46: A conversation with Eddie Izzard of "The Riches"

Eddie Izzard flew into San Francisco last week and came to the Chronicle (and our sad little podcasting "cave") to tout his superb FX series, "The Riches". But as expected, we went on all kinds of tangents. Izzard is brilliant at letting his imagination take flight in often spectacularly funny ways but also in being serious and analytical about any number of topics. Unfortunately, much of the delay in getting this podcast assembled is that we had some massive technical glitches that neither one of us were aware of. We spent about an hour and twenty minutes talking about all kinds of things -- and I can only wish now that we had video of it, because Izzard's physical movements and facial expressions added immeasurably to the discussion. All told, we lost about half of the podcast to technical issues that couldn't be overcome. That we have 45 minutes to have fun with is a testament to Benny Evangelista sitting in a room all day trying to save it (as opposed to his normal job of trying to forget or erase what we normally do on the TVTM podcast). So thanks Benny. And, obviously, thanks to Eddie Izzard for coming in and riffing. Not unexpectedly, Izzard turned out to be one of the most fascinating and engaging people I've ever interviewed (which of course makes losing half of it so painful). One of the great losses was an extended bit on his future interest in politics that wove in France, Russia, Europe, Yemen, Germany etc. -- something he said he'd never gone into in such detail. (Oh, well.) Two of the main elements that surface here but we covered more extensively were his efforts to make the leap from comedian (and a transvestite comedian, no less) to serious dramatic actor and the master plan behind it all. Despite Izzard's wild verbal forays into the ether, he's a remarkably focused and driven person. We talked in near military terms about the precision needed to execute a dream. His intellectual curiosity and joy at discovery were really something to witness. You won't get the full experience of the interview, or maybe even all the jumping off points, but we get around to issues like spirituality, the analytical drive he took from his father, a love of cool words like "brutal" and "gutted" and "bollocks," his fear of flying, his interest in personal politics, arm-wrestling Brian Dennehy, dramatic structure, Clint Eastwood and, oh yeah, "The Riches."