Jason Bateman Can’t Look Away

Pattiday presents in the red corner the undisputed, undefeated weed whacker guy,

champion of hurling grass and pollen everywhere.

And in the blue corner, the challenger, extra strength, Pattiday!

Eye drops that work all day to prevent the release of histamines that cause itchy, allergy eyes.

And the winner by knockout is Pattiday!

Pattiday, bring it on!

Did you know Tide has been upgraded to provide an even better clean and cold water?

Tide is specifically designed to fight any stain you throw at it, even in cold.

Butter?

Yep.

Chocolate ice cream?

Sure thing.

Barbecue sauce?

Tide's got you covered.

You don't need to use warm water.

Additionally, Tide pods let you confidently fight tough stains with new coldzyme technology.

Just remember: if it's got to be clean, it's got to be Tide.

But there's a writer's room somewhere.

Somewhere.

Yeah, and in that writer's room, they are figuring out these seasonal arcs that are just, they're just gobsmacking.

Like, for instance, you know, remember for a moment there, it was very plausible that he was going to win the election, but start serving in prison.

Hi, everyone.

It's Nicole Wallace from Deadline White White House.

I'm here with a new project.

It's called The Best People with Nicole Wallace.

The best people are accomplished, but they're also accessible.

And here at the best people, I'm going to share them with all of you.

I'm so excited to do that.

The first person that I reached out to is the person who hosts my most favorite podcast, Smartless.

But when I asked Jason Bateman for advice about how to podcast, he said, it's called Smartless for a reason.

I don't have any advice.

But he did agree to talk to me, which is very good news because he has a huge political brain and watches more MSNBC than I do on top of being an award-winning actor and director.

So this is The Best People and this is Jason Bateman.

I've want to be that person just off your camera so bad on that show.

The big steady cam tilt down.

It's all so exciting.

I'm very addicted to your show.

Very big fan.

Very excited to be here oh you're so nice you know i'm very addicted to smartless in this thing like i really believe in never meeting your heroes it can only go downhill i don't ever do it like steph curry is my hero i hope to never meet him if i saw him in an airport i'd run no and you guys like i he is he is like run to him he could not be he's here he's my hero i love show a otani i feel like i don't think we run in the same circles i don't know that i'd run into him but i really try to never meet my, never.

I don't know if that's getting old.

And like, I love you guys.

Like, I thought I was doing, I really thought I was rocking COVID.

I was like, you know, I'm eating green soup.

I'm, I'm nailing like third grade.

I was teaching my son third grade.

I was anchoring out of the basement and the numbers were up.

And I started listening to Smartlist and I would laugh until I cried.

And I was like, you know what?

I'm probably not okay if these guys are making me cry.

You know, exactly.

So I would just weep, you know, you'd be talking to, I don't know, one of, it wasn't even COVID anymore.

And I'd still cry like Courtney Cox plays the piano, and I like I didn't know any of you, and I was just weeping.

I'm like, that's so beautiful.

And I really, I think I tapped into my own like instability and isolation from how in love I was with you guys on Smartlabs.

Yeah, well, thank you.

It wasn't some necessary nonsense during that really kind of fraught period.

And we were really surprised that people were listening to us because it was just a selfish sort of thing for us to kind of stay in contact when you couldn't be in physical contact or proximity.

And so it was kind of this Zoom that turned into, you know, something to monetize, as Sean is so good at doing.

He's like, well,

just guys, let me have my guys just run some numbers because this is fun and everything.

But I think we could make some money.

I was like, all right.

So, yeah, that was a big shocker and remains a big shocker.

We thought that it was all going to go away after COVID and we'd get back to.

our lives of not doing it and actually seeing each other in person.

And there was such an audience there by the time COVID was done.

And we were getting so many flattering incoming calls to talk to people that we would never speak to.

You know, to your point about Shohei Otani or Steph Curry, like you're not going to bump into those people.

It's possible to like talk to folks that you can really get a lot smarter speaking to.

And unless you're trapped in an elevator, they're not going to speak to you.

So it's our little one hour elevator breakdown.

Why did you think in the beginning that someone would listen?

to 45 minutes of, you know, like the thing about cable is like you're trying to be so efficient with words and time under this sort of hypothesis that people are busy and it's so competitive.

But people are

really drawn

to these really intimate, really unscripted, really long conversations.

And as someone sort of on the other end of that medium, making my first foray into this one, that in and of itself is like a delicious and wonderful and like affirming reality about what people listen to.

Well, first, obviously, we did not think anyone was going to listen and that no one really needed to listen because, you know, it costs next to nothing to put one of these things up.

I mean, you can go down to the Apple Store and get a podcast mic and stick it in your laptop.

That's all we do, really.

It's just a Zoom.

The fact that people did check us out, probably because, you know, the first wave of guests were just some of our fancy friends that were nice enough to say yes.

And then

I guess somewhere through that sample size, people

kind of liked the ability to go about their day and,

you know, multitask and kind of half-listen to us because we are not journalists.

We don't claim to know much about anything and are happy to sit there and have smarter people answer our questions that are really coming from a layman's point of view.

And,

you know,

he's now since become a controversial figure, but Charlie Rose is somebody that I just, I watched every single episode he ever did for no other reason than he kind of, he was, he's us, you know, as far as like being a non-expert in

most of the industries and experts that he had on his show.

And he would just basically, well, explain that to me, you know, how, why, why are you the king of drywall?

You know, why were you drawn to sheetrock, you know, when you're, and what is it that makes it such a big industry?

Like, you know, and like, that's a fascinating in to just be kind of a common person that is curious about the industry that might live right next door to you.

So, and you have one of the reasons I love your show is you have people skills and you're able to listen and talk and you never get the sense that you're just waiting for them to stop talking so you can go to the next question on your buck slip there.

You're listening to them and the audience is listening as well.

And so you are probably going to arrive at the same question the audience has if you take the same position the audience has, which is just listening.

You're not prepared, hopefully.

You know, I mean, the other two on their show are not.

That was part of the design.

That's the, you know,

to have a surprise guest that was really selfishly so that the other two don't have to do anything.

Yeah.

But it also affords them the same perspective as the audience, that they're just listening.

They don't have anything loaded.

And the next question is just going to simply be prompted by being a part of the conversation.

And listening.

I mean, I think that's it.

And I think that goes beyond.

what either of us does.

Like, I think that's the political answer.

And there's something, there's something like perversely brilliant about Trump hearing anger and then feeding it back to voters.

One of his political gifts is like he hears the grievance and then he makes it clear to his voters that he hears them.

Right.

And are you, you're implying, I think, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but that there's a baked in level of cynicism there and manipulation and opportunity to tap into a large group of people that are aggrieved and that well their votes count the same.

So let's go after them because there's a lot of people that are pissed off.

I can't begrudge him that because that's kind of the game of politics.

But once you're elected, it's like, can we now like actually help the country instead of continuing the cynicism and

trying to put more people into it's basically creating a larger group of people aggrieved with his policies and

then somehow convincing him that, yeah, I know I'm the arsonist, but trust me, I'll be a firefighter soon.

You know,

I don't know how he's able to do both.

But I think politics is like Nordstrom, right?

Like the customer is always right.

I worked at Nordstrom one year in college and like people would return things that are like 11 years old and stained.

And I remember going to like a manager, I'm like, you're going to take that skirt back.

And they're like, yep, we take back any like, so the voter is always right.

But I think that.

to the degree that voters were saying something about Biden's age or about inflation or about the democracy, you know, instead of trying to change what they were saying, I think people are too slow to not listen to it.

But I do think it's still true that people face to face don't hate each other as much as people do online.

And so

I feel like to the degree that I think we could be okay, I still think it's like going and getting in front of people.

Like I still think the resurgence of like,

if this were political, this is retail politics, right?

It is two people talking to each other and listening to each other.

I think that's what politics has to go back to.

And then I think

that presupposes that they have access to a speaker from which a bunch of facts are coming.

So what do you do about that?

You know, your point about the customer is always right.

Well, they're making their right decision

on facts that might not be facts.

And so what do you do about that?

In other words, do you think that do you think Trump would have gotten the same number of votes if the people who voted for him had access to or the curiosity to seek out and find

the truth because they're not getting the truth over on Fox.

This $780-some million-dollar lawsuit is proof of it.

And that was just one issue.

So, what do you do about that?

You know, people who are- You're so good.

I can't believe you're asking me a question.

I wanted to ask you, so here's my, this is my thing.

This is the thing that keeps me up at night.

I think the truth has to be the next moonshot.

And I think that all the smartest people in the world, maybe all the fired scientists, have to figure out how to make the truth the thing that's that's sticky, the thing that goes viral.

Like the truth has to be the thing that people are sending around and they're like, you know, look at this when no one's watching.

This is the truth about Trump or this is the truth about but who's the arbiter of what is true?

I've always fantasized that, you know,

that little grade that's on the front of restaurants, you know, A, B, C, whatever.

Like it would be great if media was forced to have that little bug in the bottom right corner of, you know, just like on MSNBC, during the day, it's news reporting and it's facts, and at night, it is opinion.

And like, that should have its separate letter.

No better, no worse, just identifies that.

And therefore, you can intellectualize the thing that you're talking about, opine on it, whatever it is, but the same burden is not placed on that reporter in front.

And then on Fox, they can go and freestyle if they want.

And on MSNBC, you can freestyle if you want.

I happen to think I'm a huge fan, but I happen to think that MSNBC doesn't drift from the truth.

They just have this immense amount of really interesting, solid facts to talk about.

And so they don't have to freestyle and embellish.

So I don't know.

Talking about Pete Buddha Judge, he's been on Fox a bunch of times and is somehow, you know, reaching that audience.

I asked him why he's the only one that's really been on there.

Why aren't are the politicians not being invited on because Fox is afraid of what they're going to say?

Or the politicians not want to be on because they don't want to take the heat?

Do you know?

I think it's probably a combination of both, but Pete's heat's been going on for years.

I remember when I was first dating my husband,

we were going to go get something to eat.

And he said, no, I can't, we got to stay in.

I said, why?

He said, there's a Buddha Judge Town Hall on Fox.

He says,

2018 or 19.

And I was like, we're staying home for that.

Like, okay.

I mean, it's just like, it's great TV.

It's amazing that he does it.

And like, he's been doing it for almost 10 years.

Like, it's part of who he is.

To your point about news and perspective, I think it should go farther.

Like, I actually think we should reveal, you know, like almost like a confessional, you know, I worked for George W.

Bush.

I worked for Dick Cheney.

I still like them.

I know they did lots of things wrong.

I worked.

Like, I also think that if we're part of our own sort of responsibility for our own credibility, I think putting it all out there and being more transparent.

I mean, I love Pete.

I love everything that he's doing.

And I think that that's not only is that like the right model, I think it's the only model.

Like you cannot leave out half of the country.

And, you know, you don't need to win everybody, but you have to win over some of those folks.

Yeah, but the truth tellers or whatever book all the facts sit in from day to day is not, there is no attempt to hide that from the Republican voters.

It's ubiquitous.

It is.

I know.

You have to make a real effort to stay insulated from the facts and common sense.

I know.

It's everywhere except

on Fox or Bright Moral or whatever, whatever the hell the spots are I was telling my girls in 2020 I was saying you guys are gonna look back this is the most fascinating year this is gonna be a hard one to beat with COVID and with Jan 6 and the rest and it just keeps getting more and more interesting you know I joked earlier about the Trump show I'm addicted to I really am fascinated I can't stop watching

the things that he does and the things that he says and marry that to the fact that there are 80-some million people that would vote again for him tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

You know, is just a social phenomenon, a political phenomenon that I just can't get my head around.

And I don't want to ignore it.

We are all neighbors.

We all share this country together.

And so I want to understand it.

And I know that there's genuine dissatisfaction with their standing in life or the system and whatnot.

So that's legit.

I'm sensitive to that.

I respect that.

But whatever section there is that is kind of doing it just to stick it to the libs,

it's not Schadenfreude, but I am curious to see what they're going to do when, you know, eggs keep going up and gas keeps going up.

And again, I'm not wishing harm on anyone, but it's tragic that I think the people who are least equipped to bear what the Trump administration is going to yield.

are a lot of the folks that voted for him.

And that's really freaking sad.

Again, I don't wish any person or business financial harm but in some ways the market reaction brought new people to the fight and i think that's what happened elon musk's bottom line right i mean i mean like right like i right and so like i again i don't wish anyone financial ruin i don't wish anyone you know and i welcome them to the effort to not have the whole country sort of held hostage to the whims of Trump.

I mean, the tariff thing, like, isn't even a thing.

There aren't any.

There are no deals.

They're not on.

They're not off.

They're just like whatever he wakes up and does.

And to the extent there are, you got to eat it, you know, because you made so much the last few years.

Like, what?

But it might take something that he can't spin his way out of to make everybody understand.

Right.

And that's unfortunate, that there's only one way that medicine's going to go down or the lesson's going to be absorbed.

Like,

got to have to learn the lesson the hard way.

Again, to my point, that's going to be a painful lesson

for mostly the people that voted for him.

Yeah.

And that's tragic.

But I guess it's the only way to break the fever.

Perhaps.

We're going to take a quick break right here.

When we come back, we'll have more with Jason Bateman.

Back in a moment.

Hatterday presents in the red corner the undisputed, undefeated weed whacker guy,

champion of hurling grass and pollen everywhere.

And in the blue corner, the challenger, extra strength, Pataday!

Eye drops that work all day to prevent the release of histamines that cause itchy, allergy eyes.

And the winner by knockout is Pattay!

Pattiday, bring it on!

Did you know Tide has been upgraded to provide an even better clean in cold water?

Tide is specifically designed to fight any stain you throw at it, even in cold.

Butter?

Yep.

Chocolate ice cream?

Sure thing.

Barbecue sauce?

Tide's got you covered.

You don't need to use warm water.

Additionally, Tide pods let you confidently fight tough stains with new coldzyme technology.

Just remember: if it's got to be clean, it's got to be Tide.

Saturday, October 11th from New York City, it's MSNBC Live 25.

Join your favorite MSNBC hosts: Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Nicole Wallace, Ari Melber, Alicia Menendez, Simone Sanders Townsend, Michael Steele, Chris Hayes, Jen Saki, Lawrence O'Donnell, Stephanie Ruhl, and more.

Visit msnbc.com slash live25 to buy your tickets today.

I think that what makes the Trump story so amazing is nobody knows what's going to happen next.

You know, I mean, the people in his cabinet don't seem to know what's happening next.

You know, it's crazy.

And, but there's a writer's room somewhere.

Somewhere.

Yeah.

And in that writer's room, they are figuring out these seasonal arcs that are just, they're just gobsmacking.

And somehow they build to these great, you know, cliffhangers, too, that are kind of like, well, that's like jumping the shark.

Like, for instance, you know, remember for a moment there, it was very plausible that he was going to win the election, but start serving in prison.

Like, that was that wasn't that you would, you would write that.

Yeah, like that would be a jump the shark moment, but no, actually, everything was built towards that legitimately can happen.

And people are trying to figure out the apparatus to get classified documents to him, et cetera, et cetera.

And like, to me, that's just a show I can't stop watching because he keeps out doing himself and doubling and tripling down.

And it's not for show.

It's actually a reasonable escalation based on what just happened last.

It's like it's really happening.

Does it change your industry at all when like the real world is so bad shit crazy?

Like, does it make people think, you know, like, like, oh, this couldn't happen when the real world keeps defying that frame of this couldn't happen?

Well, there's plenty of projects.

I've been involved with at least two of them that are directly related to key figures in his administration that I have started developing, but then backed away because there's no way you can do that because those are still active storylines.

And by the time you're done shooting it, the ending may have been written and we won't have it in the show.

So yeah, it's the notion of what is plausible and possible in the political world.

I think the writer's rooms are having difficulty imagining it, even in a fictional setting, if you were to to just have a fictional administration, because, you know, I think most of us come off the car lot with a standard feature of shame and an ability to become embarrassed.

And that is, uh, that's not built into our systems of defense.

You can't assume that somebody is, is going to drive right through shamelessness.

And he does and he is.

And so we're constantly on our heels because we're surprised.

I think it's amazing that people haven't adapted.

Like to your point, like he has no shame.

He has like three impulses, greed, winning, and I don't even know what the third would be.

And this is on us too.

We still cover him like they're playing 3D chess.

They're like, they're always playing whack-a-mole, you know, always.

Well, it's, I think it's just a question of like, the problem is that

nothing matters because no one's listening.

Like, maybe MAGA folks aren't watching MSNBC or reading the New York Times where just one of the really salient points would be, why would this guy be slashing and burning and cutting all the waste and abuse and all that stuff?

And then the other side of his mouth, say, I want a $45 million birthday parade.

You know, like it's just they're at odds with one another.

$400 million jet.

Exactly.

That could have been filled with bugs, listening devices, and on and on and on.

But like, you wouldn't even waste your time reporting that because it's not going to move the dial because in the fire hose, you're not even going to hear it or see it.

And so what do you do?

People like yourself, you can't stop reporting the news, but like, who are we talking to?

Do you ever see a day, and I know this is kind of a third rail for politics, but at what point, if ever, do you think this story would change from reporting on the outrageousness of Trump and his actions, his decisions, his words, and instead move to the people that have voted for him twice?

And I know that goes back to the whole story of deplorables.

And like, as soon as that happened, everyone just backed off and don't ever talk bad about, you know, America and the 80 million.

But he's never changed.

Like, he's always been the same.

He didn't do a 180 and dupe everybody when he got to the White House.

It's the people that have put him there and then put him there again that really deserve a great deal of responsibility and a talking to.

I'm sorry.

And I say that with love.

They are our neighbors, as I said before.

And I know that they are, you know, deservedly aggrieved and whatnot, but there's another way to do it.

There's somebody else in the Republican Party that can look after your issues.

If it makes you sick to vote for a Democrat, great.

Vote for Republican.

Tons of my friends are Republican.

Like I have no issues with Republicans.

It's this extra step that I think is so unnecessary to follow blindly.

Yeah.

I mean, I started out covering the Trump voters because from our end, we kind of missed them.

And I covered people who'd voted for Obama at least once or twice or Clinton and then voted for Trump.

It's everything we've been talking about.

They either don't believe the bad things, they think Democrats are worse.

They found something they really didn't like about Biden and then Harris.

I was at some fancy Hollywood thingy and tell us about a fancy Hollywood thingy.

It's boring as you can imagine.

No, this is boring.

Tell me about, tell me a fancy Hollywood thing.

Well, but

only to bring it back to politics, which is that Rahm Emmanuel was there, and as was Ari.

And I said to Ari, I said, I hear that Ram is going to run.

And Ari gave, you know, a beautifully kind of non-committal kind of grin or whatever.

But it's now since become more public that Ram might be one of the people to run.

And I got really excited about that because, like yourself, he's been uniquely accessed to, you know, these places of this access in there and the knowledge and being chief of staff and what, ambassador to Japan and mayor and whatnot.

And so anyway, I think he'd be a really exciting candidate.

But then I said to somebody, and somebody said, oh, no, he'll never win.

He's Jewish.

And like, I'm a guy who lives in Los Angeles.

We have to stop the fact.

But then I started thinking,

and Pete Buttigieg can't win because he's gay.

And I started thinking, well, am I just in such an LA bubble that I just can't imagine that that would be a barrier to somebody voting for someone or that somebody is black or that somebody is a woman?

And then I started thinking, and I'm going to ask you to the extent you're comfortable answering it, if you're an independent voter or somebody that's kind of on the border between voting republican or democrat is a gay black jewish or female has the best chance of being

the next

non-white middle-aged male president where do you think the tolerance is well so i think you go to the battleground states right and in pennsylvania shapiro won i think he won like a huge margin huge margin so those are the same people you have to win over.

Right.

Right.

Right.

And he's, you know, very comfortable with this faith, talks about it all the time.

I think you go to Michigan, huge, huge crossover of Trump voters and Whitmer voters.

I mean, there's a woman.

I mean, you got to go study the battleground states where women, I mean, Michigan, I think women hold all those top statewide offices.

Jocelyn Benson's the Secretary of State.

There's a female attorney general.

I mean, you got to go look.

I mean, Obama's already been president twice.

And Obama's been president twice.

So you got to go, you got to go look behind the tabs.

I worry a lot that the Democratic Party will take all the wrong lessons from Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris's defeats.

Because I think, you know, Whitmer's a great example.

I think Nikki Haley was really a threat to Donald Trump, and she was the second highest vote-getter.

I don't think that's the barrier.

And I don't think that was Harris's barrier.

I hope not.

Because you look at in the battleground states that pick presidents,

they're open to all sorts of politicians.

Well, it was economy really is what the sort of the

but now look at it.

So, you know, we'll see if that was true.

We'll see.

We'll see.

We'll see.

Okay, wait, I got to hear more about the fancy Hollywood stuff.

I'll tell you, in our world, everyone's talking about good night and good luck.

I know you just saw it.

I just saw it.

Yeah.

And then Clooney's story of sort of coming out and writing about Biden is everywhere in politics because Jake Tapper has just written about it.

So, you know, you talk about how it's hard to not jump the shark in writers' rooms.

It seems like some of those moments from history are maybe the way to get at this moment better than anything.

Well, and that's one of the reasons that, yeah,

his play is so timely and important.

No matter what side you're on, I recommend anyone who's in New York to go see it.

And what he and Grant Hesloff have done with adapting the film and contemporizing it is there's a piece at the end, and I won't ruin it for folks, but there's a bit of a status report per se of where we're at, where we've come from and where we currently are from McCarthyism to, you know, today.

And it just lands the plane in such a heartbreaking slap in the face of, you know, you just, you, you literally, you see it.

And it's upsetting that you sort of, my takeaway, at least as I was, you know, drawing my tears,

that it's been a bit of a frog boil.

As much as we are aware of that, of the heat,

it did really sneak up on us.

And, and it's not coming it's here we're in it yes and like all the way up to and including they're coming for you like they're literally knocking on people's doors today and pulling them out and shipping them off and not just into their home country and get out of here we don't want to see you

into a maximum security horror den

and so

what do we do about that um it's it's just it's really heartbreaking.

And I refuse to believe that even though the folks on

the other side are numb to it,

they deeply care about this country, just like we do.

We all love the flag.

We all love the military.

We all care about the health of the country.

And

I'm just heartbroken that somehow they found a way to shield their eyes and their ears from the current status and that they could be so helpful to fixing that.

It doesn't take a lot of them, just a few of them, to kind of say, you know what?

My bad.

I'll make a better choice next time.

And you don't even need to admit it.

I mean, that's why there's a little curtain you can close behind you when you go in the booth, you know?

And so, I don't know.

It was a great show.

And I think he's done a lot for giving voice to a bunch of people like myself that no one really wants to hear from.

It's like, okay, Hollywood Elite, you know, would tell us how you feel about America.

But we don't care about the country any less.

And if you can use that uniqueness to speak a little bit clearer, louder to a larger number of people, he's doing that.

And this play is an example of that.

I think Trump is aware of how powerful it is.

And I think that's why he's so obsessed.

Oh, Trump is uniquely aware of what George is doing.

And

it's a problem.

Yeah.

Correct.

And I think his attacks on Bruce Springsteen for what he said in Manchester at the end of his concert, his attacking Beyoncé, I mean, I actually think...

Well, that was a chilling thing.

Like, is that not a precursor for a complete IRS?

I mean, he's kind of created the predicate for the IRS going all the way into Beyoncé's finances, Springsteen's finances.

You know, there's nothing there, but he set up the predicate for it.

And now he's just going to make their life, financial life, miserable and force them to spend a bunch of money to defend themselves.

But the reason he, I mean, and this is where I think, this is where I think so much of what they do is designed to chill, right?

They want you to both believe that no one wants to hear from Hollywood elites when Trump is deeply interested in Hollywood elites.

And two, they want to make the barrier of entry so high so that it's just not worth it to speak out.

And I think that he is acutely aware of how people with large platforms who don't like what he's doing do represent a threat to his political support.

Yeah, but the problem is that somehow those people are still kind of inoculated from that information, those voices, those facts.

I don't know how

they do it.

I mean, it is by choice.

They are by choice keeping themselves insulated from those facts, or when they do hear them, they are using their intelligence to discount it and somehow feel more intelligent to imagine that there's actually a conspiracy and that there's a deep state and that somehow that that's a more complicated thought.

And so that makes them feel smarter.

It's like, I mean, there's not some big effort to dupe America into thinking that Donald Trump is a bad guy, you know?

Well, I think what's amazing is, too, is his family is sort of our original sources.

Like the most that most journalists have is the books written by his niece and nephew, Mary and Fred Trump.

So to the degree that I know anything about his childhood, it's from reading about them.

And to your point, there's so much, you know, original source material

we'll be right back with more of my conversation with jason bateman stay right here

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I think that you have to have faith that in the end it'll all be okay.

That no matter who wins a presidential election, we will live in a democracy.

The First Amendment will govern what journalists can say and do.

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If you can agree that most people want those things, our show is about trying to bend the arc toward that end result.

Deadline, White House, with Nicole Wallace, weekdays from 4 to 6 p.m.

Eastern on MSNBC.

You know, I feel like

the power of the Murrow story and the facts all being out there is that, I mean, I always view our show as like a sports bar, right?

Like they have to be open every day.

They have to have like the good turkey burger and like the nice fish tacos.

It has to be, it has to be good.

Is Heilman the turkey burger?

Yeah, but like people, but like it has to be open every day.

And like we're not Broadway, right?

Like I do not put on Good Night and Good Luck.

We are not Clooney, right?

We are, we're not Smartless, right?

We will not make you laugh, but like we're there every day.

And when people are ready, you know, when the price of everything is so high that people are like, man, how did we get here?

And how do we get out of here?

Like, we're just going to be there every day.

And so, to me, it's like, how do you keep the doors open and keep it straight enough?

And then that's why we have all these economists on like, how do you keep it inviting enough so that when people are ready to come, we're open and we're friendly.

And like, we have a good meal.

If you, you know, haven't eaten yet, you know, the game's on.

And it's like, keep it open, keep it friendly, and keep it real so that when people are ready, you're there.

And your group, as you put it, your favorite friends and reporters, or what was the phrase?

Yeah, favorite reporters and friends.

Yeah, it's a great great group so congrats to you and to your team your staff and whatever you're doing you have a great mix of studies that you know that are in there heilman included and mccaskill and the group i mean it's just it's it's a and throughout throughout all the shows on msnbc it's it's i love it and i know you guys are probably all going through a weird time i i hope that morale is as high as it deserves to be over there and you guys keep doing what you're doing thank you you keep doing everything that you're doing um We love all of it.

I know you're getting all your, all the buzz.

Can you tell us anything about

Black Rabbit?

Oh, I can.

Sure.

That is a limited series that I have coming out on

Netflix in September.

It's an eight-episode show.

Jude Law and I play brothers that run a night spot in the Lower East Side.

And the first episode is a break-in at this place.

And a couple of people get shot and they steal a bunch of jewelry.

And then you flash back six months, and you spend a few episodes catching up to that moment, and then you reveal who did it.

And then the last two episodes are kind of the fallout from that.

But it's

really, really well done, if I do say so, just because there's so many great people involved with this thing, and I'm super proud of it.

I think it's the best thing I've ever done, and I'm just really excited for it to come out really, really exciting.

And Laura Lenny's involved.

Everyone loves you, and Laura Lenny from the other side.

I brought her in to direct a couple of episodes.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, she did.

I finally talked into doing one on Ozark, and it was one of our best episodes ever.

It was the first time she'd ever directed Ozark.

Which one did she episode?

I forget what it was called,

but we get in like this sort of traffic jam at the end, and I just storm out of the car and I walk all huffy towards camera.

If people remember that, it was just, we get in this big, huge fight.

But she directed two of these

in Black Rabbit and was just fantastic.

And she could have very easily said no, especially once she had done one and she knew how much work it was.

But she didn't.

She leaned into it and she said, Yeah, I'd love to.

It's just a few blocks from my house.

And let's go to it.

And the episodes are incredible.

She was awesome.

I can't wait to see it.

I went back and watched the first Ozark.

Oh, yeah.

Because I remembered everything there, but I couldn't, like in my brain, I was like, I don't remember how they got there.

So I watched the first one.

Oh, wow.

And I forgot the drop.

and I like screamed out loud

from that.

And I like the guy that falls off the building, yeah.

The lover, and I, I, I, I watched the whole thing, and I don't know if I blocked it out, I don't know, maybe there's something about how dark it is and like escaping

like in the back of my brain.

I'm always like, Where would I go?

And so, I had a whole like, really going like from Chicago, like that part of it really like spoke to me in a different way watching it again.

There's a there's a so yeah, so that there's a body that that falls from the 40th floor and hits the like it falls yeah well and i and i wanted to

uh i wanted to have a uh a dummy uh do that i didn't want that to be computer generated so we dropped a like a 200 pound dummy from about 300 feet but we had to put it on cables in case the wind blew it towards me because i was standing pretty close to the landing spot But then in post-production, the amount of time I spent try to get the sound right of what a body would sound like, I mean, it was a very bleak darling.

Some of the stuff we have to go through to get the authenticity just right.

But it was,

and then in Black Rabbit, kind of semi-spoiler, there is a body that falls at one point in one of the episodes.

And I'm working with the same.

sound crew, the same mix team.

And so we grabbed that file from the first episode of Ozark.

And so

this body drops from not quite as high.

So we had to adjust the sound a little bit.

But, you know, getting that sound just right is

dark work, but it's fun.

Well, it's so good.

And because, and because he's, you know, sleeping with your wife, like the reaction isn't horror.

It's like, it's, it's just

what you got.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, it's so good.

And I, I wonder too,

are you totally free from the real world when you're in those moments, when you're directing or acting?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Totally different part of the brain.

And I truly, truly love doing what I do.

The directing a little bit more than the acting, just because,

you know, you're kind of in charge of what people are hearing and seeing and thinking, hopefully.

Whereas with the acting, you're just kind of responsible for your one character.

And I don't mean to imply that

people that are actors are doing easy work and directors are doing hard work.

It's just it's many more levers that you're obligated to to know about and prepare for, but also have the privilege to participate in.

And so I love it just because it's harder and it kind of calls on all the things that I've kind of been trying to absorb since I started when I was a little kid.

And I know even though all of your co-anchors, you guys give each other so much shit, it's clear that your...

your sort of longevity as an actor also fuels all the respect you garner as a director.

I mean, mean, it feels like it's very hard for you guys to give each other any compliments, but even like a person that doesn't know any of you can feel that come through and attach to you.

What?

That there is a begrudging sort of respect for one another.

Respect.

It is clear that

because you have

played such iconic roles.

I mean, my son knows arrested development.

He's 13.

Like there's no reason for him, you know, like it's like the things you've done have different lives.

yeah.

But do you think that coming to directing?

I mean, you've always directed and acted, but does that does that make it something that is a faster line to having actors respect you that you feel their pain?

Um, perhaps, I mean, maybe at a minimum, they they can assume that the direction from the director is going to be a little bit more actor-friendly because it is a difficult thing to try to figure out how to speak actor.

You know, when somebody is doing a scene where they're they're having to maybe play the emotion of jealousy and, and they're just, it's not, it's coming across more as paranoia as opposed to jealousy.

And like, so like, what word would you say to an actor to get that performance?

Like, it's, you know, because we're, we're all crazy, you know, I mean, I'm, I'm nuts, you know, we're pretending to be other people.

It's, it's a, it's a weird thing.

So it is nice to, to, for crazy to talk to crazy, but uh, you're right.

Me and Will and Sean, we do give each other a lot of shit, but there is a deep amount of respect for one another.

You know, Will just did this really, really cool, tough dramatic and comedic movie that he wrote that Bradley Cooper just directed, who's an incredible director.

Talk about an actor-director.

I mean, he's, I think, one of our finest directors.

And so he just directed that.

And so Will's got that coming out.

Like, you know, I don't want to jinx anything, but like, it was a good shot.

Like, there's going to be like nominations for that film.

So Will's got all the respect in the world I could give.

And Sean, you know, when he did Good Night Oscar, which was a play on Broadway last year that he won a Tony for, when Will and I went and saw that, you know, Sean's a classically trained pianist and we'd never really seen him play piano.

And he plays Rhapsody in Blue at the end of that thing

for 10 minutes by himself in the middle of the stage on this grand piano.

And then the curtain comes down and Will and I are crying.

I looked at Will.

I said, well, he's just ruined the podcast because now we can't make fun of him anymore.

We've got too much respect for him.

It was really, really amazing.

So they're really special guys and they're very, very good at what they do, but

you wouldn't know that because they like to play dumb a lot.

And I hope if we do anything well, it's that we're just kind of just playing grab ass and trying to get on with it and ask some decent questions.

as the sort of common folks that we are.

I mean, what you guys model in terms of friendship and connection, as busy as you all are, as successful as you all are, is really, I love that.

Yeah, I mean, it's certainly not unique.

We all have really close friends.

We're fortunate that we get to do it in front of a microphone and

bring on people that, as I said earlier, wouldn't normally get a chance to talk to.

And the fact that that's also interesting to the people that listen to us is just really fortunate.

So we get to keep doing it, hopefully, you know?

I love it.

I hope you guys do it for a very long time.

Yeah, me too.

Thank you so much for doing this.

Thank you for having me.

It truly is a pleasure to meet you and hope to do so in person someday.

It's such a privilege.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right.

Thanks, Nicole.

Have a good night.

Bye.

Thank you so much for listening to the best people.

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The Best People is produced by Vicki Vergelina and senior producer Lisa Ferry with additional support from Max Jacobs and Ann Gimbel.

Our audio engineers are Bob Mallory and Katie Lau, and Bryson Barnes is the head of audio production.

Pat Berkey is our senior executive producer of Deadline White House.

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