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Katie O'Connor: Hi listeners. I'm Audible Editor Katie O'Connor, and today I'm thrilled to be speaking with Tony Award-winning legend Harvey Fierstein about his memoir, . Welcome, Harvey.
Harvey Fierstein: Thank you very much. It is lovely to be on Audible. I've been up in your offices. I taped my play up there. The studio was wonderful. They do music there, and it was so wonderful. It was very homey; I could bring my dog. It also takes me a long time to record. I'm dyslexic, so it took four full days, plus two days of pickups.
KO: I was actually surprised to learn while I was listening to this that you were dyslexic. And I was curious how that impacts your process, either when you are learning lines or when you're working on a new story on a new book.
HF: Well, the great difference is, I'm going to be 70 in June, so when I started writing, I was writing on a manual typewriter. It was always one finger typing my first few plays, then I moved up to an electric typewriter, and now to a computer. So the computer obviously is incredible for a dyslexic person. It even rewrites for you, whether you want it to or not. The computer is just this incredible gift to somebody like me.
KO: And I love your origin story in the theater because you were gravitating towards plays and things that could be read out loud easily on your trips to the library. I thought that was wonderful.
HF: Right? Well, also because it didn't have all those extra words describing stuff, we cut right to the characters, you know?I've always cut right to the character. It's got some stuff to tell you, what props are around, but other than that, we get rid of all that other stuff.
KO: Your memoir is poignant and vulnerable, but also filled with your wit and your humor.
HF: No, you've got to tell them there's lots of sex and violence.
KO: Those other things are true. There is sex. There is violence, but your voice alone will sell these books.What was your background work like? Were you just pouring out your memories or were you having conversations with family, friends, and colleagues to sort of piece together certain events?
HF: That would've been smart, wouldn't it? It would've been really smart to have a diary or something like that. No, COVID hit, and then my desk was clear and there was nothing else to do. And I said, "Oh, I'm a quilt maker," as you may have read. And so I said, "I owe a lot of quilts," because people have had babies and people got married. And so I went down, took out my sewing machine and I made five quilts in a row. And the next day that sort of got boring.
"Okay, what do I do now? With COVID there are going to be so many plays that are backed up. It'll be years till anybody will get to it. I'll probably be dead by the time they put the play on. I don't want to do that." And my agent said, "Why don't you write a memoir?" And I said, "Well, I don't write prose." I mean, I write op-ed pieces, but I've never written a book.
And so I said, "You know what? Take your own advice.” I have that advice in my book, “Just do it." And so I started. First I wrote what became the beginning of chapter one, not the preface, but the story about me in second grade wanting to be the evil queen in Sleeping Beauty.
That evil witch, she had green skin and red lips and black nails. So I wrote that story and I sent it to my friend, Philomena. Philomena in second grade was the one who got to play the evil witch. We've been friends since kindergarten. And she sent back the photograph that's in the book of me at seven years old in drag. And I said, "This book may only work for Philomena and me, but it's going to work for at least two people.” And so I sallied forth. I then contacted Shirley MacLaine and I said, "Shirley, you've written a lot of autobiographies." And she gave me great advice, which was allow memory to edit your book.
"I realize I'm going to be writing about a lot of dead people. And a lot of people who died young and never got to tell their story. And I feel a certain kind of responsibility to tell their stories since they will never.”
Just let memory edit it, you write as it comes to you. And I said, "I realize I'm going to be writing about a lot of dead people. And a lot of people who died young and never got to tell their story. And I feel a certain kind of responsibility to tell their stories since they will never.” And she said, "You can't look at it that way. You can only write about how they affected you.” And that's what I did. So I had no plan. I didn't stop and talk to relatives. I didn't have a diary to go back to.
KO: Yeah. I feel like diary writing, at least for me, it always feels very performative. I loved so many of the people that we got to meet in your memoir. Your mother, Jackie, sounded like she was just such a force, but I really enjoyed getting to know more of your brother, Ronald. You guys clearly have a great relationship. I loved that he used to preview your shows to see if your parents should attend or not. Can you talk to me a little bit more about your relationship with him?
HF: Well, he not only previewed my shows to see if my parents could see the show or not, but he would bring a girlfriend along and if she would freak out seeing my shows, then she wasn't for him. We had what I always thought was a kind of normal relationship. He's a year and a half older than me, which while growing up felt like 30 years. In adulthood it's an hour difference. He still thinks of himself as my older brother. I got shoes 10 times older than that, that I don't think of as old shoes. We are completely different people, which probably makes it a little easier for us to get along. He wrote a book before I did, and his book is called Triumph of Genius. And it's like four times thicker than my book. It's about a legal case, you know, just the opposite of me. He's an attorney and he's a logical thinker. And he makes me totally crazy. I sent him my book and he sent me all this stuff that I got wrong. And I said, who cares?
KO: Going back to Shirley MacLaine, “Those are my memories. They're not your memories.”
HF: I changed the names of most of my exes in the book, but I did send the book to several of my exes, which has been interesting. And of course they'll turn to themselves first. They had to figure out who they are, you know. Somehow they manage, male egos. One of them already said, "Oh, you were so wonderful to me in the book. And so sweet in the way you described us and so much more generous than you could have been. By the way, this is what you got wrong.” And then a whole list. And they were all things that no one would care about. And then the next morning, I got another email from him saying, "Is there a launching party I can go to?"
KO: You have been going nonstop for decades from your early days performing at La Mama. You were also taking college classes, working on one show, performing in another. Four decades later, you are touring with Fiddler on the Roof while working on Kinky Boots, Newsies, Casa Valentina. What does balance look like to you?
HF: I don't take jobs I don't want to do.Really important. I don't take jobs for money. I learned that lesson when I did Legs Diamond.
KO: That anonymous stranger that you quoted in the audience when she said, "Harvey? No, no, no," sounded so much like my aunt that I texted her. And her response was, verbatim, what you wrote in the book.
HF: Your aunt knows. Your aunt knows. But yeah, that was the only job that I really did. No, that's not true. I took Hairspray in Las Vegas.I loved doing Hairspray. And I thought it would be a kick to do it in Las Vegas. I didn't realize that I was going to sign on to do Fiddler on the Roof. It turned into a lot of fun and it paid a fortune. Paid for this house that I'm talking to you from. It's such a bad cliché, but it's true. If you're doing what you love, it's not work. You know?
So I had to say yes to that, but I was already writing Kinky Boots, which I didn't want to write. I loved the movie, but when they came to me and asked me to write the show, I thought, “The movie's so good. Leave it alone.” But Jerry Mitchell who directed and choreographed it had offered me three other shows before that, that I turned down, so I said, "I cannot turn down another. He's going to be so mad at me. And since you really do love the movie you can do it." So I said yes to Kinky Boots. It has sex, violence, and what else do we need?
KO: Famous people.
HF: Famous people, a lot of famous people in that.
KO: I was also privileged to see you as Edna Turnblad in Hairspray. And you mentioned in your memoir that you felt most at home in that role. And just from curtain up to curtain down, that show is electric. There is so much energy from the cast. There's so much great energy from the audience, but live theater can be really unpredictable. When a theater crowd is kind of meh, where do you draw your energy from to keep your performance elevated?
HF: It's absolutely true that even though you are concentrating on the stage, live audiences do add the energy to a show. And if an audience is death, it does affect the show. There may be one person in that audience; the audience can be totally silent. And if one person in that audience is getting something out of it, you've got to give them 100% every time because that one person is definitely out there.
I've had enough stories in my life of people saying I saw the show at such and such, and I always think to myself, "Oh my God, that was a terrible performance." And they tell you how it changed their lives. So you onstage can't judge that. You need to do your job. You're not being paid to enjoy the audience, they're paid to enjoy you. You need to do the job.
You click in as tightly as you can with the rest of the cast. You concentrate on the basics. You stay in character. You stay with the rest of the company and you always remember somebody magical out there. There was a performance, I was doing a play called The Haunted Host in Boston at the Charles Playhouse. So we arrived for a Wednesday matinee in the middle of a snowstorm. Had to be 14, 16 inches of snow on the ground, and we're sitting in the theater and there's nobody there. It's curtain time. I think three people have shown up to see the show. It was only a two character play, and I said, "Are we really going to do this with two people?"
We decided to take up a collection and buy their tickets back from them and give them free tickets to come back that evening, and we'd go to the movies. There was a movie theater around the corner. So that's what we did. So we come back about two and a half hours later. The producer is standing in front of the theater, screaming his head off. Screaming how he was going to call his lawyer and all that. Well, there was an entire bus of people who had paid to see the show and they got there about 40 minutes late because of the snowstorm, but they got there. The cast had gone. Remind me to put that in the next book. Okay?
KO: Yeah, you save that one.
HF: The truth is the book is 400 pages, but I'm 70 years old. I got I lot of damn stories that I could have told. You asked me about performances. That's exactly what "I Was Better Last Night" was about, you know, that last night, yesterday was always a better performance than today. Though the actual story behind that line is it's what I always thought I would put on my gravestone, “I was better last night.” I thought that was very funny, but now I've decided not to have a gravestone, so I might as well have an autobiography instead.
KO: So our listeners might know you from Hairspray or Fiddler on the Roof or perhaps Mrs. Doubtfire, or like my children, Mulan. But you are also a playwright. I was curious if you have a preference between the writing or the performing. Does one feel more rewarding to you?
HF: I probably think of myself more as a writer because I don't act all the time.I act kind of rarely, most stuff you get offered really stinks. The television stuff is so terrible. It's not worth leaving the house for. I really don't enjoy movies very much because most of your time is spent sitting around, and I'm not good at sitting around as you can probably tell from this interview. The great part about my life is that I get to do different things.I get to write. If I wanted to write a political essay I could get it published. I can write a play. I can work on a musical. I can write for television. I can act. I can paint, I can make a quilt. I can cook dinner. Art is art.
KO: You've been a trailblazer for the LGBTQ community. You were the first openly gay actor to play an openly gay role in a sitcom in Daddy's Girls. You were the first openly gay actor performing on Broadway in the early 1980s, which just blows my mind. You wrote two shows that were about gay characters, Torch Song Trilogy and La Cage aux Folles, which were all the more special because you weren't writing tragedies. You were writing about life.
And I want to mention the 1983 Barbara Walters' interview. Here you were with two Tonys already to your name, the season's hottest new show on Broadway, La Cage aux Folles which you had written the book for, and you seemingly sit down to talk about this production with Barbara. And instead she starts asking you about life as a gay man. It was a flabbergasting interview, and you just have one mic drop after the other. But in your memoir, you applaud her. You point out that she so easily could have edited that to make herself look better and you look terrible. Did you feel a shift in the theater community after that interview and after your commercial successes? And I'm curious just in general, what was it like being at the center of that movement in your community?
HF: The big answer to it is yes. I'm very grateful to Barbara. We were already personal friends. We already knew each other socially. I would see her at parties at my producer's house, so I was more shocked than anything that she took this idea of, “You're this creature from another planet, I've never met one of your kind before.” And you can see that look on my face.
Right at that time was the beginning of the AIDS crisis. I know from letters that kids would send me how important it [the interview] was to some people in their lives. I know that kids living in small towns all over the world saw that interview and it changed their lives, which is absolutely wonderful. And as I said, had Barbara not edited it that the way she did, making me look great and her look kind of foolish, it wouldn't have that effect. So I still salute her.
KO: You have collaborated with so many legends. Robin Williams, you worked with Dionne Warwick, Estelle Getty. You gave Matthew Broderick one of his first roles in Torch Song Trilogy. Is there someone that you haven't worked with yet that you would love to partner with?
HF: Oh yeah. There are so many talented people out there, and I'd love to work with them all. And there are a lot of friends I'd still like to work with that I still haven't gotten to work. I want to work with only the best. You know, there's a lot of people who want to be the smartest person in the room. You are not talking to one of them. I want to be the dumbest person in the room. Fill the room with brilliant people! They will only bring me up.
KO: What is your dream role?
HF: I have lots of roles that I'd love to play in the canon of theater, but hopefully the dream role is still coming that I don't even know about. I wanted to play Ursula in The Little Mermaid live action, and they went and got this very untalented woman instead.I think the name is something like Streep. Yes. Something like Meryl Streep.
Every time Alan Mankin, who composed the song ["Poor Unfortunate Souls"], whenever it has to be performed, he always calls me. I've done it at Carnegie Hall. I've done it at Joe's Pub. I've done it at the Hollywood Bowl. I mean, whenever he needs somebody to come sing "Poor Unfortunate Souls," this is who he calls. So that's a nice part.
KO: You're Ursula at your core. So you narrate I Was Better Last Night. Can you talk to me how performing your own life story compares to performing characters you or others have created?
HF: Well, the whole thing is different because of the way you write it. First of all, you do everything to have the characters speak and you don't want to hear the author. You know, in bad movies and bad plays, you hear the author. You know that's the author speaking and you don't want that. You want your character speaking. And I'm really good at disappearing and letting my character speak. All of a sudden doing the memoir, I wanted more than anything to make it feel like you were visiting me.
And so that took an adjustment. But once I got there, it became kind of a natural way to write. I really felt that the book is in my voice. When I sat down to read it for Audible, because of my dyslexia, it was harder. Some stuff was written just to be written and not to be spoken. I didn't write it in dialogue. I wrote it in prose, so it was harder in that way, but I think I did a good job. I can't listen to myself so I can’t tell you.
"All of a sudden doing the memoir, I wanted more than anything to make it feel like you were visiting me."
KO: Towards the end of your memoir, you say Bella Bella will rise again. I know your intent was to use Bella Bella in fundraisers and benefits for female candidates for political office, but then obviously the pandemic hit. Will Bella Bella be revived? Where do you see its next iterations going? And then what's next for you?
HF: What's next? Well, what's next is Funny Girl on Broadway at the end of March. So that was the easy question. Bella Bella has been done in a couple of other productions, but the whole reason I wrote it has not yet happened.I'm hoping as we get closer to the midterm, it will raise money for other women running for office. So I've gotta put some more work into getting that going again. My hope was that Bella's friends like Gloria Steinem, Renée Taylor, and Lily Tomlin, that those women will go out and do readings for women candidates. That's the reason it was created.
KO: I love it. It was such a pleasure speaking with you today. Thank you so much. And listeners, you can get I Was Better Last Night on Audible.
