At 89, Alan Alda is as quick-witted as ever. Just ask him how he’s doing. “Making progress,” he says with a sly smile. He pauses before adding, “I didn’t say in which direction.”
Since being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2015, the beloved M*A*S*H star and father of three—who also has face blindness, or prosopagnosia, which makes it difficult for him to recognize people—says life has been a never-ending series of puzzles. “Almost every day I’m finding a new way to do something,” he says. “It’s gone from a part-time job to almost a full-time job keeping track of all these little solutions. But it keeps me always looking for the funny side.”
If managing his Parkinson’s is a full-time job, then acting could be considered Alda’s side gig— and it’s certainly keeping him busy. Alda recently made a scene-stealing cameo on Tina Fey’s Netflix series adaptation of his 1981 film The Four Seasons, which follows three pairs of couples as their relationships and friendships evolve over the course of a year. Fey’s series has already been renewed for a second season. “I’m so happy for Tina,” says Alda. “The movie meant a lot to me, and people are reacting to her work very much as they did to mine.”
While writing the original Four Seasons script, the New York City native—then already a star thanks to M*A*S*H, which ran from 1972 to 1983, and films like Same Time, Next Year—was inspired by “events happening around me in my personal life.” Before they filmed, the cast—which included Carol Burnett and Rita Moreno—spent three weeks rehearsing and “trading stories about our past,” remembers Alda, who also directed the movie. At one eventful lunch at a Chinese restaurant, “there was a dish of moo shu pork on the table, and it had vegetables wrapped up in a pancake,” he says. “At one point Carol stood up, held the pancake up and let the whole thing unroll and said: ‘It’s a message from the king.’ ”
In the original film Alda plays controlling lawyer Jack Burroughs. On Fey’s series Will Forte plays a reimagined version of Alda’s role, while Alda appears as a character’s father. During a scene with Fey and Colman Domingo, his character offers them some hilarious marriage advice: “Every once in a while . . . [my wife would] say, ‘Congratulations! Take off your pants, it’s a sex day.’ You might think of trying that with your spouse.” Like his character, Alda regularly calls upon advice from his own wife of 68 years, Arlene. “She always says, ‘The secret to marriage is a short memory,’ ” he says. “We both try to practice being there when we’re there: listening, answering, taking an interest.”
Through his journey with Parkinson’s, which has caused body tremors visible in his Four Seasons cameo, Alda says Arlene, 92—whom he met during their college days in New York City in 1956— has been present every step of the way. “I don’t have dexterity with my fingers the way I used to, so sometimes she has to tear a package open for me,” he says. “She’s so good-natured about it. I’m always saying, ‘Thank you.’ ” It’s that sense of gratitude that has continued to carry him through every era of his life. No matter what he accomplishes, “I don’t get proud,” he says. “I get glad that I can do something. Proud seems like a waste of time.”