Suzanne Savoy - How to Defy the Odds in Health and Career - ENCORE

Suzanne Savoy is a working actor and has appeared in shows like House of Cards, Better Call Saul, and The Blacklist. As she ages, she defies the odds and books more work than ever. Suzy beat her fatal stage four rectal cancer diagnosis 12 years ago by advocating for herself and demanding aggressive treatment. Advocating for herself is a huge theme in her life and she tells us how to do it. She loves a good project; from creating her solo show, Je Christine, to her YouTube channel, Chemo Bean. That’s a channel that provides resources and advice for cancer patients dealing with hair loss and how to properly style wigs and scarfs. Get ready to laugh and learn how to Age Like a Badass Mother from this amazing woman.

 https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0767929/

 https://www.jechristine.com/

 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNxw2y_KeXqa5BlnnneXOxA

 https://wellelephant.com/ ACE40 discount code for ACE Plant-based Eating Class

Transcript

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Hi friends. Lauren here. Wishing you a merry Christmas, a happy Hanukkah. All the good wishes for a Happy New Year. This week we're going to have an encore presentation of Suzanne Savoy. I call her Susie. She's my good friend. She's a working actor. She's been in House of cards. Better call Saul, The Blacklist. I know you've seen her. This is hilarious. We tell the story about the time we got so high I had to take her to the emergency room. She's who is really funny and stay till the end. She talks about something very serious. She actually beat her stage for rectal cancer diagnosis 12 years ago. So talk about a badass. I hope that you will enjoy this episode and we will be back in February. Take care and enjoy the show. I'm Lauren and I'm Lisa, and we're flipping the script about growing older. Our guests have been influencers since before that was even a thing. Welcome to the anti Anti-Aging podcast. Welcome to age like a badass mother. Today's guest is doing something that very few people can say they have done fully support themselves as a working actor. You have likely seen Suzanne Savoy in one of your favorite shows or movies, including The Upside. House of cards, Law and Order, The Blacklist, NCIS, Better Call Saul, 30 Rock The Knick, or most recently in Steven Soderbergh's Full Circle, starring alongside Dennis Quaid, Timothy Olyphant and Clair Danes. Susie, as I call her, moved to Houston in her late 20s and was inspired by a chance encounter with Helen Hayes to embark on a career in acting. She co-founded Mercury Studio in Houston, which provided On-camera training to actors from 1986 to 2005. That's where I first met her. Susie moved to New York in 2005 with her daughter, Bonnie, and has resided there ever since. Her solo show, Jake Christine, presents the works of medieval French author Christine de Pasar and has toured universities and other venues since 2017. Susie translated all of the medieval French text to English. 11 years ago, Susie was diagnosed with late stage rectal cancer. The doctors decided without telling her, which she learned from another doctor, that there was no point in trying to save her. So she fired all of them and got a new team and beat the cancer. She has had more health issues but manages them like a true badass. People occasionally ask Susie if she's sad about not being a star. She says, quote, I am a big star, damn it. I put my kid through college on an actor's income. That's huge. And I paid off her effing tuition in my own head. I'm a huge star. End quote. She is a bright and shining star and one of my very best friends for over 35 years. Please welcome actor, writer, costume designer, cancer beta, fabulous mom and friend, Suzanne Savoy. Welcome. Hey, hey. How are you? It's so good to see. So nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, too. Good to see. And I know you are in for class. Since you were teenage, you know, since I was a teenager or in my studio. She was my acting student. I was going to say you were taking acting classes. Is that what set you on your path to stand up comedy? Well I yeah I guess I'd never had the nerve. At that time I was doing some improv and things like that. But I don't know why I took acting classes because I'm clearly not an actor, I'm a comic. Susie was very generous though. She is with me. She's a good student. She is an amazing actor. She really is. And of course, she did comedy best. And I'm not surprised to hear that she was going to be doing something out there in the public eye, because she's quick on her feet and she's, you know, congenial and she's pretty and, you know, she has a great sense of humor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I it just always seemed clear that she was going to be doing so. And she's just a dynamo. So I always knew she was going to be doing something really cool. So here she is. And she's so it's so cool. That's a quite impressive list of shows, and several of which are some of my favorites, including House of Cards and Better Call Saul. And I went back and watch the clips with you in them. That's like, oh my gosh, I remember those scenes. I remember that those episodes. Yeah, well, they were they were big shows. They actually. House of cards was a troubled show for me because, you know, we were working with one of the future stars of the MeToo movement. And really, there was like a little power thing going on. And it, you know, I don't want to get into that and, you know, all that negativity. But it became a very positive thing for me because I realized that I didn't want to be treated that way anymore. There were a lot of really great people. The directors were just wonderful. And Robin Wright, oh my God, she's a goddess. I think that's why I love the show so much. Great, because there are so many women. Yeah. In that demographic, demographic, your demographic and powerful roles. Yeah. And Michael Kelly was just he's just a wonderful human being and a fabulous actor. So there was a lot going on. It was great. But here I was in a hit show, you know, in a good role. I was playing national chairwoman and it was, you know, it's a fun role to play. But there were just certain things about it that I felt like I didn't want to be treated that way by, you know, certain people. And I just felt like I wanted more control over the roles that I did and how things were on the set. So that was why I went off. And I decided for a while that I wasn't going to be an actor anymore. I just couldn't stand it. But instead of giving away my ball to the boys on the reset in the recess yard, I decided instead to create my own content, and I landed on something that turned out to be just a fabulous project for me in so many ways, and I'm still doing it. That was back in 2016. I think I started doing that as a Christine and I'm still doing it, and it's led to all kinds of wonderful possibilities. And now when I'm on set, nobody treats me bad anymore. Now they treat me with a lot of respect. I get, you know, the queen bee treatment. And I think it's because I sort of stood up and took things into my own hands and created my own content, my own projects. And I think people really respect that. Tell us about Christine or Christine deposition, because have you got a fascinating character that well, just give us the short version. And then also, you know, that you that you translated this text is crazy. It is crazy. So just talk about that. And I and I just want to say I've seen the show and it is phenomenal. And I saw it in Austin when you performed it. I don't think that place is there anymore, but it was a replica of Shakespeare's Globe Theater. That's right. And that was unbelievable. And somebody's property. And there had been a joust outside the theater that day. So as I was doing the show, this, you know, show that supposedly takes place in the 15th century, and there's horses outside, like just a few yards away from where we were sitting, champing at the bit and stomping because there was a storm coming and you could see the storm. And I wish I'd been to see that I'm a project person, and so just the thought of wearing that headdress and building the gown, because I'd been a costumer and in a former light, so. Oh, and that costume was incredible. And the set, it's really heavy, but it's really fun to wear. She made a living as an author. She's one of the first women to do that right. She was Frances first professional female author, starting in the late 1300s and into the 1400s. She started she started out, I mean, yes. Was she privileged? Yes. She her father was an advisor to the king of France. They had brought him over from Italy. And so she had access as a very small girl to the Royal Library, probably, and to her father's library. So. And her father encouraged her to read and to study. Her mother did not. Her mother thought she should just, I don't know, become a nun or something, but her father encouraged her and her father, actually, she was put into an arranged marriage. Her father found a husband for her when she was 15, and the husband was about ten years older than she was. She. He chose this husband so well. She loved him with all her heart, all her body. She wrote amazing poems about him. And then when she was quite young, in her 20s, early 20s, he died. And all of his estate was taken by the crown because women did not inherit their husbands property back then. So she was left debts and her father was dead by then. So she was left destitute, having to care for her children and her mother with no income. And she didn't want to just marry some dude for money because she knew what real love was. And she just thought, no, I'm never going to get married again. I've had the best. Why? Why would I do that again? And she didn't want to do any of the other things that women were left to do to make money. So she started writing little short poems or cute poems to sell to courtiers, to give to their sweeties or whatever is kind of hallmark cards. And they loved them. They were great. So they asked her to write longer and longer poems, and she did longer. And then she got into this debate, a literary debate with the the big hoity toity clergyman who ran the University of Paris and who ran a lot of the government, and she went up against them about a book that she felt that was very popular. It was a novel called The Romance of the Rose, and she felt that it was a rape manual, and it should not be used as a literature book for young men to read and learn, learn morals from, because their teachers were saying, oh, this is good moral work! Haha. But it wasn't. It was a it was a satirical work in many ways. And and it ends in basically a rape. And so she got into this literary, epistolary debate with all these powerful men. And this is you would think that would be a very dangerous thing to do. She could get imprisoned, she could get killed, she could get banished, whatever. But what does she do? She's like the original feminist and the original badass she is. Yeah. I was just thinking that she is what you would call a proto feminist. Because in our current term of feminist, you know, she she did believe in the patriarchy. She did believe in the monarchy, but she did believe that women should have rights and that she should be they should be represented well. But anyway, so what did she do with these letters that she's gotten from all these clergymen? She saved copies of her letters that she sent to them, and she saved their letters. She bound them in a beautiful book with leather bindings and gold fittings and clasps. And she and she dedicated it to the Queen of France and presented it to her. So now she had a royal mentor, so nobody was going to mess with her. She was a total badass. Total. She was a badass. Yeah. I'm so glad you brought that to life. Well, okay, so we jumped right into that. We didn't we didn't really talk about. I wanted to talk about, you know, your younger years. And I just admired you so much as a as a mother. We really became friends. We did. We bonded as moms, as moms, because we had kids around the same time. And I really look to you a lot because I just, you know, I look to other people as examples. We all do that. Right. But I just remember your daughter Bonnie is about a year older than my daughter Jane. And then Ali came right after that. Yeah. So, you know, we raised those those girls together. I had my youngest later, but we raised the girls together a lot. And I learned a lot of important things. I remember that Bonnie was kind of really upset about something. We were walking through the Galleria in Houston. I don't know if you remember this, but Bonnie was like, oh, you know, she was crying and she was. And there were several of us adults. And, you know, she she sat down and she was really holding up the show. And I was thinking, oh, she's going to get in trouble now. But instead you sat down next to her and you go, you seem really upset. What's the matter? And I was like, whoa, Holy cow, that's how you do it. That is how you do it. And I just remember, like, you showed her so much respect and really grace today. She's a badass, too. Yes. Right. Well, I learned really early on, I a lot of people thought I was raising her wrong. And, I mean, did I spank her? I spanked her, like, three times, and I, they were big spankings. I always did a light one, a light one, and then like a twist and twist my hand and go. The third one was the one smart. It left a little red mark, but still after that last one I thought, I'm not teaching or anything with corporal punishment. She's just learning that mommy's mean and you know mommy get mad, which I'm so what? You know, that doesn't teach her anything. So my mother, a lot of folks thought they're like you. You need to punish her. You need to put her in a closet or whatever. And they put me in a closet. So they put her, all right? Yeah. Okay. That was the 30, mom. So I learned that when I listened to them and stopped listening to her, that's when I made my biggest mistakes. If I listened to her and really figured out what was going on because she had a lot of she had a lot of physical ailments that nobody could ever really figure out what was going on. And it was probably an autoimmune disorder that she's still trying to get sorted out now as an adult. But, you know, why punish a kid because she doesn't feel good. That's just wrong. So yeah, she's a friend of your time because parenting awareness around that style of parenting has sort of evolved over the last, at least since I had our son 20 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. So you were definitely ahead of your time? Well, I think we were all I had people who, you know, influenced me, who I looked up to. Yeah. Yeah, we all do that for each other, but you, I I've told you before, but I want you to know, you really did do that for me. So, Jane, Allie and far. Thank you. But. And then I can I tell this our famous story of you tell the story with what? This. Okay. Before we we started this podcast, Susie was drinking out of a wine glass. It looked like wine. And Lisa is like, how are you drinking wine? I was like, I was thinking to myself, there's no way this woman is drinking wine. She doesn't drink. She doesn't. She's the straight isn't having pills and drinking wine. I was like, is this how we're starting the podcast? Yeah, my insulin and drinking wine. Right. Exactly. I knew that was something like tea and, you know, whatever it meant, or her medicine. But one night, our girls were little, and she took that story. Oh, my God, she is. Is it okay? You said she came over for dinner. We got the famous Kim Sun Vietnamese food from Houston. The best Vietnamese at the time. Andy and I had, like, a little joint out in the garage, and Andy said, you guys go out to the garage and smoke, and I'll take care of the kids and you won't have to worry about them tonight. Now I was like, oh my God, he's my hero, my husband. So you and I go out to the garage, we take a puff, we go back in. I you have to preface this with, I'm not a smoker. That's what I said. You don't drink, you don't smoke. You don't do anything. Nothing but some things. But not that well, like, what do you do? Well, obviously. That's a pretty good. That's good. You're not a virgin. Okay. Good. Good. Okay. And so anyway, we're high, we come in and all of a sudden a few minutes later, you go, you know what? I don't I don't feel good. Like I feel like I'm going to have a heart attack. And I feel like we need to go to the emergency room. No, I'm also I'm not a doctor first. A friend of mine who is a doctor. I told him all my symptoms. I didn't tell him I was high. And he says, well, I think, I think you should go to the emergency room. It sounds like either, you know, just just to be safe, go to the emergency. Yeah. Pot. Hot pot. High panic attack. Oh my God. And you know, she had a little kid, so she's like, I can't go home with Bonnie. What if I have a heart attack while I'm home with Bonnie? So I take her to the emergency room, and even I'm high, and I'm not thinking this is because she's high. Because I'm high. So we're sit in the emergency room in Houston. A long, long time. Lot like ours. Probably because they were looking at it's going, these chicks are just stoned. And it's. But we thought it was the sex. No, it was a long time. It was a long time. And finally you like, burp, you fart. And then you look at me and you go, oh, I feel better now. Let's go home. I was like, I'm going to kill you. And it was just at that moment that the nurse came out to call my name. She goes, Mr. Bob. And we're like, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's a great story. So, you know, she looks like she's all distinguished. But, you know, I had a bad effect on her so very well. You play distinguished. That's I think that most of your, your roles, every time I see you on TV, you play some really like, hoity toity. Oh, yeah. Women. Well, I grew up women like that, so. Oh, man. Do you find that the roles are limited or plentiful? Because I, I guess, you know, seeing you on House of cards and and Better Call Saul, you're playing an age appropriate role, and I'm, you know, we're always reading about hearing about how difficult it is for women in show business as, as we age. And I lost my train of thought. I know, I know age range. What age range do you play? And I guess, do you feel like the roles are plentiful? We'll be back after a quick break. Hi, friend. Lauren here. Are you looking to add more plant based meals to your life? If so, please download my free cookbook Cook Your Way to Health with well, Elephant. You'll get healthy, guilt free recipes like Sloppy Joes, lasagna, Spring rolls with peanut sauce, cupcakes, and honey mustard dressing. Go to well elephant.com right now to download your free cookbook and start adding more health promoting meals to your life. I generally these days I'm playing roles in my late 50s to 60s, but you know, into, you know, 60s. But here's the thing. I just lost my manager. I still have my agents, but I just lost my manager because she keeps sending me, or she kept sending me auditions for women in their 80s, 90s in retirement homes. Wrinkly. You know, okay. My gosh. Anger and and I mean, if I work really hard, I can play that. But, you know, I have to put on the wig and I have to wrinkle up my face, and I have to, you know, do a fake voice and, and hunch over and whatever. I have to do all those things because they want the they don't want a, well, presenting woman in her 70s or 80s. They want some little old wizened woman. And so I wasn't I don't get those roles. I auditioned for them, but I wouldn't. It just seemed like a big waste of time. And I have just, been diagnosed with type 1.5 diabetes, not 1 or 2, but 1.5 is the designer diabetes. And I felt like I needed to keep the stress level down. So I called or I emailed my manager and I said, you know, I'm trying to cut back on certain kinds of auditions. Do you think we could cut back on the these little old ladies? Here's a picture of what I look like right now. And I just, you know, in case you'd forgotten. Well, I got an email back almost immediately saying it's clear that your agents understand you better than we do. So by it's goodbye. And what? What? And she said. She also said casting directors want us to allow a 20 year range for our auditions. Well, I don't know that men have to do that. And I mean, for the most part, you want that because it gives you an opportunity to audition for more things. But in my case, I feel like I need to. I it's gotten to where I'm doing, you know, 3 or 4 auditions a day, and I put a lot of effort into them so that takes up your whole life. You don't have time for other things. And it's it's very wearing. So I thought, I know which kinds of roles I get. And they are the kind of Loren was saying they tend to be Type-A personality, strong woman, badass, Upper West Side woman with a lot of jewelry and dogs and stuff. And so, you know, sometimes I get normal people too. But, you know, I just know how I'm generally cast. And so I lost my manager, and, and and I realized she was right. She was actually right. Because she wants to she wants to cast the way she likes to cast. And it works for her and for her people. And I'm wanting something a little different. I'm thinking outside the box a little bit, and that is a waste of her time. So it was a good thing. And then a week later I was a little bit late, longer ago than that, a longer after that. But I got like the best audition of my life, the love interest in a remake of a movie that I'm not allowed to tell you what it is, but at some point you'll find out of a very funny movie and I am up for the role of the love interest. Well, this casting director who is casting it knows my work really well. She's cast me in several projects that were really good, and she tends to give a very short list of actors to the director, and she sent me out to the director with, you know, had me audition. And so fingers crossed, watch this space, see what happens. Yeah, yeah. So I'll like you tell us a little bit about the last series you did with Dennis Quaid. Oh, that was so fun. Steven Soderbergh is, my God, everybody who works with him just. It's unlike working with any other director he is. You've worked with him a few times? Yeah, about three times. And he doesn't pull rank on anybody. He loves to have you bring ideas to him. A lot of directors are like, no, just sit there and like in House of cards, if you do it, I sit there and, you know, sit up straight and don't, don't do anything. But he was although I will say Robin Wright was a wonderful director when she directed. She was great. I loved working with her. But no Soderbergh. He usually works with the same crew people or as many of the same crew people as he can, because they are like a unit. He barely has to say anything and he doesn't say much. They just know what to do. And he, he'll use a dolly for a lot of his shots. He's definitely he's not shooting sort of the big blockbuster style. He's usually shooting that indie style that he loves so much. So you're getting a lot of those, what they call European cinema shots, where they're 11 minutes long and it's on a dolly that's or handheld and following the actors around to do that without laying down tracks so that you know exactly where you're going to go and the actors hit their marks, doesn't do any of that. One of the biggest compliments I ever got was when we were working on Full Circle. I heard him saying something to I think it was the assistant director was saying, well, do we need to put down some tape marks so she'll know where to hit her marks? And he goes, and I heard him say, no, she's really good at knowing where she's supposed to be, which I think is what he looks for in his actors. One of the things he looks for, he just wants everybody to be able to feel it. And what a compliment. Oh, and working with those actors, with Dennis Quaid and Claire Danes and Timothy Olyphant, we were a family unit in this show. So, you know, they were in almost every shot that I did. One or more of them were, you know, most of the shots I did and my grandson was played. Ethan. Oh, no. Now, I can't remember Ethan's last name. Sorry. Ethan Graves sure. He's not listening to age like a badass mother. I never know, maybe he's. But I do want to hear how you prepared for your character. How you channeled my mother. Well, I do let me hear about that. You know, you try and get as many clues from the script as you can, and the script was written by Ed Solomon, who wrote Men in Black, and he wrote All the Men in Black said he wrote all the bill, and Ted's excellent. Everything's so he's I think he's the highest paid screenwriter in America, something like that. He's really up there, but sweet, lovely man again, very much like Steven Soderbergh. And so I'm thinking Ed Solomon. Solomon, I'm playing a mother and she's really difficult. She's like a real handful. But, he's writing about a Jewish mother. Okay? He writes about what he knows. Oh, I know some Jewish mothers. Who are a handful. Not all are. But Lauren's mother is a is a big personality. And that is so sweet. Yeah, I've. You know, I've only met Lawrence and Joan. I haven't met. She is nothing like you've met. I know I that's what I've heard from you. So she's nice about. How are you? What you took from Lauren's mom and brought to your character the Jewish mother? Well, the main thing was, it's all about me. Everything is about me. And. And with a lot of emotion. Yes. Like that. You know, that is correct. That scene running into the bathroom was screaming and crying when you know something terrible is happening and she just makes the whole thing about her. It was I didn't even have to think about it. I'm just like, what would what would Lauren's mom do? You know, the grandson got kidnaped, and Claire Danes and Timothy Olyphant are the parents. Well, what if what was just like a spoiler alert? What if people haven't seen that? That's, like, right at the beginning of the show. Okay. All right. Okay. And so yeah. And then she runs in the bathroom and she's like I'm fine. Yes. Well and then and just make sure there was a second Jewish mom that I patterned it after as well, my friend Ellen Baer, her mom has passed. So I think it's okay for me to talk about her. Her mom, Sylvia, was a real handful and never said anything nice to her daughter. And in this script, the mother said some really awful things to her daughter. And I thought at first I thought I was, where is this coming from and where can I get this from? And then I thought about Ellen's mom and I thought, oh, well, okay, I'll just just do that. So you just, you take it from life and you make a sort of a mish mash from a lot of different people, and then you work with them. So interesting to me. I'm an excellent coach. Maybe that name is Jessica Cummings. She comes from the Bob Krakauer school. So. Well, you know, you never answered Lisa's question, but I. I know it's her to this. Are you, are you getting more roles? Oh, as a really important question. I mean, and it's important to me because so many of my friends who are my age, who are actors, are are discouraged and they're not getting the work that they want. But I'm getting more than I ever got. And I think the reason is partly because I number one, I don't give up. Number two, I continue to study. I continue to work with coaches. I continue to learn new things. I just started taking ballroom dancing, you know, to learn because I had to do it. I had to do a waltz or, you know, a dance in a movie. And I did it badly. And I thought, I'm never going to put myself or anybody else in this position again. I want to be able to dance. So I did that. My next project is I want to take stand up with my friend Jessica. You know, you just keep you keep pushing and getting better. You have to keep reinventing yourself and just. And I'm not afraid to play age. I'm not afraid. You know, right now I have a gray wig, even though my hair is blond and bleached and, you know, colored. Well, everything you just said is what we're really hoping to get across in this podcast. It's like you're staying true to yourself. You're open to learning new skills and new things. You're allowing yourself to evolve. And I imagine that's not true for a lot of women in your demographic. In this business. I imagine that there's a lot of fear and fighting and trying to please to get the role. And so, you know, that I think that I would hope that that helps you in some way. Yeah. And I mean, and it sounds like it does. Yeah. And you can't really blame the women all that much. Because it's a perception of casting people. And I've always done my best to change their perceptions. When I lived in Houston, I remember right after I had my baby, when Bonnie was still, you know, still nursing a little baby. I took my agent out. Jenny. Bobby, who I love, took her out to lunch, and I said, Jenny, I'm a mom now. I need to be home with the baby. But I still have to work. So I need to work less and earn more. What can we do? And she said, well, Susie, I don't know, because, you know, in Texas, especially in Houston, the men can get over scale, but women don't. And I went bang. I said, well, what would happen if the next time somebody casts me, you say, well, Susie is more than scale, more than union scale. And then if you know what'll happen, are they going to take out a gun and shoot you? You know, if they say no, you can just go, oh, well. Oh, I was just kidding. You know, it's less than scale or whatever, but I should just be good for you. Just try it. The very next job I got, she asked for double scale. The producer didn't bat an eyelash. I did the job and Jenny, from that day on, all her women started working at double triple scale because somebody just had to stand up and say, just try it. But but that's what it takes. You got to think. You got to think in those terms. That was you. But you stood up and you said it. I mean, you you did that, I did. Yeah, I imagine that can be a scary thing to do. When you said, you know, you can't blame other women for having to wanting to change, to fit into whatever they're looking for because it's got to be very scary. I mean, it's scary enough, you know, culturally, for us as we age. And again, which is why we have this podcast and we're trying to sort of help change that general perception. But yeah, but when you've got, you're being, you know, judged all the time and critiqued and everything, it's got to be just a gazillion times harder. It is hard. But here's something that I learned from an acting class at HB Studios about, I don't know, ten, 15 years ago I took classes at HP Studios. I did awesome back in the 80s on Pendleton, who I think has been there since then, is a wonderful teacher there. He's just he's just a real New York fixture. And I was taking a class with him, and I decided to do a scene from The Graduate with this really gifted young actor. And I did the scene, a scene where I think she gets, yeah, she's seducing him and she, you know, takes her clothes off. In this particular one. I just got went down to my bra and panties or something like that. And I just was so nervous about I thought, oh, I have to look, really, I have to look really pretty so that this young, you know, thinking in terms of the character, oh, she needs to look really young and pretty so that this young man will he'll find her attractive and she can seduce him. And the scene fell flat. It was terrible. Yeah. Then Austin said, I thought you said, you know, try being more true to yourself. Do this, do that, do that. So I went home and I got my mother's pillbox hat, and I got a girdle, and I got a suit with shoulder pads in it and a pocket book. A pocket book in the pocket book anymore. And I have my mother's pocket box. Yeah. And I did this scene like that, like. And I had a slip on, you know, and so it suddenly became very kinky. I was like, oh, so cute. That's fantastic. Elaine's mom now going to screw some young looking woman. He's going to screw mom. So sometimes embracing who you are and what you really look like is makes the whole thing so much juicier and so much better. But it's very hard to give in to that because, as you say, we feel that we're being judged. We have people telling us, oh, you should lose weight, should get a, you should get a tummy tuck, you should get, you know, boob lift, you should get Botox. The whole reason Steven Soderbergh cast me is because I have had no face work done. He doesn't want actors that that look Botox done. So yeah. But it's still you're beautiful and what what I think what horrifies me when I see so many of these actresses on TV now who were once beautiful, but they look strange because of they've had to succumb to the pressure. I noticed I haven't seen it yet, but that there's that series about Truman Capote and the Swans or something. And, I think the actresses, that I saw in at least in the trailer, I didn't recognize them. So good for you for not succumbing to that. Well, I haven't yet. We'll see what happens. I might well, I might speak. Can I know it's so hard. I fight against it all the time. I'm like, damn it, I need to get some Botox. But. Okay. So, I guess there's a way, though, to do it where it doesn't do that to you, though, because there are certainly plenty of women in Hollywood who we see, and they are aging beautifully. Years ago, somebody else retired a when just they said, when you look in the mirror, what do you see? And she says, really good work. So but now she says she regrets having had a facelift. So anyway, doesn't change facelift. Yeah. Excuse me. You know, I never say never but she said a few. Okay. So getting back to it like that, you know, you just stand up for yourself. So much. And I think that's such an important and important part of aging well. And it's saved your life. Can you talk about when you were diagnosed with late stage cancer and how you saved your own life? Yeah, about 13 years ago, 12, 13 years ago, I was having a lot of rectal bleeding. I was having trouble going to the bathroom. You know, I was talking to my friends about like, dear, you're in trouble and something. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we have trouble. Whatever. So. And I went, excuse me, I had a colonoscopy, I had an endoscopy. I went to a surgeon who did a biopsy, all these things, and nobody found anything. But I knew I had cancer because after a year of this hopping around to these doctors and this one in particular, who everybody said, oh, well, he's very highly regarded. So we have to take his word for it. Totally missed it. There's a big old size, a big fat snail, you know, escargot wrapped around, you know, my bum hole and blocking everything. And it, you know, it had gone on for a year. And I finally, finally went into this. One doctor said, okay, I think it's these hemorrhoids, you know, you're just an older lady. It's it's these things have just take a take a laxative, you'll be fine. And they all said the same thing. Well, he's so dismissive, oh, so dismissive, and he's so I said, well, if it's if it's hemorrhoids, then whatever they are, they're causing a lot of trouble. Let's get rid of them. So hemorrhoid surgery is pretty extreme and it's very painful. And it's a hard healing process. From what I hear. But we scheduled it. I've heard the same thing. Fortunately, he went on a golfing trip down to Florida or someplace, and he had a woman doctor filling in for him. So I called up, I said, I got to come in, it's getting worse. I can feel it pressing against my spine. There's something there. I have cancer or something. Please. And meanwhile, nobody's taken any images. So I go in and she's like, well, after a whole year, after all, this is a year, a year. All they did was colonoscopies and, you know, like sticking things up there. So I so finally I'm sitting there and she's still shaking her head to go, I know, but we have to believe this doctor is so, well, well-regarded. So I thought, all right, I'm an actress. I hate to do this, but I have to do it. So I just started screaming and crying. I did, I pulled, you know, Lauren's mom, and I said, I can't go on like this. Why are you not taking images? So she went, all right, all right, all right. Well take images. Well, of course, as soon as they did, all the doctors come running like cockroaches running out of the walls to check me out. And then the male doctors couldn't wait to stick their fingers up my butt, because it was just up far enough that only the man with really long fingers could touch it. And I'm hearing that this is like the big locker room talk is who could touch the tumor. And Suzy's butt is what they're, you know, at the cancer board meetings. So I get this feeling when I go and talk to the oncologist that they're not going to really they're not going to really treat me because they were going to just give me some chemo and no radiation and not not much. And then that was it. And I thought that that doesn't sound right. This is stage four rectal cancer. The survival rate is and it was a very rare it was a skin cancer in the rectum, which is really weird. So I went back to this radiation oncologist that I had seen who I really respected, young guy. He gave me some Intel that he had heard that that what I thought was true, that this is what the scuttlebutt was and that they weren't going to really. So I, I went about finding a doctor who would was sort of outside the system. I mean, he still had privileges at a, at a hospital. So I had an oncologist who would treat me aggressively and I got radiation, which unfortunately caused other problems later on, but it saved my life. And quite quickly, you know, as soon as they started treating me, the darn thing started going down. And I mean, there's story after story within this story of just people not paying attention, reading, reading charts wrong. At one point they were going to close me up, give me a Barbie. But and you know, and in a colostomy bag for the rest of my life because they were reading last year's colonoscopy and there's like, oh, it's it sounds like a lot of potential malpractice. Oh, oh, you going on there? No, because they all know I asked about that and they were all like, oh, we can't speak out against our fellow doctors. I'm like, well, what about your fellow patient? What about the person who's paying you to get her? Well, but no, they're all like in, you know, they're in this little club together. So I mean, I'm not saying all doctors are like that. There's. I have found some amazing doctors. My the surgeon who. Faith Mencken, who took care of my a lump in my breast. She was. She's amazing. So. Well, I think what you said. I mean, you really listened. You know, like, there's something about knowing, right? That something's not right, no matter what. All these people who are supposed to know everything about this are telling you, you just you knew it. Yeah. When you look in a doctor's eyes and they glaze over like they don't even see you, and they see a number and like a toe tag on your toe, you, you know that they they don't see you as a living person. You're just. And of course, surgeons are not known to be the warmest, buzziest people in the world, so. But yeah, no, I really, really got a bad feeling from that. So. But you have your first or your second. Yes. That is, that's you know, and I got lucky. I mean, the fact that I talked to the, the right doctor who knew the right intelligence, what if I hadn't talked to him? You know, it's I don't like the fact that so much is is left up to look, I don't like. Yeah. And I think well, Lauren's story is a great example of that and something that we really preach on the podcast too, is like, you do have to advocate for yourself. Do not give your power away, especially, you know, in the medical field. But earlier when you mentioned your wig, I said, oh, yeah, I wondered, and the reason I said that isn't because it looks like you're wearing a wig, but because I had watched your YouTube channel that you created when you were going through the treatment. Yeah. Which I thought was incredible. Can you talk about that a little bit when I well, I've lost my hair twice, 12 years ago when I had rectal cancer and then three years ago I had ovarian cancer, but it was encased in my uterus. And it had gotten to a very bad point because the radiation from my rectal cancer had blocked off my uterus and my cervix and couldn't go in to do pap smears and so forth, couldn't really see what was going on. And this cancer grew very quickly. And so I had to have the hysterectomy and treatments. And it was very harsh, harsh treatments. Lost my hair again. Well, you know, different people. A friend of mine down in Houston, Winston Durden, who's a writer, said, well, you know, you know, you you love wigs. Yeah, I love wigs. I don't mind losing my hair because I have two big bins full of wigs that I've collected from acting and from cancer and whatever. I just I love them. So he said, you know, there's a lot of women out there who are afraid of buying wigs or who don't think that they're worth spending the money on a wig for, and they're afraid it's going to look bad and look wiggy. So he said, you should make little videos so that other women can can help them have the courage to buy wigs or style them or whatever. And I thought, well, that sounds like something to do while I'm, you know, sitting around the house getting better from another project, another project. And my dog was home taking care of me, from California. She came home for three months. Can I give you a side story? Another empowering story. She works for a company out in L.A. that is mostly men. It's a video company. They do. They do kind of socially conscious videos that they post, and she does very well there. But they wouldn't promoter wouldn't promoter wouldn't promoter. All these men who are coming in after her, you know, buddies of the owners were passing her by and she was having to fix their mistakes. They were getting raises, you know, the usual story. Well, she came and took care of me for, I think three months. And I was so worried that she was going to lose her job. Well, what happened was she was gone. Who was doing all the work? Nobody home. So they suddenly realized. And one of the guys, his wife had a baby with birth problems, birth defect problems. And so he suddenly discovered what it was like to have a child that needed a lot of care. And he suddenly went, oh, Bonnie, Bonnie's taking care of her mother. Oh, we should give that girl a raise. While she was gone. She got two raises and a promotion. Incredible, right? All she had to do was go away. Ladies. Remember that. Just walk away for a little while and see what happens. Then you sting. It's a shame. That's what it takes to see what, to have them see your value. But yeah. Hey. And then. Yeah, that's no pain story. Okay. Well, I mean, it is on YouTube if you go to YouTube and put in Suzanne Savoy chemo being there's I think there's about eight videos now and I talk about the different kinds of wigs because there's all different kinds of construction. I show a lot of my own wigs and how I wear them. I show head scarves and hats and different ways of tying things on your head. And I show a catalog that's out there, the TLC catalog that the American Cancer Society does, which is a great catalog. There's one video where I just sit on the couch and like leaf through the catalog. People love it, you know? So I've gotten a lot of really wonderful feedback from folks who have seen the videos or who pass them on to other friends who they feel need to look at them. And, there's a lot of there's a lot of video videos out there to help people who are dealing with hair loss from cancer. There's really a lot of people out there doing this. So I'm just another person doing it, but I'm just doing it my way. I don't know, I really love your channel, and I really it was very inspiring. And I am not on the cancer journey, and it made me want to go out and try some wigs. So I'm like, wow, because you they the way you describe how to wear them and the things to look for and then everything makes them look completely natural, which I think is what the fear is that you're gonna look like you're wearing a wig, right? Yeah. Yeah. So. And I wouldn't have known you were if you hadn't mentioned it. So it's. It looks great. Unbelievable. That is really cool. Well, it's cool, it's dark, but they do have sort of a shelf life on your head at some point. But you obviously couldn't work doing it during the period that you were getting treatment. Oh when I got treatment, I was, I was too yeah, I was too, yeah. Sick. And to exhausted. And I mean, there were days when I cried when I really just thought I couldn't get through it. But I will say that the minute but the minute that my treatments stopped, I started feeling better. I guess it was this particular chemo and the first time as well. Any time I've gotten really sick or had a really bad, like when my husband left me and I was left like crying on the floor, something really great always happens afterwards, I think, because you're so raw and you're so out there and people recognize that and they want to help or they want or they want to capitalize on this, really a person who's channeling their their inner stuff, you know, that stuff can be really great on camera, I guess. So I mean, you came back and worked again. I mean, that's that's the point I was getting to. I've had my best two years since my cancer was in 2021, I think, and I've had my best two years since then ever. And so yeah, you, you and you take really good care of yourself. You have had you've battled a lot of health issues and now you're doing type 1.5 diabetes. And so how are you taking care of yourself? I mean, you really you really I know put a lot of thought and work into it. Yeah. Well again listening you know, I really listened. I was at Memorial Sloan-Kettering for some reason. I went there for when when my blood sugar went to 1257, which it's supposed to be under 100. And it was like, and I didn't know. I just knew what my mouth was really dry. And, you know, just a lot of real weird things were happening. My eyesight was going and so I had an appointment with my doctor. And so would you take my blood sugar? I think something's wrong. She took it, and she's like, get to the hospital right now. And she was at Sloan-Kettering, so she sent me there. Well, the folks in Sloan-Kettering, even though it's a cancer hospital primarily, they had a really good training program for how to how to count your carbs and how to do all the insulin and all of that, because there really there are a lot of fine points to it. You know, you're supposed to eat the vegetables first and then the carbs, because that helps the insulin work better. Just don't freak out if you're if you start to get a spike, don't suddenly freak out and go in the other direction too far. If it you suddenly plummets, don't start eating a bunch of candy. You have to eat a little bit, but you don't want to eat the whole candy drop, which I started doing in the beginning. So you're wearing a monitor all the time now then? Probably I am, but I'm having a lot of trouble with the company that distributes these monitors. Again, you call and you try to get help and they just brush you off. So I've, I've called out as many of the big guns as I can to, you know, I've called my doctor's office. They've called trying to get it sorted out. They're just not delivering to me. They're saying, oh, well, she's got the wrong date on her wrong birth date at CVS. No I don't well, she's got the wrong address on her. I'm like, no, I don't. So it's just somebody doesn't want to do it. Please share with us the diet and lifestyle changes that you've made since your health journey with cancer and type one and 1.5 diabetes, actually with, you know, Lauren's been a great inspiration over the years because, you know, she's does so much with nutrition and lifestyle. And so I was all right. Even though I don't follow her regimen to the tee, I've been eating very much in that way for a long time. And I'm more plant based. Yeah, very completely plant based and very little oil. I mean, every that's where I don't follow it to the tee, is it? Sometimes I do use a little oil, but very little. And I don't eat gluten because I find that I, it gives me inflammation. So I was already there. So when they were teaching me at the hospital how to count carbs and do this, that it was really not much of an adjustment at all. So when I went back, you know, they give you the sensor and they give you all your stuff and they send you on your way and come back for a check several months later. And they they check your blood sugars over the long haul. And they were shocked. They were just shocked because I was a lot of the time, I was 99% of the time within the range that they wanted me, which is apparently, you know, quite, quite a feat. But it wasn't really that hard to do, especially with the sensors and just with watching what I eat. So yeah, so I was already kind of there like, yeah. And you know, we learned from somebody else, Laureano Hernandez, who had cancer. And because she was so healthy to begin with, they were able to treat her aggressively. And I imagine it's the same thing with you with your cancer and and that you can recover quickly from your diabetes, you know, be on the road to health just because you were in such good health before you got there. That's very much the case, because when I landed in the hospital with my blood sugar, it 1257 and they said, lady, why are you not in a coma or dead? We don't know. We've never seen anybody walk in like that. And I really that my, my vital signs were all perfect. My my pulse, my oxygen, my heart rate, all those things were fine. It was just that my blood sugar was off the charts and I was horribly, horribly dehydrated. So my body was taking care of itself. I think I'm going to lose you in a second again. Okay, well, let's just a couple quick questions. What is one one piece of advice for aging? Well, you've given us so many already. My piece of advice for aging well is don't take advice. But so we're going right back to where we were. Listen to yourself, I said. God is great for other people. But, you know, they told me you can't start an acting career at the age of 30. You know, you passed by all the roles that you, you know, the really good you'll never play. Juliet know, I'm like, oh, I never did play Juliet. But that's okay. So but but it's never too late. And you know to do what your heart that's. I remember hearing on NPR and interview with Noguchi, the Japanese-American sculptor who at the time was around 80 years old. And the interviewer said, do you think about slowing down or retiring? And he said, well, I just bought a whole load of stone that would take me. I'd have to live longer than 100 to carve all that stone. But, you know, I'm just going to keep doing it and not, not consider the end. Well, he died about four years later and somebody had to do something with all that stone. But I like that idea of thinking of the arc of your life as that. It's, you know, it's it's not going to end. It will. But if you focus on it, maybe it's good to focus on it so you don't get surprised. But I don't I can't imagine ever retiring. I love my work so much. And as long as I can talk or move a finger or whatever, I think I'll still be out there looking for roles, looking for scraps, alone in the room. You're an example of someone who you're aging well because you live well, so it's about living. And I have, and I'm lucky, I guess, to like a lot of people live well, but you know, that maybe they had genetically they were not, you know, given some of them, some of, you know, genes that would keep them alive longer. So some of it's luck, some of it. But but it sure doesn't hurt to take care of yourself and to have a I have friends of every age and I've had people say, you know, well, it's a little weird. You have so many young friends, you know, don't do are you trying to prove something? Are you? And I'm like, no, they're interesting and they like me and I like them. And we sit and talk for hours. You know, I'm not trying to act young. I'm just. I'm interested in those people. And as well as I have older friends, too. I have friends who are much older than me. So, yeah, I take it Helen Hayes gave me good advice when I met her. She said, train your voice and learn your lines. Let me, if that's good advice. Oh, Susie, it's been so good talking to you. I love you so much. Thank you.