Patricia Heaton contrasts Hollywood's 1990s heyday with today's streaming-dominated landscape, citing Warner Ranch's demolition and young writers' "wokeness" as drivers of comedy's decline. She reveals her past membership in the secret conservative club "Friends of Abe," founded by Gary Sinise, and critiques modern anti-Semitism following October 7th attacks while defending Israel against Boko Haram comparisons. Moving from Los Angeles to Nashville due to taxes and crime, Heaton emphasizes keeping art separate from personal politics, grounding her resilience in Christian faith and concluding that love ultimately overcomes inevitable trouble. [Automatically generated summary]
The thing that I think a lot of people outside of Hollywood have a misconception about, even though actors, myself included, will state our political opinions.
When you're working, you're just trying to make a show successful.
And that you should be conscious that there might be somebody who has a different opinion.
You know, you have Tilda Swinton and you have Mark Rufflow and you have Benedict Cumberbatch and all these folks who live a very privileged life because the same people who were standing up in Hollywood against what Israel was doing in Gaza stayed silent when Boko Haram in Nigeria were murdering Christians.
All right, Patricia Heaton, you're not getting a proper intro read off the teleprompter because I can describe you as legendary actress, cookbook author, activist, Twitter fighter a little bit lately.
But mostly you are like an old friend to me somehow, even though we've only known each other for a couple of years.
We became good friends very quickly in LA and then we both fled, as I said.
You, there's so many things I want to talk to you about in a limited time.
Let's do a little bit about just comedy and acting and all that first before we get into all the political stuff.
You guys just did the reunion show for Raymond.
How did that feel to you?
I mean, I know it's like the most cliche question I can ask in some sense, but to get back there with everybody or at least whoever was still around, obviously you guys, well, some people over the years, and just be part of that, again, such a legendary thing.
And it was sort of a Twilight Zone vibe because it felt so deeply familiar.
Spent nine and a half years on that set, over 200 episodes, right?
And so it was like, it's like a weird kind of like, we're here, but we're not really here.
But it was so great.
You know, we all had kids while we were on the show.
There was, there was the show, and then there was all our lives that were happening.
And all the crew came back.
And so that just shows you kind of what a family this was.
I remember every crew member's name.
I don't remember my kids' birthdays, and I remember every crew member's name and to see everybody again.
It was very, you know, very formative years.
And you just realize what a rare thing it is to have that kind of chemistry among the actors with that level of writing.
And because it's on a network, you're limited to the things you can say.
You can't curse.
There's certain things you can't show.
And so I feel like either it's going to get really dumbed down because of that, or it gets really elevated because the writers have to work extra hard.
And that's what happened on Everybody Loves Raymond under the leadership of Phil Rosenthal.
And the other thing that made it ring so true is because every story was from Ray's life, Phil's life, or the writers' lives.
Phil has famously said, go home and fight with your spouse and then come back and tell us about it and we'll do an episode.
So that's why it's so universally acclaimed, you know.
And I remember I was doing some charity work for this organization, World Vision, and I was in Rwanda.
And the fellow, the Rwandan that worked for World Vision there and I were in a car driving around and we were just talking about his weekend plans.
And this is in rural Rwanda.
He lives on a farm.
And he said, oh, I have to go to a wedding of someone my wife works with and I don't want to go.
I just want to stay on the farm.
And I thought, even in Rwanda, marriages are exactly the same as they are in the United States when it comes down to relationships and husbands and wives and their differences.
And that's why Raymond works, because the show even is relatable in Rwanda.
How much of it do you think was also just the special timing, sort of culturally, even technologically, obviously things have now shifted, the online thing and everything else, that that type of sitcom could really work then?
It almost seems like, I mean, I guess some people would say Big Bang Theory, but Raymond seems like, what year did it go off there?
I just know because when I still watch, when I watch Raymond, when I watch Seinfeld, when I watch Golden Girls, I mean, you know all the laundry list of shows that I love, like it still works.
I remember you telling me a couple of years ago that you were in a writer's room for a show that I think maybe never aired, that where you basically felt they had to hire this diverse cast of writers and they were basically fighting the entire time over what was offensive.
Do you think some of it's also just economics that like, you know, the old things can be so cheap now on an iPhone and with little, you know, what do they call black magics or whatever, that getting a studio to sit there and you got to feed those people and do how many takes would you guys usually do?
And so we realized, like we were thinking about this during the pandemic, that I mean, I used to like literally kiss the ground every day I stepped out of my car on the Warner Brothers lot because both were shot in the middle and Raymond were at Warner Brothers.
I never imagined I would have this kind of career.
But I was going to say, I look back.
So I was always grateful, but I look back on it now and I'm like, that was the heyday.
You had Seinfeld, you had friends.
Even going back to his show like Wings, when my first son was born in 93, I watched Wings was so funny.
So there was all these great comedies and we got to be a part of that.
And whenever you would go, either at ABC or CBS to, you know, one of these Television Critics Association events, you know, and all the casts would show up and you were like, We're all on shows.
Let's talk a little bit about your beliefs in general, because you're also a little bit of an outsider in a Hollywood perspective in that you're Catholic.
I think I remember when I was interviewing for Linda Bloodworth Thomason to do a part on a new spin-off from Designing Women called Women of the House, where Delta Burke's character, her husband in Designing Women, had been a congressman or a senator, and then he dies.
It was me, Delta, Terry Garr, wonderful Terry Garr.
And so, and Valerie Mahaffey.
And I sat down with her and I said, I just want you to know I'm pro-life.
So I don't, because the show was slightly political.
And I said, so I don't see myself really doing any pro-choice character, you know, unless there's another pro-life character on the show that makes an equal argument.
And she said, there's nothing funny about abortion.
We're not going to do that on this show.
And I'm like, okay.
But so I was clear about those things.
And I think people knew.
Okay, I don't know if I ever told you this story, but my very first show with Linda Lavin was called Room for Two.
And we played mother and daughter, where I produced a morning show and she ends up having an opinion thing, like an Andy Rooney thing on my morning show, much to my character's chagrin, right?
And so that was during the time where Clinton was running against Bush.
And everybody was for Clinton.
And she was doing a lot of work for Clinton and whatever.
And because it's really because of the pro-life thing that I was like, okay, I'm voting for Bush.
It's not like I had a big commitment to Republican ideals necessarily, but when the Democrats put abortion in their platform, that is a game changer.
If it's not in the platform and there's some Democrats who are pro-life and some who are pro-choice, then you could still be a Democrat.
But when it's in the platform, then as a Catholic, you're out.
Or I'm out.
And so, but I, so I never said anything, but it was just getting the point where they were just saying terrible things about Republicans just freely because they assume that everybody thinks like they do, right?
And I'm new here in town, so that was my first sitcom.
So I go to a, I see a friend of mine outside of work had a little Bush quail button, right?
I said, give me that button.
Give me the button.
I'm going to wear it to work.
I'm not going to say there's no wearing.
So I put it on my jacket lapel and I was like, had my handbag over it.
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I'm like, I don't know if I really should be doing this.
But so, and there was like everyone was staring at me.
And there was another guest actor who had been on the previous week, who I had completely hit it off with, who was staring daggers at me after I said this.
And he said, I can't believe it, but I am just hating you right now.
And I said, well, and we had had long, deep conversations prior to that.
And I said, well, it's probably because you hate your dad and your dad's voting for Bush.
And then, and then, God bless Linda Lavin, who passed away last year, who was my dear friend for life.
And she said, it doesn't matter because Clinton's going to win.
Now let's do the table read.
And that was just a beautiful way to handle it.
But afterwards, after we finished the table read, the script supervisor, who's also a liberal, came over to me and she goes, you're the bravest person I've ever met.
And then Linda's assistant, who is a gay woman married, probably not married at the time, but had a partner with a kid.
She comes down from Linda's office and said, my partner and I don't agree with most of your views, but we absolutely defend your right to say it and have your views.
And I was like, okay, refreshing.
And then another writer came down, a guy, and was like, I heard about your button.
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And I thought this thing spread like wildfire through the show.
But, you know, I wasn't meaning to share my political opinions, but I just wanted people to be aware that not everybody shares your political view and that you should be conscious that there might be somebody who has a different opinion.
So when you're walking around freely like crapping on every person that has a different political opinion, it might be your friend standing right there that you're talking about and you don't know it.
Just like for my pro-life views, I don't ever talk about that in a makeup trailer on the set because many, many people have had abortions and it's a sensitive subject.
And I would never want to introduce that, especially into the workplace, right?
And the thing that I think a lot of people outside of Hollywood have a misconception about, even though actors, myself included, will state our political opinions, when you're working, you're just trying to make a show successful, right?
And you're going in there and you want to be nice to the crew.
You want to know your lines, hit your marks, not complain about anything, show up.
That's really what it's about on a day-to-day basis.
We're all people who have families that we're trying to support.
And so we want the show to be the best it can be.
And that's really the focus.
So even though I have political opinions and a lot of my dear, dear friends have very differing opinions, we're really united, first of all, in just friendship and admiration and respect for each other, but also the fact that we're just trying to make it work in this really, really, really difficult business.
And, you know, I probably, I admire actors who have chosen really to just keep it separate.
It's a real discipline because you're pressured to really be out there publicly, not necessarily your opinions, but to have social media and to push projects and create this image and all this stuff outside of your work.
So there's pressure for you to do that as far as selling a show and being a good player, a good employee for whoever is producing your show.
And, you know, I'm just such an opinionated person and sometimes I just cannot not say anything.
So that's my own fault.
And there's probably people who don't want to watch me because they don't like my opinions.
And that's the price.
Yeah.
And I do admire those folks who just, you don't know anything about what they believe and they just do their job.
I do admire that.
And I think there's freedom in that.
Yeah.
But I say like, I would say, especially in the Israel Palestine space, like Mark Ruffalo is very opposite, right?
Because you guys are on like, because he's like, it's not that just he's like sort of pro, it's not even Palestine because it doesn't make sense, but he's not even that he's pro-Gazan, let's say, or something.
I don't know him at all and I've never spoken to him.
So I haven't.
And I'm trying to think if I've had, I don't think I've had any interactions except with, no, I haven't had any interactions with people who are on the other side.
There are a lot of like big movie people who I, you know, you have Tilda Swinton and you have Mark Rufflow and you have Benedict Cumberbatch and all these folks who live a very privileged life.
But okay, so as it pertains to the Israel set, you've become an unbelievable supporter for Israel, which is tough to do as someone in the industry you're in.
Where did that even come from, from you originally?
So, you know, we had, it's Christmas and Hanukkah coming up.
And so we had this long, crazy pandemic.
Then we had a writer strike.
Then we had an actor strike.
So we're having a couple of years now where I'm not really working.
And I'm not a leisure-oriented person.
I like to work.
I can only enjoy a vacation if I'm coming off of a job or I know I'm going to a job.
So here I am, moved to Nashville, love it there.
But I just, every day, if I don't have something to do, I can doom scroll for eight hours like nobody's business.
And that's not healthy.
So I was just like praying, like, Lord, you've got to give me something to do.
I would hope it's another TV show, but if not, just give me something to do.
Like for two years, I'm praying this.
Like literally, that's the prayer.
And then October 7th happened, and I'm watching on my social media Hamas posting body cam footage of what they're doing.
And it's so horrifying.
And I was like, what the hell?
And I thought there's going to be uprising on the streets in support of Israel and especially in Nashville because there's three churches on every corner and they've all gone to Israel and they all love Israel.
So we're going to see a support of Israel in Nashville.
And I was just like, where is everybody?
Where is everybody?
And then two days later, so by October 9th, everyone was calling Israel the bad guy and all the colleges were full of people shouting free Palestine from the river to the sea with posters and flags.
What?
Like in 24 hours, they suddenly had all this stuff ready?
There's going to be a lot of books coming out in the next 10 years about what's going on because none of this stuff stays hidden for long.
And so I was like, I grew up, my dad served in World War II.
We grew up reading about Anne Frank.
We all knew the Holocaust had happened.
This was just a shared common knowledge amongst all Americans, right?
And so I thought, does nobody remember all this stuff?
And it was supposed to be never again.
And now here we are.
And I just started, I think the first post I had said, if this is on Instagram, did you ever have the thought, if you were a German during World War II, did you hope you would be the good German who hid their Jewish neighbor?
Well, today you have that opportunity.
Reach out to your Jewish friends, support.
I'd listed a bunch of organizations, support these organizations if you can.
And then I did text and call a bunch of Jewish friends and I said, how are you doing?
And they said, we're not doing good.
And you're the only person that's asked.
And so I thought, I know a lot of my friends support Jewish people and support Israel, but I think they don't know what to say.
And they feel awkward.
And they've never had these conversations with their Jewish friends.
And so along with my partner Elizabeth, who's Christian married to a Jewish man, we created this organization called October 7th Coalition 07C to activate Christians to be visibly and vocally supportive of the Jewish people of Israel's right to exist and to fight anti-Semitism.
And we were just starting in Nashville, but the minute people saw that someone like me, who was not Jewish and who had a platform, was speaking out, we started getting calls from a lot of different places saying, can you come here and can you come there?
And can you speak for us and can you do this?
And so I just felt like it was something I was called to do.
And I think an experience I had when I first moved to Los Angeles was really pivotal for me.
I was in a gym on a treadmill and there was a very elderly woman next to me on the tread, on her treadmill.
And when I looked over at her, she had numbers tattooed on her wrist.
And I was so, it was like a gut punch because we've read about this all our lives.
We've heard, I never met anyone who experienced it.
And I didn't talk to her, but I was like, oh, it was like, it's right there.
It's right there.
And so that always quickened me to what Jewish people went through.
And I've just had so many Jewish friends.
And I just, you know, I mean, I'm in an industry where Jewish people are super successful.
There's maybe, I think part of it is because MAGA, well, not anymore, but on the right, it's been mostly pro-Israel.
And particularly, Trump has been very good.
So people who hate Trump feel like if they support, even if they're Jewish, if they come out in support of Israel, that they're connecting themselves to Trump.
And that is like the third rail for a lot of people.
It's the third rail.
People just don't want to have any association with him whatsoever.
You know, I keep saying that Trump d'Ardrian syndrome actually will be studied as a mental disorder.
I think you're right.
Because if you view this man's belief system as the center of your universe, if you make a decision because he believes in the opposite or vice versa, then it actually is a mental condition.
Because you'll go against your own, you know, your own self-preservation.
Yeah, that's absolutely right.
And I think also being in Hollywood for years, where if you're pro-life, they take your woman card away, right?
So I've always been a little bit on the outside of it.
And so I'm used to it.
So almost that is sort of a preparation for me to be okay about being open about the Israel issue because I've always been someone who's not gone with the main flow in Hollywood.
He did that because I didn't have anything going for me.
So he can do anything.
So even in this time, I'm just called to speak up for what's right.
And it's very clear in scripture for Christians that we, Christianity doesn't exist without Judaism.
Jesus was Jewish.
This whole thing, our whole faith system is grafted into Judaic roots.
So, and God tells us in the Old Testament, we have to bless Israel.
And so, and this doesn't mean that you agree with what the current government there is doing.
Nothing against people who have an issue with political decisions being made over there.
Listen, there are family members of hostages who didn't agree with what they were doing.
So it's not that.
We can see that really this is about anti-Semitism because the same people who were standing up in Hollywood against what Israel was doing in Gaza stayed silent when Boko Haram in Nigeria were murdering Christians.
Not a peep.
So it's clear that it's about Jews and not about the actual violence that's going on.
Yeah, I think more because we have to battle stuff within our own party.
Because how weird, since Charlie Kirk was assassinated, there was initially almost a spiritual thing that happened where people who had never really even thought about this stuff were posting on social media that, like, I'm feeling called to go to church.
There was a lot of that.
And that they were saying, I don't even know this guy, and something's really wrong with our country if this is happening, that you can't just talk on a campus without being shot.
So, for a minute, there was a movement of like, this is going to bring us together.
And then from the right, there was this big uprising of anti-Semitism that came out.
And they were using Charlie Kirk as an excuse, saying he was being pressured by Israel and he all this kind of rumors and stuff.
And people we know who are feeding that, other pundits are feeding that for whatever reason, whether they're being paid by a foreign entity or they're just crazy.
And as a Catholic, there's this kind of vein of people in the Catholic Church who seem to have adopted a sort of Byzantine medieval view of Jews.
And they are saying, and they're combining it with this America-first thing.
And it doesn't really make sense.
And so again, we find that this Jew hatred, that's what it is, it's Jew hatred, is resurfacing, but now on the right, which a couple people had predicted.
Like I think James Lindsay had talked about it.
And so that is, I think there's a spiritual aspect to that.
There's a spiritual war going on in this world.
And young people who are ignorant are being infected.
It's almost like a zombie apocalypse.
Like people will pop up who you couldn't ever imagine questioning Israel's right to exist on the right.
I'm just like, oh, not you.
Are you kidding?
You too?
Like, it's a little bit scary.
I just feel like our group is getting like smaller because this infection is happening to everybody.
And I think that's what if we redid something like Friends of Abe, it would be to address that.
What I keep thinking lately as this is happening, and I've watched some of my friends who I don't even need to name drop, but public people that have kind of gone off the deep end.
I keep thinking, actually, if anything, this is just refining the rest of us.
It's not fun.
It's not fun in its own way.
And it's not, it's like pretty terrible, actually, when you see someone go the other way.
And I think you see who will sell their soul for money because I think it's coming down to money in clicks.
Yeah.
And, you know, in the New Testament, it says, what does it profiteth a man to sell, to gain the whole world and lose his soul?
And I think we're seeing that happening, that people want, they have a greed for attention, for money, for clicks, for subscribers, and they're willing to sell their soul for that.
That's what I think is happening.
And listen, like you said, we're being refined, and God doesn't need a lot of people.
He needs the right people.
And we're just finding out who the right people are.
That might sound arrogant to say that I'm saying we're the right people.
I'm not saying I am a particularly good person, but I don't see how you can see this in any other way than black and white, than black and white.
As I said, you can criticize the current government in Israel, but the right for Israel to exist, there's no question.
Yeah, you're not keeping anybody for long and having to keep buying them pizza and having a comedian tell them jokes while they, you know, but you're there for 12 to 14 hours.
So the so the leisure time you get in a single camera, you pay for in that your day is two or three times as long.
So it and you don't get to see it pieced together until it goes on the air because they shoot it all out of order.
So you don't get that satisfaction of watching it like a play from beginning to end.
So they're just very different animals.
And I'm just so blessed that I was able to do both so I could sort of hone those skills.
I remember when I first went on the middle and they said, okay, I was in the makeup trail.
They said, come on out for rehearsal.
We rehearsed the blocking and then they sent us back in.
I'm like, that's it?
There's all the rehearsal we get.
So you had to like come in with it already fully developed in yourself.
And that was really scary to me.
I think for the first two years, I just thought, I don't know what I'm doing.
I just don't know what I'm doing.
And eventually you kind of get into it.
But every year that when the first week coming back to Raymond or the first week coming back to the middle, I always thought, I don't know how to do this.
I don't remember how to do this.
Like fear.
And then you do it and then you're like, okay, I think I remember now.
So I can't, this is going to be another butchered set.
Okay.
Which for a sitcom person is particularly bad.
But we met because you DM'd me after I did a show in LA.
It was one of the last shows that I did with Jordan, and you were in the audience at the Orpheum.
And I remember getting the DM and I was like, my God, first of all, I can't believe that you care about any of this stuff.
Like you're reaching out to me.
It was also at the early time of Twitter.
Now everyone knows everyone's correct.
So it was like, that was sort of special.
But it reminds me now of something that to try to get this all into one bucket here.
There's a video of Jordan on Rogan where he says, if you think what happened to the left was bad, wait till you see the reaction for the people on the right.
And that's sort of what you were referencing before about what's going on.
So to tie all of these things together that we've done, acting, people meeting each other, fleeing places, going to places, fighting for truth, all of that.