.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Oh, this has been lovely. I'm so glad to talk to you after 10 years. Thank you.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
I love talking to you so much that I guess I felt like I've been denied or something like that.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Or like, this has been so wonderful. I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Yes. When I was a kid, my, you know, again, 11 kids and also Catholic, so, you know, no meat on Fridays. We had so many Mrs. Paul's or like Gorton's fish sticks. I think it was Mrs. Paul's fish sticks growing up. And my mother, her idea of making you fancy. And I'm sure she saw this.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
the serving suggestion on like on the back of the package with some partnership with Campbell because it would take a can of Campbell's condensed tomato soup and you would just heat up the condensed soup and ladle that over the fish sticks as the sauce.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
No, no, no. That's if you're making soup, not if you're making a delicious remoulade.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Oh, exactly. Exactly. I'm a creature of pure sodium by the time I was 10. But, you know, that also, this is the thing that even I, as a child who just would eat anything you put in front of me, spaghetti with ketchup.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Oh, my God. We got that all the time. My brothers and sisters loved it. I'm like, I don't understand what's happening. But I would, of course, have to eat it.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Not only did I have appendicitis, I was dumb enough to do two shows with a burst appendix.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
It was one night, but we did two shows that night.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Just popped right out of my body. And no, I mean, I didn't really want to eat anything for a long time. It's a great, you know, appendicitis is the new Ozempic, in my opinion. No, no, no. Because I lost 17 pounds. I looked pretty hot there for a while. Pale and hot. I look like a vampire. I have tried like to be healthy over the years. Like I was vegan for seven months. That was fine.
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Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
No, no, no. I lost a bet with someone, a friend of mine who's a vegan.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Well, because I couldn't. I couldn't talk. I was in so much pain. I thought I was indigestion of just like the highest possible quality. But it felt like somebody was leaning on a broomstick and just jamming the end of the broomstick into my gut. And as the day went on, just lean it in a heavier way. And I just said to my assistant, I said, no one can talk to me.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
I'm just going to go to rehearsal and that's the only time I'm going to talk today. And I had to do rehearsal essentially sitting down and I rewrote the show afterwards lying down on a couch. And I would just hold up my thumb if I approved the joke or thumb down if I didn't approve the joke. Then I would have to talk because I would have to say this is how I want to rewrite it.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
We managed to get through rewriting two shows. But between acts of the show, I would burst into tears because I was in so much pain. And I never feel sick on stage. I always feel fine because the adrenaline kicks in and there's a relationship with the audience. And I've never had it affect me on stage. When I get off, you know, about a half an hour later, when the adrenaline's gone, it'll kick in.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
But this was the first time ever I couldn't actually get through it on stage and, like, put it behind me. But I was committed. You know, I had... Bradley Cooper on there for Maestro, and I had Jose Andres on there, and I had lots of other lovely people.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And when I got through the show, when all the adrenaline was gone, I started to get a thing called the Rigers, which is every muscle in your body goes into spasm, which is from blood poisoning. And I just wanted to go to bed.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
She calls me and goes, you need to go to the hospital.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
No, nothing. I just need to go to bed. And I have a driver that I've had for many years, and you called me.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And thank God, because at home we don't have morphine, but at the emergency room they do.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And also there's the old, you know, the show must go on.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
But if you say but, but, then the show will never go on. That's the wrong attitude.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
It was a pretty good show. It was two pretty good shows that night, I got to say. If you look back, you won't know that I'm dying. And the thing is, is that the show must go on to me is not like, you know, there's someone over you with a whip saying you must do the show. The show must go on is because that's what you do.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
I've gone on and done shows under terrible conditions, and the show always makes it better. And that's why I went on, not because I felt an obligation to the CBS Corporation.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
I do have an obligation to the CBS Corporation and really paramount and very soon David Ellison. Welcome aboard, David. But that's what makes me feel better. I'm a performer. My default is to go on stage.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Well, they found out when they finally actually did the MRI, which was at 11, and we got the results at 1 or something like that. They knew it was my appendicitis, and they scheduled me for surgery the next day at 6 a.m., and they didn't think it had burst. But when I finally came out of it, the first thing the doctor said was, boy, it was a mess in there.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Yeah, sepsis, and it was bad. I don't know. I don't want to say, like, I was on death's door. But it was the sort of thing that if you don't treat, yes, the worst will happen.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Like 21 days. It was so bad. I had, like, this neutron bomb drip to try to wipe it out because it was in my bloodstream.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And again, can we get back to the morphine for a second? Because I was so shaking. I was in so much pain. Like I could not communicate at all. Like I couldn't speak because my teeth were also chattering because of the blood poison causes spasms all over your body. And I got that line in me. Oh, God. It was funny.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
I think her name was Nancy. Nancy, what's your story?
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
I'm like, what are you talking about? I just want to know what Nancy's story is. She seems like a nice person. So, Nancy, are you from around here?
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
I wasn't worried until later when I found out how bad it was.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
Have a great show, everybody. At any moment, Terry. Your appendix could burst. You could be gone any second.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And I hadn't done any acting. and performing of any kind, really. And I secretly wanted to. It sort of came from my mother, who had trained to be an actress. But my senior year, I finally auditioned for something, and I got in a couple of plays at school. And the Spoleto Festival was bringing a play by Giancarlo Manotti to Charleston called The Leper.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And there was a role for a teenage boy, and that boy had been cast out of New York, and he had dropped out last minute for reasons I don't know. And they called my choir director, Ben Hutto, at school and said, do you know anybody who might be right for this part? Send them over to audition.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And he said, you should go over and you did a good job in Annie Get Your Gun or whatever I'd done because you should go over there. And I auditioned for Maestro Minotti and these professionals from New York and I got the job. And somebody in the company said – You're good. You could do this if you wanted to. Oh, wow. Yeah.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And I husbanded that knowledge for the next two years because then I went off to college and I was a philosophy major for the next two years. And then two years in, I went, you know, I actually – I want to go do that. And so that's why I transferred to Northwestern University's theater school.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
But it made a huge difference in my life, besides the fact that my mother also like threw parties and that sort of thing. And I got to meet the artists and the actors and the dancers and the opera singers. And my mother and I used to be supernumeraries in the opera where we would go in there and like dress up. I'd be a spear carrier for Antony and Cleopatra or something.
Fresh Air
Stephen & Evie Colbert Share The Taste Of Home
And but that that exposure and just someone giving you any encouragement, that just little spark saying you are good at something.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
Excuse me, mate. Yeah. I haven't got a clue what I'm doing here. I don't know what to say.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
Never even been in a police station before. You'll be fine. I just don't want to get it wrong. You know what I mean? You'll be fine.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
Thank you. What a wonderful introduction. Thank you very much.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
Of course. Yeah. But she understands it and she does it. And you know, if there's anyone that can dive into emotions when they're on set, it's Hannah. She's unbelievable. So when I try and do it, Sam, she just goes, oh, well, the dog had diarrhea all over the carpet this morning. And I'm like, oh, and she went and I had to go shopping and the car ran out of petrol while I was on the motorway.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
And I'm like, oh, cry me a river, Steve.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
Exactly. That's kind of where she goes. But again, you know, and I know, look, for me, family is the most important thing to me. It's them a rock. They make me the man who I am. Do you know what I mean? I am here because of them mainly as well. And just to share this with you. And these are the tricks of the trade.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
on that last scene that on that episode it was the very last take so again my kids both grace my daughter and alfie were there and hannah was there for that day and for that last take when i go into the bedroom i had no idea something that they'd done it honestly i didn't and i had gone into that bedroom obviously 15 times and so i had a kind of idea of what i was going to do and what i was going through and philip come up with a beautiful idea
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
when we were in rehearsals and he said, I'm just going to put a teddy bear on the bed. And I was like, why? And he was like, just see what happens. So all the maternal instincts he felt for that teddy bear kind of just come from nowhere. Do you know what I mean? In many ways, because it's a replacement for his son.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
But anyway, when I came into the room, what Hannah and the kids had done, and this is the take that you see. So this is where it comes from as well. I'm already in the moment. Don't get me wrong. I'm completely in the moment now. But what my kids and Hannah had done, they put photographs on the, on the wall of, of them and me. And they just put, we're so proud of you, dad. We love you so much.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
And, and obviously then you can imagine, I've told you, I'm a very soppy person. I wear my heart on my sleeve. And I just, and I just went, do you know what I mean? It was like, it just all came out. And then when I'd finished that particular scene, yeah, they grabbed all to me and yeah, they didn't let go of me for a while. And I did cry for quite a bit of time after that, actually.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
But we all cried on that set after that particular scene when we'd finished it.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
Thank you very much. It's been an absolute pleasure.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
I'm going to ask you once, okay? No matter what's happened, no matter what you've done or you haven't done, I want you to tell me this truth. Did you do it?
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
For a lot of people, it is, yeah. And I understand it and I get it. And to some extent, I think maybe there is for me. I'm also able to jump in and jump out and decompress quite quickly now, which is a kind of technique I've learned myself over time. Do you have tools for that? Yeah, yeah. And those tools are, well, the biggest tool for that is my wife, Hannah, on many levels.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
You know, if I phone her and say, it's been a really tough day at work today, love, you know, I had to cry and stuff. She'd be like, oh, really? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I go, oh, do I sound like a d**k? And she'd be like, yes. She'll go, well, I'll tell you what, the dog had died.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
Of course. Yeah. But she understands it and she does it. And you know, if there's anyone that can dive into emotions when they're on set, it's Hannah. She's unbelievable. So when I try and do it, she just goes, oh, well, the dog had diarrhea all over the carpet this morning. And I'm like, oh, and she went and I had to go shopping and the car ran out of petrol while I was on the motorway.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
And I'm like, oh, cry me a river, Steve.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
Exactly. That's kind of where she goes. But again, you know, and I know, look, for me, family is the most important thing to me. It's them. They're my rock. They make me the man who I am. Do you know what I mean? I am here because of them mainly as well. And just to share this with you. And these are the tricks of the trade. On that last scene, on that episode, it was the very last take.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
I think it was like take 12 or something like that. But it was the very final take. Oh, was it take 16? Wow. Okay, God. Yeah, we had to stop a couple of times. One, the door wasn't open when he was trying to back into the door with the camera inside.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
he just hit the window there was a couple of times the car wouldn't start as we got it and as we set off so there was oh then we got stuck at the traffic lights that's right so take 16 and what happened was again it was the last day and it was the very last day of filming
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
so again my kids both Grace my daughter and Alfie were there and Hannah was there for that day and for that last take when I go into the bedroom I had no idea Sam that they'd done it honestly I didn't and I had gone into that bedroom obviously 15 times and so I had a kind of idea of what I was going to do and what I was going through and Philip come up with a beautiful idea when we were in rehearsals and he said I'm just going to put a teddy bear on the bed and I was like why and he was like just see what happens and
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
So all the maternal instincts he felt for that teddy bear kind of just come from nowhere. Do you know what I mean? In many ways, because it's a replacement for his son. But anyway, when I came into the room, what Hannah and the kids had done, and this is the take that you see. So this is where it comes from as well. I'm already in the moment. Don't get me wrong. I'm completely in the moment.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
But what my kids and Hannah had done, they put photographs on the, on the wall of, of them and me. And they just put, we're so proud of you, dad. We love you so much. And, and obviously then you can imagine, I've told you, I'm a very soppy person. I wear my heart on my sleeve. And I just, and I just went, do you know what I mean? It was like, it just all came out.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
And then when I'd finished that particular scene, yeah, they grabbed all to me and yeah, they didn't let go of me for a while. And I did cry for quite a bit of time after that, actually. But we all cried on that set after that particular scene when we'd finished it.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
I asked my brother to make arrangements because my heart cannot be trusted.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
I had an idea and a vision of where I would like to take this particular character and this man. And that began, if I'm completely honest with you, so that began for me really in the beginning was the physical aspect of it. You know, I wanted to look like I was a fighter. I wanted to look like I was a brawler. I wanted to look like I was capable of getting in the ring and fighting.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
Well, you're built like a tank in the show. Thank you very much. Yeah, I'm not normally like that in real life. But, I mean, I've managed to keep that physique to an extent. So for me, it was more the physical aspect at the very beginning and setting off on that journey. And I, you know, when we got greenlit, I had six months and I knew I had six months to prepare before we began to shoot.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
So I really trained and I trained like an athlete. I trained, you know, I trained like a fighter. I had a wonderful, wonderful coach who was my coach.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
physical coach who is also my dietician as well um rob he you know we we used to we do five days a week and on top of that i was boxing three four times a week with my boxing coach who's a really good friend graham um so i amazed myself completely into that whole kind of physical aspect of it um so you said you were training for six months with someone who was also a dietician i imagine that
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
The first thing, and again, it's not that bad really, but the first thing I had, which I was dying for, was I had curry goat. Curry goat and rice and peas. I smashed that. We were in London and I just yammed it. I swallowed it whole. Yeah, because it was just unbelievable. But I think I've never eaten so much broccoli and spinach. Probably like just chicken breast.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
Chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, this chicken, that chicken. And it's like, can I have a bit of flavor? I love real good spices.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
No, but I did get away with it. I couldn't do what I had to do. I had to just spread sriracha all over it, you know what I mean, personally.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
Yeah, yeah, they are massively. Shoes change my physicality and they can make me walk different. And I just, I love that kind of, the embodying the movement and the physicality of the character. So I love working on the walk.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
And sometimes I can really, really, really do the heads in of my family and I can annoy my lot because I'll tell them to stop what they're doing and watch me walk in the living room. And I'll go, look, is this a good walk? And they'll be like, Dad, I'm watching it. And I'll go, just give me two minutes, please. Just watch me. Is this a good walk? Look. And they'll go, yeah, yeah, that's great.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
And I'll go, you're not looking properly. Watch. Tell me now. So, yeah, them kind of physical aspects of the character that I think are important. And then you create all the psychological aspects.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
It didn't make it particularly difficult, but what it did make me want to do, and as well when I explained to Shane, because originally when I went to... Shane Meadows. Shane Meadows, yeah, who's the fantastic director. When I explained to Shane that I was mixed race, I kind of thought that he might then give the part to somebody else. Because we'd had auditions and we did a bit of a workshop.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
And Andrew Shim, who plays Milky, who's the black character, who's part of the gang as well, we'd endured the improvisation, as you can imagine. I went to some extremes with the language that I used there. And I never said anything to anyone.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
But that night I managed to get Andrew's phone number and I phoned him up and I said, look, I just want to apologize for the language and for the things that I said to you today. I want you to know that that's not the way I think. It's not me at all. And I hope you can understand. I said, and to be completely honest with you, I'm mixed race. And he was like, really? I said, yeah.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
He went, I thought so. I thought there was something wrong. and I was like but can you do me a favour and he went what I went please don't and I was about to say don't tell Shane he shouted Shane Shane and I was like oh no and then he gave the phone to Shane and Shane was like hello hello mate and I was like alright and he went what is it and I was like
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
Look, Shane, I just wanted to say, I've just told Shimmy, look, I'm mixed race. You're probably going to want to give the part to somebody else now, and I understand that. And he was like, are you kidding me? I went, no, I'm just... He was like, this is amazing. He said, imagine what we can do with it now. I went, what do you mean? He went, well, we can take it somewhere else now.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
We can take it somewhere else that we never thought of taking it. And then we did. You know, we really worked on it, and what it became about was it became more about... An abandonment issue from his father and kind of not being accepted or not being a part of the identity of his self and the black part of his family. So we added such a complexity to it then.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
Yeah, yeah. And if I'm honest here, from both sides. I had a little struggle of my own back then, trying to find the sense of where and how I belong. You mean your identity, sort of, your racial identity? Yeah, completely. culturally, racially, in many ways, you know what I mean?
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
Because there were certain elements of my white cousins and on that side of my family who said some horrible things and, you know, even other family members said some horrible things and said some really horrible things to my mother at the time. And then on the side of the black family, you know, things were said to me... And said to my mother as well in a horrible sense from both sides of it.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
So it did take a while and it kind of, you know, it's maybe in my early teens. I'm not saying that that's what my life was like all the time because it was very happy and joyous, you know, my household, my mom living with, it was just me and my mom for the first 10 years. And I adore my mother, God bless her soul. She was, you know, she was the strong matriarch and she was a wonderful woman.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
And my pops came into my life when I was 10. Your stepfather? Yeah, my stepfather. He is my stepfather. But he raised you. Yeah, he raised me. He raised me. And he's mixed race as well. So he really taught me about my sense of identity and who I am and where I'm from. And taught me about the likes of Marcus Garby and Toussaint Louboutin and Malcolm X, Martin Luther King.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
So he filled me with the history and the knowledge of who I was, do you know what I mean, in many ways. Yeah. And then he also inspired me and led me to believe that anything is possible and to follow my dreams. But as a kid growing up, there was, you know, at times it was difficult.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
And it took a little while for me to find my sense of self and for me to be completely comfortable with who I am, really. Do you know what I mean in that respect? Which, you know, I sit with inside myself of who I am today and I'm completely comfortable with myself. But it takes a long time, I think.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
Taxi Driver and Deer Hunter. Taxi Driver, The Deer Hunter and The Godfather. And it was kind of that's where the beginning of my love affair for filmmaking started and the art and the craft of what it is. Do you know what I mean? And then he introduced me to the likes of David Lynch and Curry Sauer and Martin Scorsese. Do you know what I mean? All of these great directors. Ken Loach.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
as well uh alan clark you know i got a real great education from my pops because my pops has always loved film um and that's kind of where it began for me and then you know me him and my mum used to always go we'd go like to the tate and to art and he made me look at art and things differently Thank you.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
Thank you. What a wonderful introduction. Thank you very much.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
It happened a while ago, to be honest with you, Sam. I read an article in a newspaper, which it was about a young boy who had stabbed a young girl to death. And it just made me feel quite cold. And I was stunned by what I was reading there. And then about three or four months later, there was a story on the news, on television.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
And I was watching it and it was, again, it was about a young boy who had stabbed a young girl to death. And this incident was the opposite end to the country to the first incident that I'd read about. And at that point, if I'm completely honest, it really hurt my heart. But in that moment, I judged the parents and I instantly said to myself, you know, it's got to be down to the parents.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
And then I stopped myself and tried to be mindful and questioned the fact that what if it's not? Maybe I shouldn't be so judgmental. What if it's not? And from that basis, from that premise, I just thought, well, why is this happening?
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
Why are we in this situation where, you know, young boys, and they are young boys, they're not men, you know, their brains haven't been fully formed yet, their physiology is not complete as yet, you know, adolescence is a very difficult age as we all know, do you know what I mean?
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
You go through a lot of different things physically, mentally, and even spiritually in the greater scheme of things, you know what I mean? But my main question was why, why is this happening?
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
No, not at all. And, you know, ultimately, I think I think that's one of the main themes of the show is that they can't be resolved and we don't have the answers. There's a wonderful saying, which is it takes a village to raise a child. And within that kind of complexity of what that says to me. within what we are doing, it's kind of like, maybe we're all accountable.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
And that comes down to, you know, the parenting, maybe how we, how we parent our children, the school system, how the education system guides and tries to educate our children, the government, you know, how they can bring in legislation, um, the community and the environment of where we live, um,
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
And then on top of that now, which was something that me and you never had to suffer from and our parents never had to think about, but there is now this big thing called the internet.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
When a child closes the door, back in the day when it was me and you, we didn't have access to the rest of the world and we couldn't be influenced dramatically by other people and their theories and their thought processes. So that was what we really wanted to look at, you know what I mean? Maybe we're all accountable in some way for what is happening today in our society.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
For me, Eddie, the character that I played, I wanted to make him more like that kind of archetypal man in a way. The kind of men that I was brought up with, like my uncles and like I've said, you know, my friends, fathers and stuff like that, who are beautiful, wonderful men.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
hard-working men who go to work say maybe six o'clock seven o'clock in the morning and don't manage to get back home till gone six seven eight at night you know what i mean um so the kind of area that they live in is it's a really nice housing estate you know what i mean it's it's it's it's a well-to-do area in many ways it's not it's not it's far from upper class and it's you know it's it's a working class household
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
in a really nice area. So I wanted to concentrate on the fact that they come from a good home and there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of love in that home. The mother and father primarily are doing the best for their children and his sister is an A-level student.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
You know, she's a really hardworking, conscientious student because it's unconventional for us to follow the story through the eyes of the family who are from the perpetrator. Normally, as you can imagine, it would be the victim side of it. And rightly so. Do you know what I mean? In that conventional drama, that's what we would see.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
But also what I wanted to try and do with this process was eliminate the possibilities of pointing the finger and saying, well, this is why. So I didn't want it to be like dad raised his hand and hit his boy. So normally we could be able to point the finger in that direction and say, this is why he did it. But we wanted to eliminate that. and start with a clean slate.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
yeah yeah and that's there's a lot of pain inside eddie you know when after he realizes what his son has done because what it is as well was what i wanted to try and try and achieve and try and accomplish with the respects to eddie is like i said that kind of old-fashioned archetypal man in many ways um who you know it comes from a lineage of of men who are not very tactile um
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
And that kind of comes from the process of with my son and with my daughter, you know, I'm very blessed to have two beautiful children. And I hug them and cuddle them and I tell them I love them every single day, every single day, because I adore my kids. I really do. You know, one of the best things, the best thing in my life I've ever been a part of. They really are, do you know what I mean?
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
Yeah, Stephen's very soppy and I wear my heart on my sleeve. I'm almost, you know, look, even just thinking of Grace and Alfie is making me start to tear up and I'm just ridiculous. They laugh at me all the time because I'm very teary and narrow.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
but what I wanted to do was to play the polar opposites of that and one morning when I had Alfie and some of his mates were in his house I was giving Alfie a cuddle because they were going out for the day and I give him a cuddle and I give him a kiss on the cheek and I said be good have a good day do you know what I mean and his friend started to cry a little bit and I was like are you okay and Alfie jumped in and said his dad never hugs him and his dad's never told him that he loves him
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
And it just broke my heart a little bit. Do you know what I mean? And I've seen him with his father and you can see the love his father has for him. And for me, it was completely alien. I thought there was no way that his father would have never done something like that. Because to me, it was just such a natural thing that I don't even think about it.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
The beauty of this is where we have three weeks to shoot each episode. Yeah. But what we do within that context is for the first week, we rehearse the script and we go through the script like we're about to do a play.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
Yeah, yeah, of course. And that's the beauty of it. But we rehearse the script and we go through the script. And it was great because we had myself there and we had Jack, the writer. So it was a beautiful position that we were in where we could tweak the language. We could adjust what was happening to our environment.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
And in the same respect, you know, me and Jack are not 14-year-old boys, but we could ask Owen, what would he say in these particular situations?
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
Yes, yeah, that's right. Owen Cooper, who's phenomenal in the piece. But within that context, we could get to use the real authentic language. It's such a gift because you're able to marry both disciplines. So you have that spontaneity and the live kind of feeling and exhilaration of theatre. But you have the technical ability and the kind of nuance and the realism of film and television acting.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
But then also because of the technique of it being a one shot, you know, you're able like in episode two to travel all around the school.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
Yes, yeah, it really was. And it was actually, you know, for I think about 150 of our extras of the supporting artists, it was their school. So that was great because they, you know, they know the place and they really felt at home. So in that first week, we work on a script.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
and then the second week we work with all of the crew all of the crew come on set and we we negotiate and we begin to walk through our pathway of what we're going to do and where we're going to go and how we're going to get there and that's when you have everybody about so you know you can then the sound department they can plant mics here and there so we really really meticulously go over and over and over and over our movements and
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
And the third week is when we begin to shoot. So we do two takes a day. So sometimes, you know, hopefully at the minimum, we will have 10 takes.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
Yeah. So we shot for five days and you do two takes a day. But as is with episode one, the take you see is take two. With episode two, the take we used was take 14.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
Well, I did, personally. I did on the first one. I knew it was the second take. I just knew it was. And I was kind of like, can we go home now? And Phil was like, no, we're being paid to be here for the rest of the week. And I said to Phil, it's not going to get better than that. And he was like, you never know. And I was like, trust me, that's it.
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
Don't say that. I didn't give him that, did I? Well, did I give them that?
Fresh Air
'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why
And I promised myself... I said, when I had my own kids, I'd never do that. I'd never... I'd never do that to my kids. And I didn't, did I? I just wanted to be better. But aren't we? I'm not better.