Beyond the Bar Podcast

He gave Guns N’ Roses half its name, founded L.A. Guns, and spent four decades on stages around the world. But when Tracii Guns sits down with Denisa, the famous parts of the story turn out to be the least interesting thing about him. This is a conversation about what actually lasts. Tracii talks about the five year old in the back of his mother’s car who heard one Led Zeppelin song and knew exact...

Ice-T and Coco are back for Part 2, and this is where the conversation gets real. Ice opens up about becoming a father at 18 with no mentor and no playbook. Coco shares why there’s no nanny and no housekeeper in their home, and why she proudly calls herself a housewife and a mom. Together they get into what 25 years of marriage actually takes, why people secretly root for couples to fail, and the...

For 25 years he was Ridge Forrester, the face at the center of The Bold and the Beautiful. For music fans, he is the voice and bass behind Player and the number one hit Baby Come Back. But when Ronn Moss sits down with Denisa, what comes out is the story of a self-described man of few words who spent a lifetime learning to step out of the shadows. Ronn talks about the record executive who listened...

She has carried one of the most avoided subjects in medicine to the World Economic Forum, onto PBS, and even onto the floor of the US Senate. Denise Pines, the Peabody Award winning filmmaker behind The M Factor, sits down with Denisa to talk about menopause the way almost no one does, plainly, practically, and without shame. This conversation gets into the symptom almost no one connects to perime...

He plays some of television's most chilling villains, the kind of man you love to hate. So why is J. Anthony Crane, the face of Chandler Groff on Outer Banks, one of the warmest and most curious people we have ever had? The actor behind roles in Succession, Billions, Broadway, and the Royal National Theatre of London sits down with Denisa to talk about the strange craft of playing the bad guy,...

W. Bruce Cameron wrote A Dog's Purpose as a book about the soul. The world read it as a book about dogs. He has been happily explaining the difference ever since. The number one New York Times bestselling author has written more than thirty dog centered novels that have made millions of people laugh and cry, often on the same page. His stories have become hit films, and this holiday season his...

Thom Filicia got his big break because his dog needed to pee. He was a successful interior designer in Soho with a dozen people working for him when he got stuck in an elevator with a group of strangers, a panicking woman, and a dog with his legs in a knot. By the time the fire department pried the doors open, one of the women in that elevator had decided this hilarious stranger belonged on televi...

Rikki Rockett built an entire empire out of a pair of drumsticks, and he is the first to tell you he still can't believe it worked. As the drummer and co-founder of Poison, he helped define an era, sold tens of millions of records, and just landed in the Metal Hall of Fame. Now he is dropping a memoir that spares no one, including himself. Ghost Notes: My Life in Poison hits September 15th, an...

Some people spend their whole lives asking permission. Patrika Darbo never did. At a Hollywood audition in 1968 she was told she had all the talent in the world and none of the look the business wanted. What she did next set the tone for the next 40 years, two Emmys, and one of the most respected character careers in the industry. You know her as Nancy Wesley on Days of Our Lives, and from In the...

Early in her career, Debra Rubin gave clients bus fare out of her own pocket so they could make it to court. Today she runs her own firm and is one of the most recognized matrimonial attorneys on Long Island. How she got from one to the other is the real story. Host Denisa Tova sits down with Debra for a conversation that moves easily between the practical and the personal. Debra came up through L...

Caroline Stanbury and Sergio Carrallo run nine companies, raise three teenagers and live a life most people only see through a screen. You know them from Ladies of London and The Real Housewives of Dubai. What you do not know is what actually holds it all together. In this conversation they open up about the rule they live by that keeps their marriage steady, the setbacks that nearly took each of...

Valerie Tocci, Partner at Fox Rothschild LLP, could have stayed in the courtroom chasing high-stakes cases as a federal prosecutor. Instead, she walked into family law and never looked back. Eighteen years later, she's still fired up about it, and in this episode she's honest about why. She talks about the anger that still rises when she sees injustice, and why she thinks a good lawyer sho...

Barrett Doss played Victoria Hughes on Station 19 for seven seasons. Before that she was a leading lady on Broadway, starring as Rita in Groundhog Day opposite Andy Karl and winning the Theatre World Award for her debut. Right now you can find her as Emily Henderson in Netflix's remake of Little House on the Prairie. She has her own rule for the industry: don't work for the business, make...

Heidi Harris, Partner at Mosberg Sharma Stambleck Gross LLP, has spent more than 30 years as a divorce attorney in New York City. Then she went through her own, after 25 years of marriage. What happened next is the part most people don't expect: the anger eventually subsided, and today she and her ex-husband are genuinely friends who travel together as a family for their kids. Heidi opens up a...

For Molly Zamoiski, family law wasn't a winding path. It was in her blood. Her mother ran a nursery school, and her father, who passed away before she was born, was an attorney. She grew up drawn to law and to helping children, built her entire career at one firm, and became a matrimonial attorney who genuinely loves the work. Denisa Tova gets to know the person behind the title. Molly talks a...

Victoria Rowell was a foster child on a farm in Maine who taught herself ballet from a book. That turned into a scholarship to the American Ballet Theater, and eventually into one of the most recognizable careers in television. Drucilla Winters on The Young and the Restless, eight seasons on Diagnosis Murder with Dick Van Dyke, and Dumb and Dumber opposite Jim Carrey. She has her own rule for maki...

Gregory Gilston built a family law firm from scratch in the middle of the pandemic and ran the whole thing on technology from day one. That turned into a second company, TekStak Legal Consulting, where he helps other attorneys do the same. He has his own rule for family law: it takes four to tango. Both attorneys and both parties. He explains what that means for anyone stuck in a case that will no...

Sally Miller spent 30 years designing clothes for women. She built her own fashion brand from scratch on credit cards after a shocking divorce. She dressed the Obamas. And then in 2020 everything stopped and she had to face the question she had been avoiding her whole life. Who am I without all of this? So she sold her house, gave her kids 90 days to move out and drove across the country alone for...

Nobody plans for the thing that changes everything. Jerry Scharoff of The Law Office of Jerome A. Scharoff, P.C. didn't set out to be a divorce lawyer. A single case landed on his desk, he wrote one memo on a weekend, and 30 years later, here he is. That's how careers actually happen. Not in a straight line, but in moments you don't recognize as turning points until you look back. Jerr...

Sean Stone grew up on some of the most iconic film sets in Hollywood. Wall Street. The Doors. Born on the Fourth of July. His father is Oliver Stone. And somehow none of that is the most interesting thing about him. Sean talks about traveling the world from the age of five, spending a semester shadowing his father on the set of Alexander instead of going to class, and what happened when he broke i...

Joseph H. Nivin built his matrimonial law firm from the ground up in Forest Hills, New York. But what he brings to the work goes well beyond the courtroom. As someone who has been through divorce himself, he understands on a personal level exactly how much is at stake for the people sitting across from him. In this episode, Denisa Tova gets the story behind the title: the short-story-writing kid w...

Most people know Carson Kressley from Queer Eye or RuPaul's Drag Race. But the kid who grew up on a pony farm in Pennsylvania with 200 Shetland ponies and taught himself to survive junior high with humor because it was the only weapon he had — that is the version worth knowing. In this episode Carson opens up about realizing he was fabulous in the fourth grade, what it felt like to carry the s...

Dawn Cardi didn't come from comfort, and she didn't wait around for permission. The founding partner of Cardi & Edgar LLP has spent decades in matrimonial law, family law, and federal criminal defense, work she calls "people law" because it means helping people when they need it most. In this episode of Beyond the Bar Podcast, host Denisa Tova sits down with Dawn to trace a s...

He was a special education teacher in North Carolina. Then a parent of one of his students dared him to audition for American Idol. He got cut in Charlotte. So he drove to Atlanta and tried again. Forty million people watched what happened next. In this episode Clay opens up about not knowing it was a big show until thousands of people showed up screaming in Raleigh, what ten years traveling to wa...

She built a 35 person law firm from the ground up in Denver, Colorado. She did it while raising three kids in diapers. She did it without a roadmap. And she did it because she wanted to create something that did not exist when she needed it most. April Jones is one of the most influential women in Colorado law and the founding partner of one of Denver's most respected family law firms. But bef...