A 30 Year Almost Romance, Sparked at NYU Tisch

For Nancy Balbirer ’87 (BFA, Drama) and Howard Morris ’86 (BFA, Drama), the first time they met didn’t feel like the first time at all. Instead, every interaction felt like a continuation of a friendship that had always been there. As students in NYU Tisch’s Drama Department, the two toed the line between friendship and flirtation. However, despite instant chemistry and mutual crushes on one another, the friendship never led to romance while they were at school.

For over thirty years Nancy (the author of A Marriage in Dog Years and Take Your Shirt Off and Cry) and Howie (the creator of Grace and Frankie) remained close, staying by one another’s sides through milestones, marriages, career successes, children, and divorces. Finally, with the help of a few mutual friends and coworkers, the pair finally acknowledged what they had felt all along - that they were madly in love. 

Nancy tells the whole story with humor, honesty, and heart in her new memoir, Almost Romance, released on February 1, 2022. Almost Romance is available for sale now online, and anywhere books are sold. If you would like a personalized signed copy, you can order one through Chevalier's, the oldest bookshop in Los Angeles.

Alex Manges of NYU Tisch Alumni Relations sat down with Nancy and Howie to learn more about Nancy’s book, the couple themselves, and how their time at Tisch led them to where they are today.

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Alex Manges: As the origin of your story as a couple began at NYU, I’m curious about your own origin stories. What brought you to NYU Tisch?

Nancy Balbirer: Well, he went to Tisch first, because he's older! We were both applying to the top acting programs, and Tisch had the best program that wasn’t a conservatory like Julliard.

It was kind of the no-brainer choice for me. I was born in New York City, but when I was one year old my parents moved to a small town in Connecticut. I spent the next 16 years trying to get back.

Greenwich Village in the early 1980’s was an incredibly vibrant place to be, artistically and spiritually. There was a lot of really interesting theater going on at that time, and one of the things I wanted to capture in the book was what an incredible place that was to be as a young person.

I will never forget that day that I came to the Village for my NYU audition. I remember standing there in Washington Square Park and saying ‘I am home.’

Howard Morris: I also wanted to be an actor, and I think what was interesting is that, though I was at the Stella Adler studio and we both wanted to be actors, somehow we became writers. I started realizing at NYU that I only really liked acting when I was saying what I wrote.

Both of our writing comes from that experience of being actors and having to say the dialogue, and we got a lot of that experience at NYU.

AM: The book brings us through your years of a will-they-won’t-they romance, but there’s one bit of the story I’m still curious about. Can you both describe the very first time you met?

NB: You know, I actually don't remember the exact first time, but my feelings and our flirtation started as if we always knew each other. I just remember, like I describe in the very first flashback in the book, seeing him at the front desk in the dorm, at Brittany.

HM: I was a desk man.

NB: He was a desk man.

HM: What you have to realize is that the desk man was important, because back before cell phones, the way you communicated with people was by leaving them a note at the desk. People would write the notes and then they would fold them and say ‘Hey can you put that in 904?’

With Nancy, I started reading the notes. I would get very involved in her notes.

AM: Nancy, how did you know now was the time to write this story?

NB: When we got married, the New York Times did a story about us in the vows column, and it really had this crazy response! A lot of people were sharing it, and not just people who knew us. I realized this was a story that people needed to hear - it's so circuitous and serpentine and it wasn't a straight shot, and you couldn't get all that in an article.

Now, cut to the pandemic and I'm writing in a lockdown and the world is so dark. The process of writing our story, reliving those early moments, was very powerful.

HM: Yes, and during the last two years, we desperately needed to be in that place, to a place that was happier than the current headspace.

NB: It was such a joy to reflect on our time together, to swim in that pool for a change. As hard as it was to write, once I got there, it was like - how exciting, how liberating this is!

AM: Howie, when you read the book, were there any parts of the story that were new to you?

HM: There were actually!

The thing that sticks out most in my mind is a conversation that Nancy had with a mutual friend of ours in the book, a conversation that I didn’t know took place. It was a surreal but interesting experience to get a chance to look at my life as though it was a movie, to see all the scenes.

Like in a movie, I was finding out the scenes that a character doesn’t know. At the time, I only knew what the character knew, and this gave me insight into my own life. I didn't expect that extraordinary experience. But it was also an extraordinary experience to get to be a character in the story.

AM: What was your favorite thing about each other when you were at NYU, and what’s your favorite thing about each other now?

HM: Obviously, I always thought Nancy was beautiful. I always thought she was just stunning and out of my league and all those things are still true. But the thing that I really love the most, both then and now, is honestly how funny she is, and how we made each other laugh. It always meant the most when I made her laugh.

NB: That’s true for me too. I've always been very attracted to funny, even though when I was at NYU I took myself very, very seriously and I fancied myself a dramatic artist.

HM: That's why you were so offended, which is in the book, when I told you you should do comedy.

NB: Yes. I was in this play, and he was like, ‘You know, you need to be doing comedy.’

HM: You being funny in that play was the only thing that got me through.

NB: We’ve always also had this chemistry, a sort of rhythm. We could always riff together really, really well. Sometimes he'll give the zinger, sometimes I do the zinger, or sometimes I’m the wacky Gracie Allen - it's always in motion.

One of the things that I loved about him right away was how it started - right away, it was like a conversation. That first moment didn't feel like a first moment at all, it felt like it was a continuation, which is what everything always felt like with us. He was the person that I could call whatever time of day, whatever time of night and tell the most embarrassing shit.

It's not like he's a non judgmental person, but I never felt judged - I felt seen and heard. It was something I had never felt before with somebody of the male persuasion.

AM: In some ways, your own story reminds me of Sol and Robert from Grace and Frankie - two dear old friends who finally realized they’re in love later in life, and uproot their lives to be with each other. Howie, did your almost romance with Nancy play any role in crafting that story?

HM: From the very beginning of the show, it has always been about hope. From the first episode when you think it's over, it's not over.

You know the joke, there's a light at the end of the tunnel and it's probably a train – but it might not be! I have often thought about second chances. With Grace, Frankie, Robert, and Sol, it was always about starting their lives again in their 70s. This book is about starting over in your 50s. So there's always been a thematic connection between our story and that story - I’ve always seen that.

NB: Yes, but at first it was coincidental, when he was first doing this series. But then when we got together, I think it probably flooded more of his consciousness.

HM: Very much so. My experience was writing about these people, then you ask yourself, ‘are you living the same way?’ I do think that those questions that I started asking myself opened me up to pursuing this again and not writing it off as something that would never happen.

NB: There’s a part in the book where he sends me an email, and he's telling me about the premiere, season one episode one. He's sitting there and he's seeing Jane Fonda as Grace doing what he had been unable to do in his life and his love life, and it was this Aha! moment for him. He’d written these characters playing out a thing that he wanted to do, but had frankly not been able to, so it was like he was being schooled by…

HM: …by a reflection of yourself!

AM: Nancy, given your experience as an actress and writer, and Howie, with yours as a writer and showrunner, are there any talks of bringing this story to the screen?

HM: Oh definitely. We’re trying to figure out the best medium for it and whether it's just a one off movie, or whether it’s a series. We’re trying to take it organically and see where it leads us.

NB: We definitely see it as something that is worthy of adaptation but, as he said, the question is what form it should be. It could really go either way at this point, so what we're hoping to do is take a little trip to Santa Barbara at some point, hole up in a hotel and like…

HM: …and see what the dog thinks.

NB: Oh yes he is the best dog for writers, because he’s only happy when you're actually actively sitting, you know and writing.

HM: He gets so happy when you open the computer. He goes right to your feet and lies down and he knows you're going to be there for a while.

AM: Nancy, what is the biggest takeaway you hope readers leave this story with?

NB: As the great philosopher Pablo Cruise once said, “keep your heart open ‘cause love will find a way.” It's really a story for people who believe in that, but it's also for people who don't, which is kind of where I was. I wasn't a total cynic, but I was at a place in my life where I was just very matter of fact. I thought that love was a parade that had passed me by.

I think that this is a story that demonstrates that nothing is ever done, as long as we are breathing air on Beyonce’s green earth. That there is possibility and hope, as is the theme of Grace and Frankie.

The other thing that I would say is that there's nothing more essential to a person becoming their best self than community, friendship, and chosen family. Nothing else gives you the same ability, the same courage, to summon your best self. That’s what we had, and it helped us clear the path. ⧫