SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Eli is a child psychiatrist who lives with gruesome nightmares. It's his own profound loss. One day, there is a knock on his door from a little boy who has blood on his hands.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "BEFORE")
BILLY CRYSTAL: (As Eli Adler) What's your name? Do you live around here? Are you with anybody?
(SOUNDBITE OF RUNNING FOOTSTEPS)
CRYSTAL: (As Eli Adler) Hey. Hey. Hey, come back here. Hey, kid.
(SOUNDBITE OF TIRES SCREECHING AND HORN HONKING)
CRYSTAL: (As Eli Adler) Watch it.
SIMON: Billy Crystal is Eli Adler. A remarkable young actor named Jacobi Jupe is Noah, the silent young boy in Apple TV+'s new series "Before." And we will caution - our discussion may include descriptions of self-harm.
Billy Crystal, who has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, has received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor and the Kennedy Center Honors and has - well, he's hosted the Oscars almost as many times as Derek Jeter was an all-star.
CRYSTAL: (Laughter).
SIMON: He joins us now from New York. Thanks so much for being with us.
CRYSTAL: Thanks for the introduction, Scott. Anytime I'm mentioned with Derek, that's pretty cool.
SIMON: You're also executive producer of this series. Why did you want to play Eli Adler? Why did you want to get this deal done?
CRYSTAL: Well, you know, Scott, I was one of the creators of the show, and I hadn't intended to play him. I was going to produce it. And then Eric Roth, who was my beginning co-creator - fantastic screenwriter, Oscar winner for "Forrest Gump" - once we hit on the idea of this troubled psychiatrist working with this young boy, he recommended this young writer named Sarah Thorp. And when Sarah came in and she heard our initial idea of this troubled kid with these horrible memories and traumas that he can't explain and can't express, I said, you know what? I want to play him because she described a world that I had not acted in before, and a chance to stretch and grow, even at this point in my career, and do something totally different was really appealing. And it was a great story to tell. So it was an easy decision.
SIMON: Help us understand the loss that is gripping Eli over his wife, Lynn.
CRYSTAL: His wife, Lynn, who's beautifully played by Judith Light - extraordinary actress - he's reeling from a suicide. And the question is what happened there. And he's haunted by it. She's around him. She motivates him. She taunts him. She pushes him.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "BEFORE")
JUDITH LIGHT: (As Lynn) Eli, what have you done?
CRYSTAL: It'll all make sense when this show finally finishes. Right up to the very last second, will be questions about what happened between the two of them.
SIMON: I want to phrase this very carefully - does Eli feel that he let down his wife because he cared so much for his patients?
CRYSTAL: There is that aspect of it. He's very self-involved and wanted the best for her, kept trying to push her to seek new treatments, and he just missed something. But what he misses is haunting him.
SIMON: What does that knock on the door and Noah open up in Eli?
CRYSTAL: Confusion. Why me? Why did this kid come to me? He's so scared. What's he seeing that I'm not seeing?
SIMON: Can you turn Eli on and off when you're playing a role like that?
CRYSTAL: This time, I couldn't. And it was really fascinating because I'm not by any means a method actor. But this time, I was, by the process. I was alone in New York on this one, so I'd get to the set, and I'm Eli for 12, 13 hours and then get home, and I have to learn my words for the next day, so I'm still him. And so then when I get up in the morning, I'm now getting ready to be him, so I was always him. And it was exhausting that way, but it was really liberating because the choices I would make were, you know, always Eli choices.
SIMON: And a great sadness hangs over Eli, doesn't it?
CRYSTAL: A great sadness and a great confusion. And he's a man of science and a man of facts. It has to make sense. And this young Noah is presenting things to him that are throwing that all aside. And his discussions with his friend, who's wonderfully played by Robert Townsend - starting to think that maybe there's something else besides science. He's losing his mind, and it's sort of necessary for him to find himself.
SIMON: When you play a serious role, does it actually help that a lot of the audience might see you and instinctively feel, OK, at some point he's going to be funny?
CRYSTAL: It does. Even the funny roles are serious roles. It's all life. And, you know, this one, with all the twists and turns that I go through - and it gets pretty graphic sometimes - I love surprising them. And that's the great reactions I'm getting from people that mean the most to me. Today, I got a beautiful email from Mel Brooks saying he's just so taken with the show and what I'm doing, and that means a lot to me 'cause that's - you know, he's the ultimate funny person.
SIMON: Yeah. I have read you were once a substitute teacher on Long Island. Is that like auditioning for a different producer every day?
CRYSTAL: (Laughter) When I got out of college, when I graduated from NYU with a degree in film direction - which, of course, qualified me for just nothing else but making little films - I got a job as a per diem floater, was what it was called. And it was in the junior high school that I actually had gone to. So every day, if somebody was out, I was assigned to a different class. I would be the English substitute that day. I would have the gym class...
SIMON: Oh, my.
CRYSTAL: ...That day. I would have the bio class that day. Knowing very little about most of the subjects I was being thrust into, I would talk to them. That's when I was first starting out as a comic, so I would even try out some material on them and stuff. Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
CRYSTAL: So it was quite fun, actually.
SIMON: Are great comedians better at playing serious roles than many great tragedians are at playing comedy?
CRYSTAL: I don't - you know, I'm asked that many times and...
SIMON: I didn't say it was original. I'm just trying to...
CRYSTAL: (Laughter) There's always a longing for my fellow funny people all through the history of entertainment to want to play a dramatic role - and sometimes very successfully. There's that longing in us to want to do something different.
SIMON: Did you watch the World Series?
CRYSTAL: Oh, boy.
SIMON: Sorry, I had to ask.
CRYSTAL: No, you didn't.
SIMON: You know, you're right. I didn't.
CRYSTAL: Chicago - are you a Cub or are you a White Sox guy?
SIMON: I'm a Cubs guy.
CRYSTAL: So lining up all my promotion, I started thinking, oh, man, if the Yankees win the pennant, where am I going to be? And then it was the Dodgers, of course. And I saw I'm in London. So I bought one day - they gave me the Monday. So we were at Game 3, and that wasn't good. And then I fly to London that morning. So it's five hours difference, I think, right? So it was, like, 2 o'clock - 1:30, 2 o'clock in the morning, and I have to be up at 7. I'm already jet-lagged. And I'm watching on my MLB app on my phone in the dark, and Cole's pitching a no-hitter. They're up 5-0. And I think, all right, this is good. I'll go to sleep 'cause I got a lot to do tomorrow. Then there's a base hit. All right, no no-hitter. Then Judge drops the fly ball. Then Volpe throws the ball away at third. Then Cole doesn't cover first. It was just terrible. It was just terrible - not meant to be. But you know, the better team won and onward to next year.
SIMON: Billy Crystal's new series "Before" is now on Apple TV+. Thank you so much for being with us.
CRYSTAL: Such a pleasure to talk to you after all these years.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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