- If Tom Hanks were willing to do it with me. I mean, I couldn't do it with anybody else!
- [Who worked with other comedy mates all the while received training]: People I work with there saw a comedian in me. I'm still most at home with them.
- [About "It Must Be Him" is more on the absurd side]: He's visited by his dead parents and occasionally breaks into song.
- Unquestionably. I know no actors of my generation who haven't experienced it. We're coming up against our own resident pride and the frailty of ego. And sure, maybe that has something to do with why Kenny Solms and our director, Dan Kutner, sought me out to do this role. I think to some extent they just wanted me to bring life to the role, if not my life experience, but I have both. About a year after Bosom Buddies, I was suddenly a regular on Newhart, and I was there almost seven years. And then, somewhere in the mid-1990s, I ended up doing a TV series version of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. I thought at that time: 'Wow, what's going on here, this isn't a prime-time series, I'm not going to get Emmy-nominated for a show that airs at 5 in the afternoon.' It's all the hobgoblin of your mind telling you that you should have more, or that you'll never have what you had before. If I've gotten nowhere else, at least I've gotten over that hump of believing in my own hype. Now I believe in the importance of where it is that I'm sitting in my career.
- [About Bob Newhart wanting him for a co-starring role Newhart (1982)]: So, Barry Kemp [I think] introduces me, and we have an actor who's in 'Bosom Buddies,' and Bob leans in, so that everyone can hear in a mock whisper, stage whisper, and he says, 'I told you to get the other guy!'
- [Of Bob Newhart, who played Dick Loudin]: He mastered the craft of secrecy on the last episode of Newhart, where he hid Suzanne Pleshette from even the production staff.
- [Of Bob Newhart]: Bob, this is a male story. It's like that male bonding kind of story, we play golf together, many, too many times, a terrible, terrible game. And he went to hit the three went off the muddy fairway, and beautiful golfer, beautiful swing, just electrifying thing in this rainstorm, and looked out for it, and didn't see him, he didn't see it anywhere because he had driven the ball directly into the button, hadn't left his. It's the point of disembarkation.
- [When asked if there was any dirt about Bob Newhart, who played Dick Loudin]: No, there was no dirt on Bob Newhart, let's be very clear on that point. There's no dirt, he said, 'What?,' he said, 'What he did, what?' No, but there some things.
- [As to how many Emmies both he and Bob Newhart had lost on Newhart (1982), before the two had finally won, decades later]: I don't know the exact #, but I think we lost, 20 Emmies over the years and Bob won, in this category [Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series], a couple years ago and you probably know, he told me earlier tonight, 'You can win one; if you're up to it.' He said, 'I've got one at home.' It was great to be in this category. It was some calming effect because somebody at it had been so meaningful in my life, such a mentor to me. If he were to win another one, tonight, I would've been fine with that.
- [Of his on- and off-screen chemistry with [Bob Newhart], who played Dick Loudin]: We like each other and we have a nice association; but we really ran set of a ... there was a concurrent, a development of affection. I'm at a loss off to imagine what anyone sees in me, when I can tell you what I saw in him, which was you know, a guy who was really complicated and did not suffer fools, gladly. He was always a gracious man; but he would confide in me, must've played 30 rounds of golf with him, in my time there, my 7 years of the Newhart show, cause Tom Poston got me into that Godforsaken game of golf and Bob picked it up and started taking me out to play with him, on Mondays, after we read a script and go home. 'You want to go out to Bel-Air Country Club,' 'OK!' ANd later, he sponsored me for a junior member Bel-Air Country Club. I don't play golf anymore, I don't have any money left, but I have these fond memories and I saw Bob at the Emmies, not this past Emmies; but a year ago and I was nominated in his category for Guest Actor In A Comedy Series and we were backstage, reuniting. I hadn't seen him in about 5 years and he said, 'You know Pete, you can win this, this year, I'm OK with that, I already have one,' and I knew that he really (in that) in his own way, which wasn't exactly cryptic, but was nuanced! You had to get to know Bob overtime to know how he really felt about some things. Sometimes, he would be sarcastic, funny and teasing and you would know how he felt, other times he would say.. things that were so... not many people get to penetrate that way.
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