The Luminous Kelli O'Hara

For more than a decade, Kelli O'Hara has beenat the very top of the Broadway heap. She gets called "luminous" so often that it must get really very,very tiring. It's been a remarkable journey for a kid who grew up on a farm in western Oklahoma and cut her teeth doing repertory theater in Wichita. She tells Alec her story, with a fascinating, surprising twist:she deeply loves Broadway but wants to branch out, and says she's struggled to do so.

Russ Tamblyn, from DeMille to David Lynch

Russ Tamblyn was born in Los Angeles in the middle of the Depressionto a chorus girl and a Broadway "song and dance man." His father had moved hisgrowing family west to press hisluck in the talkies. Russ was a showbiz kid and found his talent young: Cecil B DeMille cast him as the young King Saul inSamson and Delilah when he was just 13 years old. Stardom came at 19 inSeven Brides for Seven Brothers, where hestole scenes with his goofy enthusiasm and astonishingly acrobatic dancing. But the role that will go down in history is Riff in West Side Story. Tamblyntook a part that could have been just a young tough, and imbued it with such nuance, such balance between aggression and vulnerability, that every Riff since has been held up to him. In this funny, revealing conversation, Tamblyntells Alec what it was like being part of the old Hollywood contract system (he was an MGM property) -- plus which major Golden Age director was "overrated," and why he didn't stay a movie star. And of c...

The Oscars Series, Day 5: For Sama, This Year's Most Powerful Documentary

This week, in honor of the upcoming Academy Awards,Here's the Thingbrings you a collection of conversations with Oscar-winners -- and, today, with a pair of 2020 nominees. They are Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts, theco-directors ofFor Sama, which is up for Best Documentary Feature. It's a movie pieced together from more than 500 hours of footage shot by Al-Kateab, a young mother in rebel-controlled Aleppo, Syria, as government troops closed in. For Sama isabout what it's like for an ordinary, middle-class family toconceiveandraise a child in a city under siege.As the San Francisco Chronicle puts it, "For Sama is a film made with the instincts of a journalist, the passion of a revolutionary, and the beating heart of a mother." Watts, Waad, and Waad's husband, Dr. Hamza Al-Kateab, joined Alec at a live taping of Here's the Thing at the Hamptons International Film Festival.

The Oscars Series, Day 4: Spike Lee

This week, in honor of the upcoming Academy Awards,Here's the Thingbrings you a collection of conversations with Oscar-winners -- including one new interview,coming tomorrow, with the creative team of 2020 Best Documentary-nomineeFor Sama. Today, on Day4 of our Oscars series, it's our live event with Spike Lee at the TriBeCa Film Festival. The two movie-veterans came prepared for a serious discussion about Place in the Sun andOn the Waterfront, but get distracted very quickly. AsBETput it in their roundup of the conversation,"The iconic director held nothing back." Spike Lee's first Oscar, shockingly, came last year forhisBlacKkKlansman screenplay.

The Oscars Series Day 3: Julianne Moore

This week, in honor of the upcoming Academy awards,Here's the Thingbrings you a collection of conversations with Oscar-winners -- including one new interview with the creative team of 2020 Best Documentary-nomineeFor Sama, coming Friday. For Day 3 of our series, we bring you ourJulianne Moore episode, in which she and Alec bond over their shared past in soap operas. Moore won her Oscar in 2015 forplayingan Alzheimer's patient inStill Alice.

The Oscars Series, Day 2: Cameron Crowe

This week, in honor of the upcoming Academy awards,Here's the Thingbrings you a collection of conversations with Oscar-winners -- including one new interview with the creative team of 2020 Best Documentary-nomineeFor Sama. For our second installment, we bring youthe Here's the Thingepisode that may have generated our most enthusiastic listener feedback. That's Alec's conversation with director, screenwriter, and Rolling Stonejournalist Cameron Crowe -- punctuated with great songs from Crowe's films.Crowe won his Oscar in 2001 for his screenplay forAlmost Famous.

The Oscars Series, Day 1: Barbra Streisand

This week, in honor of the upcoming Academy awards, Here's the Thing brings you a collection of conversations with Oscar-winners -- including one new interview coming Friday with the creative team of 2020 Best Documentary-nominee For Sama. We begin, however, with a reprise of one of the HTT team's all-time favorite episodes, in which Alec enjoys a little miso soup at the home of Barbra Streisand in Malibu. Streisand has won two Oscars: first in 1969 for her turn as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl, and then again in 1977for herBest Original Song “Evergreen” from A Star Is Born.

Kantor and Twohey: The Reporters Who Broke the Harvey Weinstein Story

Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey are the New York Times reporters who broke the Harvey Weinstein story. For five months -- perpetually in danger of losing the scoop -- they cultivated and cajoled sources ranging from the Weinsteins’ accountant to Ashley Judd. The article that emerged on October 5th, 2017, was a level-headed and impeccably sourced exposé, whose effects continue to be felt around the world. Their conversation with Alec covers their reporting process, and moves on to a joint wrestling with Alec’s own early knowledge of one of the Weinstein allegations, and his ongoing friendship with accused harasser James Toback. The guests ask Alec questions aboutthe movie industry’s ethics about sex and “the casting couch.” Over a respectful and surprising half-hour, host and guests together talk through the many dilemmas posed by the #MeToo movement that Kantor and Twohey did so much to unleash.

Wynton Marsalis, Keeper of the Jazz Flame

Wynton Marsaliswas on the cover of Time as the avatar of the "New Jazz Age." His central role in reviving the genreis thanks partly to his gorgeous, virtuosictrumpet-playing, and partly to his founding of Jazz at Lincoln Center. JALC establishedjazz at the heart of American high culture. That"officialness"turned off some jazz musicians: wasn't their music supposed to be looser, smaller? But Marsalistells Alec that the desire torelegate jazz to small underground clubs is "ghettoizing." In front of a live audience at JALC's Rose Hall, Marsalis also goes deep with Alec about his father's influence -- and hisracially fraught interactions with professors and conductors at Juilliard when he showed up from Louisiana in 1979.

Julie Andrews, Revisited

We often think of Julie Andrews as the prim nannyfromMary PoppinsandThe Sound of Music, but her personal path may have the greatest resemblance to one of her Broadway roles: Eliza Doolittle inMy Fair Lady. Andrews grew up in a family strapped for cash during the Second World War, and her initial training as an actor was in the less-than-prestigious field of vaudeville. But right before opening night of her breakout role inThe Boy Friend, it was producer Cy Feuer’s advice that we have to thank, in large part, for the level of excellence Andrews has brought to musical film and theater for generations. “Forget camp,” he told her. “Get real.”