Mimi Qua (00:02):
People say life is a journey, not a destination, but how do you know you are on the right path?
Jo Stanley (00:09):
If only we could see the signs when they appear.
Mimi Qua (00:12):
Well, I’m Mimi Qua.
Jo Stanley (00:14):
And I’m Jo Stanley.
Mimi Qua (00:15):
And on A to B, we speak to fascinating people about how they navigated their way to be here now having profound impact on the world.
Jo Stanley (00:25):
We hope our conversations will help you reflect on everything you’ve been through to get here, the triumphs, challenges, and bumps along the road.
Mimi Qua (00:35):
And if you haven’t already, find your own map to what matters.
Barbara Bingham (00:40):
They were lined up around the corner to get an autograph and a photo with me, and then would say, “Barbara, you changed my life.” And you realize that it’s so unbelievable that you’ve touched all these people that you have zero contact with and have no idea.
Mimi Qua (01:00):
Our guest today has a fabulous alliterative name.
Jo Stanley (01:05):
Great word.
Mimi Qua (01:06):
Great word. I’m going to go so far as to say on [inaudible 00:01:11].
Jo Stanley (01:11):
Yes.
Mimi Qua (01:11):
Are you ready for it? Her name is Barbara Bingham. It’s a great name. And she really does have one hell of a story.
Jo Stanley (01:22):
Well, speaking of hell, Barbara does star in quite a few horror movies, which I can’t watch a horror movie, so I haven’t seen a lot of those. But by stark contrast is known also for her rom-coms. She grew up in Hawaii, which is one of my favorite places on earth. She began her career on the original Hawaii 5-0.
Mimi Qua (01:44):
Which amazingly, and this must be true because it’s according to my taxi driver when I was lucky enough to be in Honolulu recently, Hawaii 5-0 is still going on US TV. So a little bit like Our Neighbors and Home and Away over here. So Barb is like an original cast member.
Jo Stanley (02:03):
Amazing. She’s a successful actor and screenwriter, and I love that she’s a huge champion of age positivity.
Mimi Qua (02:10):
Yes. But as you might guess, all this success has not arrived on a silver platter because as we well know, Jo Stanley, it never is a straight line to get from A to B. We are actually experiencing a miracle right now, right here, all being the three of us together in the same place at the same time. Because when we tried to put this interview together, what happened, Jo?
Jo Stanley (02:37):
I was on my way. Well, first of all, we have to say hello, Barbara. I appreciate your patience because I was on my way to the previous recording session we had booked, and my car just died literally in the middle of peak hour traffic in the middle of one of Melbourne’s busiest roads. The irony/coincidence of A to B, where my literal A to B was quite the bump in the road. And here we are having a conversation about A to B stories. I was like, there’s a lesson.
Mimi Qua (03:10):
And Barbara Bingham, you could not have been more zen or kind about the whole situation when we had to postpone.
Barbara Bingham (03:18):
Oh look, I mean, I’ve been on that road when there is absolutely traffic going past you a million miles an hour and you’re sitting in your dead car. So no, I get it. It is not pleasant.
Mimi Qua (03:33):
And that is a metaphor for life, isn’t it, as well, the traffic going a million miles an hour and you’ve kind of been in that traffic in your own A to B. And that’s what we are here to talk about, Barbara Bingham, because we became friends on Instagram, and I did not know at that time really any of your backstory. All that I knew was that you were an actress and that you just had this incredible energy. But take us back to the start of your career. How did it all begin?
Barbara Bingham (04:03):
I actually started modeling in high school, and that was my introduction to being in front of the camera, loving the camera, and having a relationship with that camera. Then I started doing commercials and a producer from a commercial that I shot said, “I’m going to head over to the Hawaii 5-0 studios. Will you come with me? “And I said, “Sure. I’m 18 years old, 17 years old. I’ll go with you.” And I get in the car with this producer, we drive off to Diamond Head, and he introduces me to the producers at Hawaii 5-0 and Margaret Dover Sola, who was casting it at the time. She hands me a script and says, “Can you read this?” And I read it and they said, “Great, you got the part.”
Jo Stanley (04:52):
That’s unbelievable.
Barbara Bingham (04:53):
It’s unbelievable. And John Hillerman was my boss playing a very, very mean boss. I had no idea what I was doing. And I got to set, and Jimmy MacArthur, James MacArthur, who played Dano back in the… This was in 1978, comes walking up and he says, “You look a little nervous. You okay?” I said, “Oh, no, I’m fine. I’m good.” And he goes, “Just hit your marks. You’ll be fine.” I said, “Marks, what are marks?” And this gentleman gave me a masterclass on finding your light, walking in and feeling it, because we had big CLED lights at the time and had to count your steps. I had to enter the office, and I had to… Bless his soul because it could have been so different.
(05:46):
Isn’t that amazing? And it was on that set that I went, oh, this is what I’m going to do the rest of my life. Got it. Okay. Beautiful.
Mimi Qua (05:54):
It’s so amazing because so many people’s A to B is not a straight line, whereas in many ways, as you say, the universe was opening up all of these opportunities for you. And for you, it was quite a straight line, wasn’t it? I mean, even when you were a little girl, you knew that you wanted to be in front of an audience somehow.
Barbara Bingham (06:16):
Yeah, I was going to be either Lucille Ball or Carol Burnett or Mary Tyler Moore. It was one of those women. They were my heroes. That was it. The only problem is I couldn’t sing and couldn’t dance.
Mimi Qua (06:31):
But you didn’t let that stop you?
Barbara Bingham (06:34):
Well, I tried. Yeah, I went to college for musical theater, but it was like, yeah. Sorry, Barb. Nope.
Jo Stanley (06:43):
So this begs the question for me. When people’s A to B might be more of a struggle, right? Is that a sign that it’s not the right path for them? Because you talk about how the doors opened and I just go, should it be always easy?
Barbara Bingham (06:58):
No, I don’t think so. I mentor so many young actors now, and I see their difficult path. And it wasn’t like I got to LA and all the doors were open. I mean, I certainly had my struggles. And then even now since I moved to Australia and raised my son and pretty much left the business for a very large chunk of time, and now returning to the business, it’s not easy. My A to B is like… It’s been hard.
Mimi Qua (07:30):
Something that I loved about you, Barb, is you said to me at one stage, you said, “Mimi, I’m going for Australian accent training.” And where every actor in Australia is doing US accent training here you are trying to get our accent. I love it.
Barbara Bingham (07:46):
I know. And I tried. Oh my God, I tried, but it’s so like-
Mimi Qua (07:54):
Oh, no, not good?
Barbara Bingham (07:55):
No, I mean, the funny story is that my agent wanted me to put down a scene in Australian. So I had worked on just this specific text and my business partner was helping me. And anyway, he goes, “Barb, you’ll be fine. You can do this, you can do this.” And I said, “Okay.” It was a scene in a graveyard. Just go to the graveyard. You’ll be great. And so I said, “Okay, I’ll see you later.” And I come off of Zoom and my son comes walking down the hallway and he says, “Who are you talking to?” And I said, “Oh, my business partner.” And he said, “He’s blowing smoke up your ass, mom. Your accent is terrible. You can’t do an accent. Don’t try an accent.” And I can’t disagree with him. That’s the problem. I tried. I did try.
Mimi Qua (08:47):
I know your son’s not a baby anymore, but sometimes from the mouths of babes, we have to be told.
Barbara Bingham (08:52):
Yes, yes, yes, exactly. Yeah.
Jo Stanley (08:56):
So what would you have done if you weren’t able to follow this path of being an actor?
Barbara Bingham (09:02):
I always wanted to be a private detective,
Jo Stanley (09:05):
Which is often effectively just being an actor.
Barbara Bingham (09:08):
Yes. Yeah. I’m a Gladys Kravitz from the old Bewitched show. I’ve got an intense curiosity about people. And I mean, it could be called a sticky beak or it could be called a nosy neighbor. But I love mining what makes people tick and what is the motivation behind what people do and how they react. And that to me is fascinating. It’s fascinating.
Mimi Qua (09:40):
Something that I find fascinating about your career, Barb, is that you have not only dabbled, but you have become expert in two very different genres. The rom-com and horror, which I just think is so interesting. Tell us about that. How have you found yourself in these dichotomy kind of character narratives, and how did you become… You sort of became royalty in the horror genre?
Barbara Bingham (10:11):
Well, it helps that you’re in a franchise like Friday the 13th, that has a fan base that is off the charts, so that helps. But yes, I played these wildly wide-eyed optimist for most of my career. That is what my branding is. If we go into branding, that’s who I am. And even in the horror scene, for me being the wide-eyed optimist going in and saying, “Oh no, everything’s going to be fine. We’re all going to get through this.” It works in the genre.
Mimi Qua (10:52):
And everyone’s like, “Look behind you.”
Jo Stanley (10:55):
Don’t go in there.
Barbara Bingham (10:57):
Exactly. And it wasn’t until you do this horror this, and it is schlock horror. We’re not going to sugarcoat it. It’s a slasher 1980s movie that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. And I remember having the feeling of, oh, Jesus, is that going to be what people were going to know me for as I left the business. So I leave the business and it’s like, is that going to be it? Wow. And I had a guy in the States who asked me for almost five years straight to come and do a horror convention in the States. And I said, “Look, I live in Australia. Unless you’re going to fly me from Australia, it’s not going to work.” Every year, he asked me, asked me, and finally one year he asked, I happened to be in the States when this convention in Atlanta was on. So again, everything all lined up that I could be there.
(11:53):
And it was mind-blowing because it had been over 30 years. There were people that had autographs from everybody in the movie except for me, because I had never done a convention. I was fulfilling their dream. They were lined up around the corner to get an autograph and a photo with me, and then would say, “Barbara, the character of Colleen Van Deusen was so heartwarming, and I wish I had had a teacher like her, and you changed my life.” And you realize that it’s so unbelievable that you’ve touched all these people that you have zero contact with and have no idea. And I went, well, geez, I need to go do some more homework for these people and help them out.
Jo Stanley (12:45):
I mean, that’s kind of the essence of A to B in a way, in that we do not know who we touch on our path, right? And you have had such a huge platform because of this incredible franchise. What does that feel like for you to know that you’ve touched people? It’s extraordinary.
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:13:04]
Jo Stanley (12:45):
Barbara Bingham (13:04):
Yeah, it’s a bit mind-blowing, to tell you the truth, Jo. I really had no idea. I had no idea. What’s even funnier, one of the guys says, “Can you just write down what you said in the car? Or when you were talking to Mr. So-and-so, can you just write that on the photo?” I think my line is something like, “This is just the beginning.” I wrote, “This is just the beginning. Love, Barb.” He takes the photo and he looks at it, and he says, “That’s not what you said.”
Mimi Qua (13:33):
Oh, no.
Barbara Bingham (13:37):
“Then let me rip up this photo. Okay. What did I say? Can you tell me?” He had all my dialogue, so he knew everything exactly as I said it.
Mimi Qua (13:47):
That’s amazing.
Barbara Bingham (13:47):
It’s amazing.
Mimi Qua (13:47):
It’s so amazing.
Jo Stanley (13:49):
And do you think you’re a wide-eyed optimist in real life?
Barbara Bingham (13:54):
I am. I am a glass full person, yes.
Jo Stanley (13:57):
And what’s made you that?
Barbara Bingham (13:58):
Look, it’s a good question. I was a surprise baby. My siblings were 10 years older than me and five years older than me. My parents were done. And then all of a sudden I came along and I think they were so tired. My dad was 48 when I was born and my mom was 39 when I was born. So they were done. They were tired. They were, “Whatever you want you’re doing.”
Mimi Qua (14:25):
I know how they feel.
Jo Stanley (14:29):
You do have four children, Mimi. You really have taken-
Barbara Bingham (14:32):
You have an excuse.
Jo Stanley (14:33):
Yeah, that’s right. But I love that image, Barbara. I imagine when you say I was a surprise baby, I imagine you just bursting out of your mother just going, “I’m here.”
Barbara Bingham (14:40):
Hello.
Jo Stanley (14:44):
Just going, “I’m going to take this family by storm.”
Barbara Bingham (14:47):
Yes. Yeah.
Mimi Qua (14:47):
We love hearing about those people that really guided you or were instrumental in your A to B because it does sound like you were just, as Joe just said, “I’m here and I’m ready.” But who was it when you were a child and when you were a teenager who actually supported these dreams that you had?
Barbara Bingham (15:07):
Look, there was a dance teacher, I had Barbara Harris all the way through high school, that she really did make the difference that you can achieve your dreams and all you need to do is put your one foot in front of the other. Even though my dream was dancing and singing, she still helped me achieve that. Yeah.
Mimi Qua (15:29):
What was the difference then between you achieving your dreams and going on that path that you went on and maybe other people that you knew or know who then don’t? They might have the dream, but then they don’t follow through with the act of pursuing the dream. What is it? What’s that ingredient that you had?
Barbara Bingham (15:49):
I think it’s resilience. I think that you have to have resilience, and especially in a career like acting, when you hear way more nos than you do yeses and all you hear is how hard it is. “It’s so hard. Oh, it’s so hard. You’re going to be an actor. It’s so hard. Hard. Oh, it’s hard. It’s so hard.” It’s like, “Hard? I love hard. Make it really hard.”
Mimi Qua (16:12):
But what gave you that? What gave you that resilience, Barb?
Barbara Bingham (16:15):
But even the competitiveness, I was very competitive with my older brother, and I’d always been competitive. So even going into a room of other actors, it was like, “Yeah, this is mine.” I could just, and I could still talk to everybody and be friendly, but knew that I’m going to go get this part because I can still be friends with you, but I’m going to go get this, just so you know.
Mimi Qua (16:40):
Take us back to when you moved to Australia. Your career seemed to be going so well and then you moved to a completely different country as far away as you could possibly get.
Barbara Bingham (16:50):
Yeah, my husband and I had both visited here separately, and we both loved it here. And because of growing up in Hawaii, it felt very familiar to my growing up years, just having the beaches and the weather and I just loved it. And so we decided that we would live a couple years here. And my son was 10 months old when we moved, and we just thought, “Okay, well we will spend a couple years here and then we’ll enroll him in preschool at the bottom of the canyon we lived in Malibu for preschool and we’re good, but we’ve lived in a different country for a couple of years,” and my son just turned 28.
Mimi Qua (17:34):
So the couple of years turned into a couple of decades and then some.
Barbara Bingham (17:40):
Yeah.
Jo Stanley (17:41):
What led you to stay?
Barbara Bingham (17:43):
Well, first of all, the lifestyle. Number one, it is such a beautiful lifestyle. And we live, we’re in the northern beaches of Sydney. It’s being able to walk down to the beach and go for a swim and watch the waves. And that was all just heavenly. And then as we were just starting to think about moving back to the states, 9/11 happened and we were actually looking at schools in Northern California and there was an Amber alert, and it was such a fear-based atmosphere. We just looked at each other. We were sitting in a parking lot of a shopping center, and we just looked at each other and was like, “What are we doing? Why are we leaving Australia?” And we both went, “Yeah, yeah, this is not good. Let’s just stay where we are.” And America was not in a good place in 2001. It was just not good.
Mimi Qua (18:43):
And I get a sense, Barb, that in the last few years, correct me if I’m wrong, because I’ve only known you for a couple of years, but I get a sense that in the last few years you’ve really reinvigorated your career. You just seem to have more gusto, more drive, more determination, more things going on, so many projects than before. Can you explain why that is?
Barbara Bingham (19:07):
Well, when Sam was growing up, because we didn’t know anybody when we moved here, there was really no support system. So for me to be able, I got an agent and I was doing, I could go away for a commercial and for the day and find somebody, but then when my agent was sending me for things for a three-week shoot in South Australia, we just didn’t have the support system for me to be able to do that. So I then made the conscious choice of, “Okay, I can’t go out for anything that will do that because it’s just not viable.” And I was fine with that. I had waited later in life to have a child, so I was really, really happy to devote my time to him. And so that worked out really well. And then when he was getting ready to go to college, he said, “So mom, do you think that you’ll start doing movies again?” And I said, “Yeah, I suppose I could.” He goes, “Well, you could let them know that you’re available now.”
Jo Stanley (20:12):
That’s a start.
Barbara Bingham (20:13):
That’s what I’ll do. I’ll let them know I’m available now.
Jo Stanley (20:17):
Smart kid.
Barbara Bingham (20:17):
Because I’m sure they’ve all been waiting for me the last 20 years.
Mimi Qua (20:19):
Well, turns out they were.
Barbara Bingham (20:22):
Well, apparently they were.
Jo Stanley (20:23):
I feel like you have a lot of lessons in your journey. It’s interesting because when my car died, you messaged to me, “Well, there are lessons that the universe share with us,” which I was like, “Oh, she’s so right.” But I feel like your journey has lessons, one being mothers who, obviously we’re overjoyed to have our children but might love our career as well. And there is that conflict around choosing to be with our children or not. Was that difficult for you? You say obviously you were thrilled to be with Sam, but in the sense of knowing who you are.
Barbara Bingham (20:59):
It wasn’t a difficult choice. I think because I had had a full career from when I moved to LA when I was 21 and to leaving when I was 38, 39, I had had a big robust, fulfilling career. So there was a part of me that was like, “I don’t know, maybe I am done. Maybe, I don’t know. Let’s just see.” But it wasn’t until you’re looking at empty nesting full on that you go, “Oh my gosh, I need to get a life because I made this child my life the last 18 years, and he’s leaving the nest and I got to go make a life for me again.”
Jo Stanley (21:46):
Wow.
Barbara Bingham (21:48):
Yeah.
Jo Stanley (21:49):
How do you do that? Is that scary?
Barbara Bingham (21:51):
It was very scary. It was very scary. And I started it by, one of his friends is a coder, and he helped me make a website. So I was trying to pull all my work from all the years and I had all this print work. And so he helped me assemble my very first website, which made me feel like, “Okay, well I do have this body of work here, and I have done a little bit here.” So moving forward, it gave me the confidence to go, “Okay, well, I can reinvent myself now as an older actor,” because when I left, I wasn’t an ingenue, but I certainly wasn’t a grandmother or playing anybody that was in their fifties and sixties.
Jo Stanley (22:44):
Because I hear that story so often from women who, late fifties, sixties, and they don’t know where to begin in reinventing themselves. What can you say to women who might be going, “Actually, do you know what? I’ve lost my sense of self. Because I had put everything into my children.”
Barbara Bingham (23:03):
Right. I would say that you need to look at really what makes you happy and what makes your heart sing and you know what you do during the day or with your friends that really makes you happy. And if it’s cleaning out closets, I had a friend who loved cleaning out closets. She went to work with the clutter place so that she just loved, she just got so much joy from that. And then from there she went into interior designing. And so it’s just finding where that happiness little bubble comes up. Where you just go, “Oh yeah, that makes me happy. Ooh, I like doing that.”
Mimi Qua (23:41):
You are such a fabulous advocate and much loved advocate of aging positively and just seizing the day and doing our best in life and finding that happiness. And there was something that you wrote about that your late nephew had said to you, which was really quite beautiful, and I’d love you to speak to us about your relationship with him and what he said.
Barbara Bingham (24:17):
Yes, my sweet Ian and I get teary just talking about him. He died of cancer at 32 with a one-year-old and a three-year-old and a beautiful wife from a uveal melanoma that had started in his eye. And just when we thought that he had got to the five-year mark of being completely clean, it was throughout his whole body. So it was just heart-wrenching to lose him. And I went to Hawaii as we knew that he was dying, and he was so funny because he didn’t want to talk about dying. He had a one-year-old and a three-year-old, so he just couldn’t talk about it. But he did say one afternoon I was trying to record his voice. And he says, “Auntie Barbara, why do you want to record my voice?”
(25:11):
And I said, “Well, because I want your stories. You tell such beautifully funny stories.” I said, “When you’re gone, your brother’s going to tell them and do you want him telling your stories?” And he said, “Well, he’s going to tell them that I wanted my ashes in some place in Colorado.” And I said, ” Well, where do you want your ashes?” He said, “Well, right there.” And there was the Mokulua Islands were right behind him, which is these two little islands right off of the beach in Kailua. And that was the opening for us just to have the understanding that he was dying, because nobody else knew. And on the night that I was leaving to go back to Australia knowing that I was not going to see him again, I had started Corporate Actors Australia, and I was 58 years old, so here I was starting a new business with four other actors, three other actors.
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:26:04]
Barbara Bingham (26:03):
Here I was, starting a new business with three other actors, and I had that business going on, I had a few acting things that were coming in, and I had some print stuff that was coming in. And as I was saying goodbye to him, he said, “Auntie Barbara, it really feels like your life is just starting.” And I said, “Aw, Ian.” Just, “From your lips. From your lips.” And he said, “Oh,” sat back, and he closed his eyes, and he had a big smile on his face and he said, “I’ll be watching, Auntie Barbara. I’ll be watching.”
Mimi Qua (26:36):
Wow, that’s so beautiful.
Barbara Bingham (26:38):
It’s so beautiful. And the man… I came back to Australia and I had to do something. So I wrote a short film. And it had nothing to do with him, because it’s like a Hitchcockian thriller, but I needed to give him something to watch. So I made this short film, and the film is dedicated to him. And I think that him dying and saying those words to me, are what is going to keep me working the next 20 years, because I need to keep putting things out there that Ian can watch.
Jo Stanley (27:21):
It’s an extraordinary gift that he gave you in that moment.
Barbara Bingham (27:25):
Yeah. He did. He really did.
Jo Stanley (27:29):
And to talk about the events or those little moments in our lives that shape us, would that be one of the biggest for you?
Barbara Bingham (27:37):
Biggest. Absolutely. Yeah. Especially because they are his dying words to me. And he should be here. His kids, his little boy, is exactly like him. It is unbelievable the DNA that comes through his wife and into this child. I’m going next week to Hawaii to see them, and it’s like playing with Ian when he was five years old. It’s so beautiful, but heartbreaking at the same time.
Mimi Qua (28:10):
For some people, and I certainly have this real sense of my ancestors walking with me, of my loved ones who I’ve lost in my lifetime, walking with me, is that the sense that you have with Ian? And do you believe in that, in a broader sense?
Barbara Bingham (28:27):
I do. I do. Ian is so with me every day. I’m reading this beautiful book, called Signs. If you can read it, it is… Ugh. It’s this beautiful book about reading the signs that our loved ones are always talking to us all day, every day. And just that we need to be open to it, and if you’re open to it, they speak to you. And the day that I had the director, and the… Because we shot my short film, Over The Edge, at my house, so the director, the director of photography, and the producer, and myself, and the other producer, the five of us, we all opened my sliding glass door and we stepped outside onto my balcony, and five black cockatoos came down, and they have that beautiful cry, and right in front of us, they just zoomed and flew and went on, and then they flew away. And I said, “Oh, that’s Ian. That’s Ian saying, that’s five of them, there’s five of us, he’s going, ‘We’re all good.'” Good. Okay. And they’re all looking at me, like, “Oh, God. Bingham’s lost her mind.”
Mimi Qua (29:43):
I love it. You can see how we became friends, Jo.
Jo Stanley (29:45):
Oh, I can.
Mimi Qua (29:46):
It was all about the signs.
Jo Stanley (29:49):
So many people though, would be resistant to that, Barbara, and I think, sometimes hard to be open-hearted to our loved ones speaking to us, because it’s too painful.
Barbara Bingham (29:59):
Yes. But I think it’s their way of letting us know that they’re okay and that we’re okay too. And, yeah, I find it absolutely heartwarming. We have so many things that he does, but he gives me signs all the time. All the time.
Jo Stanley (30:20):
And when you go back to see his children, you get to walk with them. Do you share parts of him with them?
Barbara Bingham (30:30):
Yes. The wonderful news is that his wife, when she became a widow, dove headfirst into grief and what it means to be a grieving widow and all of a sudden being a single mom, and she’s a beautiful writer, and I kept saying, “Please, you need to write a book. You need to write a book.” And bless her soul, she’s got a book that’s published and coming out later on this year, and she’s a grief counselor now, and she’s in love, and I’ve met her boyfriend, but I’m going to meet her boyfriend’s children next week. So again, it’s nobody wanted her to be a single mom, and we have to accept that the kids want a father figure in their life and it’s not going to be Ian because Ian died, but we talk about Ian all the time with them. I have videos I show them from when they were babies and from when Ian was a teenager. And yeah, we talk about him all the time. He’s part of the conversation, even with the new boyfriend, which is wonderful. Really wonderful.
Mimi Qua (31:40):
And that whole idea of going into grief counseling and turning something that was obviously so challenging in her life, and so monumentally life-changing, and turning that into a way to actually channel energy into helping others, that is another great metaphor for what we do with grief and what we do with trauma or what we can do.
Barbara Bingham (32:04):
Yes. Yeah. Now, Emily has been an absolute beacon of light on how to grief and how to be a grieving mother and single mother, and she’s an extraordinary woman. Really extraordinary.
Jo Stanley (32:20):
Barbara, I want to ask you about your marriage. It’s a conversation we haven’t really had in the series so far, Mimi, around our partners, like our life partners, which obviously have a huge impact on our A-to-B, and we haven’t been blessed to have someone on the series who’ve had a beautiful long relationship yet. So I want to ask you, Barbara-
Mimi Qua (32:44):
Is it, what is the secret?
Jo Stanley (32:45):
Oh, well, do you think when you are with someone for a long time, is your A-to-B, is your path side-by-side, or do you intersect and come apart and intersect and come apart? How does the journey fit together?
Barbara Bingham (33:01):
Oh, that’s such a good question, Jo. Look, I think because there has to be intersecting, but you have to go parallel, it has to be both. We’ve been married, and we got married in ’90, so that’s where… We just had our 33rd year anniversary. But are there times when you are on this path together? Yes. And then there are times where he’s had rough times, and I’ve had rough times, and we’ve seemed to come back and work through them. But I think the key is you really have to like your partner. You may not always love them, but you really have to like them as a human being.
(33:46):
And the thing is, and I’ll tell the story of how we met, because I had been dating actors for years, and it was not working for me. Actors… I dated a guy who spent more time in the mirror, getting ready, than I did. And I had spent quite a bit of time, but it was like, “You’re still not ready? What are you doing in there?” So I knew that I didn’t want to date an actor, so I just stopped dating. And this was the ’80s. And for a couple years, I just didn’t. I had a friend with benefits. So that was great. And it was wonderful because I didn’t have to worry about dating, but I had a friend with benefits. Because it was the ’80s and you could.
(34:28):
And I was supposed to go to an improv class that I was doing at Paramount, and I had met with a director and had a glass of wine with him. And then we had a second glass of wine. And I thought, “Oh no, if I go to my improv class and I’m funny tonight, then I’m going to have to go next Monday and drink two glasses of wine before class next week, and that’s not a good thing.” So I thought, “No, I won’t go to class. I’ll just go home.” And my roommate had this blind date with Bill Bartee, and she said, “Oh, I wish he’d call me.” She had fallen in love the weekend before, at a wedding. And she had this blind date. Back then, there was no email, no one called. It was like they were having this date, on this night, it was set up a month in advance. And she kept saying, “Oh, please, I wish he’d call so I can cancel.” And as I was coming home from not going to class, they were coming down the stairs of our apartment. And I shook his hand and I looked at him and I thought, “Oh, this is who I’m spending the rest of my life with.”
Jo Stanley (35:39):
Oh, that’s awesome.
Barbara Bingham (35:40):
And Terry, my roommate, was standing there and she saw this stuff going off between us, and it was like, “Okay, bye. Have a nice evening.” And I went into the apartment, and in those days, I wore, Lanz made a flannel nightgown that came from… Ruffles all the way up here. And it was a big, long granny nightgown, all the way to the floor. They come in after dinner and I’m in my long flannel nightgown, sitting on the couch with my ruffles. It’s like, “Oh, no.” But he sat down on the floor and poor Terry couldn’t get a word in, edge-wise. We talked about Hawaii. He was a surfer. He had lived in Hawaii for a period of time, and I had tickets to the Olympics, and he was going to the Olympics. Anyway, he called Terry the next day and said, “We had a lovely date. Do you mind if I reach out to your roommate?” And she said, “No, that’d be great. I would love…”
Mimi Qua (36:38):
That is amazing.
Jo Stanley (36:38):
That is beautiful.
Barbara Bingham (36:47):
I just knew. I just knew.
Mimi Qua (36:48):
That’s amazing. Yeah, we just know, don’t we? When it’s right.
Jo Stanley (36:53):
It’s interesting. Mimi, do you remember the moment you saw John? Because I remember the moment I saw Daz.
Mimi Qua (36:58):
Oh yeah, absolutely. John and I have been together 30-something years now. And yeah, I vividly remember the first time I saw him, the second time I saw him, the third time I saw him.
Jo Stanley (37:10):
That’s so funny. And I remember… I’ve been with my husband 23 years, something like that. And yeah, I can see him now in my mind’s eye, he was wearing shiny, Adidas tracky dacks and a green, really skintight T-shirt and he had muscles. And I was like, yeah. And he had a tattoo. No one had tattoos in 1997.
Barbara Bingham (37:37):
Oh, that’s so funny. And it’s amazing that you can remember what they’re wearing, right? Yeah, it’s crazy.
Jo Stanley (37:44):
What was Bill wearing?
Barbara Bingham (37:46):
He was wearing a crisp white shirt that had silver snaps down it, and Levi jeans.
Jo Stanley (37:53):
And Mimi, what was John wearing?
Mimi Qua (37:54):
Well, maybe not the first time I met him, but the second time I met him, he came to buy a coffee from me at a coffee cart at Perth train station at six o’clock in the morning. And he was wearing a three piece pinstripe suit to go to Deloitte to do some data entry. And he bought a coffee from me, and I remember what I was wearing, as well. I was wearing a green roll neck velure jumper with black wide-leg pants and Spice Girl, what were those shoes called? Platform shoes, as the barista. And my hair was in a ponytail and I had big hoop earrings. He bought a coffee from me and he said, “You look beautiful for this time of morning.” So I’m not sure about the qualification of, “for this time of morning,” but I took it as a compliment. And he bought a coffee and I later found out, wait for this, he didn’t drink coffee. He went around the corner and threw it away. He just bought it from me because he wanted to talk to me. There you go.
Barbara Bingham (39:00):
Aw!
Jo Stanley (39:00):
That’s so romantic.
PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [00:39:04]
Barbara Bingham (39:00):
To me. There you go.
Jo Stanley (39:01):
Aww.
Mimi Qua (39:01):
That’s so romantic.
Jo Stanley (39:04):
That’s so sweet. I love that. I love that.
Mimi Qua (39:08):
Now, Barb, we forgot to tell you at the beginning of the program, that when we are deep in conversation, just as we are, we all of a sudden come up with an origin story that has nothing to do with the conversation whatsoever. And the origin story today is from Jo. So Jo and I share the task of finding origin stories to bring to our guests. And the other person, that being me this time, does not know what the story is. So it will be as much a surprise to me, Barb, as it is to you.
Barbara Bingham (39:42):
Okay.
Jo Stanley (39:43):
So the intention is to share the origin story of a very well-known thing, and I’m going to reveal what that well-known thing is as I tell you the story. Now, coincidentally, it is a car-related story, and as we are here at the second attempt of this interview because of my terrible misadventure with my car, it’s quite relevant. So this is the story of Bertha, who was married to Carl. Carl had actually invented, in the 1880s, a motor vehicle, but he wasn’t doing much to market the motor vehicle. The public hadn’t really connected with this car that he had actually created. And Bertha was pretty sick of her husband not really getting out there. And you talked about brand earlier on, Barbara, he really wasn’t on board with the brand of his car that he had invented. So Bertha and two sons, on the morning of August the 5th, 1888, Bertha left a note for Carl on the kitchen table telling him that she was going to visit her mother.
(40:49):
Now they lived in Germany, and she lived, the mother, 60 miles away. And then whilst Carl was asleep, they tiptoed out of the house, the three of them, went to Carl’s workshop and pushed one of his cars down the road so it wouldn’t wake Carl, and off they took on a journey that took 12 hours in this very first iteration of the car. Because she was like, “I need the world to see what this car is able to do.” And so Bertha, she made repairs along the way in this journey. She had to use her garter to repair the ignition. She had to use a hat pin to clean a blocked fuel pipe. Apparently the brakes failed at one point so she went and got the first leather replacement brakes for this car. And then she got to her mother’s and sent a telegraph to Carl to say, “Look what I’ve done. The public loved this car. They have seen it out on the road.” Their surname was Benz.
Barbara Bingham (41:49):
Oh.
Mimi Qua (41:50):
Wow.
Barbara Bingham (41:53):
That is sensational.
Jo Stanley (41:53):
So this is the origin story of, yes, the Mercedes-Benz. However-
Barbara Bingham (41:57):
It should be the Bertha Benz. Why isn’t it that?
Jo Stanley (42:01):
It should be the Bertha Benz? And actually, because it was her money too, by the way, that had created the business. But it actually also is the first ever recorded long distance journey taken by an automobile. So she invented the road trip.
Mimi Qua (42:19):
I love it.
Jo Stanley (42:24):
It’s the road trip. That is brilliant.
Barbara Bingham (42:25):
Oh. I love it. I love it. That is great.
Mimi Qua (42:26):
That is so great.
Barbara Bingham (42:27):
That’s great.
Mimi Qua (42:27):
And then I was just having visions of you, Jo, with your little car that broke down the other day, getting the garter to fix it and a piece of leather and unblocking the exhaust as you went along.
Jo Stanley (42:40):
If only I had a hat pin and a garter with me.
Mimi Qua (42:41):
If only.
Jo Stanley (42:43):
The thing I love about Bertha and her sons, is that image of the two of them out on the road. And I love the image of you and your son, Barbara, and the connectedness that you have. How has that relationship shaped you?
Barbara Bingham (42:56):
Aw, look, it is… Like, it’s everything. He is a spectacular human being. And the paradigm shifted, because I thought I was going to have a couple kids, and then had all these miscarriages after trying to have him. So then the paradigm went, “Oh, I’m lucky to have one.” And having that only child later in life where I could put everything into him was wonderful. And he’s a PhD student in quantum physics now. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Is that correct?
Jo Stanley (43:38):
Clearly, clearly.
Barbara Bingham (43:41):
People laugh when I say that. I don’t understand. And he’s a beautiful pianist. He’s done piano, and he’s just, he’s a remarkable human being. And I’ve taken road trips with him and he is so much fun. I mean, he is just the best. And then my husband, you don’t know when you marry somebody, what kind of father they’re going to be. And my husband just happened to be this amazing father. And you go, “I didn’t even think about, when I was marrying him, I didn’t think what kind of father he was going to be.” And that was just a bonus to get this man who just dove head in to being this amazing father. But yes, to answer your question, he’s everything.
Jo Stanley (44:25):
Well, I imagine that your impact on him, I’m certain is profound. If we were to interview him on his A to B, I get the real sense that you would feature very much on his A to B journey.
Mimi Qua (44:39):
Get him on. We can do a spontaneous ‘This is your life.’ Just bring all the people in.
Jo Stanley (44:44):
The other thing in your story that I really have loved is Hawaii, because I love Hawaii. It’s one of my favorite places on earth. And do you remember Mimi, I introduced you to a term that I just love, the… I’m not going to be able to say it. Ho’oponopono? Am I saying it wrong, Barbara?
Barbara Bingham (45:06):
Ho’oponopono. Yeah.
Mimi Qua (45:07):
It’s a prayer to the ancestors, right?
Jo Stanley (45:10):
Well, this is what I understand it to be, because I’m not Hawaiian obviously. I came across it when I was in Hawaii though. But it is a prayer to the ancestors, but it’s something that you say to yourself as well, to cleanse yourself of… I use it as a mantra, I guess, when I find myself being hypercritical perhaps, you know that voice that we all have? It’s literally, the mantra is, “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.” And it’s been a really profound refocus of self-love. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. Which I love, I’m thanking myself, and I love you. So that’s how I use it.
Barbara Bingham (45:53):
That is so beautiful. That is so beautiful. Thank you.
Jo Stanley (45:59):
But yeah, we all have those voices, yeah?
Barbara Bingham (46:01):
Do we ever? Yes. Yes.
Jo Stanley (46:04):
What do you battle? I mean, and that’s the thing when it comes to actors and resilience, you do it despite the voices, right?
Barbara Bingham (46:11):
Yes. You have to do it despite the voices. And the voices are saying, “You suck. What are you doing? Hang it up. You’re so old. Oh my God, Barbara.”
Jo Stanley (46:23):
So what do you say to the voice? What do you say to the voice? Or what do you do with the voice?
Barbara Bingham (46:27):
“Shut the fuck up.” Yeah, look, it’s a work in progress. I think learning to love ourselves… And I mean, I thank you for today because I will now make this ho’oponopono part of my life, because I love that. And I think that the self-love and the self-acceptance and the self-forgiveness is something that we can all do on a daily basis.
Mimi Qua (46:56):
It’s a massive thing. So Barb, as we come to the end of our beautiful conversation with you, that we are so very grateful for, what is your Be?
Barbara Bingham (47:08):
My Be would be connected. To make sure that you are always connected to a community. Especially at 65, we’re kind of told to go away and be invisible and shut up, and society really doesn’t want to hear from us. And I’m finding that the more I connect with friends and family and colleagues and people on Instagram, thank you, Mimi, that there is a community that is there to support you and to connect with.
Mimi Qua (47:51):
That’s very beautiful. And so true.
Mimi Qua (47:54):
Barbara Bingham, thank you so much, thank you so much for joining us today. That was just beautiful.
Barbara Bingham (48:01):
Thank you both very much. This was so much fun. You two are just divine, and I’m so happy to be here. Thank you.
Jo Stanley (48:10):
Thanks, Barbara.
Jo Stanley (48:13):
Thank you for listening. We love you joining us for our A to Be chats.
Mimi Qua (48:17):
Yes, we do. Please see our show notes for our acknowledgement of country and all the people who help us put this podcast together, as well as interesting links to our guest’s work and other references we’ve mentioned.
Jo Stanley (48:29):
Such as your frequently unverified quotes.
Mimi Qua (48:32):
Yes, I may still need to check a few of those. Thank you.
Jo Stanley (48:36):
We’re Jo.
Mimi Qua (48:37):
And Mimi from A to Be. Rate, follow and get in touch on our website.
Jo Stanley (48:42):
And let us know whose A to Be you’d like to find out about.
Mimi Qua (48:45):
We can’t wait for you to hear our next conversation.