-I wanted to mention something really quick.
I was lucky enough to go to the met gala.
-Ooh. -Last week or two weeks ago.
and I saw Kendall and Kylie Jenner,
who looked gorgeous, by the way.
-Really? -Stunning, yeah.
But they wore -- -When don't they?
[ Light laughter ]
-They really are a good looking family.
But a lot of them -- she has an orange outfit on,
and Kylie had a light blue outfit on.
and people compared them
to you and Jim Carrey from "Dumb and Dumber."
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
[ Laughing ] Do you see?
Did you -- I don't know.
Did you hear about this at all?
-No. -Yeah.
[ Light laughter ] -No. I'm wondering if they knew.
-No, I don't think they did at all.
-Unwittingly. -No.
-Unwittingly, kind of, "Light blue and orange.
I think that works. That won't mean anything else."
-Yeah, exactly, yeah. [ Laughter ]
But, obviously, yeah. -They look fabulous.
-It's the gorgeous version of you.
-They look dumb, but they look fabulous.
[ Laughter ]
-I don't know how you're doing all this, by the way.
I don't know how you're doing the show and coming on our show.
-The drugs are good. -Yeah, exactly.
[ Laughter ]
But you're also doing commencement speeches...
-I am. -...at schools.
You're doing one next week, right?
-I am. -Yeah, why --
-Someone asked me to talk to college kids...
[ Laughter ] ...which I love doing.
I love doing.
They're all so eager,
and they can't wait to get into the world.
You just want to slap 'em. [ Laughter ]
-Dude -- -And I'm the guy you--
-"This is as good as it gets!"
I'm the guy you bring in. -[ Laughs ]
What do you -- What do you say --
-Here's the thing I tell college kids,
and I'll probably do a version of it this week.
I went to Central Michigan University,
thank you.
[ Laughter and applause ] Central Michigan University.
I didn't graduate.
I dropped out after my junior year,
thank you.
[ Cheers and applause ] -You did?
-And went to New York to be an actor and all of that.
So, I'm in a waiting room. I'm in a call back --
a final call back with three other really good young actors.
This is, like, early '80s.
And they're all in there, and we all went to college,
and I start to hear them talk, and they start to compare.
And they go, "here did you go?"
And the guy goes, "Oh, I went to Yale Drama School,
and I did 'Hamlet.'
I don't know if you heard about it."
"Oh, my God. Of course I heard about it.
You were 21, you were Hamlet, and you were at Yale."
And then the other guy says, "I went to Juilliard."
"Juilliard, wow!
What about you?" "I went to RADA --
the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art."
"Jeff, Jeff, where did you go?"
I said "CMU."
[ Laughter ]
And they said "Carnegie Mellon"?
[ Laughter ]
I said, "No. Central Michigan University."
and they all kind of just looked down at their scripts
and just kind of --
[ Light laughter ] -Like, "We got this one."
-The audition was for "Terms of Endearment."
-Wow. [ Audience "ohs" ]
And there you go. -I'm just saying...
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Changed your life. -You can be from anywhere.
-You can be from anywhere and still make it.
Gosh, it changed your whole career, huh?
-Yeah, that one did. -Yeah, absolutely.
-Shirley, Debra and Jack.
-Thank God you dropped out and became an actor,
because I got to see you perform in this play,
"To Kill a Mockingbird."
and you're doing it for a little while, right?
-A year. We're doing it for a year.
-Man, oh, man. You are phenomenal in this play.
And I feel embarrassed saying this in front of you,
but I said it when you weren't here.
You hold the audience in the palm of your hand
for two and a half hours. -Yeah.
-You crush --
crush this play every night?
How many shows a week do you do?
-Eight. -Wow.
-Eight a week, but you get --
You know, you get used to it.
It's like this show, you get --
There's a routine. You get ready, and you do it.
it's Atticus Finch.
It's Atticus Finch on Broadway,
at the Shubert Theatre -- the Carnegie Hall of Broadway.
-Yeah. -In the foxhole with you
is Aaron Sorkin, who made the play out of the book.
-Right, great!
You've got this great cast. We've got New York pros.
People like Celia Keenan-Bolger
and Will Pullen and Gideon Glick.
They play the three kids. They're adults --
-But by the end of the play, you think they're children.
-Oh, 30 seconds in.
-Seriously, it's phenomenal. -Yeah.
They're doing some incredible work.
-Did you know that you were going to --
Did everyone know that they were going to cast adults
to play -- -No, they did the first reading.
This is almost two years ago
that we started working on this,
and did the first reading
just to have Celia and Will and Gideon just read it,
just so we can hear it,
and by the intermission,
Aaron and Bart Sher, the director, were going,
"You know, this is probably what we should do."
and it was a risk.
I mean, you go in,
and you got all these people who love the book...
-Yeah. -...cherish the book.
-Oh, of course. -The first week of performances
was, "Don't screw this up." [ Light laughter ]
"Please." You could feel it in the whole audience.
Then I walk out,
and I'm not Gregory Peck.
-No, no. [ Laughter ]
-And they have to adjust to that.
I mean, that whole first month was just like --
And we took them.
And what Aaron did, what Bart did,
with, you know, the Peck thing,
we'd do a different thing with it
than what he did in the movie, and it works.
The story still works, the play...
If you're in this theater -- and that's the difference.
You watch the movie, you read the book,
you feel the play.
When you're in the room, doors shut,
you and just a whole bunch of other people,
shared experience.
and Tom Robinson is found guilty...
you feel it. -Ooh.
-And then so that's what we've got going for us.
and it works. -It rocks the room.
-It does. -I mean, It's insane.
'Cause I actually enjoyed --
Aaron put a little humor a little bit into it,
which is not in the movie.
-We got funny, yeah. -A little bit.
Dude, you had laughs,
and here's what's genius about it.
It kind of lets you loose, and you, kind of, like,
lower your guard for a second because you're laughing.
You're like, "Ha ha ha," and then you go...
And, dude, it's like, "Oh, my gosh."
-And it is -- You can hear, like, a pin drop.
-Yeah. -And it was unbelievable.
The cast is phenomenal in this thing.