Tovah Feldshuh, LILYVILLE: Mother, Daughter, and Other Roles

[1:05]Zibby Owens: This is Zippy Owens and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy, called Moms Don't Have Time to A Quarantine Anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID nineteen vaccine research. And I'm the editor in chief of Moms Don't Have Time to Write, a new publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there. And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and My website is zibbyowens.com. Okay, now back to this amazing podcast. Welcome to memoir day of my June Book Blast. I am releasing a bunch of really powerful, amazing memoir episodes today, and I really hope you enjoy them. Memoir is like my favorite literary genre. I don't know what yours is, but I love memoirs. I always learn so much. And this is part one of the memoirs I have to release in this book blast. Enjoy. I was so lucky to do a live event with Tova Feldsha. She's the author of Mother, Daughter, and Other Roles I've Played. Tova is a six time Emmy and Tony nominee and has been awarded three honorary doctorates of humane letters. Additionally, for her theater work, she's won four drama desks, four Outer Critics Circle Awards, three dramalogues, The Obie, The Theater World, and the Helen Hayes and Lucille Lortel Awards for best actress. Listen to our conversation here. She is so entertaining. Oh my gosh. Hi, Toba. Thanks so much for doing this with me.

[2:39]Tovah Feldshuh: Hi, Zvi. It's my honor to do it.

[2:42]Zibby Owens: Wow. Oh my gosh. First of all, I have so many great things to say about Lilyville, but the thing that was the greatest was even from the start, the way you structured this book as like a play in three acts and use so much clever theater isms all throughout. Tell everybody about Lilyville.

[3:03]Tovah Feldshuh: What inspired you to write this book and how you came up with this adorable innovative structure? There was an agent on his way to his office now at UTA, a wonderful man named Albert Lee. He was listening to an interview I had given Entertainment Weekly with Dalton Ross. My mother had recently died and within five months of my mother's death, I made plans to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. And I had just come down from that peak, which I climbed with our son, Brandon. In all events, he listened to my interview. He went to his office. He called my managers in LA and said, does Tova felt you have a literary agent? They said no. And he said, I think she has a writer's voice. I'm glad he thought so. I had no idea. He showed up in my living room with his wonderful partner, Lane Zachary, and they asked me, what did I want to write? And I said, I'd like to write about my mother, Lily. She has recently passed away and she was remarkable. Our journey to find each other was remarkable. When Hachette asked me to write a book, when the book deal was made and I was becoming a paid author, they wanted a celebrity autobiography And I've auditioned all my life and I tried to figure out how to stop the conveyor belt on this, not autobiography, but memoir. I don't regard myself as some international entity. I'm a Broadway kid, so I'm local talent And I had the honor of playing Houston and love Houston. God, I think I got my first cowboy boots at a place called Cutter Bills, but it was quite some time ago, it was in 1980. In all events, I decided to write about my mother. I decided to look at my life, not chronologically and say, was born, I did this, I did this, who cares? I decided to look at my life through the eyes of my mother and my mother's life through my eyes. My mother and I are forty years apart, so we didn't have a generational gap. We had a generational chasm. And then my friend, Jeff Harner, wonderful man who directs me in my one woman concerts like Tova, Out of Her Mind, Aging is Optional because God, hope it is. Tova is Leona Helmsley. That's another one we did. He suggested, he said, Tova, what do you know best? And I said, Well, I guess I know the theater best. He said, Why don't you write this as a theater piece? And that is when the whole manuscript took off. And I structured it in three acts with two intermissions and a palate cleanser between each chapter. So instead of getting chapters, you get scenes. Instead of getting forward, a forward, you get an overture. Instead of getting an afterwards, you get exit music. Instead of getting acknowledgements, I go a cast party to honor all those who helped me, particularly Jeff Harner and my wonderful assistant, Oliver Scholson, who was a linguistics major at Yale, who was typing the manuscript furiously and knew where every comma and every colon went. And I am thrilled that it has been received so graciously. And I hope that Zippy that in writing this memoir, which also has palate cleansers between each scene. In Vaudeville in the old days, the actors would come downstage, the most shallow curtain at the stage, almost on top of the first row of the audience and do a song and dance, tap dance or sing as they changed the scenery behind stage. So you went from Henry Higgins house to Freddie Einsford Hill singing, I have often walked down this street before when the curtain opens. To do that scene change, you had to be in what we call in one. My editor, Lauren Marino, who was absolutely great, said, don't say in one, it's too effete, people won't know what you're talking about. So I called them Lilyisms and Tovaisms. And that was the way also to bring in my career in between the chapters. But this is really a look of an ancient, ancient primal relationship between a parent and a child. And it, you know, there's a person saying that a tree in order to bear fruit, a branch in order to bear fruit must learn to bend. Well, our trees were on different lawns in Scarsdale, New York, And eventually Lily lived so long and I grew up enough that our branches could bow together, become intertwined and truly intimate. And what the book really says, and it has a happy ending, is no matter what you are experiencing between you and another primary relationship, your husband, your child, your mother, or your father, it can be solved. I promise you, if I could solve this, you can solve that. That is my gift to you for Mother's Day. I also thought, Siby, last thing, and then please go ahead, that how do you hit the river of universal experience So that this is a book, not just for Tova, but for you, Zibby, and for you, Amy, and for the JCC of beloved Houston. You have to get to the primal relationships that exist for Homo sapiens actually for the whole living world, which is that we all were given birth from somewhere. And these people gave us our lives. They gave us our life. So how do we manage this? They tried the best they could. And if they didn't love us in a way we could understand somewhere, they tried the best they could and somewhere you can try to empower them to be able to love you the way you need. But you, you have to do the work too. You have to do the work. I wish you were my therapist. I would have saved so much time and money

[8:24]Zibby Owens: if I had just had this conversation with you. Oh my gosh. You know, it's so funny. I love reading books about mother daughter relationships, especially memoir where people really put it out there, what their relationships and difficulties they have. And I'm continually struck as I was with yours, how different every single one is. And some of the struggles like your mother who you are so funny the way you capture exactly who she was. I feel like I completely know her. The things that you throw in, like the fact that you talked about going to Juilliard and she called it a trade school, like, ugh, you're not gonna do that. Like, you're not gonna do this. She was so dismissive of you at times. And the when you got your big trapeze role and she was like, Oh, look, you have to go on a trapeze to get this job. All of these things that like these little digs as you grow and become your own person. Like, it's hard to get over that type of background noise. Tell me a little bit about I mean, write about it with such humor, but there's also sadness in there. Well, first of all, my mother was a mitzvah machine.

[9:32]Tovah Feldshuh: She did deeds of kindness, probably deeds of loving kindness, except for one little thing. She was silent. So therefore she didn't tell, I don't believe she told my older brother, David either, or myself that she loved us. Like, I love you. Like I get up as a young mother with my own children. And I always said, I love you because you breathe. I love you because you breathe. You have unconditional love in this house. And when you go out of this house, you have to learn the respect, earn the respect of other people. And when you're 16, and particularly once you're 18, you are subject to the laws of The United States Of America. You are responsible, you are accountable. So be a Mench, be a human being. However, so my mother, you know, there was a book, I forgot the author, but five different ways of loving. So my mother loved through deeds, through actions. And many people says we are not who we are, we are what we do, you know? So she did these things, but she was a silent partner. And my father was a litigator and very vociferous. I really played my father on Law and Order when I played Danielle Melnick and he had known death early. His father died when he was 16. And then he was drafted in the army and spent his years abroad in the intelligence and didn't get home till 1946. So he was there under General Dwight David Eisenhower for some time, and he saw death and knew death from the fight against the fascists. And as a result, because I was born well after the war, I became his only infant. So he really never left my side. He flanked me and that saved, that saved my life. It saved my emotional life. Finally, when I was 18, I went to my mother and I said, mommy, do you love me? And she came right out of fibula. Do I love you? What do mean do I love you? Who takes you in the Chrysler, the Hebrew school? Who takes you to your singing lesson, your dancing lesson? Who buys you clothes at Saks Fifth Avenue, only undergarments at Alexander's? Who makes the nutcake? Who makes the strawberry shortcuts? Who makes the dollop pancakes? So of course I love you. That's about as far as I got. Of course I love you, as if it, again, dismissive. When I took her to see Golda's Balcony, and Golda's Balcony, where I played prime minister Golda Meir, did become the longest running one woman play in the history of Broadway in a hundred years. And if you do what you're supposed to do, you know, the greater the transformation for the actor, the greater the actor gets credit. So with Goldest Balcony, I had a fat suit, I had big breasts, I had false legs, I had a false nose, I had a wig. I mean, I was a size sixteen and I'm a size four, six. So after the show, I said, mommy, mommy, how did I do? And she said, Tavva, I rate your parts by how you look. Dolly Levi was a 10. Golda Meir, zero. So this is what we were up against. There is an Eastern European tradition. I don't think it's just Jewish. We are not to over praise your child, yes, lest they have hubris and they are struck down by the gods. From that come the little red ribbons we tie around our cribs and our strollers so that the devil will think he's already been there and pass over our children. So that trickle down of that kind of superstition is what led my mother to this tough love thing. Plus the fact she was born in 1911 on a dining room table in the Bronx. She put herself to NYU where she met the love of her life, Sydney Felschu. She was 17, he was 18. She paid for her entire college career. And in those days, a woman was as good as her match, as good as her match. So she married her Harvard lawyer and the sun rose and set around my father along with her incredibly dutiful obligations to her children. But she also remained silent so that daddy could take the son in the spotlight. And it wasn't until my father died on 05/11/1996. I'm actually writing a pitch now for a TV series, and it starts at my father's funeral, that my mother unexpectedly bloomed. She was the only survivor of my six aunts and six uncles. Each parent was one of four children. So 12 people were dead. And with my father, the thirteenth. And when I say survivors, please understand we did not experience the, God forbid, the European Holocaust. We came to this country in 1902. So she was the only, the sole survivor of her generation. And the light came to her, given to her by our entire large family. And aunt Lil was very wise and aunt Lil used to give out wisdom. Like I say, my brother who graduated summa cum laude from medical school and also was a director of plays, he headed the theater at Cornell. So he practiced emergency room medicine on Saturday and Sunday, and he was a professor during the week at Cornell, he still is. As a matter of fact, he's doing a lot with COVID now, set up a stand and busy inoculating. So my mother says to him, this is a great scholar, my brother. He says, David, I'm so glad I'm not your patient. Two days a week he practices, two days a week. You break your leg on Saturday, fine. You break it on Wednesday, call Gutterman's. Gutterman's the local Jewish funeral. So let me put it this way, though all my roles as an actor took place on Broadway, Off Broadway, in concert halls, in film and television, they all truly took place under the dome of Lilyville, where my mother Lily reigned supreme. And so with the applause of thousands, applause of thousands was created by me to substitute for the lack of applause of one human being who finally came my way. When my dad died, she lived for another eighteen years and we did not waste a second making sure that we were intimate, that we were intimate. Wow. It's so funny

[15:17]Zibby Owens: how you have to look to these external rewards and praises for what you this this primal need for love that's deep down. And I know it was offset by your dad, but that's just such a you know, just the image of you on stage with everyone applauding and your mom being like, Ugh. And even when your brother got you got the same fellowship as your brother or whatever that was, and she was like, Ugh, two actors. Oh my gosh. You know? Like, just so not

[15:42]Tovah Feldshuh: not What did I do What did I do wrong to have you get in the theater? Right. What did we do Sydney? What did we do? But I'll tell you what my mother gave me. And there's light for all of us. Any obstacle that a parent unintentionally or intentionally dishes out as they're trying their best. People really do try their best and nothing is personal. I can't imagine how my mother was brought up by her British mother. This is British Jewish. Pass the matzah please. It isn't exactly the Queen's English. It's not back here you say. It's not that very, very, very elegant uppercross thing. It's more of a dentalization. Just like when you go to Long Island, they have TS4D. I'm going to the dentist and the dentist is going to, she's going to drill my cavities. Anyway, what my mother gave me was resilience.

[16:37]Zibby Owens: Today's episode is sponsored by Quince. Summer always makes me rethink what I'm reaching for every day. Lighter fabrics, better materials, pieces that just feel good the moment you put them on and look effortless. That's why I keep coming back to quints. They focus on high quality essentials. Think breathable linen, soft organic cotton, washable silk, but without the luxury markup. It's that rare balance where everything feels elevated but still easy. Quince has beautiful everyday pieces like 100 European linen pants, dresses, and tops with styles starting at $32. Their denim is soft and easy to wear. I wear my jean jacket all the time. And their organic cotton sweaters are perfect for layering on cool summer nights. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. And it's not just clothing. Quince has really become a destination for elevated essentials across home, kitchen, bedding, and beyond, making it easy to bring a more premium feel into everyday life. In addition to my jean jacket, I recently got a white tank top dress with a beautiful cotton skirt that is absolutely gorgeous, and I can't wait for it to be warm enough so I can wear it every day, but it has been a cool spring. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com/zippy for free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's quince.com/zippy for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Quince.com/zibby.

[19:32]Tovah Feldshuh: That was a thing. When the going got rough at the Guthrie, when I was a McKnight fellow, the no I got from two directors, as in you are worthless as an actor, was not new news. It was similar earlier experience when it was much more traumatic. So it was my mommy. It's my mommy. I had a mommy who said to me, and I say this in respect to anybody who is adopted, but my mother did say when I was three or four years old, are you adopted? Like that. So I was worried that I was adopted. Now, what she said she meant later is you're so capable, you're so extroverted and I'm so shy and so introverted, you couldn't be mine. Well, tell that to a three year old. I mean, we're dealing with a time in a life when you say to a three year old, keep your eye on the ball. You know, you're trying to train him for baseball, keep your eye on the ball. The little boy takes the ball and he puts it on his eye. So this is the situation with a mother who just lovingly, I suppose not a loving style. I could understand miscommunicated with her child. And when I went to my brother, David, I said, does mommy love us? And he said, of course she loves you. I said, that's what she says. How does she love us, Davey? And he said, mommy loves us because she's always there. And that was remarkable. I don't know about you guys, but I was a careerist as well as a mother and I wasn't always there. I had this alternate vacation universe called theater, film, television entertainment, where even in my marriage, told my beloved husband, we're married almost forty five years. I will never give up my work. I said to Andrew Harris leaving, he said, it's okay. I said, you better, you better really look at this. I will never give up my work. Not because I love it so much, but because I need a backdoor. I need a vacation. I need a vacation for myself if the going gets rough.

[21:25]Zibby Owens: That's how you perceive your work. I love my work. I'm playing

[21:29]Tovah Feldshuh: a little Rasthimer now. I'm doing a one Muslim play. I'm going to be filmed as Doctor. Rut Rasthimer, and she is an orphan of the Holocaust, and she has such a will to be optimistic that she lifts up the ends of all her sentences. You see, they go up, they go up, they go up. Is this how you are at home? Do you always do the voices like this? Is this just like what you're like? I'm here with you and Amy and the JCC and fabulous Jake. There's a tech guy here who is a genius. He's a Phi Beta Kappa. Bravo, Jake Bravo. I'm here to be with you, to be a master storyteller, to entertain you, and to hope that you take Lilyville as your favorite mother's day gift. And it's not just for mothers, it's for fathers and sons. It's for parent and child. It engenders hope. You can solve. If I solve Lily, you can solve anything. No, at home I listen, I'm much more of a listener because the children are there and also not, they're not there. They're married now with children, but one tries to be flexible and one tries to be available. I'm now in rehearsal and getting ready to be filmed in the next three weeks. Then I'm going to the Hamptons and I'm going to open with Becoming Doctor. Outh live in Bay Street at Sag Harbor, which is the first time they've opened their theater. Where equity only allows us a 100 people a night. So the theater will be one third filled. That's what's allowed. It's person, space, space, person, space, space, person.

[22:59]Zibby Owens: I'm gonna come. I'm so excited. I'm totally gonna come. I didn't know that was opening. That's exciting. You know, the other thing that I loved aside from the structure and all the amazing stories and everything else in the book, I love that you say like, okay, are you here for this book to get all of my salacious stories about all these famous people I've worked with? Okay. You'll get some of that. But like this is mostly about my mom. And yet, then you go into this whole thing about Barbra Streisand and like you're so funny about it. How you wove in the lofty, like the most famous people of all time and then like the most tender moments with family members and how it is to leave Scarsdale how it is to land in Scarsdale and suddenly feel so lonely and yet the next moment you're with Barbra Streisand and everything. And how do catch your breath in the midst of these big personalities and your onstage life and your I think that's why I was asking, are you like this all the time? Because for

[24:00]Tovah Feldshuh: public personas, I wonder, like, how do you just, how do you shuffle back and forth? What does that do to somebody? Well, it's like what I taught the children. I would put in the children what I hoped for the children. I have a son, Brandon, and a daughter, Amanda. They married, Brandon married a marvelous woman named Jamie and Amanda married a phenomenal husband named Joel. And at night when I would put them to sleep, I would say I'm the luckiest mother in the world because I have the most empathic child. I have a child who walks into a room and knows what's wanted and needed in that room and does the right thing. A person who knows the difference between a library and the Yankee Stadium. And Amanda would say, Mama, what empathic? And I'd say, That's to feel with somebody. So you would put in them what you hope for them. Likewise, my function as a mother is very different than my function as your author tonight. The first thing, the children call me every night. I miss them terribly, but I love my work. So I've had to balance. I haven't worked in, like many actors, I haven't worked in a theater in fourteen months. My last concert was in Houston, February 22, unless I'm crazy. I sang somewhere in Houston February 22 because I came home and I got COVID. I got COVID starting March ninth to nineteenth, over a year ago. And I've been double vaccinated like most elder states when I've been double vaccinated since February. So New York state really had it together. How are you guys doing in Texas? Are you getting your vaccinations? I'm in New York City. I know Zibby, sorry. So you're with me. So you were fine. But eventually I assume, I assume you guys in Texas are not gonna do any hocus pocus and believe in some, anything but science. Anybody who doesn't get double vaccinated in my book is selfish. You're jeopardizing your countrymen, you're jeopardizing your family, you're jeopardizing your children. That's what I see. And everybody had a great, we had a great time in New York getting those things. Anyway, I switched channels depending on what's wanted and needed in the space. When I'm with my wonderful director, David Ellen Stein, and he has something to say, I'm quiet, I listen to him. I will be with Scott Schwartz in Bay Street at Sack Harbor to do Becoming Doctor. Ruth, and he directed me in Goldest Balcony. So that'll be a lot of fun. I'll finish this filming, which is streamed for all their subscribers and you can buy a ticket to the North Coast Rep production of Becoming Doctor. Ruth. It'll be released June 8 through July 4, as I am opening in Bay Street, June 5, June 5 through June 27. It's so wild. We should write a piece about that, Zippy, that I think it's the first time in pandemic days that an actor is both live and on film with the same property at the same time. Wow. Yeah. So having written this book, do you feel like you wanna write more books about all sorts of other things? Or is this like your magnum opus, like you did what you wanted to This is what you wanted to achieve with literature

[26:56]Zibby Owens: And now you're back to your I mean, you have so much creative energy. It's just like sort of radiating off you. You could do obviously a zillion things.

[27:04]Tovah Feldshuh: Is writing not your thing, is your thing? How did you feel about it? I'm sure. I mean, if you're a writer, you know this. It's the hardest thing. It's the most challenging thing I've ever done. It was an opus. And then also you want to curate your book. You want to curate, oh, look, there's mom, mom and dad, and being a flapper. She's a flapper. God. You curate your book. So you need to pick your verbs, your subjects, your way of inviting the reader into the canvas, which you don't need to do in the theater. In the theater, I move a shoulder or look at somebody and have a clear thought, the audience is brilliant. They'll pick it up. In a book, it has to be on the page to invite the reader into the canvas of your life. You know? I was on my way to the Galapagos with Andrew, and the day before I was to board the plane for Ecuador, I got a call from my Hollywood managers to ask if I could audition for a series called The Walking Dead. Have you seen it, Topher? They asked. No, I replied. I'm close enough to death that I don't have to see it walking. Takes honing skills. That's not a first draft. That's figuring out what is the music of this? How do I make this not only apprehendable, but how do I engage the audience and tell them that I've taken care with language? I also have the audio book for those of you who are interested, and I do sing on it. Sony gave me permission to sing parts of, Where's the bathroom? Where's the bathroom? I need to find your bathroom. Tell me that you have your bathroom. In a hovel, you call home. I need to do that on the audiobook. What was the experience of recording the audiobook like for you? It was thrilling. I had just done a very, very complicated major opus called The Slaughterman's Daughter by a man named Itzkovic. And the woman who directed me in it, Christina Rooney was brilliant. And when I was asked to do the audio book by Hachette, I said, may I please have this director? And they gave me that director. So I think we did a bang up job. I haven't listened to it though. I did get it on audible and I can keep you company. All of you who jog or who exercise, or you're on your elliptical, can put me in your earphones and I'll keep you company. I'll keep you company.

[29:17]Zibby Owens: Having gotten through to the end of this journey and now the book is coming out in the world and it's so exciting, what advice would you have for someone who's just starting out or who wants to do a writing project, wants to be a writer? First step toward brilliance

[29:31]Tovah Feldshuh: is to know you don't know. So I was a first time author. I knew I didn't know how to write a book. I knew that. I knew I knew how to tell a story. And I told stories very, very well. And I handed him my first manuscript and my editor had said, this is brilliant, this is brilliant, this is brilliant. Because I would check with her every week. Because I went to Sarah Lawrence College, it was under the Cambridge Oxford system. We had a Don, Elia Wax, Professor Elia Wax, thank you for believing in me. First person to believe that I could write. In all events, I handed in that first manuscript and my editor said, this is not a book. I said, This is not a book. These are pearls on a coffee table, not strung together. And then it was Jeff Harner that said, what do you know best? And I said, theater, he said, write it as a theater piece. And I put Harner and Scholson, that's Oliver Scholson and Jeff Harner in the writing room with me. I write, I write, I write Oliver's typing, I'm talking, I'm talking. We go back, I redo it. I say it to Jeff. He says, is that the verb you really wanna use? We'd go to the synonym dictionary, look up the synonyms. I start to hash through, cultivate, curate, curate every word. So it was a real upward journey, but it hung together beautifully in a play format, because I know plays, been doing them for fifty years. This is my fiftieth year as an Equity actor. So that's very thrilling. Do I have a sequel like Sydneyville? Maybe, but my biggest ambition now is to make this into a television series. If you dream of being a writer, as Joseph Campbell would say, follow your bliss. This was not sought by me. This was, if you will, thrust upon me. I was given the opportunity and then the world collaborated, the pandemic broke out. Actors had no work. I was a paid author by Hachette. I had a very, very nice advance. And I wrote this book because I wanted desperately to write about my mother. Why do I really wanna write about my mother? Because I want her to live forever. I want her to be ubiquitous. I want her on my shoulder. I wanna hear, I wanna hear. This is the night of my bat mitzvah. I'm in a dress from Bonwit Teller with a Kelly green cummerbund and matching green shoes that we had dyed to match from Miles Shoe Store in White Plains. I had a little pillbox hat made by my mother's milliner that looked like, you know, something like Jackie Kennedy because she was coming into fashion. I have on my bat mitzvah pearls. So that's why I, one thing that's great about a memoir is that you revisit your whole life, you excavate your life, and you choose the best, best finds to give to the reader and say, this really was unique in my life. Maybe it will help you. Maybe it will help you. We're still in service to each other. If we're not in service to each other, who are we? I completely agree. Well, you so much. Thanks to the JCC.

[32:27]Zibby Owens: And thank you for all of everybody for coming. Have a great night. Thanks for listening to part of my June Book Blast. I hope you enjoy it. Come back tomorrow

[32:59]Zibby Owens: and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.