How Tom Hanks Helped Get Billy Joel’s ‘And So It Goes’ Documentary Made (Exclusive) originally appeared on Parade.
Actor Tom Hanks was glad to get into a “New York State of Mind” for his latest project.
Hanks, 69, serves as an executive producer for And So It Goes, the two-part documentary about Billy Joel’s rise to fame, but there was a lot he didn’t know about the singer before signing on to the project.
“The movie industry is all weighted around people with experiences,” co-executive producer and close friend of Joel’s, Steve Cohen, tells Parade. “And I think Tom’s curiosity about Billy Joel was kind of on par with [director] Susan [Lacy‘s] in the initial thing.”
“He knew the top line story about Billy, and I think where Tom’s involvement was important was in his selection of Susan Lacy, because he’s got a great deal of history with her and knew that as executive producer, if he recommended the person to tell that story, that’s just about as big a brush stroke as you can do in a situation like this. So, I’m very grateful.”
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Once his curiosity of Joel, 76, peaked, Hanks used his connections to help get the wheels of the project in motion.
“A little bit inside baseball, but Tom had a great relationship with HBO,” Cohen explains. “Susan, of course, had a wall-to-wall deal with HBO, so we knew that if we joined forces with these people, we would have a very high bar critically, because we all love the quality of the work that comes out on HBO. So that really was Tom’s basic involvement.”
“At the end of the day, it’s the filmmakers and it’s the storytellers, and we as executive producers are there to make sure that the ground is clear for them to be able to create.”
In the HBO project, Joel sits down for the first time to really open up about his life as a musician and how he got to where he is today. From details of his first marriage to Elizabeth Weber to saying goodbye to Hollywood, the documentary probes all aspects of Joel’s life and career. Several friends and family members add their thoughts regarding personal journey, answering any die-hard Billy Joel fans’ burning questions.
It wasn’t easy for Cohen to get Joel to sit down for the five interviews needed to complete the project. “It was very difficult,” Cohen says, “He doesn’t talk about this kind of stuff, and I think what ended up happening was, he originally said, ‘Look, you’ve got all you need from me in archives. I don’t need to do any interviews,’ and Susan was adamant, and said what’s important for us to tell this story is your reflection on these events from your perspective today, as a 76-year-old man. So, I think he was reluctant to sit down and do any interviews.”
“But Susan is amazing. She and Billy have a very common sort of through line. They’re both incredible appreciators of classical music. Billy was a trained classical musician. Susan comes from a classically trained family. They’re all musicians. They both share a similar back story in the fact that their families were both Holocaust survivors. So, I think that there was a resonance in the two of them as just people, and Susan has an incredible way of drawing something out.”
Part 2 of Billy Joel:And So It Goes will be available to stream on Friday, July 25, at 8 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.
How Tom Hanks Helped Get Billy Joel’s ‘And So It Goes’ Documentary Made (Exclusive) first appeared on Parade on Jul 25, 2025
This story was originally reported by Parade on Jul 25, 2025, where it first appeared.
