Can Michael Keaton Talk to You for a Minute, Batman to Man?

There’s this guy you’ve known a long time. You like him. You’re from the same hometown, and even though he’s done well for himself he hasn’t forgotten his roots. He usually keeps his politics to himself, but this election has gotten to him. So when he leans in to talk, you hear him out.

The guy is Batman. Beetlejuice. Mr. Mom. The world knows him as Michael Keaton, but in the neighborhood where he grew up in Pittsburgh, just south of the Point where the three rivers come together downtown, he was known by his birth name, Mike Douglas—George and Leona’s youngest.

He brings his parents up when he talks about the vote on November 5. “I’m from Western Pennsylvania where I was raised by two really great parents who taught me the right way to live. Hopefully I’ve lived up to that,” he says in a video posted three days ago to his Instagram page. He never mentions a candidate’s name, but rattles off a list of selfish and demeaning actions that are unmistakable. “A lot of you are like me. You were raised by great parents. When you go into that booth, before you check that box, or punch that ballot, I want you to ask yourselves: Is that how I would want my son or daughter to live?” Keaton says. “Is that how your mother and father raised you? I don’t think so.”

He bends your ear for less than a minute. “He’s not one of you,” Keaton says finally. “And I don’t think you’re like him.”

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The actor sounds like another Pittsburgh native son, Fred Rogers, who always appealed to people’s better nature. That’s no accident. In addition to what he learned from his parents, Keaton picked up a lot from his first showbiz job, working as a production assistant and sometimes-actor on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood at Pittsburgh’s WQED public television station.

In a season of celebrity endorsements, Keaton’s handful of messages stand out for their simplicity and sincerity. There’s no script, no crew, no production values. Just a 73-year-old dude propping up his phone and pushing the record button.

Keaton reaches out specifically to people on the fence, the kind who might not share the same party politics as Kamala Harris, but know deep down that Donald Trump is unstable. He cites high-ranking career service members, like General Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who worked closely with Trump and have called the ex-president dangerous and unfit. “I happen to like her,” Keaton says in an October 27 post. “I’m a fan. You don’t have to be. But you can’t have that as our future.”

In another video, he speaks like someone who sees a buddy falling in with the wrong crowd: “For some of you folks—guys mostly, I guess—who are thinking about attending a rally with Musk and Trump… They don’t really respect you,” he says. “They laugh at you behind your back … They’re not your ‘bros.’” That’s notable for another reason: He’s reaching out to men, a much-needed demographic that has been lagging for Democrats.

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Before the election, Keaton’s Instagram was usually reserved for talking about typical dad stuff. This summer, he posted a video of a sax-playing street busker on the Roberto Clemente Bridge in downtown Pittsburgh that he shot while taking his grandson to a Pirates game. Keaton hypes music from his songwriter son, he posts videos of his dog chasing a stick, and he boasts that the Steelers started their season winning back-to-back games that fell on the same two weekends that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice topped the box office. (There must be a connection.)

As a fellow Pittsburgher, I reached out to talk to him about why he decided he had to speak up, how he’s approaching it, and how his roots in Western Pennsylvania factor into it all.

First of all, why is it that whenever two people are from Pittsburgh and they meet anywhere else in the world, there’s an immediate connection?

Michael Keaton: That is 100% true. That absolutely happens. You can be in Copenhagen, you could be in Morocco, I don’t care, if someone’s from Pittsburgh, the first question is, “Well, what part?” You might know someone in common from there.

There’s something about that region that makes you feel like we’re all in it together.

Hopefully we are all in it together. I worry about that. I mean, you can say that sounds Pollyannaish or that sounds unrealistic. We’re literally are all in this together.

So what part of Western PA are you from?

I grew up in between McKees Rocks, where my mother was born and raised. The Rocks was a very working-class, very tough little town. I grew up between there and a town called Coraopolis, which was down on the Ohio River. They both were mill towns.

In one of your videos, you talked about your mom and dad. Can you tell me about them?

I was just with my brothers. They were out in Montana with me, where I live part of the time. We’re bird hunters and they always like to reminisce about these old stories. We were talking about how my dad never really graduated from high school, but he got the GED and he became a civil engineer. He was a commissioner for a minute in the township, and then the county surveyor for a while. My mom was a housewife who volunteered a lot at the hospital and went to mass literally every morning.

You had a huge family, right?

Seven of us.

Where do you fall?

I’m in the bottom. Yeah, I was just talking to another baby of the family. These 70-year-old babies of the family. We were talking about hand-me-downs. I never knew anything but. I mean, I wore what my brothers outgrew.

Was politics talked about a lot at home?

In my house, the local guys would come down and seek my dad’s counsel in a way. And so he knew how the township worked. He knew everybody. I distinctly remember the cigarette smoke and the coffee going. My mom kept us home from school the day Jack Kennedy was inaugurated, because it was a big deal that an Irish Catholic was elected. There was always politics being discussed in my house, so I’m used to this kind of conversation. I’m just not used to the conversation now. It’s just insane. If there was a Democrat running right now, who is saying the kind of things that Trump says, there’s no way on earth I would ever vote for this person—ever. Ever, ever, ever, ever.

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What gets to you the most?

First of all, I take some of this personally. My mom had a massive stroke when I was 18, and she was handicapped from then on. So, not that I would’ve ever been interested in him, but once he started mocking handicapped people…. Man, I was out. I was so out.

What do you have in mind when you make your videos? Who are you trying to talk to?

Here’s what it is. I don’t know if maybe there are 11 votes out there to be had for Harris. Maybe there are 11 undecideds. I’m talking about the kind of people you and I know. These are decent human beings that must be thinking—and I hate this expression—that they’re going to hold their nose and vote.

What bothers you about that?

Well, if you have to hold your nose for something, it ain’t good. You have to look at yourself in the mirror and say, “Wait a minute, hold on a minute. I have to really think about this.” I know some of these folks, and I don’t believe they’re going to feel great once they cast that vote for him. I just don’t think they’re going to feel good at all.

The video you made about your parents reminded me of when Fred Rogers got a lifetime achievement award, and instead of a speech he asked the audience to take a moment to quietly remember someone who “helped you become who you are.” You worked on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, another famous Pittsburgher. When you said in your video about Trump: “He’s not one of you … And I don’t think you’re like him,” it reminded me of him. Was he an influence on you too?

When I worked at the station, one of the jobs was you worked on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and sometimes that just meant setting up the sets, lighting the set, breaking it down, and also anything else. I would jump at any opportunity at that station to get in front of the camera—and Fred knew it. So occasionally he’d make me Purple Panda. And I ran trolley for him a couple of times. But I’ll tell you, smartass me kept thinking, “There’s no way he is authentic. There’s no way.” I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it took about maybe 10 days and I realized the shoe was never going to drop. This is who this guy was. So people can laugh at him, make fun of him. You could do all that. But he was the real deal. We’re fortunate to come out of that time.

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I think he captured something good about the spirit of our hometown. He distilled the decency of people who knew they had to help each other.

Yeah, it comes down to that, doesn’t it? I mean, what we’re saying is so obvious. I mean, we’re not saying anything that is that extraordinary. When I did a tape for Biden last election, one of the things I talked about was, at some point, it’s pretty simple: You either are going to stand by common decency or you’re not. I’m going to make myself vomit here in a minute if I keep talking about it, but it’s the truth.

People might not associate Mister Rogers with toughness, but he had a gentle strength about him. It was reassuring.

Where we grew up, these kind of towns, they’re always really tough guys. I mean physically tough. Just badass guys. But every time, the guy with the loudest mouth, the big talker, wasn’t the true tough guy. The quiet guys were the tough guys. And so this whole thing about Trump’s toughness is such an obviously insecure cry for whatever his issue is. And it’s okay if a person has those issues, but your issues can’t affect a country. You know what I’m saying?

You mentioned making a video for Biden during the last election, but you only recently started posting more about Kamala Harris. Did you feel any hesitation about weighing in, given how divided everything is?

I run the risk of being another annoying celebrity, but it’s worth it to me. And I think it’s important to walk the line and thread that needle of not being annoying, I guess. Just having people use common sense and listen to you and not do a knee-jerk reaction, which I’m certainly guilty of, instead of screaming and yelling and ridiculing.

What I found moving about your videos is you’re reaching out to people’s better nature. Compassion for people who disagree is something missing from the discourse.

If I’m going out, I want to go out on the upside. I don’t want to go dark and negative. I just don’t want to.

You’re not saying, “You’re a dummy, you’re a bigot.” You’re saying, “Just think about it. You’re better than this.”

Well, I’m sure you have friends, and in my own family that are Trump supporters, but we have too much love in my family to risk throwing that out. So we’re very, very careful. To be honest with you, mostly 99% of the time, we just don’t bring up politics. By and large, it’s not worth risking relationships like that. It’s just not.

But you have a relationship with your audience too. In your Biden video, you said: “You may not want to hear from me, and I understand that, but come on … I’m freakin’ Batman.”

Oh, of course.

It’s almost like, “Hey, if I made you laugh or I made you cheer for me over the years, can that buy me a minute of your time?”

Thank you. You hit it on the head right there. And you have to keep a sense of humor. It’s important. We could go down the list of reasons to vote for one person or not to vote for another person. But if you had to break it down to one thing [about Trump], the man has a total and a 100% inability to laugh at himself. And the great thing about her is she’s the exact opposite. She has an extreme ability and openness to laugh at herself. She just does. You know why? She’s funny. She has a great sense of humor.

That brings us to our last question, and I saved the absolute hardest for the end… Who would Beetlejuice endorse?

Oh man, you know what? I’m afraid to turn him loose.

He’s not a good guy, so he wouldn’t necessarily do the right thing. But maybe he’s not that bad either.

He may not be a good guy, but he’s also not a dumb guy. He’s not a gullible guy. He’s essentially an anarchist, which is worrisome.

He’d go third party on us.

That’s right. [Laughs.] He’s got a tattoo of Robert Kennedy Jr. on his back, probably.

This Q&A has been edited for context and clarity.