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Jon Cryer joins Sam to talk about how he chooses his acting roles when he knows saying yes to one job means having to turn down another, and tells Sam about a huge role he passed up. They also get into it about a raccoon that steals his delivery food, why he gets recognized at the Frankfurt airport, and being a seat-filler at the DNC.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Samantha Bee, Sarah Silverman, Jon Cryer

Samantha Bee  01:21

Every once in a while, although recently, I feel like it’s many onces in a while I read a news headline that stops me cold. Usually, if you know me, you know that I read the news or I start at around five in the morning. So when this happens, my day is pretty much spoken for before it starts. The other day, during my morning Doom scroll, I saw a headline that we now have reporting on the first confirmed death due to the reversal of Roe. It took more than two years to be publicly reported, and I’m sure many of you read about it as well, so I don’t need to explain to you the rage, fury that engulfed me as I read about Amber Nicole Thurman, the young mother who died in an operating room in Georgia as routine life saving care was delayed after Georgia implemented their six week abortion ban. Let me be very, clear it is not deniable that reversing roe killed her, which is why I have some serious choice words for people who say they are pro life and yet support abortion bans that, as we have been saying, forever, will kill women. And super extra choice words for the lower than low. People who say that this death was justified, that it is the proper punishment for ending an unwanted pregnancy. Can you imagine, actually, you know what? No, I don’t have any words for those people. This death was officially deemed preventable. Doctors in states with abortion bans now hesitate to perform routine procedures like a DNC, because though they can be simple life saving procedures, they can also be used to perform an abortion. Doctors are scared for their own careers and their own futures because barbaric laws have wiggled their way into women’s health care. Now we have proof that women are dying because of that. Oh, boy, I am outraged, truly.

 

Samantha Bee  03:42

This is Choice Words, I’m Samantha Bee. My guest today is actor Jon Cryer, who you love from projects like pretty and pink and Two and a Half Men. I love how he has been inspired to use his immense platform for social good, and really enjoy talking to him about his becoming a more active participant in democracy. So take a listen and make good choices.

 

Jon Cryer  04:10

Hi, how are you?

 

Samantha Bee  04:13

I’m great. Thank you. I’m okay, are you in New York right now? Are you elsewhere? Are you?

 

Jon Cryer  04:18

I am in Los Angeles, in my in my basement.

 

Samantha Bee  04:22

Oh, fantastic. Okay, well, I’m in New York, so you’re definitely going to hear ambulances and screaming and dogs and drugs.

 

Jon Cryer  04:30

Actual crimes going on as we speak. That’s that’s ideal.

 

Samantha Bee  04:34

We do. We do have someone in our neighborhood who calls the police every single day and is always on citizen, and it’s always really the wildest crimes. It’s like a raccoon came into a woman’s house with a baseball bat and killed her family. And you’re like, wait.

 

Jon Cryer  04:52

Now, okay, I would, I would dismiss that, except a raccoon stole my fortune cookie out of my DoorDash. Just. Just a week and a half ago, and I will I actually went back and got the security camera footage, because that little mofo just, he was very specific. God bless him. He just reached right into the plastic bag, pulled out one tiny thing delicate upon it, and ate it on my porch, as if, you know, oh my God, just in my face.

 

Samantha Bee  05:25

Oh my god. Did he read his fortune? Was he like unraveling with his tiny fingers? He was like, you will come into money interesting. Oh, my God. Raccoons are.

 

Jon Cryer  05:39

They’re clever, little evil creatures, and they’re cute, though. So we like them because they’re cute, but they are evil. They’re like 15-16, pounds of pure evil.

 

Samantha Bee  05:51

Pure evil um, just, this is not podcast. It’s not about me. It is about you. But I am about to tell a story about myself, perfect, yeah. Which is that when I was growing up, we had a cat who had kittens, and then a chimney sweep. Chimney Sweep. That’s not what I know. Chimney technician, yeah. Chimney technician came to our house and was like, my whole car is filled with baby raccoons. And my mom was like, Maybe this cat will immerse them. And she did.

 

Jon Cryer  06:21

That’s the first thing that comes to your mom’s mind. Oh, is hey, you know some interspecies collaboration.

 

Samantha Bee  06:29

Why don’t we? Why don’t we see what happens if we have, like, a wet nurse for these, for these raccoon babies? And I want to tell you something, it is believable to me that that raccoon did read and personally, like, kind of psychologically digest its fortune, because those raccoons were so advanced, like they went, they accelerated past the kittens on such an Incredible timeline.

 

Jon Cryer  06:59

They were super raccoons.

 

Samantha Bee  07:01

Yeah like, within two days, they were like, We are fully sentient, and we are on the ceiling now, swinging from swinging from your lamps. It is a pleasure to be talking to you today. We have business to attend to, yes, very important things. Okay, okay, we, I want to talk to you first. You know, we don’t usually start every episode by talking about the raccoons that we nursed to full health.

 

Jon Cryer  07:31

It’s a very specific podcast. That’s the, you know, I wanted to hit a very specific niche brand wise for my podcast. And it’s only Yes, Raccoon stories and just pretty much the nursing raccoons.

 

Samantha Bee  07:44

Yeah, Raccoon experiences with Samantha Bee is how we’re just changing the name of the podcast. Okay, it is choice words. I love to talk about choices, big and small. It made an impact in your life, are you? But my first question is usually, and it is an important question, yeah, good at making choices and decisions for yourself. Are you a decisive human being, are you?

 

Jon Cryer  08:08

Am not, I overthink things all the time. Love it. I think my, my career has is the answer to that question, both the good and the bad. I you know the interesting thing about being an actor is that you kind of have to surf your opportunities. You get you know, you might, you know, if you take one thing means you can’t do another, you know. And, and also, just to be in a position where you, where you’re getting offered jobs, is just so ridiculously lucky at all. You know, you’re already in this infinitesimally small percentage of people lucky enough that that there’s a market for what you want to do in any way. I am not decisive. I go back and forth. I agonize, and I’ve made super dumb choices that, you know, there’s always those stories for actors of you know, that great role you could have had, you know, like, you know, and thankfully, I don’t have many of those. Not a lot of you know Tom Selleck turning down Indiana Jones, you know, for me. But like, the closest thing I have to that is I got a script from my agent on a Friday afternoon. I was flying on Saturday morning back to New York from Los Angeles, and he said, This is an emergency. They can only meet you on Sunday so you’d have to read it on the plane, prepare when you get home and be ready to perform on Sunday morning. I was like, oh, okay, sure. So he hands me a script, and it’s an independent movie. And just to explain, independent movies are thrilling for actors because we get paid almost nothing and usually have to work in horrible conditions, and then the movie never comes out.

 

Samantha Bee  09:52

You have to change your wardrobe in the bathroom of a Starbucks, and the day is 18 hours long, minimally.

 

Jon Cryer  09:59

Yeah. Said there’s no food, and you’re putting up with, you know, they hired their brother to be the actor opposite you, or whatever, you know, so independents are not what actors are always looking for. But anyway, I got this, this script for this independent movie. I’m reading it, and it’s like, weird, because it goes, it has these long monologs, and it goes backwards and forwards in time, and you can’t and I was like, what is this even, I’m not even sure. And just profane, Mama, I mean, just, like, things that just make you go, oh, Jesus. Really, you know. And so I get into New York on Saturday night, it’s late, and I realize I have almost no time to prepare for this thing. And I’m really nervous, because it’s like, I’m gonna go in kind of unprepared to meet with the director and the producers. So I so the next morning, I’m just getting more and more anxious about like, it’s like, I don’t have time to prepare for this. And my phone rings, and it’s my sister, and my sister’s mother in law is ill, and she my sister has to go out to Long Island to take care of her, and cannot. And my sister’s asking me, Can you take care of my daughter, my niece? And, and I go, bing, this is a perfect excuse to get out of this audition. Yes. So I call up the producer, and I say, I’m so sorry, but, you know, I got my sister’s mom got sick, and, and I have to take care of my niece. And it’s just, I can’t, you know, I can’t I’m such a wonderful uncle and caring family member that I’m sorry I have to blow off your.

 

Samantha Bee  11:27

I prioritize family. […]

 

Jon Cryer  11:32

That’s who I am. And he said, oh no, bring your niece.  And I was like, Oh no, this thing is just foul. And you know she’s gonna sit on my lap while I do this thing. You know, she’s, she’s two. You know, this is not, this is not appropriate for an audition situation. The guy was just so adamant. He was like, no, bring her. You’ll see, you’ll it’ll be great. I was like, No, I’m sorry. I can’t and I begged off.

 

Samantha Bee  11:56

Okay.

 

Jon Cryer  11:57

Well, cut to a year later, and there’s a Hollywood Reporter headline about the Sundance phenomena of this movie that is called Reservoir Dogs. Oh my. And it is lighting the the festival on fire, and, yeah, I was supposed to audition for Mr. Pink, the Steve Buscemi role and I blew it off in order to hang out with my niece, because I’m such a good guy, you know, because I was so anxious, yeah, but what’s funny about that? And I did realize that actually, I think a cool life lesson out of that, certainly for actors, is I love that movie, and Steve Buscemi was fucking great in that screen. And honestly, I I, you know, I don’t think I would have been better. Certainly, you know, there’s, there’s so many roles that I was in the mix for and didn’t happen. And, you know, there’s a famous story of me not doing friends, not doing Chandler and friends. But again, really, that’s a story of a guy auditioning and not getting it. That’s all it is, but it has morphed into this cultural thing. Well, he could have been Chandler, you know, he could have been, you know, dating Julia Roberts or whatever, who knows?

 

Samantha Bee  13:18

I feel that everyone who’s in the performing arts has their own kind of version of that at different scales. You know what I mean, where you have to go. Am I the type of person who can like, wrestle with envy and put it to rest? Like, can I experience it? Can I put it away? Am I able to like, how do I kind of like square all this rejection, balance it with success. Like, how do you, I guess, how do you process that stuff? Is it fast? Because it always happens. It doesn’t matter what level of show business you’re at. Forever and ever and ever, people will want you. They won’t want you. You don’t know why. There’s no logic. Everyone thinks you can, just like, walk in a room and make a project happen, and it’s never true for anyone.

 

Jon Cryer  14:04

No, I have so many people say, say you should do a movie with Tom Hanks. It’s like, yes, I should. I’ve heard he’s good.

 

Samantha Bee  14:13

Do you know him? Does he want that also.

 

Jon Cryer  14:16

Exactly, do you understand the the 1000s of things that have to come together in order for it to be me and Tom Hanks doing a movie together. You know what? Years ago, somebody said to me, Hey, there’s enough success for everybody. Which actually, you know, which changed things for me a lot, you know, we I it made me feel less like we’re all fighting for a single piece of the pie, you know, that that that we’re all going to be on these journeys. And, you know, by the way, some of us might not be able to make a living in in show business. You know, that’s what I tell people when they they ask me about this. I say, you know, if you want to pursue this great it’s if you can enjoy how dumb this business is, you’re going to have a great time, because it’s […] and it’s not fair, and if you’re get lucky, there’ll be a market for what you do, and you can make a living at it, but you know, there’s a million ways to pursue it, not for a living. You can always write yourself. You can always write that screenplay that you love and see what happens. Who knows? You know you can do community theater. You can, you know you can create your own theater company. You can, you know you can make things yourself. That doesn’t mean the world will pay you for it, but you can pursue it as an artist, absolutely.

 

Samantha Bee  15:35

100% you can express yourself in a way. You know you can express yourself however you like perpetually with no and if, if you kind of see it with no promise of financial reward, or you don’t see it with any kind of like it’s, it’s hard to make it a career, but you can always it is an art form also

 

Jon Cryer  15:55

Yeah, and again, I always did enjoy how dumb the businesses I always, you know, because, because it’s just got these crazy roller coaster peak and valleys and things, you know, nothing makes sense, and people succeed at, at incredibly unlikely, you know, you go. How on earth did that work? You know, but it worked so and I love the personalities in it. I find that when I like I when I was tiny when I was probably five or six years old. My parents are both performers, or both actors, and my mom’s also a playwright, and my dad was doing the fantastics off Broadway in New York, and I was just backstage, and I just realized I love all these people. I love these actors. I love how, how you know that they tell wonderful stories and laugh way too loud and and are vain and ridiculous and walk around in their underwear. And, you know, I just love being a part of this, right? Had a similar feeling in the Two and a Half Men writers room that that was, you know, it was just so much fun to be there, right, that I thought, Okay, this is, this is the feeling that I this is why I do this, you know.

 

Samantha Bee  17:05

And I do think it’s also helpful to never give yourself a backup plan of any kind. Yes, you know what I mean? Like, if you give yourself a backup plan, you’re going to take it, guarantee.

 

Jon Cryer  17:20

Well, it’s true. I mean, i my i When I was 18, I got offered my first understudy role in New York City, and I was also enrolled in NYU at the same time. This is another choice. I had auditioned for the NYU Acting Program and got accepted astonishingly and somehow, in retrospect, I realized NYU is one of the most expensive schools in America. And in retrospect, I have no idea how my mother was going to pay for that, or how I was going but, but at the time, I got offered a job, and I said, I can either go to college or I can take this leap. And, you know, and it was not I was probably not the long term wisest thing to do, but, but again, I had to do the thing that I loved.

 

Samantha Bee  18:06

We’ll be right back after this.

 

Samantha Bee  18:13

You’re such a you’re so known to literally everyone like you have been in like culture defining, decade defining projects. Do you? Can you walk the streets of New do people stop you? People stop you? I bet they stop you less in New York than if you went to a shopping mall in LA, but am I? Do I have it wrong?

 

Jon Cryer  21:02

Yes, thankfully, I have no hair now, so because I have a different look, usually when people hear my voice, they go, oh, there we go. I still get a lot of Ducky, although it’s funny. I was just in Europe visiting my Son, who lives in Germany now, and Two and a Half Men is huge in Germany, but they dub it so people don’t recognize they look at me and they go, that voice is not your voice. So really, so they don’t recognize me from the voice.

 

Samantha Bee  21:34

That is, so I’m just picturing you walking down the street in Frankfurt or something, and people are just like, is happening right now.

 

Jon Cryer  21:47

Well, actually, yeah, in the Frankfurt Airport, the police recognized me. They were like Alan wilkoman, and they were very nice to me. And it’s funny because the kid who does Angus dubbing in German sounds like Augustus Gloop from Willy Wonka.

 

Samantha Bee  22:12

I love chocolate.

 

Jon Cryer  22:13

Yes, but the guy does Allen is great. The German Allen guy is fantastic.

 

Samantha Bee  22:22

Again, it’s all like, scale because, like, my husband is in Hot Tub Time Machine and, oh, my good time machine, too. And we were at a fall fair once, and the people working the carnival rides were like, Oh my God. And he was like, what’s wrong? We were all like, oh, something’s tear. Something terrible is happening, horribly wrong. And they were so excited, because on their carnival tour busses, carnival trailers, where they go from place to place, one of the they had two, like, exactly two DVDs in the DVR player, and one of them was hot Time Machine Two, do you know what I mean?

 

Jon Cryer  23:06

Two, not the first one. They wanted to. They wanted to, you know, get on that horse as it was galloping. They were just no need for the thing that sets it all up.

 

Samantha Bee  23:17

No.

 

Jon Cryer  23:18

No, I’m on board.

 

Samantha Bee  23:21

We accept that this is the world.

 

Jon Cryer  23:22

Yes.

 

Samantha Bee  23:22

The world exists. Okay, it’s funny, because people would shout, ducky to you, right? Like they must.

 

Jon Cryer  23:31

Yes and, actually, it’s one of the things I learned very early on, yeah, actually, from Christopher Reeve when I, when I did, I did the Superman movie that nobody admits ever happened. It’s called Superman for the quest for peace.

 

Samantha Bee  23:43

I admit it. I like, I really like hearing you talk about it. You’re so, just so open about it.

 

Jon Cryer  23:51

I appreciate, well, it was a you know, it was a formative experience for me, because I was, I was a still young guy, and I loved, you know, I was 14 when the first Superman movie came out, so it meant a great deal to me. It was, it was like what the magic of movies was, and that I was going to participate in that was just this amazing thing. And they had reassembled the whole cast from the first, from the first one. They got Margot Kidder back, and, you know, and Jackie Cooper, and, you know, I mean, it was ridiculous. And, and the script was actually terrific. Chris Reeve had, had written the story to the script, and so it was really an exciting relaunch of the franchise, as it were, and, and, oh, and I was gonna be doing all my scenes with Gene Hackman. He’s also good.

 

Samantha Bee  24:37

I’ve heard of him.

 

Jon Cryer  24:39

You heard him. But then we get on the set and it’s and that movie was actually made by the Canon company, which were these Israeli movie producers who had who were famous for doing schlock things like Chuck Norris and Delta Force and stuff like that. But this was going to be their bid at respectability. But unfortunately, they did not possess. Respectability. They just could it just like wasn’t it was just part of their bones. They couldn’t do it. And they, they took most of the budget from Superman four and put it toward he man and the Masters of the Universe that they were making at the same time with Dolph Lundgren.

 

Samantha Bee  25:14

I mean, also a classic, yes, also classic.

 

Jon Cryer  25:18

But unfortunately, so we ran out of money. So, so Superman, for as released, is currently, like, unfinished. I mean, the reason that it there’s, it’s so the special effects are so terrible, and there’s just these huge narrative gaps, is because they just ran out of money. And, but the interesting thing that I learned while I was doing it, well, I learned a lot of things, but, you know, like, get, get paid up front, yeah. But I was really surprised and moved by how much Chris Reeve, he understood the obligation of playing that character. He understood that that meant a great deal to people, that it meant more than just, you know, a role that he was playing for cash, you know. And so he understood that that that bond you have with the audience is really valuable, and you have to respect it. You have to understand that that’s an incredibly precious thing that you’re incredibly lucky to have, right? You know? I mean, because he didn’t, you know, I mean, he obviously did a lot of roles after, after Superman, but he understood that he’ll always be Superman to a lot of people. And, you know, and I thought that was really cool, and I I’ll always be ducky.

 

Samantha Bee  26:21

Do you ever think about this teenage like adolescence is so different now, it’s so deeply different now with social media. Do you wonder? Do you ever wonder what adolescence would have been like for you if you’d had Tiktok? I’m sure that I would be living alone on an island, exiled from humanity?

 

Jon Cryer  26:45

Oh, gosh, I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t, I don’t think I could have handled it. I mean, I was, I was a little overweight growing up not and when I was 14 and I went to theater camp, although having gone to theater camp brought out something in me, so I might have been doing very overt and ridiculous tiktoks By the time I was 16 or 17.

 

Samantha Bee  27:11

My brand.

 

Jon Cryer  27:13

Show tunes and […]

 

Samantha Bee  27:17

Okay, you were I’m doing a hard turn. I’m doing a hard ass turn because you were at the DNC.

 

Jon Cryer  27:24

Yes, I was at the DNC. Did you? Because I, you know, I work with a group called the creative Coalition, which generally advocates on behalf of the National Endowment for the Arts, which is, you know, which is a steep climb, because most of these legislators do not want to hear about it. So they, every now and then, they import me to Washington, DC, and truck me around to various, usually Republicans, because those are the ones who won’t vote for it. And they try to make a charming case for why America’s culture is worth funding. You know, because people forget that America is it’s culture, you know, that is what you when you think of being an American, you’re thinking of culture, of the culture that America is, you know, it’s pop culture, it’s theater, it’s, you know, it’s art, it’s all of those things. And it’s also not about subsidizing people so that they can become media stars. It’s because the people who aren’t media stars are also creating the culture that is America. You know, it’s for the people who can’t make money at it, you know. It’s for stuff that, that, that that is harder to fund. At any rate, they offered me a chance to go to the DNC and and I thought, wow, this is history, you know, and my son is 15, has suddenly gotten interested in politics. So it was really wonderful actually, we got to the DNC on the second day, and we had floor passes, which is, you know, kind of exciting. That’s exciting on the floor. But the problem is, if you’re not a delegate and you’re on the floor, you have no place to sit. You got nothing true, you have no ticket. So so we were, my wife was there as well, and my son and we were all trying to get in. And first of all, there was Tim Kaine, former VP nominee, and they wouldn’t let him in because he didn’t have the right pass. And I was like, are you kidding me? He was the nominee for vice president.

 

Samantha Bee  29:22

There’s no dignity.

 

Sarah Silverman  29:23

There’s no dignity.

 

Samantha Bee  29:26

Yeah.

 

Jon Cryer  29:27

Across, to hisc redit he actually handled it gracefully. He had a couple of you know, aides who were a little less graceful about it, understandably again, so I take my son out onto the floor for the first time, and it’s literally the last three states to officially nominate Kamala Harris, and so we were there at that electric moment when she had enough votes, and it was all official, and it was just like the place was on fire. It’s become such a vessel of hope. Now you know it went from people, all of whom you know. Were had enormous respect for what the President is currently doing. Has done an astonishing legislative record. Everybody respects that. And, you know, has an enormous amount of affection for President Biden, but we all had, you know, part of the job is communicating, and he was clearly starting to have a very hard time communicating. So that burst of just excitement and hope was just palpable. It’s and I think, you know, interestingly, a lot of people, for some reason, have been underestimating Kamala Harris for four years. You know, a lot of people were like, oh, no, we gotta have an open primary because that, you know, and it’s not gonna, you know, and it’s like, she’s the Vice President, you know, there’s somebody right there. And she’s just risen to the occasion in an astonishing way.

 

Samantha Bee  31:00

Have you been, have you always been? Have you always been a very political person? I mean, you grew up in New York, it’s kind of like part of the kind of in your blood, if you live here a little bit.

 

Jon Cryer  31:10

Yeah, I grew up in the 80s, and, you know, had to live through Reagan, who’s been, you know, just held up as this, you know, amazing American figure, which I had a lot of issues with rain back in the day. You know, time has given me some perspective on some of them. I, you know, there’s, there’s some things I do admire that he did, but I was still have a lot of huge problems with him. And I actually did a podcast called lawyers, guns and money recently that is about Iran Contra, which has just disappeared from the national consciousness.

 

Samantha Bee  31:43

Oh, gone.

 

Jon Cryer  31:44

Yeah, absolutely gone, and, but so many of the major players of it, you know, Bill Barr and, you know, they’re still around. Oliver, North is still around. You know, still. You know, it sort of was the first use of where Republicans were using, you know, far right militias to sort of be a part of American foreign policy, to basically get their using militia members to get what they wanted, which is a bad precedent, I think. But, you know, but the Iran Contra, you know, goes back to, you know, World War Two, when the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA start, started working with organized crime in Europe, against Hitler, you know, and to some degree with organized crime figures here who were fighting Nazis, Nazi subversion in America. So, you know, we have a we have a history of doing very complicated things.

 

Samantha Bee  32:42

Complicated is such a generous way characterize it, but I do remember, you know, those were, those really were those hearings were seminal for me as a kid watching them in Canada.

 

Jon Cryer  32:55

Oh, first of all, I did not know you were Canadian. That changes this whole conversation.

 

Samantha Bee  32:59

Everything’s over computer shut.

 

Jon Cryer  33:04

But so that must be interesting, because for me, the problem was I felt like everybody got away with it at the time. And so we’ve had, we had Nixon who got away with Watergate, you know, you know, then we had Reagan get away with this. And it was just like, When are, you know, when are we going to hold presidents to some kind of accountability.

 

Samantha Bee  33:24

I don’t think we have quite nailed it, not just, not just yet doesn’t feel, actually feels farther away from possibility now.

 

Jon Cryer  33:39

But now as a Canadian, I mean, you know, people have said being Canadian is like living above a meth lab, because the United States is just so bonkers, but is that how you felt?

 

Samantha Bee  33:51

Yeah, for sure. But, I mean, I like, we share so many cultural products. Do you know what I mean, like? I mean, it’s like, right across the board. So we would the news that we watched was really like the news from Buffalo out of Cheektowaga, like so there was a, there is a sharing that takes place. There’s like a, it’s a really permeable cultural border.

 

Jon Cryer  34:15

Yeah, there is a shared cultural history.

 

Samantha Bee  34:17

Right? It’s not exactly the same. The perspective is different. Some of the you know, some of the conditions for living, I think, are a little more compatible with human life, let’s say that, but it affords you a little bit of distance to go. I don’t think that it was right what you did there. I don’t think that that was a good thing. I don’t like Reagan very much. She doesn’t seem to align with our values here. You know, we all kind of like watched those hearings, and my mom was very political, and she hated Ronald Reagan. And my grandmother was very political, and she loved Nancy Reagan, and thought. Was a beautiful just like an icon, just a great snappy dresser did had the same hairdo, and I loved my grandmother so much, so it was the source of many fights when I was 11, I guess?

 

Jon Cryer  35:15

You’re just tearing into your grandma.

 

Samantha Bee  35:17

Everybody’s like.

 

Jon Cryer  35:18

I don’t want a cookie. I don’t want a cookie. Don’t give me a cookie. Let’s talk about Ronald Reagan.

 

Samantha Bee  35:21

How can you say that? Oliver North is lying, and then I moved here many decades ago, and he’s the host of his own show, so that’s great. You know what I mean? Accountability is not the strong suit. But I love to it was, fun to work here in political satire and bring that kind of distance to it, because I love the United States absolutely 100% I’m a citizen. Now, it’s all fine. It’s all legal.

 

Jon Cryer  35:52

Welcome.

 

Samantha Bee  35:53

Thank you.

 

Jon Cryer  35:54

I’m going to talk loudly, because that’s what I do to people from foreign countries.

 

Samantha Bee  35:58

Foreign foreign tongues.

 

Jon Cryer  36:00

Yes, we eat hamburgers here […]

 

Samantha Bee  36:07

But it is, you know, is a little bit like coming here was a little bit like it was interesting to have full conversations with people who did, who grew up within the United States educational system, and how we just have a different perspective. I was actually just telling someone this morning that I one of the first things I did that really offended people at The Daily Show was sit in a meeting of all these, like, very Ivy League educated writers. And I was not confident. I was very nervous. I was like, very Canadian about it. And I said something about American imperialism. And everybody in the room was like, What did you just say? And I was like, you know, like, just like, No one comfortably used that vocabulary in the so I did bring a kind of a different because in Canada, we have so much fear that you you’re all going to steal all our water, and we goddamn know what’s going to happen.

 

Jon Cryer  37:12

Hey, if we need it, come on, we should be allowed to steal it.

 

Samantha Bee  37:17

AI, needs a lot of fresh water. We need a lot of coolant so that we can make the best AI porn, okay.

 

Jon Cryer  37:28

That’s really what this was all about.

 

Samantha Bee  37:31

Come on, you don’t want to think that you live in a world where all the technology was like, kind of like its origin story is in, like, just improving porn. But here we are.

 

Jon Cryer  37:45

But no, okay, but okay. But it virtually every media advance from, like the Gutenberg, you know, Bible. It’s like they did Gutenberg, Bible and then porn, you know that everything, you know, it drove the VCR. It drove, you know, the every time there is a technical, a technological leap, porn is the first big seller of it.

 

Samantha Bee  38:08

The first big seller. And the innovators, really.

 

Jon Cryer  38:11

Yes, yeah, no. For the first thing, they did the Gutenberg Bible. They did porn. And they did a guide to witches that was very, very popular right after printing presses.

 

Samantha Bee  38:24

Were this is, that’s now, that’s a sentence, after my own heart, we’ll be right back after this.

 

Samantha Bee  40:59

You okay, you are very you are extremely outspoken. I love how political you are. It’s actually very nice to talk to you know, when a high when a high profile person is very politically engaged, and who actually uses your profile for good, as opposed to Scott Baio? And this is not about trashing Scott Baio, but he suck.

 

Jon Cryer  42:11

I don’t know Scott Baio. I’ve never met him. I wish him the best. There’s enough success out there for everybody. I’m saying it. I you know, no I get why people, at least online and in social media, sometimes resent when actors do it, because, you know, as an actor, you’re you’re a media personality, and you get a following, and that feels like an unequal power, feels like a power imbalance. And they’re like, who are you? Why should there be a power imbalance between you and me, and they’re right. There shouldn’t be. They’re absolutely right on that and, you know? And so I do try to be aware of that, and I try to temper my my political stuff with mercy, just in an understanding, because I do, I have people I differ with politically, and my family, you know. And I try to think, okay, how would I say that to a person in my family who you know? Because you know, we agree on so many more things. I know this is a cliche, but we agree on a lot more things than we disagree on and and I feel like, you know, there is a compassionate way to make the same case. You don’t have to just rub everybody’s face in it and be be cruel. You know, I try to criticize elected Republicans, as opposed to rank and file Republicans, because, you know, the these electoral, elected Republicans, ostensibly, should know better.

 

Samantha Bee  43:38

Yes, and I also feel like if you are an elected if you are an elected official, or you are seeking to be an elected official, that means that you are effectively trying to make the rules that govern all of our lives. Therefore you are subject to whatever the citizens would like to express to you, and.

 

Jon Cryer  44:02

Yes, that’s if people want to. You know, it’s interesting on social media, people are shocked when you’re not just trying to. You know, have that, that viral moment, you know? It’s like, here’s a gotcha. You know? It’s like, no, let’s talk about this, you know.

 

Samantha Bee  44:22

Yeah you’re very good with it. You’re very good with it. Your voice is actually very, I think, very clear and strong and kind.

 

Jon Cryer  44:33

Well, thank you. Good to be Canadian. That’s what I really need to be Canadian.

 

Samantha Bee  44:41

You can visit. It’ll be fine. I’ll if you want, I’ll adopt you.  Yeah, you can try it out. The healthcare is very good.

 

Jon Cryer  44:52

Yes, that part, yes, I have experienced the healthcare because I’ve shot up there. Yeah, fairly, you know. And I love that people that it’s not a concern. Yeah, they consider it silly that you’re worried about having to spend a lot of money for medical care. You know, it’s like, Why would anybody have to spend a lot of money?

 

Samantha Bee  45:09

It is like casting off, I always liken it to an Invisible Backpack that all Americans wear, like there is a heavy burden to the knowledge that one day your whatever disease or condition you develop could actually bankrupt you and your children. It’s a perpetual concern, which we sometimes, I see, like my Canadian relatives, bellyache about the system, because it’s not it is imperfect. And I’m like, oh, honey, you have no idea. I know, there’s like worries, but you just need to live on the other side of the border for 15 minutes and you’ll feel great. You can feel a lot better about this. You know, such a complicated relationship with X, formerly known as to litter, yeah. Think that anything about it is salvageable.

 

Jon Cryer  46:00

I don’t know. I still have a lot of people that I enjoy conversing with on it. So I still post there pretty regularly. I also when I when I want to reach an audience of Trump supporters, I post there because they’re there. They’ve been prioritized. They’re clearly the audience that Elon Musk wants to have there. So I so if I want to say something to them, I’ll say, hey, Trump supporters very often. I’ll, you know, in very chipper things. And of course, no matter how nice and polite I am and how much it’s backed up by actual, you know, facts and you know, and all that stuff, the the withering anger that I am. And by the way, the one of the nice things about being in show business is you get used to people not digging your stuff, you know.

 

Samantha Bee  46:51

Yes, you get a bit of a callous. You develop a bit of a callous.

 

Jon Cryer  46:54

And I remember  I was in line in 1987 for a movie and and I heard people saying, Oh, hey, there’s a new John Cryer movie out. And I heard another person say, I hate John Cryer. And I was just like, oh, my goodness. And but honestly, I was like, You know what? There are actors who work, whose work I’m not a huge fan of, so that’s fair, you know, if they don’t, they don’t, you know, again, I’m lucky to have the opportunity to put it out there. And that helps with social media, because it’s like, you know, people just, you know, I put out a message, and it’s like, you know what this is, I try to be sure that the messages I put out are what I want to put out. I try to not act rashly. Every now and then I slip up and go, that wasn’t, that was poorly worded or whatever, and every now and then, I amplify something that I later find out was just fucking wrong, you know, and that I try to avoid that as well. It’s funny because Elon Musk’s big, you know, priority when he first bought it was, I got to get rid of the bots, and the bots have flourished like never before. Oh, my, yes, and so, yeah, I don’t know if it can be salvaged. I’m enjoying I’m on threads as well. And blue sky and I a lot of great comedy people went to Blue Sky, which I think is very cool, right? And, and, and threads is starting to get better about news. So I’m enjoying that.

 

Samantha Bee  48:23

The funniest part of it, really to me, is that a lot of the people who probably respond to you on X and they’re like, fuck yeah, you privilege fuck if they saw you at a picnic, they’d be like, it’s ducky.

 

Jon Cryer  48:38

Yeah, no, I’ve had a few of those. I’ve had a few people who say, I don’t agree with you, you know, every, every now and then there’s, there’s a few people that I’ve conversed with that will argue with me in good faith. And that’s just invaluable. And I do enjoy that actually, I think that’s fair. I mean, it’s not wildly popular. I don’t have millions of followers. I have, you know, less than 400,000 you know. So, you know, I’m sure there, there are people who are better at the much more combative style, and they get, you know, millions of followers, because people like the bites. But that’s not necessarily why I’m there.

 

Samantha Bee  49:14

Right, I like it discourse, imagine people talking to each other. It almost feels so pastoral. Okay, tell me about, I want to talk about the man who calculated depth.

 

Jon Cryer  49:31

Oh, thank you.

 

Samantha Bee  49:32

So tell me about what is the origin of the there’s more and more narrative podcasts, which I actually, I’m really into that.

 

Jon Cryer  49:40

I love narrative podcast. And unfortunately, they’re, they’re, they’re in a tough place now because the talk show podcast, like what we’re doing right now are, are what is very popular with, you know, Spotify, and all the people in wonder. They all want their Talk Show podcast, but they’re literally kind of iffy on narrative podcasts. But I love them too. I’ve absolutely. Addicted to him, the man who calculated death, sort of fell into my lap in this weird way. It’s actually, it’s a podcast I produced. I’m not a part of it. Unlike lawyers, guns and money, which I actually was the narrator of this thing, fell in my lap because a friend of my wife’s we were having dinner, and her friend drops this bombshell at one point. She says, anyway, so anyway, my grandfather was one of Hitler’s most important scientists. Anyway, yeah, and changes the subject. I’m sorry, we’re going to have to back up and investigate that a little bit. Turns out this woman is a woman named Suzanne Rico she used to be an anchorwoman here at CBS News in Los Angeles, and she’s a gifted journalist. She, as her mother, was dying, her mother confessed to her that she had written a memoir about her traumatic childhood in Germany, and she said, I’m not going to be alive long enough to finish this. Will can you finish this memoir for me. And Suzanne was, you know, of course, taken aback, and she and her sister Stephanie were like, how, how do you finish someone else’s memoir? Yeah, and there had always been this sort of reticence to to look into their mother’s childhood in Germany, because her father was a Nazi. Her father was the was a Nazi scientist named Robert lesser who worked on on one of Hitler’s most secret weapons programs. He invented the v1 which was the first cruise missile, the thing that terrorized London for all that time and so, so he wasn’t just a Nazi. He was one of the highest level Nazis. So Suzanne felt like she needed to look back into her family history, so she went back to Germany and finally, really examined the life of this man who had affected her family’s trajectory, and there had been this mystery that had always bedeviled Suzanne’s mother in that there was a mysterious bombing that had killed her. Her mother, Suzanne’s grandmother, the wife of Robert lesser, was killed. And so Suzanne went back to Germany to investigate how that happened and who did it. And the astonishing thing was, Suzanne, in the course of making this podcast, solved it. She  solved the mystery and found out who did it.

 

Samantha Bee  52:32

I cannot subscribe fast enough.

 

Jon Cryer  52:35

And so the first season is her solving this mystery. The second season, which she hasn’t actually recorded yet, but she’s mapped all out. Is her family got brought to the United States in Operation Paperclip.

 

Samantha Bee  52:46

Oh, wow.

 

Jon Cryer  52:47

And so her grandfather, who had been a Nazi working for Adolf Hitler, is ended up working with Wernher von Braun on our space program. So so this German family got plunked in the middle of Alabama and and had to make a new life for themselves, working on, you know. So they went from, you know, the, arguably the lowest horror that the Earth has experienced, you know, that human history has experienced, to working on, you know, what many consider man’s greatest achievement?

 

Samantha Bee  53:24

This sounds fantastic. Oh my God. What a pleasure talking to you. I mean, this was really fun.

 

Jon Cryer  53:33

The pleasure was mine. I’ve enjoyed yourself. I’ve actually appeared on your show, which was fun.

 

Samantha Bee  53:39

Ages ago.

 

Jon Cryer  53:40

Yes, we did a Christmas a Christmas eggnog.

 

Samantha Bee  53:47

Yeah, grateful to you for that. It was so fun. I should share it. I should actually re share it.

 

Jon Cryer  53:55

Absolutely the nod. The problem was that the the actual eggnog that was there on the set that day was vegan eggnog, which I don’t, I don’t recommend.

 

Samantha Bee  54:05

That’s disgusting.

 

Jon Cryer  54:06

To anyone.

 

Samantha Bee  54:07

Actually, they’re like, they’re like, No, it’s just like, regular eggnog, but with chickpea juice, and you’re like, that’s technically edible, is not what I’m looking for an eggnog.

 

Jon Cryer  54:22

No, not my nog.

 

Samantha Bee  54:26

Thank you so much for doing this.

 

Jon Cryer  54:28

Thank you. It was really a pleasure.

 

Samantha Bee  54:36

That was John Cryer, and I had no choice but to look up one thing he jokes about being a seat filler at the DNC, but do they have actual seat fillers? No, they don’t. They don’t need to. They just rely on people like John. They just have John. Thank you so much, John, and thank you listener for joining us. I’m Samantha Bee, see you next week for some more Choice Words.

 

CREDITS  55:13

Thank you for listening to Choice Words, which was created by and is hosted by me. The show is produced by […], with editing and additional producing by Josh Richmond. We are distributed by Lemonada Media, and you can find me @realsambee on X and Instagram, follow Choice Words wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership.