WOOSH! We’d emerged from the tunnel.
The train was slowing and we were coming into the next station. What? How could that be? That wasn’t fifty minutes. It was fifteen.
I looked up from my position on top of Robin, perched on the passenger seat facing backward, and I saw the two couples I remembered nodding hello to earlier. The cars were compact, and we were bumper to bumper on the flatbed train, so they weren’t more than ten feet away. I waved apologetically. Robin covered her face. But no need. The couples laughed and whistled their approval and honked their horn. Bene, bene! Motto bene!
I heard a voice. It was coming from below. Robin. With a tight smile, she was trying to tell me something. Her tone was patient, but her meaning was precise.
Get. Off.
I fumbled back into the driver’s seat, pulling up my pants, and looked up. Three small children grinning through the back window of the car in front of us. Even Italian children have knowledge of lovemaking—they’re probably taught the basics in kindergarten. Like the English with punting.
Robin and I were both red-faced, but we were laughing, too. Well, that last tunnel was not quite the experience that was advertised.
Had the travel agent been mistaken? Or had he set us up on some kind of honeymooners’ initiation? We never found out. In the end it didn’t matter. It was an adventure. With Robin it’s all an adventure.
Robin is my partner in all things. My love. There are a million things I adore about her, but if you pressed me for my absolute favorite thing, it’s that from the moment I met her, through the twenty-seven years we’ve been married, she has maintained this incredible sense of play and wonder. A firefly makes her giddy.
Our marriage has been such a foundation for me. Whenever young actors ask me for advice, I always tell them: get your house in order. Your relationships, your health, your personal life: that’s your foundation. If your home life is sane, it allows you to go insane in your work.
Dad
When we met, Robin wasn’t sure whether she wanted to have kids. Before we got married, I asked if she would agree to at least one child. I didn’t think I could marry someone who didn’t want children. She said yes. I said that’s good enough for me. We agreed that we wouldn’t talk about another kid until the baby was past one.
Robin had a smooth pregnancy, no morning sickness, only an occasional uncomfortable night. But then a month and a half before the due date, our doctor started noticing a drop in amniotic fluid. She ordered Robin to slow down. Then the levels were still dropping and so it was bed rest.
Two weeks before our due date, Robin’s fluid levels were still too low, so the doctor said we had to induce.
As the baby was coming out, there still wasn’t enough fluid. Robin was fully dilated, and I saw our doctor do this short, worried exhalation. You never want to see your doctor anxiety breathing. I clench up when I feel unnerved. I get tight. But I tried not to show it, because what good would I be to Robin in the delivery room?
Suction. Forceps. Our doctor pleaded, “Robin, you’ve got to push. You’ve got to push.” I felt so helpless. In my distress, I did the one thing I shouldn’t have done. I became the coach. I turned to Robin and got close to her face, as if I were spotting her lifting weights. COME ON, ROBIN! YOU’VE GOT THIS. PUSH! That technique may work on men, but my wife wasn’t feeling the burn.
In between deep breaths, she critiqued my method. Shut. Up.
I adjusted my approach. I love you, honey. You can do this. I’m right here with you.
At 7:04 p.m., February 12, 1993, our baby was born. When the doctor finally got her out, it was such a release for me. I wept. And then I freaked. Her head was conical because of the suction and forceps. My daughter looked like one of the Coneheads from Saturday Night Live. The doctor, whose worried exhalations had done nothing to reassure, was now wonderfully easy and consoling. “That conehead is normal. That will reshape.” Almost immediately it did start to reshape. It was miraculous.
I can, in an instant, recall the depth of feeling for my baby when I first saw her, the utter dependency, the desire to protect her. Cut the cord, Dad. I cut her cord. I was a father. I was honored to be the first one to hold her. And then I gave her to Robin, who didn’t cry. “Oh, there you are,” she said calmly. “You’re so beautiful.”
They checked the placenta. They needed to do the Apgar test. Come on, Dad. Hold the baby. Pinprick test. All good. Length. All good. I put her on a digital scale. It read 6.66. The nurse went to write it down but looked at me first, eyebrow raised. Robin is superstitious, and that decimal point could be missed upon first glance. I put a finger on the scale and nodded to the nurse. It now read 6.67. She smiled and wrote 6.67 on the official paperwork.
Robin started nursing and bonding. When she rested, Taylor would lie on my chest and hear my breathing and feel my rhythms. I’d never felt so connected with anyone.
We stayed an extra day at the hospital because Taylor was slightly jaundiced. They sent us all home with a baby tanning bed; we put tiny tanning goggles on her and lay her under the heat lamps, and she would just fall asleep adorably. At first you hear your baby is jaundiced, and it’s alarming. But it’s pretty normal. And then she was over that.
A week after the birth, Robin was still struggling. We thought, Well, of course she is. She just had a traumatic, emotionally taxing experience. We went back to the doctor after ten days, and her pulse was sluggish, she was anemic, and her blood pressure was way too low. She was hemorrhaging blood.
Right there in the doctor’s office I saw Robin’s eyes roll back in her head. She collapsed. Seeing anyone lose consciousness is scary. But to see my wife, who’d just been through so much, go down like that? My heart dropped. I grabbed her before she could fall and we called an ambulance. Even though we were in the Cedars-Sinai hospital complex, she had to get into the ambulance to go two hundred feet to the ER next door. Transportation policy. Bureaucratic bullshit.
We knew something was wrong. They ran the gamut of tests and discovered they hadn’t removed the entire placenta after the birth, and that was creating all kinds of havoc. Robin’s body was basically treating the placenta like an intruder. They had to do a procedure to collect the tissue from the uterus, and Robin had to stay in the hospital. I brought Taylor back and forth to see Robin and feed. It was stressful, but in a way uplifting, because I felt needed and useful and connected. That bond between a mother and child is so strong that sometimes a father can end up feeling like a third wheel. But I felt so bonded to both Robin and Taylor then. My sister Amy came to stay with us for a while around Taylor’s birth, and by that time she was a nurse, and she was incredibly helpful.
When Taylor was two, I brought up the idea of having another baby. I’d started working more, and Robin was working less. I said I think it’s fair that you have two votes and I have one vote. The first child was up to us. The second is up to you. What do you think? “I’m good,” she said. She didn’t want another.
I brought it up again when Taylor was three. Robin said she didn’t feel she needed another child. I don’t know if the difficult late pregnancy and birth had any influence on her decision. Maybe so.
I’m certain the main reason I thought we should have another child was so that Taylor could have a sibling. Because my parents had been who they had been, I thought of family as siblings. Growing up as I did, I don’t know what I would have done without my brother’s support and the strong bond we shared. But Taylor would have a much more stable environment than I’d had. So a sibling wasn’t a pressing matter. I deferred to Robin, and we stopped at one.
With an only child, it was easier to take her with us, so Taylor has traveled a lot. Also, there’s no denying only children spend a lot of time around adults. Taylor was comfortable around adults and adult conversations early on. Her level of comfort around kids her own age took longer to get to, but it came.
Taylor expressed interest in acting when she was extremely young. We tried to steer her
into classes and experiences that didn’t professionalize her. Of course some children who act professionally go on to be fully actualized adults. Many of them do not. It’s a hard road. And we wanted to protect her from that, let her be a child. She’d have a lifetime to work when she grew up.
The great acting guru Constantin Stanislavski said, “Love art in yourself, not yourself in art.” I think of that often. I try to live by that. Work, hone your craft, enjoy your successes in whatever doses they may come. But do not fall in love with the poster, the image of you in a movie, winning an Oscar, the perks, the limo, being rich and famous. If that is what you’re falling in love with, you’re doomed to fail. My father was oriented toward those things. And I wanted to live a different kind of life. And I want a different life for my daughter. Fall in love with creative expression and the surprising discoveries and empowerment it can bring. Be wary of the rest.
When I was nominated for my first Emmy, Taylor was young; Robin and I got a babysitter, and off we went to the award ceremony—a fun, glamorous night. We got home, and I paid the babysitter. The kitchen trash reeked something awful. I mean it was alive. Robin handed it to me, and I held it at arm’s length so it didn’t drip on my tuxedo and patent-leather shoes as I walked out to the garbage cans outside.
As I was straight-arming the Hefty bag, I smiled. An hour ago it was limos, autographs, flashing cameras, champagne—now, smelly trash.
That’s the way life should be. Balanced. Chores. Daily responsibilities. Family. Show business has a natural attraction to charlatans and phonies because it can be superficial. And empty. Sort of like whipped cream. When you dig into it with your fork, there’s nothing underneath. You can’t build anything on whipped cream. But Robin gave me the bedrock stability that I wanted professionally and needed personally. And when our daughter was born, Taylor gave me that, too. Then it was my job to give my family the same in return.
Confessor
When I attended my twenty-year high school reunion in 1994, I was happily married with a young child. And I planned to finally confess to Carolyn Kiesel and reveal what she meant to me as a young boy. I was now free from that burden, and I’d been open with Robin about how I’d craved Carolyn’s attentions and affections, how much tenderness I’d felt toward her, how crushed I’d been when I let my chance slip away, how it had always remained with me, a time-release lesson. Robin was supportive. She encouraged me to talk to Carolyn at our reunion; she was curious to meet her, too.
At the registration table I picked up my name badge, which featured the silhouette of a generic man because my picture had been omitted from the yearbook. I always thought that spoke volumes about who I was then. In some ways, I think it motivated me to leave a mark.
I knew that as active as she was in school, Carolyn wouldn’t miss the reunion, and I asked the classmates manning the registration table if Carolyn had arrived yet. They exchanged an awkward look, and then one of them whispered that unfortunately Carolyn was not there. She had died in 1977. A few years after high school. Car accident.
I stood motionless. Finally the classmate asked if I would please step to the side so she could assist others checking in. I murmured thanks for the information and walked away. I relayed the news to Robin, who instantly understood what a loss it was.
You hear of people dying in accidents all the time. But Carolyn? Not Carolyn. I’d barely known her but I’d always missed her, and now I’d mourn her. She died before she got to experience marriage, children, a career. And I’d never be able to express my appreciation for her sweetness. Her generosity of spirit. She’d been so important to me privately, and I wanted the chance to tell her publicly. For days it would dawn on me again and again, and every time I felt both the shock of the new and a deepening sadness: she was gone.
Tim Whatley
When I got the role of Tim Whatley, “dentist to the stars,” I was already a big Seinfeld fan, and I was thrilled that I’d get to play a small part in one of the best comedy shows of all time. Seinfeld was revolutionary, really, in that instead of breaking down the story lines into A-plot and B-plots (major and minor stories), each episode gave all four main characters a major narrative, and somehow all of them intersected. Most other shows use guest stars to inject an element of humor. Seinfeld used guest stars to facilitate and spotlight the show’s stars. A superb construct.
The first episode I did was called “The Mom and Pop Store,” which was kind of an homage to Midnight Cowboy. Tim is having a party on the Upper West Side, and Jerry isn’t invited. Or is he? Jerry can’t tell! George Costanza meanwhile buys a used car he thinks might belong to Jon Voight, the actor. George is really getting off on the romance and glamour of driving around in a car that belonged to a celebrity. But Jerry plants a seed of doubt in George’s mind about the provenance of the Chrysler LeBaron. Did it really belong to Jon Voight? Then George finds a pencil in the glove box. It has teeth marks. Kramer tells George: “If you take the pencil to Tim Whatley’s party, you’ll find a dentist who can match the teeth marks to Jon Voight’s bite.” Did I mention that Jon Voight had recently bitten Kramer on the arm? As luck would have it, Tim knows Jon Voight! George exults in his good fortune. But then Tim continues: Jon Voight the periodontist.
Seinfeld has become a touchstone for so many people. Seinfeld superfans, who’ve seen every episode umpteen times, roam the streets, and when they see me invariably shout out: WHATLEYYYYYYY. Many people think my recurring presence on the show was part of some grand plan. In fact, I appeared in only six episodes, and each one was, for all I knew, the last time I’d be on.
On each episode, I got to see Jerry Seinfeld’s legendary comic genius up close. His knowledge of comedy is unmatched. Several times he’d tell me to adjust a joke here or there, and wham, the moment was transformed from pedestrian to uproariously funny. But all the major players on the show were brilliant. Going to work was like attending an intensive comedy seminar.
Larry David, the cocreator, an incredible comedian, never put characters first. It was always story first. Then find characters that suited the story. What if Kramer is mistaken for a mentally challenged person? He’s drunk. No. What about if he’s just come from the dentist? He’s got a mouthful of Novocain. Let’s bring Tim Whatley back. Thus was born a classic episode called “The Jimmy.”
Jerry had a rule about jokes: If you’re in the group, you can make the joke. If you’re not in the group, steer clear. So Larry David and Jerry said: “We need someone WASPy, who gets under Jerry’s skin, to convert to Judaism and abuse the ‘in-group’ privilege. Whatley!”
Tim converts to Judaism and immediately starts making Jewish jokes. When Jerry looks at him askance, Tim says, “Jerry! It’s our sense of humor that sustained us as a people for three thousand years.”
Jerry sneers. “Five thousand.”
Tim: “Five thousand, even better. Okay, Chrissie. Give me a schtickle of fluoride.”
The fact that Tim had been Jewish for a few days, and he was already telling Jewish jokes, offends Jerry not as a Jew but as a comedian. Hilarious.
In a famous sequence from “The Jimmy,” Jerry is distressed to see that Whatley has Penthouse magazines scattered in his waiting room. It’s a dentist’s office! Then, with Jerry in the chair, Tim says that his regular hygienist is at Dr. Sussman’s. “We find it fun to swap now and then,” Tim says saucily, sleazily.
Later, as Jerry wakes from the gas, he has a sense that his hygienist and Whatley have molested him. Was his shirt untucked before he went under? He can’t remember. Between the Penthouse magazines and the untucked shirt, Jerry suspects Whatley is a dental Caligula.
We rehearsed that scene, and then the other actors went on to do another scene. I stayed behind to get comfortable on the dentist’s office set. An electrician was adjusting a light, and he called down, “Hey, you know what would be funny?”
I was a bit confused. Was he talking to me? “What?” I asked.
“It would be funny if before you pu
t the laughing gas mask on Jerry, you took a hit off it yourself.”
I thought about it and realized he was right.
It came time to shoot the scene. We were rolling, and I said, “Cheryl, would you ready the nitrous oxide, please?” She handed me the mask, and I brought it up to my face and took a healthy hit. Jerry fell over laughing. Larry David was beside himself with joy.
We did a ton of takes. The director, Andy Ackerman, kept saying, “Jerry, you cannot laugh.” But every time I took a hit off the mask, Jerry lost it, and then everyone else would have to laugh. Finally we got one take where Jerry wasn’t sliding out of the chair. That’s the one we used. That’s the only take in which he didn’t lose control.
In the end, when everyone was telling me what a great idea the nitrous hit had been, I pointed out the electrician who told me to try it. Everyone turned to see who it was. The electrician shrugged sheepishly.
You never know who’s going to give you the gift of a good idea.
Lt. Gordon Denton
Brooklyn South seemed like a good job on paper. The show had accomplished writers, smart people, a talented cast. Steven Bochco was executive producing. David Milch of NYPD Blue fame was running it. He was a nice man. Extremely bright.
I auditioned with a well-constructed two-page monologue supplied by the show and got the job. My character was an internal-affairs officer. His job was to investigate other cops, weed out the bad apples: Where were you on the night of so-and-so? The cops would reply with uncooperative shrugs. And then my character would embark on a soliloquy showcasing his powers of conjecture and deduction. He had a lot to say. I knew when I got the job that my character was going to be driving every scene. I knew I’d have to put in the hours and prepare.
I called to ask about my script a week before my start date. I was told there was no script yet. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday—still nothing. Maybe I’m not working Monday? I called. “Am I working Monday? I need the script.”
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