Very few actors have the range to pull off “Dumb and Dumber’s” slack jawed Harry Dunne, while mastering the arc of moral giants like Atticus Finch on stage or Ronald Reagan in the upcoming film “Reykjavík.” Jeff Daniels is that actor. He’s played iconic character driven roles like “The Newsroom’s” Will McAvoy and delivered countless monologues that embrace the better angels of our nature. And now, he’s playing guitar and writing songs that hold up a mirror to the human experience. He joins Nicolle in this episode to talk about the trajectory of his career, choosing a life in Michigan over Hollywood, and the lack of a national moral compass in the Trump era. Plus: a special acoustic guitar performance.
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Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
(Music Playing)
Nicolle Wallace: What was the most out of body role for you?
Jeff Daniels: “Dumb and Dumber.” I didn’t know how to do it. You know, I didn’t know how to be that dumb.
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Nicolle Wallace: Hi, everyone. It’s Nicolle Wallace. Welcome to “The Best People.” This week, I talked to one of my favorite friends who lives in the middle of the country, someone I e-mail all the time at the most heated moments in our politics to say, how’s it playing in Michigan. He decided to raise his family there instead of ever moving to Hollywood or Los Angeles, even though he is one of the most iconic actors of our time playing some of the funniest men on the big screen and some of the most moral men on stage and on the small and big screen. But that’s not all, he also played us his guitar in this episode. This is “The Best People” with Nicolle Wallace. And this is Jeff Daniels.
(Music Playing)
Nicolle Wallace: To laugh.
Jeff Daniels: Just try not to hit it. Try not to hit an iceberg on our way.
Nicolle Wallace: Icebergs are everywhere.
Jeff Daniels: Thanks for having me.
Nicolle Wallace: Thanks for being here. So, I got to listen to you create something that I hadn’t heard from you before. I’d seen you play on Kelly Clarkson and on the internet, but I got to listen to you perform a whole set and your whole thing made more sense to me after that. Like you make more sense to me now. I made you laugh well.
Jeff Daniels: Yes, you know, that’s a good way to put it because, you know, I’m known for one thing, being an actor, but to walk out on a stage in front of, say, 160 people or a club with just an acoustic guitar and your stories leading into the song and you got to hold them. That’s hard, and I get to be creatively. I’m a hundred percent in control. I’m the director, I’m the writer, I’m the editor, I’m everything and nobody to blame, but except me. But you know, it’s a great challenge too. And that’s kind of where I am now, you know, is challenging myself after decades of doing this. I never want to stick to the same thing. And I think that’s why the guitar happened. And the fact that I can entertain people and hold them for a hundred minutes is, that’s the success every time I do it.
Nicolle Wallace: It’s called “The Best People” podcast. What’s the best plot twist in your life?
Jeff Daniels: Best plot twist was auditioning on a whim at another college just to see how I’d stack up against kids from around the state. And then I’m going to skip the callbacks and go to the hockey game and get drunk with my college roommates. That’s Saturday night, that’s my Saturday in 1976 spring. That’s all I’m going to do. So, I go down to this other college. I auditioned doing a monologue I had done four months earlier at the play college I was at. Boom, there it is. Thanks so much, buddies are outside. Great. I leave. I’m going. And a seventh-year senior. Great, great guy. Where are you going? You know, we’re going to hockey game. Callbacks are any minute. I know. I know. And he said you might want to stick around. And so, I did, and I got called back and I’m going to read for the lead in Summer and Smoke, the Tennessee Williams’ play who’s directed by somebody I’ve never heard of, and I go. I want to take off. And he’s going, you idiot. The guest director of Summer and Smoke is a guy named Marshall W. Mason. He’s the artistic director of circle repertory company in New York. Basically, he’s out here at Eastern Michigan University picking up a check to direct some college kids from his old buddy who he went to college with at Northwestern, who has now asked him to come on out, make some money. Great. He’s done that. You might want to stick around for that one. And so, I waited and I was the last one to get called back and Marshall brought me up, sat me in a chair, had a girl named Debbie. It was the two of us. He sat us in chairs just like this and said, do the scene. Oh, okay. Just do the scene. Great, good. We’re done. Thank you. And I got it.
Nicolle Wallace: And that was that.
Jeff Daniels: And Marshall said, you should probably come to New York, and like no promises, but you should come to New York. You’re good enough to try. And so, I quit school and came to New York that fall and never looked back.
Nicolle Wallace: Is it that serendipitous? I mean, Aaron Sorkin says you’re simply one of the best actors he’s ever worked with. I mean, is it both? Is it the talent and the twist?
Jeff Daniels: I think that’s part of moving to Michigan was I didn’t want to lose whatever it was that happened when I became Fagin in “Oliver” or Harold Hill or Tevye, “Fiddler on the Roof” for God’s sake. Where is that coming from? Who is? I don’t want to spoil that. And I thought moving to Hollywood would spoil that. And so, I’m just riding that same well of creativity and imagination that I had way back when, but I didn’t have any training or technique or knew how to bring it up whenever I needed to bring it up. And I think the magic of it all, where you’re in the take in the middle of, you know, doing Reagan and you can feel him and now you’re riding it. You know, that’s why Aaron was, is so good. And the great writers are all like this. You’re just riding their words. You know, they’re Secretariat, you’re just the jockey, you know, on top, but then you got to know what to do with it. And then you get out of the way. The greatest country in the world speech that I did in Newsroom was full of just it’s like it has wings and you feel yourself go, and you’re him and you’re riding and it’s all there. And because you prepped, you’re prepared and then cut.
Nicolle Wallace: So, the best feeling.
Jeff Daniels: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: Anything better?
Jeff Daniels: The best feeling ever was Atticus Finch. And this is when I knew I’d made it. I was done. I didn’t need to chase anymore. And the closing argument in “To Kill a Mockingbird” on Broadway, Harper Lee, Aaron Sorkin, and the whole play I’m on stage talking to characters. But halfway through that closing argument, I walked down to Tom Robinson and the injustice that is about to happen to this innocent man. I turn for the first time to the audience and I treat the audience like it’s the jury. And it’s so startling because we had others, Celia and others were talking to the audience kind of narrating along the way, but Atticus never did that until then. And when I did, and I treated the 1,400 people sitting in the Shubert Theatre, like they were the 12 white jurors and shamed them, pin drop every time, eight times a week for a year, every single show, I’ll never have that again. But I had it then.
Nicolle Wallace: I was there. It was incredible.
Jeff Daniels: It was, you know? And I came out of that show going, nope, I made it. That’s when I knew, at least in my world, 45 or whatever years later of doing it, like going, you made it, you got there. Now it’s just fun.
Nicolle Wallace: I think the reason you become someone I turned to, and I’m trying to understand what the hell’s going on in the country is that that connection extends to the country, right? And to your neighbors and to the middle of the country. How much has the creative and the location and where you decided to sort of plant your flag connect?
Jeff Daniels: Moving to Michigan in 1986, after about four or five movies, was not what you were supposed to do. And it allowed me that when I did come into New York or L.A. to do something, it brought back the wonder. I was making movies. It’s kept the fun of it. I got asked by a younger actor recently, he goes, do you still like it? And I said, I love between action and cut, because if you do it right, you lose yourself. You become that person, you become Will McAvoy or something. And then they say, cut. And then they say, Jeff, you good? And you have no memory of what you just did.
Nicolle Wallace: It’s that out of body?
Jeff Daniels: That’s what you’re shooting for. Yes. Doesn’t always happen because, you know, there’re lines and staging and all the stuff, the technical, the mechanical part is always, you know, going, but you want to shut him up so you can just kind of go, then they say cut and you go, okay. That’s where the fun is.
Nicolle Wallace: What was the most out of body role for you?
Jeff Daniels: “Dumb and Dumber.” I didn’t know how to do it. You know, I didn’t know how to be that dumb. I didn’t. And I remember I got it. And I had done the screen test with Jim. Jim came in. There were a few of us that were in the finals. And so, I came in. I remember Jim just kind of started a scene and he kind of screwed his hair up. And so, I go, I got to match that. So, I just did, you know, and then we were kind of bouncing off each other and then we got into Colorado to shoot and it wasn’t going well. We were reading stuff. It wasn’t going well, you could tell. And then I said, I know what it is. And they’re going, what, please? He has an IQ of eight, not seven, not nine, eight. And that made perfect sense to me. And then I became the puppy on the leash. Jim would lead Harry? What? You know, just have a half second delay. Now you got that. You got that. You just see the word eight and there’s a vacancy that happens. And then they’d say cut, and you’d get your brain back.
Nicolle Wallace: “Dumb and Dumber” is —
Jeff Daniels: You asked.
Nicolle Wallace: No, no, no. Well, so my son is gloriously uninterested in everything that I do. Thank God. But when I told him I was talking to you today, he sort of looked at his schedule at school and he said, no, I can’t miss school, but that’s cool. For “Dumb and Dumber” to mean something to a 13-year-old, with all the competition that teens have from screens and phones is about sort of the transcendent nature of “Dumb and Dumber.” Right? Why do those guys still just nail it with all audiences?
Jeff Daniels: You know, you hope that, especially with a comedy, there is a shelf life on most of them. That the fact that we were lasting like a “Pink Panther,” Peter Sellers, Preston Sturges movies last, at least for me, it becomes this kind of everybody does something stupid at some point. So that’s the kind of universal hook. And I’m glad, you know, we knew when we put it out that 12-year-old boys, 13-year-old boys would think of it as their “Citizen Kane.” We knew we were aware of that.
Nicolle Wallace: That was the contribution.
Jeff Daniels: Which is we weren’t prepared for the demo that went from 8 to 80.
Nicolle Wallace: What is it to have that role among your iconic role standing next to Atticus Finch?
Jeff Daniels: Part of my plan was to create as wide a range as possible. I knew if I lived out of L.A. or New York, living in Michigan is you might as well be in Siberia. And so, I had to create a range, and I knew I could be funny and I wasn’t going down that road. So, I really wanted “Dumb and Dumber.” Got it. So “Dumb and Dumber” is way over here, but then you put Atticus Finch or Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Now there’s this wide gap that has nothing to do with creating a brand where you are at 35, you hit, you’re an action star, or you’re a romantic lead or whatever you are. And that is who you play the next eight movies until you get older. And then it’s, you have to decide whether you get the plastic surgery or not. And then if you do get the plastic surgery, you try to pretend that even though you’re 62, you’re really 35, but everyone can look on their phone and go, you’re not 35. You know, so I always wanted that range. And Clint said, I did a movie with Clint Eastwood and he said, there was a drama I did called “2 Days in the Valley.” He said, if you can do “2 Days in the Valley” and you can do “Dumb and Dumber,” you can do this.
(Music Playing)
Nicolle Wallace: We’re going to sneak in a quick break. Then we’ll have much more with my friend, iconic actor, Jeff Daniels. We’ll be back in a moment.
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Nicolle Wallace: What felt like the biggest reach at the time that you got it?
Jeff Daniels: I’ve always gone in to most, especially in the last 10 years or so, and I don’t know how I’m going to do it. So, I say, yes. If I know how I’m, oh, I read it, and go, I know how to do this. I can do this on Monday. I know I’m going to be bored.
Nicolle Wallace: And that’s the enemy.
Jeff Daniels: That’s the enemy, at this age. You know, when you start, when you check out the ambition hotel, you know, and you kind of go, okay, now I just want to do stuff that keeps me interested. I just shot a movie called “Reykjavik,” hardest thing I’ve ever done. Because I had to come up with a Ronald Reagan. It was the 1986 meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev. They met in Reykjavik, Iceland, in a little house to discuss lowering nuclear weapons. Because as I researched it, it was like, oh, my God, were we close? And it was an incredible weekend. And I had to come up with a Reagan, and Michael Gunn is the writer director. And he actually was on the staff, writing staff at Newsroom when we did Newsroom. Smart guy, great guy, had a great script taken from transcripts of what they said to each other. And there’s a story there, especially now with Trump and Putin and what that relationship is, Reagan and Gorbachev was not that. It’s what the Republican Party used to be, what they could be proud of, you know. I mean he says things in the “Reykjavik” movie that we got from the transcript, he tells Gorbachev, we are a nation of immigrants and he’s for that. I had to come up with a voice that was hard.
Nicolle Wallace: Should we hear it?
Jeff Daniels: Huh?
Nicolle Wallace: Can I hear it?
Jeff Daniels: Well, there are trigger words, much like Harry Dunn had the numeral eight, the word, well. All I have to, well, I’m right in here. And that’s kind of all you need. And you know, I was YouTubing him for seven months before we shot trying to get the voice, trying to get the well. You know, and you get just enough of that. And then they put the hair on you and you look, I look like him sort of, but I was still me. It’s what Timothee Chalamet did in “Complete Unknown.” Ed Norton did it with Seeger, Pete Seeger and George Clooney is doing it on Broadway with Ed Murrow in “Goodnight, and Good Luck.” There aren’t any prosthetics. There’s no chin in the nose and the thing. And you can’t even see me. You could see Timothee, you could see Ed, you could see George, but Murrow, in George’s case, was inside him. And that’s the little magic trick with the camera. If you can still see me, but there’s enough Reagan hair and the cock of the chin and the well right in here, Nicolle, and then suddenly you’re pulling him in and he’s in here somewhere. And then strangely it works, but you doubt it every single day you’re shooting, because you feel so fake and false and you go, I just, I can’t. I just wish I could. Well, you’re not him. Okay. So just him hardest thing I’ve ever done.
Nicolle Wallace: So, you’re playing Reagan as the campaign season, because I was e-mailing with you. How much is Reagan our distant past, now that Trump is the standard bearer of the Republican Party?
Jeff Daniels: Distant with capital D. Yes. I don’t think we should be surprised. Maybe there are some Republicans who are becoming surprised about how what’s going on, how far he is going. But I’ve told you, I used to go back to that 90-minute meeting that Trump had with Putin behind closed doors in Helsinki, kicked the American translator out and just Putin, Trump and the Russian translator. What happened? What were we talking about? Curious, because he came out of that room, looking like a child that had been scolded and told to stand over there. And as someone who has spent his life observing people, that’s what I do. Every human being has strengths and weaknesses. Even the biggest moral hero that you’re playing it’s got to have weaknesses. Otherwise, he’s one dimensional. That’s what makes us human. We’re not perfect. But the collapse of the Republican Party, taking a knee, you know, I still think about Kamala and how I think she would’ve been a good choice. I don’t care what they say because she would’ve done what Lincoln did. Liz Cheney would’ve been secretary of state.
Nicolle Wallace: “Team of Rivals.”
Jeff Daniels: Yes. “Team of Rivals,” Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote the book about it. That’s what Lincoln did surrounded himself with the people who would disagree with him, not the people who would, you know, take a knee and go yes, more tariffs, sir, more. It’s “The Madness of King George” and just the deterioration of the Republican Party. I mean, look, I’m just an actor. What do I know? But when Mitch started stacking the courts 25 years ago, I said it on your show once, they can see it coming. The new America that is diverse and treats everyone with equality and respect and dignity, you know, kind of like Jesus did. We’re ready for that. And Mitch and company could see it coming. They were going to be the minority. And then here we are and now you got it and now you’re losing money. I hope you’re losing tons of money. Those of you who thought this would be okay, my question is what are you guys going to do about it?
Nicolle Wallace: I mean Michigan voted for Trump this time, again, I think, right?
Jeff Daniels: Yes. Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: I mean the tariffs are going to hurt your neighbors.
Jeff Daniels: yes.
Nicolle Wallace: They’re going to hurt.
Jeff Daniels: Which I think, at the end of the day, that’s what’s going to do it. You just got to go wait a minute. The grocery bill is what? A hundred eighty bucks more.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Jeff Daniels: I can’t get that car that we have to have unless I pay another eight grand. What? Who do I blame for that? Who do I see about that? One person.
Nicolle Wallace: And I feel like some of the conversations we’ve had over the last, you know, five, six years were about this tug, not between right and left, but between decency and maybe if it’s about the cost of things, decency became a luxury. There’s something about decency being the sort of collateral damage. The thing we lose over wanting cheaper eggs. Do you think it was ever really about cheaper eggs?
Jeff Daniels: Well, I think at the end of the day it would be about just the price of eggs. Did it go up or down?
Nicolle Wallace: Yes. Yes.
Jeff Daniels: because that’s what he told me. He was going to lower the price of eggs or my grocery bill. I think that still matters. At least out in the middle of the country is that matters. The money matters.
Nicolle Wallace: So, Trump wins because things are too damn expensive. Right? We talked ahead of the election. I mean, like I think a lot of people did feel so much economic anxiety that they swallowed the whole bag of Trump’s warts and wounds and flaws to have more economic relief, maybe, is what they were looking for. I think there was this pull right between, I know that he doesn’t have the character, if you were a lifelong Republican of someone like Reagan or McCain, but there was this profound sense that things were getting out of reach the price of college, the price of a home, all those things. If the character or the lack of character didn’t hold them back, do you think the economic collapse he’s manufactured will make people in Michigan think twice about Trumpism?
Jeff Daniels: I think he’s a snake oil salesman. And I think people will see that. I think one of the things that we’ve lost, and this having played people like Atticus Finch, and yes, Jim Comey. He stood for some things, even McAvoy in “Newsroom” certainly did.
Nicolle Wallace: Is America the best nation? What’s the monologue? How does it start? America is —
Jeff Daniels: No, we’re not the greatest country in the world, but then whatever I said. Yes. I can’t remember it. I can’t remember it. It was —
Nicolle Wallace: But you memorized it, right?
Jeff Daniels: Yes. At one point. Yes, it was in there. We’ve lost decency. We’ve lost civility. We’ve lost respect for the rule of law. Lost it. We have normalized verbal abuse on the internet. We’ve normalized bullying, much as the woke generation tried to, you know, change that. It’s back, and along out the window goes character, integrity. I mean, nobody has great things to say about politicians. They never have, go back to Mark Twain. But ideally, we’re supposed to elect the best of us. Not the worst of us. He’s everything that’s wrong with not just America, but with being a human being, I just don’t get the Christian right. And I’ve read a lot of people who do and they explain it a lot better but it’s beyond me. But if Jesus came back, say 4 o’clock this afternoon and he booked an appearance on your show, what do you think he’d say about how things are going. That’s what I want to propose to some of the people who are so, you know, hell bent on what Trump is and what he represents and how I love the president. I’m going, have you seen the litany of stuff that he’s done to people? I just think we’re better than that. And I wish the Republican Party could get back to being better than they are now. I don’t know.
Nicolle Wallace: Do you think that people in Michigan, I mean, it’s a super informed electorate with really, really, I don’t want to say rising stars because there are already stars, but really high quality statewide elected officials in the governor, Governor Whitmer, the secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson.
Jeff Daniels: Mallory.
Nicolle Wallace: Mallory running for Senate. Do you think that in November, because Michigan is a perfect example, I mean, people chose, you know, they chose all those women I just named and they chose Donald Trump. I mean, what was that about?
Jeff Daniels: I don’t know because I missed that. I thought Michigan would get swept up in the new America, that we were the generation that was going to go, no, we’re ready. All-inclusive note where it’s going to be the best of all of us, not just some of us. I thought we were ready for that. I was as surprised as anyone. But I think, you know, I think they got to get hit. I think they got to get woken up. Look, I mean, I grew up in a Republican house. We just didn’t, I don’t think I ever heard the word Republican until I was in my 20s. My dad was a small businessman. My mom used to be on a farm and you didn’t talk about politics. Nobody did. Now it’s on our phone. It’s hitting this, it’s Facebook.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Jeff Daniels: Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Jeff Daniels: You can’t get away from it. And I think that’s good. I think it’s bad. But and there wasn’t such the divide. I mean, I’ll go back to Reagan, and that he could get in a room with Mikhail Gorbachev and hammer out something over three days, just the two of them and George Shultz, but just the two of them, and Tip O’Neill and Obama and John Boehner were this far from a grand bargain.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Jeff Daniels: And then somebody jerked Boehner’s leash. And next thing you know, he is selling marijuana in Florida. You know?
Nicolle Wallace: He seems so happy.
Jeff Daniels: He seems happy. Well, he should be. But it’s just there used to be a time. Shelby Foote was a great writer, a Civil War historian. He did the Ken Burns thing, and he says something to the effect that democracy is compromise. It’s about getting in the room and shutting the door and not coming out until you have a deal. That’s it. That’s the only rule. And Lincoln was fighting to get that back, certainly, after the war ended, the Civil War. But Shelby was talking about the Civil War and how that we couldn’t compromise is what will be our defeat as a nation. You know? And the other thing too, with the Reagan-Gorbachev thing, once they, Reagan and Gorbachev had a deal and the Berlin Wall came down, which was an added bonus to what he was over there to do, Gorbachev I think told him, you don’t have an enemy in me anymore. Your enemy now is going to be within.
(Music Playing)
Nicolle Wallace: Next up, much more with my conversation with visionary actor and musician, Jeff Daniels. Stick around.
(Music Playing)
Nicolle Wallace: What are we leaving this next generation? What is important about you playing Reagan right now? Why does that matter?
Jeff Daniels: I think it’s because we can learn from our past that history does repeat itself if we’re not careful. And I think, in regards to Reagan, there was a way that we dealt with a country, certainly a leader of a country who was hell bent on being at least our opponent and maybe eliminating us. In today’s world it just feels like Putin wants to infiltrate the United States. And you know that Trump is, you know, like his puppet or something and it just, that’s not what Reagan was with Gorbachev.
Nicolle Wallace: He was strong.
Jeff Daniels: He was strong, and he was, in his way, patriotic in a way that that word just gets thrown around and it’s now it’s taken on a political connotation. It was patriotic if you agree with what we’re doing on the right.
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Jeff Daniels: And there was more of a universal thing. That’s the thing that Reagan had, that Atticus Finch had. They had respect for things that were bigger than them. They respected the rule of law. Jim Comey that was sacred to him. Atticus Finch, the rule of law, the right thing to do versus the wrong thing to do. These guys were moral giants, you know, Atticus in particular. And now, there is nothing bigger than Trump looking in the mirror.
Nicolle Wallace: What I saw you in “Mockingbird,” you could hear a pin drop.
Jeff Daniels: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: People were and remain so hungry for what you just described. Stories of the moral man or woman prevailing. They’re absent from our politics. Why do you think that they are thriving in film and failing in politics?
Jeff Daniels: Well, I think they’re thriving in film because they’re failing in politics. I think that will be one of the things, I hope, where the country, as a whole, starts to look and realize that he is representing you. You may think you’re different than him, but you’re not. You’re the bully. You’re the asshole. That’s how the world looks at us now.
Nicolle Wallace: Now.
Jeff Daniels: I mean shooting in Iceland for the “Reykjavik” movie, I mean, the whole crew was from Europe and they were peppering me with questions about the election that was coming up between Biden and Trump. You know, that’s that, it’s who we are.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Jeff Daniels: I hate to tell you, but that’s you —
Nicolle Wallace: It’s who we chose.
Jeff Daniels: That’s us. That’s us. If you don’t like the way that looks, if you don’t like the way that’s going on, get rid of them, but it’s got to be you. And I think it reflects on us poorly. And I think we’re better than that. I think we’re supposed to be better than that. I hope the day comes when we all decide that, you know, maybe having respect for things that are institutions that are bigger. It’s much like, you know, everyone has their God and all of that. It’s the same thing. In Trump’s world, he is God, and that’s not what the founding fathers sat around the table and came up with, it just isn’t. And we need to respect that. We should continue to be representing people that have a moral standing that are looking out for other people who are more interested in taking care of others than they are of taking care of themselves, not hard.
Nicolle Wallace: And until then the, the art and the music.
Jeff Daniels: Well, that’s the escape, for me. Yes. That’s the escape. It’s where I get to channel some stuff, you know? And so.
Nicolle Wallace: Will you play something?
Jeff Daniels: Sure. Sure.
Nicolle Wallace: I was there on Monday, and it definitely lands through your truth and your honesty and your humor. It does land on hope, right? Your songs, your sets, your set list. I feel like wove in thread.
Jeff Daniels: Yes. Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: Is that fair?
Jeff Daniels: I make fun of some things.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes, it’s irreverent, but it does land on some hopeful messages.
Jeff Daniels: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: Winds its way through some weed.
Jeff Daniels: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: What are you going to play?
Jeff Daniels: Yes. So, I have this song that it’s about a guy trying to pick up somebody in a bar. And a great writer named Lanford Wilson, Pulitzer Prize playwright. He was a mentor and he would say things like, this is the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had. And then he would just toss that up. And so, I stole that and then wrote this.
(Playing Guitar)
The best damn pickup line I ever heard was by some guy in a bar south of Harrisburg. Seen himself a woman, she was drinking all alone, I watched him blaze a trail into her gray. She sidled up smooth like a man on the make. That empty seat beside her was his to take. He’s a darling, I know just what you think you’re thinking. Bartender, I’ll have what she thinks she’s drinking. And before she knew it, he was in control. She was the rhythm to his blues, she was the rock to his roll. All he had to say was, where do we begin? How about we cut to the chase? Start at the end. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He said, bet you’ve lived a life best forgotten. Your up for grabs, your downtrodden. Past is on your back and your future is too far and now you’re where you don’t know why where you are. You said, if somehow or other they made me king of this world, I’d turn your oyster into a great big pearl, a snap of my fingers and a wave of my wand, I’d brighten your darkness with a brand-new dawn. And before she knew it, he was in control. She was the rhythm to his blues, she was the rock to his roll. All he had to say was, where do we begin? How about we cut to the chase? Start at the end. Before she could say a word, he was staring off in the distance like he’s broken down and needed some roadside assistance. And he finally turned, looked her right straight in the eye, said, darling, at the risk of seeing a grown man cry. I don’t know about you, I’d love to live in a place where I’m surrounded by love, compassion and grace. There ain’t no castles, there ain’t no thrones. Everyone’s got everyone and no one is alone. If there ain’t no hatred, there ain’t no greed, the only thing you want is the only thing you need. Where miracles happen and dreams come true, where a man like me like you can love a woman like you. Yes, the best damn pick-up line I ever heard was by some guy in a bar, south of Harrisburg.
Nicolle Wallace: Brought the house down on Monday.
Jeff Daniels: Made him cry.
Nicolle Wallace: Loves that.
Jeff Daniels: When in doubt, leave him crying.
Nicolle Wallace: So, this song has a lot more hope than our conversation today. Is that just the delta between art and life?
Jeff Daniels: Yes, they’re at war, and me, that’s for sure. I still have hope. Kathleen and I were, because she’s livid.
Nicolle Wallace: Your wife.
Jeff Daniels: Just of what’s going on and everything.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Jeff Daniels: And I’m trying to muddle through. And I said, look, it may come down, right now, to get up today and just do one thing that’s good for someone else, for yourself, for someone else. One little hour of hope a day. Let’s start there because I can’t keep up with the chaos. I’m not on social media anymore. And I say that proudly and I don’t care, but it’s just this. You just got to find the flower that comes up through the cracks of the sidewalk or something. That’s where I am right now. I hope so, but as someone who turned 70, you don’t want to hear from me anymore? You’re not that interested in what I have to, you know, I’m just, okay, got it. Good luck.
Nicolle Wallace: How’s 70?
Jeff Daniels: I likened it to 60. Is you’re driving down your little town residential street at 25 miles an hour and you hit a speed bump. That’s, ooh, that’s 60.
Nicolle Wallace: You feel it.
Jeff Daniels: Yes, you feel it. But you know, no problem. You’re still going where you’re going. Sixty-five is you’re going down the highway at the speed limit, 70, and then you hit the speed bump. You felt that one more. You didn’t blow a tire. You’re okay. You keep going. Seventy you’re going down the interstate driving 90, and you hit the speed bump and you go airborne. And you just hope there are angels on the other end of wherever it is you land.
Nicolle Wallace: I love that.
Jeff Daniels: That’s all I got.
Nicolle Wallace: So, Daniels, thank you. You’re the best people that I’ve had a chance to get to know in doing my job.
Jeff Daniels: Thank you, Nicolle.
Nicolle Wallace: Thank you for doing this with us.
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“The Best People” is produced by Vicki Vergolina and senior producer Lisa Ferri with additional support from Clara Grudberg and Ranna Shahbazi. Our audio engineer is Bob Mallory and Bryson Barnes is the head of audio production. Pat Burkey is the executive producer of Deadline White House. Brad Gold is the executive producer of content strategy. Aisha Turner is the executive producer of Audio. And Madeleine Haeringer is the senior vice president in charge of Audio, Digital, and Long Form. Search for the best people in Nicolle Wallace wherever you get your podcasts and follow the whole series.
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