Streaming Wars, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sigourney Weaver

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I'm Jane Pauley, and this is Sunday Morning. A new season is upon us in television, movies, theater, books, and music. Summer is history. It's time for some coming attractions. With the pandemic taking an increasingly lower profile, things do seem to be getting back to normal. But not everything. Take the way we get our home entertainment. It's a new day, right? Or is it? California has been assessing our options. During the pandemic, TV was one of our safest companions with seemingly endless program options to keep us occupied.

And that's a problem. If you have 10,000 titles to choose from, how much time are you going to want to spend looking for something? People just want to watch something.

Later on Sunday morning, the streaming wars. His was one of the most memorable books for any season. Ted Koppel takes stock with bestselling author Mitch Albom. When it comes to popular biographies, greatest number bought and read, you'd have to include Abe Lincoln, certainly Winston Churchill. And then of course, there's Maury Schwartz. How many copies is the book sold?

18 million, something like that. The ongoing phenomenon of Tuesdays with Maury ahead on Sunday morning. We're talking with three giants of entertainment this morning, all women with very different callings.

I'd say we have close to 40 animals. Lee Cowan talks with Winona Judd, struggling to make sense of her mother Naomi's recent death. I did not know that she was at the place she was at when she ended it. Gwyneth Paltrow marks a birthday milestone with Tracy Smith. As a woman, you turn 50 and maybe we all give ourselves permission to be exactly who we are.

And we stop trying to be what other people are expecting us to be. And I'll check in with Sigourney Weaver, who's having a banner year at the movies. I usually have something simmering.

And so it looks like I threw some magic beans out the window and they all suddenly went like that. Our look ahead to the new season has something for everyone. David Martin previews a new dramedy based on a true story about a most unlikely beer run in the midst of the Vietnam War. Plus a report from Steve Hartman and more on this Sunday morning for the new season, September 25th, 2022. And we'll be right back. Once upon a time, some of you may recall, there were three channels for television. Soon, three became 300. And now, our choices are quite literally almost limitless.

We begin our preview of this new season with Kellefasane. Fishy, fishy, fishy! On one fish?

For more than four decades, PBS and Sesame Street were inseparable. The letter B! B! B! B!

Beat it, will ya? When the show was first started, it literally was supposed to be preschool on TV. How many of you have heard of school?

Me! Universal Pre-K was called Sesame Street and PBS back in that day. Steve Youngwood is the CEO of Sesame Workshop. It is a responsibility, but it's a fun responsibility.

Hey Count, how are you? Though older episodes still air on public television, the beloved children's show moved to HBO, the premium cable network, in 2015. Four years later, it moved again to HBO Max, an online streaming service. Youngwood says today's toddlers are very sophisticated consumers. You know, they don't understand Tune In to This Time or That Time. They need to fit their schedule and their lifestyle. There's something happening.

Something cool. During the pandemic, there was an influx of viewers. The so-called streaming wars heated up between services like HBO Max, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV Plus, Hulu, and our parent companies, Paramount Plus. People are watching more than ever.

Alex Weprin writes for The Hollywood Reporter. It's just that that watching is spread across more apps, more channels, more platforms. It's all fragmented in a way that it just wasn't before. He says what we're watching affects how we watch it. When it comes to news and sports, people still watch that live. And so those are the things that are kind of keeping the traditional television business models alive, whether it's broadcast or cable.

And the traditional model is all about appointment viewing, right? Yeah, it's getting people to tune in at 9 p.m. on Thursday or if there's a breaking news event to kind of watch enrolling coverage. To major advertisers, catching everyone around the TV is not just about togetherness. They want millions of people watching the same thing at the same time, all watching the same car ad, kind of something that you really can't match in streaming where the viewership is diffused across thousands of titles. More choice for subscribers means more challenges for the streaming services as viewers pick between the many options. This year, Netflix announced that its era of seemingly endless growth was over. Does that mean that people are getting a little disenchanted with the content or are they just running out of humans?

I think it's partly because there's a lot more competition now. Netflix for years kind of had streaming to themselves. There were other players, but no one had the depth of the library that they had.

Of course, those libraries aren't quite as permanent as the term would suggest. This summer, many Sesame Street fans were startled when HBO Max pulled 200 episodes from its archive. Steve Youngwood suggested the move may have been related to changes at HBO's former parent company, WarnerMedia. They're going through a new merger with Discovery and they're going through some shifts. But overall, Nielsen will show you that we're a top 15 show on the whole service. Finding there's a limit to the number of subscriptions viewers will pay for, streamers are looking for ways to cut back. The average viewer has between three and four subscriptions according to Deloitte. And that's a problem because there's a lot more than three or four streaming services out there. So it seems like one of the promises of Netflix and some of these other networks was that finally we wouldn't have to watch ads anymore.

Yeah, and that's certainly changing. Increasingly, every streaming service, including Netflix, is going to launch advertising. Ad supported options can be cheaper or even free, like Amazon's FreeV and Paramount's Pluto TV. Essentially, a throwback to the way TV used to be. The old business model of television was so good and generated so much cash and so much profit. And the new model is actually so much harder to make a profit on because the cost of adding one more subscriber is so much higher. Which may be one reason why Amazon Prime recently became the exclusive home of the NFL's Thursday Night Football, an example of a streaming service starting to act more like an old-fashioned TV network.

Throughout the industry, Weprin predicts increasing consolidation. And as for those limitless program options... In the old days, they used to say about cable, 200 channels and nothing to watch. And sometimes it still feels like there's nothing to watch. You know, some things always hold true. And in theory, there should be something you want to watch.

But in practice, if you have 10,000 titles to choose from, how much time are you going to want to spend looking for something? People just want to watch something. Often, something familiar. Oh, hey, welcome to Sesame Street.

How much do networks even matter? Everyone knows Sesame Street. Everyone loves Sesame Street. And I suspect that a lot of people would follow Sesame Street wherever it went. Sesame Street is arguably the most iconic brand in children's television. If they left HBO Max and went to Netflix or Paramount Plus, there's no doubt that people would watch Sesame Street on those services. They're in that unique position where the brand of the show, Sesame Street, is actually more recognizable than the streaming services that provide them. Sesame Street's not going anywhere. Steve Youngwood of Sesame Workshop tries not to worry too much about the streaming wars. Sesame Street was brought to you today by the letter S. We're good at doing what we do really well, which is making high quality educational content. We will partner with PBS. We will partner with HBO Max.

And if we do something and if we do something right, we know we will be noticed and we know it will matter. Goodbye! Okay, now!

Cookie! Now, that satisfying ending! It's an unlikely dramedy about the Vietnam War. David Martin tells us all about the greatest beer run ever. I had 50 years of telling stories about this, and 99 percent of the people didn't believe me. But Chicky Donahue's tall tale of the greatest beer run ever really did happen. What are we doing?

We're going to run for our lives. It is now a motion picture directed by Academy Award winner Peter Farrelly. A guy who brought beer to his friends in Vietnam, I just immediately thought that's a movie. What was it about that story that connected with you? It was the sheer, you know, hubris, the stupidity to even attempt it. But then, to actually go through with it, pull it off, I loved that guy. And what exactly did Chicky pull off?

I'm going to Vietnam, and I'm bringing a beer! That's Zac Efron as the young Chicky spending way too much time at his local bar in New York City. Chicky, had you ever heard of Zac Efron?

Honestly, no. So here's the good news. He says you nailed him.

Right. So what do you think you nailed about Chicky? I think I understood a part of why he did it. It comes from a pure place inside of him. You got a good heart, Chicky.

It's your brain that I'm worried about. So where did this crazy idea come from? You don't have to go further than Colonel Lynch. He was not really a colonel, but a former GI who tended bar and hated seeing protests against the Vietnam War while boys from the neighborhood were fighting and dying over there. Do these protesters not know that our soldiers see that and that it's broadcast all over the world?

In the movie, he is played by Bill Murray. I'd like to go over to Vietnam and track down all the boys in the neighborhood and just give them a beer. To the boys! To the boys!

I could do that. Do what? Bring them beer. I'll go over there, I know.

I know how to get there. Donahue was a merchant seaman, so he signed on to an ammo ship bound for Vietnam and set out to find six guys, which became four when one was killed and another sent home with malaria. Did it occur to you that this might be pretty hard to find four guys? I thought it would be impossible, but I had to try.

And if I failed, I failed. Who would take the opportunity to come over here 10,000 miles just to bring us a beer? Yet here they are today, Chickie and his buddies, at the world premiere of The Greatest Beer Run Ever. 500,000 soldiers and Marines in country at that time, and he finds four of us. Amazing. What are the odds? Maybe you're no one.

Maybe you're no one. Tommy Collins was the first. Ah! I said, what the hell are you doing here? He says I came to bring you a beer. Incredibly, Chickie had barely stepped off his ammo ship when he found Collins. Guys, this is my buddy from back home, Chickie Donahue. That's some pretty screwy friends, Collins. This screwy friend just came 10,000 nautical miles to deliver your ass a sudsy thank you card. So as crazy as this idea was, it just seems to have been blessed with good luck. I don't believe in coincidences anymore. Somebody wanted it to happen.

Sticking out like a sore thumb in his Madras shirt and jeans, Donahue got around Vietnam by talking his way aboard military flights. The constant question is, who the hell are you? I'd whisper to them.

I'd say, Major, if I told you the truth, you wouldn't believe me. And it worked. It worked. If you don't believe him, ask Rick Dugan. I took the picture, and the picture proves that he was dead. Dugan and his platoon were manning an ambush site near the border with North Vietnam. He found me, which is a miracle in itself.

We were never in the same place for one or two or three days at a time. The moment when Donahue found Dugan, You shouldn't be here. You think this is funny? was a turning point for Farrelly in his direction of the movie.

It's light in the beginning because you think, how silly is this? But the reality of it is not silly. You want a taste of Vietnam?

You're about to get it. Like the rest of America, Chicky found out it was easier to get into Vietnam than get out. But his incredible luck held. He was walking down a jungle road, and who should drive up? Kevin MacLune. Chicky freakin' Donahue? Who's that? It's MacLune. Who? What the hell are you doing here?

Looney? This is like a free-fire zone. And I pulled up next to him, and I said, I said, get in, get in.

I said, Chick, holy Jesus, Mary and Joseph. I found it looks as though the entire war has been fought here. When the 1968 Tet Offensive hit, Chicky still had one more name on his list, Bobby Pappas, based at a huge ammunition dump attacked by the Viet Cong. They blew up $8 million worth of ammunition in eight seconds.

A million dollars a second, you know? It was a rude awakening. The Vietnam War was nowhere near one, and Pappas started taking it out on Chicky. I started giving him the business. Oh, yeah, the war is over, the war is over.

Take a look at this place. It just looked like a horror show, you know? When he was yelling at me, I'm smiling. I had a big grin, because I thought he was dead. And here he was, cursing me.

Nothing wrong with this guy. So your character has the best line in the movie. Yes. He says to Chicky, you got a good heart.

But just your brain I'm worried about is going to get you killed. Right. Did you really say that?

Yes. I was scared for him, you know? I didn't know how he was going to get home, where he was going to go.

You know by now Chicky did get home. What effect did this long, strange trip have on you? I was a staunch supporter of the war, but when I got there, I saw things that just weren't right, and it was just false, totally false. Fair to say you came home with a different view of the war?

Yeah. The truth. So which is more improbable, your trip, or the fact that after all these years, a movie gets made out of it? The movie.

That's more improbable. I don't get it. Why are you doing this?

It's like you said, everyone's doing something. This movie is going to be how most people remember you. You good with that? Oh, yeah. I did the right thing.

I was letting these kids die without me helping them, and that's what I wanted to do. It's the new season on Sunday morning, and here again is Jane Pauley. Something big happened 50 years ago this Tuesday.

Tracy Smith is in conversation with actor and entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow. When you were, let's say, 20, 30 years old, how did you see what you'd be doing at 50? I don't think I thought about it. I thought, you know, 50 is like you're dead at that point. Okay, she's clearly far from dead, but Gwyneth Paltrow, who will indeed turn 50 this week, is already well into a second life. So you beat everybody to the office, basically.

I usually beat people to the office. She's founder and CEO of the lifestyle brand Goop. It's a website. I founded Goop 13 years ago to unearth cutting-edge ideas that could really help us optimize our lives. TV shows.

We thought it was about time that we take this approach to sex and intimacy. And lots of products aimed at making you feel and look good. The Goop flagship store is in Santa Monica, California, where Paltrow was raised by mom, actress Blythe Danner, and dad, producer-director Bruce Paltrow. Growing up watching her mom, Paltrow knew she wanted to act, and success came early. Oh, happy dagger. This is thy sheath.

They rest and let me die. She won an Academy Award for Best Actress for 1998's Shakespeare in Love. You won an Oscar at 26. I know. It's crazy when I think about that now. At the time, I thought I was like a full adult, you know? What do you think that did to your mind?

F*** it up. In what way? Well, I think to reach that kind of pinnacle at that age and have that much scrutiny and attention.

And then it's like no matter what you do after that, you can't really win, right? It's like you have a few years of it's like nothing's going to live up to that. It's just a lot to hold.

She continued to star in movies for the next decade. This is Marge Sherwood. I'm sorry, what is it?

Ripley. How do you do? How do you do, Marge? How long do you intend to stay here? I don't know. Are you ever coming home?

Maybe not. What are you doing here? Avoiding government agents. Are you by yourself? Where'd you get that dress? Well, it was a birthday present from you, actually. But her father's untimely death in 2002 put her on a new path. When did you start caring about wellness?

I'll tell you exactly. When my father got cancer and I was helping him one day, you know, feeding him with a syringe and feeding tube, and it struck me like what is in this can that I'm injecting directly into his stomach? And it was the first time I made a connection between food, wellness.

I'll never forget that moment. When I started Goop in 2008, I was like my calling is something else besides, you know, making out with Matt Damon on screen or whatever. She started researching and sharing what she learned, and it turned into the website Goop. Her initials, plus two O's, because she'd heard successful Internet companies have double O's in their name. What all do you do in here? Our scientists come in here, there's lots of mixing and testing and textures and fragrances.

Today, the company is reported to be a $250 million business. It's also a controversial one. Some doctors and scientists have slammed Goop and Paltrow for recommending methods and products that aren't scientifically proven. What do you say to people who say that you're promoting pseudoscience? I genuinely don't understand where that comes from because we don't do that. We've never done that.

I mean, especially when we started, there were so many modalities and ways of achieving wellness that had no scientific backing but that have worked in India for thousands of years or worked in China. So I think it was like a way to take shots at us, but there's nothing that we talk about that's actually that wacky. Oh, come on, it's a little, some of it's maybe a little wacky.

Okay, like what? Maybe the egg. Goop used to say that a $66 jade egg inserted vaginally could regulate hormones and tighten the pelvic floor. They were investigated by a California medical task force for false claims in 2018 and settled the case for $145,000.

They admitted no wrongdoing but offered full refunds and tweaked the product description, and they're still selling the egg online. There's a whole industry now around strengthening your pelvic floor. We were just early. Paltrow says she and Goop are often misunderstood because they're ahead of their time. We would talk about something and the Internet would freak out, and then six months later or two years later it would be widely adopted. Give me an example. Well, the gluten-free thing is a perfect example of that. People thought that was totally nuts.

There are a bunch of examples of it. Where at the time people were like, oh, that Gwyneth. Yeah, this crazy girl talking about gluten-free or getting a nice divorce. Yes, the divorce.

When Paltrow and musician Chris Martin announced their conscious uncoupling in 2014, eyes rolled, but they've raised their two kids together while remaining good friends. I mean, as much as people said, oh, conscious uncoupling, you guys really did figure it out. I think we did.

I think we did. And he's completely my family, and I love him, and he would do anything for me. I would do anything for him. We would do anything for our kids.

We really did commit to wanting our children to be as unscathed by the divorce as possible. Paltrow now has a blended family with husband TV producer Brad Falchuk and his two kids. Her oldest, Apple, just left for college. How's that?

Oh, wow. That is, you know, I know it sounds nuts, but it feels almost as profound as giving birth. And as she approaches another milestone, Gwyneth Paltrow seems to be handling it well. As a woman, you turn 50, and maybe we all give ourselves permission to be exactly who we are, and we stop trying to be what other people are expecting us to be, and we kind of exhale into this other thing. Have you given yourself permission to be who you are?

Yes, but it's taken me time. This is Intelligence Matters with former acting director of the CIA, Michael Morell. This week, Iran expert Karim Saajipour talks about the potential new nuclear deal between Iran and the United States. It's a tough political argument to say we should be easing pressure on Iran and lifting sanctions against them.

It's a much easier political argument to say we should be tougher on this regime whose identity is premised on death to Israel and death to America. Follow Intelligence Matters wherever you get your podcasts. The Good Fight, the final season, now streaming exclusively on Paramount+. It's a book for the record books, one of the best-selling memoirs of all time. And its author, Mitch Albom, is taking stock with our senior contributor, Ted Koppel. Tonight, Maury, lessons on living. This is Nightline. When I was at ABC News, we ended up producing three Nightline programs with a retired university professor who was dying of ALS, often known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Some mornings I'm angry and bitter, but it doesn't last too long.

Then I get up and say, I want to live. But what we could never have anticipated was that those conversations with Maury Schwartz would become among the most popular programs we had ever done. And that, it turned out, was just a beginning.

Because among those viewers was a young sports writer, Mitch Albom. I had been so close to him in college. I took every class he offered. I promised him the day I graduated that I would always stay in touch, and then I broke that promise. So for me, it was a question of, oh my God, he's dying.

What do I do now, and how do I try to make up for what I haven't done in the past? Mitch began visiting Maury weekly every Tuesday, as it turned out, until Maury died. And then Mitch wrote a book, Tuesdays with Maury. You may have heard of it.

You're a good writer, Mitch, but you're not Mark Twain, for God's sake. So what is the chemistry after all these years now? How many copies has the book sold? 18 million, something like that. 18 million. Has there ever been a biographical work that sold more? A memoir?

Not too many. Tuesdays with Maury was first published 25 years ago. Its ongoing popularity was celebrated recently at the National Book Festival in Washington.

This is yellowed with age. It's probably my third copy. Your third copy? Yeah. I read Tuesdays with Maury sophomore year of high school. So I was homeworked. Yes, but I enjoyed it.

It has crossed all kinds of cultural, ethnic, religious, racial boundaries. What are people getting out of it that they don't get out of most books? Well, I've learned that the appeal of Tuesdays with Maury isn't my writing. I'm not Mark Twain.

It's the story of a younger person who's a little lost and an older person who's about to leave the world who says, let me tell you what I've learned. Almost everybody can find themselves in one of those two characters. Well, why don't we ask you, what do you think it was about your version, Ted and Maury, that made it the most popular nightline ever? Clearly, there was a vulnerability that made Maury accessible to everyone. And when you see someone dying... Don't let go too soon, but don't hang on too long.

Find the balance. They were watching him lose the ability to live, and he never lost his dignity. The disease is not going to get my spirit, and yet my body will not get my spirit. And if you're thinking that's a theme that has dramatic potential, you'd be right. There is a play, and it has been produced in more languages than Mitch can recall. There's been like 600 different productions of the play around the world. It's pretty close. I'm not sure how to say it in English.

I don't know how to say it in English. And then, there was the movie. Yeah, it's one trip to Boston. Quick little visit.

Say I'm sorry, and say goodbye. I do remember the first day I went to the set of the movie, Jack Lemmon was playing Maury, and Hank Azar was playing me. And I heard Jack Lemmon say, Mitch, when you learn how to die, you know how to live.

Jack Lemmon told me privately that he had been diagnosed with cancer. I remember he asked me questions. He wasn't asking me questions about Maury. He was asking me questions for himself.

He later told me that was, of all the roles that he had played in his life, that was the one that meant the most to him. I'm going to come back next Tuesday, okay? The almost universal appeal of Tuesdays with Maury has produced a precarious tension between legitimate education and the pressure to merchandise. At the height of this, I got a note saying, we want to do a Maury calendar with expressions from Maury on every... I said, no. Then they said a thing, we want to do a bumper sticker. I said, no.

Then they said, someone wants to make a bracelet, WWMD. What would Maury do, you know, instead of what would Jesus do? Thank God I turned down every one of those things. Perhaps no one's life has been more profoundly changed by Tuesdays with Maury than Mitch's own that turned your life inside out. Totally. Before Tuesdays with Maury, people would spot me in an airport, hey, sports guy, who's going to win the Super Bowl? And I would say, Patriots, and just keep going up the escalator. After Tuesdays with Maury, hey, my mother died of cancer, and the last thing we did was read your book together. Can I talk to you about it?

And you can't go, Patriots, you have to stop, and you have to listen. Most people in life, no matter how happy they look on the outside, are walking around with a piece of a broken heart. Mitch's initial motivation in writing the book was to raise enough money to pay Maury's medical bills. I believe, you'll correct me if I'm wrong, half the royalties went to the family. Continue to. And Mitch has become deeply engaged in charitable work. That's totally due to Maury, 100%. Maury told me an aphorism about giving is living, because I watched him always helping other people while he was dying, and I said, I don't get it.

You're the one who they should be feeling sorry for. And he said, because that's taking, and taking makes me feel like I'm dying, and giving makes me feel like I'm living. Mitch now operates nine separate charitable operations in Detroit and an orphanage in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. I go every month since 2010, and Maury's right. I'm more alive during those moments than I am in anything when I'm writing a book. Power goes out all the time.

It's hot, it's sweaty, it's uncomfortable, but I always sleep so much better there. I got it on tape too. Mitch has about 20 hours of audio conversation with Maury, permitting listeners to his podcast today to eavesdrop on moments more than 27 years ago. Mitch. Yes. Look at me. You're smiling. Yeah.

I love you. Come on. I'm assuming that didn't shock you when Maury said that. No, he used to do that a lot.

Mitch. And he'd make sure that I was looking, because I was usually fiddling with something. I'd look over and say, I love you. By the end, I said, I love you too.

You and Maury had a conversation, come to the graveside on Tuesdays, and we'll continue the conversation. Yeah. Have you ever done it? Oh, many times. Really?

Oh, yeah. Almost every time I'm in Boston, he said, I'll make you a deal, Mitch. After I'm dead, you talk, I'll listen. I think it's the whole philosophy of Tuesdays with Maury, which is if you spend your time as Maury did, then when you die, you're actually not 100% gone. You live on in the heads and the hearts, everybody you touch. There's probably not a day goes by in my life that I don't hear Maury's voice. I hear him ringing around like a penny inside a piggy bank when you pick it up and shake it.

That's where it is. Love is a life that's made a happy woman out of me Oh, love is a life And here by me In the world of country music, the Judds are in a league all their own. As you probably know, earlier this year, Naomi Judd, who'd grappled with depression, was found dead the day before she and her daughter were to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Wynona Judd hasn't talked about that awful day until now.

Here's our Lee Cowan. This is the first interview I've done since she died, so this is it. And a new chapter begins.

And yet that chapter, Wynona Judd says, is one that she wished had never been written about her mother, Naomi Judd. Wynona and I started singing together at home about nine years ago. They used to call themselves two red-haired hillbillies from Kentucky, and way back when, they were.

Sing along. Mama, he's crazy But performing together as the Judds in the 1980s, they became one of the most successful country music duos in history. And one of me when the nights get cold One of me when don't know One of me We're just very ordinary girls, and I think something extraordinary is happening to us.

And this woman right here, I mean, she's been a single parent since I was eight, has some pretty big dreams. And lovers really fall in love instead Stand beside each other come again The Judds sold more than 20 million albums, had 14 number one singles, and won five Grammy awards. It was a halo bride Sent down from heaven Their voices blended so perfectly, like the twin strands of their shared DNA. Nothing like family harmony. And sometimes the only harmony we had was in music. River of time For as much as they complimented each other on stage, often the chords of their mother-daughter partnership seemed rarely in tune. We were incredibly close, and then she'd get mad at me, and why did you do that? And then we'd not get along and be disconnected, then we'd come back together and hug and cry.

It was incredibly complicated. We tried really hard, and those are the tears, because I know that we tried. And we did pretty damn good.

Most of the time. Love and only love Things smoothed out a bit when Naomi retired from the Judds after being diagnosed with hepatitis C. But fans still demanded reunions. Love can build everything The most recent was this past April, at the CMT Music Awards in Nashville. We can do anything, anything, anything It was the Judds at their best. Big hair, a big stage, and a big choir.

But it would be the last time that they would ever perform together. I got the call, and I went over, and I saw her, and I said goodbye to her in the hospital, and I closed her eyes, and I kissed her forehead, and that was that. And next thing I know, I'm sitting here on the side porch, and I'm just trying to figure out what's next. After a long and public battle with depression, Naomi Judd took her own life at the age of 76.

The next day, the Judds were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. I did not know that she was at the place she was at when she ended it, because she had had episodes before, and she got better. And that's what I live in, is like, was there anything I should have looked for, or should I have known I didn't? That's kind of a strange question, I guess, but... I don't care. Are you ever... are you angry at all? Yes, incredibly angry. Does that go away?

No, I don't think so. Not for a while, and I'll let you know. I'll call you up and literally send you a note. Do you still feel your mom? I do. I do. I feel her nudging me, and sometimes I laugh, and sometimes I say, I really miss you.

Why aren't you here so we can argue? Really? Yeah. She told me one time.

She took my hand and she said, my life is better because of you. Those are the memories that are starting to come through more and more. I think when you lose your mother, a lot of that crap goes away because it doesn't matter anymore. Right. It just doesn't. And mom is proud of you.

Neither do some of the disagreements she had with her famous sister, actress Ashley Judd. We both kind of look at each other like, I've got you, right? And we look at each other and we say, yeah, we're so united right now.

More so than we have been in a long time. And yet it seems like you grieve in different ways. We do very much so. Every family member can agree with me on this one. We're all very different in this family. All three Judds live near one another. What's not to love? About an hour outside Nashville.

You're so sweet. And the memories are everywhere. It still runs. Even that old red Chevy parked near a pasture. My mom used to give me the grocery list and send me to the store. Really? I'll buy myself in this car. At 13.

At 13. This is really happening. Her rock, though, the last few months, she says, has been her husband. Musician, Cactus Motion. She's about to be backing her up on a new tour, starting this week featuring mostly music by the Judds. Oh my God, it's been so long.

Okay. It was supposed to be a reunion tour, one that was announced only weeks before her mom died. Is getting back on tour, is that therapy in some ways?

I have no idea. I think it's important to do it, if that makes sense. I feel like I have my marching orders. Those orders come directly from her mom, she says, along with a few other tips. She had Kleenex in her bra at all times. Now I do. And chapstick.

And I've got a tuna sandwich in here somewhere. As she began to rehearse, the dam started to break. I don't know if I can get through this one, but, uh, yeah.

And all I can know Love is Alive was a ballad they so earnestly shared for decades. Sweet words of music to go dancin' by Love is a man and he's alive As I walk out on stage that first night, I'll probably say something like, it's not supposed to be like this. Because it's not, right? It's supposed to be the two of us. And I'm going to be angry because she's not there. Is she looking forward to the tour? Winona Judd isn't quite sure.

But she's grown up knowing that the show must go on. And music is the only output, it seems, that for now, at least, keeps the grief at bay. I want to come out on stage and sing from my toenails a song that helps someone out in that audience.

Long cover up It's about me singing to help someone feel better. That's always in my spirit. 2022 is shaping up to be a very good year for actor Sigourney Weaver.

Yet another stellar chapter in a storied career. You are such a city girl. And look at you out here. Well, I think that's why I like it so much. You know, we in the city need to come and get our hands dirty and smell the soil.

And it's very inspiring. At the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, lifelong Manhattanite Sigourney Weaver is in her element. Are you harvesting? Yeah, do you want to taste? Sure.

Well, yeah. Yummy. Botanical garden grown. Oh, it's delicious. Really good.

So pretty, right? They say that with a garden, you plant the garden. First year, it sleeps. Second year, it creeps. Third year, it leaps. But there's never been a year like this one for 72-year-old Sigourney Weaver. Four movies in the next four months. I usually have something simmering.

And so it looks like I threw some magic beans out the window and they all suddenly went like that. Cuddling with gorillas. Kevorting with ghosts. The three-time Oscar nominee is a commanding presence in power suits. Hi, I'm Katherine Parker.

You must be Tisk. And iconic in space suits. One of the first badass heroines in space.

Get away from her, you bitch! Warrant officer Ellen Ripley in the Alien franchise is how Sigourney Weaver made her name. Though she was born Susan Weaver, Sigourney was the name she took for herself in the early 90s.

From the novel, The Great Gatsby, when she was 13. I had great trouble saying, at the height of six feet, my name is Sue, so small. And I just saw this name and I went, oh, I love that. It goes on. That's fantastic. I like the look of it.

Three syllables. I thought, I'm going to use that until I can figure out what name I'd really like because I'm not going to use Cuddly Weaver. I really like, because I'm not going to use crazy name like Sigourney.

It was absolutely a placeholder. My pretend name was Giselle. And you went with Sigourney. And that wasn't a stage name.

No. We both had parents who were not expecting the careers that we went on to have. Did your parents think you could act?

I'm sure they didn't. Her English mother had a career in stage and film in the 30s and 40s. Her father was a pioneer in television in the 50s.

Sylvester Weaver created both Today and The Tonight Show. I think that they were horrified that I was going to take this on. My father thought it was good to go to drama school.

That would probably shake this goal right out of me, and it almost did. Weaver attended the Yale School of Drama. I didn't really belong there.

I wish I'd gone to like Second City or something. She felt like a fish out of water, and the faculty seemed to agree. They were not supportive. Explicitly so.

Yeah. I have to say they could not have been meaner. And the irony was that they were fired when I graduated. So the lesson to me is, don't believe what your teachers tell you. Deflated but undeterred, she returned to New York City with a new attitude.

What did she have to lose? When I went to an audition, I was just trying to inhabit that character for a few minutes just to be able to work. And I wasn't trying to get somewhere because I figured I wouldn't. So I just thought, I'm going to just do my thing.

After four years on stage off-off-Broadway, her first film appearance was a small, non-speaking role in Annie Hall, followed barely two years later by the Ridley Scott blockbuster Alien. I got really lucky. You sort of came out of nowhere. So how on earth did that miracle happen? I remember thinking, it's science fiction.

It doesn't matter what I do. I wore these very high hooker boots that made me about seven feet tall. I stalked into that meeting. Ridley asked me what I thought of the script, and we just started to talk, and I could see the casting person in the background who was kind of going, like, you know, he doesn't really want to know what you think, dear. A superstar had arrived, but she didn't play the part. It certainly didn't make me want to have a film career, which is ironic because I was in a very good position. So I didn't really do anything for a couple of years. I went back to the theater, and I just felt I really wanted to learn my craft. Now in the fifth decade of her career, the long-awaited sequel to the box office record-setting Avatar arrives in December.

But in the coming weeks, she'll be seen in Master Gardener. You think you can run around the backyard in the middle of the night paying a little visit to this one here? No, I'm not. Stop that.

Stop what? Call Jane, a timely and provocative film about abortion set in pre-Roe 1960s. You're going to rest for a few hours. Which one of you is Jane? We're all Jane.

And out this week, The Good House with Kevin Kline. She plays a recovering alcoholic. Hildy, would you like to have a seat? Well, if we're really going to do this, I need a drink. Oh my God.

Kidding. Here's this woman who was at the top of her game, who's sort of slipping, and she's fighting against ageism. Her assistant's stolen all her clients and she's being pushed off her perch and she decides to fire back and fight back. You know, how many projects are there where an older woman gets to do any of that?

Like none. With more than 60 film credits and still counting, Sigourney Weaver seems to have found her place and at her own steady pace. And that's the secret of Hollywood longevity. I think I was very lucky because I wasn't a babe, but I could play a babe. I wasn't this, but I could play that. So I would always just pick the story and not the role. And I thought, is this a story I want to see? Is this a story about something I really believe in? It has cumulatively shown a lot of different fun things that I got to do.

The ladies got range. Well, that's, I think, for me the greatest compliment, so thank you. Steve Hartman now with a story about friends in need.

I'm over here. When people first see 9-year-old Carson Majors of Encinitas, California, almost everyone jumps to the same conclusion. But she doesn't have cancer. She's fine. She just has alopecia universalis, an autoimmune disease that results in near total hair loss. Carson began showing symptoms at the age of six, and within two years, her flowing blonde locks were completely gone. I like to do my hair a lot, but then it fell out, so... Carson says it still bothers her at times.

Because I miss my hair. But she says her attitude improved dramatically after a chance meeting on the lacrosse field. When you first saw her, what did you think? She was, like, so nice, pretty, beautiful, cool. She was way older than me.

But equally bald. She's like, do you have alopecia? I was like, yeah, do you?

Yeah. It was a moment of awe, especially because the sun was setting. It was just, like, shining down.

It was, like, perfect. 17-year-old Scarlett Hall says she used to hate her hair loss, too. But her attitude also improved dramatically after meeting Carson. Scarlett! Hi, kid. I got a best friend.

I got a mini me. Alopecia in children is rare, which is why Scarlett decided it was especially important, not only to engage with Carson that first day, but to remain a presence in her life. I want to be able to show her that, like, you're perfect. You don't need to look like the people in the magazine cover.

And by all accounts, that message is getting through. Did she help make you more comfortable with who you are? Yes. By something she said or just the way she was? The way she was. So friends make that big a difference. Did you not know that?

I had an inkling, but now I believe it even more. Two besties showing the world that hair should never be top of mind and that bold is beautiful. That's perfect.

Thank you for listening. Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning. Vegas was always one of the shows we look forward to.

October 1st, 2017. That's when the world changed for us. I'm looking at what the heroes did that night. Sorry.

I can't say what made me decide to go back in, but it's the right thing to do. I didn't think there was any one of us that thought we were coming out the same way that we went in. 11 Minutes, a new docuseries streaming September 27th on Paramount+. This is terrifying. This is really a whodunit. This is the moment of truth.

This is 48 hours. This is a senseless murder. This case reads like a movie script.

It's just more like a horror movie. This is real-life drama. This is crazy.

I'm the only person alive that has ever walked out of his own grave. This is how we make a difference. This is real. If it wasn't for 48 hours, there would have been a funeral. This is 48 hours. Available on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.