Justine Bateman Tells Megyn Kelly About The Pitfalls Of Fame | Megyn Kelly TODAY

[Applause] producer pilot computer scientist when we say Justine Bateman has done it all we really mean it and now she has a new provocative project we're gonna speak with her in a moment first a quick look back at where it all began watch in the 1980's the show family ties brought the Keaton family into living rooms everywhere the liberal parents we're going out to demonstrate against nuclear arms there's nothing foolish about that the quirky siblings including conservative hi how you doing I'm

Alex Keaton played by Michael J Fox and who could forget Justine Bateman as fashion-obsessed Mallory there are no silly stores there are only silly shoppers the rule would earn her nominations for two Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe we are on a higher psychic plane than we were Arjen is in perfect alignment with our yang the show was a ratings blockbuster and is considered one of the most iconic sitcoms in television history bateman's success launched her career that includes more than 50 roles

on TV and in film including some of televisions biggest comedy shows like Arrested Development opposite her brother actor Jason Bateman oh you're bad she also visited Wisteria Lane on Desperate Housewives in recent years she wrote and directed the short films five minutes and push in 2016 this wife and mother of two graduated from UCLA with a degree in computer science now Bateman is speaking out about her years in front of the cameras and the pitfalls of Fame and what she has to say will likely

surprise you and joining us now to discuss her new book Fame the hijacking of reality is Justine Bateman hi this is so fascinating to me because you rightly point out that our society is Fame obsessed obsessed and you've lived it full cycle for the full circle so you you talk about rising to fame quickly as a teenager you you didn't have any designs on becoming famous back then no it really just was this byproduct of me getting into acting and you know it was on a lark and yeah really shot up a

nd [Music] yes it was sort of overwhelming and then and I've done the complete lifecycle the where I qualified is the the love the hate the equilibrium then the slide where maybe only you notice it's sliding and then the descent where it's sand through the fingers and then the without or are you ever really without fam can you ever not be famous again so the book goes through the whole lifestyle lifecycle but within a very raw emotional style of writing it's very unsparing I mean it's it's you p

ut it all out there your brother is jason bateman he was on Little House on the Prairie with my friend Melissa Francis actually they were the next generation of Ingalls kids you you know I'm obsessed with that show and so your parents are like Justine would you like to do it you got cast on family ties next thing you know I mean top of the you know yeah hottest thing on the red carpet the whole bit do you remember that feeling I mean was it heady was it did it did it fill you up it was more like

ho you're walking along the side of the river and then suddenly you're in a raft and you're going down the roaring rapids and you just like wait what's happening just trying to like keep your head above water so that's what that was like and for the viewers to give some perspective to the how concentrated their audiences were back then at our height we had about 55 million people watching every week now and on average we had like 26 million people watching over the course of seven years and so

putting in perspective top shows now may get 9 million viewers and even some of the some of the shows that are hot or maybe have around 2 million right so because we didn't have the internet we didn't have you know the the consumer-facing internet like we have now yeah and even cable wasn't anywhere near is they have cable they were with three top networks and still had the cable box in my house that was connected by a wire to the TV and you had it like the ABC remember those days no but we all

watched we all watched that show and and loved you but you're very honest about how when you become famous they put like a sheath over you people put a sheath over you and what does that do well then you're you're inside watching them react to how they feel about you based on either what they've read or which is akin to being in a small town maybe somebody spreads a rumor around about you and there's nothing you can do to change that rumor so when you're famous maybe it's a sort of a good rumor

or a bad rumor you know in that sense but they're coming at you with something that some prepared idea about you but then also there's sort of a frenzy about it there's a sometimes people come up and they would say oh I like your work but other times people come up and just say oh my god you're her you're her you're that girl that girl yeah yeah I take a picture with me take it you know and it's and it's like this so it's not necessarily about your work per se and it's it's really not about you

but it's about this thing it's like this glitter cloud this sort of hovers over people for a while like I am the still this I'm still as good a performer as I ever was even though I don't act anymore but so nothing changed in what I was the quality of work I was doing Joanne I'm saying like that's maintained itself but the fame then at the same time you have these two lines it goes up like this and then it comes down you still have this thing here but the thing the frenzy was caused by the fame

not necessarily by you know now your work is the best it's ever been and that's why people are reacting right it's because this is this odd thing that's happening what I think is brave about your book is you you dissect and openly honestly analyze what happens when the glitter cloud goes away yeah the what I call post Fame but inside of it it's it's not what you might think we're gonna pick it up there when we come back with Justine in America we're back there talking with Justine Bateman about

her new book Fame the hijacking of reality and so you in reading this book obviously you know a lot of famous people you're Michael J Fox and you on the show together and your brother did you talk to them at all I'm putting this together yeah when I first started this I I just graduated from UCLA in 2016 and so I was I was in the mindset of writing you know college papers and so my first effort at this was an academic version which I I think is pretty good still but then I went I was halfway thr

ough that I realized that I needed to do the version that that you have that we have now you know the style of that and so for that first version I did interview like 18 different famous people sports you know athletes actors like that and and had some great quotes to put in all of it but now there's only a few in this new style yeah so you talked about when the glitter cloud fades and you recognize at some point that your your fame if it hasn't gone away entirely as you say it does it does it e

ver it's it's different it's diminished then what is that like well the trouble with and I and look I know this this affects like a very small subset of people but the reason I subtitle the book the the hijacking of reality is that for a very small subset of people Fame becomes a component in your in the foundation of your reality just like where you live what language you speak what job you have things like that right now for us for anybody if any of those elements that are foundational to our

reality change like a spouse dies god forbid or you have to you lose your job or you have to move city suddenly it's extremely traumatic and so for this tiny group of people Fame disintegrating is is traumatic as well in the sense that it's come in like water into like a flower bed and it's gone into everything so you might have a lot of things attached to it you can't help it it's become your reality your self-esteem your ego where you sit in society everything and then it's also tied into you

know you work opportunities which is a whole separate thing you know to do with career so when it starts pulling away it starts pulling away those things to like your self-esteem so you have to start almost unhooking from when the cloud starts moving on because they start unhooking from the cloud your self-esteem your you have to and hooking to something else I mean that's yeah you have to lower to the book is that it's the real Justine not that not the one we saw in family ties desperate how's

that the real Justine actually in a way came to life once you unhooked well it's funny it's like if you if you live your whole life not that fames a crush but a crutch but I'm trying to draw just a analogy if you if you have a crutch always on your right side and then and then one day they say well you're not gonna use that crutch anymore your right leg is not as strong so you have your like oh now this needs to be developed you know so it's it's not a bad thing it's just it's sort of startling

and you're like oh I had no idea that I have to it's like if someone always laughs at your jokes you don't get an opportunity to really develop a good comedy bit yeah you know so what I mean knowing all this now having the benefit of this wisdom would you would you let your kids become famous would you want that for them no I think power is good my name is good you can do a lot of good things with those two things but fame it's I think also when it's introduced later in life it's it's you have a

better sense of yourself and you don't you don't feel so much like you're just you know trying to live through the the roaring rapid ride you know you're actually you're actually you have a better sense of yourself so it's not becoming as foundational to your sense of yourself and you can have a little bit you can be objective a little better you know and I would say just being on television for a while if if Fame comes in in my view it's a it's an almost an unfortunate byproduct of delivering

the news on television you know you want to deliver the news and you want to tell people stories and you want to connect with an audience but that that sort of Fame that false adoration that can come is not fulfilling and I do think too many people chase it and we live in this selfie obsessed world where we have these reality stars who are famous for nothing other than being famous there's there's a sort of a bat bit nature to it that is fleeting and I think unhealthy I'll give you the last word

well and and in some cases incredibly unhealthy when they fall off cliffs when they die trying to take oh yeah a picture to gain more followers and and I think what's happened one of the things I hope people can take away within the book from the book is this this obsession with Fame and attaining Fame and sort of ignoring you know the skills and talents that each one of us has I feel like we then we devalue ourselves we devalue the work that we all do you know no matter what it was and there a

re other things you can put in your be putting your energy into that will you trust me be much more fulfilling in the long run check out the book again it's worth your time Justine is great to see you thank you [Applause] [Music]