E-mail a friendMike Farrell
airdate March 8, 2007
Mike Farrell is best known for his role on the long-running hit TV series M*A*S*H - a show for which he earned Emmy nods for writing and directing several episodes. To a different audience, he's known for his turn on the series, Providence. He's also a dedicated political and social activist. Farrell supports long-term efforts to end homelessness and hunger and was named Goodwill Ambassador for the U.N.'s High Commissioner for Refugees. As president of Death Penalty Focus, he opposes capital punishment.
Mike Farrell
Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Mike Farrell back to this program. The former M*A*S*H star has been an outspoken advocate for a number of worthy causes, including his long-time opposition to the death penalty. His new memoir is called "Just Call Me Mike: A Journey to Actor and Activist." Mike Farrell, always an honor to have you on the program.
Mike Farrell: Thank you, Tavis, nice to see you.
Tavis: How, in short, have you navigated this career where you have both of these things, and done both well? Actor and activist. It's enough to get people to have the courage to do one, much less both.
Farrell: (Laughs) Thank you. Well, for me it's just been a process of going along and doing what strikes me as being the right thing to do. Obviously when you're trying to be an actor, you have certain steps up the ladder you have to take or you hope to take. But when you involve yourself in social and political activism, it's really a function of what hits you in the face.
What says, "Hey, this needs attention." And when I got to a place where people paid attention, I decided that I would give it some of my attention.
Tavis: You connect, though - which is fascinating for me in the reading of the text - you connect these decisions and how you make decisions about what you involve yourself with to the relationship with your father. Difficult relationship at times. Tell me about Mike and his dad.
Farrell: Well, I was terrified of my father. He was a big, tough guy, and he dealt with me the way he dealt with everybody, the way he dealt with the world. He wasn't open to emotion; he wasn’t open to certain expressing tender emotion. So, I learned to duck. I learned to watch it, I learned to be careful. But what it taught me was to hate injustice. To hate it when big people did wrong by little people.
Tavis: I'm fascinated by that, Mike, 'cause I wonder what it is you think - and I'm asking you to analyze yourself, but I wonder why you think it impacted you in that way? That is to say that it made you hate injustice rather than doing the opposite, which is turning on people, because there are two ways to take that. There are a lot of folk who end up being violent because of the violence they're exposed to. It turned you the other way. You have any reason why?
Farrell: Maybe there were other influences. My dad was not a bad man. He was just very contained. And I think I had other influences, certainly my mother, and certainly other people around. A man at the park when we were kids took us in and tried to organize us and teach us some things about candor and about believing and about caring about each other.
So I knew there were things to do. I just sort of didn’t know how to do them, and I was looking for the clues. And what I determined was when I had a child, I would never do what I felt was done to me, which was make him afraid of me. That's the last thing I wanted to do.
Tavis: How do you - not to get too personal, but how do you rate yourself in that regard? Because every one of us says when we get older that there are things we are not going to do that our parents did and vice versa. So looking back on it now, how did you do relative to those commitments that you made as a child about how you were gonna do things differently with your kids?
Farrell: Yeah, I probably overdid them differently. (Laughs) But I think I succeeded in at least not making them afraid of me and letting them know they were loved and respected, and letting them know that I was there for them.
Tavis: Speaking of kids, I'm always fascinated - I happen to love, as viewers know, I love autobiographies, I love biographies, in part because there's an old adage that says, "People see your glory, but they don't know your story." So they see Mike Farrell in all of his glory, they don't know the back story. And for me, the back story is always the most interesting. So speaking of being a kid, when you were here growing up in L.A., you had a pretty interesting childhood in terms of delivering groceries to some pretty well-known people.
Farrell: I did. Here I was, hoping to be an actor and I lived right across the tracks from Beverly Hills and saw all that up there. And then when I was old enough to drive a car, I got a job at a market where we delivered groceries into the back doors of the homes of Jack Benny and Anthony Quinn and Lucille Ball and all these people.
And I was just starry-eyed, thinking maybe somebody would turn around and say, "Oh, you have the (laughs) - you have what it takes, I'm gonna make you a star."
Tavis: (Laughs) It didn’t quite happen that way, though.
Farrell: It didn’t work that way, no.
Tavis: So, how did it happen? How did you find yourself into this business?
Farrell: Well, I finally had - after I got out of the Marines, I never spoke about it to anybody until after I got out of high school, joined the Marines, got out of the Marines, and then a couple things happened, and I started giving voice to the fact that I was really interested in being an actor. (Laughs) And a friend of mine once said, "If you're really interested in having a career as an actor, maybe you ought to do something about it." (Laughs)
And he enticed me to come to an actor's workshop, and that started one group, and a bunch of people putting on a play, and a teacher, and from one teacher and one workshop to another. And pretty soon, you learn, hopefully, how to do it.
Tavis: So that story, Mike, obviously begs the obvious. How ironic, you end up having served in the Marines and being on this long-running series called M*A*S*H.
Farrell: (Laughs) Yeah.
Tavis: What do you make of that?
Farrell: I'm not quite sure, except I was the only one - only two of us in the cast who had ever put on a uniform in real life. So it taught - I knew some things about the military that they didn’t know, and I was able to help. But the Marines are very different from the Army Medical Corps.
Tavis: The other irony about this I think that I'm sure jumps out at people for those who know your back story and your history of activism, you had some things to say about this war in Iraq, and other wars that we have been engaged in. And it's so ironic to me that here you are starring in a show for so many seasons where you're a part of the military, and yet you’ve had some critical critiques about U.S. Military engagement around the world.
Farrell: Yeah, very much so. I remember we got an award one time, one of the awards that M*A*S*H was given, and I had the opportunity to speak. And I said, "It's odd to me that we're being given an award for a show about peace when the dogs of war are once again sounding on the American political scene," and people applauded. And I thought, “There's somebody out there that wants to hear somebody raise a voice in opposition to what's going on.”
Tavis: Ever thought to the contrary that you were being too big-mouthed, too loud-mouthed for an actor who needs to work, and perhaps putting yourself in harm's way by being so vocal, shall we say?
Farrell: Well, there are a lot of people who feel that way, but. (Laughs) Who say some version of shut up and sing. But it never felt to me like - it always felt to me as though what was more important was doing what was right. And if it cost me, it cost me. But more often than not, if somebody didn’t wanna hire me because of my political beliefs or my social behavior, somebody else probably would. So I think it all balanced out.
Tavis: What do you make of the long-running success of a show like M*A*S*H? And I ask that against the backdrop of watching it every night now on TV Land. So I'm seeing you, like, every day.
Farrell: Well, thank you.
Tavis: Yeah. But why that show for so long? So many came and went, but 11 seasons? Yeah.
Farrell: Yeah, 11 seasons. I think because we talked about people who cared enough to take themselves out of their comfort zone, to go do a job that needed to be done, even at the cost of taking time away from their loved ones when it was important that the job be done. A lot of people never put on a uniform, and a lot of people certainly haven’t been in a war.
But most people understand being - having to face that choice. What do I do? This needs to be done, it's gonna take me away from my family, but it's important that it be done. And I think people identified with us on that level.
Tavis: So you wanted to be an actor, you got a chance to do that. On the one hand, you were blessed with what everybody in this town wants, the opportunity to be on a series that is hugely successful, that runs for 11 seasons. That just does not happen every day.
Farrell: (Laughs) No, it doesn’t.
Tavis: So you got the most extreme blessing that Hollywood could bestow upon one. The flip side of that is, though, that when you're on a show for 11 seasons, everybody knows you from that show. They call that typecasting around here.
Farrell: They do (laughs).
Tavis: You regret M*A*S*H for 11 years, or you would do it all over again?
Farrell: Absolutely, I would leap in, joyfully. I was so happy. I'm the luckiest actor in the world, and one of the luckiest people in the world. I got to work with a wonderful company doing important work, I felt. Saying good things. And the audience out there embraced it and loved it, and I'm just immensely proud of every minute of it.
Tavis: What do you make of the television landscape these days? The TV show as we once knew it is - things are a little different these days.
Farrell: Dying or dead. It's really sad. There are still, fortunately, some thoughtful people doing important work, but so much of this garbage that's being done. The reality shows that are all about humiliation, people subjecting themselves to humiliation in order to have their moment in the limelight. It's really - I find it very, very sad, and I fear the impact it has not only on the business but on the audience. I worry about kind of dumbing down the audience.
Tavis: Let me offer this as a quick exit question. The news, of course, today, President Bush has announced he's gonna travel south of the border to Latin America.
Farrell: Does he know they don't speak Latin down there?
Tavis: (Laughs) I don't know, but maybe Condi will tell him. That reminds me of his trip to Brazil. I remember this a few years ago, he says to the president of Brazil, "Do you have very many Black people down here?" (Laughs) And Condi Rice is standing next to him saying, "Mr. President, they have more Black people in Brazil than anywhere in the world, basically." (Laughs) But anyway, I hope he knows that.
That said, though, you spent a lot of time working over the years in Central America, that region of the world. What advice for President Bush, now that he appears to be at least taking somewhat seriously our neighbors to our southern border?
Farrell: Well, I think there's some question as to how seriously he takes our neighbors, but the fact is what he needs to do is what - the advice that was given to the Dixie Chicks? Shut up and don't sing. Just shut up and listen. I think there's a lot that he can learn if he will simply allow himself to do that.
Tavis: Yeah, well, maybe President Bush will listen to you. We'll see. The new book by this great actor - actorvist Mike Farrell, "Just Call Me Mike: A Journey to Actor and Activist." Mike Farrell, always an honor to have you on the program.
Farrell: Thank you, Tavis, it's a great pleasure to see you.
Tavis: Good to see you.
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