Exclusive Interview: Josie Adams Reveals Untold Secrets Behind We Thought They’d Never Leave with Tony Shalhoub
MDH: It’s almost like a manual.
JA: It’s a manual, yeah. Get together, play a game, eat. Don’t always talk about the hard stuff. You can’t talk about the hard stuff when your mouth is full of food.
MDH: True, true! As a step-adoptee, I was especially taken by the few references to the way you and your adoptive dad formed such a close bond. My favorite passage is of Tony describing your first time attending the family reunion after he married your adoptive mother. He’s in the lake spotting you jumping off the raft: “When she hit the water, everything in me lifted… like a rush of joy that not only connected me to my four-year-old self, but in an instant locked her soul to mine and to those of my parents and redefined my entire concept of what it means to be a father. It wasn’t just that she’d done something brave. It was that she trusted me enough to do it. That she believed the water would be okay because I was already in it. That shifted something in me. That’s the job, I realized. You’re the safe place. You’re the one they leap toward when the water looks cold.” Did you discuss whether to write more about his adoption of you or is this a subject matter for future writing?
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