you know, you never know what s going to happen. one of the things that s a secret to success is great guests and i want to show a clip of you with meryl streep. yes. dustin hoffman. yeah. jack nickel son. yeah. robert medford, marry one, shag one, kill one. radford marry maybe. okay. yeah, okay. and jack, shag. okay. and dustin ex nay? dustin very good. first of all, how big a deal to get somebody like meryl streep on the show and how big a deal that she played along? i mean, i love when she said shag jack. yes. very big deal. that was actually about four years into our we re now 14 years into doing watch what happens live. that was early in the run and a huge turning point for us to get
there is great vanilla ice cream. i like to concentrate on stuff you can t get that like a good roast chicken. you can t buy a good roast chicken in the market. if it comes out of the oven, it makes the house smell good and it s a different experience. those are the things i like to concentrate on. i like to use things one of the things i ve been doing is instead of stuffing a chicken or a turkey or whatever you might want to stuff, i make a bread pudding. i make instead of cutting up the bread and toasting it so it absorbs the pudding mix, i just buy pep ridge farm stuffing mix. nobody knows the stuff king mixs in there but it s easier. why not? one of the things that you advocated during the lockdowns was drinking. [ laughter ] here is me? yeah, here is a look.
acceptance speeches that go on too long, and, in at least one case, famous people mispronouncing each other s names. please welcome the wickedly talented, one and only, adele john travolta s filiblub introducing adina idina menzel. but for menzel, it was so much more. what was your immediate reaction when you heard that? and when did you realize what a huge gift he had given you? okay. so, i had done a lot of preparation because i was super nervous about that night. and i knew that it was going to be meryl streep and brad pitt sitting in the front row. i had done a bunch of meditation about visualizing, manifesting that that night would go well for me. and i also told myself, i was just going to sing to my son and make it about singing to my son,
actually do it. are you really saying because i think you re somewhat under selling yourself. are you saying that all of this just happened? there must at various points been thought about i would say every 20 years i get incredibly bored and i just go okay, i have to change all of this. if i wake up in the morning and i m a little scared about what how this will work out, i m not happy. okay. let s go back. mid 70s you re in washington d.c. working in the ford and carter administration and you re writing budgets for the government s nuclear energy programs. one, how did that come about and two, how was that for you? i started in i mean, i worked at the federal power commission through a few jobs and ended up a year and a half later in the white house legislative office. so we would write do a writeup of whatever legislation so the president knew whether to sign it or not. i don t know how i just figured
whatever it does, it appeals to you and i just think there are certain things, even i after 13 books, how many recipes have i written? 1,000. there are certain recipes i go to all the time like an apple tart and back to basics and just there are things you just roast chicken. go-to recipes. let s talk about your food empire. you sold more than 7 million copies. we have 14 million in print. i stand corrected. you ve had your show on the food network for 20 years. how would you describe how you built your brand over the last two decades? you know, one of the things i don t have a grand plan. i really just do what i love to do. i get up in the morning. i think what do i feel like doing today? testing recipes. and so that s what i do. in the middle i do a little tv because i think it s important for people to know how to do something. i mean, it s one thing to read a recipe on a page but it s another thing to see somebody