The Complexity of Modern Relationships

Welcome, welcome, welcome to our arr Chair experxpert. I'm Dax Shepppd. I'm joined Lily Padman. Hello. And today we have Olivia Wilde Maybe a while Um I'm such a fan. Yes, me too. I've talked about her a lot on here. I think she's such a gangster director She directed Don't worry, Darling. The name The name to you a few times ag I never get right in the interview. Bookmart. She also directed. was incredible. And then as an actor Tron Cowboys and Aliens house And she's a new movie out her third movie that she's directed called The Invite, which you and I saw And we fucking love it so much And we're doing a little the invite Week. So this is guest one of the invite Week. Please enjoy Olivia Wild This episode is brought to you by American Beverage. We've probably all had that moment where someone says something about an ingredient in your drink and you're like, shouldhould I be worried about that? 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Now available in Canada too That's Qu I nCE d. com slash dax for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Quints d. com slash dax He's in our chance Is child How are you? Oh this is so great. I'm so great. Oh, come on now. I. Hi. so nice to meet you. We have so many friends in common. I know. Start the list. Barb. Barb. Who's Barb? Barb is old dog Eible hair. know The terrible dog we have. D I hate that. Bar's the fucking best. Barb was so adorable she had never done the Met Gala And then she came with me and I was like, this is the whole reason I'm here You looked incredible. It was all our and she was like really giddy Barbara stylist. She's a hairirstylist irstyle.. She's very good. H she got into your mermaid? She has She's gotten in there many times. You know Monica was a herbal essence mermaid in a commercial. With the orgasmic did you have to have like an orgasm? I did not have to have an orgasm. I was a mermaid in the commercial Oh, you It have to swim and I don't really know how to swim, so that was bad. You don't know if I can swim. You don't love it or you don't know how to. It's somewhere in between. Olivie, I've observed her swimming not to I'm gonna not to not believe women, but she has. She has swam in front of me several times. Okay. You're not confident. I'm not confident, and I do think if I jumped in, I would drown Right, You need to be if I'm already prepared, I can like get across the p. Right. Right. But the jumping in, I don't want to do that. So you never swim's fun. It's not like I'm gonna to go swimming. Never But I do like a pool. I like to like Be by the pool. Yeah, yeah, yeah, pool culture in pool culture. This is like how I like skiing. I don't like to ski. I like to ski You like A prere pool. That's right. Wait, what's apre skiing? Apre skki is like drinking culture basically. You just like go to the lodge. Yeah. It' the lodge life. Yeah, yeah. And it's all the stuff except the ual sport Yeah. You know now that you're saying it, you're reminding my father who was a drunk, but did get sober when I was in ninth grade. He got into skiing for a minute because he had a wife who was into skiing. For really? Yeah, he just loved it. Yeah because he would get all of his gear and then go straight to the bar. Oh ye sit there and we just visit him coming off the slopes. Yeah. It's like golf. I think people golf so they can drink. Yeah. Yeah the nineteenth poole Yeah. ye. Yeah Yeah. That's what they the golf culture. All right, I need to start by saying, I'm like beyond thrilled that you responded to my Instagram message. I was so flattered that you were splended into those DMs. I sent Monica a screen grab immediately and I was like, you are not gonna believe it. You's so funny is I took a screenshot of it too, which I showed Kristen Because I thought it was so authentic, it was so sweet. People assume that someone in your position doesn't do any of that. That someone there's a whole team. No, he doesn't. That's why it is flattering ery flat Oh oh me. I even referring to yourself. No you might assume. No, no. But yeah, I'm making assumptions. I'm like you're like a bonafide auteur now and you don't need to do press and there's no reason you're gonna say yes, but I'm just gonna tell you that I have been for whatever reason, really cheering from afar. appreciate F Booksmart. Speaking of our other mutual friend Katie Katieie Silper. Katie wrote Bookmart and don't worry, Darla Yang and she very good friend. The best. And she's now basically running Netflix. I know. she is. She's like the in house writer, producer, extraordinaire. and's she's a genius. She is a genius. Y. Yeah. so I saw that Don't worry, Darling Monica and I both. We had a field day with that, right? We were so into that movie And there was so much accomplished in it, visually storywise, acting, all of it, the swing, the execution. I was like, this bitch can fuck Chickedouse. And then we saw the invite We got to see it. And then I went ballistic. I don't know if Edward shared with you my feedback from it. He just said that you enjoyed it, which made me so happy. I immediately was like, this is a Mike Nichols movie. This This woman made a Mike Nichols movie. Wow So kind of you. my actual dream review. and it's definitely the best thing I've ever made It's great good. I'm so proud of it. It proves everything we've all been taught from the beginning, which is like The more personal something is, the better. spepecificity, making something personal, authenticity, taking risks all those things and doing something for the process rather than the result. Yes.. All of the ingredients to a great experience that I had known, but Only now do I fully understand why that's so valuable. This is a challenge. This is a play And how will this play be riveting on screen? And why aren't I watching it in theater? Exactly. That's always a question, I think, when something is an adaptation, which this was originally a play I think the question is always why adapt? Wh make it a movie? or if it's a book, like why not just leave this as a great book? And I think it has to be that the medium you are adapting it into has to be taken advantage of. So like what can you show in a film that you can't show on stage and then you better take advantage of that O else we'd all just like to sit and watch a great play. Who's afraid Virginia Wolf was the kind of North star for me in terms of inspiration because Mike Nichols He took this play written by Edward Alby that had been done to great success on Broadway. Everyone loved this play. probablybably isn't the one to fuck with. Nois right out. Exactly. And he decided to shoot it in a way that made it so visceral, so kind of emotionally vivid and really bold choices, really making you feel like you were getting in their case like drunker with the characters. The cinematography really on this journey, which, you know, sounds so hoy, but it is a real challenge when you're never leaving one set, which of course, that movie is also in house. And we were so inspired by that. So the whole crew, we took a lot of cues from Mike Nichols in every way. It was a reminder that we could be just as ambitious with a single set, single location film as you would with an action movie. So we had this extraordinary cinematographer Adam New Borbera, who also shoots the studio and that's where I met him. he's crushing it there And shot Club Kid, which is Jordan Firstman's movie that just got b of can.. Adam is just incredible. And then we had this extraordinary production designer, Jade Healey. She's just one of the best. She had done marriage story, she had done lots of films that showed that she could turn a space into a character. And so Adam, Jade and I put our heads together and we were like, okay, how the fuck do we make? A movie that takes place in one room not boring. and it became about using architecture to become a barrier in between people, using mirrors a lot, using glass and creating a very designed roach So that then when I brought the cast in there, I could say like, go nuts, just have fun. Right. We have figured out how to do all this.. You be free. Yeah. Oh, it's so good. we'll get into even more detail. Yeah, yeah. Let's start in New York City. You're a little tiny baby, you're brought home from a hospital to New York City, but you're quickly whisked away to DC to Georgetia. quickly when I was five, we moved to DC ye Where did you live in Manhattan up til five? Upper Westide Okay. ninety third in Central Park West. Do you have any memories? I tell if I've made them up, I like to pretend that I remember one thing just to traumatize my mom because when I was three, we were walking around Central Park and a flasher cl And I definitely don't remember it, but I like to just say to her like, I don't know, I guess ever since that day, I haven't really gotten over it. It setet you on a trajectory, really? Yeah. Yeah.sill kind of de. protected me. But no, my memories are probably all informed by photographs and stories. My sister and I like to also like steal each other's memories. you know, you do that with siblings? Yeah Yeah, yep, ye ye. I'm so curious about how kids who have photos of every moment of their lives. Yeah Will react to that. Will they have clearer memories or worse memories of their childhoods? Well, I think objectively there'll be more proof one way or another Pof. But does that stop us from having to remember anything? Or still creating the story that you w to have? Right. But you will be able to like check the tapes. Exactly. I think about this with my kids, I'm like, o, well, let's just start with the fact that they're going to resent something I did They have to They can't be on planet Earth and not reflect on something I could have done better. Yeah. And I'm always like, what's the thing they're going to pick? Be I'm calling bullshit already in my head. I'm already defensive. Like whatever thing they think they're gonna to launch on meens. But I will say the thing that's been sweet, if you had this with your kids where you're looking at old You go to find one picture and then all of a sudden you're in the wormhole of watching Belta say insane stuff. Our littleittest one always was saying the craziest stuff. And what is nice? I've benefited from this, The girls will watch it and like it's hard to find a video of us where I'm not dancing with them when they're little baby. Like I just held them and dance with them. You can't find a photo where they're not strapped to my chest. So I do think that's helped me in that They do go like, oh, wow, yeah, you were clearly always doing the thing which I like because That would be my whole am that they think. And they will feel like they remember that, even if they don't really have memories of being like one strapped to your chest. they think they do, which is so nice. Yeah, they see that they were laughing and giggling as a little by and I'm dancing around. My parents took pictures as though it was like the eighteenth century. Every photo looks like it was taken underwater like tin type, I don't know why. Daguerreot type. They really did not document enough And so we have a few pictures that all my memories are really based around those photos. And then I feel like I started remembering things I guess around like four or five Oh, my kids love looking at old videos of themselves and it's funny because it Otis who's twelve. his sister is nine and everything she does annoys him now, but he has this interesting like love for the baby videos of her. Oh, interesting. He just will sit and watch videos of her and smile. like. So you do love her. Yeah. And I have to like I have a whole file ready. so when he's like, M, I hate her I hate I can be like,, F up You Oh my go. when she couldn' pronounce ketchup, you loved so much. There should be some sort of experiment where there's a kid and the mom takes videos of all the good moments and the dad takes videos of all the bad moments.. Maybe it's two kids o. identical tws. identical tw. we' got to be identical twins person is always getting the bad moments if they remember their childhood worse. than the person who's always getting the good moments. because when we were little, it was only just like happy pictures of birthday bir. Yeah only vacations. Yeah, random happy moments. Yeah. right now you could definitely get someone like falling down. And we have proof of them being shitty. So another great thing is like Delta watches and she's like, oh, wow, I was a handful. R. We're like, Ohh yeah, we loved it, but my God, you were a handful. That's good. It's good they can do that Otis likes to do something where he frowns, Even if he's having a great time, the second he senses the camera, he'll do a sad face because he thinks it's really funny that the record of his childhood will look like he was like already. Yeah. He can snap into a frown so quickly and I'm like, Ohh just come on. The picter' thing, okay could be a little telling because I have both envy and perhaps not envy. 'cause mom and dad, Andrew and Leslie. Yes are gangsters. The cockburns. are both journalists. I'll tell you something and there's no way you would know this. It's pronounced Coburn which I want you to imagine being a kid Well that, of course I'm curious what it's like to be a young girl in the last n. It' spelled Cburn. It's spelled Cockburn. You're claiming it's Coburn. It's a Scottish name. Okay. And it is very much like boy named Sue. You know what I mean? Like a character building. I think it's important. We should all give our kids devastating middle names. Yeah, yeah. just so that you can grow up with like be totally bullied for. Were people burning you for that last name? But I think it was an early important lesson in laughing along, not in a way that was like giving into to the bullies in a way, I don't know. I thought it was funny too. I was like, oh I get it.'ny man. That's funny. Yeah, yeah yeah. It's not c. I mean, there's a There's a verb It's a painful verb. Yeah ye. You're hoping it's from Rugburn, but it could be a pan. Yeah, it really could. It was never a disc. Exactly. Oh I hear it is like a disc. a burn. Oh, okay. yeah, there's that too. And it's up for grabs on, who is it worse if you're a girl or boy? likeike did my brother get it worse He's nine years younger nine years younger. And so life was nicer nine years later, a little bit, right? We've gotten I think marginally better every I don't know, have we? Basing it on, I see kids living out loud every version of themselves in the elementary school my kids go to and they're not getting destroyed over it That's true. It couldn't have happen incrementallyer in the late seventies, I promise. Yeah. So that seems better to me. But then again, I don't know just ' because we're in L.A. and I'm not in Detroit anymore. But no, my buddy's kids, they're nicer boys. I think having the last name looks like Cockburn in any city in any decade. It's too czy. Yeah, it's gonna In fact it's kind of comforting too. It is. It's like no matter how evolved we get our last name's Cckburn. we're gonnagh ear. But no, I was so proud to be a part of my family because I come from multiple generations of journalists. And so I grew up with my grandmother, my grandfather, my uncles, my dad, my cousins Everybody was a journalist on my dad's side And my mom has this really interesting family too. They're shipping people? Yes. Fr Hillsboro. Yes. Ver impive. So she gw with money, ye? She did. Yes. My mom grew up and couldn't be more different from my dad's childhood who My dad grew up in Ireland, had polio as a kid along with his two brothers lived a completely I mean, the two childhoods of my parents, when I have done like deep therapy on this, it's been so interesting to think like what did they find in common?ight it seems like This ferocious appetite for the world and documenting it investigating it. Yeah. Speaking truth to power. I think they both have a very strong sense of questioning authority and tellelling stories and justice. Yeah, justice and going to places nobody else wants to go. Yeah. Living outside the box, and they both do it. I mean My parents when I was little were W correspondence working in the most dangerous places in the world and they'd both go to Baghdad on either the same job or on separate jobs and they'd go on separate planes and then like stay in separate hotels and meet in the middle of the night. Reb plane bad. Sexy bad job sex. And then like put on their bulletproof vests and go out to work. They lived a very cool life, which now I sometimes think about You when you come back from shooting a movie At first you get home and it's a little bit of like shell shock because you're like, Whoa, you come from a set environment and then you come home and there's always a day of adjustment of like remembering this world. And I think about how crazy it must have been for my parents when they come back from like Afghanistan. Oh my go. To me being like, where are my ballet shoes? They must haveve been like This is big change. I've seen a lot of your mom's work because she's both a producer on sixixty Minutes and frontline. I've seen many of her frontlines. Yeah. I love frontlinine. Yeah.. She did extraordinary things. and my mom was the first Western journalist to interview Saddam Hussein's sons. Basically, her thing was that she could get an interview with people who would not talk to Western journalists. And you think is they were underestimating her Yes. yeah. like leveraging that. Yeah. She would also go to places that were more dangerous than other people and she would sneak a camera under a Burka to go into a place. She was incredibly bold. and she had a lot of respect for the people she was interviewing. There were some questionable people she was interviewing that would agree with, but she had respect for the process and was incredibly well researched and just very, very curious and smart. And I think that kind of curiosity They both have And we grew up in this household where it was all about asking questions. And I think that had a really great effect on us She probably had on a pl or she could have had a kind of comfortable life in San Francisco with rich parents. I think so, although you know kind of admire that? We live in a patriarchal society and I think as a woman born in the fifties she felt that yeah, there's probably a life she could have chosen that was way different and maybe comfortable, but not at all taking advantage of her intelligence. Yeah and her skills. And so she left, she was one of the first women at Yale. Second class. Yes ever. Exactly. same Women as now. that's. And she went and then she studied anthropology graduated early, went and lived in Kenya for a year. W. thenen went to grad school in London. Psycho analyze her. What was going on with her I think it was pr being herself. Yeah. She was the youngest of three kids and my grandfather was a wonderful guy, very old fashioned. And it wasn't like she was going to take over the company. That wasn't something that a woman was going to be given the opportunity to do. So I think she was proving that she could forge her own path and that she was capable of much more than just being a wife. Yeah. Yeah. She then ironically got married really young, which was funny because I think she was like, I'm not gonna to be a wife and then married my dad at like twenty four. But in a way that was really rebellious because he was not the guy My grandparents had envisioned at all. I mean, he was basically the opposite. He was Irish, He came from no money, came from this socialist family of journalists who were just very, very, very bold. And yet the families came together beautifully and ended up really blending and loving. Oh really How is it decided whether they would live in Ireland or live in the U S. I don't know if they ever thought they'd li Bea you spent sumers in Ire. I spent like every time we weren't in school, we were there, which was great. And I actually as a kid felt just as Irish as American. W. And you dual citizens. I dual, yeah. I actually have triple ee British Irish. Don't brag. You know was cabinet at Irish. Were you in Northern or southern Ireland? Southern Ireland. So was the Republic of Ireland, very, very different. Yes, yes, yes, especially then Did you come back home with that? I come back with an I mean, how insufferable It's embarrassing. Just the worst. It must have been so annoying. And I feel like my sister still does it. She'll kill me. She comes back. She lives in London now, but anytime she comes back from Ireland, I'm like, Oh, no, no. we're not We're not doing this Parents did a great job of making us feel culturally very connected to our Irish roots. Also, when you're a kid, I think your personality is forged in the summer. Yes, absolutely. Like that's who you are. There is an Irish rascaliness. Y. I just don't know what else to call it, but where I'm from a be white trasashist. But in a prideful, wonderful way Absolutely. I mean, when you are a country who were the victims of such unbelievable oppression for hundreds of years and really they tried to wipe out the Irish. They were treated herrifically and I think that will never leave the Irish spirit. There is a survivor. You see it in like the Australians too. That's why they're such badasses. They have thisip their shoulder. on shoulder you can't really mess with us. we will survive anything. And I think the Irish have that. And it's a great attitude you see in all Irish artists too. L I ended up going to acting school there in Dublin when I was older and I loved that the attitude towards acting in Dublin was so humble. Like you go see a play in Dublin and then youd go have a drink with whoever's at the play afterwards. you're like a tradesan. It's a tradesman. You're craft tradesman. You're not a star. No. And it's like humiliating to even think about it that way. And I think there's a respect for things much bigger than yourself. For instance, like we come from this little fishing village And for a long time in that village, the fishermen didn't learn to swim. You'd love it. Oh my God. I could be there. And the idea behind it was that if the ocean wanted you, it would take you. And now, you know, it's different times. peopleeople learn to swim and luckily far fewer people are drowning from this. But I always thought There's this respect for things more powerful than yourself. this understanding that like the ocean and nature. And then there's just a humility to people there that I really deeply respect. Okay now So the upside of your parents is like, oh, I'd love to have parents that interesting, that engaged, always bringing home topics But also, these are very involved in their own lives' parents. Yes. So like when you said the pitchers like, I'm not shocked. there's not a ton of pitchers. Yeah. What's the trade offff? They're pretty self consumed, I'd imagine to have those careers. You know They were, but they did something that I try to learn from where they were very social people And they brought a lot of that to our house. so it felt like this kind of salon all the time. You know, there were all these interesting people around and they brought us into that. Sit down and have a conversation or listen to this conversation or be a part of this. So we felt connected to their work and their lives because they took us seriously as little people that bridgeed the gap between these very full careers that did take them away a lot and being at home that they incorporated their lives into the home life in a way that I I have to remember to do all the time. Sometimes I think people think you have kids. and so that means that when you're with your kids, like you don't go out, and you just hang out with your kids. Yeah But I read this interesting thing about how Your kids learn to socialize from you. So observing your social life is an important thing. And you have to like bring them to things and kind of like bring the party home. We just had an expert last week I was talking about yeah, that this phenomena of the last forty years where it's like most kids had to go with their parents to the hardware store. They had to go with their parents to work on a day and sit there bored. Yes. Like the amount of times you had I then just comparing that with hunting and gathering societies who are almost always, you're not joining the kids world, the kids joining your world world. Yeah. And they're learning so much. I see my thirteen year old all the time just eavesdropping on me and my friends. And I love it and I don't care, but I can see how interested she is and what's going on And she's learning so much from the way you interact I used to crawl under the dining room table and like lay down under the dining room table during their dinner parties and just listen to the hum and listen to their conversations and think that they didn't know I was there. Although of course they did, I wasn't very good at crawling quietly. But I think it's true. and every time I see how close my kids are to their friends I feel so proud that we have modeled for them this idea of your tribe, your friendship community is being super important Yeah Now with all that said, did you ever long for did you have a friend whose mom was always at home when you got home from school and she had madeaid shit? Totally. I also used to watch like sitcoms and almost fetishize the suburban environment because we lived in the city. The whole idea of what felt like the nuclear family at home and parents home every night, eating dinner with your parents It was so foreign to us. Right. And so I used to just watch hours of sitcoms and just think like, why I want that? And I did have a friend whose house I spent a ton of time at, whose family was really sweet to me. and it was the opposite dynamic as mine. But of course, all my friends wanted my parents. Yes, exactly. My girlfriends would just sit with my mom and she would take them seriously and take their dreams seriously, and that was kind of the superpower she had. For me, when I was young and I was like, I want to be an actress. It wasn't like, okay, sweetie, every little girl wants to be an actress. It was Okay, where do you want to study? What career do you admire? You need to then watch these great movies with these great actors L took us seriously. What's the game plan? Yeah. and just in a way that just reflected a kind of respect and a different way of thinking that I think a lot of my friends weren't finding in their homes. so they'd come over just to feel that vibe. Yeah. Do you think maybe though you could have been adult toooo young Were you like precocious? and do you think you maybe missed out on some? Oh, I thought at like twelve I was like, why am I still hanging out with all these like children? Right? I need my own apartment. A like older dudes? Oh yeah Like how bad I mean, I grew basically on the Georgetown campus, which is a terrible. What wayor for. And I would just walk around and try to make up different majors that I could say that I. And I don't even think I looked older. I just to my head. I was like obviously very mature. I remember when I had braces when I was thirteen, I told orth that honest, he had to take them off because it made me look young. Yeah. I was like you're thir. You're young. Yeah. but I know I was like getting tattoos at thirteen. I was a terror. They sent me to boarding school because I was a t. Okay, I was going to ask about boarding school because again, It's hard not to get judgmental here I have a friend that just No, no, just I have a friend who just told me he sent his kid to barding school and I'm like canan't comprehend it. like I al eith that they're leaving and I know. What are you talking about Sent him out now? So I just can't relate. And I recognize it was a totally different time. But anyways, how' you end up in boarding school It's just so funny because like I went to boarding school and I would never send my ks to boarding school. Yeah which' is no disrespect to the people doing it. And like my sister's sending her kids, I think they love it. I mean, her one son is there. The daughter will probably go and they love it. hadad a hard time. My sister went. my brother went after me My brother went five years older than She's five years older. She's nine years young. Yeah. My mom had kids in her twenties, thirties, and forties. So funny to run the whole gamut of like experiences with Motherhood in different deces. You guys all had such different childhoods, probably. Completely different. Yeah, so I'm sure your mom After fourteen years of experience. Yeah your brother. Ttally different. But I think, okay, boarding school, here's my take on it. What did you do that had landed you then? What kind of naughtiness were you up to? The way my mom describes, I think she said I would' have like torn the wallpaper from the walls. I was just so completely unontroll I mean, I don't want to say uncontrollable because I wasn't there are far worse cases than mine Stay tuned for more ar are We are supported by All State Checking All state first could save you hundreds on car insurance. Not checking your gas gauge before hitting the road? genuinely thought you could make it, you were wrong. 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Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you Hixleep dot com slash armchair Liv, did you kill him?? I didn't kill him. I't were caging. I was caging. And I couldn't, I mean, there was no curfew that I would take seriously. Were you partying? Was it boys? Was it shoplifting? It was partying but not in a like drugs and alcohol way, it was like, I couldn't understand that if there was a concert, like so DC was a big music town. And so there was the nine hundred and thirty Club, which is an iconic music venue. And the idea that I wouldn't be allowed to like go see any show I wanted and stay out and go and hang out, I couldn't fathom that kind of boundary. Yeah. I like to think It was me just like wanting to plug into everything a little too early, but really as a parent, they must have just been like, she's gonna to get herself in trouble. Yeah Yeah. She's gonna end up pregnant or in jam. I'm really happy that I went away because I think I just would have grown up a way, way, way, way, way too fast. Also DC, it was a fun town, but for a twelve, thirteen year old who thought she was twenty four, probably not the safest place. I will say too I remember Kristin and I went to like the correspondence dinner, I don't know what it was eight years ago, ten years ago, whatever it was. but I had not been there since I was in high school and went to the nine thirty club And then on an earlier trip with my mom where we stayed at this like Fucking guns shot motel across the street from a greasy p. Like it was a shit hole. Marian Barry was the crack on TV and he's the mayor. Yeah, we had the highest crime rate in the country Yeah, so I think when people go there now, it's that same chasm between New York when I was a kid and now. So you go New York and it's like, it's Disneyland You feel like you're in Europe, It's so clean and beautiful. Every storefont's nice. But yeah, Dy used to be a shitole. Now it's so nice when we were there for that correspondence thing. I'm like, this place is Eden. It's so nice, despite what Trump likes to say, it is incredibly nice now and I think that It was also a time where it was impossible to like track your kids. It was like checking in from the payphone, which by the way, now when I think about how much we used payphones, like the idea for me, it's just like the bacteria. That's what' about. It's like how often we were just like snuggling up against the phone. You could smell it too, You could smell it when first got on it, the receiver smelled.'re. ten minutes later. You're like holding your you've forgotten everything. Checking your p your cigarette it' touching the. Exactly Pager bravo too. Oh, the pager. Yeah, I loved it. But wentent to a Bardning school was very nice. So I didn't get sent to like reform school. I went to a Bardning school that had this unbelievable theater department, which to me was extremely exciting. In DC I went to GDS, Georgetown Day School. It's a great school. The theater was like In a gym. they did their best, but Handover, where I went to high school, had a main stage theater, several black box theaters, studio theaters. They had a student theater producer program so you could learn to produce plays. I produced like twelve plays in a year. Oh my God. It college. Like college. I was so lucky. This is in Massachusetts Beautiful beautiful like Jeffersonian architecture in the suburbs. You can just attracts. This is a global, right? Yeah. It's like a very fancy private. It's very fancy.. Did you have crazy classmates? I did have crazy classmates. I mean, it was a lot of people who've all gone on to do very impressive things I would say most of the people there, they were very focused on like going to Iv's and becoming like Titans of industry. I found my home kind of with the theater kids. Do you covet any of that wealth? Clearly people are taking like private jets to Aspen for spring break and shit. Well, the cool thing about boarding schoolool is it does equalize that. So even though you'd hear someone had crazy, opulent lifestyles, but in orn becausecause we were all in shitty dorm rooms And was like this really puts us all in the same. And it was coed. It was coed. So you could have lovers. Oh yeah. all aboutnder Making out in the stacks. But now I'm like, do they even have libraries anymore? What do you do? Where do you make? They're also designing all these places to be safer against sexual abuse, which is a good thing, but it really hampers how much Yeah whereere do you make try to get more. Yeah, we just had an expert on architect. Yeah, yeah Book stacks that are low. All doors have a window so you can be caught and be observed from a hallway. It's all great stuff. W. But again, where on Earth is one? irf the first Eactly. You can't do it at home. But it's amazing how kids will find a way. Of course. Isn't that nuts? Like we're always animals. You' find a way. And it was like, you know, you had to leave your door open and sign people in. But everyone was escaping in the middle of the night and running across campus. and. It was all that. So you liked it. Then you got accepted to Bard Yes. But you delayed the delayed, delayed. Oh yeah. I deferred for like three years. I met someone later in life who had been there when I was there who said that I was the most requested roommate because they knewn't show up. I was never gonna show up. Oh's So it was like, Ohh, you're gonna get a two room single. Yeah. So you' were kind of a legend and you didn't even go Yeah Of course, now I'd love to go. What sounds better than college now Read books and then talk about them in grou debate in class, so it's so. I would pay a lot of money. I amase of going in retirement back What would you study? Probably physics. Oh, cool. What did you study when you were there? Anthropology. Oh, very cool. Yep, that was really fun. I have a fantasy of just picking up degrees as I'm an old man. I tell myself I would study neuroscience, but I think that would involve such a foundation of mathematics and science that would take maybe like eighteen years of college we get a degree. Well, that wouldd be the beauty of it. Like you could just take classes, you could skip organic chemistry. You'd be like fuck that. I don't care. I'm not going to practice You can take like everything online. All those classes are online now, which is amazing. I mean it's all about being in that classroom. Yeah. I love any opportunity to sit with people and debate things and talk like any kind of book club, movie club. Yeah. I have this fantasy about starting a debate club Debate club dinners Because I think we've lost the skill of disagreement. Yes and like discourse. and my favorite thing was debate in school because you had to learn to argue that's right. Other person theation whichich is such a great skill. So don't think it' be fun if you came to debate club dinner and under your plate was your position that you had to argue and it is probably something that you don't believe at all, but you now have to argue that part. I love it. Oh my I love it. Let's do it. Yes. I am committing fully to this dinner party. Me too. Be my hobby is forcing myself to mount a really solid argument for something I don't agree with. I love it. I go, okay, I feel this way. Now I have to sincerely imagine I feel the other way. Yes. And most of the time if I take the time to cons op. I recognize everyone has a pretty cohesive opinion and they're pretty well intentioned and I just disagree on the best route there. I do think that's how we have to respect each other.' like This notion that we're not friends because we don't agree on something or that we can't talk or that I can't have you as a guest, all that stuff is so corrosive and wrong. It's only becoming worse with social media and everything because I think now there's this curated socializing that's happening across generations. We don't gather if we don't know who we're going be with and what their opinions are and what will be discussed, and we can have be reassured we will all have the same opinions Yes, we're safe. There's no real kind of randomness that allows for the opportunity for you to be in a conversation with someone who disagrees and for that to be kind of great Yeah. And also I also think just as an ethos, people think their goal is to end their conversation and convince the other person to think like them. And I would just urge and beg people. It's like actually it's so much more rewarding to leave a conversation with a totally different We just had someone on. We had a schizophrenic ony whod tried to kill his father. W. And prior to that conversation, I had such a hard and fast opinion. I'm like, all these people who are schizophrenic are any of these bipolar Take your fucking medicine. Why does everyone go off their medicine and go on these big, you know? And it's just frustration with that. And then through talking to this person for two hours, I was like, o, I totally get it. And I definitely acknowledge there are a lot of people that maybe the medicine's not the solution for them. or it's yet one of eight things. I don't know. I love going, whoa, I want eightating on that. Yes. And that's lovely. I think that curiosity is such an incredible that you have and that it is something that if we can just get people to see the value in it, like you said, it's not about convincing, but it is about learning. And it can be super frustrating when it comes to things, but like when it comes to politics these days, it's frustrating because you feel the stakes are so high. Yes. you're convinced very emotional. If you lose this, someone's dying. Yeah That's just not the context for a good conversation. Everyone's arousal setting is just like fucking p. Yeah. Well that c is all out. Debate dinner is good because if you're handed your stance, then you can really do it without emotion. Exactly and like go hard on it. So if I had you like the moon landing was fake, right And you had to be like, listen flag It was waving. Exactly. O like you just think of like all the things you've heard, but then really have to dig in. Y. It allows for it to become an exercise that I think just works a muscle that we've lost. percent. I love that. I think it would be Im man. That's how we started our friendship Debating a pause on some of the debate. They got to everything political. Yeah, we had to. Well, again, things get emotional. The closer you are with someone, the more stakes, as you said, and like the more emotions come into play where it's like, you don't even trust me or you don't hear me or Yeah. That's thiseet heart of the motivation underpinning it is we don't think if someone thinks differently than us that we can coexist or love each other or be there for each other or be friends. So it starts getting scary. like wait, you think that about that? Can we even be friends is what you're thinking which is preposterous. but I think that's ' underneath Yeah ye. This is why I think like when my kids argue with me over something, as opposed to, I think we were raised or at least I was with like a don't talkal backack rule. And for me, it's like, oh, they're learning on us how to debate, how to argue with people out in the world. So if they say like, well, I don't want to brush my teeth orr I don't wantan to do my homework or whatever it is as opposed to like do as you're told. Yeah, ye. It's like let's train them to be better. So sometimes I'll be like, you gott to make a better argument than Yeah. So we're the same. I'm constantly like, I'll lay something out I know they're not going to like it. Yeah. And I go, okay, counterpoint. me I always go counterpoints. Love that. I really think that even the hormonal spikes that cause them to be more volatile, that that is the training ground for later conflict. so that It's like, okay, I'm glad it's me you're arguing with because you know I love you. Exactly. And I think about that, particularly, I think it happens to boys too, but for girls being around like thirteen and then there's this idea that you become enemies with your mom. Now my mom and I definitely had some battles, but I'm kind of relishing the opportunity to have this And Dace's only nine and she's like the nicest person in the world and he to have this. but I think of it as like, yes, let me train you in this I'm not gonna tell you not to argue, but I'm gonna make you better at it.ood Yeah, yeah. ye yeah. I reject that they have to do a c. I love my mom the whole goddamn rightide. That's good. to hear my f love their My poor father has to deal with all the gener. I know I'm notar. Yeah. But boys definitely, I just took Otis to Japan just us for a week for spring break. and it was like the best week of my life. A. I was like, I didn't know it. Couplees trip ' is so Delightful. It was really sweet because I realized he was giving me like some activities were definitely for me. We went and like meditated at a temple with a monk, which is not something he would have suggested. God bless him. He got through that at twelve. He did it. He came and like meditated and learned. afterwards, I was like, didid you love it? He's like, I mean, no, but I tell you. You could never get a dude to do that. No on a trip with a dude on a vacation. If he didn't want to meditate. If he went, you'd hear about it the whole. Exactly. Yeah, I'd be like, I did this for you.. You ow me We also just laughed so hard. He's really into manga and we went and took a class, like drawing class, manga class. What's manga telling? like Japanese anime drawing The class was entirely in Japanese and we were Hissing ourselves laughing. L trying like crying, like hiding our faces and every time we caught eyes, we would just laugh so. And at one point we had to draw each other, which was the funniest thing in the world because he drew me in a way that was so hilariously weird. and I drew I thought like a perfect depiction of him, but I'm not at all good at drawing. And we were laughing so hard. He knew that that was me doing an activity that he loved He felt so, I think, that just really seen and respected. But then at the end of the day, every day I'd be like, okay, Rose and Thorne, like, what was your favorite part of the day? And he would surprise me by saying like, I liked walking through the cherry blossoms with you. That was really fun. And I was like Like in LA, he would never be like, Oh mom, I'd love to go for a stroll in the park. Yeah. But it was like a whole different on the other side of the world when it's just us. the rules were all different. and he also just kept spontaneously grabbing me and hugging me and be like, I love you so much. And I was so happy. I was just like flying high the entire time Did you always know you werent know Yes, he did I didn't like fantasize about motherhood in the way that a lot of my friends did, but I did always know I wanted kids. I didn't realize how fun it was going to be though. It's way better than I could have possibly imagined. I think every stage of it I love more than the last stage. Now of course, when we look at those old videos of them as babies. And I was working a lot when they were really little and I'm like just destroyed with guilt about that as like so many of us are. But I didn't realize that it was a friendship that was so deep, and so profound and so fun That is different than what I imagined it would be. Yeah. I think for me, it just exposes a lot of The limits I have given relationships. Really? becausecause they're just a product of my undying commitment and devotion and unconditional love. And I do wonder how many of my relationships could have been and not just even romantically, just If you treated people the way you treat kids, I do wonder what the sky is. That's so interesting. For relationships.es. I don't think can. It's a biological. Yeah, I don't know that you can. Yeah. But it does introduces you to your own capacity for love, patience, empathy, forgiveness, all selfessness I didn't think I possessed. Yeah. I think I was pretty honest about my selfishness And so I was like, I don't even know I saw this level of it coming. Also, it humbles you so completely, like brings you to your knees in such a real way that I think that is something that just makes you definitely a better person, but in relationships, being humbled is a very important thing to have been humbled. Yeah. And I think to understand your own frailty, we all need to, but parenting does it different. Okay, we have to get back to the overarching story of your I'm going to ask you the questions Leslie asked you, which is after you do the acting school in Ireland and you come back and you get yourself on the OC , Which is really quick. Yeah. And before then I was a casting intern And it's so funny. I wonder if you ever came into our office. It's highly possible. So many of my friends now I cad. Who would you also read or not? Oh I would read I mean that was a little bit higher than my pay grade. If I was really lucky if other people weren't in the office, maybe I'd get to read. But I was really low. I would bring you coffee and water and I would kind of keep the sign in sheet and like just be behind my boss at all times. And she was My Finn. She was one of the best casting directors in the business, hardcore She did everything from like Titanic to David Gordon Green movies, to like eight mile to the Matrix to elephant. And I got to just observe and learn everything in that office. That was in LA. That was in LA. First when I was sixteen, I came out for a summer and I worked for her for like four weeks as an intern and then I came back When I graduated high school and worked again, I was like, can I do another summer working for you? And most castage directors will not let actors be interns Yeah because you're like a spy. You could easily like steal material. I don't know.. And you the world that you want to be auditioning. She was like, you should go and audition and I went and got pilot, which was for the show called Skin that was a very short lived show on Fox. But it was like a ridiculous experience because it was like my first audition for a pilot. Then I got it. then it When when you were wearing the wool turtleneck and she was like, you got toa get realistic about your fucking outfit. Yes. I came from like a Northeast boarding school. so I was dressed like a professor. There was like a lot of cordoroy. And she was like What? firstirst it was ninety five degrees. And I took two city buses to work. So I was like really. I'm gonna ask I have to ask it. and I know it's gonna be so hard to answer, but okay. you're so beautiful. Oh thanks. You're so beautiful that Were you trying to downplay that you were fucking beautiful? No Be I did not feel beautiful at all. And in fact, coming to LA Does anyone get to this town and feel beautiful? I was like This is crazy. The first waiting room I sat in as an actress, I was like, ah, I gotta go. This is a different species. I think that it took me a while to understand that what made me I guess we all kind of go on this journey, but like what made me different was good and I didn't need to try to make myself look like the other girls, but I really felt unattractive. You They all really knew how to dress and again, the aforementioned turtleneck is indicative of what my vibe was. I dressed like Johnn Lee Hooker. I wore a of vintage. I look back I'm like, you were cool girl, but time No. It sounds cool. But it's hard to get on the C show when you're dressing like Yeah. And my boss, Mally was like, what are you doing? Go change before you go to your audition. I also saw the bad side of that where we had girls come into the office to audition where she would turn them around and be like, no. She'd say, did you think I was a male casting director? Actresses would show up in outfits clearly designed for male directirectors casting couch bon. And we had directors who would be really unspecific about what they were looking for just so they could meet every hot actress in and we were like having to read Hundreds of girls and then none of them were right for it because he didn't know what he wanted. So I learned the bad side of that really quick. I definitely just felt such imposter syndrome. And I remember a casting director early on when I went to an audition told me I had a pie face. Oh tellell me what that me. Yeah comp. She kindind of said it in a way that sounded like she was trying to be nice. Well, you got a pie face. She said something You'll be fine., you've got I think she might have said apple pie pumpk. So there was maybe a flavor attached to the pie. but I think she was trying to say something nice. I took it as a flat face.at. Maybe it was apple pie and it meant all American. Yes. Maybe that's what she was saying. That seem. But I just felt, oh my God, when I think about the drawer of push up bras that I had for auditions because I thought maybe that will help and it doesn't and it's so sad Being an nineteen year old going to auditions is rough and you're just like, Driving to the deep valley to go to this reading with like a thousand other girls. I was inclined to think you might be like Lake Bell who I worked with on the show forever and we friends. I love Lake. And what I realized is that Lake is so hot her whole life that she liked to date ugly guys. L you know you're so say like that. No, I called her out on it. I'm like I like you know it's cool that you'll date ugly guys. And she's like, She kind of know And I'm like, that's how you know you're so hot that you don't even need the validation of the hot guy Would you date the hot guy or the ugly guysy? It's been a real range. Oh It' really hard to figure out the common denominator. I felt like such an outsider always because as a kid, I would go between the States and Ireland and Ireland, obviously super weird oututsider. American kids showing up in the summer is weird, oututsider. Then back in the States, I felt like an outsider because I just felt like we were different. familyam was different coming back and forth different. Then boarding school. Total fucking weirdo. I felt again even just with clothes. I like had never seen such preppy clothes. I felt like an outsider there at then in LA. So I never had The thing of like, I'm so attractive that I I'll dateated three ' it looks fununk rock. Just to even it out. Yeah. is That's really funny. We're callorn the fact jack. The personalities were good. And so yeah, she's not gonna date someone hot just so that she feels hotter ' she She wasn't try to compensate. She was not acceptible to a higher status person validating her, which is a real unique. to date people she really like.. Yeah. Wh often you're like, wow, that's cool. she's with that. Right call I Don't look into her ees. But does anyone is it impossible? I we talk about humbling. I think about all of our friends who went through that cattle call experience. and I'm like, it's actually great because being rejected that much does something very good to your charac If I live If for all of us who lively. Yeah, yeah. You live. you are not unscathed. And what's great is we all have our unique version of why it was terrible. And it can't be all true, right? So my issue was I would go to the commercial audition And it's like that dude's balalld, that guy's overweight. I'm not goofy enough yet I'm a comedian. so this is what I'm supposed to get. But I don't look goofy enough to play the guy at the muffler shop It was crazy. Then now I go to the attractive shit. I'm like, I am not nearly good looking. Like these guys like that two caught in betweenainers. I wasn't character looking enough and I wasn't handsome enough. I'm like, what are we gonna to do with this? Yeah And then you realize that that is exactly what makes you so special. takes a long time If you're lucky. Yeah. Okay, so who though were you at that time wanting to be career wise. Did you have a North star I wanted to beet Katherine Keener, which is why I Great pick The job as a casting intern because I read that she had been a casting intern. I was like I will emulate that experience. Yeah yeah. And I still want to be Catherine Kenner. Yeah. She's a good role mod. That'. Have become friends with her? No. Have you ever met her I met her once and I think I said something like,, I've modeled my life was like. Here's a compliment you'll never be able to accept. Exactly. you dont have what' supped to say in her turnurn. And she was very sweet to me. So you want to be like in indie movies and do cool things? Yes, completely. Okay. so then when you get on the OC where you like Oh my God, Gateful, but this is the opposite of what I'm trying to do It was funny because this is very classic mic to not understand what I'm getting into and then be in it. I had no idea how big that show was when I joined because I think I joined the second season. Josh Swartz was like, do you want to come and do the show? Well first he said, do you want to come play a bartender? because we had a lot of musical taste overlaps, like we knew each other through that kind of world. and I remember I was talking about music a lot. and then he said, comeome play a bartender because we'll have real Musicians are going to come on the show and perform in the bar the bay shop And that was the sales pitch. Yeah. And I was like Absolutely And as a joke, I was like, only if I get to make out with Mishia Barton. And he went, Wh told you? And I was like, Oh real. Yeah But it was so fun. Everyone was so great. We had all these amazing musicians around and it was so fun, but I did not know how big the show was. Yeah,. And after the first episode aired, I was like, wait, what is this? And I remember Adam describing at the time any time he could like sense teenagers in any place he wasn' int love cross the street to get around to walk around anybody who might be young. And I quickly understood what that meant. Yeah, yeah, yeah, ye. Did you interface with Ben MackKenzie at all? Yes, I loved. He was so sweet to me. We met him for the first time a couple of weeks ago. He was a crypto expert. He was on our experts. Yeah, he' And I la going, I think that's the smartest actor I've ever met. Yeah, he always was. He was always very on actorory. Yes. It just felt like he in the best way was doing it for fun. Yeah, which is great. He belongs in the Austin State Assembly. That's his heritage. like he's supposed to be doing that. Yeah. Okay, so then you quickly get on or by my estimation pretty quickly, you get on house. Right. Were you replacing Jen Morrison? Not really replacing also joining a show late seeason four, maybe? Season three. Okay It was like expanding the cast and then we were all on it together. That show had such wide reach in a way that I had no idea. and even now anywhere I am on the planet, there's a house fan. So I've never liked one of those medical shows and I loved house. Yeah. love H loved.. The whole thing was just that. Were you fucking smitten with him? Is he smmittenworthy in real life? He is so smitten worthy. Smittwthy. So smart. He's like a crime novelist, motorcyclist. I loved him on Jeves and Worceser and he had done all sorts of interesting comedy in the English comedy theater world that I was obsessed with. Meeting him, o, I mean, the dreamiest dream boat and so gracious and had all these kids around him really that he was So sweet and encouraging. and we spent a lot of time together. I mean that's a hard show, right? We did like nineteen hour days. I think the show went eight years. I did, I think four years. Four years. And then I started doing movies in the off season. I had a deal with them where I would get paid less, but it meant I could go do movies. Yeah. It was really nice to them let me do that, but I knew I couldn't stay. And it was because the hours were Poor Hugh, the dialogue he had to fucking memorize. Here' my favorite quote about acting with an accent. Someone said, what is it like acting with an accent on that show? And he said, it's like everyone else is playing with a tennis rackquet and I have a salmon Yeah Perfectly Like evocative. He's so good. I learned a lot from him and yeah, we were good, but we're buddies. He's the cest. You got to get him to the debate dinner. Oh my God that we have committed to Yeah Yeah amazing. Now, okay, so you booked a pilot, then you booked the OC, then you booked us you are Well there's like stuff in between. you know, I went back to New York I did like an off Broadway play and I did indie movies. Wh I was doing the OC, I did this Nic Casvet's movie called Alpha Dog, which kind of had a lot of the people from our generation in it that movie was crazy because it was about A murder that had happened in L.A. only a few years before. It was a real story. And the real guy was on the run And the movie initially ended with like, he is the youngest person on the FBI Most Wanted list. And by the time the movie came out I think they had found him in Brazil and then they reshot the ending to incorporate his capture. Wild experience. Wellso Nick Casaveetti. So this dream you had of being like Katherine Kenner This is the right vehicle, but did it deliver to your romantic notion of? Yes, loved it. I felt the experience of being on the OC and being on the set of Alpha Dog and I was like, I want to do movies. want. And so they very kindly offered me a chance to stay on the OC or to leave and I left to go make zero money.. So you're booking sub you don't haveoster syndrome No, I mean, I think I still have impmpauseer syndrome. Maybe it's starting to wear off. Well, yeah, I would hope that I was gaining confidence though by that point. I think I I was earning my stripes. but at that point, House really changed things. She did Tron on the Od season and And then she did Cowboys and Aliens. Oh this is like now then I was like onnce you were to Cowboys and Aliens, I was like, okay, I'm now aware. I' making space in my mind. There's a new movie star. That's nice. in a way, if Cowboys and Aliens had done what they thought it was going to do. By the way, you and I have had a very shared experience, which is rare, which is I did his movie Z Thura Oh yes. Favreau. Yes. It's the best movie I'm in. It's a phenomenal movie So so good. Everyone's like, willill everyone just wait for the five hundred million dollars to arrive?ly? it just never came So you and I are probably in the only two underperforming fash. Totally, totally. And also like Tron, they thought it was gonna to be like the biggest thing that it had ever been. I think it's very healthy to have these experiences Because it just showed me that nobody knows anything. You don't know what's gonna to work and you better love the experience of doing it. Yeah. Cowboys and Aliens had every brilliant person here and Fabreu is so good and we were produced by Spielberg and Ron Howard. and it didn't work and yet the experience was the most fun I've ever had. Was it? Oh good. Yeah, it was like riding horsees Craig It was H solo. Yeah, it was literally Hrison Ford and Daniel Craig and me and Sam Rockwell, who became one of my best friends truly the best human being we have And Paul Dano, another amazing guy who when I was a casting intern, he was the only really nice actor who would come in and not bitch at me for the fact that they were waiting too long for their audition. Everyone else treated me like low level staff, except Paul Dano, the nicest person in the world. Then being able to work with him on cowboys and Aliens, we just had the best time. Walk Goggins. Oh my God. Walk Gogins saved my life on that movie. What happened? He did. I had a very bad horse accident and he saved me. Basically, we were galloping across. I've ridden horses my whole life I have a lot of confidence with writing English sty, but this is Western, different. and we were At that point like two months in and we'd gotten real cocky with it. and we were pretty competitive. Oh boy. And it was me and Daniel Craig There was a board galloping like full sprint across the desert. Oh boy. withith like forty horses behind us. Oh my God. And it was like we were like leading the jarge to fight the aliens or whatever. whatever we were doing in that movie part where I could see ahead of us that there was a large ditch, like a six foot ditch. And I was like, this horse is gonna to jump that ditch. And I'm on this western saddle, no helmet because I'm playing like an old timy lady. Yeah. spoiler I was actually an alien You find out it. I know everyone's seen it, but still so sure enough this horse jumps And bucks me off in the craziest way. I felt if I hit my head in my back and I was laying, but unfortunately I was on the other side of this kind of lip of dirt. So meaning that theors behind me couldn't see me No. And there was also a lot of dust. No. And I remember having my ear to the ground and I could hear it and it sounded like thunder like they were coming towards me. and I had the thought sounds so dramatic, but I thought it'll be quick Yeah, It'll be like pulverized applesauce out Oh and I was waiting for it to happen and then Wal Goggins had seen it ahead of him and in a split second thought To turn his horse sideways right in front of me and let everyone kind of bash into him. No. And he's a great rider, so he was able to handle that. And people split the two sides around us, thinking he had just like gone insane, but he was protecting my body on the ground. W. And so I owe him my life It's crazy. Wow. He's a real life hero. He's a real life hero.. I didn't even bring that up when he was on the show. He's probably died so many people. He's saved so many h. probablyably saveree women on. He does not save men. That's what men don't know. He lets them go Stay tuned for more arm If you dare This episode is sponsored by Better Help So Monica, here's something that really stuck with me. BetterHelp's twenty twenty six state of stigma repeport surveyed two thousand Americans and revealed that eighty five percent of Americans believe getting support is wise. Yet seventy four percent say society discourages people from doing so. That's a huge gap. Most of us agree therapy is a good thing, but there's still something holding some people back from actually going Right. And I think that's where just talking about it, normalizing it makes a difference. I mean, as you know, I'm I obsessed with thepy I've been in it consistently for years and years and years. and I have said this and I shouldn't say it, but I do think if you're struggling and you've been struggling for a while and you haven't sought therapy, I judge you a little bit. Oh Okay Yeah. I know I'm not And I gott to go to therapy to work on that, you know, but also there are options for you. You can help yourself And Better Help makes that first step easier. They match you with a licensed therapist based on your needs and with over thirty thousand therapists and twelve plus years of experience, they typically get the match right the first time. Don't let stigma stand in the way of support. Start therapy with Better Help. Sign up and get ten percent off at betterhelp dot com slash DAax. That's betterhlp dot com slash DAax This episode is brought to you by Sopfi all in one finance app where you can bank, borrow, and invest all in one place. Let's talk bank accounts for a second. The average bank savings rate is zero point three nine percent in interest. You're earning pennies on your savings, but it does not have to be that way. 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You're pretty particular about that stuff too, which is saying something. It is. and I'll just say it, the lightweight cotton thong is the best one I've ever tried. I also have their cotton jersey t shirt. I have it in black and I really love it. It tight fit, but it is very flattering. Sometimes I don't love a tight fit shirt, but Skims just does everything right. I really don't know what they're doing over there. The t shirt is perfect for summer. It's a great summer shirt. G get yours, shop SkimMs cotton and all of my favorite pieces at skims dot com. After you place your order, be sure to let them know we sent you. Select podcast in the survey and be sure to select Armchair experpert in the dropd down menu that follows Okay, so I guess I want to fast forward now to Bookmart because we've had you for a while already, even though it feels like five minutes. I know things lead up to it, right? You direct a music video for a band, I don't know, but then you do a Chili pepper Y. So yeah, I did Edward Charpper the Magnetic Zero. There we go. And then the Chili peppers was my first big gig, which I only got because a brilliant director named Mark Romanic who is all time Music video director King, he also directs movies and television shows, but he famously directed many nine inch nails videos, Michael Jackson, he's the top. The sccream video, which is still like the most expensive music video ever made, Michael and Janet. But he was supposed to do the Chili peeppers video and then he was directing me in a show we did aew York called Vinyl, an HBO show. also short lived. Also one that everyone was like, this is gonna be. Also this second thing did with Juno Temple? Yes. I'm obsessed with her. Love Juno Power has always been. Since she was like sixteen and I met her on year one and knew that she was going to be a superstar, then we did Vinyl. Mromanic directing an episod of Viny. here he'ars me talking about how I just want to direct decides to throw me his gig on the chili peppers video. He's like You should do it. I'm going to tell them they should hire you instead He gets me that job I go direct that, time of my life. and then I took myself seriously. I was like, okay I want to do more and directed a short film. You did the glamour thing, right? Exactly. Th a grant, which is the only way people can really get going is through some sort of grant program. then Bookmart came about and I was so lucky you have a real point of view? I mean, I guess it's as simple as that How did you get to that point that quickly? Probably the most valuable acting lesson I learned from working for My Finn, my casting director boss, was that the person who got the role was the one who made the choice. someomeone who came in And with a choice, a choice that risked being the wrong choice, but a perspective on the scene. And people who came in and just tried to be sort of vague, Give you what you want. They never got the job. So I had learned this lesson that made a lot of sense to me and I think with directing, it felt the same. Tarantino says, makeake the movie only you can make. And I think it's really true. It's like don't even try to please everyone. Make it really specific because it's going to be your obsession for several years. You're gonna be married to this process and you have to really, really love it and have something to say. And I think with Bookmart I felt so passionate about telling a story about shame and judgment in high school and female friendships and the intensity of that platonic love. I felt like I'd so much to say that it felt effortless in a way because it just felt like a place to put all these stories and opinions and ideas. And I think that all the high school movies that I grew up loving, I mean, really, Bookmart was really heavily influenced by both Dazays and Cuse and the Breakfast Club, which those two movies really raised me What's nice about it is there is a this kind of came up with the invite to. there is a shared language of when it comes to high school and adolescence that are very fluent in so you only have to reference certain things. For instance a high school bathroom. And like stalls. All you have to do is like show that and people are like, I gota got. I know why that's scary. I get everything involved and there's that shorthand with the audience. And I think that's why somethingomet like High school movie happens with anything that's like, okay, buddy cop movie, hospital show, relationship movie. There is a sense of like got it. There's a shorthand. Short handand. It was like an opportunity to lovingly poke on everyone's trauma from adolescence. And it was. Did you have a soulmate in the boarding school that got you through? I've always had very close friendships and really always had like a group of girls that were my sisters. And certainly in boarding school, I had a tight group. Also we lived together. I mean, you couldn't have gotten closer. And before then I had my riot or die and I still have those relationships. think I was pulling a lot from that I also formed this incredible friendship with Katie Silberman who wrote the film and we really felt like the two characters so much of those characters is modeled after our dynamic and Beanie and Caitlin were starring in the film and they would often just say that they would look over at us and sort of be check in with they're playing It was like a film about friendship being made by people in this intense friendship, and it was wonderful It's so good. It's in the nineties. I covet this. I've never been in a movie that had nineties someplus rotten tomatoes. Oh, I mean, I also made one that has like a thirty five. so Yeah, that's all. they're about forty, I did something wrong. Alas, you made it for six million bucks. and made twenty five million bucks. This is fucking Premium start, thank you, Darling. Don't worry, Darl Darling. That would have been a better title. It's always been a hard. Don't worry, Darling. That one's a Major departure from Totally. That. And so what inspires that? I love psychological thrillers. Name a few of your favorites. I mean Hitchcock as the master of all psychological thrillers. I love Verttigo It was always my top. But then I grew up loving the sixth Sense. I also love like Stephen King novels. Seven. I loved seven That's our movie. Best of all time. Silence of the Lambs. I had a library in my room when I was a kid of all like horror fiction. Like I love scary stories, ghost stories. I as a kid loved like Tales from the Crypt. Oh ye that creepy little. I loved goosebumps, like those kind of books. I always had a fascination with that genre and I was Fascinated by the kind of like early rumblings of the manosphere. Yeah, it wass kind of inell inspired.? I was at the beginning of the inell culture. disturbed by Inell culture meeting technology in a way that I was like, wh, somebody could take advantage of that and put us back into this time. and obviously as a metaphor for what's happening, which is like putting ourselves back into an era where women are stripped of all rights. And I think it preceded I wasn't really thinking about Tradwife culture yet, becausecause that wasn't happening It wasn't happen d C Yeah exactly. And this was smack in the middle, November of twenty twenty September or something. Yes, exactly. Okay, so the fun things about this well, I just loved it. We had this extraordinary crew, like Matdie Batiqu who shot that movie is such a gangster. We made that movie for thirty million dollars. It looks like a hundred million dollars movie. him. And because of Katie Byer and our production designer, we were also shooting in Palm Springs and in LA on stage, but during lockdown. was crazy that we were even outside. And this crew worked so hard on this movie together. and it was ill an effort to build this world in this time. And for me, getting to do car chases in a sixties porsche, it was just like a catnip catnip. reallyally just want to shoot car chases. I really just want to get hired to do like Fast the Furious twenty seven. Most exciting thing for me on Don't worry Drawling was that the Stunt team who were our stunt drivers. I realized at one point that I wanted them to be in the movie because we were about to go hire actors, The stunt guys were going to double the actors to drive. And I was like Why don't you guys just be in the movie? Yeah They were all so excited and they gave it E I had to keep reminding them that they didn't have to hide their faces. Ko stunk guys. Fously, that's what they do. And they were all so brilliant and they gave these great performances. And I was so happy when the stunts category was added for the accademy. Yeah because the whole business is built on that That's a fucking movie by the way. Fall guy. Oh, I love it. Do my kids have watched it twenty five times? I think it's a perfect film. And then the director of that film was our stunt coordinated Bon Fraan, David Leach, and taught me many things including What to do if you ever fall off a high bridge or building? I'm gonna tell you guys right now because it's important. You have to make yourself into like a tilted line. Put yourself at an angle because if you go straight down, your spine will shoot up through your brain. So you have Beuse we were shooting on a high bridge and he's like, okay If you fall off What? And he's like, if you fall off, just try to land at an angle And I always think I' like It's impossible.. collllect yourself. takeake a minute, leararn a lot about dynamics. Okay. I' in a hurry. Yeahame toes. Yeah bl your toes at an angle. But I love stunts. I loved shooting those stunt sequences. Oh, blowing stuff up. Anytime I was at work, and I was like, arere you kidding? my job?'s a blow up the sixth street f. Yeah. I think you're in adrenaline junkie? Yes. Okay. Maybe from your parents. Yes, totally. The idea of like, are you really alive if you're not experiencing something at like full tilt I went back and some of the stuff I read was you doing press around the time of Thank you Darling. So worry Darling. Don't worry. this retitle. Why is it thank you Darling? Thank you worry, Darling. Much more gracious. I've been doing a good job until now. Don't worry, Darling. And you impress everyone so much And then it all falls apart. Yeah Yeah. Isn't that the fun part for you though?ike when will I fall off the balance beam? And I'm offidge. Yeah, yeah. at angle Okay, don't worry about worry entirely. Yes. At the time, I could tell you you were sick of talking about like people are making a big deal of the sex stuff. Yes. But I'm here to tell you that was great stuff. It was worthy of talking about like Monica and I We both saw it. we were like, o, did you like? Yeah, I loved it Almost on cute, The dining room table scene. Yeah yeah we loved it. I had wanted to shoot that was like a scene in my head for so long. The idea of basically turning the idea of like a feast into like Yeah. like I love food so much. It's really just me bringing food into every possible scene. I the notion of like showing up to the table likeike you're gonna to devour Yes is wonderful. And I also was really passionate about like showing you like female pleasure. I wanted it to be about that. But obviously, yes, it overtook the conversation in a way that was a bummer because there was so much else to talk about But here's a fascinating conversation. There is some tricky obscurity with feminism and sexuality in film because Clearly women were objectified for a long, long time. and then clearly that's a pause to confront. And then also like feminists are fucking sexual. you want to see sexual fantasies. Yeah. There can be this weird balancing act, I feel like if you're feminist, like are you betraying feminism by having nudity? whichich I don't I reject. Right Of course. But there's some weird tension there about how you do the female driven sexy fucking movie, which I want you to do Totally without any stress. Why know we both love Esther Perrell Yeah. And I love how she writes about how there's nothing very politically aorrect about eroticism. She talks about women's sexual fantasies and allowing for them to veer into a territory that is not something that you would necessarily ever experience in real life or that you feel is like politically correct in how you think things should be, but your curiosity, your imagination is allowed to veer into that ter. You want a power dynamic in your life. Eact. I want a different power dynamic when it time. And I love that she writes about how like it's so important to let your mind go to these places And Jillian Anderson compiled an incredible book of female fantasies called Want, which is a book of Anonymous fantasies from women around the world. And all you learn about the woman at the end of each fantasy is like what they do, where they live and if they have kids or not. And it's a lot of like powerful women who have fantasies about being objectified. Yes. As there are these powerful men. Yes. I made a movie about BDSM culture last year and I learned so much about that. and it is all like super powerful men who on their lunch break go to the dungeon. It is true that when it comes to Sexuality in film, this question of like, are you making the problem worse by showing women in any way Is nudity and female nudity a part of the problem or solution? And this has been written about for many decades and Gloria Deinam wrote about like self objectification. There's so much to think about with it and I think it's the way it's done is always what makes the difference. But I think for a long time, we weren't even seeing female orgasms in movies. It wasn't part of the man. It was all about the manen. so I think even that feels re completely unrealistic female orgasm, which is Michael Dougas starts plowing you from behindout any warm. And two minutes later you're screaming and. You' screaming men unfairly sllam a girl against the w behind. She's Ma up for the orgasm. She's like, thank you. That's all I need But at the same time, movies are allowed to be a fantasy and kind of the idea should be your fantasy. be the fantasy. just need both partartyies making their fantasy so it's equal ye ye. Yeah. I don't want to see males get rid of their fantasy or females. Exactly. Yeah I want everyone to like explore a little bit more Yeah. And I think for that movie, I was like, I just really want to focus on it being about female pleasure and that that was actually part of this male pink This world was about men who have created a utopian society for themselves. And I was like, well, what happens to female pleasure within that? These were topics that were very interesting. They had to be explplored That's fascinating. Yeah. Okay, now I have directed Kristen in scenes with a male lover Yeah And I'm fine with it. I think for the male lover, Josh Dumel in this guy. I love Josh Dum. He's the sweetest guy. He's perfect to have your wife hook up with me. Yes, he is. But I remember just being like, I felt like I needed to be extra smart about that dynamic to make her happer hb been brought in into makeout with my wife Yeah and I'm directing the thing. Yes. Did you feel any of that weirdness? Oh and don't worry Darling. No, no. That wasn't tricky. That wasn't tricky. Okay. My thing is and maybe this comes from being such a theater nerd as a kid is like Once you're kind of in that dynamic of making something, making a play or a movie, like everybody becomes part of the same effort to just like make it as good as it can be. And I feel like that eliminates a lot of the anxiety that exists in a regular sort of dynamic. think that Particularly when you're directing it, I remember we had to have the camera spun around very slowly during the scene where she's on the table. and Maddie, the DP and I are just standing at the cama and we're like, is that glass in the way? Fuck the glass is in the way. moveve the glass. No, Okay, get ready for the glass. Like we're just looking at what can be seen. I think that any sort of weirdness and nerves around what's actually happening are eliminated by the obsessive focus on the shot and making it work I so happy with how it was all looking and feeling. I felt so proud. I was just like, we fucking nailed that. We're not in like the nineteen forties anymore. Our kissing. I do appreciate when people really go for it. Well you can feel think about we can remember these incredible like the fucking Tom Cruise Kelly topop gun makeout senior like exxactly let's go. I mean nine and a half weeks was a huge. You can feel real passion, just like you can feel any emotion. And like you said, like the stunts, we try to make them as real as possible, why wouldn't we go for it I think as long as everyone feels great, then it's awesome. That's the nuance of the whole thing. That's the nuance of the whole thing. ' when you're friends it can be so funny. Like Sam Rockkeell and I we did this movie called Better Living Th throughrough Chemistry where we had to have the craziest sex scenes. It was like a montage and it was so funny. L we would just cry laughing because we were two good buddies. Yeah. The idea of thinking of each other in a sexual way was just so ludicrous.es harder when you're best friends. You were talking about When you got to direct one of the incredible things was recognizing. Oh, you can design these situations differently. Yes And in particular, you're talking about a closed set. So there's an illusion of a closed set. R. Historically, which means they're going to clear out everyone that doesn't have to be in the scene, and then you're going to rehearse in private, and then you're going to have a minimal crew to film the whole thing But in your experience So often it was not really a closed set. and there's all these little sneaky monitors that are around. Like there's a monitor on the sound cart that just always mysteriously stays on. And it was when we were shooting Booksmart, we were shooting a scene with Caitln Diever and Dina Silvers. and they're in a bathroom together and it's like a sexy scene. And I was so fiercely protective of them Of. I shut down every monitor and we had an amazing crew, but people don't realize that a clos set can be even more closed and can reallyally be closed. And in the defense of the crew, let's also be honest, all of it's white noise. like they got to run cable and then they gott to throw the dolly It's not even like, they're not paying attention to any the scene. So they don't even know that they've wandered into one that's sensitive. Exactly. Yeah, they're like, I don't know what's going on. It depends on the comfort of the actor too, because I did this movie last year with Cooper Hoffman, this Gregor Rocky movie They basically I play a Dominatrix and that one, it's called I Want Your Sex. And that movie, I would like get up the middle of the scene, basically naked and walk around in the moditor and be like, Hey guys, do you because I just felt comfortable with it and I at that point had no nerves about it. So some actors are like, it's fine. I don't care. And they can feel like it's weirder if everyone gets weird Which is a thing for some people. So it's like based on what they want. But I do believe that the value of being an actor who has turned into a director is that you can empathize with every part of the experience from when it's cold and they're the only freezing ones that everyone else has thick winter coats on to the sex scenes, to bringing them in too early, to not giving them enough time to prepare. So I like to think that that's like value of having been in their shoes is that I can make particularly sex scenes a little less weird. I have a quick question about that movie. Well, it was funny. I had drinks with Katie recently and she was talking about I guess maybe we were talking about Fame sick, Lena's book or something. and we were talking about how things get very blown out ofure Yeah, yeah, yeah. She specifically referenced that movie. She was like, it was so crazy because there was all this stuff around it and all this crazy quote drama that was not real Yeah. And she as the writer was like, I don't understand how to tell people that it's not real Yeah And you were at the center of a lot of that. How did you handle? wereere you like, I hate everyone You come to realize that it is so far from reality because it's about b it's about selling tabloids And okay, a long, long time ago, I remember Jen Garner giving me advice when I was just a baby actor and she said the thing about this business is that you get Unwillingly sort of cast in the soap opera of the media. Once they cast you as your character, that is your character. And that is the narrative and it really has nothing to do with you, but it exists and they will keep it on the way that you know, onene life toelve will stay on for one hundred fifty years. And that was such a great advice because it allowed me to understand the separation between reality and what the media presents And I think we all have lacked like critical thinking when observing tableot stuff because you're like, Oh, snap. It's also, by the way. The world is so overwhelmingly difficult and grim and when you can sink into a juicy tabloid soap opera, it's a lot more fun than think about how different's. And so I was aware that we had been kind of turned into this tornado of drama that had so little to do with reality. Yeah. and that nothing was gonna chang that at one point our crew wrote this letter, like this beautiful letter basically saying like signigned by the entire crew being like none of the shit that you're saying in the press is real. there was no fighting, there was no drama. And we all had this great time and the crew They did that on their own. And like nobody cared. Exactly It doesn't fit the narrative of's not as fun Yeah's not sameame as I know, but it drives. Ohes. It's maddening. And I think that having a healthy understanding of what that is and that it's a machine and just understanding that is essential, I think, to surviving in this business. But for that movie, the heartbreak for me was that the crew had worked so hard on this movie and we were so proud of it. And we like never got to talk about the movie. Yeah. 'cause it was always this other stuff that was just fictional drama that titillated people And I mean, I get it, like shit's rough. It was COVID. Yeah. peoplee wanted j. wanted something. It was hard. Life is hard and tabloids feel like junk food and you're like, donon't tell me that it's not good for me. Like let me eat it. Don't tell me that the flavor isn't real flavor. flavor It's so good. It's red dye.s't talk about the red dye. Let me enjoy. There' a moment where I'm at an airport And I look at the cover of a magazine and it says, Ashon Amila are getting divorced And then I literally go You know, I was with them three weeks ago. They seemed really good. Could this be true? It's on the cover of a magazine. Right. it's on the cover. it must have some. Yeah, like, did I miss something Right They're fine. they've always been fine I know they're just not going to get. Its also it's impossible for them to keep up with the need for so many more stories. I mean these tableoids peopleople have to come up with something every time the same content inferno that we all are. Yeah you got to shovel it in. Exactly. Okay premise of the invite. It just got Tastier and tastier. ' thank God, I didn't know anything about it. Yeah It is lovely. That's good. So at first I'm just like, okay, I'm meaneting this couple. It's you and Seth. Yes. Seth Rogan Sethogan Seth Rogan. But it starts with a quote. What is it's an Oscar Wild quote about being married. Yes. one should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry. which is very cynical I put that quote in there because I think represents the perspective We we were talking about earlier, like a director having a perspective that you feel I like quotes that contextualize the kind of director's perspective. It's like the same thing when you read a book that starts with a quote and I'm like, all All right, I see your kind of see your vibe. The movie is both romantic and cynical, I would argue It's both romantic and cynical. And then also because it's Oscar Wild, it's like an astute observation that's also clever and funny So you' go like, oh, I can kind of say this rough thing, but I'm also putting it in a package that it's still fun. Yeah, so we meet you guys. and although I'm not in one of those relationships, I'm so aware of How easily all relationships fall into this? Yes. And that relationship being one that has, I would argue, slid into a kind of rhythm of resentment and a complete inability to hear or see one another. Y. And you are just sort of coasting along on like inertia and obligation. And your partner now somehow is the cause of very malody you have.ike you're not responsible anymore for any of your suffer.tely You should fully on your partner. Yep. That's where we start. And s' so fucking funny and you're immediately great. You guys are so good together. Did you know him? I knew him only a little bit when he asked me to come and do the studio and I came and did an episode and we had So much fun together He reminded me that I had actually screen tested for Kocked Up. Oh one hundred seventy thousand years earlier. Great movie I was like, oh my God, that was our first time acting together and I hadd been a fan of his forever, but we had never really gotten to play. And so the studio was Immediately so fun, and we recognize something in each other right away. we were like, Wait a minute We have a real fun time finding a rhythm with each other After a similar thing, maybe? Maybe. Yeah. There's a similar goal to the way we approach it. and he's a genius for so many reasons. He's so sensitive to the audience's experience. He can feel what the audience is feeling at any moment So putting this movie together with him He was so helpful in reminding us at all times as we kind of workshop the script together of how the audience would be feeling. And within a scene that you're improvising with him, he can feel where it needs to go. And it was so fun. but like The thing that I'm so proud of is that everyone knows that's a genius. Eone knows he's one of the funniest people, smartest people, so stylish This movie, I feel very proud of him in the way that he, I think has shown an additional dimension, which I call sad Dad. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah yeah. He's so good at playing someone who's kind of Hit midlife And didn't work out for him. He plays a guy who was in a band. He had a little pop the beginning of his life. Yeah. now he's living on his parents like fucking loser. He feels an incredible imposter syyndrome within his relationship, within his life. He lives in the apartment that he grew up in, his parents house. He's bottomed out and he's reached this kind of like numb space that he has decided to settle into and he may settle into and live in forever, his wife who I play has hit a similar place of dissatisfaction with life, but is way more Anxious I was going to say it is the yin and yang you often see play out, which is like the dude just fs out. Yesrender. And then the woman gets so much anxiety and it's trying to control every fucking thing. No one's prospering in this dynamic. And then we meet the neighbors, which are played by Edward Norton and Penel B Cruz No. She's so powerful and she's So beautiful.. And so why does she look like? I know. That's unfair. Do you know she has a twin sister? No no. I are frernal. I they whoever noctnal? I don't wan to get that wrong. We'll check. But she just has this incredible warmth to her and this power, but I've never felt anything like it. I mean, I knew that I was in love with her, but it really was taken to new heights, all of us. And the chemistry that she's able to create with a house plant. like she can do anything, but she and Seth genuinely had amazing chemistry.. So fun. everyverybody on set because one cool thing about this movie is we shot it in order The crew was more invested than they typically are because they were watching it play out. So they were like, oh oh, oh, what's gonna happen? Oh no. they would watch the rehearsals and like clap at the end of rehearsals, like kids watching a theater production done in several different bits. like they were so invested. Everyone was feeling like, wait a minute, Seth and Penelopebe are in love. Yeah, yeah, ye it was And maybe they were They were in love and you heard it here first. It was so extraordinary to see the pairing of two very different actors just boom clicking Man, I mean, she just is unlike anyone else. The fact that she wanted to do the movie, I felt like I was being punked. Yeah, tellell me how'd you get her and how intimidated were you to guide her? First of all On our Zoom that we had, she read the script written by Rashida Jones and Will McCormick, and she loved script. Spanish movie? Yes It was based on a Spanish movie called The People of Stairs, which in Spanish was called Sentimental. and that was based on a play and this turned into a movie in Spain. It was also made into a movie in South Korea in Germany, in Italy, in France. It's unversal premise. We got sexy neighbors sexy neighbors coming over for dinner. What will happen? How will you handle that if your marriage is falling apart? I love the idea that every culture has this basic Question And every movie is very different And so Rashida Unuell wrote the English version. And then we approached it in this really fun way, which I had never done before. It was always my dream to shoot it in order Shoot it on film Workshop the script together as a unit The writers in the cast for two weeks before we shot the film and then to continue workshopping it as we were filming. That sort of like high intensity adrenaline that I love the risk involved was that we would, I suppose, go off the rails and lose the tether of the story. And yet with these people, I knew we were safe because we had some of the best storytellers in the business putting their heads together. And I loved that we were taking big leaps and we were making it more and more specific. So like we would approach every scene and think, how can we make that more personal and more specific and more unexpected? I mean, the example I think about a lot is that big little lie show. When we got into that twisted relationship with Alexander Skararsgard and Nicole Kidman I've never been in that dynamic But what I could sense was, oh, this is the real dynamic. there was a level of specificity and the way the pattern in the cychle went was like, o, I get the trap of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I can see how people are trapped in this. And it's just through how specific it really is. I think that's when the actors are allowed to infuse real experience into the performance into the characters and that takes Writers who are really open to a process that is not traditional because we were taking the script far from its original structure and making it more and more specific to these actors and their choices. We were thinking about it as we went, we were very careful to make sure that everything set up in an authentic way, what was coming next And that everything that happened would only happen based on what had happened before it. So like we would finish a scene and then say, okay, well then tomorrow's scene, we have to rewrite it because it would never happen that way anymore. R. Because we've already crossed that boundary. We played that beat. So now we have to do something different. it's constantly engaging in the process of workshopping the script as we went along. We didn't know how it ended a week before we shot it. Wh We had an idea of the intention of how we wanted to end, but the way we wanted to do it, Seth and I felt really strongly that we would actually not say very much in the end. and anyone who's ever been through an experience that sort of creates an eruption, a conflict in a relationship knows that sometimes the speechlessness is the most devastating feeling, which we were so passionate about the idea like people who are very quick to be snarky, you know things have shifted when they actually you can be speechless, like some shit hit some shit hit the Because fighting, you're still engaged. Yeah Fighting is you're fighting. You're at least fighting for it in some way, but when you're done talking, you've resigned. You're done now. Yeah, exactly. This pause on the battlefield and it's like, oh, no, this is different. So we were able to do that because we had this group of Unbelievable I mean, I've never felt anything like this dynamic and I can't believe that I got to act with them, which was not the original plan. I was not supposed to be in the movie I was putting all these ideas in front of the cast of like actresses who could play this part and all incredible people And they kept like not getting back or like not answering, not coming up with the decision together. And I was like, well guys, we got to figure it out. And then they got together and then they came to me and they're like, we want you to do it. The three other acts. And I was like Yeah, right. Weirdly I had The confidence to direct Edward Norton, but the idea of like acting with Edward and Penelope I was like, Are you kidding me? I can't. Not me. And Edward was the one who was like, you obvious are telling the story for a reason Yeah. And maybe you need to play this character. But who do you think you were in that quartet Like who am I in Wh are I really? I am a combination of all four of them for sure. I have the kind of like resistance to social situations like Seth's character, the idea of a surprise dinner party in my house is my personal hell. Okay. I have some of the like people pleasing anxiety of Angela. In my dreams, I want to be like Penelope's character. So I think I have the aspiration to have the kind of wisdom of Penelope's character. And then Edward's character has this incredible ability to have reinvented himself and this kind of almost infant like openness, this sweet kind of openness to change, which is something that as I've gotten older, I've learned. I'm a combo of all four. Now there's a very fine line between mutiny and collaboration. Yeah. becausecause Edward was telling me how much of it you guys all did together basically And so I'm imagining myself directing that. Boy, I want just the right amount of them and then it has to be a singular vision. I do believe a director has to bring to I think actors want that. They want to feel there's someone going How you navigating the line is like, okay, that's enough ideas for the day. I know what I want. You guys might not think this is the thing, but I know that this is what I want They were all incredibly respectful of that exact thing, of the need for it to all you to be deferred to. Exactly. So they would give me many ideas and then allow me to kind of say that one feels right. That not so good. Is that hard for you to say That one's not the best. H It's interesting. I think initially I just wanted everyone to feel really comfortable giving me every idea. It was like, G me everything opening it up. But then I knew by the time we shot, I was like at this point, I'm going to start kind of pruning the multiple ideas and say that we're going there. But they also really respected that and would say, like, what do you think? what do you want? I mean it was so surreal for me the first day Edward was like What do you think? How do you think I should approach this moment? I was like, oh my Godd. All I could see was like ime fear and you're so good. They're all such professionals that they just understood that I had a very, very clear vision It was not specific to how things would play out in scenes at all. I knew that was going to be a full discovery. But I did have like the intentions always in my head. And so they would check in to be like, is that fitting the intention that you have for it? Does that feel right? And that was so so professional of them to always kind of know that they're all filmmakers too. I mean they're all directors. Yeah. So that helps. So far from a mutini. It was a complete collaboration. I've never felt anything like it. It was like, We were all in rhythm with each other. I hope Edward tells you the story, but he'll probably be overly humble about it. So I actually want to tell was there's a scene where his character tells a story story back st. Yeah.. And he came up with that entirely on his own. and I didn't hear that until we were rolling cameras because there was nothing there before and we needed a ramp, an emotional ramp to take us from one place to another in the movie and to shift the weather in the room. Edward said, I have an idea. I want to tell a story. And he said, Do you want to know what it is? And I said, donon't tell me. because I want to hear it on camera, which he couldn't believe, especially because we were rolling film, didn't have a lot of money. And I said, justust tell me like roughly how long so I know what kind of ag I need on the cameras. He was like, Do you think maybe you could have two cameras that day, put them on you and set so we can film your real reactions. And I had no idea where he was going go with it And he started telling the story that was so different than anything I could have imagined. and I just burst out crying thinking about this he was telling the story. was so powerful. he's so good. He's so good. You're like. This is a real story. this happened to you. Yeah. I believe it. And Seth is having his completely different reaction, which is perfect for his character. It was such a gift and now that's one of my favorite scenes in the movie. Oh, it's incredible. And everyone was doing that. Esther Perll present in this movie. Esther was our consultant on the film. Okay. I mean, there's even direct quotes that Penelope' saying. Oh yes, Esther's whole perspective is like Yeah ye Penely basically plays us. Yeah. Yeah H they had a friendship prior to this? No, I introduced them they feel perfectly matched. Oh my gosh, I know that's the podcasts that I need I need them to link up forever and ever. Padeli had heard of Ester, but she had never met her and then I introduced them on Zoom and it was Fireworks and Penelope and Esther then had long conversations about the character. and every time they had a conversation, Penelope's character would get M specific and I could feel her like slowly like morphing. because Phenelope in the movie is not all Penelope in real life. She never met her. just such a good actress that you'd believe that's exactly her. She is the sweetest, most kind of adorable, giggly, hilarious, but she's not a star and that is a huge testament to her talent Those direct quotes you're talking about really, they became like goalposts in the film that we were kind of working around these philosophies that we cared so deeply about that we wanted to be able to hit. So it was like making sure we could justify getting to that place in the conversation. So the whole idea of, yeah, you can have a new relationship with the same person. When I first heard her say that in a TEed talkalk, whatever was almost twenty years ago That blew my mind. I'd never even considered that concept. It's so beautiful. It is Yeah. This relationship is over. You may have another one or you may go your own separate way Right. But a new one or no one is what's next. And allowing for that that maybe that's It something that can allow people to change within a relationship and let go of resentment for maybe things that have happened or the person you just don't want to be anymore and that you're allowed to reintroduce yourself to each other and decide, are you in love with who your person is today? Exactly. Would you like to meet them where they are now and have a relationship with them now? Yeah. It's so hard for people. Yes. of course it's hard. It's hard It takes a lot of courage to get rid of that resentment that is in some ways convenient because it takes away the agency to have responsibility in your own life. It's much easier to be like,izzle ball and sh. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Everyone's in a relationship that the only flaw is the other person. Eact. We were just talking about this last night. So many people have this notion that there are not two people doing the exact same thing. I mean, Esther talks about people come to couples therapy like they're doing drop off. Yeah Yeah. fix them. Fix this person, please. Thankk you. And's like,, this is a fifty, fifty thing. This is a system Yeah. you guys are both in. and you're both playing roles in this system. I mean, mating in captivity That book when Eester released it twenty years ago is now it's the twentyentet anniversary and she's reissued it with a new forward. and it's fascinating. And I think it's required reading for anybody in relationships. Or just listen to her podcast too, which is so mind blowing. the way she can just drop in to these most horrific scenarios that couples deal with and like navigate it perfectly. Did you hear the ones she did about the guy who's in love with his AI Oh yeah, so I started listening to that one it was recommended to me and I was having a hard time understanding the guy. rough conection anyways, but yeah. it's wild. And it's so crazy that Spike Jones made her whatever was fifteen years ago. What you were in? I play the like nightmare date with a human that really makes him think it'd be better to be with an AI. It might just be easyer Yeah. Yeah I choo my phone. but I think that the way Esther takes that relationship apart, by the end of the podcast episode, you actually think you're listening to a couple on a couch ' she keeps inviting the AI to share.. She's like She's so fucking open minded the way she approaches this whole thing. Thing, it's open minded know my m seems to be like, dude, as convenient as this is you gott to have a human But she's curious about is he getting what he needs? But when I asked her about it, she said, peopleeople can live without sex, they can't live without touch. And that that guy, when she asked him, what do you miss about having Astrid be human? and he said, I just want to like cuddle on the couch and watch Netflix. Yeah. I mean, this iss so relatable. So relatable. Yeah. And that's the thing. the universal experience of like how do we survive in relationships. That's what's been so interesting about taking this movie out now to audiences is people Connect with it. That I didn't expect to connect with it, like young people. We're all middle aged people. You, we went through it. There's like seventeen year olds watching the movie and they're like, o, that's me. That is me. And' like Yeah. I was talking to these college kids and they were like, yeah, I felt really relevant. I'm like, reallyally? That's fascinating. Now, were you nervous at all that this is gonna to open up so many questions about your stance on marriage Are you nervous at all? I'm interested in all those questions. And what was really fun is that everyone making the movie has completely different kind of relationship histories. And Seth and I as the main couple in the film, you know, Seth has been with Lauren for twenty years. They are doing it their own way in a way that I just so respect. They respect each other as individuals. They admire the hell out of each other. They are best friends, but they still have this really sexy dynamic. They're nailing it. It was really interesting to put him in a relationship that only made him more clear on why he was so in love with his wife and wife. And he was like, oh my God, people live like this Bickering and not having sex, which he couldn't believe that People don't know' so cute. He was like, what do you mean? This is science fiction. All of us were like pouring our own experiences the part in a way that was like Yeah. I think the most romantic movie I've ever seen or I cried the hardest of. and it was because I had broken up with the girls withith for nine years and then I saw the movie, But ternal sunshine in the spy was mine It's really just the one exchange where they're deciding whether or not they're going to be together again. She's like, I'm going to do this and you're going to get annoyed and then I'm going to do this and you're going to do this. And he goes, okay. And I'm like, o fuck, I could have just said okay. I could have like loved that and honored and appreciated that. I went into this whole zone where it wass like, oh yeah, I met when I was broke and we were in the tent with the light. L we had that relationship. Now I have money and I'm famous. Like will I ever have anything that's that Guine So in a weird way, that movie made me deeply sad. Oh, De I could relate to that. likeike, yeah, okay, I'll take all that, you know? Right. Right. So did your any sadness at the end becausecause your couple, well, we can't give away the end, but you know, there's hope in your. Well it's actually interesting you see it that way because it's sort of ambiguous by. And the audiences we've taken it to so far, I do a little poll at the end in the Q and A and it's been fifty fifty every time. I had an argument with someone about the end. That's c I disagree with you. That it's hopeful. Yeah. Yes. And Seth and I disagreed when we were filming it. He was like, ride or die felt like these people are together forever. He was so sure of it. But is' it It also reflective of all of us in the room. Totally. I believe fuck, I've been doing this for nineteen years. There have been periods where it's like, I wouldn't have bet on us. Yes. And then here we are. But you've also had breakups that you are like, yeah, that ran its That should have been the end Exactly. Yeah For me is how I was like, that's done. Often when we see breakups in movies, it's devastating in a way that makes us afraid in life of ever seeing an ending as maybe a healthy result. Right. And we don't have a lot of movies about a divorce that should happen. I remember amazing misses Doubtfire was made in the nineties And it ends with them not getting back together. think the whole movie like, okay is Holly gonna work? And the ending is just like, no, but they actually find a way to live separately, really happily. And I think That was very bold for that time, but it's still something people are uncomfortable with, particularly when there's kids involved. There's still this idea that like, no, no, no, you make it work no matter what. Yeah. And fifty percent of marriages end. so clearly, there's a lot of people coming to a different conclusion, but can we kind of change the conversation around it? But what's interesting is that now I've watched the movies so many times that I at the end, sometimes I've started to feel like maybe I have hope I like, Oh, am I changing my opinion basased on how I feel today. But offering the opportunity end a relationship allows for you to make the choice to be in the relationship. And I think that is V very aere. This is a choice. And if people take away the obligation to be there and the resentment and the paperwork and it's like, get rid of all that. That's all easily undone. You can get rid of that. You're allowed to leave. So if you're here, make the choice to be here and actually be here or don't. And that's okay. That's also okay. But also we have a a good time pressure testing this relationship they're observing from upstairs. Yes. That seems Like aic seemems great. But then which I like is you're truthful enough to go like, oh yeah, and then that has problems. All of this shit has problems. Yeah, conflict isn't The problem, it's the inability to be honest about it and resolve it. So we wanted to show an example of like rupture and repair. Yeah. We're not saying like you're only happy if you never fight It's how you fight, how you recover from the fight and fighting's actually really healthy if it's honest and you're not letting this resentment build up over time and secrets and all those things that come if you don't communicate. There's also this delightful thing and I think a lot of people thought this about Bri and I, by the way, because we were in an open relationship all nine years. And I also think there's this thing when you meet the couple that seems to be totally fine with everything They're so intelligent. they have thought through everything and they're unaffected by all this. When you get to see those people affected Yes. It's really rewarding. It kind of confirms this hunch we have that no, no one can transcend those feelings. Now I'm on the other side of that debate, right? whichich is like, no, we really did, and it was really fine. And I know everyone thought we were flls shit. Well, it's also very threatening to people to present the idea that it's possible You could just love each other and Yeah, they don't even want to let that to the room. Well, because they know they've experienced jealousy before and it's just such a dark feeling I've heard about jealousy is that if you take I'm ruining a Buddhist adage, but it's that if you take the ego out of jealousy, you're left with admiration. I think about it all the time. That' lovely. The other one is if you take the ego out of anger you're left with determination. So it's not about like eliminating the feeling. it's transforming it by removing the go I which is so hard to do But it's like if you're jealous of somebody, it's usually because you actually admire them you recogn them you recognize something an offering people would like. Also, another thing that's really from meeting in captivity for Mester's book is the recognition of the third. She calls it the shadow of the third, which is that when you're in a relationship with someone, it's important to recognize the opportunity they have to be with someone else and that's not bad thing, It actually keeps the erotic charge alive. If you remove that then you lose this kind of separateness that is important. You've traded safety what you think is safety for death. Exactly. the idea of like acknowledging maybe if jealousy is just a use to be like you are desirable Yeah and you desire others and that's actually a charge. I don't want you to lose. I dont why you not have that? Polyamory is a whole other step in that direction. I'm critical. I'm just like, I w to see this work out. Right. I know a hard won relationship is I don't know how you That's the multiple people, it sounds exhausting. Yeah everything thing was like, if I never know about something I don't It's amazing. And that worked right for us Intil didn't. I always have to say that. But nine years we broke up. I don't think that is the reason I feel guilt free frraming it that way is that just wasn't It wasn't the thing that ended. It wasn't the thing that ended up. Yeah, which people would probably assume. Yeah. Think of how many couples were so happy when you guys broke up I know ex. They're like Yeah see We talk about also the concept of comppersion in the movie, which is also a necessic Cpersion. Compersion is experiencing joy within your partner's joy. and we're using it specifically in terms of like sexuality. So they say they transfer jealousy into compversion, the idea being sexually pleased and that I'm experiencing it because you are setet and my characters we're like, what on earth, we can't imagine. But I think that this The whole point of this is we stop recognizing our partners as whole people, and we stopped recognizing ourselves as whole people. And I want people to leave the movie feeling like, am I blaming my partner for all my unhappiness? Am I fully realized whole person? Have I really thought about myself in that way? notot just someone who completes someone else or someone who needs to be completed? Do I recognize my person as a separate person And I think that would be a healthy thing to put out there. A good line of thinking. that's useful. I feel like with comedy, my favorite kind of laugh is the laugh of someone recognizing themselves and the sense of like, oh my God, I thought I was the only one. and you can hear it in the theater when they're like,. And it's like that's the best because It takes the shame out of an experience the sense that people are less alone and they're just like, we're getting to laugh at how ridiculous we all are. And the movie is really just having fun with that. It's like, look, we're all just awkward humans attempting to relate to each other. Oh It's impossible Olivia, I have had you for so long. I'. This is your second This is your second of the day. Oh, that's okay. Thank you so much. Oh, such a joy. I think you're so good. I'm so excited to watch all the movies you'll make. Thanks. Yeah, I'm really a huge fan. I'm so grateful. And I feel like when I heard that you guys liked it. It was very exciting because I think there's this feeling of like very, very funny talented people canan be very critical of comedies. Sure. So it meant a lot to me when I heard you liked it. It's so good. It comes out june twentyth. June twenty sixth in New York in LA six, six two. Kind of cool, right? Six two, six, two six. I wish that was like aue. it was like a Taylor Swift thing where like you could unlock from coordinates or something lead you to a show. No, it's New York and LA, june twenty sixth, and then it goes wider from there. so it's fully wide, july tenth Okay, july tenth, great. getet your fourth of July blackouts done Yeah, Yeahah. And then when you're just thinking like, I gota tighten it up this summer. Maybe I'll go to a movie instead of I bl came out his nameight. It's a great date night movie And I think it's a great double date movie. And my fantasy is that people'll swing outor yourself go and swing. But people will think like who's the other fun couple you know to go see it with and then have dinner and talk and argue. It'll spark so much That's my fantasy. Oh yeah, really well it's great. I think that's assured Olivia, this has been a blast. I'm so grateful you said yes. coming Thank you. in the next movie direct. We'll do it again Sweet, de. Thank you. Stay tuned for the facts cheack so you can hear all the facts that were wrong coffee over. Oh, he's a very very. Very nice. We did something earlier. We tested a theory. Oh yeah We were between we were between recordings and u I hate to admit to this, but I was very tired and then I just soon as the episode was over, I just laid down on the carpet face down in the studio and then I said if I were on railroad tracks and now was unconscious, non responsive Could you move me off the railroad tracks? Yeah. And I said, off course. Yeah, you were like, no problem. And then I said, okay, give it a shot. I want to tread lightly here. I want to be honest, but I also don't want to hurt your feelings. Go ahead. I was like Is she even trying to lift me up? I was I knew I wasn't going anywhere. Like from when you first gave it your first thrust, you you get you went for it And I didn't move at all and I didn't come off the ground didnt even it was weird. I was like she's not even going to be able to give me an inch off these tracks. like, you know I gave up immediately It was really pretty It was pretty bad. I reallyally like could not get you to move at all. And I wasn't doing anything sneaky. I was just laying there. I know. And then' so heavy Yes, and then we went up to see Lincoln in the gym. Yeah. and u You said try you kept saying, which I think is hilarious is you It's fine though, becausecause you get super strengthed. I do. I'm like when we're really in this position, I' to get super strength. I know, you're certain of it. am I'm nervous. a lot of people think they hear about the one story from the fifties where a mom lifted a car off a baby or whatever. So often, the moms always can lift the car off the kids But yeah, you're so confident. You're not even worried. I'm not, which is that scares me I mean, Lincoln did better. She No, but I wanted I also want to say something. Okay. I was like, well, if we're really doing this like for real roleplay, I can't do for real what I would do because I would just be yanking your arm like out of its socket And I knew I couldn't. So I couldn't give if my full. I also didn't want to scrape up your whole face. I was on carpet, but okay. Yeahah, but o Rug burn. Okay And I know that. and I know you'd be upset if I scraped. Oh my God, you don't know anything. I wouldn't be upset. I wouldn't even acknowledge my face was scraped. I almost I couldn't admit I was tired. What are you talking about? not It wouldn't have been like. Oh, Monica, would you think you'd ever hear me do that? Of course. I mean, it happened five minutes later. We were. It did You make a great point. But That's my child. Either it hurt you. So then we asked her to do it. She really got in the most. She didn't do what I did, which was half stng. She thought about it a little. Maybe it's from her eighteen months of j jitsu train. two Yeah. But she immediately thought to just grab one arm and get me rolling. L don't try to lift me but I did say before we went up there, I said, it was hard because you were on your stomach and I would want you on your back But you got to get me on my back by the channel. And then yeah, Lincoln was so keen to impress you that she was running into me like not looking where her feet were going. And she got my side of my side skin, which is very tender in between the rubber mat in her fucking tennis shoes sole. Yeah. and it felt like she ripped all the skin off my And I did say Al second time. No I was like you said Al the first time and then you said second you Okay hard like stop that. That' two for two. Yeah. And I was like, this is why I only went half straightth. I lost that one. It really did hurt. I know, I'm sure it did. But listen, if you're on the railroad tracks, I'm gonna you won't feel it because you'll be non responsive as you said, but You're gonna be very injured after that. What have you said? You're gonna be very happy with where you wake up You're not going to be on the tracks A Monica tried for a few times. I was like, that's it. You're I'm in three pieces. L Well, you know what? I was also making the steaks hkes I was going. I know. That was really scary. I hateated. You know what, though? I would die too Becauseuse I wouldn't give up. You'd have to give up. No, I wouldn't. I would just keep stay there. I wouldn't know by superhuman strength would happen at the last minute in the movies, it always happens at the last minute.. So I would be like, it's okay, it's gonna happen at the last minute and then we'd both get dead. does remind me of, and I know you've heard it, but Earon and I's death pack, which is if I die first He's obligated as the funeral. The funeral will be held at a railroad crossing. Oh yeah. And he's going to put me in a full Superman outfit And then put me in a chair and tie me with rope to the chair And then when the train's coming, you you're like, it's no problem. It's Superman. He'll He'll get out of those ropes, but and then I just get smashed. It would be such a good joke. No, it's a bad It's so fun In this case You've already been hit by, I think you need a plan B in case you do die by railroad tracks. Oh, I would then need it different. Yeah. would you have to go to need We have backup plans for that actually. you know, there's There's three different scenarios. Oh my God, I hate this. You know, the dream is we die at the same time. I don't like this. And then our in our funeral we have opposing cannons that are one hundred yards apart. Yeah. Again, we're in superhero offits And they explode the cannons and we're flying through the air. You're like, it's a bird, it's a bir. Look at, we would look like superheroes in our capes and everything flying. But then we would collide mid air. and then we would just fall like what ses of cement. It's what a joke that would be so funny. So funny. Yeah, reallyally funny stuff. so funny. Yeah. The whole family would be laughing, I think. They'd be laughing so hard. you flyross your dead body fly across the air and collide into the air and smack into air and Yeah terble to the ground. Holy. And then everyone just turns and gets back in their car and leaves's in a field. But then somebody has to like clean that. No and leave it out for the scavengers for the jackals and the coyotes just had a brainstorm. You get you can on your license elect to donate your body to science and to organ donation Would you donate your corpse they get eaten by a polar bear Well, have they taken my organs out and given them to people? Sure thenen yeah Yeah, wouldn't that be great? Well, I don't know if it'd be great, but I just like can stoke the pololar bear. It's like one at the zoo. And then they just throw this they throw your corpse in there. That's such a sweet gift to that polar bear. I mean, yeah, I don't really care about the vessel Yeah, you know afterwards, but I do want to give my organs to people This is a fun topic because We just watched that crazy documentary about the woman. I haven't seen it yet. making a pregnancy Moonchausen. I know, do we want to spoil it for people? No, just, I guess this is inadvertently. Anyways, at the end of the thing, which we watched with the family, the kids were asking me about like how do they kill people when you get sentenced to death And u I was like, well, you've got electric chair, I think it's still functional maybe in a state or two. lethal injection, most common. and then firing squads still This comes up in an episode too soon. Oh right I probably made the same point in that episode, which is that's my pick by far. I think that's crazy. Well I'll tell you why Um Bullets' moving faster than the speedest sound Did you know that's actually the bang you're hearing in a gun? You're hearing some bang from the gunpowder, but the big bang is when it breaks the sound barrier W Isn't that cool? That is cool. So you're standing there, the bullet's traveling faster than the speed of sound. You would never even hear the gun go off You'd be standing there like thinking like, oh, this sucks, this is how I'm going to go. And then that's that. There's you're not watching someone hit a syringe to initiate the lethal injection. You're not watching a guy go over to that fucking archaic switch on the wall for their electric chair. I just hate it all I hate it. Yeah I hate it. It was fun for me because the kids are now I mean you'll remember right. High school is probably the first place they have you debate the death penalty. as I recall. Yeah I don't remember It's a very like it's a perfect wonder if they still philosophical debate to launch onto young minds? Yeah And I had a very specific opinion in high school too that I don't now have. Oh, interesting. So were you pro death penalty? was. Yeah, so what changed your mind? I just learned about the world. I mean, one is I've learned well, too many people could be innocent.. I'm too afraid of that. Yeah. I recognize that there is less choice in the matter than I used to think. L I used to just think like everyone was making these bad decisions everyveryone in the same childhood as you did and then they made the decision with your brain. Exactly.. It's like, oh, no, like all of this is a crap shoot and sometimes things happen. Yeah. And yeah, if I do it, I've made a choice. Right, right, right right a bad one and maybe I should be killed for that. Yeah. But I can't I can't People don't have that same back. Yeah. so I'm just against it. Mine was fiscal So my whole point and when I was a senior, I remember debating people often about it was Okay, we're spending thirty thousand dollars a year to keep someone incarcerated So this man has just butchered this family And we're going to go spend thirty thousand a year to keep this piece of shit alive. When we could be giving that thirty thousand to like the fucking inner city kid who's got no leg up. I was just like, why why? Of our limited resources, why on earth do we honor This fucking person Um But what changed my mind is I learned that Almost all death row inmates will exhaust all of the legal moves they can make. So they're entitled to X amount of appeals They can do clemency dececlarations, all this stuff All told I forget the number exactly, but all told, the average legal expense incurred from someone on death row by the time they put them Death is like over a million dollars And the second I heard that, I was like, okay, well then my Normal objection doesn't even make sense. That's even more money we're spending on the monster who murdered everyone. And Did always object to the notion of killing someone to show that killing's wrong. It just always felt like a flawed premise. Yeah, it just felt like how can that be a premise But if I were right, like if you got sentenced to death, they knew it was the person Yeah And they killed them the next oday I think I would be in favor of not spending four hundred fifty thousand dollars on a person who butchered someone's family over the other people that could benefit from it It's hard. It. I just also there's some cases where I forget a case we were just watching and they weren't getting the death penalty. And I was like What's weird is this person is in so much discomfort with their psychosis and their mental health issues. It feels almost more torturousing them a thing person alive for another thirty five years to suffer in prison. I used to also say that. I used to say like, I think it's worse for them to be in prison. Like if they if you really want punishment, death isn't really a punishment for them. If you want them to suffer. Yeah. but so I used to also say that I now no longer really feel like that. L I don't pive suffer. Yeah, exactly. I don't really want anyone to suffer on this earth. Yeah, I don't want to hurt the people that hurt people. Yeah. I just want to keep them away from Everyone. Everyone ye which I guess some people would say then yeah, remove theom. I just I can't like I can't get on board with It's messy. The bottom line is it's so fucking messy because I'm of the same opinion as you are. And then I just we just interviewed someone who's like the fucking person was out for five days on parole after raping a bunch of other people and fucking breaks it's like I know. Then there's that. So it's like, hh It's so inconvenient. I know. It is and that's the people who want them thrown away forever. They have, you know, under everyone's got a We've got a bunch of innocent people that didn't belong there or their circumstances we're going to land them there no matter what. So we have a we have a healthy dose of people we can point to for that And then the people on the other side of the arumment have a really healthy dose of the people that were let out and then immediately killed more people. I know. It's just if unfortunately you have to choose the lesser of what do you want this country to be against peoplee who are innocent in jail or who are guilty out and like killing innocent people sometimes Sometimes. which is It's just I think that's more to me the solution is more about that eachach side admitting that then one side or the other getting their way. It's just like,'s let's just all acknowledge this is fucking really messy. and it's not great when the person that could have been better Mhm doesn't get to be. you can see that. if you're on the, you know, throw the throw away the key side of the argument even they would be able to acknowledge for the person who got out and turned their life around and never hurt anyone again. It would be a shame to keep that person. You know, like everyone could admit what's going on both sides and start with the notion like Whatever solution we agree upon It's going to be very far from perfect And we have to accept that to some degree. Yes, I think we do. But you know, I am not like, I'm a I'm a pretty fearful person. And I also think that's where people who Well, there's two, there's a lot of variables, but I think fearful people are often for it Uhu Yeah, because because it's like less scary people get rid of them flush them around the toilet. Itesn't matter. the tiny chance that they could come out and do something like no Now worth it Um So I think that's also part of why I used to want it. of just like, no, that's like a bad guy. They whyy wouldn't you just kill them? Yeah let's just get rid of that. And now I'm like I don't know, maybe I'm just less scared . I'm not scared at all Oh Congratulations. That was quick I didn't see all the baby sts it just like went from fearful to not fearful at all No, I just You should write a book on how to overcome fear Stay tuned for more armchair experts If you dare Confidence, It's listening to your gut. It's moving forward, even when the path ahead is unclear. For nearly one hundred and sixty years, Pacific L has helped people keep their promises, building confidence for generations. Whether you're confident in your financial future or just beginning to envision it, we're here to help Ask a financial professional how? Pacific Life? The power of a promise. Pacific Life Insurance comppany, Omaha Nebrasa and in New York, Pacific Life Annuity Phoix, Arizona overcome a lot of fear, I think. Oh yeah, yeah I'm not cured. Yeah. But I think a healthy dose of fear is okay But whatever you're doing is great I think it's great. Yeah. But anyho, I just don't well what did they what did the kids say? Did you ask them about? Well that's why it became a conversation because I was interested and fascinated. with the notion that Lincoln was very much like, yeah, that person should probably get dead. Yeah. And I was like, Ohh, that's interesting. Tell me more about that, you know? Yeah. And then I got to save my whole journey with my opinion on it, you know? But I did think I left it thinking like I wonder if that's just a more natural conclusion for kids or when you're young. Exactly. Exactly. But again, because life is a little more black and white when you're young. Yeah, they're good and bad. And you see such a you can't have the nuance and the exposure to like other people's experiences and how people got where they got and all they're tiny and scared. Of course, yeah, it's scary. But my my parents watched it. I haven't watched it yet, but they we were chatting on the phone last week and they were like, haveave you seen this thing? You shouldn't watch it. This is what happens. I was like, Ohh my God Okay. You shouldn't watch it. This is what You know, she was like, she's being sentenced to death And I was like, oof, like that was my reaction. I was like, oh. And she said, as she should And I was like, lookook, I I get it. I get it. It's it's about as it's as dark as you can get. Yeah It is. I mean, it's dear Zachary is still much worse, but it's on the it's on the far end of the spectrum. the mom did it? The woman had like killed her husband and then the friend came to make like a video to pass ono their child. while he's making this like video trying to he's a documentarian his Yeah. And as he's trying to build this whole story of his life so that the kid will know who his dad is He starts kind of realizing that the wife killed him And then This custody battle ensues and then the end she feels like herself family.. It's it's so brutal. and I and it's like It's. Also the guy who put his kids in the water tap. killed them, put them in the water tower. Do you know that? Oh Oh my God hod justust like What is happening out? It is. it's it's Perfect Anyway. So they told me and then she was, you know, happy that she was that was her sentence. Yeah. And I was like And you know what yeah, different opinions and I respect. I get it. But then and I always want to say this 'use I think a common response is like, what if you' let me be clear. If someone fucks with my family, I want them dead. Yeah I'm not claiming that I want it personally them and be happy if they were killed. anyone who hurt my family. I agree. But I think societally we can do better than what we individually would want. I also em for like, obviously, I'm not like this woman should never get out of prison. Im like she should never have the ability to get out. Like it's not I don't But I don't feel unsafe knowing she's in there for life. Like I'm not Right, you know. She weirdly was the person that I was like, is it more torturous? Like this person is in such a fucking totally different reality than everyone else is that I just don't I don't know. I don't know how this person recovers in any way I mean, you also have to look at the like That woman has children, right Yeah that she didn't raise or have anything to do with. Sure. But I just mean that person has children and that regardless of how king horrific. therere parent is You are passing down trauma by murdering them and they're already So fucked up I'm sure There weren al any the kids in town whose mom did this Exactly. Therere already had like the biggest up Charlotte Rers. Yeah, ye. And then you add This It's just like it's it's not just the one person. like there are repercussions. and I just wish we could just like get ahead of all of this mental illness. Yeah, that would be great. But back to I don' know I don't really know how to say it. I know what I feel about it and I know I can feel it very strongly that part of our problem is people have not admitted what's possible to themselves