Lifestyle
Celebrating movie icons: Meryl Streep
TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. Today, we continue our series Classic Films and Movie Icons and hear interviews from our archive with Meryl Streep and Sidney Poitier. I spoke with Streep in 2012 when she was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the film “The Iron Lady.” She won. She’d previously won for her performances in “Kramer Vs. Kramer” and “Sophie’s Choice.” She holds the record for the most Oscar nominations – a total of 21. One of the things she’s known for is her uncanny ability to do accents. Let’s start by hearing how she sounds as Margaret Thatcher. The film begins after Thatcher has lost her husband and is suffering from dementia. She’s imagining that her husband is still with her and talking to her. In this scene, Streep portrays Thatcher after she’s become the first woman to lead the Conservative Party. She’s speaking before the House of Commons.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “THE IRON LADY”)
MERYL STREEP: (As Margaret Thatcher) The right honorable gentleman knows very well that we had no choice but to close the school…
(JEERING)
STREEP: (As Margaret Thatcher) …Because his union paymasters have called a strike deliberately to cripple our economy.
(JEERING)
STREEP: (As Margaret Thatcher) Teachers cannot teach when there is no heating, no lighting in their classrooms. And I ask the right honorable gentleman, whose fault is this?
(JEERING)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Methinks the right honorable lady doth screech too much.
(LAUGHTER)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) And if she wants us to take her seriously, she must learn to calm down.
(JEERING)
STREEP: (As Margaret Thatcher) If the right honorable gentleman could perhaps attend more closely to what I am saying, rather than how I am saying it…
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Here, here.
STREEP: (As Margaret Thatcher) …He may receive a valuable education in spite of himself.
GROSS: Margaret Thatcher later took voice lessons from a drama coach to help her sound more authoritative. Here’s Streep as Thatcher after those lessons, addressing Parliament about the war in the Falklands.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “THE IRON LADY”)
STREEP: (As Margaret Thatcher) We were faced with an act of unprovoked aggression, and we responded…
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters) Hear, hear.
STREEP: (As Margaret Thatcher) …As we have responded in times past, with unity, strength and courage…
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters) Hear, hear.
STREEP: (As Margaret Thatcher) …Sure in the knowledge that though much is sacrificed, in the end, right will prevail over wrong.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
GROSS: Meryl Streep, welcome to FRESH AIR. Thank you so much for being here. And congratulations…
STREEP: Thank you.
GROSS: …On your Golden Globe and your Oscar nomination.
STREEP: Thank you very much for having me, Terry. I’m a huge fan.
GROSS: Oh, wow. Thank you.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: So we just heard you before and after Margaret Thatcher has voice lessons – voice lessons to teach her authority and power – so that you can speak more powerfully to the Parliament. Did she really have that kind of vocal training?
STREEP: She did. My memory is a little cloudy, but I remember reading that Laurence Olivier had something to do with arranging for her to have – he demurred. He said he wouldn’t care to do it himself, but he steered her in the direction of a good vocal coach. And she did go. And it did help her. And it was part of the “Pygmalion” process that Gordon Reece put her through.
GROSS: So can you talk a little bit about what you think she learned with those vocal lessons and how you transformed your voice as her after she really learned her way around as a public figure and had the advantage of those voice lessons?
STREEP: Well, I think that voice lessons really just bring out a voice that you already possess. So she already had – whatever the sort of stentorian tones that she acquired over time. They were all lying in wait there and within her arsenal. And she’d also had elocution in her high school, the equivalent of high school, in Grantham. She had changed her way of speaking. Her accent from Grantham had disappeared by the time she went to Oxford to study chemistry, and she had decided on a sort of a plummy kind of aspirant, upper-middle-class, what we would call upper-middle-class, voice. And so what the voice coach did was enabled her to expand her breath, deepen her voice, bring it to a place where men could listen to it in its most emphatic tones.
GROSS: So how did you change your voice for the before and after, for the more confident and experienced Margaret Thatcher versus the early Margaret Thatcher?
STREEP: Well, I had evidence of both voices, you know, from the public record, so I could listen to them. And it’s sort of my fun to sing along with records and imitate people that are on the telephone that have different ways of speaking. I mean, I pick things up like that, so it’s not a thing that’s a struggle. It’s work, but it’s not a struggle. It’s fun. And she had a very particular way of emphasizing points and making her point. And that had to do with bringing out a word that you didn’t normally think was the most important word in the sentence. Do you know what I mean?
GROSS: Yes.
STREEP: And she also had a sort of a way, like a railroad train of going – (inhaling) – (impersonating Margaret Thatcher) taking a breath and starting quite quietly and making a point in a way that you don’t really know that this point is going to be made through several examples, and there will not be a break in the speaking voice at any point. And you – if you think you’re going to interrupt, you’re really not going to have the opportunity because she’s just got capacity. It’s just really stunning as I looked at interviews.
GROSS: So you need a lot of breath to keep talking like that. Did you have it?
STREEP: I’ve just been talking like that.
(LAUGHTER)
STREEP: Yeah. I did need a lot of breath. I had – I needed much more breath than I have. After all my expensive drama school training, I couldn’t keep up with her.
GROSS: I think it’s interesting when you’re doing the voice of a real person, or I suppose if you’re learning an accent, too, you think of it as singing along with a record. So is that what you do, like, you play Margaret Thatcher giving a speech, and you do the equivalent of singing along with it, you give the speech as you’re listening to it?
STREEP: I say that because that’s my way in in the very beginning…
GROSS: Yeah.
STREEP: …How to enter it. Very quickly in the process, I don’t think about voice being separate from the way you hold your head or the way you sit or the way you dress or your way you put on lipstick. It’s all a piece of a person, and it’s all driven by conviction. In other characters, it’s driven by insecurity, or it’s driven by fear, or – there’s always a driver, and the – all the physical manifestations – you need your way in. So, yeah.
When I was a kid, when I was 16, 17, I’d come home from high school, and my dad collected all of Barbra Streisand’s records. And she was very young then. I think she was – she probably had three records out, and she was 21. And we had them all. And I knew every single song, every breath, every elision, every swell. And I sang along to it, but it – for me, it was a way to get out the feeling of the song and also to get out the feelings that, you know, roil in high school, to express something that I had no other way of expressing. And, of course, now I’m rich and famous, and I met Barbra Streisand, and I told her that, and she was nonplussed.
(LAUGHTER)
STREEP: She was just – oh, we can’t know what we mean to each other. You know, artists – you can’t know – you can’t know that, but she was really important.
GROSS: We’re listening to my 2012 interview with Meryl Streep. We’ll hear more of it after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF ALEXANDRE DESPLAT’S “JULIA’S THEME”)
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let’s get back to my 2012 interview with Meryl Streep as we continue our series Classic Films and Movie Icons.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
GROSS: I have another Margaret Thatcher question for you because you age several decades through the course of the film.
STREEP: Four.
GROSS: Yeah. So you had to wear, you know, like, a prosthetic older person’s neck, and your face has a lot of makeup or something because, you know, you age four decades. So is it harder to be expressive when you’re underneath something, you know, either a lot of makeup or a prosthetic or whatever?
STREEP: Well…
GROSS: I mean, you manage to be very expressive, but I’m wondering if it’s, you know, more difficult.
STREEP: It can be, but I didn’t want it to be. So I’ve worked for 35 years with a master artist – makeup artist and hairdresser. That’s Roy Helland, and he’s done everything – bleached my eyebrows for – and hair – for “Sophie’s Choice.” And he gave me a brown mullet in “Silkwood.” And…
GROSS: (Laughter).
STREEP: …You know, he got me ready for the Golden Globes. And he understands the job and changing the outside to get at something inside. So in conjunction with this British prosthetics designer, Mark Coulier, he and Roy and I, we did tests. And it was all about taking away, taking away, taking away. You know, we start with what Mark would carve the – a sculpture of me. They took a life mask. And then he’d add on, with clay or whatever the material is, age. And then they’d cast it in sort of this silicon thing. And then I would wear it, and we’d test it. And then I would say, inevitably, less, less, less, less. So it’s kind of remarkable how little I really am wearing. And…
GROSS: And when you’re saying, less, less – I want less – is that partly so that you can move your face and…
STREEP: So I can be free.
GROSS: …And be expressive? Yeah.
STREEP: It’s all about being free and having – so I can look in the mirror and see me, not stuff. And it all has to do with – you know, it’s not about the audience. It’s all about fooling the other actors into believing that you are who you say you are because that’s hard when you walk on set, and it’s a big makeup job. And it’s – it makes it hard for them. And I take my entire performance from them. So if they don’t look at me and hate me appropriately…
GROSS: (Laughter).
STREEP: …Or love me the way they’re supposed to or find, you know, an old face but see the young one underneath, which is Jim Broadbent’s task as Denis Thatcher, then I’m lost. I don’t have anything to go on ’cause I can read that immediately in their eyes, you know?
GROSS: Gee, I never thought of it that way – that you have to convince the other actors that you’re Margaret Thatcher.
STREEP: That’s the whole deal – the whole deal.
GROSS: You know, I hear a certain similarity between your voice in “The Iron Lady” as Margaret Thatcher and your voice in “Julie & Julia” as Julia Child. It almost strikes me as if – and I never thought about this till hearing you in both those films – that if Margaret Thatcher kind of drank too much…
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: …And started being, like, surprised and delighted about how her, like, food concoction was behaving, that she might sound like Julia Child. What do you think?
STREEP: Well, they had a similar flutiness in – especially in the younger – Julia Child had (impersonating Julia Child) a flutiness…
GROSS: Yeah (laughter).
STREEP: …You know? which, is – and it’s also part of her class, her – the way that there are women of that time and of that class. We don’t like to talk about that in America, but there are classes in America. And she was of a class of women who were wealthy, privately educated, went to Smith, moved in that sort of circle. She was conscripted into the OSS, which is the early CIA, which was all filled with Yalies and Princeton and Harvard people and a few women, who were typing mostly, but also had something to do. And they had a way of speaking. I mean, the last person you would know – we would also recognize as having that way of speaking is Katharine Hepburn, probably.
When I was in – at Vassar – and I came from a public high school in New Jersey – there was a way of talking that the private school girls had that was different than the way I talked from (laughter) New Jersey.
GROSS: Let me play a little bit of you as Julia Child in “Julie & Julia.” And this is a scene when you’re on TV early in your TV career, and you’re making some kind of, like, mashed-potato pancake concoction that you’re about to flip, and it’s not – it kind of…
STREEP: …Doesn’t go well.
GROSS: Doesn’t go well. It kind of splatters in the air, and half of it lands on the stove instead of in the pan. So…
STREEP: Yeah.
GROSS: …Let’s hear a little bit of that. And this scene alternates with you on TV and with Julie watching you on TV.
STREEP: Amy Adams, yeah.
GROSS: Yeah. Amy Adams is Julie.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “JULIE & JULIA”)
STREEP: (As Julia Child) I’m going to try to flip this thing over now, which is a rather daring thing to do.
AMY ADAMS: (As Julie Powell) She changed everything. Before her, it was frozen food and can openers and marshmallows.
CHRIS MESSINA: (As Eric Powell) Don’t knock marshmallows.
STREEP: (As Julia Child) Give it a try. When you flip anything, you’ve just got to have the courage of your convictions, especially if it’s a loose sort of mass like – oh, that didn’t go very well. But you see, when I flipped it, I didn’t have the courage…
ADAMS: (As Julie Powell) She’s so adorable.
STREEP: (As Julia Child) …I needed to – the way I should have. Oh, but you can always put it together. And you’re alone in the kitchen. Who’s to see?
ADAMS: (As Julie Powell) Pearls. The woman is wearing pearls in the kitchen.
STREEP: (As Julia Child) I’ve just got to practice the piano. I’m Julia Child. Bon appetit.
GROSS: You know, I love that, ’cause you talk about studying someone’s voice as if it’s music, and she has such a musical voice.
STREEP: She does.
GROSS: And, you know…
STREEP: And she has no breath.
GROSS: Yeah, I was going to say that.
STREEP: Absolutely none (laughter).
GROSS: Exactly. It sounds like she’s been running up a hill.
STREEP: She always sounds like that. I feel like that when I’m in the kitchen. Don’t you? Well, I’m not a very good cook, but…
GROSS: Me neither, honestly.
STREEP: (Laughter) I just…
GROSS: I believe that’s why…
STREEP: I find myself…
GROSS: …Delis exist, so that I don’t have to cook (laughter), but…
STREEP: Well, I got better after this, and my entire family really did appreciate it.
GROSS: (Laughter).
STREEP: Usually, they’re resentful of movies that I go off and make (laughter), but this one had a bonus attached. But, yeah…
GROSS: You know, I compared…
STREEP: …She had no breath.
GROSS: …I compared her voice and Thatcher’s voice before, but breath-wise, they’re the opposite, ’cause she’s almost, like, gasping for air.
STREEP: Yeah.
GROSS: And Thatcher has this, like, endlessly long breath.
STREEP: Well, she’s so alive, Julia Child, and Margaret is so designed. She’s so intent upon making her point. That’s the most important thing, is that she win the argument, and there is nothing that stands in the way of that train, you know? But Julia’s just alive in front of you. That’s part of why people loved her. They lived it with her. They breathed it with her. And the mistakes were all part of it. But she was adept, too, at what she was doing – incredibly adept.
GROSS: OK, so here’s a story I read, which I assume is true, but you can tell me if it actually happened (laughter), that in – for the 1976 Dino De Laurentiis remake of “King Kong,” you auditioned for Dino De Laurentiis and his son…
STREEP: Yes.
GROSS: …Who were Italian.
STREEP: Yes.
GROSS: And Dino De Laurentiis said in Italian – what did he say?
STREEP: (Speaking Italian). I don’t know. I can’t speak Italian anymore, ’cause I’m so old and forgetful, but he said something like, but this is so ugly. Why do you bring me this?
GROSS: This being you (laughter).
STREEP: Yes.
GROSS: Yes.
STREEP: I’m sitting in front of him, opposite the desk. He’s smiling. He looks impeccable. He has everything beautiful. And his son is very kind. His son said – ’cause his son had seen me in something, and he said, no, you know, Dad, she’s a wonderful actress. And because I had just – I’d studied a year of Italian at Vassar, I could understand what they were saying, and I said, you know, (speaking Italian), I’m very sorry that I’m not as beautiful as I should be, but, you know (laughter), this is it. This is what you get, sort of. And I left. I mean, I was very upset, but I didn’t show it. Yes, it’s a true story.
GROSS: So a very interesting story (laughter), ’cause you were being told early in your career, basically, that you’re not beautiful.
STREEP: Yeah.
GROSS: You’re not qualified – your face is not qualified for this role. And you’re also…
STREEP: Face and body, I believe.
GROSS: And body.
STREEP: Yes.
GROSS: But then you’re also making the decision to let them know that you understand what they said. They were intentionally speaking in Italian so that you wouldn’t understand them.
STREEP: Right. Right, right.
GROSS: But you did understand them. You let them know you understood them, and…
STREEP: Because they did – they think actresses are stupid. That was the other thing that – I mean, not they, ’cause I don’t think his son was that way. His son was my champion. I mean, he was the reason I was in the office. But the dad – he wasn’t being mean to me. He was just speaking to his son in Italian, but he had no idea that I would understand, because they think Americans are stupid, too, so…
GROSS: Did you worry that you were basically – I mean, you hadn’t been in any movies yet (laughter), so did you worry that word would spread about you that you were…
STREEP: A pain in the a**?
GROSS: …That you spoke back to directors? Yeah, that you were a real pain…
STREEP: (Laughter).
GROSS: …And that you were – yeah, that you were a problem, so, like, avoid her.
STREEP: I am a pain in the a**.
(LAUGHTER)
STREEP: How can I hide it?
(LAUGHTER)
STREEP: I mean (laughter), yeah, that is the package, you know, and…
GROSS: (Laughter).
STREEP: But I was not probably suited to that role either. I mean, that was the truth.
GROSS: How much did you want it?
STREEP: Not much. I mean, I did want a break, but I didn’t think I would be good in it. Honestly, I didn’t. It represented something that, I don’t know, I wasn’t drawn to. So I suppose it was easier to be obstreperous in the meeting because of that. If it was an audition for “Sophie’s Choice,” and Alan Pakula had said something like that, I maybe would have swallowed it because I wanted it so badly.
GROSS: We’re listening to the interview I recorded with Meryl Streep in 2012. We’ll hear more of that interview, and hear my 2000 interview with Sidney Poitier, after a break, as we continue our series, Classic Films and Movie Icons. I’m Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOSTON CELLO QUARTET’S “RAPSODIA CUBANA”)
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. Let’s get back to my 2012 interview with Meryl Streep, one of the movie icons we’re featuring this week on our end-of-summer series.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
GROSS: You were engaged to the actor John Cazale, whom most people know as Fredo in “Godfather” one and two, and in…
STREEP: “Dog Day Afternoon.”
GROSS: In “Dog Day Afternoon.” Why am I blanking on the title? And he had a small part in “The Deer Hunter.” You were nominated for an Oscar for your part in your – in “The Deer Hunter.” It was, like, one of your first films. And so you were engaged, and he died of bone cancer shortly after, in 1978.
STREEP: Yes. We were not engaged, but we were a couple. We lived together and – yes, for, like, three years.
GROSS: So he probably died not knowing how famous his roles were going to be, how famous those movies were going to be.
STREEP: I know. I know. He had – well, he had a – the “Godfather” movies were unbelievably popular. And, you know, they were just – popular isn’t the word. They were…
GROSS: Well, they’ve entered into iconic. Yeah.
STREEP: Yeah, absolutely. And they did early. I mean, early, early on, they had that importance, certainly in New York, where we lived. And, you know, we would walk along the street, and people would roll down the window, and they’d go, hey, Fredo, you know? And we could never pay for a dinner if we went to Little Italy – never, which was great. We went all the time. But he – yeah, he made five movies, and all five of them were nominated for best picture.
GROSS: You gave a terrific commencement address at Barnard in 2010, and one of the things you talked about was how you think of your first character as being you in high school (laughter), when you wanted to be the pretty, popular girl. So what you did was you studied Vogue and Mademoiselle. And what were some of the things you taught yourself to do?
STREEP: Bleach my hair, A, and curl it. And there was an elaborate thing, ’cause there weren’t hot curlers in those days, so you had to go to bed on – sleeping on rollers, which is just a torture, like maybe sleeping on one of those Maasai…
GROSS: (Laughter).
STREEP: …Wooden plugs that they put under your neck in the boma, you know, to go to sleep, which I also don’t understand.
GROSS: Did you ever use the tin-can thing, putting a tin can on top of your head?
STREEP: That was for the people with curly hair.
GROSS: All right. I get it.
STREEP: I was interested in curling…
GROSS: I get it.
STREEP: …My bone-straight hair…
GROSS: Right.
STREEP: …Which won’t bend, you know, under any circumstance. Yeah. But the girls with curly hair put it on cans so that it would straighten it out…
GROSS: Right.
STREEP: …During the night. Everybody was miserable.
GROSS: So you said that you adjusted your temperament to – in trying to be popular and appealing to boys.
STREEP: Yeah. Oh, sure.
GROSS: What did you change?
STREEP: I remember that, well, opinions took a back seat. Opinions were not, you know, attractive. I mean, this is stuff I remember thinking when I was quite young. You know, at my house, in order to be heard, you had to get your – no, you had to get your opinion out. No, no, no, don’t interrupt me. You know, Dad, he did that again. And you just…
GROSS: (Laughter).
STREEP: …You got it out. You learned to rise above the contending voices, but I recognized early on that that wasn’t attractive on a date. Like, if he said something stupid, you go, no I don’t agree with that at all. That’s – how can you say that? It’s idiotic. And that would not get a second date, so I would learn to go, (laughter) wow. Yeah, cool.
GROSS: (Laughter).
STREEP: You know, and that that would be OK. So it’s a form of acting for a purpose which girls learn to do, and girls are good at it, if they care to be. Now I don’t think they – what do I know? I have three daughters, and they’re all – they’re all doing it on their own, in their own way – I mean, getting along in life on their own terms. And I don’t feel they make those accommodations quite in the way we did, but this was something people did. Yeah.
GROSS: One other thing actresses, I think, worry about – you can be the leading lady in your 20s and 30s. Once you’re in your 40s, it’s really harder to get roles. There’s character roles and, you know, the parent roles. I think things are starting to change, but have you been satisfied with the roles for women of your age as you’ve changed ages over the years, or have you been frustrated with what’s out there?
STREEP: Both. I remember when I turned 40, I was offered within one year three different witch roles to be in.
GROSS: Literally witch?
STREEP: Witches, to play three different witches in three different contexts. But it was almost like the world was saying – or the (laughter) studios were saying – we don’t know what to do with you. And I remember – I mean, I’ve repeated this before many times, but I remember being shocked to find out that Bette Davis was 40 or 41 when she did “All About Eve” and was playing an over-the-hill, done, out-of-it, you’re-finished actress and that she was only 50 when she did “Baby Jane” and “Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte,” and those grotesques of witches. You could call them witches. So, yeah, I think there was for a long time in the movie business, a period of when a woman was attractive and marriageable or something – not marriageable. [Expletive], I guess, is the word (laughter), which…
GROSS: You can’t really say that on the radio.
STREEP: …I probably can’t say that. OK. Well, you know what I’m saying, so you substitute something better, but…
GROSS: We could bleep it.
STREEP: OK.
GROSS: It will have been bleeped by the time listeners hear that.
STREEP: OK. So that’s – that was it. And then after that, they really didn’t know what to do with you until you were the lioness in winter – right? – until you were 70. And then it was OK to, you know – “Driving Miss Daisy” or “Trip To Bountiful,” or things like that. But that middle period, what we call the middle, the most vibrant years of a woman’s life, arguably, from 40 to 60, were completely – nobody knew what to do with them. And that really has changed – completely changed – not for everybody. But for me, it has changed, and part of it, I think, has to do with the fact that I wasn’t that word that I just said that you bleeped before. When I was a younger actress, that wasn’t the first thing about me.
GROSS: Sexuality was not the first thing, is what you’re saying.
STREEP: It was not the first thing.
GROSS: Sexiness.
STREEP: Yeah, because when that goes away – cute. I was never cute. So when cute goes away, ’cause that goes away with age…
GROSS: Well, Meryl Streep, I really regret that we’re out of time. It’s been great to talk with you.
STREEP: Me too. Great to talk…
GROSS: Thank you so much for being on our show.
STREEP: Thanks, Terry. I enjoyed it.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAURENCE ROSENTHAL’S “MAIN TITLE/THE CHAUFFEUR”)
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The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
On a 75-mile cliff-hugging stretch of highway in California, traffic is way up, despite soaring gas prices. And locals expect the busiest summer in years.
The road is Highway 1 in Big Sur, which reopened in January after three years of repair and reconstruction following a pair of landslides. Drivers can once again embark on the state’s most famous road trip, covering the 100 miles between Cambria to the south and Carmel to the north without leaving the two-lane coastal highway. And they’re heading out in big numbers.
Caltrans estimates that as of May, Big Sur restaurant and retailer guest counts are up 40% from last year, and that northbound traffic at Ragged Point, the southern gateway to Big Sur, has risen 900% year-over-year.
People pose for photos near Bixby Bridge. Monterey County’s Board of Supervisors voted to explore a 12-month ban on parking around the bridge.
Safety cones prevent parking along Coast Road near the Bixby Bridge.
“Take your time,” said Kirk Gafill, co-owner of the popular Nepenthe restaurant and president of the Big Sur Chamber of Commerce, offering advice to travelers. “You’re going to be sharing the road with a number of people.”
As travelers rediscover the road, the cost of driving has been shooting skyward. California’s average gas price ($6.11 per gallon as of May 26) is up 26% from the year before. In early April, rates hit $9.99 at the isolated gas station in the Big Sur community of Gorda.
For spring and summer travelers, these numbers would seem to pose a stark question: Stay home and save money, or head for the coast because the road is finally open and it’s still cheaper than flying?
So far, the latter answer is winning big.
Fog lingers off the coast of Highway 1.
“We are definitely seeing a huge uptick in our reservations,” said Megan Handy, assistant general manager at the upscale Treebones resort. She estimated that bookings are 30% or more ahead of last year, and rates are unchanged since then. But “it’s still not feeling super crowded, which is nice. Everything still feels kind of calm.”
But added traffic has raised some anxiety. On May 19, Monterey County’s Board of Supervisors voted to explore a 12-month ban on parking at Bixby Bridge, one of the region’s top photo spots.
Over the years, the number of cars parking near the bridge — often illegally, sometimes impeding emergency vehicles — has risen. The proposed parking moratorium won’t take effect until the supervisors discuss it further.
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Busy as things are, several business owners pointed out that many international travelers have not yet returned — perhaps because most make their plans more than six months ahead, perhaps because of global politics, perhaps a little of each.
The biggest challenge for businesses during this resurgence? “Restaffing and retaining,” said Handy at Treetops.
At Nepenthe, Gafill said his business has seen a 45% boost in guest volume since the road’s reopening. Gafill said he would have expected a 35% pickup, “simply by virtue of reopening the highway.” The additional 10%, he said, might be “all that pent-up demand,” aided by “a very beautiful and very dry winter,” followed by a mild spring.
A lunch crowd dines at popular restaurant Nepenthe.
Another possible factor: Nobody can be sure how long the road will remain open.
To cope with the influx of people, Gafill said, “everybody is trying to recruit and retain their existing staff.”
At the Ragged Point Inn, where rates dropped as low as $149 nightly last fall, rates are back over $200 and staffers are suggesting that customers book at least six months ahead. The inn has reopened its snack bar for the first time since early 2023, and management is investing in capital upgrades and staging live music on weekends throughout the summer.
Business “is up over 100%,” said Diane Ramey, whose family owns the inn. “I know not all of our neighbors are having the same lift, but everybody is doing better.”
Traffic approaching Bixby Bridge.
A visitor poses in an oversized chair at Big Sur River Inn.
Even at the New Camaldoli Hermitage, a Benedictine monastery above Lucia, the road’s reopening and coming summer season have made a difference. Bookings are up an estimated 30% at the hermitage, which rent rooms and cottages (for two nights or more) to visitors who agree to its requirement of silence.
Big Sur business owners advise visitors to travel on weekdays for less traffic and the best hotel rates, and to get on the road as early as possible.
Since its opening in 1937, the highway has been vulnerable to landslides and shifting ground, operating on a longstanding cycle of landslide, closure, repair, reopening and then another landslide, or sometimes a fire. The U.S. Geological Survey has identified the Big Sur coastline as one of the most landslide-prone areas in the western United States. The 2023-2026 closure was the longest in the highway’s history.
Over time, road crews have used increasingly sophisticated strategies. In the most recent efforts, Caltrans said, it used drones to help survey the slopes and remotely operated bulldozers and excavators to reduce risks to workers.
During the closure, no traffic was allowed on 6.8-mile span from just north of Lucia until about a mile south of the Esalen Institute. Drivers detoured inland by way of U.S. 101.
Correspondents of CBS’ 60 Minutes pose for a portrait in 2023. From left to right, they are Sharyn Alfonsi, L. Jon Wertheim, Bill Whitaker, Lesley Stahl, Scott Pelley, Cecilia Vega, and Anderson Cooper. Former Executive Producer Bill Owens sits on the far right. Only Wertheim, Whitaker and Stahl remain at the program.
CBS Photo Archive/CBS via Getty Images/CBS
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When CBS fired Scott Pelley on Tuesday night, the new 60 Minutes executive producer, Nick Bilton, told Pelley it was for insubordination at a staff meeting the day before.
The veteran correspondent argues he was defending the DNA of 60 Minutes and the integrity of its journalism.
The battle royale over the network’s most prestigious and profitable news program is part of a broader fight over the direction of CBS News.
And given CBS’s acquisition by a billionaire family whose business interests have become intertwined with the political interests of President Trump, it reflects a larger war over control of the media in the current moment.
That father and son, Larry and David Ellison, bought CBS’ parent company, Paramount, last summer. In January, they became co-owners of TikTok’s U.S. operations. Now they’re seeking approval from Trump’s regulators to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN.
A glamorous show shorn, for now, of most its stars
CBS fired Cecilia Vega, a correspondent, and Tanya Simon, the executive producer, from 60 Minutes last week. They are shown in this photo at the 2026 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner on April 25, 2026 in Washington, D.C.
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Kristina Bumphrey/Variety via Getty Images/Variety
But the specifics of this individual episode matter — for 60 Minutes, CBS, its audience of millions, and even the news business itself.
The program has been the most glamorous post in broadcast news. The correspondents are the stars of the show. And now, there are just three of them.
Anderson Cooper left last month, concerned over the direction of the network’s coverage. Last week was a virtual bloodbath: correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi were fired. So were a producer and two show executives — including Tanya Simon, a longtime staffer who had stepped up as executive producer when her predecessor resigned in protest before the Ellisons’ takeover.
With Pelley’s ouster, only correspondents Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and Jon Wertheim remain. Now they are considering whether to resign, according to two associates with knowledge.
Their brand-new boss, Bilton, was previously a tech reporter for The New York Times and an investigative reporter for Vanity Fair. He executive-produced a documentary for Netflix about a couple accused of laundering Bitcoin and has been a producer on several other films.
Notably, he has no experience in television news.
Neither does Bari Weiss, whom David Ellison installed as the network’s editor in chief last October. The Ellisons also bought her center-right views-and-news site, The Free Press.
She has maintained that the network of Walter Cronkite needs a makeover for the digital moment. She has also contended for years that CBS, along with the rest of mainstream media, is too reflexively anti-Trump, anti-Israel, and too woke.
A rejection of CBS News executives’ overtures
The new executive producer of 60 Minutes, Nick Bilton, has been a tech journalist and documentary filmmaker, but lacks experience in broadcast news.
Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
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Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
Bilton attempted to set a conciliatory tone at Monday’s meeting — his first with the show. Pelley, a formidable veteran correspondent and former CBS Evening News anchor, wasn’t having it.
Pelley called Bilton unwelcome and unqualified. And Pelley said that Weiss was attempting to “murder” the program.
In firing Pelley on Tuesday, Bilton said the journalist had hijacked the meeting and rejected overtures to work constructively through their differences. (NPR obtained a copy of the firing notice.) Bilton wrote that Pelley’s “antipathy to the future of the show came through loud and clear.”
In his own statement late Tuesday evening, shared with NPR, Pelley accused CBS’s new news leadership of killing 60 Minutes‘ DNA and pushing him “to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story” and “to include assertions that are unverified.”
The accusations, to which CBS has not yet responded, echo those made by Alfonsi and Vega, the two correspondents fired last week.
Earlier this year, Alfonsi publicly complained after Weiss held one of her stories at the last minute, and kept it frozen for weeks, demanding an on-camera interview with a Trump White House official that never played out. It ran, unchanged from the intended version, with additional statements from the administration tacked on to the end.
After being fired, Vega said in a statement obtained by NPR that her team had “experienced efforts to insert political bias into our stories.”
“Let’s call this what it is: censorship, both censorship and self-driven” Vega continued. “It is dangerous for the show and dangerous for democracy.”
Weiss previously rejected Alfonsi’s and Vega’s allegations. (CBS said Vega’s claims, for example, were “not based in reality” while expressing appreciation for her work.)
Weiss and Bilton say digital threat requires a 60 Minutes overhaul now
In a meeting this morning, Weiss said that Pelley chose his own path — that is, to be fired rather than to find a way to work through his concerns, according to attendees. The network and Weiss have not yet publicly addressed Pelley’s accusations of interference.
Bilton and Weiss say they respect the show’s traditions, its accomplishments and its legacy of enterprise reporting, extended interviews and visual storytelling. It rose in the ratings 9% over the past season under Simon.
The two news leaders say, however, 60 Minutes needs to be overhauled before it becomes increasingly irrelevant in the era of streamers and other sources of news, information and entertainment in the digital age.
Interviews with 12 current and former CBS News staffers, from producers to executives, suggest great reservations and suspicions remain about Weiss’ judgment and her ability to handle the prominent and even famous journalists on whom her division relies.
Weiss had initially sought to reinvent the CBS Evening News, dropping a two-anchor format that had sagged in the ratings. Cooper turned down Weiss’ overtures to anchor it and left the network altogether, concerned about her approach, according to associates. (They spoke on condition of anonymity because Cooper has not chosen to speak publicly on the matter.)
David Ellison became chairman and CEO of CBS’ parent company, Paramount, after buying it last year.
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Noam Galai/Getty Images for Paramount/Getty Images North America
The ratings have continued to sag under new anchor Tony Dokoupil. And some CBS journalists, including producers who have left the Evening News, have publicly accused Weiss of making editorial decisions driven by politics. She has rejected those claims.
The decision to take on overhauling two key shows — one listing, one highly profitable, both high profile — carries significant risks for Weiss and the network, even apart from other considerations.
But the Ellisons’ presence cannot be ignored.
When Shari Redstone was negotiating the sale of CBS’s parent company, Paramount, to the Ellisons’ Skydance Media last year, the network announced the end of Stephen Colbert’s late night show. He had been one of the president’s most biting and acerbic critics.
David Ellison also made a series of concessions directly to Trump’s chief broadcast regulator, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, gutting CBS’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and appointing a conservative ombudsman to field complaints of bias against its news reporting.
Carr and other regulators approved the Paramount deal last summer.
The accommodations echo those made by other media titans.
Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos remade the editorial pages of the Washington Post, which he owns, into a far more hospitable zone for Trump at the outset of his second term. So did Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a noted medical device inventor. Amazon and Blue Origin have multi-billion dollar contracts with the federal government. Soon-Shiong’s medical research firm routinely has patent applications up for review with federal regulators. One was approved Tuesday.
The Ellisons are hoping to win approval from federal regulators next month for their purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery in a deal valued at more than $110 billion. It would include Warner Bros. Studio, HBO and CNN, among other properties.
As Weiss routs CBS News’ old guard, the question of what role she might play at CNN — and what changes that portends at CBS — hangs over journalists at the two networks. The fate of 60 Minutes serves as a high-stakes case study for both.
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