Playboy Interview: Edward Asner

a candid conversation about drama, comedy and politics with television's gruff lou grant, who runs the most famous fictitious newsroom in america

For the past ten years, Edward Asner has been one of the most respected, popular and highly paid male stars on TV (his current "Lou Grant" contract is. Worth a reported $60,000 a week). But during the 1980 actors' strike, he also emerged as a power behind the camera--a leader other actors naturally fell in behind. The double-edged sword of Asner's popularity was probably most evident to the general public during the 1980 Emmy awards. At least in part because of his leadership, the strike effectively stripped the televised ceremony of its glamor--and its value to the producers as entertainment. Nevertheless, "Lou Grant" dominated the awards themselves. Asner's show was nominated for 15 Emmys and won six, including best drama series. "Ed had it both ways tonight," a network executive remarked ruefully later that evening. "First he spoiled the party, then he walked off with the centerpiece." In one "Hollywood night," acting and politics, the twin passions of Edward Asner's life, intersected, and by the next morning, many California Democratic leaders were seriously discussing him as a future gubernatorial candidate.

Edward Asner was born in Kansas City, on the Kansas side, in 1929, the youngest of five children. His parents were immigrant Jews who ran a junk yard. At Wyandotte High School, Asner excelled at history and English and was named all-city tackle on the football, team. "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to sing and act," he recalls. "But that's not something one readily admitted in Kansas City, especially not a football player."

He arrived at the University of Chicago in 1947, but his parents withdrew his sustaining funds over an affair with a gentile girl, and his college career ended abruptly. But Asner remained in Chicago and continued acting at the university theater while supporting himself as a blue-collar laborer. During those years, Asner developed a strongly liberal and avidly pro-union political orientation that was to remain one of his enduring passions.

Asner's theatrical orientation was also forged during those years. In 1949, he and several other of the school's most gifted drama students broke away from the campus theater to form their own company, called Tonight at 8:30. The group's membership included Paul Sills, Elaine May, Barbara Harris, Mike Nichols, Zohra Lampert and Tom O'Horgan. Over the years, changes in personnel led to a change in orientation from legitimate to improvisational theater. Yet the continuity of the group was never broken, only the name has changed. It is now called Second City.

Asner was drafted in 1951 but returned to Chicago two years later to continue his theatrical apprenticeship with Sills, Nichols and friends. Then, in 1955, he left Chicago, as he now puts it, "to become a lion on Broadway." Instead, he landed the off-Broadway role of Mr. Peachum in "The Threepenny Opera" and stayed with that show for nearly three years. "That was a serious mistake and it cut a big chunk of time out of my growth as an actor. But the money was too good to resist--$55 a week." Asner did manage to get in some other acting, including several very rich character roles on the last of the live-TV dramas--"Playhouse 90" and "Camera Three." In the late Fifties, he also performed at the American and New York Shakespeare festivals and met his future wife, Nancy, an agent and later John Houseman's assistant, at the Stratford, Connecticut, Shakespeare Festival.

In 1960, Asner made his Broadway debut with Jack Lemmon and an all-star cast in "Face of a Hero." The show flopped and Asner's disappointment drove him westward, where he quickly became one of Hollywood's leading character actors. During the early Sixties, he guest-starred regularly on three of TV's classic dramatic series, "Route 66," "Naked City" and "The Untouchables." He also played supporting roles in a dozen motion pictures, including "Gunn," "El Dorado," "The Slender Thread," "Kid Galahad" and "They Call Me Mister Tibbs!" Then, in 1970, he landed one of the most complex and fully realized roles in TV sitcom history, Lou Grant on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," and immediately became a national celebrity.

The political side of Asner's life, which remained relatively dormant during the New York years, blossomed in the early Sixties when U. S. Special Forces were sent to Vietnam. From then on, Asner's activism in liberal and prolabor causes escalated constantly and now takes up an enormous portion of his time. Although he and Nancy are still very much together after 22 years and three children, according to one close friend, "As much as Ed loves his family, his priorities are for other things." When not acting, he can usually be found stumping for various candidates and causes. His primary problem has been fitting those commitments into the acting schedule of a self-confessed workaholic. Every TV series has a summer hiatus, but Asner invariably squanders his vacation time playing other roles. And two of those summer jobs turned out to be among the finest performances of his career. In 1976, he won an Emmy for "Rich Man, Poor Man"; and for his stunning performance in "Roots," he won another Emmy and the Television Critics Circle Award for Best Dramatic Performance of 1977. Asner has always been regarded by his peers as an actor's actor, and his hardware collection includes seven Emmys, two Television Critics Circle Awards and four Foreign Press Awards.

Nineteen seventy-seven was also the year Asner transplanted his Lou Grant character from a half-hour comedy series to a one-hour dramatic series. That delicate transition was accomplished with breath-taking success. For the past four years, "Lou Grant" has been both a top-rated show and one of the most critically acclaimed programs on television.

In 1980, Asner added two new dimensions to his already multifaceted life: labor leader and movie star--in the summer of that year, he shot "Fort Apache, the Bronx" with Paul Newman. At the height of the actors' strike--when Asner's activities were the lead item on the local news in Southern California and war in the Middle East came second--we sent New York journalist Sam Merrill (whose previous Playboy interviews have included those with Roy Scheider, Joseph Heller and Roone Arledge) to Tinseltown to cover Asner during what the actor himself now describes as "the most intense period of my life." Merrill reports:

"The actors' strike was into its second month when I arrived at the MTM Enterprises complex at Studio City, and the place was engulfed in an almost otherworldly hush. You could hear clocks ticking. The narrow roads that connect the various studios--usually bustling with cars and pedestrians--were as silent and empty as the city streets in one of those Fifties movies about the survivors of a nuclear holocaust. I half expected a couple of balls of sagebrush to come rolling by. But in one office, the lights were on, the air conditioners were churning and a group of cars clustered around the door. One of those cars was a nondescript sedan with crushed bumpers, a back seat filled with junk and two wheels up on the curb. That particular car was parked in a spot marked with a star and bearing the name Edward Asner.

"I entered and Asner greeted me warmly but briefly. Then he took a call from someone who had just left the negotiating table after yet another 'no progress' session. Asner talks--on the phone and in person--with a unique combination of airy nonchalance and highly focused attention; when he's talking with someone else, you can study him shamelessly and he'll never notice; when he's talking with you, be prepared for an intense, though often humorous, conversation. That first day, he wore running shoes (he has run at least two miles most mornings for the past ten years), a T-shirt that said Be secure all night, take a cop to bed, wire-rim glasses and baggy trousers the color of cardboard. His office, which doubles as a dressing room when 'Lou Grant' is shooting on the lot, is filled with books on history, politics and theater; no books about television and very few novels. Copies of The New Yorker are strewn around his coffee table. More New Yorkers have fallen between the cushions of his couch and crunch when you sit on them. There are various honorary awards from political and labor organizations, pictures of and by his children and of his parents. The over-all impression is of controlled chaos.

"Between strike-related phone calls, we talked, mostly about politics. When asked personal questions, Asner answered politely but perfunctorily. Unlike most show people I've interviewed, he simply isn't as interested in himself as he is in the world around him. We met in his office for three consecutive days and our conversations were always the same: interesting but impersonal. Then, as the days--and the strike--went on, we met less formally over breakfasts and lunches and between political engagements, and the interview began to take shape. But not in the usual sense of a journalist breaking through the stone wall of his quarry. Asner never permitted what he viewed as our 'relationship' to develop in such a one-sided way. So, in the end, we interviewed each other. It took a while, but that was the only way to cover the ground, because, despite all his political activity, Asner is just not comfortable on the soapbox. Only when the forms of friendship were approximated--I hope not too artificially--did he really speak his heart. And in the process, he ended up advising me with care and considerable wisdom on both professional and private matters. We stayed in contact through the end of the strike, his return to work and the Presidential election. All the while, I felt I was covering some fictitious, off camera story, intercut with scenes of me and my editor, Lou Grant, of the Los Angeles Tribune."

[Q] Playboy: During the Sixties, you were a top character actor in both motion pictures and television. But between 1970, the year you became a major TV star, and last year, when you co-starred with Paul Newman in Fort Apache, the Bronx, you didn't appear in a single movie. Why not? Were character roles suddenly not good enough for you?

[A] Asner: On the contrary. Suddenly I wasn't good enough for them. There were a number of movie roles I wanted during the Seventies, but I didn't get a single one because of the snobbism and discrimination that exists in the film industry. In each case, I was informed that they didn't want a "TV face."

[Q] Playboy: Would you care to name the films on which that happened?

[A] Asner:The Godfather, The New Centurions, A Star Is Born and The Sting were all pictures on which this prejudice evidently took place. Those were very juicy job opportunities that I didn't get specifically because I was on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. At first, my fury knew no bounds.

[Q] Playboy: At first? You mean you adjusted to being discriminated against?

[A] Asner: Let's say I compensated. I began to work in TV--movies and miniseries and did some roles that were more satisfying than anything I could have gotten in the movies. Huey Long was one of the first. It was not a success, but goddamn, I loved doing it. Then, of course, Rich Man, Poor Man came along. Then Roots. Then The Gathering, which was enormously effective. And last year, The Family Man, which I'm also very proud of. There haven't been that many roles out there in movieland that I could have dominated, and dominated with, as I've done lately on television. So now, you know, they can take their movies and shove them up their ass.

[Q] Playboy: Is that what you told David Susskind last year when he asked you to play opposite Paul Newman in Fort Apache, the Bronx?

[A] Asner: Not exactly. But two important changes have taken place in the motion-picture industry since 1970. One is that John Travolta proved you could bring your television following into the theater, and two is that when movies are made now, the producers are often as interested in the eventual TV sale as they are in the initial theatrical run.

[Q] Playboy: Despite all the fame, the recognition and the juicy roles you've received as a TV star, in your heart of hearts, do you sometimes wish your career had gone the other way? That you'd become a movie star who never appeared on television and whose public image was somehow bigger than life?

[A] Asner: No, because that whole mystique of being unapproachable is, I think, a terrible grave that movie actors dig for themselves. Their association with the streets tends to become nonexistent. It's an elitist thing and I'd be ashamed if I ever found myself becoming an elitist. I need the constant activity and contact with people that you have in the TV business. I enjoy it and use it as a source of information. Also, if I'd become a movie actor exclusively, I wouldn't be able to work all the time, which I love to do.

[Q] Playboy: Would you call yourself a workaholic?

[A] Asner: Yes, and that's why making Fort Apache wasn't a particularly good experience for me. I didn't do enough work. I sat around a lot, ate and drank a lot--which in New York is very easy to do.

[Q] Playboy: Movies are certainly shot at a much slower pace than television.

[A] Asner: Yeah, and I haven't been able to ascertain exactly where all that time goes.

[Q] Playboy: It's supposed to go into careful attention to detail. And, certainly, when you compare most TV shows with most theatrical movies, the movie looks and sounds more polished, more professional.

[A] Asner: In many cases, yes, of course, that's true. But I see a quality of acting and writing and cinematography in Lou Grant that equals the quality of most features. We do it not by rushing but by leaving ourselves open to do more work than planned if the opportunity arises. We know we're going to do X many pages at the beginning of the day. But we also know that if we finish them earlier than anticipated, we'll go on and do these two pages here, or those four pages there. So you move intensively. Energy, energy, energy. But on a movie set, it's three or four pages a day no matter what, with everybody spacing things out, working, it almost seems, in slow motion. The attitude I'd like to see on a movie set is, "If it can be done now, let's do it."

[Q] Playboy: People have criticized Paul Newman in recent years for being more interested in racing cars than in acting. And the past few pictures he made before Fort Apache were not very well received by the critics or the public. Did Newman seem distracted or uninterested to you?

[A] Asner: Not at all. He was a pro. He worked hard, and judging by the rough cut, I think it's safe to say that Newman is back. But, of course, I can't be totally objective, because Paul Newman has always been a hero of mine--both politically and professionally.

[Q] Playboy: The two always go hand in hand with you, don't they?

[A] Asner: I can never divorce a person from his or her politics.

[Q] Playboy: Did Newman stand up to close scrutiny day after day for three months?

[A] Asner: Who could?

[Q] Playboy: Did he come close?

[A] Asner: Yeah.

[Q] Playboy: Were you happy with your work on Fort Apache?

[A] Asner: Mixed feelings. It's a nice return to the movies, but it isn't the major contribution I would have liked it to be. I'm not ashamed of my work on the picture, but it doesn't bowl me over. And I'm embarrassed by my billing.

[Q] Playboy: Would you rather it were in smaller print?

[A] Asner: It's more prominent than it should be, but I sure as hell won't let anybody shrink it.

[Q] Playboy: You mentioned having eaten and drunk a lot while making Fort Apache. Are those recurring problems for you?

[A] Asner: I've yet to discover moderation in eating, and it's difficult for me to find moderation in drinking.

[Q] Playboy: You've already described yourself as a workaholic. Are you also an alcoholic?

[A] Asner: No. I came to booze late in life and I guess I spent a while making up for lost time. But that's over now. A little beer or wine is more than sufficient to provide a good taste and still keep control.

[Q] Playboy: Is that why you stopped drinking hard liquor? Because you were losing control?

[A] Asner: Yeah. I had one big drunk during Fort Apache and was told afterward about things I'd done that I did not remember.

[Q] Playboy: What sort of things?

[A] Asner: Well, they were cute things, mostly. Like doing swan dives onto the table of a Manhattan restaurant. And later, instead of walking home, I rolled down the street turning somersaults. When I woke up in the morning, my jacket was torn and I couldn't remember how it had happened. And later, when I went to work, I was still drunk. That was scary. It's nice to be out of control once in a while, but you still should feel you're on top of the situation. And, clearly, I was not.

[Q] Playboy: Were you with Newman during that marvelous evening of swan dives and somersaults?

[A] Asner: No, I was with a bunch of cop buddies. I made a lot of friends among the cops we worked with during production. They're fine people. The salt of the earth.

[Q] Playboy: On The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Lou Grant got drunk every time the situation called for it. But on Lou Grant, although the Tribune staffers are frequently seen socializing at a local bar, you never seem to get plastered anymore.

[A] Asner: That was a very conscious decision by our producers, James Brooks and Allan Burns, who felt I could get away with doing a comic drunk but feared that a drunk in a drama would be deadly.

[Q] Playboy: Do you agree?

[A] Asner: I've always suspected that the opposite is true, that a comical drunk is more damaging than a serious one.

[Q] Playboy: Most viewers of The Mary Tyler Moore Show would probably disagree with you there. When Lou Grant got drunk, it always seemed to enhance his humanity because he always did it for good reason, or in response to something.

[A] Asner: Yeah, the producers.

[Q] Playboy: It's almost sad to learn that we'll never again see Lou Grant slurring and becoming just a little belligerent, then the next day fighting one of his magnificent hangovers.

[A] Asner: He probably has kidney stones now. Or maybe it's his prostate.

[Q] Playboy: How about grass?

[A] Asner: I love grass, but I don't smoke it anymore, because nobody was ever capable of traveling with me as far as I was traveling. I mean, it was extreme.

[Q] Playboy: You were an easy high?

[A] Asner: Let me put it this way. My normal routine, besides the paranoia, was to end up fucking a wall. My problem with grass is that I get higher than other people. If I'm going to burn my lungs out in the name of having fun, then I want somebody to be there with me. But nobody ever is. And I don't want to do it alone anymore.

[Q] Playboy: For the past 20 years, you've devoted a large percentage of your non-acting time to political and social causes that many Americans would consider radical, or at least strongly leftist. Yet you remained almost universally well liked--until the actors' strike. When you emerged as the leading spokesman for the strike, an awful lot of people in the business turned against you. How and why did that happen?

[A] Asner: In a sense, it was a conscious decision.

[Q] Playboy: You decided to become hated?

[A] Asner: Well, before the strike, despite all the unpopular positions I advocated, it was always one of my styles to go back on my trail and sort of clean up after myself. That way, even if I didn't win people over, at least I didn't lose them. But one of the maturation points I feel I've reached during the strike is no longer finding it necessary to pick up the turds I've dropped in other people's paths. If they hate me, they hate me.

[Q] Playboy: Many actors were afraid to speak out in fear of a black list.

[A] Asner: It'll have to be a hell of a long list. The guy who plays Lenny on Laverne and Shirley said he wasn't going out on the picket line because he didn't want to become one of the "Hollywood 500."

[Q] Playboy: But the feeling among the producers was so strongly antistrike, and antistrike leaders, that a black list is still not inconceivable. Even your old friend Grant Tinker, the head of MTM Enterprises, turned against you, at one point telling Variety that you were "talking with Lou Grant's credibility" but "thinking with Ed Asner's judgment.' Did you ever think that maybe you were blowing your whole career on that one issue?

[A] Asner: Believe me, I was aware of that possibility, but what the hell? It's been a big life already--lots of jazz, ten fucking years of national prominence, in addition to the joy of being a working actor for 20 years before that. In a way, that's why I did it. Very few people are as well ensconced financially and popularly as I am. I should be less afraid to speak up for what I believe than the struggling actor.

[Q] Playboy: Forgetting the part about your "judgment," Grant Tinker was right about your power. Some of it does derive from the built-in believability of the fictional character you portray, a character Tinker himself helped create.

[A] Asner: Grant is absolutely right about that, and it's a very hairy problem. But it's a problem that can never be solved. I could retire from the field of battle on the grounds that I have the unfair advantage of actually being Lou Grant in so many people's eyes. But that would mean giving up my freedom of speech. And damned if I will. So I'll keep on using my unfair advantage and risk prostituting the name of Lou Grant, and my name, in the rightness of the cause.

[Q] Playboy: You talk about the risk of prostituting the name of Lou Grant and your own name, but do you ever find those two identities melting together in real life? Do you ever catch yourself actually becoming Lou Grant?

[A] Asner: No. When I made the transition from the comedic Lou Grant to the dramatic Lou Grant, most of the changes were to make him more like Ed Asner. More somber. Less bombastic. Less demonstrative. More sophisticated. Not that I've made him a grander person. But in those somber tones, I've made even the comedic aspects of today's Lou Grant more like me. So maybe the reason I haven't been tempted to become Lou Grant is that I've been allowed to make him more and more like me.

[Q] Playboy: Do you read the newspapers differently now?

[A] Asner: I had a love affair with journalism when I was in high school. I pictured myself as Don Quixote with a quill. Then the love affair began again when I started doing the Lou Grant show. But things like the lack of news coverage of the bloodshed in El Salvador remind me that the press is just another institution. My feelings toward the press are not antithetical now, but the love affair is over.

[Q] Playboy: Is the Los Angeles Trib based loosely on The Washington Post?

[A] Asner: Very loosely, because the Trib is a loser and the Post is a winner.

[Q] Playboy: And Mrs. Pynchon is loosely based on Kate Graham?

[A] Asner: Yeah, with a little Dolly Schiff [former owner of the New York Post] thrown in. But her part has become a living, breathing entity and has taken off in its own direction. At first, she was more crotchety, more of a fuddy-duddy than she is now. And less elegant and tasteful; the original Mrs. Pynchon was a tuxedo with brown shoes.

[Q] Playboy: And was Rossi your "Wood-stein" character?

[A] Asner: Yes, and that role hasn't changed much, because it was written for Bobby Walden, so he took it where he wanted to go from the beginning ... with the producers' permission. Nobody goes anywhere without their permission.

[Q] Playboy: Do you ever find yourself suffering from the Marcus Welby syndrome--people thinking you actually are a journalist?

[A] Asner: That does happen.

[Q] Playboy: To some extent, you encourage it, especially by doing speaking engagements at journalism schools.

[A] Asner: I can assure you the students learned nothing about journalism from me. Those things are fun. The students want to know about the show, about the process of dramatizing a journalist's life. They never have any trouble making the distinction between a real and a fictitious newspaper and we always have a good time.

[Q] Playboy: Do real reporters ever feel it their duty to criticize details of the show that aren't authentic?

[A] Asner: Some of them are such goddamn sticklers that whenever we depart from reality, they nail us. They forget we're a drama. They seem to want nothing less than a documentary. But don't misunderstand. Most journalists are pleased that the show is as realistic as it is. Even in our first year, when things were very rocky and we weren't sure who we were or where we were going, the press was very supportive of us. It could see a future for the show that we couldn't see. But I was embarrassed by the praise of journalists during the first year, because I felt we weren't that good yet.

[Q] Playboy: Many of your close actor friends took a low profile during the actors' strike. Have those personal relationships been strained?

[A] Asner: I don't have those people over to my house anymore. But in most cases, I'll get tired of carrying the grudge eventually. Most of them aren't bad people. In terms of morality, they're just asleep at the switch.

[Q] Playboy: Essentially, the actors were striking for a slice of the new electronic pie--cable TV, video tape and video disc--and for increased basic minimums. You've achieved both of those goals, though the final numbers were a compromise. Do you now view the strike as a success?

[A] Asner: In my opinion, we were royally gigged. I've never seen such phenomenal tenacity on the part of management. The producers never surrendered one solitary cent they didn't absolutely have to. They employed, in my opinion, professional strikebreakers and political dirty tricks. And all the while, they kept the press solidly against us. You've got to give them credit for using the skills of their trade. It was probably the best "produced" strike in American history.

[Q] Playboy: Which famous Hollywood liberals did you find notable for their absence from the picket lines?

[A] Asner: I thought Norman Lear was strangely silent. I know he's a producer, but he's also a great liberal, not just a lip liberal, and I missed him. Jim Garner and Carroll O'Connor are producers and they were on the picket lines. Gene Reynolds, the producer of Lou Grant, was a phenomenal supporter of the strike. But more typical was the case of a producer who is--or was--a close friend of mine. He was very pissed off at me. I was shocked. I couldn't understand why. His personal life was in misery because of the strike; he almost lost his home and he blamed me. That's been everyone's view of this strike--only the actors are to blame. The producers never gave one inch, yet working people, even some union people, sided with management. It's been a fucking education.

[Q] Playboy: Perhaps your main problem was the complexity of the issues. None of your negotiating points ever lent themselves to easy reduction. If only you had a nice, simple battle cry, like, "Remember the Maine!" or "Fifty-four forty or fight!"

[A] Asner: I came up with a pretty snappy battle cry, but for some reason, it just never caught on: "Let them eat documentaries."

[Q] Playboy: The actors' strike was your most visible public commitment, but it certainly wasn't your first. Does your political mail ever outweigh your fan mail?

[A] Asner: Sure. I campaigned for Gary Hart for Senate in Colorado this past election and got a lot of mail on that; very intelligent, thoughtful letters asking me who the hell I am to stick my nose into Colorado's affairs.

[Q] Playboy: Well, who are you to do it?

[A] Asner: I'm a United States citizen, and a U. S. Senator from any state directly affects my life. I went the circuit for Alan Cranston here in California. Liz Holtzman was my candidate in New York. I supported McGovern for re-election. And George Brown and Carey Peck for Congress. And, yes, on some days, the mail on that stuff does get rather thick. Recently, Tammy Grimes and I did a pro-abortion show for syndicated TV. I anticipate one or two letters about that.

[Q] Playboy: Whom would you have liked to see as President?

[A] Asner: I still like McGovern.

[Q] Playboy: In your heart, you're basically a liberal and a union man, then.

[A] Asner: Absolutely. One of the first jobs I ever had was on a General Motors assembly line in an open-shop plant. Then, two years later, I worked on an auto-assembly line in a union shop, and the difference was like night and day. In the open shop, there were finks and spies all over the place and I was treated like a piece of crap. In the union shop, I was treated with respect. Right then, I knew I'd be a union man to the day I died.

[Q] Playboy: Many of this country's most progressive liberal thinkers feel that unions have grown too political, too big and too corrupt to honestly represent the workingman.

[A] Asner: When a crisis comes, the union is the only defense the workingman has against the powerful and highly organized people who own and run our society. I think how fucking wonderful it is that the iron ring of Eastern communism was broken in Poland by people who wanted unions. What a phenomenal demonstration to the world and particularly to capitalist America that the first freedom to be sought in a totalitarian regime was the freedom to organize labor. What magnificent proof that unions and communism are, to risk an awful pun, Poles apart.

[Q] Playboy: Your latest cause is El Salvador. What, specifically, are you doing?

[A] Asner: I'm editing a documentary about the situation there and raising money for the refugees and trying to get the word out that these people are trying to achieve a just government--

[Q] Playboy: By "these people," you mean the rebels?

[A] Asner: Yeah.

[Q] Playboy: Both Carter and Reagan have labeled them "pro-Castro" and U. S. policy has been that it's better to support the repressive right-wing government they have than allow another communist take-over in Latin America.

[A] Asner: We should drop that bullshit catchword Communist and just let the poor bleeding people elect the government they want.

[Q] Playboy: The U. S. has a long established policy, dating back to the early Fifties when Vietnam was divided, of not letting a foreign country hold open elections if we think a Communist government will win.

[A] Asner: But those poor rebels are bending over backward to disassociate themselves from any form of communism, and from Castro in particular, just so the "Yankees" don't pin that label on them. But we're doing it anyway. And the press is helping.

[Q] Playboy: Ronald Reagan was an actor and a union leader who later achieved some success in politics. Now some very serious and influential people in California are talking about launching you down that same road by running you for governor. Have you encouraged those rumors?

[A] Asner: I'm too selfishly content with the life and the power I have now to forsake it all and become a politician.

[Q] Playboy: So you've done nothing to encourage all the current talk about Asner for governor?

[A] Asner: Nothing, I promise you.

[Q] Playboy: How do you feel when you hear other people talk that way?

[A] Asner: Sad. It's a measure of how low we've sunk.

[Q] Playboy: Now that we've chatted awhile about such trivial matters as the movie industry, drugs, booze and politics, let's get down to something a bit more important. What's Mary Tyler Moore really like?

[A] Asner: She's beautiful and an enormous talent. A performer who could carry the entire show one week, then the next week provide a solid hub for one of the other characters to swing around. She never made problems. For seven years, she did great work and contributed to a happy set. But personally, Mary is a closed corporation.

[Q] Playboy: One of the most urgent questions facing our civilization is, Will Mary and Grant Tinker get back together again?

[A] Asner: Not anymore. After their first breakup, I thought they would get it all together. Like everyone else in America, I found myself rooting for them to make their relationship work. And when they reunited briefly and said it was working again, I believed them, the dirty bastards.

[Q] Playboy: As you've said, the principal players on The Mary Tyler Moore Show took turns carrying the story. That would seem to indicate that Mary's ego never outgrew her part.

[A] Asner: Oh, she has a big ego, and so do the six or seven other people, including me, who were involved with her. And no one has a bigger ego than Jay Sandrich, the director of most of our episodes. But we found that big egos in cooperation with one another can make great work.

[Q] Playboy: But egotists have never been famous for taking direction, or even advice.

[A] Asner: We reached the point very quickly--especially the guys: Ted Knight, Gavin MacLeod and me--where we never had to worry about hurt feelings. We were always giving one another suggestions, little shtick to use here and there. And, yeah, sure, there would sometimes be that quick wall of reserve where I or one of the others would say, "Who the fuck do you think you're telling how to play this bit?" But then we'd quickly realize it was constructive advice from a friend who had nothing to gain but only wanted you to look better, wanted the show to be better. That kind of give-and-take went on all the time because we trusted one another.

[Q] Playboy:The Mary Tyler Moore Show was, at heart, a basic TV sitcom. And you'd never done comedy on television. How did you get the part?

[A] Asner: Tinker, while he was still an executive at Fox, brought Allan Burns and Jim Brooks together to create a show for Mary--

[Q] Playboy: Who was doing what at that point?

[A] Asner: Mary's career was at a nadir. After The Dick Van Dyke Show, she got diabetes, had a flop on Broadway and made a couple of not-very-well-received movies.

[Q] Playboy: And you?

[A] Asner: I'd just done a pilot at 20th for a new Erle Stanley Gardner mystery series called Doug Selby, D.A., starring Jim Hutton. I played a bumbling police chief, a real schmuck, and I enlarged the comic aspects of this schmuck every way I could. Tinker saw that pilot and asked me to read for the Lou Grant role.

[Q] Playboy: What was your first reaction?

[A] Asner: I wasn't overly interested going in, because my agent, Jack Fields, and I weren't planning a career for me in TV comedy. But I took a look at their script--it was the pilot episode where I hire Mary--and I'd never read anything in TV comedy that came remotely close to the writing excellence I saw there. The potential was obvious. I wanted that role. But when I read for it, I gave a nice, intelligent reading, and they said, "OK, you can come back and read with Mary. But next time, give us something a little crazier." At least they'd asked me back, but I didn't feel good about it. I felt my chance slipping away. So I spoke up. It was a risky thing to do, but I've always been lucky when I've taken that route. I said, "I'll tell you what. Let me try it again now, and if you don't like it, don't have me back." Allan and Jim were a little nonplused by that kind of offer, but they said, "Well, we do have another appointment, but OK, read it again." So this time, I gave them a reading that was truly meshuga. Allan smiled, as he always does, and Jim laughed his insane laugh, and they both said, "Yeah, yeah. Do it just like that with Mary." I was thrilled but also worried. I went home, thinking, What the fuck did I do? Because there was no logic or rationale to my reading; I was afraid I wouldn't be able to repeat it. A week later, I went back, read with Mary and tried to emulate that same craziness. Jim and Allan laughed again. Mary said, "Was he really that funny?" Meaning, of course, that she certainly didn't think so. But they said to her, "That's your Lou."

[Q] Playboy: What was Mary's reading like that first day?

[A] Asner: She was closer to the eventual Mary than any of the rest of us were to our characters. I think she always had a clear vision of what she wanted to do with that role. Mary was the hub of the show, artistically as well as titularly, right from day one.

[Q] Playboy: When the cast was finally assembled and you were preparing to go on the air, what was the dominant mood?

[A] Asner: Everyone was just peeing in their pants with nerves. But not me. I didn't give a shit. Because all I could think about was that in nine years in Hollywood, I'd never had such a rich script or such a rich character as this creature called Lou Grant. So it didn't matter much to me whether we were canceled or not. At least I'd have these first 13 shows to feel wonderfully at home in. I was probably the calmest person around. Until opening night, before a live audience. That's when the nerves finally got to me.

[Q] Playboy: But that first show went extremely well. One moment is especially memorable--when Mary is talking about how spunky she is and finally you say to her, with a perfect deadpan, "I hate spunk."

[A] Asner: Ohhhh.... That "I hate spunk" line was one of those moments when everything--the build-up, the physicality, the voice, the look, the timing--everything was absolutely perfect. Athletes have those moments sometimes. Actors have them less often. But that moment Mary and I had together was transcendent. I felt such an inordinate power; the megalomania it induces in a performer is almost frightening. You feel you have those 300 people right there in your hand and you could squeeze them into a pulp if you so wished. I'm speaking about ultimate power.

[Q] Playboy: So that first night was a triumph. It can fairly be said that you arrived at the studio a well-respected but little-known character actor and returned home a major TV star. After 25 years in the business, you were an overnight success. Where did it all begin? In your home town, Kansas City?

[A] Asner: No, in Chicago, where I went--very briefly--to college. I was born in Kansas City, on the Kansas side, to immigrant Jewish parents. My father was a junkman with a pony and a cart. They were always old. My mother was 47 when I was born, my father, 57. They were great strong people. My father's hands were twice as big as mine. At the ladies' auxiliary picnic, my mother always won the nail-pounding contest. My parents were tough, honest and strong. But people like that were a dime a dozen in those days.

[Q] Playboy: Not exactly your typical stage parents.

[A] Asner: No, and, of course, they were very unhappy when I told them I was going to try to become an actor. But there were no tears. No "I'll throw myself off the roof." None of that. And they never completely turned their backs on me, either. If this corpulent frame ever became emaciated, it sure as hell knew where it could go for its next meal. And later, when I began getting acting jobs with some regularity, my mother would always say to me, "We were wrong and I'm glad."

[Q] Playboy: In high school, you became all-city tackle on the football team. In your office on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, on the back wall among the various maps and plaques, is a photo of a young football lineman in set position. Could it be ...?

[A] Asner: It is. In fact, when I arrived at the University of Chicago--with the vague notion of studying political science, but really because I didn't have the guts for the open road à la Kerouac--my nickname quickly became The Jock.

[Q] Playboy: But instead of going into athletics, you appeared in a college production of Murder in the Cathedral.

[A] Asner: Coincidentally, at my roommate's urgings, I gave it a try. My appearance in that play, the joy and feeling of accomplishment, clinched it all for me. From then on, I knew what I wanted--a life in the theater. My first love affair also began in that show. She was my age but much more experienced, and not Jewish. My first play and my first love. It was a phenomenal experience. I could never shake it.

[Q] Playboy: You stayed with the theater after you dropped out of school. As long as your life continued to revolve around the university, why didn't you remain enrolled?

[A] Asner: The crisis came during Christmas vacation of my sophomore year. That's when my parents found out about my affair with the gentile girl--I suppose I wanted them to find out--and they withdrew my support. So I dropped out, went to work and continued at the theater.

[Q] Playboy: And the girl?

[A] Asner: She went to Europe with her family. We picked up our relationship after she returned, but I discovered she hadn't been true to me--as I had been to her--and things went slowly downhill from there.

[Q] Playboy: Then you and some others at the university theater did something very special--and historic. You broke away to form your own troupe, a company that, after passing through several metamorphoses, ended up as Second City. How, exactly, did that happen?

[A] Asner: Well, we didn't so much break away as get thrown out. The director of the university theater had some rather severe problems, and one by one, he disowned the best actors and actresses in the school for imagined infractions. My turn came during a performance of Antigone. He held a meeting just to berate me in front of everybody, accusing me of deliberately sabotaging the production by shouting my lines. I was terribly hurt. But by that time, so many exiles had been created that we formed our own group called Tonight at 8:30.

[Q] Playboy: What was your first performance with the group?

[A] Asner: I did Yeats's Purgatory. A young man who'd never directed before was in charge of this fairly complex production. He was nervous, but we all helped one another and he ended up doing a hell of a job. His name was Mike Nichols.

[Q] Playboy: In July 1951, you were drafted. Were you sent to Korea?

[A] Asner: No. They put me in radar. There was a long training period. A lot of technical stuff. I studied hard, cheated on the final exam and came out with a perfect score. So they sent me overseas as a clerk typist.

[Q] Playboy: With a perfect score in radar?

[A] Asner: Don't ever let anyone tell you that conscription brings about a more efficient use of manpower than the volunteer Army.

[Q] Playboy: After the Army, you went back to Chicago to rejoin your little troupe, which was then called what?

[A] Asner: The Playwrights Theater Club. A week before my discharge, I got a letter from Paul Sills, telling me about the change and luring me back with an offer of $50 a week. I returned, and my life fell together from there. Paul had gotten this little theater on the Near North Side of Chicago, on La Salle Street, on the second floor. It was a magical little stage. We did The Caucasian Chalk Circle, La Ronde, Wozzek, Murder in the Cathedral again, The Dybbuk, a pirated version of The Threepenny Opera, an original play by Paul called Coming of Bildad, a modern adaptation of The Duchess of Malfi, Widowers' Houses, Mooney's Kid Don't Cry, The Glass Menagerie, Red Gloves. Those were fervent years, classic plays. I learned from every one of them.

[Q] Playboy: But you were with the group for only two years. How could you have done so many productions?

[A] Asner: Two years? That's just the first six months I've told you about. Then we did Miss Julie, which Elaine May directed.

[Q] Playboy: Were she and Mike Nichols a team at that time?

[A] Asner: Not yet. They met there and eventually came together, but I was directed by both of them before they joined forces.

[Q] Playboy: Who else was in your company?

[A] Asner: Barbara Harris was our little ingénue. Zohra Lampert was our leading lady. All kinds of crazy things kept happening. On the opening night of Miss Julie, this old man in an overcoat came trudging up the stairs right in the middle of the performance and tried to hand me a telegram. None of us would break character to accept it, so finally he just threw it at me and stormed out.

[Q] Playboy: What was the telegram about?

[A] Asner: Somebody was wishing Zohra and me good luck. Another night, a roving youth gang barged in and busted up the place, but we just kept on acting.

[Q] Playboy: Then you played Prospero in The Tempest. That's remembered as one of the best productions the group did during that period.

[A] Asner:The Tempest was such a huge success that we repeated it in New York.

[Q] Playboy: Was that your first New York performance?

[A] Asner: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: How were your notices?

[A] Asner:The New York Times.... Well, it was Brooks Atkinson's last season as a critic and he said I sounded like a train announcer.

[Q] Playboy: How did you react?

[A] Asner: I felt anger but not rejection. Oh, I stormed around and called him an asshole for everyone else to hear, but I knew while I was up there that the performance wasn't happening. So I diverted my rejection--my failure, really--into an anger that he would not be there to eat his words after future productions when it would be automatic that I was great.

[Q] Playboy: Is that fear of failure the constant companion of an actor?

[A] Asner: Without it, you lose your drive. So this powerful schizophrenia develops. One half of you is saying, "Don't tell me anything. I'm so fucking good I'll kick your goddamn teeth in." But the other half is asking, "How can I improve?"

[Q] Playboy: Over the past ten years, you've become a curious kind of sex symbol. You and Mary taught a generation of women that they needed not only a Mr. Right in their lives but also a Lou Grant. Are we wrong to infer a sexual undertone to your seven-year boss-employee relationship?

[A] Asner: Oh, there was definitely a hum going on between us. And the producers kept it going, year after year, until the end, on one of our very last programs, when Mary and I finally decide to have an affair. We were nervous but forced ourselves to go through with it--until we kissed. Then we both changed our minds.

[Q] Playboy: Did you enjoy that aspect of the role?

[A] Asner: Of course. Within the body of every fat priest is the soul of an emaciated martyr. And within every fat man in the world, this one included, there exists a spine of sexuality. How much he believes in it is up to him.

[Q] Playboy: How much do you believe in it?

[A] Asner: No matter what I may look like or have ever looked like, I've always thought, given a chance, I surely could become the world's greatest lover.

[Q] Playboy: When you became well known, did beautiful women start throwing themselves at you indiscriminately? And, if so, how did you deal with it?

[A] Asner: At first, I was always receptive. But I got into trouble a few times. So now, while trying not to lose whatever innate sexiness I might sometimes have, I've cut back on that sort of activity. I realize how much I love my wife and how important it is for me not to endanger our relationship.

[Q] Playboy: So lately, despite all the temptations of stardom in this town, you've been faithful.

[A] Asner: Any man is capable of infidelity, and I suppose I still am, too. But during the past few years, I haven't acted on those impulses, because I like what I've got.

[Q] Playboy: But the impulse remains, even though the response has been curtailed?

[A] Asner: Sure. When I was a kid in a candy store, my hunger was supernal. I feel that same way now in the world of women. I want to sample the nougats and the bridge mix and the candy corns and the creams and ... well, I suppose the old appetites remain with you, but with maturity comes an understanding of what's really important. For me, it's my love for my wife. Also, in my youth, I was looking for an answer, a solution, and expected it to come sexually. I think a lot of us do that, men and women. But sex isn't an answer. Sex is sex.

[Q] Playboy: How did you meet your wife?

[A] Asner: Frank Perry, Jerry Orbach and I were in a show together in 1957 and we used to chum around a lot. One day, Jerry invited us up to his girlfriend's place for steaks. Nancy, who was a friend of Jerry's girl, was there. She'd just broken up with a guy. My previous girlfriend--also named Nancy--had gone off to St. Louis with an improv group. We were both at loose ends and kind of needed someone to fill our time. She seemed interested and demonstrated her interest by offering me half her steak. I guess just by looking at me she could tell how to win me over. Our romance blossomed from there. Two years later, the time came to either do it or not. So we did it.

[Q] Playboy: You got married.

[A] Asner: Yes, in 1959. I was 29 years old and feared it would be my last chance. The idiosyncrasies of bachelorhood were closing in on me. If I hadn't gotten married then, I'd probably still be in New York, walking down Fifth Avenue with a Pekingese.

[Q] Playboy: You made your Broadway debut in 1960, in Face of a Hero. In several interviews, you've referred to that show as a "disaster," and even as the reason you moved to L.A. But you've never explained why it was so terrible. That was certainly not your first flop, or your second. And looking back at the reviews, they were really just mixed.

[A] Asner: The whole experience was just a ... disaster.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Asner: Because Broadway was my dream, and with that show, the dream turned sour. Everything went wrong. For everybody. But instead of stepping back, examining our problems and correcting them, panic set in and the problems got worse. Everyone was running around, crazily, out of control. The one thing I wasn't prepared to encounter on Broadway was amateurism. The bad taste lingered for a long time afterward.

[Q] Playboy: So you allowed your career to take a westward turn.

[A] Asner: Not consciously, but yes, that's certainly the way things worked out. I went back to TV drama, but the era of live television was ending. When the industry went to film, it moved to Hollywood and I moved with it.

[Q] Playboy: For your first experiences in filmed TV drama, you did regular guest spots on two classic series--Route 66 and Naked City. Unfortunately, because of legal problems, those shows are not in syndication. Have you seen any of them lately?

[A] Asner: I saw myself in one of the original Route 66s just recently and I couldn't believe how good it was. Not me. I was kind of laughable. But the production was very strong. The only parts that were dated were the Chevy commercials. And Naked City also stands up beautifully today. An excellent, excellent show. We had great writers--Stirling Silliphant, Howard Rodman. And the best actors, too. It's a goddamn shame nobody can see them in rerun. I also did The Untouchables in those days, but that show doesn't stand up at all--very dated and wooden. Route 66 and Naked City, though, were damn good.

[Q] Playboy: Comparing those shows with most of today's TV dramas, which are put together almost on an assembly line, do you think their superior quality was the result of a less rigid, more organic approach?

[A] Asner: They were less rigid, all right. Many of those shows came together so casually their quality was probably somewhat accidental. Each time I'd go back on location for Route 66, I'd be aghast to discover they were even less prepared than the time before. And Naked City was a real fly-by-night operation. One time, David Janssen was guest-starring and he and Paul Burke did some very effective scenes together, with the first days' shootings being the end of the show. The opening scenes were still being written. Then, finally, the beginning of the script was finished and we all discovered that Janssen was dying. That's what the whole story was about. But neither of them knew it when they shot their crucial scenes for the end. That's how mixed up things were. But afterward, everyone said, "Wow, it was so subtle how they handled the knowledge of Janssen's illness. Now, that's acting!"

[Q] Playboy: That's ridiculous, of course. But still, the acting probably was excellent.

[A] Asner: It was. The actors and the writers held those shows together. We did some great pieces. One week on Route 66, Bruce Dern and I were Israeli agents looking for a suspected Nazi, played by Lew Ayres, among the offshore oil rigs in Louisiana. I'd love to see that again. Then I did a Naked City that was Sylvia Sidney's return to television and one of Bob Duvall's first TV appearances. Then I did a Route 66 I'll never forget. We were shooting in Cleveland and I was guest-starring with Rod Steiger. As we were starting to shoot, George Maharis walked off the show. They rewrote the whole script without missing a day's work, hired Glen Corbett to replace Maharis as Marty Milner's partner and kept the show on the air for another year and a half.

[Q] Playboy: Sounds like you had to stay pretty loose.

[A] Asner: Loose is a good way to describe that bunch. Along with all their other problems, paternity suits were filed against various members of the Route 66 company all around the country.

[Q] Playboy: Yet you've said that your experiences on those shows finally convinced you to move to Hollywood.

[A] Asner: I just kind of drifted out here. Nancy knew I was going to move before I did. In one Naked City episode, I actually had to fly to L.A. for part of the shooting, to extradite two killers played by Frank Sutton and Robert Blake. Everyone said to me, "Hey, while you're out here, you've got to see some people." So I did, and had a lot of nice smoke blown up my ass. A week later, I called Nancy to say, "I think I'm gonna stay another week and see some more people." She didn't say anything, but I could hear her thinking, Oh, shit, the handwriting's on the wall. A week after that, I called again and told her I wanted to move. She wasn't happy, but she certainly wasn't surprised. All she said was, "When?"

[Q] Playboy: Was it one of those life decisions that you absolutely knew was right, or did it feel a little like a crap shoot?

[A] Asner: I felt pretty sure about the rightness of it, but I'd always envisioned myself becoming a lion on Broadway first, then being flown out by private jet to become a lion in Hollywood. Instead, Nancy and I drove across the country, pulling all our worldly goods behind us in a 14-foot U-Haul.

[Q] Playboy: Still, it must have been exciting to arrive in Hollywood.

[A] Asner: It was, of course. I felt in many ways that I'd come to meet my folk heroes--all those people I'd admired so long for their talents and for their politics. But I quickly discovered that many of the celluloid kings and queens I'd come to revere were putzes. Many of the liberals I met out here, I wouldn't want them to marry my sister. The fact that such liberals existed amazed me.

[Q] Playboy: What was wrong with them?

[A] Asner: They were lip liberals. Complete phonies. They knew absolutely nothing, did nothing. They were empty suits. And many of my lifelong heroes were just as disappointing for their lack of talent. It is said that the camera doesn't lie, and to a certain extent, that's true. But the camera falls in love with you first. There's a line in Murder in the Cathedral where Becket says, "The raw nobility, whose manners matched their fingernails...." I found that equally true in movies. People who might be called nobility turned out to be pigs. There are a lot of them in this town. And I'm always being surprised. There are a lot of conservatives in Hollywood--and fascists--people I never gave a shit about and whom I expected to be assholes, but some of them turned out to be very fine people.

[Q] Playboy: For example?

[A] Asner: One man who is not a fascist, certainly, but very much a conservative, is Robert Stack. I did a number of Untouchables with him and he's a very nice guy. That show was shot at Desilu Productions in the dirtiest, coldest, draftiest studio in town. And Stack was cast in this awful, really unactable role. But he'd be there at six o'clock every morning, never bitching, always jocular, helpful to everyone--exactly what a star and a leader should be. Just a marvelous man. So, no, I don't set myself up for disappointment. I'm just the kind of person who tends to have heroes. And some heroes turn out to have clay feet. Others don't.

[Q] Playboy: Speaking of heroes, you made one picture with John Wayne. Did you enjoy working with the Duke?

[A] Asner: No.

[Q] Playboy: Details, please.

[A] Asner: It was El Dorado, a very big Western directed by Howard Hawks and co-starring Bob Mitchum. Our first day on location, Wayne was astride Appaloosa, this great horse of his, while an army of technicians pulled the camera into place for our first scene together. I was walking toward him and he was looking directly at me from his horse, but none of the technicians could see me, because I was still behind them, and he said, deliberately loud enough for me to hear, "Where's that New York actor?" Of course, I'd been in California for five years and "New York" was a euphemism for something else.

[Q] Playboy: Perhaps a certain religion that will go unnamed?

[A] Asner: Yeah. So I said, "You mean me?" He just looked at me and didn't say anything. Then we did the scene where he throws a bag of money to me, and I missed it. So Wayne says to the crew, "You better get that New York actor a catcher's mitt." Well, I picked the bag up and tossed it back to him so we could shoot the scene again. And, you know, when you've played some ball in your time, as I have, one of the wonderful little gifts you develop is the ability to throw something to someone just off the mark enough so that it's uncatchable, but it looks like the other guy missed it. That's how I threw that moneybag back to John Wayne. And, of course, he missed it.

[Q] Playboy: Did he say anything?

[A] Asner: Not a word. But he never bothered me again for the rest of the picture.

[Q] Playboy:The Mary Tyler Moore Show is in syndication twice a day in most cities. Do you watch those reruns?

[A] Asner: I've seen maybe half a dozen of them.

[Q] Playboy: How do they look to you now?

[A] Asner: I'm rarely satisfied with my own work, but watching one of those shows is like finding an old trunk filled with treasure.

[Q] Playboy: Did the quality and the popularity of The Mary Tyler Moore Show increase the pressure on you when Lou Grant went into production? Were you afraid that if your show wasn't that good right away, you'd be considered a failure?

[A] Asner: My feelings during the first year of Lou Grant could be pretty well summed up in one word: horror. And I didn't have the comfort of a live audience to lean on. That first year was the worst form of masochism one could experience.

[Q] Playboy: Why? The ratings and reviews were good.

[A] Asner: Yes, but the show wasn't right. Everyone in the company was seeking his appropriate level, his niche, his piece of the wheel. I was in a deep depression most of the first year, but by the end of that year, we had enough of a wheel to roll. The second year, it rounded out much more.

[Q] Playboy: Exactly what kind of deep depression are you talking about?

[A] Asner: When our second year was starting, on the first morning of work, I was late and rushing and I didn't close my razor sufficiently. I gave myself that [pointing to a facial scar]. It took 20 stitches. I was so depressed that I was seeking some means of avoidance.

[Q] Playboy: You don't think that gash was totally accidental because you happened to be in a hurry and were a little nervous for perfectly normal reasons?

[A] Asner: I have my doubts. We often affect our lives this way so we can step back and take a few deep breaths before making a mistake.

[Q] Playboy: In your third year, the show received 15 Emmy nominations and won six. That must have relieved the depression at least temporarily.

[A] Asner: Yes, of course. But by then, I knew we had it. The running characters had blended together into a unit whose moves occur so quickly the audience can never anticipate them. And when that happened, the producers and writers were able to assert themselves more and more in terms of issues and adult behavior. I give a lot of credit to CBS, the prestigious network. It doesn't panic and cut people's heads off to save face. It has a tradition of doing quality series that NBC and ABC just don't have.

[Q] Playboy: You seem to feel about the Lou Grant company, and the Mary Tyler Moore company before it, as one might feel about a family.

[A] Asner: A series company functions like a family in many ways. You begin to empathize with and even love the characters for all their qualities--good and bad. The clown you love to hate. The real scumbag--you can't wait to see where next he'll show his cravenness. But still, he's part of the family. I think we've done that on Lou Grant, including showing more menopause in our characters than in the characters of almost any other show.

[Q] Playboy: The characters on Lou Grant and on Mary Tyler Moore have a special quality: They're remarkably human, even when, like Ted Baxter, they're wildly overdrawn.

[A] Asner: That's because we're all losers--lovely losers, each in our own way. And we're all alone except for one another and our jobs. I suppose the closest thing to a winner on either show would be Charlie Hume.

[Q] Playboy: But he's so vulnerable.

[A] Asner: Yeah, and we always see Charlie careening from one crisis to another--a Hare Krishna son, difficulties with his wife, financial problems.

[Q] Playboy: Mrs. Pynchon is a winner. She owns the newspaper and is a fixture in L.A. society.

[A] Asner: She's an old lady with a dog.

[Q] Playboy: When a show has been on the air for a number of years, the actors are bound to feel they know their characters pretty well, maybe better than the writers and producers do. Those feelings have flared into nasty conflicts on some shows, with actors refusing to do things they consider out of character. Has that ever happened on Lou Grant?

[A] Asner: Very, very rarely, one of the regulars will say, "No, my character would never do that." More often, the conflicts on our show come from the actors' seeking different ways to expand their characters.

[Q] Playboy: For example?

[A] Asner: Robert Walden would like some bigger windmills for Rossi to tilt at. Nancy has wanted Mrs. Pynchon to be more direct, more thrusting. Linda is always nudging for something spicier in Billie's role. I don't know about Mason Adams. We don't get any static out of Jack Bannon, except that sometimes he'd like to display more untoward aspects of Donovan's personality.

[Q] Playboy: There's only so far you can go in that direction on television.

[A] Asner: But in pursuing that essential humanity, we try to push back the boundaries of television with greater and greater suggestiveness. We can't spell it out, but we know that people have fucked, that we're all capable of betraying one another. We're always pushing avidly to make ourselves more fully human.

[Q] Playboy: Pushing against whom--the producers?

[A] Asner: It's not that the producers don't want those things displayed, they just want it to happen at a slower pace than the performers do.

[Q] Playboy: Are you satisfied with the issues Lou Grant has tackled?

[A] Asner: Very much so, and we got our tits in the wringer with a couple of them. Last year's show on the Irish gunrunners--we're still getting response to that. And the show in which a Hare Krishna becomes a hero and the deprogramer, to the chagrin of all those parents of Hare Krishnas out there, is dramatized as the villain--that was extremely controversial. But I'm proud to be on a show that in certain areas exceeds my own liberal instincts.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever said no to a story because you found it politically disagreeable?

[A] Asner: I've never said no to a Lou Grant story for any reason.

[Q] Playboy: Have you fought with your producers for control of any other aspects of the show?

[A] Asner: Only in terms of personnel. Casting. And usually they win. But I keep trying. There are some actors in TV who like to run their whole show, but I'm not even close to being that big a megalomaniac.

[Q] Playboy: Do the names Jack Klugman, Jim Garner, Michael Landon and Alan Alda ring a bell?

[A] Asner: The four guys you just mentioned happen all to be people I respect, so maybe I should be more of a megalomaniac. Maybe I'm lazy or lack guts. But I just feel that people have jobs to do--writers, directors, producers, story editors--and they should be allowed to do those jobs. If you don't like their work, you can replace them, but you shouldn't encroach on their turf.

[Q] Playboy: Are you currently on the couch?

[A] Asner: I've been with a Freudian therapist for four years, on and off.

[Q] Playboy: Since the last year of The Mary Tyler Moore Show?

[A] Asner: Yes; happily, it preceded the difficult period when Lou Grant was starting up.

[Q] Playboy: Apparently, you feel it's been good for you.

[A] Asner: I would say yes, because I don't think I've taken it on as a crutch. That's my fear. I haven't found that one special light at the end of the tunnel, though, and if I'm still seeking it two years from now, I'll withdraw for a while and see what happens to my angers and frustrations without the therapy.

[Q] Playboy: Anger is a surprising word. Nobody describes you as having a temper.

[A] Asner: I feel a lot of anger. Before therapy, my desire to eradicate was stronger than it is now.

[Q] Playboy: To eradicate wrongs?

[A] Asner: People. People who are wrongdoers in my mind.

[Q] Playboy: Is it an overt anger? Do you scream and throw things? Or does it eat at you from the inside?

[A] Asner: I'm almost always in overt control, but I do a lot of gnashing. I used to do a lot more.

[Q] Playboy: Most successful actors in L.A. drive either a Rolls or a Mercedes. The mavericks express their individuality with BMWs, Ferraris and Porsches. But you drive a battered Oldsmobile. Why?

[A] Asner: It's a strong sucker. Built like a tank. Which is definitely what I need.

[Q] Playboy: Are you one of those drivers who tend to view the other drivers on the road as antagonists?

[A] Asner: Most California drivers do that.

[Q] Playboy: As we talk now, your "tank" is parked just outside the window. The rear end seems to have absorbed two particularly nasty crunches. In those cases, were you the denter or the dentee?

[A] Asner: I was the offended party both times. Two concrete pillars rose up and struck me. One at the American Film Institute, the other at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

[Q] Playboy: At least you don't play favorites.

[A] Asner: No, I drive into walls in strict accordance with the Fairness Doctrine. But since I've cut down on my drinking, walls have stopped attacking my car. There may be a connection there.

[Q] Playboy: You don't make many TV talk-show appearances, but you did a Dick Cavett show last year that was kind of strange.

[A] Asner: Yeah, a lot of people hated that show, including my wife.

[Q] Playboy: You were telling the story of moving from New York to L.A., pulling that U-Haul across the country and having your brakes fail on a mountain road in some national park. It took so long, and both you and Cavett got so deeply involved in every arcane detail, that many viewers assumed you'd both taken a lot of drugs and were broadcasting from the planet Neptune.

[A] Asner: It was definitely one of the weirdest half hours in the history of public broadcasting. But not because of drugs. I was coming down with pharyngitis at the time, and immediately after the show, Cavett checked himself into the hospital for exhaustion and was there for a month. So we both just ... let's say there was a willing disregard for the audience, which can sometimes make for very good TV.

[Q] Playboy: You never appear on the Johnny Carson show.

[A] Asner: He won't have me.

[Q] Playboy: Why not?

[A] Asner: I was on there once and was so programed by this assistant of his that it was embarrassing.

[Q] Playboy: What do you mean, "programed"?

[A] Asner: Everything I did had to be structured. It wasn't me. I wasn't relaxed and, of course, Carson is never relaxed. The entire experience was just mortifying. So I said, "Screw your show."

[Q] Playboy: Do you mind the fact that you've made more than your share of enemies?

[A] Asner: As I said earlier, I no longer feel it necessary to go back over my trail and clean up after myself.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever wonder if perhaps you enjoyed being viewed by the producers as the villain of the actors' strike, because it gave you the opportunity to be a radical again and lash out at the establishment?

[A] Asner: Yeah, sure. I wish to be identified with the labor movement to my dying breath. I hate to be so fucking poetic about it, but that's the way I feel. Maybe that's why I hung around with the cops in New York instead of with Paul Newman.

[Q] Playboy: Maybe deep down you still see yourself as an auto worker, a blue-collar guy from Kansas City, and not as a Hollywood actor at all.

[A] Asner: No, I always see myself as an actor. But a blue-collar guy? Yeah, maybe that is the real me. It certainly is to the extent that being blue collar implies an intrinsic opposition to the establishment. But mainly, I was just glad for the opportunity to represent labor again.

[Q] Playboy: You really enjoy casting yourself in that role, don't you?

[A] Asner: I delight in it.

"There were a number of movie roles I wanted during the Seventies, but I didn't get a single one. In each case, I was informed that they didn't want a 'TV face.'"

"I think it's safe to say that Newman is back. But I can't be totally objective, because Paul has always been a hero of mine--politically and professionally."

"In my opinion, we were royally gigged. The producers employed, in my opinion, professional strike breakers and political dirty tricks."

"Everyone was just peeing in their pants with nerves. But not me. All I could think about was that I'd never had such a rich character as Lou Grant."

"I quickly discovered that many of the celluloid kings and queens I'd come to revere were putzes. I wouldn't want them to marry my sister."

"There are some actors in TV who like to run their whole show, but I'm not even close to being that big a megalomaniac."

"I wish to be identified with the labor movement to my dying breath. I hate to be so fucking poetic about it, but that's how I feel. Maybe that's why I hung out with cops instead of with Paul Newman."

"I've seen maybe half a dozen of the old Mary Tyler Moore shows in reruns. I'm rarely satisfied with my own work, but watching one of those shows is like finding an old trunk filled with treasure."

"Within the body of every fat priest is the soul of an emaciated martyr. And within every fat man, this one included, there exists a spine of sexuality. How much he believes in it is up to him."