Today on the Rarified Heir Podcast we are talking to Anne Serling, daughter of the great writer and as we learn, practical joker and pop culture figure Rod Serling. Of course we talk to Anne about beloved anthology shows her father created like The Twilight Zone as well as The Night Gallery but we also talk to Anne about her father’s humanity, his years growing up in upstate New York, his religious beliefs and traditions, his career in radio, the films he wrote and much more.
But we also hear from Anne about why she wrote a book about her father, As I Knew Him: My Dad Rod Serling but also what it was like being the daughter of entertainment industry legend,…at home. We learned that Rod was a lover of animals and their home was filled with dogs, parakeets and even some very unconventional animals. We learn her father splurged only on two things which we will get to, his favorite restaurants in Los Angeles, the music her father sang to and even some of the inside jokes they shared together.
This episode is literally years in the making and we couldn’t have been more thankful to Anne for taking the time to sit down with us to talk about someone we all know and love as a creator of two massively influential television shows but also about the humanity, humor and kindness of her father as only she would know. This is the Rarified Heir Podcast and everyone has a story. Or is it?
This is a terrific interview. Rod Serling sounds like he was such a down to earth guy but he’d start writing and going soaring off into the stratosphere and take the rest of us with him. It was interesting to hear how Anne liked “In Praise of Pip,” which is also one of my favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone, but then again there are so many – “Five Characters in Search of an Exit,” “Number 12 Looks Just Like You,” and even the pilot “Where is Everybody?” are among my favorites but the list would be too long for me to put in here.