Heather Thomas on The Fall Guy, Activism and The Poster

Weirdy, weird media. Eighties, So pretty through the City, good things, money man World. Welcome to eighties TV Ladies, where we look back in order to leap forward. Here are your hosts, Susan Lambert had them and Sharon Johnson. Hello, I'm Susan.

And I'm Sharon. It's interesting how influential posters were in the eighties. Did you have any posters on your wall in the eighties. I don't think I did. We were living in military housing primarily, and my mom was always kind of wary of us putting stuff up if I did have any, And then when I, you know, when I went out on my own, I don't know what I had on my wall.

I hadn't really thought about it for a long time. It was such a thing. Certainly early on. I remember when my sister and I shared a room, we would often fight over what like pull out from Team Beat we would put up because it would have one young star on one side and another on the other side. And the one of the bigger fights we had was the Hardy Boys, and Sean Cassidy was on one side and Parker Stevenson was on the other, and I was a total Parker Stevenson over Seawan Cassidy and my sister was a Shawn Cassidy, And so we literally flipped it every week.

Uh yeah, I was going to ask you, how did you resolve this dilemma? For goodness sake? Did you go buy another magazine? No? And we didn't get them.

Yeah. So and again, you know, I had a single mom and we didn't have a lot of disposable income. We had plenty, you know, for our life. We wouldn't have a team beat every week. It would be picking up a special one because there was a special pull out, like the Heart Hearty Boys.

I was thinking, maybe use your babysitting money to get another one, yes. Yes, or yes that's true. But yeah, so we compromised on that and it was half and half. Then when I got my own room, it was definitely Star Wars was probably a poster, but it would have been no true like movie poster. It would have been again another sort of pull out from a magazine and Harrison Ford I remember.

But I would mostly put up pictures. I remember I had this little sort of corner. I didn't put up a lot all over the walls. I had a little corner that were like cutouts from magazines, and that's what I would put up on my walls when I was home. When I went to college, I feel like I started putting up movie posters then because you could get them, Like every once in a while you could walk up to a movie theater and be like, hey, do you have any extra posters?

And then whatever posters they had taken down, if the employees didn't take them, you could get them. And yeah, I never. Would have thought of that. But seriously, I, for the life of me, could not begin to tell you what, if anything, I had on the wall. There probably were things, and my mother would probably remember very clearly, because she's much better about that stuff than I am, But I have no idea.

But I'm going to have to ask her about it next temper. Well. And it's so funny because our walls were pretty bare at home, like it wasn't the decorating that life has now, right, I have everything up on the wall. I also used to cut out magazine words, and I had a clipboard, and I would make a clipboard like every few years of different inspiring It was like a little like vision board for my clipboard. The fall Guy as a TV show is not technically an eighties TV ladies show, but our next guest is most definitely an eighties TV lady and an eighties poster lady, Heather Thomas.

Heather Thomas was born in Connecticut and raised in Santa Monica, California. She had an extraordinary influence on popular culture in the nineteen eighties. She's an actress, writer, and activist, but may have been and most famous in the nineteen eighties for her pink bikini poster may be the best selling pin up poster of all time. She appeared in several eighties shows, including BJ and the Bear, Love Boat, and TJ Hooker, as well as movies and TV mini series including Ford The Man in the Machine. She also got famous playing stunt woman Jody Banks on one hundred and twelve episodes of The Fall Guy.

The Fall Guy was an ABC action show created by Glenn Larson, which ran for five seasons from November fourth, nineteen eighty one to May second, nineteen eighty six. The Fall Guy TV show inspired Countless Posters, a board game, a nineteen eighty four video game, and, of course, most recently twenty twenty four is The Fall Guy movie starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt. And has a cameo by Lee Majors and Heather Thomas. Now Lee Major's he was one of the biggest television stars because of The six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, so he was the star of The Fall Guy as stuntman Cult Sievers who moonlights on the side as a bounty hunter using his stunt skills to catch bail skippers, a perfect eighties idea.

It also starred Douglas Barr, who many of you may recall later was on Designing Women, another show we've talked about. He played Lee Major's nephew and sidekick, Howie Munson, and Heather Thomas was his associate slash assistant and a new beast stunt woman, Jody Banks. In the first season, Joanne Flug played Samantha big Jack Jack as the bail bondswoman who hires them. Then Marky Post came in to play a similar female bond dealer for the rest of the run. Now it had lots of movie stunt action, which was kind of cool as a kid that was interested in filmmaking.

Heather Thomas left acting. She after doing a bunch of stuff. She left acting in the late eighties, apparently due to some stalker issues and because she had a family and wanted to focus on that. And she's recently returned to acting. But she's always been a longtime writer, novelist, political activist, organizer, and fundraiser.

So we are thrilled to welcome this Heather Thomas to eighties TV ladies. Hello, how are you? We're great and so looking forward to this conversation today. It's kind of a crazy time and I'm just wondering what you're doing to find joy these days. Well, I've been I've been mainlining grandchildren a lot of that.

I had four school programs, one community theater play, and actually two community theater plays. Because now is the time for children pageants and holiday pageants. Yeah, yeah, I have them from twelve down to seven. That sounds fantastic. Are your family closes or are they far?

They all live within five minute. It's a way. We have a big family, big happy family. Three daughters, two of them have families. That's wonderful.

That's really wonderful. Yeah, that is very delightful. You know, I've been watching some of your interviews and you clearly love words and storytelling and I am very curious about where that love of story came from. I think as a child I was bored, so I had books, and I mean television was sort of a it was sort of more of a communal event because we had a commonality in that we'd watched one of the three stations available, and usually there was one big kid program a month, you know, whether it was on Disney or Wizard of Oz something like that, you know, or the Charlie Brown Christmas Special. And so it wasn't so much TV.

It was more books. I read a lot as a kid, and I hadn't had a big fan of life too. Did you do any writing as a result of your writing? And sure, always as a kid, I always did. And then you ended up going to UCLA Theater and film school, yeah both.

I'm curious about that you. Couldn't enter as a film major. The film major was primarily in those days, back in the Mesozoic age. When I was going to school, it was primarily a graduate program. In my junior year, I applied to the film program because it was only two years for undergraduates, and then I got in.

They let fourteen people in. I got into the film school. There when you went to college, was it always your intent to study film in theater and writing. Yes, yes, absolutely absolutely, I wanted to be part of story and theater you know, you run into the proscenium walls, you know, you can't break the way you can with film. You can't flash cut, you can't you know, then passed whatever's possible on stage.

That's such an interesting point. And we spoke with Dorothy Lyman on another episode and she talked about that too, that you can kind of put the camera anywhere. Yeah, and a lot of the directors that we've talked to that's been the real appeal of television film. Yeah. Well there's an intimacy you can't get with theater too, and that you're right there with the character and it's live.

So it's it's just such different mediums, but you can be inside the character and film. Yeah, So I'm curious about what it felt like to break in at that time. Well, you know, you're in theater class, you're in the acting class, or you're you're studying checkof or you're doing you know something else, the Terek waiting for Godot or something, and then you do eighties to sna know, they went back by the way. That's what you know, help me, help me it was, you know it was. He caught on pretty quick what it was about and how you maneuvered and where the power lay, et cetera, et cetera.

I'd love to just sort of talk about some of the shows that you were on, like b J and The Bear. How was working with the Bear? I didn't work with the Monkey much. I ended up working with on an episode of Fall Guy, with that Clyde monkey from every which Way but Loose that. Yeah.

I worked with an Orangu Tang on that and that guy was scary, like he thought it was funny to grab my boob and I just kept thinking he's gonna rip it off any minute. But the Chimp I didn't work with. Okay, well good because if they were going to sexually harass you. I worked with Greg Evigon a lot, and I adored him. Was BJ and the Bear The first time you worked with Glenn Larson.

Yeah, And because of that, you know, I got Fall Guy. He called me in for Fall Guy because I ended up doing a two part episode that was kind of a pilot that didn't get picked up with Rebecca Reynolds. We did one it was called Girls on the Hollywood High or something. We were women detectives and we were researching a case. I was a straight man and she was the funny one.

Well, I would have loved that show. I wish that had gone. Yeah, that would have been a good show. So clearly you worked like Glenn Larson wanted to work with you and find the right thing. So what was it like.

You know, we heard he's a little bit crazy. All of them are crazy. You're not going to find a normal one. Not in those days, everybody was nuts. Everybody was nuts, and they still are.

Glenn was great, you know. He started out as like a boy band singer guy, and with the four Preps and so everything was breaking the song. You know, you'd be walking along and someone would start singing, I can't sing for hell. I did not sing, but everybody sang. That's so great.

I love that. Glenn Larson is a musical theater guy. Yeah, he's a very musical guy. And so there was a lot of musical stuff. There was a lot of celebrities and everywhere was limousines and stuff like that.

It was funny. It was a funny time. Working with Lee Majors, coming off of like one of the biggest starts in television. Yeah, I get over intimidation really fast. It's just another dude.

What did you think about your character? Jody? My character? Like for a while there they said can you smile more? And I was just thinking, oh, brother, here we go.

Not them, But you know, the network was worried that I wasn't likable because I didn't smile enough, and then they put me in a Bikinia and it made up for me not smiling enough. I guess. I've been watching some of the some of the fog Ey episodes, in particular, looking for what I like to call Jody centric episodes. But one of the things I really liked about Jody and the way that they wrote her is that she was literally just. You know, one of the guys.

I mean, they really weren't trying to, you know, sort of patter on the head and say, oh, you're just a girl, Please stand over to the corner while the men take care of things. Yes, you could have had more to do on a regular basis, but when you did have, when there were things to do, they you had things to do, which was great. I thought. Yeah, a lot of the times I was just a slave. You know.

Other times I had would participate in the stunt or I would be part of the stunt team, which is really important. You know, you need your backup people. Did they let you do a number of your own stunts in the in the fallguy, or did you have a stunt double? Oh, I had a stunt double, Debbie. But I did the fighting and they hung me from a crane once I was supposed to be parachuting.

They had me spread e gold over the entrance to the fox. It was terrible. Oh my goodness, we hunt from a helicopter skid once. What else did we do? I didn't do any of the fire and I didn't do it was mostly this fighting.

I would do the stunt fighting. Did you ever get injured? Now? Okay, no, well once or twice there were some lee majors. Almost broke my nose once there was like a cue.

I was here and he was here with our heads and my head was supposed to pop up than his, and he went on my cue, so he bumped my nose. He tried to take you out. Yeah, he said, get her close up quick before it swells. So we used to work like that. Was he a fun guy to work with.

Yeah, he was funny. He was funny. He was very jaded and uh, he'd keep the set closed because he didn't want a lot of looking lose. That way, we were all very comfortable. Do you know how sometimes they'd bring people on set.

Yeah, Doug Barr lived in the same building as Betty Davis at the time. She wanted to bring her grandson and Li said, now did he really how Doug had the answer to Betty? Poor God? I thought that was funny. That is funny.

And how was it working with Doug Where you guys were kind of Doug. Was like my brother. I love Doug. I still talk to Doug all the time. I talked to Lee every now and then, but I talked to Doug a lot.

Well, it felt like you guys were simil in a similar place, right. You would come up through some of the same stuff, and now you were on this show that was a hit show, and and so it felt like it was the acting version of the characters in the show in some ways. Yeah. But I was wondering if you worked much with Joanne Flug or Marquy Post. Yeah, I'd worked with both of them.

I miss Markie, Poor Markie. Yeah, Markey was great, Joanne was great. I like everybody, but I was thinking of the episode Hell on Wheels where you are a roller derby woman and you did the like slide into the split. Yeah. I did all that stunt because I was really good on skates.

And then I went and I learned how to do roller derby, which is pretty easy if you can skate. Because I lived in Marina Delray Peninsula and we went everywhere on roller skates. It was that Linda Ronstat roller rink time. I trained one afternoon with La Thunderbirds and they taught me how to you know, when you're jamming and you're gonna somebody behind you. They're holding onto your shorts so you can't knock them down, but they make it look like, oh so you're faking like you're falling backwards and stuff, but you're actually hanging on to their shorts.

Oh my god. And Ralphie Valderoz he showed how to break my back on the rail. He picked me up and went like this, and I go, it was fun. That sounds terrifying, but roller derby is really fun. But I didn't do roller derby after.

That thought maybe you pick it up as a hobby. You know. The show will let The show was really strict in what I could do in my spareu. Oh really they said you can't do this and you can't do that. Yeah, they were like you're going roller skating?

What if you break an ankle? You know? Oh all right? Well did you have other like favorite stunts or things you got to do because of the show, Like. I love doing the horse stuff because movie horses are a riot.

Like when you play polo, it's like having a Ferrari. Well, a movie horse is like a machine. The truck with the camera on it goes, your horse goes. So you could be like not even holding the reins and the horse would go perfectly anywhere it needed to be. That's so interesting.

Wow you could. It makes you look like a great rider, now I did. I did a movie in Australia where I had to ride English and they actually needed me to ride in that one, and they trained me with these crazy Australian stuntmen that every single one of them thought they were the man from Snowy Rivers. So they would take they would take you with no saddle and make you gallop downhill and the forest, you know, avoiding trees. It was craziness, but it was one way to teach you.

It's like throwing the kid in the water to teach them how to swim. That's amazing. Again, the eighties felt like, oh, we're going to be very careful with their stars. Sometimes sometimes yeah, sometimes they were, sometimes they weren't. A few minutes ago, you mentioned a stunt performer named Debbie.

By any chance, was that Debbie Evans Love It different Debbie. No, I'm trying to remember her last name so long. I only asked because she Debbie Evans Love. It was a guest on our show. She was fantastic, so anyway, just just thought might be a happy coincidence.

No, I'm trying to remember her name. I feel like a horrible person. Like you said, it was it was a while, like it was a while ago. Yeah, I got to look her up on my phone forty years ago. We should organize our phone by decade.

I'm like, yeah, that would be great. I met her around eighty five. I'm doing this with no glasses. That's a that's an impressive stunt. Indeed.

Yeah, I mean I'm going to find it. Wait, I'm going to tell you her last name, because I'm really who was. I know, I was trying to google it. Here's the problem, because it's AI. They were telling me that Jodie Banks was your stunt woman.

I know, this is horrible. They just keep telling me it's me. Welcome to the future. Yeah, and then there's something about my net worth, which is frightening. Ah, the dumbest timeline.

Hold on a second, I think I have it. AI only has what they program into it. I think I have it. Debbie Porter, Yes, yeah, you win. The frigid Air Debbie Porter, Oh my god.

Yeah it was great. You get all the flames and falling. I've got two dogs now. They want to get out of my office. First they were crying to get in.

Okay, we need to take a break and we'll be right back with the rest of our fantastic conversation with the amazing Heather Thomas. And we're back with more Heather Thomas. Any any favorite directors that you worked with on The Fall Guy or Beyond. I saw that Ted Lang directed a couple. Yeah, Ted was great.

I remember when Reagan got elected that day and we all want to haven't help us, But it's nothing like now we've thought it was bad then. Yeah, Bruce Bilson was great. Dan, you're like killing me here, I'm sorry, Yeah, forty years, I'm supposed to remember these people. I love Bruce Bilson and then his son ended up being a professor at usc Film School for my daughter, my youngest. Oh yeah, for you.

What makes for a good director? What did you like? What did you want from a director? Well, fall guy, the director was basically Lee Major said I want to go home at five. You know, that's what made a good direct for him, get it all done.

For me, A good director was someone that gave direction. Yeah, you know, I knew my character, and he'd say, A good director would be okay, I'm probably gonna need to cut to you at this point. You know, sometimes when they explain what they're going to do with the film, that helps for me. The poster, right, was it before the show or during the show? No, it was during the show.

It was during the show. Yeah. I had Rogerson Callen publicists and they said, okay, the shows that hit you got to do a poster. And I went, what you know, they were booking me to do all these photo shoots and go to these events and then they said, you're doing a poster, and I did it and it sold really big. It's one of the top, maybe the top.

I mean, it's hard to tell that. Is it is. It's the highest selling in the world, outsold Pharah. And were you sitting around going, Okay, I'm gonna I got I just passed Heather Locklear. Now I got a head for Pharah.

Like I didn't. I didn't need to pass Heather lockleyer. She didn't even come till like later. I wasn't even thinking about her at that point. I was just happy because I was going, I can buy a house, you know, That's that was what I was doing.

I was thrilled. Yeah, it was the time. And people still love this, like those are still you know, for sale. I'm vintage now. You know, they never give you the money after a certain amount of time.

All these people they licensed me, these phony companies, and they sell my likeness, you know, they sell the rights to have a picture of me somewhere. That's gotta be frustrating. Yeah, yeah, But if you go after these guys, it's like whack a mole. You know, another one's going to pop up. I remember being you know, in the nineties.

They were taking pictures with giant life size cutouts, you know, boardwalks and things like that. You take a picture with a giant life size Eddie Murphy and a giant life size Heather Thomas. One time, I think I was on a date with my husband in New Orleans and as a joke, he stole the Heather cut out and the guy was and he gave it to our limo driver who was running away with it. And the guy is chasing him down the street going bring Heather back. Really funny, and my husband goes, no copyright infringement, but we had to give it back at the end of the day if we wanted to go, unless we wanted to take him to court.

You know, it sounds like a fun moment, but they know I was everything but a toilet seat cover and an ash tray. It probably was an ashtray. I found myself on a lighter in Mexico. I was a peachy notebook. I was a puzzle.

It was a lot of notebook covers for kids, and then I was a lot of I was a pillow. All right, so's scary. Yeah, do you start to separate yourself from the image. Well, it's worth. It's it's my luring.

You know, it's work. And that's how I looked at my body even then, you know, like it's, oh, this is my living, this is what needs to be healthy, this is what needs to be you know, exercised and starve, and it was It's tough. It was tough in the eighties to be on television as a woman. Yeah, because you were naked half the time. They didn't have, you know, all the special effects that could stuff and you couldn't have an ounce of cellulight or anything.

You had to be screen perfect. Yeah, you can fix it. And so I mean, did you feel that pressure. Did you feel like, oh my god, I have to do this or did it you know, you seem like you were athletic. It was part of the gig, you know.

It wasn't like, oh my god, I can't eat a ice cream. I didn't care. I was happy to make the money. I was grateful every day I was making more money than I ever made my life. I was happy.

I was a kid. Yeah, And so what did it mean to be that recognized that young? Like I assume you went out and people were like, oh my god. You were like objectified to a certain amount, but that was what you were selling. So I wasn't.

Oh, they don't think of me as a person. I never did any of that stuff. I was pretty I was pretty tough in those days. I was that's what I'm selling, that's what I do. And yeah, they talk about you like you're a thing, but you really didn't.

It didn't like hurt my feelings. It was I kind of knew the gig, and. So can we talk about a couple of your movies? Sure, which they were speaking of knew. I think I kind of have to talk about Zapped if we can, because it's such a it's one of the quintessential eighties movies where it's basically, you know, teen sex comedy, borderline sexual harassment.

Yeah, it was very much sexual harassment. I did that before Fall Guy. I remember I did that, and again I didn't think anything of it. They tried to get me topless, and my my contract said huh huh, and so they used a body double. But they have a disclaimer at the end.

Was it fun to do or was it just this is a job. It was fun until they tried to get me topless. They said, we're going to get a girl with ugliest fits in town. I said, fine, as long as my head's not on them. And they did morph a picture of me with somebody else's boobs.

But there's a big disclaimer at the end of the movie that it's not my tips. I mean, I'm glad you got that, you know, because Yeah, and I did. People magazine about it. I did a kind of publicity about it, you know, to keep the network happy that it wasn't my boobs. Yeah, because the network cared for the show.

Yeah, you know, they want they don't want you doing something trampy. And you did a lot of press and appearances. I revisited a David Letterman appearance you made. Oh that was fun. That was fun, so much fun.

That was fun. And Bobby Morton I hung out with his producer and we were laughing because we had this book. I don't know how we got ahold of it. I think it was Bobby's. It was about the Gabor sisters and we were all talking about Gabor War, and like the new Gabor's were the Cardassians.

They married, well, they had all these gowns and all these things they sold, and they were like a sister act in Vegas for a while, and they had a mom that just kept making money and she owned like three blocks in downtown Manhattan. They were just funny. They would just you know, Mary and Divorce and Mary and Divorce. And so they were the Kardashian like. Yeah, they were just like the Kardashians.

They got the sister plastic surgery the minute she hit New York. Oh my gosh. So what was David Letterman like as a talk show host? Lovely and normal? They're all lovely and normal.

Well that's great. Well I thought that you were. You showed a lot of the bunk and you made for a very interesting guest because of your word smithness. I think David Letterman asked about your poster and why you did it, and you said it was an actualization of a misdirected need for acceptance, and you kind of threw him. With that answer, Well why not, that's kind of what it is.

And it was, you know, you could say that's what it is. It was basically for furthering my queue quality. Yeah, I mean I think you were messing with him, but yeah, the way you did it, I think also through him. Well, you know, everybody was so analyzing in those days that you know that there must be a psychological issue if you do something like that. You know, these days, it seems on talk shows that it's almost scripted what they're going to talk to the host about.

Was that the case when you were on David. No, they always ask you questions so he can know what you're doing. You know, the guy's got to do what fifty people a week, and you know, so they're going to pre interview you to find out if you're interesting enough to be on the show number one and number two? What you have going on? Yeah, so they can get a clip of it.

You know. Sure, I was. I was in a really bad movie when I did Letterman. I was laughing so hard about it. I was still shooting at it.

I think it's a psychoty. Yeah, it was so bad, And you were like, no, I. Was shooting, like I'm really I was shooting something in Montreal at the time. I was like four movies ahead of that. Cyclone was my divorce movie.

That's what you say on the show, And I was like, this is insane. Like talk shows were so much more fun in the eighties because people just said things. Yeah, you said, what really was it? Was my divorce movie. I came back from Sri Lanka making this other movie, a German Nini series.

I went over there and that way I could get a divorce and hide. There's no place better to hide than the jungle in Sri Lanka. And still so I came back and my soon to be ex husband had contested some of my money and so it was frozen. So I said, I need money, and my friend Mark said, well, why don't you do one of the crappy movies across the hall. They're always making movies.

I walked over there, I told them my price and they they met it and I was in their crappy movie. That's amazing. It was. I took so much of their money out of the budget that they used the craft service guy for my stuntman doing the motorcycle stuff. And like there's a couple of times when there's like a hairy knuckles reving the.

That's awesome. They even took my bra and put it on the guy's stuff. I got a low budget. It was low budget, but they had Heather Thomas, that's right, and Mark Landow was in it. There was like all right, hey, you had to get the card to get the insurance, you had to have so much money over you.

Yeah, for sure, for sure, and so who did Like, I'm also curious about I watched some of the Ford The Man in the Machine TV movie or TV series. It was like any series, you're great. It's something you don't get to do as much. The period and all that stuff. I know that was fun.

Yeah, I'm curious about working with Cliff Robertson, what that was like. And Hope, Hope Lang was the scream. It was a scream. She's one of the funniest people I ever met. Rest her soul.

I loved her. Cliff Robertson, he would help me with my acting. He was good. He was good. He would tell me he was a little bossy, but I respect that and old guys they like to do that.

He was a good actor. Damn, he was a good actor. It was cold as old af there. I mean it was so cold. I was in Montreal in the countryside, and I thought I knew cold, but I didn't know cold until I was out there.

It was like we were shooting in like twenty seven below. The guys from Quebec were not friendly. The Montreal people were not that friendly. They were just busy trying to survive, and like the grips, all you saw were two little red eyes and scarf, and yet they were pulling cable with their bare hands. And I remember I had this one scene where I had the I'm in a riding habit and I'm leading a horse and talking with Cliff, and Cliff kept blowing the shot because he was scared the horse was going to eat his to pey or something, and the costumer didn't think.

He gave me real riding boots that were my size, and all I could wear with them was like a nylon sock, and so my feet were walking through slush and the dreggor said, well, just raise your hand if you know numb, and we'll get you to the hospital or something. And I remember at the end of the shot, I said, I can't feel my feet anymore, and so they took me and they plunged my feet into ice water, and I remember screaming. They put them in ice water to warm them up, because when you have frostbite, you can't put them in hot water. And I didn't lose any toes. I got the people.

See there you go. The eighties, we won't let you do anything fun. But God forbid, on set, we're going to take off her toes. We might kill you, but we don't mean to. I want to talk about your mom a little bit, if that's okay.

My mom is fabulous. She sounds fabulous. I was Gladdie Writer. What a name. She sounds like lou lu Yeah.

She was a right. Is that love of words and or just that sort of I don't know, interesting layer. What do you think she gave you? I think what she gave me was a sense of not conforming more, don't be what people expect. She was enthusiastic stick If she wanted something some way, she figured out how to get it.

Very determined when it came to her students, she wouldn't give up on any of them. She was a special ed teacher for thirty six years, and she would do things like on her own dime, her own time. She would teach parents sit at night what their rights were as far as their children's rights were as a student in the state of California, and what they could ask for for their student, and how to tell if the teachers were teaching them correctly. And I would have given up the ghost after two days in her classroom. But she just handled it all.

She could multitask. You know, each kid was different and had different needs, and she say, your job is to do this thing. Do you need to stop chewing that? She let kids chew gum, And there were the kids that had emotional disabilities, and there were kids that had physical disabilities, and there were kids that had perceptual disabilities, and they were all different, and she would handle it all at once. She was amazing, wow wow.

And she'd have like thirty six kids in her class or forty kids sometimes because at one point, the conventional thinking in California was let's make mega schools with mega classrooms, and then nobody got any attention. Yeah, and what do you think you gave to your daughters? To my daughters, discipline as far as being kind to everybody, treating everybody with deep respect, and reading a room. I know I'm going to teaching my kids that that you have wealth or privilege comes responsibility to give back. That's very important to me.

My children also know how to set limits and not blow it go overboard. They know they're loved. They got that from me. That's great. I mean, we're you know, We're fascinated by sort of that mother daughter stuff which comes up in some of the shows.

I'm very eccentric as a mother. I would do weird things. Yeah, like what oh we do Solstice dinner where we wear crowns, different types of hats that we have made, and you have to offer something to the group, something that you created, whether it's a painting or a song or a story or a something you discovered. You have to offer something that night, and then we all tell fortunes. I'm that kind of a mom.

I'm a weird mom. My youngest daughter on her birthday every morning, my husband and I would be wearing big rubber masks to wake her up. You know, we're a little bit weird as a family. I would put like soap in the mold of dolls, hands on their so ope in the morning. Or I'm weird and eccentric, But I think that keeps it interesting and we have good traditions.

You want to have traditions. When I came on the scene, my husband and his ex wife were fighting and the kids were caught in the middle, and I came in and cut that out. That's good. I'm the step parent and a parent and I love when everyone prioritizes the kids. Yeah, you got to you and you can't take anything personally.

When you're a step parent, you're going to be the outlet for their the stuff they can't tell the other parents. They're going to put some anger on you, some resentment on you. And my biggest thing was never criticize either parent, because that's like telling a kid half of you is wrong. They can't separate themselves at an early age, and it puts pressure on them to, you know, either have to defend their parent or or they feel they're betrayed their parents. It's just weird.

So I just didn't personalize anything and just was along for the ride and wanted to be just loving and accepting. That is amazing and it's so interesting. Where did that come from? Is that from your mom? Is that from your own family?

No, my parents didn't divorce till I was like eighteen twenty nineteen, maybe eighteen or nineteen. They didn't divorce until then. I just saw what was going on and figured out the most healthy way that I was going to exist in the relationship that I was going to be there. I didn't want to be one more thing on these kids. And then the other thing was we needed to set some consistency.

My husband tends to be a giant walking yes, and it's not healthy for kids. They need boundaries. And I was the mean mom that would say, you got to know, you're not going to this person's house unless the parents are home, because it's disrespectful or you know, stuff like that. Yeah. I remember when I started dating my now husband and his kids were very little, and I was like, oh, I don't know about this, and I was looking for like the book on how to be a you know, step parent, or how to manage blended families.

And at the time, this was now twenty years ago, there wasn't a lot out there. There's a little more now and there's podcasts all over the place. But it was an interesting sort of like, Okay, I'm stepping into a world that exists, right, So how do I build a place and guidelines but also honor what's existing. Yeah, because you have to honor what's existing. But if what's existing is really unhealthy, you have to say, well, what am I going to bring to this that makes it healthy so I don't go crazy and they don't get hurt.

Yeah. Yeah, it's it's interesting to navigate modern relationships. Yeah, speaking aboutern relationships. Can we talk a little bit about your activism. What sparked for you?

I mean, you've been very politically active and very interested in the world and how it works for a long time. When did that start? I've always been that though, ever since they said you can't climb the tree the boys can. I was probably a feminist first, and I have a great love of nature. I also could see where the environment is everything.

It's the air you breathe. It's like everybody thinks the environment's out there, it's right here. So I was very interested in conserving nature. Sure, you know, from seeing the discrepancies between the sexes, I gravitated to civil rights things. I think I did my first march in high school with Laurisquert.

I was there. I don't think Caesar was there, but it was for the UfW farm workers. Was that the kind of thing your parents were doing that? Your parents parents. Were really into Bobby Kennedy.

They were there in the nighty got shot. Oh my god, they were. They were democrats. I come from a big democrat family. So La Cafe is what I was reading about.

It was called Regime Change Cafe. How did that start? I got together with some guys that were progressive but also embedded in the Democratic Party, but more the progressive wing and what I was seeing happening in Hollywood, because you know, I got thrown into this kind of trophy wife donner class thing when I married Skip. I blame monotheism. Everybody kept like gravitating to the one big thing that election.

You know, there would be one guy who would say, I have GPS's and we're going to track you know, voters that way, and we're going to you know, make sure everybody votes. And there would be one guy and I'd say, well, what about all the grassroots locally, la la la, But they would always want to do it from a big national level. I saw that happening and we kept losing, and I started saying, well, let's identify local issues and what's going on. But it takes a million different There are a million different paths up the mountain that you have to get there. So I started working with putting baby grassroots groups, these effective grassroots groups together with foundations and funds and seasoned activists.

So we started doing this kind of linking salon where you know, young groups would present what they were about, and people would come and advise them. You know. It was kind of just like getting them connected to people. And some times they'd say, well, you should probably roll into this group and be part of them and not be your own thing, or some of them would say this is great, I'm going to fund you. We'll get you some money for this effort.

And we had everybody present. Everybody came through move On First came in through there. We got critical early funding for Crew Nice, which was a really funny story. At that time. Gail Zappa was still alive.

It was at a time when that who was that guy Tom Delay was, you know, doing all this scheazy stuff, and they had no ethics in Congress probably how they're going to have it now, and everybody was faking like they were conservative. There were like tumbleweeds blowing through Henry Waxman and Barbara Boxer's office, and everybody was faking like they were these big conservatives, and they could not get enough money to challenge the ethics. And they were all former federal prosecutors. They knew where everybody was breaking the law, but they couldn't get any traction and the Democrats are too scared to get on board with them. They needed critical early funding.

And Gail goes, oh, I know where I can get them a million dollars and I said really where? He said, Larry Flint, I went really, And I said okay, okay, and she goes, have Melanie Sloan. We're going to have a lunch. So we had lunch the Four Seasons. And I don't think I told Melanie until he rolled in like Joba the Hut in his wheelchair.

She like freaked out, and I'm just holding her dress down on her chair. Take the money, take the money, Take the money, honey. And because of that they were able to bring up all this stuff that culminated in that Foster guy who was molesting the pages and the Republicans knew, and then Nancy Pelosi was able to say culture of corruption. But none of that was started by the Democratic Party. That was started by Crew.

But it was critical early funning, and because of that, Nancy Pelosi became the speaker. So there's all these funny little ways to get up the mountain. I love that critical early funding by Larry Flint. Well, he was sick of them. He was sick of them hounding Bill Quitting about a blowjob.

So so he was looking to discredit other people, you know, to say they're just as bad. Who were they the point fingers? You know, I can dig it. That strategy kind of worked for a while too, because there were a number of Republicans who who's misdeeds were brought to light and they were sent on their way. But there's always more Republicans.

They're much more. They're completely audacious. We we are so timid as Democrats. Yeah, I agree, I agree. Well, yeah, often comes from place of reason, thoughtfulness.

It from being thoughtful and kind and having empathy. Now, did you did you help fair Fight in the early days. I had a million people helped fair Fight. Yeah. I got what money I could for Stacy.

I also created don't get per Merged for her a little too late, because Kemp really purged a lot of people of the voter roles. I'm from Georgia, so I was following follow Georgia politics a lot. I'm convinced she won that year. I still am. Yeah, you know, Karen Girlwargo, I bet she knew they didn't even have line of custody of the voting machines.

You know, or the voter rolls, but there were so many people that were turned away from the polls that year. Yeah. Absolutely, and then even I mean even this last election was very scary. There were like sixty seven bomb threats called into places. Something went down.

You know. I can go the conspiracy theory way and say, how come Elon pulled all of a sudden thirteen satellites went down, you know, and the bullet votes and go the way of that. But I think the main problem was that we have ignored being in media, and we ignored the fact that media was owned by people that wanted trumph. Yeah. Yeah, we're in a really uh weird tough time.

It's gonna get worse. Yes, it's gonna get a lot worse before it gets better. Woo. We can do it, and we're gonna have to handle it and we will. But yeah, it's gonna get worse.

And the sad thing is people are gonna get hurt. Yeah, and people are gonna there's gonna be all sorts of people hurt. And it's just you think, who are these guys. They think I'm yeah, I'm gonna own the Libs and then they find out they're gonna have to pay for their parents the rest of their lives because the social safety net has gone or this has gone. There's there's gonna be hell to pay well.

See, I think these guys are just gonna rape the money. Yeah, they're gonna rape the money. They're gonna rape the countryside. They're gonna give away our natural resources, They're gonna sell the farm. It's all the New World Order of the tech bros.

Yeah. I mean, if you read any of the Curtis Yarvin stuff that Peter Thiel ascribes to, it's crazy town. Yeah. It's like these Neuveau Reach thirteen year olds all got together and decided to design a world where they're all little kings. You know.

It's hysterical. Are you staying on Twitter or are you going to bliss? Guy? I'm both. I'm on both.

I haven't done social media for three days and people are like in my DMS, going are you dead? Are you alive? It's so funny. Usually I'm on there a lot. Yeah, but it's it's kind of good to have that.

I did that after the election, then it was good. It was good. Yeah. I stayed after the election because I wanted to give people hope and let them know I'm still here. I'm fighting to the last breath comes out of me.

And don't concede in advance. Nope, and don't you know all that on tyranny advice. I'm into it, but I had a lot of grandkids stuff the past couple of days, so I haven't been able to say, Oh, Kimberly Gilfoyle shouldn't be an embassador. You know it's insane. It's insane.

Well, I'm glad you that you're having the grand grandkid thing now. Also, I'm curious about your fly fishing and how you got into that. Oh, fly fishing, I love it. My husband would have dumped me if I couldn't fish. That's his thing.

Yip Brittenham is one of the best fly fishermen in the world. He has records all over the country, all over the continents. He even fished for our nation. He was on two World champion teams. But you didn't know we had a world champion.

I did not no idea. No, I mean a world is a world fishing contest fly fishing and he was on the US team twice. How do they rate it? What are they divide an area like they've gone to Italy. I'm like, where's the big fly fishing in Italy?

And do they have enough to divide into beats so that everybody can compete fairly? No, but they do it anyway. You know, They've done Argentina, and I think they fish all over the world, just depends on which country is up that year. I was in a fishing contest. I'm one of the few women that was on a winning team in the Jacksonville One Fly which is really really fun.

Yeah, you get one fly in the morning. You pick your fly in the morning. If you lose your fly, you're out. So you only get the points you score with that fly. Oh gratulations, that's awesome.

Yeah. What is it about fly fishing that you that you find so appealing? You can't think about anything else but fly fishing. When you're fishing, you have to think about the You have to think about the entomology. You have to think about the water, you have to think the hydraulics of it.

You have to think about the weather. You have to think about what the moonlight was the night before, what the cloud cover is that day. You have to read what the fish are taking and match it and I fish barblous, so that gives you less than a second to catch your fish. It's not baked. You know, it's a fly, so they're not going to swallow it.

You fish with the worm. You're going to get the fish no matter of what. And you're probably going to kill the fish. I catch and release. You have the fly, and it's just if the fish grabs it, okay, And so it doesn't hook them.

Yeah, it hooks itself. But you're getting their lips just that you have just barely a second to get it. Okay, that sounds harder, but kinder. Yeah, they don't really feel the same way. We feel same.

They just know they're going forward or backward. They're not feeling that thing the same way. Now, have you ever gone fly fishing with Henry Winkler? My husband taught Henry. I think he first took Henry Winkler fly fishing, or one of the first times.

And Henry's been on the same river We've all been on a fishing trip, and he's been in a boat on the same river. I have rowed a canoe with Henry Winkler in it. Henry and I have been in a canoe, but I have never been fly fishing with him side by side. We used to own a fly fishing ranch in West Yellowstone called the Firewall, and he came up to visit and everybody went fly fishing. But I don't think I fished by side with him.

What about your daughters or your grandkids? Do any of them are any. I'm interested in? They don't even get No, they don't care. My oldest daughter is really good and she'd be like, Dad, there's a fish on my line.

Again. They don't like it. It's not their thing. It's not their thing. Well, I really now want to show with you and Henry Winkler fly fishing and solving political problems.

Can yeah, political problem? Yeah, we need to get rid of money in politics. And I don't know how that's going to happen. Yeah, yeah, we'll figure it out. I would go a long way to fixing a lot of things.

Yeah. How can people find you or support causes that you support? They can always donate to don't Get Purged, there's a donation button on there, or they can't. They go to don't get purge dot org. We had millions of people through that site this year checking their status.

There's a million things I support, give to the right foundation. I think right now the most important thing is we support our local newspapers. We support local journalists, we support libraries, librarians, teachers, we support institutions, support your local I would do all environmentalists, because the environment's going to be there's going to be no regulations and probably no way to even test legally by the time they get through with this. So I would invest in those life straws and invest in water filters and stuff and air filters. Wow, all right, Well, how do you keep hope?

There's always hope. Nothing's impossible, there's always hope. And I don't think people are going to take it. I don't think people are aware what they voted for. It was a worldwide throwing out of the incumbencies because of inflation.

I think that's what it mainly was. Selection and eggs were high, and they don't really consider that democracy is going to be at stake. They didn't think that someone in another state having a problem with abortion if abortion was legal in their state. They didn't care. Nobody thinks about that stuff until it affects them.

Yeah, it's hard to tell that story effectively. Yeah, and there was also this big sense worldwide. It was a kind of a zeitgeist where people believed that other people were coming to their country and getting stuff they shouldn't have, and they resented it, even if they were living fairly well. It wasn't like we were living in poverty and someone else was. You know, the propaganda would be the migrants or in five star hotels.

That was crocodile, you know, but that's what people believed because we do not have the media. M hmm. Yeah. And it was a backlash for me too, which went too far. And I think we still haven't shown that we can successfully elect a female president.

No, and we won't even nominate one for a couple of cycles now, which is stupid, stupid. But you know, sadly, I've I've thought for a long time that that the first female president will be a Republican because republic public. Yeah, but Republican women are contemptible. I'm not. You're just saying that's the way.

I don't know. I have met a very few Republican women I respect. Frankly, yeah, I think it will happen. I was hoping it would happen in my lifetime. I'm not as sure, but.

That's I'm not so sure either, but I'll be happy if we keep democracy in my lifetime. Yeah, me too. Let's let's let's start there. Let's start with that. We'll start there, and you know, nothing's impossible.

It could be for all we know, there might be another woman nominated and elected. But right now we have to see where the men were like, oh, we're losing our white privilege. As long as we're on this grievance thing and the someone's taking stuff, someone having something is taking it away from me. You know, I thought that was going to come with overpopulation, and we're here and it came. We thought about that in the eighties, we thought about stuff like that.

Yeah, overpopulation and my and with global warming, whole populations are going to have to migrate with that, and so it won't just be war as an impetus for moving around. It'll be worse. Yeah, yes, basics. Anyway, it has been so great to talk to you. It's been great talking.

It's been awesome to have you on the show. And you're thank you an amazing eighties TV lady, and so I'm really glad. Yeah, we really appreciate your time and your willingness to share with us and eventually with our listeners. Really really admire what you're doing, what you've done in your career, and also what you've done. So interesting conversation.

Mm hm yeah, absolutely it. Has been, and I really appreciate your activism a lot. Thank you and your sense of hope and giving people. Do you have a sense of hope? Yeah, nothing's impossible.

Yeah, me too. I think it's our jobs. I think it's our job. If you have any privilege, it's your job to have hope. That's right, Yeah, good point, our job.

All right, Thank you, have a great afternoon, have a good day you too. For our audioography today, you can find Heather Thomas on Twitter at Heather Thomas AF. She is also on Blue Sky at Heather Thomas af dot bsky dot social. And if you haven't already seen it, you can find The Fall Guy movie on Peacock TV for free if you're a subscriber. It can also be rented or bought on Amazon Prime Video, YouTube Vandango, and Flix, Fling.

Flixfing how fun Flix fling Flix Fling, and The Fall Guy TV show is streaming on Amazon Prime Video. You can also purchase it at YouTube AppleTV. You can also go to don't Get Purge dot org to make sure that you are not taking off the voter rolls. And for the organization crew that Heather Thomas mentioned in the show, which is actually the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, you can go check them out at Citizensfoethics dot org. They're a great organization.

So we come to the end of what I think is another fantastic episode, and we hope that eighties TV Ladies continues to bring you joy and laughter and lots of fabulous new and old shows to watch, all of which will lead us forward toward being amazing ladies of the twenty first century, which I think. Heather Thomas is. I agree. Eightnds Bread To the City