Writer-Performer Mitchell Anderson (You Better Call Your Mother): "I Owe It All To My Dirty Laundry"

DENNIS ANYONE? with Dennis Hensley

Dennis is joined via Zoom by actor-singer-writer-restaurantuer Mitchell Anderson to discuss his new autobiographical play You Better Call Your Mother, which takes its title from something a producer said to him backstage after he came out publicly onstage at the 1996 GLAAD Media Awards. This was while he was playing a gay character on the hit TV series Party of Five and made Mitchell one of the first--if not the first--leading man types to come out as gay. It was a huge deal and Mitchell talks about what led him to make that decision, the phone call he made to his mother afterward and the personal and professional fallout from the decision. He also talks about leaving Los Angeles a few years later and moving to Atlanta to be with the man who would eventually become his husband, Richie Arpino. Mitchell also talks about his second career as the chef and the owner of a pair of restaurants in Atlanta called MetroFresh and why he loves it. Other topics include: returning to acting after 18 years in the digital series After Forever, the strangest place he's ever been recognized, how a pair of overalls led him to quit Juilliard, the voicemail he played more over and over and the fact that he gets more fan mail for Jaws:The Revenge than for any other project he's done.

www.highwaysperformance.org