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Donate at plannedparenthood.org/slash defend. Mama! Papa, my corporate a rimante, and the robot that I understand very promptly. But no tenement sufferer for the mode with the vacos of classes of Amazon. Amazon, dastamenos, sonriemas.
Good morning. I'm Jane Pauley, and this is Sunday morning. They may not be household names, but a select few actors have what you might call household faces. They star in some of our most familiar commercials and can be as recognizable to T V viewers as just about any of their more famous acting brethren. This morning David Pogue meets the person behind the pitch.
Mm-hmm. Release the hounds. Probably monkey baby. TV commercials are big business. I'm on a porch.
This is the way we take it to the beach. But what's it like to star in those ads? Have a bad moment. You can't be like, no, I'm not in the mood. There are some casting directors that won't touch me with a 10-foot pole because they're like, oh, he's too visible as that guy.
TV ad Hall of Famers. Ahead on Sunday morning. And speaking of recognizable actors, this year no TV series earned more Emmy nominations than the hit streaming show Severance, which means the face of its unassuming star, Adam Scott, has been, well, everywhere. This morning, he's here talking with our Connor Knighton. When I first read the script, I thought, This is amazing.
I'll never get this role. Actor Adam Scott has been working in Hollywood for more than three decades. This is something. that little by little I've been working my way towards getting a chance at something like this. But as Mark Scout in the dystopian drama Severance, The journeyman takes his turn as the leading man.
We're at work with Adam Scott later on Sunday morning. The musician known as Leve may hail from Iceland, but her songs can feel like a warm embrace. With Tracy Smith, we'll take note. When Leyve was practicing scales on the cello as a girl, stardom was not on her radar. I killed the dreamer in me.
What were your dreams? My dreams were truly just to make music. I didn't think I'd be playing arenas or anything like that. Good evening, Manila. How are you?
Funny how things can change. Coming up on Sunday morning, Leve comes into her own. Your skin. Also ahead. I'm happy to take a walk on a glacier any day.
Ben Tracy takes us to Washington State to meet a scientist for whom documenting the melting of the world's glaciers is truly a family affair. John Blackstone explores a surprising musical partnership, plus another chapter of these United States. And more on this Sunday morning for the 17th of August, 2025. We'll be back after this. Images from Juneau, Alaska, where this past week flooding from an overflowing glacial lake prompted evacuations.
Disappearing glaciers are of course a worrisome global trend. Ben Tracy with Climate Central introduces us to a man who's made glacier mapping a family affair. But it is stunningly beautiful out here. This one, two miles we've done so far today, I mean that was fun. I'm not complaining.
I'm happy to take a walk on a glacier any day. In the rugged North Cascade Mountains of Washington State. My life has been shaped by this ice. No one likely knows this glacier better than Mori Pelto. We got 6,000 measurements on this glacier.
You have 6,000 measurements on this one glacier. Yeah, at least. Wow. For more than 40 years, Pelto, a glaciologist, has returned to this remote wilderness. The crunch of footsteps in the snow now rivaled by the sounds of melting ice.
It's always melting off, the crevasses are changing. We can hear the water flowing under our feet. Yeah, I mean just standing here, you can hear it just running under our feet. Pelto founded the North Cascades Glacier Climate Project in 1984 as a grad student. He vowed to measure these glaciers every summer for 50 years.
So, how deep is that? This is 9.5 feet.
So now we just do this over and over again all day long. This is year 42. How old were you when you decided to do 50 years of this? That was 22. 22.
How old are you now? 63. In that time, the glaciers have changed more than he has, shrinking by 40%.
Some have disappeared. Pelto's work has been featured by NASA and fed into a worldwide glacier database.
So of the 47 that you have studied and returned to over and over again, how many are gone? Twelve of them. Yeah. Yeah, and nine of them just in the last five years. Wow.
Climate scientists say warmer summers and drier winters, driven by our burning of fossil fuels, are accelerating the loss. Seven of the 10 worst years for glacier melt worldwide have happened since 2010. according to Climate Central. Or just ask Maury Pelto where the ice used to be. Almost fifty feet.
Above my head, just a decade ago. A decade ago, this glacier would have been 50 feet above your head. Yeah. That much has been lost. Yes.
Glaciers are Earth's water towers, storing 70% of the fresh water supply. Vital for drinking, farming, and the health of many ecosystems. As they melt, sea levels are rising and coastal flooding is getting worse. We're on Tarmigan Ridge, and that's a ridge that extends most of the way from Mount Shuxon to Mount Baker that we're looking at. That is spectacular scenery up there.
It is. You know, it's the highest mountain in the North Cascades. On his annual treks to Mount Baker, it feels like home. Pelto has hiked nearly 6,000 miles. Yeah.
And slept 800 nights in a tent. This is our kitchen. We got our living rooms. We got our picture window. It's also one of those places that's really special to us as a family.
I brought two real crampons and a fancy yak track. His son, Ben. Daughter Jill, and now his nine-month-old granddaughter Wren have joined him in the field. Two, feet. Two feet.
Jill Pelto has spent 17 summers by her dad's side. You get some measurements of the GPS along the blue ice. But she doesn't just collect data. As the project's art director, She paints it.
So, these measurements that you and your dad are taking out here, eventually, some of those data points will go into your art. Yes, exactly. Data is A story about something in the real world, and that story has meaning and emotion, and that's what I'm trying to bring into my art. Her watercolor paintings are more than just beautiful landscapes. They reveal the science.
Look closely and you see a bar graph of glacier decline in the North Cascades. One piece showing temperature rise and ice loss made the cover of Time magazine. I think sometimes when people see data, there's kind of this instant reaction. And so it's not like the data is any different in my art, but something about that combination. Maybe gets people to kind of put down that wall of, like, oh, I can't understand this, or, you know, this is not something I'm interested in.
The average person is not going to read a scientific report. No. But they will see a painting. Yes. and it does impact you in a different way.
Yes, definitely. Her art has given her dad a new way to share the story he's been recording for the past 42 years. There's nothing left of the glacier that was around that cave. No. What has this been like for the two of you to do this together?
I imagine something like this has to change your relationship in some way. We do it so seamlessly at this point.
Sometimes I don't know what. You know where I started. Feels like you're one team out here. Yeah. this bigger project that just means so much to us and has Shaped our lives.
So sharing that every year is, yeah, beyond special. Tomorrow we go to the Rainbow Glaciers. And now Maury Pelto has just eight summers left to fulfill. His 50-year promise. What do you think it's going to be like that first year you don't come out here?
I don't know, I can't remember what it was like to not come out here. This landscape has been shaped by ice, and so to understand the landscape and the ice, you really have to walk across it. We have a story about commercials and some of the most familiar yet largely anonymous actors on television. Here's David Pogue. Hey, Blue.
You know those progressive insurance ads? Good. Again. Ooh, a big old tree limb comes crashing through the window. Boom!
You're covered. This is what it's like to make one. Lose the wow up front. Ready in action. Maybe a big old tree crashes through her living room.
Uh-oh, she's covered. Is it safe to say that doing what you do, having witnessed it, is harder than the average person might think? I'm gonna say yes because you're catching me at half at the halfway point of our day and I'm like, mother needs a, mom needs a steak. Comedian Stephanie Courtney has played Flo the Insurance Woman in more than 215 ads so far. She's helped turn Progressive into America's second-largest insurance company.
You are, by any measure, one of the most successful. Actors in the world. Oh, okay. You've been on television non-stop for 16 years. Oh, yeah.
face recognition by the public, money, like every Single way there is, you are At the top. Thanks. I'm not going to fight you on that, even though in my head I'm like, what? What does it mean when you go out in public? Do people harass you, want selfies?
No. Not really. I mean, I'm sort of halfway to flow right now, but normally, I look like a sea hag.
So I get I get a double life. What? She's come a long way since 2007. I was broke as a joke. I was auditioning.
I was driving around LA, auditioning for every commercial, every show. Is it too much of a trope to say that you were a struggling actor? I think that would be a compliment. I would have aspired to be a struggling actor. And then I got the audition for for Progressive.
That first ad wasn't intended to be funny, but then came the ad lid that changed advertising history.
So I remember the first actor, his line after I tell him the whole thing is, wow, you know, and he said, wow. and 24-7 live support, all at no extra charge. Wow, wow. I'm like, wow. And then I was kind of shocked at how I screamed in this actor's face.
And I was like, wow, I say it louder. Wow. I know. I say it louder. And so.
That's the first clue about like. Who is she? How crazy can she get? Viewers loved Flow and the commercial icon was born. Please name your prize tool.
Oh! Gosh, don't mind if I do.
Now, you may know Dean Winters from his roles on Oz. Mm-hmm. Not only did he say that he put a curse on me, He said he put a curse on you. 30 Rock. Dennis Duffy, Beeper King.
Who's Got a Gun? Or John Wick. But you're most likely to know him from the ads he's made for Allstate, more than 150 of them. I'm a parking gate and I'm all out of whack. He plays Mayhem, the human embodiment of every risky person, place, or thing in your life.
I'm a raccoon. I'm a bear. I'm a random windstorm. Shaky, shaky. Yeah.
It's like mayhem, mayhem, mayhem. I can't even ride the subway anymore. Does it bother you at all? That you're getting recognized more for an ad campaign. Yeah, I think in the beginning, maybe a little bit, but I wouldn't have the lifestyle that I live.
If it wasn't for people Watching the commercials, watching the TV shows and movies, paying for their insurance.
So every time someone stops me, my first thought is, oh, this person is helping me pay my mortgage. The luxury of having a side hustle is not lost on winters. It's a very fickle business and thing, you know, you can go six months, eight months without working easily. A lot of my friends are struggling right now, and so. Like, I'm very cognizant of how lucky I am.
It's become like the greatest thing that ever happened to me. Barbie has always shown us that we can turn the impossible into reality with boldness and a little heart. I am a 360 degree entertainer, singer, songwriter, vocal coach.
So playing this game for 10 minutes could win you more than a whole day's work. But if anyone knows about the ups and downs of Showbiz, It's Deanna Colon. If you want to be in the world of entertainment, you have to do it all. But now I'm true. She was on America's Got Talent.
Check out my house, check out my tree. And she's appeared in ads for Pepsi and Big Lots. But the biggest break she ever got was the Jardiance commercial. I have type 2 diabetes but I manage it well It's a little pill with a big story to tell I never even gave her a name, but the chick from the Dardiance commercial, she was dancing with my mailman, and I'm like, hey, how you doing? and she's living her best life.
The ad aired in March 2023. and aired and aired and aired. Apparently they showed it one million times. People were yelling at me online, I'm so sick of seeing your face. And I'm like, I have no power in how much they air this thing, guys.
See? Every day is Black Friday. I don't think the public has any idea. what commercials So I'll tell you with big a lots, I made over $100,000 in a three-month period. It's pretty good.
Pretty good. Plus health insurance. Plus you get your health insurance. Yeah, it's awesome. What wasn't so awesome was the online hate that the Jardian's ad brought her.
I would get emails to my personal website that were horrible and I'd just be crying and It was mostly about my weight and how, you know, oh, if you danced like that all all the time you wouldn't be the size you are. Would you do anything differently now that you know how toxic and horrific some people can be? No, I'm always gonna be a plus-size woman. I'm always gonna be a curvy woman. And you're gonna see me singing and dancing and acting, the joy of it all.
Far away. The haters. Sports. I've never been number one in anything until I put these babies on.
Meanwhile, Dean Winters will be mayhem for as long as All State will have him. You know, I really hope that I'm doing it until mayhem is wheelchair racing in a nursing home. You know what I mean? And I'm feeling every single creepy finger on this old man's hand. As for Stephanie Courtney, She's given up her youthful dreams of appearing on Broadway and on Saturday Night Live, but she still performs every week with the Groundlings Improv Group in LA.
And she still loves being flow. I will tell you the thing that made my heart grew three sizes that day was the Halloween costumes. seeing especially like little kids That, I love it so much. I just, I'm like, just keep reapplying powder, reapply your lipstick, go, go forth, be free, go spread the word. Are you feeling more fulfilled now that you're back to work?
No, I need a vacation. See the movie the critics are saying is an awesome look at that. Crowd pleasing, fist-pumping, all-out brawl of a film. Right about that. They're coming after our family.
Go fix this. Omar. Nobody 2 rated R. Only in theaters now. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock.
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Visit lifelock.com slash podcast for 40% off. Terms apply. I get quiet when there's no one else. Score. Me and you and It's Sunday morning on CBS and here again is Jane Pauley.
From the start, help put the Icelandic singer Leve on the musical map with Tracy Smith. We take note. I wish you shelter from the storm A cozy fire to keep you warm This may not be what you usually think of as pop music. I've made my rounds, kiss some mouths. Trust me, I don't want a single soul.
But if pop is short for popular, then Levé, spelled L-A-U-F-E-Y, is indeed a pop star. Never been calm or collected. The 26-year-old Icelander has earned a devoted following, blending modern lyrics and music with classical and jazz. Life means My music is such a combination of the sounds of my childhood. It's just something that's.
become a part of me. I want to make things that made me happy. I loved Golden Age. Musicals, like watch Carousel and Oklahoma and American in Paris and sound of music. They were so beautiful and had these dance breaks and the dresses were floating and the colors.
It was just like that feeling I got from that. I just wanted to create that feeling. I've never been so fresh. Yeah. The world she inhabits, in her work anyway, is whimsical and romantic, full of windswept cliffs.
frilly dresses and bows, and shello. Almost always cello. It's like as important to me as my voice. And I think it's really what makes a levee song a levee song. Le Vei Lin Bing Junstadter comes by it naturally.
Her Icelandic father introduced her to jazz when she was a girl. Her Chinese mother played classical violin.
So does her identical twin sister. You've said that growing up you felt different Yeah, how so? Everyone was like, you know, going to play soccer after school or dance and I was sitting down and playing music from the 17th century. And then on top of that, I was a twin, identical twin. I just felt like weird on top of weird on top of weird.
Some people live for the forture. And things only got weirder when she started singing. You have this beautiful alto voice. Has it taken a while for you to appreciate your voice? Yeah.
Like I remember going on singing competitions in Iceland when I was. Younger, and they'd always be like, She sounds like a 40-year-old woman that's been divorced twice, and she chain smokes cigarettes. And I was like a 13-year-old girl standing on stage being like, okay. Like I just wanted to be a girl.
So yeah, it was always a little bit like Felt a little bit like a circus act. He's hurrying. But Leyve found her footing at the Berkeley College of Music in Boston. She started posting original songs and jazz covers on social media during the pandemic. And if I ever have Yeah.
All very Rich. And they quickly went viral. Were you surprised that people were responding to the jazz influences? I was so shocked because I'd never seen any example of it before, and I'd never seen a community of. Young people.
That was the most shocking part: that it was young people responding to the music. But there was always a part of me that was like, of course, they love it. It's the best music in the world. I want to look like I've seen in the movie.
Now she sells out just about every concert, like this one in Norfolk, Virginia. When I first showed my parents that, they were like, this is what you guys listen to. And I was like, yeah, like this is what younger people are listening to. I feel like she takes just kind of more old people music and pushes it into a newer generation so that more people can enjoy it. I'm in a reckless fever.
Levé's new album, A Matter of Time, comes out this week. A stadium tour will follow. Listening to you, harp on Beltsome New Soul May. She's so perfect, blah, blah, blah. Blah uh Her songwriting usually starts on guitar, like her Bossa Nova influenced from the start.
Run to me, confess your love, at least just let me say But she just as easily can weave in a little classical. as she did on her last album, Bewitched. Like this kind of rolling thing is very inspired by Liss. You bewitched. Me From the first time that you kissed Me.
Last year, Bewitched briefly knocked Frank Sinatra off the top of the jazz charts. And then that album won a traditional pop vocal Grammy. Levy beating Bruce Springsteen, among others. Thank you all so much. This is incredible.
I never in a million years thought that this would happen. I'm LeBay. And then this happened. Um Yeah. Barbara Streisand asked Levé to sing on her recent duets album.
Levy has such a soothing, silky vocal style. It was like Buddha singing with her on this song. And here's the thing. You weren't just doing a duet with Barbara. She was singing a song that you wrote.
It's crazy. It's crazy. The song is called Letter to My 13-Year-old Self. It's one of those songs that I wrote just in my most intimate moments and could have been a song that I never put out. It was a song for me to heal myself, but it's a very hopeful song.
You know, it's reaching back to tell your younger self that you're going to be okay. Don't you worry. But your curly hair What do you think your 13-year-old self- would think of all of this. I think she'd be really excited. I think she'd be really happy.
There's not a single part of myself that has Changed any of my artistic interests to follow some sort of. I wish I could go back. I can give or a squeeze myself at thirteen and I get to make exactly the music that I love. Back then.
So I think I'd I would have been really, really happy. John Blackstone this morning catches up with an old friend who's all about the challenges and triumphs of life. Mr. Measure of May When your truck breaks down along the road Nick Taylor is part of an unlikely musical partnership. He writes music and sings.
But lyrics for their songs are written by a man who can't sing. Who can't even talk.
Alright, Henry. Henry Evans had a massive stroke 23 years ago that left him mute and paralyzed from his neck down. I'll go ahead and run through that for you. From his home in Florida, Nick connects with Henry on his computer, a continent away in California. They met when Henry posted an ad on Craigslist, looking for a singer to To put his lyrics to music.
I love the way your eyes sparkle more than light. Henry's wife Jane is the other essential partner in this music writing team.
Okay, board. as she holds a letterboard B E. A Henry spells out words with his eyes, pointing to one letter at a time. T R try D dropping. T Da.
Forever. Should I draw okay.
Okay, I'll come in at a till the stars. Henry's lyrics touch on familiar country themes, like dogs. Blue blue. My world's a better place. Sweet.
And drinking. Much higher praise for me. This is worth her weight and whiskey. I always enjoyed country music. Henry used the voice generator on his computer to answer questions I sent in advance.
Many country songs are about loss and hardship and pain, and certainly it would seem to me that you could write those kinds of songs. Why don't you? There is already enough sadness in the world, I would rather spend my life writing about upbeat things. There were plenty of upbeat things in Henry's life before his stroke in two thousand two. He and Jane have four children.
He was a forty year old Silicon Valley executive with a Stanford MBA. When his life changed. 22 years ago, we went through five years of a very deep depression. And I think he's left that world behind. It's about what do you want to do with the life that you're given.
And as he says at the end of his emails, You have nothing to say about the cards you dealt, but everything to say about how you play them, or he's playing his card. And as you'll see, he's playing his cards well.
So cool, because we're not focusing on the robot at all. You're calling, you want to raise? Evans has become a leading advocate for robotics to help the disabled. All the way from Los Altos Hills, California, mister Henry Evans. Using a robot as a stand-in, he's given TED talks on three continents as part of a project he calls Robots for Humanity.
This technology allows me to remain engaged, mentally active, and feel like I am a part of the world. We first met Evans on Sunday morning back in 2015. And you don't have to go slowly for me, Henry. I know that you drive pretty quickly sometimes. When we toured a San Francisco Art Museum together by robot.
John, the fact that a quadripelogic can now wander through a museum on the other side of the planet or just across town, while comfortably lying in bed at home is pretty remarkable. For the last four years, Evans has been helping develop uses for a new robot called Stretch. Often when we've thought of robots in the past, we've thought of something that kind of looks like a person with arms and legs. Stretch doesn't look like a person in any way. Yeah.
Veneta Ranganeni is a roboticist with Hello Robot, the company that makes Stretch.
So stretch by just having this one arm, right, that can move up and down, extend and retract, is much more simple to control than a robot with, you know, two arms that can kind of move the way human arms do. Evans controls the robot using the dot on his forehead that works like a computer mouse.
So Henry designed this. V Wen as an occupational therapist with Hello Robot.
So, again, this allows him to eat independently. The robot helps Evans do practical things like have a snack. or scratch his head when it's itchy instead of waiting for someone to do it for him. I think the more independence you give a person to say, you know, I did it myself is just absolutely crucial. Stretch is also enhancing his social life.
allowing him to play his own hand in a card game.
So he uses the robot to move the card he wants to throw to the top. Yes, it's right in the middle. I think there's such a joy, right? He is smiling at his own deck. No one's looking at it.
It's his, right? And we can all play together. Papa Willie, there's a cat on your head. Perhaps most significant of all, he uses the robot to play games with his granddaughter. Let's go even higher.
Girl who used to ignore him now calls him Papa Wheelie. This man that was Inanimate object, it made him become a real person to him. He became Papa Wheelie. And now he's also Henry Evans songwriter.
So how does country music fit into this? Ah. T It's F. You fun. Rapper At the door, is Johnny Walker black and sitting at the table?
Is our drinking buddy jacket? Henry's song, Never Drink Alone, was a finalist last year in a national songwriting contest. This year, two more songs were finalists, including Keep It Hometown. Keeping on the stillness Keep it cut and keep it thin and keep it home.
So The judges praised the lyrics as impressively demonstrating your songwriting talent. Measure of a Man is the first saw Nick and Henry worked on together. And that, I feel, is Henry. You know, he is the measure of a man. I feel that I've grown a lot.
Uh Bing. I think I'd get emotional, but Um, yeah. I think I've learned a lot and grown from those There's emotion too in a song Henry dedicated to Jane. All I've crazy twists and turns will always be my daisy jam. My day is in change.
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Fire Country, all episodes now streaming on Paramount Plus. And now, another chapter in the story of these United States. Tobacco had been cultivated and smoked by Native Americans for centuries. Introduced in Europe by none other than Christopher Columbus, tobacco eventually became a sensation. Profits from its sales would sustain Britain's fledgling colony at Jamestown.
and help fund the Revolutionary War. But growing tobacco is notoriously labor-intensive. And that labor was initially done mostly by enslaved Africans. In fact, until the invention of the cotton gin, most Africans brought to the New World worked on tobacco plantations. In 1881, a Virginian named James Bonsack patented the cigarette rolling machine, which helped turn tobacco into a mass-market consumer good.
Tobacco companies shipped millions of packs of cigarettes to American GIs during both World War I and II. And by the 1950s, 45% of Americans smoked. It is a judgment of the committee. that cigarette smoking contributes substantially. to mortality from certain specific diseases.
and to the overall death rate. That began to change in nineteen sixty four, when the Surgeon General released a landmark report linking smoking to cancer and heart disease. Two decades later, another report found that smoking was, in fact, addictive. Of course, in recent years, smoking, once considered glamorous, has become increasingly stigmatized and banned in places like restaurants, even on airplanes where it used to be commonplace. I don't like to smell smoke when I'm out eating and enjoying myself.
What about people that like to smoke when they're having a drink and eating? It's too bad for them. Today, the U.S. grows a fraction of the tobacco it did 75 years ago. Fewer Americans smoke and we're living longer than ever.
But in many ways we've simply replaced one addiction with another. These days, rather than reaching for a smoke, A lot of us just Reach for our phones instead. The critically acclaimed series Severance has turned Adam Scott from a working actor into a star, a transformation that Connor Knighton tells us has been decades in the making. Wait a m Were you the Were you that guy? Yes, I was.
You weren't! Adam Scott was once a solid that guy, a steadily working actor you might remember from any number of roles. He's been active since the early 90s, playing everything from Howard Hughes' press agent in the aviator. Thelma, this is Howard Hughes. Howard and I were just discussing how he wants me to pull a camera out of my ass.
To a pompous jerk in the film Step Brothers. They are what's called a trophy fish, so. Yeah, they're pretty big. I'm He's acted in large ensemble television shows like Party Down and Parks and Recreation. But in 2022, when ads started popping up for a new Apple TV Plus show called Severance, with his face front and center, It was a new experience for Scott.
It was terrifying. Like truly. I it was something that Know as an actor, it's something you wait your entire career for, your entire life for. But when it happened, I was immediately terrified and didn't quite know why. You know, I guess I was.
Afraid that it was just going to end up being embarrassing, and people were going to make fun of us and make fun of me. Quite the opposite. Severance ended up becoming a critically acclaimed hit. The show's second season is nominated for more Emmys than any other show this year. 27 in total.
Including outstanding drama series and a lead actor nomination for Scott. what you're asking scares me. Because whatever this life is. It's all we have. And we don't want it to end.
Scott's character, Mark, works for a mysterious, seemingly sinister corporation. When he's off the clock, he has no memory of his work life. He's a severed employee. A device in his brain separates his office self from his home self. A lot of people relate to severance because of that sentiment of, like, wouldn't it be nice to turn your brain off from 9 to 5 and not do my mind-numbing job?
I think you never really had a job like that, though. How do you tap into that? It's funny, because the things that ended up really sort of making a difference in my career were like part of my. Parks and Wreck and Party Down and Severance, they are largely shows that are about work. And these are jobs that I've never actually had to participate in in real life, because I was always in a play or doing a guest spot on NYPD Blue or whatever.
I guess I relate to these kind of feelings that these characters have. Because It's been sort of this long A path for me in show business. Scott's path began in his hometown of Santa Cruz, California. Where he'd spend hours in his room watching and imitating actors he saw on David Letterman. Were you looking at that thinking, oh, I might like to do that professionally?
Did that even cross your mind? 100%. In fact, I used to practice on my bed. I would set it up like a couch and I would practice being on David Letterman. I remember I had a project that I would pretend I was promoting where Harrison Ford and I were playing.
playing father and son cops. I'm sure I just look like an insane person. For what it's worth, I would watch that today. It's not too late to make that initial.
Sounds great. After some success in high school plays, Scott moved to Pasadena to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. where he started thinking that Adam Scott didn't sound dramatic enough. When I was in theater school, I really fancied myself as a very serious actor in the vein of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. In fact, At one point, I wanted to change my last name to Cordero.
I remember writing on a piece of paper: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino. Adam Cordero. My mother's na maiden name was Corderaro. I Scott stuck with his last name and after graduation stuck it out through the highs and lows of building an acting career. One thing I always felt that I knew about myself is that I was never going to leave.
I didn't have any other options, but I knew that I was just going to stick around until something happened, something came together for me.
So, this is the same lot that Parks and Rec shot on. Yeah, yeah, we shot just over that way over the bridge. Scott's five seasons on the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation took his career to the next level. Please just tell me what you want me to do. Although, it came with an unexpected downside.
Now that he was so well known for comedy, it was harder to get dramatic roles.
Okay, that was funny. He'd done work that was dramatic before. It just wasn't things that, you know. people really hadn't seen as much of as his comedy work. Ben Stiller, one of the executive producers and primary director of Severance, believes Scott had the skills necessary to play what's essentially two roles, or at least two parts of the same person, sometimes transitioning between his severed personalities in a single shot.
The key to the effect working really is Adam's change of expression and just how good he is as an actor technically. He has to get that timing right of the change. with the camera effect.
So it's not easy to do. Then He can take a note and just adjust something minimally. That very few actors I've worked with can do as well as him. Seems like you saw that potential early on. Was it a tough sell for the studio to have him front the show?
You know, they had a different idea in the beginning, but I said, look, Adam to me is, I think he's the guy. It's clear fans agreed. As part of Apple's massive marketing push for Severance, viewers were invited to an event at the historic former Bell Labs building in Holmedal, New Jersey. Which stands in as the headquarters of the fictional lumen industries on the show. Can you sign my lumen tag?
Yes, sir. Yeah, yes. Seeing the photos of this place, of the Bell Labs building. It started dawning on me just the scale of the show and what it was exactly that Ben had in mind.
So this is when we're kind of diving back into like making the show. Outside of severance, Scott's work life and home life revolve around his wife Naomi. They produce podcasts, films, and TV shows together. They met in the late 90s, which means she's seen him through a number of career ups and downs. I kind of learned that there was a cycle of him.
you know, picking himself up off the ground. And I did know how to nurture and encourage that. That I knew how to do, but it was hard to watch. What's it been like to see people finally see what you've been seeing for all these years? Oh, it's very vindicating.
I knew it. Um, it's great. I love it. And once my wife is free, I swear I will finish the process. Adam Scott had to audition for Severance and fight for the role.
Now, with season 3 already in the works, the actor who always knew he was in it for the long haul is finally getting his due. There's not some bank of Hollywood where they look and they're like, Well, he made 30 years of deposits, so find the exact cash it in. No, there's absolutely, you're entitled to nothing in show business, and I knew that. But I. I also knew that there was something I could bring to it that nobody else could, and I knew that I would have to.
give all of myself to it in order to pull it off. I would have to use absolutely everything I've learned. Over 30 years, if I was going to do it right. And so when I was lucky enough to get the job, That's exactly what I did. Earlier, you saw David Pogue's story about actors in TV commercials.
It was beautifully edited by Joseph Frandino, who's retiring after many years here at Sunday Morning. Joe is part of our family, and so is his family. His twin sons performed our theme song on Father's Day in 2020. Joe's first Sunday morning story, a profile of actor Dylan McDermott, other favorites. Harry Belafonte.
Mitch album. Of course, there have been no shortage of news stories here at Sunday morning. Like this one in 2017 about a family coping with the aftermath of a terrorist bombing at the Brussels airport. Joe says he got to see the world while editing Stories for Us.
Now he says he's going to travel to all the places he shared with all of you but hasn't been able to visit himself. He goes with our heartfelt thanks and best wishes. Thank you for listening. Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning.
