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Bonus Episode:  

ENCORE: Revisit Cagney & Lacey with Tyne Daly

Sharon Johnson: Hello, I'm Sharon Johnson.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And I'm Susan Lambert Hatem. Welcome to 80s TV Ladies. Special summer reruns. Sharon, we're supposed to be on vacation right now. Aren't you in Hawaii or Europe or somewhere?

Sharon Johnson: Oh, not yet, but I am actually out of town visiting my mom.

Susan Lambert Hatem: That's so cool. I'm going to be heading to Atlanta to see friends and family and then the summer is going to be over very soon and we'll be getting our teenager ready for his senior year of high school. Hey. What a crazy, nutty, insane few weeks it's been. Once again, the world has turned upside down and changed three times. But this latest change has made me very, very hopeful and excited.

Sharon Johnson: Me too. Kamala Harris is running for president of the United States. Let's make it happen. We are not going back. If you're so inclined, and we hope you are, you can join the Kamala Harris campaign at kamala harris.com dot.

Susan Lambert Hatem: It's amazing. $200 million in like a week and 170,000 signing up to volunteer for the campaign. People on, zooms. And it's been pretty incredible. Thank you to President Biden for being a spectacular president and once again being the true statesman we need in this time of chaos who put the good of the country over himself.

Sharon Johnson: What an incredible man. And president and his and decades of public service are unmatched. We've been so lucky to have him in the White House and I'm very.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Excited for him to finish out this term strongly.

Sharon Johnson: Absolutely.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Regardless of that, we thought it might be fun to remind you of what it was like back in the summer of 80s television by giving you some reruns of our favorite episodes.

Sharon Johnson: And just like the networks 40 years ago, we'll be back in September with brand new episodes. I have to say, covering Cagney and Lacey was a real dream. And we got to talk to the trifecta of creator Barney Rosenzweig, star Sharon Gless, and star Tyne Daly, who created the role of police detective Mary Beth Lacey. We re ran the Sharon Gless interview in May during podcast move in evolutions and y'all loved it. The Tyne Daly episode was truly a special interview for us as we got to interview her in our studio in person.

Susan Lambert Hatem: We're so thrilled to be able to rerun it for you today. Please enjoy this conversation with the incredible actress, activist, human and the inspiration for us. Miss Tyne Daly.

Sharon Johnson: Have a great summer.

[Singing] Amy Englehardt: 80s TV Ladies, So sexy and so pretty. 80s TV Ladies, Steppin’ out into the city. 80s TV Ladies, often treated kind of sh-[wolf whistle]. Working hard for the money in a man’s world. 80s TV Ladies!

Susan Lambert Hatem: Hello and welcome to 80s TV Ladies. I'm Susan Lambert Hatem.

Sharon Johnson: And I'm Sharon Johnson.

Susan Lambert Hatem: We hope you are hanging in there and finding joy. We are super thrilled to be looking at Cagney and Lacey.

Sharon Johnson: We have such a very special guest today who is here in our recording studio right now.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And by our recording studio we meet my garage office.

Sharon Johnson: That's correct. I, Cagney and Lacey was a groundbreaking 80s show starring Sharon Glass and Tyne Daley that won 14 Emmys.

Susan Lambert Hatem: This detective drama ran from 1982 to 1988 on CBS and examines both the cases and personal lives of two female police officers in New York City. It also spawned several tv movies. Let's get started.

Sharon Johnson: So to that end, our very special guest today is Tyne Daly. She is a stage and screen actress and a multi-Emmy winner. She won a Tony Award for best actress in a musical playing Mama Rose in Gypsy on Broadway. She has been inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.

Susan Lambert Hatem: She may be best known for her role as Mary Beth Lacey in television's Cagney and Lacey. She also starred as Amy's mom Maxine in six seasons of Judging Amy and has done multiple television appearances, stage productions and movies from the 1976 3rd Dirty Harry movie, The Enforcer, where she played a female cop to homecoming. She's also an activist and co-hosted A Night with Sharon Gless at a reading of the play “Row” by Lisa Loomer that was at the Fountain Theater here in Los Angeles.

Sharon Johnson: Tyne Daly has won six Emmys, four for Cagney and Lacey playing Lacey, of course, one for Christy, the one season period drama, and one for judging Amy.

Susan Lambert Hatem: All right, well, welcome to the show Tyne Daly.

Sharon Johnson: Thank you so much for joining us. We're very excited to have this discussion with you.

Tyne Daly: I'm very excited for joining because I have a very difficult time in the 21st century, with, everything being filmed and everything being sent through the air and

00:05:00

Tyne Daly: everything being electronic. When you get old, which I hope you do because it's a really interesting time of life, but when you get old, there'll be a whole lot of stuff to adjust to that you will not have seen before. I promise you.

Sharon Johnson: I'm already finding that things that are happening where I just find myself going, I don't understand the need for this or why we should be pushed to that or what the heck is that, you know? And why is anybody interested kind of thing?

Tyne Daly: Well, I think I began to tell you. I'm asking people to give me one word on the 21st century. So far. We're not a quarter of a century old century. We're moving in on it though. But a little assessment about. If you had to find a descriptive. If you were a poet, for instance. A thing to say. This century, you get one word. It's very tricky.

Sharon Johnson: Oh, yeah.

Tyne Daly: It is. You don't have to answer immediately, however. Perhaps at the end of our time, because I. And if you'd like to know mine now, I'll tell it to you. Yes. Or I could wait. Let's wait.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Should we come at the end?

Tyne Daly: Let's wait.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Okay.

Tyne Daly: Because I. So, where are we now?

Susan Lambert Hatem: Okay. Well, I do want to talk about the beginning of your career first, if we can.

Tyne Daly: sure.

Susan Lambert Hatem: You come from an acting family?

Tyne Daly: I went in the family business, on base. It was the only way to get their attention. there was a young, There was a theatre, a local theater. The Antrim players. From the place we moved after. Well, there was a lot of schools before that. We moved around a lot. When we settled down in Suffern, New York, there was the Antrim Players. Which just closed their doors forever. Which makes me very sad. They're going to turn into a church. Oh, dear. And, But they had a program for kids and, for grownups. And I got to escape there and do my apprenticeship. and then played, there a little bit. Then the parents, you know, they were parents. They wanted me to go to college. They wanted me to finish high school. I mean, they were. They were so. They pinched me so hard. Because by the time I got to the Antrim Players, I wanted to do it all. So I did. I finished high school barely, on the good graces of a history teacher. Who said, basically, oh, get out of here, you know, with your D minus. I went to, Brandeis University for a quick year. Because there was a man from American History of the Theatre. Named Jasper Deeter.

Sharon Johnson: Jasper.

Tyne Daly: Either a ballplayer or Theatre, right? One or the other a Jasper Deeter. And, then he was gone after my freshman year as a teacher. Although I learned a great deal from him, he was one of my lucky teachers. and then I found out they weren't going to let me on the stage until I was a junior.

Sharon Johnson: Really.

Tyne Daly: I said, the hell you say. So I went home to the parents and said, I quit college, send me to trade school, went to trade school, met my husband, got married, got pregnant, came out here. I, had done a couple of plays in New York, quickly. And a couple of seasons of summer stock. and I got out here and called in all of the connections that I had, and none of them paid off.

Sharon Johnson: What was the cause?

Susan Lambert Hatem: You wanted to work in movies and television. Is that what was it? Or did you want to.

Tyne Daly: I wanted to follow my young husband and for us to raise up our baby together. And I didn't want to leave New York at all. This was foreign territory, and in many ways still is, because this is a movie. This is the movies. New York is the Theatre. There's the movies on those terrible, you know, dichotomies that we are forced to do. But, I tried to find theatre out here. I did do some theatre out here, but I felt that I was leaving the theatre town forever. And I was. I was in mourning for that, because that was what I had fantasized about. Broadway. Broadway, how great you are. Not the. Not the silver, screen. That was for ideals in that day and age. It was only for ideal people. And, they cried ideally, and they suffered ideally, and they made love with a certain amount of cool. Just cool, not hot.

Tyne Daly: Coolness was the big. I wasn't any of those things. Ah. And I wasn't going to be. But the luck of timing, which they don't talk to you about in acting school, was that we hit the Duster Hoffman, we hit the real people time. You could look like a person. You didn't have to wear your bra. We hit a wave, as did my young husband, who hit the wave of the inclusion of black people for the first time in a very long time. So the luck was those cultural timings, both for the women's movement and for the social revolution of race.

Tyne Daly: And in that sense, we were very lucky. And then we did the work. And then I. I was middle-aged, I was 34 years old. I was done. Come on, who's that? Wonderful, wonderful. Who directed? some like it hot.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Oh, Billy Wilder.

Tyne Daly: Yeah. Billy Wilder famously said, there's only one thing for a woman to do in Hollywood after 30, and

00:10:00

Tyne Daly: that's leave town. And he was one of the nice ones. They were exploiting little girls from twelve, like the Gish sisters. M*A*S*H all the way up. But nobody wanted to take a look at anything that wasn't smooth and white and feminine. Let me put some quotation marks around that. No threat to the patriarchal feminine idea. And the ugly people were allowed. The non-perfect people were kind of in fashion. So I was just definitely not perfect. I feel like in the movies, I couldn't pass the physical movies like the Marines.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah.

Tyne Daly: In terms of your assignment, you know, there's a requirement for a certain kind of strict adhering to the rules. And I was really much more interested in being a mass unit, you know what I mean? Oh, they were help people bash them up because they've been hurt. Oh.

Sharon Johnson: When you first came to LA, though, did you find much, to your liking of the Theatre community here? Or was it a fairly non-existent at that time?

Tyne Daly: we made a couple of theaters. We made a wonderful little theater, in the valley that was this little space. We did some very esoteric plays. We did ball. And it was fun because we turned it into a sweet little theater. This is when there was, under 100 and then under. And you could still, get a dispensation from your union. Some of us were union women, some were, you know, milkmen. At any rate, when we lost that theater after two seasons, we had to turn it back into a storefront. It was heartbreaking because it was a sweet little theater with its sinks and the little box office and all this stuff. Moorpark.

Susan Lambert Hatem: The name of it?

Tyne Daly: No, it was on Moorepark. who was in it, interestingly, was David, what's his name? Starsky, they used to call it. Kagan likes to go say witcher. You and I'd say Starsky. Starsky and David, she …, come to me. This is why I, David Soul.

Susan Lambert Hatem: David, I'm gonna help you out with the Internet and technology.

Tyne Daly: Okay? That's cheating, though. That's the death of conversation, that machine. Because people, you know, what's his name, who's in that movie with, you know, she was married to, Oh, that fellow who did the thing that he was doing. He worked for, you know, at that studio, well, you know what?

Sharon Johnson: At the place behind the car with us.

Tyne Daly: We never get laughed about this, my contemporaries and I. You've got another ten years. You've got another nine. Nine years before your brain leaves.

Sharon Johnson: Oh, no, no. It's already leaving the station. It's on its way. Trust me.

Tyne Daly: Oh, Ladies. So we were speaking of culture.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yes.

Tyne Daly: being lucky, what happened before that? So I did ten years here of freelancing on television and getting jobs through my connections and through having, you know, delivered on those connections. M. You know, but the getting the job is, is hard. My dad had a show. My husband had a show.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Your husband was in The Rookies, right?

Tyne Daly: He was in The Rookies. We were talking about Aaron Spelling, too, in those paternal, you know, producers, who could announce at the end of their season, there would be another season. Everybody has a job, go on vacation hiatus and have a good time. So them days are overdevelop. I had done a couple of pilots for various proposed series and gone home and fallen on my knees and prayed to my maker not to have it sell. Please don't make me have to do that for another 15 minutes, much less five years. I got lucky in the movies a couple of times, but that didn't pan out to be anything, in terms of work. I was approached by my agent with a script called Cagney and Lacey. And I said, I did my cop, I did my copy. Eastwood The Enforcer, that's over. And, he said, read it. And I read it. And I thought, oh, there's room in here for something else besides run and gun. And. Yeah, and every. And the other thing was that I'm, by that time, was a little bit smart about the business. I thought, every single actress in this town is going to throw a blonde wig on her head and want to play cagney. Because Cagney's glamorous and Cagney's funny, and Cagney is sharp in a very specifically second way. Of feminist way. Yes. Which shelf life, I'm not so sure. but anyway, so I thought, I thought, I actually thought, Mary Beth was more interesting, had more possibilities in terms of a long run thing. And then we did it. And then it wasn't appreciated. Well, it got good numbers with Loretta. Got very good numbers. Because Loretta was harder than a pistol playing Hot Lips Houlihan. And so it was her. They owed her a movie of the week, like they did to sweeten contracts then. Ah. And, yeah, got sensational numbers. 60 something. It doesn't happen anymore.

Susan Lambert Hatem: No.

Sharon Johnson: But there wasn't an inkling in doing the tv movie that there might be a series in this.

Tyne Daly: Not to me. I thought it was a one off. and, so we had no contract for it. So then there's this network who lives and dies on math, which is the difference, actually, between the theatre

00:15:00

Tyne Daly: and the movies. The theatre is words. The movies is numbers. So just by the way, so they got impressed and they went to Barney and they said, where's our series? Maybe he told you this story. Yeah, he said, I don't have Daly, I don't have swat. What do I do now? They said, Swit’s tied up in her series? During the 11th year, I believe, of M*A*S*H. They said, get Daly. So we came to a deal and started looking for a new, a new Cagney. And then they told me the long history of who they'd wanted in the first place. And Blahdy Blahdy, that's a long, that's Eleventy times told...

Susan Lambert Hatem: So then you did the first season with Meg Foster as Cagney and like this was your second run as Lacey. What changed for you, for that character? Between the movie and the show and then with the different Cagneys?

Tyne Daly: I'd been playing with the big boys and I'd had to make compromises, personal ones. Personal ones about loyalties, and about advancing my own career and about, Yeah, it was a very tough time because Meg and I had worked well together and ah, we had done what you, television series don't spring full blown from the mind of Zeus. Right? There's an idea. You do it. And then, as Amy Brenneman once said to me famously, she called me up after we were picked up for Judging Amy. She said, I know what it is now, Tyne-o, we have to keep doing these. I said, yeah, baby, we do.

Sharon Johnson: At least twelve.

Tyne Daly: Yeah, it's a whole different animal. So I thought we were done and we weren't done. And I was, I was for about a minute and a half. Well, or we can have in on the casting process of the new Cagney. And I was still aching from Megan, and I, Meg and I, because I thought we'd sort of started to figure it out.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah.

Tyne Daly: But there wasn't any start to figure it out. There was deliver, deliver, deliver. You know, so. Oh, after that, sitting with these, listening to these people audition, these actresses, all of whom I admired.

Tyne Daly: I mean, any of the smart ones said, oh, that's a good part. I'd like to have that part. We don't see those parts very much in tv, you know, and they all came in and, and they read. And after the first day and a half of my reading with them, I said, fellas, I can't stay in this room with you. When these actresses leave, I cannot listen to you speak about these women and these workers. I will go down and get them from the waiting tank and I'll bring them down to you and we'll read together. And then I'm leaving because I did not have the soul of a boss do that. My shoulder hurt from trying to protect them physically from these assaults on their personhood that to me had very little to do with acting anyway. So I'd had an encounter with the powers that be and I'd been threatened with a court if I broke my contract. And, What was his name? Harvey. Harvey. Not Harvey Prue. That's a playwright. Harvey Lacey. That was my husband. Harvey Weinstein. That was a bad guy. One of those Harveys. One of those Harvey. He said to me over lunch at some very fancy place, I was knitting. Like, a mad thing about my knitting. He said, well, would you like to be working for me next year, or would you like to be in court?

Susan Lambert Hatem: Is this because you were, like, I was saying.

Tyne Daly: I was trying to say m. I went into Meg, over Meg. I said, we laid the groundwork. We've done our thing. You know, we're just beginning to roll with it. This is gonna work. It's gonna be great. She's a.

Susan Lambert Hatem: She's a team player. She's in.

Tyne Daly: She's Mike Hagney. Little did we know, anyway. Oh, God. It's a long time ago. And the struggles were real, and the struggles were mostly about trying to make a better product from everybody. I think now I'm a little kinder.

Sharon Johnson: But at the time, you know, since you were so personally involved, this is your. You're going to be literally your partner on the show. And, yeah, it's not just a. It's hard to be, to be objective about it in that way. It's different for you than for the producers and everybody else involved.

Tyne Daly: Well, people say often, don't take it personal, whatever it is. This is very personal work. This is my instrument. Here it is sitting in front of you. Size, shape, age, whatever. This is what I have to work with and my brain and my memories and my guts and all those things. And it is personal work, and it's about. And it doesn't work if someone doesn't pick up on how personal it is to you and feels that same way, too, it becomes personal for the person you're telling the story to. And that stuff is. That's tricky stuff, you know? No wonder half of us go mad and turn into drugs.

Sharon Johnson: I'll admit, until we started doing this podcast and started

00:20:00

Sharon Johnson: looking at Cagney and Lacey, either I didn't know, or I just didn't remember that Sharon Gless was Cagney number three in the show.

Tyne Daly: Well, I said, you didn't need to. That's good. That's very good. She became the one. She said they were the one they wanted in the first place, and she was tied up in a series of her own. We had met a couple times. I went to full courtship because I wanted the job for myself. Come on. I wanted it to work. I didn't want it to fall apart.

Sharon Johnson: Right.

Tyne Daly: Do you know? Anyway, then we were fired and then we were hired, and then there were prizes and we were fired again. It was a really nice, chunky roller coaster, I was going to say, for.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Such a successful series from the outside, it had a very tumultuous history. We learned from Barney and from reading about the show and stuff. And so I imagine being in the middle of it, just trying to do your job and being surrounded by whether we're going or not going, who we're going with, who is being handed to us.

Tyne Daly: Well, and, the more difficult assignment was to be some kind of an example or a role model or, you know, what do we stand for? How do you account for the success of this show? When we go to actors and we stick the microphone in their face and we want them to know stuff that isn't often in their can and sometimes they're deeply stupid about. And I want to say, go talk to the people you elected. What are you talking to me for? What do you want my opinion about this? You know, Do I have one? Sure. No, I don't think it's appropriate for you to be asking me about this. Ask me about what I do. Anyway, That was very annoying to me. I didn't. You know, and the. The part where you're supposed to represent.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Something, it's at this point that Miss Daley notices the Jimmy Stewart retrospective poster on the wall of my office.

Tyne Daly: There's Jimmy Stewart right up on the wall. Look. Hi, James.

Susan Lambert Hatem: So I.

Tyne Daly: Sorry.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I went to USC film school and organized a, retrospective of Jimmy Stewart movies because I wanted to see them.

Tyne Daly: Yes.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And I got to meet him, too, at the last. It was really, again, an incredible memory. And he was so kind and gracious.

Tyne Daly: That he was. A lovely man.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah.

Tyne Daly: Did you go around when he did his show and talked about his past and all that stuff?

Susan Lambert Hatem: No, I wasn't out here then.

Tyne Daly: But, yeah, it's a strange deal for actors. Actors and all performing artists. Although we have film and although we have all of that recording devices, you only serve in your own time. I could not have served in the 30s and, Betty.

Sharon Johnson: Betty Davis.

Tyne Daly: Davis could not serve now. Couldn't get a job. I mean, you know, the styles change. Very smart friend who said to me once styles changed, but the truth does not. So you can see the truth tellers, you know, in the movies and the theatre.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And I think it's one of the Cagney and Lacey holds up and I think it's because, you guys are truthful in your moments. There's truthful moments.

Tyne Daly: That's what we were working for.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And it comes through and there's a.

Tyne Daly: Whole lot of bullshit too. I mean, there's.

Sharon Johnson: But.

Tyne Daly: Yeah, no, but the end of the season, we used to get to a point, me and Barney Rosen's wagon, and we say, okay, so this year we did 22 or 24, whatever. And which, ones would you keep if you would keep eight? We're doing great. You keep eleven. That was a very good season. And it was gone down into. Around. Well, I'm not proud. then we were. Then we jumped the shark. Then it gotten silly. Then we were grasping at straws. And I wish we were more then, like the English, you know, to say this story has a finite amount of time to tell.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah.

Sharon Johnson: I'm of two minds of that, though, because as a television consumer and a  lover of television, I'm happy to spend as much time as I possibly can with these characters that I like, these shows that I enjoy. But at the same time, it is nice when the expression about going away before you're missed or before.

Tyne Daly: Oh, yes, right. Too.

Sharon Johnson: Let them miss you as opposed to want you to go away, leave them wanting more. Yes, exactly. I understand that as well. So I'm always of two minds when it comes to that. because, yes, I would love to spend as much time with characters that I enjoy and shows that I enjoy as I possibly can. But when you're doing 22, 24 episodes a season, they're not all going to be keepers because of the runaway train that is television production. So there's just not a lot of time for that. But it's so lovely.

Tyne Daly: Well, when my daddy started doing serious television, they did 39 episodes a year. That was one. The hiatus was 52 weeks cut in quarters, 39 episodes hours.

Sharon Johnson: And. Yeah, and he was on an hour show.

Tyne Daly: And so then I saw it slip for him when he was going out to the coast and it became 36 and then 34 and then 28. That was a big dip, you know, and. But it's changed again. Now it's six and maybe eleven was what I was thinking about the sopranos. Eleven. How did you know? All that same money. All that same amount of time. Time and money makes things

00:25:00

Tyne Daly: excellent. But, yes, we had. When Sharon and I did three shows together, they showed two of them on television and then Barney begged to have the third one also shown, you know, and my friends thought I was lucky because they were only making two of which it's the business. I know far more about this business than I want to. I never wanted to know anything about show business. I wanted to pretend to be somebody else. And so, like, I think that's not uncommon. impulse, ah, I want it to disappear into somebody else and show off at the same time. See, that's.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Look at me, don't look at me.

Tyne Daly: It's one of the nice dichotomies I used to say, you know, the impulse to show off and the willingness to disappear. But in terms of reality television, if I was remotely interested in reality, you think I would have been an actor? No. Let's pretend and have dress up. Let's have fantasyland, old school.

Susan Lambert Hatem: So that reminds me of an interview that I watched with you where you talked about one of the first things you do is find the voice of the character, and your voice is so amazing. Right. But I love that thought, that that's how you approach.

Tyne Daly: Well, it's not so much as finding the voice is hearing her. And the hearing of her doesn't come just out of my brain alone. Or auditory hallucinations, as we say. it comes from the page, it comes from the written. What's on the page? And, as I said, I'm not a visual. I'm an, a oral learner. Don't talk about that. They started talking about that with my little girls. What kind of a learner is she? Slow. so, yeah, I often, music. The auditory thing, is, ah, a stimulus for me more than the visual. Whereas my young husband, George, I used to catch him standing in doorways, staring into space. And I knew he was directing. I knew he was seeing it, trying to envision it. Does that answer your question?

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah. I'm just fascinated by actors, different approaches to creating these characters. And Mary Beth is such a subtle character in a lot of ways, much more than Cagney. Cagney is sort of through the door first, I guess.

Tyne Daly: Yes, right. Well, maybe in cliche, Cagney is a little more available, you know, because she's more showy. Lacey, I just liked her. And I also thought she was doing a struggle that I was involved in myself. But on being an actress level, not being a housewife, and with a second job at the local hotel, cleaning rooms, I mean, she was trying to do that particular juggling act. I'm not getting to it. of the 80s woman, you can have it all. And, that wasn't true. You certainly can't have it all at once. You can have it all very quickly, one after another, if you have an endless supply of energy and good temper. yeah, she was throwing herself up against a bunch of walls with her husband and her kids and her work than I thought was worth telling stories about. And then what do you know? A whole lot of people wanted to hear stories about themselves on tv. What a surprise.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I know.

Tyne Daly: they wanted to see themselves reflected.

Susan Lambert Hatem: They wanted to see women being real in their lives and everybody else, too.

Tyne Daly: Again, it's a crack in the. I'll read the statistics of our union still, how many stories are told about the white male in the society? And, we reflect. Some people think television leads. I'm not so sure. I think we reflect. I think a lot of what we were talking about on Caddy and Lacey had been talked about in the world. But here we are again with people, assaulting clinics that take care of women's health, with people marching in the streets saying, we matter. Can you see us with people confused about the. Well, police to have played a policeman. Both my husband and I played policemen in those days. And if you think we didn't go home and discuss and decide to accept that in them days, then you underestimate both of us, because, it was not easy to say, I'm lining up with the pigs. Not only been marching for Vietnam and meaning it, you know, compromises.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah. The end of the Vietnam war was really not that far away from when.

Tyne Daly: No, no.

Sharon Johnson: And all the things that went on, you know, around it, was not that far away. So it's totally understandable.

Tyne Daly: The entertainment industry for peace and justice, the worst. what are those things that. NATO's the one that those things,

00:30:00

Tyne Daly: into a word. The EIPJ. Jane fun and, Don Sutherland and us with carriages in the street, you know, street theatre, all that stuff. And we'd be back. I just did street theatre again, sort of. Sharon and I introduced a play by Lisa Loomer called, ah, Roe v. Wade. That's, you know, here.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yes.

Tyne Daly: You know, to a bunch of people, to 100 people in a thing saying, don't give up the ship. it's disheartening, and yet I know there's progress.

Tyne Daly: But, only progress if you, insist on it.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah. Yeah. The fight never stops for a lot of things. You have to keep fighting.

Tyne Daly: I just don't. I'm not my version of fighting because I'm nothing very, I don't have a very aggressive spirit. So my version is storytelling. And I think human beings need stories? I don't think. Sometimes I think, oh, I've spent too much time with words. I've wasted my time with too many words. Still looking for the right words. I still call up my friends and say, you want to hear a poem? You know? and I know that that can be not as useful as deeds. Words and deeds.

Sharon Johnson: I think everybody has to contribute what they can. At the end of the day, everybody can't do everything.

Susan Lambert Hatem: words are very powerful, which we're seeing, the policing of words, and we're seeing. You don't get to call yourself what you want to call yourself. And we're seeing. So words are very, very, very powerful. And, you know, it's the first amendment.

Tyne Daly: Well, freedom from fear.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Freedom from fear. Okay, so we're going to take a little break. We'll be back. All right. Welcome back. Oh, my gosh.

Tyne Daly: So did we get up to Cagney and Lacey? What do you want to talk about?

Susan Lambert Hatem: We're gonna talk about Cagney and Lacey.

Sharon Johnson: More about Cagney and Lacey.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And, you know, what your favorite moments were like, what you still hold dear.

Tyne Daly: M*A*S*H I don't. When at the end of the show, they gave us an opportunity to have all of the, episodes, the entire series. And it was a choice between Betamax and VHS. Yes, VHS. I didn't understand it, but I did do a little research. I found out Betamax was smaller and better resolution, both visually and audibly. So I said, I'll have Betamax. So I haven't seen Cagney and Lacey in 40 years. and not, really interested in it. looking at oneself is a mixed bag. And Sharon will tell you, maybe, she used to sit down with, Monique James, who was her mentor at Universal, and they'd watch dailies, and Monique would say to her, that's good. I like that when you do that. Don't ever do that. Watch out when you do that thing with your. And talked her through how to look. And it was just, foreign to my nature. I thought for a while I'd look at the shows, and Barney said it was an interesting opportunity to see if, you know, if you'd made a table that had four good legs or one leg was short, you could assess the work. But the opportunity to really see yourself when you're making it was very rare. There wasn't any tivo or look at it afterwards. I remember looking at, dailies every once in a while from a scene I was interested in for a while, because we had the whole operation at Lacey street, which was an old brick factory that they turned into a studio with everything. the first year or so, season or so, we didn't have the sound department, but we had the writers upstairs and we had the cutters downstairs and we had the costume department. It was all kind of a self-contained little factory of our own. we didn't have to report to universal. And if the powers would be called up and said, oh, we hate that scene. You can't do it anymore. Sorry. We filmed it. Oh, too bad.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Oops.

Tyne Daly: Shot. And then they were too cheap. So it was, a lovely cocoon in a way out there. But, collecting favorite moments.

Susan Lambert Hatem: You don't do it.

Tyne Daly: I don't do it, really. I know that I had very good times working with a particular director or on a storyline. we were being the heroes. And then as the thing went on, there was the victim requirement. People had to be date raped and people had to have breast cancer and people had to have, you know, the things that were. The victimhood of the female cop was not required from some of our colleagues with penises, if I could say that. and that was another interesting thing to negotiate. I remember, yeah, you know, trapped in the thing we did called heat. When the bad guy trapped you in the hot. M*A*S*H being a victim. yeah, there were good acting opportunities. I liked the quieter ones. but it's painful to me to try and name you

00:35:00

Tyne Daly: episodes. I mean, we picked out did they work or did they don't work? A very smart man named Arthur Lawrence, whom I encountered later as a director, an old fox of the theatre. And he said to me, there's no right and wrong in the theatre. Does it work or not? Does it work or it doesn't work? You know, so I think we worked it mostly. I don't feel that there were times when we really betrayed the side or something. There were a couple of stupid episodes, you know, but they were mostly just relief from, you know, now we've done 20 of these. Let's do something silly. we did a lot of laughing together as workers. We had a good, good, tight crew, you know, who knew each other for. I mean, we lost people, but that they held together mostly.

Susan Lambert Hatem: you had some really, you had, for the time, a number of female directors. We did.

Tyne Daly: We tried consciously to hire female directors and ads and stuff and to help on that front in terms of technology. Would you,

Susan Lambert Hatem: I don't know if you remember Karen Arthur?

Tyne Daly: Of course, I.

Susan Lambert Hatem: We're going to be talking to her?

Tyne Daly: Yes. She's in New York now, as far as I know. Last time I saw her was in New York.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah, well, I think she'll be zooming in, so I don't know exactly where she is.

Tyne Daly: Yeah, yeah, yeah. She was one of our, regulars.

Sharon Johnson: So you mentioned you were talking about how you really never really watched the show, if I'm remembering correctly.

Tyne Daly: Yeah.

Sharon Johnson: So is that consistent across the work that you've done on film and television, that you haven't gone back and after you finished it, gone back and watched it?

Tyne Daly: Pretty much. So, I mean, we had a couple of moves, a handful of movies that I've done. some directors have dailies in the olden days, which was kind of another communal activity. You know, come and have drinks after the thing and watch the days work. God, it's such weird work. Because. Because there's no. Because I prefer the theatre where you don't have to look at yourself when they look at you. And in fact, they're not even allowed to take your picture unless they're doing it on the sneak. Do you know? It has to live in the memory of you and the person you were telling the story to. So the non-communalness of this last couple of years, which is changing our business of law of, gathering any place and gathering with comfort and ease and rather than suspicion and nervousness and wondering if going to the movies is going to make you sick. That's, something I'm kind of looking at from the margins, because I'm not. But I have done enough work to see how different it is. this guy wants to know about, burn notice. And I have to tell you, the reason I did it was to keep my pension open. My pension had faded. And I called Sharon. I said, Sharon, I got to make this much money to do my pension, get me a job. I mean, this is. You want to know about how it really works, folks. You get to be old and they kick you to the curb. Okay, so, what, was I going to tell you about something, though?

Susan Lambert Hatem: Theatre. and theatre and.

Tyne Daly: Yeah. The recording of an experience so that you can look at it again and again is very different than having it have to last in your memory and you could retrieve what you can. And, I understand, you know, there are kids who are recording their teachers in college class instead of taking notes. Taking notes is one kind of recording, but recording the whole thing and then go, what, fall asleep over it again? I think it's an excuse for paying attention in many ways. And that makes me sound like an Altacka, which I am.

Sharon Johnson: So, I'm probably pretty far down that road, too. I mean, as you know, cell phones have proliferated. When I first was able to take pictures all the time and as many as I wanted, I did that. I've gotten to the point now where I almost never take pictures when I go places because I want to see an experience and I want to look at what I want to look at and pay attention to what I want to look at. Because there is something about being in that moment, and that's one of the beauties of theatre over film. As much as I love film and television and filmed entertainment, and it's lovely.

Tyne Daly: To see things again, it is. It is wonderful to see great performances and all that stuff. I don't mean to be religious about it.

Sharon Johnson: I mean, I think there have been a number of actors who've talked about how they don't watch themselves. They don't. So you're definitely not alone. so I was just curious if that was something consistently over your career that you've mostly done when it came to the finished product as opposed to dailies, which to me is a little different. Cause you're seeing the work of the day and helping. That may be useful in terms of going forward. I don't know, but I think I.

Tyne Daly: Have only like 8% Sunset Boulevard in me.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Just enough.

Tyne Daly: Just enough. yeah. Not my favorite form of fun. Let's say that.

Sharon Johnson: Understandable. Sure.

Susan Lambert Hatem: So let's move on to theatre because I want to talk about Gypsy and I want to talk about what theatre has meant to you over the years because you've done a ton of theatre.

Tyne Daly: I've done some, but I also had. There was this distraction of my husband's career was out here. My career turned out to be about television in a little, bit of a way. You know, the movies where I couldn't pass the physical and, to, be a marine, which I remember reading something about, Demi

00:40:00

Tyne Daly: Moore saying that she was a hands-on mom and she also spent 8 hours a day in the gym. I thought, baby, how do you do that?

Susan Lambert Hatem: How do you do that?

Tyne Daly: Which? Eight all in a row. How many hands? I don't know, I just didn't. It amused me. anyway, I couldn't figure out that kind of juggling without a lifestyle that I didn't, wasn't designed for. Do you know, very bad at delegating responsibilities and asking other people to do my shopping. So the theatre and the movies, I've been very lucky. I've gotten to do some of each. Do you know? but my yearnings for my dream time, as I said, was a theatre. Nothing. Movies. Not to be on the silver screen, but to be. But to be on the Broadway stage. And the music part was fun, and getting up for it was fun. And, retraining, again, to make the cabarets was fun. so I wasn't required to choose to say, you do this or this. I was happier being a jack of all trades.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And I think that, has changed. It used to be you were doing television. You did television. If you did movies, you did movies.

Tyne Daly: Snootiness about it. Until Lawrence Olivier sold cameras.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Oh, okay.

Tyne Daly: Until old Larry got that ad for Polaroid. Yeah, inroads were made on what was the fancy stuff. and, you know, where you earn the monies and where they want you. so the theatre takes a different kind of energy. I don't know that I could do the first act of Gypsy without falling over. These days, it's just, you age out of that part of it. and the memory fades, the attrition of old age. But hopefully, I always wanted, I was interested in telling stories about women from the beginning to the end. I didn't like cutting out and leaving only the 15 years between 15 and 30, that, those were the only ones we looked at.

Susan Lambert Hatem: 15 and 30, yeah.

Tyne Daly: No coming, very few coming of age things for girls, very few getting through the middle passage for girls. Very few after I can't make you babies for the girls. And very few, old wise hags to add a little bit of the female spirit to the overbalance of, male stories about, how they figured out the world and how they run the world and what is necessary to run the world. I had a thought the other day, about the Bible and the constitution and all of the things that are rolling around in our society right now, and the words, the great words. And I thought to myself, I wanted to say to the founding fathers, who told you that story? And they'd say, I'm my dad.

Tyne Daly: And I say, well, who told him that story? They say, oh, my dad. Your dad told you that story? We've all been listening to the dad stories for a long, long time on the version of what's creative, what's nurturing, how do we get to be better people, you know? And I, so I thought there was room for the mom stories particularly the mom, not the girlfriend, and not the rival for the job.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Well, it was such a big part of Lacey. And there's a, again, rewatching these, there was a line that struck me from one of the episodes, and she constantly questioned whether she was being a good mom. But there was like a. I thought I was stronger than this. I thought I was a good mother as a mother and a stepmother and a working person and a thing.

Susan Lambert Hatem: like, I was like, yes. We're constantly asking that question of ourselves.

Tyne Daly: Yeah. Serving all these masters and wondering if you're failing them all. It was a condition, and still is a condition of a lot of people. And I know it's not that men don't question themselves or that they don't, blah, blah, blah, but the running of everything. And the recent being instructed that I'm a second-class citizen officially now from the highest court in the land is painful to me and my daughters and their daughters and their sons. You see, if you can announce that somebody's a second-class citizen officially again, you could pick. Take your next group. There's that, you know, who do they come for next? There's that thing, to say your personhood is in question, your citizenship is in question, your value to the community is in question. So I'm Lacey. Had a hard time with that in the 80s, and Daly's having a hard time with that in the twenties. Yes.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Are we all.

Tyne Daly: Yeah. You know.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah. And it's, you know, one of the reasons we sort of have this little saying, like, look back in order to leap forward, and yet we're tripping sideways, like in backwards and. And

00:45:00

Susan Lambert Hatem: forwards. Like it's. It seems like a bit of a hot mess right now.

Tyne Daly: Yeah, well, maybe it's always a hot mess. I just, It's the idea that you. And it applies to the acting game, right? It's the idea that you've arrived someplace and now you're there and that's it. That's the end of the story. You've got to this platform and then you don't have. And. No, it's an ongoing thing. There's on, back the whole, whole ebb and flow and blah, blah. All that stuff is happening in our country and happens in the career. So when you get to something, okay, this is it. This is what I do. I live in New York City and I do bad plays. Oh, no, this is what I do. I go and sell out in Hollywood and make money and win prizes and get famous. And that's you know, and that's, and that's it for no, there's no arriving and how to be of service. I always wanted this to be a service job. That's how I was brought up. Human beings tell stories to each other about themselves because they need it.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah.

Tyne Daly: And more importantly than that for me was, you know, human beings come to the theatre to watch actors, because they've all been actors. All of them, even the starving ones, have pretended to be somebody else and to get themselves out of this condition and have played dress up and have, you know, shown off and they've all forgotten. We're the ones who remember how to, how to, how to play dress up and show off and be silly and. And they come to get that from us, you know, but there's no, there's no arrival at some law. We were so innocent that we thought we would change the laws and we forgot they could be changed back.

Tyne Daly: As a generation, I think hippie dippy, you know, against the war and all this stuff. We thought we were the only people that marched on Washington ever. We forgot all about them civil war soldiers who never got their pension. No sense, you know? And history shows us that you have to go. To go out again and again again.

Susan Lambert Hatem: You have to keep fighting for your rights. You have to keep fighting constantly. And fighting is an interesting word, right?

Tyne Daly: You know, striving, struggling, questioning, challenging. I like all those. My mama said to me one time, I hate all this stuff on tv. Everything's a fight. You're fighting ring around the collar, and you're fighting the yellow on your floor, and you're fighting the, you know, you're cold with this medicine, and everything is pitched as a battle. And I thought, that's really interesting. that's a hell of a long time ago, but, yeah, the idea that, of combat, and aggression and struggle, I think we sort of run out of that being useful.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah.

Tyne Daly: I think that anybody that thinks that war is a solution to anything is wrong.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah.

Tyne Daly: Period. Got to figure something else out.

Susan Lambert Hatem: We got to do it, guys. We got to look for different ways. And I think that's. That's one of the reasons I wanted to do this podcast, is I wanted to celebrate women in all ways and also examine what our choice of language is. Like, we sort of question each show that we look at and we go like, okay, is this a feminist show? What is a feminist show? Did they know they were making a feminist show? You know, what does it mean to do that?

Tyne Daly: Well, mostly, I've played women, girls in my career. I did play an eight year old black boy in, Moby Dick Prohurst in Denver, but that was unique. And mostly I've been asked to play women. So if I'm doing it, it's a feminist show. I mean, it's about. If it's about women, it might be about the woman standing in the background. But that will give you the, you know, the story on the woman of that story. the. Everything having to sit in its own category. This is for girls. This is for boys. This is for Black people. This is for Asian folks. This is the bitsing up and categorizing everything here.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Okay, here we go.

Tyne Daly: I'll tell you my last idea, okay? Independence Day, 4 July, bombs bursting in air. and I thought, I want a new vacation. I want a new holiday. I want a holiday called Interdependence Day. On Interdependence Day, we celebrate everything that's alike about each other, everything we have in common. no show of military might, no uniforms, no banners, no anthems, no borders. And nothing that smacks of anything that's like a badge or a symbol. Just, Interdependence Day. I'd like to see us move towards that instead of towards the disaster of the 21st century, which is tribalism, factions, my opinion, period. That's it. I got to read your poem. Can I read poems?

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yes, let's read poems.

Tyne Daly: Let me read your poem.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Daly is going to read us a poem

Tyne Daly: because I like to say, Wisława Szymborska. this is a terrific poem if I can make it, because

00:50:00

Tyne Daly: this is what I'm doing now. What I'm doing now is working with words. And I have been for a while, to try. And there's still your career.

Susan Lambert Hatem: You've been working with words.

Tyne Daly: Well, I can't memorize them anymore, so I have to read them, you know, but I can still, throw the poetry in the room, as we used to say. I'm going to. This will betray me as a theatre actor. I'm going to go to the home of Alfred Lundt and Lynn Fontaine. Anybody raise your hand. Never mind. The greatest acting couple of the early part of the 20th century. and, they live in a place called Genesee Depot. I'm going to do a, ah, seminar for actors. They all have to have been in the business for more than 20 years. And, I'm going to try and refresh their spirits in terms of. And find out what they're up to and how it's been for them for these two years of masked and, the name of my seminar is renewable energy. Excellent. Oh, my God.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Tyne Daly. You have refreshed my spirit today. I just want you to know that.

Tyne Daly: “Life While You Wait” by Wisława Szymborska. Life while you wait. Performance without rehearsal. Body without alterations. Head without premeditation. I know nothing of the role I play. I only know it's mine. I can't exchange it. I have to guess on the spot just what this play is all about. Ill prepared for the privilege of living, I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands. I improvise. Although I loathe improvisation. I trip at every step over my own ignorance. I can't conceal my hayseed manners. My instincts are for hammy histrionics. Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliates me more. Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel words and impulses you can't take back stars. You'll never get counted. Your character like a raincoat, you, button on the run. The pitiful results of all this unexpectedness. If I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance or repeat a single Thursday that has passed. But here comes Friday with a script I haven't seen. Is it fair? I ask, my voice a little hoarse since I couldn't even clear my throat off stage. You'd be wrong to think that it's just a slapdash quiz taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh, no. I'm standing on the set, and I see how strong it is. The props are surprisingly precise, the machine rotating. The stage has been around even longer. The farthest galaxies have been turned on. Oh, no, there's no question. This must be the premier. And whatever I do will become forever what I've done.

Sharon Johnson: That's awesome. That's awesome.

Tyne Daly: Cheers. Thank you.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Oh, my God. Thank you so much. That was absolutely beautiful. all right, will you say the name again?

Tyne Daly: Her name is vistava. W I s t a w a. Wistowa Zimborska. S z y m m b o r s k a.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Please tell me you've done audiobooks.

Tyne Daly: I have not. I failed completely. Oh, this is a funny story. They approached me once to do an audiobook, for new mothers, and it was a little book of contemplations, you know, so that you could read about yoga. I said, if this new mother has ten minutes a day for herself, she's doing better. She don't need this book, God bless her. That's when my experience them. Ten minutes don't go until the kid is 35. Let's be serious. Okay.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Oh, my goodness. Oh, wow.

Tyne Daly: No. And I tried. I tried. I listened. I got. So we were doing a long distance trip, and I got, books for the girls to listen to her drawing. My daughter back from school, Wisconsin. And I got, Ruby Dee doing their eyes are watching God. And I love Ruby Dee. And we had. I worked for her and for Ozzy and stuff. And I got. The thing made me fall asleep driving. And it was like. It was like a supper. I can't. So I say I listen, but I can't. Very few books on tape move me.

Sharon Johnson: I find it hard to listen to nonfiction, audiobooks. Fiction audiobooks.

Tyne Daly: Ah.

Sharon Johnson: I find easier to listen to, maybe because it engages my imagination in a different way as opposed to trying to take.

Tyne Daly: Their Eyes were watching God. Come on. what else? Jim Dale. Do you have Jim Dale in your mind? He did all of the voices for the Harry Potter. Something like 309 voices. I thought,

00:55:00

Tyne Daly: what kind of a thing is that?

Susan Lambert Hatem: Those audiobooks are amazing. You listen to them with own voice.

Tyne Daly: But he said he recorded them and managed to remind himself of who everybody was. You know, sometimes he lose a voice. That kind of. See, that kind of gift is just amazing to me.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Can I ask you really quick? I know we gotta wrap up, The Bread Factory, two-part movie. Like, such a charm. Like, how did that happen?

Tyne Daly: Are you having fun with that?

Susan Lambert Hatem: I did.

Tyne Daly: Patrick Wang is a lovely, genius filmmaker. You should see his film called “In the Family”. Yummy. And then there's one called, The Grief of Others. But, yeah, Bread Factory was shot in under 30 days with 210 speaking parts. It was a miracle. Dancing and singing, carrying on. And I got to it through my friend. Like, happens a lot in my business. Ah, my friend Brian Murray, gone from us now, but a great actor. And he had done a piece for Patrick in, and I'm trying to remember which show. I think it's the first one, in the family.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Just lovely. And the two. That was such a brilliant, like, two movies. You shot both movies at the same.

Tyne Daly: Time, back-to-back in a breathtakingly amount of no time in a tiny. And, ah, Jeanine Garofalo. Funny people, you know, who just came because they were charmed by the material, basically.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Anyway, it was a favorite.

Tyne Daly: Where did you see it, for God's sake?

Susan Lambert Hatem: I found it streaming. Okay. Uh-huh. Because that's the great thing about streaming. When we do our audiography, I will, because I have to look it up again.

Tyne Daly: A Bread Factory, part one and two. Yeah. It's about a local arts center that these two Ladies run together in half forever. And where kids can draw and paint and sculpt and act and sing and carry on. it's being threatened by a consortium of modern entertainers who are pretty electronic at any rate.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Okay, so it's three questions. You can't name your own shows. But is there an 80s TV,, Ladies driven tv show that resonated with you? And I can remind you of some to get you going. Like Golden Girls and Murphy Brown. China beach.

Sharon Johnson: Designing women.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Designing women. Remington Steele. Or were you too busy being a mom and making tv?

Tyne Daly: I have never been a regular television watcher. I used to watch my dad, which was kind of interesting because, you know, he'd be on these and then there he'd be. And he'd be being, you know, Robert E. Lee. Or he'd be being, Walt Whitman. Or he'd be being. In those days when they, He was always somebody. He played, Ah, give us barabbas. He played Barabbas in the, you know. He played a lot of different stuff and a lot of different. Interesting. Long fight. And it was very strange to see your dad. I remember my brother Tim the first time he saw. When he was, ten years younger than I. But the first time he saw my dad on tv. And my dad was being threatened by a bad guy. He freaked out. He couldn't. Truth and illusion. He couldn't make the thing. Even daddy was sitting next to him and he couldn't make. I mean, I watched The Rookies regularly because I was home, in the seventies. I haven't owned a television set for about 20 years now. And I don't mean to be graceless about it. And Sharon tells me all the time, there's such great things on tv. And you have to see these shows. I think I saw three Sopranos.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Is there an actress?

Tyne Daly: I like those actresses on Designing Women. I thought they were terrific. And Sharon's in love with, what's her face, who's doing her new show. Jean Smart, who's a wonderful actress. And occasionally it sounds like I sometimes feel I'm an ingrate about this. Because I do love to go to the theatre. And I love it when it's good. And I love to see the actors afterwards and stuff. But sorry.

Susan Lambert Hatem: That's okay. Nothing to be sorry about.

Sharon Johnson: Nothing to be sorry about.

Tyne Daly: Who's Alex Trebek? I watch Alex Trebek faithfully and go to sleep afterward. He's gone now. I thought that would be a great job. I would love that job. But they wouldn't let an old lady do. But I think I would like it be a, trivia, you know? Trivia. Yeah.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Is there an actress out there that you wish you could work with or wish you had worked with?

Tyne Daly: I've enjoyed the ones I have worked with that are real famous. I, when I was a kid and came out here, I was leaving New York with my three day old baby. She'd been born while her father came. He came back, he was out here earning the money to pay for her. and I was in the airport and there was this, it wasn't playboy. It was another kind of men's magazine like that. Less sex and more gentleman's. GQ. GQ, possibly GQ. And there was a picture of a woman on the COVID obviously naked. The part we couldn't see. But she was, she had her stuck in a big trash, can. And so her legs and her arms and her,

01:00:00

Tyne Daly: you know, were hidden by this, corrugated. Is that what they're called? Galvanized? Galvanized. A huge silver trash can. And her, long hair and her stuff in her and kind, of posed. And the headline was “The California woman: through at 21.” And I was 21. I'd had my first baby. I was just turned 21 and I was going with my baby to California. And I wondered, why am I going to California if I'm already through? And then I would sit and I had my baby and we had our little thing and we were told no money. Georgia was working as a janitor to and there'd be these, some m fan magazines. And they'd say, here was the new actress and here was the next new actress. And here was this other new actress. And I kept saying, not me, not me. No, not me again. But I didn't want to be them. I didn't want to turn into Meryl Streep. Meryl Streep had already done that. You know. there's a little card, that says, be yourself. Everybody else is taken, you know. And I just wanted to be there in the mix. But I didn't want, I wasn't envious to be somebody else or to admire somebody else. Not that I haven't had fun in the theatre and had people move me and tell me stories. But I just, I really don't have anybody that I wanted to be like or wanted to have their career instead, you know. I mean, everybody wanted Angela Lansbury's career. Career. But, you know. But I. I think a lot of.

Susan Lambert Hatem: People want your career.

Tyne Daly: Well, they can't have it.

Susan Lambert Hatem: You're very good at it.

Tyne Daly: I'm almost dead. And second of all, it's taken. You know, there's no repeats. You can't put your foot in the same river twice. All that stuff is true, huh? So, I love seeing there being more stories for women, I'll tell you that. I love those. I love seeing those, those girl cops on LAPD thing and stuff. I mean, there were cracks were being made. I was aware of that, but I didn't have time to sit down and watch it because I was busy doing it, you know?

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah, no, that's great. That's great. Last question. What's a moment that you've had that you felt like, is this scripted? Am I living in a television moment right now? You were on set all the time in television moments, but, like, one moment where you're like, that was so memorable, or so, like, out of that, I.

Tyne Daly: Felt like I was in a movie. You mean.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Yeah. like a movie or a television moment of drama.

Tyne Daly: Well, I tell you what my brain thinks up, because I don't. I'm not quite sure I understand that. I remember, George was doing The Rookies and was directing and got me a job. I got the in because I was married to the co-star. And, we were doing a show. We'd been in school together from the time I was 17 or 18, and you babies. And we were doing a scene which he was also in. He was directing, but he was in it, and he came up and stood up next to me, and I said, “Hey, baby, it's you and me and in the movies.” And we had the best laugh, you know, that I could tell you, there are moments when it's amazing that you're on the stage or, you know, on the stage. You can't let that awareness in too quickly or you'll not know what you say next. Anyway, this work, it's good work. It's, lined up with other things to do for a living. It's not a terrible thing to do.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Thank you so much.

Sharon Johnson: Again, we cannot thank you enough for this. It's something we've been looking forward to, and it's exceeded, I think, our expectations. So thank you so much.

Tyne Daly: Okay, cheers.

Susan Lambert Hatem: So, Tyne Daly challenge is to come up with one word to describe our time now, here in America or on.

Sharon Johnson: Earth, this first part of the 21st century.

Susan Lambert Hatem: This first part. Oh, in this time period, the first part of the 21st century. And then we forgot to come back to that, to circle back before she left. So I'm going to get in touch with her and find out what it was.

Melissa Roth: Her word.

Susan Lambert Hatem: we think. Kevin thinks it's, tribalism. Which might be right. And, now we have to come up with our own. The first word that popped in my head was change.

Sharon Johnson: I just. I think I found my word. Turmoil.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Turmoil.

Sharon Johnson: Because from the beginning, first we had 911, 2001. We're still dealing with ramifications of that insanity. we had the historic election of Barack Obama, followed by the kind of, What's the word I'm looking for? Obstruction from the right that I don't think any of us have experienced in our lifetimes. Maybe there have been periods in the history of our country where similar things have happened, but this is a whole taken to a whole new.

Susan Lambert Hatem: It was a whole new level. Whole new level.

Sharon Johnson: And it's only gotten continued to get worse from there. The fact that we went from Barack

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Sharon Johnson: Obama, in my mind, one of the best presidents, one of the best men that's ever been president of the United States, to arguably the worst person that has ever been put into that job. The worst kind of person that ever could have, or should have. This is not about ideology. This is about a person. This person, and that. That person. Because I refuse to say the name.

Susan Lambert Hatem: We're not going to speak that name.

Sharon Johnson: that person continues to not only be an effective stirrer, but that there are still so many people who have been brainwashed into believing and to sustaining the lies and distortions that he created in his time in office.

Susan Lambert Hatem: He built a cult on hate and, vitriol and fear and, division.

Sharon Johnson: Yeah.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And continues to work to divide the country. Sometimes I'm like, oh, of course, that's who was nominated by a faction of people who want to punish like, oh, yeah, you're not going to have a woman president. We're going to give you the worst of Men.

Sharon Johnson: That's exactly what happened. Oh, my gosh.

Susan Lambert Hatem: We will take the worst of men over any woman as a payback. Oh, my God. Sharon just broke her paperclip. That's how wild we're getting here. Okay.

Melissa Roth: All right.

Sharon Johnson: Have you come up with your word?

Susan Lambert Hatem: Well, the first word was change, but it wasn't enough. And I think turmoil, is indeed. And you also reminded me that the 21st century started 20 years ago. So I'm also going to say opportunity. It's an opportunity for turmoil and crisis, and it's an opportunity for change. And we've seen both of those in the last 20 years, and we'll see. And we know we're not at the end of this. We're not at the end of COVID We're not at the end of the chaos of the result of the last six years in politics. The last 20 years in politics. We are also in the middle of this enormous technology change and speed, of information that's unprecedented and that we're not built for. Right.

Sharon Johnson: Speed of information and disinformation.

Melissa Roth: Yes.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And it's a crisis, but it is also an opportunity. It is. We are in this, I mean, I think the word that I can't come up with right now because my brain isn't working is something that represents both of those well.

Sharon Johnson: Cause you're right. There always is opportunity. In chaos and disruption, there's opportunity there. It's just a question of, do you seize that opportunity to make things better? Whether it be something big, like the things we've been discussing or even in your life? It's hard to see it sometimes. It's hard to believe that it's there, but it is there. It can be there.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And it's not even so much about the silver lining. It's about when things are breaking apart. It is a moment to rebuild them in a new way. Hm. And to decide to do things differently. so I think that question, which, again, is sort of resonating from all of the stuff we talked about today, which is, how did we get here? Right. That's sort of. We're looking back to be like, how do we get here? And then how do we get out of here? I think it's one of the other questions, and it's, you know, again, very serious conversation for mostly a light podcast. But the undercurrent of everything right now is a, struggle to define the new way we are going to be. And because there is opportunity in these crises, because we can recognize things and name them in ways we couldn't, we can recognize that our healthcare system in America is not appropriate to the situation. It needs to be different. We can recognize that our involvement in government has to be more for the people, by the people, than of the people. We can recognize that these things that are breaking down are things that we can rebuild in a new way of looking at things. I don't think anybody is interested in doing the same thing. I'm seeing it in theatre. I'm seeing people take power from their own place. That is often a disenfranchised place. But they're now saying, I don't care, we're now going to unionize. I don't care. We're now going to

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Susan Lambert Hatem: demand not only these rights back, but more rights. And even though there's a lot of work to divide us into these factions, there's a lot of people that are saying no. More people in my history than I remember ever are activated, are engaged, are paying attention. And with that attention comes the opportunity. And again, I'm seeing really exciting people running for office and really amazing people stepping, up and finding their voice in their community in a way that I think is not what I saw happen in the 80s when things were falling apart and in the nineties when people were sort of ignoring that things had fallen apart anyway. But we got into a serious vein because I think I'm still searching for my word. But if I don't, I'm just going to say opportunity, because it's also an opportunity for bad forces, right? So it's an opportunity for everybody. And the question is, which opportunities are we going to take advantage of and which opportunities are we going to demand change for good?

Sharon Johnson: We'll see. Now it's your turn. 80s TV Ladies, listeners, how would you answer Tyne Daly's request? What is your word? What one word describes our time now here in the 21st century so far?

Susan Lambert Hatem: Send us your thoughts and your word to 80stvladiesmail, uh.com, or contact us through our website or on social media. I don't know, Sharon. Turmoil is a pretty good one.

Sharon Johnson: Sadly, yes, I think so.

Susan Lambert Hatem: And now it's time for our audiography for websites. first I want to let you know that you can go to the official Facebook page for Cagney and Lacey, facebook.com/Cagney and Lacey. There is a Facebook page for Tyne Daly, TyneDaly online, facebook.com, TyneDaly online. You can find The Bread Factory part one and part two at various streaming sites. You can stream it for free using your library card or university login@canopy.com that's k dashanopy.com and that's for thousands of movies.

Sharon Johnson: You can also rent or buy it on Apple TV.

Susan Lambert Hatem: It was available on Amazon. It's currently only available through Fandor on Amazon right now.

Sharon Johnson: What's Fandor?

Susan Lambert Hatem: I don't know. It's one of those new things we want to shout out. our friends at Rainbow Remix podcast South Florida singer rocker JD Danner and podcaster Denise Warner invited us onto their show, which features LGBTQ lifestyle news, music, arts, media, mixology, and so much more. They are delightful, and they just loved our show and reached out to us.

Sharon Johnson: They had us on their podcast to talk about 80s TV,, Ladies, 80s television and why we started this podcast. Denise and JD are delightful, and we are going to have them on in a future episode to talk more about queer representation in 80s television and seventies and nineties.

Susan Lambert Hatem: You know, it's slim pickins, I realized, which was a little disheartening, but a, very vital part of television history herstory. And all of us to read, check.

Sharon Johnson: Out Rainbow remix podcast. A, link will be in our audiography.

Susan Lambert Hatem: All right, so the books that I'm going to call out today are remembering Cagney and Lacey with Sharon Gless and Tyne Daly by Brian McFadden. and I'm also going to, shout out the book that Tyne Daly read to us from. It's called poems, new and collected. And I'm going to mispronounce this name, Wisława Szymborska. It is the winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, and I'm going to run out and get it right now and then dream of Tyne Daly reading them all to me. and the last book I'm going to shout out today is New Handbook for a Post-Row America by Robin Marty. It's very helpful. Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much to our Patreon supporters. Thank you, Michael, Ann, and Kate. Y'all are awesome. If you want a shout out on the show, join our patreon@patreon.com. 80s TV Ladies, you can get all sorts of cool stuff, but you also can just support us and support us making more episodes.

Sharon Johnson: Support at any level is most welcome, and listeners of any kind are most welcome, and we're grateful to you all. Next episode, we have Cagney herself, the incredible Sharon Gless.

Susan Lambert Hatem: I can't wait. Once again, we're just, like, trifecting.

Sharon Johnson: I'm just thrilled that we have another Sharon on the show. There aren't too many of us out there, it seems.

Susan Lambert Hatem: It was funny, during this episode, Tyne Daly kept saying, well, Sharon says this. I was like, when did they have that conversation? And then I realized she was talking about Sharon Gless. Cause they're all

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Susan Lambert Hatem: friends and stuff.

Sharon Johnson: It was a little confusing for me, too, occasionally, even though I knew that she was not talking about me, there was a moment where my brain thought, you know, when she mentioned Sharon, of course, I'm the only Sharon in the room.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Someday we're gonna get you and Sharon Gless in the room together.

Sharon Johnson: That'll be very fantastic and probably at times, very confusing.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Too many Sharons.

Sharon Johnson: Hope 80s TV Ladies brings you joy and laughter and lots of fabulous new and old shows to watch, all of which will lead us forward toward being amazing Ladies of the 21st century.

Susan Lambert Hatem: Like Tyne Daly. I want to be Tyne Daly, but she won't let us because she's Tyne Daly.

[Singing] Amy Englehardt: 80s TV Ladies, So sexy and so pretty. 80s TV Ladies, Steppin’ out into the city. 80s TV Ladies, often treated kind of sh-[wolf whistle]. Working hard for the money in a man’s world. 80s TV Ladies!

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