'The Interview': The Grody-Patinkin Family Is a Mess. People Love It.

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From the New York Times, this is the interview.

I'm David Marchese.

Mandy Batinkin and Catherine Grody are a highly successful artistic couple.

He's a Tony award-winning star who's also been acting in movies and TV for decades.

You probably know him as Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride, or maybe as Saul in Homeland.

She's an award winner winner too for her off-Broadway acting work, and she's also an accomplished playwright and author.

But in the last few years, they've achieved a newfound fame just by being themselves.

During the pandemic, Catherine and Mandy's younger son, Gideon, started posting these zany TikTok videos of his parents as they bickered, chatted, joked, needled, and were affectionate with each other.

Those videos found a giant fan base online at a time when people were hungry for a dose of family closeness.

Clearly, people respond to them.

So now, the trio is in the early stages of making an advice podcast.

They're also shopping a TV pilot co-written by Gideon that's based on their lives called Seasoned.

I talked with Mandy and Catherine, who've been married for 45 years, about finding viral success later in life, the ups and downs of their relationship, parenting, their passionate political activism and feelings about Jewish identity, and a whole host of other stuff.

And thankfully, Gideon came along too, both to help wrangle his mom and dad and to offer a little perspective.

Here's my conversation with the Grody Patinket family.

Thank you all for being here.

This is the biggest group I've ever interviewed before.

To have a family also is very nice.

You need to take some medication.

I might.

It might.

Maybe at the end.

Maybe we'll see how it goes.

So, in the social media post where you said you were working on an advice podcast, Mandy, you referred to you two as messes.

Catherine, do you think that you're messes?

Oh, definitely.

What do you call purposeful messes?

I mean, I actually, it's interesting.

I embrace being messy more than I ever have as a reaction against the whole AI chat bot algorithm world.

It's like, I want to be messy.

I want to be human.

I want to make mistakes.

I want to apologize.

I want to be tactile, you know?

So, yeah, we're messes.

Speaking of mess, I'm also a mess, emotionally a mess.

And I lost a friend, and the memorial was on Monday.

I needed to speak, and I was extremely anxious about it.

And that's why I have this cold store on my lip, which no matter what, it's not going to be hidden.

I'm sorry.

I'm a member of Spinal Tap.

Right, yes.

For people who don't know, there's a scene in Spinal Tap where all the members of the band

into it.

Thank you.

Back to Hermes.

Yes.

I mean, how, you know, by mess, I just mean we're not careful with each other.

We're all reactive.

Well, he's not reactive, and our older son is not reactive because I think in reaction to seeing us be so immediately hysterical about things their whole lives, they've learned to embrace taking a breath.

But it's funny, over the years when I tried to contain the mess, I now just think it's human and I'm letting it out.

Gideon, do you think what your mom just described about how your parents' messiness maybe led to a particular emotional reaction from you?

Does that sound accurate?

Is that how you experienced it?

Yeah,

100%.

I mean, they've been great teachers in what to do in the world and what not to do in the world.

And I think one of the gifts is I've seen their

often hysterical, emotional, painful response to things not be in service of their life and joy.

And if they could

take a beat, take a moment, and

have a little more perspective or gratitude or just air in their lungs, that they'd enjoy their experience a bit more.

What do you think about the idea of your parents making an advice podcast?

Well, I think that idea and experiment, and we're just in the process of making a pilot right now to see what that would be like, is kind of like an outgrowth of the conversations and play we've been having creatively since COVID.

And

these two never think they have

much interesting to offer.

They talk, they respond.

and communicate their life experience and many people find it illuminating and hilarious and bizarre and they see their own parents in it but they're the farthest thing from thinking that they'd have any advice to give you know one of the potential ideas for the name of it was don't listen to us just to clarify that these two uh don't have any expertise in anything do you two have a a hunch for why

people respond so positively to you?

What's your thinking?

I have a couple.

First of all, all of this was an accident of the pandemic, Dana.

People were terrified.

They were stuck in their homes.

And I think we were unknowingly an antidote to the youth bias in the culture.

So that for people that couldn't get to their parents or couldn't get to their grandparents and they were stuck and terrified, one, we seemed to offer some comfort or warmth.

And I think

it shows that people don't have in general the bias about elders or people with white hair that the culture would think that you do.

You know, I've been furious about this for years since I was like 50.

Do you know?

Because you don't.

If somebody would offer her a seat on the subway, that was a big mistake.

She would tear into them like a really crazy person, but now it's a little different.

I used to pity these people that would try to help her.

No, there was this one woman once.

I remember I'd just come from working two hours in the gym.

I get on the subway.

I have my New York Times in one hand.

I'm holding on to the bar of the other.

And I see this young woman get up.

And I actually thought, oh, that's really nice that she notices some older person kneading.

Is that for me?

Right.

You're standing up for me.

I just was at the gym for two hours.

And she's like, I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry.

But that was maybe 15 years ago.

And now you're like, now I'm like,

excuse me.

Excuse me.

I can't figure it out.

I don't understand it.

I understand.

But the logic.

I understand understand it, the logic of why they would pay attention to us.

I mean, there's a lot in this world I don't understand.

And that is one of the things because we're just ourselves.

But it brings it back to the mess that you talked about, David.

I think

that authenticity, we're not selling anything.

I have no brand of makeup, obviously.

That's not always true.

Sometimes you're selling yourself.

Sometimes,

yeah, what do you mean?

Sometimes I take a little kombucha, you know, like I'm drinking it or something, and then I can't say it right.

Then he makes fun of me, and the next thing we know, we get boxes of it.

That's not what I mean.

Those are happy little accidents where you get a free thing, but you're not sponsoring anything.

I mean that we started sharing things with no intention of self-promotion or anything.

And that's like a very pure thing.

And the initial intention was to get more eyeballs on posts about the International Rescue Committee and support of refugees and around the world, which they've always been attached to.

But as time time goes on and you build a following, then sometimes you do have a project that you're making a post about or sharing.

I mean, mom's got, you know, a play she wrote coming up.

So we do,

I just want to be truthful.

Like, we're not selling anything.

But the purity of the initial thing can change.

Yeah, and it has

changed.

The reason that we're here today, in truth, is we're having the lawns sale.

And we're hoping that we'll give the address address before it's over.

We have wonderful items, and we're hoping that

you can come gently use some broken, but you know, you can get them fixed.

Lovely bench.

Lovely bench.

The bench.

Oh, don't talk to me about the bench.

I'd give that one away.

A bench that she insisted on buying that nobody sits on because it will cripple you instantaneously.

It's really

in the center of the room.

The kids don't love sitting.

They love standing on it.

They never sit on it.

Stop her.

They don't.

Feel free to stop them anytime.

David, come over, set up a camera, you know, night vision, whatever you want.

The children don't sit on the bench.

David, to get you through this family experience, we give you Kirplanes to just stop.

No one sits on the bench.

I have to say, even just in the few minutes we've been talking, the way that you two instinctively held each other's hand, the way that you, Catherine, patted down Mandy's hair.

What's left?

What's left of Mandy's hair?

It's just very sweet.

And I'm curious: are there ways in which you see your dynamics as having changed over the years?

Because the way I often think about it is early in a relationship is when the dynamics get established, and then it seems to me that things solidify, and everyone plays their roles, and there's not a ton of deviation.

But I've only been married 14 years.

They be beginning.

Can you tell me about how your sort of roles with each other have changed or not over time?

You go first.

I think

there is so much Sturman drawn in the beginning of relationship, do you know?

I mean, I'm six years older than him.

I had had two serious relationships when I met him.

I considered him, I mean, the only thing I knew when I was 20, I was going to have life in the theater.

I was going to be a mom.

Different than my mom, but I was going to be a mom.

And I was never going to have anything to do personally with an actor because I thought one in the family was enough.

I was right.

You know, at our first date, very first date, he said, before we eat, I'm going to tell you, I'm going to marry you.

Right.

Okay.

I had not had coffee with this guy.

I really thought he was insane.

And I said, well, I don't believe in marriage, so that's not going to happen.

Six weeks later, after we've been dating, he said, let's just stop.

Stop dating.

Stop dating.

Yeah.

So he went from, I'm going to marry you.

To let's stop dating.

Okay.

I think he wanted to still sleep together, but basically stop having a relationship.

It was not my thing.

I don't know if that's true.

I'd just like to have my lawyer here for the rest of this conversation.

Go ahead.

We went to the reflecting pool at Lincoln Center.

And, you know, I said, if you can let go of the future and if I can let go of the past and we can just be in this moment, let's take it day to day.

And here we are, 45 years later.

It's all that you don't know, David.

You know, am I going to find my person?

Then the person you find is totally not who you expected to find.

And it's all the unknowns that you, you know, our rabbi at our wedding said marriage is a real leap of faith.

And just beginning careers and children and figuring out what our differences were, there was just so much high drama and joy and passion and love, but it was also exhausting.

Well, I knew, go on, sorry, I thought you were done.

Maybe.

You asked about what's the trick?

What's the secret?

Why are we together?

Or how the roles that you play with each other either have or haven't changed over time.

Have or haven't changed.

Two things that I've noticed.

One,

there were times where things got pretty scary, ugly, frightening.

Maybe we made a mistake.

We were separated, I think, on two occasions.

I think once for six or eight weeks, and then once for like two or three months.

Right.

You refer to these periods as the troubles.

The troubles.

As I troubles.

Right.

I got it pretty close.

But we saw each other every day.

We spoke every day.

We met at popovers on Columbus every day,

next to Barney Greengrass.

On Amsterdam, next to Barney Greengrass.

Every day, every day we were together.

We couldn't be apart.

And so on our 25th wedding anniversary, she gave me this wedding ring, this silver one, and it has two bumps on it to represent our two troubles.

And from those troubled times,

I feel

during the previous times when somebody said this to me once, and I thought it was perfect, when you can't even watch the person you chose to live your life with eat.

It so repulses you.

You can't watch them eat.

You don't want to hear them speak.

You're just looking for the exit constantly.

I just learned, let it go and move on, as the song says.

But something's happened.

He's talking about the song from Sunday in the Park with George, not frozen.

That's what I thought.

Oh, no.

Frozen?

Which is a different frozen.

It's a different gross.

It's letting go from the movement.

No, it's called move.

But the key thing that I feel has changed

is

time

and what it means.

And Catherine

would, like she said, be in a rage if you tried to give her a seat on the subway and, you know, things that had to do with age or whatever.

But she has stopped obsessing and screaming about aging and being terrified.

What's changed is she's not worrying

about

time like she used to.

She recognizes it is moving way too fast.

And if we worry about it and complain about it, we're going to miss a lot.

And that has changed exponentially.

And I...

I'm so grateful that we've accepted

that

we're older and there's such such benefits to it.

So we're always saying to each other, if you could be whatever age, what age would you be?

And I would say, well, I'd be 25, the age I was when I met you, only if I can know what I know now.

You take away what I know now, all bets are off.

And I just talk to me.

Well, you're looking skeptical.

No, I just, I mean, it's

completely different response.

I'm just listening to this, seeing what parts of it I identify with or not.

I mean, the question was what has changed over the years David and first of all it's all the things you don't know.

It's are you going to be are you going to be able to have children?

Are you going to be a good parent?

Are you going to still be able to work?

Are we going to be able to make a living?

Do you know?

And it's also, I think at the beginning of the relationship, you make a lot of assumptions about commonalities because there were certain things that drew you together.

Right.

And you make big assumptions about what those things are.

And then when you commit to each other, you discover: oh, I'm a social person.

He is not a social person.

Do you know?

I love people.

He is more.

He likes some people.

He likes some people.

I was going to say, I was going to say selective.

Okay, one.

You know.

More than I was more like.

Rosemary.

Ellen.

Rosemary.

In the abstract.

They all got in the article.

Look them up.

You know, so I think the

inherent tension of not knowing all of those things brings out the best and worst in you, you know?

I mean, it was very funny.

Recently, we were talking about when the kids were little, and I mentioned that when he was four days old and our older son was four, Mandy came to Central Park.

We had a birthday party for the four-year-old and then kissed us goodbye and went to Europe for several months to do Princess Pride.

So we were talking about, and I was alone with the four-day animal, and Mandy went, I would never have done that.

That didn't happen.

I said, honey, who you are now wouldn't have done it.

But who you were then, yes, yes, you did that.

No, Catherine, that's not.

And I had to go back and

be fact-checked pretty easily.

But you got to move exactly when you were.

I came when he was three months old, honey.

So you didn't see him for three months.

And when we arrived.

I was still sore about it.

Yeah.

Get it.

Have you seen a change in your parents' relationship?

Yeah, totally.

I mean, in their troubled times, there was a period when they split up and I was a teenager, I think.

16.

Yeah, that I was sort of, at a certain point, happy for them.

I was like, these are two people who were so enmeshed and codependent and like might be having an experience in their adulthood where they could get to discover who they are without the other.

And that could be really great for both of them in different ways.

And then I saw two people who were trying to separate completely incapable of being away from the other.

And I remember thinking as they were getting back together, like, oh, I just kind of gotten used to the idea of them being part.

I was like, kind of excited for how they'd develop in ways that maybe they couldn't while stuck together.

But that was a long time ago.

And we haven't developed at all.

That was 20 years ago.

Yeah.

And now I've gotten to see two Mushuguna people, you know, stick it out

for better and worse.

And,

you know, know, that's a beautiful thing.

Catherine, you were going to.

That's what I was going to say.

One of the bigger things is, I think in the initial coming together of a relationship, you assume you're one person,

which is a big error.

You know, I never understood that, that settling down thing.

You know, I thought of dust mites when you shake a blanket.

It's like who he is, who I am, and who we are as a couple.

And I think it takes a long time to figure out

that you have permission to be your totally different selves and who you are as a couple.

And so I would always,

you know, I understand I would try and fix what ailed him for years, which just usually had the opposite effect of making things worse.

And I would also try and talk him into,

you know, things that I wanted him to be at.

And now you're doing that less.

And I do it a lot less.

I just say whatever you need to do.

And if he has permission to do whatever he needs to do, he most often shows up than not.

So it is not being threatened by the fact that you're you're two really different people that have chosen to share a life and make a life and make family together.

But there's...

Mandy, you have something to add.

Yeah.

Two things I would agree with.

It brings me back to the word fix, but also I want to talk about your earlier question, being together.

I wish for everyone to have a companion to go through life with, to do nothing with, to have in the other room, to just think about calling.

You don't have to be married.

I don't care what the circumstances are, but someone.

When you meet that someone,

if you're lucky, which many people are, and you feel that something that you cannot put into words,

that is what you should hope and pray for and be available to the possibility of that taking place in your existence.

And the thank God part of that is when the shit hits the fan, And in every relationship, if it's worth its salt, it will hit the fan.

You will reflect on that moment in the beginning of hello, where where you couldn't put into words what you felt about that person.

And that is the gold.

The other word you hit on that I heard, I think Catherine said it was fix.

Fix.

The word fix.

And my teacher for the past, since about 2005 or 6, started teaching me the Buddhist idea

of stay in the moment.

and don't be in the past or the future and don't try to fix what's wrong.

You know, you fix things in every imaginable way.

You drink it, you drink yourself, you eat yourself, you divorce, you run away, fix, fix, fix, as opposed to staying in that discomfort.

One of my favorite things was with little babies, when they fall down, you say, let me kiss it and make it go away.

Don't make it go away.

Kiss it if you want to, but it doesn't have to go away.

It hurts.

It's okay.

And I just think the whole world would be better if we learned to stay with our discomfort, learn to live with it, stop running away, stop trying to fix everything.

And I could go on, but that's

you made me emotional.

I somehow wanted to.

Because that's a teaching of my life.

If I was on my deathbed and you said anything lasting other than love to the kids and grandkids and Catherine, I would try to communicate this idea of just be in this moment.

Oh, Catherine, go ahead.

You know, I can sum up when a huge difference just occurs to me.

Yes, go for it.

And then I do have another question.

No, it's just very funny.

I used to want to share my feelings about politics, about a book I read, about an article, about a person, and it would drive him crazy.

And he would say, I just want you to be a body in the other room.

And I would be furious.

A body in the other room.

Get one of those dolls they have in.

Which we looked into.

Yeah.

And now it's just so funny.

I found that so insulting in the beginning of our relationship.

It sounds dehumanizing.

Just dehumanizing and not seeing me and my needs and screw you.

Now

it's, I'm really, I know what that means, the comfort of just having somebody you know really well.

There's company there and we're sharing the same space, but very comfortably being each other's body in the other room and knowing we're there.

This is sort of a

difficult question, but you know, so all three of you are,

I was about to say obviously, but I don't want to assume anything, but you're Jewish.

Yes.

And you

are also politically active in your way, including on social media.

And, you know, you talk about your hope for a ceasefire in Gaza and the tragedy of that situation.

And then that's on one side.

And then by nature of being Jewish at this moment in history, anti-Semitism is obviously heightened right now.

It can be a conflicting set of feelings for Jewish people.

I'm Jewish also.

And I just wonder, are you thinking or feeling any differently about what it means for you to be Jewish in this moment?

Yes, I am.

I'll let them go first because I don't want to take up too much time.

I've always loved the concept tekino lam, to heal the world.

If you save one life, you save the world and so

my

i hate the way some people are using anti-semitism

claims as a claim for anybody that is critical about a certain policy you know as far as i am concerned compassion for every person in gaza is very Jewish.

And the fact that I abhor the policies

of the leader of that country does not mean I'm a self-hating Jew or I'm anti-Semitic.

You mean Metanyahu when you say the leader of that country?

Benjamin Netanyahu.

Yes.

Yes.

I feel

this is the behavior, the politics of what he's doing is the worst thing for Jewish people.

It's like lighting a candle for anybody that has any anti-Semitic feelings.

It's creating a generation of wounded and hurt.

kids who will understandably be very angry.

So that is how I feel.

And I feel

I really feel deeply troubled and horrified by what is happening in my name because it is the opposite.

You know, it's that old hurt people, hurt people thing.

I see people acting the way

they supposedly created a place out of the horror of the hatred.

So I am,

I am very proud of every Jewish person that stands up for the humanity of people in the Middle East.

May I?

Do you want to speak first?

Please.

So I'm sitting here praying as I'm listening to Catherine.

I'm asking Hashem, who I like to refer to,

and ask for his strength for me to be of service to your question.

I'm going to say several things, and if I go all over the place for a minute, I'll try to make sense.

Okay.

I want to take you back for a moment.

I came back from Europe after working.

We had our firstborn son, Isaac Grody Hyphen-Patinkin, and he was about this big on my arm.

He came to about here.

He would suck on my bicep and give me a hickey.

And I was asked to sing the Israeli national anthem at One Dog Hammerschold Square in front of the UN for a Soviet jewelry rally, I believe.

I was on the podium with my baby son.

Mario Cuomo was on my right.

Ed Koch was sitting behind us, and a stranger was next to me.

This stranger next to me,

I didn't know who he was, but he had a very

distasteful vibe.

And I took my baby son, and I moved him from my left arm between the stranger and me to my right arm.

So my baby would be between Mario Cuomo and me, not between this man.

This man got up to speak, and I remembered that

he was

introduced as the ambassador from Israel to the United Nations.

And I remember sitting there because I'd often hear my parents say this phrase on the south side of Chicago in the Jewish community.

That's good for the Jews, or that's bad for the Jews.

And in my mind, out loud, I heard, that's the definition of what's bad for the Jews.

And I I didn't know this man.

I knew nothing about him.

I just knew he was a threat to my child.

And later I learned that that man was named Benjamin Netanyahu.

And I loved that I had no idea who he was or what his position meant.

You felt the vibes.

I felt it.

Then...

I don't remember exactly when.

I think what age it was a while ago, 10, 15 years ago, I was in Philadelphia getting ready to do a concert with my dear friend Patty Lapone.

And then I go up to the hotel room.

Catherine was in the hotel room.

And the movie The Princess Bride was on.

She was watching it.

And just as I walked in the room is that final scene in the movie where Inigo is sitting by the window with a man in black.

And the man in black asks Inigo, would he like to be the next Dread Pirate Roberts?

And the Inigo Montoya actor, who was me, said these words, which I did not really know what they meant, that William Goldman wrote, which I think are the singular greatest words I've ever read.

And those words are, were, and always will be.

You know, I have been in the revenge business so long,

now that it's over, I do not know what to do with the rest of my life.

And I ask Jews

all over the world.

to consider what this man, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his right-wing government is doing to the Jewish people all over the world.

They are endangering not only the state of Israel, which I care deeply about and want to exist, but they are endangering the Jewish population all over the world.

He is the most dangerous thing, not just since October 7th.

It has been a deeply troubled situation.

And endangering the Jews by endangering

those in Gaza.

And to watch what is happening for the Jewish people, to allow this to happen to children and civilians of all ages in Gaza is unconscionable and unthinkable.

And I ask you Jews everywhere all over the world to spend some time alone and think,

is this

acceptable and sustainable?

How could it be done to you and your ancestors?

And you turn around

and you do it to someone else.

I appreciate all of your honesty.

And

sorry.

I think I'm going to take a sip of water.

Just give a moment.

Yeah.

And then, you know, we're.

Whether Jewish, not Jewish, whatever you believe politically or about the world, it feel like we're living at a moment that's sort of pervasive with uncertainty and despair.

But I think it's hugely important just as a

person, as best you can to not succumb to despair.

And I want to know where and how you find joy in the world.

Can I chime in?

Yes.

I think one little place I find joy in the world and that I remind my parents often is just,

you know, being very proud of them when they speak up

for

things they believe in.

And

it always feels good to remind them that I'm

always proudest of them when they speak for people who have less power and are being harmed.

And Catherine?

Yeah.

You have more power.

No, that's that's just our grandchildren.

Yeah.

Tell me about your children on the floor.

Tell me about your grandchildren.

They, they, it's such a strange thing.

I still can't get over that.

I'm old enough to be a grandmother.

I mean, my parents didn't get that gift.

And so I am very grateful for it.

And the sense of wonder, my grandson, my granddaughter is nine months old, but she's just simply, she sees you and she goes,

and i remember being out on a deck when a sudden downpour happened i mean just you know one of those things like god dumped water big water and and our grandson was 18 months old and he was there and his response david was just

he thought it was so extraordinary that this thing was happening.

And it was the same thing.

I remember walking with him in the fall and he said, Look, Granji, the leaves are yellow.

And I remember thinking, yeah, it's going to be one of those yellow falls.

Where's the red?

And I stopped myself and went, Jesus, what is with me?

That is your lesson.

That is my lesson.

That's this chapter.

This is it.

To notice the yellow is it.

To notice the yellow leaves and to

suck in and drink that wonder and joy.

And that is my antidote to grief.

I think you guys find joy still in, you know, the creative practice.

I mean, dad, with your, you know, singing and mom.

I mean, we had an incredible time making this TV pilot together and writing this show, which came out of

their incredibly generous willingness to let me and my dear friend and collaborator, you and Wright, take their most vulnerable lived experiences and write stories with them and turn them around and say, look, these things that felt painful or embarrassing or useless or a waste of your time or the family's time can actually be like relatable, hilarious, connective tissue for others.

And the show is essentially, I saw the pilot.

It's essentially a fictionalized version of your relationship.

Yes.

There's a scene in the pilot where you two or your characters.

Yeah,

you and your characters are doing what we take responsibility for.

You have this big argument

and you, Catherine, have this line that you say to Mandy where, you know, it's not always easy because you take up all the space.

Your feelings are so big.

Your feelings are so big.

Yours have to shrink.

You know, assuming that you figured out how to work through that problem or manage it, how did you do that?

I think it was a weird trick.

It was very easy to avoid my own Michigan house

because his was so big.

And, you know, I once said publicly, I was supposed to marry a rock so I could be the lunatic I am.

And instead, I married a lunatic so I have to pretend to be a rock.

And

don't forget to say I'm not always.

And he's not always a lunatic at all.

And in fact,

I have my own lunaticness.

And I think that

I realized at a certain point that I could avoid dealing and improving on my issues.

I could avoid it because I was so busy taking care of

your children, and I do that with my children.

I've said to you, I said, Mom, you know, I really also want to be good friends with you, but that involves being able to communicate things that aren't positive in my life.

And it's very difficult to do that with you when you're so ravenous to take your children's problems or anybody else's problems and then blow them up and make them a bigger thing and repeat them to your friends and live in them so that you can avoid your own life.

Yeah.

And I think that's something.

Look, careful.

So that's an improvement right yeah sort of we're getting that yeah i uh

i actually had emailed gideon yeah maybe last week or something and asked him because he obviously knows you a lot more than i do he knows as well uh you know are there any things that might be interesting to ask your parents that they haven't been asked before and he sent me a wow a long pretty long list a long

list comprehensive you feel free to publish it as a book

and one of the things that he brought up was that,

you know, he's noticed that you, Catherine, seem to have developed an interest in sort of expanding the mind a little bit.

You know, sort of he said that you've gotten into astrology, you're learning about string theory.

I think the way you put it was, you know, you're that you, Catherine, are toying with the idea of taking psychedelic mushrooms.

And I want to know, sort of, do you, do you think about

the balance between pushing yourself intellectually and emotionally as you get older versus a completely understandable comfort with

just being who you are and

kind of settling down,

not in a negative way, you know?

There's an aspect of this is who I am.

All those questions about will I find love?

Will I be a mother?

Will I have a career?

Those have all been settled.

But I don't feel who I am sitting here right now is who I want to be in 10 years or 20 years.

I cannot, I'm so drawn to physics, the concept of one thing being in two places at one time.

There was this article in the Atlantic, June of 23, called something about we're all part of the cosmos, but you still have to buy groceries.

I cannot tell you, Dave, that my brain is not able to really grok those concepts, but I am so drawn to the description that we're all part of a cosmic hum, that energy really doesn't ever die.

I read this article and I said to my director, we were doing a workshop, I have to put this in tonight.

This is the thing about time.

It's about time.

We don't ever really die.

Ovid was right.

Whitman, they're all right.

It just transforms.

And she's just going, what?

What are you talking about?

And I did try and put it in that night and it was a complete disaster.

But I want not to be afraid to learn new things or change my mind about things.

You know, I am very drawn to the idea of micro-dosing, you know?

Very drawn to the idea of all kinds of dosing.

You just haven't crossed over yet.

Yeah, right.

I've learned something that works every time, which is what I'm saying.

Oh, no, honey, it's not going to work now.

It will work.

No, it won't.

No.

Not if I tell you I adore you.

Wait, tell me.

She laughs whenever I say I adore her.

She can't stop laughing when I say I adore her.

You were going to say something else again.

No, I want to just tell her I adore you.

Anytime I say I adore you, she starts laughing.

It's just a very funny thing.

Why do you think that is?

Because, honey, it does not, the word does not accurately describe your feelings toward me on a 24-hour basis.

But Mandy,

how do you think about, at your age, balancing, you know, still wanting to grow and learn new things and

change

versus

an understandable inclination maybe to just rest in who you are?

Resting in who I am will bore the shit out of me and dissatisfy me.

I have

so much growth to do.

I came to puberty very late.

Mark Freife in the sixth or seventh grade said, What's the matter, thinking you don't have any pubic hair yet?

Well, I've just tried to.

Well, you're speaking metaphorically, at first.

No, no, no.

You meant that literally.

I tried to get back at Mark Freifeld forever because I was late to everything.

And I'm late to being a human being and growing up and changing.

I

struggle continuously with

panic attacks, with anxiety, with trying to live that lesson of being in the moment and not going back and not going forward, but being right here.

And I...

I want to get better at it before it's over.

And you've gotten so much better at it.

You have that shit under control

in a way that you can't see or understand because you live with that.

But those around you see a person who has learned that part of themselves and learned to manage it and learn to deal with it.

Thank you.

Beautifully.

Thank you.

But when, oh, gosh, where was I going?

Where was I going?

Oh, but Catherine, Catherine, sometimes, and she's gotten so much better at it since all the changes have gone on in the world.

She'll go to sleep reading every

difficult article, you know, dark stuff, every podcast, And then she goes to sleep crying, wakes up crying, and she wakes up with me.

So I'm the first one who hears the tears and needs to be held and everything.

And we're begging her as a family, please stop reading everything.

Please stop listening to the podcast.

Please put other things in your way.

It's an addiction that she works very hard at trying to break.

I mean, she's not alone.

She's not alone with her own addiction.

But there are moments that are going on in this world, in this life at this moment, globally, home, everywhere, in our personal lives, in every aspect, that put me in the reverse gravity chair the other day.

And I'm upside down with my head back, and I can't, and I'm weeping for maybe 35, 45 minutes.

And Catherine, and I couldn't control it.

I just couldn't hold, I just couldn't hold on anymore.

But she just sat next to me, didn't say a word, and just held my hand.

And I started to get it together, and then it would come again.

The floods would come again.

And she just held my hand till we were done.

And then we went to the kitchen, I think, and we had more of her number one dish, which was rice and vegetables that you have to put on so much dish and special sauce that Gideon brings to make it taste like something.

But we made it through it.

And

I believe there's so much good ahead.

Go ahead and ask the next question.

You know, you pretty clearly let it all hang out and do it in public.

Is there anything that you think that you would like people to know about the Patinkin-Grody family that maybe they don't already?

We've given up on boundaries.

No, we'd like to take things back.

Yeah, we'd like to take things back.

They know too much.

They do.

Yeah.

I believe in boundaries, actually, between public and private.

But it's very, we just stretch them.

After the break, I get more quality time time with the Grody Patink family.

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You guys can hear me okay?

Yeah.

Yes.

All right.

Mandy and Catherine, where are you?

We are in upstate New York at the place we've had since our older son was two.

And we came very, very periodically because of our unpredictable schedules.

And then in the pandemic, this is where we came to wade that out

i am a deeply urban person so i'm still adjusting gideon where are you are you at home uh no i'm in a big um

artists uh collective uh studio in jersey city

what are you doing there kid

i am uh doing a variety of things

That is a child's answer to a parent if I ever heard one.

Always undercover.

When we spoke last time, I had asked if there are things that are kind of off limits for the public.

And you said there are boundaries.

So without being specific, where are your boundaries for what you'll share with the public?

Go ahead.

Go ahead, Ken.

Well, I've

yeah, it's a good question.

I find that you often put up a boundary for yourself.

And as soon as you claim there's something or a space you don't want to share or talk about, you might enter into that space.

But it's about knowing that you can feel you don't have to talk about anything that allows you to talk about more than you expect.

Would you agree?

No photographs and or videos of our grandchildren.

is certainly one.

Well, sometimes we say name, I think we have, but no videos, that's one thing.

And

just an endless list of all the things that are deeply personal and deeply private in both our personal lives, our family lives with our children, our lives individually.

Professional.

Professional things.

The list is

things that are just too private.

It seems like we'll talk about anything, but we're very selective.

And the beauty, which we do not have the luxury of while we talk to you, is when we do social media or anything, social media particularly, Gideon is also the editor, not just the interviewer.

And that gives a great sense of safety.

You know,

it's respecting the privacy.

We've been very open about what we call our troubles, our true separations, you know, years ago.

But I'm not going into the specifics of that.

The only people that need to know about is me and him and, you know, what we want to share with our kids.

So that's an area, you know.

I once did a play years ago at the public called falling apart together because i was frustrated with people being together for two years separating having nothing marriage for two years separating and i wanted to show how a family could go through wonderful things horrible things and then enfold all of that in their story and i was insensitive i used my kids real names because i was advised to

I thought they were years away from how I was portraying them.

And I really learned a lesson, David, about respecting

my sense of my privacy about my life is one thing, but I really have to respect what they feel comfortable sharing and not sharing.

Catherine, you did talk about this idea of,

I think the way you put it was lunatics and rocks, and how you're maybe more naturally a lunatic, or you kind of had to be a rock.

Yeah.

How did you learn to be a rock?

God, David, you ask really good questions.

I think I love this guy a lot and I loved, I really needed my family to be an intact family because my parents died when I was 25.

And I think I didn't realize how much that impacted me in terms of family.

Separation was kind of death, you know.

And I honestly think even though I have lunatic qualities, I am also, even though I find it boring, I'm I'm kind of a rock.

You know, I kind of naturally am a rock.

You're a pretty rock.

Thank you.

I mean, therapy helps.

Oh, yeah.

Therapy helps.

And having to be where your kids need you to be, you know, they gave a structure.

That was sort of a rock-like place, too.

Gideon, from our brief time together, you sure seem like a rock.

Thank you.

Do you have any lunatic in you?

My, he was talking to me.

Oh,

you know, that's actually true, Gideon and Gideon.

Our sons are more rocks than either of us could ever be.

Let Gideon answer the question.

Okay.

He was talking to Gideon.

He's asking, Do I have any lunatic in me?

I mean, you know, my family would probably have a different response to this question, as would my partner, but

I think think

I definitely get

very like hot and tense inside.

I think that's in part a result of having like very emotional parents and maybe

countering that.

So I think most of my lunatic is tight and contained within me.

Maybe that's my

the toxic masculinity influence.

Who knows?

Mandy, you know, I read about this

incredibly intense formative experience you had in your family as a young man where your father was ill with cancer.

And then for

some reasons, your family decided not to tell your father that it was cancer, that it was terminal.

And

you sort of all engaged in this deception in the hopes of not crushing his spirit.

And you found that experience so...

difficult or distasteful that as a result, you had a real hunger and yearning for the truth.

You only wanted honesty.

I would be very surprised if your own family dynamic, the four of you, including your other son, involved something quite as intense as that.

But do you think there is sort of a

Rosetta Stone incident for the family?

Or

something that explains the dynamics of the family?

Yeah.

Well, I can only explain it through the window of my existence.

You are correct.

It was one of, if not the singular most formative event that took place in my younger years,

that the truth means everything to me almost to a fault, because I feel that I don't deserve to live if I do a take.

while I'm making a movie with Elmo and my concentration failed while I was talking to Elmo and I'm back in my trailer, literally thinking about calling my therapist because I failed Elmo.

And that's to the degree

of what I'm dealing with here.

And when I didn't tell my father the truth that he had cancer, because my mother and his two elder sisters and the doctor and everybody who was the grown-up to 18-year-old Mandy said, you mustn't tell Daddy because he had an earlier accident where he broke his neck and it was very traumatic for him when he was like 17.

And if you tell him he has cancer, he'll probably take his life.

So, I put myself in the position to do what the grown-up said, and I never got to sit with my father to tell him the truth of his condition.

And when we lied to him and told him he had hepatitis, my father was not a fucking idiot.

He knew he didn't have hepatitis in five seconds.

And we never got that moment.

And you don't get it back.

And I'll never forgive myself for it.

And the way I deal with it is I try to be truthful to you, to my wife, to my son, to my audience, and to the world.

And it is

not hard.

It is not hard to be truthful.

I never heard that about grandpa.

I never heard that you guys told him he had hepatitis.

I didn't know that was part of it.

But I told you a million times, but maybe you didn't.

Maybe I didn't.

I don't.

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what happened.

I wish to God I could answer any of your questions without getting so intense.

I don't know how to do it.

I wish I could.

Wait, kidding, maybe you could help me bring this question home.

Let me get out the fire extinguisher.

I mean, the truth, you know, is there, is there, no, is there, do you, just in your own memory, is there a moment that you think kind of encapsulates what your family is about?

No, I think we're just as messy and complex and contradictory as like any other family that's trying to get along, trying to understand ourselves and each other.

And kind of the pathway, I think,

towards having more peace and less misunderstanding is like trying to talk to each other about our shit when we have problems with each other.

I don't think there's a singular moment.

I don't think there's a singular saying.

I think it's just a big, swirling,

beautiful mess.

I want to thank all three of you for letting me and our audience sit with you in your various feelings of discomfort and comfort and being a family.

So thank you for taking the time.

I really appreciate it.

When's the next session, David?

Well, then I start charging.

Then I start charging.

That's the Grody Patinkit family.

Catherine's one-woman show, The Unexpected Third, will be at the People's Light Theater in Malvern, Pennsylvania from September 17th to October 19th.

This conversation was produced by Wyatt Orme.

It was edited by Annabel Bacon, mixing by Sonia Herrero.

Original music by Diane Wong and Marian Lozano.

Photography by Devin Yalkin.

Our senior booker is Priya Matthew, and Seth Kelly is our senior producer.

Our executive producer is Allison Benedict.

Special thanks to Rory Walsh, Renan Barelli, Jeffrey Miranda, Nick Pittman, Maddie Masiello, Jake Silverstein, Paula Schuman, and Sam Dolnick.

If you like what you're hearing, follow or subscribe to the interview wherever you get your podcasts.

To read or listen to any of our conversations, you can always go to nytimes.com slash the interview.

And you can email us anytime at theinterview at nytimes.com.

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Subscribe at youtube.com slash at symbol the interview podcast.

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I wanted to leave well.

And I think that for me, one of the proudest things that I have in my life is how I left the show.

I'm David Marchese, and this is the interview from the New York Times.

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