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[0:14] Robert Bannon: Welcome to The Roundtable, everybody. My name is Robert Bannon. You're listening to us on Broadway World or over here on the Broadway Podcast Network. I'm so excited. You know, this is the show. As Peppermint said, this is the show where the queer kids come to play. And I waved my flag, and I love having everybody in here. We are in a revolution to let people love others and themselves. And our next guest has really moved me. I know she hears about Kelly Clarkson all the time, but I'm getting married to my husband in May. The first song he ever played for me was after Pride. I sang it as Pride here in Detroit, and he played me "Wrapped in Red" from the Kelly Clarkson album. I said, "You're a crazy person who listens to Kelly Clarkson in September and Christmas."

He said, "I listen to Kelly Clarkson every day." So Kelly Clarkson, and I'm playing it for him as a surprise at our wedding, but don't tell him. Our next guest is not only a four-time Emmy winner, and not only putting on the shows that make us smile every day, but she's inspiring people to be who they are and writing hysterical, funny, good stuff coming to New York City as well. I'm honored to have you here, Caragh Donley. Welcome to the show.

[1:19] Caragh Donley: Uh, well, hello, thank you. I feel like, you know, I could stand in for Kelly and sing for you if that's what you want.

[1:27] Robert Bannon: Yeah, God no, you want the marriage to go well. I don't think having me do Kelly would be a good harbinger of future events. Well, um, kudos on the giant success that is the show and all the work that you do for it.

[1:42] Caragh Donley: Yeah, yeah, thanks. I'll hum if you need me to hum and play triangle.

[1:46] Robert Bannon: Perfect. I love a triangle. I'm there. Just, you know, book me now. What do you consider yourself? Are you a comedian? Are you a writer? Are you a producer? Like, are you an actor? What are you?

[1:58] Caragh Donley: Um, sure. Any pick one, put it on a wheel and spin it, and wherever it lands. I'm just a 65-year-old trans lady, you know, trying to survive in the world. But I do all of that. I've been a journalist, I'm an author. It sounds like I can't hold a job now that I'm talking about it. Talk show producer, and now apparently a playwright. So, you know, and I make really good enchiladas. Just part of it.

[2:31] Robert Bannon: I love an enchilada. My best thing. I saw my face there for a second. It's frightening. Yes, people, there's a couple of shows. You need to get your tickets. "He Said, She Says," written and performed by you.

[2:47] Caragh Donley: Yes.

[2:48] Robert Bannon: Four-time Emmy winner, GLAAD nominee yourself. You are here, and you're gonna tell heart and humor, and people have been raving about this show. And if people want to get tickets to see the show, you can go to tickets.frigid.nyc and see all. See, I can, I'm a producer too, but oh no, you're way better than me. Keep going. I'm loving this. You just take over.

[3:11] Caragh Donley: So get your tickets, make sure you stick get your tickets. There's like a ticket for $25, but if you don't even have the $25, there's a sliding scale, and you can come. There's no excuse for you not to see her in person here in New York City. And if you want to show that trans people need love too, or deserve love too, you know, come on out, because we do actually deserve love too.

[3:38] Robert Bannon: So what can you say this show is about and what gave you the courage to write it and now put it up on its feet?

[3:47] Caragh Donley: Uh, well what it's about is it's gonna sound horribly self-serving, but then again, that's why I'm here. It's just about my transition at the age of 63, which apparently most people don't do. I'm the fool who decided to do that. So the show is about my journey, but told in what I hope is a more interesting way, and there are jokes. So, you know, come and hear me compare being trans to Bitcoin, because that's in there. I could spoil it if you want, but you know.

[4:29] Robert Bannon: No, buy a ticket. Buy a ticket and hear it for the first time. You're your Bitcoin and trans people together. I'm for it. I'm with it. So it's one thing to write it, it's one thing to share it with friends and family and people that you love and love you, and then it's another thing to share it with the world. Being public about it, you've got a lot of press, and people have talked about it because of your job and what you do. Has it been scary? Was it something that you were worried about being public about?

[4:58] Caragh Donley: Um, as I've said many times, when you get to this age of 65 now, because yeah, this is 65 people.

[5:10] Robert Bannon: Good. You look good.

[5:11] Caragh Donley: Oh, so all the filters worked. Thank God, money well spent. You get to this age and your skin gets wrinklier and it gets saggier, but it also gets thicker, I think. And I'm not bothered by all of that. I say that now, and then all the Elon boys will come after me. But what do I have to lose? My whole rest of my life is dedicated, I think, to showing that trans people, we're just people. We can be as boring as anybody else. I know there are risks to being this public as a trans person, but I mean this is what we are. Are you scared of this? Like, you know, is Laura Ingraham gonna look at this and go, "No, that's the face of the devil"? It may not be that attractive, but I don't think I'm the face of the devil.

So it's, um, we're preaching to the choir, I know, but I'm appalled at all of the things being said, and I think that trans people, queer people, people in the LGBTQIA+ community, nobody, we don't want to be political. We want to be political, but we don't want to be politicized. We're trying to live our lives. We have people we love. We're just trying to go to work and be a part of society like everyone. No one's trying to take your kids, no one's trying to steal their identity and gender. I just, I hate public bathrooms too. Okay. So nobody goes into a public bathroom and thinks, "Alright, now I'm gonna be here for hours. Look at the fresh meat." That doesn't happen. It's never happened. It will never happen.

You know, grooming, the, uh, I took my son to get his hair cut when he was little. I mean, if that's grooming, then sure. But my feeling is, and not everyone necessarily agrees with me, even in the trans world, but people just haven't met a trans person. I mean, or an out trans person. Everybody's met somebody who's trans, you just don't know it.

[7:32] Caragh Donley: I was on our show about a year and a half ago. I think I produced one hour for Trans Awareness Week, where I got to be on the same couch as Laverne Cox. I'm surprised I didn't die in that moment, sandwiched between Kelly and Laverne. But after that, not only did I start getting so many messages, you know, some maybe not as great, but very few. But mostly, and even the crew here would pull me aside and be teary-eyed and say that until I was on the show, some of them didn't know I was trans. That I have trouble believing, because you know, passing is maybe not my thing, but they then said, "So we love having you here." That's what trans people are. Oh, you know what? We were sadly misinformed.

And if absolutely nothing else, people come to the show, cis people, because I really want, you know, cis people there, will go, "So what were we worried about?" You know, really. If I'm, you know, if you don't find me scary, you're not gonna find trans people scary. Because we're not.

[9:04] Robert Bannon: No. And I hope that everybody goes and sees the interview. If you're curious or you want to know someone's journey, this is the show for you to see. And if you know someone and love them, it doesn't matter who they are, what they are, how they identify as a gender or sexuality, or it's like race, religion, gender. These are all things that people are. We love people for who they are.

[9:25] Caragh Donley: So I love that your story, you know. I cannot relate fully to your story, but I do relate to being married once to a woman before I was married to a man. And people ask a lot. So see, and people ask a lot of questions like, "Did you know? Did you, was it real? Did you, was it a fake? Does it offend you?" What do you, how do you answer those questions? Do you punch them?

[9:47] Caragh Donley: No. Yeah, uh, I couldn't punch, you know, pre-estrogen. So I'm gonna start now. I mean, actually, that's a way of also talking about this show and the structure of it is, right after I transitioned in June of 2023, I naturally would get people asking me questions, like friends and strangers, and they were always the same questions. And I was probably a bit of a jerk because I came up with this game called trans bingo, which if somebody asked me like the five usual questions in a row, I would shout bingo, you know, and in my head. I didn't, you know, literally shout it because that would have been weird. But it's the structure of the show is going through the five questions that people have always asked, and I have learned most of them are just curious, and I need to engage to show people what we are.

But the very first question, and the one that annoys me to no end, and friends have now apologized for it, is when did you know? When did you know? And my feeling, my answer is, you know, being trans isn't like growing bangs, you know. Like we don't just wake up one day and go, "Huh, I'll try that." It doesn't work that way. And you know, anyone in the LGBTQ community, it's not like you suddenly changed. I hate the phrase changing gender because we're not, we're confirming it. And so I tend to rant a little, like in my show, about that thing that people don't quite understand. If the question is, when did you start to feel like you were not what you appear to be, or something like that? Then my answer is, when I was six and I used to have this recurring dream that Tabitha from Bewitched would come to our house, knock on the door, ask me if I wanted to play, I would say sure. She would hand me this little paper cup of tapioca pudding like goo.

[12:21] Caragh Donley: I drank it. Then I was a little girl and we go play. Um, and I didn't really think anything of it because I was six, but that is when it began. My awareness began for me.

[12:35] Robert Bannon: So no, go ahead. I'm sorry.

[12:37] Caragh Donley: No, sorry, but while you're talking, no, that's a bad talk show host. How am I gonna get your red carpet correspondent job at the Kelly show if I'm interrupting the guests?

[12:45] Robert Bannon: Oh well, you can roll out the red carpet. How's that?

[12:48] Caragh Donley: Well, okay, I'll take what I can get. So when you what what breaks my heart is that you people don't understand the pain and anguish that people have gone through in their life to be who they really are when people are so judgmental. It's not like you said you don't just wake up and say, This will be fun. This is something that people have struggled with and wrestled with to be who they truly are. I mean, there are five thousand and one misunderstandings that transphobes have not even transphobes, because I think they're very it's a it's a fine small finite number of people who just hate us. It's mostly people who just have not given it one thought one way or the other, and um once they meet somebody, it's then then you go, Oh, yeah, uh I don't know why I was so worried about it.

Um, and that's that's there's anything I can impart to anyone, uh, even if they don't come to my show, but you should because you know, uh mama's got kids, they gotta eat, you know. Uh so uh it's just like we're just people. We're just we're we can be as boring, we can be as funny, you know. You might even have Bitcoin jokes. Uh I'm trying to learn how to do the tease part of the of the selling.

[14:17] Robert Bannon: You're doing good. You're doing good.

[14:19] Caragh Donley: Thank you. Uh um yeah, I I have lost my uh I have answered anything you just asked me.

[14:28] Robert Bannon: You did, you did. Can you can people follow you? Are you on on the gram?

[14:31] Caragh Donley: Uh I am. I my daughter who was 23 had told me before um that I was too old for it.

[14:41] Robert Bannon: Uh so this new that would be wow, that is me. How'd you do that?

[14:46] Caragh Donley: That I was hoping it was you. Just magic.

[14:51] Robert Bannon: Magic.

[14:52] Caragh Donley: I would make a Doug Heining joke, but I'm old and I know Doug Haney.

[14:56] Robert Bannon: I get it.

[14:58] Caragh Donley: Illusion.

[14:59] Robert Bannon: It's a world of illusion.

[15:00] Caragh Donley: It's it's a world of illusion. You could follow you and your journey. Was your was telling your family one of them one of the most difficult parts of the journey? Was it was it easier than you expected?

[15:11] Caragh Donley: Um yes, sort of to all of it, but that's that's another thing that I I would hope people take away from my story from the show. Uh first I spent decades worried about telling family. Uh and then I had kids who were now in their 20s, but um when they were little I didn't want to say anything because the outside world that doesn't care for us gets in our heads and we start to believe they're right and we're weird. Uh so I didn't want to tell them forever, and when I finally did, uh they uh their reaction was okay, where are we going for dinner? Um like it and they have been my my I have a son and a daughter and they have been just rocks uh my daughter actually just left a couple hours ago she was visiting me here in New York and um they have been great and I then I wondered why it took so long to tell them because I should have known that they are amazing humans.

[16:18] Caragh Donley: Uh my mom uh was a little bit of a different story and I do deal with this in the in the show that she's like uh you know hand cowswife from Kansas like you know she is she grew up with a a grandfather who was a minister and you know in rural Kansas where nobody is and I never I I figured if I told her this would probably literally kill her. Uh and as she got older that only increased but last summer um I decided I had to because she was very sick. Uh so I went to see her in Seattle and um I had told her on the phone but also dementia so she didn't really grasp it.

[17:10] Caragh Donley: And uh I walked in wearing what I like to think was a pretty hot dress for a you know um granny from Beverly Hillbillies to be putting on um so the for the fifth golden girl to wear.

[17:22] Robert Bannon: I like that that's good.

[17:24] Caragh Donley: They cut me out of the show I mean I was going to be uh old person referenced the Pete Best of uh the Golden Girls.

[17:33] Robert Bannon: Um yet you know, long forgotten, but he was in the band.

[17:37] Caragh Donley: He was so like like that. But anyway, I walked in to if I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna really show her me. And even though she was so sick she couldn't get out of her chair, uh, she called me over, she grabbed my hand and her her arthritic, you know, tiny fingers, and said, I love you. Uh, you're my child. I don't care how you look, I don't care what you call yourself, you are my child and I love you, and that's it.

[18:09] Caragh Donley: And people make me boo-hoo cry. It was, I mean, she's like a Fox News watcher, she's she was 90. Uh, and the rest of my time seeing her, again, not not healthy at all. Um, uh, and she has since passed.

[18:28] Robert Bannon: Uh, but the the fact that it hit home for her instead of all her church folk telling her, you know, trans people uh are uh drinking baby's blood or whatever we're supposed to be doing, um, that it's your child, you gotta love your child.

[18:49] Caragh Donley: Um, and that's that is so missing in the the debate. I don't think there is a trans debate. I mean, there's there's not that's a media term, but if if my 90-year-old mom from Kansas can accept her trans daughter like anyone should be able to do it. It hit when it hits home, you know, uh you have no choice if you you love your child.

[19:12] Caragh Donley: You have no choice. And we have to love, you have to love your child, you have to love your neighbor, you have to love people in general because we don't know what people are going through, and people are trying to mind their business, go to work, love who they love, live their life, and um and this show is going to bring some humor and some light to it.

[19:35] Robert Bannon: And I know as an educator, Kara, and as somebody who has had a lot of students who have come out and have a lot of trans students and non-binary students that I've worked with over the years in New York and in Detroit and across this country, seeing people like you and seeing what you do every day on uh television or talking about it on stages, um, it really makes a difference because for some people it is the difference between life and death, and it is the feeling of being wanted and accepted and and needed in this world and not. And and there is some real beautiful, beautiful work that your public life and what you've shared will change lives. So thank you.

[20:06] Caragh Donley: I I mean the other purpose of the show, which is a call back to you know, about seven hours ago when I started talking, uh, because I warned you, um, is that I I would love for someone to pay me to take this show around the country to do for parents, like cis parents, and to do for trans kids, because one of my main missions is to say, don't do what I did.

[20:38] Caragh Donley: Don't um spend sixty-three years of your life um hating everything you are, but not telling anybody, and all they see is a miserable person for 63 years. Um and don't be that.

[20:57] Caragh Donley: But learn from somebody who did it. Um, and there will be somebody in everyone's life you can count on. It may not even be somebody you know yet, but um it's the the example in the show, and um I'm sure he won't mind that I give him this plug.

[21:15] Caragh Donley: Uh Carol Kelly's hairstylist, uh Robert Ramos is the first person I didn't pay 250 dollars an hour to that I came out to. Uh and it just he used to ask me, like he was very intuitive and would ask me what was going on and why was I growing my hair so long.

[21:38] Caragh Donley: Uh and I when I had to choose somebody to tell, I just thought he seems like he'll be the person who will make me feel better. Um, and he was. It was incredible. And what I kind of tell people now is find your Robert.

[21:56] Caragh Donley: You know, you have one. You may not know who it is in your life yet, but open up your intuition a little bit and you'll feel that person, you know, like one of those metal detectors that uh old men, which thankfully I won't have to be now, uh on the beach, you know, and they're they're doing that thing with the metal detector.

[22:19] Caragh Donley: Uh have a trans detector, whatever you want to call it, but you will find that person who will hug you until you say, All right, I'm done with the hugs.

[22:29] Caragh Donley: Uh I gotta get to work. And and that's all we're trying to do is get back to work and be who you are.

[22:35] Robert Bannon: I uh that is a really moving thing. Find your Robert.

[22:38] Caragh Donley: Now you can find me, I'm Robert, but not this Robert. Find your Robert.

[22:41] Robert Bannon: You will do too. Uh how about this? We say that everyone has a Robert in their lives.

[22:48] Caragh Donley: Um, and now I'm gonna tell them to copyright that.

[22:51] Robert Bannon: So and I love that. And I'm gonna, I would like to give you a hug too until you tell me to please get, I don't know you, you please get off me.

[22:57] Caragh Donley: That's people on the subway do do that, but it's a little weird.

[23:01] Robert Bannon: Go to tickets.bridget.myc. There's four dates you can get your tickets.

[23:06] Caragh Donley: There's a sliding scale, so you can pay what you can, or you can get a ticket for $25 and help support the show and the festival.

[23:11] Robert Bannon: And we could follow Kara on Instagram and see all the things that are to come. Congratulations.

[23:15] Caragh Donley: Thank you so much. We're talking everybody, like we said. He said she said comes to New York.

[23:20] Robert Bannon: And it's he said she says.

[23:24] Caragh Donley: And um, congratulations and thanks for all the work you're doing.

[23:28] Caragh Donley: Thank you for I I mean, this is an experience just leading up to it, unlike anything I've ever had. And um I thanks to anyone who even considers coming, who anyone who talks to me, this is this is all new.

[23:46] Caragh Donley: And uh I you know, I I hope people are willing to come and laugh at the jokes, if nothing else.

[23:54] Caragh Donley: Even the ones I promise you this the best the mantra at the end of every show here is the best is yet to come.

[24:00] Caragh Donley: And uh when you take that one step, the path opens and it's only just begun for you, and you're gonna change a lot of lives and share a lot of love for a lot of people.

[24:06] Robert Bannon: So let's go. Best is yet to come.

[24:08] Caragh Donley: Thank you. I appreciate it, and uh it's been great.

[24:11] Robert Bannon: I I sincerely appreciate you.

[24:14] Caragh Donley: Back at you.

[24:15] Robert Bannon: Back at you. We'll be watching the shows every day.

[24:18] Caragh Donley: So say hey over there.

[24:19] Robert Bannon: Thanks for what you do at your day job.

[24:21] Caragh Donley: Uh I will I will spread it around. Thank you.