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No country has been harder hit by Ebola
than Liberia, a hot zone for the outbreak, where more people have died from the virus
than anywhere else.
That's where most of the U.S. effort is focused, with more than 2,000 Americans now leading
the international response and more on the way -- soldiers, doctors, nurses and relief
workers -- who're running mobile labs, building hospitals and treating patients.
Liberia lies just north of the equator and is home to part of the last great rainforest
in West Africa, where the Ebola virus thrives in tropical, humid conditions.
With their hospitals overwhelmed, special centers for the sick, called Ebola treatment
units, are being built as fast as possible. One of them is run by an American relief-group,
the International Medical Corps -- where Lara Logan, who is currently self-quarantined for
21 days, reported this story.
To get to the Ebola treatment unit, we traveled north from the Liberian capital along pitted
roads toward the border with neighboring Guinea where this outbreak began. American virologist
Joseph Fair, who's been here for most of the epidemic, came with us.
Around 40 miles out of Monrovia we were stopped at the first checkpoint.
Lara Logan: So everybody basically crossing this line into the next county has to have
their temperature taken?
Joseph Fair: Yes. On the way in and on the way out.
Manned by men with thermometers instead of guns, they were hunting for anyone with a
fever.
[Lara Logan: 36.3.]
And after every stop, a ritual cleansing with chlorine. It kills the virus in seconds.
Lara Logan: In this outbreak, there have already been more deaths than all of the previous
Ebola outbreaks combined. Why is this one so bad?
Joseph Fair: This really happened at the nexus, the tri-state region where a single or a few
tribal groups exist throughout the three countries and each of those areas are connected by roads
to the major cities in each of the countries affected. And those major cities are connected
to the rest of the world. So this had never happened in such a highly mobile and geographically
connected region.
At the end of a dirt road, on the grounds of an old leper colony, we arrived after a
five-hour drive at the International Medical Corps' Ebola treatment unit and were hosed
down again.
It's a one-disease hospital with 50 beds and a staff of nearly 200, run by American doctor
Pranav Shetty, who trained in emergency medicine at UCLA.
Pranav Shetty: We have a lot of protocols and procedures around the cleaning of supplies
that are taken in the high-risk zone. This is where we dry boots, basically everything
after it's been heavily chlorinated and washed and dried, and clear of Ebola, we can continue
to use it.
Since they opened in mid-September, they've treated more than 200 patients and so far,
none of their staff have been infected. Containers of chlorine and taps for hand washing mark
the divisions between every section. Patients in the confirmed ward have tested positive
for Ebola. Those who feel strong enough sit outside, but most are hidden from view in
their rooms.
They're separated from the suspected ward by an orange fence, where people whose tests
have not come back yet have to wait. No one can enter these areas without layers of protection
and on their way out, staff are hosed down in the decontamination zone.
Dr. Colin Bucks: It's otherworldly. We're in an area football-field-sized plot, cut
out of deep green forest, and everything is blue or gravel, and it smells like chlorine.
You've come to another planet.
Dr. Colin Bucks has been on duty here for the past month. At home, he's an emergency
physician at Stanford.
Dr. Colin Bucks: The world, if it chooses and people say "step up," I think this is
very containable.
Lara Logan: And if they don't?
Dr. Colin Bucks: I think we make our own bed, you know? That's why I urge people to say,
"This is my responsibility. I have a global citizen's responsibility to do this." And
if you want to say a patriotic responsibility to keep America safe. "Yeah. People go off
to war to keep us safe; people should fight this crisis with the same sense of responsibility."
[Kelly Suter: These rooms are clean.]
Nurse Kelly Suter is one of a handful of Americans working alongside Colin Bucks
Kelly Suter: Even though I know it's a reality that I could get sick, and that I could be
one of them that doesn't survive, I'm OK with that because I'd rather be here helping than
home and safe.
She's 29, from northern Michigan and will be here until the end of the year.
Lara Logan: What is it like to see it every day?
Kelly Suter: It can be difficult. There's good days and there's bad days. I mean, the
first deathbed I experienced was a gentleman that, I mean, he came in critical but I didn't
expect him to pass away as suddenly as he did. In fact, I was in there bathing him and
getting him dressed and then all of a sudden I looked up and his eyes were really big and
he was obviously scared. And, you know, my instincts as an American nurse is to turn
around and look for, you know, the code blue button to hit or some medications or an Ambu
bag. And you realize that...
Lara Logan: But there isn't one?
Kelly Suter: No, you know. So I got down by his bed and held his hand and talked to him.
And a few minutes later, he was gone.
Most of the staff here are Liberian and to lift their spirits they mark every new shift
with hymns. The stigma of the disease is so great, many of them say they're treated as
outcasts when they commute back home every day. But in here, the Americans who work with
them call them heroes.
In sweltering heat and often 100 percent humidity, they cover every inch of their bodies in plastic
and rubber armor. They're so hard to recognize, they wear their names on their foreheads.
It's for each other and for their patients.
Lara Logan: How tough is it to wear that suit?
Dr. Colin Bucks: Physically?
Lara Logan: Yeah.
Dr. Colin Bucks: It's astounding. You're soaked with sweat before you walk in. You're just
drenched. The tough part is that when the masks get filled with your own breath and
sweat, that then it really gets hard to breathe. And you have to go to breathe. You have to
get out then. It actually, you feel like you're suffocating.
Every time they cross into the high-risk area, they're touching people at their sickest and
most contagious. That's Dr. Steven Hatch, an infectious disease specialist from Massachusetts,
on his two-hour shift behind the fence.
Dr. Steven Hatch: I try to make it seem like I'm a regular guy doing a regular piece of
work. It removes that sense that I'm an alien, which is the first reaction the patients have
when they see us.
Lara Logan: It's kind of intimidating, right?
Dr. Steven Hatch: Oh, I can't even imagine what they experience in the first 24 hours
when all they see are these, you know, faceless creatures that are moving around. And so I
try to do everything I can to humanize that process for them and we all do around here.
In the confirmed ward, patients wait mostly to die. There are 15 to 20 here at any given
time. A few survive with IV fluids and early care that allows their immune systems to get
ahead of the virus. But if they don't, it wreaks havoc on their organs, melting away
cell walls and plunging the body into shock. It can be an agonizing death, which the doctors
here try to ease with pain medication and sedatives.
Lara Logan: So this area behind me is the high-risk area here at the treatment center.
And we want to talk to some of the patients, but you have to keep your distance. And this
gentleman who you can see behind me, is caring for his son. He was cured here at the center.
And is now looking after his five-year-old boy who is confirmed to have Ebola.
The boy's name is William. And his father, George who is now immune to this virus, gave
us permission to tell their story. Nurse Kelly Suter was with them from the start.
Kelly Suter: He's been by that little boy's bedside around the clock, And when things
get hard or I'm tired or sweating so bad that I just want to go home, you know, I remember
George and I remember little William.
Lara Logan: So what would you want people at home to know about this?
Kelly Suter: It's not as scary as it seems because it is manageable. There are protocols,
there are procedures to protect yourself. It's not like we're walking into Ebola land
and, you know, we're all going to die. We're doing what we should. We know what we're doing.
A medical team masked in full protective gear is always on hand when new patients are brought
in. This is what passes for an ambulance here: a pick-up wrapped in orange tarp.
On this day, Colin Bucks was waiting. No one can come near the patient until the sprayers
are done.
Strapped inside, a young man highly infectious with Ebola. He'd been abandoned on the street
for a week until they picked him up.
Dr. Colin Bucks: They were afraid that he would exit the vehicle while it was moving.
He was quite confused. And we see that with Ebola, a kind-of encephalopathic kind of state.
The trauma of the epidemic had touched everyone we met.
Over the summer, virologist Joseph Fair saw some of his closest friends in this region,
doctors and nurses he'd known for years, get infected and die. Fair has spent 15 years
in West Africa, mostly on behalf of the U.S. Department of Defense, studying dangerous
viruses in secure labs or trying to track them down at their source in the animal world.
For most of the past eight months, he's been working to get ahead of this epidemic. Here
at the National Laboratory in Liberia, there was no way to test for Ebola until he and
his team hand-carried in the equipment. By late May, they thought the outbreak was over.
Joseph Fair: We were just a few days from declaring it over and that's when we had cases
emerge both in Liberia and Sierra Leone and Guinea.
Lara Logan: What happened?
Joseph Fair: Individuals that were infected with Ebola were missed at the time through
the contact tracing that was in place. And those individuals traveled, became ill and
infected other individuals around them.
Lara Logan: And that is the cause of this current huge wave of the epidemic?
Joseph Fair: That's all it takes. It only takes missing one individual to result in
another outbreak.
Resources that were slow to come at first are now pouring in. The U.S. Army showed us
one of the 17 Ebola treatment units they are building together with the Liberian military.
But there's still no cure and the virus is killing around 70 percent of the people it
infects.
Tracking down the sick and the dying is a dangerous but critical part of containing
the outbreak. On this day, the International Medical Corps' ambulance team, led by Dr.
Trish Henwood from the University of Pennsylvania and Kenyan nurse Elvis Ogweno, had been called
back to a house where two people had already died of Ebola.
The patient was kept isolated to one side, while a team of sprayers worked on the house
with chlorine.
As he walked to the ambulance, the patient was followed. They covered every piece of
ground he touched.
He was headed for the suspected ward, where patients are caged in waiting to find out
if they have Ebola.
Like this woman, who stayed close to her son. Her husband already lay deathly ill on the
other side of the fence in the confirmed ward. Later in the day, anguished wails filled the
air. She had just been told her husband was dead.
Death is a constant here, and at the end of a path through the forest, lies their graveyard.
A team of gravediggers try to stay ahead of the numbers. For the American scientist, they
had many questions.
[Joseph Fair: We think it probably exists in the bats because they don't get sick from
the virus and that's how we know usually where the virus comes from. If it doesn't make that
animal sick, it usually means that animal can carry the virus]
Lara Logan: What do you say to people back home who are much more focused on Ebola in
the U.S. and think, you know, you should just shut it off, isolate it and protect Americans
from this disease?
Joseph Fair: The thing that I need to get across to everyone is that until we handle
the outbreak here -- and be that Ebola, be that some other disease -- until we handle
outbreaks where they occur, we are never going to be safe ourselves.
There were 34 filled graves when we arrived. Two and a half weeks later there were more
than 60. The patient, who came strapped inside the ambulance, is now lying here.
For every death, a simple funeral. A patient's brother clutched a wooden gravemarker on his
way to the graveyard. The body, still infectious, had to be wrapped in two body bags. With each
move, there was more chlorine. It's now protocol here for every burial.
For the boy William and his father George, who survived Ebola with the help of the American
doctors and nurses here, there was much hope as they fought for his son's life. But in
that same graveyard a few days later, another small grave was added.
Tomorrow, the day before Veterans Day, the new head of Veterans Affairs will announce
the biggest reorganization in the history of the VA, which comes after the agency's
biggest fiasco. It was last spring that we learned that tens of thousands of vets were
waiting months for medical care while managers cooked the books to hide the delays. The former
secretary was forced out. Tonight we have the first interview with the new man in charge.
Sixty-one-year-old Robert McDonald has no government or medical experience but he does
know management. He was chief executive officer of Procter & Gamble, the largest consumer
products company in the world. And we wanted to know how a soap salesman will go about
cleaning up the VA.
Scott Pelley: How many employees do you think should be fired based on what you know?
Secretary McDonald: The report we've passed up to the Senate Committee and House Committee,
has about 35 names on it. I've got another report that has over 1,000.
Scott Pelley: If 1,000 people need to go, give me a sense of what are some of the things
that they did?
Secretary McDonald: We're simplistically talking about people who violated our values.
Scott Pelley: And those values are what?
Secretary McDonald: It's integrity, it's advocacy, it's respect, it's excellence. These are the
things that we try to do for our veterans.
But Bob McDonald can't punish or fire a thousand people right now. He's discovering how different
the Capitol is from capitalism. To fire a government manager he has to put together
a case and prove it to an administrative judge.
Secretary McDonald: Scott, the reason this is, reason this is okay in some respects is
that...
Scott Pelley: A lot of people think it's not okay...
Scott Pelley: ...that if people lied and put veterans second...
Secretary McDonald: That's different. That's different.
Scott Pelley: ...and their self first, they should be cleared out.
Secretary McDonald: Absolutely. Absolutely. But we've got to make it stick.
Scott Pelley: How do you mean?
Secretary McDonald: So we propose the action, the judge rules and the individual has a time
to appeal. That's why we have a lot of people on administrative leave. We've moved them
out because we don't want any harm to our veterans.
[Volunteer: Bob I'd like you to meet my district commander.]
He's been on the job four months and in that time he's been getting an education. McDonald
has inspected 41 VA facilities. We caught up with him in Boston, where we discovered
that he refuses to be called "Mr. Secretary."
[Woman: It's so nice to meet you, Mr. Secretary.]
[Secretary McDonald: Nice to meet you. I'm Bob. Please call me "Bob."]
His Washington staff can't get their heads around calling the boss by his first name,
so they've taken to calling him "Secretary Bob."
[Secretary McDonald: So you were with Patton in North Africa?]
[Volunteer: No, he was with me.]
He'll need that sense of humor because McDonald is battling a behemoth cobbled together over
decades. The VA is the second largest agency in the entire federal government behind only
the Department of Defense.
Secretary McDonald: We have no hope of taking care of veterans if we don't take care of
each other.
He has 340,000 employees who handle services ranging from home mortgages, to college loans,
to heart transplants.
[Secretary McDonald: Well you've got people who really care about veterans here.]
[Patient: Exactly.]
With nine million patients the VA is America's largest healthcare system, but it had slipped
into critical condition. Last April, a doctor in Phoenix exposed those phony wait lists.
[President Obama: It is dishonorable. It is disgraceful. And I will not tolerate it, period.]
Investigators found that the official records showed that vets in Phoenix were getting appointments
in 14 days. But this was the true wait list. Those are numbers of days in the right column
more than 400 days in most cases. The investigation found that the wait may have contributed to
six deaths. It was all because Phoenix was overwhelmed.
Scott Pelley: The general condition of the emergency room at that time, you would describe
as what?
Dr. Katherine Mitchell: Chaos. Absolute chaos.
Dr. Katherine Mitchell was co-director of the emergency room.
Scott Pelley: How well known was it inside the VA in Phoenix that veterans were going
months without getting an appointment?
Dr. Katherine Mitchell: Everyone knew that, everyone that worked at the Phoenix VA for
any length of time.
And when she reported the problems, she was reassigned to an empty clinic.
[Dr. Katherine Mitchell: In 2013, I submitted a confidential OIG complaint regarding the
life threatening issues within the Phoenix VA system.]
Dr. Mitchell was among the first to blow the whistle.
Dr. Katherine Mitchell: I had veterans who had survived World War II, who had survived
Pork Chop Hill, who survived the Battle of Fallujah, who had gone through so many situations
of combat, where it's a life and death situation. And yet, I could not guarantee their safety
in the middle of metropolitan Phoenix in my ER because we didn't have adequate staffing
or training.
A nationwide investigation confirmed the phony wait lists in Phoenix and 92 other VA centers.
Scott Pelley: When you read that in the Inspector Generals report, you thought what?
Secretary McDonald: I was incensed. I was incensed. Our veterans have earned these benefits.
They earn them with their lives in danger.
Scott Pelley: It strikes me that you are coming into a system which was broken because the
people in the regions were lying to headquarters.
Secretary McDonald: This is one of the reasons I have traveled. I've got to get to the bottom
of it. I've got to meet the people. So the adverse information gets from the bottom to
the top as quickly as possible. People get rewarded for bringing adverse information
forward.
Scott Pelley: That has never been the case before.
Secretary McDonald: It's going to be the case now.
Secretary McDonald: I have a piece of paper right here from a veteran.
The day we were with him, a vet had driven 1,200 miles to get care at the Boston VA hospital.
She slipped McDonald this note.
Secretary McDonald: Can you read it? It says, "I'm from Alabama and I had to come here to
Boston to get care." That breaks my heart.
Other failures boggle the mind. In Pittsburgh, six vets died of Legionnaires' disease, and
this year we learned that the hospital had known that its water system was contaminated.
In Brockton, Massachusetts a Vietnam vet was hospitalized for eight years with a psychiatric
disorder, but no one ever scheduled an appointment for him with a psychiatrist.
Scott Pelley: When you got the call suggesting this job, I would imagine you would've thought,
"Oh boy. I'm not sure I need that headache at this point in my life."
Secretary McDonald: My immediate reaction was, "I want to do it." I feel like my whole
life has been designed to lead to this.
The design of Bob McDonald's life, in many ways, started at the U.S. Military Academy.
He graduated in '75, and served five years as a paratrooper. He bought his first home
with a VA loan. And the VA paid for his master's degree. In 33 years at Procter & Gamble, he
put Tide, Pampers and Joy into most of the cupboards on Earth. Though he left West Point
long ago, West Point never left him.
Scott Pelley: The first time you saw this view of the Hudson River you were 18 years
old, here at West Point, getting sworn in at this very spot. And I wonder what that
experience has done to inform your life?
Secretary McDonald: I think it's the West Point motto: "Duty, Honor, Country."
He's sentimental that way, uncompromising. So it's no wonder his new number two at the
VA is his West Point classmate Sloan Gibson, who used to run the USO. As cadets, they sat
across the table from each other in the mess hall.
Sloan Gibson: The first place I visited was Phoenix, ground zero. While I was in Phoenix,
I met with a large group of employees. They wanted to do the right thing. They worked
really hard, but the system and the organization was just not supporting them. What I saw there:
leadership failure, mismanagement and chronic underinvestment in the system.
Already Gibson has suspended bonuses for all VA executives. And he fired the director of
an Alabama hospital. Tomorrow, McDonald will unveil the reorganization. Part of it designed
so that veterans won't have to go to war to get their benefits.
Secretary McDonald: Right now they face nine different organization structures across the
country so they don't know where to go and if they do find somebody to go to that person
may be an expert in benefits but not an expert in heath care. And we want to create a customer
service representative that that person can go to. Secondly they face multiple websites
that require multiple user names and multiple passwords and that's not acceptable. We've
got to get to one website, one entry point and then fan people out from there.
[Man: Can you stand up for me?]
Something he's already done is given doctors a raise. VA physicians were making less than
most private doctors. It was hard to fill the open jobs and that led to those intolerable
wait lists.
Scott Pelley: How many doctors and nurses and medical professionals do you need to hire
right now?
Secretary McDonald: If we could do it today we would tell you we probably need about 28,000,
is what we said in our committee testimony.
Scott Pelley: I'm sorry, 28,000?
Secretary McDonald: Yes. But wait a minute, Scott...
Scott Pelley: How long is that going to take?
Secretary McDonald: Well, it's going to take time. Because every adverse outcome that gets
amplified by the media doesn't help me. I was on...
Scott Pelley: You've got a bad reputation.
Secretary McDonald: I do. But we're changing it.
[Secretary McDonald: And it is the largest integrated health network in the United States.]
He's trying to change that reputation himself. McDonald is personally recruiting doctors
and nurses. This was Massachusetts General Hospital.
[Secretary McDonald: If you want to do research, clinical work and teach at the same time,
this is a great place to work...]
Later we caught him calling a young doctor that he'd met the day before.
[Secretary McDonald: I heard what a wonderful cardiologist you are. So we've got some state
of the art stuff we're doing here and we'd like to get you on board. And if you get to
Washington, I'd love to see you.]
And if you know the number of a good psychiatrist, McDonald needs to hire 2,500 mental health
professionals. Since 2006, 400,000 vets, many from Iraq and Afghanistan have applied for
mental health services.
Secretary McDonald: We've had an instance where we've spoken to the family and the family
has told us that the individual came to the VA and they got out of their car and they
took their own life in our parking lot because they knew that we could then deal with it.
And they didn't want to do it at home with their family.
Scott Pelley: Deal with their body?
Secretary McDonald: Well, deal with their tragedy.
There are many tragic, senseless failures around the VA, but we noticed something else
too.
[Man: If there is any bonuses to be given out, give them to these people.]
[Secretary McDonald: I will...]
Everywhere McDonald went, there were plenty of vets eager to praise their care, from rehab...
[Man: And there was a lot of other guys and ladies who you know was homeless like I had
became and we stayed like a family...]
...To a Boston homeless shelter funded by VA.
[Man: Thank you for coming, sir.]
[Secretary McDonald: It's my pleasure, you are kidding? I knew you were here. I wanted
to see you.]
While his staff gets used to "Secretary Bob" there's another term that they're learning.
He calls vets "customers," which to a Procter & Gamble-mind is both a compliment and a bond.
McDonald says, by next year, there will be one website, not 12. New patients will see
a doctor within 30 days and no one will wait for their benefits.
Scott Pelley: What do you owe these veterans? Not the VA. But Bob McDonald, what do you
owe these veterans?
Secretary McDonald: Well, this is very personal because I served with a lot of these guys.
And we were in very dangerous situations. And anytime you jump out of an airplane in
a parachute, you're putting your life in danger. And as a jumpmaster, you're checking that
person's equipment. And their life is reliant on yours. That's the kind of relationships
you create. Those are the relationships that drive me to do this.
For years now Steve Carell has been one of Hollywood's most reliable and highest paid
comedy stars, both on television and in the movies, a gifted, versatile performer equally
adept at sophisticated or sophomoric humor. But Carell says he's always considered himself
an actor who does comedy, not a comedian. It's particularly noteworthy right now, because
he's turned in one of the most unusual and remarkable screen performances of the year
in a new film, out this week, called "Foxcatcher." The role is about as far away from Carell's
personal and professional persona as you can get. Which always entails a certain amount
of risk.
This is the Steve Carell audiences have become familiar with over nearly a decade.
The lame-brained weatherman in the movie "Anchorman." The hairy 40-year-old virgin, who was told
he needed his chest waxed.
[Woman: We are going to need more wax.]
[Steve Carell: You f-----!]
And the well-meaning office manager who always managed to come up with just the wrong words.
[Steve Carell: Let me ask you is there a term besides Mexican that you prefer? Something
less offensive?]
But no one is going to recognize Steve Carell in "Foxcatcher," as the dark, delusional,
drug addicted and ultimately dangerous heir to one of America's oldest fortunes.
[Steve Carell: I am a patriot and I want to see this country soar again.]
[Channing Tatum: I want that too.]
Carell plays John e. du Pont, who in the 1980s became the patron to some of the best young
wrestlers in the country, enticing them to his 600-acre Pennsylvania estate with a lavish
training facility and dreams of Olympic gold.
[Steve Carell: As a coach, I want you to be champions in sport and winners in life.]
Steve Kroft: It was different than anything you had ever done.
Steve Carell: Completely different. I felt like I was experiencing something as opposed
to going in and acting for a camera. It was a different thing.
Steve Kroft: You're one of the most successful, highest-paid actors in Hollywood. Why would
you want to take the chance?
Steve Carell: Well, when you put it that way, it was really an ill-conceived idea. Frankly,
I'm glad we didn't have this talk when I was considering doing this. Well why not? Because
it was exciting and it was potentially something great. And why wouldn't you want to be part
of something like that?
It turned out to be a very good decision. The true-crime psychodrama about wealth, patriotism,
class, manipulation and murder has already won acclaim at film festivals around the world.
And so has Carell's performance in a magnificent ensemble cast that includes Channing Tatum,
Mark Ruffalo and Vanessa Redgrave. Director Bennett Miller, whose other films "Capote"
and "Moneyball" were both nominated for Academy Awards, spent eight years working on "Foxcatcher."
He didn't want anyone obvious to play du Pont. He was looking for someone benign and non-threatening
who had never shot anyone in a movie before. When Carell's name came up, Miller booked
a lunch.
Bennett Miller: To be totally honest with you, right after our first lunch, something
inside of me just clicked. You know, the coin dropped and I thought, "Oh, I could see that
I want that."
Steve Kroft: What happened at the lunch? What did he do during the lunch? What did he say
during the lunch that made you think that he was right?
Bennett Miller: Deadly serious. Deadly, deadly serious. Somebody who had read the script
and had done some research. And part of it is a commitment knowing that you're both feet
in. And that it might not necessarily be easy, but that, "I get it. And whatever it takes."
What it took was three months of long days on a lonely shoot with a small cast and crew
outside Pittsburgh. They would go over and often rework scenes well into the early morning
hours. There was not much time for small talk.
[Steve Carell: Hey Mark. Let's gear up. Practice in the gallery.]
Steve Kroft: Did you stay in character?
Steve Carell: Not in an actor-y sort of way but I think, inadvertently, we all sort of did.
Some of it had to do with Carell's makeup. He was almost always the first one on the
set because it took three hours to apply. He wore it all day until the shooting was
over.
Steve Carell: I think that just sort of lent to being in character. When I was around other
people, I got the sense that they didn't feel like they were around Steve. They were around
this other person.
Steve Kroft: That must've been pretty intense.
Steve Carell: It was intense. The whole thing was intense.
Steve Kroft: Did you enjoy this?
Steve Carell: I did. It wasn't fun. But I enjoyed it.
Carell has never been afraid of hard work or big challenges. He was born 52 years ago
and raised in an upper middle class family in Acton, Massachusetts, the youngest of four
boys. His father was an engineer his mother a psychiatric nurse. At Denison University
in Ohio, he graduated with a degree in history and theater, and preferring the latter, set
off to Chicago to try and make a career. After a few years as a starving actor, he got his
first big break with the famed Second City comedy company, which has produced the likes
Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi and Tina Fey.
Steve Kroft: That's a big job.
Steve Carell: Big job. Second City in Chicago was one of the best gigs you can have, I think,
in Chicago. It was a big deal.
[Steve Carell: You know I am going on about myself. What do you do?
[Woman: I'm a waitress at the crab shanty.]
[Steve Carell: Oh, no way. I used to stalk a woman from the crab shanty.]
For five years he often performed seven or eight shows a week before live audiences perfecting
his timing, expressions and reactions while improvising a reservoir of characters that
would serve him in the years to come. All of it was done alongside incredibly talented
people including his future wife Nancy Walls and Stephen Colbert, who he would later join
in New York in the earliest years of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."
[Stephen Colbert: Next question: Yes or no?]
[Steve Carell: Yes.]
[Stephen Colbert: No.]
[Steve Carell: Yes!]
[Stephen Colbert: Does the French election signal the re-emergence of fascism in Europe?]
[Steve Carell: Oui.]
[Stephen Colbert: Non.]
[Steve Carell: Oui!]
They were correspondents on "The Daily Show" together for five years. During which it rose
from a blip in the cable ratings to a mainstream hit.
Steve Carell: That was a terrifying show to do at first.
Steve Kroft: Why?
Steve Carell: You can't really describe it, professionally. Because you're not really
-- you're sort of an actor, but not really. You're definitely improvising. You're sort
of a correspondent-journalist. But none of us had any sort of journalistic background.
So you were winging it and pretending. We all dressed in suits, and we went and we had
little "Daily Show" logos on our microphones. And no one knew the show. And they just thought,
"Oh, you know, some cable outlet is covering the debate."
And before the politicians caught on, it produced moments like this one.
[Steve Carell: Senator, how do you reconcile that you were one of the most vocal critics
of pork-barrel politics and yet while you were chairman of the Commerce Committee, that
committee set a record for un-authorized appropriations?]
[Steve Carell: I'm just kidding. No, I don't even know what that means.]
Carell left "The Daily Show" in 2005 and in less than six months he had already filmed
a pilot for an American version of a British sitcom called "The Office" plus a movie he
had co-written with producer Judd Apatow based on a sketch he'd developed at Second City.
Steve Carell: The idea that I had was a group of guys playing poker and just regaling each
other with stories of sexual conquest and one guy who clearly didn't have a frame of
reference and was trying to keep up with these stories.
[Romany Malco: Are you a virgin?]
[Steve Carell: Yeah, not since I was 10.
[Seth Rogen: That makes so much sense. Look he is a virgin.]
[Steve Carell: Alright you guys are hilarious.]
The "40-Year-Old Virgin" would gross more than $100 million and over the course of one
weekend, change Carell's life. His popularity propelled "The Office" to a seven-year run,
at the end of which, Carell would be making $300,000 an episode.
And his career has not slowed down. By our count he has made 24 movies in the past 14
years, but he doesn't care much for celebrity and he tries to stay as far away from the
limelight as he possibly can.
Steve Kroft: Most people who are in comedy and most people in show business, like to
be the center of attention. I don't get that sense from you.
Steve Carell: I hate it. It's embarrassing.
Steve Kroft: Why?
Steve Carell: I just have never liked it and it sounds like I'm being precious when I say
that. Because I always did plays and I was always on stage. But that was different. Because
it wasn't me. But just as myself, yeah, I don't crave it. I don't know. I just don't,
it makes me uncomfortable.
When he's not on location, Carell splits his time between L.A. and Marshfield Hills, Massachusetts,
where he and his wife Nancy bought and restored this general store and post office that goes
back to the Civil War.
[Steve Kroft: Lots of candy.]
Both of their extended families still live around here and they were afraid that someone
would turn the store, which anchors the village, into a real estate office.
Steve Kroft: So you bought this place right when your career was beginning to take off.
Steve Carell: Yeah. Yeah. And, as a fall back. Just thought, "You know what, if it all goes
south, I still can man the cash register and sell penny candy." No, it's neat. I mean it's
a gathering place. And that was the draw for me, a place that people can come and hang
out. And there aren't that many places like that anymore.
Carell's sister-in-law runs the place. And Steve and Nancy spend their summers and holidays
here with their two children to give them a taste of life outside Los Angeles.
Steve Carell: I wanted to show you this. My mom knitted this. And she put a little, and
these are for sale.
Steve Kroft: Really?
Steve Carell: Yeah, she put a little tag on it. "Made by hand by Harriet Carell."
Steve Kroft: Wow, how many of these does she crank out?
Steve Carell: Oh, I have her working day and night. Because these things turn over, like,
"Come on, Mom. You have to pay for the roof of the house. Let's go."
Steve Kroft: It's beautiful. I can see why she would want her name on it.
Steve Carell: You're not taking it. You buy that.
When the camera aren't rolling the private Carell seems to be more shy, quiet and reserved,
keeping his feelings and his opinions about things to himself.
He and his wife Nancy are widely considered to be among the most normal people in Hollywood.
They drive their kids to school, rarely go out to glitzy events, and if they do, they
don't stick around for the party afterwards. Nancy, another veteran of Second City, "The
Daily Show" and "Saturday Night Live," says she was blown away by her husband's performance
in "Foxcatcher."
Nancy Carell: I just watched that, and I almost immediately forgot that I was watching my
husband up there. That was amazing to me.
Steve Kroft: He says he's not really a comedian. He's not that funny in real life. That he's
not a good conversationalist. That he's very socially awkward. Is that true?
Nancy Carell: What an attractive portrait you paint of yourself. Yeah, he's a real dud.
No. No, of course not. No, he's very funny, he just doesn't try as hard, he doesn't feel
the need to entertain people on a, you know, 24-hour basis.
With that said, Steve Carell laid back and did what he does about as well as anyone else:
play the straight man.
Steve Kroft: Did you ever think it was going to turn out this way? That you'd be living
here with all this money and all this fame, and...
Nancy Carell: I was counting on it.
Steve Kroft: Why do I feel like I'm in an improv sketch?
Steve Carell: Oh, it's what our kids deal with everyday.
Nancy Carell: No. I had every faith in your success. I knew he'd be successful. But I
think we thought he'd be successful in the Don Knotts kind of way. Seriously, though.
But, like, you know, Barney Fife was an, I mean, that's an incredible character on a
TV show. And that was my dream for you.
Steve Carell: Thank you.
Nancy Carell: You're welcome.