We tend to think of our Founding Fathers as upright and uptight, but this presentation depicts Franklin with a sense of humor and a sex life. He’s a complicated guy. The fact that he was not very thoughtful to his wife, Deborah—he left her for years at a time—was an extraordinary contradiction to his moral and ethical brilliance, his humor, poetic writing, his genius to invent and his ability to be a charming ambassador for the founding of our country. Did you learn any fun facts about Franklin? Oh, yeah. He had discussions with people about farting, trying to figure out a way to make farts not smell. He just thought that was not a helpful aspect of the human condition and he thought it should smell more like ladies’ perfumes. I love that stuff. When Benjamin Franklin first went to England, he seemed like a Loyalist to the British, but then the British insulted him and that was a turning point, making him a Patriot. If the British hadn’t insulted him, could that have changed history? I don’t know if it was so much an insult as the growing imbalance in insanity of being taxed without representation, and, therefore, the Tea Party and all of these concerns. I think to the end he was willing to consider variations on the peace treaty, but he wouldn’t give up independence. He wanted that umbilical cord cut. He was willing to compromise to get the Southern states to be part of the union. Do you think that there’s a lesson that politicians today should take from how he functioned as a politician? Exactly. He went to Europe with JohnAdams, who had a prickly personality and was 30 years younger than him, to negotiate. And then they end up sharing a room and a bed together because of certain conditions. The prickliness of Adams was something that Franklin tolerated. He found where the glass was full and not empty and worked with him. To me this is not original sin, but 20th or 21st century sin, where the current parental body of not only our country’s dinner table but the world’s dinner table sets an example that couldn’t be more horrific of not speaking to each other. Is that how you want your children to behave? Not to speak to their siblings? I think Ken Burns and his team have brilliantly put together this history lesson from the people who founded our country: “It’s a republic, if you can keep it.” And there are examples of these individuals that founded our country as people who reached across the table—there was no aisle—and worked together, spoke to each other with dignity and, most importantly, listened to each other with grace and respect, and held their own. I remember when I was younger, my wife and I went to a fundraiser for MarkGreen, who was running for some office in New York. I forget the famous scientist, but he was the guest. And he said there were 250,000 people in America when our Founding Fathers founded our constitution, and there were 250 Founding Fathers. Where are those like minds today? Are human beings that different from then to now? I think not. I think we are capable of growth and change. And that, to me, is the most exemplar quality of Benjamin Franklin. An individual who starts off thinking one way, and let’s just take the most horrific example, that slavery’s acceptable and he’s a slave owner, and ends up realizing it is unacceptable and he leaves this world as an abolitionist fighting for their freedom. And that example of growing and changing and being true to your moral, ethical, Christian code at that time is everything all of us, not just in America but the whole world, need to be paying attention to. Was Franklin a bit of a ladies’ man? There’s a thing with some young girls in France. These are young girls and he’s married, but all these women loved him, and they’d call him “Papa,” or “Cher Papa,” or something like that. And he would sit in the bathroom with them while they’d be in the bathtub, put a board across the bathtub and teach them chess. I thought to myself, “Why did I not think of that when I was younger?” You are also the voice for the upcoming Paramount+ docuseries Invisible: Healing Hate. I was very concerned, and I worked very hard with my wife and the team of Healing Hate to make sure that there was a balance between the healing and the display of how the hate grew for decades in our country in these white supremacists’ organizations. In this world and age of holding the robots in our hands that I’m talking to you on, of instant information that is disseminated across the globe in seconds, everything is taken out of context. So if you’re showing people from white supremacists’ organizations who are filled with hate speech, asking for a world that only has people like them in it and others shouldn’t exist, you’re going to show things that they said. The fine line to walk is: Are you making a plea for healing, listening, growing, changing and understanding and becoming one nation indivisible? Or are you recruiting people with hate speech? And so, at the end of the day, you have to believe that the good will outweigh the negative. I pulled this out of Walter Isaacson’s book, and this is a quote Ben Franklin said: “Printers are educated in the belief that when men differ in opinion both sides ought equally to have the advantage of being heard by the public, and that when truth and error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter.” I believe in human beings and I’m not afraid to engage in discussion that show both sides because I believe people will see what is good versus what is hateful. What is right for human beings to be to themselves and to each other versus what is morally and ethically reprehensible like slavery, like annihilating a people called Native Americans. And I have faith in human beings. I’m not an idiot. I know there’s always going to be difference of opinions. And that is why we work to preserve our democracy, and our country, and the sacred right of our freedom to vote, and the beauty of the peaceful exchange of power from one president to the next. So that we don’t have another January 6 for the rest of the history of this country. Ever. And that takes work and courage. Putting your opinion and your heart on the line takes courage. Everyone’s not going to agree with you. Some people will unfortunately be violent. In your wide-ranging career, what have been your favorite roles? I’ve been really spoiled. There are many roles that I loved dearly; one certainly was The Princess Bride. Another that defined my being was playing George Seurat in the musical Sunday in the Park With George. And then I got to be Saul Berenson in Homeland for eight seasons. Saul is a much better person than I was. How so? It was Saul who taught me how to listen better. If you asked my family, “So what do you think of your dad?” or “What do you think of your husband?” They would go, “Well, it would be nice if he listens a little more and shut up sometimes.” And so, Saul Berenson taught me how to be quiet and listen. It’s the character they wrote. From the moment I read the part, I knew he had one job, which was to protect this savant, gifted young woman [Carrie Mathison, played by ClaireDanes] because she embodied everything he cared about, and she would be his legacy and keep the world safe. And he lived for that. And so, protecting that young woman was what I got to do for 10 years, even though it was just eight seasons, but I always say 10 because we were working for 10 years. And that changes a human being. When you live with a character who listens better than you do and is a caretaker better than I was a caretaker, it teaches you how to be a better caretaker and a better listener. I didn’t expect those kinds of gifts from being an actor when I began. I didn’t know that was going to be the reward. During the pandemic, you found social media fame. How did that happen? My son Gideon, the younger son, was worried about his folks during the pandemic. His work had to stop because of the pandemic, so he came home right when it started to take care of us. We said, “Gideon, we can take care of ourselves. We can figure out how to get food and groceries. We’re not idiots.” We would take walks on the road, distanced when he first got back because we separated for however long we were supposed to back then. I think it was April 17 because the day before was April 16, which my wife and I consider our main anniversary because it was our first date almost 44 years ago. And we had a fight, like people do. He said, “How’d the anniversary go? What was it, yesterday?” I said, “Well, it was our anniversary, we had a fight.” And he filmed it. He’s always picking up the phone doing what he calls family archives. And the next day he says to us, “That was a great conversation. Can I put that on your social media?” I said, “Gideon, I did the social media to work with the International Rescue Committee. We gave birth to that to bring awareness of the refugee crisis and how people can help refugees and raise awareness and money to help vulnerable people all over the world. Nothing goes on my social media without me seeing it, but I don’t know how to upload or download. They do it for me, but we create the content together. So I don’t know how to do it.” He said, “No, I know, I can do it.” I said, “OK.” And he puts it out there and the thing goes crazy. And all of a sudden, we realized two things were happening as the months passed. One was the pandemic was terrifying all of us. And two, people were finding us funny and laughing at these two old farts. And we went, “God Almighty, we’re making people laugh during this nutty time? Sure, we’ll answer your questions.” So we’re just the two idiot parents that my son knows how to push our buttons; he knows us like a book. He knew what to ask and he just kept asking and filming. And he would come to Kathryn and me and say, “Is this ok to put out? Can I put this up?” And we did. And then that morphed into the election coming and we realized, “My God, we’ve got a thing here, we can help get out the vote. We can help people register to vote.” So we did. Then Black Lives Matter happened. So we started trying to make people care about that situation. I just don’t understand why people are interested in us. I tell you I’m grateful, but I can’t understand it for the life of me. The pandemic shut down so many things, including concerts. How are you scratching your singing itch these days? I take walks every day and I run songs every day; I run a concert every day. I started vocalizing after taking about a year off. I couldn’t do any concerts because I won’t gather people yet until I feel safe, you know? I don’t want the responsibility of making anybody sick by gathering. And so, I started working when my piano player came. He’s a conductor for a Broadway musical as well. He was double-vaxxed and boosted, and then he got breakthrough COVID, so we had to stop. And then Omicron hit and that was another whiplash to us all, so we stopped. Now, I have been working with Joan Lader, my voice coach for many years, who’s a genius. It’s the one time a week I get to sing for one hour a day. We do vocalizing exercises. It’s partly just relaxing your body, your mind and your voice. Your voice is sort of the truth-teller of your being. If you’re not feeling good, your voice won’t work so good. It just shows everything, sort of like a person’s eyes. And so, I sing with Joan on the phone now once a week for my voice lessons. And that’s my pleasure and my joy. She takes care of me. It’s my therapy. And I’m waiting. A friend of mine just sent me a song that I love by JamesTaylor. I said, “I can’t wait to learn it.” And I hope one day sooner than later I’ll be in front of people and sharing these songs again with audiences. And so, I work on it every day, so I don’t lose it, and I’m waiting for it to be safe. There’s nothing other than my wife and children that I love more than singing. There’s nothing that makes me feel better. If you told me I could only do one thing in the work arena, I would absolutely choose to sing for people in concert because it’s my favorite thing, period. Your mother, Doralee Patinkin, is the author of two cookbooks. How are you in the kitchen? Both my sons are geniuses in the kitchen. I love being in the kitchen and I’m a creative cook, but I didn’t do it that much because I didn’t have that much time. My wife hates it, and therefore my sons sort of became the opposite of my wife; they loved it, and they’re amazing cooks. They love their grandma. They love their grandma’s cookbooks and many other cookbooks. We had a manny taking care of the kids when they were little because I was on the road a lot and we wanted another man around when I was working. And so, we had two different guys, and the second guy we had, he’d see me calling my mother everything Thanksgiving, “Ma, Ma, I can’t remember, do you put the breast side of the turkey down or up?” And she’d say, “You put it down. You put it down so all the juices fall into the breast.” “OK, OK, OK. I can’t remember, do you cover it?” “Ma, Ma, I can’t remember the stuffing. How do you do it?” And so finally he said, “Why don’t you have her write a cookbook?” And I said, “Yeah.” And so, my generation of children and our grandchildren all wrote to Grandma Doralee, my mother, telling her their favorite recipes. She was a phenomenal baker and an amazing cook, and she wrote enough for two cookbooks. And the manny said, “Let me call a few people.” He was an entrepreneurial guy. And five minutes later, he’s got like five different offers for people that want to publish the cookbook, so off we went. Then my mother and I did all the talk shows, David Letterman and Rosie O’Donnell, and had the time of our life. For years afterwards, I’d be on the road doing concerts and I’d entertain people with a concert, and they’d want to say hi after the show and I’d go out to give autographs. And so often many people would have her cookbook in their hands, “Could you please sign your mother’s cookbook for me?” Next, As You Wish, Here Are 39 Quotes From The Princess Bride
