Sam Simon: It’s basically one week of chemotherapy on, one week off. It used to be that when I was off, I would bounce back and start feeling good. But I get every possible side effect — fatigue, nausea — and the chemo accumulates in your body, so today and tomorrow are, like, my two good days for the month. So I’m feeling pretty good today, and, you know, we shall see.
THR: What is your work schedule like?
Simon: I do half a day a week on Anger Management on FX. Whatever they’re doing, I just sit in with the writing that day. And I do my radio show [on Radioio.com]. That’s a good workload for me. I’m not supposed to drive anymore, but I do. I got into three accidents on my way home between Wilshire and 16th to here. I think they give me too much Ativan. That’s the way it is now.
THR: How active can you be with your charitable work right now?
Simon: I was never that hands-on with any of it. I’ve just been fortunate to find great people to run things. Frankly, one of the pleasures of the foundation is hanging out with the people because they are some of the nicest people in my life.
THR: How did you get involved in animal rights?
Simon: I was just an animal lover. Everything that the Sam Simon Foundation does is supposed to help dogs and people — that’s our mission. I like dogs and meeting people whose dogs we’ve saved with our free-surgery day. When The Drew Carey Show did a show about greyhound racing, I was on the show and asked the writer for a script change. I didn’t think it affected the story at all, but they didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to take any money from this episode and [wanted] to make a statement about dog racing, so I donated my money from this episode to PETA. So PETA set up this photo shoot and were supposed to get these six dogs from this California greyhound rescue on this [race] track. I got up there, and there were no dogs. They said that the greyhound track found out about the PETA shoot, so if they put their dogs in the shoot, they were going to kill the six dogs that the rescue was going to get the next month. I just thought that was pretty startling. Then I started hanging around with those PETA maniacs, and it’s a slippery slope, and I just slipped all the way down to the bottom.