E-mail a friendTed Danson
airdate May 19, 2005
Actor Ted Danson is best known for his TV work, specifically his award-winning role on Cheers and as the star of Becker. His film credits include Saving Private Ryan and Three Men and a Baby. Danson became interested in drama while at Stanford. He transferred to what is now Carnegie Mellon and moved on to NYC, where he worked in commercials and soaps. An environmentalist, Danson founded the American Oceans Campaign. He next stars in Showtime's Our Fathers, about the Catholic clergy sex abuse scandal.
Ted Danson
Tavis: I am pleased to welcome Ted Danson to this program. He, of course, became a household name and a 2-time Emmy winner, courtesy of his role on one of the best comedies in TV history, 'Cheers,' which I still watch on TV Land every night. More recently, he enjoyed a successful run on 'Becker' on CBS, but this spring, he's out in something decidedly different. His new project is the Showtime movie 'Our Fathers,' which deals with the Catholic Church abuse scandal. The film premieres May 21st. Here now a scene from 'Our Fathers.'
Mitchell Garabedian: Those children put their trust in a priest who destroyed their innocence and their future. And the church that was supposed to look after them when they were children, it was--it was looking the other way, and now you want me to take this money and do the same thing?
Man: Mitchell, you know the limitations on any suit against the church is 20,000...but if you leave this meeting without accepting, our offer is withdrawn.
Garabedian: Interesting.
Tavis: Ted Danson, nice to meet you.
Ted Danson: Yeah, you, too.
Tavis: I'm glad to have you on this program. First of all, are you Catholic?
Danson: No. Watered-down. I was raised Episcopalian. But my mother is converted, and my father converted to Roman Catholicism when they were in their 50s.
Tavis: Yeah. I start with that because I figure that if you were, in fact, Catholic, this might be a little bit--this project might be tricky to make if one was, in fact, Catholic.
Danson: Actually, it was--I don't know if it was written by, but most of the people involved were Catholics. The scandal was revealed mostly because of Catholics. Either the energy of priests who were so upset with what the hierarchy was doing, or laypeople who cherished their faith and didn't like seeing what was happening, so it really is not--I think it's important to say it's not Catholic-bashing by any means.
Tavis: But there were a number of Catholics on the crew?
Danson: Yeah, and producing. The producers, and...
Tavis: So what was it like in between shoots? Was there a lot of conversation about the abuse scandal?
Danson: You know what? Actually the--I guess you'd have to say yes 'cause many days there were survivors there on the set, 'cause this is all taken from a reporter from 'Newsweek.' David France, I think he worked as a reporter, wrote this book, so it was all pretty much verbatim, and all the characters, which I really loved, 4 or 5 of the survivors insisted that we use their names, their real names. So the level of conversation was pretty high. They raised it because--when you have people who have gone through this, are brave enough to become public, 'cause it is such a shaming--any kind of sexual abuse to a child is, you know, such a taboo, such a shaming thing, that to stand up and say, "Yes, this happened to me, and I'm going to work in this area and make sure it doesn't happen to other people" is such a courageous thing that it kind of raised the level of the conversation on the set.
Tavis: If I read your resume correctly, this is not the first time you worked on a project dealing with sexual abuse.
Danson: Yeah, that's true. 'Something About Amelia' years ago on ABC.
Tavis: Yeah. Now, you play a lawyer in this particular movie. Tell me about the role you play.
Danson: His name is Mitchell Garabedian, and he was a Boston lawyer who, I think, was described by someone incorrectly as kind of, you know, an ambulance chaser, which he wasn't. But he was doing these kinds of cases, and he was the one who--the tragedy is that the reason why this went on, one of the reasons why this was allowed to go on and on and on is 'cause it was secret. When a family would sue the church, you know, and say, "This happened," and it did, then the insurance policy the church carried would pay an automatic $20,000. The court put a gag order on everything that took place so that if anyone spoke about this at all, they would lose the money immediately. They would have to pay it all back and be in a lot of trouble. There's that kind of secrecy. There's the secrecy of the fact that this is really like a parent abusing a child, because the priests are the next thing to God, you know, to Jesus. So it's unheard of. This couldn't possibly be taking place. The family would be torn apart because this couldn't be happening. Not the priests. The child in all child abuse cases, almost always, they blame themselves. It's something about them made this happen, so the shame is so deep that the whole situation is about secrecy. So, for these people to come forward is so brave, so courageous.
Tavis: How did the illness and the recent passing of the pope affect the production? 'Cause I thought I heard somewhere that this project might have come out sooner had it not been for the pope's--
Danson: I'm not sure that we--I know that they postponed--in Boston, they postponed the premiere, the showing of the film. I know they did do that. But I don't know if they postponed the actual date. I'm not sure, to be honest. I don't know about that. In a way, I'm glad they did, because Cardinal Law, who is, kind of, the center of the controversy in Boston--first off, let me just take a little parenthesis here. It's not just Boston. It's, you know, it's happening in Los Angeles, happening in every city in this, you know, this country.
Tavis: But Cardinal Law, to your point, though, got bumped up to a nice job in the Vatican, which made a lot of people upset.
Danson: Yeah. And I'm not looking--I don't know that anyone should look for retribution, but there should be--doesn't feel like there's a seriousness of intent when you remove somebody from the controversy and elevate them. It certainly was not satisfying for the survivors, that's for sure.
Tavis: I know the movie is not about preaching, but for you, is there a lesson in the project?
Danson: Yeah, it is. It's about healing. Well, it's about secrecy. You've had, probably, secrets. Secrets, I've had secrets. They poison you, you know, and until you shine light on it and tell the truth, which is unbearably uncomfortable and painful, there is no possibility to heal, and this is about healing. Another thing I liked about this film when I read it was I was thinking, "Oh, dear. Here we go with some homosexual bashing," and they make a very strong point that that is not the case, and one of the characters involved is a priest that is passionately against--this is not a character, this is a real-life human being who is passionately against what the cardinal was doing, the way he was handling this. He just thought it was sinful and awful. He was outed as a gay, who had had a gay relationship when he was not in the priesthood. And the point is that, you know, you cannot draw a direct line from homosexuality to being a pedophile. That's not accurate.
Tavis: All right. So, you mentioned secrets, so here on national television I'm gonna tell a secret. That involves--
Danson: You'll feel so much better, and I will try not to shame you.
Tavis: All right. It involves Ted Danson.
Danson: Uh-oh.
Tavis: When you were playing Sam Malone on 'Cheers' back in the day, when I got to L.A.--I went to school in Indiana University, came out to L.A. to work for--graduated Indiana, moved to L.A. to work for Tom Bradley, the late great mayor of the city. When I got here after I'd been offered a job by the mayor, this was during the Reagan era, the city, the minute I got here, had a hiring freeze. The money was so bad that they put a hiring freeze on. So I was out here floating for months and months and months, trying to get a job, trying to hold on. I could hear Gladys Knight and the Pips warming up.
Danson: Did I behave well?
Tavis: Yes, you did.
Danson: Oh, thank God.
Tavis: I've been dying to tell you that story.
Danson: 'Cause here I am, out of work, on your show, so this could be really--
Tavis: Well, I even told my staff that. But it was, like, so funny how the world goes in full circle. Here I am as an extra, just trying to make a living, and here you are on our show and I'm glad to have you on.
Danson: Facing a hiring freeze.
Tavis: That was funny. What do you think, looking back on that series all these years later?
Danson: I love it. I only saw probably about a third of them, 'cause we had young kids at the time and it was a bedtime, you know, ritual. So I missed--plus, I don't like looking at myself, you know. So I'm now watching them. My wife Mary Steenburgen is a 'Cheers' fan, so we started watching them on, you know, what is the network?
Tavis: TV Land. Yeah.
Danson: TV Land, God bless 'em. You know, late at night, and it's fun. I'm so far away from it, it's like I have no idea who he is and what he's about to do next, so...
Tavis: Every time I see you, and I run into you at various places around town, I always want to walk up to you and say, "Mr. Danson, how are the oceans?" and I want to ask you that because you are such a passionate advocate. So how are our oceans?
Danson: They're, you know, they're in jeopardy, but they're fixable. I started something called American Oceans Campaign, which now has merged into an international organization called Oceana, and I'm so proud to be part of it. It's in Santiago, Chile. It's in Madrid, Spain, Brussels, Washington, L.A., Alaska. 70 people working full time. So it's really positioned itself to be effective worldwide. I can tell you about a lot of the different things we're working on, but the one that I'm excited about that's coming out, it's campaign oriented. This is--these are the problems of the ocean, this is what we're capable of doing, and then we pick those off. And what we're about to work on is mercury. These are our EPA--this administration's, which is not particularly environmentally friendly--these are their figures, so it's not me exaggerating: one out of 6 women of pregnant-bearing years has too much mercury in their system to safely give birth to a child without the possibility of brain damage because of the mercury in their system. That's huge.
Tavis: Startling.
Danson: That's startling, that's huge. And it comes mostly from eating fish, and it gets into the fish because of coal-burning plants, mercury gets in the air, drops down to the water, and it's water-soluble. Fish get it in their gills. You eat the fish. Or we've discovered also from chlorine plants that are still using mercury in the process of making the chlorine molecule. So it's a big deal, and we're starting a big campaign on that.
Tavis: And I was going to have salmon tonight after the show.
Danson: Salmon's not so bad.
Tavis: I may want to have salmon after the show.
Danson: You may want to watch whether it's farmed salmon 'cause that has its problems. But these are all fixable, by the way. It's not doom and gloom. It's plan ahead, because these are our natural resources, and if you are in big business, you'd pay attention to your natural resources.
Tavis: I gotta get out of here. Let me ask you in 10 seconds right quick. I know that because of your wife, in part, being from Arkansas, you guys are very close to the Clintons. Hillary in '08, what do you think?
Danson: If that's what she wanted to do, I would be there, you know, doing anything I possibly could. I have no idea what she wants to do.
Tavis: Nice to have you on the program.
Danson: You, too. Thank you.
Tavis: Check it out on Showtime May 21. 'Our Fathers,' May 21, on Showtime. That's our show for tonight. A reminder, you can catch me back on public radio this weekend and every weekend on P.R.I., Public Radio International. Check your local listings. I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, here's a classic scene from 'Cheers.' Good night from Los Angeles and keep the faith.
Back to May 19, 2005