My relationship with Ireland has healed. But just as something that has been broken is never quite the same, the fragile years of childhood that are battered by high-conflict divorce are irreversibly affected. Divorce itself is child abuse. I tell friends and loved ones now that if they have to split up, to know that any failure to achieve “collaborative divorce” will take a toll that will last forever. I think the worst thing one can do is to put a child in the middle of these battles. That is what I did. And I am reminded of it and I am sorry for it every day.
The voicemail and its aftermath killed a number of activities for me, and my ongoing support for specific issues and particular candidates was one of those casualties. On a beautiful summer afternoon in 2007, Senator Barack Obama was entering the lobby of my Central Park West apartment just as I was leaving. He was no doubt heading to meet potential Democratic supporters, which my building had in number. It had been only a few months since the voicemail had leaked, and I wasn’t feeling like someone you’d want to be standing alongside if you were running for the highest office in the land, but I nodded to Obama and he smiled back. I have the highest admiration for President Obama, and I believe he served his country with an abundance of intelligence and grace. But at that point, I couldn’t imagine he or anyone else wanted my support, so I’d stopped offering it. I’ve often regretted any lost opportunities during Obama’s years in the White House, the chance to work with his administration on behalf of the arts or children or the environment. I simply felt that my family life and reputation were in tatters.
I found that the world of independent film was changing underneath my feet as well. Production companies were offering interesting roles to good actors, but the budgets were plummeting and so were the paychecks, unless you ranked among the biggest stars. It appeared that Hollywood had come to heed Katzenberg’s prescient admonitions regarding the old, unsustainable economics of the movie business. TV was becoming the only place you could get paid, if getting paid was part of your plan. A great migration was occurring, as TV, and especially cable and then streaming services, gambled on the more complex, darker material that both film audiences and actors sought. People spoke of a new “Golden Age of Television,” and I had seen the example of Jimmy Gandolfini, who I had worked with on Streetcar in 1992. By 2006, Jimmy was heading toward the end of his remarkable run on The Sopranos. He’d won every award, the show had made him rich, and the role of Tony Soprano put him on the map as one of the most respected actors in the business.
In early 2006, before the voicemail incident, I pitched a television pilot, a political drama, to FX, and their executives sounded inclined to make it. As we began the most preliminary talks about the project, Lorne Michaels called me. He said he had a project—a sitcom—that he was producing for NBC and he wanted to cast me in the ensemble. Here it was: a job with a regular schedule that meant I could reliably travel to LA to see Ireland, who was eleven years old. Lorne, as you may know, is rather persuasive. And the next thing I knew, I was drinking an iced coffee on the set of his latest comedy venture, embarking on a role that would bring me something I hadn’t had in a long while: an audience.
13
Lemon, There Is a Word
Whenever anyone told me I was funny, I was reminded of when people in high school tell someone that he can hit a fastball or shoot a basketball well. Then he gets to college and everyone is big and fast and strong. After that, if he turns professional, everyone around him seems inhuman. They’re the biggest, fastest, and strongest. That’s what SNL was like for me. The worst idea the writers there came up with was funnier than the best thing I could think up. My definition of funny changed while working with them. If people think I can say a line in a way that gets a laugh, I’ll take it. But I’m not funny. The SNL writers are funny. Tina Fey is funny. Conan O’Brien is funny. You’re only funny if you can write the material. What I do is acting.