Jeff Daniels has had a long and illustrious career, with a wide range of comedic and dramatic roles Stupid and stupider Unpleasant The newsroom. He’s a singer, an actor and a writer – so it’s only natural that his memoir includes all of the above.
Instead of writing a book about his life, the 69-year-old teamed up with his son, 40-year-old Ben Daniels, to produce an Audible Original series, Alive and good enough continues. All twelve episodes of season 2 are now available on Audible.
Jeff and Ben spoke to Yahoo Entertainment ahead of the show’s release about their father-son podcast team, Jeff’s legacy as an actor and how this unconventional project came together.
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
So why do something episodic and audio instead of writing a traditional memoir?
Jeff Daniels: Well, I don’t need to go on book tours – let’s start there! I’ve been playing and writing songs for 50 years, and this platform allows me to do it all. I can act, I can read scenes from plays I’ve written and play all the roles in, I can play music, I can write fiction – I get to do it all on Audible Originals, which I couldn’t do if I was sitting behind a card table at Barnes & Noble.
What was your focus for season 2? Was there a topic you really wanted to delve into?
Jeff: I’m a big fan of people like David Sedaris and other people who know how to take things from their own lives, find the meaning, metaphor, or theme, and create something that people can relate to. Then I’ll just give it to Ben and see what we got.
Jeff Daniels performs with his son, Ben Daniels, in 2018. (Al Pereira/WireImage)
How do you work together on this?
Ben Daniels: We set it up so he can record his words, and then I edit it and break it up. In the beginning there were too many little noises that we had to comb through, but that’s not his fault. That was just the computer.
Jeff: (Jokingly) We blame the computer and not the older person speaking into the microphone. We will do that better! It’s definitely a team: the two of us.
What did you learn from the first season that you carried into the second season?
Jeff: That it worked! That we made it happen! That we got away with it!
Are there any songs, skits, or stories from Season 2 that you’re excited to see out in the world, Jeff?
Jeff: There are some really beautiful stories! Some of [his time on the TV series] Wicked, dealing with horses and riding horses. When actors say, “Of course I can drive!” and they can’t, this is what happens. Then at the end there’s a section about Al Pacino and what he meant to me early on. I’m reaching the age where I see things have come full circle. There’s a section about things actors do to each other on stage to break character. The only show diary I ever kept was that of an actor named Jerome, who starred in Chekov’s Three sisters with me off Broadway. The guy tried to do something every night, and he was 92 years old, so you had no control over him.
Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels enter Stupid and stupider. (New Line / Courtesy Everett Collection)
When I talk to actors and people who have played many iconic roles, I notice that some see their most popular work as something they to have to speak to fans as if it were a chore. But you seem to like the way people bring up your role, for example Stupid and stupider as a fun opportunity to entertain.
Jeff: It makes people laugh! And especially now we can all use it. In comedy, it’s hard enough to make people laugh just once. To make them laugh after seeing it again and again, or across generations, decades later – we can all use that. I’m proud of that. I had a blast making it. I loved working with Jim Carrey and the Farrelly brothers. I love that I can do that And play Atticus Finch [in To Kill a Mockingbird] on Broadway. I like the range.
Ben: We used the toilet scene [from Dumb and Dumber] to potty train my daughter. Not every parent has a grandparent who can help in this way.
What a scene! Did she recognize your father?
Ben: She was still a little young, so maybe we should brush her up now that she’s in first grade. But at that point we were running out of ideas!
Something that comes up in my daily life as a journalist is that speech you give in the first episode of The newsroomin which your character, a newsreader, tells an audience of students why the United States is “not the greatest country in the world.”.” Do you look back on that speech as often as you do other work you’ve done?
Jeff: It’s been viewed, I don’t know how many, millions of times on YouTube. Every actor wants that one movie, that one role, that one speech, that people will remember from it. I have several, so I’m lucky in that regard. It’s just something else that will outlive me. I’m increasingly looking at it as something that will last, because it’s still relevant today. But I knew how big that speech was the day we gave it. I got to ride Aaron Sorkin’s words. It was a special day that I will never forget.
