jeev good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. stephen fry has been making pbs viewers laugh for decades, co-stars on wooster and jeeves. he's back for "the great indoors" on cbs. he is also known for short-form writing, 140 characters at a time. we'll talk on his love/hate relationship with twitter and his 12 million followers. we're glad you joined us. actor stephen fry in just a moment. ♪

♪ and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. ♪ thank you. ♪ i am pleased to welcome stephen fry to this program. pbs viewers may remember him from "black adder" and "wooster" and "jeeves ". here is a clip of hem im as row

lan rowland, the editor in chief of an outdoor magazine. >> oh, my god. >> you look like winston churchill had sex with nick nolte's mug shot. >> if anybody wants me, which they won't, i'll be down at edward's, dining on failure and fully-loaded potatoes. >> rowland, we have to talk. >> no, you know what you're going to say, but you don't have to quit the adventure society out of loyalty to your mentor. >> i wasn't. >> you don't have to. whatever your as soon as of honor tells you, you don't have to. >> i just came -- >> no, please, i won't allow it, just ignore the right thing to do. i absolve you. >> i wasn't going to -- >> no, you really don't have to. >> i think i get it, but what convinced you that this was the

right vehicle at this point in your career? >> it was a mixture. i think joel is a wonderfully talented guy. i liked the script. mike gibbons, the creator. he just, he'd worked with james corden. and i thought it was smart and funny and diligent. and i'd long-wanted to go back to the old world of a multi-camera old-school sitcom in front of a live audience. it's a very specific type of entertainment, a delicious one. you don't work nearly as hard as you do in a drama. not that that's of course -- >> what is it about the specificity of that multi-camera shoot that you like? >> well, i suppose it harks back to a day when television was a national fireplace around which the family would warm themselves. because of the laughter that's

live and the performances that are chirpy and live with it. there is a sense of what comedy can best do in terms of just what, family, this show i a kind of family show, although it's a workplace comedy, it's about generations, my generation and joel's generation and the younger generation of millennials. so it's like grandpa and the children if you like. >> you've embraced their medium, twitter. which i'll come back to. but you've embraced their medium, twitter, what do you make of hanging out with these youngsters on set? >> they're terrifically warm and friendly. they are in a world i've never understood, i have never heard of their musical groups. we come back after a weekend and i say what you have been doing? and they describe something they have done on the sunset strip at 3:00 in the morning. it's a very different sort of

world. [ laughter ] >> but we respect each other. >> maybe that's a lesson for the wider world than the body politic. we may be different, but we can celebrate our differences. >> we'll get that at some point in the conversation. this may be a silly question but not the first or last i will ask on this program, i'm certain. what is the difference for you if there is a difference between situating yourself in an american comedy versus the stuff that pbs viewers and others have seen you do? >> it's a good point. pbs, the kind of short-term for pbs british drama is the masterpiece theater thing which involves cocktail shakers and vintage cars and the dame of the british empire at the very least in some form or foanother and t old england that people want to exist. obviously, sitcoms, the thing when you're doing an american sitcom is the volume of the

audience, the staggering a whooping that goes on, it's bizarre. you walk onto the set and people scream. they're clamping their thighs together and shivering with lust and excitement or something, they've been fed some weird narcotic that i know nothing about, opioids spreading around america apparently. there's a different atmosphere. it's very lively. we british are a little bit reserved as is probably known, and also, technically, we're a sing ma single camera comedy. in britain, we make comedy series, and there will be six episodes in a season. you might do three or four series. the greatest of all was "40 towers", and there were only two seasons of that, 12 episodes, that was it. but it's a very different way, john cleese wrote them with

coneye boot connie booth. i think it was by episode 11 that we started to repeat the lead writer. that's how big our writing staff is on the show. each episode will have a different writer and we will go through 12 people virtually before you start to -- >> you need that if you expect to get to syndication. >> to feed the beast, exactly. >> i was laughing when you said you were reserved, but i would not call that jacket reserved. what color is that, my friend? >> pumpkin possibly, or i'm going to go, bold apricot. something like that. it's a cheering thing, isn't it? what i believe these days interior decorators call a pop of color. >> a pop of color. >> it's a sidebar. when i first lived in america, i was in new york. and the first question people ask you is whereabouts are you,

upper east, soho. the second question is who's going to decorate. what? he' i'll buy a picture and put it on the wall. i got so bullied by people wanting decorators. i had this anna win tor's connecticut beach house. i said i'm so sorry, i've never had a decorator. oh, i'm not a decorator. oh, no, no, no, i find the decorator in you. >> only in new york. >> yeah. and it was from him i first heard the phrase "pops of color." classic with a twist and pops of color. >> i find the decorator in you. i'm laughing thinking of the kinds of questions you would get asked in l.a., which is like, who are you wearing?

>> a touch of that. >> i can see he has his own kind of crazy questions. you went there earlier. i want to come back to this now, which is this moment that we find ourselves living in. let me back up a beat and we'll come to this era in america. were you for or against, i think, i would assume against brexit. >> i was against brexit. i was for remain. >> for remain. >> but it's an interesting point because one's kind of, it was a negative that we defending. the positive was to leave, whereas one tried to suggest the positive was to stay. i joked to my american friends here in california in particular, i said i left brittain to avoid this rise of populist nativism and right-wing xenophobia. and i come to california -- [ laughter ] >> and it's five inches a day for seven weeks. and the whole identity of the

guntr country. it's interesting for an outsider. as someone who's long been involved in a small extent to politics, i've always felt with almost everything i believed firmly is i've hated those on my own side who bully the enemy or that they are our opponents, and i think of what's happened here is much more a failure of the left than a triumph of the right. and when i hear people say we've got to do this, demonstrate about that, i say who, whom, whom are you thinking you will convince by appearing on the street or shouting or -- whose mind are you going to change? >> yeah, yeah, yeah. >> i'm practical fellow. and i think if you do want the society to change or the political outlook to change, then you've got to think practically about it, rather than being right. anybody can be right and scream that they're right. you've got to achieve what is right. and that takes patience and practicality. and it takes the understanding of the point of view of others. and i, you know, i sort of want

to strangle the person who came up with the phrase "basket of deplorables", because it was so dumb. it so failed to understand human nature. human nature is what we all live with. it's no good having ideas and abstract thoughts about politics. you've got to understand, it's about people. i believe if you go to a crowded shopping mall or busy town square and you threw a pebble, it would land on the head of a decent person. there are, unfortunately, on the fringes, people who are noisy and intemperate and deeply priebaprie tribal. and i think the tribal institute in humanity is a very sad one. would you concur? >> i have been listening to you and didn't want to interrupt. i have four questions now i would like to follow up on.

in no particular order. number one, i hear your point about the illiberal nature that liberals have taken on. it gives rise to these idiots like, what's this guy, milo? >> milo yanapoulos. >> i find him to be irascible, not just racist but a contestation of people's humanity. >> and the worst kind of -- >> i agree. how much of that which people will celebrate until they get caught >> mm. >> so he was invited to speak at cpac until they learned more. >> breitbart. >> and at a tecertain points th

have to cut their loss. but how much of the liberal liberalness breeds that? or is that just him run amok? >> it's an interesting point. i think his generation, another example, he's european, but the youtube guy, who apparently paid people to show anti-semitic signs as a kind of joke. i think there is this sense amongst a certain kind of young, especially male figures, that who never watches television. they'll never watch, they never watch pbs, they won't even watch the fringe or specialist premium cables or any of the others. they spend their life picking up material from the internet. from youtube and all kinds of other sites. and they speak in languages that we don't understand. they use phrases, i mean, one of the favorites of cutie-pie and

this my low guy is sjw, we are the enemy, sjw means social justice warrior. it was part of the social contract and the international consensus that social justice was something we all aimed for. that is not, they think social justice is a busted flush at the very least the they think it's entirely the wrong path of humanity to go down and liberal speak to tell people how to think and behave. and we find ourselves, those who doubt ourselves vainly progressive or who want the world to be a nicer place and friendlier place without putting too big of a philosophical bent on it, we are the orwellian threat to freedom, because we tell people how to think apparently, and that's something we have to address. but the really important question is, because, you know,

transsexuals get beaten up, gay people get beaten up. black people get killed by the police. >> is it legitimate or is it an excuse? >> that's the point, isn't it? exactly that. you know, there is a problem, you know, that minorities suffer, but there is also a lack of understanding amongst those who wish to protect those minorities and western to sish e their full and proper place in society. there's a lack of understanding that if you force people into, you tell someone to respect then if they've got any self-respect, they might say no, screw you, why should i? it's like if you get stopped in the street by someone who just wants to pick a fight with you and says, you know, show me some respect. and i, i have this nightmare that i'll say someone, show me

that you deserve my respect and i'll respect you. i'll show you fear. yeah, i'm afraid of you, but i don't respect you, i have to say. i don't respect your gun or your knife. i fear it. that's a different thing. respect is earned. and i think we just tell people, this is what we must think about, and i don't, i'm not suggesting i have the answer, except there are, there are virtues that the older i get the more i believe in them. they are not the great capital virtues like justice and mercy and passion. they're smaller things, and they are kindness. and cheerfulness. and i think in the face of adversity, cheerful people become mightily heroic, it's a great quality, you know. the cheerful person at the store, the cheerful person that lets you in through the traffic. the cheerful person who thinks and is considerate. politicians don't tend to put those words into a program or

manifesto, that we will be cheerful. it comes from inside, obviously, but i think what you, the way you question a politician is when they don't seem to adduce those kinds of qualities as being what they stand for. and i think there has been a tendency of the left to speak in abstract, to talk about people but not individuals. and the great jonathan swift, one of the great satirists. he said i love pete, paul, john, andrew, but i hate and detest that race called man. let's get back to our individual treatment of each other. >> i think, though, there are those who see those kinds of virtues as a weak response. >> hmm. >> to the kind of attack that's being waged now. in the era of donald trump. so i'm not saying those things -- >> i do.

it's very ironic, because i so often feel that the way i want to respond as a pretty dyed-in-the-wool atheist is very christian or at least what used to be christian. >> not these christians. >> no. but is to take, you know, to take the enmity and hatred and not throw it back and not scream. but you're right. it is, i think this is the problem with being a liberal. and i am a liberal. i'm not a hard left. and i'm not anything, and liberalists flatly and weak and isn't dear me, and oh, can't everybody be nice to each oh, oh, dear, what a pity. let's try harder now, oh. the book called "two cheers for democracy", he couldn't summon a third, you know? that's how i feel. >> so the other thing i want to get back to was you were talking

about bullies. >> hmm. >> and if donald trump is anything, he is a bully, to my mind. >> mm-hm. >> and the question that comes to my mind, is how you contest, how you push back? how you, to use the word of the day "resist." how do you resist a bully and honor your edict to not attack the bull she y? >> well, i used to be very keen on chess, and a chess master told me, you know, the best move to play in chess is not the best chess move. 's to figure out which move your opponent least wants you to play. and if you can figure out what they don't want you to play, play that. even if it isn't as good as the move. so it's all very well to talk about the bullying and narcissism and brashness and lying and braggadocio and all the other qualities we see in the president. my first thought was, it's very

simple. he is the most extremely, most narcissistic person, i'm not a psychiatrist, obviously, that i can imagine in public life. and i know that in my lifetime, there has never been a single individual on this planet who's been more talked about at every bar, every table and every restaurant, every talk show, every radio talk show, you know, everybody's talking about him, all the time. and i kind of imagine that he's like some sort of dr. seuss figure, who's like a balloon, and every time his name is mentioned, he gets a bit bigger and a bit bigger. he feeds off this energy, like a star trek, you know, alien who feeds off the mention of his name. and so the answer, of course, is to stop talking about him. >> does he just keep getting bigger? or at some point does he implode? >> that's what everybody is thinking. i know a few of the people on the show i work with who said he was never going to win, who now

say he'll never last the first year. >> no second term. >> if you imagine that the press decided they would cover congress and, you know, various cabinet members and what they said and did, but they would simply never talk about him. they would actually ban his name from the pages. of course it won't happen, because he's clickbait. >> they hate him, but they love him. >> you see how much junk mail comes through the spam filter thing. trump's latest thing. they want to see what he said, what fury he's unleashed on this or claim he's made here, but that would be the answer would be not to feed his appetite for being mentioned. and never to mention his tweets, and never to mention his statements. that, that would work. but of course no one will do it, which, >> and tell me more, then, about your tweets and your love/hate

relationship as i would characterize it. >> yes. >> with twitter and social media. >> i was a very early adopter of all things digital, i was the first person. you are the second person in europe to own an apple in january '84. first was my friend douglas adams, went to the shop together. he got the first and i got the second. that was january 25th. that was a great day in the history of computing. so i've always loved these new things. and when social media began i saw twitter as a very interesting and exciting thing, so i joined it early, and so amassed quite a following. >> 12 million and counting. >> 12.5 million, yes, which is terribly useful in terms of publicity. i'm afraid i discovered before trump that you can bypass the press, and in britain, the print media, once your following exceeds the circulation of all

british newspapers then when you're doing a film or book or whatever it is, tv show, and the publicity person says will you do their interview for the daily mail or whatever, and you say no, i'll just tweet. i'll reach more people. there's a bit of a cut-up there, and that's helpful. but i believe twitter in the way i believe internet, so foolish and optimistic and naïve i am, that this would be a way that the world would come together and we would understand each other better and we would like each other better. we would know more. it would be a fantastic tool for education and spreading of ideas and sharing of thoughts and sharing of experiences and that we would come together. instead, the opposite has happened. you know what i mean. and it's vulcanized and opinionized, and everyone has endlessly discussed, trapped in

their filter bubble and don't listen to anybody any more. and i'm afraid my relationship now is a one-way rather than two-way. that's to say i tweet, but i don't read, i don't even look at the page of general tweets. i only look at mine and just put out, because i'm incredibly sensitive. people have been after me. i get very, very upset. i now people who really take it, they don't mind the friendly, marvelous writing, j.k. rowling, she gives as good as she gets. and my husband is reading a book on the matter about michael jackson, the last days of michael jackson. >> "before you judge me." >> yes. >> thanks for joining us. this book of mine is in your household. >> that makes me happy. maybe watching "the great

indoors" will help us from this dreaded future that we seem to be sinking into. i'm glad to have you on the program. please come back again. >> thank you. >> that's our show tonight. thanks for watching. as always, keep the faith. ♪ for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. hi, i'm tavis smile eyy, jo me next time for an interview with actress dunbar moss. we'll see you then. ♪

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