Mary Steenburgen, Pt. 1

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I'll describe your side in the bathroom later on in the show.

Oh my God.

Welcome back to where everybody knows your name.

Today I'm going to be talking with my wife Mary Steenberg.

It is

incredibly hard to come up with something that reflects how much I love her in a you know, intro to a podcast.

But oh boy, do I ever.

This is going to make her squirm.

She's an amazing actor, composer.

She's my best friend,

an extraordinary grandmother.

The list goes on and on.

I should just let her, you know, speak for herself.

But,

all right.

Sorry.

See, I'm tongue-tied.

Honestly, I didn't know how much we'd have to discuss, seeing that we know each other so well.

But boy, it was a lot, actually.

So much that we divvied up this conversation into two parts.

Today's episode focuses on her upbringing and early years in Arkansas up until she started getting cast in films.

The next episode is on everything after that, especially me.

This is hard.

Anyway, here you are, Mary Steenberg.

Hello, Mary.

So weird.

Oh, you have no idea how weird this is going to get.

Oh.

Because I'm

straighthead and nervous and all of that stuff.

Well, I've never been interviewed

by my husband before.

This will be a first.

Can I just start off?

Here's my little thing to myself today.

One of my favorite moments that you and I have had

was on a dance floor

early on in our relationship, and I started to get intrigued about how well I was dancing.

And you very sweetly came up in the middle of the dance and whispered in my ear, pay attention to your fucking partner.

So,

this is my goal for myself today.

Pay attention to my fucking partner.

One would hope.

One would hope.

Hi.

Hi.

All right.

I'm going to just start this off by saying

I want to go back.

I want to go back.

I want to go back to the very kind of beginning of who

is.

Sorry.

Boy, I'm just so nervous talking to you.

This is so fucking straight.

I'm so nervous.

This is so weird.

Well, it's not my.

You literally live with me

for 30 years.

We are almost never apart.

During COVID, we never left each other's side.

And

yet, you don't know what to ask me.

And I don't know if you've done any research into me whatsoever, other than just counting on life.

Research?

Yeah.

Like you research, I watch you research all your guests.

Did you come up with anything that you don't know about me?

That's what I want to ask.

Nope.

But I'm going to find out stuff I don't know about you.

All right.

Here's two things.

First off, let me get the Dax Shepherd story.

We saw him out of the way.

We saw him the other night because we were at an event that was celebrating Kristen Bell.

And I told him that we were about to do the podcast together.

And he said, oh, wow.

Yeah,

everyone I know who

has a podcast and interviewed their wives, the first time they did it, it just turned into an out-and-out fight.

I know.

So

that kind of made me nervous right off the bat.

Yeah.

I'll settle down, by the way.

I promise you.

But here's what I would like to talk about.

I want to talk about your roots.

I want to talk about North Little Rock.

I want to talk about

who

made you, you know, and

your kind of moral compass came from those years.

And she's grinning at me like, like, what a fool.

Come on,

I'll play along.

Go on.

All right.

I I was listening to you talk to somebody, a politician on the phone, and they were,

there was an implication in the air that you,

your,

your liberal bias or whatever came from being, uh, going to Hollywood.

And you replied, actually, that's not true.

Everything I am, my moral center and all of that.

came from

North Little Rock, came from my father, the trainman, my mother, who worked as a secretary, and my aunt, who was a teacher, and my church that I went to,

you know, not just once a week, and

the times you were living in as far as civil rights and everything.

So that's where you came from and who you are.

And I'd love to just talk about that for a minute.

I know some of the stories.

But it intrigues me about you, where and how you became Mary Steenbridge and that's a good place to begin you can stop smiling now okay

um

yeah i was i was born in a little town called newport arkansas and we um we moved when i was maybe 18 months old to north little rock to

um

a little house that my sister and I still own and that family lives in.

And

my dad was a freight train conductor.

During his,

during his working life,

he suffered many heart attacks.

It was kind of crazy how many heart attacks.

How old were you?

The first one was eight years old.

And

one of my

memories

that was a very kind of,

you know, titanic memory in my life was a doctor saying to me, after talking to my mother in front of me, and then looking at me and saying, you need to be a good girl, you behave because,

you know, if you don't, that could mean something very serious for your dad.

So basically, the little girl heard,

don't do anything wrong, or your dad's going to die.

And

in my life, psychologically, there's my first life, which is zero to eight, you know, eight years old.

And then there's everything after that, because in that moment, my

understanding of the world as I knew it changed.

And my understanding of what I needed to do to keep my father alive, which was.

try to be perfect, even though I'm so, as you know, Ted, so far from being perfect.

Yeah.

Oh, sorry, sorry.

That was editorializing.

Escaped you, I know.

Yeah, so that was

kind of what I swam in for my

dad now.

My dad was this.

Who I never got to meet him.

You never got to meet him.

It's, it's, um,

he was, he was, I loved him so much.

He was a fantastic man,

very quiet, very soft-spoken, amazing sense of humor.

He didn't laugh out loud.

If he got really tickled, he silently shook and tears rolled down his cheeks.

And it was such a delicious occurrence and so contagious that I spent a lot of time trying to make that happen, you know, to just make him laugh.

And

he was

a

really

good

person

a real

man's man and it was very hard in those days when you had a you had a heart disease in those days

they treated it in such sad ways like they told him you know you can't hunt you can't fish you can't

um

you know

you can't i think they even said you can't can't make love to your wife.

You can't, there was all this like crazy shutdown of a human being to protect you.

Meanwhile, you know,

he had knowingly had bacon and eggs every single morning.

And,

you know, and my dad was the kind of person that, you know, none of us had, nobody in our family had been to college.

So

these young people that were his doctors, he would call, he would say, yes, sir, you know, yes ma'am his doctor actually for a lot a large part of it eventually was a woman who was really cool but

but um

yeah it was it was um

that was that was the way it was in our house there was a lot of fear of right of uh

that kept getting more and more frightening because he had more and more heart events.

And

so each time that happened, I think I tried to figure out what I'd done to cause that.

And the only reason I say this is that I think it's one of these things that I never hear people talk about.

People really worry when somebody gets divorced, if the child will feel like the child caused that.

But

people

need to remember to tell children that they can't stop someone from being ill.

It wasn't their fault.

And

to be mindful of their psychological life during that time, no one knew.

I felt like if I contorted myself enough, I could save him.

You know, ironically, my father died

when I was 35 years old.

And he pretty much died from lung cancer from his chewing tobacco that had been his choice.

And that he used to go out in the backyard because he didn't want us to see him do it, but he was pretty addicted to his chewing tobacco.

And

most people don't realize you can actually get lung cancer from it, not just mouth and throat.

So, boy, I've started this out on a very cheerful note.

No, no, no, but that was me.

But also just that image of your daddy, because your daddy was a trainman.

And I'd love you to talk about that because there's there's this one image you describe uh when you were very young uh of seeing your daddy on a train but yeah we we had one car

so and when my dad trainman at least in those days will get a call in the middle of the night that tell him okay now it's time for you to come to work and that call could come at 2 a.m or 3 a.m

and then

He would pack this thing called his grip, which was a little suitcase.

And he would disappear

for like two days.

He'd go to Poplar Bluff, Missouri.

That was where he worked for Missouri Pacific Railroad, which eventually became Union Pacific.

And

we would have to drive him to work.

I'd have to be bundled up and put in the back of our old Chevy because my mom couldn't dare leave me alone in the house.

And

so I just remember one morning we took him to work and it must have been just as dawn was breaking.

And

to he knew that I was awake.

And so he climbed up on top of a boxcar and I, he waved at me from the top of this boxcar and I saw my dad silhouetted against the dawn sky.

And that

has since become a song.

I know.

I wrote that later.

Kerry Jean and Luke Leir.

Yeah.

I love that image.

I love that image.

All right.

So, and your mom, talk about your mom, Nell, who I did get to meet.

Yeah.

Who I just got goosebumps as soon as I said her name.

Yeah.

She was amazing.

She was,

she was basically

a kid.

Her dad died when she was six.

And her mom had had mental health issues.

And so

when she was six years old, her memory, one of her first memories is that

some people she didn't know put her in this sort of horse-drawn wagon and drove her

to

Grubbs, Arkansas, or

within a mile of Grubbs, Arkansas, there was a little one-room school and they let her out.

She had the clothes on her back and her doll.

And they said, walk a mile down that road and there's a schoolhouse and your sister, your older half-sister is there.

She's going to look after you now.

And then they drove off.

And so this six-year-old walked down the road to her new life.

And

so my aunt, my aunt Lillian, who was her half-sister, became also this really towering figure in my life because she was an educator.

She taught in this one-room schoolhouse.

And

she taught me to read

before I even went to school.

And

she helped raise my mom.

So,

but my mom was very,

she had a lot of reasons that she could have been bitter and sad in life.

And instead, she was this

very

beautiful, smiling,

non-judgmental, non-judgmental,

A lot of what people call liberal in my life just came from my mother's love of each human she met, regardless of

how they presented themselves or what they believed.

She just, she, she was,

um,

she was a lot to live up for in some ways because she, I never saw her do a mean thing ever in my life.

She was just, she didn't, she was also quite childlike and had a unbelievable sense of humor.

So both of my parents did.

I think that's why I sought you out in life because

it was important to find someone that loved to laugh and that made me laugh, you know.

But

yeah.

They were just really good people and we didn't have much money and some years some years we had no money please tell the story of you standing next to your mom at the sink oh doing dishes together yeah i was i was i loved to read i was obsessed with books and i read

i didn't know i was reading like an actress but i but i did read as an actress like i i entered books and they became my safe world nobody died or if they did it didn't didn't, you know, it was, it was those letters on the page and it didn't wound like the things I was so scared of, you know, and so books were my beautiful world.

And so I had read a

book about a girl who was, I'd read a book called Sarah Crewe and she, you know,

it's kind of similar to The Secret Garden, I think that book.

I'd have to reread it.

It's been, you know, a very long time.

But at any rate, I was, I was

kind of

living in the book.

And I was helping my mother with the dishes.

And, and I guess I was making a lot of weird faces, which was pretty common for me.

But, um, and she looked over and she said, Mary,

what are you doing?

And I said,

I'm pretending we're poor.

And she looked at me for a long time and she goes, Mary, we are poor.

I just remember the like confusion on her face that her daughter hadn't yet caught in Dawn's bat.

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You got me coming over to your place.

Yeah, please.

Anytime.

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You know, in some ways, I didn't.

I only knew we were poor when I went to junior high school.

Like all in high school,

my mom made all my clothes and stuff.

And

I didn't really, I wasn't really,

I didn't compare myself to anybody.

But then somehow in junior high schools, in seventh grade, it was like these girls had dresses that came from stores.

Their mom didn't make.

And even though I think my clothes were probably more beautiful looking back than any of those,

they were made with so much love.

But suddenly I wanted that villager dress with the matching belts and all that crap.

And

yeah.

Mine is the label.

She gave you that literally.

Oh my God.

She was amazing.

She, I still don't understand,

you know, because when my dad couldn't work, my mom had to go to work.

My mom first worked in the school administration, and then she, then she worked at Commercial National Bank.

And her best friend at work was Vanita Clark, who's General Wesley Clark's mother.

And the two of them used to sit and brag about their kids.

And I would always say to mother,

What, what could you possibly say about me?

Like, I, I, you know, I, I was just kind of, i wasn't like a brilliant student he you know obviously went to west point and all this other stuff and then of course they tried to figure out me dating wes and i was such by then such a little hippie and wes was you know an army guy and um you know i was like mom that's never ever going to happen.

And I only dated musicians, you know, and it's funny because at one point in our lives, we served on a presidential commission together and

the commission for the selection of White House Fellows.

And Wes and I

only then got to know each other.

And, you know, I just adored him.

Yeah.

And do.

Yeah.

Go back, though, just for a second, because I want to add church.

Your church,

unlike many churches I've heard about, was a huge part of your life.

I know.

I still love it.

It's

the denomination

is called Disciples of Christ, which sounds

super intense.

And

what it really was

was

about caring for people.

It was just about

doing good in the world and

all people could be included in that love.

And,

you know, it

didn't put up barriers between people.

It didn't interpret

the Bible to be full of punishment.

It didn't, it didn't,

it genuinely felt like

Jesus was

a teacher of tolerance and love.

And that was my church.

Yeah.

And

people exemplified that in their lives.

And it wasn't just a once-a-week thing for you, right?

It wasn't a lot of fun.

No, we went a lot.

Yeah,

we went a lot.

We were there a lot.

And I sang in the choir.

And at one kind of misguided point, they let me play the um the organ which was probably not

that was probably desperate on their part but um because i really didn't know how to play the organ i still don't but um

um i loved being in the choir and my best friend um ann rogers and i were terrible gigglers and like really um the church was our playground that church we knew every inch of it And we were,

we were, we even got called out from our

pulpit, right?

Yeah.

Well, that was actually my mother and I got called out for giggling.

We got tickled.

And

it just embarrassed my father so much that he wouldn't let us sit next to each other anymore.

It had to, he had to be in the middle.

But

yeah, I, by the way,

have a serious giggling problem.

Yeah.

Yeah, you have ruined many a tale

while acting.

I know.

And it makes me, it makes me

saying it makes me think that people will think I'm not a very committed actor.

We'll get, we'll, we'll fix that later on.

Do one more story, but it's really about your church.

And it's really, really about your mom.

Um, about

um oh, yeah, yeah, please do.

I love this.

Um,

somebody came.

This is when my I heard about this from my sister that um Nancy, my

beloved sister,

that

someone came to the church

who was trans.

And

my mom at this point had to walk on a walker.

And so the person had never been there before.

And the person

came into the church and

sat down.

And I only say the person was trans because

I think that maybe somehow

this person and I don't remember or care the

details of it, but this person looked different than maybe what some of the people would have been used to before.

So

the person was sitting there alone and my mom

got up with her walker and excused herself down the aisle and went up the center aisle and sat, asked if she could sit next to

this person and

made them just said, you're so welcome here.

I'm so glad you're here.

just was there for that person.

And

that

wouldn't have occurred to my mother not to do.

So that, that was or even that she was making a gesture of any kind.

No, she never would have like told anyone she did that or anything like that.

I

only know that story from my sister, but that, but that,

you know, that she exemplified

just

love and tolerance in every

and

just

kindness right every day of her life and i i i got to witness that i got to know your mom and she was uh and she had a filthy sense of humor by the way oh filthy it was dirty nine-year-old boy filthy i know which is which is a dot definitely uh i inherited yeah yeah yes you did yeah

I saw you almost my interpretation get emotional for a split second when you started to say something about Nancy, your sister.

So let's talk about her just for a second, Not the part where you tortured her in your youth, your pre-teen years.

Not that part, but what she does for a living and how, how, you know,

the impact.

She taught in the public school system for years.

She taught first and second grade.

And the thing that's particularly beautiful about it, and about the fact that everybody that she taught

can't say enough about how she shaped their lives.

But what's really magical about it is that my sister struggled as a student when she was little and hated school.

And

they used to come and get me.

I remember particularly when I was in fifth grade and that would have been when she was starting school.

And I would need to take her home, you know, to walk home with her and look after her because she didn't she didn't want to stay in school and um

so she's she's an especially magical teacher to kids who struggle in fact she

um

uh teaches kids who are dyslexic um how to read and she's masterful at it and uh changes lives is just just a real hero to people and

um

I love her so much.

She's five and a half years younger than me.

And I've had to learn in life not to act like a mother to her because when I was a girl, because our parents weren't always at home, you know, when, when I would look after her, so I think I was an annoying big sister in many ways.

But,

but we have an amazing relationship.

Yeah.

She's fun too.

Okay.

One more thing

of this period, then we'll leap ahead.

But you also born in 53 and in 57,

I think,

North Little Rock

went through Little Rock.

Little Rock.

Yeah, Central High School.

Central High School.

Will you talk about that and what kind of impression that made on you?

I just remember as a little kid being so excited to start school.

And then school to me became

these images of people screaming and yelling

at

a kids.

And I don't think at first I realized why they were doing that because I had not

been taught

any

sort of prejudice about what someone's skin color was.

You know, that hadn't

ever been,

it wasn't something I knew existed until then.

And then

I began to realize why they were screaming and yelling at these kids, you know.

And it was,

it was scary to even think of going to school.

But but when I

did realize that I would be just fine if I went to school because of the color of my skin, it it started something in me quite young

to be aware of such things.

And I think

being raised in different parts of the South at that time, certainly in Little Rock, where the desegregation was such a

massive public

scary thing,

you either became more committed in your bigotry or you became

more committed committed against that concept.

At a very, very young age.

At a very young age.

I mean, I can't say I was an activist from the time I was a child, but by the time I was in junior high, and then,

well, junior high was the huge thing for me because

seventh grade was the year that we had black students at our school for the first time.

And there were four

black students who who

were all handpicked by their community

to

represent them all.

And you think about,

I think so much about them, one in particular, and

about

her parents.

Her mom is still alive.

So

seventh grade was when I had my first

friend

that was

black.

and she, her name was Karen Muldrow,

and

she

sat next to me in a number of classes.

And I used to stare at her, and she was very beautiful.

She was so pretty.

I had lunch with her daughter recently, and Karen, by the way, has passed.

And

which

I will,

I wish,

I hope she can hear me talking about her, but she does know how I felt about her.

But the bravery of a child, you know, to be one of four people to go to this school and to know that you're going to get called names there, and she did,

and that you're representing an awful lot of people, and she was.

the courage of her parents.

And

I remember her hands.

She had, I told her daughter, I said, Did you, do you think your mom had manicures?

And she goes, no.

And I said, because she, I had never seen such beautiful, perfect hands and nails.

You know, I like, I don't even think I knew the word manicure.

And, but, but there was something so perfect about her.

her nails and her hands.

And her hair was always perfect.

And she was, she, she was very

contained smartly you know she kind of

kept things

close you know but somehow she and I became friends and

um

and she taught me a lot and she was she was

a seminal teacher in my life

by just being herself and being so freaking brave.

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I've been on the road, so basically I've been eating in restaurants for the last month.

So I'm going to throw this to my producer, Nick Liao.

Nick.

Well, Ted, I can cook a meal for you because I've been enjoying Home Chef.

Nice.

I'm looking forward to trying the smoky barbecue Chicken Thighs, which is a good summer meal.

Smoky chicken thighs.

Smoky barbecue chicken thighs.

How does it sound?

You got me coming over to your place.

Yeah, please.

Anytime.

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Okay, that's that's I know I've left a lot out of that period of your life, your upbringing and everything, but that to me is a glimpse of

why and who you have become.

I think those were amazing building blocks to you, Mary.

But let's skip forward forward a little bit.

We'll pass over your hippie days where you were,

I think you were dating the lead guitarist in the band, lived out in a house in the middle of nowhere where people would sometimes take pot shots with a rifle at the house you are living in because you were hippies.

Right.

So

bold move.

Bold move.

You told me that you used to work the, what do you call it when you have water and color and lights.

I did the light shows.

I did the light shows with my friend

Alan.

And

it was like

a pan of water with colored oils that we would drop into it.

And this projector that did it onto the screen behind the band.

So it was, it made you feel all psychedelic without like like actually going there and that's why later in life you're very much into what do you call it color to oils and stuff oh well you don't need to like we don't have to get into the whole woo-woo thing i'll describe your side in the bathroom later on in the show oh my god i thought about it this morning well i have on orange and blue if you must out me yeah

Okay, let's skip forward.

You go

many things in high school, but then you go to Hendrix College for a year.

Yeah.

And by then, you're starting to act

in theater plays.

Yes.

Yes.

I was in, I was in,

I've somehow auditioned and got to be the lead in the play there as a

freshman.

It was called, it was the night Thoreau Spent in Jail, and I played Lydia Emerson.

Right.

And

did you know at that point, ooh, this is what I want to do?

I did, but

actors weren't real to me.

They were, they were, you know, thing, they were people I saw on TV.

There was absolutely no crossover.

It wasn't like, oh, I'd seen a film shot

in our area, although I think there might have been a few, but, but there, but there just wasn't, it wasn't a real career path for me right and yet um

this thing about reading and this obsession with

um fantasy life yeah these imaginary worlds which i still you know inhabit yes sadly for you but um

but anyway um

they they were so

important to me, I guess, and to my psyche that I kept walking toward it.

Even though in my brain,

I was going to be a teacher.

I was going to maybe learn how to teach theater or something like that.

And I did come from such a family of teachers that

was the reasonable thing.

And then some very impactful teacher told you, hey.

Yeah, this, this teacher there, Kenneth Gillum,

who directed the play,

said to, he handed me a list, which I still have, and it listed about 12 places in the United States that you could go to study to be

an actor.

One of them was where you went, Carnegie Mellon, although you're much older than me, five years.

So we wouldn't have met.

We can cut that out.

I have final cut.

Wow.

Okay.

Yeah.

So, um,

um,

yeah, so and it was called

he checked only one of those things.

Like, he didn't check Juilliard because he knew my family couldn't afford it.

And, uh, he checked the neighborhood playhouse.

And the reason he checked it mainly was that

a very great man,

Sandy Meisner,

taught there.

And so that's the only school I applied to.

And

I didn't have to audition.

I had to fly for the second time in my life.

I got on a plane and I flew to Dallas, Texas.

And I met with a man named Peter Wolf.

I remember his name, Peter Wolf.

And I just talked to him about why I wanted to be an actor, which I think it was.

pouring out of me that I actually did want to do this, you know, and

it was a little bit like saying, I want to go to the moon.

yeah

for me having not been a person who traveled or knew anything about New York

but I

I

applied

and then my I went to the post office at school every day and nothing arrived but one day my mother called and it had gone to our house and and she she hadn't opened it and I said well is it skinny or fat?

And she goes, It's pretty fat.

And

I was like, Open it.

And it said I'd been accepted to the neighborhood playhouse school of the theater.

And so,

scared.

Approached your father.

Yeah, my dad, we had told him none of this, you know, because of course we were trying to protect him from dying of another heart event.

So

we sat down down and

I said to my mom, it's probably better if you don't make it real obvious that you already know all this.

So if I'm telling both parents at the same time.

And I just remember that my mother,

my mother assumed a pose that was her.

pose of being unknowing and she crossed her ankles to the right and put her open palms on each other other on the left.

And, and it was the sweetest, like,

I've never heard these words you're about to say before.

And, and I

told them what I'd done, that I'd applied to this school to go to New York to study.

I wasn't going to finish college, like their dream that the first kid was going to go to college.

I was going to go instead and do this insane thing.

And there was just this incredibly long

silence.

And my dad said, Well,

I don't understand any of that, but we'll do everything we can to help you.

And

what he did,

oh my God, the school, the neighborhood playhouse sent the required, it was literally called the required reading list.

And it was 101 books about theater, like biographies of Sarah Bernhardt, and,

you know,

all kinds of wonky books about theater.

And so my dad and I spent a summer writing to book, you know, to bookstores because you didn't have the internet then, like trying to locate all these crazy books and me cramming them into my brain.

And I was about 10 books short, if you can believe it, of reading all that.

And

when I went up to New York and

I remember on the first day waiting and waiting and waiting for the test.

And then we finally went in the library and there was this sweet kind of dotty

woman in there who was the librarian.

And she said, were any of you able to read any?

of the books on the list.

And I thought, well, I can't tell them.

I've just spent the last like

three or four months reading a hundred books on theater.

Nobody had read those books except me, but it said required reading list.

But anyway, by the time my dad

and I had done that, you know, together, it was like this mountain we climbed together.

He was so proud of me already.

And I hadn't even gone there.

And so I went there and I worked a double-day bookstore on 53rd and 5th, which in my case was a disaster because you got a 33 and a third discount on all books.

And I couldn't survive

on just books, which is all I was spending my money on.

So

I had to stop being that.

And my friend MoMA Yashimuk helped get me a job.

uh as a waitress and we we both lied to bubbles the bartender that night and said oh yes i've waited tables before.

And Moa said, She's fabulous.

And of course, I'd never waited tables in my life.

And it was this crazy restaurant where every time you put in an order, you had to go down a flight of stairs, turn in the order, come back up, and then go back down to pick up your food.

So you're up and downstairs all night.

And of course, the first night I wore nice shoes like an idiot and didn't have my like orthopedic shoes yet that I would seven years later only wear as a waitress, you know, but anyway,

wow.

She said the next morning, it was clear that you'd never done this.

Oh, that night, at the end of the night, Bubbles said,

she goes, you got the job, but don't ever lie to me again.

Okay, so wait.

So you're going to,

having studied the same method from a different teacher, not from Sandy.

I know that it's an incredibly

intense two years, three years, two years of your life.

If you're lucky.

Right.

And you did not arrive with a pocket full of money or your parents were not able to subsidize this.

So off you are working tables.

But so you would go to school at what time?

No.

Nine.

And you'd be through at around five usually.

Right.

And that doesn't include rehearsing with your scene partners or whatever.

And then you would go to work from when to win.

Usually by 6.30, I'd be at the restaurant.

and some shifts were to 2 a.m.

and some shifts were to 4 a.m.

Okay.

I'm speeding this up just a little bit.

I know that after you got out of school, you co-founded or started something called Cracked Tokens, right?

Which was an improv comedy improv group.

With my friend Pamela Moeller, who now brilliantly runs the Neighborhood Playhouse.

Right.

Yeah, we did a comedy.

There was five of us in a comedy improv group.

And the only important person we knew in New York was

someone at the Bureau of Alcoholism.

And so they had, they sent us to

Make People Laugh that were in all the sort of halfway houses or, you know, it was like rehab.

It was, we were the rehab comedy group.

And

we like all my shows were in, you know, Bedford Stuyveson and, you know, way down.

I don't even know where all we went.

We, we just went wherever people were hurting, actually, and tried to make them laugh.

And it was terrifying.

And,

and I remember around this time seeing Lily Tomlins amazing, original

show in New York

and being so inspired by her.

And I remember doing one comedy show, and there was like some little part of me that was trying to be like Lily.

And I, I remember

the cognition in the moment.

You can't, you can't be like Lily.

You'll never make anyone laugh like Lily.

You have to only,

if you ever do make someone laugh, it'll be because you're being your deepest self, you know?

So

I just remember that

little moment.

So, all right.

So, we went fast over that time, but you are full-time waitressing at the same time you're doing after school.

You're still doing crack tokens.

It's the seventh year you've been in New York,

and you

somebody recognizes, sees you work at one.

Not just somebody,

Gene Guest,

who was Chris Guest's mom,

was casting director.

And

she and this woman, Mary Buck, who worked with her, saw me in,

we were by then at the Manhattan Theater Club, and they saw me there.

And they called me in to meet with me and then sent me to

a big casting director.

And I had this big important meeting with a casting director.

And I

it went well.

And then it was clearly at the end of the meeting.

And

I stood up to leave and I

remember

this when the story gets a little woo-woo, Ted.

So we have more woo-woo questions to come.

So you brace yourself.

Okay.

So I stood up to leave.

And as I'm about to leave, I just had a feeling that this was something and that I better turn around and ask her, are you casting anything in particular?

And she said,

yes, I'm casting two movies.

One is called Heaven Can Wait with Warren Beatty and one is called Going South with Jack Nicholson.

But I just, I can't get you in on those.

I'm so sorry.

We're, we're full up and I have very specific things that I'm supposed to, you know, criteria for who we're going to see.

And just don't think that's it.

But I really liked meeting you.

And I listened to all this, and I just said,

Well, I'd really, really like to see that script for going south.

And

she just looked at me like, What don't you understand about what I just said?

And so I kind of stumbled out the door, realizing, oh my God, I just, um,

I just blew that in a big way, you know?

So instead of leaving, I sat down for a second because somebody else had gone in there.

And I thought, if I just,

if I just slip in after this person comes out and apologize to her, maybe this, maybe I can make it okay.

So I'm looking down and I'm formulating my apology.

And there's three models across from me, by the way, who are drop dead gorgeous and all have a copy of Going South.

I can see that, you know, so I got what the whole criteria thing was.

But anyway, I said,

I just sat there trying to think of what I was going to say to her.

And I see these two feet and I hear this voice that sounds insanely like Jack Nicholson saying, are you waiting to see me?

And I thought, whoa, he sh

I thought.

I would think he would be in LA, but that really sounds like him, you know?

And I said, No, and he goes, You're not.

I said, No.

And he goes, Why not?

And I finally look up, and it is, in fact, Jack Nicholson.

And I said, Um,

I don't have a script.

And he walks over to the table, gets a script, hands it to me, and he said,

Be here at whatever time.

I don't remember now, but I think I probably like two o'clock or so in the afternoon.

And

you've got 10 minutes tomorrow.

So I stayed up all night.

I lived in a fifth floor walk up with my friend Peter Barkey.

I won't even describe how bad this apartment was, but I

got dressed in what I thought was an appropriate

thing for that character.

And then I took a cab

instead of public transportation.

And I went over there.

and it was in the Gulf and Western building, which is now

a different place.

It's a different place now.

We won't say, but it's not our favorite ex-president.

But anyway, I went up

to this place and I went inside

and

I didn't have to wait.

I went straight in and

he asked me if I was nervous.

And I said, yes.

And he goes, well, let's talk for a minute.

And then we started talking.

We started talking about basketball because both of us, I was like a big Nick's person.

He's obviously a Lakers person and talked about, I don't know, Arkansas a little bit.

And then finally,

I settled down.

We started reading and reading and reading.

And at one point, the casting director kind of knocked knocked and opened the door.

And I don't know what she thought was going on in there, but

he goes, you know what?

Cancel the next few appointments.

We're going to keep reading.

And we read every scene in the movie twice.

And then he said, so where have you been?

I said, well, I've been here, you know, for about six years.

And

he was so beautiful and kind to me.

As I was leaving, leaving, he said, can I give you a kiss?

He kissed each of my cheeks and then said,

so

I have to be honest with you, I want to direct this.

And you know what that means, don't you?

And I said, yeah, I do.

And I have no clue.

I had no clue what that meant.

But people told me that meant, I can't use.

A girl who's never done anything, whose last name is Steen Burchin.

Like, that's not going to fly.

So

anyway, I had to have that explained to me.

But I remember just quietly screaming all the way down those floors in that big tall building and thinking, well, that was that.

And that was amazing.

And, you know,

and then a few days later,

I got the message that I was going to fly to Hollywood for a screen test.

And I tested with

six other actresses, some of whom are friends of mine now, all of whom were big stars.

And

on the last day I was there, I had borrowed $1,000 from some friends in Arkansas.

My friend Kevin McConnell, who kindly, he and his wife Kathy lent me money so I could stay out there more than the one night's hotel bill they were paying for

at this Chateau Marmont, which was awesome.

Very rock and roll.

Very rock and roll.

But

I'd run out of that money because LA is expensive.

And so I went in on my way to the airport to go back to LA.

You're still doing your screen test.

I did my screen test.

And then

I went back.

Basically, the word on the street in L.A.

was there's no chance that you're going to get this part, you know, because he needs a big star.

So I was heading back to LA,

I mean, to New York for my waitressing shift at the Magic Pan, where I served crepes in a little derndal trying to make me look like a French girl, but that's all.

So, so I

went in to get the money in cash that they owed me for the one night's hotel bill so I could get from the airport into the city.

And Jack was sitting there smoking a huge cigar.

And he goes,

sit down, kid.

Don't worry about that because you're on the the payroll now.

And that was it.

Wow.

And he, he had to fight for me because Paramount said, Yeah, that's the best screen test, but you've got to pick your second choice because she's never done anything.

She has a weird last name.

You know, you pick number two, all of whom are huge stars.

And he fought for me.

He said, Then we don't do the movie.

And the movie was shut down for a few days until they relented.

and

um he he was my mentor and i owe every single thing to him just to do full circle the whole name steenburgen thing

was not just in your mind because you were called in at the very end of this process but before the studio said yes to talk to the two studio heads and

they were running you through the mill trying to figure out how they could could not use you.

Yeah.

And the last thing they said

was to change my name.

Yeah.

And

I just stuck to my guns.

And I said, look, I know it's a weird name,

Steen Virgin.

I know people mispronounce it.

But it's, I just thought about my dad, you know, and my mom and how

like unbelievably,

how much belief they'd had in me.

And I thought, I'm not going to feel the same throughout this career ahead of me with somebody else's name.

So I said, no, that's my name.

I'm not.

And

so,

and oh, as I was leaving their office, their sunken office where you had to climb up like three steps, you know, and it was like, I knew that they were not rooting for me.

And

I walked up the steps and I turned around and I said, Look, I know you can get somebody who's more famous than me, who has a better-sounding name than me, that's more experienced, and that's probably a lot prettier.

But I just want you to know you've got nothing to worry about.

And then I left.

And when I got back to Jack, because of course the secretaries all love Jack, so they told him everything that was being said in the room.

And he goes, He

has a nickname for me based on the film.

He calls me Chair.

So goes Chair.

All those idiots need to be told is that they have nothing to worry about.

Wow.

And off you go into the world of

yonder.

Yeah.

To the moon.

So because there are other things I want to talk to you about.

Are we going to talk about our marriage at all?

No.

Yes.

That's why I'm speeding through to get to me.

I'm sorry.

I've been very long-winded.

No, you haven't.

I love these stories.

And I think I, you know,

your, your upbringing and how you ended up in the movie business is

perfectly.

Yeah, but it makes perfect sense.

That's who you are.

And that's who you still are.

Can we do this, disclaim it right now on air?

This is a two-parter because I have so much to talk to you about.

I know.

We've been literally.

talking nonstop for 30 years.

But I have more.

I have more questions.

And I want people to know you as I know you, you magnificent thing.

I don't know if that's wise, but okay.

Yeah.

All right.

So we're going to come back.

Mary is now,

you know, full-blown movie star and off she goes into the world that leads to me.

But we're going to come back to that because after the me part, there's also the music part of your life.

So actually, I'm glad we're doing this as a two-parter because the music part deserves its own hour.

So I love you so much.

I'm so grateful.

And by the way, I did pay attention to my fucking partner.

You were, no, but you were mesmerizing.

And it's like, why I'm in love with you.

I just, I just listened to why I'm in love with you for an hour.

You're

amazing.

Yeah, back at you.

Okay.

All right.

We're coming back.

Make everyone sick.

No, no.

Yeah.

Barf bags to come.

All right.

Okay, that was part one of my conversation with Mary.

We're releasing part two as a special episode this Friday.

We're going to get into more of her acting career, her first marriage, and we're almost at the part where I enter the story.

So obviously things are about to get really good.

That's it for this episode.

Thanks to our friends at Team Coco.

Once again, you can subscribe to our show on your favorite podcast app, and And you can give us a great rating and review on Apple Podcasts if you have some time or the inclination.

Thank you.

See you right back here next week where everybody knows your name.

You've been listening to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson.

Sometimes.

The show is produced by me, Nick Leow.

Executive producers are Adam Sachs, Colin Anderson, Jeff Ross, and myself.

Sarah Fedorovich is our supervising producer.

Our senior producer is Matt Apodaka.

Engineering and Mixing by Joanna Samuel with support from Eduardo Perez.

Research by Alyssa Grahl.

Talent booking by Paula Davis and Gina Batista.

Our theme music is by Woody Harrelson, Anthony Gen, Mary Steenbergen, and John Osborne.

Special thanks to Willie Navarre.

We'll have more for you next time where everybody knows your name.

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