John Goodman talking to Howard Stern — it was like an Honesty Festival. And filled with mutual respect, as the two funnymen with well-known serious sides talked about everything John Goodman has done in his amazingly durable career. In an unlikely scenario, as he admits, Goodman has become a genuine movie star. He achieved iconic status despite feeling like an “outsider” in Hollywood, he told Stern. (Hey he started in a Talking Heads video.) Maybe that outsider feeling is why he drank so much — Goodman even began drinking, he told Stern, during shooting. Though he swore he’d never drink at work, he drank anyway on the sets of Roseanne and The Big Lebowski.
Goodman, like most stars who last, has winning things to say about other stars. He loved working with Brie Larson in Kong: Skull Island — she’s “so charismatic,” he said. Speaking of charismatic, Kristen Wiig is another target of Goodman’s affection and adulation. But the 13-time host of Saturday Night Live had an embarrassing moment trying to meet her: “She was talking to somebody else, and I was just… I think she’s so great, and the social barriers broke down and I interrupted the conversation… and I would just hate for somebody to do that to me. And she goes, yeah I’ll talk to you in a minute.” Goodman told Stern. “It was like the atom. I shrunk down to atom size. …I really like her, and it was embarrassing.”
