Jeff Daniels says his iconic speech from ‘The Newsroom’ is ‘still relevant today’

Jeff Daniels has had a long and illustrious career that has included a broad range of comedic and dramatic roles, from Dumb and Dumber to The Newsroom. He’s a singer, an actor and a writer — so it’s only natural his memoir involves all of the above.

Instead of writing a book about his life, the 69-year-old worked with his son, 40-year-old Ben Daniels, to produce an Audible Original series, Alive and Well Enough Continues. All 12 episodes of Season 2 are now available on Audible.

Jeff and Ben spoke with Yahoo Entertainment ahead of the show’s release about their father-son podcasting team, Jeff’s legacy as an actor and how the unconventional project came together.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

So, why do something episodic and through audio instead of writing a traditional memoir?

Jeff Daniels: Well, I don’t have to go on book tours — let’s start there! I’ve been playing and writing songs for 50 years, and this platform allows me to do all of that. I can act, I can read scenes from plays I’ve written where I play all the parts, I can play music, I can write fiction — I get to do all of it on Audible Originals, which I wouldn’t get to do if I were sitting behind a card table at Barnes & Noble.

What was your focus for Season 2? Was there any subject you really wanted to dive into?

Jeff: I’m a huge fan of people like David Sedaris and other folks that know how to take things from their own lives, find the meaning or metaphor or theme, and create something people can relate to. Then I just hand it to Ben and see what we’ve got.

How do you two work together on this?

Ben Daniels: We set him up so he can record his words, then I just edit it and break it down. At first, there were too many little sounds in there that we needed to comb out, but it’s not his fault. That was just the computer.

Jeff: (Jokingly) We’ll blame the computer and not the elderly person speaking into the microphone. We’re gonna do better on that! It’s definitely a team — the two of us.

What did you learn from the first season that you brought to the second season?

Jeff: That it worked! That we pulled it off! That we got away with it!

Are there any songs, skits or stories from Season 2 that you’re really excited are going to be out in the world, Jeff?

Jeff: There are some really good stories in there! Some from [his time on the TV series] Godless, dealing with horses and riding horses. When actors say, “Of course I can ride!” and they can’t, this is what happens. Then there’s a section near the end about Al Pacino and what he meant to me early on. I’m getting to the age where I can see things come full circle. There’s one section about things that actors do to each other on stage to get you to break character. The only show diary I ever kept was with an actor named Jerome who was in Chekov’s Three Sisters with me off-Broadway. The guy would try to do something every single night, and he was 92 years old, so you couldn’t control him.

When I’m talking to actors and people who have had a lot of iconic roles, I find that some see their most popular work as something they have to address with fans, as if it’s a chore. But you seem to find the way people bring up, for instance, your role in Dumb and Dumber as a fun opportunity to entertain.

Jeff: It makes people laugh! And, especially now, we could all use it. In comedy, it’s hard enough to get people to laugh once. To get them to laugh after they’ve seen it time and time again, or in different generations, decades later — we could all use that. I’m proud of that. I loved making it. I loved working with Jim Carrey and the Farrelly brothers. I love that I’m able to do that and play Atticus Finch [in To Kill a Mockingbird] on Broadway. I like the range.

Ben: We used the toilet scene [from Dumb and Dumber] to potty train my daughter. Not every parent has a grandparent who can help in that way.

What a scene! Did she recognize your dad?

Ben: She was still a little young, so we might have to refresh her now that she’s in first grade. But at the time, we were running out of ideas!

Something that comes up in my daily life as a journalist is that speech that you give in the first episode of The Newsroom, in which your character, a news anchor, tells an audience of students why the United States is “not the greatest country in the world.” Do you revisit that speech as much as other work you’ve done?

Jeff: It’s been viewed, I don’t know how many, millions of times on YouTube. Every actor wants that one movie, that one role, that one speech, that people will remember from them. I have several, so I’m lucky in that sense. It’s just another thing that’s going to outlive me. I think of it more and more as something that will last because it’s still relevant today. But I knew how big that speech was the day we did it. I got to ride the words of Aaron Sorkin. It was a special day I’ll never forget.

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