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September 26, 2021 11:27 am

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CBS Sunday Morning / Jane Pauley

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September 26, 2021 11:27 am

 In our cover story, Susan Spencer looks at the pain of family estrangements, and the difficulty of repairing broken family bonds. David Pogue looks at the road to Broadway of a musical about Princess Diana. Maurice DuBois talks with Adrienne Warren about her Tony-nominated performance as Tina Turner. Lee Cowan sits down with "The Price is Right" host Drew Carey, and Mola Lenghi interviews former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, one of the few female leaders of a Fortune 500 company

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I'm Jane Pauley and this is Sunday Morning. More and more it seems our United States is a house divided. The national fabric torn by partisan politics, race, even our response to a deadly pandemic. But there's another far more personal rift that can separate us. Family feuds. Bitter quarrels that can tear households apart, sometimes for good.

Susan Spencer this morning looks at family feuds. And then a story straight out of the history books from our Seth Doan. Holding a long lance this night on horseback gallops toward the target and carries on a centuries-old tradition. These games reminds us of our roots, our medieval roots. And yet still today they transform and transfix the Tuscan town of Arezzo.

Coming up on Sunday morning a trip back in time. For almost as long as TV has been in our living rooms, The Price is Right has been there too. Lee Cowan looks at one of America's favorite game shows as it hits the half century mark. Celebrating 50 years of anything is a milestone but lasting 50 years on TV is as rare as it comes.

Like everything's the same but it's not. A golden anniversary for a show whose price has always been right ahead on Sunday morning. Tonight is Broadway's big night.

The Tony Awards are back here on CBS after a year off because of COVID. Maurice Dubois will be talking with Adrienne Warren who's been nominated for her portrayal of Tina Turner and the challenges of playing a living legend. When Adrienne Warren asked Tina Turner how she should portray her on Broadway, the rock star said, find my essence. What is the essence?

What does that mean? The essence of Tina is fire, it's ferocity, it's resilience. Becoming Tina Turner, the first TV show in the world, becoming Tina Turner later on Sunday morning. Then it's on to a new show that's getting a lot of buzz. Diana the Musical based on the life of Lady Diana Spencer was in previews 18 months ago when the pandemic dropped the curtain on Broadway. David Pogue tells us how a show is born. Once upon a time there was a musical about Princess Diana. There was a setback. The whole of Broadway was closing for a bit. And there was a happy ending. There's going to be a very beautiful movie of the show before the show is ever opened on Broadway. Hello, I'm Diana. Ahead on Sunday morning, the story of a Broadway show told in three acts. Mola Lange has the remarkable success story of Indra Nooyi, one of the most powerful executives in the world. Plus Steve Hartman, commentary from singer-songwriter David Byrne, and more on this Sunday morning, September 26th, 2021.

We'll be back in a moment. Family ties. There may be no stronger bond, but as Susan Spencer tells us, when that bond is broken, the pain can be everlasting.

Don't say it till you mean it, for real. Nashville musician Whit Hill doesn't typically write songs about her mother, but there is a trace of her mom in every note she writes. You described having some sort of psychic pull toward her.

What does that mean? I remember telling her when I was a little child, I said, Mom, we are connected by a silver band. There is a silver band of love between us. That silver band of love snapped when Whit became pregnant at 22. That silver band of love snapped when Whit became pregnant at 22. She turned to me and she said, get it taken care of. And that was a knife to the heart. And I said, no, I'm going to have this baby and it's going to be okay, Mom.

It's going to be okay. And then she said, well, then there can be nothing more between us. When she said those words, which must have been devastating, did you for one second think that this was going to be the literal truth? No.

But it was. Whit's mother cut off all contact with her daughter for four decades. Did you make an effort to get in touch with her? I wrote to her regularly for many years. Mom, the door is still open on my end. I miss you. Sometimes it's not too painful anymore, but I'd be willing to make all the necessary adjustments if you say the word.

Scores of letters like that one from 1985 all went unanswered. When people would ask you about your mother, what would you say? I would say it's a sad story, but we used to be very close and I have been disowned. I think when a family member walks away, it's almost more painful than if they died.

Jade Wu is a clinical psychologist at Duke University School of Medicine who has written about these broken relationships. This is one of the deepest types of human hurts that we can have. These are the things that we regret on our deathbed.

These are the things we spend sleepless nights thinking about. And it's something that happens more often than you might guess. This is a problem that affects everyone in our country and cuts across a lot of divides.

Professor Carl Pilimer is a Cornell University family sociologist. His new research is an eye-opening look at just how prevalent family estrangements are. I was absolutely stunned to find that 27 percent of Americans report that they are currently in an estrangement.

And that would translate to close to 70 million people. That's unbelievable. It is an extraordinary, almost epidemic-level problem. Sometimes the problem becomes a spectacle, from the feuding royals to famous Hollywood stars. It's horrible to have to do this.

To the siblings of an Arizona congressman who last year campaigned against their own brother. But most family estrangements go unacknowledged by the outside world. People are willing to talk about all kinds of things, but they really clam up if they're asked to talk about estrangement in families. Over and over, we heard from our respondents that they feel shame, they feel guilt, they feel stigmatized. When they tell someone that they haven't seen their son in 10 years, they imagine a cartoon bubble over the other person's head saying, what's wrong with you? And often that's the case.

Professor Pilimer hopes his recent book will change all that. What are the primary causes of it? If someone could tell you the exact causes of a problem as complex as estrangement, they should probably win a Nobel Prize or the equivalent. A strong risk factor for becoming estranged is very divergent values about religion, about lifestyle, about other issues. My mother had a very different outlook on things than I did.

It was just a different generation. Pat Wasalu never will forget the lunch she had with her mother in 1982. They started talking about unmarried couples living together.

I just said very conversationally, I have several friends who live together before getting married and they're doing just fine. And in the middle of this restaurant, she blew up as badly as I've ever seen it in my life. Her mother, who was known for such rages, stormed out of the restaurant. For Pat, that was it. I said, I am never going to speak to you again. You meant it from that moment on, literally.

I meant it. I was like, I am not going to put up with this again. Such family breakups, Professor Pilimer says, seem to be on the rise in the U.S. The bonds of obligation that might have affected our parents, you stick in this because it's family and blood is thicker than water.

That's something that's changed, especially for a lot of young people. I think in America, we have a sense of needing more boundaries and more distance. And that distance is often a bridge too far. According to a recent CBS News poll, four out of 10 people who have fallen out with family members say they have never reconciled. Still, psychologist Jade Wu says, don't give up hope. You may feel like you will never approve of your son's partner. You may never approve of your daughter's career.

You may never understand what transgender means. For example, but the whole point is that you need to hear their side of the story. And if you can listen with empathy, and even if you don't immediately agree, you can still say, I hear you.

I can see how deeply I hurt you. That is a huge, huge step towards healing. For Pat Wazalu, reconciliation came after a year of silence. Out of the blue, her mother called and apologized. What did it mean to you to have reconciled with her before she died? Oh, it was really important. It was really important. I literally don't know how I would have felt if I had never spoken to her again, and then I heard that she had passed away. If you think I've conveniently lost my memory of you, you're wrong. But for Whit Hill, there was no happy ending.

Four decades of disconnect ended with no hug, no explanation, just news last year that her mother had died. You'd think I wouldn't care after all this time, right? I wish I didn't. I wish I hadn't cared.

But I screamed and fell into my husband's arms and cried. I think we are hard-wired to have very strong feelings about our family. These are the people that are the closest to us. They are the ones that watched us grow up or raised us. Remember that every family has conflicts. But when there is conflict, be willing to put aside what's right and what's wrong, and be willing to apologize, perhaps again and again. Now we take you back in time for one spectacular spectacle.

Our walk through the pages of history is in the company of Seth Doan. They march from their own quarters or partiary of this city in the heart of Tuscany. These Italian cafe owners and teachers are the ones who are the ones who are the ones who are the ones who are the ones who are the ones These Italian cafe owners and teachers, mechanics and business people become in medieval costumes, nobility, knights and soldiers. While there is plenty of pageantry, their expressions reveal the competition at the root of this is real. Preparations have been underway for days in the Piazza Grande, as have practices for the main event, in which a knight on horseback hits a target to get points for his team. This spectacle, known as the Giostro del Saraccino, dates back to the Middle Ages, and twice a year the picturesque walled city of Arezzo is transformed, transformed, as is Enrico Vettovini, a local jeweler turned knight. We train all the year, all the year, for only four seconds. Four seconds is how long it'll take to run his horse Pinae across the square. We met at Vettovini's farm as he prepared for his 40th Saraccino joust.

That's a lot of jousts, but the pressure is the same. He's helped his team win 12 times, making him something of a local celebrity. Every day, everybody, oh, you make Saraccino, you make this. People recognize him.

Yes, every time. And this I don't like too much. You don't like it?

Not too much. This uncharacteristically humble knight says tourists only see the Saraccino with their eyes, whereas locals, he says, feel it in their hearts. We have this game in our bloods.

In your blood? Yes, this game reminds us our roots, our medieval roots. Historian Fabiana Peruzzi grew up in this ancient city. With everyone dressed up in these old costumes, for a while it seems the people actually match the backdrop. Yes, yes, also it seems to be back in time. Back to a time when Tuscan cities were fighting both each other and foreign forces, the Saraccino, Peruzzi explains, was a sort of war game. During times of peace, knights needed to train to keep in shape, so the best way to do this was through these war games.

And the town would come out to watch? Yes, of course, there were very important events. These games, a sort of twist on a joust with the prize of golden lance, have become a city-wide obsession. Divisions are clear and color-coded. Are you wearing green for a reason? No, actually my district is the yellow and blue one. You can't wear green today. That shade of green is tied to a team with 36 golden lances in its museum. Green and white are the only colors team manager Severio Cristini would wear on these days, supporting his quarter, Sant'Andrea. In my family, a part is to Sant'Andrea, another part to Porta Crucifera, that are enemy. In fact, during this period with my mom that is from Porta Crucifera, mom, today I won't talk with you, OK? Are you serious?

Yeah. Just outside the museum, the team was fueling up its fans, preparing a paretevo and a three-course meal for 700 people. It's part of yet another tradition, the pre-joust meal. Here, green and white was everywhere, including the nail polish on Laura Borri, who told us there was a division in her family too. Her sisters would never come to this dinner featuring Sant'Andrea's knight, Enrico Vedovini. The next morning on the big day, the teams paraded through town and were blessed by the bishop. And as spectators filled Piazza Grande, the streets behind it had a backstage feel.

That's where we found Enrico Vedovini. Now I'm ready. Now I prepare my oats and I go. It's a lot of emotion, a lot weighing on you. Big emotion now. They may be in costume for this joust, but those emotions are authentic. A fight even broke out over perceived foul play, and police had to be called in to settle things in this melee of medieval uniforms. Then it was Enrico Vedovini's turn.

He struck the center of the target but then dropped the lance, losing all of the points. Ultimately, Porta Crucifara made the winning run and fans flooded the field. It had been six years since they won.

The truth is, this reporter does have his leanings in this case. After all, I married in to a family from Arezzo, which is also divided. Passion is part of the tradition here.

At Enrico Vedovini's farm, we saw him training with his 12-year-old son, Giulio. Another generation prepared for the fight. Another generation preparing for another joust, just as they have for centuries. It had to happen again.

This is the second time, this is the second time in 32 years that a model has been smiling at the camera and crash. It's TV's longest-running game show, The Price is Right, is turning 50. We ask Lee Cowan to come on down. If you don't watch your back backstage at The Price is Right, the price just might be a limb. Everything is on the move back here. There's games, prizes, cars especially. All pushed into place as if every battery in Hollywood was dead.

But, despite the controlled chaos of CBS's oldest game show, we found host Drew Carey just minutes before air, as calm as he could be. What kind of prep do you do? Do you really? None.

Is that right? I don't do any prep. There's no prep. Here's your host, Drew Carey.

But as soon as the door opens, I know just what to do and I'm ready to go. Oh my goodness. 25 minutes. Oh my goodness. $25,000. Carey has made the show his own, despite the fact it's been on TV for 50 seasons.

50. Like everything's the same, but it's not. But it's not, right. Bob Barker. Bob Barker was the first host, starting way back in 1972. Think about that. Richard Nixon was president. Jane Fonda was taking home her first Oscar.

And Barker was giving away brand new cars that cost less than $3,000. Six. Six.

Let's see number six. To this day, there are few places on TV or really anywhere else where people can express such public displays of affection. I don't take it for granted. Even after all this time?

No. Are you kidding me? It's playing games all day. It's fans are some of the most loyal in the galaxy of game shows in our orbit.

Energy and persistence is the key. Rosendo Alvarez, come on down. Rosendo Alvarez has been to 180 tapings of The Price is Right. That's a record. So what kept you coming back?

Just for the fun of it. Congratulations, buddy. Nice to see you. He's made it on stage twice. The last time, winning big.

You got it. I've seen this guy in so many tapings since I've been here. He's been here 180 shows, just sitting in the audience.

Stand by, open it. That's part of The Price is Right's charm. Unlike reality TV, few here really root for anyone to lose. Get it, get it, get it. $25,000!

Especially the cast. Well, one thing Drew always says is, it's not our money. I know that's not our money, but he's right. He'll say it on TV. He's like, it's not my money.

I hope you win it all, you know. Rachel Reynolds and Manuel Arbelaz are two of The Price is Right's models. Not the only ones, mind you. There are now male models too. That's one of the big updates in the last 50 years. We have a lot of viewers that like Debit and James right now, yeah. But the biggest change, of course, was the host.

All right. Bob Barker had been at the helm of The Price is Right for 35 years in 2007, when he finally decided to retire. I've never met anybody who had a job that long.

Have you? Like, that's like unheard of anymore. Right. Cary remembers meeting Barker at this legendary old Hollywood haunt, Musso and Frank, to discuss the very real fear that when Barker left, The Price is Right might feel all wrong. Does that all seem like ancient history now for you? Uh. That big transition and everyone talking about it.

Yeah, it does. But at the same time, you know, every day it's from the Bob Barker studio and people still show up with Bob Barker shirts and with this picture on their shirts. Bob Barker! Bob Barker! Bob Barker! At the time, Barker was practically Hollywood royalty.

Cary was a blue-collar comic from Cleveland. A brand new car! Getting paid to give away prizes that growing up he could never imagine affording is still a little surreal.

When you're a guy in Cleveland that's just a regular guy, you can only dream of so much, realistically. Nobody in my neighborhood had a lot of money. If anybody ever said they got a new car, you would say, oh yeah, what year is it? Cary has always been funny on the outside, ever since he was a kid. When I was younger, I would memorize joke books. 2000 Insults for All Occasions was one of the big ones that I had.

But he was struggling on the inside. The self-described nerd as a teen, he says he was plagued with self-doubt and unworthiness. I had two suicide attempts when I was younger when I was like 18 and I was like really depressed and lost and I didn't know what I wanted to do with myself. Even in junior high, I would walk through the hall and instead of saying, excuse me, I would say, I'm sorry, sorry, sorry. Like I was sorry for existing.

He dropped out of college and joined the Marine Reserves. And when I was in boot camp, I was so excited to be part of a thing, you know, and I got a lot of pride back into myself and they could yell all they wanted. I didn't care. I was just so happy to be part of this. Like I was part of this big thing and I was doing it. Would you welcome Drew Carey?

His later successes are well-documented. Johnny Carson made him a stand-up standout. I'm the only one that still looks like his graduation picture though, so I'm pretty happy. I know it's funny and everything. I just don't think looking like this is worth that one joke. But anyway. Nine seasons of The Drew Carey Show made him a sitcom sensation. Man, Chuck, I really got to thank you for letting me in your carpool like this. Although it is kind of rude.

You haven't introduced me to your girlfriend. Why do you think that show lasted as long as it did? Oh man, a mismanagement at ABC. Christmas hoedown.

And the game show Whose Line Is It Anyway? Christmas is a holiday that I really hate. There's nothing about it to which I can relate. So every December 25th, I kick off my shoes and go down to the deli and hang out with the Jews.

It made him realize that just being himself was all it took. I didn't start out doing stand-up and think, oh, I'm going to have my own sitcom someday. I couldn't even dream of it. I couldn't even think of that.

Much less. The price is right. You ever pinch yourself that all this has happened? All the time. It's crazy.

All the time. There it goes. Ten thousand in the middle. Ten thousand in the middle.

So here's to another 50 years for a TV time capsule. And to average Joes everywhere. Who on The Price Is Right can win big.

Including the host. From Steve Hartman, a story on the care and feeding of Louisiana linemen. After Hurricane Ida, linemen from across the country came here to southern Louisiana to restore power and found an angel in the flood. Hot lunch. A woman actually named Angel Flood. We got gumbo, y'all.

I just knew it from the beginning. I was like, we've got to feed these people. So under her own blue tarped roof, Angel began prepping lunch for the linemen working in and around Houma, Louisiana. Couldn't stand the thought of them eating cold processed food. There was no restaurants. Yeah, nothing in Houma was open. No power, no water. So if you wanted food, came to you.

Came to the women of Louisiana. Yeah. And that's the thing. Somebody's here. It's not just Angel. Come in.

Not by a long shot. Good morning. We turning and burning.

Turning and burning. While we were there, seemed every 15 minutes, someone else showed up with a side dish. A scene that repeats daily here in Houma and across Louisiana. It's good?

It's good. OK. On this Facebook group, we found thousands of women and men helping the linemen in every parish affected by the storm. They've been preparing meals, offering rooms, even doing laundry. It's like checking your chickens and you got an egg. Angel tells the men to leave their dirty clothes on the porch and has them fluffed and folded by morning. Thank you.

You're welcome. For linemen like Jared Collie of Winter Garden, Florida, this treatment is unbelievable. Potato salad. They have been an absolute godsend to us. Y'all want drinks? I've been on a lot of storms. I've been doing this for quite some time. We've never been treated this good before. Not like this.

That's pretty cool. But Angel says it's the least she can do. Keep working hard. These guys put in 16 hour days, seven days a week, away from their families. We love y'all. And in talking to them, Angel has learned it's rarely about the money. It's about duty. If you're a lineman and you don't take a call to go on storm is what they call it.

It's like being in the army and turning down deployment. So in Louisiana, they're now recognizing linemen for the heroes that they are. They're helping us to rebuild the community that we love so much.

And that's how you restore the power of gratitude. Kind of don't like Maggie Hess. For more from this week's conversation, follow the Takeout with Major Garrett on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the new season on Sunday morning.

And here again is Jane Pauley. At tonight's Tony Awards, it's probably fair to say that Many Eyes will be on Adrian Warren, nominated for best actress in a musical for her portrayal of Tina Turner. She's on Broadway with Maurice Dubois. It feels incredible to be back.

It feels like a blessing and I'm happy to be able to do what I love. What Adrian Warren loves is performing in a theater filled with people and portraying one of rock and roll's biggest stars in the reopening Broadway show Tina, the Tina Turner musical. And Broadway loves Adrian Warren. She's nominated for best actress in a musical for her portrayal of Tina Turner. And Broadway loves Adrian Warren. She's nominated for a Tony Award as best actress in a musical.

And the show itself is nominated for 12 Tonys, including best musical. Did you forget stuff? Yes. Yeah. I've forgotten a lot.

I've forgotten a lot. Adrian Warren has been becoming Tina Turner for more than six years now and Patience has been the name of the game. I've done the show for so long and I think I put so much pressure on myself, pressure to do right by her, pressure to do right by her fans. And now I feel a bit more ownership over it in a way that I didn't feel that before.

And now I think I can actually have a bit more fun. Before the pandemic began, Warren shared with us the pivotal moment in her transformation to Tina Turner. Right here, my back is to the audience. In the beginning, the first scene. In the beginning.

Right. And right when the lights go down here for me, and I hear that crowd. That's when I become Tina. That's when I become Tina.

The musical tells the turbulent story of Tina Turner's life from her difficult childhood in Nutbush, Tennessee, to her discovery and horrific treatment by her husband and producer Ike Turner. How bad did it get? It was, I had to be really careful what I said and how I said it. And I didn't want to start a fight because it was always a black eye, a broken nose, a busted lip, a rib.

It was pure torture. Tina Turner is one of the executive producers. I've looked up to her for as long as I can remember. There wasn't a time where my parents didn't play her music in my household. And I had never seen another woman sing rock and roll that looks like me. Hello there, stranger.

From their very first meetings, Turner made sure she would be there for any advice that Warren needed. You know, I didn't see you dance yet. I know you haven't. Can you see the, can you do the pony? Yes, of course. Do it a little bit.

Right now? Yeah. You know, from the beginning, she, she asked our producer, she said, let Adrienne come and sit with me and tell her she can ask me anything she wants. And I thought, what?

You do it from the foot, not from your shoulders. And then when you go faster and faster and faster, and then your head goes... One of the first things she said to me is there are no shortcuts to hard work. And I thought, oh, I don't really know what she means by that. But now I do.

Is it all or nothing? Turner says she told Warren, don't try to be me, find my essence. And in order to find that essence, Adrienne Warren turned to video of Turner's classic performances. How does her body move when she's just grooving? Her hands are often always here.

They're often a little loose, but she like makes points and points at things and points at the audience. And Warren says she was shocked by something else. There are a lot of videos that you can look back and you can actually see bruises on her. She would say, Adrienne, you see that under my eye there?

That was he had just punched me in the face before. And she tried to cover it up with makeup. Being Tina Turner took its toll, pain to her ankle and knee, a herniated disc.

She hardly ever leaves the stage for the show's two hours and 45 minutes, performing an astonishing 24 numbers. So what happens to your muscles, your mind when you don't perform for a year? I actually had to forget about myself as an entertainer for a little bit. I actually asked the question of who am I without that. Come up with any answers?

Yes, I think so. I am someone who cares a lot about what's happening in this world, in this country, cares a lot about my community. The silence around black lives infuriated me in a way that actually made me want to stop performing. At one point, Broadway was silent about my life and about whether or not it matters. We were having to ask permission to be seen as equal, and the industry didn't really acknowledge us for years until now.

Which explains why she'll walk off with a special Tony tonight for her work with the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, a group Adrienne Warren co-founded five years ago to combat racism. So ultimately, in your mind, what does social justice look like when it comes to the theater? It looks like you and I as theater owners. It looks like you and I as producers.

As producers, it looks like black narratives being more about watch how well we sing and how well we dance. But what is it to be us in everyday life? We're being acknowledged. So now we're here, you see us, and we're not going anywhere, and we're going to continue to hold people accountable, and we're not going to shut up. In my journey of learning how to be Tina, somewhere in there I've been able to find myself.

Yeah. Curtain going up on Broadway. A momentous time we've been waiting for. We have thoughts from singer-songwriter David Byrne. I've been a performer all my life. At some point in my life, I realized that these experiences changed me as a person. I realized this was a collective kind of ritual going on that was healing for me.

And sometimes it had a similar effect on the audiences as well. Most of the time this experience seems to be not about me as an individual, but about me and my collaborators enabling a group social experience. We act as a catalyst, an enabler of a moment that lets everyone experience something that allows them to transcend themselves for a moment. Becoming part of a larger group than just I is a wonderful experience. It might be in a music club, in a Broadway theater, a dance club, or at a sports event. The sociologist Emile Durkheim called this phenomena collective efflorescence.

He wrote about it a hundred years ago as something that happens in religious ceremonies. Now I won't presume that what we do in the theater or in concerts is necessarily religious or spiritual, but it partakes of the same part of our nature as social animals. It's essential to who we are as humans. We're not merely individuals alone or gazing at our screens. Much of who we are is what happens when we're together with other people. This part of ourselves has been denied us, at least in this country, for a year and a half. It's been like a part of our bodies, our souls, ourselves, has been cut off, taken from us.

We've been not quite whole. Now we're beginning to recapture that experience, that part of ourselves again. The feeling of becoming whole again is ecstatic. Audiences erupt in spontaneous applause, not just for us performers, but for themselves, for the collective joy they missed.

Laughing together, cheering, being moved all together. We on stage feel the same way. Let's hope this can all be the same again. We on stage feel the same way.

Let's hope this can all continue and we can become completely human again. With Broadway reopening, the curtain is finally going up on the highly anticipated musical, Diana. David Pogue has a preview. Snap, click, snap, click, lady, die.

Damn, I see why you called Charlie's eye. This is the story of a Broadway musical about Princess Diana. Hello, I'm Diana.

You probably know the plot already. She was a phenomenon and she single-handedly transformed the royal family from basically a domestic institution into a global firm. Andrew Morton is the author of the 1992 book that revealed Diana's unhappiness.

Oh, thank you. Oh, Mrs. Parker Bowles, but call me Camilla. Charles and I are old chums.

Prince Charles had had this relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles. As she famously said, there were three of them in the marriage, so it was rather crowded. The story of this musical's journey falls neatly into three acts. Act one, a show is born. I just happened to be reading about her and I thought, this is a great idea for a story and a musical. Composer David Bryan and scriptwriter Joe DiPietro began writing the show in 2016. It's a show where there are no villains.

It's just people trying to make things work in a very difficult situation. There are no villains? You're a villain? You're the guy who rhymed Camilla with Godzilla. But it's through Diana's eyes, right? Do you guys know where you are on your walk?

I think it's right before you start doing the ha's. They approached Christopher Ashley, artistic director of the La Jolla Playhouse in California, about directing. Our story takes us from when Diana was 19, the day she meets Prince Charles. I'm sorry, who are you? Lady Diana Spencer. Lady Diana Spencer. To the divorce. So it really is a story of a marriage. Yeah, it's a little soap opera-y.

Plus it has history. For me, the moment that I really got interested in Diana was when I saw the picture of her shaking hands with a young man with AIDS and that really moved me a lot. Now all they had to do was find themselves a Diana. Gina walked in and she was absolutely definitive in her first audition.

My whole preparation began with watching all the countless YouTube videos we have. And then a pose for the cameras. How did she move? How did she hold herself? How did she speak? They found their Diana in Gina de Waal. And how about the accent? I mean, yes, I'm British, but she has a totally different accent. I think my normal accent definitely fluctuates a lot, but Diana sort of talks a lot more forward, you know, very forward and quite nasal and very articulated. For Diana aficionados, Diana's biggest co-star might well be her costumes. This is the closest to my heart of any show that I've ever worked on. See, Lady Diana is wowing Britain.

It was just the beginning. William Ivey Long has designed the costumes for 75 Broadway shows, but he really wanted this one. Because the main character is known for her fashion.

She is. I mean, the wedding dress is famous. The revenge dress is famous.

The John Travolta dress. She was famous for, among other things, her fashion sense. Everyone wanted to see her. Everyone wanted to be her. And how many outfits have you made for Diana? Princess Diana on stage is wearing 35 different outfits. Hold on, hold on, hold on.

By my calculations, that's less than four minutes per outfit. How do you do that? Is it velcro? It's a secret. It's velcro.

I can guarantee you there's not an ounce of velcro in any of these things. After a successful tryout at the La Jolla Playhouse, it was all systems go for a Broadway opening in March 2020. And then the curtain fell. So we arrive ready for our daily note session. And our lead producer gave us the news that the Hall of Broadway was closing for a bit. COVID-19 closed the Diana musical before it had even opened.

Act Two, Netflix. Chris, we meet again. We do, six months later. The last time I spoke to you, we were in this room under very different circumstances. Give us a concise history of what's happened since. So the creative team started meeting the day after Broadway shut down. Great. Go to Bethany. We wrote a new song and really did major reworking of the first act.

Frenzy fails the night. And then the Netflix possibility came up. The show's producers had struck a deal to film this Broadway musical that had never actually opened on Broadway. And so, in the thick of the pandemic, in August 2020, the cast spent four weeks living in an isolation bubble, rehearsing for the Netflix shoot in their empty theater. Some of you might say hello to my husband.

He adores Wales. And nobody said, who's going to buy a ticket to the show if they've seen it on TV? I think that's turned out not to be true. If you think about the impact that the Chicago movie had, it's still running on Broadway, the live show.

I do actually think people want to see something live for themselves that they've experienced on film. Act three, back to Broadway. A few weeks ago, we sat down once again with Gina de Waal.

She'll be putting on Diana's blonde wigs once again when the show finally opens in November. How was your pandemic? Longer than expected. I can't really think of what it would be like. I mean, you are re-rehearsing a show that you've already re-rehearsed twice.

You know, it's like a third wedding. At this moment, you've been with the show for five years. You still don't know if it's a hit. We really don't. But we're going to find out really quickly, really quickly. Because the release of Netflix means we're not just going to be judged by the New York stage critics.

It means we're going to be judged by everybody all at once, which I'm kind of pleased about. The Netflix film of Diana will become available on October 1st. The Broadway show begins previews November 2nd. At least, if things don't change again. Now, I hate to be that guy. But right now, this story has a nice three-act structure.

Show meets Broadway, show loses Broadway, show gets Broadway. But this Delta variant, is there any worry? Well, of course there's worry. I mean, how could you not be worried? But that is just the nature of being an artist. You have to sort of surrender and have faith. She embodies the American dream, rising from humble beginnings to become a Fortune 500 CEO.

She's also struggled with every working mother's dilemma, juggling career and family. Correspondent Mola Lengi talks with PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi. You've got an incredible collection here. Indra Nooyi's office in Greenwich, Connecticut... Lionel Richie signed my 12-string. ...looks like a shrine to rock and roll.

But this one is the one I love the most. Blake Shelton signed it. In fact, Nooyi, the former CEO of PepsiCo, one of the most iconic brands in the world, was something of a rock star herself in her native India. I was in an all-girls rock band when I was in high school. Remember, I was in a Catholic school, so songs that were appropriate to those nuns. But they were good songs. The nuns picked the band name? The nuns picked the name Log Rhythms, because we were studying log rhythm tables.

Nothing says rock and roll like nuns picking your name, your band name. Nooyi went on to become a rock star in the corporate world. Tapped to lead PepsiCo in 2006, she was one of only a handful of female CEOs at Fortune 500 companies. In 2018, when I retired as CEO of the Fortune 500, out of 500 companies, there were 41 women CEOs. Now you can read it as great progress from zero to 41, or you can say, in 25 years, we moved from zero percent to about eight and a half percent. Is that progress?

Yes and no. Though technically retired, she's still hard at work, trying to improve not just one company, but all companies. How? Well, simple, really. More women. Women are 50 percent of the population. Women get more college degrees than men. They're 70 percent of high school valedictorians.

They are over-represented. But at some point, their career paths derail. Today, women account for roughly a quarter of senior leadership jobs. Nooyi takes aim at this disparity in a new memoir, chronicling her self-admittedly improbable rise to becoming, as Fortune Magazine described, one of the most powerful women in the world. Do you consider your time as CEO of PepsiCo a success?

I'd say it was a pretty good success. Did bold things, did transformational things, did things that people at that time criticized me for but now call it prescient. She pushed the more than 100-year-old company to put families first by focusing on challenges facing women in the workplace, offering generous paid family leave and help with childcare. The biological clock and the career clock are in conflict. Some people are delaying childbirth for many, many years.

For many, many years, you know, freezing their eggs or just not having children at all. Others are saying, I can't keep working. I can't go through this rat race. So my point is, we've got to make it less of a rat race.

That's one thing. Her ideas on family are rooted in her own experience, one that began in a strict but loving multi-generational home in Chennai, India. A family that believed the girls should be allowed to soar as much as the boys made a huge difference, huge difference.

In 1978, Nui was accepted into Yale Business School. So off to America she went, some 8,000 miles from everything she had ever known. One of the few women and even fewer minorities in her class, she arrived on campus to a rude awakening. Nobody's smiling to welcome you. I'm like, oh my God, what have I done? And I'm starving. How do I get food? I go to the grocery store.

Ultimately, I bought a loaf of bread, a tomato and some potato chips. And I hated crying, saying, what have I done? Turns out, she knew exactly what she was doing. Nui graduated, got married to her husband Raj, and had two daughters, Prita and Tara, all while working more than full time, eventually landing a job at PepsiCo and climbing the corporate ladder. In 2000, she was appointed president of the company.

She rushed home to tell her family the news, but was quickly humbled by her mother. She said, you know, I don't care if you're president or on the board. I don't even know what that means. But let me just tell you, when you walk in this door, you're a mother, you're a wife, you're a daughter, you're a daughter in law. That's all you are in this house. So please do me a favor.

Just leave that crown in the garage. She says it was a critical life lesson. That's why I always say work and life is not a balance.

It's a juggling act. And how you juggle this every day is the big challenge. It's a skill we have to develop. Look, trade offs are part of everybody's life. Being a mom, being an executive.

Um, how do I be the best at everything? A painful emotional trade offs. So I think back at some of those and there is hurt. I feel pain. I feel a loss.

This one was great. It said, dear mom, happy anniversary. While she has forgiven herself.

You may be a little grouch, but for a mother, you're nice. The reminders of time with family that she traded for time in the office are still present. When I found them, they were so painful and poignant and emotional. I thought I should keep them very, very carefully.

These sacred artifacts are at once a mother's mementos of her children and a CEO's lesson in sacrifices made for success. Dear mom, I really love you. I really would appreciate if you came home early.

Please, please, please, please, please, please. If you say yes, I love you again. You kept these things these all these years. Why?

I don't know. I cannot get myself to not look at them regularly. You still look at them.

I look at them. Despite the tough choices, she says she has no regrets and wants the same for other women. And while, yes, her mission is gender equity, Indra Nooyi insists it could also be good business. I approach it as an economist first rather than just a feminist because and as such a lost opportunity. Women are smart. They're driven. They want the power of the purse. They want to work.

They want economic freedom. Let's harness their capabilities. Thank you for listening. Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning. Put our mind to something we can usually figure it out. What people are saying and what we kind of know analytically and empirically is our strategic situation, our military situation is not being matched up with what we're doing. Follow Intelligence Matters wherever you get your podcasts.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-01-29 08:43:23 / 2023-01-29 09:03:14 / 20

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