FRIDAY

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Local Showtimes
• Past Shows
• Blogs
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis
• Features
• Mobile

RELATED LINKS

• Bio on Mr. Azaria
• Article on Mr. Azaria
• HUFF official site

E-mail a friend

Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome the multi-talented Hank Azaria to the program. The 4-time Emmy winner is back on television this fall with a new Showtime series called 'Huff.' The show premieres Sunday night. Here now a scene from 'Huff':

Tavis: Hank, nice to see you.

Hank Azaria: Nice to be here.

Tavis: You all right, man?

Azaria: I'm good. Feeling good.

Tavis: Um, this series, no pun intended, really starts with a bang--

Azaria: Yeah.

Tavis: On the first episode.

Azaria: Yeah, you can intend that pun.

Tavis: Yeah.

Azaria: Uh, I think we used it a couple of times. Uh, yeah, it's about--the concept--a very talented guy, Bob Lowry, who wrote it--was the idea of sometimes you wake up right out of your life. Especially right in the middle of it. Usually something happens that turns it upside down in one way or another, and that's where he wanted this series to start, and for Huff, this shrink, it's a very tragic event that jolts him out of his happy little existence.

Tavis: Yeah.

Azaria: Yeah.

Tavis: Don't want to give too much of it away, but, uh--

Azaria: No, a very bad thing happens--

Tavis: A very bad thing happens in the first episode.

Azaria: With a patient, and it--it, you know, turns the guy's life upside down and, you know, for this guy, and I relate to this a lot, he--he's the eternal good boy, the good son, the do-gooder, the guy who thought, "If I'm a good guy, things will work out." And, you know, life doesn't always work like that, and, uh...sometimes profoundly doesn't ever work like that, and that's what he's facing, a kind of a mid-life crisis for him. And I think everybody can relate. Certainly everybody in their middle age can relate to that kind of thing.

Tavis: Well, you're a do-gooder. Things have turned out pretty well.

Azaria: You know, I am--

Tavis: As a matter of fact, so well that this show has been picked up for a second season, and the first one ain't aired yet.

Azaria: That's true. We'd only shot 6. We were shocked. And they picked us up for the next year. We were in a very public forum, too. We were at the T.C.A., which is Television Critic Association. We were standing there in front of 200 critics, and the head of Showtime, Bob Greenblatt, just said, "I'm announcing we're picked up for next year." And I'm like, "Did he say we're picked up for next year? Thanks for telling us."

Tavis: Yeah.

Azaria: Uh, but you know, I went, very profoundly went through a time not long ago, about 5 years ago. I'd just turned 40, but, uh--where my whole life got turned upside down. A divorce, and things not working out they way you want it to, and it's very upsetting, and you gotta have to rethink everything.

Tavis: Yeah. I'm actually amazed that I'm sitting here talking to you tonight 'cause I read somewhere, and I've been dying to ask you if this is true or not. So apparently, like on 3 separate occasions, you quit this--this business...and decided to come back every time. So I'm amazed that I'm actually sitting here talking to you. I'm glad you came back. Ha ha ha!

Azaria: This was long time ago.

Tavis: Yeah.

Azaria: No--yeah, I got so--it's nothing fancy. I just got rejected so much in the first 5 years I was trying to do this in my early twenties. I was like, "That's it. You know, I don't think I can stand another no. I really am done." I wasn't trying to get attention. I was really done.

Tavis: Right.

Azaria: And as I sat there for about a week or 2 deciding what to do next, I realized I can't do anything else.

Tavis: That's all you were good at, huh?

Azaria: Yes. As bad as I am at this--

Tavis: Ha ha ha!

Azaria: I'm worse at everything else. Might as well just stay with it.

Tavis: What is it about--I've always said this to my friends who are actors--I could never be an actor. One, I don't have the talent, I suspect, to do that, but beyond not having the talent--even if I had the talent, I'm not sure I'd want to do that because I cannot handle, to your point, being rejected that often. I mean, every day you're going to auditions, and more often than not, until you get to a certain point in your career, you hear no, no, no. What kind of constitution does one have to have to be in a business where you get told no a whole lot more than you get told yes?

Azaria: Um, people say you develop a thick skin. I'm not sure that's true, though. I think you get resilient, and--it's almost a pathology, I think. You have to be...almost crazy enough to stay with it against all odds, and--in a way, you know--we were joking about it when I said it, but it has to be kinda true. If you can do anything else, you will...and you should. Um, it takes a lot of, uh...a crazy, almost obsessive drive to just stay at it for some reason and to improve things about yourself, or your abilities that you need to improve, or to just--you have to have some weird--I wished I could have quit, you know? But I was like "I just feel like I'm supposed to be doing this. So I'll keep trying."

Tavis: Uh-huh. You mentioned you turned 40 not long ago, and my view is no--I turned 40 not long ago as well.

Azaria: Oh, yeah?

Tavis: We did a show about turning 40. It was pretty fascinating. A number of Hollywood actors came on the show as well. Um, some of the stuff that you went through was rather public, and I'm not trying to get into that, about what you mentioned a moment ago at 35--you know, 4 or 5 years ago. What I want to ask you, though, is what you learned through that period that is making you, I hope, at least, value life more or certainly see life differently, um, now that you're at 40?

Azaria: Yeah. Well, that's--it's connected to what we were talking about in the show, is a lot--you know--for me, it was a divorce, but...it seems to be a common thing. A lot of people somewhere between 30 and 40 have some kind of an event. Even if it's just their own dissatisfaction with everything or their disillusionment about where they thought they were gonna be at that point in their lives, but usually, it's a little more profound than that. It sort of makes you question everything, and...you know, like my character in the show, I always thought that if you just are a good guy and play by the rules and are honest and fair and work hard, it's all gonna work out...and just not everything does.

Tavis: So why do you think then, Hank, why do you think then that on occasion, bad things happen to good people?

Azaria: I think that it, you know--I know what it left me with, that if you go through it and you don't run away from it, if you stick with all those uncomfortable feelings and all the fallout and you take responsibility for how you contributed to the situation you're in, and you look at what you can do about it, you come out the other end appreciating what is good about life. You get much simpler. You're just kind of happy to be having just that day, you know, of a good day's work or your family around or the people you love or your dog or whatever it is. That's how I ended up. I take nothing for granted now. Just even a calm little happy scene to shoot or a dog to pet or a friend to hang out with is not lost on me that those are privileges and not givens in life. And you're a lot happier, you know. And you accept that bad stuff can happen, but that's why you gotta enjoy the good stuff while it's here.

Tavis: Well, a lot of good stuff has happened for you, namely things like 'The Simpsons.'

Azaria: Yeah.

Tavis: So let's see how good you are on cue. You ready?

Azaria: Sure. Throw it at me.

Tavis: Uh, Moe the bartender.

Azaria, as Moe: What about him?

Tavis: Ha ha ha!

Azaria: What do you want to know? What's funny? I'm a clown? I amuse you?

Tavis: All right, uh, Chief Wiggum.

Azaria, as Chief Wiggum: Yeah? Present. What? You know, these look like they're coffee mugs, but there's water in 'em, and also usually with coffee there's doughnuts, and I don't see any. There's like no food here, and I'm hungry.

Tavis: Um, Apu.

Azaria, as Apu: Yes, hello. Um, Apu usually is working. He works 24 hours a day, so it's difficult. It's amazing he can be here, quite frankly.

Tavis: Ha ha ha! Uh, that was amazing 'cause Hank quit the business 3 times, and he made it here after all. Um, how did you get so good at this? I mean, you're like bam, bam.

Azaria: I quit, but Apu always stayed with it. He has never wavered. He always knew. He was down.

Tavis: Ha ha ha! How did you get so good at this, man? You are good on cue. 3 different voices, bam, bam, bam.

Azaria: Well, I've had practice. 16 years of--you know, when I first did 'The Simpsons,' I was startled by that, too. I'm like, "Wait, I can't just go right into it," but Harry Shearer and Dan Castellaneta, who do all the other male voices on the show, they're so nimble vocally, I was kind of shamed into just doing it, you know. I didn't want to admit that I couldn't be that fast, and then you just...I learned watching them a lot.

Tavis: Yeah.

Azaria: Um, and sometimes your characters have to--excuse me--you have to talk to each other. That, uh, you know... hey, Apu. Hello, Chief, how are you? I'm all right. Give me a couple of doughnuts. All right, sir. With sprinkles or non-sprinkles? you laugh, but this is my job.

Tavis: I'm about to ask that. I'm laughing 'cause it is your job. What kind of job is that? I mean, how cool is that to have a job where you're, like, playing all day?

Azaria: It's amazing. It's literally...I can't believe it. I think it still annoys my father, uh, who actually had to work for a living. You know, it's--it's like winning the lottery to be able to--I've always been able to just mimic things. That's my main real talent is I can mimic. I thought, when I was a kid, I thought everybody could do it. I didn't understand that you couldn't exactly replicate the voices that you heard. I was always able to do it, so I didn't know it was a marketable skill until years later.

Tavis: Speaking of marketable skills--this may be a stupid question. It wouldn't be the first, it won't be the last, I suspect, but is there something that you have been able to translate from being able to mimic and doing these voices into your acting? When you're not doing these voices, of course, is there anything that you've taken from your acting that helps you when you're mimicking? When you're doing 'The Simpsons'?

Azaria: Yes, a lot of both. I mean, uh, I got better. Like I say, I was born a natural mimic, but I really--actually acting didn't really come naturally to me. I had to very much learn the craft of that over 10 years. Oliver Platt, who I'm doing the Showtime series with, is a good friend of mine from college. We did a lot of college productions together. He was a real natural. I mean, when we were 18 years old, he was pretty brilliant. And I could always do funny characters and had pretty good comic timing, but I had no idea how to be emotionally honest in a scene or--or be simple in my work and just sort of be present with another actor. All that was beyond me. I was too nervous to do any of it. Um, and as I learned to be a better actor, the voices got--the characters sort of got more 3-dimensional 'cause I was able to act them better. And with the acting, a lot of times, 'cause I can mimic so well, sometimes if you can get a voice of someone or something, it kind of gives you an insight--it's almost a weird thing. If I get the voice--like in 'The Birdcage,' for example, I was talking like this, very gay Latin kind of thing... and if I have it in the voice, the body kind of follows, just naturally, then if the body follows, kind of an entire attitude and philosophy seems to follow after that, and it can be a real insight into a character. I mean, Woody Allen talks about how in his mind in his movies, he's doing a dead-on Bob Hope impression. He thought people would even notice and bust him on it, and if you look at Bob Hope's films and you look at Woody Allen, you say it kind of is the same comic persona. It's just coming out through that weird Woody Allen filter. I do that sometimes with roles. It's like I imagine what--like, what if Michael Keaton were doing this? Sort of in my head, I'm doing some kind of impression. It kind of gives you a little piece of the character you might not think of on your own.

Tavis: Well, if 'Huff' and 'The Simpsons' aren't keeping you busy enough, you've got, like, movie projects. You're in this movie 'Eulogy.'

Azaria: Yeah, 'Eulogy's' coming out soon.

Tavis: With Ray Romano and everybody else, it seems like. A big cast in that thing.

Azaria: There's a lot of us in this funny little ensemble black comedy, yeah. And Zooey Deschanel plays my daughter. She was really great to work with, and Rip Torn plays my dad. He's really great, kind of a force of nature.

Tavis: And a Monty Python project?

Azaria: Yeah, that I'm really excited about. I'm doing a musical version of 'Monty Python's Holy Grail' with Mike Nichols. I'm doing it with David Hyde Pierce and Tim Curry and--we just started rehearsing in New York. It'll be on Broadway in February.

Tavis: Yeah.

Azaria: That's really been fun. I'm playing all the John Cleese parts.

Tavis: That's always the good stuff. The Cleese parts are the good stuff.

Azaria: In my opinion, those are the most fun parts to have. And he came by last week. It was very nerve-wracking during rehearsal to have him there, but it was fun.

Tavis: Nobody makes you nervous at this point in your career.

Azaria: No, almost everybody.

Tavis: I didn't make you nervous, did I?

Azaria: No, I felt very at home.

Tavis: Well, thank you, Hank. You're welcome back here any time.

Azaria: Thank you very much.

Tavis: 'Huff' premieres this Sunday night, and that's our show for tonight. As always, you can catch me on the radio on NPR. I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, thanks for watching. Good night from Los Angeles and keep the faith.