Remembering 'WKRP in Cincinnati' actor Howard Hesseman

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. Our guest, Christine Baranski, is co-starring in the new HBO series "The Gilded Age," which is set in the 1880s in New York City. She plays Ada (ph), a society matron who despises the newly wealthy people moving into her Fifth Avenue neighborhood. In this scene, she and her sister Agnes (ph), played by Cynthia Nixon, receive a letter from their niece, who's recently discovered she's penniless after her father died.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE GILDED AGE")

CYNTHIA NIXON: (As Ada Brook) What does she say?

CHRISTINE BARANSKI: (As Agnes Van Rhijn) She thanks you for the letter that you did not show me and for the tickets that you purchased without my knowledge. She means to join us here just as soon as she has closed the house and sold her furniture.

NIXON: (As Ada Brook) What a relief.

BARANSKI: (As Agnes Van Rhijn) A relief - and who is to support her? Exactly - me with the Van Rhijn money, which was not achieved at no cost to myself. You were allowed the pure and tranquil life of a spinster. I was not.

NIXON: (As Ada Brook) I'm very grateful.

BARANSKI: (As Agnes Van Rhijn) So you should be.

NIXON: (As Ada Brook) Well, I'm glad she's coming. And if my letter played a part in her decision, then I'm glad I sent it.

BARANSKI: (As Agnes Van Rhijn) I doubt it was your letter. More likely, she has discovered her father left her without a penny to her name. Henry couldn't provide for a dog in a ditch. He never kept a dollar in his pocket if there were women or drink within 500 miles.

NIXON: (As Ada Brook) Agnes, our brother, has died.

BARANSKI: (As Agnes Van Rhijn) Our brother, with whom we have had no connection these many years.

NIXON: (As Ada Brook) We should have gone for the funeral anyway.

BARANSKI: (As Agnes Van Rhijn) It wasn't worth an uncomfortable day of travel to make sure Henry was dead.

DAVIES: Christine Baranski started her career in theater and went on to co-star in the TV series "Cybill" and "The Big Bang Theory," and films, including "Reversal Of Fortune" and "The Birdcage." She's been in several stage and film musicals, including "Chicago," "Mame" and several by Stephen Sondheim, including "Into The Woods," "Follies" and "Sweeney Todd."

Today we're going to listen to Terry's 2020 interview with Christine Baranski. They spoke when Baranski was starring in the legal drama series "The Good Fight," playing the smart, progressive litigator Diane Lockhart, a character spun off from the series "The Good Wife." They began with a scene from "The Good Fight." Baranski's character has become a partner at a majority African American firm, which is eventually acquired by a much larger multinational firm. In this scene, she's talking with a senior partner of the larger firm, describing how powerful men are behaving like they're above the law in cases she's arguing in court. John Larroquette plays the partner.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE GOOD FIGHT")

BARANSKI: (As Diane Lockhart) Is there some sort of get out of jail free card for rich and powerful clients?

JOHN LARROQUETTE: (As Gavin Firth) Not that I'm aware of. Why do you ask?

BARANSKI: (As Diane Lockhart) Well, you assigned me to pro bono cases, and you want me to do my best?

LARROQUETTE: (As Gavin Firth) Yes, of course.

BARANSKI: (As Diane Lockhart) Right. Well, there is something going on whereby certain people - rich and powerful people - don't have to comply with subpoenas or judicial rulings and can end a lawsuit if they think the ruling will go against them.

LARROQUETTE: (As Gavin Firth) You've experienced this.

BARANSKI: (As Diane Lockhart) Yes. And Brian Kneef, one of your lawyers upstairs, seems to have benefited from one of those cases.

LARROQUETTE: (As Gavin Firth) And you're investigating this.

BARANSKI: (As Diane Lockhart) Yes. Now, I'm sure you will agree that we should all be subject to the same system of justice. But we're not. If I'm given a subpoena, I have to comply. I have to answer honestly. And if I don't, I should be prosecuted. That is the only way that the system works. And if it doesn't work that way, then the country breaks down. It's over. We're done. Now, you have given me control of these pro bono cases. And this is essential to my involvement in these cases.

LARROQUETTE: (As Gavin Firth) OK. Just keep me in touch.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

LARROQUETTE: (As Gavin Firth) Diane, I know that it seems like I am the enemy. But sometimes I don't even know what's going on in my own law firm.

BARANSKI: (As Diane Lockhart) Understood.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

TERRY GROSS: So many of your roles in the past on TV and on Broadway were kind of wisecracking, cynical, slightly alcoholic women.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: And, you know, there's comedic elements in "The Good Fight." But your role - I mean, your character - she's got biting sarcasm when she needs it, but she's not a kind of snarky, cynical comic character. There's a lot of just, you know, real drama there. Do you think that your voice changes when you're doing a comedic role versus a more dramatic role?

BARANSKI: What an interesting question. I think I had to find the voice of Diane during my years of "The Good Wife" because I was - I had done so much comedy. And my real challenge with playing Diane was assuming that I was that powerful woman - you know, the senior partner in a law firm that she created - that she had a kind of authority and gravitas, and I needed not to work at it because people who are serious-minded and authoritative really don't work at it. They just are that. So I've learned to calibrate the sound and the tone and the manner of that character to be just much more understated as the years have gone by, which is why I've loved an opportunity to be on the air for all of those seasons because I keep refining the character and refining the performance. My comedic roles were always much more flamboyant and physical in nature - certainly, my stage work. So yes, I've - you know, I've loved the opportunity to vary my performance style and have people see another aspect of me.

GROSS: What did you learn about your voice through singing lessons? And I don't even mean just your singing voice, but just your voice in general.

BARANSKI: Oh, my voice. You know, I went to - I studied acting at the Juilliard School. And we didn't have a single class for musical comedy, so I never trained my voice at Juilliard. And then I was always extremely shy of singing. So singing to me when I finally began studying in my mid-twenties - it was an emotional journey, as it is for a lot of people. One feels very vulnerable singing. But I did in particular. I remember a nun - I think it was in eighth grade - who humiliated me when I sang a song. She made fun of me. And I still think that moment had a real traumatic effect on me because I couldn't sing publicly unless I was sort of doing a jokey voice. I couldn't just sing in an audition and feel comfortable.

So my journey as a performing artist - a musical performing artist - it was a very slow, slow journey. And the teachers who helped me were helping me past a place of fear. And I learned that I had a very wide range - is what I learned. And that's what I've learned, I think, as an actor, is how wide my emotional range can be - as I've played a lot of different kind of roles. And I've played a lot of different styles. So...

GROSS: Isn't it interesting that you didn't know that you had that vocal range until...

BARANSKI: I did not.

GROSS: ...A teacher showed you that you had it.

BARANSKI: Exactly. I started studying in my mid-20s. And by my late 20s, I was working with someone who started me singing leader in art songs and said, you have a very wide range - over three-octave range. And then I got really turned on, and I started studying opera arias.

GROSS: Stephen Sondheim is such a brilliant composer. But the intervals he writes bits in songs that are sometimes, like, just - they're not typical. They're not the typical resolutions. They're not the typical melody lines. And it always strikes me as a non-singer that they must be more complicated to learn because they're unusual. So what do you think?

BARANSKI: I think one approaches his work with terror and humility.

GROSS: (Laughter).

BARANSKI: And I've had the - and I think that's the best place to be as an artist. But I've had the pleasure and privilege of doing at least eight Sondheim musicals, unfortunately never an original Broadway production. My first Sondheim musical was "Company" when I played April. That was shortly after I graduated from Juilliard. But yes, always, his music is challenging because he's just such a brilliant man that you try and live up to his, you know, level.

GROSS: When you're learning a new Sondheim song, what do you do to get it into your head so that you know exactly where to go melodically?

BARANSKI: Well, when I did "Sweeney Todd" at the Kennedy Center, that was a full production. And I started months in advance to learn it. And I learned it phrase by phrase. And I did it by repetition, repetition, repetition of those, as you said, those intervals. And Mrs. Lovett is cockney, so you have to sing with a cockney accent, which is also very challenging to make yourself intelligible. I can only tell you that the work I did was so exacting and took months of very careful preparation.

And I worked with my singing teacher every day to get those songs so into my voice, into my vocal, because also, Mrs. Lovett goes - you can - her range is very high. At moments, she's almost singing in an operatic range with Sweeney, and then sometimes it's a vaudeville belt. So there's a high range, middle range and low range. So it's by far one of the most challenging, if not the most challenging theatrical piece I ever did because I don't sing all the time. I'm not known primarily as a musical performer. So I found it really daunting. But I can only tell you, when you pull it off, you get such a high. When I did - do perform Mrs. Lovett, it was just one of the great moments of my career performing it.

GROSS: Would you illustrate for us the point that I was trying to make that Stephen Sondheim writes very wonderful but very unusual melodies, that the voice doesn't necessarily automatically know what to do because they're not typical, like, resolutions? Is there a - can you sing a line that you had trouble learning? It's so interesting, but challenging.

BARANSKI: Let me see if I can - "Every Day A Little Death" is a really odd song from "A Little Night Music" - not odd song, but those intervals - (singing) every day, a little death, in the parlor, in the bed, in the curtains, in the windows, in the buttons, in the bread, every day a little sting in the heart and in the head, every move and every breath. And you hardly feel a thing, brings a perfect little death.

Now, those - all those minor tones, but they reflect the characters, that melancholy in her marriage, don't they? I mean, I think I may have gotten one little note wrong there because I haven't sung that song in ages, but can you hear the - it's not that easy to learn? (Vocalizing). Yeah. But that's the joy of singing him is he's so - he's such a writer of the complexities of the human heart.

GROSS: Did he give you any good advice on singing his songs?

BARANSKI: Yes, he did. He wants the truth of the character. Steve is really not into beautiful sounds. He says, don't make it beautiful. Don't feel you have to sing the song beautifully. Yes, he cares about the notes being sung properly. But what he cares about is - because he's such a great lyricist - is the communication of the lyrics, as though people are thinking and feeling on pitch. It's not about how beautiful you sound.

GROSS: That must have been good for you to hear because you're known as an actor, not as a singer, even though you've been in a whole bunch of musicals. So it meant that, like, acting the part was what was really important, not just having, like, a gorgeous voice.

BARANSKI: Absolutely. I think all of the great Sondheim performers - Angela Lansbury - name them - they're all great actors as well. He wants actors who can sing. He doesn't want strictly singers. And I also - I don't know if I can articulate this properly, but there's an elegance to his writing. You don't need to embellish it. His lyrics are the communicators. You don't have to be clever with them. He is already so clever in the best sense and smart that the best thing you can do is take a direct route to his work and not not try to, you know, embellish Steve Sondheim.

DAVIES: Christine Baranski speaking with Terry Gross in 2020. We'll hear more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF JIM BEARD'S "HOLODECK WALTZ")

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's interview with Christine Baranski, who starred in the series "The Good Wife" and its spinoff, "The Good Fight." She began working in TV in the 1990s, playing a comedic role in the sitcom Cybill. Now she's co-starring in the HBO series "The Gilded Age."

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

GROSS: Your grandmother, if I have this right, was an actress or just a devotee of music theater.

BARANSKI: No. My grandparents, both of my paternal grandparents, were actors in the Polish theater. I grew up in a suburb of Buffalo, Cheektowaga. But they - there was a very active Polish community and theater, and so they did plays and musicals in Polish as well as English. And my grandmother - my - I never knew my grandfather. He died before I knew him, but my grandmother lived with me when I was a child up to the time my father died when I was 8, and then we moved away from my grandmother. But we shared a bedroom.

And I always say she was a Auntie Mame influence in my life. She loved music. She loved dance. She had a vivacious personality, and she even had her own radio show on the Polish radio station, and she wrote a comedy hour with her friend. This is where, I guess, my love of theater and my - perhaps my talent comes from.

GROSS: Well, and also the idea that you could actually become an actress 'cause you shared a bedroom with one.

BARANSKI: Yes, I did (laughter). And she was very theatrical, and she had very theatrical friends. They would come over and just - I could hear them. You know, we would be put to bed, my brother and I, but Nana was in the living room with her Polish friends, and they'd get drunk, and they'd sing, and they dance. And, you know, as I said, she was really rather a Auntie Mame type. And - but she had a great effect on my life. And when my dad died, when I was 8 years old, we moved away from Nana. And it's only years later that I realized what a profound effect that had on me.

GROSS: So you grew up in Cheektowaga, which is a suburb of Buffalo. Is it fair to say it was a kind of industrial suburb of Buffalo?

BARANSKI: Well, there were some factories, but it wasn't - it was very much on the outskirts of Buffalo, but no, not that far in the suburbs. I was within walking distance of my church and my schools, and I, you know, walked to Mass every day. We had to hear Mass every morning, and it was a Polish Catholic upbringing. And my mother worked in this air conditioning factory called Hudai (ph) that made parts for air conditioners. And she was something of an engineer. My dad worked at a Polish newspaper in Buffalo until the time he died. And he died of an aortic aneurysm when he was 49 years old.

GROSS: So you got a scholarship at Juilliard, and the way I've read it reported in the press is that you got a thousand-dollar scholarship because you were the most hardworking, economically needy student. Did they literally say that?

BARANSKI: They certainly told me when I got the scholarship that they knew I was in need financially and that I was to use the money to live on the following year. And I think the next day I was in the passport office, getting a passport to Europe and spent all the money traveling around Europe alone for two months (laughter).

GROSS: Did you feel just a little bit guilty taking the money that was meant for you - to enable you to attend Juilliard and instead traveling to - what? - France?

BARANSKI: I traveled to London, then I went and took the ferry to Paris, and then I traveled through the Alps to Switzerland and then to Italy and then to Greece. And I didn't feel any guilt whatsoever...

GROSS: (Laughter).

BARANSKI: ...Because it was one of the greatest things I've ever done. To this day, I will tell you that it was one of the greatest things I've ever done and one of the gutsiest 'cause I was a young woman alone. I was 19. I was staying in the cheapest hotels, you know, walking the streets of Paris and Rome and just discovering all of these extraordinary - I would spend hours in museums and sitting in the cheapest cafe and just thinking it was the most romantic, incredible thing. And it informed me as a human being. And so no, I have no guilt.

GROSS: When you started doing TV work on the show "Cybill," starring Cybill Shepherd, and you were her, like, best friend - cynical, wisecracking - your family was still on the East Coast, and you were basically, like, commuting to Hollywood to shoot it. You were already a mother, right?

BARANSKI: Yes. I had resisted doing television for years, which is why I spent so, so many years in the theater. I was already in my 40s when I was offered "Cybill," and then it was a question of, you know, it's really time to make a career move and this would be good for your career and also good for your finances because it was clear that my theater - our theater salaries - my late husband and I weren't probably going to earn enough working in the theater to pay for private schools or college educations. So it was a very, very tortured, very big decision. They really weren't shooting a lot of television in New York in the '90s, certainly not sitcoms. So for 3 1/2 years, I commuted, but it opened up my career. It really opened up my career.

GROSS: Yeah, it sure did.

DAVIES: Christine Baranski, speaking with Terry Gross, recorded in 2020. Baranski currently stars in the HBO series "The Gilded Age," and she'll return in another season of "The Good Fight." After a break, we'll remember actor Howard Hesseman, best known for playing a DJ in the series "WKRP In Cincinnati." And Justin Chang reviews the new Norwegian film "The Worst Person In The World." I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF DAVID BUCKLEY'S "THE GOOD FIGHT THEME")

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. Howard Hesseman, the actor best known for playing a radio DJ on "WKRP In Cincinnati," died Saturday in Los Angeles due to complications from colon surgery. He was 81. In the 1960s, Hesseman performed in the San Francisco improv troupe The Committee, which regularly performed at anti-war and civil rights demonstrations. He had many minor roles in film and TV, including playing a hippie on "Dragnet," before landing the part on "WKRP In Cincinnati," which aired from 1978 to 1982 on CBS. Hesseman likely drew on his experiences as a San Francisco DJ for the character of Johnny Fever.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "WKRP IN CINCINNATI")

HOWARD HESSEMAN: (As Dr. Johnny Fever) All right, Cincinnati. It is time for this town to get down.

(APPLAUSE)

HESSEMAN: (As Dr. Johnny Fever) Yeah. You got Johnny, Dr. Johnny Fever. And I am burning up in here. Woo (ph).

DAVIES: Hesseman was also known for playing the teacher Charlie Moore on the sitcom "Head Of The Class," which aired from 1986 to '91, and for other roles including a brief appearance in the rock 'n' roll mockumentary "This Is Spinal Tap." He played the manager of a rival band who politely blows off the members of Spinal Tap after they try to chat him up in a hotel lobby.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THIS IS SPINAL TAP")

MICHAEL MCKEAN: (As David St. Hubbins) Where are you playing in town? Are you playing here?

HESSEMAN: (As Terry Ladd) We're doing the EnormoDome, whatever it is. It's terrific. It's a good house. We sold it out.

MCKEAN: (As David St. Hubbins) Oh, yeah, big place outside of town.

HESSEMAN: (As Terry Ladd) Very nice.

MCKEAN: (As David St. Hubbins) That's a big place. You sold it out?

CHRISTOPHER GUEST: (As Nigel Tufnel) What's that - 20,000 seats?

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) We really should run, you know?

TONY HENDRA: (As Ian Faith) Good heavens. How are you, laddie? Great to see you, Ter - terrific to see you.

HESSEMAN: (As Terry Ladd) Liam - Liam?

HENDRA: (As Ian Faith) Ian. Ian. Yeah.

HESSEMAN: (As Terry Ladd) Listen. We'd love to stand around and chat, but we got to sit down in the lobby and wait for the limo.

HARRY SHEARER: (As Derek Smalls) OK.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Well, that's great.

SHEARER: (As Derek Smalls) OK. We'll catch up with you on the road.

(CROSSTALK)

PAUL SHORTINO: (As Duke Fame) Great to see you again, Terry.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Cheers.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) Yeah, best of luck.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Duke.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) We'll catch up at my house, maybe.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Great, great - great to see you.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) See you.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) Good days, good days.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) See you, Duke.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) See you.

MCKEAN: (As David St. Hubbins) [Expletive] wanker.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) What a wanker.

MCKEAN: (As David St. Hubbins) A wanker with no talent.

DAVIES: And in an episode of the TV series "ER," Hesseman played a man high on drugs found in the middle of the street.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "ER")

JOE MANGANIELLO: (As Officer Litchman) Found him sitting in the middle of the street directing traffic.

HESSEMAN: (As Dr. James Broderick) Well, I was just trying to calm the masses. There was so much negative energy. Nobody could feel that universal connection that we all have.

JOHN STAMOS: (As Tony Gates) Right, right, right. What are you on, buddy? What are you on? What are you on? What are you on?

HESSEMAN: (As Dr. James Broderick) No, no. You know, when I touch you like this, we are exchanging matter on a subatomic particle.

STAMOS: (As Tony Gates) Right. Well, I don't know where your atoms have been, so it's best you just keep them to yourself.

SCOTT GRIMES: (As Archie Morris) What's this?

LINDA CARDELLINI: (As Samantha Taggart) I'm thinking acid trip.

HESSEMAN: (As Dr. James Broderick) Oh, you would be wrong. LSD is a man-made chemical, and psilocybin is a gift from God.

GRIMES: (As Archie Morris) Oh, the magic of mushrooms.

HESSEMAN: (As Dr. James Broderick) Yes, that is (laughter)...

DAVIES: Terry spoke to Howard Hesseman in 1988, when he was starring in the sitcom "Head Of The Class."

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

TERRY GROSS: You know, "Head Of The Class" is, in a way, a reversal of the type of school shows that television had on, say, in the 1960s 'cause in this case, the students are the overachievers, and you, as the teacher, is the one who's trying to loosen them up a little bit.

HESSEMAN: I guess - yeah, that's accurate.

GROSS: But yet you're the authority figure, which most TV viewers aren't used to seeing you as.

HESSEMAN: Well, I guess they're not. I don't - I'm not used to seeing myself that way. But, you know, when you say it's sort of a reversal of the '60s, so are the '80s, in a sickening sense - a reversal of the '60s in which, you know, nobody wants to take responsibility for much of anything but they want all the rewards and accoutrements of a responsible life. Thus, the planet is sort of (laughter) slowly dying off.

GROSS: When...

HESSEMAN: At least, that's my sort of pinhead view this morning.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: What are the parts of the character that you think of as yours, character dimensions that you added that weren't in the way the character was initially conceived?

HESSEMAN: Well, in television, particularly where everything is done in such a - I don't want to say a shorthand manner but a short-cut manner, actors have a - actors sort of are the character. It's not as though you're given a well-delineated character that's been tried and tested over a period of time like, you know, stage characters or someone who's a character that's had the benefit of a long period of development - of gestation and development in the writer's mind. The character is created, and once it's sold, there is this enormous rush to make things work in a very tight time schedule with as tight a budget as possible.

I mean, some of these things are certainly true in movies and in stage work as well. But I think more and more, because of the voracious appetite of television as a medium, writers depend on personality quirks of the actor to delineate character. And in the long run, my feeling as an actor is that there is no character. There's me, and I am limited by what this character says and does according to the text.

GROSS: Were you anxious to get back into TV after...

HESSEMAN: (Laughter).

GROSS: No - after "One Day At A Time" and after "WKRP"?

HESSEMAN: No, I don't think I was ever anxious to get into TV. Even now, on an almost daily basis, there's a certain sense of, oh, to quote a friend, "joyful dread" each morning. You know, I like to work. I like the actor's work. I love doing it. But there is something about television and particularly series production that saps me of the will to live.

GROSS: (Laughter) But other than that, it's great. Where does the - in the joyful dread, what's the dread part of the equation?

HESSEMAN: Well, most of television is so predictable. I mean, that's not limited to television, either. I mean, a great deal - a great many stage plays that we see now and a great many movies are so predictable in terms of the plot, in terms of the action, in terms of what little character revelation and delineation occurs. You know where they're going. You're not surprised. And I suppose, you know, I have these standards that are relatively impossible for me or anyone else to meet (laughter) in part because I can't define them. So - but I'm just, for the most part, disappointed when I look at television, particularly network television.

GROSS: Do you find that television viewers' preconceptions of you vary according to who you're playing on TV? You know, when you were Johnny Fever, did they think of you as being a high - someone who was always high and a real, you know, anti-authority kind of figure? Then when you were on "One Day At A Time" as someone who was going to marry Bonnie Franklin (laughter) and now as the teacher in "Head Of The Class" - do people have a different idea of who you are based on who you're playing?

HESSEMAN: Absolutely. It's - sometimes I think of it as sort of quaint, and sometimes it's terrifying. But many people's seeming inability to differentiate between a character that you're playing on television and who you really are. Of course, this flies in the face of what I was saying eight, 10 minutes ago about, in television, the actor sort of becomes the character. Or some facet of the actor is exaggerated and becomes a key element of the character. But I also feel as though that's a problem that exists largely for those people and not for me.

GROSS: But what are some of the different ways people have seen you, different preconceptions people have had on you - had about you, depending on which role you've been playing at the time?

HESSEMAN: Well, it was very strange. During the production of WKRP, we had extraordinary support from the radio broadcast industry, far more so than CBS TV.

(LAUGHTER)

HESSEMAN: Thanks to radio, people knew that we were being bounced around the schedule like a Ping-Pong ball for the entire four years. Radio people really followed the show and let their listeners know about it. And at the same time, radio people were very quick to talk about inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the studio setting of the show. And, you know, the only defense that one can offer is, we're not doing a show about how radio works. We're doing a show about a group of people who happen to work together at a radio station.

There is this poetic license that we're taking. But in terms of a specific character - ask me a question, I can babble forever. In terms of the character, yeah, people thought I was really loose, that I was always looking to get loaded, that I was some kind of a party animal on my last legs. But I was going to go down, you know, at full-tilt boogie speed. Hardly true. That had happened years before.

GROSS: (Laughter) Who did you pattern the disc jockey on who you play? Did you have an image in mind?

HESSEMAN: Yeah.

GROSS: I know you were a disc jockey for a really brief period of time, around six months.

HESSEMAN: I was. And I welcomed this opportunity to say this on radio. Repeatedly, in talking with print interviewers, I would try to stress the fact that I had been a professional actor for several years prior to my brief and humiliating stint...

GROSS: (Laughter).

HESSEMAN: ...As a radio (laughter) personality. I put quotes around that.

GROSS: What was humiliating about it?

HESSEMAN: Well, I think when you're doing radio, you like to feel that people are listening and enjoying what they hear.

GROSS: (Laughter).

HESSEMAN: And in my case, what little feedback occurred indicated to me that wasn't necessarily the case.

GROSS: (Laughter).

HESSEMAN: But it was great fun. And I patterned Fever after my sense of myself as a disc jockey, but just with a little more - with a sufficient degree of success that was invisible to me. I mean, I thought, this guy is better than he thinks he is. He's really committed to doing a good job. But he's messed up in a number of times along the way. But he's still good because of his commitment. Beyond that, there were a number of radio personalities who were good friends of mine in San Francisco in the '60s. And I think little bits and pieces of them would float through Fever from time to time, sort of little ghost visits. The late Tom Donahue - "Big Daddy" Tom Donahue was sort of the father of progressive rock 'n' roll radio in America, was a close friend. His wife, Raechel, is a terrific radio personality. There were any number of - just little elements of different people would occur to me.

DAVIES: Howard Hesseman speaking with Terry Gross in 1988. We'll hear more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF TRACK AND FIELD'S "LEAVING FOR COSMOS")

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And we're listening to Terry's 1988 interview with actor Howard Hesseman. Hesseman died Saturday at the age of 81.

GROSS: Did you have a hippie image when you first started acting?

HESSEMAN: Well, when I first started acting?

GROSS: Yeah.

HESSEMAN: No, I was in the second grade.

GROSS: (Laughter).

HESSEMAN: Actually, I think I probably actually started acting when I was about 3 years old. I was trying to act normal.

GROSS: (Laughter).

HESSEMAN: But I became a professional actor in San Francisco with a committee, an improvisational - satirical, political, improvisational review company in 1965. And I looked fairly normal - I wasn't inside.

GROSS: (Laughter).

HESSEMAN: But I think I had just done a play, so I'd cut my hair. I looked sort of straight, kind of square, as we used to say. And that changed as the years went by. But I would come up with a role that would (laughter) force me to cut my hair. Yeah. Yes. I wore a lot of tie-dye and bright, velvet English trousers and patchwork boots. And as often as not, my hair was longer than my neck.

GROSS: You know, it's funny. In the film "Steelyard Blues," made in 1973 - Donald Sutherland, Peter Boyle, John Savage - they play the misfits. They play the outsiders. And you play the suit. You play the establishment.

HESSEMAN: I have photographs of myself taken the day before I cut my hair to get the look of that character.

GROSS: Oh.

HESSEMAN: And the film, incidentally, was made in 1971...

GROSS: Oh, OK.

HESSEMAN: ...I believe - '70 or '71 and released about a year later. But let's put it this way. I had hair that was close to between my shoulder blades and a long moustache. And I took all that off and discovered within the first week that none of my clothing worked any longer.

GROSS: (Laughter).

HESSEMAN: When I was on the street - I can't really tell this story on the radio because it's not going to carry very well.

GROSS: (Laughter).

HESSEMAN: But basically, people who normally would have, you know, winked or given me a high sign or something in a surreptitious manner...

GROSS: Sort of passed you a joint or something.

HESSEMAN: Yeah. Basically, people - many of us at that point in time walked with our eyes pretty much toward the ground for fear of tripping and meeting the ground suddenly face first. And when you saw somebody, you know, you kind of traveled up over the ankle bone, the knee bone, the thigh bone, up and checked out their face, and then it was just random head, eye, neck movements from there. And I would discover people coming up, and at about chest level, they were still smiling. And then they would see this haircut. It would get all different. They would - there was a willful attempt to avert their eyes. And I got very quickly, probably within two or three days, that I appeared to be either on leave from boot camp or an incredibly crude undercover agent. And it was time to go buy some new clothes because this, you know, rock 'n' roll drag didn't work anymore.

GROSS: Well, speaking of undercover agents, didn't you once sell an ounce of grass to an undercover agent in the early '60s?

HESSEMAN: He begged me. He begged me endlessly. That's all I can say. The man was destitute. I knew he was an undercover agent, but just as a human being - and perhaps you had to be in San Francisco in 1963 to understand this - I wanted to help him. Now...

GROSS: Well - yeah.

HESSEMAN: ...It was two ounces. And in fact, at the preliminary hearing in San Francisco County Court, there was only one ounce offered in evidence. You draw your own conclusions.

GROSS: (Laughter) Oh, I see what you're saying. Now, you know what they always say about how things are going to affect your later career. You got a three-year sentence for this, which was suspended, but you had to serve 90 days in prison. Did this...

HESSEMAN: That was before it was hip to be arrested for drugs.

GROSS: Well, did this ever interfere with your acting career? Did you ever have to fill out an application there or anywhere else that said have you ever been arrested?

HESSEMAN: No. I filled out many of those. I served my probationary period. In fact, I had three years of probation, and at the end of two years, my probation officer recommended and the court wisely saw fit to terminate my probation since I'd clearly turned into an upstanding citizen and was doing my best to ridicule every holy institution in the western world six nights a week on stage. But I was making a living, so I fit in somehow.

Having your record expunged, at least in California, means that you can legally answer the question, have you ever been convicted of a felony, no. I think what it really means is that they cross out your name somewhere in the files, but it's still clear that you were once convicted of a felony, but that you can legally say you weren't. It's never been any real problem for me. The committee was not the sort of theater group that would look upon me with disdain for that sort of activity.

GROSS: Right.

HESSEMAN: In fact, whether I did that or not was of little consequence to them.

GROSS: Are you ever surprised when you wake up in the morning that you have started...

HESSEMAN: Yes.

GROSS: (Laughter) That's not what I meant - but that you who got started on The Committee satirizing everything ended up a TV star.

HESSEMAN: Yeah. I (laughter) - yes, I've turned into one of my own targets, but many of us have been saying that for a long time. We became the people we used to satirize. It's terrifying to consider. And then on the other hand, you could say, well, of course, I was young when I did all that. It's all changed. Now my values are different. I don't - some of them are; some of them aren't. If none of them changed, I would assume that, you know, I was the victim of some real - what do I want to say? - arrested development and I don't think that's the case.

DAVIES: Howard Hesseman speaking with Terry Gross, recorded in 1988. Hesseman died Saturday. He was 81. Coming up, Justin Chang reviews the new Norwegian film "The Worst Person In The World." This is FRESH AIR.

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DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. Our film critic, Justin Chang, has a review of the new Norwegian film "The Worst Person In The World." Its star, Renate Reinsve, won the best actress prize at last year's Cannes Film Festival, and the film has been shortlisted for the Academy Award for best international feature. Here's Justin.

JUSTIN CHANG, BYLINE: Two of the best movies I've seen in recent months have focused on the inner lives of restless, rudderless women in their 20s. You may have already seen "Licorice Pizza," in which Alana Haim's character tries to figure out what to do with her life and who to do it with. Now along comes the dazzling Norwegian dramedy "The Worst Person In The World" with an equally star-making turn by an actor named Renate Reinsve. It takes place in present-day Oslo, but its portrait of millennial angst is so moving and perceptive it could be set just about anywhere.

When we first meet Reinsve's character, Julie, she's a whirlwind of indecision. She's a top-notch medical student until she suddenly decides she wants to study psychology, then photography. She cycles through men just as impatiently, ditching one boyfriend after another in quick succession. And that's just the first 10 minutes. Soon, Julie falls for a successful graphic novelist in his 40s named Aksel, played by Anders Danielsen Lie, and moves in with him, at which point the movie settles into a sweetly romantic groove. But like Julie herself, it doesn't stay settled for long.

The director, Joachim Trier, and his regular writing partner Eskil Vogt give the movie a playfully novelistic structure, 12 chapters bookended by a prologue and an epilogue in an early chapter. Julie goes on vacation with Aksel and several of his married friends and is reminded of the age difference between them. Aksel wants to have kids, but Julie doesn't know if she does.

In the next chapter, after leaving Aksel behind at a party, Julie crashes a wedding and meets a man roughly her age named Eivind, played by Herbert Nordrum. Neither of them is single, and despite their mutual attraction, neither of them wants to cheat. What follows is one of the movie's richest, funniest sequences, a mix of gross-out humor and aching sensuality. It does something that too few romantic comedies manage, placing its heroine at a crossroads between two very different men you can't help but root for.

Eventually, Julie breaks up with Aksel and takes up with Eivind, but "The Worst Person In The World" is to bracingly honest to suggest that happily ever after is in the cards. Julie's upheaval continues. There are sudden tragedies and surprising reunions, plus one psychedelic dream sequence that dredges up her demons in a way that's a little too on the nose. We spend some time with Julie's divorced parents. Her mom is loving and supportive, but her dad is distant and doesn't seem to care much about her. Every chapter and every detail, even the ones that seem trivial or tossed off, add something to our understanding of who Julie is and who she might become.

This is hardly the first movie Trier has made about the emotional and existential crises of young people. He was in his 30s when he made "Reprise," his dazzling 2006 debut, and "Oslo, August 31st," a devastating portrait of addiction. Now he's made one of his best films with "The Worst Person In The World." At 47, he may be removed from Julie's generation, but his empathy still shines through. At first glance, the distracted commitment-phobic Julie may seem to embody some stereotypes about people her age, but Trier doesn't reduce her to those assumptions. If anything, he's just as hard on the foibles of his own generation. In a way, Aksel serves as the director's stand-in. He's an artist trying to make sense of Julie and coming to a newfound appreciation of her despite their differences.

Anders Danielsen Lie, who's worked with Trier twice before, recently won Best Supporting Actor from the National Society of Film Critics for his quietly heartbreaking performance as Aksel. Still, the movie unquestionably belongs to Renate Reinsve. She nails Julie's every shift in mood and perspective. And she has a gift for cluing us into what Julie's thinking, even when she's saying nothing.

The title of the movie is a bit deceptive. Nobody ever calls Julie the worst person in the world, but you suspect that's how she thinks of herself when she considers the mistakes she's made and the people she's hurt. But by the end of this exquisitely funny and melancholy movie, Julie has learned to make peace with her decisions, including the ones she has yet to make. She may not be the easiest character to figure out, but she's awfully hard not to love.

DAVIES: Justin Chang is film critic for The LA Times. He reviewed "The Worst Person In The World," opening this week in theaters.

On Monday's show, Jonny Greenwood talks about two aspects of his music life as lead guitarist for the band Radiohead and as a composer of film scores. He wrote the scores for Paul Thomas Anderson's films "There Will Be Blood," "The Master," "Phantom Thread" and "Licorice Pizza," and scores for the new films "Power Of The Dog" and "Spencer." I hope you can join us.

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DAVIES: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support from Joyce Lieberman, Julian Herzfeld and Al Banks. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salit, Phyllis Myers, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Therese Madden, Ann Marie Baldonado, Thea Chaloner, Seth Kelley and Kayla Lattimore. Our producer of digital media is Molly Seavy-Nesper. For Terry Gross, I'm Dave Davies.

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