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Actor-activist talks about the anti-Semitism he experienced as a child and about Mexicans being the new racial scapegoats. (4:27)
 

Full interview. (23:18)
 

Tavis: I'm pleased and honored to welcome Ed Asner to this program. The legendary TV star and long-time political activist has so many distinctions to his credit, including that of being the only actor in history to win both a comedy and drama Emmy for playing the same character. One guess? You got it. The iconic Lou Grant.

Beginning May 29, you can catch him in what promises to be one of the year's biggest films, "Up," which is the first ever 3-D animated feature from Disney Pixar. Here now a scene from "Up."

[Clip]

Tavis: I'm glad they finally got to your voice at the end. I was like, "What kind of clip is this? Where is Ed Asner in the clip?" (Laughter)

Ed Asner: (Laughter) Well, it was my body. They primarily hired me for my body.

Tavis: (Laughter) How you doing, man?

Asner: I'm doing fine. I really am.

Tavis: It's nice to see you. Could I just say to you this voiceover thing works for you? If this acting career doesn't work out for you, I think the voiceover thing might work for you.

Asner: Oh, I've been doing it for a number of years, yes, yes. The most interesting thing is that I did about five books on tape when I first started. This is over a period of a couple of years. I did only one with Julie Harris. The other four I did on my own.

"Esquire" or "Playboy" came out with a Christmas edition, a thick catalog of the books on tape, and I had different reviews for each of the five I had done and they were all raves. I said, "Oh, my God. They're gonna be pouring over the transom hiring me for these books." I waited two years before I got my next job. So the voiceover thing is an old thing, but it's one I love.

Tavis: To your point of loving it, what have you discovered about your voice? I know every character is different and so are books, obviously. What about your voice works as a voiceover artist? Because not everybody who acts, of course, is being called upon to do voiceover. What's it about this Ed Asner voice you think that works?

Asner: I think I incorporate a lot of tones and notes in it that might not otherwise be there. I regard the actor as a musical instrument and the more intelligently and the more mellifluously he betrays the notes of the writer, the more successful he is in presenting that character.

Tavis: So tell me about "Up" and the character that you play in "Up."

Asner: Well, he's a much nicer guy than me. I'm not that nice.

Tavis: Yeah, yeah. I can't imagine that (laughter).

Asner: Nah, nah, nah. He's a wonderful man who loved once, as they say, too well. The wife was taken from him and he lives a life alone dreaming about the adventures that they hoped to do together and the world barges in on him, developers, eminent domain, that kind of crap, as well as an eight-year-old boy who's trying to get him to help him win a merit badge.

They force themselves on him and it leads to this escape and the boy is trapped with him and they are off on a marvelous adventure in South America with Christopher Plummer as the villain.

Tavis: He plays a great villain.

Asner: Oh, God, yeah. He's a good swordsman too.

Tavis: (Laughter) Yeah.

Asner: You know, I meant with swords.

Tavis: When you are looking at work today that comes across your desk, specifically voiceover work, is there a particular something you're looking for?

Asner: Yeah, intelligence. I'm right now, I think, what is it - no. I just did two "Boondocks." That's a Black cartoon show, in case you didn't know that.

Tavis: Yeah, yeah. Some guy named Aaron McGruder.

Asner: Aaron McGruder, yes. A Scotsman.

Tavis: Yes (laughter). Old friend of mine, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Asner: Well, I loved his cartoon series and I loved being on that cartoon show. He's a beautiful man and writer and I play the white villain. You didn't know there were any, did you? I bet you didn't know that.

Tavis: I only know that because I saw you in "Roots" when I was a kid. You played that villain pretty good.

Asner: I regard that villain as, let's call him, a guy who was trying to be a good Nazi and he failed.

Tavis: Sounds oxymoronic, but I hear your point. As you look back on that now, 30 or 35 years later, what do you make of the opportunity you had to be a part of - I mean, you've been a part of some of these seminal projects, but talk to me about "Roots" and the character that you had a chance to play in it.

Asner: Well, I had succeeded well with "Rich Man, Poor Man" the year before. I didn't know that the director would ever have me back again, but amazingly to his credit, he did, but they wanted me for the captain. I mean, for the first mate. I felt I had done that role before and, much as I'd like to be on "Roots," I preferred to do the captain and betray some literary aspect to the character, so they said yeah and I was amazed.

I did it and Ralph Waite was a wonderful first mate. One of the reasons I did it was because I'm sure that the white actors in Hollywood, racist Hollywood, will avoid this movie about Black people, so I have got to put myself up as the great good soul that I am. You knew that, yeah. Put myself out there for the Black people of this country. I was lucky I didn't have broken legs from the white actors who wanted to be in "Roots" and they got some beauties.

So I did it and I also thought it would be a lost leader. I didn't think it would run away the way it did and it scored phenomenally and I'm delighted. I think it changed radically this country and a lot of this country's attitude by its people to Black people.

Tavis: I think you're right. I think we owe a debt to Alex Haley that we can never repay.

Asner: He should be up there in the list of Gods.

Tavis: Did you ever have pause, ever give consideration to the notion, to your earlier point, of being a white guy that playing that type of role might make Black folk who you were trying to do a favor by casting yourself angry with Ed Asner for? Not being able to separate you from the character? It's such an emotional series. That's why I ask this.

Asner: Yeah. You don't have time to think about - you have the time, but you can't waste your time thinking about things like that. I just did a "CSI" which was one of the best things I ever did in which I played a supposed Jewish holocaust victim who in the end turns out to be Nazi in hiding.

You know, you can ask yourself a lot of questions on that. As our politicians have a tendency to overuse, it's for the greater good. It's for the greater illumination. It is to teach us and, from that, we learn.

I learned - I think I taught by doing the Nazi and I think I learned by showing what happens to somebody; i.e. the ship's captain who goes along with a crime, a state crime of slavery, and by trying to improve the lot of the slaves on the ship merely keeps more of them alive so that they can be brought into the horrors of landlocked slavery and its viciousness and its maiming and its killing.

Tavis: You mentioned a moment ago, Ed Asner, your Jewish face. What was it like growing up as a Jew?

Asner: I didn't, but I am (laughter).

Tavis: (Laughter) You did and I'm gonna follow you there.

Asner: Play that back!

Tavis: Yeah (laughter). What was it like growing up as a Jew in Kansas, of all places?

Asner: Kansas City, Kansas.

Tavis: Yeah.

Asner: Well, there were about ten Jews in my high school of 2,000. When I got out into the world and I saw people from the other places of the country and I realized that, though I encountered anti-Semitism, it was in so much more a mild form than what I found Jews in other places encountered, so I really can't complain.

Tavis: What were you exposed to, though? When you say anti-Semitism, what -

Asner: - name-calling, yeah. "Oh, the dance we do is enough to kill a Jew." You know, crap like that. I think before I was born, there was a country club that had a lake there, the only lake in the area, and supposedly they had a sign at their box office that said, "No Jews or dogs admitted." You know, I've done a lot of research on Boss Prendergast of that era. He was Irish and they used to have signs up that said, "No dogs or Irish need apply."

So it's applied everywhere. Nowadays they're probably saying, "No dogs or Mexicans need apply." I think, you know, the Mexicans take a tremendous - the immigration, the illegals take a tremendous, what would you call it, burden off Blacks by their illegality and by their lessened American capabilities.

Tavis: Take a burden off Black people in what way?

Asner: Prejudice. I think some of these people are so busy hating Mexicans, they don't have time to hate Blacks.

Tavis: You can't believe that.

Asner: I can't believe that?

Tavis: You believe that?

Asner: Oh, of course. How much room can they have to hate?

Tavis: I don't know that that hate has to be categorized that way.

Asner: They don't like to blur their focus. Let's put it that way.

Tavis: I hear that point. But I think that anybody who is a bigot is a bigot.

Asner: Oh, sure, yeah, yeah. The Archie Bunkers of the world who did that - there's another good Nazi who was humorous. Yeah, I probably am overstating my case, but as Ford said, you always need someone - you need a scapegoat.

Tavis: I only raise that - I think Ford's right about that. I only raise that because I think - and I know you weren't suggesting this - but I think it's dangerous particularly now that we have an African American who's president and we celebrate that. I certainly do.

But I don't want us to buy into this notion that we live in a post racial America nor do I want us to buy into the notion that, because people are hating on Mexicans, that does not mean that African Americans are still catching hell in certain circumstances.

Asner: Oh, no. I'm not going to remove that. The skin color will always be a brand.

Tavis: Exactly. That's the point.

Asner: The Mexicans have a lighter brand. I know that and I know that I think that, if this country spent more time on trying to benefit all of its citizens no matter what color, there would be less time for hatred and discrimination.

The crime for me in this country is to spend trillions in Middle Eastern adventures with the incumbent loss of life while our country goes into the toilet at home in terms of education, in terms of jobs, in terms of health. I think that's the biggest crime of all.

Tavis: I don't think it needs it necessarily, but I want to ask just to make sure I'm on the same page. You want to qualify what you mean by Middle Eastern adventures? You want to define that for us?

Asner: Iraq. I even question Afghanistan and the persistence by this present president of planning to stay in Afghanistan, I think, is foolhardy and a quagmire. You know, the Western world should finally realize, I think, to stay away from this place called Afghanistan because you cannot win. They're gonna try to make themselves the first winners. We were gonna try to improve over the French in Vietnam, weren't we? We got surprised, didn't we?

How nice if we could - the crime is you can convince all those Congressional people and the people through the media to piss away all that money overseas and it becomes socialism to convince them to piss away the money here at home.

Tavis: If those members of Congress were sitting in my chair and debating you on this, they would say that these aren't really adventures. This is about spreading democracy, Ed Asner. We've got to spread democracy around the world, and to that, you'd say?

Asner: How many years do you think it'll take? When can we first hope to see those democratic springs arising? And we also see that trouble is beginning to erupt again in Iraq as time moves on and the sects are beginning to fall apart again. I don't trust any of it. I think we have disgraced ourselves as this great democracy and it would be nice if we could do something for the folks at home for a change and uplift ourselves.

I mean, too many times in the past, in my opinion, when things have been going too bad, America somehow found itself in a foreign engagement and the military industrial complex got a chance to work and sell and make profits. I'm really tired of those profit makers. I really am.

Tavis: How did you become so opinionated, so outspoken? I'm wondering if there is any connection to the anti-Semitism that you faced as a youngster that has made you a defender of the underdog, the disenfranchised. You pick a word if I'm on to something here.

Asner: Well, I think I'm always feeding my ego. That's certainly a big part of it. I like controversy and I'm a cynic or a skeptic. I'm not sure where I fall. So I -

Tavis: - is that healthy?

Asner: It's easy to play grouches.

Tavis: (Laughter) You can get paid for it. You do that well, but is it healthy?

Asner: Well, I think it's unhealthy to ignore the problems that we live under. I think it's very unhealthy. I'd rather choose that lack of health of calling a crime a crime of saying this is wrong. My sister caught me as a youth in Kansas City. Kansas, one of the gentler places, but she exposed me. She became a social worker later. I came home one day and I said, "Boy, there sure are a lot of niggers in this town" and she ripped me a new one.

From that day on, I began to liberalize myself out of shame and I never took the cudgels until I got to college, and they were mild cudgels. But I walked out at the University of Chicago with a demonstration against the lack of minority hiring in Billings Hospital. I think, from that day on, I have been aware.

I never went down south to register Black voters like Jamie Cromwell did. I'll admire him for that until the day I die, or to die like Schwerner and Goodman did. So there's always that cowardice aspect in me that I don't go the whole nine yards. But I think that, if we had more martyrs like that earlier, we might have arrived at a quicker solution.

Tavis: I hear your point of spending the rest of your life since that comment about Black folks, colored folk in Kansas City then. I hear your point that, for the rest of your life, you are dedicated to liberalizing your way out of that, if I can paraphrase what you said. What made you utter that? What brought that out in you in the first place?

Asner: I thought I was being a hot-shot. I worked in my father's junkyard and I worked with nothing but Blacks there. I loved them. I found them fascinating, instructive, joyous, comical, everything. They were my buddies and I still could utter a comment.

Well, no. I guess - I'm not sure. They may have come a little later, but they were the people in my life. They were the housekeepers; they were the people I liked to identify with. If I felt sorry for myself as a Jew, I certainly could look around and see that that, hey, there's somebody who would love to be just Jewish.

Tavis: So why this comment, then? Where did that come from?

Asner: Tried to be one of the crowd. Don't we always try to be one of the crowd? Even though it was in the privacy of my own home? I probably was influenced - my closest friends were not racists. I never heard them spout racism. We played Emporia High School in the mud. Kansas City was the only segregated town in Kansas that I know of that did not admit Blacks.

Our quarterback, when we went to Emporia to play them, was a big fat Black guard or tackle. He says, "Let's get that nigger" and, by this time, I didn't speak out, but I said, "That's not right, that's not right" and nobody else said, "Yeah." Nobody agreed with him. Okay, it's only by slow increments that we finally bring ourselves to believe in total equality and I hope I'm there now.

Tavis: I want to circle back before we close to this film because this may seem like a strange tie-in, but it's not for me. You said - I wrote this down. I wanted to make sure I got the quote right - you said of this movie, "Up," "The film has something to say about celebrating life and the union of two souls is always much sweeter than the isolation of one."

It's a perfect place to close our conversation because, if I had time, I could wrestle with this and tie these two things in together, what you have confessed or expressed on this show tonight, with this notion of a film celebrating life and the union of different souls.

Asner: And they are different, of course. They're very different. I think this is a most gorgeous movie. If people open their minds and hearts to this movie, what it pushes to us is how wonderful that he had this past that he lives in. He doesn't wish to offend the world. He wishes to slowly die into his death and hopefully join his wife.

But the world pushes in on him in the guise of this little boy and eminent domain and out of this comes a new life for this man who had given up on life, and I think that is the most beautiful thing to discover.

Tavis: I never know what to expect from a conversation with Ed Asner, but I know it's always gonna be rich. What I also know is that he's gonna tie this thing in so nicely together at the end that the whole conversation makes sense. So thank you for coming on.

Asner: My pleasure.

Tavis: Glad to have you here. "Up," the new movie from Disney Pixar starring Ed Asner.