Fred Rogers has been dead for 15 years, but the lessons that he taught multiple generations of children live on. Tackling hard issues in a way that children of all ages could understand. Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood was a groundbreaking, legendary series that changed everyone for the better. Rogers’ unique blend of puppetry, music, and live-action learning first emerged in the early 1950s, then hit the Canadian airwaves in 1963—but it wasn’t until 1968 that the Neighborhood found a national audience in the U.S. The series would go on to run until 2001, producing almost 900 amazing episodes. Even to this day, Mr. Rogers can still be found on PBS, in addition to a spinoff focused on Land of Make-Believe resident Daniel Tiger.
Fifty years after its national debut, Oscar-winning director Morgan Neville has everyone feeling warm and fuzzy and a little weepy over everyone’s favorite TV character, thanks to his Sundance Film Festival darling of a documentary, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” Relying heavily on archival footage from the series, plus “other odds and ends” like “speeches, home movies and outtakes,” the film attempts to show the “real” Fred Rogers, as well as the genius and compassion that compelled him to create one of the most enduring characters of the twentieth century.
Neville confirms that it was the current chaos of our world that made him think of making a film about the significance of of both the Neighborhood and the man who created it.
Campaign Action“I can’t believe how contemporary this story is even though it features a character from 50 years ago. A big part of my motivation to make it was that, a couple years ago, I had a feeling we needed a discussion about stability, something important that Fred Rogers talked about. What kind of neighborhood are we going to have? We seem to have so little common ground with each other now.”
To paint the fullest picture of Rogers the man, not just the character, Neville relied heavily on the participation of Rogers’ 90-year-old wife and college sweetheart. Joanne Byrd Rogers. The director goes on to explain that Mrs. Rogers had one important request for Neville.
The thing that Joanne said to me when she decided to make film was, “Don’t make him into a saint.” Fred the human did not exist on a different plane. He struggled with insecurity from his earliest days to his death bed.
Mrs. Rogers is taking her nonagenarian self all over the place in support of the movie, which began a limited release last week. She’s an absolute delight, as any fan of Fred might expect her to be, and funny as hell. Check her out on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, where she laughingly concedes that her husband was always bit "different" from the other college boys.
"But he talked about his feelings, and I could talk about my feelings to him and the things that bothered us, the things that we loved."
(More on Mr. Rogers and his feelings in a minute.) Mrs. Rogers also points out that her husband chose public television because she didn't want the series to become overrun by companies and networks treating kids “like consumers.” What a novel idea.
That clip ends abruptly, but don’t worry, there’s more! In the second clip, Fallon gushes like only he can, specifically about how Rogers tackled “hard things” like death, war, racism, and divorce, always contextualized in current events and with children in mind. Mrs. Rogers can only agree.
Jimmy even managed to surprise Joanne at the very end, that will only make sense if you watch both clips.
Back to Mrs. Rogers’ Press Junket. She also appeared Megyn Kelly TODAY, with producer Nathan Ma, son of famed cellist and Yo-Yo Ma, who himself visited the Neighborhood as a child and teen. It’s a long clip—and for many, Kelly is a hard person to watch, so the clip below is queued up to the lessons that Mrs. Rogers thinks her husband would want us to learn today, because Daily Kos cares about you.
MEGYN KELLY: “What do you think he’d have to say now, because you look around America, and we’re so divided, and people seem to have taken a step away from love and kindness?”
JOANNE BYRD ROGERS: ”I think he would—you know, people say, ‘what do you think he would say, what do you think he would do about this?’ And I think it would be about the children. It would be about the immigrants who are having children taken, the children themselves—it just breaks my heart. And I know it breaks everybody’s heart.”
Kelly, of course, doesn’t acknowledge Mrs. Rogers with so much as a “hmm,” ostensibly because she is the worst, but the audience agrees before she changes the subject to Rogers' response to 9/11.
Let's circle back to Fred and Joanne, though, and Mr. Rogers and his feelings. As his widow said on The Tonight Show, Mr. Rogers liked to talk about his feelings, and it made him different from the other boys at their Florida college. In this delightful clip from The Oprah Winfrey Show, Fred Rogers himself offers a little glimpse into what it must have been like to be married to him.
Just in case you need a little more Mr. Rogers in your day, here’s a great compilation of some of his finest moments, including his far-too/still-relevant thoughts on toxic masculinity, mental health, and violence, plus that epic Senate hearing where he “saved” public television by reciting the lyrics to one of his songs about anger.
And remember: You are special.