Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff: The Kristine Carlson Story

By starrymag | October 16, 2021

By: Jamie Steinberg

 

 

Q) Maura, it seems like “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” has been a passion project of yours for years in the making. Can you briefly share with the audience your personal story behind making this movie a reality?

MAURA DUNBAR:  Thank you so much for that question, yes.  This project, this little book “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” has been a 21-year passion project of mine.  It started because, sadly, 27 years ago I lost four immediate family members in my life, and Richard’s book came out about six or seven years after that, and I found that book, and the book, even though it’s about not sweating the small stuff, and I was enveloped by the darkness of loss and grief, the little pinpoints of light that Richard so beautifully distills in his books about not sweating the small stuff in everyday living became the little footholds that I was able to grab onto, and as you started to string those little pieces of light together, when you’re so overwhelmed and you can’t see your way through, those little lights became beams of light, became rays of light that began to light up the room where I began to find my way through, and when you’re so lost and you find that pathway it became the pathway to healing for me.  And so I had the privilege of, when I left ABC as a network executive after sixteen years, of being introduced to Richard by his publisher, and I drove up.  I flew up and met Richard, Dr. Carlson, and Kris and had the pleasure of spending a weekend up there and getting to know them and got the rights, and it’s been an honor and a privilege, and it’s just been a passion of mine for the last 21 years to be a steward of Richard’s in getting this story out there, and Kris has been amazing and in indulging me for forever coming back to her, knocking on her door and saying, “I’ve got another chance, I’ve got another chance.”  And now with the incredible support of Tanya Lopez and Lifetime, who was my first agent, by the way, when I sold it for the very first time twenty years a goat ABC as a half hour.  So thanks to Tanya Lopez and my producing partner Mark Teitelbaum on the project, who’s not with us, and to Meghan McCain.  So thank you.  It has been an amazing journey.  I cried the first day of filming.  And to Heather Locklear who has just done, I want to say, the most unbelievable, breathtaking job taking on the role of Kris Carlson and has been one of the most amazing professionals I’ve ever working with in the business under sweltering heat conditions that I’ve never seen anyone be so unflappable on a set with such a great sense of humor.  I think it’s her best work to date.  So, thank you for the question.  It’s been the most important movie I’ve made in my 37-year career.

Q) Meghan, how did it come to be that you became attached to this material, and maybe this is me watching “The View,” and bravo on your years there, but are you kind of surprised this is your first TV movie as opposed to something maybe a little more political?

MEGHAN MCCAIN:  Yeah.  It’s funny.  This is the only –the second thing I’ve ever executive produced, and the last one was a very serious political documentary, so it’s I’m delighted to be doing something that everyone in my life will want to consume because, obviously, politics is incredibly divisive, and this is something that is meant to be feel good and it’s going to bring people together.  I had read “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” at different incarnations in my life.  I read it when I was much younger when my mother had read it when it first was released, and I told Kristine and Maura when I first met them it was a book that my mother had on her nightstand in her bedroom growing up, and I can remember just the very distinctive title and it always being sort of like something I remembered, and then after my dad died I went on Amazon and just looked up books that were good for grief, and the book came up again, books for good –the good books about in moments of crisis in your life.  And then my agent had come to me saying Lifetime was possibly interested in partnering with me on projects, and I said it would have to be something that would be organic and something that I would have to be authentically passionate about, otherwise, it wouldn’t work.  And when Maura came to me with “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” I felt like it was incredibly serendipitous, because I had started rereading again for some of its meaningful and evergreen messages during COVID, and I just was so excited at the idea of this medium being turned into a film because, again, I have a lot of friends who are incredibly busy and they don’t have time to read all the time.  Sometimes they don’t have the bandwidth, and I just think Kristine’s story and Richard’s story is something that so many people can relate to, especially post COVID during this time of such pain and loss.  And I’m just really proud of it, and I’m really excited to be doing something that everyone I know and everyone I respect has been excited about and will be excited to watch.  And this is a movie that you’ll be able to watch thirty years from now and fifty years from now and sixty years from now.  I really believe this is going to be one of those movies that’s going to stay in our lexicon just like the book has.  So, it’s really just a privilege to be working with these incredible women and to be a part of this project, and I’m really delighted, and I just am so excited for its release coming out soon, and it’s around my birthday, and I just –I don’t know.  It’s just been –This whole experience has been wonderful and I’m really, really honored to be a part of it.

Q) Heather, did you meet Kristine before the filming of the movie and talk to her to get an idea about her character at all?

HEATHER LOCKLEAR:  Yes.  I did meet her.  I flew up on a coach flight, just saying, to meet her, and she picked me up and was a little late but, yeah, I went up, and I spent the night, and we spent a night with our friends, both of our friends that happened to know each other, which is all synchronicity.  And I had read the book before, and I had talked to her a lot saying I can’t get through your book right away, because it’s making me cry.  It’s giving me–which happens every time I talk about it.  Anyway, so, meeting her was such a joy and such a light in my life, and I can’t imagine what she was and is in everyone else’s light –life, but meeting her, and I went to dinner, and she talked about all kinds of stuff and showed me Richard’s jacket that was in her office that stayed there since he passed –that’s fifteen years, by the way –and told me different stories and told me stuff that I was afraid of, to do, to play, and how, you know, what happened.  And then I got to have coffee with her in the morning in her bed, and I felt like this must have been what Richard and Kris together.  They sat there with their coffee.  They meditated right here, and it felt so unique and so special and on a different level than I am on. I would like to be her level, but I’m not quite there, or their level.  And it was so, so special, so special that she’s coming out for my 60th birthday to stay with me, yay.  What more can I say?  Oh, I can say something else that has nothing to do with that question.  So my mom says today that Meghan is her favorite person.  She’s watched her.  Yeah, and but she actually happens to love your husband.

MEGHAN MCCAIN:  Then she is hardcore, she loves my husband –

HEATHER LOCKLEAR:  She’s hardcore.  She’s definitely.  She’s so hardcore that I have to stop her and go: “Enough, don’t sweat the small stuff; don’t sweat the small stuff.”  But she’s in love with your husband and thinks you’re fantastic.

Q) Heather, obviously, you’ve been acting for quite a long time now, but is there anything that you still find challenging when you do a project like this?

HEATHER LOCKLEAR:  Oh, no.  The challenging part was it was so fearful to me, and it was the second to the last day is when I get on the phone, and I find out that Richard has passed.  And Kris had told me –oh, my God.  I’m going to die –she had told me this is what I did, this is what I did, and I said I’m so glad that you’re telling me because I don’t want to ask this question of how it felt or what it did.  And she said, “It’s almost like a child died.”  And that stopped me in my tracks, and I’m like I can’t go there.  I can’t do it.  So it’s always my fear of the whole, like, when is this going to be scheduled that I have to take in when her husband died.  And I’ve read her book and what happened and all that.  And I’m like, okay, I’ll go back to these pages before I do this, and we talked on the phone the morning of, because they wanted to know certain things, the producers and director wanted to know certain things about what happened and blah, blah, blah, and I go I can get her on the phone right now.  And so my fear was I’m not going to where my child passes.  I could never do that.  So that was my fear and what am I going to go to.  I don’t even know what I went to, because it was the spirit of Richard, the spirit of Kris, so that was challenging, and they did it great.  They did all kinds of shots and all, and so it felt –I felt very safe, but that was my biggest fear.

Q) I read the book ages ago. It seems like a lifetime ago. But I want to know from the whole panel have you really perfected the art of not sweating the small stuff, because in this crazy world, I mean, it’s hard to just go through life all the time and just be la-la about the really small stuff, but they do affect us.  So how do you deal with that?  Have you perfected that art?

MAURA DUNBAR:  Well, I can say it’s sort of an ongoing process, but it’s having read these books and lived with these books for so long and being dear friends with Kris. In fact Kris and I have the same birthday, July 5th.  I don’t know if it’s July 5thgirls,but it’s about being mindful and treasuring the journey, as Kris often says, and just being centered in not getting caught up in those small, little things and being in gratitude for so much, and life is filled with those little joys if you just change your perspective and focus on that, and that’s what being with Richard and being with Kris and reading these books and being with this material for so long has taught me.  So I really do try, and it kind of starts to come naturally after a long time, and after 21 years it’s kind of come naturally by now.

MEGHAN MCCAIN: Oh, my gosh.  Well, if you’re asking me if I’m good at don’t sweat the small stuff, not all the time, but I am working on it.  And one of the mantras from the book that always helped me is “make peace with imperfection. IN:  I find myself, yeah, it’s my favorite one, I find myself saying that to my –in so many –I have a almost one-year-old daughter, and there’s something about motherhood that you just really have to surrender and make peace with imperfection, and there are so many small pockets of wisdom in the book that I and hundreds of millions of other people find so accessible.  And I think all of us, no matter who are you, I think are going through some kind of existential moment in the past two years because of the nature of the crisis that have happened in the world.  And I think the best part about “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” is that it is accessible and it’s not overwhelming for people that want to grow and want to sort of make changes in their life that are more accessible than say, you know, whatever, reading the Dalai Lama.  I have given this book to, I have it on my Amazon list, and I have sent it to eight people in the past few months just saying, “This is a book that will really help you, and it’s not overwhelming, and you can just read ten pages at night before you go to bed, whatever.” And some of my friends, I think, sometimes when things are so popular people just are thinking that maybe it’s not evergreen, and so many of my friends have just been saying how much it’s helped them; how much it’s helping them get through this moment.  And I’m trying, but I also find that the book is something you can really just continue reading and dip in and out of.  And there’s other incarnations of it like, “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff for Moms,” and, etcetera, and I think that I’m certainly trying, and I think that’s all we can hope for anyone.

KRISTINE CARLSON:  Oh, yeah.  I was just going to say that “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” is really a life philosophy.  It’s something that is the way you practice every day, and like Meghan just so beautifully said, it’s the small ways that we practice life that makes the biggest difference in our lives.  And what’ happened over the last 25 years of the series is that the book tends to do very well in times of crisis, because people need to get back to the basics and, certainly, what we’ve all been through this last two years shows us that life is very basic, and if you don’t get back to the basics you’re going to get lost in all of the worry and the concerns and the troubles that we see ahead of us.  And I also want to say that when you have a real-life crisis happen to you, what you were sweating the day before that crisis happened never gets on your radar again.  And, certainly, as you recover from crisis there are small things that get to you at different times.  I will never say that I am the one that never sweats the small stuff.  That simply is not possible nor true, but like I said, it is a philosophy, and it helps you to focus on what matters most to your heart when you don’t sweat the small stuff.  And at the very cornerstone of the philosophy is to be grateful for the small things in life, because life is incredibly precious.

HEATHER LOCKLEAR:  Okay.  Now I’ll speak.  I didn’t know that it was make peace with imperfection.  I thought it was make peace with perfection, but that’s from the script.  I don’t know.  And, you know, they write whatever they write.  But I think one of the things that Meghan was talking about is imperfect or perfection that we learn every day.  We learn something new, hopefully, if we connect with people.  And I would always say on the set, I’m such an a-hole, I would say, now only to Maura –maybe I would, because she was a little bit uptight; just a little involved –I would say, “Don’t sweat the small stuff; don’t sweat the small stuff.  It’s a movie.  The sun will go down.  The sun will come up.  We’ll be alive or we’ll be dead.”  And I used to do that on other things that I worked with that I was in fear of, in front of an audience.  I would go, “Okay, the sun’s going to go down.  I will be alive when it comes up.”  And so being a kind of jerky person, I would say to other people, because they’re going we’re trying to get the lights, I’d go: “Don’t sweat the small stuff.  It’s just a movie.”  But it’s a beautiful movie and it’s a beautiful story, but I kept trying to say that, and even in my fears of what I was doing: “Heather, you’re going to be okay.  Everything’s going to work out.  Everything will be okay.”  And I actually came into this book I think in the nineties maybe, and I was so busy working –So I read it.  I did read it, and until you’re kind of solid and not busy doing things in your life in a busy world, you don’t really grasp it, but I think in the last year-and-a-half it was easier to grasp, and because we’re all sitting still, and it’s so simplified –

MEGHAN MCCAIN:  Yeah.

HEATHER LOCKLEAR:  And like Oprah said that she put it on her night table, I had it in my bathroom.  Sorry.  Sorry.  Because that’s where we don’t sweat the small stuff according to my boyfriend.  Maura (inaudible@ 01:56:38).  But reading a little bit at a time, because you can only –

MEGHAN MCCAIN:  Yeah.

HEATHER LOCKLEAR:  It’s so specific and so good that if we just take the one step that we read that day, it’s almost like reading a Bible verse or something, maybe that’s too much, and you take that into your day and you can learn something, you can remember it, you can’t remember it, you can go back.  So that’s all I’ve got.

MEGHAN MCCAIN:  Yeah.

MAURA DUNBAR:  Well, she did help me on set.  That’s true.  I do tend to sweat the small stuff when I’m working on set, but in my personal life I do try to make peace with imperfection ergo the not sweating the small stuff.  But, yes, as a producer, yes, I want everything to be perfect.  I admit it.  I’m sorry.  But that’s why we have such a beautiful movie, I believe.

HEATHER LOCKLEAR:  Don’t be sorry.  You were amazing.  You were effing amazing, and you brought the world down.  When she would come, the first day of set, I think after we finished the first day, she gave this story about Kris and it’s not about Maura.  It’s about Kris and Richard, but it’s about Maura and all of her trying to get this together, and it would bring people to tears, because it was so heartfelt and so real and what she’s worked on and all, and then I have to go: “Wait, this is Kris and Richard, because they’re combined lives of Maura,” and it’s all their story together.  So it was always a blessing to have you there, my friend.

Q) Why was this the right project for you to return to TV with, and how did it feel to be back?

HEATHER LOCKLEAR:  It felt like what I was praying for, and I’m like God-driven, and I was praying for something solid for me that had to do with something spiritually that was important, and that was really what I was praying for, because I didn’t want to do light –I’ve done lightweight stuff.  I didn’t want the dumb stuff.  Sitcoms are great but unless they’re “Veep” they’re not my kind of sitcoms.  And so it’s weird that when you pray for something it comes or it doesn’t come, but it seemed to come.  And that was super important to me and spirituality and God, and I don’t know how this happens, but it landed in my lap.  And then these two great people showed up, Maura and Mark Teitelbaum, and I was just so –I felt so blessed, and it was just something special that I go I can do this, and then I had Valerie Bertinelli tell me, because I was scared, and my makeup artist who does her, too, and I said, “I’m scared remembering lines,” and blah, blah, blah, and it came back in seconds.  And she said, “Heather, it will, you will, it’s like riding a bike.”  It’s so easy, and it was so easy.  I don’t know why we’re so fearful of memorizing lines.  How about getting the emotion across?  I don’t know.  But that was just it felt really good to hear from someone else fearing the way I feared, and it’s always been important for me to memorize lines.  I’m always nervous.  But these great people came and then Kris came and Meghan came, and it all fit together.  I love that I see women, four women.

MEGHAN MCCAIN:  Yeah.  It’s pretty cool.

HEATHER LOCKLEAR:  I think it’s fantastic.  I’ve always been a woman’s woman.  I’ve always been competitive with men, which does not mean men are bad, but I used to race them and would come in second to one man and four boys.  So I’ve always been competitive, and because I don’t think there’s a difference, but then there’s love and there’s opening your arms to sisterhood, and I think Ellen Pressman being our director, was unbelievable about women, right, about women and the softness of her direction, which wasn’t hard and do this and this is important, this scene, or this angle is important.  It was incredible, and she came to me with flowers.  I’m like what are you doing?  And I was in sweats and stuff.  I’m like, “Oh, you’re being so formal.”  But it was just amazing that Maura put together a great bunch of women that can support each other.  No bashing on men because we have Mark.

MAURA DUNBAR:  He loves women, too.

MEGHAN MCCAIN:  And he apparently does.  No, not apparently.  No, no, no.  He’s very married.  But, yeah, so I thought it was an amazing project.

Q) Kristine, given you’re collaborators on this, obviously, you’re all cheering about it, how safe did you feel having the story told? And second part is how excited were you that Heather was the one that was going to be telling it?

HEATHER LOCKLEAR:  Tell the story of Pepperdine.

KRISTINE CARLSON:  Which one?

HEATHER LOCKLEAR:  I don’t know.

KRISTINE CARLSON:  Yeah.  Oh, well, I will tell that story.  So, first of all, I want to say just my heartfelt thanks is really to Maura Dunbar, and to the writer that was hired, Shannon Colleary, because I knew that they had my back on this, and I knew that they were going to share the story with their whole hearts, and that made me feel a lot more comfortable just knowing that.  It’s a very vulnerable position to share probably what you could consider the worst of year of your life and the worst year of your children’s lives.  And, of course, my kids are grown now.  They’re thirty and thirty-two years old, and I have five grandkids now.  And so it was very vulnerable for me to bring them into it in such a public way as well.  So, I really trusted Maura and trust her, and I trusted Shannon, and I worked very closely with Shannon, and I just knew.  I just knew that this was going to be a good thing for people.  I knew that, I believe that it’s how we learn is through story, and I believe that it’s part of the hero’s journey is to share your story and to bring home a message of hope and healing to other people.  And you can’t really take advice on grief from somebody who hasn’t gone through it.  You can’t really understand, or people don’t think you understand unless you’ve been through it.  So I’m really hoping that story sheds so much hope.  And also a pathway for people to follow so that they know they can return to life again and return to joy and that life continues, and you have to learn to continue with grief.  So that said, I was absolutely, I mean, truly just –I don’t think there’s any woman alive that wouldn’t be thrilled to have Heather Locklear play them.

KRISTINE CARLSON:  I mean, I think she was the –You know, she’s just, in my mind, I mean, I, of course, was a big fan always.  She was at UCLA when I was at Pepperdine.  We have all these very weird, common synchronicities that have happened.  And she said that she put up this prayer for this project to come by, and we had this really amazing synchronicity where one of her college roommates turned out to be one of Richard’s very first crushes in junior high, and it’s one of her very best friends, and we find out all of these common threads and that really not six degrees of separation, but more like one-and-a-half degrees of separation, and I really felt that this was very divinely orchestrated, and that Heather was picked and hand chosen by my husband Richard to play me in this movie.  So, it’s been amazing.  It’s been an amazing journey to get to know her and to just really fall in love with who she is as a beautiful woman and just a woman with just tremendous heart and empathy.  So, I’m thrilled.  Like I couldn’t have asked for –But she was everything I had hoped for and more, way more.

 

 

*CONFERENCE CALL*