Interview: Marilu Henner Talks THE MARILU HENNER SHOW, Her Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory & More!

Stage and screen star Marilu Henner has returned to Bucks County Playhouse with her dazzling new club act, 'The Marilu Henner Show', now running through August 15! Featuring song and dance and stories galore, the show, which grew out of her sold-out cabaret engagement at Feinstein's/54 Below, pulls from all facets of Henner's incredible life both on stage and off.

Henner entertains the audience with all the charm and talent in the world, covering everything from her starring role in the iconic television show 'Taxi', the seven Broadway shows she's been in, her twenty-three Hallmark movies, and her Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory.

The show, directed by Bob Garrett, features singers-dancers, Julius Williams (Bucks County Playhouse's "Mamma Mia!") and Adam Vanek (Bucks County Playhouse's "Guys and Dolls"), with Michael Orland ("American Idol") leading the band.

Purchase tickets to The Marilu Henner Show HERE!

We spoke with Marilu Henner about how it feels to be back on stage in front of a live audience, how her Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory helps her as a performer, and much more!

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How does it feel to be back at Bucks County Playhouse?

Oh my gosh, well, first of all, the place is just so magical. I first saw it - and I talk about this as soon as the show starts- on Christmas day of 2000. I brought my family here, we thought, "Oh, let's go to Bucks County for Christmas," because I was on the road with 'Annie Get Your Gun', and I was about to open up at the Merriam. And I passed the Bucks County Playhouse and I said, "Oh, it's so historical I hope this opens again, and if it ever opens again I want to play here!" I got my wish in 2013 when they asked me to come and do a show I had done on Broadway, 'The Tale of the Allergist's Wife', and I got to play opposite Marsha Mason, who's become a good friend, and who was always an idol of mine. And we both loved the place so much we both signed up to be on the board. So, I'm actually on the board here.

And then, the following year, I did 'Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike' with Christopher Durang, and that was a great experience, and then I came here again September 21 of 2019, on a Saturday, I was the emcee of the gala. So, I haven't been here for almost two years, and coming back, I cannot believe how many more shops, how many great little restaurants, it's just thriving. It's just amazing. It's fantastic, the whole area is so special, and I love it here. We're already talking about, "What can I do next year?" because I just want to keep coming back.

That's so wonderful. It is such a magical area, and the building itself, you feel the history within the walls.

Oh, and every bathroom you walk into, every corner you turn, there's some poster of Julie Harris, or Richard Kiley, or something Rodgers and Hammerstein, or Neil Simon tried it out here, it's just amazing. You feel the history, you feel like, "Ooh, I'm walking in the footsteps of greatness." It's a great feeling as an actor.

What can you tell us about this show? What can people who come expect to see?

Well, it's kind of a musical memory of my entire life, everything is connected to some part of my life. I've done so many different things, I also had a very unusual upbringing, the way I got in to Grease- I was in the original company in Chicago- so, I tell stories about that, I do something from 'Chicago'- I did 408 performances as Roxie- and I do a tribute to Taxi and show a montage video, there's just a little bit of something for everyone. I pay homage to Burt Reynolds, and to Candace Cameron Bure in my Hallmark family series, I show pictures and stuff like that. I love telling stories, I'm very comfortable in front of an audience speaking, so I do a lot of that, but there's also a bunch of numbers.

I talk about this unusual memory I have, and my brother, Lorin, is such a genius at making up different lyrics. I touch on all the different aspects of my life, I talk about my three husbands, my two kids, I sort of take people on this really fun journey. We sold out in New York, the tickets are going like crazy, they're so happy here, and it's getting unbelievable reviews, so it's expanded since I did it in New York last year. It's so funny, because I chose to do it on March 4th, because I'm always looking for sticky things for people, so they gave me all these dates throughout the year of 2020, and I picked March 4th because I thought, "Okay, it's the only imperative command in the calendar, 'march forth!'" And I'm so glad I did because everything shut down a week later.

That's crazy timing! So, this autobiographical memory, it's so interesting and it's so cool, do you find that it helps you as a performer and in your career at all in any way?

Oh my gosh, it helps in every aspect of my life. I sing in the show, "There's nine different spots on my brain, ten times larger than the average joe. I never forget, recalling's no sweat, don't need no ginkgo biloba!" They put me through MRI's, wired my brain, took 300 measurements, and found nine areas ten times larger than the normal brain. I've known I've had it since I was six years old. Everybody said, "What's with that kid and her memory?" They called me little miss memory, miss UNIVAC, like the old computer, because I would retain information in such a way that I could spit it back out. It's something I had my entire life, and I knew it was unusual in my family, everybody in my family has great memories, but I had something oddball, in a good way. But when you're one of six kids, you're part of a litter, and you look for anything that differentiates you from your brothers and sisters. So, I wore it as a badge of honor all the time, and really developed it more and more. I fell asleep saying, "What did I do a year ago in kindergarten?" or, "What did I do a year ago today in fourth grade?" And it was something I just always exercised, but I knew I had something unusual.

Can you tell me about your first day as a professional performer? Do you remember what day that was?

Oh yeah, totally. I kind of tell a story around that in the show, because I went from being a college student in the morning to being in the first national company of Grease in the afternoon, and a couple days later I signed my Equity card. But, when I got the call to come to do Grease, I was on my way to the library, and I said, "Oh, I have to go to the library, I'm a college student, I can't come." But then, I went to New York, auditioned, I got the part, and they made me show up for the first rehearsal. So that was November 28th, it was a Tuesday, and in that room I met Jeff Conaway playing Danny, Jerry Zaks playing Kenickie, Judy Kaye playing Rizzo, John Travolta playing Doody, and rehearsing with us for the London company was Richard Gere. Michael Lembeck, who directed most of the Friends episodes, and also the pilot for Everybody Loves Raymond, he was playing Sonny. So, everybody in that first national company did so well. And those were the people who I thought, "Oh, I'm giving up school for these guys, and it's worth it!" They gave me 15 hours to go home and pack up my life after that, and then two days later I signed my Equity card, so it was November the 30th, 1972, and that was a Thursday.

That is so cool! Your career is so multifaceted, and something else you are incredibly passionate about is health and wellness, women's health issues, fitness, when did you first begin to get interested in that, and are you doing any work within that world at the moment?

First of all, what got me into it was that my parents both died very young. My father died at fifty-two of a heart attack, I was seventeen at the time, and he was there one second and then completely gone. We had this extraordinary upbringing, with a dancing school in the back yard, a beauty shop in the kitchen, art classes going on upstairs with my uncle. My uncle was also an astrology reader, so we had such a colorful background, and overnight it's like my father passed away and so many things changed for us. I ate my feelings, and I got very heavy because I was just in a quiet depression, and my mother, I could see that her whole life changed, and her body just became ravaged with rheumatoid arthritis. And a few years later my mom passed away. But when she was taken ill, I said, "This is not about my weight anymore, it's about my health, I'm going to do everything I can to save my mother's life, and if I can't, I'm going to do everything to save my brothers' and sisters' and my life." And when she died, I became this obsessed student of health, I went to medical libraries, doctors, nutritionists, I took human anatomy classes at UCLA, and because of my memory I could cross-connect a lot of information, so I would learn something and then say, "Oh wait, this connects with something I read over here," and, "Let me experiment with this,"

It took me time to experiment on myself, but once I did, I never looked back, and that's when I started writing books. I'm the New York Times Bestselling author of ten books, and it's everything from Total Health Makeover, to The 30 Day Total Health Makeover, Healthy Life Kitchen, Total Memory Makeover... So, I got very interested in it around the time of my mother's death. And I just started to feel so much better that people said, "You have to write a book about this." I was actually in the Broadway show Chicago, and I would do lectures and seminars between shows on matinee days. And pretty soon those tapes turned into a book and the book came out after I finished the show, and became a bestseller, and it gave me a whole other career in writing. But I've always been passionate, I do a whole tribute to health in the show in a really funny way.

You pull from so many facets of your life, how does it feel to take a little bit from each part of your life and to play it out on stage?

It's such a special feeling. I had done the show last year at 54 Below, and it was a little bit shorter, it was seventy-two minutes long. But at Bucks County they said, "No, we want dancers, we want an intermission so we can sell drinks, we want bigger, bigger!" So, there were so many other things I can draw from, and I just thought, "Oh, this will be fun!" I can't wait to get there tonight to perform it, because it's so much fun, and the audience gets so many surprises.

And how does it feel to be back on stage in front of a live audience?

Oh, there's nothing like it! It's totally, totally my true love. There is nothing like it. I feel like it's such a gift that they've given me because I can do this. I can use so many aspects from my life, so, one of the things that I get to do is talk about the fact that I did so many commercials, and I was a body parts model, so I take people on a tour of their body, starting with snippets of 23 different songs. And it's just a blast. It's so much fun to do, and to share life and stories with people.