Life can often be so predictable. Each day I wake up, have coffee, get my kids to school, and go to work. But sometimes there are days when things happen that are completely unexpected. That sums up my experience interviewing today’s podcast guest Brian Burns, and I could not be more grateful for it.
Brian Burns is the award-winning writer and Executive Producer of the hit television series Blue Bloods on CBS, HBO’s Entourage, and Will Ferrell’s hit comedy film, Daddy’s Home.
Brian has served as Executive Producer of Blue Bloods for nearly 300 episodes over a record 13 seasons, & has personally written over 50 episodes of the long-running hit police procedural.
Prior to Blue Bloods, Burns wrote and produced many seasons of Entourage on HBO, where he was nominated multiple times for an Emmy and Writer’s Guild Award.
Based on his experience as a new stepfather, Burns wrote Daddy’s Home for Will
Ferrell and Adam McKay, which went on to be one of Ferrell’s most successful box office hits.
So I predicted we would mostly talk about writing and producing TV and movies, which we did. I also figured we would spend a little bit of time discussing his incredibly tight-knit family, which consists of other career heavy-hitters like his father, Edward J Burns, an NYPD police sergeant and former Spokesman for the NYPD, and his brother Ed Burns, the well-known actor and director with whom he created the ABC sitcom That’s Life and the NBC sitcom The Fighting Fitzgerald’s starring Brian Dennehy and Connie Britton.
But our conversation held SO much more than just Hollywood and his incredible and successful creative endeavors.
In a beautifully unplanned and organic way, our conversation traveled far and wide, as all the best ones do. We discussed the death of his mentor and dear friend Rocco, his mother’s passing during the pandemic, and his journey to sobriety that helped him become a better father, writer, and human being.
Brian shares intimate stories about facing the fears that were holding him back
from living an honest and (sometimes) HARD life. But it was those “hards” in life that forced him to have intimate yet difficult conversations with his loved ones, led him to start training and running marathons, and finally allowed him to get to the truth about his relationship with alcohol.
This episode is the longest interview I have released yet, and it’s worth every single moment. Join us for this captivating and deeply authentic conversation filled with unexpected turns and immense hope. Our talk left me with an enormous amount of faith in the goodness of people.
We are all striving to be healthier in our bodies, minds, and spirits. And regardless of how well-known our work is, or how successful we may be in the world, we all struggle sometimes in life as we try to find ways to connect more deeply to ourselves in order to strengthen our connections to our loved ones.
May this conversation strengthen your own connections and give you hope for what’s possible.
Love,
Molly
Connect with Brian on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook
Resources mentioned in this interview:
- Book: This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol, Find Freedom, Discover Happiness & Change Your Life by Annie Grace
- Book: The Honey Badger by Robert Ruark
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