After many e-mails back and forth with the publicist for Beowulf and Grendel I was finally granted this interview with Gerry. It had taken three and a half months. I got a date... August 9th...5pm eastern time..2pm pacific. He was going to call in from the west coast and would talk to me for 20 minutes. At 5pm sharp...the main line in the WBZ radio newsroom rang. I picked up..the line was dead. Well...little did I know the phone at that workstation was all of a sudden not working. I didn't panic...figured it wasn't Gerry anyway. Phone rang again...someone else picked up at another workstation (in a newsroom when a call comes in on the main line...anyone can pick up at their desk). They told me it was Gerry and transferred the call. I picked up...again the line was dead! Then it happened a third time. I moved to another workstation. Phone rang a fourth time. It was Gerry. Someone else was talking to him now and explaining that we had trouble with our phones. They transfer him to me at another workstation. I say "hello this is Carolyn"....I finally hear his voice..."this is Gerry Butler". I got him! I usually have a little speech before I do an interview to thank the guest and explain what I'm going to do ..but that never happened. Instead, I apologized profusely for the phone problem. He asked if that happened all the time. I said...no! then he explained that he called "like four times". He said the first time someone hung up on him. The second time he dropped his phone. The third time he got hung up on again. The fourth time he finally got connected. Just to clarify...we weren't hanging up on him.....but it must have sounded that way to him. After a bit of chit chat we finally got started and he says he can't hear me! My headset wasn't working. Oh no, so I tell him to hold one more time and I move yet to another workstation. I get set up and he says I sound muffled. Oh brother. I said I think we have to go with it cause I couldn't make him wait anymore. I turned up my mike, started the interview and hoped for the best. As we went on I balanced the levels and we were on our way. Afterwards, I had a sound person level my voice and Gerry's even more and I think the finished product sounds pretty good especially after all we went through. Unbelievable. Anyone else might have said forget it and and hung up. But you can hear from the interview that Gerry wasn't phased by it. He was relaxed, eager to talk, and cheerful. And so patient while I sorted out the problem. He made me feel at ease right away. And when I was interviewing him I felt like I was talking to an old friend. I have to say this man is very special and he is everything you think he is. He's honest, very, very smart, and funny. And he really appreciates his fans. In part three he talks about how lucky he is to have such a wonderful, loyal fan base.

Someone on the site asked why he did this interview now and why boston and did his people contact us. No. I contacted them after I saw Phantom and Dear Frankie back in April. I thought he was awesome. I wanted to produce a segment on him because I couldn't understand why an actor with such tremendous talent and screen presence wasn't a bigger name. I wanted to do what I could to let people know who he was. I also wanted to be able to bring something to his die hard fans since there had been such a dry spell. So I gave it a shot and tried to set something up and it worked. In the end...I don't know why I was granted this interview. Gerry wasn't doing any press this summer. I think someone also asked if I was supposed to interview him for 40 minutes. No, I wasn't. It was only supposed to go for 20 minutes. But it went long and he was fine with that...lucky for all of us!

I want to thank all of you for your positive feedback. I'm so glad you enjoyed hearing Gerry talk. And thanks for spreading the word about this interview. I've even seen posts about it on other Gerry sites. Amazing! This is great for Gerry, Women's Watch and WBZ! Thanks so much!

Lastly, I had a blast doing this. As you can hear...we laughed alot. It's hard not to when you talk to Gerry. He was an absolute joy.

Carolyn


Stay tuned for parts two and three...I'll be posting them to WBZ's website shortly...and they're even better than the first!