Life can take some pretty unexpected turns. Just ask Phil Rosenthal. The man who brought us “Everybody Loves Raymond” is now a global star in his own right thanks to “Somebody Feed Phil” — Netflix’s longest running unscripted original series, a show Phil says boils down to one simple sentence: “I’m just like Anthony Bourdain if Bourdain was afraid of everything”. The result is a profound, at times goofy, and utterly relatable exploration of humanity through food. Phil tells Nicolle about his “hero’s journey” as a kid from Queens who didn’t taste garlic until he was 17 to a world traveler who’s trying to get everybody out of their comfort zones one dish at a time. And Phil shares what he’s learned along the way: that most people are nice, it’s time to replace the manosphere with the “lady-sphere”, and diners might just save the world.
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Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
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Phil Rosenthal: But I figured there’s a lot of people like me who watch Bourdain and say, he’s amazing. I’m never doing that. And maybe just getting off the couch is a step out of your comfort zone. So if I can get you just to go to the next town, just to see what else is out there, just to expand your horizons a little bit. And I think if you can open a mouth, like taste the new food, if you can open a mouth, you can open a mind.
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Nicolle Wallace: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the “Best People” podcast. You have met a lot of the best people in the country, in the world, in their different fields. But I don’t think you have yet met someone who was one of the best people to me and to my family. This week’s guest is someone we discovered during the COVID pandemic. We had movie and TV night as the pandemic wore on. And one of the shows we discovered, one of the shows I discovered with my son was “Somebody Feed Phil.” And when we go to Croatia, which we will, because of this show, we will watch that episode again and go everywhere where they fed Phil. So this is the “Best People” podcast. And this is Phil Rosenthal. Thank you so much for being here.
Phil Rosenthal: I love seeing you, Nicolle. You know, I watch you too. I watch some of you. You’re on a long time every day.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Phil Rosenthal: But I watch some of you, I think almost every day.
Nicolle Wallace: Really?
Phil Rosenthal: You’re like my favorite. Absolutely. So, I’m just delighted to be here with you.
Nicolle Wallace: I love the show so much and I felt jealous when I watched this season’s premier and saw that your real world, big time famous now, because I feel like I was there at the beginning, but you have people flocking to your hotels all over the world. Is that weird?
Phil Rosenthal: Yes. It’s amazing at this age to wake up and find yourself Taylor Swift.
Nicolle Wallace: But you are. Is it you? Is it the food? Is it food?
Phil Rosenthal: I think food’s a big part of it. People like food. That’s why I’m using it to get to you. I think you know what the real message of the show is. So I’m only using food in my stupid sense of humor to get you that real message, which is I think the world would be better if we all could experience a little bit of other people’s experiences. But what I learned from writing like sitcom is that good writing is saying it without saying it. So I never want to be preachy and saying today’s lesson is, right? We should be kind to each other around the world. We should be friendly neighbors to everyone. We should abide by the golden rule. I don’t need to say that. Why? Because I hope that I’m just demonstrating it.
And the way I show love is to sit and eat with you. I say that food is the great connector and then laughs are the cement.
Nicolle Wallace: What is it about food that shaped you and put you on what I think you would describe as an unlikely path to your —
Phil Rosenthal: A hero’s journey.
Nicolle Wallace: You’re super stardom. I mean, you talk openly so I don’t think I’m saying anything at a school that your mom wasn’t a very good cook.
Phil Rosenthal: Nicolle —
Nicolle Wallace: You don’t cook.
Phil Rosenthal: — how dare you. That’s my mother you’re talking. No, she was not, uh, the best cook. In fact, she once made for Passover, she made matzo lasagna. Instead of sheets of pasta, sheets of matzo. I think she found this recipe in an anti-Semitic cookbook. So, we didn’t grow up with great tasting anything. By the way, it wasn’t until I left for college that I had food with what most people call flavor.
Nicolle Wallace: And it’s garlic, right? That was like your —
Phil Rosenthal: It was garlic.
Nicolle Wallace: — Pandora’s, right? Tell us what happened.
Phil Rosenthal: So I go to Hofstra University and now I’m free and the kids and I we go to a perfectly cheap Italian restaurant, probably pretty crappy now that I think back on it, but I had pasta with sauce and I’m freaking out. And the kids are going, what’s wrong with him? I’m like this is the best thing I’ve ever eaten. They say, what? Just pasta and sauces. And I said, no, no, no. Well, like what are these little white bits, you know, what is that? And they said, what, garlic? I said, that’s garlic. I was living like an animal.
Nicolle Wallace: That’s so funny. I think most people remember, I don’t know, their first drink or their first kiss at the beginning of college. I love your story about your first bite of garlic.
Phil Rosenthal: That’s it. And it’s like then in the “Wizard of Oz” when she opens the door, now the movie’s in color. And then the next giant leap for me was going to Europe. When I was 23, I got a courier flight. Didn’t cost anything. You could go as a passenger, a coach passenger and all their luggage tags was their cargo. So it was going as your excess baggage. That was the cheapest way for them to send cargo.
You got a free trip to any destination that they went. So this was a great thing to have. Well, I got to Paris. I didn’t have any money, really. I had maybe $200 for the two weeks that I was going to be in Europe, stayed in youth hostels, got a baguette and some cheese. You sit in the park in Paris, you’re as good as anybody.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Phil Rosenthal: You’re in Paris, man. And that just, that blew my mind.
Nicolle Wallace: What determines where you go for the show?
Phil Rosenthal: At first it was just where I want to go. Like I knew I had to show the world Paris and Florence and you know, I started with Earth’s greatest hits, right. And that was the first show was called, I’ll have what Phil is having, it was on PBS.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Phil Rosenthal: You can still see those first six on YouTube. They’re on YouTube now. But it was just where, you know, here’s a budget go where you want. Okay. So we go. Barcelona, Paris, Florence, Tokyo. It was absolutely phenomenal. After the first season of that, they couldn’t afford to do more shows. It’s PBS. Here comes this young startup, Netflix, and they pick up the show. So now, I think we’re their longest running unscripted original series in their history, eight seasons. So now we have tourism boards calling us, please come. So we check them out —
Nicolle Wallace: It’s amazing.
Phil Rosenthal: — to see. So I want to go everywhere. Like, you’ll see this in this season, you’ll see Tblisi, which is a place I never thought to go and –.
Nicolle Wallace: How was the food?
Phil Rosenthal: Amazing. I was expecting like Soviet era beets and dirt, but it wasn’t. The soil there actually is very rich. So everything that grows, did you know this? Did you know that wine was invented in Soviet Georgia 8,000 years ago before the Egyptians? Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: I didn’t know that.
Phil Rosenthal: And they’re still making it. That natural wine that you find sometimes with that orange color, that’s Georgian.
Nicolle Wallace: That’s amazing.
Phil Rosenthal: That started there. Yes, amazing. So all this great stuff that you find, the whole thing is you don’t know what you’re missing, literally.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Phil Rosenthal: So you explore. All I do is I do research. Google best place to eat Tbilisi, right? Oh, sorry about the phone. It’s a busy house.
Nicolle Wallace: Mine too.
Phil Rosenthal: Right. And so I’m doing that, and then I do have a production company in New York, which they’ve been everywhere. So they tell me that’s not the best pizza place. This is the best pizza place. And then we leave room in the schedule for serendipity, for stuff to happen, which is my favorite stuff.
Nicolle Wallace: I think that’s it, right? Like it’s for everyone. But to your point, it’s not fluff. I mean, it’s perhaps the most profound and subversive content you could create, right? Every stop, every city, you highlight the immigrant contributions to the best and finest cuisine. Talk about that. It’s obviously not accidental.
Phil Rosenthal: This is why I’m so happy to talk to you because listen, I don’t get political in the show. It’s not for that. And I don’t know if subversive is the right word. I’m not preaching one side or the other side. I’m just trying to be a human being. And maybe that’s what we’ve lost —
Nicolle Wallace: Well, that’s become subversive, I would argue.
Phil Rosenthal: You’re get no argument from me. I mean, that’s the problem, isn’t it? Is that we’re losing that and I’m trying to hang on to it. And I know I’m not alone. Since when did hugging someone from another culture define your political bent? I’m just trying to be a guy, just a nice guy. Most of the world I find is very nice. The news, I don’t have to tell Nicolle, they don’t report on all the planes that landed safely today. You have to report the extraordinary. And the extraordinary is that 10% of humanity that’s not so nice that gets our attention, that stands out. But I’m saying it stands out because most of the world is not that way.
I’ve been to Israel, there’s a town called Acre. And I was told that Jews and Arabs live in that town side by side, you got to go see this and I’m thinking, I’m going to go there. You know what’s going to happen? They’re going to maybe meet in the town square and maybe I won’t be so safe. Guess what? They meet in a town square every day. What do they do? They have lunch. The mosque is next to the synagogue in this town. They celebrate each other’s holidays and weddings and bar mitzvahs. This is how the world wants to be. This is how the world is. I’m not showing you in my show the way I wish it was. I’m just showing you what I find and what I find, I’ll go one step further. Most people around the world are so much better than their governments.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Phil Rosenthal: We all feel that, no matter where I speak and I say this, I’m doing right now, a big North American tour right now. Everywhere I go, even in the Midwest, which we think is going to be a certain way, there’s a lot of people who are feeling what we feel, that we don’t want our humanity to slip away. And we don’t want criminals, literal criminals, leading us and telling us what’s right and wrong when we know better, we inherently know better. We wouldn’t raise our children this way. Isn’t it a shame that you can’t have your kid watch TV and emulate the president of the United States? What’s happened?
So I’m looking, I’m looking at my show as maybe a little alternative programming. If you report the news, but if you watch the news and I can see by your face you’re submersed in the news, it must be terrible sometimes to just have to live in that world. You can’t. You have to have this other life that is life affirming.
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, I think one of my revelations after the 2024 election result was that to pull out just the politics, I can’t think of an ingredient that this would apply to, to give you a good food analogy, but it’s too intense, right? That the soup without all the other stuff is too much. And so the political news, it’s such a concentrated dose of the news. I mean, to your point, I mean, it makes me cry listening to you talk about going all around the world because I worry what people around the world think. And yes, people are always better than their government, than their leaders because their incentive structure is different. They have to coexist and most people want to be liked by their neighbors, and most people want to be called if there’s a neighbor in need. But I wonder if you feel different when you travel around the world now.
Phil Rosenthal: I want to give you a little hope. When I go around the world and I meet people, they feel exactly like we do, maybe even more so. Why? Because Russia’s at their doorstep. They have counted for generations on the United States, being their big brother, being the protector. We were the ones who saved the world, not ruin it. That might be naive to say, but at least that’s a real perception. Everywhere I go. You know that everyone has the phone and when we get the news alert here says breaking news, right? They get it too.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Phil Rosenthal: They get it. Oh no, what did he do? Oh, no, they don’t go to us. They treat us, I believe this, as the victims of a hostile takeover.
Nicolle Wallace: Really?
Phil Rosenthal: Yeah. They don’t see it as, you guys were all stupid. What are you doing? I never got that. Never. I mean, I feel that we must be stupid. What are we doing? But they look at it as, oh God, we are so worried. They’re worried. They have their literal own safety to worry about.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Phil Rosenthal: We have normalized this crime syndicate. Why don’t question start with, as a convicted felon, why did you. Why can’t that be the question? Why don’t we normalize that kind of question? Jeffrey Epstein was convicted of raping children. Is that why you’re worried that your name is in it? Why can’t we be a little tougher with this guy?
Nicolle Wallace: Why do you think people aren’t?
Phil Rosenthal: Afraid of losing their position at the White House Press Corps maybe, that you won’t be welcome in anymore. But go out with a bang, at least. Don’t you love “South Park,” what they’re doing?
Nicolle Wallace: It’s incredible.
Nicolle Wallace: Don’t you love —
Nicolle Wallace: It’s incredible.
Phil Rosenthal: Talk about subversive. That’s not —
Nicolle Wallace: Incredible.
Phil Rosenthal: You’re calling me subversive. Look at that. They’ve got the big cajones. Look at Gavin Newsome. Like him or not, you got to love the young lady who’s working on that.
Nicolle Wallace: It took them nine years. But I think that —
Phil Rosenthal: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: — they’ve figured it out. That all of this, and I think Michelle Obama intended that line, when they go low, we go high. It’s for Michelle Obama to say and do not the entire country and Democratic Party. I mean, the fight against Trump is happening on the low road. And I think that to your point, whether you love Gavin Newsom or hate Gavin Newsom, he’s the first one to figure that out.
Phil Rosenthal: How great? And it almost seems like they’re knocked back on their heels. They don’t know how to deal with that.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah. Yeah.
Phil Rosenthal: If they go after him, it’s very obvious what they’re doing, right? And I’m sure they’ll try because I think there’s no shame, but I think Michelle Obama had to say that. I think it was at a time when we thought that that type of thinking would prevail. And maybe because it hasn’t that we now need to fight harder. And also who says that laughing at them is not staying high.
Nicolle Wallace: That’s right. That’s right.
Phil Rosenthal: Right.
Nicolle Wallace: When I call the program subversive, I mean, I think the levity, I think, hides or disguises something really deeply profound, which is that if we’re deeply connected to each other, it doesn’t matter who you voted for, you won’t let ICE haul them off in the middle of the night. And so I wonder what role you think reconnecting to each other plays in this moment?
Phil Rosenthal: It’s the most important thing. My whole thing is connecting with people. That’s it. When the government fails to take care of us, what happens? We have to take care of ourselves. We can’t turn on each other. That’s what they’d like while they steal. This whole thing is so they can steal more. But I mean, we don’t address this. It should be every single day addressing people. You should understand. The only reason he ran again was to avoid jail. And now that he’s here, he’s going to make sure that no one can arrest him again and he can steal more while he’s doing it. Is it more complicated than that?
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, it’s certainly what he’s unafraid to show us.
Phil Rosenthal: It used to be, at the very least, it was symbolic, the office. Symbolic.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Phil Rosenthal: Now it’s all tacky gold leaf and paved over rose gardens. It’s insane.
Nicolle Wallace: It’s insane. I mean, coming from your career in Hollywood, could you make it up? I mean, could anyone have made this up? This plot?
Phil Rosenthal: No. That’s why shows that are doing satire stop being funny when real life surpassed it.
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Phil Rosenthal: You can’t make it up. Only “South Park” or a show that goes way beyond, way beyond decency —
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Phil Rosenthal: — can show you the real depravity of what’s there.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah. The animation helps too because, like, you can’t even imagine the actor —
Phil Rosenthal: It distances.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Phil Rosenthal: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: — play the same —
Phil Rosenthal: The animation helps.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Phil Rosenthal: Because when real life gets to be so cartoonish —
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Phil Rosenthal: The only thing that could mock it is an actual cartoon.
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Nicolle Wallace: We’re going to sneak in a quick break right here. When we come back, we’ll have much more with award-winning creator of “Everybody Loves Raymond” and star of the hit series “Somebody Feed Phil,” Phil Rosenthal. We will be back in a moment.
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Nicolle Wallace: I’ve been thinking a lot about culture and the role of artists and creators. People like yourself and “South Park.” And it seems like it isn’t a piece of it that we all rode together. It feels like that’s the vessel.
Phil Rosenthal: Our contribution, meaning the entertainment business, Woody Guthrie had a guitar and on the guitar, it said this machine kills fascists. Isn’t that fantastic?
Nicolle Wallace: It’s incredible.
Phil Rosenthal: So that’s everything. This machine kills fascists. That’s our only while we still have a little free speech, use it. Use your powers for good. That’s what I tell my kids. That’s what I tell to use your powers for good. Why? Because some people are using them for not so good. So we have to counter it. We can’t just sit there and take it. And by the way, it’s not enough just to laugh at “South Park,” just to laugh at Gavin Newsom.
I would say that Gavin Newsom is actually doing more good because he can literally affect change. He can change the districting in California. He can literally, and while he’s doing it, call people’s attention to the hypocrisy and the insanity. I can’t even believe that someone on the other news station said he shouldn’t do that, Gavin Newsom. He looks foolish doing that. Yeah. Have you been paying attention?
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah, I think in watching all of the interactions and to your point about people being the same wherever you go, people don’t want to be played for fools. And that feels universal still.
Phil Rosenthal: Yes. Do you think that that’s the thing that will change people’s minds? Everyone signed up for his university, right. They were hoping that they would get an education and they’d become rich people too, in the real estate world. And when they got scammed personally, then they sued.
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Phil Rosenthal: By the way, I thought that had to be the end. Wouldn’t vote for a guy who does that.
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Phil Rosenthal: But until it affects them personally, I don’t even know if Epstein’s going to make the difference.
Nicolle Wallace: Well, he certainly makes some of Trump’s prominent followers feel stupid, according to them. I mean, you’ve got some of the prominent podcasters saying, what does he think, we’re children? I mean, yes.
Phil Rosenthal: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: He does, who fall in line, but I wonder what you think of all the discussion these days about the manosphere.
Phil Rosenthal: It’s a real thing. I try not to participate too much, even though I’m a guy. I’ve met world leaders. Got wonderful president of Finland and had lunch with her, a young mom, maybe 37, spectacular. And you talk to this lady and you go, oh yeah, more of the world should be like this. What if young moms were in charge? I think we’d have less war. We’d have nice programs to help and lift each other up. I’m all for it. Yes, men have run things for a long time, the manosphere, Time for a lady sphere.
Nicolle Wallace: I like it. You got my vote.
Phil Rosenthal: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: Do you try to steer any conversations away from politics on your travels? Or do you let them go where they go? I mean, do you —
Phil Rosenthal: I let them go —
Nicolle Wallace: — do you edit out?
Phil Rosenthal: — and then edit out the blatant. Like I wouldn’t talk this way on my show. I might make a little joke. I might make a little hint. I do even in my live show. I talk and they go, somebody goes Phil for president. I go, no, no, no. Thank you. That’s very nice, but I happen to be one of the few people that still believes you should be really smart to be president. And that’s as far as I go. I feel comfortable doing that with you, because I actually want your reaction to this stuff because I’m trying to learn as much as I can from an insider. I’m just a guy trying to figure it out. How do we get here? How do we get out of here? How do we fix this?
Nicolle Wallace: Well, I mean, I’m here trying to do the same thing.
Phil Rosenthal: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: I think that everyone’s choices are so instructive and what I would say as an insider is we got nothing. So we’re all turning to you. I don’t think we have the answers. And I think what the voters have rejected twice now is the perception of insiders that know more than everybody else. And so not only do we not, but I don’t think that’s what people want. I think people want to be good, but I think they’ve made two out of three times the worst choice. And I’m trying to figure out if maybe more of us should use our platforms more overtly. Would you contemplate that or is that just not what the show is?
Phil Rosenthal: I feel like that’s not what the show is. I feel like you are getting the message without me having to say it.
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Phil Rosenthal: I’d like to say it without saying it. If you’re touched by the kind treatment of immigrants in the Amsterdam episode, for example, by this wonderful organization that tries to assimilate them to their new homelands. Imagine, they’re not locking them up and throwing them out, they’re helping them assimilate. And when you help people assimilate to their new land, what does that do? It certainly makes their lives better, but it makes our lives better because here’s the other thing I’m learning. Everywhere I go in the world, for the most part, immigrants make wherever they immigrate to better, not worse, better.
Nicolle Wallace: Right. I worry that we have the most divergent public rhetoric about immigrants that we’ve had in maybe ever, but certainly in a generation or two. And I wonder having spent time all over the world, what do you make of a sort of sadistic profile in an American policy holder?
Phil Rosenthal: It can only be described as monstrous. It’s disgusting that they’re selling merch for alligator Alcatraz. They even have a fun name for it. What’s wrong with you? My parents are Holocaust survivors. They were in a concentration camp, my mother. What the hell? Just listen. Just the golden rule. Just the golden rule. If we just had that.
Nicolle Wallace: Do one to others.
Phil Rosenthal: Yeah. Isn’t it true that, I don’t have all the stats, but isn’t it true that most of the people that they’re apprehending have no criminal record at all?
Nicolle Wallace: A whole lot of them. Yeah. And to the credit of some people who are speaking out, they seem to be operationally targeting people at work. And you’ve got about 80% of the country that thinks if someone has a job they’re filling a need. And those are not the kind of people you should send away. It makes me want to scream somebody feed Nicolle.
Phil Rosenthal: Yes. Yes, that’s right.
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, I guess this is what we need to heal from.
Phil Rosenthal: Right.
Nicolle Wallace: And I wonder if you’re opening a restaurant also, a diner.
Phil Rosenthal: I am. So, that could be seen as a tiny bit political as well.
Nicolle Wallace: Talk about it.
Phil Rosenthal: And again, saying it without saying it. So, diners are disappearing in America, but we all know and love diner since childhood. You’d be maybe school athletics or the theater group or wherever it is, the chess club even. Where are you going after that? Going to the diner with your buddies, right. That’s where we go. It’s where we grow up. We know that food. It’s literal comfort food. Eggs all day, waffles, pancakes, burgers, sandwiches, milkshakes, ice cream sundaes, things like this. It’s the food of our people, right, of Americans. This is what we love. This is what we know.
It’s democratic with a small D. You don’t have a lot of money, you can come. People with a lot of money, they like it too. We all love it. We love it so much it becomes the center and it’s so easygoing, it becomes the center of towns. If it comes to the center of the community. If they’re disappearing, maybe we are losing our sense of community. This place where neighbors can come and talk over everything that they like. And if we lose these communities, maybe we lose the country. So Nicolle, I’m going to fix everything with my diner on Larchmont Boulevard. And the best part is I’m naming it after my parents, it’s going to be called Max and Helens.
Nicolle Wallace: I love it. I love when you would call them at the end of your episodes.
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Phil Rosenthal: How many years married?
Unknown: Twenty-five happy years, and out of 56, that’s not bad.
Phil Rosenthal: Goodbye.
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Phil Rosenthal: They were the best part. Best part of the show.
Nicolle Wallace: My favorite part at the end.
Phil Rosenthal: Yes. Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: Will you talk about that whole thing that this whole show about universality, about friendliness, about food, about connection ends with the ultimate connection.
Phil Rosenthal: What’s the subtext? We’re all family. You relate to that because you have parents that you Zoom with. You have parents that you call or maybe can’t call anymore. I wish I could. They were so supportive and so loving and I missed them terribly still. And the reason I called them was because they were also an amazing source of comedic material.
Nicolle Wallace: They were funny.
Phil Rosenthal: My brother and I marvel. Every single call they always deliver. As if they were great comedians, as if you’re calling Robin Williams and he would be just bowing (ph), always. You’d call him right away, they turn to each other. They don’t even realize, like they know they’re on television. They know we’re filming. And within five minutes, they’re fighting as if nobody’s there. Hilarious
Nicolle Wallace: And the timing. Their timing is so funny.
Phil Rosenthal: The timing and my dad. My dad, he actually was a tailor in the garment center in New York with his father. And his father’s father had been a tailor and on and on. But what he loved doing was telling old jokes at an amateur night, in a club in New Jersey. This is the 1950s. He would get up, this skinny little tailor from New York City, having immigrated to New York from Germany, got up and told old jokes. My mother’s on a date with another fellow one night and sees this Max Rosenthal get up and tell jokes. And she says, you know what? I think I like this guy better than this guy. And I always say, if he’s not funny that night, I’m not here.
Nicolle Wallace: That’s amazing. That’s amazing.
Phil Rosenthal: So I owed everything to his sense of humor and to her sense of humor and recognizing it. And they were just really funny and charming and loving parents and grandparents. So of course I wanted them in the show. And now that they’ve passed, I thought, oh God, how do keep, first of all, the segment going? How do I keep their memory alive? How do I honor them? Well, a good way is calling my funny friends and having them do a joke for Max. And so this year you’ll see in the Australia episode, we have Mel Brooks.
Nicolle Wallace: That’s amazing. That’s amazing.
Phil Rosenthal: We have wonderful people, comedians, really great people.
Nicolle Wallace: And they all deliver.
Phil Rosenthal: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, that’s the funny thing about, and my son loves comedy. He’s got me watching some of the men in the manosphere shows and I’ll watch the whole show with him. I mean, they’re funny. And I think comedy feels as essential as the air we breathe right now.
Phil Rosenthal: It is essential. And look at Mel Brooks and look at how he treated the Nazis.
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Unknown: Springtime for Hitler and Germany.
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Phil Rosenthal: He would tell you that that’s one of the better ways to deal with them, is to first laugh at them. First, bring them down a peg, right?
Nicolle Wallace: Sorry for my dogs.
Phil Rosenthal: No, it’s okay.
Nicolle Wallace: They’re laughing at me. The idea that I would record anything. Talk about the accidental nature of your fame now as a food traveler. And I’ve heard you talk about Anthony Bourdain.
Phil Rosenthal: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: It’s such a self-deprecating twist on the inspiration, but just talk about Bourdain and talk about the accidents that led to the creation of this real huge cultural force that you lead now.
Phil Rosenthal: So after “Everybody Loves Raymond” was over, I thought that I’m supposed to make sitcoms. I thought that was my purpose in life, but the business had changed greatly in the nine years we were doing that show. And they told me, listen, they like you. They want another sitcom from you, but just we want you to be more hip and edgy. That’s what they want. Hip and edgy. I said, well, you got the right guy. I missed a hip and edgy. And so I struggled for years. And then I thought, if I’m going to bang my head against this wall of show business, let’s pick a spot that I would love. And I had been inspired by not only Bourdain, but everyone who’s done this, but mainly Ray Romano, while we were doing Raymond. Like the first season, I asked him where he was going on his vacation in between season one and two. And he said, oh, I go to the Jersey Shore. And I said, that’s nice. Have you ever been to Europe? And he said, nah. And I said, why not? And he goes, oh, I’m not really interested in different.
Nicolle Wallace: Really?
Phil Rosenthal: He didn’t want to go. Really. And this a 40-year-old guy at the time, and I’m thinking, we’re doing that episode. He goes, what do you mean? I go, we’re going to send you to Italy as you. And you’re going to come back as me, someone who’s excited about travel and especially Italy and the people in Italy, food in Italy, right.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Phil Rosenthal: It took me three years to convince him because he was afraid of flying too. But he got on the plane. And this episode, I don’t know if you saw that episode of Raymond where we go to Italy, but the episode is about Ray doesn’t want to go, complains the whole time, and then slowly gets it. Well, what happened, the best part of this is that I saw Ray transformed the person. Phil, have you had gelato?
Nicolle Wallace: That also happens to be very, very funny.
Phil Rosenthal: And now he goes all the time. And from that moment, I thought, what if I could do this for other people?
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Phil Rosenthal: So when I hit this wall of, I can’t get another sitcom on, I go, okay, how about this dream? And my agents thought I was nuts because they don’t like you changing lanes. It’d be like you walking into MSNBC and saying, you know what I’d like to do now, I’d like to be a tap dancer
Nicolle Wallace: It might come to that.
Phil Rosenthal: So it took, I think, 10 years to sell the show and I sold it to PBS —
Nicolle Wallace: PBS.
Phil Rosenthal: — and I was ready. I walked into PBS and I sold the show. This is true, with one line. I said, I’m exactly like Anthony Bourdain, if he was afraid of everything.
Nicolle Wallace: And he was afraid of nothing. So that was a perfect, I love it. I read that line in a profile about you and I love that.
Phil Rosenthal: So that’s true. And all of us that do any kind of food or travel maybe in real life too, owe a huge debt to Bourdain because he literally reinvented an entire genre. So my show is just a take on this type of show. I’m the guy who watches Bourdain and go, he’s amazing. I’m never doing that. But I figured there’s a lot of people like me —
Nicolle Wallace: -Yeah.
Phil Rosenthal: — who watch Bourdain and say, he’s amazing. I’m never doing that. And maybe just getting off the couch is a step out of your comfort zone. So if I can get you not even to go to Japan or to Europe or Africa, but just to go to the next town, just to see what else is out there, just to expand your horizons a little bit. And I think if you can open a mouth, like taste the new food, if you can open a mouth, you can open a mind.
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Nicolle Wallace: My conversation with Phil Rosenthal continues right after a very short break. Don’t go anywhere.
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Nicolle Wallace: There’s something inside a restaurant. I mean, it’s still —
Phil Rosenthal: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: — I still think there are people who walk into a restaurant and feel a little excited. What’s going to be on the menu? What am I going to have? I mean, as a mom, like, I’m not going to have to do any dishes. I wonder if you think that’s part of what we have to get back to. Turning off our phones or leaving the phones in the car —
Phil Rosenthal: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: — going inside a restaurant —
Phil Rosenthal: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: — because it’s special.
Phil Rosenthal: Yes. You know what it’s a lot like? Traveling.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Phil Rosenthal: You’re transported for the evening. A great restaurant does that.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Phil Rosenthal: And it can be the diner.
Nicolle Wallace: Of course.
Phil Rosenthal: It can be. We’re traveling. It’s also mommies taking care of us. That’s the other thing.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah. Nurture.
Phil Rosenthal: You know what my favorite moment maybe in movie history is? It’s certainly the best food moment ever in a movie. You ever see “Ratatouille?”
Nicolle Wallace: Of course, of course.
Phil Rosenthal: When he takes a bite at the end, the critic, the whole movie’s hinging on this, he takes a bite of the ratatouille and what happens? He zooms back to childhood —
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Phil Rosenthal: — and he zooms back to his mom’s ratatouille.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Phil Rosenthal: So it’s all the feelings, the evocations of everything that food represents. How ascent can transport you back to a place and time and a feeling, even. It’s all connected, sense of sight, sound, smell, taste, all connected to feelings, to emotions.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah. Memories.
Phil Rosenthal: Memory.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Phil Rosenthal: So that’s what the great chefs always tell me. Thomas Keller says, it’s all about creating memories. Touchstones back to special memories and creating new ones.
Nicolle Wallace: My mother and grandmother were Greek. And so —
Phil Rosenthal: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: — all the Greek —
Phil Rosenthal: I haven’t been there yet.
Nicolle Wallace: I know you haven’t. It’s —
Phil Rosenthal: I got to go. Go meet me.
Nicolle Wallace: You got to go. You got to go. We’ll come meet you. We’ll come eat with you. But all the recipes of my great grandmother are handwritten on little index cards. And I keep telling my mom, you’ve got to least take pictures of them. So they’re stored on a cloud, on someone’s cloud —
Phil Rosenthal: That’s right.
Nicolle Wallace: — somewhere. But I wonder how much of this is for you, your history. I mean, your mother’s. Your parents’ history is harrowing and your food journey is so connected to them because of how you’ve integrated them and shared them with us. But I wonder how much of that is so deeply personal for you?
Phil Rosenthal: Probably deep, deep down, I don’t wear it on the top, but deep, deep down, it probably is. Not for one second do I ever forget how lucky I am. That I’m the luckiest guy you’re ever going to have on your show that anyone’s ever going to see. I tell every audience, I see, take a good look. I’m the luckiest one, because I’m living a dream beyond the dream. I can’t even fathom how I got here and how lucky I got to be. So if you’re that lucky, I think you owe it to the rest of the world to be first of all, nice and second, try to give back a little bit. So that’s everything.
Nicolle Wallace: What show, looking back, had the greatest impact on you or change —
Phil Rosenthal: Wow.
Nicolle Wallace: — a perception you had the most dramatically?
Phil Rosenthal: Oh goodness. I watched so much TV as a kid because for me it was so much safer than going outside because I was little and skinny and I’d get picked on and all my friends were on TV and I loved everyone funny, starting with my dad, but then everyone funny on TV. And my parents used to say, go outside. What are you going to do? Get a job watching television. And by the way, when I first got a job writing television, I sent them the biggest TV that they made at the time with a note on it that said ha-ha. And the shows that made the biggest impact on me, you can see their influences in Raymond. So on the family, “Dick van Dyke Show,” “Roseanne,” “The Odd Couple,” “Taxi,” shows that were filmed, first of all, in front of a live audience so like theater so you felt like part of it. Second, they were set on planet Earth. Everything in the shows could happen in real life, which is, if you think about it, that’s something that a lot of shows they don’t keep that dictum. They don’t have that.
Nicolle Wallace: Well, you call it low concept. I want —
Phil Rosenthal: Exactly.
Nicolle Wallace: — and your point is so profound in that a high concept show, it’s hard to keep thinking of a zombie apocalypse and another galaxy.
Phil Rosenthal: Exactly.
Nicolle Wallace: How do you keep that going? Just talk about that.
Phil Rosenthal: Yeah. If you have a high concept, our family comes from Mars and we have to pretend to be regular people so that they don’t find out we’re from Mars. Now you’re servicing that premise every single episode. It has to be about that. So you run out of stories, naturally. Low concept is a guy and his family live across the street from his parents. Turns out you can run a very long time. He can run nine years even.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah. Yeah.
Phil Rosenthal: Why? Because it’s the stuff of life and there are actually infinite possibilities or nine years’ worth for stuff with the family just like in your real life. We had one rule in the writer’s room. Could this happen?
Nicolle Wallace: And the answer had to be yes.
Phil Rosenthal: Yeah. And not that it would always happen that way in real life, but are we stretching credibility so much that the audience goes, that would never happen, right?
Nicolle Wallace: It’s so simple. I mean, and it’s all related to the same thing that you can’t connect if you can’t relate and you can’t relate if it couldn’t happen.
Phil Rosenthal: Exactly right. And so the same sensibility that was behind “Everybody Loves Raymond” is now right in front of you in “Somebody Feed Phil.” It’s like the road under your car. You’d take it for granted. But you’d know if it wasn’t there.
Nicolle Wallace: No, I mean, look at a newscast is built the same way.
Phil Rosenthal: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: And over the last nine years, we’ve had a lot of structure to work with, you know, threats to our democracy, signs of hope.
Phil Rosenthal: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: We’ve started spending a lot of time on culture. We led the “South Park” after that episode.
Phil Rosenthal: Right. Right. You have to.
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, and it feels as essential. Whenever I see an artist speaking out with such great risk to their livelihood and perhaps more —
Phil Rosenthal: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: — I think it’s newsworthy. I wonder if you see it that way.
Phil Rosenthal: Absolutely, yes. The air changed when that came. You were like, oh my God, somebody, you know —
Nicolle Wallace: Somebody spoke out. Yeah.
Phil Rosenthal: What’s that, that famous Apple commercial from the ‘80s where it looks like 1984 and somebody swings the thing —
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Phil Rosenthal: — and crashes it into the screen and it comes tumbling down. Those are little moments like that.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Phil Rosenthal: We need more of those.
Nicolle Wallace: Right. Like the synapses are connecting and we’re all still seeing the same thing and we can laugh at it.
Phil Rosenthal: Exactly. And we’re not crazy.
Nicolle Wallace: And we’re not crazy. Yeah. I guess the last thing I wanted to ask you, if there’s a trip that’s changed you or a country or a stop or the making of your own show, an episode that’s changed how you see things.
Phil Rosenthal: Only every single time, because every single time starting with that first trip that I mentioned at the beginning of our talk about going to Europe, your mind is blown. What it does for you is it changes your perspective on life and you bring that home with you. I give an example. I go to Paris that first time and I’m marveling at how gorgeous it is. Even the trees on the Boulevard are spectacular. The way they’re lined up. I go home after the trip and I’m walking in my neighborhood in Washington Heights, Manhattan, that I had a roommate. I could only afford a tiny apartment, not a fancy neighborhood. For the first time ever, I look and I go, hey, we have nice trees too. Huh? That’s invaluable.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Phil Rosenthal: You now have first of all, a basis for comparison. Second of all, a perspective that you didn’t have before. That’s what travel does. And that happens with every human being that you meet. That happens with every place that you see, better or worse. There are ideas that you take from Japan. You go to the pharmacy, you buy a pack of gum. They wrap it for you as if it’s for your hundredth birthday. The level of care and detail. The little children are out on the street in Tokyo, three-year-olds go into the supermarket for their parents doing errands. I said, how do you let this? They go, the community cares for the children. What? The community cares for the children. Is that a terrible idea? Would that be terrible to export?
Nicolle Wallace: It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. The care though, is something that you see in all the preparation from all the chefs.
Phil Rosenthal: This is an expression of love.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Phil Rosenthal: You taste the love.
Nicolle Wallace: And art. I mean, they’re creating something so exquisite. I mean, I think that’s something that you get when you go to Europe, the beauty in everything they eat, big and small, cheap and expensive.
Phil Rosenthal: You go to Europe the first time, I’m like, I needed to buy a shirt and the store is closed in the afternoon. I’m like, what’s going on? Everything’s closed. Yeah, we close from like 2:00 to 4:00. What? Why would you do that? Oh, we want to enjoy the day. Enjoy the day. What?
Nicolle Wallace: Imagine that.
Phil Rosenthal: Imagine. And you go, oh, there are other ways to be.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah. Well, I want to be like you. I love that you did this. I’m so happy to talk to you. So, yeah, we’ll eat. We’ll eat.
Phil Rosenthal: That’s great.
Nicolle Wallace: We’ll eat.
Phil Rosenthal: Okay, dear.
Nicolle Wallace: Thank you so much.
Phil Rosenthal: This is great.
Nicolle Wallace: Thank you.
Phil Rosenthal: Thanks Nicolle.
Nicolle Wallace: Thank you.
Phil Rosenthal: Thanks everybody.
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Nicolle Wallace: Thank you so much for listening to “The Best People.” Be sure to subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcast to get this and other MSNBC podcasts ad free. As a subscriber, you’ll also get early access and exclusive bonus content. All episodes of the podcast are also available on YouTube. You just have to visit msnbc.com/thebestpeople to watch. And a reminder, to get your tickets to MSNBC Live 25, it is an all-day event. It’s happening October 11th at the Hammerstein Ballroom. I will be there along with some of your most favorite MSNBC hosts and special guests. Tickets are on sale at msnbc.com/live25. And we’ll have a link in our show notes.
“The Best People” is produced by Vicki Vergolina and senior producer, Lisa Ferri with additional support from Clara Grudberg and Joann Kong. Our audio engineer is Bob Mallory and Bryson Barnes is the head of audio production. Pat Burkey is the senior executive producer of “Deadline White House. Brad Gold is the executive producer of content strategy. Aisha Turner is the executive producer of audio and Madeleine Haeringer is senior vice president in charge of audio, digital and long form.