Letting Them Talk with Will Harris

This time, I’m letting Bruce McGill talk. I’ve talked to Bruce many times in the past, and it’s because he’s always got stories to tell. In fact, he’s got so many stories that I continue to try to talk him into letting me help him write his memoir. To date, it has not happened, but he says that if he does it, the only person he’d collaborate with is me, and by God, Bruce McGill is a man of his wor...

Today I’m letting Bill Lawrence talk. I first interviewed Bill because of his ties to my area: he’s an alumnus of the College of William & Mary, which provided me with a local angle and an excuse to talk to him for The Virginian-Pilot. Or was the first time for PortFolio Weekly? Either way, I’ve known Bill Lawrence for quite some time at this point, and yet despite that, it somehow always surp...

This time I’m letting Jamie Hector talk. Funny thing is, I actually interviewed Jamie for the AV Club , even if I didn’t entirely remember it at first. In my defense, I’ve done so freaking many Random Roles interviews over the years that the relatively few non-Random Roles interviews I’ve done with actors often slip past me, although I really should’ve remembered the fact that I interviewed Marlo...

This time, I’m letting Graham Parker talk. Graham is a singer-songwriter who’s been plying his trade since the ‘70s, steadily touring and regularly writing, recording, and releasing new music. He tends to get lumped in with such so-called “angry young men” as Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson, but as it happens, he was already out there with his debut album before either of those guys…and thanks to a...

This time I’m letting Jon Cryer talk. I’ve interviewed Jon more than a few times over the course of the past decade or so, and  I’m always pleased to have a chance to talk to him again. That’s mostly because he’s a swell guy and we have a nice chemistry whenever we chat, but if I’m being honest, there’s always that little voice in the back of my head that’s going, “Dude, you’re talking to Duckie.”...

This time I’m letting Sally Timms talk. Sally is a singer-songwriter who – since 1985 – has been a member and one of the lead singers of one of the longest-running bands to emerge during the UK punk explosion, even if it’s been quite a while since one would readily describe their sound as “punk.” She recorded her first album in 1980 with the help of Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks – if you’re curiou...

This time I'm letting Lukas Haas talk. Lukas was still in single digits when he made his film debut, managed to make it through his teen years without succumbing to any sort of scandal, and is currently in the cast of a series that’s sitting at a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes…and that’s on both the Tomato-Meter and the Popcorn-Meter. Not bad for a guy who – given that he only just turned 50 a coup...

This time I’m letting Kevin Rowland talk. He's been a recurring figure on the UK charts since the early ‘80s, and on the US charts… Well, okay, he hasn’t exactly made any headway there in quite some time, but even in 2026, the sheer inevitability of “Come on Eileen” has continued to keep the name “Dexys Midnight Runners” a familiar one. Rowland founded Dexys Midnight Runners in 1978, with the band...

This time, I’m letting John C. McGinley talk. I’ve wanted to interview John for many years, so the fact that that dream came true just as he’s delivered not one but two Emmy-worthy performances made it all the more exciting. I no longer remember where I first saw Mr. McGinley, mostly because he was in so many films throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, but like most people, he made the jump from “characte...

This time I’m actually letting two people talk. One of them I was expecting, one of them I wasn’t, but I was thrilled to have the opportunity to chat with them together, even if it had only been a little over a week since I’d last talked to them separately. To try and make that slightly confusing sentence a bit more comprehensible, I should explain that my wife and I recently took a trip to London...

This time I’m letting Kevin Dunn talk. Kevin is a gentleman who’s been working in front of the camera since the mid-1980s, but it’s arguable that the role that transformed him from “oh, that guy” to being an “oh, that guy” from a very specific thing was playing White House Chief of Staff Ben Cafferty on VEEP. At the moment, however, he’s doing press for Tyler Kornack’s new film, MERMAID, which pre...

This time I’m letting Sam Anderson talk. Sam is someone who’s been a working character actor since the 1970s, popping up in dramas and comedies alike. At the moment, he’s living the character actor’s dream, in that he’s a series regular on one of the most entertaining dramas on network television, playing Kathy Bates’ husband on CBS’s extremely creative reboot of Matlock. Like so many actors, Sam...

This time I’m letting Jay O. Sanders talk. Jay started in the theater, quickly found his way in front of the camera, and has successfully forged an extremely substantial career as a character actor. Before that, though, he made his New York theater debut in a “Shakespeare in the Park” performance of Henry V alongside such fellow cast members as William Hurt, Meryl Streep, Michael Moriarty, and Bru...

This time I’m talking to someone who was once named People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive. Not that it came up in the conversation, but it just feels like a real pop culture badge of accomplishment, so I felt like I needed to mention it. Mark Harmon has been acting since the ‘70s,  but while he earned an Emmy nod for his work in the 1977 miniseries Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years, it rea...

This time, I’m letting Corbin Bernsen talk. As one of the leads of NBC’s long-running legal drama L.A. LAW, Corbin was one of the biggest TV stars of the ‘80s, and he’s managed to maintain a significant career ever since, not only as an actor but as a director as well. On paper, he seems to be someone who was always destined to work in Hollywood, given that his mother, Jeanne Cooper, was a soap op...

This time, I’m letting Thomas Dolby talk. Thomas Dolby is a musician whose output throughout the ‘80s and into the ‘90s was part of the soundtrack to my life. Of course, anyone who came of age during the early days of MTV knows his music whether they know his name or not. Just play them a snippet of “She Blinded Me with Science,” and the memories will instantly come flowing back. I had the opportu...

This time I’m letting two – count ‘em – two people talk: DeAnn Heline and Eileen Heisler. They’re the pair behind Blackie and Blondie Productions, which should ring a bell if you’re a diehard TV fan, but in case you’re still drawing a blank, DeAnn and Eileen are the duo responsible for creating The Middle. Yes, you may recall that we’ve had another duo on this show in the past, and they, too, were...

Unabashed plug: WE HAVE MERCH! https://www.teepublic.com/user/lettingthemtalk   This time I’m letting Peter Tolan talk. Peter is one of the best TV writers in the business as well as one of my favorite storytellers, either of which would be plenty enough excuse to have him as a guest. But when I traded emails with him a few weeks back, he said he was confident that I’d be able to come up with a le...

This time, I’m letting Jane Alexander talk. Jane is a four-time Academy Award nominee, a seven-time Tony nominee, and a two-time Emmy winner (with six additional nominations to her credit), so…there’s really no good reason why she should be talking to me for this podcast. The only explanation I can offer: she and I got along swimmingly when I did a piece for Smithsonian about the play and film ver...

This time, I’m letting Dennis Quaid talk. Dennis has grinned his way through an acting career that started in the ‘70s and has continued unabated ever since. Sure, he’s had a few ups and downs over the decades, as he’ll freely admit (and, indeed, does so during the course of our interview), but he’s still going strong and acting up a storm. The project that brought us together for this conversatio...

Today, I’m letting C. Thomas Howell talk. I’ve been watching this man’s work since I was 11 years old and went to see “E.T.” with my family. A line like that might make some actors feel old, but given that Tommy – and I’m not being overly familiar here, this is actually how he’s listed on his official Facebook page –  was only 12 years old himself when he was hired for that particular film, I thin...

Today, I’m letting Nathan Rabin talk. I used to read Nathan’s work on the A.V. Club long before I began writing for the site myself, and every once in awhile it still strikes me as a little weird that he and I have become a mutual admiration society. And it’s not just me: during the course of the conversation, you’ll hear me mention that my daughter considers it her favorite low-key brag that her...

This time I’m letting Raymond Ian Burns talk…although you’d know him better by his nom de punk: Captain Sensible. As a founding member of the Damned, he’s a proper punk rock legend and a member of the band who famously released the first punk single in the UK and was the first UK punk band to play in the US. Mind you, he hasn’t been a consistent member of the band throughout the entirety of their...

This time, the person I’m letting talk is Kathleen Chalfant. Kathleen is an actress who got her start in the theater, moved into on-camera acting through the wonderful world of soap operas, and has become a familiar face in films as well as on television, most recently on the Peacock series “The Copenhagen Test.” In the series, Kathleen plays the elusive character known as St. George, and while I’...

This time, I'm letting Kyle Vincent talk. Kyle is someone whose music I’ve been enjoying since the release of his self-titled 1997 album. Appropriately, it’s that very album that brings us into conversation today, since it’s finally made its way to streaming services for the first time. Kyle has a deep history in music, but things really got rolling for him when he was fronting the band Candy, who...