Why would Ted Danson's kids ever want to see the most iconic comedy in the history of television? Why would they ever want to see that?

I'm going to play this clip for them.

Welcome back to where Everybody Knows Your Name with me, Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson, Sometimes. I really enjoy talking to my guest today who makes us all actually look bad, figuratively and literally. Not only is Rob Lowe devilishly handsome, and I did clear that with him before I said those words devilishly handsome, I think he was chuffed, to be honest. He's also been working continuously on TV and film for decades. Think the Outsiders, Saint Elmo's Fire, the West Wing, Parks and Rec, and so much more. Season 2 of Unstable is up and running on Netflix, which he co-created and started with his son. I suppose we also have a certain kinship besides the devilishly handsome part. He is the host of the very popular podcast, Literally with Rob Lobe, writing here on Team Coco podcast Network. He is really a fascinating guy, and I enjoyed talking to him very much. Meet Rob Lo.

You know what I love? I I know about you as an actor? We've never said howdy, maybe in passive.

No, I feel like there should have been a Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, Chris Cross. Was there one of those in the '80s?

Perhaps.

There had to have been. Yeah. Had to.

She's become one of our best friends. She's the best. She's the best. She's astounding.

I was very, very, very close to her during that time.

Then During Tom Hayden time.

During Tom Hayden time. Then I was actually at her house. She goes, You know who called me? It's the weirdest thing. Ted Turner. He wanted to take me out. I'm like, You should go out with him. That was the last I saw of her. That was it.

Yeah, I wanted to... We'll get into this, but you guys probably have done similar environmental stuff. Yes, totally. That showed up to the same- Yes. Conference or whatever.

Yeah, my favorite one is that When you want to shirt down a nuclear power plant, the two people that are best to do it for sure are me and Meg Ryan. I mean, that will make you rethink your energy priorities when we show up.

I know. We are so the wrong spokespeople for the environment. We're so obviously liberal lefties.

I just remember it like it was yesterday. I love doing all that The number one, where I think we missed each other was in the famous Clean Water Caravan. It was Craig Zaden and Neil Maron, the great producers. There was a bus tour through California through Prop 65, which was about cleaning up our water system. Everybody on the planet was on it, but there were two different busses. It sounds like maybe you weren't on either bus.

No, I wasn't. Totally missed that. What year was that?

1986. We got pulled over for speeding. Well, also because Michael J. Fox and I were smoking pot out of the top of the Greyhound bus roof. The cop pulled us over and out. It was like a clown car. Out came Whoopy Goldberg, Cher, Judd Nelson, Michael J. Fox, Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, Robert Downey Jr, Jane Fonda, Danny lover.

Why were you pulled over?

Because of the smoke? We had the top emergency hatch off, Michael and I, and we were smoking pot.

You know what I love about you? I got to say this right off the bat. You are one of my favorite kinds of actors. You are a character actor in a leading man's body. And that, to me, always delights that slight contradiction. Delights me because I never quite know where you're going to go as an actor. And that is what makes, I think, an audience the happiest. Is when they are surprised and delighted.

That's the greatest compliment you could give me. Thank you. That's the way I just aspire to be. I mean, to be a character actor trapped in a Leading Man's Body. That's exactly it.

Did you start off that way, or were you just thrilled to be Leading Man and then move into character acting?

Well, I always felt the same way. I always felt like, I think I could be wrong. I don't want to speak for character actors, but I always feel like character actors don't feel like leading men. I never felt like one. I might have looked like one, but I certainly never felt like one. But I always got leads. It was weird. I never had the four-line part and then the three great scenes and then moved up. I got immediately cast.

Is that The Outsiders or something for that?

Even before that, I did a TV show with The Great Eileen Brennan. Do you remember Eileen?

Yes, I do.

I played her son. I was like, Handsome son of Eileen Brennan, who's raising a family on her own. But wait, there's a twist. There's another family sharing the house. Remember every sitcom was that? Yeah.

What year was that? What was it called?

It's a scintillating title. The title just makes you sit right up in your chair and go, I want to watch this. The title was A New Kind of Family.

It was a new kind. Meaning, sharing a house together.

Sharing a house together, yeah. Nobody had ever done that before, apparently.

How long did that last?

We shot 13. They shut us down after 6:00 and replaced the other family without ever telling The Audience. The new family became Janet Jackson and Thelma Hopkins.

The Janet Jackson.

The Janet Jackson.

And that was your first?

That was '15.

You were '15? Yeah. Wait, all right, back up even more. How did you get... Were you always wanting to be an actor?

Always.

Was that once you landed in Malibu?

No, I was raised in Dayton, Ohio, and I went and saw a local community theater production of Oliver, and there were kids in it. I was struck dumbfounded. If we were doing my life stories in a movie, it would be like, Oh, and the light hits me. Yeah, in a total epiphany.

That's early for that.

Really, I was like eight or 9. Really, really young. There was a bunch of flyers in the lobby for a children's summer theater workshop. I saw it, grabbed it, gave it to my mom, said, I wanted to do this. She was like, Great. I never looked back. I knew. Ignorance is bliss. I had no idea how hard it was. I had no idea that Dayton, Ohio, isn't exactly a fertile ground for actors, although there was a lot of opportunity. A lot of community theater, a lot of summer stock, repertory theater. There was the great Kenley that went through there. I'm surprised they didn't come after you. Because what they did, the Kenley players in those days, would take the hottest person on a TV show, and they would say, Hey, on your hiatus, how would you like to be Henry Hill and the Music Man? You'll do Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Flint, Michigan, and we'll pay you 30K a week, and you will, excuse me, suck and fuck your way through the heartland on your hiatus. And I saw everybody come through, Kelly players.

Go back to the suck and Fuck. I'm not quite sure what that particularly meant.

Oh, come now, Ted.

Well, I know what Suck and Fuck means. I'm sorry, but how did that come with the $30,000 salary or whatever it was? I think you just learned everything you need to know about me, by the way, that when you said Suck and Fuck, I went, I'm sorry, what do you mean? Yeah, I was a real late developer. I know.

I was like, Come on now, Ted.

I came very late to Suck and Fuck. It was the Midwest, and you were Fonzy rolling through Indianapolis on those summer nights. Yeah.

Two matination. Come on, get out of here. I know what was going on.

Did you ever do that, Joe?

Did you go back? I auditioned for John Kenley. I want to do a movie about John Kenley. His life was insane. He brought traveling musicals. It was his idea to do traveling musicals. Now, they do them all the time. He was a great entrepreneur and super interesting guy, drove a bicycle around the stage all the time. He was nuts. But anyway, I digress. There was that weird opportunity in Ohio. Then I moved to Malibu, and nobody did theater. There was no theater in California.

What happened to you?

I got an agent, didn't know what an agent was, and They told me I needed one. I got a couple of commercials. Then I got a new family at 15 and had a TV show on the air and then had a development deal at ABC. Wow. Well, a development A holding deal. I did a pilot presentation, not even a pilot, with Ron Howard directing. It was a starring vehicle for his brother Clint Howard. Yes. Peter Breck from the Big Valley. In those days, like I said, it wasn't good enough just to have a family living in a house. This was a show about a family of stunt performers who traveled the world with another family who were circus people. You had people bringing elephants and tigers to cities while I was a young evil genevil in spandex.

Well, Clearly, this was not a half hour. No. This was an hour, single camera.

Hour, single camera. Nobody ever asked me if I could ride a motorcycle. I couldn't.

Did you?

No, they had a grip below the frame I'm like, roll me. I never worked for Ron since. Ron only made 5,000 movies. I'm like, Ron, really? You throw a brother a fucking bone. Then I did a bunch of after-school specials? Yes. Remember, they were a big deal. Yeah. Big deal. Not as big as there's something about Amelia big.

But the same thing. But the same vibe. You could do it in a month and a half On your hiatus, you could go off and do a movie like that.

I did a Hallmark Hall of Fame that I think got me a Golden Globe. No, I think it got me a Golden. It did when I was 15 and a half. Wow. No, no, no, The Golden Globe, I was laid out because it was right after Outsider. It was 17, 18. I'm getting into that era, and then Outsiders, and then I just did movies, pretty much two a year.

Before Outsider, right before, how was your ego? Was this all heady?

No, but dude, I was a nerd. Listen, first of all, you understand, I was so pretty that I looked like Brook Shields. Legitimately. Terry Terry Shields literally tried to get us to get married. Terry Shields tried to do an arrange marriage. That's her mom. Yes. She really did. The guys weren't having it. Guys were like, Get out of here, Barbie. Do you know what I mean? They weren't having any of what I was offering. The girls didn't want anything to do with me because I was- Too scary. I wasn't a jock. I liked sports, but I wasn't on the... I wasn't a jock. I was a theater kid. I really was a true in the quad of high school, where it's like the jocks over here, the popular. I was in the misfit, and so I always felt that way.

That's funny. Because of your looks and all of that, my thing was I was just totally unconscious. I went away to school from living in Arizona with my Hopi and Navajo friends. Then I went to a prep school in Connecticut. Immediately, that was the beginning of me, faking, belonging someplace. I faked my way through the entire thing. I always felt like a bit of an imposter. My outsider thing came from having my head in the clouds.

I still have my head in the clouds.

Yeah, but you're talking creative clouds and dreams and imagination.

Yes, 100%.

Yeah, not me. I was just totally out too long.

Well, you didn't know what sucking and fucking was. We've established that.

No, I didn't. One of my hopey friends, when I was 12, said to me, or 11, said, Hey, we're getting to know each other. Hey, do you like to fuck? I went, Oh, yeah. Had no idea what he was talking about, and it took me a long time to figure it out.

That's amazing. Yeah.

One other quick little... My friend, my hopey friend, Raymond and I, are hitchhiking from town out to where we live in the country, and we got picked up by this. Back then, you'd call him a hood or something.

He had a relayer. A greaser. A greaser, yeah. A greaser, yeah.

A greaser, yeah. A hot rod. And very cool. And he picked us up, and he started talking about his date the night before, and offered us this tip about women. Oh, this is good. What you do, you cup your hand and you give them just a little smack in the butt, right there in the center of their butt. Just give them a little smack, and it sends a seismographic quiver to their clitoris, and they love a bit. We were just nodding our head, going, Oh, wow. Thanks.

I can promise you you didn't know what a clitoris was. No.

I don't think I knew seismographic quiver either. No. This guy, was he from NASA?

I I love that you remember that phraseology to this day. Yes. Who's going to forget it?

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We're bouncing around, and I'm sorry.

This is what we do.

Oh, good. No, no. This is what we do. Let's talk about your 30-year marriage, because that's impressive. I know everyone says this, but it's impressive in this town and this business and what we do for a living. And also to be... How old were you when you got married?

I was 27, 28. By the way, married five blocks from where we sit talking.

But that's rare because people change. People grow up and mature at different speeds and levels. A lot of times that doesn't work out.

We changed and grew at different levels. But I think one of the secrets, and I've It's funny. People ask me a lot, do I have any tips? And it's never occurred to me until you framed the intro to the question the way you just did is, even though we would grow at different speeds, the other was willing to catch up. Yeah.

For it, willing, I think, is one of the key words in a relationship.

Willing, yeah. Sometimes it's been my job to catch up with her. Other times it's been her job to catch up with me. I can go back and look at two or three seminal moments where either one of us had to go, Okay, all right, I'm going to show up and figure this out and do the work. Usually, it's me, by the way. I was about to I've never wanted that.

Mary's never had to catch up with me.

No, let's face it, it's always us. I tried to make it equal, but even I couldn't keep that lie going any longer than that. Then the other thing is, I think, first of all, I know this just from 50,000 feet with you and Mary. You guys are really good friends. Yeah. Same with Sheryl and I. Also, whatever problem you think you have, and maybe you do have them, you go, I'm likely to have the same problem with the next person. I might as well fix it here with this one. A lot of people, the grass is greener thing just gets them.

You met, if I may bring up, because I know you've talked about sobriety.

Yeah.

If you met- During the height of my craziness. Of your craziness. But when you got married, you were sober.

That's right. I got sober a year before. As they say, when you really are getting sober, don't do anything major in the first year. So I didn't. We were together, but we didn't Then I had a year of sobriety under my belt, and I proposed to her, and we got married.

Was that shift to sobriety? Was that, Oh, I need to do that if I want to be with her?

100%. It was like, At least 70% of why I got sober was realizing if I couldn't make it work with her, and I wanted to, I wasn't going to be able to make it work with anybody.

If you're blessed, then you find somebody who feels the same way. Because if you go, Oh, I see my part in this, and I'll share it with you, but the other person goes, Yeah, you're right, and doesn't look at their part of whatever the issue is. You need a partner. Then you don't trust. You You don't grow.

Yeah. I mean, we've been, Sheryl and I, are big believers in therapy and marriage counseling, and we've certainly done that. We've done it when we needed it, and we've done it when we didn't need it. It's like taking your car in and making sure the engine's running great.

I had never done couples therapy before the last couple of years, and it's great.

Isn't it?

It's better than, I think, single therapy in a For sure, because you know what it is, is you get to go, in theory, let's hope it's a dispassionate observer, and you get to go, Hey, wait a second.

Am I crazy? Yes. They go, Yes, Ted, you're crazy. Or they go, No, you're not great. But I love it, and I think it's, for whatever reason, it's fraught with, Oh, we're in trouble. We're in marriage counts. It's like, That's not what it should be. It should be like going to the trainer. It should literally be like, I went to the chiropractor. It's what it should be like in terms of stigma.

I think what you find out you can start sharing is stuff that you just don't want to share because it makes you feel bad about who you are or something. I'm not going to share this because it's just... You find yourself sharing that and realizing, Oh, it's not the end of the world. I just blew the lid off of something that I've been keeping. Any secret in my life just totally fucks me up.

You can't have them. No. I mean, well, it's one of the core, core, core tenets of sobriety. So luckily, that's something that got baked into me 33 years ago. You just... Maybe normal people can have them, but it's hard to stay sober with secrets.

I keep bouncing backwards in time.

No, it's good. It's like a quantum physics talk. It's like we're in the unified field, Ted. Everything is happening all at once.

Mary follows me around in life going, he just made a leap, everybody. So what he didn't say is that she has to... She translate. Asterisk, everything I say, she translate. I understand, yes. But all the stuff we're talking about, all the, let's call it, wisdom or life experience, can you look back at your mom and dad and go, Oh, yeah, they gave me that or this or whatever? Or- Or not.

Or you can look back and go, They didn't give me this. Boy, am I glad I got it? My mom passed away really young, breast cancer. She was 64. My dad is still alive and looks One of my earliest memories of my dad is going to… Can you imagine that they used to have these at county fairs? The Guess Your Weight and Age Booth.

Was he good at it?

We would murder. Harder because he looks 25 years younger than he is. Still, he's almost 85. He looks like he's 65, 67.

You have a good relationship? Yeah.

We do. Great. I mean, it's complicated as all. What I realize having my own kids now who are ones about to turn 30, Jesus Christ, is no matter how, we fuck them up somehow. We just didn't In some way, they have an ax to grind. They're always going to have an ax to grind. Do you know what I mean? The ax may be teeny, teeny, tiny, or it may be ginormous. Every father, every son has their thing, and I certainly have it with my dad, but he taught me, he still works, still practices law. That's the number one thing, I think, of anything is work ethic, the value of work, the love of work, which is a big thing. Rule of law. Rule of law.

That's a biggie.

Yeah. How to think. How to communicate.

How not to be a victim.

How not to be a victim. Yeah, he's definitely not a victim.

He's right or wrong, but you're not a victim. That's right.

Yeah. Yeah, he taught me a lot about that. My mom was someone who wrote every day of her life, never professionally, but wrote. I still have all of her writings. When I wrote I wrote two memoirs, and I would never have written them without my mother's influence. Never.

Did you write those after sobriety? Yeah. That helps. Yeah.

I don't think you want It would have been like the Shining. How do you like my work? And it's all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Page after, How do you like it? Here's my chapter about Brat Pack.

Brat Pack.

See how I led you there? Yeah, that's great. You like that? You're welcome.

So wait, that landed on all of you right after.

That's professional podcasting, which just happened.

I am, by the way, I am. You can't see me, but underneath the table, I'm taking notes.

Yeah, I understand.

And I was hoping you'd go first, so I could just mimic whatever you said. So when did that title land on you from the press?

I remember it vividly. I'll give you the Reader's Digest version of the story. At the time, my best friend was Emilio Esteves. He was 24 years old. We'd done St. Alma's Fire and all the John Hughes movies, and that was all a big thing happening at the time. Emilio was writing, directing, and starring in a movie. Apparently, he was the last 24-year-old to do that was Orson Welles, apparently.

Wow.

New York magazine is going to do a profile on that. It's my best friend. Writer spends all the time with him, editing room, talking, talking, talking, weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks. At the very end, Emilio comes to me and he says, So the writer feels like he just has one view of me, and it's very work-centric. He wanted to see what my friends are like and what I'm like away from work. I'm throwing a dinner for him. This It makes me laugh, at the Hard Rock Cafe. Oh, wow. Going back. That's how long. When that was cool. It's like, So I'm throwing dinner at TGIFs, at Fud Rockers. We're all going to get together. But that's what it was, and that was the cool place. So we go, and I remember being there. I don't remember much. It was a normal night, nothing to write home about, literally write home about. Two weeks later, the article comes out. I'm on the cover with Emilio, and I think Judd, and it's a still from St. Elmo's Fire of us at a bar. Acting crazy. It's still from the movie, so it looks like we posed for it.

The title is Hollywood's Brat Pack. The article has nothing to do with Orson Welles or Emilio's work as a director. It's all to do with this phenomenon of young actors taking over Hollywood, but really, all we really like to do is drink. Well, not necessarily untrue, but it's super bitchy in that way that journalism used to be... The one good thing I'll say about journalism today is the got you celebrity bitch-athon. There's not really a market for that anymore.

Well, it got taken over by the internet.

By the internet. That's right.

That's so they don't have to be bitchy.

Very good point. But they devastated all of us. But the public, interestingly, regular folks never got... It was lost on them. They just thought the Brad pack was cool. But for a lot of the actors in it, a lot of them to this day are super bitter and angry about it. But I don't care.

Because it had an impact on their career?

Yeah, they feel like it had, and it probably did. It probably made people go, Oh, they're not as serious and they're jaded, whatever. But with 30 years of history, I look back on it, and I think the term is great. It's like the fact that people still refer to it, I think, is cool. But at the time, a lot of people were really bent out of shape about it, and it was a really gnarly got you piece.

I thought of it as just a comparison to the rat pack, which was fucking cool. So this was a bunch of younger people who were like the rat pack. Oh, it'll be funny or clever to say rat pack. That's where I took it.

If you hadn't read the article, that's... Obviously, I don't know, not a lot of people read New York magazine, so most people just thought of it as that. That's cool. I'm down with that. I do Brat Pack merch if the opportunity arose.

Yeah, I tried. I tried going to some convention and signing autographs. How was that?

Should I do one of those?

No. No. Well, you should, but I should never do it again.

No, why? I think we're very similar.

I mean, possibly it was a bad day of the week. Possibly it was Father's Day, and there was a reason why no one showed up. But there I am, my little pile of headshots, feeling a bit slimy, just a little bit.

Where was it?

It wasn't Cincinnati, but let's call it Cincinnati. But it was like that. Understood. They paid me a chunk to show up, and boy, did they not get their money's worth.

Amazing. Here's the part that gets dicey. You're probably not going to name names. Because my thing is all about who's at the table next to you. Because it isn't going to be Daniel Day-Lewis.

No. I think it was a wrestler.

There you go.

Yeah, and doing very well.

It wasn't John cena or The Rock.

Okay, so you're Rat Pack now, what was the first thing that you can remember where it was like, No, I'm not. Suck on this. Look at this performance. I know you didn't choose it that way, but looking back, what broke you away from that, do you think?

I think it was about last night, even though Demi was in it with me, and she was fantastic in it. That movie, it's based on David Mammet's play, Sexual Proversity in Chicago. It was a great piece of writing. Ed Zwick's first movie. Wow. Yeah. And it was the first adult-ish thing that I got to do.

Did you ever in this have moments of, Oh, I don't know, I'm out. I've shot my whatever?

Yeah, for sure. You think it's over. It's only taken me within the past five years of realizing… Like you, it's like you're a maid man, as they would say in the Mafia. You made your bones back in the… I always have the phrase, You made your bones? It makes me laugh. But like, You made your bones Back at Paramount. Stage 23, you and Woody, you made your bones together.

In the latter half of the former century.

You made your bones when I was kicking it. I realized I'm probably not going anywhere at this point, but it took me a long time. A long time. I can remember times where I thought my career was for sure over. For sure.

I had a moment after Chiers and Becker, and I tried something else that lasted nine episodes, and it was like, Oh, okay, I'm boring myself. I'm not funny. There are other people who are doing this and are really funny. I'm out, no more TV. I went to Jeffrey Katzenberg, who I'd known from three men and a baby. I said, You don't have to pay me, but me in any movie. I'm not going to do TV anymore. It's a bit art, whatever. I don't care. I just want to start doing movies. I don't know if he was responsible, but I got to be in Saving Private Ryan.

Oh, I remember it vividly. I've always wanted to ask you about that. Yeah.

Well, on your own time, pal.

That's when we reunite on my show. I have it underlined.

Yeah, I thought I was out. Then, curb your enthusiasm reinvigorated my desire to be funny.

Got to do it.

Yeah, that'll do it.

I mean, legendary arc character for you, even though it's you, but not you, and one of the great comedies of all time.

All right. Thank you. Moving on. Sorry, we'll save that. You have children. That's a big deal to be an actor, famous actor, and have kids, and raise in some way that allows them not to be in your shadow. Was that a big juggle for you?

It's the reason we moved out of LA. Matthew was six months old, and I remember vividly the light bulb going on and going, I got to get out of here, was he was literally six months old. They're like, You better be thinking about preschool. I was like, I'm sorry, what? I can barely figure out how to put a diaper on this kid. No, in LA, the preschools, there's a list, and you should really think about this one. I tell you, you should talk to. You know you should talk to about the preschool. He's got preschools while, You know you need to talk to Mike Ovitz. I was like, I'm out. I'm out. I'm out of the city. I am gone.

Wow, that's mature, though, because you can get sucked into what's hot and what's not here in LA.

Every once in a while, I have a really good vision. Really, truly. Every once in a while. Wanted to be an actor, knew I should get sober, knew who I should marry, knew I had to move out of LA. It feels like, and looking back, it looks like I'm good for a good idea every 10 years.

That was a good idea. Mary did that. Mary moved out of town and moved to Ohio and raised her kids there in one of the great schools. Oak Grove, just a brilliant school.

Oh, yeah. My sons went to Kate, so Thatcher was the big rival. I spent a lot of time.

Did they surf?

They were on the surf team at Kate, the surf team.

Yeah. Charlie McDou, Mary's son, is a big surfer.

Amazing. Yeah.

Loves it.

Yeah. That's so amazing. The thing about living up in Santa Barbara, Montecito was that it's not a company town.

No. As a matter of fact, you're a bit of an outsider if you're an actor.

100%. There were always actors had a footprint up there. Robert Mitchell had been there forever.

How cool is that?

No, come on. But it was regular people and working class people. Then they're always old-school Eastern families with lots of money as well. But it was a mismosh of different things. I got to coach Little League without having to worry about pulling out the President of Paramount's kid from third base because he's a fucking spastic. Do you know what I mean? Honestly, that was part of it, too. I knew I wanted to coach kids' sports. Oh, really? Yeah, really. I'm not kidding. I was like, I don't want to sit there with my agents kids, my publishers kids, with this movie stars. I just didn't want... I know that sounds weird, but I didn't want that. Is that insane?

No, it's smart. I don't know if comes from I made it. I made it big. I'm part of a title, The Brat Pack.

I wasn't there yet. I had many years of worrying about whether I was going to done before. Oh, really? Yeah.

All right, I'll give it to you. That was a really brave, mature choice.

Well, it made all the difference. My kids, knock on wood, are doing great. Johnny, my youngest. He went to Stanford.

Yeah.

Like you.

Two years I went. He went four?

You did. He made it.

Smart lad.

But then he decided he wanted to be an actor. I'm like, Well, you could have told me that. Before I wrote the check. Because all you had to do was four years of going to Jamba Juice. Yeah, that was me. Going to yoga. It would have been exactly the same. But anyway.

Johnny, he doesn't mean that.

No. But he's co-created a show on Netflix that he and I do together.Unstable?Unstable..

I looked at a clip. That's pretty cool. It's really fun. Well done.

Well done him. It's really fun. He's a really talented writer and a really good actor as well. Sometimes you can't fight City Hall. You know what I mean? You can't fight genetics. Then Matthew, my oldest, was the one who went, I want nothing to do with this business. He went to Duke and then went to Loyola and got his law degree, and now is in finance and has a real job.

Living?

Living in LA.

Oh, wow. She's great. Yeah, he didn't go to New York. That's cool. No.

He loves the outdoors. He's a big-time, intense outdoorsman, so he has to be the ocean and all of that.

Southern California has a lot to love.

Yeah, it really does. Yes, it does.

But that A lot of that then, I'm assuming, because you were out of town a lot. I took them with- fell on your wife's shoulder.

Well, here's what happened. I was doing movies, and in those days, there were all those independent movies. There was lots of that, and I was living in that world, and they would come with me. They were young enough that we always traveled like the Von Trock family. We traveled together. They were young enough that they weren't really in school, whatever. Then when they When they got into elementary school, I just fortuitously got the West Wing script. Then I was here and doing television.

Did you commute?

I commuted, yeah. The first, I did. For the four years I was on West Wing, I commuted.

That means up at 3:34.

It was brutal. But I didn't know any better. You know you don't know what you're missing? Until you've been driven somewhere, you don't know what you're missing. I was like, This is what you do. I was up, and then the sun wasn't up with my coffee and driving in. I loved it. It was great. But I think it made a difference because I was home every night, and they knew I was home. The kids knew I was home. That made a big difference. But it enabled my television work coincided almost perfectly with them being in school where we wouldn't be able to pull them out and travel.

Yeah. God, good for you.

No, it was a lot of it was luck. I mean, a lot of it was luck.

They must have, even in Santa Barbara, bumped into, Oh, your dad's famous, huh?

But they never tell you. That's true. They never tell you, ever. I bet you your kids have never seen cheers. No.

Of course, they haven't. They never come to work unless, Oh, I'm interviewing Rob Lowe today. Oh, we'll come. All right. Otherwise, they could give a rat's ass.

No, they don't care at all. No. No, it's unbelievable. I just know without asking. I promise you, your kids have never seen Cheers. Of course, they haven't. Why would Ted Danson's kids ever want to see the most iconic comedy in the history of television? Why would they ever want to see that?

I'm going to play this clip for them. Yes. Because they will embarrassingly admit to that every once in a while.

Oh, for sure. You think my kids have seen the West Wing?

Yeah. Maybe Johnny?

Particularly not Johnny.

All right.

Oh, dad, that show's like science fiction.

Wait. Well, it is now. It is now.

No, he's right. He's not wrong.

Yeah, he's not wrong. He's not wrong.

It's watching that show now, you're like, It plays like a comedy.

Can I move away for a minute and talk about your big old heart and what drives you nowadays? If you had a... I know this is off purpose for me because I need to do something in the world besides acting and all this stuff. What is that like for you now? Where is your heart? Where is that center of you and what's it aiming at? Thing.

I mean, it's funny. I spend a lot of time mentoring young men because my kids, they still need mentoring, but it's a different thing. They're on their own and doing their own thing. The best way I can mentor them in many ways is to stay out of their lives, honestly, in a weird way. You know what I mean? Yes. But I missed that, and I was good at it. If there's a young person maybe struggling with drugs or alcohol, I know I'm going to get that call, which is great. I love helping, and to the extent that I'm able to do that. I devote a lot of time in the recovery world with that. I also- Unofficially, just people finding you or reaching out to you or hearing about you. Yeah. You know how things are. There's a network. People who know, know. You know what I mean? There are other people doing what I do. Bradley Cooper does a lot of work in that area. He's a great friend to people who are trying to get it together, and there are others. I do a lot of that. I do a lot of work in the cancer fundraising in honor of my mom and her mother and my grandmother, three generations of breast cancer.

Then the other thing I do is I work with a group called the Horacio Alger Society. They're out of Washington, DC, and it's self-made people like Horacio Alger.

Wait, I'm so sorry. Say that again.

What is- The Horacio Alger Association. It's the Society of Distinguished Americans that I was honored to be invited to. It's the who's who of people. What we do is every year, we pick two students who have to apply from each state who are at the top of their class academically, but whose families make less than $25,000 a year and who have the horror stories of where they come from. You don't even want to repeat them out loud. They're so bad, what these kids are dealing with at home, the abuse. We pay for their college education. We have a dinner every year in Washington, and we get to meet these kids. I'll tell you what, you will know our country is in great hands when you see these young students. In spite of everything they're going through, getting great grades and wanting to change the world while they go home and have a crap beaten out of them and everything else you could possibly imagine, and they still show up. To be able to be a part of that is super cool. Those are really the three areas where I am spending my time when I want to give back.

Tell me about the kids. Is there a follow-up?

Oh, yeah. Do you know everything about them? Sheryl and I sponsor. The members will all sponsor kids as well. You don't just get paid for the education and go, Good luck, because a lot of them don't know how to live. Sheryl and I have a sponsor to a student from going to college. She's now in the workforce. It's whatever he may need, a little money here and there, checking in, advice. It's like Big Brother program used to be or whatever. It's very, very inspiring. It's a great group.

I I think you've answered my next question, which is, how do you cope with—it's a lot going on in the world—to make you scared, sad, hopeless, if you're not vigilant. But I guess what you do in life, the giving back, as you called it, is what probably keeps your heart in good shape.

Yeah, because it's easy to get jaded. Sometimes my brand, my comedy comes from a place of that because there's nothing better than the Paul Newman archetype of the world-weary Butch Cassidy or Slapshot Coach, and I like that vibe a lot. But if you live in that- It's a cop-out. Yeah. Working with people who are wanting to change their lives, wanting to better themselves and change their lives. That's the key. Working with people who are actively wanting to change their lives for the better in whatever that looks like.

Enter Jane Fonda.

Jane.

Oh, man. Isn't she just an inspiration? I met her when I was just turning 70, and I thought at 70, I was going, Well, I better find a nice soft place to land and gear down and make sure everything is in order. Then I met her, and she was 80, and she had her foot on the gas pedal. She still does at 85. She is relentless. She'll do a 12-day shooting, turn around get on a plane, fly to so and so to campaign for somebody who's going to not take oil money. She's just truly inspirational.

She's had so many chapters.

Her documentary, Speaking of Chapters, is brilliant. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, it's brilliant.

Yeah, I mean, there's nobody like her. Nobody.

She also will say anything, tell any truth, and share anything. There's nothing hidden about her life. When we first met her, Mary and I both drove home going, Oh, I don't think she should sail. I think she needs to be more guarded. And then it was like, Oh, maybe we're too guarded.

That ship sailed a long time ago for Jane. Yes, that's true. That's It's true, right?

Yeah. We are so blessed to be around our children. We have four kids, and they are willing, for some bizarre reason, to share their friends with us. It's the best. And it's the best. It really is. Now we get grandchildren, which you're going to love because then you got to watch it like an anthropologist and go, Wow, look at that brain development.

Here's my question. Sheryl and I talked about this the other day. I don't know, do you root for grandkids? Well, once you're married, you root for grandkids. I guess I don't want to root for grandkids. Both my kids are single, so let's not have any grandkids at the moment.

No, no, no, no, no. All in the fullness of time.

In the fullness of time.

I think it happened to me in a perfect time. I was just starting to get a smidge grumpy about being old. And along came a granddaughter, and it was like, Oh, I'm in. I look in the mirror and go, Oh, shit, look at this thing hanging from my chin, this flap of skin. And then one of them is sitting in my lap playing with it with their finger, just smacking it back and forth. And I'm going, Thank God I have a waddle because this is fun.

Waddle is my favorite word of the day. The password is Waddle. Waddle.

Not to be confused with Waddle. No, not at all. Thank you so much for sitting down with me. What I'm beginning to learn about podcast, not that I'm good at You're great at it. But the opportunity to sit next to somebody you really don't know, or even you know, but you've never sat down for an hour and got to talk about anything.

Isn't it amazing?

Yes, it is. It's a privilege.

It really is. It is such a privilege. I love it. I go back and I vacillate between, which is more fun, sitting down with somebody you do not know or someone you know really well because they're both different gears.

Yes, but you will find out. I mean, I've sat with Woody here on this podcast and found out stuff I had no idea.

My sense is you could do a podcast with Woody for the next century and find out things you didn't know about Woody.

Yeah, yes, that's true, because he is such a bundle of contradictions.

I mean, right? Yes.

I will only eat the purest of air, but I will smoke and drink this.

Oh, I please.

I admire you so much, Rob.

Oh, and vice versa.

Really, really grateful for this. Thanks.

Vice versa. Thanks.

This is great.

Special thanks to Rob Loe for being here today. Be sure and check out, literally, with Rob Lowe, wherever you get your podcasts. You could even start with my episode because I visited him last year. And watch Unstable Season 2, created, produced, and starring Rob and his son, John Owen, out now on Netflix. That's it for this episode. Hello to Woody. I miss you, buddy. And special thanks to our friends at Team Coco. If you enjoy this episode, please send it to someone you love. Subscribe, rate, and review.

You know the drill.

If you like watching your podcast, just a reminder that full episodes are available on Team Coco's YouTube channel. We'll have more for you next week, where everybody knows your name.

You've been listening to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danton, Woody Harrelson, Sometimes. The show is produced by me, nick Liao. Executive producers are Adam Sacks, Colin Anderson, Jeff Ross, and myself. Sarah Federovich is our supervising producer. Our senior producer is Matt Apodaka. Engineering and mixing by Joanna Samuel with support from Eduardo Perez. Research by Alyssa Graal. Talent Booking by Paula Davis and Gina Batista. Our theme music by Woody Harrelson, Anthony Genn, Mary Steembergen, and John Osborne. Special thanks to Willy Navarree. We'll have more for you next time where everybody knows your name.

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