Debbie Millman:
Josh Brolin has led a wild life, and I’m not just referring to his acting career in his just-released memoir, From Under the Truck, we learned that he started stealing cigarettes at nine, got stabbed in the belly button in Costa Rica, and had a stint in prison. From Under The Truck is a book about Josh Brolin’s trajectory as an artist and an actor, but it’s also about what it was like to grow up on a ranch with a mercurial mother, hit it big in a movie as a teenager, become a day trader in his 20s, and be nominated for an Academy Award at 40. Josh Brolin, welcome to Design Matters.

Josh Brolin:
Thank you, Debbie. Thank you so much for having me on.

Debbie Millman:
Josh, I understand you do a wildly impressive Richard Burton impersonation.

Josh Brolin:
From who? Who said that?

Debbie Millman:
I read that somewhere in my research.

Josh Brolin:
I don’t know. You know who does the greatest Richard Burton impression, who’s from the same area is Tony Hopkins. There’s nobody that does a better Richard Burton impression than Tony Hopkins, but mine’s okay.

Debbie Millman:
Okay.

Josh Brolin:
I’ll throw it in there somewhere along the line, but I feel moved.

Debbie Millman:
Well, congratulations on the publication of your memoir, From Under the Truck.

Josh Brolin:
Thank you. Thank you.

Debbie Millman:
You’ve said that writing the book was perhaps the most humbling experience of your life and definitely the hardest you’ve ever worked on anything, and I’m wondering why so humbling and why so hard?

Josh Brolin:
I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s true, if it’s the hardest I’ve ever worked on anything because the work ethic aspect of my life I think is set, and it has always been set. I remember when my dad said at one point, “I remember when you went to war,” and I don’t know when that was. I think it was sometime in my 20s. It was meant as a positive, as an affirmation that I finally said, “I’m not going to play with this. I’m not going to just kind of dip my finger in this. I’m going to give myself entirely to it.” And it was the same thing with the book, I’ve always written, and I think when I finally decided to stop writing books and putting them in a dark corner to start disintegrating and tell nobody about it, I said, “Put it out there.”

There’s something that happens in your 50s, where you just kind of say the fear is a different type… My relationship with fear has changed. I don’t care as much anymore, or even if I do, I care about slightly different things, and there’s going to be negative connotations to everything that I do, maybe that’s being in this acting business for 40 years. So my version of fuck it finally came to fruition and I just wrote it, but I cared. So I care about sentence structure, and I care about writing a literarily viable book. It’s not just about, “Hey guys, look at my life. I was four years old, and they knew I was going to be a performer. They knew it from the start. Then I met famous people and life just got great.” I’m not interested in that trajectory.

Debbie Millman:
If only it were that easy.

Josh Brolin:
If only it were that easy.

Debbie Millman:
Now, I understand it was your dad who first encouraged you to write down or draw what you were thinking on a piece of paper as a little boy and I believe you have… I read that you have something like 90 journals.

Josh Brolin:
I do. Yeah. I don’t know if it was my dad. Interviews are great because you guys end up finding out things that I don’t even know or I haven’t thought about in 40 years or 50 years. Maybe he did. There’s a book that he used to read called Cyber-Cybernetics and say it was going to change your life. He still mentions it. He’s 84 years old, and he’s still talking about the same book, but I think that there’s something in that book and The Art of Dramatic Writing. God, I haven’t thought of that book forever. I think it’s Lajos Egri or something like that, and he mentioned that book to me at a very young age. I think I was in my teens, and I read it. For some reason for me, the expression of writing was the one place I could be completely honest.

Debbie Millman:
Why do you think that is?

Josh Brolin:
I don’t know. And when I look back at those journals, some are very angry, some are very contracted, and then there’s things that are very poetical about them. And in the way I was looking at things that I didn’t feel like I could express to my little ruffian buddies because I thought I would get slammed for it. So it was the one place of solace and liberation I found myself was in journals. Yeah.

Debbie Millman:
You described From Under the Truck as unconventional nonfiction. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Josh Brolin:
I would probably describe me as nonconventional nonfiction or a bit fictional. Jennifer, a mutual friend, Pastiloff, she sent me something this morning. Somebody had asked a child about writing in their journal, “Have you written your journal yet?” And the child responded, “No, the words are still stuck in the pencil.” And I said, “I want to think on that plane all the time.” You just hit the nail on the head of… And whether it’s absurd, whether it’s considered absurd or not, there’s something about that leap of the imagination that I want to live in all the time. And I don’t think it’s wrong to live in that all the time. It doesn’t negate the practicalities of life.

So I think that when I was… I think I was around… I was in ninth grade in high school, and there was a guy named Mr. Visser, and I was writing, it was an English class, it was a lit class. And he came by and he was reading my stuff and he said, “Technically, you’re all over the place.” He didn’t say that. He used other words, the F word, but he said, “All you need to do is write, just keep writing.” So there was something about my writing that he felt was going to flourish at some time. So there was always some focus on it from the outside of people who took the time to, and I say this emotionally, see me. I had my outer layers, surfer, tough, fighting, drinking and all that stuff, and then there was this softer, more imaginative person that didn’t feel like he had the space to live that outwardly. So journals were that for me.

Debbie Millman:
Early on in the book, you state that you have made your life harder than it needed to be.

Josh Brolin:
For sure. I learned from the best.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah. Well, let’s talk a little bit about your upbringing. You grew up on a 230-acre ranch in California. You were primarily raised by your mother, who in many ways is the centerpiece of this book. And you describe her in the book in this way, and I’m going to quote you, “She was armored with a character so unique and memorable that to die would be an insult to her mythology. She’d be leaving behind an easy breeze, a cloudless sky, no music on the radio. She was the zap in every electrical current we had felt. She was the alcohol in a mixed drink. She was the wildness in a sunset just after a horrible storm had passed.” There’s a really vivid description. I’m wondering if you would describe her as happy.

Josh Brolin:
No, but I too don’t think that’s the goal. There’s something that I mentioned in my book, and not to insult my father at all, but I think that there was this idea, this status quo idea of waking up in the morning and saying, “Good morning, are you happy?” And I’m like, “Why is that the goal all the time?” So I think that my mother and what I got from my mother is maybe a little too much. You embrace whatever’s going on. Life is a potpourri, and sometimes you’re angry and sometimes you’re sad, and sometimes you can’t explain it. And sometimes you’re ashamed for no particular reason that maybe you can pull from your past. And it’s this kind of therapeutic idea that if you just go to the right therapy, you can exercise that thing that will finally set you free. And what I’ve learned in doing a lot of therapy and just from a very, very early age, 13 years old, I was paying for my own therapy.

Debbie Millman:
Really?

Josh Brolin:
Yeah. There was a guy who used to go to sleep on me that was therapeutic literally, but that’s what I mean by making it tough. I wanted to experience everything. I wanted to know. I was curious. And I don’t say this from a victimized place, coming from the chaos that I came from, I became insatiably curious about why do people do what they do, why are they reacting like they’re reacting, but I’ve found later on in life that it’s my relationship with it that makes the difference. Tony Hopkins had said something to me once, he said… Sober. He said, “How great is it that we’re like this?” And I was like, “What? What does that mean? What?”

And he said, “We’re just angry. We’re edgy.” I go, “Why is that a good thing? Is that a good thing,” I said. And he’s been sober 40-something years and one of the greatest human beings I know. And he said, “Yeah, because alcoholics given this thing that this engine that seems to live in us that never quite idles properly left to its own devices can be the most hurtful destructive thing imaginable, but directed in the right way, given the right tools can be the most productive enlivening thing imaginable.” So that was a moment in my life where I was like, “Oh, it’s my relationship with it,” as opposed to having to change and be somebody else and get rid of something that is innate in me.

Debbie Millman:
You became sober at 29, two years after your mother died. What provoked you to try and stop living with the anger in such a destructive way?

Josh Brolin:
I think there was another level of drinking and using I went to try and get closer to my mother. It was almost like I was writing a true crime novel, and I was at the epicenter of it. The night my mother died, she had pulled a .22 on her boyfriend that was saying, “I’m out of here.” And he was trying to leave and she said, “You’re not going anywhere.” And then she was chasing him in the car, and she ended up turning a corner that I know very well because we still have that ranch and then hit the tree at 70 miles an hour or whatever, and everything was heightened. So I think I just heightened what was already stratospheric, and it scared me. And I didn’t choose. There was an intervention with some friends. I always liked sober people because they were more honest and could count on them. And people said, “I think it’s time.” And I tried it, and I stayed sober for a while, but I didn’t stay sober forever. I never wanted to stay sober because I felt like sober was invisible.

Debbie Millman:
What does that mean?

Josh Brolin:
It means that I didn’t feel like I had a personality on my own. I felt what drinking did for me, and it absolutely did do it for me for a while. It gave me a personality. It gave me a voice. I didn’t have the fear filter, the massive fear filter that everything had to be pushed through. I’m scared. I’m sober. I go talk to a girl. She’s not interested in me. I’m polite. I’m this. I’m drunk. I put out my hand. A girl grabs it, and we’re together for the next three months or three years.

I don’t know why that works that way. I don’t like that it works that way. I don’t know if it has to do with confidence or false confidence or whatever it is, but it seemed that when I drank, it all went more smoothly until it didn’t, until it bit me in the ass, and it always eventually bit me in the ass. And now sober, I think to cut to years and decades later, there’s a form of sobriety that I feel that I’ve found that deals with the fear as well as and much less self-destructively or destructively than alcohol did, but alcohol was a great friend for a while.

Debbie Millman:
Well, you said that your childhood… And this is a quote from the book, your childhood was on a leash of the whims of your mother, and your world revolved around country, western, outlaw 18-wheeler culture. Great line. Now, this included drugs, a lot of drinking, performing in a punk band, surfing with a group named the Cleo Rats-

Josh Brolin:
Cito Rats.

Debbie Millman:
… [inaudible 00:13:45] this stint in juvenile detention and prison. Now, you said that if you weren’t in prison at the time that you were, you’d have been dead. Why is that?

Josh Brolin:
Well, it was the Cito Rats, C-I-T-O.

Debbie Millman:
Oh, sorry about that.

Josh Brolin:
No, no, no, that’s okay. Because I’ll have a couple of guys call me, for sure. Why would I be dead? Because a lot of us died, a ton of us, not a few, 36. So there were a lot of guys that I grew up with because there was the heroin epidemic, there was punk rock, there was just normal self-destructive. Everything that we’re talking about that was heightened and more vivid living from my mother was also a culture that I was in the nucleus of in Santa Barbara, and you can’t even tell that story because it’s fricking Montecito. So you mentioned Montecito and self-destruction, and people go, “Oh, silver spoon self-destruction. I get it.” You know what I mean? And back then it wasn’t like that, it was a very… I’ve never seen anything before it or since. It was all kind of instigated by this Sid Vicious mentality, Sex Pistols mentality, and it doesn’t exist anymore.

I’m in Santa Barbara again, it’s lovely here. I’m more geriatric, and I’ve found a flow. But we moved back to Santa Barbara fairly recently, and I contracted a mild case of Bell’s palsy. I was so scared of moving back. I was telling my wife, “You don’t understand. You’re not supposed to understand, but if we move there, our little girls are going to end up in prison. Do you understand? This place is paradise in disguise. There is an underbelly,” and it’s not. It was, but it’s not. There was something about that time and place and that group of kids and how parents were in the ’80s, that all lent itself to a lot of… Destroying a lot of really brilliant people who I miss dearly.

Debbie Millman:
Josh, you talk about your brother in your memoir, and I want to read a line that was one of the most moving and really sad. Your mother hired a woman named Ramona to help her, and you describe her in the book as your mother for seven years, but she left to raise her own children, and you include the date. You remember the date, September 4th, 1981. You were 13 years old, and you describe your brother in the following way, “Jess was nine, and that was the last I saw him, for it was at that moment when he drove his personality inside the garage of his brain and closed the door.” Did he ever come out?

Josh Brolin:
No. Yes, he came out in his own way, in a way that he could control, in a way that made him comfortable just like I did. I think how he dealt with his surroundings was very different because he’s a different person. I think he-

Debbie Millman:
And younger, yeah.

Josh Brolin:
And younger. But I think he got… The irritation toward my brother was more than what I got. I got the normal severe, albeit severe impatience, but my brother didn’t have fight in him. He had violence in him, but he didn’t have fight. He didn’t have wherewithal. I just think he was more sensitive. He was more affected. I protected him as much as I could. And then I kind of went off and did my own thing once that Cito Rat deal started to happen. But I think my dad describes it now, he said, “You were very protective. You were always shaming us for the bad parents that we were toward Jess.” I talk to my brother all the time now, so he’s doing very well. I mean, I called him about writing that stuff and I said, “Are you okay with this? I wanted to check. Are you okay?” And there’s some things that I read to my brother and he is like, “Yeah, I don’t think that’s how it went,” which is always going to be the case-

Debbie Millman:
Absolutely.

Josh Brolin:
… because his perception and my perception of it, but I think we’re a pretty open family now, and we kind of look at it through the lens of absurdity, and I think pleased that we survived it. There’s a lot of humor in my family. There’s a lot of compensatory humor in my family. So we exist on that plane most of the time.

Debbie Millman:
You got your first movie role, the starring part in the 1985 Steven Spielberg story, The Goonies. You were 17 years… I just re-watched it by the way. It still holds up. It still holds up. You stated that to prepare for the part you were reading Stanislavski, and you asked Steven Spielberg if the tunnel in the film was a metaphor for your mother’s womb.

Josh Brolin:
Womb. I can remember it like it was yesterday. I remember his face being very patient and nodding while I was talking. And then he’s looked down and then he looked up and he said, “You know what? Why don’t you just say the words that are on the page?” And I was like, “Okay, that’s what I’ll do.” I want it to be good. I want it to be-

Debbie Millman:
Of course.

Josh Brolin:
I want it to be good. I was reading Stanislavski. I was reading Grotowski. I was reading Antonin Artaud. I was reading about the Theater of Cruelty. I was in it. I was in it. I just want it to be better.

Debbie Millman:
I think that’s probably one of the themes of your whole life if you wanted outsider’s perspective now that I read your memoir. Your next two movies were Thrashin’ in 1986 and Finish Line in 1989, and you didn’t make another movie for another five years. And you said the problem back then was that you were a C-minus actor who had no nuance, no depth, and no innate natural skill. You began to supplement your income as a landscape artist and then day trading. What made you decide to play the stock market?

Josh Brolin:
I had met a friend, Brett Markinson, who’s still a close friend, and I had met him. I did something called Into the West. It was like a mini-series. It was a Western mini-series. And I had done an episode of that, and they flew us to New York to promote it, and they were flying us back. And it was a friend of a friend, Skeet Ulrich, who introduced me to Brett Markinson. And we just laughed for six hours on the plane back. And I asked him what he did and he said he trades stocks, and I said I was always a math guy. I was always very good at math. I was always the guy who was actually looking for extra credit from the math teacher because I had just enjoyed doing that. And he said, “Yeah, well, it’s all about reading graphs.” And then I just started asking question after question after question, and I liked him and he liked talking. He liked teaching.

So I wasn’t making a lot of money. I was working once every 12 months, 14 months or something like that. I never was in a position for two decades to know while I was doing a job what the next job was going to be. I always went this long span of time auditioning and seeing the normal people in the hallways. And thank you for coming in, Josh. That was wonderful. Lie. And knowing that I wouldn’t hear from them again, popping up from behind the couch and pretending like I have a gun with my thing, and I’m in the black forest in Germany, whatever it is. You know what I mean? It’s all so ridiculous and just shame spiraling my way through this career. And when I would finally get a job, it was great. But trading just brought, I don’t know, it allowed me to utilize a part of my brain and find my way through this labyrinth of discipline that I really enjoyed because he said, “Any instinct that you have in trading is meaningless.” I have a feeling this is going to happen, should not exist in your vocabulary.

Look at the graph. It’s all practical. And once you really learn how to start reading the graphs, all you’ll see is fear and greed, and you’re playing off that. You’re playing off momentum stocks. You’re playing off the foundation of a company. You’re not looking for the big win. You’re just looking for little breaths on an upward trajectory. And I did, and I got it, and I made a lot of money. And I would never do that today because I don’t have the time and a bunch of young kids. I remember when I was trading, my older kids, they’d be like, “We have to go to school. Please God, get in the car.” I’d be like, “One more. I’ll be right there. I’ll be right there. I’ll be right there, yo.” And it’s not gambling. It was really a design, and I had a lot of fun doing it. So I won more than I lost, and that was the point. And I was able to survive a little bit longer and still call myself an actor.

Debbie Millman:
At that time, you described it being one when no one wanted to hire you, you would then cast as, and this is actually one of my favorite roles of yours, as the bisexual ATF agent in David O. Russell’s brilliant-

Josh Brolin:
Brilliant.

Debbie Millman:
… 1996 film, Flirting with Disaster, which co-starred Ben Stiller, Lily Tomlin. Oh, she’s amazing in that film.

Josh Brolin:
Amazing.

Debbie Millman:
Patricia Arquette. Now, I read that you actually improvised the scene where you lick Patricia Arquette’s armpit.

Josh Brolin:
Yeah.

Debbie Millman:
True?

Josh Brolin:
Yeah. That was just supposed to be a kiss. We filmed it. It was supposed to be a peck. And David O. Russell very smartly said, “This is boring. It’s not working.” I said, “What about… I don’t know, what if I suck on her toe or what about something like that?” And then we’re thinking about it. He said, “Suck on her toe. I don’t know.” And then Patricia said, “What about licking the armpit?” And she had grown out her hair for that role. It was more like a hippie mom. And I was like, “Nah, I don’t know about that idea. That’s not…” And David goes, “Oh, that’s great.” So we did it. We’d have wet wipes on the side to wipe off my tongue. And then David says, “I know the armpit hair is really getting in the way for me.” So then we did it a third time with no armpit hair, and that was the one.

Debbie Millman:
Your role in that movie… I don’t know. I feel like that’s the movie where you became an actor. You were so good in that movie.

Josh Brolin:
Thank you.

Debbie Millman:
You were unrecognizable in that movie.

Josh Brolin:
Thank you.

Debbie Millman:
In so many ways.

Josh Brolin:
I had done a lot of theater before that with Anthony Zerbe, and I felt like I had done roles like that in the past. I had just never… I was still stuck, I think in people’s minds in a certain way. It was a jock or they didn’t know what to do with me or that… So Miramax did not want me to do that film. They actively tried to get David to get somebody else to do this film.

Debbie Millman:
Why?

Josh Brolin:
Because I think, at that point, what was I? 27, my mom had just passed during the rehearsals of that film. And I just think I was a guy in their minds that should have hit and didn’t. So I was like damaged goods. I was rotting fruit. I think that role was like Mark Wong or something. I wasn’t even right for the role, the way it was written. Wong was not me, but I came in and I auditioned. They let me audition. I kind of improvised through some things and he really liked me, so he forced me down their throats. And then I ended up being like a Miramax guy after that, and he used me for several roles until I turned down a role, and then I was blacklisted for 10 years.

Debbie Millman:
At that point, did you feel like your acting had improved? Because I forgot that you were in that movie. I forgot that it was you in that movie. It was such from all of your previous roles. When I was looking at your filmography, I’m like, “Oh, my God. He’s in one of my favorite movies,” and I didn’t even realize it.

Josh Brolin:
I love that movie. I love that experience. And I was such a fish out of water because like I said, I had done roles like that on stage, and I was a Harley guy, and I was riding my Harley to work. And so there was some rebellious thing that I was playing out some idea of that. And then you see Alan Alda, Lily Tomlin, Richard Jenkins, Mary Tyler Moore, George Segal. And I’m like, “You’ve got to be…” I so don’t belong here. I don’t blame Miramax for not wanting me. Why am I here? And we developed that character, he was just a bisexual ATF agent.

And we did the tattoos, we did the armpit licking thing. We did the scene in the back of the car where we’re talking about proper blowjobs and all that kind of stuff. And it was really fun because I felt like, was I a better actor? No, but I felt like it was more along the lines of my sensibilities. It was character. It was what interested me, what are people about, what’s behind the cosmetic presentation, it’s like when I researched Wall Street too. When you take a bunch of billionaires out, they’re going to present a certain type, get them drunk, and then you get to find out some real stuff, and I found out some real stuff.

Debbie Millman:
Two movies figure prominently in your memoir, The Goonies and the 2007 film, No Country for Old Men, which was the first movie you made with the Coen brothers. What made you decide to focus on these specific films?

Josh Brolin:
There’s something about my… Even saying, I enjoy being an actor was tough for me for a very long time. There was something emasculating, emotionally emasculating about the idea of saying, “Yes, I’m an actor, that’s what I do.”

Debbie Millman:
Why is that?

Josh Brolin:
I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s the celebrity that I experienced my dad kind of endure. There was never a celebration in it. There was always a massive discomfort in it. And I think this idea, this confusion of are you an actor or are you a celebrity? Do you know what I mean?

Debbie Millman:
Yeah.

Josh Brolin:
And I’ve always said that with any kind of success in this industry, people immediately resort to this idea that you are walking through a life on a red carpet just waving at people. And this is part of the memoir, is in reaction to that. You go, “Listen, it’s all dirty, it’s all messy. We’re all trying to find our way through the muck and the molasses, and find our value and what that means and that changes and all that.” And that’s to me, what becomes this celebrated communal experience, is when we all go, “Oh, we’re all going through different versions of the same thing. How great. Cool. Let’s lean on each other. Let’s share with each other.”

So I think if there’s any intention, it’s that. So I lean away from this idea of like… And then I was nominated. And there was Michael Shannon and there was Robert Downey, and we’re looking at each other and we’re going, “I hope it’s me. I hope it’s me.” Of course, it’s going to be Heath because Heath had just died and it just would have been horrible had it not been Heath and he deserved it anyway. But who really deserves it and what is the academy anyway? I mean, I could go through all that, but it’s super boring to me.

Debbie Millman:
Well, during the filming of No Country for Old Men, you met the writer, Cormac McCarthy, and you became friendly with him. And you write in the memoir about a conversation you had with him about your careers and the realization that there is the work… I’m going to quote you, “There is the work, then there are those who respond to the work. That’s it. You’re a genius and you’re a disaster of an artist are close cousins.”

Josh Brolin:
Yes, yes. I don’t know who wrote that, but that’s cool.

Debbie Millman:
Well, you quoted it.

Josh Brolin:
I know.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah. I think that was you, Josh, I think that was you.

Josh Brolin:
I did. I wrote that.

Debbie Millman:
I don’t think that was Cormac.

Josh Brolin:
I’m proud of that. No, it wasn’t Cormac. And the funny thing and why I think Cormac liked me and why I loved him, was there was me trying to find out what writers inspired him. And that moment in the memoir where I tried to get him to sign a typewriter, and he just would have none of it. He just wasn’t interested. He was interested in talking about the Santa Fe Institute and the scientists around him. And he was much more interested in the alchemy of things than he was in the status of things.

So, he did give me that one moment where he was like, Hemingway’s short stories were pretty good.” I was like, “Thank you.” But I’m sure it’s like Brando talking about acting. There is just an innate talent. Cormac said it to me. He says, “I don’t know what I do. I just sit down and it comes.” And I think that was probably the most astute, honest thing that I had ever heard anybody say professionally where some people just have a talent and a gift. And whatever they’re working out and sentence structure in their head, they refuse to take anything less than what they know is the best of what they can do, but it’s all a very quiet, silent process.

Debbie Millman:
But it’s also about sitting down and doing it every day.

Josh Brolin:
And he did it every day. I was with Cormac the night before he died. It was me, his ex-wife and his son, and that’s it, helping him drink little sips of Diet Coke. And he was starting to go, and yet, he was telling amazing stories about him drinking wine in Paris with Andre the Giant and these crazy stories that were so fun that he was telling that night. But he still had on a little tiny piece of wood, that typewriter that he’d written 25 years of books on that was right at the foot of his bed right up until the moment he died. So he did, he just did, and I liked the idea of doing. And going back to what you were saying just quickly about the most humbling process of my life, because the most inspiring people, men or woman to me in my lifetime has been writers. That is what has inspired my life more than anything. It’s what freed me from my family.

When I read Ray Bradbury for the first time, when I read Martian Chronicles, I was like, “I had no idea you could go to these places.” And then suddenly, I got turned on to all these writers, and then I got turned on to George Saunders, who just wrote this book that I just read for the second time and that’s how I met Jen. And now I’ve been talking with him, and I was like, “Dude, when I was 18 years… No, 19, 20 and 21 reading Gogol, reading Tolstoy, reading Turgenev, reading on the floors of these bookstores in Los Feliz, I mean, my whole life opened up. It was fanfare. It was great.”

Debbie Millman:
What was it about the Russian literature that compelled you so much? Was it that sort of Slavic sense of doom?

Josh Brolin:
It was Slavic sense of doom, but there was always a sense of humor in it. There was always a sense of almost making fun of the weight of their cloud, their storm, which I loved that contrast because I felt the same way. I mean, obviously, I identified with it. It was like if you write Diary of a Madman or you write Notes from the Underground, Dostoevsky, you’re like, “Oh my God.”

But even in the story about Little Johnny, who obviously is me, and told in a kind of Dr. Seussian cadence, when he’s looking around and the mother is screaming and she’s throwing these massive mugs through the window at the father who’s coming home late because she knows he’s been somewhere where he shouldn’t have been. It’s all so black cloud, it’s so full of black cloud. But at the same time, and why I wanted to have that Dr. Seussian cadence is because it’s ridiculous. It is surreal. It is absurd. What the fuck are we doing to each other? It’s amazing what us little weak humans do to each other.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah, especially now.

Josh Brolin:
Especially now. And I go, “What is that idea, even with my neighbor who is a far right-wing belief system and all that?” And I go, “Listen, we don’t have the same beliefs, but in that very primitive, primal country way, I know that my kids are safe with him and his kids are safe with me. And when it all comes down to it, I want to know those people still exist. Even if I hate your belief system, I want to know you have my back on a very, very human level.”

Debbie Millman:
Well, I think it’s fine to have different points of view and disagree, as long as it doesn’t come to fisticuffs and killing.

Josh Brolin:
That’s what I mean, killing. And you’re like, “Why would you… Oh, you believe that? Well, I don’t believe that. You’re bad. I’m good. Bam. I just did something good.” You know what I mean? And we can go off on a whole tangent, but again, it comes back to this very simple thing of what makes people tick. I am forever fascinated and thrown by what makes people do what they do, and also amazed.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah, that’s sort of why I do the show. I’m endlessly fascinated by how people become who they are and how do what they do. But speaking of violence, you played a character, you played a villain. Actually, Thanos has been voted the greatest villain of all time, even besting Darth Vader-

Josh Brolin:
Crazy.

Debbie Millman:
… in the Avengers film franchise. And Avengers Endgame is the highest-grossing film of all time. You’ve said that you were eventually able to find Thanos within you, but you had to go looking first. What did you have to find?

Josh Brolin:
The humanity in him. It’s the same thing that I did with Dan White. Dan White as a human being disgusted me. Big fish in a small pond, went into a big pond, realized he was a small fish, was being bested by a gay man. I mean, the ego just dying on the vine. And there’s something that I find even though it hurts, very enlivening about my ego being lacerated because I know a great lesson is around the corner. And I think that that’s come with age and that’s come with tools and all that kind of stuff. But Dan White, I did the same thing where I was like, I don’t have to like this guy. I just have to know… I did the same thing with W. It’s like, yeah, we can watch CNN and find out how much we hate George Bush. But what is the trajectory? Why did he stop drinking? He was the black sheep of his family. He wasn’t the golden child. How did this happen? That’s interesting to me.

So when I was doing it, here comes the Richard Burton. When I showed up with the Russos, I had this, “In my craft or sullen art, exercised in the still night when only the moon rages and the lovers lie abed with all the grief…” I had this presentation of this kind of Shakespearean presentation. And they were like, “Yeah, I don’t think so.” And they started referencing movies that I loved, like Apocalypse Now. And they’re like, “It’s okay if you scratch your nose, if you have an itch, if you want to fix your hair, if you want to feel your muscle, if you want to…” Whatever it is, we just humanized him. And we played, and played, and played, and improvised, and improvised, and improvised. And I think that’s what people responded to. I was very proud of that, strangely enough. I never thought I would be proud of a mocap character, but I really am.

Debbie Millman:
There’s a scene when you are annihilating Gamora’s planet and you take her, you adopt her, and you hold her hand, her tiny, tiny, tiny little hand in that giant hand of yours, the character’s. That for me felt like the character had heart. You write about in your memoir how at one point, you were positive that something in you was broken and that it is the brokenness in a character that you’re most drawn to. Is that still the case?

Josh Brolin:
No, I don’t think so. I don’t think I’m broken. I think I’m cracked, but it’s like I remember reading The Agony and the Ecstasy about Michelangelo and this idea of getting rid of what’s no longer needed, that the sculpture already exists inside, kind of like what we said about the child and the pencil and the words living inside the pencil that just haven’t come out yet. And I think that I’ve adopted this idea that I’m just continuing to let go of things that I thought were necessary, that don’t feel to be as necessary anymore. So as opposed to what am I made of foundationally, I think I’m made of some pretty good stuff. I think whatever God put together in what I was intended to be and was when I was firstborn, I’m slowly tapping into now. It’s just taken me 56 years.

Debbie Millman:
In the Avengers movies, End Game and in Infinity War, you talk about your behavior and motivation being inevitable. You used that word again in your most recent appearance hosting Saturday Night Live and you used the word three times in the book. Is that your word or was it the writer’s word in the script that you fell in love with?

Josh Brolin:
There’s something so weighted about the word, inevitable. And I like the idea of playing with maybe… I’m just thinking about it now, this idea that you can’t change something. And I go, “Yeah, but why not?”

Debbie Millman:
Yeah.

Josh Brolin:
Why not? Again, it’s another status quo word that instead of discarding it immediately, I choose to have a massive relationship with it, and then I’ll discard it at some point. But yeah, I do like the word, in all honesty.

Debbie Millman:
It’s a good word. It’s a really good word.

Josh Brolin:
It is a good word and it’s a challenging word. Destiny is another challenging word. What does that mean? It’s all predetermined. Do I have any control over it? What do I feel about control? What do I feel about all that stuff? But I do like the lessons. I do very much like the lessons. They hurt, but I do like them.

Debbie Millman:
Josh, you’re also starring in the Dune franchise. The second installment was recently released to great reviews, great box office. And while on the set, you began writing verse about the experience, which was recently made into a book titled, Dune Exposures, which features your words alongside photographs taken by Greig Fraser. Can you talk a little bit about how that book came about?

Josh Brolin:
That was really Tanya Lapointe, who is Denis Villeneuve’s partner and producing partner, partner in life and producing partner on set. She had read some things that I had posted and that she knew because I’ve known them for a long time. And Greig was taking pictures on the set just here and there of film pictures, all film. And she said, “Why don’t you guys try and put something together? It’d be fun to have something for the movie afterwards.” And we put together an initial book that cost way too much money. And we used paper that was too good and we did whatever it was and nobody bought it. And then we did for the second movie, we used stuff that we had written and photographed from the first movie and the second movie, put it together and it became a bestseller. But it was nice. I felt good and I felt able in the memoir. I took out a lot of poems in the memoir. I took out probably 20 poems. And that the suggestion-

Debbie Millman:
Why? Why? Why? You played with format so beautifully in the memoir. Why did you-

Josh Brolin:
Because I didn’t want to saturate it with that and it’s really truly my first love. Recently, I said, “Did I write the first poem?” Because I don’t remember reading a poem, but I do remember writing a poem when I was eight years old and showed my mother, this circular poem about death. And she was like, “What is this?” She found it. “What is this? What does it mean? Should I be worried?” I don’t ever remember reading a poem. So, obviously, that was something in me needed to express in that way. Maybe because it was mathematical. I needed to pattern things mathematically in order to feel closer to it. I don’t know. I don’t know. But my relationship with poetry has always been very intimate.

And I think I got a little scared. Doing a Dune book is one thing, it’s celebrating something together that we did that focuses on the movie. It’s not necessarily on the book. It’s celebrating something that is already accomplished and praised and all that. Whereas a memoir is just… I didn’t realize. I’ve talked about it in this way. Nobody understands when you’re actually doing a scene, how naked it feels because you’re all just juggling ideas and emotions and vulnerabilities and all this. Nobody actually knows what’s going to turn out well, ever. They go, “How did it feel during No Country?” I go, “It’s like any other time.” We were laughing. We were worried. We weren’t sure if things were going to work. When you hire Javier to play Chigurh and he has a Spanish accent, is that going to be seen as ridiculous? Is it going to be seen…
So it’s all a big question. And when you’re writing a memoir, I now have realized you’re in that all the time. It’s the dream where you’re naked in the playground all the time, which you know, I know now. I’m not one to spiral. I’ve been spiraling because I go, “And I created it.” You want to be honest, you want to be naked, you want to put it out there. You care about this. You care about putting out an unconventional memoir because you’re into prose, or poetry or whatever it is. And okay, then do it and suffer the consequences, pal. And I don’t mean that in a negative way. I mean it in the most enlivening way, potentially enlivening.

Debbie Millman:
Well, if you are afraid of it, you won’t be able to do it. You just have to, as you said in the intro, your monologue on Saturday Night Live, “You just have to take the cold plunge.”

Josh Brolin:
You just got to do it. And I remember even when I was doing that, Lorne was like, “Yeah, that’s not funny.” And I go, “I’m not trying to be funny. I’m just trying to be me.” I think that there’s something that will be accepted during that monologue if they realize I’m not trying to be SNL funny. I’m just trying to say, “Hey, I’m here doing this thing. They’ve asked me to do it and here I am.”

Debbie Millman:
Half naked, taking the cold plunge.

Josh Brolin:
Half naked, taking the cold plunge. Play it. Why not?

Debbie Millman:
I have one last question for you, Josh.

Josh Brolin:
Yes.

Debbie Millman:
At the very end of From Under the Truck, you state, “I am right where I’m supposed to be fully aware and shame no longer follows me like a reticent dog being belly dragged on a leash.” For anyone that’s still being belly dragged around on a leash, what is the first thing you’d suggest that they do to break free?

Josh Brolin:
Oh, don’t believe the lie that fear is helping you survive. I think survival mechanisms are absolutely like alcohol was for me in a lot of other things, were absolutely necessary. So that’s why I don’t shame myself for it, even though I feel bad and I’ve confronted the idea of hurting people and hurting myself even. But it was needed. I don’t know if I would have survived without it. And I don’t know that I would have survived without that fear that kept me in check, but I love my relationship with fear now. I love it. I love my relationship with the challenge and I don’t think I’m trying to turn myself into mincemeat now. I think that I’m trying to grow, whatever that means. I don’t love that word. How about germinate? Germinate into ultimate innocence.

Debbie Millman:
Josh Brolin, thank you so much for making so much work that matters, and thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.

Josh Brolin:
Thank you. I was so excited to do this today. Thank you very much for this morning.

Debbie Millman:
Thank you.

Josh Brolin:
Okay.

Debbie Millman:
Josh Brolin’s just-released memoir is titled, From Under the Truck. You can also see him on the big screen in Dune 2. I’d like to thank everyone for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

Voiceover:
Design Matters is produced for the TED Audio Collective by Curtis Fox Productions. The interviews are usually recorded at the Masters in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, the first and longest-running branding program in the world. The editor-in-chief of Design Matters Media is Emily Weiland.

The post Design Matters: Josh Brolin appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:
If it weren’t all true, Carrie Brownstein’s career would seem like fantasy fiction. She’s a celebrated musician first and foremost, but she’s also a comedian, a writer, a director, and an actor. In today’s interview, we’re going to talk about the band she co-founded, Sleater-Kinney, which has been called one of the greatest bands of all time. They just released their 11th album, Little Rope, but I’m also going to ask her about the now classic television series, Portlandia, which she co-wrote and starred in alongside Fred Armisen. Along the way, we’re going to talk about her memoir, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, and everything in between.

Carrie Brownstein:
Thanks for having me.

Debbie Millman:
Carrie. I understand that you’ve described your look as akin to Mick Jagger in sweatpants.

Carrie Brownstein:
Really?

Debbie Millman:
Yes.

Carrie Brownstein:
I don’t remember saying that. But you know what’s weird? I’ve seen Mick Jagger in sweatpants. My only time ever meeting Mick Jagger he was in sweatpants, so maybe I somehow conflated those two things. When I saw him, maybe I thought, “That’s what I look like.”

Debbie Millman:
I actually think of myself as a little business casual, no matter if that’s appropriate or not. I’m business casual in my everyday life, but sometimes I’m also business casual on stage with my band, and I think this is when I should have not been dressing business casual. I look like I can go from stage to being a flight attendant on Delta right after the show.

Carrie Brownstein:
What made you attracted to the business casual look?

Debbie Millman:
I think early on when I was playing with Sleater-Kinney… I grew up in the suburbs, and I think my idea of dressing up was to just look a little like, okay, you just put a blazer on or you put a button-up shirt on. So in my mind, I thought, “Well, I’m going on stage. Probably should wear a loafer.” It’s not how rock stars dress, or should.

Carrie Brownstein:
Any particular favorite designers?

Debbie Millman:
In the current era, I really like Stella McCartney. I like Rachel Comey. I like Proenza Schouler. But that’s not what I… Also, let’s just admit, I have a lot of J. Crew, too.

Carrie Brownstein:
Well, Jenna Lyons day was quite nice, her time there.

Debbie Millman:
She was nice, yeah. Right now I am wearing a J. Crew sweater and Everlane cord, so pretty basic. Pretty basic over here.

Debbie Millman:
You said that you grew up in mostly the suburbs. It was the suburbs of Seattle, mostly in Redmond, Washington. And you wrote in your memoir that Seattle was your beacon and your muse, but it was never really yours. I’m wondering if you can explain that a little bit.

Carrie Brownstein:
I think because I was outside of the city and I never really came of age there, that’s… I had some formative experiences there, but I was always on the periphery. And when I finally found my voice and tried on the boldness and the brazenness that comes along with electric guitar and forming a band, I was in Olympia, Washington where I went to college. Seattle was something I sort of looked up to. I imagined that I would end up there eventually and I never did. It always just feels like the thing I thought I would be and something I thought I would be a part of and then never was. I feel sort of adjacent to it.

Debbie Millman:
In elementary school, you’ve described yourself as confident and popular. You were an early round draft pick for teams in gym class. I never was. You won the spelling bee. You attended every crucial waterpark birthday party and sleepover. You were active in music, sports, school plays, and was elected vice president. Would you say that at that time you were a bit of an overachiever?

Carrie Brownstein:
What a tool. God. That’s the kind of kid I would just loathe now and be like, “Ugh.” I was a little bit of an overachiever, I mean when you list it all like that. That’s not how I felt, but I think I was confident. I think I had, at the time… And this is sort of right before I lost all of that confidence. But yeah, I was a little bit of an overachiever, I guess. I mean, if I’m just listening to that list and feel exhausted by it, then yes, I was.

Debbie Millman:
But you had quite a range. I mean, you were sort of smart by winning this spelling bee, so that was one aspect of you, but you also were active in sports.

Carrie Brownstein:
I was an all-rounder. All-rounder. You could also call me a child dilettante, too.

Debbie Millman:
Oh, in what way?

Carrie Brownstein:
No, I think I just… Yeah, I think I connect. Even now, I connect with people via… I’m introverted, and I like activity-based hangouts. I ended up mostly being raised by my dad. But even when my mom was still around, we were kind of in the way that… And this is very essentialist, but in the way men like to hang out with each other through activities, that’s kind of how my sister and I were sort of ushered into our social lives. We sort of were mimicking our dad’s way of interacting, so it was my way of being around people because sort of one-on-one interactions were trickier for me, and sometimes still are, just because I get nervous and shy.

Debbie Millman:
Your dad took you to your first concert when you were in the fifth grade. Tell us about who you saw.

Carrie Brownstein:
Yes. Well, in 1985, Madonna was touring for her seminal album, Like a Virgin, so she was on the Virgin tour. She actually started that tour in Seattle. She played three nights at the Moore Theater, which is… Actually, it might be the Paramount, so someone can fact check that. Anyway, a really small theater, 2,000 capacity. Beastie Boys were opening. They were booed off stage, by the way. People hated those guys.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah, I read that in your memoir and was laughing out loud.

Carrie Brownstein:
People just thought, “What a bunch of brats up there.” I went to the first night, and it was incredible. I mean, there were costume change after costume change and all the hits. It was exhilarating,

Debbie Millman:
And I believe you dressed up as Madonna at that time.

Carrie Brownstein:
I mean, my very young version of that. My parents were… They weren’t strict, but you can do a lace glove like Madonna, but you’re certainly not going to have a bra… I probably wasn’t even wearing a bra. What would we be showing? It was very chaste. It

was a truly virginal version.

Debbie Millman:
I believe that it was seeing that show, that first ignited the feeling that you would much rather be the object of desire than dole it out from the sidelines. Did you have a sense of what that feeling meant in regard to who you wanted to be or become?

Carrie Brownstein:
I think it was actually a slightly later show. It was George Michael’s Faith tour.

Debbie Millman:
Oh, okay.

Carrie Brownstein:
Because I remember at that show my friend turned to me, and she basically said that she wanted to just make out with George Michael. She was just-

Debbie Millman:
It was slightly more-

Carrie Brownstein:
It was dirtier than that.

Debbie Millman:
… lascivious in the book.

Carrie Brownstein:
Yeah, it was dirtier than that. What she wanted to do to George Michael was unholy. I mean, I was sort of surprised, taken aback because the way I was watching George Michael was thinking, “I don’t want to do something to him. I don’t want to be like a side piece or accessory. I want to be that. I want to be the person that’s on stage that is making people feel excited. I want to have people projecting their fantasies and imaginations onto me.”

Debbie Millman:
That was the moment where I thought, “Oh, I’m in a different place than my friend. The way that I’m experiencing this is not sort of witnessing. I want to participate in this not just as a fan.” I think that really sowed the seed for me wanting to perform.

Debbie Millman:
Though your first music lessons were on the piano, you gravitated to the guitar. And when you were 15 years old, you bought your first guitar, a Canadian-made solid-state amp with a cherry red Epiphone copy of a Stratocaster. It was the first big money purchase you made with your own money. How did you make that money?

Carrie Brownstein:
I worked at the Crossroads movie theater in Redmond. I worked Saturdays and Sundays. I just saved up my money. By the way, big money, it was like a $300 guitar. That was a ton of money for me at the time.

Debbie Millman:
Oh, yeah.

Carrie Brownstein:
But as far as guitars go, that’s not like a big ticket item, but it was a huge amount of money for me. And I just saved up. I started working that year, actually, at the movie theater. My weekends were pretty boring because I just went to the theater at 11:00 and I left at 7:00 and didn’t do much after, but it was a good lesson.

Debbie Millman:
I think my parents, rightly so, they were like, “Well, you’ve gone through these phases. You sort of have these pursuits that you get really excited about. You did tennis for a while. We got you…” They just were like, “If you’re really going to do this, maybe you’ll stick with it if you have more invested in it,” and they were right.

Debbie Millman:
You took guitar lessons from Jeremy Enigk, a music and part of the band Sunny Day Real Estate, and Jeremy and the band are often cited as pioneers in second wave emo. He taught you chords by way of playing “The Last Day of our Acquaintance” by Sinéad O’Connor, wherein you’d play along to the two-chords song, which I couldn’t believe that it was two chords, while Jeremy sang. Then, he’d get bored and play R.E.M.’s “The One I Love” or U2’s “New Year’s Day.” And you felt that even with just a few chords everything was in your grasp. At that point, did you think you wanted to be… Were you sure at that point, “I’m going to be a musician”?

Carrie Brownstein:
I wanted to be a musician in the moment. I was really raised to think that I have to go off to university, probably get a graduate degree, music seemed like a hobby and certainly a way of harnessing my emotions as a teenager, making myself heard and giving myself a voice when I just felt like I didn’t have the words or just sort of lacked coherency. I was excited to have that tool at my disposal and to have a way of expressing myself that involved volume and was naturally angsty, putting the guitar through a distortion pedal or turning the gain up on the amp. It seemed to match this rage and discomfort that I was feeling, or just confusion, the confusion of adolescence. But, I didn’t really think, “Well, this is what is going to sustain me for the next 30, 40 years.” I just thought, “This is great that I have this now. I can form a band and be around people and be part of this community.” Wasn’t thinking too much beyond that.

Debbie Millman:
While all of this was happening, your home life was becoming more and more unstable. Your mother had an eating disorder, and you’ve written that her illness permeated the landscape of your psyche, and you developed a kind of general anxiety and sense of unease. And this manifested in nightmares where you would wake up scared of a fire or that all of your hair was falling out. Did your parents understand what was happening to you at that point?

Carrie Brownstein:
I don’t think so. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, which I definitely do, they had a lot going on. My mom was dealing with her own illness, physical and mental, and my father was trying to keep her feeling safe. Of course, he was worried about her and then basically take on the role of sole parent while my mom was hospitalized for a few months. I think they were concerned about my sister and I, but I don’t really think they had the wherewithal or the bandwidth to do much more than sort of make sure we were fed and off to school and getting our homework done. They had a lot going on.

Debbie Millman:
You were 14 when your mom left your family to seek a cure for her eating disorder. You wrote in your memoir that in doing so she left another form of sickness and longing behind. Did anyone explain to you what was happening? How did you experience her leaving?

Carrie Brownstein:
I mean, it was explained as, I guess, that they were splitting up. But what we really didn’t understand was that she was forging a path that, in her mind, necessitated leaving behind her role as at least a day-to-day mom, the quotidian tasks of motherhood and nurturing, that that was kind of going on the back burner. We didn’t really realize that until she was gone and there wasn’t any sort of structure for custody except that we were just with my dad. There was no arrangement like, “Well, you have to see your mom,” or, “She wants you guys around on these days.” It was just, “That’s it.”

I think it sort of took a second for us to realize we’d been left. For me, I was a little bit older than my sister, so I was able to use that irascibility that starts to take hold when you’re 14. You can be defiant and reject, like, “I’m going to leave you first.” You have a little bit more of that gumption. But yeah, the truth was that we’d been kind of left behind.

Debbie Millman:
When did she come back, and what was it like when she came back?

Carrie Brownstein:
I mean, she would pop in and out every once in a while. She was not too far away, but there just was no sort of formal routine for us seeing her. It was sporadic and really, really confusing.

Debbie Millman:
All through this time you were still playing music. And in your junior year of high school, you formed a band with a few other people called Born Naked. What kind of music were you playing?

Carrie Brownstein:
Oh, we were playing rudimentary punk music, for sure, three-chord punk songs. Our singer, Lex Bratty vocalist. It was fun. It sounded like the punk music coming out of Olympia would sound like. It was definitely minimalist and more about intent than the actual product, I think.

Debbie Millman:
At 16, you wrote a song called You Annoy Me. You’ve stated that you sometimes feel that you’ve been writing that same song ever since. I’m wondering if you can talk about why or how and what maybe some of the lyrics were. I couldn’t find it.

Carrie Brownstein:
The first line I think is, “The way you look really annoys me. The way you talk really bores me.” That’s the opening two lines there. I think that it feels like a perennial theme in that… My friends call me Carrie David after Larry David. I have this kind of constant dissatisfaction, glass is half full. I have to be kind of poked and prodded into optimism, I think. Of course now I have a little more self-awareness to realize if someone else is annoying me, it’s probably a projection. In what ways am I annoying myself? In what ways am I not measuring up? So yeah, self-awareness sets in. But I think that can be my default mode. And the older I get, I try to rest myself of that and take a deeper look at why I’m feeling dissatisfied, or disdainful, or grumpy.

Debbie Millman:
How do you feel like you’ve been writing that same song ever since?

Carrie Brownstein:
Well, I can hear iterations of that song, not musically. Musically, I’ve progressed. But in a lot of the, especially early Sleater-Kinney songs, there’s a brattiness. There’s a get out of my way, leave me alone, I need to be by myself, this sort of lone wolf theme that keeps cropping up. But hopefully, I think maybe in the last couple years, there’s less you-annoy-me songs. Maybe more I annoy-myself songs

Debbie Millman:
At that time, Nirvana’s Smells like Teen Spirit came out. For you and your friends, Nirvana was a local band. I think you saw them play in your high school gymnasium. Is that true?

Carrie Brownstein:
College.

Debbie Millman:
College gymnasium.

Carrie Brownstein:
Yeah. The first college I went to was a state school in Bellingham, Washington, which is a small town really close to the Canadian border in-

Debbie Millman:
Beautiful, beautiful town.

Carrie Brownstein:
It is beautiful.

Debbie Millman:
Beautiful place.

Carrie Brownstein:
Very verdant. Anyway, Mudhoney, who was another Seattle grunge band on SubHub records at the time, were playing. It was very exciting. “Oh, Mudhoney’s coming to our college.” So, I got tickets, and I went in, and there was a surprise opener, and that opener was Nirvana, who had just released Nevermind earlier that year. I think they were really good friends with Mudhoney and said, “Hey, we’d like to come and do a secret show.” That’s a pretty special university show to watch. And they played all the hits, I mean, Smells like Teen Spirit. That album was probably already platinum at that time.

Debbie Millman:
Shortly thereafter, you started to become aware of the music scene in Olympia. You heard bands like Bikini Kill and Ratmobile and Heavens to Betsy. You’ve said that for the first time you heard your story being explained and sung to you, that you were being seen and recognized. I’m wondering how that music did that to you. What did it speak to you? What was it saying to you?

Carrie Brownstein:
I think it took a certain female experience and centered it and was fearless, and unapologetic, and unsparing in the specificity and the detail and just not sidelining those stories. It spoke to pain, and longing, and specific narratives that I could really relate to and had anger and fury, and was unafraid to express that in music. I just thought, “Oh, this is really the first time.” I mean, I’ve been listening to punk, and indie, and alternative music, at least by then, for a couple years and certainly had related to it. But all of a sudden there was a blueprint, and I think I could see myself on the landscape for the first time. People need that, right? Anyone needs to be able to see themselves in order to do it and to make it and have an example. It gives you faith and gives you the ability to try. It’s helpful to have people come before you, for sure.

Debbie Millman:
You also wrote that it was crucial to finally recognize yourself in the world. What were you beginning to see?

Carrie Brownstein:
I felt like I just didn’t have a voice or a means of expressing myself. Punk music, and particularly the music coming out of Olympia, it just became this container, this world that I could set myself in. I think what I was seeing was someone who was worthwhile, someone who could find the words, especially if the way of conveying them was through music, that there was a way out. I think that’s what I recognized, was a way out from who I was, which was someone who was very insecure, and diffident, and lonely, I think.
So, I recognized community. I recognized collaboration in these fellow travelers, and I dove into it. They’re also just queerness. I just recognize all these facets of myself that were very nascent and not even that clear to me yet, but my world just opened up.

Debbie Millman:
You left Western Washington University in Bellingham and transferred down to Evergreen College in Olympia in order to be closer to that music scene. I understand. Though, that you first met Corin Tucker, the lead singer of Heavens to Betsy, in Bellingham. What was that first meeting like?

Carrie Brownstein:
Corin played in a band called Heavens to Betsy, which was a two-piece, very deconstructed, unconventional music, which a lot of the Olympia scene was. They were playing a show at this space called the Show Off Gallery. It was them, Mecca Normal, it was a very avant-garde two-piece from Vancouver, and Bikini Kill, who were probably the most well-known riot grrrl band of that era, and very well-known band today.

But, Bikini Kill canceled, so it was just these two other bands. I went in and watched Corin sing. I’d seen Heavens to Betsy before, before I’d gone to college, and I went up to her afterwards and told her I was a fan. I said, “I think I’m going to drop out of Western and transfer to the Evergreen State College, which was in Olympia.” She basically said, “Yeah, you should.” I mean, I sort of took that as permission from this person I’ve never even talked to before. She said, “Well, why don’t you give me your address? I can send you my fanzine or keep in touch?” I think I knew I was getting out of Western because she had basically ordained it, and I wrote down my dad’s address in this notebook for her.

She remembers me as being very… She said very nerdy and shy, and I think I was. But yeah, so I dropped out two weeks later and my dad was not happy. He just thought, “That’s it. You’ve ruined your life.” But I did apply to Evergreen and transfer, so I finished college.

Debbie Millman:
You described Corin’s guitar this way. It was handmade by her and her father, and you described it as a crude piece of machinery painted matte black and looked like a home appliance that had been melted down in a fire. She also played with the tiniest of amps, an orange Roland cube with one speaker, no pedals, and no tuner. You’ve written that the ugly parts were edged in disgrace and disgust. It bordered right on ugly the whole time. But you’ve written this in a way that makes it feel very beautiful and something you really liked. I’m wondering if you can talk to that a little bit.

Carrie Brownstein:
I think feeling like the music that Corin was making, this grotesque grumbling sounds coming out of her guitar and the way her voice could sort of pin you to the wall, it was scrawling and screeching. It had moments of, I think, gracefulness to it as well. It just felt truthful, honestly. I just thought, “This is just real.” Not everything is pretty and beautiful, and female singers don’t just have to be folk singers that are a salve for people’s hurt. Another way to process hurt is to meet it, to scream back at it. And I loved that sort of beautiful ugliness of that music.

I think at the time I sort of felt like a distorted version of a person, and the music really matched that. It was kind of being splintered apart. In the moments where it came together, you just thought, “Aha! I can be both. I can acknowledge the parts of me that are broken, but also stand up, too.”

Debbie Millman:
You started your own punk band, Excuse 17, in 1993 with Becca Albee and be Curtis James and recorded two full length albums, a single, and you contributed to the Free to Fight compilation album. And you also started to tour the US as the opening act for Heavens to Betsy. What was it like to first start performing live?

Carrie Brownstein:
It was fun, and it was really scary. I mean, when you say performing live, one thing to remember is these were not traditional venues, so it’s not like I suddenly was on a big stage in a beautiful theater. I was in basements, some kind of ramshackle, jerry-rigged club or venue or space that had just opened up. Everything was a little bit derelict, so it was good that we started there because there was nothing real polished about us as a band or my sort of performance on stage.

But, it was really exciting being in those small decrepit spaces that didn’t live up to any fire code. It was wonderful and wondrous. And what I really remember about it was getting to see the US for the first time. I just had grown up in the Pacific Northwest. At this point, I’d never been to Europe. I’d only ever been to Vancouver, Canada. What I remember was just that comradery and meeting like-minded people in all these cities and just feeling less isolated. This is pre-internet. Just the only way you could reach people was to go there in terms of actually meeting them and getting to know them. You could have a pistol area relationships. But in terms of the face-to-face, you had to go to their town. It really was eye-opening in that way. Performing, I sort of got my sea legs a little bit as a performer.

I think the other thing people forget pre-internet is it’s a mystery what… You rehearse in a space, but you don’t necessarily understand. Even a club or some kind of fly-by-night venue, they still have a PA. They still have monitors, if you’re lucky. There’s a sound person. These are new things. You don’t watch a YouTube video. I didn’t go to a school of rock where you learn what all these things are. The tour was a full… It was just demystifying all these things that I really didn’t understand. When you get on stage, you need a monitor mix. That’s what you hear. The audience is hearing something through the PA speakers. But I was like, “Oh, what is that? How do I explain myself?” It was a real lesson in learning how to communicate and take these chances, but it was really scary, that first tour.

Debbie Millman:
In your memoir, you write about how you were anxious to pour your guts out, and many of your songs with the Excuse 17 are a sonic and lyrical purging, like a caged animal who upon release head straight to the recording studio. I’m wondering, given how you’ve mentioned that you were introverted and shy, where did this stage persona come from and what’d it feel like to have that persona on stage given your introversion?

Carrie Brownstein:
I don’t think it fully came to be in Excuse 17, but there were shades of it. Again, punk is a great place to practice loudness. You are turned up in terms of your amps, and often you don’t have a great monitor mix, so you better be singing loud or literally screaming. In screaming, which I did a lot of Excuse 17, I just literally found my voice, literally was more in touch with my anger. Performance-wise though, I’ve seen video of myself back then, I’m not moving around very much. I still feel kind of stuck in place.
I had this little leg move I did. Not like Chuck Berry, but a little bit of a Buddy Holly, I guess, sort of my foot sort of moving back and forth. That was as bold as I got back then. But the music, it’s bigger than you. That’s, I think, is the first thing that really gives you license because you’re like, “Oh, this music can hold me. I have felt so unheld and just free floating in life for a long time, and now I have this sonic vessel that allows me a sturdiness and ballast.” Then, once you accept that, once you realize that, you can start taking steps forward, and I think I did. Excuse 17 was sort of the early iterations of that, but I didn’t really have a full stage persona yet, which I still don’t quite have, but I definitely… It’s very rudimentary compared to what came later.

Debbie Millman:
You don’t think you have a stage presence now?

Carrie Brownstein:
Oh, no, presence, yes, but I wouldn’t say I have a persona where I sort of get on stage and fully transform. I think there’s always something of me that comes through. But I definitely have a stage presence, yes. I move around on stage in a way that I never would in real life. I don’t quite know where that comes from, except to say that, again, the music as a place that I understood as just having me. It has me. It’s not going to let me go. And this is a world that I’ve built, this with my cohorts and collaborators and with the audience is a steadiness that I’ve built.

Debbie Millman:
I would describe your stage presence almost like punk ballet. There’s something very balletic about it. How did you learn how to windmill, to do the windmill?

Carrie Brownstein:
I don’t know how I learned to do it. I don’t think I practiced it, but I realized I was able to do it. It’s interesting that you say balletic because I am coordinated, but I wouldn’t say I’m the most graceful person. But on stage, I’m able to sort of mimic a gracefulness that I think I don’t really in my day-to-day life.

But things like the windmill, it’s interesting, on stage, I just possess a fluidity that I just don’t have anywhere else. Something like the windmill, which I probably just auditioned one time on stage, without knowing whether… I mean, even Pete Townsend, I think, actually pierced his hand, like a whammy bar. It’s not the safest move. But luckily, yeah, I came back around and was able to strum the strings, and I just thought, “Oh, okay. I guess I can do that.” It wasn’t me auditioning that in my room or something. I just did it on stage. But, the stage just gives license for those kinds of things, including failure and error and a lot of things that could go wrong. But I think I like that. I’m willing to take those risks on stage, risks I would not take in real life.

Debbie Millman:
Now, Sleater-Kinney started as a side project with Corin, and you named the band after one of your practice venues. When did you decide this was it, you’re both leaving your other bands and starting your own band together?

Carrie Brownstein:
Probably around 1995. It’s a weird story because… We were in a very insular but vital artistic music community. In Olympia, there were a lot of bands. We were gleaning a lot of influence and inspiration from our friends, but it was also sort of suffocating in its smallness.

We actually went to Australia and sort of took ourselves to the other side of the world, and it just allowed us to see ourselves in a different way, to just dare to imagine ourselves existing outside of Olympia, bigger than Olympia, just let’s reinvent.

I think it was during that time that we decided we probably wouldn’t continue with our other bands, and that was tough. It’s been a long time now, and Corin and I have spoken recently about that wasn’t easy. I think our other bands felt a little betrayed by that, like, “Oh, you guys are just going to form this thing.” Then, it ended up being bigger than those other bands. I think, obviously, that’s difficult, too. But, we had this chemistry, Corin and I, that was undeniable. We were creating something very singular together, and I think we didn’t want to let that go.

Debbie Millman:
You said that when you started playing with her it felt like you’d met your musical match?

Carrie Brownstein:
Yeah, for sure. I mean, we just are really intuitive together. We can sort of finish each other’s musical sentences. I think because we are both self-taught, the way that our guitars interlocked and the way our vocals would play off each other, it just felt very different than anything else we’d done. To this day, there’s certain ways that I play that I can only play with Corin, and that always makes it more unique than something I’m doing with another collaborator. I really value that.

Debbie Millman:
As the band grew in popularity and stature, critical response, you began to grapple with issues that you said you’d face for years, the requirement that you were going to have to defend or analyze decisions like why you were an all-female band or why didn’t you have a bass player. You realized that those questions and talking about that experience had become part of the experience itself. Was that something that you resented or just figured it was part of the equation?

Carrie Brownstein:
That’s a good question. I did resent it sometimes. What it is is it’s an energy suck. We just wanted to talk about the music. I would just think have you ever asked a band of men, “Why are you an all-male band?” I know you’ve never asked that question, and I just thought, “Oh, all the time saving that those guys get to do. They don’t have to waste a single moment thinking about these other things and having to speak for everyone.” Just not being able to be seen as an individual or a specific entity, that was frustrating. I don’t know if I was resentful, but it was frustrating because we didn’t want to have to do that. We didn’t want to have to spend our time doing that.

Debbie Millman:
Years ago, I interviewed David Lee Roth, and I kind of wish now that I’d asked him, “So, why were you in an all-male band?”

Carrie Brownstein:
I wish you had. I wish you had.

Debbie Millman:
Me too. As you moved into the late aughts and early 2000s, the band continued to grow in fame, in stature. But you stated that to court fame, money, and press felt dirty and sweaty. It implied that you wanted to be accepted and loved by the mainstream, the same people who had rejected, taunted, and diminished you in high school. You wrote that it sounds silly now, but at the time, these categories seem finite, immutable, and significant. Has your relationship to fame changed over the years?

Carrie Brownstein:
I mean, I think it’s still something that I don’t really value as a category. I try to examine things more from a place of feeling gratitude, like, “Oh, I’m grateful for access to certain things. I’m grateful for certain privileges that come with success.” But in terms of what I value and who I want to be around, it has very little to do with fame or celebrity.
I find it a strange thing to sort of worship or put too much of a premium on. I just want to be around kind, smart, interesting people in all walks of life from all walks of life. I have a lot of hobbies that purposely sort of bring me around people who I would never meet through film, music, or television.

Debbie Millman:
What kind of hobbies?

Carrie Brownstein:
Dog agility. It’s interesting with dog agility because we all think of like, “Oh, what’s a diverse group of people? What’s an interesting intersection of people?” Well, you actually have to step out. Dog agility is very interesting. I mean, it is people… I just like, “Oh, I would never meet you.” This is not academia. This is not the arts. It’s wonderful. I love it.

Also, now I do a lot of pickleball, and I’m hanging out with a lot of older people and younger people. Anyway, I just love these kinds of hobbies or pursuits that really get me outside of a social group that I would normally be around and make genuine friends there and have a common interest that we form our friendship around. I love it. It’s one of my favorite things.

Debbie Millman:
In 2005, Sleater-Kinney… Or 2006, I’m sorry, Sleater-Kinney took a hiatus. It had been about 12 years and seven albums together. You took an indefinite hiatus. And speaking of dogs, you dove headfirst during the hiatus into volunteer work at the Oregon Humane Society, and you won the Oregon Humane Society Volunteer of the Year Award in 2006.

Carrie Brownstein:
I did, yes. I also worked at the time as a trainer at a private facility and got a job at the humane society as well. I was not just a volunteer. I also worked in their training department, and I was the assistant in a reactive rover class. Then in the other, at the private facility, I was an assistant in just more like basic obedience. I was all in with that. My social life was all… My best friend that year was a woman named Jean, who was probably 70 years old. We hung out all the time. We went on dog walks together. I stayed at her house on the coast and became friends with her son. I really dove into that world, and that was pretty much my main social group for at least a year.

Debbie Millman:
My first dogs, which I got back in 2000, after going through a particularly depressive experience, I think I credit them with opening my heart. My wife was never a dog person, but she knew when we met that I’d had a history with dogs. And both of my dogs, who were very close to each other, they were like soulmates, had passed away at 17 and 18-

Carrie Brownstein:
Wow.

Debbie Millman:
… six months before we met. So, she knew that I had this giant hole in my heart for dogs. And despite not being a dog person, she got me a dog three years ago.

Carrie Brownstein:
That’s sweet.

Debbie Millman:
Now she is a dog person. She is even more of a dog person than I am. So, I do think that dogs can save and change our lives in the most profound ways.

Carrie Brownstein:
Absolutely.

Debbie Millman:
Did that job at that time help you get over some of the loss of Sleater-Kinney and the sadness that you were feeling about the band going on hiatus?

Carrie Brownstein:
Absolutely. For one, it just was a way of understanding, just broadening my comprehension about life and loss and giving me a task to do. I think dogs, or animals in general, their needs are very clear and they’re simple. You realize that humans aren’t that much different. Most of us want to be loved and protected. You start to see all these through lines, and it really is so clarifying, I think. It also just teaches you patience.

One of my volunteer jobs at the humane society was just cleaning out the cages. You see, obviously, the literal feces of these dogs, but you just sort of see this is just a temporary thing for most of them. They’re just living in this cage. There’s just so much humanity in here and there’s just… My only job is to just make sure for this moment that this dog has an okay life as we are stewarding them into the next phase. I just thought, “Well, that’s how it should be with everyone.”

Whenever I have an interaction with someone that’s finite, I don’t know if I’ll ever see them again, it should be as pure as what I’m doing with these dogs. I don’t know what state someone else is in. My job is just to be kind and open and leave them feeling either the same or better than when we started this conversation. I think that clarity of purpose really helped me just have perspective on the band and also just appreciate what we had done, not just mourn the hiatus, but appreciate the journey we’ve been on.

Debbie Millman:
One thing that I’ve come to realize about dogs that I try to consider what it would be like as a person to be this way is just how unselfconscious they are.

Carrie Brownstein:
I know.

Debbie Millman:
I mean, Max, my dog, doesn’t really like when anybody’s looking at him when he poops. That’s probably it. Everything else he’s just completely okay as is, and I love that about him.

Carrie Brownstein:
I love that, too. Sorry, my dog is barking. There’s probably someone… Hold on. I do need to at least bring Banjo in here. Hold on.

Debbie Millman:
Okay. Absolutely.

Carrie Brownstein:
Banjo, buddy. Come here, monkey.

Debbie Millman:
In 2005, you began working with Saturday Night Live alum Fred Armisen on a series of comedy sketches for the internet titled Thunderant. What first inspired you two to do that together?

Carrie Brownstein:
Fred and I met through music because he is a drummer and we’d been in the same circles for a while. He had just started on SNL, but was still… Like in the cast, but not one of the main stars of the show.

He reached out. He said he wanted to collaborate. I assumed he wanted to do music. He said, “Well, actually, I…” I think it was the year John Kerry was running for president, so it would’ve been 2004. He said, “I have to make this video for their campaign.” He’s like, “My idea is that you’re a host of a cable access show and you’re running it out of your basement, and I’ll play Saddam Hussein as like…” He’s like, “When I see pictures of him…” He’s like, “He looks like one of those aging rockers. He’s got this beard now, and he just looks like a Paul Weller.” I was like, “Okay.” So, I played Cyndi Overton and had the first interview with Saddam Hussein, who he did. He played with a British accent and had a guitar the whole time.

I don’t know if Fred ever turned that into the Kerry campaign. I can’t imagine that they would have used it. I mean, they’re not going to put Saddam Hussein in a campaign, a viral video ad. Anyway, that encouraged us to keep making videos. So, we would just get together every once in a while. The next thing we made, actually, was the feminist bookstore, which became a recurring sketch on Portlandia.

Debbie Millman:
Yes. One of my favorite.

Carrie Brownstein:
We really enjoyed it. Fred would fly out to Portland. Although, I think we did one in New York, too, where he was living… We would just make these videos and put them up online and send them to our friends, and it was really fun. We kind of developed a language and we built our own chemistry. We were just like, “Oh, we have this sensibility now. These are ideas. These aren’t just disparate sketches. We’re creating a world here.” So then we took it out as a pitch for a show.

Debbie Millman:
And you pitched it to Lorne Michaels. He proved it in 2011. Portlandia debuted on the IFC network, and it was an immediate success. I know

that when you were in high school you were, I believe, the star of one of your high school plays, but did you feel surprised by this sort of naturalness at which you could enter into this new world of acting and comedy?

Carrie Brownstein:
Yes. And I was absolutely surprised. I had terrible imposter syndrome. I felt like I’d snuck in through some kind of side or back door. What’s also amazing is that if this had been created in any other way, I think that someone would’ve said… I mean, Fred was working with Kristen Wiig, and Amy Poehler, and Maya Rudolph, these heavyweights, heavy, brilliant, brilliant comedic actors, and somehow Lorne… This is why he’s genius and he just has that acumen. He just thought, “No, this is… You guys are friends.” Not that Fred isn’t friends with those other people, but, “You guys have this specific way of being together that if we just sub out Carrie for someone else, it will change the nature of the show.” So, I felt very lucky, but I also felt like I had a lot to prove.

I remember when we were shooting the pilot, Fred and I had done every scene together, and then all of a sudden we were doing a shot. It was the Put a Bird on It sketch. It was just me, and our director, Jonathan Krisel, yelled, “Action,” and I just thought, “Oh my God. It’s just me. What am I going to do here?” I was really nervous.

I really credit Stacey Silverman, who is a wonderful writer. She had written for Colbert, and now she writes for a ton of comedy shows. She just had a lot of faith in me, especially as a writer. I think becoming more confident as a writer in terms of writing the sketches helped me become more confident as a performer. Fred was really helpful, too. But yeah, I was terrified.

Debbie Millman:
Your beloved feminist bookstore sketch, which you’ve just referenced, Women First, stars your characters Tony and Candace. This was one of the first of a range of characters that you and Fred played together where you were cross-dressing with Fred appearing as a woman. Later, you appeared as a man, most notably as Andy, the men’s rights activist, or Lance, husband to Fred playing your wife, Nina. You were so great as Andy. I wouldn’t have even known it was you, truly.

Carrie Brownstein:
That kind of gender expression is just really… It’s very freeing. It also grants you, I think, a little bit of an understanding, too. I was like, “Oh, yeah. Okay. This is a different headspace to get into for a little while.” I loved it. I missed that.

Debbie Millman:
Portlandia ran for eight seasons. The show received 22 Emmy nominations, won three, and in 2011 won the prestigious Peabody Award for its good-natured lampooning of hipster culture, which hits the mark whether or not you’re in on the joke. In 2015, Jerry Seinfeld stated that Portlandia was one of the best comedies of all time. And that very same year, Stereogum chief editor Tom Breihan stated that Sleater-Kinney was one of the greatest rock bands of the past two decades. Did you believe any of it?

Carrie Brownstein:
I feel like that stuff is so arbitrary and subjective, and of course it’s a lovely thing to hear, but you can’t really hang your hat on that. You have to take it with a grain of salt. Because if you put a lot of faith in that or give that kind of stuff too much power, you also have to give the negative feedback a lot of power, too. I think my role is to hopefully tune both those extremes out as much as I can, even though it’s flattering. It’s so arbitrary.

Debbie Millman:
2015 was a big year. The band reemerged with the launch of the album No Cities to Love. And your most recent album, Little Rope, was launched earlier this year. While you were making it, Corin was by the American Embassy in Italy that your mother and stepfather had been killed in a car accident while they were there on holiday. I’m so sorry, Carrie. I’m so sorry that this happened.

Carrie Brownstein:
Thanks. I appreciate that. I will just clarify that Corin just got a call that they were trying to get a hold of me. So, she didn’t actually have to deliver that news.

Debbie Millman:
Oh, okay. It was hard to read. I’m sorry I didn’t get that quite right.

Carrie Brownstein:
Oh, no. That’s totally fine. That’s totally fine.

Debbie Millman:
Most of the songs for Little Rope were already written by the time of the accident. Can you talk a little bit about how grief mitigated into the work, perhaps in ways you didn’t expect?

Carrie Brownstein:
Yeah. That time was so awful and disorienting. It’s been good to contextualize all this because music for me was something that had existed for so long, and I knew how to write songs. I didn’t know how to grieve my mom. I sort of was able to transfer just some of that confusion into a choreography that I knew, which was songwriting and playing… It was even more simplistic than that, more reductive. I just literally played guitar. I hadn’t played that much guitar since I was in high school. I mean, obviously I’ve played guitar for many years now, but I don’t usually just sit around for eight hours a day. I just needed somewhere to put my hands to place myself in time and space and literally in a room. It was so comforting to put my hands on the neck of the guitar and feel my fingers move along the frets. It helped ground me. It became a ritual and just started to give shape to days that felt very foggy and misshapen.

The other thing was, I think when you lose someone, you lose the ability to do anything for them, and you sort of miss that ability to reach them, to connect with them. So, I transferred a lot of that caretaking, and nurturing, and tending to onto the album because I couldn’t tend to my mom.

I think more than the songs sort of being about grief, the sorrow just informed the way we approached the record, the way I approached it, and just the stakes felt very, very high. Just didn’t want to put anything out into the world that wasn’t fully formed, wasn’t intentional, didn’t have life to it.

Debbie Millman:
I read a review, and I thought this was a really, really apt line, “The songs feel despondent and treacherous at times, but at others they’re hopeful and gleaming.” I think it’s a really complicated, really beautiful album. What do you think Little Rope tells your audience about who the band is now?

Carrie Brownstein:
I think it tells them that we’re a band willing to reckon with the present, that we’re not steeped or trapped in our own history except to bring it along with us. We’re not stuck there. We’re not sort of tricked or intoxicated

by nostalgia or sentimentality, but we’re willing to carry the weight of our history, and our failures, and our frailty along with us and transform it into something that exemplifies strength and that we have a willingness to keep going and persevere and to connect. That desire to connect and commune with an audience is ever present and ongoing, and that we’re uninterested in no longer telling our story, that we have, I guess, enough confidence and willingness to keep the chapters going, keep the narrative going. I think it just expresses a willingness and also a celebration at the same time. Not something that’s a burden, but something that’s a real joy.

Debbie Millman:
I have one last question for you. In your memoir, which was published several years ago, you wrote that much of your intention with songs is to voice a continual dissatisfaction, or at least to claw your way out of it. I’m wondering if that’s still the case.

Carrie Brownstein:
I think in some ways it is, but I don’t feel just wholly dissatisfied. It’s too cynical to be steeped in dissatisfaction. Also, there’s something whiny about that. I’m like, “Ugh, come on.” Dissatisfaction, what does that mean? That’s sort of your own making a little bit.

Debbie Millman:
Well, it’s a tough world out there, especially now.

Carrie Brownstein:
It’s a tough world, but it’s tougher for other people. I guess that’s how I feel. Sure, existentially, if you’re lucky, it’s just existential. If you’re less fortunate, those can be very real threats, corporeal threats.

So, yes. I mean, I’m not saying that I can’t be dissatisfied, but I guess what I’ll say is that I try to at least question what I’m dissatisfied about. But I also like to be a voice for those of us who are discontent, for those of us who are still clawing, and fighting, and wrestling, and thrashing about. Those are my people. Those are my people who just are restless by nature, and that restlessness can be born of many things, and I love that. I want life to feel urgent. I want art to feel urgent. I want people to leave everything on the stage, leave everything on the page, leave everything on the screen. Just put it out there.

I don’t know if it’s dissatisfaction, but it’s definitely a restlessness and a desire to keep wanting and to not settle, to just not look out and think this is okay. I will continue writing for myself and for other people who think this is not okay.

Debbie Millman:
Thank you, Carrie Brownstein, for making so much work that matters. And thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.

Carrie Brownstein:
Thank you, Debbie. That was a wonderful interview.

Debbie Millman:
Thank you. Carrie Brownstein’s memoir is titled Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl. Her latest album with Sleater-Kinney is titled Little Rope. You can find out more about the band on their website, sleater-kinney.com. This is the 19th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Design Matters: Carrie Brownstein appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:
So, Roy, I know you were born in New York.

Roy Wood Jr.:
Yes.

Debbie Millman:
But you claim Birmingham, Alabama as home.

Roy Wood Jr.:
Yeah. My father was in journalism, and so he worked for WCBS at the time. And then as soon as I was born, he got another job. You know journalism, you just bounce around.

Debbie Millman:
You go where the job is.

Roy Wood Jr.:
So we were in Memphis till I was in the third grade and then Birmingham after that. I feel like wherever, first bully, first kiss, high school diploma. If you got two out of three in the same city, that’s where you’re from. That’s my metric. I know that’s not an official statistic.

Debbie Millman:
No, that’s actually a good metric. That means I’m from where I was born, Omaha, Nebraska. Not great. So how did Birmingham shape you, especially if you had two out of three of those milestones there?

Roy Wood Jr.:
I think Birmingham shaped me. It’s an interesting place because it’s essentially 75% Black. Just Black American Black. I don’t mean immigrants or any other type of Black diaspora, just regular ass, cheese grit, Black. So this idea of racism and all of that was… I’m not saying that it wasn’t foreign. We were taught it. You’re educated about it. And I had two parents. My father was a civil rights journalist and my mother was a college educator. Eventually spent the rest of her time at a HBCU. So the idea of the world is terrible, you really didn’t get that unless you were over the mountain in the suburb shopping and you got followed around the store or you played a white school out in the county for whatever sports you played and you get called the N word or whatever in the middle of the game and the ref or that they didn’t hear it.

But day in, day out, I was around Black people. Every school I went to was predominantly Black. I had mostly Black educators. So Black barbershop. I got bit by a Black dog. So this idea of how terrible the world is, I was prepared for it, but I only got it in sneak previews. Like the idea of diversity and what we have now, I didn’t have a Latino classmate until the seventh grade and Asian until the sixth grade. Just didn’t know them, didn’t meet them, they just weren’t around. And then in high school I went to an alternative high school, so it was half white, half Black, and that’s where you get into the foreign exchange students and all of that type of stuff.

Something that’s so commonplace in most cities like in Alabama, there will be a conversation before like, “Hey guys, there’s going to be a Russian joining us today.”

Debbie Millman:
Something different.

Roy Wood Jr.:
“This person is from Nepal. Do you know where that is?” And we’re like, “Nope.” So it was very Black. It was very positive though.

Debbie Millman:
Do you think that positive influence in seeing Black as the center of your universe, did that help shape your comedy in the ways in which you tend to have a less cynical outlook than a lot of comedians?

Roy Wood Jr.:
Growing up in Birmingham for sure made me optimistic about what the world could be because I also grew up around people that were trying to change the city and make the city a better place. So that was probably a big part of it. For me, I’d say the biggest influence was when I started doing morning radio. So I leave Birmingham, I graduate high school, I go to Florida A&M, I get a degree in broadcast. I come back to Birmingham at 95.7 Jamz as an intern, which was the same station that Ricky Smiley started on, which is a huge, huge influence just in Black radio.

That second generation, Tom Joiner, he runs with Steve Harvey. So it was a big deal to be Black and be on the Blackest station in a Black ass city. And so what I learned from intern up to host over that decade was how many different ways people in the community were trying to make the city a better place. So this idea of what Alabama is in the perception of Alabama, I know a completely different place. We were the community, we were the number one station, but we were also the community station. So we legit showed up and did good shit.

We gave away homes and cars and there was a tornado in Tuscaloosa to Birmingham in 2010, 2011 if you want to Google it. Killed 50 people. Our station was on location before the Red Cross helping people. And so the idea of seeing white people and Black people coming together, I didn’t seen it, man. I hadn’t seen it on a regular basis. So when people go, “Oh, this…” So when you take that perspective and then you look at the national racial division that we have in this country, and you look at a lot of how angry both sides can be and how everybody has a degree of hopelessness, I just don’t have that because I’ve seen something different. I know why you’re mad and I agree it is messed up, but I also believe that there are people, we just have to find them and inspire them and get them the tools and the assets they need so that they can go out and change stuff.

Debbie Millman:
How do you communicate to people what you’ve seen and that you have seen that people can work together across divisions?

Roy Wood Jr.:
I just have to be that and then let them find out I’m from Alabama, then they be up off of it. “Really you’re from Alabama? You don’t sound like you’re from Alabama.” So I just try to be a good person. You can be an ambassador, but at the end of the day it’s just about trying to shine a light. You take a story like the Alabama Supreme Court gerrymandering, whatever. They drew up all of the districts. They kept redrawing them after Doug Jones beat the… What’s the boy with the cowboy head? Roy Moore. After Doug Jones-

Debbie Millman:
Oh, yeah. The guy who slept with 16-year-olds.

Roy Wood Jr.:
Beat the guy. Yeah, the guy who sometimes goes to the mall on Saturdays to see what’s cracking. And so after Doug Jones beat him, they redrew the districts in a way so that there wouldn’t be another Doug Jones who was a blue senator. And people fought and fought, and fought to get that to the Supreme Court and they won. Those people are also there. But the story that would get the bigger attention is the original story, which is, “Why would y’all elect Tommy Tuberville? Can you believe that, man? Alabama is so stupid. He don’t even live in Alabama.” We tried to not vote for him.

So the conversations about change just don’t happen as fast in Alabama because the bad news comes out at a much quicker turn and burn. I mean, you look at Georgia. Georgia really ain’t nothing but Alabama probably 20, 30 years in the future in terms of progressiveness. And Georgia isn’t seen as a hopeless place. But if you dig into crates and pull up some of the policies that were getting passed in the state of Georgia 30 years ago, it’s pretty bad. You might’ve had that same hopelessness 30 years ago. That makes sense.

Roy Wood Jr.:
Yeah.

Debbie Millman:
A lot of people say they’re funny and think they’re funny and perhaps are not.

Roy Wood Jr.:
I would never say that I’m funny.

Debbie Millman:
I find you funny.

Roy Wood Jr.:
I’m glad people laugh.

Debbie Millman:
When did you first know you were funny or at least believe that you could take your gift for the gab out and put it in front of people?

Roy Wood Jr.:
Sports. Because I mean, again, having… Between my two parents, there’s five degrees, five college degrees, so there was no cutting up in class and not getting your education. So I wasn’t really a class clown. For the most part, I was pretty straightforward. Even if I wasn’t making good grades, more often than not, it was just because I was just distracted, but I wasn’t a bad child. But on the baseball field, you could be a totally different person. After school, you can be something that you aren’t and then you’re around like-minded individuals. There’s a bond and a kinship that comes with sports. So I rode the bench a lot. I was not good. I was good enough to make the team, but never good enough to play-

Debbie Millman:
Get on the field?

Roy Wood Jr.:
… regularly. Because that shit stops at 12 like everybody gets a turn. That’s little league. Everybody plays. And then once you hit ninth grade JV, “Sit your ass over there and we’ll let you know.” And so when it came time to heckle the other team… And keep in mind, this is Birmingham. At the time 10 Black high schools. It’s down in consolidated, but at that time it’s 10 predominantly Black high schools. So the bulk of your schedule is Black kids playing other Black kids from other sides of town. And we would go to work, we would talk shit. We would crack. We would Jones, whatever you call it. And that became my job. That’s how I contributed. I’m not going to play, but that kid right there, I’m going to break his soul.

Debbie Millman:
Wow. Before Beyonce even.

Roy Wood Jr.:
We were dirty. We would watch the car that you got dropped off in.

Debbie Millman:
Oh, no.

Roy Wood Jr.:
If you got dropped off in a raggedy ass car, I’m on you. And so that became the place where humor was a bit of a weapon. And so now, because I’m funny at the baseball field, at school, I’m cool. I’m not getting picked on or bothered or whatever. I was never the coolest kid, but I definitely could move between different circles because of sports because all of my teammates hung in different social circles. So for as long as there was one person in that circle that was on the baseball team, I was accepted within that circle.

So it kind of made me a man of many countries where I could kind of just bounce around. I could hang with the golfs, I could hang with the gang bangers, I could hang with the nerds. I could be in chess club one minute and then be outside skipping school, going to McDonald’s in fifth period.

Debbie Millman:
Do you think that was a sort of foreshadowing of the way that your comedy appeals to a really wide audience, that ability to cut across different lifestyles?

Roy Wood Jr.:
Yeah. But I would say for sure that’s probably where on some superhero Ironman in the cave building, the first suit, Batman Begins type shit. Ironman came out too long ago. I had to add.

Debbie Millman:
No, I know what you’re talking about.

Roy Wood Jr.:
I had to add Batman Begins on the bad shit.

Debbie Millman:
When he was using all those jankity tools in the cave.

Roy Wood Jr.:
They called the second one. Okay. That was the beginnings of it. But I would say where I really cut my teeth and having to learn how to entertain different demographics was in college. I was 19 when I started standup. I was a server at Golden Corral. It’s not bad.

Debbie Millman:
The little rolls are really quite delicious.

Roy Wood Jr.:
Don’t go there on a date. It’s not romantic. That’s where you go once you got them, once y’all married.

Debbie Millman:
Once you’re comfortable and you can wear your loose pants like, “Baby, we’re going to Corral. Get your sweatpants.”

Roy Wood Jr.:
So at Golden Corral, as a server, I need to connect with you in 30 seconds if I have any shot of getting a tip. The moment you sit down, I believe that is when a customer decides what your tip is going to be. For as long as you establish something great and you don’t fuck it up the rest of the run, you’re going to get a good tip. I don’t think you can start off stale and slowly lighten up because when you’re interacting with a customer in a restaurant, each interaction is shorter after the initial interaction.

So I don’t have as much time. I’ve got 30 seconds up top. “What do you want to drink? I’ll go get your drinks. Here’s some plates. Welcome to… Then over here is that. The bread is over there, over there.” And I need a joke between each of those sentences because after that I’m just taking dishes and refilling drinks. I don’t have any time. So what is a joke? How can I connect in 30 seconds? And then what is that joke that I can use at the next table over who didn’t even hear me talking to you? And those are two different demographics.

Debbie Millman:
Yes.

Roy Wood Jr.:
So what is the joke that an old couple will laugh at and that five teenagers will laugh at even though only three of them paid for the buffet. And then with Florida State being in Tallahassee as well, game day was very important. So I would research. I would read up on the teams, whatever team was coming to town, the visiting team, I would read up. I’d find a game capsule online and learn a little bit about the team and then just ask the people at the table about a player or whatever.

And so what I figured out is if you can find out the things that people care about most and get them talking about it, I don’t have to say shit. So it became a sociology thing where what I found out was essentially food, relationships, money or entertainment. No matter who you are, one of those four things excites you. You have a favorite food, you have a favorite show or a sport. You’re either in love or you want to be in love. You’re figuring out a way to make money. That is the same for every American that walks this earth. Those were the four things that I always used. And once I started doing standup in the south, it was actually a little more circumstantial.

Now, high school helped, Golden Corral helped, but the circumstances of it was when I started doing standup to do comedy weekly to make enough money to pay bills, you’re performing in front of a different demographic every night. So what is the 20, 30? In those days, I was only doing like 15-minute sets. What is the 15-minute set that’s going to work at a dive bar in Fort Walton Beach with a bunch of drunk college students? And the next night you’re in Biloxi and nobody in that crowd is under the age of 70. Because otherwise you have the burden of carrying two different 15 minute sets, which is too much to work, and you don’t have enough stage time to galvanize two separate 15-minute sets.

And then the next night you’re doing a show for some dope boys and they’re going to pay you in cocaine. So what are the jokes? So you start figuring out. You go, “Okay.” So a lot of my early material, it’s food, relationship, money and the entertainment. Those were the connectors. And if I gave you one of those, then I found that audiences would allow me to go into the stuff that interests me. So you just have to meet people where they are. And that’s really what I learned at Golden Corral as a server was figure out what they’re interested in first.

Give them a little bit of that. And then when you come back to the table… I call them drive-by jokes. Then when you’re doing the refills and you’re taking the plates, we’ve already established that we’re cool and we’re friends. So now I can do a weird joke or say something slick and it’ll be okay. And so it was more of a need of necessity than some deliberate… I did not start out writing material going, “I want everybody to like me.” But 10 years in the South, this is how you’re going to make your money. Because otherwise, if you put yourself in one demo box, you’re not going to make enough money.

Debbie Millman:
So when you were 19, you were arrested for stealing credit cards and staring down a stint in federal prison.

Roy Wood Jr.:
Correct.

Debbie Millman:
And young people make mistakes, but as we well know when Black people and Black men in particular make mistakes, the consequences are often far graver. Fortunately, instead of prison, you received probation. And that’s also when you started to go on the road with your comedy. How do you get from there to here and how were you able to take that second chance and make the most of it?

Roy Wood Jr.:
So for context, I was a mail sorter in the post office at the campus post office. I don’t know if you know about credit cards and college, but that’s where all the credit cards go first is to the post office. And so we got our night here. “Man, I want some jeans. Man, I just want to look good for homecoming.” All I want is some jeans. And that was the only purpose of why we were doing what we were doing was to get jeans to look good at homecoming.

Now, when you are arrested in this country, the first thing they try to do is pin every crime that has ever happened in your genre of crime on you. And so we get arrested and they show us this book of 10, 15 other people in the Tallahassee area that they’re investigating for a white collar crime. “Do you know him? We’re going to find your phone number and we’re going to trace it, and we’re going to connect you and you better admit to it.” In that moment, I was like, “Wow, they don’t even…” The idea that this was just-

Debbie Millman:
Just being kids.

Roy Wood Jr.:
… more of opportunity. I could have got a work study in the cafeteria and we wouldn’t even be talking about it. I may not even be a fucking comedian. So this idea that there are people in this country that want you gone, they want you gone, that was very, very real to me. And so I got suspended from school because of that. And during the suspension is when… And I’m very leery, leery about using the word depressed, but I was in a very bad and sad place and I thought that I had thrown my life away. And that’s what it took for me to try doing comedy.

So I started doing standup and it was the only thing that made me happy because here’s the other thing that happens when you get arrested, you lose all your friends. And when you’re the guy that’s helping everybody else get clothes, you’re the man. But when that’s cut off, nobody wants to talk to you. And then there are other people that are doing their own crime from selling weed and robbing. You just know an array of people. I literally cannot be around you, man, because I will go back to prison. I’m on probation.

So it literally changed my circle of friends. And so I started doing standup. I get back in school and I just kept doing standup. And that was 1998 till today. The only thing I can tell you, I never did standup with this idea of, “Yes forever. This is the dream.” All I knew when I started was I like doing this. I make enough money on the side. I was working 20 hours a week at Golden Corral. All I need to clear my rent every month was $500. So yeah, rent, phone, my contribution on cable and lights total, $500. So I didn’t have to… And then the other thing that happened to me where I got very, very lucky is that I got suspended from school after financial aid checks had been dispersed.

Debbie Millman:
Ah, yes, the best time of the year.

Roy Wood Jr.:
So I had a check. I was 19 years old. I had a check for $7,000 and no classes to pay for because I’m suspended from the class. So that money was essentially the front money to get me on the road, keep me in hotels. I was young, sleeping in bus stations and stuff, trying to cut corners. But that’s what I did. And it was just once I graduated from school, I was making enough money. I was making 18K doing comedy. The two journalism offers I had were 14. So I was like, “All right, I guess I’m a comedian.”

Debbie Millman:
So journalism has always been lucrative then?

Roy Wood Jr.:
Yeah, I took my 18K, I moved back to Birmingham. I worked at the radio station for free until they put me on salary, and I just never stopped doing standup. It was wild because I remember when I used to crack jokes at the baseball field, I remember distinctly when Comedy Central first became a network in the early ’90s, and all they showed was standup all day. They did not have programming. There was a time, children where there were droves of standup shows on every channel and Comedy Central would just compile the best jokes of those shows and just show that shit all day.

I remember being 14 and watching that and just being mesmerized by it and then realizing that’s what I’d wanted to do all along. I didn’t even know that my city had a comedy club because they didn’t even really advertise that much.

Debbie Millman:
I remember those days because I love standup and you could just watch hour after hour after hour. There were no TV shows, there were no reruns, there were no sort of vaguely related movies. And so you could really see what standup was about, especially in the early ’90s. You have been on the road for a very long time, and touring can be incredibly challenging for a lot of reasons. What do you get out of still going on the road and what are the pleasures really, and what are the pains of going on tour?

Roy Wood Jr.:
The pains change as you get older. The early pains was that it just wasn’t a lot of money. But in hindsight, it was the most fun I ever had. When you look back on a lot of your struggle years, it really is fun. I remember I drove 15 hours to Buffalo, New York for six minutes of stage time. I went to Detroit, there was a club in Detroit called Coco’s and I looked on their website and they do open mic on Mondays. So I drove to Detroit on a Monday just to do the open mic. What the website did not say is that it’s open mic rap night.

I’d driven 13 hours to Detroit and it was 28 rappers and me. I went up, it was terrible, but I drove. I’m going to do my time. I signed up. So those moments help mold you. Those are the skinny days. But then as you get older in terrain, I think that the safety net comes from under you a little bit more. I’m 44 now, so you need to make sure that you find an audience and have people that rock with you and enjoy what you’re doing and make sure that you’re staying on top of evolving your jokes.

So whereas it used to be, “Can I get five minutes?” Now it’s me going through my run sheets to see what jokes I did the last time I was in this market to make sure I’m not repeating material. What is the new stuff I can integrate in? What were the ticket sales? What were the metrics? What is my meta demographic on Instagram followers? It’s the stressful stuff that you never had to think about, but it’s the stuff that matters the most. So you can’t blow it off.

I’m from a generation where I looked up to comedians who still wanted to do David Letterman and Jay Leno, and do late night when those comedians should have been the ones that were looking at digital and where the game was going. They should have been looking at MySpace. In the early days of YouTube, the first year of YouTube, I had 100,000 followers. And that’s insane. There was no monetization back then though. And then YouTube also in that time, it was just a channel. You just listened to stuff. It wasn’t really a video priority website.

So I just didn’t give a fuck. I didn’t care. A hundred thousand? What does it mean? Kajillion? The email list, I don’t need to collect emails. Who cares? Said two or three stupid things on YouTube and caught a couple copyright strikes from posting shit that wasn’t mine and lost the account. And it wasn’t until like five or six years later where I was like, “Fuck, I was ahead of the curve.” And so making sure that you are looking ahead… Like in baseball… And to me, everything is baseball. So in baseball, when you hit a ball, they tell you when you run the first, the only thing you should be looking at is the base. Don’t look at anything else. Don’t look at where you hit the ball, just focus on hitting the bag and going through the bag.

And then the moment you hit first, you have to look up and see what’s happening on the rest of the field to decide to take second. When you’re headed to second base, you’re already thinking about third base. When you’re going to third, you haven’t even touched third yet, and you’re already assessing whether or not you should go home. And that’s what comedy is. Only you can’t see where you’re going, but you know you’re going somewhere. Even now as we speak, the sands of this industry are shifting.

Debbie Millman:
And how so?

Roy Wood Jr.:
The idea of whether or not an hour special is still what it was. Standup still matters. Televising still matters. Reaching people who consume it still matters. But the model that I had been sold for the past 20 years, I need to sit and put that shit under a microscope and decide whether or not that’s the way to go. When you look at someone like say a Matt Rife far more recently and Nate Jackson, these are gentlemen that have blown up and are selling four digits worth of seats per show. They don’t have Netflix specials. They don’t have an HBO Max special.

So it’s important to look at where the industry is going and how it’s evolving. And that’s the one lesson I was never taught from a single OG because I just don’t think that they knew. I mean, the game was the same for 60 years, and then it just started evolving every five to eight.

Debbie Millman:
Is it the internet and social media that is forcing the comedy game to evolve?

Roy Wood Jr.:
Yeah. Also, I think people’s attention spans their watch habits. I think the way we consume information is changing as well and I think that’s an important part of it. You could probably get as much coverage or as much hits or views or whatever ratings, whatever metric you want to use with a 90-second clip as you could. You’re better off as a comedian right now, recording yourself for an hour and chopping that into 90-second chunks.

Debbie Millman:
On TikTok?

Roy Wood Jr.:
Yeah.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah, I believe it because I have a little TikTok problem.

Roy Wood Jr.:
Or YouTube shorts. YouTube shorts is doing really well right now, and you should put your stuff on shorts because they’re prioritizing people who use shorts. And the algorithm will favor you if you post stuff on shorts instead of Instagram. That’s the stupid shit you have to know now. It can’t just be, “Well, is this Mitch McConnell joke insensitive? And should I do it or not?”

Debbie Millman:
Yes.

Roy Wood Jr.:
Also, what platform should I put it on and what time of day should I post a Mitch McConnell joke? So it’s such a moving target now. But that’s exciting. It’s exciting. I don’t say that as some sort of complaining curmudgeon. It’s just with touring that is the purest, “Yes, we fuck with you or we don’t,” that anybody could give in this day and age. Even right now in this room, the fact that you were here in this room, you left your house, that is a chore now.

Debbie Millman:
In the rain, by the way. Thank you.

Roy Wood Jr.:
Seriously, that’s a big thing. So if you can still get someone to get out of their house and drive and sit in a room and listen to you talk, then you’re doing something right. And to me, that is the most consistent and most favorable algorithm that will always be there. And so I take touring very seriously, but just in terms of how to grow it and how to make sure that you are still connecting with people who don’t watch you or don’t watch the daily show or whatever. Hell, even late night is changing.

So you just think entertainers as a whole have to start thinking of themselves as their own promotional vehicle. And if the studios and the networks want to rock with you later on, let them come. But this idea of waiting patiently to be chosen so you can find the people who will love you forever, that’s a sucker’s bet. If you’re still operating like that, knowing that you have all the power in your hand. You can edit, you can Photoshop with that, whatever you’re holding right there.

Debbie Millman:
I have brothers. It’s a Fold 5. It’s a folding phone.

Roy Wood Jr.:
It’s Android. Just say Android.

Debbie Millman:
Oh no, it’s an Android.

Roy Wood Jr.:
We don’t know the models.

Debbie Millman:
Don’t you worry.

Roy Wood Jr.:
She just pulled out an iPhone out of that pocket.

Debbie Millman:
Let’s be clear. I enjoy gadgets and I love that you can open and fold your phone and I feel like a spy whenever I do it. I’m just like…

Roy Wood Jr.:
And that matters. And that’s the type of stuff, how people consume stuff dictates how you create the stuff where tech goes, where porn goes. That’s where humor. I’m not even trying to be funny. Snapchat started out as something way different.

Debbie Millman:
It did.

Roy Wood Jr.:
Than what it eventually became.

Debbie Millman:
Actually all social media started with porn, Tumblr, Snapchat. The Google thing. There was a thing, yes.

Roy Wood Jr.:
Circles or something. I think only Etsy is the one that’s been legit the whole time. Etsy has always been straw bags. And freaking weird cushions for your chin.

Debbie Millman:
There’s so much on Etsy. It’s too much. I need someone to go through Etsy curate a selection.

Roy Wood Jr.:
I don’t know. Did Etsy start with dick pillows or something?

Debbie Millman:
Well, yes. One of the things that marks your comedy is that you tend to make a lot of cultural observations, and you can go to very interesting and sometimes challenging places. But how do you stay culturally knowledgeable? Because there is a lot of information and we are changing how we consume knowledge. So what does your cultural diet look like?

Roy Wood Jr.:
I am every other day a local paper from a random city, which is becoming tougher because local papers are dying. And most papers now are just wire reports or just some regional reporter that files a story. Like Alabama. There’s no city in Alabama that has a hard copy paper that’s delivered anymore.

Debbie Millman:
No way.

Roy Wood Jr.:
It’s dead.

Debbie Millman:
Not even Birmingham?

Roy Wood Jr.:
Not even Birmingham. And so it may be on Sundays. Fact check it, but I know Monday through Friday there is no paper. It does not exist. And the stories you find online are kind of the same ones you’ll find on the Huntsville website and the mobile and the Montgomery website. So I try to read locally to see what’s happening in other places. Now, that’s a habit that also came from my early five, six years on the road. When I would go to a new city, I wanted to find something local to talk about so I could connect with the people from the jump.

So whatever is happening in your town, I’m going to do three minutes about that upfront. Whether it’s funny or not, it’s something you’re interested in. So it’s almost free material, low key. It’s low risk material. You’re not expecting a punchline because I don’t live here and I’m just chatting about the thing. So that’s a habit that still stayed. Reddit, I try to go to a little bit. I read some national papers. Once I got The Daily Show, I stopped reading national papers because we consume so much national news that most national papers are just a day late on stuff. I already know what’s going on.

I like op-eds, and that’s the main stuff. It’s like if news happens, I go to Reddit and read about it. And it’s the same reason I still rock with YouTube. It’s the comments.

Debbie Millman:
Oh, well, yes.

Roy Wood Jr.:
I read YouTube comments. I’m like one of the few people that will just juggle dynamite for my stuff and for other people’s stuff. And so Reddit and YouTube, to me, the way I look at it is that Reddit is the more thoughtful version of stupid. Does that make sense?

Debbie Millman:
It really does. Like an elevated stupidity.

Roy Wood Jr.:
Yeah. But you explain in detailed paragraphs why you believe… Even right now as we speak right now, there was an F-35, a pilot ejected.

Debbie Millman:
Yes, that shit is missing.

Roy Wood Jr.:
The F-35 did U-turns. They just found it crashed in South Carolina in the woods. Nobody died. There’s already people going to government and Biden and the conspiracy. And what if AI took over the jet? And it was…

Debbie Millman:
Well, there is a movie about that. It’s called Stealth. It stars Josh something or other.

Roy Wood Jr.:
Yeah, Jamie Foxx is in that one. Yes, Jessica Biel. Yeah, I got the DVD.

Debbie Millman:
Yes, talent, taste. Love it.

Roy Wood Jr.:
So on YouTube, it’ll be short blast of perspectives, of differing perspectives across the political spectrum. Reddit is a more nuanced explanation of those spectrums of views. My job as a comedian and as a correspondent of The Daily Show is to talk about this from an angle you haven’t heard yet. So I have to know, I choose to know what is everybody else already saying about the thing? And that’s something I got to give Trevor Noah props to, because I kind of stole that from Trevor because stuff would happen and it would be like 1:00.

The scripts aren’t due till three. “Trevor, it just happened. We got to put it in the show tonight.” And Trevor is like, “Well, wait a minute. Let’s see.” That’s my accent. “Let’s wait today and see what unfolds.” And you may not be first, but you will have the most interesting, and you will have the most nuanced approach to something that people thought that they had already heard and knew everything about. And so that’s kind of why I’d choose to. It’s YouTube and Reddit are the only place where constituents get to talk at length and really explain why they feel the way they feel.

Debbie Millman:
There are two other places that do it, just if you’re ever looking, TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor, hotel reviews. I live and die by them because I travel a lot. And so I need to know where I’m going to lay my head much to my wife’s chagrin.

Roy Wood Jr.:
Yeah. It’s just-

Debbie Millman:
So we’ll start there.

Roy Wood Jr.:
I like those. You can get your dudes from anywhere, but most of the time when people talk on the local news, it’s a 15-second jab. Twitter is quick jabs, and then it devolves into something crazy. Instagram is not really set up for that type of discourse, but I need to know what everybody is already saying. So I can not say that or have a new perspective on that.

Debbie Millman:
That makes a lot of sense. I read a lot about you over the past couple of weeks, and I learned a number of nicknames that people have given you over the years, but the one that really stuck with me for a lot of reasons was from an article in GQ a few years ago where Paris Sashay said, “You are the Black uncle of comedy.”

Roy Wood Jr.:
I’ll take that.

Debbie Millman:
What do you think about that nickname? And is that something you think of as a compliment? Because it was framed as a compliment, and I certainly see that as a compliment.

Roy Wood Jr.:
I mean, well, I figured what she meant was like I’m the good uplifting uncle, not the drunk uncle.

Debbie Millman:
Oh no, yeah, you were the good uncle. Not the creepy uncle.

Roy Wood Jr.:
Every family has two uncles.

Debbie Millman:
Yes.

Roy Wood Jr.:
Yeah. The one that go, “You can do it. Come on, drive. I know you’re only 12.” I enjoy talking to the younger comics. So sometimes it turns into… It’s not really deliberate advice as much as it is. “Hey man, what do you think I should do with this thing?” And I enjoy talking to younger comics because they have their finger on where the game is going. I have a child, I have a day job, I’m on the road. There’s people to talk to and deal with and staff stuff.

So I don’t have time to just be at a granular level to see everything that’s happening on the internet. Something as simple as who’s this new artist? It could be by just being around the younger comics at the comedy cell, like say, Paris Sashay and Derek Gaines or Reggie Conquest. These people help keep me hip to what’s going on so that I’ll know what people are talking about and what people actually give a damn about.

Debbie Millman:
That’s what I call my students, my youth concierge.

Roy Wood Jr.:
I’ll give you a great example. I had a joke about a Chuck Norris movie, and I’m pitching it to Paris and some of the other comedians at the table, “Man, y’all know Chuck Norris. He had these movies,” and then one of them just went, “Man, I’m 31.” And I was like, “You know what? You’re absolutely right.” And then Eagle Witt is like, “I’m 26. Oh gee, I don’t know nothing about Chuck. You mean the exercise dude at two in the morning?” So then I instantly go, “Okay, I need to rework that joke. That joke is not going to be as universal.”

Debbie Millman:
Please tell me it was a joke about Delta Force.

Roy Wood Jr.:
Yeah, it gets to that. It starts with Missing In Action though.

Debbie Millman:
Oh, excellent.

Roy Wood Jr.:
Which if you’ve ever seen Extraction with Chris Hemsworth… It doesn’t matter. We’ll talk about it later.

Debbie Millman:
Yeah. I see a lot of 30-year-olds here just looking at us like, “Hmm.”

Roy Wood Jr.:
But I never set out to be a mentor. I don’t think I am, but I just think it’s symbiotic conversation. I’ve tried to be the comedian that a lot of comics weren’t to me growing up in terms of either not sharing information because they think everything is a competition. They think that there’s only one comedy club in America and that we can’t both perform at the same time, in the same timeline, in the same Spidey-verse or whatever. So you deal with a lot of petty and competitive motherfuckers and I just decided I didn’t want to be that. And I think what I found in talking to other comics is that often, it helps to make me better.

Debbie Millman:
Roy Wood Jr., it has been an absolute delight. Thank you so much for joining us-

Roy Wood Jr.:
Thank you for having me.

Debbie Millman:
… for Design Matters Live.

Roy Wood Jr.:
Thank you. Thank you all.

The post Design Matters: Roy Wood Jr. appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:

Who doesn’t love romantic comedy? When it’s good, a romcom scratches itches we forgot we even had, for human connection in a world that seems designed to frustrate it, for things to actually work out in spite of the obstacles we face. And yes, for the sheer pleasure and experience of joy. Kyra Sedgwick’s latest directorial effort, Space Oddity, scratches all those itches with a little sci-fi thrown in the movie mix.

Kyra Sedgwick has had an extraordinary career in front of the camera since the 1980s, both in film and television, including her award-winning role as Brenda Leigh Johnson on the long-running television show, The Closer. Kyra Sedgwick has also been behind the camera, directing quite a lot of episodic television, but Space Oddity is the first narrative feature film she’s directed. She joins me today from Los Angeles to talk about her acting career, and her brand new directorial debut. Kyra Sedgwick, welcome to Design Matters.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Thank you so much. So happy to be here.

Debbie Millman:

Kyra, I understand you have a fear of food that looks like people. What is that about?

Kyra Sedgwick:

It’s not quite that. I have a gag reflex that gets triggered when I see food anthropomorphized.

Debbie Millman:

Anthropomorphic food, yes.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Thank you. And for instance, yesterday I went to my neighborhood movie theater, which is this tiny, funky movie theater called Los Feliz 3, and it is in my funky neighborhood in Los Angeles, and they have this old-fashioned, go to the snack bar, and the popcorn bag is dancing, and the soda is cha-chaing, and it just doesn’t work for me. I literally feel like I’m going to gag and will have to look away.

Debbie Millman:

Apparently, you’re not the only person who has this fear. It even has an official phobia name. It is cibolasiphobia.

Kyra Sedgwick:

I’m so glad I’m not alone. I feel like I’m not alone in this. I feel like this must gross other people out as well.

Debbie Millman:

I’ll have to check if it’s in the DSM of official ailments, but I thought you’d appreciate knowing that.

Kyra Sedgwick:

I really do.

Debbie Millman:

Kyra, you were born and raised in New York City, as was I, Your mom was a therapist, and your dad was a venture capitalist. And I understand that you’re also a descendant of a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Which signer are you related to?

Kyra Sedgwick:

Gosh, you know what? I should know their name, which is pretty… My father is rolling in his grave. “How could you not know?” I think it might be John Sedgwick, but I don’t know. I think it was a general. I also know that one of the guys in the movie Glory also is one of my progenitors. I think it might even be in the Matthew Broderick character, I don’t know. But all I know is that in my teens, my father was like, “See Glory. You have to see Glory.” It was the only movie he told us we had to see.

Debbie Millman:

You’re the youngest of six children, and you’ve said that your older brothers, Rob and Niko, toughened you. I’m wondering, in what way?

Kyra Sedgwick:

Oh my God, in every way. They were mercilessly… They teased me mercilessly. My brother Rob really was nearly violent with me. Not even nearly, his favorite pastime was strangling me and my brother, or saying, “We’re going to time you. Go get me a grilled cheese sandwich. We’re going to time you.” Making you do dumb things. And then as if that wasn’t bad enough, they would throw in all this love, occasionally, but that was only occasional. And they would, most of the time, sort of gang up on me. And I think that it helped me realize at an early age, yes, indeed, it is a man’s world, and get used to it.

Debbie Millman:

Do you have any sisters? Or all of your-

Kyra Sedgwick:

I do. I do.

Debbie Millman:

… other siblings brothers?

Kyra Sedgwick:

I have two I sisters, but I didn’t get them until later on, until I was about six. So then I realized how great that could be. And just as a PS, my brothers and I are incredibly close now, and we were close as kids. It’s just that my mother didn’t do any… It was in the 70s and 80s. It was the benign neglect theory of parenting.

Debbie Millman:

Your parents divorced when you were four years old, and your mom remarried an art dealer when you were six, and you’ve said that as a result, you became a keen observer of human nature. You’d watch people talk and study their eyebrows, and their bodies, and felt a lot of responsibility for everyone you knew, and how they felt. That’s a really big burden for a little girl to carry. How did you manage?

Kyra Sedgwick:

How did I manage? I managed by thinking I had a lot of control. I think that’s how I managed, because I think that I felt so out of control and things felt so chaotic, that I had to convince myself for my own survival that I could control things. And then occasionally, you get these little wins and you’re like, “I did control it. I can do it again.” It’s sort of an okay thing to think when you’re younger, but as you get older, you realize what a horrible burden that is. As I’ve grown, I’ve definitely grown out of that, and realized that it was a burden, but at the time, I think it felt like a superpower.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, I’ve read that. I’ve read quite a lot about how children that have been through traumatic experiences very young tend to become hyper aware in an effort, both to control things as best as they can, but also to be prepared for catastrophic things that still might be coming.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Absolutely.

Debbie Millman:

I also understand that you were a serious tomboy. Instead of playing with dolls, you’d spend hours playacting. At one point, you were a ballet teacher dancing around your room. You said you were not a happy kid. Did you spend a lot of time alone, aside from getting beaten up by your brothers?

Kyra Sedgwick:

Yeah. I think I did spend [inaudible 00:06:38]. I did spend a lot of time alone, for sure. Again, I think it was the 70s and 80s, and I think that parents didn’t really do what they do now, which is insist on family dinners, or just show up in a different, more present way. I think that my parents did better than their parents, but I think that, yeah, I had a lot of time alone. I also watched a ton of television, that was a real healing balm for me, which ultimately was actually a good thing for my work. But it was lonely. It definitely wasn’t a happy childhood really until 12, which sounds really young, but when I fell in love with acting, that was when things really shifted for me, and I had a dream, I had a goal, I had a passion, and that helped me a lot, find connection within myself and others.

Debbie Millman:

What made you decide to try out for that eighth grade school production of Fiddler on the Roof?

Kyra Sedgwick:

It’s pretty funny, actually. That’s actually a great question, because I remember when I signed up to audition thinking, “Who do I think I am that I can play this character in this show, or what makes me think that I can get up on a stage and make people look at me?” But I guess I must have had a little guardian angel or something, or there was something in me that was calling me to that. And I remember after I auditioned, my English teacher, who at the time did not think of much of me, I can tell you that right now, because I was a bit of a hippie, actually, at 12, looked at me and said, “Oh my God, you sing like a bird,” he said to me, and I remember thinking, “Is that good? Is that a good thing?”

Debbie Millman:

So did Joni Mitchell, by the way.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Yeah. And so yeah, my English teacher was the drama teacher, as is often the case in these kinds of schools. And I got this great part, and that was it. I was happy all the time, especially when I got to rehearsal. And actually, on the days that I didn’t have rehearsal, I wasn’t so happy. But the days that I did it was like, “Oh my God, this is it. This is everything.”

Debbie Millman:

Now, before you even tried out for the play, I read that you didn’t think that you were talented in any way. And in fact, you thought you were rather mediocre. Was that something that you were sort of self-creating? Or was that something that you were told?

Kyra Sedgwick:

Truly, my stepfather was a very exacting serious man. He had what is still considered one of the greatest artistic eyes that there ever have been.

Debbie Millman:

He’s a great art dealer, yeah. Collector.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Great art dealer, yeah. He bought the first Jackson Pollocks, the first Rothkos, the first Jasper Johns, Rauschenbergs, Barnett Newmans, he was a serious connoisseur, and if he could spot it, you got it. And he was also highly intellectual. And I think that when we moved into his home at age six, my dad, who had been like, “Everything you do is great,” and, “Hey, we’re all playing touch football and playing tag, and you don’t have to be special in any way. I just think you’re the pips because you’re mime, because you’re a kid and you’re adorable, and I love you,” it became much more exacting, and I felt criticized on a very profound level constantly.

And so he was critical of all of us, and probably himself. Now I can look back with so much empathy, but all of a sudden when someone’s looking at you like that, you start going, “Oh, well, I really am not really that special or worthwhile or anything.” And we weren’t focused on, so that probably also had a lot to do with feeling like I wasn’t interesting enough to be focused on. That all changed so profoundly in almost a really uncomfortable way when I was 12 and I was in that play. Suddenly, my parents were like, “Oh my God, you’ve got this enormous talent.” And all of a sudden their eyes were on me. And it was almost terrifying, in a way.

Debbie Millman:

I read something that I just was so moved by, about your reaction to being on stage at that age, and you said, “I felt like my soul had left my body and was dancing around the stage.” What a profound experience to have in a lifetime.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Oh, God, it really was. It was.

Debbie Millman:

And then you got your first gig as a player on the soap opera, Another World. And I understand your mother had a close friend from college, a man named Philip Carlson, who was a manager, and she said, “Yes, you could audition,” because she didn’t think you’d get it, and then you got it. What was that like at 16 years old to be auditioning for a major television show?

Kyra Sedgwick:

It was crazy. I wanted it desperately. Between 12 and 16, I had decided this was definitely what I was going to be doing with my life, and I had pursued it in the ways that I could pursue it. I went to acting camp, and I studied at HB Studios, and I was taking it very seriously, but I didn’t think about actually pursuing it professionally at that young age, until this friend of my mother’s was like, “How about you just audition ‘for fun’, and see what happens just to give you practice in auditioning?” And I was like, “Yes.” And my parents said it was okay, and so yeah, I auditioned, and I felt in my element. I don’t think I even felt scared. I think I was like, “Well, I got this.” And I did get this. And then doing the actual show was amazing. It was life changing, and it was… It’s a very professional atmosphere. They’re not going to cut you any slack because you’re 16. And so a lot was expected of me, and I was excited to live up to that.

Debbie Millman:

Your first on-screen television appearance was on January 15th, 1982. You played a 16-year-old, Julia Shearer, the troubled granddaughter of Liz Matthews, the soap’s matriarch. What was the experience of becoming a professional actor like for you?

Kyra Sedgwick:

I was so incredibly excited. I sat in the makeup chair, I got my makeup done, my first scene was just me in a phone booth calling my grandmother…

Debbie Millman:

Very dramatic.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Yes.

Debbie Millman:

The coat, the krishnas…

Kyra Sedgwick:

Yeah, a rock group called The Deep Six, and then I had this giant closeup with a push-in at the end, and I remember when my parents bought a DVR, like a DV… VHS player.

Debbie Millman:

VHS, yeah. VCR, something like that.

Kyra Sedgwick:

VCR, yeah, whatever, and they recorded it, and I was like, “Oh my God, there I am.” And I thought I looked pretty after not thinking I was pretty at all. It was mind-blowing. And it was also weird, but just great. I really felt totally in my element, and it was a very professional, funny situation there. And I would just live for scripts in my mailbox, and oh my God, and look and see how many scenes I had, and oh my God, counting my words, the whole thing.

Debbie Millman:

You studied acting at Sarah Lawrence College, and then you transferred to the University of Southern California, where you graduated with a theater degree, but at that point, you gave yourself a deadline. You gave yourself six years to make it. Why six years? How did that number come about?

Kyra Sedgwick:

It’s so funny. I have no idea. And also, first of all, I just want to clarify that I have not graduated from college, and I went to US-

Debbie Millman:

You attended it, then.

Kyra Sedgwick:

I attended, exactly. I attended. But I have no idea except to say that I didn’t want to take my parents’ money. And I knew that at a really young age. I didn’t want to be under anybody’s thumb, and I wanted to make my own way. And so I figured after the soap opera, I think I figured I had enough money for X amount of years, but six sounds like a lot, frankly. But I really did feel, and I really do believe, that if I didn’t start booking things, that I would’ve quit, because I was very aware that it was an artistic endeavor, yes, but that I had to make a living.

Debbie Millman:

In 1983, you auditioned for the movie Flashdance. Is it true that you scolded the director Adrian Lyne for taking a phone call during your audition?

Kyra Sedgwick:

I totally did. I totally did, yeah.

Debbie Millman:

I love that.

Kyra Sedgwick:

I was like, “You’re not going to pick that up, are you?” Because he was reaching for it, and he looked at me and burst out laughing. I had a lot of those kinds of things with men, where I would bust them, and they loved it. I think it was one of the reasons why I got born on the 4th of July with Oliver Stone, was because that, one of the first things he said to me was, “So you went to Brearley, huh? You’re a spoiled private school kid?” And I don’t remember what my retort was, but whatever it was, he just was like, “Oh, okay, this is great. I don’t have to worry about this person. She’s going to bust me right back if I try to bust her. If I say something, she’s not going to shrivel up and die.” And I’m grateful to my stepfather for that kind of prowess.

Debbie Millman:

It’s funny, I find that sort of the more powerful a man is, the more likely they seem to acquiesce to push back. I remember making a creative presentation to the CEO of a major health food company, and while I was making the presentation, he ended up… He was texting or doing something on his phone, and at the end of the presentation, he goes, “Ah, I don’t really understand it.” I said, “Well, I’m not surprised since you really weren’t paying attention.” And that was when I won him over.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Oh my God, amazing. I love that so much.

Debbie Millman:

Now, I know you worked with Jennifer Beals on Proof. Did you ever tell her about auditioning for the role that she ultimately got?

Kyra Sedgwick:

I think I might have said something, because the other funny thing about that story was that I got a callback, and they asked to do the dancing part. And they asked us to pick a song, and to just do improvisational dancing, but we had to wear a leotard with no tights and heels. And I did not do that. And I remember my agent being like. “That it’s a big mistake if you’re not going to do it.” And I just said, “You know what? I can’t. I can’t with just a leotard.” So I got myself a little mini-skirt and did it that way. But I think I might have told her that, she might have laughed. I didn’t get anywhere close, but I do remember dancing with these ridiculous red heels that I’d gotten, because I didn’t have heels. I didn’t know from heels at that time in my life.

And I had gone to some drag store downtown on Canal Street or something like that, and I remember there was a giant table at the other side of this warehouse size loft where we were supposed to be dancing, and there were just 10 men, one of whom had on mirrored sunglasses. And I can’t remember what the song was, but I just remember thinking, “There’s just no way I’m getting this.” And I definitely did not get that.

Debbie Millman:

Well, it’s so interesting that they were making you do that kind of dancing when, in fact, there was a dance double for the movie.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Well, she did definitely do some of the dancing, but there was a lot of very muscular kind of break dancing and stuff like that. But I’m sure they didn’t think that at the time. Plus, I know that… I’m certain that Jennifer’s a good dancer in her own right, but maybe at the time, they didn’t think about that.

Debbie Millman:

Your very first movie role was the lead in the 1985 film, War and Love. How did you land a starring role in your first film?

Kyra Sedgwick:

Oh my God. It was hell. I think I auditioned 30 times for this thing, that nobody ended up seeing, but it felt critical to me at the time, and not only because it was a movie that I wanted to be a lead in the movie, but really because it was about the Holocaust. It was about the children in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust, and frankly, I think was just so moved by playing Fidel in Fiddle on the Roof, and that whole Anna Tefka song, and how the Jews were persecuted, and this was another version of that.

I wanted it desperately. I auditioned so many times. Moshé Mizrahi was a very well known and famous Israeli director at the time, but it was great. I was 17, I turned 17 in Budapest where we shot the movie. We shot in Budapest and Hungary, and we actually shot at Auschwitz Birkenau, and it was a harrowing thing to experience as an actor. And I remember that feeling of having been through something, stayed with me for many years after I finished that movie, and I was so young. It’s kind of remarkable that it hit me so hard.

Debbie Millman:

The movie didn’t get particularly good reviews, but the New York Times film critic, Vincent Canby stated that, “Kyra Sedgwick, a pretty blonde actress who looks like a teenage Julie Christie, does surprisingly well.”

Kyra Sedgwick:

I love that so much.

Debbie Millman:

I know, right? I wonder what that really is saying in terms of the pretty part, but in any ca… Obviously you’re gorgeous, but it’s funny how that becomes… Nobody would say that about a man. “He’s a pretty blonde actor,” right?

Kyra Sedgwick:

No, no, no, no, no.

Debbie Millman:

Do reviews matter to you?

Kyra Sedgwick:

Oh my God, reviews. It’s so funny, because when I hear that review, which I remember my mother quoting young Julie Christie, because that just made her so happy. It was like… Oh, my God.

Debbie Millman:

I can understand that.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Forget it. There’s nothing… That was the best compliment I could have possibly gotten. When reviews are good, they’re not good enough. And when reviews are bad, they’re devastating. So I do everything I can not to read reviews to this day. And Kevin and I have a deal that neither one of us read reviews, so that we don’t know something that the other person doesn’t.

Debbie Millman:

Is it hard to maintain that?

Kyra Sedgwick:

It’s hard to maintain it, yeah, sometimes, especially when you look up on your IMDb and something pops up like, “Hey, notification.” But they have a job to do, and they do it well, some of them, but you’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t. You’re damned if you read them and they’re great, and then you believe it, and then when they don’t love you, it’s horrible. I have a very complicated relationship with it, and yet, I have to say, that if I’m going to go look at a movie, I sometimes look. So I give it credence, but I try not to as an artist.

Debbie Millman:

You met actor, director and musician, Kevin Bacon, for the second time while you were both starring in the 1987 television film, Lemon Sky, and you said you knew right away he was the one. But in all the accounts I’ve read of your courtship, Kevin has always said that you were aloof and standoffish at the beginning, and wouldn’t have dinner with him for weeks.

Kyra Sedgwick:

That’s true.

Debbie Millman:

So you knew, but you also didn’t want to-

Kyra Sedgwick:

I knew pretty quickly, but I did not know right away. I thought he thought he was all that in a bag of chips. That he thought he was really super cool, and-

Debbie Millman:

Well, he kind of is.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Exactly. And I was dating somebody else at the time, and I was like, “Why would I have dinner with you? I’m dating somebody, and plus you don’t really want to have dinner with me anyway. You’re just saying that,” kind of thing. I think I thought of that at the time. But it was very… It really was two weeks of him sort of wooing me, and then when we did have dinner that one night, he walked me home. And the next morning, I literally woke up and I was like, “Oh my God, I had this very warm, safe feeling in my belly, and what is that? Oh, it’s that guy who I just had dinner with.”

And I was like, “That feels like home.” And I was like, “Well, what does that mean?” Because I never really felt like home anywhere was really home. But then I thought, “Oh, I guess it’s him.” Then I went to work, and I was like, “Oh, yeah, it’s definitely him.” So once I actually spent a minute with him, I was like, “Oh, this is it,” because I’d never had anything like that. I think I kept myself very safe in the world of romance and opening my heart, for fear of having it destroyed smartly. But I was aloof in the beginning, because I thought, “What does this guy keep asking me out for dinner for?” I was confused.

Debbie Millman:

I hinted that your meeting on the film wasn’t actually your first meeting, and I was wondering if you can share the story of that actual first meeting.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Yeah, so my mother was a big fan of his, and he was about seven years old… He is seven years older than I am, but as we’ve said, I fell in love with acting at 12. And so for my birthday… I mean for Christmas, the year that I turned 12, my mother gave my brother and I theater tickets. And she was a big fan of the theater, she still is, and she had seen Kevin in a few plays, and this latest play that he was in was called Album. It was a very cool little play down at the Cherry Lane Theater about four 20-somethings, and he was one of the stars, and mom thought that my brother and I would love to go see it.

And so she gave us tickets for Christmas, and we went and saw it, and afterwards, we were leaving the theater and we went into a deli to get something, and my brother Nico said, “Oh, Hico, there’s that guy from the play, that guy from the play.” And we thought he was really good. And he goes, “Go up to him and tell him you thought he was good.” And I was like, “No, I don’t want to go up to him. Come on.” He’s like, “Come on, come on. Tell him you thought he was good.”

So I went up to him, and I was like, “Hi, I thought you were really good in the play.” And he was like, “Thanks, sweetheart.” I remember him saying, “Thanks, sweetheart.” And I was like, “Oh,” [inaudible 00:25:46] like a little kid, which of course I was, I didn’t think of myself as a little kid. He was 19, I was 12. Anyway, it was funny. And then years later when I worked with him, I was like, “Do you remember that I came up to you in a deli afterwards?” And he goes, “No, of course I don’t remember.”

Debbie Millman:

Oh, that’s a wonderful story. And I didn’t realize that I was at the Cherry Lane Theater, which is my absolute number one favorite theater in New York.

Kyra Sedgwick:

So great.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve said that you didn’t ever have any great role models for healthy marriages, but you knew in your heart and soul that Kevin was the right person, and it has been an unquestionable truth in your life. And you’ve been married now for 35 years. You just had your 35th anniversary, happy anniversary.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Thank you.

Debbie Millman:

In Hollywood years, that’s like 135 years, but what do you attribute to your longevity?

Kyra Sedgwick:

Longevity, that’s what I attribute to longevity. Longevity.

Debbie Millman:

Okay, yep.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Yeah, I just think that not getting divorced. I never wanted to get divorced. You never wanted to get divorced. We really like each other. We really like spending time together. We enjoy working together, we enjoy playing together, we enjoy puzzling things out together, we enjoy raising children together, we enjoy walking together down this road of life. And I feel incredibly grateful that I found somebody who can let me grow and change and shift, and doesn’t get threatened by that. We just got lucky. That’s the only thing I can say about how we attribute it. We really got lucky right off the bat.

Debbie Millman:

There were two things that I read that really struck me that I’m going to try to take into my own marriage, which is only three years, so quite a long way to go, but you state that couples should play sexy and fight clean, which is something I think is really true, but then also to always be aware of a WME, and what is a WME for our listeners? And how do you manage the WME?

Kyra Sedgwick:

The worst mood ever is a WME. And mostly I think that if either one of us are in the WME, the greatest thing you can do is just give someone a lot of space to be in the WME, and not try to change it. That’s a good one to remember. It took me many years. And it’s not personal, they’re just in the WME.

Debbie Millman:

Right. You got married when you were 23. You conceived your son Travis on your honeymoon, and when Travis was five and your daughter Sosie was two, you had an epiphany. You realized that your parents had split when you were three, and it became clear that for your children, everything was mom and dad in how they dealt with each other. Did that help you understand your own childhood better?

Kyra Sedgwick:

Yeah, I think that was a moment where I went, “Oh boy, I’ve got to do some work. I’ve got some darkness in here, and she needs to come out and be talked about, and looked at, and examined, because she’s in here running the show, and I don’t even know it.” What I realized was that parents are incredibly important. And I could see in my kids that we were their everything. We were their everything.

And if there were to be some cataclysmic shift that happened where we would split, it would rip their world in two. And I think that that kind of honor and respect for a really traumatic thing that happened in my childhood had not… We had not been taught that that was something that would affect us later on in life. I think that both of my parents, probably out of their own sense of needing to be okay, I completely understand it, for their own sense of not being terrible parents, would tell us that everything was fine. Yes, we split up, but mommy and daddy still love each other, and mommy and daddy will always love you, and it’s not going to affect you later on in life.

I don’t think that there was any kind of emotional space held for, “This must be really hard for you.” Ever, ever, ever, ever. And that’s something that would never happen today, at least with on top of it parents. We’ve learned how important it’s to hold a space for all the feelings. But at the time, I think that for their own preservation, and I know for my mother’s, she really needed us to be okay. And when I say us, I mean me and my two brothers. So we acted like it was okay.

In fact, one of the amazing things that happened between Kevin and I when we first met was on one of our dinners, first or second or third dinner, he said to me, “Tell me about your childhood,” or something like that. And I said, “My dad left when I was three, and my parents got divorced a couple of years later.” And he was like, “Oh, wow, how was that?” And I said, “Oh, it was fine. They handled it really well, so we were completely fine. It didn’t affect us.” And he laughed and went, “Well, I guess you can keep thinking that for a couple of more years.” And I remember looking at him like, “What? What are you talking about?” But it wasn’t until many years later that I was like, “Oh.” And I remembered him saying that, and I think that it was just a story I told myself. It’s like that great movie that incredible Sarah Polly did called-

Debbie Millman:

Women Talking?

Kyra Sedgwick:

No, called Stories We Tell.

Debbie Millman:

Yes, that’s [inaudible 00:31:40].

Kyra Sedgwick:

It’s like the stories we tell ourselves, and then suddenly you’re like, “Why am I telling myself a story that at three, when my dad left my mother and she almost had a nervous breakdown, I was fine? And when they finally got divorced, that was fine?” It wasn’t fine. I’m sure it was… I know it was horrible. I don’t remember it that much, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t affect me. So I think that those are the kind of things that come right up in your face when you have children, in a way that you could probably skate by on your subconscious level forever, and be perfectly fine about it, and then suddenly when you have kids, you’re like, “You have to look at this thing.”

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. Well, it’s interesting, because you did all of that work to understand it better for yourself. I’m wondering if there’s any correlation to right after you had kids, a lot of the roles that you were getting became significantly more prominent. You were nominated for a Golden Globe for your part in Miss rose White in 1992, another in ’95 for the film Something To Talk About, where you played Julia Robert’s sassy sister, so I’m wondering if getting that more clear in your own mind facilitated a better sort of understanding of your talent.

Kyra Sedgwick:

I think there’s no question at all that the more inside job work we can do, we’ll be better for everything in our lives. Ourselves, the ripple effect with family is undeniable, and learning about yourself as a human, and accepting all the parts of yourself can definitely help your acting. And absolutely, people see it. And then they want you to portray someone in that point in their life. And drama, conflict, tension is at the core of comedy, drama, everything at movies place, everything.

Debbie Millman:

I have one sort of trivia question for you about Something To Talk About. My wife and I watched it the other night again. It’s one of her favorite films.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Oh, that’s so nice.

Debbie Millman:

And she actually has a question for you. Emma Rae King, what did she do for a living? Because she didn’t work for the horse farm.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Oh, I think… I felt like she did a lot of accounting for her dad, and did the hiring and firing, actually. I thought she was the one that would tell people the bad news when they were getting fired. Because at one point he’s like, “You’re going to deal with telling your sister that the shit’s hitting the fan with her husband, right? You’re going to do that for me, because I can’t do it.”

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, we were taking bets on, maybe she was the lawyer or the financier, we were really flummoxed about it. In any case, you got your first producer credit in 1996 for the beautiful movie Losing Chase. You also starred in the movie with Helen Mirren and Beau Bridges, and you said that you’re a good producer because you’re bossy and opinionated. And while you don’t always think you’re right, you think you have good ideas and love giving people jobs. And so given your nature, what was it like being directed in that film by your husband? Because that was his directorial debut.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Right. Well, it was funny, because I got that script and knew I wanted to produce it. And at that time, what producing meant for me was getting financing, which came really easily, because Showtime, for whatever reason at that time, was making movies and wanted to make a movie with me, and hiring other people. Hiring the pop sort of group.

And when Kevin read the script and he liked it, I was faced with a very difficult decision, because I knew that if I were to give him this job, it would be Kevin Bacon’s first directing job, and not Kyra Sedgwick’s first producing job. And that is the way it is still considered to this day. I knew I was making a sacrifice. Having said that, the material really spoke to him. He’d spent a lot of time in Martha’s Vineyard, he knew what I was going for, and I thought it could help the movie to have him as the director. So it was one of those moments where it was like, “Oh, yay, I get you to have my first producorial gig, but it’s going to look like something else for people.”

Debbie Millman:

So people think that the director… People that aren’t in the movies think the director’s the boss.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Right.

Debbie Millman:

So what was it like being the boss, but then being directed by your husband?

Kyra Sedgwick:

Yeah. Well, I think that that answer gives you the sense of what I was grappling with. Because as we’ve established, we live in a patriarchy still, and also we live in a world where people love movie stars. And so he was definitely the one that everybody felt was the leader of this whole thing, that maybe possibly I’d gotten some credit just for fun. As a producer, at that time, I was much more of a just creative producer, where I was like, “Okay, I got the script, I’m going to hire the director, I’m going to take it to someplace and have them do it.” So that was sort of the beginning and the end of my job as a producer, until it came to editing, I went back in there. But I really had to, as an actor, let go of that hat while we were shooting.

Debbie Millman:

2005 was a big year for the Sedgwick Bacon family. You were all involved in the film Loverboy, another film that Kevin directed and starred in, along with you and your two children. Loverboy was a very, very… Or is a very dark movie, with a totally unexpected ending. Crazy unexpected, at least to me. How do you incorporate playing someone so evil in your own psyche?

Kyra Sedgwick:

Yeah, it’s funny. I never thought of her as evil. I thought of her-

Debbie Millman:

Creating so much harm.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Yeah. No, I know. It’s-

Debbie Millman:

Evil is not the right word.

Kyra Sedgwick:

No, no. Listen, she tries to commit a double suicide with her seven-year-old son. I would call that a version of evil. But I knew in order to play her, I couldn’t really feel that way about her. What I felt about her was that she didn’t get enough as a child. She had parents that were narcissistically in love with each other. They were everything to each other, and the child was like an afterthought, always. And they were never letting that child into their partnership. And so she has this child to have something of her own.

And I have to find some way into the character where I find some nugget of connection. And my connection with that character was having had two children of my own, there always comes that moment, that first moment when your child lets go of your hand. And it happens either on the first day of kindergarten or the first day of daycare, or sometimes it doesn’t happen until much later for some people, but there’s always some time in which your kid is walking away from you and growing up on some level, and they will never, ever need you in the same way as they do when they’re infants and toddlers.

And that is something that is very difficult for some people to get over. It was impossible for this mother to get over, but I can tell you that I have… I feel like the tragedy of motherhood is that it is a slow moving letting go that happens all the time at every year, at every level of their development. And it’s the only job that if you do it exceedingly well, you get fired. And that, to me, is heartbreaking. And I could really relate to the mom in the movie because of that.

Debbie Millman:

2005 also brought you one of the roles you’re now most known for, playing the great, complicated, beautiful, brilliant Brenda Leigh Johnson on the television show, the Closer, for seven seasons. Now, I initially read that you wanted to turn that part down, but it was Kevin who urged you to take it. Why were you so unsure about taking the part?

Kyra Sedgwick:

I wouldn’t even read it for a bunch of months. My manager at the time was like, “You have to read it. It’s great.” And I was like-

Debbie Millman:

It’s you. It was meant for you. No one else could have played that part. No one.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Well, I knew it shot in LA. That was a deal right there for me, for months. And then Kevin said to me, “I really think you should read it.” And then when I read it and I fell in love with it, he was like, “I really think you should do it.” And we knew,, on some deep level that the kids were not going to move to LA. And I don’t really know even how we knew that, but I think Travis and Sosie were just such… We had just made this choice early on in their life to raise them in New York, and that felt very important. And then it became important to them.

So it was a hard choice to make because of the kids. And I think that what Kevin was saying was like, “Look, there’s been a lot of things you’ve turned down because it wasn’t the right time for the kids, and I think it’s time you stop doing that. And this is a great role, and so I will not work when you’re shooting.” And in the beginning it was four and a half months, and they would come out every other weekend, and Sosie was 12, which is still really young. Travis was 16, and a very old 16, really. And I don’t look back with regret at all about taking it, and I missed stuff. No question that I missed stuff.

Debbie Millman:

Well, you won nearly every award you could for playing Brenda Leigh Johnson. An Emmy, A Golden Globe, a Satellite Award, a People’s Choice Award, the cast was nominated for a Screen Actor’s Guild Award every year you were on the air, you were also awarded a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame for television. For most of the run, the show was cable television’s highest rated drama. People loved your character so much, they wanted to look like her. Fashion blogs filled up with detailed examinations of the vintage jackets and your floral skirts. It was so much fun reading through all of this. And for many years after this show ended, there was a company making replicas of the purse that you carried, the one that you shot the gun through the purse in the last episode. What do you think it was about Brenda Leigh Johnson that resonated so deeply with people?

Kyra Sedgwick:

She was such a surprising character. She was just a bundle of contradictions. She was wildly underestimated in a way that I think that people just love. She seemed like this pretty blonde to go full circle, who didn’t have a brain in her head, who spoke with a lilting southern draw, and wore nothing but skirts and heels and sweater sets, and was the smartest badass in the room, who could elicit confessions, which are the only airtight way to send a criminal to jail. And she did it every episode, [inaudible 00:43:23] a few, and she did it with a lot of panache and a hell of a lot of style. And she was funny, she was flawed deeply, she was morally ambiguous, and she was a compulsive eater. And-

Debbie Millman:

Ring Dings. I love that they were Ring Dings.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Yeah, exactly. And was utterly accessible. I loved her. She mattered to me. She mattered to a lot of women. I know a lot of women that have gone into that business, into some kind of criminal investigatory business, because of it. And she was incredibly important because she made people a lot of money, which in this business, is the key to longevity. And that felt really good. And she paved the way for, I think, a lot of women being in starring roles from that moment on, because they saw that it paid.

Debbie Millman:

Well, one of the interesting things I think about Brenda Leigh Johnson was the fact that she was all of those great things and flawed. And you saw those flaws, and it somehow felt comforting that here was this sort of brilliant, strong woman who also did sometimes have questionable ethics. But I think you knew deep, deep down through and through, she was a morally noble person.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Yeah, exactly. I remember the first episode, that chocolate thing, we’re rewarding herself with the Ring Ding at the end, or Ding Dong, West Coast, East Coast-

Debbie Millman:

Exactly.

Kyra Sedgwick:

It’s a battle to the finish.

Debbie Millman:

As long as the tin foils around it.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Yes, exactly. And I remember saying to James, “Well, you’re going to keep that, right? You’re going to keep it in the subsequent episodes?” And he was like, “I don’t know. I’m not sure.” I was like, “Oh no, you have to. You have to keep it.”

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. You lay on the bed and go, “Mm.”

Kyra Sedgwick:

Oh yeah, forget it.

Debbie Millman:

What’s better than that?

Kyra Sedgwick:

Nothing.

Debbie Millman:

After seven seasons as the top-rated most awarded show on television, you made the decision to leave. You decided to retire from the show. Why?

Kyra Sedgwick:

I really didn’t want to become one of those number one on the call sheets who is really kind of bitter and sour and icky, and not treating people well, and not grateful, and that was a big part of it, honestly. And I had never been that person. It was a joy from top to bottom, and it was all consuming, but I didn’t want it to turn. I also didn’t want to hang around too long in that role, and then only be known for that role. That was the biggest reason, really, was because I’m an artist who needs to be fed in different places.

But it was a hard decision, because I knew how deeply it would affect so many people, all the crew. We had no defectors. People came back every year to do the show, and it was only 15 episodes. And all our crew came back every single year. So I knew that it meant a lot, breaking up the family, but I knew it was the right thing for me to do as an artist. And ultimately, I don’t want to hang around too long and then have the audience start to turn on us. That was just too heartbreaking to imagine.

Debbie Millman:

In the 10 years since you left the show, you’ve continued acting on both episodic television and in films, you’ve continued producing, but you’ve also taken up an entirely new role, directing. After working on set for so many years in front of the camera, what motivated you to get behind the lens?

Kyra Sedgwick:

Well, I think there were a couple of things. I think that I had reached critical mass in seeing work that I had done as an actor not cut well, not shot well, not written well, I think I had gotten to the point where I was like, “Why is my best stuff on the cutting room floor? Why did they edit it that way? Why do I not have any coverage in this scene?” Honestly. And I think I just got to the point where I was like, “Well, if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.” When you look back on my career, I had worked with so many great directors for so many years, like bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And then I think that kind of fell away, it felt like. And so I was, I think, becoming increasingly frustrated with what was coming to me, and also what ended up on screen.

And Kevin actually, again, featured prominently in… My eye for the way something is directed, became more and more keen. And he would always say, “I don’t know why you’re not directing. You have such a… You think of things directoraly, you see things you directoraly, you always, when we leave a movie, talk for a long time about the way things were shot and the arc of the character, but also arc of things visually, and you should think about it.” And I was like, “No, no, no, I’ll never direct.” And I used to say, “I’ll never direct. I’ll never direct.” And I think that honestly, a big part of that was because I thought I would never be great at it, as if one has to be great right off… out of the gate.

But I think that ultimately what happened was, I had this script that I had been trying to produce for 10 years called Story of a Girl, it was a book that I had optioned with my friend, I was meeting at Lifetime with Tanya Lopez to talk about producing stuff for them, and I was sitting outside in the waiting room, and there was a little video that they had done about female directors. And I watched the video, wasn’t thinking much of it, but then when I went into speak to her, she said, “Hey, listen, if there’s something that you are interested, we’re doing this mandate here where we’re only hiring female directors for a certain amount of time, and if you have a passion project, and…”

I just blurted out, “I have Story of a Girl and I want to direct it,” and kind of turned around and was like, “Who the hell just said that?” And realized, that was me. And she read it that night and said, “I want to do this with you and I’ll give you a little money,” and that’s how that came about. But I think that it was one of those things where my soul was kind of ahead of my brain at that moment, but it was daunting and scary and wonderful and turned out really well.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. You said this about directing actors, “I think that every actor is ripping themselves open and leaving a piece of their soul on the floor for you, so you better honor what that is. I feel like I know that intrinsically. That’s not something I had to learn. That’s something I deeply understand.” Kyra, how do you best create a space for an actor to sort of rip themselves open like that?

Kyra Sedgwick:

Well, I think that simply by virtue of the fact that they know that I know how it feels to be so vulnerable, and to have this giant piece of machinery, this camera, between you and the other actor, all you’re trying to do is tell the truth, and you have to do it between action and cut, I think that they understand intrinsically that that’s something that I understand. Having said that, I just try to be incredibly kind and loving and celebratory, and create a really safe place for them, so that they can fly without a net and give them whatever they need to get there. Every actor needs something different, but I think that you learn their instrument, and then do what you can to try to help them play. And I help them try to play their interest instrument the best that they can.

Debbie Millman:

I want to talk with you now about your most current project, your first narrative film project, a theatrical movie titled Space Oddity. Your production company, Big Swing, acquired the rights to the story, which in many ways, is a love letter to the planet, but it’s also an intimate portrait of family connections and disconnections and hope and sadness and grief and new love. What drew you to this project?

Kyra Sedgwick:

Well, all those things you just mentioned. I’m like, “Sign me up. I want to watch that movie, I want to live in that movie.” There were so many themes that were in the script, and that we spent a lot of time cultivating with the writer that were just of primary importance to me as a human and as an artist. I think that storytelling can change you, I think that storytelling can help you to exercise your compassion in such a beautiful way, and only humans get to do that, although there are some mammals that feel compassion as well, but learning about ourselves through art, whatever that art form is, is just a critical part of living for me.

And so all of those themes feel critically important to me, and more important as I get older. That idea of there’s no place that you can go that you’re not going to be hurt, that people aren’t going to die, that there aren’t going to be struggles, and the way through it is with connection with others, and there’s no other option. And being present means you’re going to get hurt, but it’s worth it.

And the journey of it, the movie was so entertaining, I found it, on the page. I was flying through the script just thinking, “I love these characters. I don’t understand them necessarily, but I want to stick with it until the end.” The payoff felt so beautiful. I love the book ending of the movie of like, “I’m going to go to Mars.” “No, I’m going to stay on Earth.” And then everything in between is, how do you be that person who wants to check out in the ultimate sense because things are just too hard, and then you become that person who goes, “No, I am fully immersed and planting myself in the soil.” I just love that journey.

Debbie Millman:

I do too. I also was so impressed with the way in which the decision making was shown. So many times in a movie where there’s this sort of cataclysmic moment, or this cinematic climactic moment of awareness, it sort of pops up. And here you sort of see the process of struggling through it. And that’s one of the things that I enjoyed the most about it, was really feeling like I understood the inner dialogue of this journey, without it being a surprise to discover. You felt like you were going along in that decision making. I love the movie. It’s a beautiful movie. You said it was really hard to raise the money for this film. Why?

Kyra Sedgwick:

I don’t know. I don’t know. I think there’s no question, I’m a female director, and even though I was nominated for a DGA award with Story of a Girl, it’s not like it made a lot of money for people. It was a respected movie on Lifetime, which is not going to win you a lot of financial support for your next gig. I think it’s a sweet movie, which I think that in the world where it’s just so hard to get people to go to a movie often, they want it to be possibly about a true story, or a horror movie, or something that you look at it and go, “I know what that’s going to be.”

And I think this movie demands more of you than that. And I do think that there’s something weird about sweet tales, even though I feel like what we need so much is sweetness in the world right now. Not saccharin, we’re going to take you on a ride, and we’re going to give you some pain, because there’s definitely some pain in this movie, but ultimately, it’s going to be hopeful, and you’re going to feel good about life afterwards. I think that’s something that we’re having trouble selling, even though I think it’s what people crave.

And I also think that what I heard a lot is it’s execution dependent, which means, “We don’t know if you can do it. We don’t know if you can cast it. We don’t know if you can do it.” And I find that so shocking, because I think everything is execution dependent, but I think it means something else in Hollywood that I didn’t know at the time. But we have 15 executive producers, and we made the movie. And I trust that it will find its people. You know what I mean?

Debbie Millman:

Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Which is the good thing about, yeah, it was only in the theater for a week because that was the only… That was the deal. It was only going to be that. But the fact that it’s going to have a long life on streaming, and that feels good about what’s happening in the world right now in movies, but even though it’s kind of painful that we’re not all together having an experience in the movie theater.

Debbie Millman:

Well, in this particular movie, I think it’s a very intimate movie. I don’t necessarily want to be listening to somebody eating their popcorn next to me while I’m sort of feeling the feelings.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Good. I’m glad.

Debbie Millman:

But you’re the third female director I’ve interviewed this season. Sian Heder, who directed CODA, Sarah Polly, who directed Women Talking, and it’s so incredibly disheartening to hear the same thing over and over about women directors in this business. And I really hope that that changes a lot sooner than it’s changing.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Me too.

Debbie Millman:

Because these movies matter. Much of the movie is set on a flower farm. How did you find this flower farm? Where can we go see this flower farm in real life?

Kyra Sedgwick:

Yeah, this flower farm exists. It is a working flower farm in Saunderstown, Rhode Island. I think that’s it. I might be wrong, but I know the town of Wickford is where we shot the movie, and they were close by Wickford, and it’s called Robin Hollow Farm, and it is a family owned farm, husband and wife, Mike Hutchison and Polly, and it is a stunning flower farm. And I was in Los Angeles in February of 2021, and I was desperate to find a flower farm, I knew I wanted to shoot in Wickford, Rhode Island because I love the town, it was perfect, and I needed to find a flower farm. And I went online and I looked up a bunch of flower farms in Rhode Island, and this one really stood out at me in every way. And I called them, I cold called the farm on the day before Valentine’s Day, and I called and-

Debbie Millman:

Busiest day of the year.

Kyra Sedgwick:

I know. And Polly picked up the phone and I immediately launched into, “Hi, I’m Kyra Sedgwick and I’ve got this movie that I want to shoot this summer in Rhode Island, and I saw your flower farm online and it’s so beautiful, and might you consider letting me shoot there?” And she said, she took a pause, and she goes, “Well, I’m going to have my husband call you back, because he’s a little more knowledgeable about the film world than I am, but I did want to remind you that you are calling a flower farm the day before Valentine’s Day.” And I was like, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I hate Valentine’s Day. I mean, I love Valentine’s Day. I mean, I just need [inaudible 00:59:02].”

And it was like I was talking to some rockstar. But yeah, we met with them that spring, and they went for it. They let us shoot there in the summer of 20… I guess it was summer of 2021. And it was absolutely incredible. Or maybe it was ’22. Sorry, I don’t remember my dates exactly. But in any case, that’s how I found the flower farm, literally online. And then I just got lucky.

Debbie Millman:

The casting is also really wonderful. I read that Kyle Allen, the young man who stars in the movie, came on board at the last minute, that somebody else had dropped out. Is he by any chance related to David Duchovny? He looks like an exact replica of Fox Mulder in the early X-Files days.

Kyra Sedgwick:

That’s so funny. People say he looks like him, they say he looks like Heath Ledger, which I also really see, and Mark Wahlberg, who I also see.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, yeah.

Kyra Sedgwick:

But no, he is not related, as far as I know, to any of the above. He is his own creation, and he is a classically trained ballet dancer. And I think that was a real plus for me, because I know how hard it is to be a classically trained ballet dancer. And so this guy was going to know how to work hard. Aside from being a wonderful actor, with a lot of tenderness and soul and pain in his eyes, I knew he would know how to work really hard.

Debbie Millman:

And the chemistry between him and Alexandra Shipp, the young female star in the movie, is just palpable.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Thank you.

Debbie Millman:

Really wonderful casting.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Yeah, I got lucky.

Debbie Millman:

And I read that though your husband is in it, he was not your first choice.

Kyra Sedgwick:

That is right. That is correct, yes.

Debbie Millman:

How do you feel about that?

Kyra Sedgwick:

I offered it to somebody else… Fine. When I asked him, he said, “I was wondering what took you so long.” I didn’t want to ask him to be in the movie because I didn’t want him to think that… He was in Story of a Girl, and I didn’t want him to feel like, “Boy, she can’t get a movie off the ground unless she puts me in it.” And honestly, that was the reason

Debbie Millman:

Your husband has stated that he’s never seen you happier at work than when you’re behind the camera. And you’ve stated that this part of your artistic journey as a director feels much more like a calling than your acting. And I think that’s just a wonderful thing to be able to discover in an artistic life. What advice would you give someone steeped in any career about making a significant pivot?

Kyra Sedgwick:

My mom was a really great role model in that way. She worked with kids with learning disabilities from the time I was little, until she was about 50, and then she studied and became a family therapist. She was a really great role model in going, “It never stops. You can keep learning, and you can keep trying new things.” So I would say keep trying new things. And sometimes it’s not that you are feeling old, it’s that you are bored.

And I’ve always had a love for learning, and while this is very much adjacent to what I do as an actor, it’s a bigger piece of the pie. And I think that in a way, as a woman, I was told, “You’re only supposed to have this little piece.” And I think that growing up in the business, I didn’t see a lot of female directors, so if you can’t see it, you really can’t dream it. And so I think that was part of it, but I think that it’s never too late to start something new, especially if you do the footwork to get you there.

Debbie Millman:

Is there anything you’d like to tackle that you haven’t yet?

Kyra Sedgwick:

I’d love to do a big action movie. I’ve done some action on City on a Hill, which was a show that I did for Showtime, and Ray Donovan, I did some action in that one. I’d love to do more of it. Again, I feel like it’s something that women aren’t invited to that party, and so I want to crash it.

Gina Prince Bythewood is just an idol of mine in that way. She just does action so well. And as an extension of great character, I think it can be something really wonderful. And I really want to lean more into big ballsy comedies. I love comedy, and I think I grew up on some of the greatest comedy of Mel Brooks and Bugs Bunny and Albert Brooks and Catherine O’Hara and all these incredible people, and I’ve got a real ear for it, so I want to do more of that as well.

Debbie Millman:

Well, speaking of action movies, this is my last question. You and Kevin both have parts in the recent Guardians of the Galaxy holiday special. In the film, Kevin is essentially abducted from his home, and I recently saw a video of you zooming in from your home on a late night talk show, and the house you were calling from looked suspiciously similar. Is it possible that your home was featured in the Guardians of the Galaxy special?

Kyra Sedgwick:

Oh my God, hell no. I have been in this business… Both of us have been in this business way too long to even consider letting anyone shoot here. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not at all.

Debbie Millman:

It seems like they designed something that was rather similar in terms of the windows. I don’t know, maybe I’m making it up.

Kyra Sedgwick:

That’s so funny. Yeah, maybe because it looked a little modern or something like that.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, that’s exactly it. That’s exactly it.

Kyra Sedgwick:

But that was a billion-dollar house, and our homes are decidedly not that.

Debbie Millman:

Well, I love that you were both in that, in the Zoom.

Kyra Sedgwick:

It was fun. And I love that I can say on IMDb that I’m in the Marvel universe, so that’s pretty exciting.

Debbie Millman:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Kyra Sedgwick, thank you so much for Thank you making so much work that matters. And thank you so much for joining me today on Design Matters.

Kyra Sedgwick:

Thanks. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Debbie Millman:

Kyra Sedgwick’s latest film is Space Oddity, and it is out now. And it is wonderful. This is the 18th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we could make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Design Matters: Kyra Sedgwick appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:

Penelope Grace Garcia is a survivor, a technical analyst of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. She has been shot, she’s been arrested, she has been jilted, she has been kidnapped all while helping to solve difficult cases. She’s also the only character who has been on every episode of the show and in all of the spinoffs of the Criminal Minds TV franchise. She’s played with heart and wit and great comic timing by the one and only Kirsten Vangsness. Kirsten is a stage actress who also sings. She’s written plays and TV episodes and starred in her own one woman shows. Penelope Grace Garcia is only the tip of the iceberg and I’m here to plumb some of those depths. Kirsten Vangsness, welcome to Design Matters.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Geez, thanks. Very exciting.

Debbie Millman:

It’s wonderful to have you here and I have a question that I’m really curious about as my opening inquiry. Is it true that you chose the name Fluffy as your confirmation name?

Kirsten Vangsness:

Absolutely true. I actually wrote it in the Book of Common Prayer in Orange Crown on top of Teresa, because I really desperately wanted to name a pet Fluffy, and that was far too pedestrian for my mother. So I was like, “Well, I’ll name myself.” And I did have this sort of round halo of fluffy hair. So it worked.

Debbie Millman:

You grew up behind the main street on-ramp of Highway 190 next to the Anderson Fence Company in Porterville, California.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

And I understand that you had a crush on Harriet The Spy as you were growing up.

Kirsten Vangsness:

I did.

Debbie Millman:

Why Harriet The Spy?

Kirsten Vangsness:

Because she’s all the things. She’s got that wonderful androgyny and the glasses, the commitment to an outfit for the sake of how it made you feel. Not necessarily that the glasses worked or the… I can’t remember what else she had on her. The flashlight. I think the flashlight worked, but something like that and her dedication to writing and her intuitiveness and her just general chutzpah that I certainly didn’t have. I wished upon it, to have it when I was that age. And the writing, the journal writing and the observing of people. So, yeah. It was Simon Le Bon, Harriet The Spy and Kate Bush. Combine those, smush those into one being and that’s…

Debbie Millman:

Your trifecta?

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

You’re the daughter of elementary school teachers. Your father also sang opera and worked with the community theater and I understand that you and your sister spent a lot of time there, and by the time you were about seven, you began playing old ladies on this stage. So why the old ladies?

Kirsten Vangsness:

I was a weird kid. And people say that. A lot of people say like, “Oh, I was weird and I was bullied and I was strange looking.” I really, really was. It’s not hyperbolic. I’ve always shown how I’m feeling or what’s going on with me on my body and I grew up in a very chaotic household and I was storing information and experience and my own thoughts on my body. And as a result, I had a real weird posture. And I have this sister who is now an elementary school teacher, and she’s three and a half years older than me, but she’s shorter and she’s more of the Italian side of the family. So she has green eyes and she can tan naturally and she was sort of perky and bright.

So for instance, my dad would play Birdie in Bye-bye Birdie and my sister would play one of the teenagers who was crazy about the star, Bye-bye Birdie. And I would play one of the 70 year old women who would be like, “Why is he…” Or I would be one of the old ladies in Fiddler on the Roof or whatever, because my demeanor was such that I could… And I was so painfully shy. I just think the hunching over, it just fit really well because usually that part, you’re just peas and carroting in the corner. But I very quickly learned to love that environment very much, just the irreverencey of it all as an observer really then, the most in the shadows kind of observer that there could be. Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Despite his interest in opera, your father didn’t take care of his voice. He didn’t have the career he wanted. He lost his job. He became a gambler and an alcoholic and the family ultimately had to exist on your mom’s paycheck. And you’ve said that being so afraid of the choices he made, made him cruel. And I thought that was such a kind and empathetic way of talking about someone that did really cruel things to you. I’m wondering, how you got to that place where you could have that insight and empathy?

Kirsten Vangsness:

Oh God, I’ve always been at that place. It’s really weird because my childhood, my growing up, all of that is so… It survived so much my fantasy life of it. And God, I can’t remember the name of that wonderful writer, psychologist, Gabor… Is it Gabor Mate? I might be messing up his name entirely, but he’s had a new book out and he talks about how children in the same family have completely different upbringings. I’ve always simultaneously hated my father. Deeply hated, wanted to murder him, and at the same time, loved him. I mean, I love him like a father. I didn’t have a father who did father things. I don’t have one of those. I don’t have that, but I remember an Amanda Palmer lyric where she says, “Fear makes you cruel.” I think the reason why I liked that lyric is because I’m like, yeah. So even when I was little… And I got told all the time when I was a kid, “You’re so much your dad, you’re so much your dad.”

And I didn’t understand that, but I was so close with him. I was the one that when my parents would fight when I was very small, I would come in and try to talk it through. So I felt like I knew him so much and because I unfortunately, spent time with him as a small child where I was way adultified, I knew him. I mean, I felt like I was a second wife and his therapist and a non-existent creature that extended outside of him that was for his purposes. And so, it’s not like I… It’s just there. The empathy or the whatever. I don’t know why, but I think I lucked out, out of my demeanor, out of the way my brain handled stuff. I know that people have every right to feel the way that they feel about their family members and people that have wronged them and I certainly have a lot of feelings about him, it’s just I don’t know why the second I got the opportunity to not be around him, I took it and… Meaning I moved into somebody else’s house when I was still a teenager.

I insisted on having friends around and the whole time being told I’m being ridiculous and nothing’s happening and you’re crazy. And the thing is, is that the people close to me in that situation that are part of my family, would still say that now. And we have to maintain this sort of… It’s hard, because they don’t like it to be real and I don’t always know if it is real, but if I behave it if it is and I take care of myself as if it is, life got much better. So I don’t know what to do and I hope I answered that question.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, I mean, it’s so interesting. Memory is such a strange and circuitous thing, and apparently every time you remember something, you’re remembering a memory.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Right.

Debbie Millman:

However, I do want to say having spent, I don’t know, the last couple of weeks, deeply researching your whole life and seeing everything you’ve done and… Your stories are really consistent, which really leads me to believe that they’re actually true.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Thank you, and I think that’s why I make things. I think that that’s part of… I’ll do this, I’ll make things and I’ll be doing some kind of performing, no one can take that ever away from me. You could pay me, you could not pay me, but I do it because it helps me process something. I mean, that’s one of the best things about art. That’s one of the things I know you always talk about on this, is that it’s so… That the ability that it has to take information that you can’t understand and alchemize it into something else is the only thing that really works.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. I think that the people that don’t remember things the way that we do, especially when they’ve imprinted in us in such a really formative manner, just don’t remember it.

Kirsten Vangsness:

And it’s so fascinating because there are people in my family that remember things to the T and will tell me. “Remember when you were four and I was this age?” And it’s like, “I don’t remember that at all.” But all I know about all of that is I am not one of the people. There are people that say, “Oh, to be a child again and to be in the warm, embrace [inaudible 00:10:10].” You could not… I will never… I am terrified of it. During the pandemic, all I thought about was all the children out there that are alone in places they can’t get out of. It is not a safe space to me. And at the same time, I think it’s kept me really… It keeps all of me, that Madeleine L’Engle, “You’re every age you’ve ever been.” It’s kept all of my ages, they’re all very close to me because I feel a deep responsibility to show them where we go.

I don’t know. I feel like sometimes I’m so cringe and so earnest because somebody else could have some really shitty things happen to them and it’s like, here I am being like, “I think it’s really great and you can take care of them and show them all the good shit.” And that’s my experience and I don’t want to take away from other people’s experiences.

Debbie Millman:

Well, but I read that you weren’t ever allowed to shut a door in your house, so you had no privacy.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah. And that’s, again, one of those things that I’m sure that [inaudible 00:11:10]

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, but you ended up losing the ability to relieve yourself for months and had to go to the doctor, which was then a re-traumatization of a body part that you were already getting trauma from.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

So there’s evidence right there.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Right?

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Hospital records.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah. Oh, yeah and I went to a pelvic floor physical therapist for years because I would punch people in the face if they were trying to touch me, even consensually. And the only way I could get by is if someone was non-consensually. I could somehow either manage… Yeah, but there was no privacy in my house. But then, there would be these wonderful periods of time where no one would be around and that was really precious to me. And that part, I was able-bodied and I don’t know, the ’80s and all the children went and opened your house up with a key and you were fine.

That actually felt really safe to me to just wander around a room, pace back and forth by myself, making up really dramatic stories. I loved that, but then whenever there were people around, yeah. There were no locks allowed to be… You could shut a door, but you can’t expect someone not to just come in. I was told multiple times that my clothes, my Christmas money I got, belonged to my father and he did that to all of us. I don’t want to speak for them and I want to be careful about that, but that was definitely my experience. Yeah, I don’t recommend that. That’s not a good form of parenting.

Debbie Millman:

Well, you said that scrambling around trying to manage the emotions of this one adult was so tumultuous, it became really hard for you to focus and it also made you be able to deescalate tense situations, made you feel valuable…

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

… and it’s a skill you still have today.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

And do you think that that’s a good thing or a bad thing?

Kirsten Vangsness:

Oh, I think it’s both. I think it can be very good, but I also think it’s a place your value in it. I mean, I still do it, but I also… And I play this character that is also very, very good at that, but is feistier, I think, than I am, that can tolerate things in a different way than I can. I can see everything all happening at the same time and I appreciate that, especially the kind of job I have, because actors can be… This idea that we’re just sort of, I don’t know, myopically obsessed with ourselves, but when I’m in a room, it doesn’t matter where I am, I will find the people that are… “Why is that person in the corner? What just happened right there?” I can see everything happening at the same time and when used correctly, you’re one of the helpers. When used incorrectly, no. So it’s really important for me to always stay in a place of potency in my essence qualities so that I don’t… I’m not doing it from an icky place.

Debbie Millman:

You said that there became a point in your life where you spent a lot of time being Agatha Christie or Angela Lansbury, in your own life, in an effort to try and predict what might happen next in an effort to avoid it and I think it’s when we have to do that kind of sleuthing that we become hyper aware.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Oh, yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Did you feel that the abuse that you suffered was your fault?

Kirsten Vangsness:

No. I mean, the straight answer is no, but the magical thinking that happens… I deeply appreciate my magical thinking and I live in this body and this body is a really lovely place to be. I’ve made it a lovely place to be. It can be nightmare town, sure, but I have things that I really believe in that are batshit crazy. I really thought this through one time. I thought, “What if we go through these multiple lives and my dad loved me so much that he decided to be the super villain in my life to create this horrible stuff that I had to transcend, that I have transcended, that I have alchemized into other things?” And when I think about it that, I’m like, “Well, I guess I made it happen because I asked.” You know what I mean?

Debbie Millman:

Yeah.

Kirsten Vangsness:

And that’s not true. That didn’t… But I refuse to believe that there is such a thing. I don’t want to give people… I don’t want to give anybody the power that there’s such a thing as evil. I don’t even… That’s the funny thing about this show I’m on is I don’t even buy it. I think that monstrous people act in monstrous ways that make other people act like monsters and behavior is despicable.

Behavior is not okay, but I just believe in radical responsibility so much, my own, and I’m sure that that’s a big flaw, but it also gets me through the day. So it’s like, is it my fault? No. Do I think about it all the time that I did? I was always so interested in what was going on and I always never wanted other people to be in the line of fire. And I have that flaw about me now too. And I don’t know if that’s me trying to center myself in the drama or whatever. I’ve gotten better about it, but I really hope I’m making sense because you’re really…

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. No, absolutely. I was trying to decide as you were talking and I’m listening, “Well, should we talk about Criminal Minds now?” But I want to wait because there’s so much more to talk about, but I will say that I want to put a pin in the notion of despicable behavior and what is it about those that have been treated despicably going one way or another.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

And then, what a show Criminal Minds does for the people that try to rise above it.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Because I think there’s a place in our culture for that.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

You started keeping a journal when you were in the fourth grade.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Mm-hmm.

Debbie Millman:

Were you writing stories? Were you recounting episodes from your life?

Kirsten Vangsness:

I was writing about things that were happening. I mean, I have a Snoopy journal that’s just the sweetest little Snoopy journal with a lock and whatever, and you open it up and it’s like, “My mom and dad are bitches. I’m going to kill everyone.” I mean, it is lewd. It’s terrible. My sister stole it one time and she wrote this very long diatribe. I counted how I felt. I’ve always felt like if I can write it down and I can see it on a piece of paper… Because my memory is so strange. And then to be… I’m going to say gaslighted growing up and being told like, “That’s not what happened. Kirsten, you lie.” You have to take that. When it gets told to you so much, you take that into your world. So now I just, “Oh, I lie. Kirsten’s a liar. Okay, got it. I’m just going to write in here what I want because it’s not going to hurt anybody and I can be as explicit as I need to be. And if I’m lying, okay.”

It gave me a place and I just think it’s so valuable for anybody. At first it’s a pain, but it’s like there is somebody there reflecting back eventually. At first, no, but eventually, there’s a witness, there’s a something and it… Ooh, I mean, it took me a bit. I mean, I was bananas until my… I mean, I was bad bananas for a while, but it’s turned around. It takes a bit. But yeah, it really helped.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, yeah. I felt that way too. I was bad bananas till I was about 40.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Okay. That makes me feel good. I was going to say…

Debbie Millman:

Maybe even into the 40s. [inaudible 00:19:32]

Kirsten Vangsness:

I was making some terrible decisions.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, yeah.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Some dangerous, terrible decisions. And to be sweet or to be nice or… I hate the word nice. To be kind or whatever, but then even in the background, in the shadow, having someone over here that I’m intimate with that knows I’m terrible. So that out in the world, I’m celebrated, but over here, this is who I really am and this is how I… And that split that I grew up with because in my house, it was so… You don’t share, and I couldn’t help but share. And that’s the other reason why the journal is very helpful is because there are no secrets. I’ve been told I’m a liar my whole life, and yet, I cannot keep things about me to myself. I’m compelled to share. So it’s a weird dichotomy and the journal helped.

Debbie Millman:

Well, it’s so interesting that you were writing so much, but you were also painfully shy. I know that by the time you entered eighth grade, you were so shy, you stopped talking.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

And you did poorly in school. And by the time you went to Cerritos High School…

Kirsten Vangsness:

Uh-huh.

Debbie Millman:

… your mom gave you an ultimatum. You had to take shop or drama.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Right.

Debbie Millman:

Now, I find this so interesting. Why did she choose those particular topics?

Kirsten Vangsness:

Well, I think that getting me out of my shell, and I had already… Since I had done the community college and when I was in junior high in Porterville, I really did love drama class, but I was bullied. Thrown in trash cans and I was the girl that people invite… I got invited to one sleepover once and it was legitimately just, “This is the girl we’re going to terrorize.” It was relentless and it was slightly better than being at home, but I didn’t like it. You know what I mean? You don’t know when you’re going to get punched in the face and I would make it worse because I would say things like, “I’m like Gandhi, I’m a peacekeeper.” While you’re getting punched, or I would make jokes about it or whatever. And I would make… It would become more of a thing because I was so… I mean, I think I still am invested in being a little bit of a weirdo.

But really, I was so weird. And when we moved, we had moved and I was like, “I can’t take it.” And we moved to Cerritos and Cerritos was… I remember that people had money and there were girls in whole outfits in yellow. I thought, “How much money do you have to have that you have a whole outfit in the color yellow?” And I just decided to stop, so… It was very hard to pay attention in school and my parents were in tumultuous situations, so they’re not really paying attention and every person from themselves. But my mother is wonderful and was struggling in this relationship with a guy that I really think… She came from a place of, “You’re supposed to be with a man to…” For the girls to be in a stable… So I really think she was trying. I mean, I know she was trying. She was trying really hard, but I think that she has these moments, my whole life, where she’s just done these incredible things that someone else might be like, “What is that?”

It’s like she’s the perfect mom for me. And that was one of those things where she’s like, “You can do this or do this.” And I didn’t want to do shop because that seemed scary and drama seemed a different kind of scary. Shop seemed boring, scary and rules and drama just seemed like terrifying, but I would love to do it, but I’ve always had that thing of, “Oh, I’m not invited to that party.” And that seemed like, “Nah, no one wants me… I’m not the person that gets to go to that party.” And then, I went in class and our first two assignments, we didn’t have to talk and I got an A and I…

Debbie Millman:

It was pantomime, right?

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah. And I had never gotten an A on anything and just… I mean, teachers were always, “Oh, Kirsten’s really creative.” Or whatever and they liked me and all that, but just to get an A in something for just trolloping around in my imagination, that was… Yeah. And I was hooked.

Debbie Millman:

In 10th grade, you got the part of a heroin dealer in a school play called Juvie.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah, I did.

Debbie Millman:

About a juvenile detention center and you’ve talked about how your teacher put Post-it notes all over the classroom before you went on stage. Why did she do that?

Kirsten Vangsness:

It builds you up. And it was quotes, [inaudible 00:24:00] quotes, all this, and it was… I mean, entering drama was like, “Oh, this is the place.” And I have the crush on my friend James, who I then eventually moved into his house and lived with him. My other best friend, Michael, who transitioned to nonphysical in ’96, but was just a genius and they were both in the play with me. And of course, in this version of Juvie, there was only a set of bars separating the male and the female… It’s binary, but in the juvenile detention center and she had one post-it, which… And all it said was, “Love the art in yourself and not yourself in the art.” And that was everything to me, because I think that part of my, “I’m not invited to the party.” Was like, “I love this thing so much. I don’t even know if I’m good enough or worthy enough.”

I mean, I still have that so deeply, that weird, impostery… It’s gross. But that gave me permission and I understood it. It was like, “Oh, that’s how I believe art is. It’s like I’m not special. Everybody’s special. There’s this big open space that it’s my job to keep as open as possible, but it’s got on it little roots sticking out and stuff from your life and my own stuff. And then, whatever that juice is that you create from comes pumping up from the earth through me and out my mouth or out my hands or whatever, it’s covered with my special sauce, but it’s not me that makes it special. It’s that…”

And that also, since I felt so gross, and I can go through that so much, the art isn’t gross and I get to be a part of it. And it loves me just like it loves everybody else and it gets to go through me and through everybody. That felt like the safest, wildest thing in the world. That’s what I serve forever.

Debbie Millman:

You won an award for your part in Juvie for outstanding cast member.

Kirsten Vangsness:

I did.

Debbie Millman:

And I believe you still have that award in your living room, right?

Kirsten Vangsness:

I absolutely do.

Debbie Millman:

Brass comedy and tragedy mask with a fake marble vase.

Kirsten Vangsness:

It’s true. I do.

Debbie Millman:

That’s when you knew you wanted to be involved in drama, theater…

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

… being an actor for the rest of your life, but you were also convinced that in order to do that, you would be a starving artist subsisting on cat food for the rest of your life.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yep. I was told, again, this wonderful thing by my mom. She was like, “You’re never going to make a living doing that. It’s literally impossible.” And I was like, “Yep.” I just knew and that was fine, but it’s so crazy because it was the thing I was good at. So I got a little $100 scholarship. I almost flunked out of high school and I got this scholarship, and I remember the kid, Paris Mada, who got a perfect score on the SAT was sitting next to me at the award ceremony and he said, “I really thought you were good in that play.” And I was like, “Paris Mada know… He’s like the smartest kid in school. What?” I got accolades for it. And then, I went to community college and went to college and was getting attention for this thing that I knew I was never going to be able to do it.

And then, I got an audition for a movie, and Mali Finn, this big casting director. Her daughter casts, I think, the Star Wars trilogy things now, but she cast Titanic and stuff. I got an audition with her at Paramount Studios. And I went in and I did my audition. And she said, “So what are you going to do when you graduate college?” And I was like, “I’m going to go be an actor.” I’m saying it very tentatively. And she says, “No. I mean, you’re not old enough to be a character actor. You’re not fat enough. You’re not young enough. You’re not pretty enough to be the main girl.” She listed off all these things and I walked out of the room and I was like… Well, for a moment, I felt like, “I can do this.” And then, I was like, “Nope, I absolutely can’t.” But it was the most freeing thing in the world.

I was like, “Oh, okay. Okay.” Because I think she ended up saying, “If you’re lucky, in 10-15 years, you’ll age into being a character actor.” She wasn’t wrong and it was very freeing to be like, “Okay, I just need to have 16 day jobs.” But every time I quit acting, I was miserable. So I always say to people, if you open that Pandora’s Box… We’re meant to create whatever it is and you have your day job, you have your thing, but you take care of that art because it’s not the person who’s on the TV show or on the Doritos commercial or whatever that’s the actor, it’s the person that’s sitting in their living room with their friends reading a play or at their community theater doing… It’s the art that matters. That is so valuable. So for me, that was more galvanizing and you cannot take this away from me. I just won’t get paid for it.

Debbie Millman:

You have written that you walked out of that audition with this woman and you heard a big cracking noise, which was your dreams dying.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yes.

Debbie Millman:

So what gave you the motivation to go on? I mean, waiting 15 years to age into being a character actress is not a lot of motivation.

Kirsten Vangsness:

It’s not… It shifted, because motivation is such a strange thing I think in general, even now. Something you love to do, a dream you love to do. And by the way, I lived down the street from where my dreams were cracking, in a place in town where I never thought I would be able to live. So it does happen, I think, but I just… Especially in Los Angeles, there’s such a huge disparate between the above the glass ceiling and below. It’s like, you can still make things. So the desire went from, “Oh, I’m going to be an actor and make money doing this.” To, “I’m going to be an actor.” So that’s not stopping me from auditioning for every play I can think of or you know what I mean? Saying yes to things. That didn’t stop me from doing that and that’s what I wanted.

And it was freeing because I’ve always been terrible at schmoozing. I’m terrible spelling correctly on my resume, all of that stuff, so it took that off and I just went toward creating. That’s what I did. And yes, it’s terrifying because you’re like, “How am I going to pay rent?” You know what I mean? I lived in a $500 a month guest house that I could not afford and never made my rent, but I did it and I was happy. And that’s one of the other things I always think about. “What’s the worst thing that’s going to happen if you go after that thing you want?” And everyone can say like, “Oh, have you met Kirsten? She’s 95 and she’s never become a famous actress, but gosh, is she happy.” I just didn’t even think about it, how to get there. I just created stuff.

Debbie Millman:

Does this agent or audition person know about your career now?

Kirsten Vangsness:

Oh, I think Mali Finn transitioned to nonphysical, but I do… Her ex-husband was one of the teachers at Cal State Fullerton and it is really strange because now, everybody at my old schools and stuff like that, it’s like, “Oh, Kirsten.” And it’s nice. I mean, when I was in college, I definitely felt like I was getting… And in high school, I felt like I was getting accolades for what I did from teachers and stuff like that. It is funny when people treat you differently.

And like I said, I remember all the ages. I don’t hold grudges or anything like that, it’s just I’m very aware of how fickle all that is and whatever and this whole thing is so wonderful to get paid to do the thing I love. There’s parts of it though that are strange, like that, where everybody likes you. A lot of people did not like me. I was not wanted in the room, so it’s very strange and I still don’t always know that I’m wanted. And now, it’s such bullshit because I think it’s so part of my personality that I think I’ve decided that it’s part of my charm. So, oh my God, what would happen if I actually thought I was wanted in places? And then, I wouldn’t be… It’s a whole fucking mind trip.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, no. I know that too. I feel like if I ever really felt the way I know other people feel about me, people that love me, I think I’d be intolerable.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah, I worry about that too.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Maybe we can make a pact.

Debbie Millman:

That sounds good.

Kirsten Vangsness:

I’ll make a pact with you.

Debbie Millman:

I will absolutely do that with you. Absolutely. So you talked about all of these other jobs you got, so after you graduated with a 4.0 average from college.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Uh-huh and I almost flunked out of… [inaudible 00:33:03]

Debbie Millman:

And afterwards, you got many different jobs and this is just some of what I found. You worked at a group home with kids that couldn’t succeed in foster care. You worked at a nature center. You were a substitute teacher at a public school. You were a bank teller, a grant writer, a personal assistant, and an animal feeder at the zoo.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Uh-huh.

Debbie Millman:

What was…

Kirsten Vangsness:

I was also… I worked at a murder mystery dinner theater. I taught children how to babysit and how to not smoke while I was a smoker for five minutes. I worked at… Oh, you said banker. There’s other ones, but those are… Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Which was your most favorite and which was your least?

Kirsten Vangsness:

Most favorite would definitely be substitute teacher or working at the group home. Both of those were… The group home was so interesting because it was before… Now you actually need a degree to do that, but the law was such… It really taught me a lot about my own childhood and to interface with kids and help them and it helped me. And I found that I then took that and then I went into substitute teaching with this superpower where I’m going to like you and I’m not going to like your behavior. I’m not going to shame you, but I will absolutely do what I say.

So if I give you a warning and I tell you something and you do it, I will absolutely do… So kids really trusted me, and I had that real Mary Poppins kind of thing. So I loved that. And the job I hated the most would be, I was a banker… A banker. I worked as a bank teller. I was not a banker. And I had one outfit that I got from Marshalls that fit me, that looked official and I would wear it almost every day and I would consistently be over or under by 10 grand, easily.

Debbie Millman:

Oh my God.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Easily, just every day. And then, I would get in trouble and then, I would panic. So that was probably my least favorite job.

Debbie Millman:

Ooh.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

While still working at all your day jobs, you got a role in the 1998 film, Sometimes Santa’s Got To Get Whacked and a role in the science fiction television sitcom, Phil Of The Future. And you were also doing improv shows in Anaheim Hills. And then, you started to watch all your friends that were acting majors in college go get real jobs. So they started to quit or they were getting real acting?

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah. No, people start realizing like, “Oh, this acting thing isn’t paying.” Or whatever, so they get another job. And then you’ve got some people that do book work and stuff and I was having a real hard time because I was living in Anaheim. I was living more like in Orange County, like Long Beach, and I was driving up to sometimes do plays in LA, sometimes do theater in Orange County, just wherever I could do it, I was doing it. And I would be around people and someone book a job on, I don’t know, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Book a job on a commercial. And I’d be like, “They’re not even that great.” Or sometimes it would be, I’d be like, “Why are they… How come I can’t…” Like, because I would be told, “You’re very good at this.”

And I would win… We would do these monologue festivals at one of the theater companies I was in where you’d get $50 if you won, and it was $50 to do it. So I could do it. I could win every time, then take the money and do it again to meet casting people and stuff, but I couldn’t book anything. And I realized one day. I was like, “Oh my gosh, they believe that they have the right to be there and be in the room, whether they’re the best person for it or not. It’s two different skills. That’s its own skillset and I don’t have it at all and I don’t know if I ever will.”

But that was amazing. And then, also coming to terms with the fact that this thing I love so much, the idea of getting paid for it or to be responsible for a certain thing, that that was a definite… That’s how I was getting in my own way. And this is where, I mean, yes, it sucks and probably is dumb to say that everything is my fault. However, the radical responsibility aspect of it where you go, “Oh, this is what I’m doing wrong.” And attacking that. For me, it’s a more active way to live than saying, “Oh, it’s because Hollywood doesn’t understand me.” It was like, “Oh, this is what I’m doing wrong.” And I kind of got into either, “Well, okay. I guess I don’t know how to do that and maybe I’ll learn.” But that was very eye-opening to me.

Debbie Millman:

So what do you mean by radical responsibility?

Kirsten Vangsness:

I mean, what I wanted to say is it’s all my fault, but that’s probably not the right way to say it. I mean that I have this universe in here that’s mine. This is mine. Like I tell my nieces when they were in high school and they do stuff that I’d think, “You’re not going to like that you did that in a few years.” I would say, “Look…” One of my nieces, her names is Lindsay. I was like, “It’s Lindsay town, population one, and you’re the mayor and you’re the constituents and you’re everything.”

So that’s how I feel about me, because I really… I had my own way of doing things growing up. There was nobody out there advocating in a way I wanted them to. I’ve figured it all out from just in me, population me and a lot of times, I felt like everything was my fault. So if it’s all my fault, it’s also… Well, I guess I should work on that. I’m going through it in real time right now. I guess I should work on the… I did it too, but I like to think that if it’s my universe and I take responsibility for everything, it makes me feel more powerful.

I read this book one time and I’m now pals with him, called The Big Leap by Gay Hendrix, and he talks about upper limiting and your happiness threshold and I don’t want to give anything away because you’re nodding, so you know what I’m talking about. I want everyone to go get that book and read it, but that. That kind of, “What’s so wrong with thinking that I made it all happen?” It’s worked for me, and look, it’s completely insane, but it works for me.

And I’m not trying to say that it works for everybody, but that kind of radical responsibility of it’s up to me to take care of this universe and anything that goes on with me, I’m going to assume that I chose… This moment that’s happening right now, I’m going to act like I chose it myself. You know what I mean? That’s an Eckhart Tolle quote, but I’m going to act like this is… And I think that that’s what I mean by it.

Debbie Millman:

It’s so interesting because I vacillate between thinking that everything is my fault and thinking that nothing is my fault.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yes. Oh, I think I absolutely do too. But look, we’re doing this interview and you’re going to ask me questions and that persona, which I do think is me most of the time, is going to come out and I’m going to be the upstanding girl who says radical responsibility. And when I’m not here, I’m going to think… Because also, radical responsibility means I’m responsible for how much cake I eat or whatever. And I like to think that it’s not fair and that other people get to eat more cake than… I don’t know. You know what I mean? So it’s not true. It’s what I want. It’s my religion, a part of my religion of choice.

Debbie Millman:

Absolutely. I think I want to be the girl with the most cake, but I don’t want to gain any weight when I eat it.

Kirsten Vangsness:

That’s right. That’s the lost line of that Hole [inaudible 00:40:42] song. Right there. Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Let’s get Courtney on the line.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

When you were 33 years old, you got a call from a friend who told you about a role for a scene in a television pilot called Quantico. And you were asked to read for a part for a character named Garcia, which was originally written for a young Latino man. What made your friend call you?

Kirsten Vangsness:

So I had done a lot of theater, as I said, and a friend of mine, Gina Garcia Sharp, called me and said, “Do you want to come in for this?” She was working for the casting director, and she was like, “You’re never going to get this part.” But she had been… Wonderful actor and working on the other side of the table to figure out how does this work? So your job also, being an associate like that, is to bring in other actors that to you know to be like… Just to be like, “Look, I know good actors.” So the idea of, come in, make my friend look good, very freeing. That’s what she needed and they needed these… It was very last minute because they realized the show, they were shooting the pilot. They had already cast the guy, they had filmed him and then realized the show’s too guy heavy, we only have one woman. We need a woman right there. So she called.

Now, this is when I was 33. I’m now 50, so do the math. And we need to talk about the elephant in the room, that a Norwegian girl would never be playing Penelope Garcia if it was happening now and that’s the correct thing. Am I super grateful for it and all of that? Absolutely. But I am aware of the benefits that White privilege has bestowed upon me, and I want to say that out loud. So I went in and go make my friend look good and say these two lines, and then you’re cast in this pilot and you’re going to be on it for two seconds. And they flew me to Canada and I had to find my birth certificate because I had never been out of the country and I was terrified and I go in this room and I memorize my lines.

It’s this technical stuff. They say, “Bring your own clothes.” I’m a size… I’m somewhere between a size 12 and a size 16. And that is a weird, magical unknown size in Hollywood. They think zero or 22. It’s like the middle part doesn’t exist. So I brought in my own clothes and I didn’t have a suit. I didn’t have anything. They were like, “What is these?” And I dressed like a space pirate. And so, then they put me in a green sweater and they sat me down and they said, “Say these words.” And they, “Do you know who Shemar Moore is?” “No, I have no…” “He’s very cute. You’re talking to him.” And I was scared out of my mind and I said the words and I remember the director coming over and saying, “Could you be funny?” And, “Yes, I can be funny.” Again, I’m getting paid for the thing I love and I do it and I think I was…

I don’t remember what happened. And then, that was supposed to be it. And I remember when I got done, I shook the hand of the writer, and as I was holding his hand and this is the… I don’t do these things as much anymore, but this is things I have to train out of myself. I grabbed his hand as I was shaking his hand and I put it to my own forehead. And then, I proceeded to thunk my own forehead and say repeatedly, “Did I butcher your words? Did I butcher your words?” And then he said… He patted my hand and he said, “We’ll see you back in LA.” I thought, “Oh, I don’t know what that means.” And then, a few months later, they did a second episode and they asked me to come for the second episode. And then, I did the second episode. And then, I tested really well, apparently, and I got to keep going. I actually have been in all Criminal Minds episodes except episode five.

Debbie Millman:

Oh.

Kirsten Vangsness:

The first season.

Debbie Millman:

I didn’t realize that.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Most people don’t. I think they mentioned me in that, but when I wasn’t on episode five, I was like, “Oh.” What’s funny is my mom and my sister had planned an intervention for me. They were going to sit me down. They had got a hotel room in Ohai, I remember they were spending this money to get this hotel room, and they told me, it was a pre-tell intervention. “We’re going to tell you you need to quit acting. You need to quit acting.” And I had to call them and say, “I got this job.” And they were like, “You have to cancel. You have to say no. Kirsten, you can’t keep doing this. You can’t keep lying to yourself.” I said, “No, no. This is a real job. I’m taking it.” And I went and I did it and this was the job that it was.

Debbie Millman:

So Garcia the Latino man became Penelope Garcia, because the TV executives thought the pilot didn’t have enough female characters.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Mm-hmm.

Debbie Millman:

What did you say in those two lines to get them to… I mean, you weren’t even in any kind of interesting attire to…

Kirsten Vangsness:

No, and I tested… I remember them saying, there’s these knobs. They have people watch it. And then, they said that my knob got turned as much, if not more than Mandy’s, Mandy Patinkin. It was like 100%. And my only answer is that… I don’t know. I just think I was different looking than what people were used to seeing and maybe that was it. Also, they paired me with someone very traditionally attractive. And I’m not trying to say anything about myself. I’m saying that usually someone traditionally attractive… I think more of a size of a woman. We tell these stories that men are attracted to women that are much smaller than them and that is a lie. And so, I think that maybe that shown that the sizes of people can be diverse and attraction can be diverse, that people really took to that.

And me and Shemar, when we shot that second episode, we had a scene together. And even before, when we were in the table read, we were joking around. And that joking around, one of the writers heard, and they ended up putting it in the script. And then, we were in that second episode together with these lines that were very flirty and we both realized we have so much chemistry and we get along just weirdly well. Not weirdly, it was just like, we don’t know each other and it was like we just knew each other. And that, I think, helped me keep that job because he’s so charismatic on screen, and I got to be his necessary thing and…

Debbie Millman:

Lois Lane to his Superman.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah. And he really treated me like that, which is, I think the thing that’s super valuable about this. It was a real, genuine, not placating, not anything like that. It’s a real thing and that was… I think, was super great. And I think that that’s what kept me on the show. It was the mix of that and… They did borrow from me, meaning the costume designer, BJ Rogers did a bang up job of that, and that was a lot of her, but she was originally putting me in one kind of thing, and then the writers would see me go out of my dressing room and like, “Can she wear that?”

And so, they started borrowing some of my clothes. And then, she was meanwhile creating it. And then, I was hoping that I got to keep the job. So I kept leaving props on her desk, which by the end and now on the show, is a living space.

I put things there that fans have given me when they come to see plays, homemade pens, all kinds of things. So it was like I thought, “Well, if they fire me, I’m going to have to come back and get all this stuff back.” So it was a job security kind of a thing. But I think that that mix of… I’m a very do it yourself person. Plays I write, things I do, I like to do it all myself. So I put that on that too, because at first, they didn’t give her much and I could see who she could be. And then, they let me keep making her.

Debbie Millman:

You really created her though, in so many ways.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

You brought her to life.

Kirsten Vangsness:

I mean, I think what’s so great about it is she’s like a lesson in yes, and because… The writers write something, I’m like, “Oh, okay. Okay. So that’s true now. Oh, that’s true now.” But I would come in and I would like, “I’m going to change this line and I’m going to put it like this.” Or “I’m going to make it like this.” And I’m a theater girl, so I can do something in one take. So they come in and they prepare for like, “Okay, Kirsten’s got to do two pages of exposition. This is going to take us two hours.” And I’d pop it out in one take and we’d be done. And then I would say, “Can I say it this other way that I memorized it? Because I added this word.” They’d be, “That word’s not even a real word, Kirsten.” “Yeah, but…”

Or me and Shemar would call each other and be like, “Okay, if you say this, I’m going to say this.” We’d rehearse our scenes on the phone, and then I’d come in and be like, “No, I already talked to him and he said I could do this.” So they were yes, anding me. I was yes, anding them. And then, she just blossomed into this thing. And I’m quite honored that I get to be her guardian because I think she’s super special.

Debbie Millman:

Absolutely. She has become really a archetype in every criminal procedural. There’s always a really unusual, edgy, genius, subversive character now.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

And it’s all based on this.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah. And when you think about it, it’s Moneypenny… What was it? Mitchell or whatever from Alias. Abby from NCIS. But I was definitely her… She was definitely part of that whole brainiac…

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, but Moneypenny was traditional.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Exactly, but I feel like that was the closest they would allow us to get, and then you go into this, which is this woman who is truly her own thing and… She’s her own thing and no one is… And what I love is I’ve heard that behavioral analysts at Quantico felt like they could be a little more who they wanted to be because she was like that. And I don’t know anything about computer analytics, so I was so happy that they felt as seen as they did, because that’s always been really important to me. And I also think it’s really important to highlight women who can do those kinds of things.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. I mean, that’s also what I appreciate so much about how you and Shemar engaged with each other, because he was so clearly in awe of your brilliance and your beauty that it’s showed an entire world that women don’t only have to look a certain way or be a certain way to be interesting to the opposite sex.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah, absolutely. And for me, I had to learn that in real time. I remember my dad had gotten sick. I mean, it sounds bad, but he was always dying. And so, he used to be like, oh, he’s dying and go to the hospital and whatever and it was one of those times, it was like second episode, third episode. And I had been at the hospital and whatever and I hadn’t gotten any sleep and I had stayed at a friend’s house. I had to be at work the next day and I was late. And I mean, if you ask anybody at work, I’ve been on 320 something episodes, I’ve been late twice. And so, I was late. And I remember, because they were concerned. I was new to the job and they were not happy that I was late and I didn’t want to tell them what was going on.

And so, I went and I did my job as best as I could. And I remember driving home and I was like, “I’m at choice right now. You can be the girl that you always have been who sabotages everything, who doesn’t believe that you have the right to be here or you can just fucking pretend that you’re this girl. This girl that this Shemar dude thinks is hot. You can just pretend. Who cares?” And I was like, “No, I can’t because I’m still the girl who lives in this car who can’t keep it clean.” I was like, “You’re just going to be that girl. There’s never going to be a moment that I’m going to be outside my body and get to observe and be like, ‘Whoa, she’s cool.’ I’m never going to have that.”

And it was a little sad, but then it was like, “Okay.” And then, I just was able to go in there and play an extended game of pretend, which I will argue, it makes your life, because at a certain point, that pretend becomes real and if that’s what you got, why not? What’s the harm?

Debbie Millman:

Absolutely. I’ve been a long, longtime fan of the show, as is my wife, and we also love Law and Order SVU. And over the years when people ask, “What are your favorite TV shows?” And I’ve always said, “Criminal Minds and Law and Order SVU.” And there have been times where I actually have said that my childhood was an episode of Criminal Minds and SVU. And people then question, “Why do you like these shows so much?” They don’t seem to get it. “Why do you want to keep triggering yourself and why do you want to keep doing something that’s going to make you feel bad again?” And I’m like, “No, it’s the opposite. Seeing the bad guys always get caught on these shows, seeing justice be done. I go to sleep feeling safer.” And I’m wondering if that’s something that you’ve heard from other folks.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Oh, yeah. Joe Mantegna just sent us… And I mean, look, it’s the greatest job in the world. I need to say that out loud. I work with people that are genuinely my family. As I was driving here, I was getting 12 text… When my phone lights up and it’s like 47 text messages. I’m like, “Oh, Paget or Aisha or Joe…” We’re very close. So Joe just got a thing from somebody who was in a harrowing, dangerous situation and actually used things that he learned from the show in this moment. And that’s happened more than a few times. And yes, I definitely feel that. For me to be in it and doing it is where I draw the line. It’s hard for me to watch. I have such a big imagination that I will actually think my friends are in trouble. There’s a part of my nervous system that doesn’t get it.

But I agree with you. I mean, it’s just by the grace of God that my NeuroNet made choices. Yes, I would like to think it’s because of some things that I did too, but I interface sometimes because of my life with someone who is very borderline and had a very similar tumultuous upbringing, and they’re unpleasant and unhappy and oh, all of that. And you’re like, by the grace of God, my brain was able to turn things off or whatever, and I’ve got my own bag of rocks. I’m not saying that, but that to me is always… There are monsters. There are people who behave monstrously and that’s the other thing I love about being Penelope is Penelope…

And I definitely gave that to her. There are rules to Penelope that I adhere to. I have never on that show, if they wrote… Anything violent that they’ve unintentionally or on purpose sexualized, Penelope’s not doing it. I will take that line out. I will, whatever. And they’ve always been very respectful about things like that, that she sees the evil behavior and not the evil person. That she maintains that people, all of us were babies and all of us had horrible… You know what I mean? And that you have to be able to see all of the thing. And I think that that makes her even more tenacious about, “No, you can’t do that.” I appreciate that about her.

Debbie Millman:

Well, one other thing that I really appreciate is that they have, over the years, given Penelope a sex life.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah. She was the first person actually who slept with anybody on the show. And she’s made some real doozies of choices and it’s been really good for me. It was strange because I came out right before I got the job and I was like, “Okay, this is part of the thing that I need to handle.” Is that I didn’t know I was gay and I fell in love with this woman and I was madly in love and that was that. And I thought, “Oh, I’ve figured it all out.” And then, I was doing this show and it was really weird because everyone’s like, “Oh, Shemar is so cute.” Whatever. And that was the other reason I was like, “Oh, I’m positively gay because I love him, but I don’t have any… Nope. Who I’m going home with is all I want. I don’t… Nope, nope. Don’t want any of these people. I’m around all these very good-looking people. Nope, just want this.”

Everything seemed to line up. It all made sense. And the show actually, through time of [inaudible 00:56:53] And then, Garcia. Garcia is absolutely queer and I’ve always known that, but I was like, “Oh, but she’s not gay.” And then, to come full circle and be like, “Oh wait, no. Okay. I also want to go out with men sometimes and then women, so okay.” Now, I’m sticking with this one heteronormative relationship and I’m a queer person and I have come to peace with that. Then I get to watch Garcia be that. She is up there doing stuff that I’m sometimes running toward that nobody even knows I’ve built this bible for her, but I know and it informs choices, you know what I mean? And the entire time, I had an impeach the motherfucker already sticker in her office that no one knew about. And then anytime someone find out, I would get a new one and put it up. That whole desk has been nothing but just a progressive manual of anti-racism [inaudible 00:57:54]. It’s a whole thing. Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

In addition to acting in all but one of the episodes of the entire series, including the new series that’s recently come back, thank goodness, you have also co-written five of them, including the first series finale, which was incredible. What first inspired you to try your hand at writing for the show?

Kirsten Vangsness:

I thought it was an impossible feat and we were in contract negotiations, which are a fascinating thing where your people say, “They want this much.” And then, the studio says, “We’ll give them this much.” So we were going through that and look, I’ll do this for free. I don’t care. However, it was interesting to me that we had gotten to a point that I was… Because people had gone and come back, there were people that were more senior than me, but they had gone and come back. So in that going and coming back, I was more senior, so I had become the most senior female in the room temporarily. And why were we not getting paid as much as the men? So this was a… I was like, “If someone can tell me… Now, I get it for me because this is the first job I’ve had, but that person has had all these other jobs and this person has all these other jobs. So you need to explain that to me.”

And they weren’t giving me answers and I was to the point that I was like, I just want to conversate. Just ABC, CBS, just call me up and we can just talk about it. And once you tell me why, then maybe… But I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. I’m not trying to be greedy. I’ll do this for… But that don’t make no sense, because the only thing I can see that’s different is organs. But again, if one of the other two women who had way more work under their belt, they were getting paid more, I could wrap my head around that, but I couldn’t and I have been very vocal about it and they kept trying to eek it up and try to please me.

And I was like, “No, you don’t seem to understand. You’re going to pay them as much as me, and that’s the end of this…” They didn’t seem to get it. And then, they bumped it… I got my way, but not exactly. I was going to say yes, but my boss called me and she said, “What do you think about writing, co-writing an episode with me?” And she’s like, “I can do that. I don’t think they’re going to go any farther in this, but I can do that.” And I was like, “Okay.” And so, I did and I was terrified out of my mind and I’m not… My first drafts of things are literally Rossi, that’s the name of a character in a show. They’ll write Rossi and then walks in and says something relevant. The next character, they say something to agree with him. Third character, says something completely opposite to disagree that’s an anecdote about a killer.

I would write out like that and then fill it in. I’m good though at writing scenes that had to do with interpersonal stuff and Erica knew that about me. So we just would flip. I’d write an act, she’d write an act, and then we’d swap. And then, she’d clean mine up and then hers are perfect. So I’d add a joke or something like that, but that’s how we’ve done it. But she’s one of my dearest friends. She’s just a lovely human being who happens to be brilliant and have just the most creatively disturbing ideas to write these episodes about. So we talk about our families and I’ve told her all my relationship problems. I’ve braided her hair so many times. We just sit and talk and eat potato chips and write these episodes. So it’s just an exercise in hanging out. And then, somehow or another, we’ve popped these episodes out that I’m really happy that my name is lucky enough to be on them.

Debbie Millman:

Well, you’ve often referred to your work on Criminal Minds as your fancy day job, and I want to talk about some of the work you do when you’re not doing your fancy day job. Here are just a few of the things that you’ve made. This is a bit of a monologue that I’m going to make now. You were the star and executive producer of the film Noir spoof, Kill Me Deadly in 2007. You starred in the West Coast premiere of Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig at the Geffen Playhouse, for which you received a best actress Garland Award. You received another Ovation best actress nod for the show. Everything You Touch at Boston Court, an LA Weekly best playwright of the year nomination for your production of Potential Space and won the Los Angeles Drama Circle best comedic actress.

You wrote a one person show titled Mess, which by the way, Neil Gaiman has called his favorite one person show ever, which you performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and was greeted with five star reviews and sold out shows. You also created a two season show on YouTube during COVID titled, Kirsten’s Agenda. Congratulations on all of this work as well as some of the other work I haven’t gotten to yet, which we’re going to talk about now. Okay?

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah, that sounds… When you put it in a list like that, I’m like, “Oh, she’s done things.”

Debbie Millman:

Absolutely. Well, I want to talk about your one woman show, Mess. It’s a very intense, beautiful, I think autobiographical show with a lot of trauma and vulnerability and emotion. What was your motivation for doing this one woman show and how did you pull it off? How did you put it all together?

Kirsten Vangsness:

I am a bit of a mess. I’ve had to embrace that about myself. I need to see everything out. So things will be out a lot. I talk in a very circuitous way. I’m a little clumsy and I’m a member of a theater company in Los Angeles called Theater of Note. And when the Hollywood Fringe Festival came around years ago, pre Criminal Minds, I decided I was going to write a show and have it in the Fringe. And at first, it was just me reading some stuff from my journal. And then, the next year I did it again. I called it Mess again, and I wrote a song, the song [inaudible 01:03:55] and then, I put other things in it. And then, I did it again the next year and I put other things in it. So it’s been this little living document. The thing that’s important to me about it and why I needed to write it and whatever, I have this belief that time happens at the same time. And this is another thing that gets me through the day. I like to think that if we can be as gentle and good to ourselves now, that we can go back and we can show all those little parts that didn’t get it, that we can heal that timeline.

I mean, wouldn’t it be amazing if then we could heal the timeline back and generations and stuff like that? I don’t know if it’s true, gets me through the day. And also, I had a lot of anxiety growing up and I still do sometimes about falling asleep and death and just the magical realism in the good and bad ways that invade my mind. And it was a way for me to work on that. And then, in 2016 when the election happened, I really didn’t understand why that happened and I had so much pain about it and I was like, “Don’t all of us… Isn’t there something common?”

And so then, it became this pursuit to me, that play. I wanted to show that play in places that… So I went to Alabama and I did it. I found a theater there and I was like, “I’m going to send you this play. This is the play I want to do. I’ll give you all the profits and I’ll donate to a public school around there.” And it was deeply in the red part of… And I did it and it’s a lot about dealing with the external, the fear that’s out here and the bad that’s out here, and understanding that my inside contains the monster, right? And the monster’s out here because I made it happen. So part of that 2016 thing for me was like, “I made this happen through my own ignorance, through my own not participating, through my own ways that I beat myself up on the inside. I’ve allowed that to happen outside.”

It was so cool to go into this environment, bikers, Jews for Jesus bikers and stuff, that watched it, that were like, “I love this show.” You’re like, “Oh, I know we voted for different people, but we have something…” And it proved this idea to me that, oh, we have all these broken parents and we’re all figuring out different ways of dealing with them. And some of our ways was like, “No, let’s make him run the country because this time, we’ll do it right.”

Or something. I don’t know. So that’s what it became. And then, it’s one of those things, I haven’t done it now in a few years, but I will probably pick it up again and do it again, because every time I do it, it’s clunky. I sent you a thing of… I recorded, I did the best I could and every time I get a little braver and I can step outside of it and try it again, whenever I’ve done it, I’ve only done it in small spaces and it feels like we did something together. The room did something together. And to me, that’s one of the most valuable things to me about making art. I think it’s that thing of being a kid and feeling like no one sees me and no one likes me. I see all of this and I know you look at me like this now, but I’m not. You know what I mean? And if you feel like how I did, we’re all the same thing. And so, I love that.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, you start the show with a song. You get your audience to sing in full throated voices. These are the lyrics, “And we all are a mess, I guess. And we all are a mess, I guess. And we cover up our mess with stuff and we act like we’re totally cool.”

Kirsten Vangsness:

That’s true.

Debbie Millman:

At three years old, you experienced sexual trauma and in the play you state, “There is just me inside me when it happens. Some dirty mark that you can make go away.” Do you still feel that way?

Kirsten Vangsness:

Sometimes. I used to feel that way all the time because I kept it so secret. And I think sometimes, I wished I just knew… I wish everybody knew or I wish it was very specific, because I’d lost caring how covert or over it was. I know it was and I’ve gone around in my head like, “Oh, I’m so sensitive. So probably what I did is I probably read his mind. He was probably thinking something bad around me. And then, so it’s my fault.” All of that. It doesn’t matter anymore.

Debbie Millman:

Right.

Kirsten Vangsness:

It just really doesn’t matter. I do know that that has always been… I’ve always just felt like me. When something like that happens in your life, I think that whatever higher self angel person that lives inside of you, she just fucking shows up, and whether she can help you or not, you have this moment where you’re like, “I’ve just always felt like me.” I’ve never felt like I’m a grownup. And that was the three-year-old, because the three-year-old was in a grownup situation where she had to just be like, “Okay, there’s some things happening and I don’t know what.”

So one of the things that I’m able to do is I’m very good buddies with my shame. People can either severely dislike me because they have a hard time with their own shame or I can feel very dear to them. On top of the fact that I am [inaudible 01:09:13] of a TV show where I always save the day. That’s why I’m very used to people coming up to me at airports and things and just embracing my body because they have to. You know what I mean? And it’s like it’s a little like, “Whoa.” Also, I think it’s because I always feel like, “I’m a little gross, but I’m going to do that anyway. I’m a little gross, but I’m going to do it anyway.” There’s always that thing that’s in there that I’m like, “Ah.” And you probably know that I am… I tried to, and maybe I’m not for the next five minutes [inaudible 01:09:45].

Debbie Millman:

But I think we all are at the same time.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

That’s what we all are. Yeah. You say that some people see Mess and they find it heartbreaking and some people see it and they find it hilarious, but it seems like at another time, you said that your favorite things to make are things that are funny but also hurt a little bit. And so, I’m wondering, what is it about that combination that intrigues you? Funny and heartbreaking.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Oh, I think that the terrible is the funniest, right? I mean, I make jokes… I mean, the most irreverent things is the things that you need to make jokes about. Again, I’m going to quote somebody, but there’s a moment in a Live Indigo Girls concert where Emily Sailors says, “You have to laugh about it because you’d cry your eyes out if you didn’t.”

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. You also wrote a play called Cleo, Theo & Wu, which has been described as a feminist historical space romp musical, and it is about how we are only as powerful as the least privileged among us, how feminine energy gets attacked and how we don’t give ourselves permission to have righteous rage. But time travel is also a part of Cleo, Theo & Wu. It’s also very much a part of Mess, in a quantum kind of way. What is it about this multiverse, quantum time, everything everywhere all at once-ness that intrigues you so much?

Kirsten Vangsness:

My favorite person in the world when I was a kid was my grandpa, and he died when I was in fifth grade. And then, my best friend, Michael, died of AIDS in ’96, and I got to be there with him through a lot of that. I mean, no, that’s a lie. I got to be with him through some of it and then not. But I was there and we had some talks. We had some big talks about what I was going to go and do. And I remember he wanted me to get a tattoo and he wanted me to become famous. And I remember… Okay, fine, I still don’t have a tattoo. And he would say, “I’m going to make things with you.” And he was a musician, he was the best. When I was a kid, I was terrified of… I wouldn’t sleep for long periods, terrified of sleeping at night for both what would happen and just the fall of sleep, the loss of control.

So I have a lot of… I need to know that endedness is not a thing. So even if it is a thing, I think that this is how I get through the day, but I really don’t believe it is and I feel like I have people that I love. I have people that I love that are the most talented people in the world. Scott McKinley and Judy Levin and Michael Hammond and fuck it, even my dad, who wanted to do these things, wanted to make these things and they didn’t get to. And this idea, whether it’s their own fucking fault or not, because my dad is one of those people when I perform, I’m like, “You can show up, but stay over there.” But you get to co-mingle with all that energy that’s come before you and after you.

I really want that to be true. I just want it to be true. And I love Neil deGrasse Tyson enough to believe in the nonsense that that’s not, but I really have decided that it is and I have enough evidence in my own life to prove it. And whether I’ve made that up or not, I do. And part of that is when I write. And that theme constantly comes through me and I do not… I sit down and it screams at me to write things. I don’t go, “I want this and this is how this…” That’s not how it works.

Debbie Millman:

Given all the writing you do, in addition to acting, all the plays you’ve written, all the episodes you’ve written, do you consider yourself a playwright?

Kirsten Vangsness:

Oh, I say that I am, and it’s so funny, because you could… Given all the things, and I’m like, I… And I’m only saying this out loud because I bet there might be someone listening to this who’s like, “Well, I’m not a writer because I’ve only…” I don’t feel like a writer. So, there. You know what I mean? I feel like a fricking fraud. And then, you just push through it. I mean, that… Another thing that I think about, my therapist, talked about one time about beauty because I have these hangups about it. Growing up, I used to be called ugly so much. I smelled funny and I had the weird posture and I dressed strange and it was so much a part of who I was. I was treated like I was so disgusting and I felt so disgusting.

And I remember my therapist talking about what real beauty is, is this believing you’re one thing and the act of pushing through and acting, giving yourself that right to be in that energy of beauty, which exists in all of us, that’s what’s beautiful. That’s beauty, is to watch that tension between not collapsing in your own [inaudible 01:14:49] and moving through it. That’s what it is. So I like to think that same thing of being a writer, being anything. It’s like the tension of holding on. And I’m only collapsing because I’m sharing it and I’m going back into it and going, “Yes, I consider myself a playwright.” But that’s the process I go through, is I’m like… I was coming here. I’m like, “I can’t believe I’m going to do this thing with…” You’re like, “Push through. You have to push through it because I’m always going to be in this little body that does this little dance.”

Debbie Millman:

You introduced me to a quote from Neil Gaiman, who I also adore, who stated that most of writing is getting ready to write.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Oh, my God. I get ready to write, so there’s a lot of getting ready and I forget to do that. And he’s so very good at that stuff and he’s so affirming of people’s things. I remember when he came to Mess, he had given me an advanced copy of Ocean at the End of the Lane, and I hadn’t read it yet. And I walked out to say hi to him and he brought Michael Sheen. He brought Michael Sheen and they’re both staring at me in wonder. And I was like, “What’s going on?” And he said, “Have you read the book yet?” And I said, “No.” And he said, “I didn’t think so.” And he gave me a hug and he said, “This is in the same waters. You got it from the same waters as the book.”

And it was like… That to me is such a writer who can acknowledge the specialness of creation period, but doesn’t… It’s Neil freaking Gaiman who’s taking ownership of it, like, “It’s mine.” It’s like, we all go to the water and we get what we have. You know what I mean? And we make sure… I think getting ready is like you make sure your buckets are properly weatherproofed and you have buckets. And sometimes, I come with a teaspoon and whatever. You got to be like, “Nope. You got to go get more stuff so you can get more water.”

Debbie Millman:

It’s so interesting because when I was watching Mess, I could understand why Neil loved it. It was so apparent to me and I loved it too. But now, I want to talk about Curtains, because in 2020, you wrote and animated your short story Curtains and it’s been accepted in film festivals around the globe. I really think it’s one of the most wonderful things that you’ve made. And before we start talking about it, I’m wondering if you could share just a little bit high altitude plot line of the story for our listeners?

Kirsten Vangsness:

I had a situation where I got in a dangerous situation. Do you want me to tell them specifically?

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, if you can.

Kirsten Vangsness:

So I went to a dance class. I was in a particularly weird part, a vulnerable part of my life and I thought, “I’m going to go to this dance class and be free and whatever.” And I was feeling really good and I was in one of those moments and I got into a fender bender on the freeway and it wasn’t my fault, but it was a utility truck that hit me. And I was like, “Go ahead.” So I was in this fender bender just by myself basically, because I told the guy who hit me, “Just go.” And then…

Debbie Millman:

And he hit you from behind, by the way. So anybody that hits you from behind, it’s their fault.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Oh, sorry. Sorry, I know that, but it was a utility truck and he looked terrified and I’m a fucking girl on a TV show and I operate like that. I mean, capitalism has served me well, I guess, but I am a social… I’m like, “We need to share this shit.” You know what I mean? So that was going to make his day really hard and it was going to be a blip on my radar. So it was like, “Go, go, go.” But my fender was all jacked up and I couldn’t drive my car and a tow truck came and the cops came at the same time. And then, the tow truck wasn’t supposed to stop because I was supposed to call for one, but it was there. And he was like, “The tow place is right down the street.” So I was like, “Okay.” And I was wearing my contacts because I wanted to be… I was trying to be girly and shit. And sometimes, we get told stories, right? That glasses make us look…

Debbie Millman:

Librarian.

Kirsten Vangsness:

… yeah, not attractive. Suck it, world. We’re very attractive people. And so, I got in the guy’s car, the tow truck. I was so panicked, you know how you’re shaking? I left my phone. Everything had gotten jostled and I didn’t know where it was and I got in the car and he didn’t take me to a tow truck place. We drove for a while. He got very aggressive and immediately when I got in the car, I was like, “Oh my God.” I know that world because I’ve been in traumatic… I’ve dated people. You know what I mean? I know the energy. So the second I got in the car, the energy changed and I was in suddenly, a dangerous situation. And what got me out of it was Criminal Minds. And I ended up having to convince him that I was on this show because I did not know what was going to happen.

And he ended up eventually taking me to the tow truck place. And I had written a short story about it, written a short story that the film became, and I had performed it once and people came up afterwards. Man, all different kinds of people. “That was really important.” Or “That happened to me.” And so, whenever that happens, you’re like, “Oh, I’ve got to do something else with this. This is important.” I was like, “That’s like Mess. Oh, I got to do something. This isn’t done.” So I told my friend Brendan, who has his own little production… Not little, it’s impressive, Jigsaw Ensemble. And he said, “You don’t want to make this in a regular short film, Kirsten. This should be animated because I know you. You, first of all, will have to lead it, but also, you don’t want to go through after take of doing that. It should be animated.”

And I was like, “Okay.” And then I thought, this is great because the story is not about… I used animals instead of people, which I think is perfect, because then you’re not looking at, “Oh, well, it’s because he’s…” I don’t know. In the story, the guy speaks not a language that I speak and I didn’t… That’s not part of the story. The story is not about… That’s not part. And it immediately becomes… It levels the playing field or something, and it was really beautiful, because I got to write it, direct it, tell the animator specifically, “This is what it should be.” And we actually did a scratch recording and that’s the recording we used. So I only had to do it once. And then, I made it. And then, Brendan was like, “I’m putting it in every single…” He was like, “Put in every single film festival.”

And then, the pandemic happened. And it’s so funny because my manager, my agents, they were like, “It’s fine, but I don’t know. What do you do with that?” I was like, “I just need the world to see it. I don’t need it…” And that’s why I make things, which could be a problem, but I’m just like, “I just want someone to see it.” And so, my intention of getting it out… I wrote every publication, every… But it was like, it didn’t get picked up anywhere, but it got into some film festivals. And so, I just slapped it up on Vimeo and you can just go. You can just look it up and there it is and you can watch it and…

Debbie Millman:

Well, we’ll provide a link for our listeners, but it’s beautiful. Curtains investigates the idea of vulnerability as a source of power, which is your superpower, I think. And the emotional curtains that we lay over our essential selves and the main character is a cat. Cats are also a recurring theme for you. They’re also in Mess. So I’m wondering, why cats?

Kirsten Vangsness:

When I was in fifth grade, my sister got to go back East to a family wedding and I did not go and I had to be alone with my parents for two weeks, which required me to hide in trees and gather food from the yard. And one of those days, there was a… God, my mom’s going to… Mom, I love you so much. We were all going through it. We were all going through it and someone abandoned a cat. We lived right by a field and someone abandoned a cat in the front yard, and they had slammed the car door on its tail. And so, its tail was hanging off. My mom took it to the vet, got it fixed up. They had to shave the little amputated tail, looked like he had a little sausage on his butt. I named him Gink and he saved my life, that cat. He drooled on me, he held me, he loved me. He liked to nurse on my clothes. And he became this giant beast of a cat and very masculine and very trained on me.

So no matter what was happening in that house, it was like I had a dire wolf who was just there, who was witnessing everything. And it was really valuable to my upbringing to have a masculine energy, a positive masculine energy, because I was not raised with someone who cherished me. I had to learn how people… I mean, I’m still learning and I’m way farther ahead now, but oh my God. I did online dating during the pandemic and I taught myself so many things about masculine and feminine and being queer and all… Oh my God, but… And I used, even in through that, the Gink energy. Do they have the Gink energy? I recently, in Criminal Minds, we have a kitten in some of the episodes and he was a rescue cat. They got a black little rescue cat, and then they were going to send him back to the shelter. I took that cat home. I now [inaudible 01:24:03] have four cats. Yeah. And his name is Gink.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, good. I’ve had a couple of soul animals over the course of my life. And as I’m getting older now and going into the third or the fourth round of a new pet, I’m starting to think, “Oh, maybe I can bring back some of those old names that I loved so much.”

Kirsten Vangsness:

The only hard part is they have to live up to the name.

Debbie Millman:

Yes.

Kirsten Vangsness:

And so, he’s still like… It’s a big mantle.

Debbie Millman:

Very big.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah. The last thing I want to talk with you about is your work with Theater of Note. You mentioned it before. You’ve been a member of the theater for over 20 years. How did you first become involved with the organization?

Kirsten Vangsness:

When you’re in Los Angeles and you’re an actor, you need places to do it, especially when no one’s calling you to do it anywhere else. So that is a really great space to do it at and I had a friend years ago who was a reviewer and she said, “You should audition at Note.” And I went and I did. And then, I went to a play there and it was like they were doing this play called [inaudible 01:25:01] at Home, which was a retelling of [inaudible 01:25:03]. It was so amazing and it was just this tiny black box with one bathroom and the fact that they could reorient the stage and you could be anywhere in this black box. I’m very into… I like to make clothes. I mean, I’m not a sewer, but I’ll cut a thing off or I like to do things my own way.

And that nothing there that you could just create stuff was very appealing to me and I stayed. And also, it was like acting class, because you’re working with all different kinds of people, all different kinds of acting levels and I just stayed. And also, theater is like… It’s so important. It’s the beginning of conversations. I did a play there called fucking Wasps, and it was about Kinsey and I remember we worked on it for six months and we were opening and no one was coming and I didn’t have any money and I watched them plaster the movie Kinsey billboard up across the street and I was like, “We made that happen.” The collective unconscious of theater is so valuable, and it’s one of the places where people of different upbringings, cultures, races, ages, you’re all together in the same space. I mean, church is like that, I guess, but theater is so specific because you’re all in love with the same thing and it forces you to make a community, to make a family.

And it’s so important that we have places like that and people don’t force themselves to be in that. And I realized when I was doing Criminal Minds, there’s art and there’s commerce, and it’s not always going to fill your art well. And Note is its own group of bananas, but I chose to stay there and be a member because it gives back to me. People are going, “Oh, it’s so great that you’re…” No, it’s part of my street cred. It makes me cool that I get to hang out with those people. And they do relevant and sometimes clunky and whatever stuff, but it’s like those are the people… I want to hang out with the people that are willing to get in the middle of the arena for the sheer purpose of doing it. Not because someone’s going to come, not because someone’s going to… Not because you’re getting accolades or getting paid for it and I feel really passionately about that.

Debbie Millman:

Kirsten Vangsness, thank you so much for making so much work that matters and thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.

Kirsten Vangsness:

Oh, my God. What a pleasure. What a dream.

Debbie Millman:

You can learn more about Kirsten Vangsness and all the work she has done on her website, kirstenvangsness.com. You can currently see her in the world premiere of the play, Nimrod at the Theater of Note in Hollywood, California. This is the 18th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Design Matters: Kirsten Vangsness appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:

Daniel Mitura is a writer, actor, playwright and producer. He had a starring role in the film, The Hobbyist, which was featured in more than 100 festivals around the world. His short film, Loyalty, is available on Amazon Prime and his theatrical work has been produced at Theatre Row, Playwrights Horizons and the Cherry Lane Theatre among many others. One of his latest projects is a short sci-fi film titled Launch at Paradise. He joins me today to talk about his multihyphenated career and more. Daniel Mitura, welcome to Design Matters.

Daniel Mitura:

Thank you so much for having me. It’s great to be here.

Debbie Millman:

Daniel, I understand that in addition to your many talents as an actor and a writer, you also play the oboe. Why the oboe?

Daniel Mitura:

Well, I played the piano since I was four and I remember apparently I saw it on TV and wanted to play. And I started playing the piano and my feet could barely reach the pedals, but I still played. I remember giving some of my first concerts which is why I always felt very comfortable in front of people because I literally grew up doing that. And when I was about 10 years old, I decided that I wanted to play another instrument and so I went through the entire orchestra and I picked the one that I thought was the most beautiful sounding. Which is also it happens to be one of the most difficult to play. You have to learn how to make reads, but I chose it based on the aesthetics purely.

Debbie Millman:

Daniel, you were born in Dallas, Texas. Mother ran a shelter helping unhomed people get back on their feet. That must have been really emotionally challenging.

Daniel Mitura:

Oh, incredibly challenging. My mother is a saint in person and helped so many families and so many people get back on their feet. They also had job training, transitional housing, so the full process from people that were homeless to actually getting them enabled to have jobs, have homes, take care of their families. These are homeless people with families if you can imagine, so that just magnifies the whole problem and most homeless families are mothers with children.

Debbie Millman:

How did that influence how you felt about the world and your place in it?

Daniel Mitura:

Well, it’s probably a couple of different things. It showed me the full range of humanity because I went to a private prep school, so that’s like one set of people in Dallas and that was actually … In some ways for me, it was great to see that. It was good to see the other side and people who didn’t have everything, who didn’t have all the resources like all of my friends in school did who would have, obviously, when you’re in grade school and high school people complain about certain things, and then if I was visiting the shelter you can see that those complaints were actually quite silly compared to other people that didn’t even have a home. In many ways, I think, for me, and I think about this with writing too, is that you see these people who “don’t”, who have nothing or are homeless and there’s so many times when you actually see more humanity and more grace and more love and more manners than you do from the people that have everything, that’s a lesson in humanity, I think.

Debbie Millman:

What did your dad do as you were growing up?

Daniel Mitura:

My dad is a sommelier and-

Debbie Millman:

I couldn’t find anything about him, so that’s so interesting.

Daniel Mitura:

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He originally had an interest in history, and then as life goes on, you get a certain age, sommelier was a second career. So I grew up and never wanted to drink any wine. Because when your parents do it, it’s not cool. So everything was always offered or, “Try this, try that.” It’s like, “No, I don’t want it. I don’t want it.”

Debbie Millman:

So is it fair to say that you’re the first performer in your family?

Daniel Mitura:

Well, it’s funny, my dad played the accordion, I remember, and I saw him play that a few times, but definitely on the level that I at least tried to do it, yeah, I think so. I’m probably back in different family trees, I’m sure there were other actors and things like that, but none that were ever spoken of or that I knew about.

Debbie Millman:

I read that you would produce concerts for your family to watch and you memorized all the music and created the costumes. Were they one-man shows or did you get the whole family involved?

Daniel Mitura:

Well, I have an older brother and it’s very difficult to direct an older brother. So there were attempts at collaborations, but then they often ended up being one-man shows. And it’s amazing because I feel like that’s a story that you hear quite often, but when I was little, that’s a natural thing. I was like, “Okay, you sit over there and then look this way,” and there’s some kind of lighting. It’s just something that happens naturally.

Debbie Millman:

You started writing and acting in plays in high school and I read that in the summers between grades, you were watching three to four movies a day. Was it at that point that you thought, “I want to make my life in performing and in theater and film”?

Daniel Mitura:

I think that I always thought that. I used to also, over the summer, I would just read novel after novel after novel, just one after the other, just big stacks of them. And in a way, movies are just like shortened novels. They have an entire world. They have a language which they’d speak. They have characters. So I think I was always just devouring anything and everything, whether it be novels or films or … Television, not so much. I never was as much into television, but I was always doing that and I loved the movies. And it’s funny because then I ended up in school, in the summers, I ended up interning at the Sundance Channel. And so I would sit there and I would watch movie after movie after movie and write these short reviews. So it’s like a muscle that I had. I love movies, I really do. It’s really rare that I see a movie and I didn’t like something about it.

Debbie Millman:

You visited New York City only one time, I believe, to see Sweeney Todd before deciding to go to Columbia University. That one visit was all it took?

Daniel Mitura:

Well, it’s funny, it’s interesting you put it that way. Actually, we came here and Sweeney Todd was available on TKTS and so we saw it. It wasn’t particularly to see that show, but-

Debbie Millman:

Well, that a good pick though, right?

Daniel Mitura:

It was. It’s a fantastic show. There’s the one with Patty LuPone and Michael Cerveris. And the actors and characters all doubled with musical instruments. So for me, having grown up and having played the piano, seeing the actors on stage also be musicians, it was a perfect match. It’s funny as if almost that was the reason that I came to New York to see that. And yeah, absolutely a fantastic show and I think, theatrically seeing that on Broadway, because I had seen musicals obviously, but seeing that, the actor-musician-type combination was really eye opening. Because like I said, as a musician, you’re a performer and you stand up in front of people, but you perform music, whereas as an actor you are the instrument and you are the thing which is looked at and judged.

So they seem very similar, but they’re different types of performing. So I feel like it’s surprisingly formative experience and that’s a great plug for TKTS as well. It’s a good plug for Broadway because it’s also like, “Try something. See something. You may not know what it is.” My parents knew what Sweeney Todd was, but I had no idea.

Debbie Millman:

But how lucky to see Patty LuPone.

Daniel Mitura:

Oh, absolutely. I still do and I grew up, I really loved opera and Sweeney Todd to me is very close to an opera, much more than other musical theater. And I had always loved musical theater. It was more like opera as in, the Sweeney Todd is drama, has very high stakes. There’s not a lot of song and dance in Sweeney Todd, so I think it’s especially appealed to me in that way. And also a lot of the novels that I grew up reading, I remember I would read Charles Dickens and Balzac and the 19th century novels and Sweeney Todd has that kind of setting with the meat pies and everything else. So it was very much aesthetically something that spoke to me.

Debbie Millman:

You majored in art history which surprised me. You only minored in theater in college. Did you have other artistic professional ambitions at that time?

Daniel Mitura:

I think I took art history in school, it was when you do theater, there were the theater clubs and then there was also the major, but they didn’t have a major in acting or writing. It was a sort of all-around theater major. So I took acting and writing classes and then art history was my major because it gave me this palate cleanser that nonetheless ended up, you think that it’s different but a lot of things end up being the same in studying artists. And I did a thesis project on Picasso. It was incredibly informative just as an artist when you read how does an artist develop their brand. And so studying that with Picasso and also thinking about film, in a film, you have thousands and thousands of frames and images, but artists would spend several years making one single picture.

If you look at the French landscape artists or anything up to the early 20th century, let’s say, there were entire narratives in one image. And how do you tell a story in one image that makes this certainty about, “What is the story? “Who are the characters?” So thinking about theater and film, in some ways, it’s easier than these artists that had to spend several years and only got one shot in one picture to tell everything.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve said that your focus on studying the classics prepared you well for being a writer, and while the Odyssey may be an ancient text, it’s still a great model of storytelling. Why do you think that?

Daniel Mitura:

I would say because people are still reading it and the Iliad then it’s proved itself in a way and that people are … You can see, it’s like as a creator, look at the things that have endured and ask, “Why have they endured?” Those are books, but I suppose they’re actually poems. They were actually performed poem songs that were done extemporaneously with different bits that were changed or improvised. So in a sense, those were live performances. Also, what they say about character is fascinating. If you look at the Odyssey and what are the moral alignments of that world, I ask that question because I actually don’t know. It’s his idea of faithfulness and then where he’s going and the homecoming. These are all such fantastic themes and the Iliad is the same. The first word of the Iliad in Greek is rage.

And if you think about what makes a great character and that Achilles has this very particular point of view and how far will he take that point of view, those are really enduring questions. And then of course, they open up historical and cultural questions and all the different people that have tried to say, “Where is the city of Troy and what was Odysseus’ journey?” and that crosses with the history of Ancient Greece which is drama and also democracy and the history of the Mediterranean. So it’s something that opens up every other possible door, which I really love about it. That’s something I think people should strive to do, is create something that then makes you want to go and look on Wikipedia about this and that and say, “Oh, when was it made? And who was the ruler at the time? And what about that? Oh, let me learn about the monarchy and then this thing,” and just to open up into all of these directions,

Debbie Millman:

It almost seems like everything harkens back to those original stories and it reminded me of something that you said about there only being a finite number of stories in that even original works are adaptations. And as a writer, I was wondering if that scared you in any way.

Daniel Mitura:

It doesn’t because I really love style as a writer. So content is one thing and then style is different. And I feel like from what I’ve seen and when I watch things, I prize a certain style. Especially in theater, I like when things are very swift and I like when they’re direct. I like the sound of the dialogue, the arc of the sound of the scene which is why I don’t really like to direct things because in my head I’m going to say, “Oh, I think it should just sound a certain way and the argument crests like this and then it falls silent.” It’s a compositional thing which doesn’t work for actors at all. And so that’s a totally different way to speak, but for me, when I write something, I can hear it and then I just pull it out from what I can hear, especially since I’ve written a lot of things for particular actors and so I know how they would say something and what their voice does and what their stature does and how they would drive it a certain way.

So for me, that’s why, well it’s a similar story, but you can tell it in a different way and then how does it come across, and for me again, it’s like the sound of it is incredibly important.

Debbie Millman:

Well, you’ve talked about the difference between the criticism or feedback you get from critics or an audience that comes to see something and then tells you what they think about what you’ve written versus the feedback that you get from actors where you’ve said that criticism speaks for itself. Can you talk a little bit more about what you mean by that?

Daniel Mitura:

I don’t really know that there really is such a thing as criticism. I think there’s only really commentary. Critics, they are writers and so I think they are also stylists. And so oftentimes, what they’re creating, and come on, when I criticize things and I look at them, it’s really all about me and my reaction. So to assume that someone can actually have a high-cultural arbitration of whether something appeals to what we assume is the mass of the average theatergoer is totally impossible. So I think if you read criticism and it’s very well written, it’s like, “Well, whatever they saw must have really inspired them to do a good piece of writing.”

People have so many different hopes and dreams of what they want from a piece of theater. I think everybody wants it to be interesting because it’s often expensive and it takes effort to get to a theater. So beyond that, I think I wouldn’t really put much on it. That’s why I say I think criticism speaks for itself because I respect that as its own genre.

Debbie Millman:

What about the criticism that’s more of a takedown where there seems to be glee in not just criticizing something but insulting it?

Daniel Mitura:

Well, I think again that speaks to whoever the author of that piece is. Actually, I feel like it’s very difficult. If you have written or someone goes to see a very perfectly written play about divorce and they’re going through a divorce, they might be very angry at the play. And if they’re a critic, they might just want to take it down. And in some ways, I’d say that actually means it’s a really great play, but for them it was a really bad experience. So I remember when I was very young, someone told me, “Look, all that matters is that people react to your work. Having them be bored is the worst thing.”

And then I think there’s a fine line. I don’t think you want to startle, surprise and challenge people, but we’re definitely in a phase where you have to be and want to be more careful about offending people. So there is that fine line, although I’m not a comedian, so I feel like that’s most difficult for comedians these days to push boundaries because we’re all deciding new boundaries for ourselves and our work. So I think that is tricky, but if you listen and you communicate with people and you’ve worked hard and you respond to, that wouldn’t be criticism but feedback, you can adjust if people are upset by things in the wrong way. But that’s tough these days.

Debbie Millman:

Daniel, you graduated in 2009 and your first play, The Picture of Dorian Gray was produced the next year. Your adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s only published novel was produced by Nomad. What made you choose this particular play to adapt?

Daniel Mitura:

Well, it’s more of a novella than a novel, which made the idea of putting it on stage a little bit easier as opposed to War & Peace, the play. And also because I just felt that, thematically, it has comes out of this traditions like Jekyll & Hyde and what it said about character, what it said about audiences and watching. There’s so much in that book about what it means to be seen and looked at, which is what we’re doing when we look at actors on stage. And I guess, just from my structured mind, I could see the 90 pages and felt that it was something that was so … In some ways, I guess from your question, I’m hearing myself say that I was thinking as a producer and it coming out that way because I feel like I don’t even have to defend the story because it’s such a great story and there’s such great characters. Who wouldn’t want to see those characters?

And it’s fascinating because so much of Oscar Wilde’s biography gets hooked into how people respond to that play, which is just amazing to me. I think it’s been what, over a hundred years since he passed away. And people are still really obsessed with something that was a scandal in the London papers back in the day. So I can’t explain that, but it is what it is.

Debbie Millman:

Well, the play is about how the young, impressionable and stunningly beautiful Dorian Gray sells his soul for eternal youth and I’ve noticed that the purpose of life or the reason for being is apparent in a number of your works. Is that intentional in reference to this specific choice or was that just the beginning?

Daniel Mitura:

I don’t know. I thought that that’s what all work was always about, but I never really liked philosophy class, so I don’t know. I remember taking some classes in philosophy and I just thought that it was way too confusing and it was too dense. That’s a really great question. I think because purpose comes to mind because creating art takes so much effort and the rewards are mostly nonmaterial rewards. So when I think about making something, it’s like, “Why? Why this? Why is it important?” So it brings you all the way down to like, “What is the meaning of life? Why is this? Why do I want to do this? Why do I do what I do?” I think all those things come out, all those questions come out for artists because of the effort involved and then because you do something and nobody sees it or the person who sees it as a “critic” or whatever. So then you constantly ask these questions and things take such a long time to develop.

And also really good collaborators will ask you those questions. Directors will say, “Why did you write this? Why does the character do this?” Actors will say that. And if you don’t have a good reason, then you just look really stupid. Unless you’re working at a really high level and you’re paying people millions of dollars, they tend to really need a good reason to do it because you’re not giving them a great monetary reason, so they tend to try to look for a passionate connection. And if you can’t deliver that, then you should get more money either way.

Debbie Millman:

At least if you’re not getting paid, it needs to have meaning I guess, right?

Daniel Mitura:

Yeah, absolutely. And also that comes across I think in the preparation and then in the performance. You can really tell if the actors are connected to it, if they mean it, if they believe it and then audiences will sit back. I have this experience in the theater, when someone on stage actually says the thing to the other person versus the line, it shocks me. When the person, if the line is, “I really hate you,” well, they say the line a lot and then you’re just, “Okay. That person hate that character, he hates the other character.” But when you hear it and they’ve said it and they mean it, it sounds a different way. And it’s funny how you can go through a whole play and not a single thing because actors can get into a volleyball back and forth rhythm, but then when it really lands, it lands and you’re like, “Oh, this is why we do what we do, because when it lands, it’s so good when it lands and it doesn’t always or even often land.”

Debbie Millman:

Your next play was titled Plan B which was a musical in one act. You wrote the book in lyrics and the music was written by Rebecca Greenstein. Was this the first time you extended your playwriting into musical theater?

Daniel Mitura:

Yes, and it was not sung through. So there were scenes and then a song and scenes and then a song. I find it really fascinating as a writer because they say like, “Oh, you’re writing the book,” but the songs are where so much of the expression happens. And so it was just a fascinating experience for me because I was the book writer and then I’d listen to the music and I’d be like, “Oh, I should just do all this.” I was like, the music … Becky was such an amazing composer. I was so captivated by her music and I was like, “Wow.” So it’s interesting. I feel like sometimes then words can fall short, but that was such a fun experience and it was very campy and it had a farcical energy to it, which just came out of the time. I’m not sure that I would capture or could capture that again or it’s where my mind or soul are at.

And so when I think of it, I’m so happy. I don’t know that I could create that again. It wouldn’t be the same or it would be too ironic or it had a bubbly effervescent quality of youth and sometimes that’s hard to bring back.

Debbie Millman:

Well, speaking of youth, these plays, your first plays were mounted a year or two years after you graduated college with an undergraduate degree. How did you get the plays mounted so quickly? How did something like that happen?

Daniel Mitura:

Just a lot of effort and you just keep pushing. And I don’t really know actually. I worked on a lot of those and was producing some of those on my own. And so I just keep pushing. I think that comes back to the question of why. And so when you believe in it, you’re like, “Well, this is going to happen and there’s so many reasons why it can’t,” and you just keep going and going. And when you push, you meet people that help you and believe in you. That’s part of the magic. They don’t believe in you and then you do something. It’s like when you’re doing something and then you’re worried it’s not going to happen, but you really want to do it, then the angels come to help. And they always do, but yeah, that’s not … I guess if someone was wondering how do they do it, I don’t know. I’m not a good teacher of … I just said, “Believe in yourself and work hard.” I think that’s all I have to offer because that’s all I did.

Debbie Millman:

Your first big acting role was in 2016 in the short film, The Hobbyist, which was written and directed by George Vatistas and shot in Brooklyn in two days. And for our listeners who haven’t seen it, can you talk a little bit about what The Hobbyist is about?

Daniel Mitura:

Well, it’s based on a short story by Frederic Brown, which George gave me the short story and it fits on a single sheet of paper which is a really great basis for a short film, because again, you’re not trying to overstuff something and it’s a very simple concept. And it’s a neo-noire thriller. And I say that because genre’s important. So it’s about a man that’s decided he wants to try to kill his wife. And there’s a twist obviously in what happens and what he imagines. And the film itself is really just a two-character piece. And Robert Smith actually, who’s in that movie, passed away recently, which is really sad and he was an amazing actor. He has this incredible presence on screen. The store was filmed in the Lower Eastside and that’s actually the store. So it wasn’t a set that was built.

And then the basement that he goes into with Robert was actually a basement that was in Brooklyn. It was our producer David Mayer, who’s amazing, it’s his parents’ or grandparents’ basement. So we were actually in the basement. It wasn’t a set. So it was the real place. And Robert was incredible. Robert was terrifying, frightening and so intense and so good. And then I just spit out lines. He was frightening me and then they came out. It was great. I’d say that that’s a very positive thing. That’s my endorsement of it. I think it’s amazing. I didn’t even see myself in it. Also, I had longer hair at the time.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, you had really hair on point in that one, I have to say. Good hair, really good hair. And I read that it wasn’t a wig. Yeah.

Daniel Mitura:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s funny because then we would go to screenings, and after the film, I cut my hair, it looked like this. And so we’d go to screenings and it was Robert and I standing next to each other. All these people would come up to Robert and be like, “Gosh, you were amazing.” And then they’d look at me and then they’d walk away. I said to Robert, I was like, “Oh, I must have been really bad,” and he’s like, “No.” He’s like, “Nobody recognizes you.”

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, there are several plot twist that occur in just a few minutes. This is a short film which requires a lot of deft acting. And I was wondering if you can talk a little bit about how shorts are constructed to get so much to happen in such a small amount of time.

Daniel Mitura:

Well, that’s a good question. It’s like there’s some expression about, “Oh, I wish I could have written something shorter, but I didn’t have enough time,” that sense that a poem is harder to write and I do think that about short films. You want to be like a poem. You want to make people think, but also feel like it’s a complete experience is very, very hard to do. I think what I said about the Frederic Brown story being a single page, that’s a great place to start. Because sometimes you watch television these days and you feel the opposite. You’re like, “Oh, my gosh, this one page has been stretched and stretched and stretched too far.” So I think having a source material is great that’s very contained, but then it really is an art for a short. I think it’s actually, in some ways … Well, it’s much more expensive, but making a long film and not cutting anything is sometimes simpler for story.

We had that with Launch of Paradise where it was strange because we had an 18-minute cut and then there was this scene that I really loved and then we cut that scene, but then somehow the movie actually made more sense without it. I don’t think I’ll be able to explain why that is. It’s just something about the flow because maybe that scene added information, but it added too much information and made you want 10 more minutes and taking that out then made the 15 feel okay. So it’s this thing that you do with editors and composers and you hope for the best, I think, is all I can say about it.

Debbie Millman:

Along with Lauren Schaffel, you wrote and acted in the short film Loyalty in 2018 and I read that you need and demand loyalty. What was the motivation for writing a film about loyalty?

Daniel Mitura:

Like I said, I’m very interested in words and I don’t know if you remember, but that year that word was batted around a lot. Actually, the quote that you read was told to someone who worked for the FBI. I just hate saying names to endorse-

Debbie Millman:

I get you. I hear you. We know.

Daniel Mitura:

And the absurdity of that, which it’s not really absurd because it’s all of our lives and it is the government and it’s what we live in, but the absurdity of this concept and you got me again thinking about farce and then also talking about these plot twists and I was like, “Well, if we can do …” If you do one plot twist, it’s like, “Interesting. A second one more interesting. A third one,” and then you’re like, “The fourth one, the fifth one.” And it gets to a point, I feel like it’s something that David Mamet does really well in his plays where it twists and turns so many times that then you lose the throughline because it’s trying to tell you that it’s not quite about that and then you get to the place of absurdity, it’s like if you do a mantra and you repeat it over and over again. The point is to make your brain think, “No more,” from the repetition.

So I think a lot of us felt that idea of absurdity that went on towards a kind of madness. I think of the playwright, Luigi Pirandello who wrote things like that or even something like Noises Off. That was the idea. And Lauren Schaffel, who was in that film, I worked with her and so many different things and she’s amazing and it was a lot of fun to do and it was a real actor piece. The cinematography is mostly closeups. And so when you work with someone a lot, you can get all of the minute reactions and it’s about the faces and all of that. So yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, one thing I was really struck by when watching the film was how everybody was both believable and yet unbelievable at the same time. And the title sets you up for assessing even before anything happens. If it’s called Loyalty, then who’s being disloyal? Who’s being loyal? And that keeps switching. And so the acting, it really is something that makes you so aware of the acting because you’re trying to decide who you can believe and who you can’t believe based on somebody’s acting.

Daniel Mitura:

Right.

Debbie Millman:

And that was something that I really enjoyed about the film.

Daniel Mitura:

Oh, well, thank you. And they’re acting for each other because they’re lying to each other.

Debbie Millman:

Right.

Daniel Mitura:

And I think that Lauren is such a great actor, because in that, she has this very human moment where my character is saying, “Oh, she told me this and she doesn’t want to get married,” and then she breaks the thing and she’s like, “Wait, you said you didn’t want …” You know what I mean? Then it’s this human moment that she has of panic and they’re out of the whole and that’s what I love about Lauren is she does that so well.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, and all of that happens in her eyes, by the way. It’s all in her eyes. All of it.

Daniel Mitura:

Yeah, that’s why we went with the closeups. And I was like, “It’s so much fun to do that.” And then if you watch it … And then our composer for that, actually, he watched it and he’s like, “I really want to write a string trio for this because it’s …” and I was like, “Yeah, that’s exactly what it is.” That’s what he wrote. His name is Ricky Schweitzer and the music is another character in the film.

Debbie Millman:

Absolutely, without a doubt. You’ve said that so much of creativity happens extemporaneously or it just happens on the spot. Did that happen on this set of Loyalty? Was there sort of adlibbing or additional construction that was happening while it was being filmed?

Daniel Mitura:

I think that the reactions sometimes get adlibbed. The script is pretty close to what we filmed, but things like Lauren in her eyes, the reactions, the hesitations, the look, that’s the stuff that organically comes out. I think other scripts could be … That one was just so tight because it had to meet the plot points. So I’ve had other things where it’s been a little bit more extemporaneous, but I feel like that had to be pretty close.

Debbie Millman:

You have a surprising scene after the end credits and I don’t want to give any spoilers away because this is a short film that I think everybody should see. So I just want to ask you, what motivated you to add that little surprise at the end? Too many Marvel movies?

Daniel Mitura:

Never enough Marvel. I love the Marvel movies. I love it. I love it.

Debbie Millman:

Me too. Me too.

Daniel Mitura:

Exactly because of that. Because it’s like this little … It’s always a little something extra at the end. It’s great that you said that because that’s really why I thought of doing that because I love the Marvel movies. And it’s like, “What can we do for this?” It’s like, “Oh, one more twist. Just pack one more in there.” And there’s also this part of me that loves that because it makes people sit through the credits to see the composer, all the people that contribute. That’s one of my little pet peeves of when people walk and it’s like, “No, that’s a really important part of the film.” And so I like doing that because then it’s like, “Oh, there’s something at the end. You have to wait,” and then you wait through it and it’s not that long.

Debbie Millman:

You’ve stated that there’s an aspect of complicity with the theater and authorship and ownership, and in a play, there’s almost always talk about who wrote it, whereas in a film there’s not as much talk about the screenwriters. It’s usually more the directors or the actors. Do you feel like you have to own the words more in theater?

Daniel Mitura:

Oh, you have to own the words and you have to own the meaning. I feel like I go to the theater, and like I told you before, I really like the style of the dialogue when there’s words that get repeated later and really crafting it, so that some character will use a certain word and then someone else uses that word and the rhythm of the dialogue and the lines. And I don’t feel like people ever actually talk about that when they see theater. They’re very obsessed with the characters and the meaning of the play. So I wish that words would have more value. And there’s some really great playwrights that are great stylists and I feel like Beau Willimon is a great example and who wrote House of Cards. And it’s like people get really hung up on the … And it’s great drama too, but I wish there would be more talk of style. You just think back to Tennessee Williams and how beautiful his lines were.

And then I think because there’s not as much talk about it, then I see plays and I’m like, “Well these are really good characters.” I was like, “But this isn’t very well written. It’s clunky.” But yeah, I think in the theater, I feel like it’s the real weight of the moral message often gets put on your shoulders as the playwright. So if you try to write something that’s satire, it can be very dangerous, because then people, if they don’t understand that it’s satire, then they think that you mean the opposite and I think even more so in the theater. That’s just the way it is. That’s just how theater is. People sit there. You’re really not allowed to get up during the show and go to the bathroom. You don’t eat popcorn. It’s like all these things in the theater you don’t have in film. So it is this communal experience, but that’s all part of it, I think, just get a thicker skin too.

Debbie Millman:

Well, it’s interesting because people are eating more in the theaters and I think that’s one of the things that Patty LuPone is so appalled by as was I. I just recently saw Into The Woods and there were people with crinkly candy wrappers next to me, people eating pretzels. This is a theater and I think that there should be a level of decorum that’s different from being in a movie theater.

Daniel Mitura:

Well, and the respect though for the person on stage that is singing that warmed up, that is their voice, that is making sure they’re in good health and at the energy to do the song in Into The Woods. The way that is so … You know what I mean? So you see the performers and the energy that they give to it. So you’re absolutely right. That should be respected because a human being is sitting just a few feet away from you and is not getting paid that much money and is working really hard to do something. And Into The Woods is a fantastic show, but you see in that that actors do a lot of work.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, the physicality, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Daniel Mitura:

Yeah, and to sing … And everybody knows those songs, so they have to sing those songs correct. Everybody in the audience has seen … You know what I mean? So it’s not easy.

Debbie Millman:

Let’s talk about your latest short science fiction film, Launch at Paradise. You wrote, produced and starred in this film and you also filmed it during the worst of the pandemic. What was that all like for you to have all of those dual roles as well as filming it during a really challenging time?

Daniel Mitura:

Well, after almost a year of not doing anything, I think I had the energy to take on the stress of that. And also, that was the time in the pandemic where everybody was tested. So you’d show up and you’d take your mask off and everybody was tested. And there was all these people that I hadn’t seen in so long. So there was a relief of being in a room with human beings and doing something fun and knowing that we were safe after so much time. So looking back on it, I was like, “I can’t believe I even hesitated to do that.” It was so nice to be with everybody.

But at the same time, I do and I like this, I feel like, especially in some of the scenes that take place in a basement and there’s two characters that have a very mysterious relationship, so much of that was made possible because of the pandemic, because we had spent time away from other human bodies and I feel like there’s a sense of alienation and kind of, “What is it and how do I look at people?” and we were wearing masks. And I love that about the film and that’s something that we could never have engineered because it was in everybody. It’s like people showed up on set and they had just been with their spouse or partner and not other people. And our first day on set, there’re probably 30 or 40 people there. So for a lot of us, I think it was just a lot of fun.

Debbie Millman:

In the movie, a powerful organization offers some agents eternal life in exchange for their brain matter, recognizing the best content of their minds to create a superior intelligence that can bring an end to war and conflict. And they’re terrified to learn that they sacrifice their individuality in order to achieve this. And you asked some questions in the promotion of the film that I’d like to ask you. You asked, “If creating a unified perspective for all humankind can spell the end of violence, conflict and discrimination, is it worth killing individual thought?” So I pose that question to you.

Daniel Mitura:

This is a great question because humans are given or are born with, have dignity. They have intellect. They have all of these things they can achieve and they have free will. But as you know, people have the free will also to make the wrong choices. And so it’s one of these things that you wonder, and especially when we’re in an age when people embrace disinformation, so it’s one thing to be confused or just not know and even to not know and not have the time or care to find out, but we’re in an age when people know that something is wrong and they still will promote it and do it. So that’s why I asked that question because I have always philosophically, and I think a lot of us do, we think about free speech and free will and the potentiality of the human being.

But when someone has decided to use that potential in a way that harms society, this is the whole argument for why we have jails. When you break the bonds of human trust, you’re removed from society and so you can be brought back in. So this is the idea of the limits of free speech and free thought, especially when we’re in an age when thought can be so easily translated into speech, when someone can just type on Twitter with their thumbs and then two seconds later the whole world is talking about it. So I thought it was at least worth posing that question.

If you actually are going to ask me the question, I would always probably err on the side of still allowing the free speech, but I am tempted by the idea of what would happen if we ended an individual thought. And I also, just from this concept of however you want to look at God or what angels are, all emotion comes out of a partial view. So any being that has infinite intellect, they can see all sides of something, wouldn’t have emotion, they wouldn’t be frustrated, they wouldn’t be angry, they wouldn’t feel lost because they could see the whole picture. And I am someone who believes in an ultimate truth. So if you could see the whole picture, then there is only one picture to see. So individual thought, in a way, is a paradox because there aren’t really different thoughts. There is one. We just are all blocked from what it is or our own choice.

Debbie Millman:

Well, it’s interesting because the movie really does make you think, makes you think about what do we sacrifice for the best in humankind, but one thing that I don’t think the film ever specifies very intentionally is what that one thought is or what is required. What are the thoughts required to end violence and conflict and discrimination? If nobody is discriminated, are we all equal? If there isn’t conflict, are we living conflict-free and what does that look like? And what that looks like is still very much open to interpretation and that’s something that I think you very intentionally leave the viewer to ponder.

Daniel Mitura:

Oh, well, thank you. That was part of the idea because I’m not perfect and so I don’t have the answer. And I think that’s why that Elsa character, she has this line. She says, “We would all just blow our own brains out if there was no more game to play,” and she’s talking from the realm of Spycraft, but the sense of, “If we did achieve that, then we would all be bored.” But again, if we achieve that as human beings, we create conflict. That’s what we do and that’s what drama is and it’s learning to live with that which is what we have to do, although I do think that we’ve all been through a period where we’ve had a little bit too much of the drama, more than we were meant to be able to handle. So that’s where it comes from.

And also, as much as there’s this philosophy, I really love James Bond movies. So in posing these questions, I also was as interested in this idea of the organization and humans taking it over. And Elsa’s character is the spy character and just the Hollywood just drama of that, that if you did have this device that it would actually be like a villain character that would take it over. So I think, in some ways, it was posing these questions and then I was like, “Oh, but you also wanted to be a good movie and so what does it take to appeal to some of those aspects?” And I have all of those aspects. And so I think that that comes across.

Debbie Millman:

Do you think that the brain needs to be fundamentally changed in order to end conflict?

Daniel Mitura:

I think that perspective just needs to be widened. I don’t think it needs to be widened to the infinite view, which can’t happen anyways, but I think that we all need to just have multiple paradigm shifts. It’s like we were talking about with Loyalty. It’s like everyone just gets spun around so much that then they forget what it was that they hated and who they were mad at and what they thought was all this stuff. I think that in some ways it’s a shakeup is needed just so we can appreciate. Appreciate the value of metaphor and see ourselves in other people that don’t look like us and that we’re all telling each other’s stories. I just wish it wasn’t so black and white. Like I said, I like satire, I like metaphors and I feel like people have really reduced it to this one-to-one correspondence.

So that’s what I think I would like is if you could expand the brain in that way, like I said, with perspective, but I’m very much a conservative in that way though. I think perspective education, I’m not into the whole thing of psychedelics or anything like that, but that’s just me to each his own.

Debbie Millman:

Another theme of the film is the all-encompassing power of technology and you stated that the power of technology to multiply our options and enable actions, both good and bad, that we could not accomplish under our own capabilities puts our morality under greater and greater pressure. Do you think that technology is tempting us to forsake our own morality?

Daniel Mitura:

I think it tempts us to not even know that we’re forsaking it. Like I said, it’s the example of the thumbs on Twitter and that everyone sees it. It’s like it’s allowing you to speak to so many people in a way that your mind can’t even envision what it means to speak to that many people, but you’re able to do it. I think that’s the scary part, is that you can run past your own morality without knowing it. If you think about Paradise Lost and John Milton, there’s Satan as the main character and the protagonist. There is something very dramatic about choosing and giving, the choice. But I think what’s scary is that people don’t even know that they’re choosing.

And that gets you back to the idea of The Matrix, is that people don’t even know that they’re not in the real world. That, I think, is the most frightening and I would say I would be most frightened for the kids that send 10,000 text messages a day and all of that. I grew up and I remember dial-up internet and I remember not having internet. I remember not-

Debbie Millman:

Oh, yeah.

Daniel Mitura:

I remember checking email once a week. So I think I still have some preservation of some brain, I don’t know, or maybe the kids that are teenagers are actually going to be super geniuses and we’ll be able to see through atoms and then they’ll be way smarter than us, I don’t know. But I just think it’s dangerous because the technology is exponential. And as humans, we haven’t gotten very far past the letter writing stage emotionally. So I think that the speed and the way that we’re able to talk to so many people, we don’t even know what that means and we are just doing it over and over again.

Debbie Millman:

Well, I think, if I’m correct, that the whole notion of how we use technology is the centerpiece of a project that you’re working on a film titled Birthright. Is that correct?

Daniel Mitura:

Yes. Yeah, well, that’s quite literally about Twitter and it’s quite literally about political speech on Twitter and what a Twitter influencer could do or any influencer online. Because I think that’s something else that hasn’t quite sunk in is just how powerful that kind of speech is. You have news organizations taking information from people on Twitter that are verified, but who knows if it’s actually that person? You don’t even know how your thought is being driven and what it’s being driven by. I think, politically, that is especially frightening because those are real choices that are being made. Those are choices that are being made if you think about and it’s beyond taxes with judges, with rights, with life, with marriage, with benefits for seniors of basically whether they live. It’s actual life-and-death decisions that are being made.

And the people that are making them, I would argue many of them don’t even understand the machine under which they’re making those decisions. And we only have, what, 435 representatives and there’s a hundred senators. There’s only 500 or so people that make all these decisions with and with technology-

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, but 350 million people, yes.

Daniel Mitura:

Yeah, and it’s not that many people that are making these larger decisions and they’re doing so with facts and figures and points of view that are just wildly askew. So that’s the basis of the movie, although really it’s a character piece and the Twitter influencer is actually in love with the guy who’s running for the … So it’s a very human element at the same time. And it’s the human element that actually gives it a happy ending because I think that humanity can then cut through the technology in person-to-person level. It’s just this basic thing of where you can try to get something done and all these phone calls happen and then you’re like, “You know what? I’m just going to go in and ask for the appointment.” And you go in, two human beings, and then suddenly, it’s just so easy and so clear. So that’s my viewpoint for an antidote to technology because I still believe in the off switch and the plug. You can pull the plug and then we’re all back talking to each other and taking a walk in the park and there’s trees and sunshine and you left your phone at home.

Debbie Millman:

When and where will you be debuting the film?

Daniel Mitura:

Well, so we’re still working. It’s in the preproduction stage right now as far as getting people attached and getting the ball rolling on that. I have another play that I’m working on. So these takes a while with the process and been enjoying also with the screenings for Launch of Paradise and seeing people’s reactions to it and being in audiences and watching it has been really cool.

Debbie Millman:

I think that you were referring to the play The Martingale and is that …

Daniel Mitura:

Yes.

Debbie Millman:

… the play that you’re working on next? So yeah, that’s the last thing I want to talk to you about. I understand it’s a single-act dramatic thriller. It’s going to have the directorial debut of Zainab Jah who costarred with you in Launch in Paradise. So do you have any sense of when and where we might be able to see that?

Daniel Mitura:

Yes, we were working on that too. We’ve had two readings of that. Looking for a theater for that now. It’s funny, so a lot of what we’ve been talking about like single-act thriller, also it has a political basis, but it’s my other historical basis. It’s set at the US Embassy in Paris and the lead is a guy who’s been a newly appointed ambassador and most of the entirety of the plays, him being held at gunpoint by an assassin. It’s a whole issue of colonialism or neocolonialism and how that intersects with race. I was very interested in taking a story and having Americans and move them to Paris and then taking in this concept of what is this colonial legacy, both of the US, and of course, France.

And it’s interesting because there’s a party going on for July 14th, is the setting, and it’s in the ambassador’s office and all of those things really exist in Paris. They do have parties there and they have costume parties. There is the office. So I was really interested in doing something like that. And thinking back to drama, it’s like, well, two people in a room and this has three people, what keeps people in a room for all that time? And sometimes, I see stuff on Broadway and there’s like 50 scene changes and they make the actors move the set in between. And so just one scene, what is the thing that keeps these people? And the roles in it were written for the actors that have read it. So it was exciting.

Actually, well, the lead role was originally written for Zainab and then she approached me about directing it. So yes, it was really interesting to work with these people and then also bring out even elements of what I would consider the psyche of the actors and the characters that I know they can play and just going for it. There’s big monologues and that kind of thing I was excited by.

Debbie Millman:

I can’t wait to see it. Daniel, thank you so much for making so many things that matter. You’re one of the most exciting new voices in the theatrical world and I want to thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.

Daniel Mitura:

Thank you for all the questions too. I feel like you really made me understand my own through line better, so thank you so much.

Debbie Millman:

You can see more about all of Daniel’s work at djdlproductions.com. This is the 18th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Design Matters: Daniel Mitura appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Abbi Jacobson:

Improv was a really good base for me in the way in which I create now, which is, I think I like showing the flaws. You’re seeing every time I mess up.

Speaker 2:

From the Chat Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman. For 18 years, Debbie Millman has been talking with designers and other creative people about what they do, how they got to be who they are and what they’re thinking about and working on. On this episode, Abbi Jacobson talks about the importance of making mistakes in the creative process.

Abbi Jacobson:

Listen, I love Broad City and I love what we’ve put out into the world, but we messed up a lot too.

Debbie Millman:

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Debbie Millman:

This is Debbie Millman, and I’m back with a new season of Design Matters. Thank you for your patience during the break. And I hope you enjoyed the archival shows we put in the rotation. In the meantime, I sent my new book into the world. If you’re interested, it’s called Why Design Matters: Conversations With The World’s Most Creative People. I’m excited to get back to having those conversations. And I was excited to go in person to this year’s TED Conference to interview Abbi Jacobson, the co-star and co-creator of the breaking TV show, Broad City, and author and illustrator of the book, I Might Regret This.

Debbie Millman:

But, as luck would have it, I got COVID and couldn’t go. Fortunately, the show did go on with my friend and fellow podcaster and writer, Dylan Marron, stepping in for me as my guest host, Dylan is an actor, writer and activist. You may have heard his voice work as Carlos in the podcast, Welcome To The Night Vale. He has also hosted his own podcast, Conversations With People Who Hate Me, which he also turned into a marvelous book of the same title. Dylan spoke to Abbi Jacobson in front of the live TED audience in Vancouver.

Dylan Marron:

Let us begin friends, angels, kings. I am so, so, so excited to bring this person up to the stage. You know her as the co-creator and co-star of the incredible television show, Broad City. She is the author of the essay collection, I Might Regret This. And she is the executive producer and star of the upcoming television adaptation of A League of Their Own. Please welcome Abbi Jacobson.

Abbi Jacobson:

Hi. Hi. Hi.

Dylan Marron:

Hi honey. Welcome to the stage.

Abbi Jacobson:

Thanks. This is cool.

Dylan Marron:

Yes. How are you doing?

Abbi Jacobson:

I’m doing good. How are you?

Dylan Marron:

I’m good. You look amazing.

Abbi Jacobson:

You look amazing.

Dylan Marron:

Great. Okay. I just said it for the compliment back.

Abbi Jacobson:

I know. I know you did.

Dylan Marron:

I ignored… I was like, I’ll say whatever [crosstalk 00:04:29].

Abbi Jacobson:

You do look amazing though.

Dylan Marron:

Thank you.

Abbi Jacobson:

I mean it.

Dylan Marron:

And that’s what matters. Okay. You’re not a stranger to TED.

Abbi Jacobson:

No, I’m not.

Dylan Marron:

Take us there.

Abbi Jacobson:

It’s very bizarre for me to be sitting on any stage here with that. My first job in New York was uploading a TED talk for a company that TED hired. It was two guys and me and I uploaded TED talks in 2006.

Dylan Marron:

Whoa.

Abbi Jacobson:

And tracked the analytics of those talks.

Dylan Marron:

How were the analytics?

Abbi Jacobson:

They’re were good.

Dylan Marron:

Okay. Congratulations.

Abbi Jacobson:

They were pretty solid analytics. I was not great at my job and I didn’t work there that long, but I have a deep history of TED and my dad used to come very early on. He was an OG [TEDster 00:05:21].

Dylan Marron:

Wow. And how did that job end?

Abbi Jacobson:

I was fired.

Dylan Marron:

Okay.

Abbi Jacobson:

I was fired.

Dylan Marron:

Okay. And now take that, here we are.

Abbi Jacobson:

Here we are. Guys, you never know.

Dylan Marron:

If you’re fired from TED, you can create an amazing television show on Comedy Central and be here.

Abbi Jacobson:

Yes, it was meant to happen that way.

Dylan Marron:

Abbi, my love, my friend. We’re dating now. No. The fact checkers start spiraling.

Abbi Jacobson:

This is our announcement.

Dylan Marron:

This is our announcement. We are dating.

Abbi Jacobson:

Yep.

Dylan Marron:

I want to take you back to the ’90s.

Abbi Jacobson:

Oh, okay.

Dylan Marron:

Okay. The Bodyguard is the movie of the moment.

Abbi Jacobson:

Okay, yep.

Dylan Marron:

There is a young Abbi Jacobson. Okay, picture her. We love her. She’s writing a letter to Lorne Michaels. What?

Abbi Jacobson:

Oh man. You’ve done some-

Dylan Marron:

I did the research.

Abbi Jacobson:

Okay. Yes, I wrote.

Dylan Marron:

But, okay. She’s writing a letter to Lorne Michaels, the head of Saturday Night Live. Tell us what that letter says.

Abbi Jacobson:

Studio 8H.

Dylan Marron:

You addressed it to Studio 8H?

Abbi Jacobson:

I think I did.

Dylan Marron:

Okay, great.

Abbi Jacobson:

I was really, really into SNL. I think my parents, that was show I was sometimes allowed to watch as a kid. And that’s all I wanted to do. Gilda Radner was the person for me. Gilda Live aired on Comedy Central, which is very full circle, because my show ended up being on Comedy Central. All these full circle moments.

Dylan Marron:

Full circles. TED, get fired, come back, Gilda.

Abbi Jacobson:

But I wrote Lorne a letter that was so sort of not aggressive, but maybe a little bit. That was like, “You better watch out because I’m going to be there.” And I think I made a bet with my brother that I was going to get on SNL by the time I was 20.

Dylan Marron:

Wow.

Abbi Jacobson:

And I haven’t paid him that $100 yet. I was probably 10.

Dylan Marron:

Yes. When you’re 10, 20 is the oldest age.

Abbi Jacobson:

20, and a $100 is the most money. And the oldest.

Dylan Marron:

Yes, rich and the oldest. You were like, “I’m going to be on it.” But by the age of 20. Wow. That’s precocious and I’m proud of you for that.

Abbi Jacobson:

Yes. It didn’t happen, so…

Dylan Marron:

But a lot of amazing things happened. We’re going to get to it. How do you go from writing that letter to Lorne, a threatening letter that could have gotten you arrested. And then you go to Mica, the Maryland Institute College of Art. Those words don’t… Institute College of Art kind of-

Abbi Jacobson:

There’s a missing O.

Dylan Marron:

Yes.

Abbi Jacobson:

Yes, you’re right.

Dylan Marron:

A strong missing O. I Googled it so many times because I was like, I must be getting the wrong pages.

Abbi Jacobson:

It’s like a throw away [crosstalk 00:08:14].

Dylan Marron:

But you went to Mica.

Abbi Jacobson:

I went to Mica.

Dylan Marron:

What brought you there?

Abbi Jacobson:

Okay. My parents are both artists, so I grew up in a household of visual art. My mom was a potter growing up and my dad was a graphic designer, hence him being an early TEDster. And my brother actually now run… and my dad have a design firm together in Philadelphia. And so, that was the obvious choice, was the arts. But when I was a kid, as I said, I was really into SNL and comedy and I used to do… I’m going to take us around. I was very into Mike Myers, especially his Coffee Talk. It was Linda Richman based on his mother-in-law, and I used to do that in school a lot. And I took acting classes, but like this, what I do now, was never really a thing I thought was a possible career, because no one I knew did any… What is that trajectory? Just was not in my mind that this was a possibility. The arts, it’s so easy to become a successful artist, so I just…

Dylan Marron:

Easy path [crosstalk 00:09:28].

Abbi Jacobson:

It’s maybe a harder… Yeah. But I was very good at drawing and that was all I did as a kid. And I could see the results in school. My public high school outside Philly had a really great art program. And I was always in that department with those teachers and they took a liking to me. And so that trajectory seemed like the way to go. And I’d looked at a lot of schools, but Mica in Baltimore wasn’t that far from Philly. And it seemed like it had a great program.

Dylan Marron:

Yeah. And you went.

Abbi Jacobson:

I went. I was general fine arts, so mostly drawing and painting. But then they had just started their video department.

Dylan Marron:

Oh. Did you take classes?

Abbi Jacobson:

Yes.

Dylan Marron:

Wow.

Abbi Jacobson:

And so I was one of the first video minors there, but I just ended up doing these characters that would’ve just been on SNL. But-

Dylan Marron:

If you had gotten on by the age of 20, won that $100.

Abbi Jacobson:

But at Mica it was so interesting. They projected them in the gallery. It was this interesting thing. I moved to New York after that and kept going in the acting world, but I was doing it already just in a little bit of like a higher brow way.

Dylan Marron:

Yes. It’s always like Cindy Sherman. When you get a Cindy Sherman you’re like, “Oh, am I smart enough to understand this?” Whereas if you saw it on YouTube, you’d be like, “I get it.”

Abbi Jacobson:

I know. It has a very high low to it.

Dylan Marron:

Yes. Whenever I go to MoMA I’m like, “I’m dumb”. That’s my takeaway when I see fine art.

Abbi Jacobson:

Well, not to pitch my own podcast-

Dylan Marron:

Good setup.

Abbi Jacobson:

Or maybe you were leading there. But I did a podcast with MoMA,

Dylan Marron:

Piece of Work.

Abbi Jacobson:

A piece of… Well, you know it.

Dylan Marron:

With WNYC, honey, co-production. I know. I did my research.

Abbi Jacobson:

This is hilarious. We just met, but I love it.

Dylan Marron:

Yes, we just met.

Abbi Jacobson:

The whole intention was making art accessible to people that feel like they don’t understand what it is.

Dylan Marron:

Okay, I need listen to that podcast.

Abbi Jacobson:

Yes. And it’s just approaching it with curiosity and it was pretty incredible working with MoMA. I got to go in to the museum after hours.

Dylan Marron:

Wow.

Abbi Jacobson:

It was pretty cool.

Dylan Marron:

Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Yes. You had to sleepover at the museum.

Abbi Jacobson:

Oh. I was like, “I don’t understand that person.”

Dylan Marron:

I’m just saying words and you’re like, “Okay, Dylan is unwell.” Okay. But after college you move to New York for the Atlantic Acting School.

Abbi Jacobson:

I did. Which is Mamet’s and William H. Macy’s acting school.

Dylan Marron:

Yeah. You took what you learned from the videos and you were like, “I like this feeling. I’m going to go towards it.”

Abbi Jacobson:

I think it was always what I wanted to do as a kid, and then felt that was impossible. And then my video stuff got… I got some good feedback at Mica from it. And I was like, “Let me just go for this.” And I moved up to New York and went to Atlantic theater conservatory program for about a week.

Dylan Marron:

Can you take us through that week? We have to hear.

Abbi Jacobson:

It’s such a serious place. Listen, I still am very interested in the art of acting, but I definitely like how I came to it through comedy. But this was full on. It was so serious. Every moment felt very heavy. I was very in my head and I know anyone that’s acting like repetition and scene study and analyzing a scene and like, what are you really saying when you’re saying this? And all very valid if that’s how your mind works. It was paralyzing to me.

Dylan Marron:

I totally get it.

Abbi Jacobson:

And I quit. I had to make a decision. When you sign up for this long thing and then they’re like, “You have seven days to… If you don’t like it, you’ve got to do it or you’re going to lose your deposit.” And I was like, “I don’t think this is for me.” And at the time I’d moved up to New York with my friend from college, Jess, and I was going through it. And she was like, “Have you ever been to the UCB, the Upright Citizens for gay theater in New York? I think based on your video stuff, you would like it.” And I hadn’t. And I went by myself to see an improv show. I have no idea what show it was, what they were even doing, but I was just fully taken. And I was like, “That.”

Dylan Marron:

That’s what I want to do.

Abbi Jacobson:

Not this, that.

Dylan Marron:

Just because I’m curious, because I think stories are so simple in retrospective narration. And I left the Atlantic and walked right over to the UCB, and it’s like, no, there was terror in that time.

Abbi Jacobson:

No, I had a full breakdown on 15th Street, Ninth Avenue. I know the corner well.

Dylan Marron:

In the vicinity of the Atlantic Acting School.

Abbi Jacobson:

Right. Right near nearby. Nope. I felt, oh I moved to New York to do this. And I guess I can’t. I even said this to you 20 minutes ago.

Dylan Marron:

Wow.

Abbi Jacobson:

Where I was like, I am an actor, but like I’m not. That’s not what I… But I fully am an actor and I can own it, because I think that partially because maybe that experience. But I always go writer first. Makes me feel way more comfortable.

Dylan Marron:

Yes. You never say artist? You never say I’m-

Abbi Jacobson:

Sometimes I say artist. M little name tag has a lot of things on it, because I wasn’t sure how to label myself.

Dylan Marron:

Yes, same. On my IRS forms, it’s a new thing each year. It’s whatever earned me enough money that year, I’m like, “Yes, writer.”

Abbi Jacobson:

Exactly.

Dylan Marron:

We talked about this, but people identify you by the software that you use, to be called a YouTuber [crosstalk 00:15:45].

Abbi Jacobson:

Exactly.

Dylan Marron:

No, that’s just the software I use.

Abbi Jacobson:

Exactly.

Dylan Marron:

Okay. This next part of the story, many of us know well, if you’re not up on the Broad City loar.

Abbi Jacobson:

I don’t know if this crowd knows well,

Dylan Marron:

No one knows this at all and we’re about to…

Abbi Jacobson:

Just going to take a long shot. Not sure this crowd…

Dylan Marron:

Blank faces of [crosstalk 00:16:05].

Abbi Jacobson:

I know. It’s like, okay.

Dylan Marron:

Just shapes that they’re seeing on stage. Okay. This next part of the story I know well, and I would like to…

Abbi Jacobson:

There’s a couple. I can feel there’s a couple.

Dylan Marron:

There’s a few Broad City heads.

Abbi Jacobson:

It’s okay. It’s okay.

Dylan Marron:

Go off Broad City. Well, I’m a Broad City head. I was like, “I know this next part of the story well.” And I’ll just say, on a personal note, I was coming up around the time that Broad City was transitioning from web series to television show. And I remember that offered such a beacon of hope for me and so many friends because it was like… I don’t know. There was this era of possibility in that you could make something that you believed in and do it so

Abbi Jacobson:

Well, I love hearing that. That’s awesome.

Dylan Marron:

It was really, really cool. But we know this next part of… I know this next part of the story well, which is that you meet Ilana Glazer at McManus, a bar frequented by UCBM provisors. And here’s how you write about this moment. “It feels false to look back on a moment, a conversation and see an inciting incident of your own life’s movie, like a formulaic Hollywood script broken down, beat-by-beat in a screenwriting handbook. But those handbooks sell so many copies for a reason. It was right there at the corner of the bar at McManus that my life changed completely.” Were you looking for a collaborator?

Abbi Jacobson:

Maybe I didn’t know I was. I was still very new in this community in New York that I had just been telling you, now when you look at that community and who sprouted out of it, it’s pretty incredible. But I think I was looking for collaborators. I didn’t know I was looking for my person in that way at the time, but it felt like that. Ilana and I met in an improv practice group. When you…

Dylan Marron:

You got to share what that is.

Abbi Jacobson:

Yes, it’s fascinating. Lean in. Basically the UCB and a lot of these other improv theaters around the country that people have come out of, you’re ultimately trying to get in a group to play on stage. You want to be in a show that’s on the main stage. And before you can do that, you really have to practice. And so, all these little practice groups were formed of friends that came out of classes and we would perform at little theaters around town that we would pay for. And host shows and it’d be three or four improv teams, and we’d hand out shots to the audience. And some of the shows were free and it was just hustling. It was hustling to perform and to work this muscle.

Abbi Jacobson:

because really good improv is done by people who have worked at it, so that when they get out on stage, they’re not thinking about it. And I write about this in the book, which is exactly the opposite of what I experienced at Atlantic, which was so in my head. And suddenly I found this place that was all about getting to a point where you were not even in your head at all. You’re operating pure gut, pure instinct with a group of collaborators. And I guess that was ultimately what I was yearning for. And I had been on this team for a couple weeks and my friend, Tim Martin, invited these two new people he met in a class to the team, Ilana Glazer and her brother Eliot Glazer. And I thought that Ilana was Alia Shawkat from Arrested Development because they look very much alike.

Abbi Jacobson:

And I was like, that makes sense that she would be on this. She’s moved to New York. I don’t know. And then we went to McManus as I wrote about, and I’m sitting at the bar and she’s telling me… I didn’t know Alia’s name, so I thought it was Ilana. And she’s telling me about how she grew up on Long Island. And we actually figured out that two of my best friends from Mica she knew. And I was like, this is not Alia. There’s no way. And then we just… I fell in love with her. When you fall in love with a friend, because she was so… If you’ve ever watched our show, which all of you’re going to after.

Dylan Marron:

There’s a binge session that we’re hosting next room. You’re going to miss the rest of the conference.

Abbi Jacobson:

Virtual reality Broad City. There’s an immersive experience.

Dylan Marron:

Okay. Ideas, ideas.

Abbi Jacobson:

Honestly, next year get in touch with me. Then we can do that. It’ll just be me in the room.

Dylan Marron:

You, live. There’s actually no goggles. It’s just you and Ilana live in Broad City.

Abbi Jacobson:

But… Where was I? Just the-

Dylan Marron:

Meeting Ilana. You fell in love with a friend.

Abbi Jacobson:

Yeah. And she was so… We play amplified versions of ourselves on the show and when you get to meet Ilana, even in the show, you’re just… You would’ve not met anyone like her either. And I was just like, “This person makes me different.” And that’s…

Dylan Marron:

Yeah. What’s it like playing an amplified version of yourself? Because I think in your book you… I just want to make sure I’m quoting it correctly, but you say that it was like, there was a good and bad to naming your character Abbi. You play Abbi Abrams, you are Abbi Jacobson. What was navigating the relationship between the two of them like?

Abbi Jacobson:

Yeah. The amplifiedness of playing that character was incredible. Abbi, unlike the version you’re seeing right now, super insecure. Just very rambly. Okay, I’m like that. I’m just like hearing my joke I just said out loud, and then I’m doing it. But all the emotions are outward, like scrambly and rambly and just desperately trying to figure everything out, which I am too. I got to just sort of… I showed the feelings more, I think, than I usually tend to do, which was incredible to do that. I grew up on the show.

Abbi Jacobson:

We started doing the web series in 2009 and stopped doing the TV show in 2019. Is that right? Which was 20 years ago now. But it was a big period of my life and the negative, I wouldn’t even call it bad, but the negative it’s the most… And I write about this too, it’s like the most flattering thing, I think, if people that really found something in the show feel like they really know me. Because it is so much me. But then it is also not, so it’s like this weird mirror and it’s also made me have to figure out myself all over again or something.

Dylan Marron:

Right. It’s like a part of you, but it’s not all of you. And you’re seeing her, but she’s also trapped in Amber from this time of your life where you wrote her.

Abbi Jacobson:

But I’m so happy we went with our names. I was almost Carly.

Dylan Marron:

Oh, okay.

Abbi Jacobson:

That would’ve never worked.

Dylan Marron:

Yes, ever. You guys, you’ll know it when you get the VR experience of Broad City.

Abbi Jacobson:

Yes.

Dylan Marron:

Want to go back to two things. One, right before, and then during Broad City, when you’re talking about doing all of that improv, what you’re getting out of that. And as you said, to get good at improv, you just have to do it all the time, over and over. And this is I would say true for every art form. But the privilege you get with that is you get to experience a lot of failure. How is failure involved in your creative process?

Abbi Jacobson:

Oh, that’s a good question.

Dylan Marron:

Okay. Thanks.

Abbi Jacobson:

That’s a good one.

Dylan Marron:

Don’t answer it. Just, we’ll move on. I just want the compliment.

Abbi Jacobson:

Next. Yes. I think that improv was a really good base for me in the way in which I create now, which is, I think I like showing the flaws, especially in the books I’ve made. Some of them were full illustrated books and some had illustrations in them, and I started really loving the idea of you’re seeing every time I mess up. And that’s part of it. The drawing is drawing, you see where I fucked up the hands over here. And I’m so sorry. Am I not… Is that the first time I cursed and am I not supposed to do that?

Dylan Marron:

No, it’s okay. We can bleep and [crosstalk 00:25:16].

Abbi Jacobson:

Okay. I’m surprised it took me that long. But I like showing the flaws and I like seeing the process. And I don’t know, I think it’s all part of it. Especially the writing of a show. Listen, I love Broad City and I love what we put out into the world, but we messed up a lot too. And we did things the wrong way, whether it was stuff you guys never saw on the show running part of it. A lot of people working on a thing, you are inevitably going to make mistakes and learn from them. And I think that that is all part of the creative process and learning from them and trying to acknowledge it, and make it better the next time. And sometimes the failing and it makes it, opens something up in a whole new way in a writer’s room or something. I can’t think of a really good example [crosstalk 00:26:17].

Dylan Marron:

No, I get what you’re saying. It’s just that with improv, the failure is more public or public for the audience members who are there for the shots that you have them.

Abbi Jacobson:

Yes. I think, yes, the improv is public depending on where you’re performing improv. It could be 20 people. No, but there’s definitely more public failures I’ve experienced more recently that I think you have to just look at them and try and do better the next time. And the same thing in comedy. Maybe not as with a serious eye, but if the goal is laughter and feeling and you it’s quiet, then you got to figure out how to-

Dylan Marron:

It’s a faster learning product.

Abbi Jacobson:

It’s very quick.

Dylan Marron:

Because there’s that immediate metric. But with improv, the failure is like, “Oh, that scene was a total dud. It’s now wiped. We’re onto the next the next show.”

Abbi Jacobson:

And that is the greatest part about it is like, you have to move past it.

Dylan Marron:

Right. About Broad City, the show going back to the era you were in. I just said what’s very true for me, you guys were such a beacon of hope to so many of us who were like, I also want to have a career in this world. Maybe not even in comedy. Just I want to make stuff. And YouTube presented… You were part of this era of YouTube where Issa Rae was making The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl that turned into the HBO show Insecure. Lena Dunham had been doing a lot of stuff on YouTube that was always referenced every time, Tiny Furniture. Her first feature was talked about. YouTube felt like we’re going to get past the gatekeepers. Were you conscious of that when you guys made Broad City? Because Broad City started as a YouTube series then went to television. Were you conscious of that? Or were you just like, we just want a space to make our work?

Abbi Jacobson:

We were both on these teams and taking classes at the theater, trying to get on the stage. And we felt in hanging out and whenever we stepped out together, that that dynamic was so unique and had legs to it and we just made each other laugh so much. And we could not get on these teams. We were auditioning. And we were both auditioning for whatever, but hardly could get on the auditions. Ilana and I are both not your typical Hollywood look. Also at the UCB, I don’t know now, but at the time if there’s a team of eight people, one was a woman. And so it would just happened that way somehow. Yeah. So weird. It’s always like that.

Abbi Jacobson:

And [crosstalk 00:29:26] we [inaudible 00:29:28] the world. And so you just knew that there were this limited number of spots and we just couldn’t couldn’t get on. Couldn’t get seen. But the two of us, we just kept being like, “But we know this is funny. We know there’s something here, even if we’re just making it for us. Even if we can take just the power back of creating a thing right away from whoever lets you be on stage.” And so, once we had that conversation, what if we made… We went to a pizza shop. Wait, what if we just make a thing? And then we were off to the races. We had got all these different collaborators from the community. People that wanted to direct, people that wanted to edit, other actors.

Abbi Jacobson:

And it was so small. We would pay little bars. I lived in Astoria in Queens and Ilana lived in Park Slope, and we would pay little bars $50 to shoot in their back little corner for an hour. Stealing stuff on the subway. And it just all of a sudden gave us control. And the YouTube aspect, part of it was like, I’m so not tech savvy. And this was before. I never considered myself a YouTuber. And our web series, like 2,500 people watched our web series. Which is not a lot at all, but it was something we could send our parents to prove that we were actually doing comedy. And we thought it was really good. Something in it was good. And then we just believed in it and just kept making them.

Abbi Jacobson:

And so, we made 35 of them for two years and I don’t even know what the question was. I’m just going.

Dylan Marron:

No, no, no. That was great.

Abbi Jacobson:

Just going with it.

Dylan Marron:

It was the era of YouTube and you completely nailed it.

Abbi Jacobson:

I haven’t talked about this in a while.

Dylan Marron:

I love it.

Abbi Jacobson:

Yeah. And it was so exciting because we would also do these live shows at different venues. Like 92Y Tribeca. RIP. But we would do these live shows where we would screen episodes and I will never forget there… I just was talking about this in the league of their own writer’s room, this feeling. We were part of this short film festival called Iron Mule. And so funny. Hannibal Burris was just there too, who was an old friend of ours, who ended up being in the web series and then in the TV show.

Abbi Jacobson:

But we were just part of this little shorts festival. But a photo of us was in the New York Times and it was this teeny photo. And I will never forget taking the subway to work. And I worked at a job next to Ilana at the time, at a place called Life Booker, which we then used in the show and made her job. I held the New York Times as if everyone on the train knew. And I was like… It is a teeny tiny photo of us on Houseton in front of a mural. And it was like, just that feeling of anything is possible. It was a really big moment. And no one had seen it and it was just like… I don’t know. I think following that feeling, those little… I don’t know where I’m going with that. Guess I am like the character, huh?

Dylan Marron:

Just rambling and rambling. No, it’s perfect. In a broader sense of Broad City is, something I loved so much about it and something that I felt was so fresh is you have these two women who are always building each other up. Building each other up and are obsessed with each other. I remember just breathing this breath of… It was like a breath of fresh air to watch this and just be like, “This feels new and it’s sad that it feels new. And yet it still new.” Did you go in with that mindset to be like, we are going to show the type of female friendships we want to see or was it just more organic?

Abbi Jacobson:

It was more organic. I think it was just, again, it might have been just… I guess we performed on this improv team for two years before where we made the show. I met Ilana in 2007, right after I was uploading all the TED Talks. But it was a newer friendship. It was really based on just the enthusiasm of being around each other, and we just had a lot of fun together. I don’t know if anyone has ever made me laugh like that, and vice versa, I think. And we used direct things in the show that I, yes, it was very organic.

Dylan Marron:

Yes. I want to talk about the last shot of Broad City, which I got chills when I watched it when it aired. And then this morning I couldn’t access my Hulu account because we’re in Canada, so I bought the episode and I watched the end and I got chills.

Abbi Jacobson:

I got an alert.

Dylan Marron:

You got an alert that someone in Vancouver…

Abbi Jacobson:

We get paid directly, right when you watch the episode.

Dylan Marron:

My 2.99 went right to you. And then we met for the first right after that. But I just want to say, it’s a really rare piece of art that can give you the same response that you had when you first saw it, as when you know exactly what you’re about to watch. And then you watch it again. And I got that feeling in my lovely little Airbnb, a few blocks away in Vancouver. Whenever I feel that from any piece of work, I just always feel compelled to thank the people who made it, so thank you.

Abbi Jacobson:

Oh my goodness.

Dylan Marron:

But I want to talk about the last shot because, and this isn’t a spoiler, but Ilana is on the phone with you and then she gets off the call and then she walks down into the Union Square subway station. And so the last shot of Broad City doesn’t actually have either of you in it. But what you see is pairs of friendships, pairs of friends, walking up the stairs, having their own little conversations and then you pull out… I’m literally getting chills right now [crosstalk 00:36:02].

Dylan Marron:

Your last scene. Wow. It’s so good. But you just see pairs of friends talking about things they’ve done the night before. You capture these little worlds of friendships and then you pull out in this big sweeping crane shot of Union Square. You see all these friends passing each other and to me, it spoke so much to the legacy of the show. How would you define the legacy that you want for the show?

Abbi Jacobson:

Oh, wow. I haven’t quite heard anyone talk about the show in a second like that. That means so much to me that you felt that way. That is exactly the intention. I hope the legacy is that whether you have your person or people yet, that they’re there. And that what Ilana and I had, which I think… If you watch it and you felt like you… I’m going to go back and figure out how to say this in a succinct way. Because I’m like, this is overwhelming to me in a way. It’s like that scene was so difficult to come to in a way. How do we end a show. And I’m going to come around to the answer, but we were writing it and actually, Paul W. Downs, who created and is in the show now called Hacks.

Dylan Marron:

Great show.

Abbi Jacobson:

He wrote on the show, the whole five seasons of Broad City too. And we’re struggling. We’re struggling. Paul comes in one morning. He says, “I had a vision.” And it was that.

Dylan Marron:

Wow.

Abbi Jacobson:

We knew we were struggling so much for how the end the Abbi and Ilana, but we wanted it to end bigger and to feel like you were a part of it. I guess the legacy… I don’t know how to answer the legacy, but I guess we always wanted people to feel like they were hanging out with us. And maybe if you didn’t have your Abbi or Ilana, you had us. Or maybe if you did, you can watch it with us. And if you’re in New York, you get it a little bit more, but wherever you are you have your own spots and your own hustles and shenanigans that you get up to. We wanted to end it feeling like you just saw one of millions of these. And maybe if you don’t have that yet you can find it.

Dylan Marron:

Ye. Because I think there can be a sense of loneliness to the city when you don’t find your person, when you don’t find that person. And yes, it was just a pleasure to revisit. Deal with it and congratulations on the 2.99 that is now in your Venmo account.

Abbi Jacobson:

I wish. That would be great. I get a little alert.

Dylan Marron:

You get it. You had the rare privilege of deciding to end a television show, which is incredibly rare in this line of work.

Abbi Jacobson:

I know.

Dylan Marron:

Was it hard to make that decision?

Abbi Jacobson:

Yes. It was really difficult. I think that when I watch a show, as much as I love it, you never want it to go. I’m not going to say a show that I’m talking about, but sometimes it goes a little too long and then you’re like…

Dylan Marron:

Yes.

Abbi Jacobson:

No, I loved it. We never wanted to outstay our welcome. And in the fourth season, we really started… It’s mostly episodic. And so, you can, for the most part, come into any episode. There is an arc to it a little bit in the first three seasons. But in the fourth season we really started to dive a little bit more into the two of them kind of growing. Which is so funny because characters grow. But on a lot of sitcoms, the reason they last for 15 years is because they don’t change that much. And that’s why you can continually do any storyline. And we really wanted to explore them changing.

Abbi Jacobson:

And once we started diving into that, we realized, what happens when two friends that are obsessed with each other and love each other so much, what happens when things have to change a little bit. And that made it so much more emotional for us to write it and it just felt really right. We were contracted for seven years and Kent Alterman who used to run Comedy Central and Viacom fought for us to end it.

Dylan Marron:

Wow.

Abbi Jacobson:

That doesn’t happen.

Dylan Marron:

That’s so good.

Abbi Jacobson:

And then they completely changed their whole thing, but he’s not there anymore. But he really fought to make it and he fought to let us end it when we wanted to, which is very, very rare of a, TV exec.

Dylan Marron:

Yes. I am looking at the time and I’m realizing there’s something we have to talk about what you’re working on now. I’m skipping so many of my middle questions, but you are adapting A League of Their Own.

Abbi Jacobson:

Yes.

Dylan Marron:

Talk about-

Abbi Jacobson:

You guys have ever seen that one.

Dylan Marron:

Everyone’s like, “Yes, we love it.”

Abbi Jacobson:

[Crosstalk 00:41:21] great.

Dylan Marron:

What is Broad City? No. A League of Their Own, a 1992 film about the women’s baseball league. Okay. What drew you to that story?

Abbi Jacobson:

Okay. Will Graham, who I created it, with approached me. I was still making Broad City, like 2017. And he said, “I got this idea. I really would love to make a TV version.” And he said, “Do you want to do it with me?” And I was like, “How can I say no to that?” And then we talked a lot about what we would do. It is a TV adaptation, but I like to think of it as a re-imagining, because it’s a lot of people’s favorite movie. And it’s very different. The movie’s over here. You can watch the movie whenever you want. And the TV show will be over here. And so, the movie explores the All American Girls Baseball League, which is great.

Abbi Jacobson:

I love the movie. It’s one of my favorite movies, as a kid and now. It holds up in a lot of ways. Our re-imagining is opening up the lens of women in the 1940s that dreamed of playing baseball. It’s a two-hander. I’m one hand. And I’m what you’re used to in the movie, the All American Girls League. I go and you’ll follow my character in that way. And it’s also about this character, Max, who’s played by Chanté Adams, who’s a black woman. And in the movie, I think you might remember there’s-

Dylan Marron:

That one scene.

Abbi Jacobson:

There’s that one scene-

Dylan Marron:

Where the ball rolls.

Abbi Jacobson:

The ball rolls and a black woman picks it up and chucks it back to Gina Davis, and she’s like, “Ah, wow.”

Dylan Marron:

Yes.

Abbi Jacobson:

And then that’s it.

Dylan Marron:

Yes. And that’s intersectional feminism.

Abbi Jacobson:

Yes.

Dylan Marron:

Just the one scene.

Abbi Jacobson:

Will and I got the chance to talk to Penny Marshall who directed the film before she passed away. And we got to ask her all these questions. It wasn’t a very long conversation, but she said… I was trying to nod. I almost did the Penny Marshall impersonation, but I’m not going to do that. But she was like, “I was trying to acknowledge all these things. And that was like a really quick acknowledgement that this woman would’ve been good enough to be on this league, but was not allowed.” And so, our show is really examining this league was an incredible space. We still do not have a professional women’s major league baseball team now. This was the only time in history that ever happened.

Abbi Jacobson:

And our show is examining, for a lot of people, for a lot of women, white women and white passing women, this allowed them to play professional baseball. But if you were not in that category, you were not allowed in that door. And Max is roughly based on three women who ended up playing in the Negro leagues with men, which is incredible. Amy Johnson, who went to the tryouts and was not allowed on. Connie Morgan and Tony Stone. And so our show there’s none of the characters from the movie, but it’s still, I think has the spirit of the movie, but it’s touching on a lot of things that the movie doesn’t, like race and believe it or not, there’s some queer women playing professional baseball. I guess in the nineties, they just like, they weren’t aware.

Dylan Marron:

No, no, no. Queerness was invented after that.

Abbi Jacobson:

But yes, the show is pretty queer.

Dylan Marron:

Yeah. It’s exciting. Let’s just talk about it. There is an inherent queerness that a lot of people read on to the movie, A League of Their Own.

Abbi Jacobson:

Yes. But no-

Dylan Marron:

So gay.

Abbi Jacobson:

It is a iconically gay movie, but no one’s gay.

Dylan Marron:

No, one’s gay.

Abbi Jacobson:

I mean, not even Rosie.

Dylan Marron:

I know. Rosie wasn’t even out yet.

Abbi Jacobson:

I think she was. Or maybe she wasn’t publicly.

Dylan Marron:

I think se came out in the late nineties, not publicly.

Abbi Jacobson:

Oh, oh, oh, okay. I got a chance to talk to her too about it. Maybe it wasn’t, I didn’t know when she publicly came out, but she was definitely like…

Dylan Marron:

A practicing queer. Yeah, exactly.

Abbi Jacobson:

Yeah. Let’s make sure the data’s right in her Wikipedia.

Dylan Marron:

We’ll fact check that to. When did it start for you? That’s what I’ll ask Rosie personally.

Abbi Jacobson:

Abbi Jacobson, [inaudible 00:46:07] thank you.

Dylan Marron:

No, I’ll get thrown under for that one. There is a queerness. If you’re comfortable talking about it, you publicly came out through, if my research led me correctly, through a weird interview with a journalist.

Abbi Jacobson:

I think that would… Yes, it was a really weird interview. And my Abbi Abrams came out because I was like, what? I think it’s so interesting, whatever. Queer people have to publicly come out. This is an obvious statement, but I hate that straight people don’t have to say a fucking thing. It was a big outlet. It was Vanity Fair. I think I was promoting the book.

Dylan Marron:

6 Balloons?

Abbi Jacobson:

No, 6 Balloons. It definitely would’ve been the book, because the book is all about that. That’s so funny. It was for 6 Balloons, which is this film I was doing. And she goes, “You’re such a catch. Why are you single? What kind of guy are you into you? I don’t get it.” And I was like, “Oh, it was not a secret to me at all. But I also, wasn’t going to tweet it.

Dylan Marron:

Yeah.

Abbi Jacobson:

I don’t know that just didn’t feel like my vibe. And I stumbled through making sure she knew I was queer [inaudible 00:47:42]. And then in the article, it appears I was stumbling through it, but I guess I was just relieved that/// I don’t know.

Dylan Marron:

But it wasn’t a secret. You were like, “I want to be honest about this, but I don’t want this to be a coming out. But you understand how media works too?

Abbi Jacobson:

Not at all. The way she even phrased it, I was like, “Oh, this is not a thing that’s known. Even thought I… Rosie, I was practicing. I think that’s correct in my Wikipedia. No one needs to go on it.

Dylan Marron:

Oh, I’ll be editing it today.

Abbi Jacobson:

But I don’t know what… I just was like, well, I have to correct this person because I don’t, this isn’t incorrect. Except for the fact that I am a catch, but-

Dylan Marron:

Yeah, not I [inaudible 00:48:33] correct that.

Abbi Jacobson:

Yeah. But yeah, it was clumsy.

Dylan Marron:

I was trying to formulate this question, but you’re totally right. That I think this whole notion and performance of coming out is kind of bizarre. I think you know I came out at 18, which was so I had a very Ryan Murphy coming out. It’s like mom, dad, I’m gay, and they’re like, we know. And then everyone was like crying. And I think like that changes… 2006 is recent, but it feels like a totally different time.

Abbi Jacobson:

Wait. 2006 was-

Dylan Marron:

Is when I came out.

Abbi Jacobson:

Okay. I was like, wait that… Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dylan Marron:

I’m telling you, no. Yes, I came out in 2006 and it just feels so different. Meaning what you’re articulating is I think the prevailing feeling of like, I don’t want to come out, I’m just queer.

Abbi Jacobson:

I just didn’t feel like I needed to make some sort of announcement. I mean, I was so old. Not that that has anything to do with the announcement. I just realized this about myself pretty late. And once I did, I was very much open about it. It’s in everything I make. And I don’t know. It was sort of kind of right that it happened that way. I was like, “Oh, you don’t know, Vanity Fair.”

Dylan Marron:

Yes, you got to educate them. Is queerness consciously woven into A League of Their Own, the new adaptation?

Abbi Jacobson:

Yes. Listen, it’s about so many other things. It’s a sports show and I think it’s like such a… Oh it has. I’ll be done in post in two weeks. I’m still very much in it every day. But yes, the queerness is without a doubt woven into it. And two, I just don’t think there are a lot of queer stories from that time period that are shown. And they’re based on real. We did a lot, a lot of research for the show and it was exciting to… Believe it or not, I didn’t do a ton of… We didn’t have a research department for Broad City. But yes, it was a really important part of the show.

Dylan Marron:

Yes. You’re making me realize something too, which is a lot of the time, with the current era of media, when it’s people refer to shows and work as IP, there’s a lot of eye rolling and some of it is valid of like, “Oh, everything’s a reboot these days.” But I think what I’m realizing now talking to you is, there can actually be a beauty to that too, because it’s taking these stories, not referring to it as IP, but stories that we all really loved and saying, “Okay, but what if you just turn the camera this way? It’s this world. We’re putting the camera in this world, but we’re angling it away a little.” I’m just curious about the creative process of taking a known story from the beginning, you wanted to make sure it wasn’t those characters.

Abbi Jacobson:

Yes.

Dylan Marron:

Yes.

Abbi Jacobson:

And I’m not attempting to be Geena Davis in any way. That would be a hilarious thing to me. I don’t know why. She’s just the such a movie star. But yes, no one is the same. There are definitely nods to the movie because as a lover and a fan of the movie, you also want to see the little nods.

Dylan Marron:

Totally.

Abbi Jacobson:

But a lot of the nods to the movie are real things that happened in the league. And so, we’re going to include them again, because we talked to real players and read all this stuff about the league and the era and what getting into that league was like, and the tryouts and all these things. I think it’s a really difficult task, especially when it’s people’s favorite movie.

Abbi Jacobson:

But now I’m at the end of it, and I’ve been really nervous us about this for the whole… I started doing this in 2017 and where we are now and I’ve been nervous. “Are we going to get this right? Are people going to hate it? I imagine people are going to watch it like this. Let’s just see how you ruined my movie.” And a lot of people might. And this might not be for them, but I’m at a point right now where I think this is where you have to be as a creative, I’m really proud of it.

Dylan Marron:

Good.

Abbi Jacobson:

And I think we made something really different than the movie and something really good. And I don’t know. That’s so scary to say, but that’s the best you can hope for. And then if it’s not received, then I did what I could. I don’t know. But I feel good about honoring these women’s stories.

Dylan Marron:

Yes. What a gift that you’re able… I’m so glad that you’re saying this and saying this on the record here.

Abbi Jacobson:

That I think it’s good?

Dylan Marron:

Yeah. No, I mean that, because I think-

Abbi Jacobson:

They’re going to be like, “She said she thinks it’s good,” when it comes out.

Dylan Marron:

You’re going to be memeable. And I’m going to be making some face in the background. No, I think that’s such a beautiful thing. And I do love that it’s recorded because I think whenever we put art out into the world, we then average what we feel with what other people say about it. And it’s like, I wish we didn’t have to do that. You believe in it. You like it. That’s so cool.

Abbi Jacobson:

Yes, it is cool. I’m going to be a nervous wreck when it comes out.

Dylan Marron:

Of course. But you have to accept that.

Abbi Jacobson:

But ultimately you just got to trust your gut.

Dylan Marron:

Completely. For many people who aren’t in the television world, TV development is an agonizingly long process. Agonizingly long. If I understand correctly, you pitched A League of Their Own and sold it in 2017. Pilot, written and shot in 2018, or you wrote the whole season and then you shot a pilot?

Abbi Jacobson:

We had a development room where we wrote an entire season. It was originally going to be a half hour comedy. Then we got feedback that they wanted us to rework the pilot. Will and I rewrote the pilot now. And I’m actually very happy that that happened. The show changed a lot and I was waiting to officially be in it. I don’t know why. I think I was still in Broad City and I was like, “Do I want to do this?” And I was waiting until I loved her. And we were working on it for so long, and then finally we rewrote the pilot and then I fell in love with the character. My character’s name is Carson. And then we shot the new pilot in February of 2020, so right before COVID. And then we wrote-

Dylan Marron:

So you wrapped?

Abbi Jacobson:

With the pilot.

Dylan Marron:

You wrapped the pilot, you wrapped production and then you were in the edit.

Abbi Jacobson:

I was editing when they were like, we need to leave the facility. Yes, in person. And then we edited remotely and then we got picked up and then we wrote season one again. Now as an hour long [dramedy 00:56:34]. All on zZoom in 2020 and 2021. Shot it. Where are we? We shot it. And we shot in Pittsburgh, last summer.

Dylan Marron:

Yes, 2021.

Abbi Jacobson:

Yes. And I’m still in post on it.

Dylan Marron:

And then it’s coming out this year?

Abbi Jacobson:

It comes out this summer.

Dylan Marron:

Wow. It’s a long process. That’s going to be five years.

Abbi Jacobson:

Yes.

Dylan Marron:

Yes. Again, we talked about failure.

Abbi Jacobson:

Good thing. I like it, right. Jesus.

Dylan Marron:

Thank God. We talked about failure and how that applies to TV. But I think the other interesting thing about improv is that improv is don’t think. Don’t think, just do. Build it, tear it down. Don’t think about it. That is antithetical to the TV development process, which is think constantly this executive in a far away tower on a lot somewhere is telling you I don’t feel emotion from this. And you have to constantly be thinking, how do you keep that… I guess it’s a similar question, but how keep that freshness of the improv spirit as you are spending hours on a line?

Abbi Jacobson:

I think it’s also like, I feel like it’s a hustle energy of improv of like, “Okay, then I’ll try this.” Or like, “I’m always going to try this.” And even in a writer’s room, when I hire a writer, my favorite kind of writer is someone who is going to be like, “Okay, that didn’t work. What about this? What about this?” Someone who’s going to keep coming with ideas. And listen, sometimes I’m the worst where I’m like, I don’t know. Negating and you always like, okay, maybe not that, but then what else? Yes [and-ing 00:58:25] is a big rule of comedy in improv. Yes or no, but also maybe this. Just adding upon.

Abbi Jacobson:

And I think writing in production and television, things change so much. The production of this show, every single thing that could have gone wrong, went wrong. And it was a constant. We have to rewrite this scene to be shot tomorrow. This is this. It’s raining. Did you guys know that it rains more in Pittsburgh than almost anywhere in the United States? Because I didn’t and we’re shooting a show about a baseball.

Dylan Marron:

All indoors. All the indoor fields.

Abbi Jacobson:

It was just like, what do we do? What do we do? We got to move this here. We got to shoot here. Maybe they’re not in it. I still feel that muscle is constantly being worked out. Because you have to figure out how to make it work. And so, even though the writing process is so thorough and feels never ending, it’s like there’s another whole stage where that’s done and now you’re taking the writing and you’re having to make this other thing work. And then you shot it all and we’re never going back there right now to reshoot. We’re in Screenville, and we have to make what we got work right in the edit. And that’s a whole other like,”Okay, well what if we recut it like this?” Or like, that’s really bringing a cue. It’s like never ending obstacle course you’re on.

Dylan Marron:

And just with your description, it’s also like the writing doesn’t end. I have rewritten in the edit because you’re like-

Abbi Jacobson:

Oh, you have to. Even if you get exactly what you want, sometimes you’re like, “Oh, that doesn’t work the way I thought it would.

Dylan Marron:

And it’s mystifying that something that can kill in the room, kill on set falls flat in the edit. And so, I think the writing process doesn’t end at the room. It’s on and on.

Abbi Jacobson:

The editors that I’ve worked with they’re writing. You have to rework a whole scene sometimes.

Dylan Marron:

All together. I know you’re working on your fantasy project now. This was a dream project for you. And Broad City was a fantasy project. But I’m just curious and I encourage you to just go wild with this answer, but what’s an absolute fantasy project you have?

Abbi Jacobson:

Okay. I have two things.

Dylan Marron:

I want them both.

Abbi Jacobson:

Here we go. One, I’ve done books where I’ve made artwork, but they never felt like actually the art I want to make. They always were in book form and they were very small. I’ve been talking about this for years. I want to paint again so badly that. And this project that I’ve been trying to work on is adapting the short story that I can’t say what it is, because I’m trying to get the rights so bad.

Dylan Marron:

Can I list some names? No, I won’t do that.

Abbi Jacobson:

I don’t know if she… Maybe it’d be helpful. Should I look into a camera and plead, but I really want to write a film and direct it, but not be in it. I don’t want to be in it.

Dylan Marron:

Based on these short stories?

Abbi Jacobson:

Just one short story.

Dylan Marron:

Wow. Okay. I’m ready to-

Abbi Jacobson:

And it’s an older short story and I read it during COVID and I couldn’t up thinking about it. And that’s really what I would love to do. And I haven’t worked on a piece of writing by myself in a number of years. And that’s what I’m longing to do. I love a collaborative experience, but I would love to do something on… Both of those things are pretty solo.

Dylan Marron:

Okay. That’s exciting. I can’t wait for both. Well, Abbi, thank you so much.

Abbi Jacobson:

My goodness. Thank you so much.

Dylan Marron:

I know this just sped by. Thank you all so much for being here. Thank you to our TED members for watching. Thank you, Debbie for watching.

Abbi Jacobson:

Debbie.

Dylan Marron:

Debbie, we love you. We hope Design Matters was in good hands just for these 90 minutes. And once again, Abbi Jacobson.

Abbi Jacobson:

Thank you all so much.

Debbie Millman:

That was Abbi Jacobson in conversation with Dylan Marron at the TED 2022 Conference in Vancouver. I hope to interview both of them separately in the near future. This is the 18th year we’ve been podcasting design matters. And I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference. We can make a difference or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

Speaker 2:

Design matters is produced for the TED Audio Collective by Curtis Fox Productions. Interviews are usually recorded at the School of Visual Arts Masters and Branding Program in New York City, the first and longest running branding program in the world. The editor in chief of Design Matters Media is Emily Weiland.

The post Design Matters: Abbi Jacobson with Guest Host Dylan Marron appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:

Yes, I know Ethan Hawke is a famous actor and hardly needs an introduction. He’s starred in more than 80 movies, many of which have made their mark in the Zeitgeist. You’ve likely seen him in everything from Dead Poets Society and Reality Bites, to The Before Trilogy and Boyhood. Ethan Hawke is also a writer. In fact, in high school, he wanted to be a writer before becoming interested in acting. Over his nearly four decade career, he’s managed to do both, and then some. Today I’m going to talk with him about his latest novel, A Bright Ray of Darkness, and his bravura performance as John Brown in the showtime series, The Good Lord Bird. Ethan Hawke, welcome to Design Matters.

Ethan Hawke:

Well, thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Debbie Millman:

Ethan, Is it true that when you were growing up you had fantasies of becoming a merchant marine?

Ethan Hawke:

That is very true. Well, I was a big Jack London fan. I had a kid who lived down the street from me. He was a great older than I was, Nick and he liked Jack London. He was really cool. When you’re 16, a 17-year-old just feels like he’s got the world by the scruff of the neck. He went off to be a merchant marine and live off his Jack London fantasies. I have no idea what happened to him. But we used to read books together and talk about him, and I thought he was a … I wanted to be just like him. But I also want to be just like Jack London. So I thought that might be a great avenue to chase down an interesting life, is to disappear into the seas and come back somebody interesting because I thought I was pretty boring as I was.

Debbie Millman:

Really? Why is that?

Ethan Hawke:

Well, I think I was pretty boring. I mean, I think most young people struggle with a sense of who they are and what they want to be. You look around you and some things seem interesting, but most paths feel impossible to walk down. I think the road of adventure loomed large in my head. I longed to been born in another time period when the world felt wilder, I guess~, but probably every generation feels that way.

Debbie Millman:

Your parents met in high school, Ethan. Your mom was 17 when she had you. But they divorced when you were four years old. When asked in an interview if their divorce scarred you, you stated, “Scarred puts a judgment on it,” and then go on to declare that you were formed by it and made by it. I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing.

Ethan Hawke:

Well, I mean, that’s called the unity of opposites, isn’t it? It is a good thing and it is a bad thing. I find children long too … They long, long, long in their heart and soul and every stitch of their body longs to believe that their parents love each other and that they were born for a reason and that they were born in love. Most of us long for that. The advantage of being raised from the point of divorce, from that vantage point, is that you see that the world as more complicated than a little earlier and you get your heart broken a little earlier. That break has an opportunity to invite some wisdom into your life, or at least some experience, right? I think that it can make you stronger. You know that poem stronger in the broken places? It wakes you up to the idea that no one has the perfect life and that you were born in love and it doesn’t matter what happened to the band after they made your music. Your music was born out of something beautiful.

Debbie Millman:

After the divorce, you alternated between living on the East Coast with your mother and visiting your dad back in Texas. I read that this caused you to alternate between personalities. In what way?

Ethan Hawke:

Well, I bet you everybody came from going to mom’s house, going to dad’s house. They know exactly what I’m talking about.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, yeah. [crosstalk 00:04:00] My parents got divorced when I was eight, so I get it.

Ethan Hawke:

There’s a personality you have that you think makes your mother like you better and there’s personality you have that you think makes your father like you better. For a long time, I thought that meant that I was a liar. That I wasn’t showing the real me. Who’s the real me? Slowly as you get older, you realize that these people, they’re all me. I love my mother and I love my father, and I want them to see the best of me. It doesn’t make me a liar. But I do think it taught me at a young age how malleable my personality was. If my personality was malleable, probably everyone’s is, and it might have been a very good entry point for the life of a performer.

Debbie Millman:

Do you think that that gave you a sense that you were performing for them, your parents?

Ethan Hawke:

Well, I know that Marlon Brando would tell you that you’re performing for me right now and I’m performing for you, that what is our authentic self is very mysterious. We want our peers to like us. We want to be somebody respect. We want people to think positive things about us and all those things, and we manipulate ourselves and we do a little bit of … You perform for grandma. “Yes, ma’am. This apple pie is delicious, grandma. You’re the best, grandma.” [inaudible 00:05:22] Then you walk into your buddy’s house and you say, “Hey, who’s got a joint?” I mean, it doesn’t mean you’re the worst person in the world. It means you’re bigger than one thing. That’s what I think, anyway. Performance, like the thing about divorce, we use all these words. Performance makes it sound like you’re not being true. I am being true when I talk to my grandmother. That is who I want to be for her, and does that make sense?

Debbie Millman:

Oh, absolutely. I read that while you were in high school it gave you the opportunity to become an expert at fitting in. I was really fascinated by that because as also a child of divorce, I also had that ability, that range of wanting to be friends with lots of different groups. I understand that you were on the school football team, in the church youth group. You had a range of friends that included graphic novel reading geeks, theater nerds, punk rock girls, deadheads. How were you able to slip in and out of so many personas at that time? Because I do sense that it really was authentic in the same way that I felt that as I was slipping in and out, I was still being aspects of me too.

Ethan Hawke:

I think you can be authentic with different types of people. I mean, the positive, maybe without breaking my arm patting myself on the back, is that I’m not inherently judgmental. I’m not convinced that I’m the moral authority on anything. So I don’t really have a belief that somebody’s got it right and somebody’s got it wrong. I think because I moved around a lot, I was really hungry for friendship, and I would accept it wherever it came. I think that’s a quality I like. I’ve tried to hold on to that quality. It’s a quality that when I see it in others, I like it.

Ethan Hawke:

One of my best friends is Richard Linklater. We’ve spent a lot of time together. He’s a great filmmaker. One of the things that makes him a great filmmaker is just a genuine love of people. If you watch Dazed and Confused, you see he has love for every type of category you want to put somebody in. He sees people with compassionate eyes, as opposed to, there’s a lot of movies and films out there that are always judging. He’s a good guy, he’s a bad guy, she’s a liar, he’s the enemy. We’re all caught in this huge spiderweb trying to make sense out of where we were born and who was our grandma and what our aptitude is for. I’ve just never felt too judgmental and that helped me as a kid.

Debbie Millman:

From what I understand you wanted to be an actor since you were 12 after your mother enrolled you in an after school program and you were cast in a production of George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan. Was that really when your first seeds of wanting to perform were cast?

Ethan Hawke:

I think a lot of young people want to feel like they matter, like they’re special, like they’re interesting, like somebody cares about them. One of the first ways you could do that is to jump in front of the class and dance or sing or play a song or be great at sports or some way to set yourself apart. I think that I don’t believe that my initial interest in acting came from a desire to express myself for some real artistic impulse. I think it came from a simple desire to be noticed, to be liked. I think that’s a very dangerous fire to play with. But yeah, I went to an acting class. I really did love it. I was pretty good at it. From my first class, I think we had a guest teacher come into the … It was at the Paul Robeson Center for Performing Arts, and this guest teacher came from McCarter theater and he led a little improv class.

Ethan Hawke:

I remember vividly in the parking lot there and he asked me will I be interested in playing [inaudible 00:09:22] page. I was like, “Well, do I have any lines?” He said, “You have two lines.” I said, “Then, heck yeah.” So I got to put on armor and be a little page to a knight, his little squire and I had a couple … I had to sneeze which was very hard to do. The [inaudible 00:09:39] page sneezes and they know the winds changed. I took that sneezing exercise very hard. But so anyway, my point is, my first acting class I got my first part. My life has been … Sometimes I say acting chose me. It guided me. I felt caught in a river almost. Early in my career with Dead Poets Society, that movie could have been a bomb and two weeks later, I’d been on a boat chasing my friend Nick emulating Jack London.

Debbie Millman:

You got your first part after your first big audition for Joe Dante’s science fiction film, Explores. He beat out 3,000 other actors. You co-starred with River Phoenix, and though it didn’t do well, at the time you thought God had found you.

Ethan Hawke:

I did feel like that. You kids, you feel like you’re lost in this sea of pre pubescent everybody … I felt the thing I was hunting for, somebody will notice me. I’m here, I’m raising my hand, Pick me, pick me, and I felt like I got picked.

Debbie Millman:

What was it like to have such an epic disappointment at 13 when the movie didn’t pan out the way you thought it was going to?

Ethan Hawke:

Well, that’s why being a kid is so hard. You have no sense of perspective. On my emotional radar, it felt like a helicopter fell from the sky and destroyed my house. I would have dreams of going to see the premiere, and they remade the movie without me. River and another kid would be on there. It was scary to be sucked into the adult world and fail. Because it felt like, well, I guess I can’t do this, this thing that I’m yearning for. Now, ironically, this was one of the greatest blessings. When you talk about the unity of opposites, right? This is one of the greatest blessings of my life. Those tears I shed over that, nothing better could have been happening to me. Because all of a sudden, I wasn’t a child actor. I’m back in high school, being a nerd, trying to do my thing, getting a dose of humility, and learning a more genuine relationship to what the arts is about.

Debbie Millman:

You decided to give acting a second chance as a senior in high school playing Tom Wingfield and your second cousin twice removed, I believe, Tennessee Williams Glass Menagerie. What motivated you to try again?

Ethan Hawke:

Well, I loved it. It actually happened a little differently than that. I was a senior in the kid who was in The Matchmaker … They were doing the … I was playing soccer that fall, and the lead in the matchmaker dropped out three days before the performance, and the head of the English program came to me and said, “Would you do this?” I said, “Sure.” I learned the lines … I was the lead of the show, and I learned the lines in a couple hours. I went out there and I had a ball, and I was good at it. I made everybody laugh. I think I was really loose because I didn’t put any thought into it. I couldn’t fail because I was so coming through for the team just by showing up.

Ethan Hawke:

It’s like there’s a great relaxation, no matter what I do, it’s going to go well because otherwise the show wasn’t going to go on. It was a perfect scenario. Once I did that and felt that laughter in the room, I felt that high, well, then I really wanted to do it. Then same English teacher picked up. It was very uncommon in high school to pick such a small play as The Glass Menagerie has four characters and and it gave me this great part that they knew I really love that play. I was really into Tennessee Williams as a kid because my family was always telling me that we were related to him, and he’s brilliant.

Debbie Millman:

After high school, you attended Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, but you hated it. How come?

Ethan Hawke:

Yes. I had really wanted my life to begin when high school ended. The joke about the Jack Lemmon thing was very real to me. I didn’t want to be a kid anymore. The thing about being a senior in high school versus being a freshman in college is you just go back to square one. You’re just a kid again and everybody’s telling you what to do. I had a couple strange experiences that are too boring to get into. But just with fights and different things. I wasn’t in the mental head space to learn, and I heard about these auditions. Because of my experience with the Explorers, they were doing big casting calls for this movie Dead Poets Society.

Ethan Hawke:

I knew there were seven parts for young kids, and so I took the train back to New York and auditioned for this movie, because I just had the thought that, well, if I can’t get one of these seven parts … This is the way a 17-year-old thinks. If I don’t get one of these parts, then I’m not meant to be an actor. Well, that’s a dumb thing to say. But in this case, I got one of them. I was able to have an adventure. I mean, going down there and meeting Robin Williams and having this part and all this responsibility and working with genuine artists, I mean, this was not Peter Weir at that time for people who are cinema fans. Peter Weir is a master craftsman and I was his pupil. He spoke to us with respect.

Ethan Hawke:

I mean we were being assigned Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman and Emerson, running little acting workshops and being given improvs, and who’s in our workshop and Robin Williams. I mean, what that’s like for a young person. You can’t unsee that. He’s on set with John Seale, one of the greatest cinematographers, and listening to the way that they talk about light and the frame and the way he listens to music, and we watch movies together. The way he watched movies was different than the way my friends watch movies. Your brain starts to … Little particles open up that had never been opened before, and you start to absorb. It was an experience that I don’t think any of us understood how impactful it would be in the mind of a young person.

Debbie Millman:

I want to talk about one of the moments in that movie, despite it being so long ago, you’ve stated that one of your all time favorite scenes is the one where Robin Williams inspires you to make up a poem. You said it was basically Robin teaching you the creative act, which is what the scene is about. But he was also teaching you how to act.

Ethan Hawke:

There’s a certain magic that happens in movies sometimes. If you try to put it into words what’s so beautiful and mysterious about life itself, you just become an idiot by trying to give it vocabulary words that make sense. But when there’s a subconscious to your work and when the subconscious is in line with what the larger metaphor of the movie is about, then you accidentally, through no credit of your own, stumble into something profound. I was struggling with my own confidence and I was struggling with this burning desire to contribute and to have a relationship to poetry and rock and roll and anything that made sense to me when the world didn’t make sense, and so was my character.

Ethan Hawke:

Robin Williams is in the height of his powers. He just done Good Morning, Vietnam. He just finished [inaudible 00:16:58] He’d been doing Waiting for Godot with Steve Martin on Broadway, directed by Mike Nichols. I mean, he was working with the best people in the top of his game, and it was him making me sound my barbaric yawp. It was exactly what … I mean, there was just levels to it, and that’s what the movie’s about. It’s unlocking the creativity of young people. Funny enough for people who are film fans, I don’t know, the steady cam had just been invented. They were really excited about the fact that you could move the camera an interesting way. Peter Weir and John Seale were very excited about this new camera toy, and that maybe we could do this scene in one shot, or what would at least feel like one shot.

Ethan Hawke:

That puts a lot of pressure on the actors because he’s doing these five, seven minutes takes in one shot, and all of a sudden you disappear. You just disappear into the process of making something. All of a sudden, they broke for lunch, and I was like, “What just happened? That was awesome.” I’ll tell you something funny. Robin took me by the shoulder and he said, “And the Oscar goes to Ethan Hawke.” Right? This is who I was back then. I was so angry because I didn’t know if he was kidding. I felt so confused by that. Because he’d been nominated for Academy Award. That idea seemed like saying, “You’re going to win the Super Bowl,” and it felt like he was teasing me. Because I just had this unbelievable high. I don’t need any prizes. I don’t need this … I wanted to be taken seriously. I think back on it and I go, “Oh, God, I was such an intense 16-year-old. Jesus, get over yourself, kid.” But I remember that’s how complicated and stirred up I felt it. I didn’t know how to judge the feelings that were happening inside of me.

Debbie Millman:

So much of that is in your face. I mean, I just recently watched that scene again, and I think that that steady cam, the way it’s going around you and as you’re both spinning around and as he’s holding you and as you’re finding yourself, it’s almost like giving birth to creativity. It was so powerful.

Ethan Hawke:

That’s the way it felt to me.

Debbie Millman:

Do you think that he was complimenting you, looking back on it?

Ethan Hawke:

He’s having experiences like that five times a week. I mean, I think he loved it. I think what he was saying is, “Wow, that was great.” I mean, I think that’s what he was saying. But he didn’t understand how badly I wanted that compliment. Because then he runs off and he’s at lunch and he’s on a meeting, he’s talking to his agent and I’m still just sitting there waiting for everybody to come back from lunch. He got me my first agent. I think I would have to say that he did. He did mean it well.

Debbie Millman:

In 1991, you took your Dead Poets Society money and you used it for a down payment on the Sanford Meisner Theater on 11th Avenue in New York City. You and Josh Hamilton and Jonathan Mark Sherman founded the Menlo Park Theater company. What made you decide to do that as opposed to hightailing it to Hollywood?

Ethan Hawke:

Why didn’t I buy a bag of cocaine? I don’t know. Why didn’t I buy a Porsche? I had no interest in anything but a life in the arts. Because of my experience with the Explorers, I was very dubious of the success of Dead Poets Society. I knew how fleeting that could be and I knew that I didn’t go to college, that I wasn’t educated. I knew I didn’t know what I was talking about, but I did have a tremendous amount of energy, and I had 26 grand in my pocket burning a hole. I was trying to start this theater company, and we couldn’t decide what to do and we couldn’t … It seemed like all we ever did was talk about it. I decided I just rent this theater, and we only had the rental for three weeks or 20 days or something like that, so we had to do it.

Debbie Millman:

You also auditioned for the Titanic. But I have a feeling if you got that party, then instead of Leonardo DiCaprio, you would have had a very different career. I recently talked to Claire Danes about the same thing. She turned down the part that Kate Winslet ultimately played. Were you upset at the time that you didn’t get the part?

Ethan Hawke:

I knew I wasn’t going to get the part when I went in for a screen test. I just didn’t audition for that. I went in for a screen test and I knew I wasn’t going to get it when I started talking to James Cameron. First of all, let me say that I don’t think I could have possibly handled it any better than DiCaprio did. DiCaprio used that success to launch. I’m one of the few people who really understand how hard it is to work. He has worked in the major leagues for years, working with great people and doing amazing work, and he used that success to launch himself into relationships with major film art directors. He was not frivolous with his gift at all, and I admire the hell out of him.

Ethan Hawke:

I’ll say the reason I knew I didn’t get the part, you can tell by this interview, right? That I like to talk. They gave me the script and you couldn’t get the script. It was so … They literally came to my hotel with an armed guard who sat and waited while I read the script, right? I walked into that audition room and I broke his script down. I told him, “This is going to be the biggest movie of all time.” I said, “This is Gone with the Wind meets Towering Inferno. This is unbelievable script.” I started breaking down what the references were. I thought I was so smart. I watched his eyes glaze over [inaudible 00:22:26] I saw him go, “Oh my god, I never want to see this kid again. If he comes on set, he is going to be such a bore.”

Ethan Hawke:

My inner voice is saying, “Shut up. Come in character. Have some dice in your pocket. Try to be a bad ass. Sell him on that you really are jack.” I knew inside I should be shutting up, but I wouldn’t stop talking about … It’s a best romance novel of all time set in Towering Inferno, right? I just I thought it was brilliant. I love the way it was written. It was beautifully written script. I mean, it read like a novel. Anyway, I was over before I started. Done, done, done. DiCaprio was a star born.

Debbie Millman:

Ethan, you published your first novel, The Hottest State, in 1996. From what I understand, you were motivated to start writing because of how mercurial an actor’s life could be. Were you afraid at that point that the acting roles were going to dry up?

Ethan Hawke:

I wasn’t afraid. I was sure of it. River had died. I watched all the people who were successful, when I was a kid actor, have terrible experiences and be like people I met at auditions. There were other people audition for Dead Poets Society, people that went on to have big careers and stuff like that. I watched how all this success was awful for human beings development. I come from a family that doesn’t have a lot of respect for society’s idea of “success.” My father is a man of deep faith, and that is his priority. I don’t want to speak for him. But your relationship to whatever is the eternal is really what matters. It wouldn’t matter how successful you were if you weren’t right within, right? I mean, that’s the house I was raised in.

Ethan Hawke:

My mother, she’s given me Wallace Stevens poems, she’s given me Thomas Merton books, and the people around me wanted something better for me than to be on the cover of [Team B 00:24:32]. But I was very restless. I really enjoyed the buzz of being around creative people and the high of trying to talk about why we’re born and why we have to die, and so I tried to write. Because I thought that the experience would make me grow. What would publishing be like? It was a huge education. My mother has a great line. “Well, how do you want your obituary to read?” People in the moment might think, “What a dummy. He’s publishing a book. Who does he think he is?” But when they read your obituary and they say you wrote a novel, you think, good for him. You know what I mean? If you get yourself in the long view of time, then you can deal with the ebb and flow of criticism.

Debbie Millman:

Is it true that your mother read your first draft and stated, “Well, you’re not checkoff?”

Ethan Hawke:

Yeah, that’s what she said. But my ego was not my problem. It needed to come down a peg. Right? She felt that was her job. I bet if you around a 24-year-old me, you might want to tell me I’m not checkoff too.

Debbie Millman:

I read The Hottest State back when it first came out, but I hadn’t seen the movie, which you also starred in and directed. I watched it in prep for the interview. I noticed in the credits Richard Linklater, the director of your Before Trilogy, and Boyhood, and Dazed and Confused, and so many other amazing, amazing movies. He was credited as the John Wayne enthusiast in the film.

Ethan Hawke:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There’s a scene in The Big Party, and he plays a guy who’s trying to chat up a girl at a Williamsburg party. It was a monologue. I’d always wanted to put in something. It happened to me standing in line at McDonald’s and this guy was crying. I said to him, “Hey, what happened, man? Are you okay?” He’s a big guy. He says, “Didn’t you hear?” I said, “Here what?” He said, “John Wayne died today.” I thought that was a great story, and I went back and told my girlfriend, I said, “Ain’t that interesting?” She said, “I’m a vegetarian.” I don’t know why. I just thought I’m putting that in something someday. Because it just struck me as all right, some people think something’s important. What one person hears is not the same thing as another person hears. I love Richard’s acting. I love acting for him and, and he took the part really seriously, if you watch the movie, which he’s very good in it.

Debbie Millman:

He is indeed. I had to go back to make sure I really understood what he was going for there.

Ethan Hawke:

Did you ever see Slacker?

Debbie Millman:

Yeah.

Ethan Hawke:

His first film?

Debbie Millman:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Ethan Hawke:

Anybody listening, go watch the opening scene of Slacker, about maybe I took the wrong bus, I think it was the … I think I took the wrong taxi. It’s a phenomenal monologue. I always wanted to get him back in front of the camera.

Debbie Millman:

You appeared in six of his films, and you’ve said that the experience of working on Before Sunset exceeded all expectations of what being involved in the world of film could be for you. In what way?

Ethan Hawke:

Well, I pray that every person who listens to this whatever, has a moment in their life where you feel like this immense gratitude for being in the right place at the right time, and that you felt like … It was so much fun to write that movie with Julie Delpy and Richard Linklater, to be in Paris. I was in a lot of pain personally, and having a place to put that pain was healing and not self serving. It was in service of something better, greater. It was not navel gazing, painting pictures of your tears or something like that. That film experience taught me a lot.

Ethan Hawke:

Rick and Julie are some of the most intelligent people I’ve ever come across, and they’re also extremely educated in the language of film. They have an extremely high bar, and they know a lot. It was fun to be around them, and listen to Julian Rick argue. I’ve learned a lot. It felt like, wow, this is where I’m supposed to be right now. I got to be in Paris making a movie with Julie Delpy, and it was a good one. I mean, what else do you want [inaudible 00:29:04]

Debbie Millman:

I read that when you worked with Philip Seymour Hoffman in 2006, you realized that what made him so great was his experience playing smaller parts. During the years that he was doing that, you said that you were doing films like White Fang and getting paid a lot of money and girls were asking for your autograph. While working with him, you realize you needed to work harder. I was wondering, harder in what way?

Ethan Hawke:

I watched Nobody’s Fool the other day, Paul Newman movie. Robert Benton directed. Really wonderful film, and Philip Seymour Hoffman plays this small town deputy or something. He’s just kind of an idiot. Little part. He probably has 10 lines in the movie. I was friends with him back then. He worked so hard on that part. Who was that guy? What does he have his pockets? How did he get the job? Why does he do this dumb thing? What’s his thing? He was rigorous with his imagination. I watched the movie, it’s years later, and he’s just so wonderful in it. When he started getting bigger parts, he applied the same rigor to every line he had.

Ethan Hawke:

I had kind of a let’s get through this scene, I’m really looking forward that scene, we’re going to shoot on Thursday attitude. I started seeing the possibilities of … There’s a difference between the job of leading man and the job of a character actor. Fascinatingly enough, the job of the character actor is extremely challenging because you have to facilitate the story. You’ve got a job to do, and that’s your only part. Then you get laser focused about it. Then when you come back to a larger part, you see smaller stitches in the fabric. You see how to sew it tighter. You see how that help your scene partner. That’s really the change for me.

Debbie Millman:

Despite the lesson you learned from Philip Seymour Hoffman about working harder, you’ve also come to recognize that every time you tried to sell out, you fell on your ass, your words, not mine.

Ethan Hawke:

I like these quotes you’re finding.

Debbie Millman:

I suspect that you’re talking about your first foray into television, which I want to talk about briefly before going into Good Lord Bird. The Fox show, Exit Strategy. What happened with that show?

Ethan Hawke:

That was my midlife crisis. I turned 40. I felt like I had to quit being an artist and get a real job and hate it like everyone else.

Debbie Millman:

Why? Was it because of having so many children? Was it … I mean-

Ethan Hawke:

My wife was pregnant with my fourth kid and the economy just dropped out in 2008, and I’d spend a lot of the previous years falling back in love with the theater. The thing you asked me about filling smaller parts. I got really interested in that, and I started doing smaller parts in some big Broadways. I did The Bridge Project, which we took Chekhov and Shakespeare all over the world. I did Coast of Utopia, which ran for a year. It’s a nine hour play about Russian radicals. Hurlyburly, I’d done for almost a year, and they’re all big ensemble pieces. I mean, some of those parts are big, some of them were small. While I was doing that, I was living like I was making a million dollars a year making movies and I was having a lot of children.

Ethan Hawke:

You asked me [inaudible 00:32:33] Well, when not when I was a kid, I was very, very fortunate. Dead Poets Society, I had this money. I got to do what I wanted to do, and all of a sudden, I couldn’t do what I wanted to do. I wasn’t getting cast. The younger actors were getting more parts, and you start seeing the world and I just panicked. I love Antoine Fuqua. We had this idea or maybe we can make a great cop show. What if we did? Well, I started betting my mindset, well, if Antoine would do it, maybe we could make this badass cop show and sneak one through. I don’t mean to knock that show or whatever, but it’s just … They didn’t really let Antoine do what he wanted to do. The show never turned into the show that we had imagined it would be, and thank God it didn’t happen.

Debbie Millman:

You said that it ultimately resulted in you rebooting and revitalizing the next 10 years of your life. How?

Ethan Hawke:

I just started doing things I care. I have an amazing wife, and she’s an amazing partner. She’s not a materialist? She’s like, “Don’t do that. What are we making the money for?” She sees very clearly the kind of capitalist design that this country gets motivated by the accumulation of wealth, accumulation of possessions, that’s how we define success. We all just get on this treadmill and hate ourselves if we have to get off it, and feel like we failed if we don’t have the school that we want or the house that we want, and she just wasn’t buying into it. Then she’s like, “Let’s start making decisions based on love. Let’s tap. That’s what you need to do.” I started doing things I cared about, and then my career started going well again. It’s mysterious how that happens.

Debbie Millman:

It’s so interesting the arc of a career. You said that there have been three times over the course of your career that you felt washed up.

Ethan Hawke:

Yeah, completely.w

Debbie Millman:

What made you continue on, and how did you overcome that sense of being over and done with or discarded? How did you find the way to reinvent yourself?

Ethan Hawke:

The world is not a very responsible critic. I don’t know what they’re talking about. Lots of things that are very good make people tremendous money, and lots of things that are staggeringly brilliant go unnoticed. I mean, through the history of the world and history of arts, if you are in service of your art, then everything’s easy. If you want the art to be in service of you, promoting you, if everything you do has to be successful, everything you do has to be “good,” then you’re always waiting for everybody’s reaction as opposed to really just engaging with what you want to communicate. What do you want to be doing? There’s so many churches in New York with basements where you can do a play.

Ethan Hawke:

There’s something that really moved me. I read this obituary of brilliant actor, Paul Scofield. Late in his life, he was acting at a very high level, playing big parts, but only at the church near him. He realized that it doesn’t matter how many people see it, it matters what you do. I want to walk to work, and I’m going to play King Lear at my church. Everything gets washed away like a sandcastle anyway. Who do you want to be? What do you want to do with your time? One of the things that I do want to say, though, is sometimes when I say that people think that what I mean is I’m judgmental of other people’s actions, and I’m really not, I love all kinds of movies and all kinds of art. There’s nothing wrong with doing Exit Strategy if you love Exit Strategy. I’m saying it matters to be you and figure out who you are. If you do that, then everything will take care of itself.

Debbie Millman:

Ethan, let’s talk about your most recent book, A Bright Ray of Darkness. Came out last month. Congratulations.

Ethan Hawke:

Thank you.

Debbie Millman:

It’s a wonderful book. The book brings us back to a character you actually first introduced to us in The Hottest State, William Harding. That really surprised me. Would you say that this is a sequel of sorts?

Ethan Hawke:

If I was forced to, maybe. But really it’s a continuation of a thought, in a way. Sometimes I think it’s not so much as a sequel as a reboot. [inaudible 00:36:48] I was young when I wrote The Hottest State, and I was learning how to write. One of the things I really avoided and was ashamed of as a young writer is I wrote a book …The Hottest State is about young love, and I’m like, “Yeah, I’m an actor, but acting has nothing to do with it.” I realized over the years that it would be really fun to have the harness to write about acting, to not run away from that aspect of his life. Because there’s so much superficial writing about acting. Tabloids, [inaudible 00:37:20] it gets … But it doesn’t really have a place in literature of … There’s not that many first person accounts of an actor on stage. I thought, well, I really like writing. That might be interesting. I gave myself that challenge to revisit that character in maybe a more substantive way, a hopefully more substantive way.

Debbie Millman:

William talks about fame quite a lot in the book, and really is trying to deconstruct it. He talks about fame as the Black Death, and declares that we like to watch people die. So we put them on magazines and fan the flames of their ego, they catch fire and explode. But at the same time, the character pleads with the Lord to grant him the Black Death, because it’s very seductive, isn’t it?

Ethan Hawke:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Do you feel like you understand that moral dilemma better? Do you feel like you still have that moral dilemma?

Ethan Hawke:

What’s that St. Augustine line? “Lord, grant me chastity, but not yet.” It’s like I really want to be sober, tomorrow. I mean a lot of times when a young actor gets told, “Oh, you are great in that show,” they’re not really sure what it is that you mean, right? They don’t know themselves, they don’t know what … What do you mean I’m amazing? Your brain when you’re left alone like, “Why do you say that? What did I do?” That compliment immediately turns into fear because you’re like, “Well, if I do anything much different, maybe they won’t think I’m amazing because I don’t understand what it is that’s working. If I change, I might screw it up.” You end up keep being the same person.

Ethan Hawke:

We all know, as a grown up, you got to keep changing. You got to keep evolving. He said this thing about, after I said being washed up three times, how do you reinvent yourself. Trying to reinvent yourself for me is a mistaken way of thinking. The washed up thing is actually just a perception. I’m often so disappointed when I start getting offered movies again, good parts, when it comes back again because often the work that I do when I’m busted is the best. By the best, I mean it’s the most true to me. When things start going well, you start getting decent offers and you can go to Istanbul and make a lot of fun movie everybody’s going to see. It’s very seductive, but it also takes you away from the self that comes out when nobody else cares. I think change is good, and I think the Black Death for me is being frozen in that formaldehyde where you’re just trying to stay this thing that everybody likes.

Debbie Millman:

The book takes us back to 2003. William Harding is getting a divorce from his beautiful, famous wife and is working in the theater playing the part of Hotspur in the show Henry IV and back in 2003.

Ethan Hawke:

Yeah, the book isn’t set in 2003. The book is set in an anonymous time [crosstalk 00:40:19] iPads and the internet in the book and there wasn’t the internet and stuff like that. People put that in there because they know that something like that happened to me. But I’m using 30 years of experience and putting it in this one fictional production that’s more like 2016 or something. It’s like I’m combining a life in the theater and turning into this fictional production. What was your question?

Debbie Millman:

Well, really it was about how there were all of these similarities that you were using in this fictional way, and confronting so much pain both as what it felt like to me as the reader, William Harding, aka Ethan Hawke. Yes, there are certainly differences, but it felt like you were confronting a lot of the pain that you shared with your main character.

Ethan Hawke:

Absolutely. I love fiction that feels personal. There’s something about the first person narrative. I think that I have found that using writing to make it more personal because my whole life as an actor is becoming John Brown, becoming somebody else. But writing is a place for me to explore what’s happening in this rib cage. I do the same thing with Jesse. There’s certain Jesse in The Before Trilogy, this character that I’ve written and there’s certain events that do happen to me, Ethan, that I feel like belong in the universe of Jesse. Then I have this weird character of William Harding that when I do something really stupid, I think, oh, that’s where Willie … That would be great for William to experience.

Ethan Hawke:

They’re exaggerated versions, they’re heightened situations, but they are things that are personal to me. For example, I was saying to you about the real healing power of Before Sunset, part of why I wanted to write A Bright Ray of Darkness is to explain to the reader that when acting is really working, it’s working in this dance with the audience and the author. What I was talking about with Robin Williams, there’s this healing power that can happen in storytelling. Your whole life, right? Your emotions are always in your way. You’re tripping on them. Why did I get so angry at him? Why did I say that stupid thing? Why did I start crying when my mom brought that up again? I thought I worked through that.

Ethan Hawke:

Your emotions are always in your way, and acting is this one place where you can take these feelings in your gut and you put them on stage and you put them in from the camera, and it’s not narcissism. It’s in service of the story. It’s a service of Prince [Hawar 00:43:03] or Jesse and Celine, or Jake in Training Day, or whatever. You’re using this well that you have. I thought, that’s what A Bright Ray of Darkness is to me, is turning something dark into something bright, and how do you do this? Yes, it’s all deeply personal to me. When I sit down with a pen and paper, this other thing happens. I just have to trust it and try to be disciplined with it and try to give the reader something worth their time.

Debbie Millman:

William also states that the public makes a big deal of acting as if it’s the celebration of the individual, and you write how the irony is when acting is going well, it’s like the individual dissipates entirely, and nowhere in your work is that more evident than in your playing abolitionists John Brown in the Good Lord Bird, the seven part Showtime series adapted from James McBride’s 2013 National Book Award winning novel, and you have an award nominated performance as well. You also wrote and directed thIS series. One thing I felt in watching this performance is when indeed Ethan Hawke does essentially disappear as he does and you become John Brown. There seem to be so much confidence in your embodying this character, your effortless confidence in disappearing as Ethan Hawke. I’m wondering if that was even something or was intentional, if you’re even aware of.

Ethan Hawke:

I remember reading somewhere about a football coach that was just insane about making sure all the players had their shoes tied right and their laces were aligned in the right way, and people were teasing him about. He said something about how inside every detail you can see the hole. I mentioned this to say that I’ve spent my life thinking about acting. Slowly, you start to figure out how to lace your shoes, how to wear your pants, how to learn your lines, what voice and speech is, what movement is, and you don’t learn it all at once. Some of it starts to be if you’re building the right habits, starts to be instinctual. In reference to the novel, I’m a young writer. I’m an old man actor. But writing is still really young to me. I don’t really know what I’m doing.

Ethan Hawke:

I learned a lot on this. This new novel, for me, was all about the architecture of the novel. I started understanding what people talk about in regards to the architecture of writing. I started seeing it differently. That happened to me a long time ago with acting. I’ve “succeeded” as an actor and I’ve failed as an actor. I’ve had these experiences. Through those experiences, a confidence does arise. You learn that not everybody knows what they’re talking about, and you got to listen to the right moment and not listen at the right moment, and it’s really tough to know.

Debbie Millman:

What inspired you to make a movie about John Brown?

Ethan Hawke:

The genius of James McBride. Race in America, it’s a wound that hasn’t healed because we don’t look at it, we don’t talk about it, we keep wanting to move on as if … In the DNA structure of this country is a crime. When we don’t look at it, it doesn’t get better. My mom would say all the time one of the great failures of her generation is she thought that when MLK was murdered, that would be the fire of which we would restructure the zoning of this country, the police of this country, the school systems of this country. She thought her generation would do that, that that’s what they were marching for. Then it all quiets down, and then we think Obama’s elected and we all like to think, well, now all this stuff is gone.

Ethan Hawke:

It’s not gone. It’s very real. But it’s very difficult to make art about because the guilt, the fear, the shame, and the anger is real. McBride writes this story. Yeah, John Brown is the main character, he’s the event of the movie, but the narrator is this young boy who John Brown thinks he’s liberating and the kid thinks he’s kidnapped, and he puts them in a dress. At the first minute, you think you’re making this abolitionists piece and it’s going to be about Dudley Do-Right doing the right thing like you’re … John Brown’s nuts. He puts a kid in the dress and you think you’re talking about black and white, but now you’re talking about gender, and you think you’re going to talk about North and South, except John Brown hates the North as much as he hates the South.

Ethan Hawke:

Freedom for young black men at that time didn’t look a lot better than what he was getting in the south. I mean, it’s not North, it’s not South, it’s not left, it’s not right, it’s not white and black. It’s human, and it has all this love in it. I read this book, and I laughed my ass off. My wife said to me, “What are you laughing about?” I said, “The Good Lord Bird.” She said, “Isn’t it about John Brown?” I was like, “Yeah, how is this possible that I’m laughing?” I really wanted everyone in America to read the book. Then my wife and I started talking about, “Well, maybe we should make it a movie.” Then we met McBride, and he is one of the most gracious and … You have that fantasy when you were a kid of what it might be like to meet a great novelist.

Ethan Hawke:

You imagine meeting Tolstoy or something, how wise they would be. I want to go out to dinner with Toni Morrison. She would be so smart and discerning and say the right thing. You meet McBride, it’s like it’s okay to meet your heroes. He’s a beautiful person, and he treated me with respect and he treated my wife with respect. He treats everybody meets with respect. I thought, I want to do whatever I can to be in a room being creative with this human being, and I’m so glad I did. Personally, I can’t believe that the movie came out. I can’t believe we made it happen.

Debbie Millman:

Well, it’s a remarkable story for our listeners that might not be aware of who John Brown is. He was a fierce opponent of slavery who was hung in 1859 after seizing an armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, hoping to spark a slave rebellion. Quite a lot of people believe that this was the first battle of the Civil War. Ethan, you know what I was thinking about as I was watching it and reading about it because I didn’t know about the book before? Why weren’t we taught more about John Brown in school?

Ethan Hawke:

The answer to that question is black lives matter. It’s a big answer. You were not taught about John Brown on purpose. Because if you teach people really seriously that the Civil War, what it was about, what was happening, how African Americans in this country were being treated, and why a white Christian would want to take over the nation’s largest armory and demand equal rights for everybody, way back when, and they didn’t want to teach you about him. It was much easier to rewrite history and try to make peace and try to move on, and not really assess what was at the root of that big giant fight where so many people died.

Debbie Millman:

Well, thank you for bringing this life to work, Ethan. It’s a remarkable series. I really hope everybody listening can watch it. I have two more questions for you. The first is about the state of the world. Small question. Broadway has been dark over a year now. I read that this is the least you’ve performed in a year of your entire life since adolescence. Are you doing any performance work at all?

Ethan Hawke:

It’s hard. I just did a Zoom production of Waiting for Godot that will be available for people to stream [inaudible 00:51:24] the new group website. John Leguizamo, Tariq from The Roots, Wallace Shawn and I [crosstalk 00:51:30]

Debbie Millman:

Oh wow.

Ethan Hawke:

It’s not just the reading of it, we memorized it and perform it on Zoom. It’s crazy and nuts, but it was a wonderful way for us to feel the actor in us. I did a small part in Robert Eggers film, this is kind of viking epic. I’ve been trying to do my thing, but that’s where perhaps this generation under me might wind up being one of the most substantive generations we’ve had since my … I always think about my grandfather having lived … He was a kid in the Depression, and he never forgot the things he learned as a kid in that era. I think a lot of young people are understanding how the NBA just doesn’t happen. The movie theaters, theater, colleges, summer camps, there’s so much to be grateful for that we didn’t even know to be grateful for in the sense of our interconnectivity and the natural world, and I think might end up hitting them in a way that escaped my generation. I’m hopeful that something good could come out of that. But certainly, the state of the world is something to talk about.

Debbie Millman:

Leads me to my last question. In A Bright Ray of Darkness you write that there must be some faulty gene in humans that motivates them to want to step out in front of 1,000 of their brothers and sisters on stage just to be judged, and that we wouldn’t do this unless we were hopelessly insecure. But as you were taking me through all of William Harding’s theatrical experiences, I realized how much he took it for granted, that we all took it for granted that 1,000 brothers and sisters were allowed to congregate around this stage in the first place. I’m wondering if it’s changed your perspective at all. Do you still think that it’s insecurity as the motivation, or do you think it could be just a profound need to connect?

Ethan Hawke:

That part of me that’s writing William in that moment is not really my worldview. That’s the insecure, dark, broken, character version of me. It’s like a different entity. I believe in the power of connection and I believe that we all know it to be true that feeling seen is so beautiful, and feeling unseen is so hurtful. That’s what’s so important about diversity in our art forms, and from all kinds of people in every walk of life. Part of what art is supposed to do is represent our collective consciousness. It’s our collective imagination. It’s how we talk to each other and share our ideas, and it has real power. For me, I love the movies, I love them a lot, but when you’re at a concert, sweaty, and somebody rips a killer solo and you’re dancing, and you know you’ll never returned to this moment, this concert, this day.

Ethan Hawke:

I mean, I remember when I first arrived in New York, I’d meet older actors and they’d be like, “I was there. [inaudible 00:54:41] named Desire. It was a Wednesday, I got standing room only. Brando was on fire. I think he had an erection or something.” You know what I mean? The craziest stuff comes out of people’s mouth because they were really there. They were there with the performers, and there’s this magic that happens. I remember Paul Dano and I were doing True West [inaudible 00:55:03] I was on Broadway, whatever. I guess 18 months, two years ago now. It’s all … Time is so strange. But in the silences, the lines are almost percussive. Pop, pop, pop! Pop, pop, pop! You start to hear the percussion and the silence becomes a part of the language of the play. The audience is actually participating in our rhythms, and I would get high from that. I mean it would us, Paul and I, to new places, deeper, stronger places. I’m so sad not to be with that audience.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, I can’t wait to be back. Ethan Hawke, thank you so much for making the world a more-

Speaker 3:

Thank you.

Debbie Millman:

… interesting place with your work.

Ethan Hawke:

Thank you. But thanks for being so well researched, for doing such a serious interview. That’s not easy to do. I know that.

Debbie Millman:

Thank you.

Ethan Hawke:

I really appreciate it.

Debbie Millman:

Thank you, Ethan. Ethan Hawke’s latest book is A Bright Ray of Darkness, and he could be seen on Showtime in The Good Lord Bird. This is the 17th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. Remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

The post Best of Design Matters: Ethan Hawke appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Debbie Millman:

Yes, I know Ethan Hawke is a famous actor and hardly needs an introduction. He’s starred in more than 80 movies, many of which have made their mark in the zeitgeist. You’ve likely seen him in everything from Dead Poets Society and Reality Bites to the Before trilogy and Boyhood. Ethan Hawke is also a writer. In fact, in high school, he wanted to be a writer before becoming interested in acting. Over his nearly four-decade career, he’s managed to do both, and then some. Today I’m going to talk with him about his latest novel, A Bright Ray of Darkness, and his bravura performance as John Brown in the showtime series “The Good Lord Bird.” Ethan Hawke, welcome to Design Matters.

Ethan Hawke:

Well thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Debbie Millman:

Ethan, is it true that when you were growing up you had fantasies of becoming a merchant marine?

Ethan Hawke:

That is very true. Well, I was a big Jack London fan. I had a kid who lived down the street from me. He was a grade older than I was, Nick, and he liked Jack London. He was really cool. When you’re 16, a 17-year-old just feels like he’s got the world by the scruff of the neck. He went off to be a merchant marine and live off his Jack London fantasies. I have no idea what happened to him. But we used to read books together and talk about him, and I thought he was a … I wanted to be just like him. But I also want to be just like Jack London. So I thought that might be a great avenue to chase down an interesting life, is to disappear into the seas and come back somebody interesting, because I thought I was pretty boring as I was.

Debbie Millman:

Really? Why is that?

Ethan Hawke:

Well, I think I was pretty boring. I mean, I think most young people struggle with a sense of who they are and what they want to be. You look around you and some things seem interesting, but most paths feel impossible to walk down. I think the road of adventure loomed large in my head. I longed to been born in another time period when the world felt wilder, I guess, but probably every generation feels that way.

Debbie Millman:

Your parents met in high school, Ethan. Your mom was 17 when she had you. But they divorced when you were 4 years old. When asked in an interview if their divorce scarred you, you stated, “Scarred puts a judgment on it,” and then go on to declare that you were formed by it, and made by it. I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing.

Ethan Hawke:

Well, I mean, that’s called the unity of opposites, isn’t it? It is a good thing and it is a bad thing. I find children long to … they long, long, long in their heart and soul and every stitch of their body longs to believe that their parents love each other and that they were born for a reason, and that they were born in love. Most of us long for that. The advantage of being raised from the point of divorce, from that vantage point, is that you see the world as more complicated a little earlier and you get your heart broken a little earlier. That break has an opportunity to invite some wisdom into your life, or at least some experience, right? I think that it can make you stronger. You know that poem “Stronger in the Broken Places”? It wakes you up to the idea that no one has the perfect life and that you were born in love and it doesn’t matter what happened to the band after they made your music. Your music was born out of something beautiful.

Debbie Millman:

After the divorce, you alternated between living on the East Coast with your mother and visiting your dad back in Texas. I read that this caused you to alternate between personalities. In what way?

Ethan Hawke:

Well, I bet you everybody who came from going to mom’s house, going to dad’s house, they know exactly what I’m talking about.

Debbie Millman:

Oh, yeah. My parents got divorced when I was 8, so I get it.

Ethan Hawke:

There’s a personality you have that you think makes your mother like you better and there’s a personality you have that you think makes your father like you better. For a long time, I thought that meant that I was a liar. That I wasn’t showing the real me. Who’s the real me? Slowly, as you get older, you realize that these people, they’re all me. I love my mother and I love my father, and I want them to see the best of me. It doesn’t make me a liar. But I do think it taught me at a young age how malleable my personality was. If my personality was malleable, probably everyone’s is, and it might have been a very good entry point for the life of a performer.

Debbie Millman:

Do you think that that gave you a sense that you were performing for them, your parents?

Ethan Hawke:

Well, I know that Marlon Brando would tell you that you’re performing for me right now and I’m performing for you, that what is our authentic self is very mysterious. We want our peers to like us. We want to be somebody respected. We want people to think positive things about us and all those things, and we manipulate ourselves and we do a little bit of … you perform for grandma. “Yes, ma’am. This apple pie is delicious, grandma. You’re the best, grandma.” Then you walk into your buddy’s house and you say, “Hey, who’s got a joint?” I mean, it doesn’t mean you’re the worst person in the world. It means you’re bigger than one thing. That’s what I think, anyway. Performance, like the thing about divorce, we use all these words. Performance makes it sound like you’re not being true. I am being true when I talk to my grandmother. That is who I want to be for her, and does that make sense?

Debbie Millman:

Oh, absolutely. I read that while you were in high school it gave you the opportunity to become an expert at fitting in. I was really fascinated by that because as also a child of divorce, I also had that ability, that range of wanting to be friends with lots of different groups. I understand that you were on the school football team, in the church youth group, you had a range of friends that included graphic novel reading geeks, theater nerds, punk rock girls, deadheads. How were you able to slip in and out of so many personas at that time? Because I do sense that it really was authentic in the same way that I felt that as I was slipping in and out, I was still being aspects of me too.

Ethan Hawke:

I think you can be authentic with different types of people. I mean, the positive, maybe without breaking my arm patting myself on the back, is that I’m not inherently judgmental. I’m not convinced that I’m the moral authority on anything. So I don’t really have a belief that somebody’s got it right and somebody’s got it wrong. I think because I moved around a lot, I was really hungry for friendship, and I would accept it wherever it came. I think that’s a quality I like. I’ve tried to hold on
to that quality. It’s a quality that when I see it in others, I like it.

Ethan Hawke:

One of my best friends is Richard Linklater. We’ve spent a lot of time together. He’s a great filmmaker. One of the things that makes him a great filmmaker is just a genuine love of people. If you watch Dazed and Confused, you see he has love for every type of category you want to put somebody in. He sees people with compassionate eyes, as opposed to—there’s a lot of movies and films out there that are always judging. He’s a good guy, he’s a bad guy, she’s a liar, he’s the enemy. We’re all caught in this huge spiderweb trying to make sense out of where we were born and who was our grandma and what our aptitude is for. I’ve just never felt too judgmental, and that helped me as a kid.

Debbie Millman:

From what I understand, you wanted to be an actor since you were 12, after your mother enrolled you in an after-school program and you were cast in a production of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan. Was that really when your first seeds of wanting to perform were cast?

Ethan Hawke:

I think a lot of young people want to feel like they matter, like they’re special, like they’re interesting, like somebody cares about them. One of the first ways you could do that is to jump in front of the class and dance or sing or play a song or be great at sports or some way to set yourself apart. I think that I don’t believe that my initial interest in acting came from a desire to express myself for some real artistic impulse. I think it came from a simple desire to be noticed, to be liked. I think that’s a very dangerous fire to play with. But yeah, I went to an acting class. I really did love it. I was pretty good at it. From my first class, I think we had a guest teacher come into the … it was at the Paul Robeson Center for Performing Arts, and this guest teacher came from McCarter theater and he led a little improv class.

Ethan Hawke:

I remember vividly in the parking lot there and he asked me will I be interested in playing [inaudible] page. I was like, “Well, do I have any lines?” He said, “You have two lines.” I said, “Then, heck yeah.” So I got to put on armor and be a little page to a knight, his little squire, and I had a couple … I had to sneeze, which was very hard to do. The page sneezes and they know the winds changed. I took that sneezing exercise very hard. But so anyway, my point is, my first acting class I got my first part. My life has been … sometimes I say acting chose me. It guided me. I felt caught in a river almost. Early in my career with Dead Poets Society, that movie could have been a bomb, and two weeks later, I’d been on a boat chasing my friend Nick, emulating Jack London.

Debbie Millman:

You got your first part after your first big audition for Joe Dante’s science fiction film Explorers. You beat out 3,000 other actors. You co-starred with River Phoenix, and though it didn’t do well, at the time you thought God had found you.

Ethan Hawke:

I did feel like that. You kids, you feel like you’re lost in this sea of prepubescent everybody … I felt the thing I was hunting for, somebody will notice me. I’m here, I’m raising my hand—pick me, pick me—and I felt like I got picked.

Debbie Millman:

What was it like to have such an epic disappointment at 13 when the movie didn’t pan out the way you thought it was going to?

Ethan Hawke:

Well, that’s why being a kid is so hard. You have no sense of perspective. On my emotional radar, it felt like a helicopter fell from the sky and destroyed my house. I would have dreams of going to see the premiere, and they remade the movie without me. River and another kid would be on there. It was scary to be sucked into the adult world and fail. Because it felt like, well, I guess I can’t do this, this thing that I’m yearning for. Now, ironically, this was one of the greatest blessings. When you talk about the unity of opposites, right? This is one of the greatest blessings of my life. Those tears I shed over that, nothing better could have been happening to me. Because all of a sudden, I wasn’t a child actor. I’m back in high school, being a nerd, trying to do my thing, getting a dose of humility, and learning a more genuine relationship to what the arts is about.

Debbie Millman:

You decided to give acting a second chance as a senior in high school playing Tom Wingfield in your second cousin twice removed, I believe, Tennessee Williams’ Glass Menagerie. What motivated you to try again?

Ethan Hawke:

Well, I loved it. It actually happened a little differently than that. I was a senior and the kid who was in The Matchmaker … they were doing the … I was playing soccer that fall, and the lead in The Matchmaker dropped out three days before the performance. And the head of the English program came to me and said, “Would you do this?” I said, “Sure.” I learned the lines … I was the lead of the show, and I learned the lines in a couple hours. I went out there and I had a ball, and I was good at it. I made everybody laugh. I think I was really loose because I didn’t put any thought into it. I couldn’t fail because I was so coming through for the team just by showing up.

Ethan Hawke:

It’s like there’s a great relaxation—no matter what I do, it’s going to go well because otherwise the show wasn’t going to go on. It was a perfect scenario. Once I did that and felt that laughter in the room, I felt that high, well, then I really wanted to do it. It was very uncommon in high school to pick such a small play, as The Glass Menagerie has four characters, and it gave me this great part and they knew I really love that play. I was really into Tennessee Williams as a kid because my family was always telling me that we were related to him, and he’s brilliant.

Debbie Millman:

After high school, you attended Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, but you hated it. How come?

Ethan Hawke:

Yes. I had really wanted my life to begin when high school ended. The joke about the Jack Lemmon thing was very real to me. I didn’t want to be a kid anymore. The thing about being a senior in high school versus being a freshman in college is you just go back to square one. You’re just a kid again and everybody’s telling you what to do. I had a couple strange experiences that are too boring to get into. But just with fights and different things. I wasn’t in the mental headspace to learn, and I heard about these auditions because of my experience with the Explorers. They were doing big casting calls for this movie Dead Poets Society.

Ethan Hawke:

I knew there were seven parts for young kids, and so I took the train back to New York and auditioned for this movie, because I just had the thought that, well, if I can’t get one of these seven parts …This is the way a 17-year-old thinks. If I don’t get one of these parts, then I’m not meant to be an actor. Well, that’s a dumb thing to say. But in this case, I got one of
them. I was able to have an adventure. I mean, going down there and meeting Robin Williams and having this part and all this responsibility and working with genuine artists, I mean, this was not Peter Weir at that time, for people who are cinema fans. Peter Weir is a master craftsman and I was his pupil. He spoke to us with respect.

Ethan Hawke:

I mean, we were being assigned Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman and Emerson, running little acting workshops and being given improvs, and who’s in our workshop and Robin Williams. I mean, what that’s like for a young person. You can’t unsee that. He’s on set with John Seale, one of the greatest cinematographers, and listening to the way that they talk about light and the frame and the way he listens to music, and we watch movies together. The way he watched movies was different than the way my friends watch movies. Your brain starts to … little particles open up that had never been opened before, and you start to absorb. It was an experience that I don’t think any of us understood how impactful it would be in the mind of a young person.

Debbie Millman:

I want to talk about one of the moments in that movie. Despite it being so long ago, you’ve stated that one of your all-time favorite scenes is the one where Robin Williams inspires you to make up a poem. You said it was basically Robin teaching you the creative act, which is what the scene is about. But he was also teaching you how to act.

Ethan Hawke:

There’s a certain magic that happens in movies sometimes. If you try to put it into words, what’s so beautiful and mysterious about life itself, you just become an idiot by trying to give it vocabulary words that make sense. But when there’s a subconscious to your work and when the subconscious is in line with what the larger metaphor of the movie is about, then you accidentally, through no credit of your own, stumble into something profound. I was struggling with my own confidence and I was struggling with this burning desire to contribute and to have a relationship to poetry and rock and roll and anything that made sense to me when the world didn’t make sense, and so was my character.

Ethan Hawke:

Robin Williams is in the height of his powers. He’s just done Good Morning, Vietnam. He just finished [inaudible]. He’d been doing Waiting for Godot with Steve Martin on Broadway, directed by Mike Nichols. I mean, he was working with the best people in the top of his game, and it was him making me sound my barbaric yawp. It was exactly what … I mean, there was just levels to it, and that’s what the movie’s about. It’s unlocking the creativity of young people. Funny enough for people who are film fans, I don’t know, the steady cam had just been invented. They were really excited about the fact that you could move the camera an interesting way. Peter Weir and John Seale were very excited about this new camera toy, and that maybe we could do this scene in one shot, or what would at least feel like one shot.

Ethan Hawke:

That puts a lot of pressure on the actors because he’s doing these five, seven minutes takes in one shot, and all of a sudden you disappear. You just disappear into the process of making something. All of a sudden, they broke for lunch, and I was like, “What just happened? That was awesome.” I’ll tell you something funny. Robin took me by the shoulder and he said, “And the Oscar goes to Ethan Hawke.” Right? This is who I was back then. I was so angry because I didn’t know if he was kidding. I felt so confused by that. Because he’d been nominated for an Academy Award. That idea seemed like saying, “You’re going to win the Super Bowl,” and it felt like he was teasing me. Because I just had this unbelievable high. I don’t need any prizes. I don’t need this … I wanted to be taken seriously. I think back on it and I go, “Oh, God, I was such an intense 16-year-old. Jesus, get over yourself, kid.” But I remember that’s how complicated and stirred up I felt. I didn’t know how to judge the feelings that were happening inside of me.

Debbie Millman:

So much of that is in your face. I mean, I just recently watched that scene again, and I think that that steady cam, the way it’s going around you, and as you’re both spinning around and as he’s holding you and as you’re finding yourself, it’s almost like giving birth to creativity. It was so powerful.

Ethan Hawke:

That’s the way it felt to me.

Debbie Millman:

Do you think that he was complimenting you, looking back on it?

Ethan Hawke:

He’s having experiences like that five times a week. I mean, I think he loved it. I think what he was saying is, “Wow, that was great.” I mean, I think that’s what he was saying. But he didn’t understand how badly I wanted that compliment. Because then he runs off and he’s at lunch and he’s on a meeting, he’s talking to his agent and I’m still just sitting there waiting for everybody to come back from lunch. He got me my first agent. I think I would have to say that he did. He did mean it well.

Debbie Millman:

In 1991, you took your Dead Poets Society money and you used it for a down payment on the Sanford Meisner Theater on 11th Avenue in New York City. You and Josh Hamilton and Jonathan Mark Sherman founded the Menlo Park Theater Company. What made you decide to do that as opposed to hightailing it to Hollywood?

Ethan Hawke:

Why didn’t I buy a bag of cocaine? I don’t know. Why didn’t I buy a Porsche? I had no interest in anything but a life in the arts. Because of my experience with the Explorers, I was very dubious of the success of Dead Poets Society. I knew how fleeting that could be and I knew that I didn’t go to college, that I wasn’t educated. I knew I didn’t know what I was talking about, but I did have a tremendous amount of energy, and I had 26 grand in my pocket burning a hole. I was trying to start this theater company, and we couldn’t decide what to do and we couldn’t … it seemed like all we ever did was talk about it. I decided I’ll just rent this theater, and we only had the rental for three weeks or 20 days or something like that, so we had to do it.

Debbie Millman:

You also auditioned for Titanic. But I have a feeling if you got that part, then instead of Leonardo DiCaprio, you would have had a very different career. I recently talked to Claire Danes about the same thing. She turned down the part that Kate Winslet ultimately played. Were you upset at the time that you didn’t get the part?

Ethan Hawke:

I knew I wasn’t going to get the part when I went in for a screen test. I just didn’t audition for that. I went in for a screen test and I knew I wasn’t going to get it when I started talking to James Cameron. First of all, let me say that I don’t think I could have possibly handled it any better than DiCaprio did. DiCaprio used that success to launch. I’m one of the few people who really understand how hard it is to work. He has worked in the major leagues for years, working with great people and doing amazing work, and he used that success to launch himself into relationships with major f
ilm art directors. He was not frivolous with his gift at all, and I admire the hell out of him.

Ethan Hawke:

I’ll say the reason I knew I didn’t get the part—you can tell by this interview, right? That I like to talk. They gave me the script and you couldn’t get the script. It was so … they literally came to my hotel with an armed guard who sat and waited while I read the script, right? I walked into that audition room and I broke his script down. I told him, “This is going to be the biggest movie of all time.” I said, “This is Gone With the Wind meets Towering Inferno. This is an unbelievable script.” I started breaking down what the references were. I thought I was so smart. I watched his eyes glaze over. I saw him go, Oh my god, I never want to see this kid again. If he comes on set, he is going to be such a bore.

Ethan Hawke:

My inner voice is saying, “Shut up. Come in character. Have some dice in your pocket. Try to be a bad ass. Sell him on that you really are Jack.” I knew inside I should be shutting up, but I wouldn’t stop talking about. … It’s a best romance novel of all time set in Towering Inferno, right? I just I thought it was brilliant. I love the way it was written. It was a beautifully written script. I mean, it read like a novel. Anyway, I was over before I started. Done, done, done. DiCaprio was a star born.

Debbie Millman:

Ethan, you published your first novel, The Hottest State, in 1996. From what I understand, you were motivated to start writing because of how mercurial an actor’s life could be. Were you afraid at that point that the acting roles were going to dry up?

Ethan Hawke:

I wasn’t afraid. I was sure of it. River had died. I watched all the people who were successful when I was a kid actor have terrible experiences and be like people I met at auditions. There were other people who auditioned for Dead Poets Society, people that went on to have big careers and stuff like that. I watched how all this success was awful for human beings’ development. I come from a family that doesn’t have a lot of respect for society’s idea of “success.” My father is a man of deep faith, and that is his priority. I don’t want to speak for him. But your relationship to whatever is the eternal is really what matters. It wouldn’t matter how successful you were if you weren’t right within, right? I mean, that’s the house I was raised in.

Ethan Hawke:

My mother, she’s given me Wallace Stevens poems, she’s given me Thomas Merton books, and the people around me wanted something better for me than to be on the cover of Teen Beat. But I was very restless. I really enjoyed the buzz of being around creative people and the high of trying to talk about why we’re born and why we have to die, and so I tried to write. Because I thought that the experience would make me grow. What would publishing be like? It was a huge education. My mother has a great line: “Well, how do you want your obituary to read?” People in the moment might think, “What a dummy. He’s publishing a book. Who does he think he is?” But when they read your obituary and they say you wrote a novel, you think, “good for him.” You know what I mean? If you get yourself in the long view of time, then you can deal with the ebb and flow of criticism.

Debbie Millman:

Is it true that your mother read your first draft and stated, “Well, you’re not Chekhov?”

Ethan Hawke:

Yeah, that’s what she said. But my ego was not my problem. It needed to come down a peg. Right? She felt that was her job. I bet if you were around a 24-year-old me, you might want to tell me I’m not Chekhov too.

Debbie Millman:

I read The Hottest State back when it first came out, but I hadn’t seen the movie, which you also starred in and directed. I watched it in prep for the interview. I noticed in the credits Richard Linklater, the director of your Before trilogy, and Boyhood, and Dazed and Confused, and so many other amazing, amazing movies. He was credited as the John Wayne enthusiast in the film.

Ethan Hawke:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There’s a scene [where] he plays a guy who’s trying to chat up a girl at a Williamsburg party. It was a monologue. I’d always wanted to put him in something. It happened to me standing in line at McDonald’s, and this guy was crying. I said to him, “Hey, what happened, man? Are you OK?” He’s a big guy. He says, “Didn’t you hear?” I said, “Hear what?” He said, “John Wayne died today.” I thought that was a great story, and I went back and told my girlfriend. I said, “Ain’t that interesting?” She said, “I’m a vegetarian.” I don’t know why. I just thought, I’m putting that in something someday. Because it just struck me as, all right, some people think something’s important. What one person hears is not the same thing as another person hears.I love Richard’s acting. I love acting for him and and he took the part really seriously, if you watch the movie, which he’s very good in.

Debbie Millman:

He is indeed. I had to go back to make sure I really understood what he was going for there.

Ethan Hawke:

Did you ever see Slacker?

Debbie Millman:

Yeah.

Ethan Hawke:

His first film?

Debbie Millman:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Ethan Hawke:

Anybody listening, go watch the opening scene of Slacker, about maybe I took the wrong bus, I think it was the … I think I took the wrong taxi. It’s a phenomenal monologue. I always wanted to get him back in front of the camera.

Debbie Millman:

You appeared in six of his films, and you’ve said that the experience of working on Before Sunset exceeded all expectations of what being involved in the world of film could be for you. In what way?

Ethan Hawke:

Well, I pray that every person who listens to this has a moment in their life where you feel like this immense gratitude for being in the right place at the right time, and that you felt like … it was so much fun to write that movie with Julie Delpy and Richard Linklater, to be in Paris. I was in a lot of pain personally, and having a place to put that pain was healing and not self-serving. It was in service of something better, greater. It was not navel-gazing, painting pictures of your tears or something like that. That film experience taught me a lot.

Ethan Hawke:

Rick and Julie are some of the most intelligent people I’ve ever come across, and they’re also extremely educated in the language of film. They have an extremely high bar, and they know a lot. It was fun to be around them, and listen to Julie and Rick argue. I’ve learned a lot. It felt like, wow, this is where I’m supposed to be right now. I got to be in Paris making a movie with Juli
e Delpy, and it was a good one. I mean, what else do you want?

Debbie Millman:

I read that when you worked with Philip Seymour Hoffman in 2006, you realized that what made him so great was his experience playing smaller parts. During the years that he was doing that, you said that you were doing films like White Fang and getting paid a lot of money, and girls were asking for your autograph. While working with him, you realize you needed to work harder. I was wondering, harder in what way?

Ethan Hawke:

I watched Nobody’s Fool the other day, Paul Newman movie. Robert Benton directed. Really wonderful film, and Philip Seymour Hoffman plays this small-town deputy or something. He’s just kind of an idiot. Little part. He probably has 10 lines in the movie. I was friends with him back then. He worked so hard on that part. Who was that guy? What does he have in his pockets? How did he get the job? Why does he do this dumb thing? What’s his thing? He was rigorous with his imagination. I watched the movie, it’s years later, and he’s just so wonderful in it. When he started getting bigger parts, he applied the same rigor to every line he had.

Ethan Hawke:

I had kind of a “let’s get through this scene, I’m really looking forward to that scene, we’re going to shoot on Thursday” attitude. I started seeing the possibilities of … There’s a difference between the job of leading man and the job of a character actor. Fascinatingly enough, the job of the character actor is extremely challenging because you have to facilitate the story. You’ve got a job to do, and that’s your only part. Then you get laser-focused about it. Then when you come back to a larger part, you see smaller stitches in the fabric. You see how to sew it tighter. You see how that helps your scene partner. That’s really the change for me.

Debbie Millman:

Despite the lesson you learned from Philip Seymour Hoffman about working harder, you’ve also come to recognize that every time you tried to sell out, you fell on your ass—your words, not mine.

Ethan Hawke:

I like these quotes you’re finding.

Debbie Millman:

I suspect that you’re talking about your first foray into television, which I want to talk about briefly before going into “Good Lord Bird.” The Fox show, “Exit Strategy.” What happened with that show?

Ethan Hawke:

That was my midlife crisis. I turned 40. I felt like I had to quit being an artist and get a real job and hate it like everyone else.

Debbie Millman:

Why? Was it because of having so many children? Was it … I mean—

Ethan Hawke:

My wife was pregnant with my fourth kid, and the economy just dropped out in 2008, and I’d spent a lot of the previous years falling back in love with the theater. The thing you asked me about filling smaller parts—I got really interested in that, and I started doing smaller parts in some big Broadways. I did The Bridge Project, which we took Chekhov and Shakespeare all over the world. I did Coast of Utopia, which ran for a year. It’s a nine-hour play about Russian radicals. Hurlyburly I’d done for almost a year, and they’re all big ensemble pieces. I mean, some of those parts are big, some of them were small. While I was doing that, I was living like I was making a million dollars a year making movies and I was having a lot of children.

Ethan Hawke:

Well, when I was a kid, I was very, very fortunate. Dead Poets Society, I had this money. I got to do what I wanted to do, and all of a sudden, I couldn’t do what I wanted to do. I wasn’t getting cast. The younger actors were getting more parts, and you start seeing the world, and I just panicked. I love Antoine Fuqua. We had this idea of maybe we can make a great cop show. What if we did? Well, I started betting my mindset—well, if Antoine would do it, maybe we could make this badass cop show and sneak one through. I don’t mean to knock that show or whatever, but it’s just … they didn’t really let Antoine do what he wanted to do. The show never turned into the show that we had imagined it would be, and thank God it didn’t happen.

Debbie Millman:

You said that it ultimately resulted in you rebooting and revitalizing the next 10 years of your life. How?

Ethan Hawke:

I just started doing things I care. I have an amazing wife, and she’s an amazing partner. She’s not a materialist. She’s like, “Don’t do that. What are we making the money for?” She sees very clearly the kind of capitalist design that this country gets motivated by the accumulation of wealth, accumulation of possessions—that’s how we define success. We all just get on this treadmill and hate ourselves if we have to get off it, and feel like we failed if we don’t have the school that we want or the house that we want, and she just wasn’t buying into it. Then she’s like, “Let’s start making decisions based on love. Let’s tap. That’s what you need to do.” I started doing things I cared about, and then my career started going well again. It’s mysterious how that happens.

Debbie Millman:

It’s so interesting the arc of a career. You said that there have been three times over the course of your career that you felt washed up.

Ethan Hawke:

Yeah, completely.

Debbie Millman:

What made you continue on, and how did you overcome that sense of being over and done with or discarded? How did you find the way to reinvent yourself?

Ethan Hawke:

The world is not a very responsible critic. I don’t know what they’re talking about. Lots of things that are very good make people tremendous money, and lots of things that are staggeringly brilliant go unnoticed. I mean, through the history of the world and history of arts, if you are in service of your art, then everything’s easy. If you want the art to be in service of you, promoting you, if everything you do has to be successful, everything you do has to be “good,” then you’re always waiting for everybody’s reaction as opposed to really just engaging with what you want to communicate. What do you want to be doing? There’s so many churches in New York with basements where you can do a play.

Ethan Hawke:

There’s something that really moved me. I read this obituary of brilliant actor Paul Scofield. Late in his life, he was acting at a very high level, playing big parts, but only at the church near him. He realized that it doesn’t matter how many people see it, it matters what you do. I want to walk to work, and I’m going to play King Lear at my church. Everything gets washed away like a sandcastle anyway. Who do you want to be? What do you want to do with your time? One of the things that I do want to say, though, is sometimes when I say that people think that what I mean is I’m judgmental of other people’s actions, and I’m really not, I love all kinds of movies and all kinds of art. There’s nothing wrong wit
h doing “Exit Strategy” if you love “Exit Strategy.” I’m saying it matters to be you and figure out who you are. If you do that, then everything will take care of itself.

Debbie Millman:

Ethan, let’s talk about your most recent book, A Bright Ray of Darkness. Came out last month. Congratulations.

Ethan Hawke:

Thank you.

Debbie Millman:

It’s a wonderful book. The book brings us back to a character you actually first introduced to us in The Hottest State, William Harding. That really surprised me. Would you say that this is a sequel of sorts?

Ethan Hawke:

If I was forced to, maybe. But really it’s a continuation of a thought, in a way. Sometimes I think it’s not so much a sequel as a reboot. I was young when I wrote The Hottest State, and I was learning how to write. One of the things I really avoided and was ashamed of as a young writer is I wrote a book … The Hottest State is about young love, and I’m like, “Yeah, I’m an actor, but acting has nothing to do with it.” I realized over the years that it would be really fun to have the cojones to write about acting, to not run away from that aspect of his life. Because there’s so much superficial writing about acting. It doesn’t really have a place in literature of … there’s not that many first-person accounts of an actor on stage. I thought, well, I really like writing. That might be interesting. I gave myself that challenge to revisit that character in maybe a more substantive way, a hopefully more substantive way.

Debbie Millman:

William talks about fame quite a lot in the book, and really is trying to deconstruct it. He talks about fame as the Black Death, and declares that we like to watch people die. So we put them on magazines and fan the flames of their ego, they catch fire and explode. But at the same time, the character pleads with the lord to grant him the Black Death, because it’s very seductive, isn’t it?

Ethan Hawke:

Yeah.

Debbie Millman:

Do you feel like you understand that moral dilemma better? Do you feel like you still have that moral dilemma?

Ethan Hawke:

What’s that St. Augustine line? “Lord, grant me chastity, but not yet.” It’s like I really want to be sober, tomorrow. I mean a lot of times when a young actor gets told, “Oh, you are great in that show,” they’re not really sure what it is that you mean, right? They don’t know themselves, they don’t know what … What do you mean I’m amazing? Your brain when you’re left alone, like, “Why do you say that? What did I do?” That compliment immediately turns into fear because you’re like, “Well, if I do anything much different, maybe they won’t think I’m amazing because I don’t understand what it is that’s working. If I change, I might screw it up.” You end up keep being the same person.

Ethan Hawke:

We all know, as a grownup, you got to keep changing. You got to keep evolving. He said this thing about, after I said being washed up three times, how do you reinvent yourself? Trying to reinvent yourself for me is a mistaken way of thinking. The washed-up thing is actually just a perception. I’m often so disappointed when I start getting offered movies again, good parts, when it comes back again because often the work that I do when I’m busted is the best. By the best, I mean it’s the most true to me. When things start going well, you start getting decent offers and you can go to Istanbul and make a lot of fun movie everybody’s going to see. It’s very seductive, but it also takes you away from the self that comes out when nobody else cares. I think change is good, and I think the Black Death for me is being frozen in that formaldehyde where you’re just trying to stay this thing that everybody likes.

Debbie Millman:

The book takes us back to 2003. William Harding is getting a divorce from his beautiful, famous wife and is working in the theater playing the part of Hotspur in the show Henry IV, and back in 2003.

Ethan Hawke:

Yeah, the book isn’t set in 2003. The book is set in an anonymous time … People put that in there because they know that something like that happened to me. But I’m using 30 years of experience and putting it in this one fictional production that’s more like 2016 or something. It’s like I’m combining a life in the theater and turning it into this fictional production. What was your question?

Debbie Millman:

Well, really it was about how there were all of these similarities that you were using in this fictional way, and confronting so much pain both as what it felt like to me as the reader, William Harding, aka Ethan Hawke. Yes, there are certainly differences, but it felt like you were confronting a lot of the pain that you shared with your main character.

Ethan Hawke:

Absolutely. I love fiction that feels personal. There’s something about the first-person narrative. I think that I have found that using writing to make it more personal because my whole life as an actor is becoming John Brown, becoming somebody else. But writing is a place for me to explore what’s happening in this rib cage. I do the same thing with Jesse. There’s a certain Jesse in the Beforetrilogy, this character that I’ve written, and there’s certain events that do happen to me, Ethan, that I feel like belong in the universe of Jesse. Then I have this weird character of William Harding that, when I do something really stupid, I think, oh, that’s where Willie … that would be great for William to experience.

Ethan Hawke:

They’re exaggerated versions, they’re heightened situations, but they are things that are personal to me. For example, I was saying to you about the real healing power of Before Sunset, part of why I wanted to write A Bright Ray of Darkness is to explain to the reader that when acting is really working, it’s working in this dance with the audience and the author. What I was talking about with Robin Williams, there’s this healing power that can happen in storytelling. Your whole life, right? Your emotions are always in your way. You’re tripping on them. Why did I get so angry at him? Why did I say that stupid thing? Why did I start crying when my mom brought that up again? I thought I worked through that.

Ethan Hawke:

Your emotions are always in your way, and acting is this one place where you can take these feelings in your gut and you put them on stage and you put them in from the camera, and it’s not narcissism. It’s in service of the story. It’s a service of Prince [inaudible] or Jesse and Celine, or Jake in Training Day, or whatever. You’re using this well that you have. I thought, that’s what A Bright Ray of Darkness is to me, is turning something dark into something bright, and how do you do this? Yes, it’s all deeply personal to me. When I sit down with a pen and paper, this other thing happens. I just have to trust it and try to be disciplined with it and try to give the rea
der something worth their time.

Debbie Millman:

William also states that the public makes a big deal of acting, as if it’s the celebration of the individual, and you write how the irony is when acting is going well, it’s like the individual dissipates entirely, and nowhere in your work is that more evident than in your playing abolitionist John Brown in “The Good Lord Bird,” the seven-part Showtime series adapted from James McBride’s 2013 National Book Award–winning novel, and you have an award-nominated performance as well. You also wrote and directed this series. One thing I felt in watching this performance is when indeed Ethan Hawke does essentially disappear as he does, and you become John Brown. There seems to be so much confidence in your embodying this character, your effortless confidence in disappearing as Ethan Hawke. I’m wondering if that was even something that was intentional, if you’re even aware of.

Ethan Hawke:

I remember reading somewhere about a football coach that was just insane about making sure all the players had their shoes tied right and their laces were aligned in the right way, and people were teasing him about it. He said something about how inside every detail you can see the hole. I mentioned this to say that I’ve spent my life thinking about acting. Slowly, you start to figure out how to lace your shoes, how to wear your pants, how to learn your lines, what voice and speech is, what movement is, and you don’t learn it all at once. Some of it starts to be—if you’re building the right habits—starts to be instinctual. In reference to the novel, I’m a young writer. I’m an old man actor. But writing is still really young to me. I don’t really know what I’m doing.

Ethan Hawke:

I learned a lot on this. This new novel, for me, was all about the architecture of the novel. I started understanding what people talk about in regards to the architecture of writing. I started seeing it differently. That happened to me a long time ago with acting. I’ve “succeeded” as an actor and I’ve failed as an actor. I’ve had these experiences. Through those experiences, a confidence does arise. You learn that not everybody knows what they’re talking about, and you got to listen to the right moment and not listen at the right moment, and it’s really tough to know.

Debbie Millman:

What inspired you to make a movie about John Brown?

Ethan Hawke:

The genius of James McBride. Race in America, it’s a wound that hasn’t healed because we don’t look at it, we don’t talk about it, we keep wanting to move on as if … in the DNA structure of this country is a crime. When we don’t look at it, it doesn’t get better. My mom would say all the time, one of the great failures of her generation is she thought that when MLK was murdered, that would be the fire of which we would restructure the zoning of this country, the police of this country, the school systems of this country. She thought her generation would do that, that that’s what they were marching for. Then it all quiets down, and then we think Obama’s elected and we all like to think, well, now all this stuff is gone.

Ethan Hawke:

It’s not gone. It’s very real. But it’s very difficult to make art about it because the guilt, the fear, the shame and the anger is real. McBride writes this story. Yeah, John Brown is the main character, he’s the event of the movie, but the narrator is this young boy who John Brown thinks he’s liberating, and the kid thinks he’s kidnapped, and he puts him in a dress. At the first minute, you think you’re making this abolitionist piece and it’s going to be about Dudley Do-Right doing the right thing like you’re … John Brown’s nuts. He puts a kid in the dress and you think you’re talking about black and white, but now you’re talking about gender, and you think you’re going to talk about North and South, except John Brown hates the North as much as he hates the South.

Ethan Hawke:

Freedom for young Black men at that time didn’t look a lot better than what he was getting in the South. I mean, it’s not North, it’s not South, it’s not left, it’s not right, it’s not white and Black. It’s human, and it has all this love in it. I read this book, and I laughed my ass off. My wife said to me, “What are you laughing about?” I said, “The Good Lord Bird.” She said, “Isn’t it about John Brown?” I was like, “Yeah, how is this possible that I’m laughing?” I really wanted everyone in America to read the book. Then my wife and I started talking about, “Well, maybe we should make it a movie.” Then we met McBride, and he is one of the most gracious and … you have that fantasy when you were a kid of what it might be like to meet a great novelist.

Ethan Hawke:

You imagine meeting Tolstoy or something, how wise they would be. I want to go out to dinner with Toni Morrison. She would be so smart and discerning and say the right thing. You meet McBride, it’s like it’s OK to meet your heroes. He’s a beautiful person, and he treated me with respect and he treated my wife with respect. He treats everybody he meets with respect. I thought, I want to do whatever I can to be in a room being creative with this human being, and I’m so glad I did. Personally, I can’t believe that the movie came out. I can’t believe we made it happen.

Debbie Millman:

Well, it’s a remarkable story for our listeners that might not be aware of who John Brown is. He was a fierce opponent of slavery who was hung in 1859 after seizing an armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, hoping to spark a slave rebellion. Quite a lot of people believe that this was the first battle of the Civil War. Ethan, you know what I was thinking about as I was watching it and reading about it because I didn’t know about the book before? Why weren’t we taught more about John Brown in school?

Ethan Hawke:

The answer to that question is Black Lives Matter. It’s a big answer. You were not taught about John Brown on purpose. Because if you teach people really seriously that the Civil War, what it was about, what was happening, how African Americans in this country were being treated, and why a white Christian would want to take over the nation’s largest armory and demand equal rights for everybody, way back when, and they didn’t want to teach you about him—it was much easier to rewrite history and try to make peace and try to move on, and not really assess what was at the root of that big giant fight where so many people died.

Debbie Millman:

Well, thank you for bringing this life to work, Ethan. It’s a remarkable series. I really hope everybody listening can watch it. I have two more questions for you. The first is about the state of the world. Small question. Broadway has been dark over a year now. I read that this is the least you’ve performed in a year of your entire life since adolescence. Are you doing any performance work at all?

Ethan Hawke:

It’s hard. I just did a Zoom production of Waiting for Godot that will be available for people to stream. John Leguizamo, Tariq from The Roots, Wallace Shawn and I.

Debbie Millman:

Oh wow.

Ethan Hawke:

It’s not just the reading of it, we memorized it and perform it on Zoom. It’s crazy and nuts, but it was a wonderful way for us to feel the actor in us. I did a small part in Robert Eggers’ film, this kind of viking epic. I’ve been trying to do my thing, but that’s where perhaps this generation under me might wind up being one of the most substantive generations we’ve had since my … I always think about my grandfather having lived … he was a kid in the Depression, and he never forgot the things he learned as a kid in that era. I think a lot of young people are understanding how the NBA just doesn’t happen. The movie theaters, theater, colleges, summer camps, there’s so much to be grateful for that we didn’t even know to be grateful for in the sense of our interconnectivity and the natural world, and I think might end up hitting them in a way that escaped my generation. I’m hopeful that something good could come out of that. But certainly, the state of the world is something to talk about.

Debbie Millman:

Leads me to my last question. In A Bright Ray of Darkness you write that there must be some faulty gene in humans that motivates them to want to step out in front of 1,000 of their brothers and sisters on stage just to be judged, and that we wouldn’t do this unless we were hopelessly insecure. But as you were taking me through all of William Harding’s theatrical experiences, I realized how much he took it for granted, that we all took it for granted, that 1,000 brothers and sisters were allowed to congregate around this stage in the first place. I’m wondering if it’s changed your perspective at all. Do you still think that it’s insecurity as the motivation, or do you think it could be just a profound need to connect?

Ethan Hawke:

That part of me that’s writing William in that moment is not really my worldview. That’s the insecure, dark, broken, character version of me. It’s like a different entity. I believe in the power of connection and I believe that we all know it to be true that feeling seen is so beautiful, and feeling unseen is so hurtful. That’s what’s so important about diversity in our artforms, and from all kinds of people in every walk of life. Part of what art is supposed to do is represent our collective consciousness. It’s our collective imagination. It’s how we talk to each other and share our ideas, and it has real power. For me, I love the movies, I love them a lot, but when you’re at a concert, sweaty, and somebody rips a killer solo and you’re dancing, and you know you’ll never return to this moment, this concert, this day.

Ethan Hawke:

I mean, I remember when I first arrived in New York, I’d meet older actors and they’d be like, “I was there. Streetcar Named Desire. It was a Wednesday, I got standing room only. Brando was on fire. I think he had an erection or something.” You know what I mean? The craziest stuff comes out of people’s mouth because they were really there. They were there with the performers, and there’s this magic that happens. I remember Paul Dano and I were doing True West. I was on Broadway, whatever, I guess 18 months, two years ago now. It’s all … time is so strange. But in the silences, the lines are almost percussive. Pop, pop, pop! Pop, pop, pop! You start to hear the percussion and the silence becomes a part of the language of the play. The audience is actually participating in our rhythms, and I would get high from that. I mean it would take us, Paul and I, to new places, deeper, stronger places. I’m so sad not to be with that audience.

Debbie Millman:

Yeah, I can’t wait to be back. Ethan Hawke, thank you so much for making the world a more interesting place with your work.

Ethan Hawke:

Thank you. But thanks for being so well-researched, for doing such a serious interview. That’s not easy to do. I know that.

Debbie Millman:

Thank you.

Ethan Hawke:

I really appreciate it.

Debbie Millman:

Thank you, Ethan. Ethan Hawke’s latest book is A Bright Ray of Darkness, and he could be seen on Showtime in “The Good Lord Bird.” This is the 17th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. Remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

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