This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Guess what, Mango? What's that, Will?

So I've been waiting for days to ask you this question, but have you ever heard of the Tony Danza syndrome?

Is that where you just walk around a house yelling Angela a lot? I think that's one variation of it, but not the one I'm talking about here. So this is something that our friend Ken Jennings came up with. He coined this term. And it's when an actor plays a character with their same name, or at least their same first name in movies or TV shows. And so Ken gave it that name because Tony Danza is, you know, kind of the king of this. And I know you could probably think of a couple examples, but he actually starred as a fictional Tony in no less than 10 movies and five separate TV shows. Yeah, I mean, I guess who's the boss, good cough. Like, it's true. I didn't even think about that.

Lots of other shows, too. But it actually started when he was playing the role of Tony Banta on Taxi.

And so the character was supposed to be named Phil Banta.

But because Danza had actually been working as a professional boxer at the time of his casting,

and this was kind of his first big acting gig.

The producers changed his character's name because they were worried that he wouldn't remember to respond to any name but his own.

So, Tony Dan's a syndrome.

But anyway, it's a pretty fitting way to kick off the episode because today's show is all about Tony's.

Let's dive in.

Music Hey there, podcast listeners, welcome to part-time genius. I'm Will Pearson. And as always, I'm joined by my good friend, Mengesh Hot Ticketer. And sitting behind the soundproof glass, holding up a boom box as he blast Tony, Tony, Tony. And it's actually on a cassette tape. I don't know if you've noticed this right outside the window. That's our pal and producer Tristan McNeil.

And he's always so prepared for these shows, but I have to admit, I was a little surprised when I saw him show up with the boom box. But anyway, I kick this off with a fact about Tony Danza. And today's episode is, of course, filled with Tonys. But where do you want to go with it here? Well, how about a fact about Anthony Hopkins,

who isn't generally my go-to Tony?

But I stumbled into some really fun research about Silence of the Lambs this week.

And there's some strange things about how he got into that movie.

So apparently Hopkins got the script, but he almost didn't read it

because he thought it was a kid's movie.

He assumed Silence of the Lambs just had to do something with like puppets or animals or something, which is kind of funny.

But I guess his agent or whoever put some pressure on him to read it, and he fell in love with the Hannibal Lecter character.

So this is actually what he told Empire Magazine, quote, I read the script and boom.

I knew intuitively how to play him.

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