December 10, 2025 • 54 mins
"Grey's Anatomy" star Caterina Scorsone reflects on what led a curious kid from Toronto to embody Dr. Amelia Shepherd, one of the most complex, electric characters on television today.
Caterina addresses Amelia’s uncertain future on the series while standing fiercely clear-eyed in her real-life role, advocating for her daughter with Down syndrome and anyone denied accommodation for their uniqueness.
Learn more about Caterina's passions - Global Down Syndrome Foundation and Modo Yoga LA.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome to Work in Progress. Welcome
back to Work in Progress, friends, fans, listeners, and internet pals.
(00:22):
This is an episode you all have been waiting for
and telling me you've been waiting for. We are finally
joined on Work in Progress this week by none other
than Katerina Scorsone. She is one of those rare performers
who brings a stunningly present emotional intelligence to every role.
(00:44):
She's best known for her more than a decade spanning
turn as doctor Amelia Sheppard on Gray's Anatomy. She has
built a gorgeous career playing complicated, honest, fiercely human women
characters who fall apart and rebuild and somehow emerge in
more whole than before. But her story off screen is
just as compelling. Katerina was born and raised in Toronto
(01:07):
in a very creative household, one of five siblings. She's
been acting professionally as a child, but took a little
left turn thinking she might actually be a doctor, only
to boomerang all the way back and become one on TV.
Her parents were academics who also ran homeless shelters, so
from a really early age she's had a keen sense
(01:28):
of life's complexities and how important it is for us
to show up in service of each other. She has
managed to merge all of her passions in such a
meaningful way on an off screen and perhaps off screen,
she's taken on her most meaningful role of all as
a mother of three and now an incredible advocate for
disability inclusion. Drawing from her experience raising one of her
(01:51):
three daughters with Down syndrome, she chooses to use her
platform to promote greater understanding, to end stigmas, and to
create community for people who value both voice and heart.
Let's dive in and talk about all of these beautiful,
beautiful things with Katerina. Hi, Hi, I'm happy that you're
(02:26):
finally here. And I know the whole Internet, like the
whole Internet, the Gray's Internet, the gay Internet, like the
whole just want it has been shouting for you to
be with us on this show. And I'm so happy
we made.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Well and we finally gotten together in like some capacity,
whether Cass and Amelia ever make it there, I go together.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
And together exactly well, I think too. Like everyone's. Internet's
kind of broke a few years ago when we hosted
our big like post soccer game party my house, and
everyone was like, wait, all these people know each other, Like,
oh my god, Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
That was awesome. Yeah, that was a great party, by.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
The way, it was so fun.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Yeah. I love that we tend to find each other
in so many spaces, whether it's like in our day jobs,
literally on the same show at the moment, yeah, in advocacy,
in supporting women's sports, like yeah, we always say like
you're here, of course.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Well, and I feel like also through time, like the
fact that we've kind of like woven past each other.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
I mean we've been how long have you been doing this?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
How long have you been an actor? And all of
the other things. But you know that being the first professional.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
I mean I didn't start going on auditions until college,
So not until I was eighteen. I was working and
you know, doing recurrings and like a little movie here,
a little thing there, you know, starting in college, and
then I was I don't know, I think i'd been
twenty one for like a week or something when I
(04:05):
bumped one tree hilp okay, and so like it's twenty years.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
And I'm I'm literally I can't even do the math
was that in like the early odts.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yeah it was two thousand and three.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Okay, and that was on trial two thousand and three.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Two thousand and three, Like a great what a crazy
time when you think back to like the early sort
of tabloid Internet and the way we treated women and
the fact that anyone dared to call Britney Spears fat,
like it was such a toxic soup of things. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Well, and I think a lot of the kind of
younger people are coming up now, like truly can't understand
the context that a lot of the specifically actresses we're
living through, like in the pre me Too era and
then like he's like when Weinstein was like running the
town versus you know this era now of like hr yeah,
(05:00):
like you know.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Like it's not perfect, but at least you have someone
to go ask for help. I will say, it's so weird.
I feel like there's so much I've learned in kind
of hindsight because booking that show, you know, it took
me to small town North Carolina for a decade, So
there was a lot that we experienced in our little bubble,
(05:22):
and certainly the pressures of the time and the commentary
and all the craziness. But like the industry stuff, I
didn't know any I didn't know any of it. I
didn't know any of those people. I was like, I
was very rarely around. And so it's crazy too. You know,
some of the things I've heard since and learned since,
(05:42):
I'm just like, holy shit, out did how.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Does this existan? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Well, And I think one of the things that we
have now, I don't again, I don't think it's perfect,
like you said, and I think that there's still a
lot of like egregious things that happen. But I think
what we got was a vocabulary for even understanding what
was egregious and how the kind of power structures work,
(06:13):
and you know, where we're entitled to more safety than
we've been given. And so I think what we really gained,
you know, is this vocabulary for moving forward slowly and
then like two steps forward, one step back, but we
can keep going with kind of a deeper understanding of
what's happening.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
That's a really beautiful way to put it. I'm curious,
you know, not just about career and present day and
so many other things people know about you, But if
we went back, you know, if we got to walk
out onto the playground right now and see our eight
year old selves. Who would eight year old Katerina be?
Speaker 2 (06:53):
I don't feel far away from her, you know what
I mean? And I think, I think and I've heard
you ask this question before, and it kind of has
given me pause because I because I'm like, well, what
did I.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Think I would do? Or who would I be?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
And I think I actually just wasn't oriented that way
in that I think I wasn't kind of looking at
myself and wondering what kind of you know, noun person
I would be as an adult.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
I think I was.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Very located in an observer position inside of myself. And
so I think my mom's even talked about it. I'm
like one of five kids, and she's kind of said
that very distinctly and specifically. When I was born and
when I was a little kid, I was kind of
always looking and I was like looking, looking, looking and
(07:43):
trying to like gather information to understand how things were, yeah, right,
And I think that that kind of whatever I became,
I think that remains.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
And I think as an.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Actor, as an artist, as a an activist and a
social advocate who's trying to like understand the structures of
why things are the way they are, and you know,
how you create a person on screen and why they
function the way they do. I think it is this
kind of orientation of like curious observation, and that feels
(08:18):
familiar throughout my life.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
And you started on a children's series at eight, right, Yeah,
I did, which is also so crazy.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Correct, And I think I understood. I did not understand
until listening to your podcast. You're Canadian somehow.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Yeah. So my dad's Canadian.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
My dad is from Montreal and moved to la in
the seventies to go to art school and stayed right,
started his business and did his whole thing. And my
mom is from the East Coast and her mom immigrated
to the US as a young kid, and so it's
like big American dream, anything is possible here energy on
(08:56):
both sides of my family.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
My parents had the reverse journey. My mom was born
in New York and my dad actually, yeah, my dad
was born in Italy and then he was in Argentina
for a long time, and then he was in California
and New York and eventually they both met in grad
school in Canada, and then they stayed and so I
was born in Canada.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
But wow, yeah, so how how does little year old
Katerina tell her parents I want to go be on
a TV show? How did that happen?
Speaker 2 (09:28):
It was not that, I mean, I think I had
kind of one of those unusual journeys. My older sister
we were in a choir. We were in like a
children's choir. And my older sister wanted to be an actor.
And I wanted to be a doctor.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
What kind of doctor? I wanted to be a heart surgeon.
I wanted to toasts.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, wow, I wanted to be obg I n oh,
my god, look at us.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
And we played doctors on TV. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
So I wanted to be a doctor. But my parents,
who you know, both were academics. They both had PhDs,
but they had opted to My dad had a PhD
in social work and my mom was a social anthropologist,
and so they had this like whack of five children,
but not a lot of cash. And so, you know,
a family value of ours was like get educated. But
I knew that you'd have to pay.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Tuition to do that.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
And so my sister wanted to be an actor, and
I was kind of with her when she was meeting
her first agent that my parents were like, okay, you can,
but it's not like I don't know, just if you want.
And then the agent was like, why don't you come
along too? And I just knew that I could like
save up money for tuition if it worked out, and
(10:39):
be a doctor.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
And so it kind of in a weird kind of metaway.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Yeah, I saved up tuition and life was long. But
somehow I'm now like an actor doctor, a doctor on TV.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
I think there's really something about it. I think it
does something on a sort of spiritual level when you
get to achieve your grown up and childhood dream at
the same time, which is how I feel like being
on set and doing a scene in an open heart surgery,
I'm like, I did it. I weirdly manifested, like my
(11:17):
two favorite things to do. This is so crazy.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Well, and I'll say I recently I had kind of
an interesting experience because I do get really hyper like
I love acting and I love storytelling, and I get
really interested in the storylines and in the medicine of
the storylines. Yeah, and so I'm like super interested in
neural which is which is Amelia's specialty. And so I'll
(11:43):
often like steal the props from set when they when
they've like printed out things about the newest studies on Alzheimer's.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
And oeass and I'm like, think you can read them? Yes,
And then I'll like go down rabbit holes. And so
I have learned a lot in that time.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
I'm and and then recently, my one of my kids
did have a big surgery and it was a it
was a heart surgery, and and and the information really
kind of served in that setting, you know, in terms
of my ability to advocate for her and my ability
(12:21):
to kind of read all of the charts and understand
exactly what was going on and kind of be the
you know, the I on everything as like different doctors
and nurses are like changing shifts, and you kind of
get to be this through line for your kid and
you have to be. But I think real life and
this kind of like fantasy life have have really kind
of worked together in a beautiful way.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
That's so cool. It just it feels like a little
nod from the universe.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll be back in just a minute.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
But here's a word from our sponsors. When did it
hit you? Because you know, I get that as a
kid on mister dress up, You're going, Oh, I can
work the way my sister works. I can save up
money for college. This feels fun. It's a little summer campy.
(13:09):
But when does acting as a professional goal sort of
crystallize in your mind.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
The first answer is when I was like fifteen, I
was doing a show for Disney, and a bunch of
the kids there were just like really focused on their
like professional careers. And I think that was actually the
first moment that I realized that this was not an
extracurricular activity yeah, that I happened to be doing like
in school hours. Like I really thought we were all
(13:39):
kind of like, you know, some kids play soaper and
some kids are inquirer, and then some kids do acting
and then you go and have your adult life. And
it was really like a light bulb when I realized
that these kids this is going to be their grown
up life.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Wait what yeh?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
And that was when I realized you could like be
a storyteller professionally.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Wow. And I still was kind of.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
On the fence.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
I wasn't sure or if I wanted to do that.
I got a little serious about it, and then at
about nineteen, I was like in la and there's a
whole journey. But I decided I wanted to go and
do college and study other things. But then in that
process I was studying like literary studies and philosophy and
compared to religions, and I came to understand how important
(14:22):
narrative storytelling was for like the human journey. You know,
I hit my parents again, like they were in social
work and they were you know, running soup kitchens and
helping people with these very like tangible, real world problems,
and I kind of thought like, oh, that's what's important.
Being a doctor is important, Running a homeless shelter is important.
Acting is frivolous, you know what I mean. And actually,
(14:46):
when I left acting and went back to college and
actually started studying philosophy and again compared to religions and
literary studies, it kind of crystallized for me that the
reason we feed people and the reason we house people
is because we're all engaged in this miracle which is life,
(15:09):
and that for us to fully participate in that miracle,
this kind of conscious attention that allows us to read
the story of self and its relationality with other is like,
that's why we're that's why we eat, you know, and
(15:31):
so they're both important. You feed the people so that
they can have this experience of consciousness through narrative.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
The root of that is empathy, and the quickest way
to get in touch with or create empathy is to
learn someone's story. And I had a very similar experience
to you in college. You know, I wanted to be
a doctor. Then I decided I was going to go
get a bfan theater, and I was in the honors
(15:59):
program at my university, and one of the things I
was really heavily focused on was theology and philosophy. Cool
and studying these things. You know, It's like, I know,
it can be just like, oh my god, roll your eyes.
The actor talking about how before there was written language,
we were passing stories, but.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
We were we were the value.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Of the story, the generational song, the humans around the
campfire at night passing down what we believe. It's like,
it's so foundational to who we are. And it made
me realize why shows like yours, which I'm lucky enough
(16:41):
to come play on sometimes, are so important because they
actually teach us about science through the lens of human experience.
They and they do also teach us to advocate for ourselves.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
One of the things that Gray's Anatomy has done really well,
I think is that it is in dialogue with the
culture through the debt shades. I mean, we've been over
twenty two years, many things have happened, many cultural conversations
have happened, and I think Shanda Rhymes and you know,
the showrunners who have come after are sensitive to Okay,
(17:19):
what are we talking about. Let's let's have that conversation.
And so one of the kind of scary things was
during COVID, we decided to do a COVID season, which
in some ways was very claustrophobic and very like I mean.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
You guys in those like the arrivals, those like space suits, which, yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
That was a lot, but we had it was a
hard season.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
It was the hard season to shoot, and I think
it was a hard season to watch. But I think
one of the things that it did was it provided
medical communication to a lot of people who did.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Not have access.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
And I think it provided witness to a lot of
the healthcare workers and frontline workers who were dealing with
this like yeah, unbelievably on speed ekable day to day trauma.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Yes, And then also being accused of like being secret
agents to some big conspiracy, and you're like, these people
are literally on the front lines of death trying to
keep people alive.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
But I think you're right.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
I think that medical communication and scientific communication is so
important because I think the reason we're so polarized, I
mean as a country and in many ways is because
there is this lack of transparency, you know, or there's
kind of this assumption that everyone's on the same page.
And I think what we've realized in the last kind
of election cycle is we're so far from the page
(18:36):
that we thought that we assumed people were on. And
it's like this big wake up of like, oh, we
were all assuming that we were having the same conversation.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
We were not. We were not.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
By projecting our assumptions onto people, we are wholly unprepared
for actually the experience that other people are having and
therefore what is going to affect our country. But but yeah,
informed consent is important, and unless you have the information,
you don't feel like you can consent. So even if
(19:06):
it's even if the scientific community is trying to do
something benevolent and for your best interest, people are going
to be suspect if they don't have the information to
make their own decisions, and so we really like address that.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
What was it like when you like discovered Grays in
the first place. Were you a watcher before you joined
the cast? Like what was that all the way back
in the beginning?
Speaker 4 (19:30):
Like I had like the box set DVDs of the
first season of Gray's Anatomy, and so I was like
doing finals, and the way I would decompress from like
studying was I would watch this new show, Gray's Anatomy
in this like on BBD.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Oh my god, I love it.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
And I was I instantly fell in love with it,
and I thought it was just like such an exciting,
dynamic show and you know, the patos and the drama,
and it was so sexy and and I was like,
I think, I I think I want to be a doctor.
I think I you know, I wanted to be a
doctor as a kid, but then I was like, no,
I'm going to be you know, all of these other
kind of social justice things. And then I got to
(20:09):
end U undergrad and I was like, I think I
do want to be a doctor after seeing this, And
so I ended up going to the medical faculty at
the University of Toronto and signing up for this like
six week lecture series where surgeons would come in and
lecture to like humanities students about like what being a
doctor was in case you wanted to like take your
(20:29):
Humanity's degree and like now become a doctor. And so
I listened to six weeks of surgeons talking about actually
what their day is like and what surgery is like.
And I got to the end of that series and
I was like, I think, I just I think I
just want to be on grais an enemy.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
It turns out, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And I.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Want to tell the stories for the doctor.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Yeah, more pathos, it was more on call rooms.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
I love it what you been able to do as
an actor through the character of Amelia. You know, trauma, addiction,
grief such a complex specialty, as you mentioned earlier. I mean,
the field of neuroscience is it's like almost sci fi.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
It's so cool, mysterious and evolving.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Like what you do has been so deeply personal and
human and also so incredibly technical. I mean, after fifteen
years of this is I was about to say, is
there a like there could be one silly me? What
would you say? Or the kind of top handful biggest
(21:39):
takeaways or like lessons or kind of magical learnings you've
had from doing this job.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Well, I do love learning scrubs and the running because
as you probably know, like I've done so many shows
where you're like in a dark factory running in like
four inchields with a gun and.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
That hurts, but physically like you're like, oh, may make
this decision.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Yeah, this is not what would happen. And so the
wardrobe gras Anatomy is the best one I've ever had.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
I love about Grays that because it's this massive cast
and our fan base is so broad, and it's all
of the world, and it's every age group, and I
feel like in this kind of like I don't know,
like uh, fractured postmodern echo chambering world, I feel like Grays.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Is such a unifier.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
But also that all of the different characters seem to
serve this like Yomian function for people, where like almost
like the kind of like avatars that you would find
on like Olympus or like these kind of Yumian like archetypes.
People identify certain characters with different aspects of self and
they can kind of negotiate their own kind of inner
(22:59):
journey in relationships through the characters on Grace, And so
there's this like opportunity for Catharsis. And I think also
I think like the audience. I think all of the
people who have been involved in Gray's Anatomy have like
been on this journey that Shonda Rhimes put us on
of like a mission based show, which is entertaining and
sexy and hot and something everybody wants to watch. But
(23:21):
we're also like again breaking down these social conversations and
having new ones and starting to understand intersectionality and marginalized
communities that in the first few seasons weren't even talked about.
And by the end we're like talking about identities that
had never never even approached being on mainstream television. We're
(23:45):
kind of breaking down binaries and finding a new way
to approach an understanding of visibility, you know.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
And so that's that's been exciting.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Yeah, I mean it's so special. And then in the
sort of backdrop of all this storytelling and boundary breaking,
to your point, you've had this incredible evolution as a person,
I mean, you know, becoming a mom and your life
growing in that way. I mean, you've got three kids,
(24:20):
and like, Yeah, what's the experience being part of such
a big on screen world and then building such a
big off screen world. I feel like because of the
way that you were raised and what you saw modeled
in terms of service and showing up and also a
big family, Like, maybe maybe did it feel more natural
(24:41):
to you to be invested so deeply in multiple worlds
at once.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
Yeah, I mean I think it is interesting.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
We're you know, I moved to la and I was
pretty much cast into Shondaland like within a year of
arriving here. And so actually most of my like art
and soul friends that I met immediately are on the show.
And so we would have these like, you know, incredibly
(25:11):
intense interactions on screen, and then behind the scenes somebody
would be having a baby or getting divorced or getting
a cancer diagnosis, or like working through some sort of We.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Just went through so much.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
And the private I'm going to include the private practice
cast in this conversation. Amelia was like on Grays and
Private Practice at the same time for three years and
then private Practice ended and she ended.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Up on Grace.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
But we're all like, all the private practice people are
still on a text thread together yeah, like marriages, babies, divorces,
like understanding. I don't know, it kind of all weaves together.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Yeah. Yeah, and I.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Think even just like one of the most exciting things
for me being kind of a woman in this industry
is like going from a place of playing au to
like understanding her kind of going from like male gaze
angenoux to like coming into her own power and becoming
professionally not just adept but masterful and exiting the male
(26:14):
gaze as like an object of desire and projection and
like coming into kind of her own, uh lived internal
experience as like kind of you know, I just think
it's like it's a journey that we haven't had the
opportunity to see from women until.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Something this long standing.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Yeah. So yeah, twenty years of watching women become is
pretty exciting.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
It's so cool.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
And Amelia too, Like Amelia went from being kind of
like a wayward you know, sometimes drug addicted, you know,
wild child, and you know, and she kind of moved
through wild like and marriage and children and queer spaces
and like she's just had this very dynamic, full life
(27:07):
and yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
We'll be back in just a minute. After a few
words from our favorite sponsors. Is there something interesting to
you about that, you know, both in her journey and
as a woman who like set out on the path.
But I think so many of us believe we're gonna
(27:31):
walk right. Like it gets laid out for you and
you're like, that's how it works, and you build the
life and you do the things and you check it off,
and then you're like, uh oh, like there's something missing
to in this character and also in the background to
you know, go through the birth of your three children
and then to go through your own divorce. Yeah, Like
(27:54):
I don't know. I mean, we've both been through it,
you know, recently enough, and it's like.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
I mean I feel like I've read sud Yeah, you know,
I feel like I kind of like again, what you're
saying is like we kind of had this like prescribed
assumption about how life is supposed to go. But when
you start to kind of like investigate where that prescription
came from and who the doctor was, and you start
to understand that that doctor was a society that does
(28:21):
not have the best interests of most of us in mind.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Yes, then you.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Start to kind of like deconstruct the protocol.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
I had this experience. I was explaining it to someone
the other day. I had this great conversation with a
friend I hadn't seen in a while over dinner, and
I said, you know, I don't think until I knew
that my what I thought was my happy ending was
wrong for me, I don't think it had ever dawned
on me that all the choices I was making perhaps
(28:51):
weren't choices at all. Right, Like, I don't think women
are reared to choose. We are reared to be chosen.
And for me in midlife, looking around and going like, wait,
did I did I choose any of this? Or did
I tell myself I was choosing? Like it was sort
(29:11):
of like going through my own internal earthquake, but it
felt really good when the shaking stopped. To your point
like this this I graduated, I'm like, exactly what. And
on the one hand, I'm kind of heartbroken for myself
and other people, And on the other hand, I'm like.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
That's just so.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Yeah. Well, And again I think people like you know,
they want to again binary rate everything where they're like, wait,
are you saying that marriage is bad? No, Like, I
think not understanding your choices is bad. I think that
if you are defaulting into, you know, heteronormative marriage and
kids because you didn't realize there were any other options
(29:58):
that might be a tragedy for you. And if you are,
if you can see outside the fish tank, how society
is structured and how we were socialized from the beginning
of the gender reveal into absolutely different grammatical roles in
our in our again our social language, and when you
(30:21):
understand that, you can go well. First of all, is
that is that authentic femininity and masculinity or is that
imposed imposed? What is actual authentic feminity? What is actual
authentic masculinity? How much of each of those do I
feel inside of myself? And how much of the assigned
(30:44):
definitions do I want to participate in in my life?
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Being taught to be a good girl, you know often
people please are often a fixer. A very early parentified child,
I was like, oh, I didn't think it didn't dawn
on me until I was so claustrophobic in my own
life that I wasn't making to your point full choices.
(31:13):
I wasn't seeing outside the fish tank. Someone the world
around me would say, here's five pence, which one do
you want to write with? And I'd go, I choose
the blue one, but there's a thousand pens. I never
asked paper rush. Yeah, but it's like I never asked
for more because I thought, well, who am I to
(31:34):
ask for more? But guess what, walk out there and
look at all the other colors, look at all the
other things, look at all the other tools, and you
don't I think you don't even realize how much conditioning
can stop you from seeing until you you know there's
more and you rip the blinders off, and then you're like,
(31:54):
holy shit, look at this world like I didn't know.
I didn't know.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Well, And I think that that that is a conversation
for again, we're kind of like talking from a place
of like a lot of privilege, right, yes, like being
white women who are in non disabled bodies, you know
what I mean, Like the wake up.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Call being able to leave in the first place.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Yeah, and and and that that for a long time,
you know, the limitations of patriarchy, uh with it within
the understanding of the story of achievement in patriarchy, and
then like one to purmiss patriarchy like unconsciously if you
haven't consciously unpacked it, like it's working for a long time,
(32:43):
you're able to get a lot of a lot of
things that feel good. And it isn't until you have
you know, a bunch of like you know, firecracker wake
up calls in your life where you're like, wait, not everybody, yeah,
has access to all these nice things, and wait, this
is I'm this is not the experience everyone's having. And
(33:05):
and those, I think are the moments where when you encounter,
you know, the first person that you know with disability,
or when you truly are kind of like when you're
introduced to kind of intersectional you know, different communities, and
you realize that that actually our society is created to
(33:26):
exclude certain people and to include other people, and and
that actually we're all we're all participating in a in
a structure that is violence to every single individual in it.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
The people with the perception of power. Yeah, it might
take longer for it to be violent with them, but
it is. Well, but it is because because it actually
just all the time, and.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Just because even even taking away your your informed consent
about how you're going to live your life, even when
you're like, you know, you get the pink cake and
you think you're supposed to choose sparkles like, that's a
violence against your individuality, right and against.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Yours so reductive.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Yeah, you're uniquely unfolding DNA and all right, and so
we're all living in the violence of like an imposed
value system that doesn't serve any of us.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
The things I've witnessed in communities of women over the
years of my adulthood have been so incredibly beautiful, including
the willingness to say, hey, I know I have me individually,
I have these following types of privilege. What am I missing?
Like one of the coolest things. I just went an
(34:45):
insane sence I'm about to say. I just got to
moderate a stop on Kamala Harris's book tour.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
And.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
She has this thing, this moment in her book where
she says, I always ask when people are being gathered
or when I'm going to meet people, I always ask
who's not in the room. I always ask who I'm
not hearing from. And that, to me, I'm like, God,
more of that. And I'm really curious for you because
(35:14):
you are such a brilliant woman, friend, mother, performer, advocate.
I see so much of your wisdom every time I'm
with you, every time I get to listen to you speak,
and when I think about your three daughters and the
fact that your second daughter has Down syndrome, I've read
(35:36):
all the things you know about how scary it was
the diagnosis and you were so terrified of what you
didn't know, and you've gone on to be this incredible
advocate for her, and you work with the Global Down
Syndrome Foundation, And I mean even the way you're able
to talk about ableism and privilege when you know how
(35:57):
poorly designed the world and its current iteration is for
us as able bodied, privileged women. And then you look
at one of your kids who has an added layer
of struggle in a world like hours, how do you
focus on what she deserves becoming a motivation and a
(36:22):
force that activates you rather than either making you so
mad you go crazy or being so scared that you
can't sleep at night, Like, how have you learned to
fuel her future in yourself?
Speaker 2 (36:38):
The beginning of the journey was full of a lot
of like fear, but really the journey was realizing that
the fear was because there was no visibility in my life.
I didn't know, I didn't know what the assignment.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
Was, right.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
I was like, this is a kid. I didn't expect.
You know, what I understand of parenting is that I,
as a parent, am tasked with taking this little baby
and helping them to achieve all of the metrics of
ablest straight SiZ white patriarchy.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
Right.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
All of this is unconscious. This is not what I understand.
I think the task is, but that is unconsciously. You're like,
I got to make this kid. I got to find
a good school. I got to make sure they're in sports.
I got to make sure that they can achieve all
of the markers that will allow them to be included.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
Right, And so how am I going to do that?
Speaker 2 (37:38):
This kid is going to have more challenges at that task,
and so you feel really powerless and you're like, I
don't know how, I don't know how to And then
you realize that the task is the wrong task, and actually,
like you're not even like the beginning of the advocacy
(37:59):
as a parent.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
You're like, I need to make sure that my kid is.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
Included in this ablest weight white patriarchy. You know what
I mean.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
It's like, actually, no, wait a second, am I am
I You're like pointing your finger at yourself. Am I
part of the problem.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
Am I heard of the problem?
Speaker 2 (38:15):
No, there's nothing wrong with this child's iteration. She is
born perfectly individual, just like the rest of us. And
the moment you stop being afraid of the word disability
is when you realize that disability has nothing to do
with the particular body of someone who can or can't
(38:38):
do certain things. Disability has to do with how much
society has decided to include people who have different abilities,
different bodies, different you know, cognitive capacities and whatever. And
I think when you realize that disability is not about
your kid or or or yourself if you're disabled, like,
(38:59):
it's about how much does society want to include you
in a conversation? How much do they want to give
you the ability to participate, then you can talk about
disability with no problem because you're actually talking about society.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Right, And what you're actually talking about is stretching the
margins of society wider than they have typically been, yeah,
to make more space for more people.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
And that society is disabling you, right. And society, if
they decide to build a staircase for an able bodied
man to get to the meeting on the second floor,
they have given him an accommodation.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
He can't jump.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Sixteen feet, so they have accommodated his disability to get
to the second floor meeting. Right, Yes, we decided that
he is worthy of being accommodated.
Speaker 3 (39:47):
Right, You can build a ramp.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
You just need to decide that someone in a wheelchair
is worthy of being accommodated so that they can get
to that second floor meeting.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
Right. And so it really is.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
A out are we creating a society with all types
of bodies in mind? And you and the same kind
of can be extended to all sorts of kind of
intersectional exclusion, exclusion for marginalized groups. It's like they have
been disabled from participation in certain kinds of activities and
meaningful parts of our of our functioning society.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
And so you know, yeah, well.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
And what you're talking about is so obvious and also
not because we don't we don't have conversations like this
unless we seek them out. You know, we don't know
these things. It doesn't dawn on you that, like hello,
the staircase to the second and third floor is an
accommodation until someone says it to you in that way.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Right, Well, I do want to shout out Amani and Barbara,
who is an incredible disabled activists, And actually it was
it was listening to her where I had kind of
the light bulb go on this that disability. I think
she said something like talking about the politics of disability
(41:07):
and like what's going on with like politics right now?
And she said something along the line and I'll misquote it,
but something along the lines of understand, if the people
in power want you excluded, they will disable you. And
(41:28):
whether that's deciding that your identity is not normative and
therefore not to be accommodated I you know, or not
providing you with the medical access you need, or you
know that basically the people in power are the people
who decide who is disabled. And when we're talking about
(41:50):
disability justice and advocacy, we have to understand that we're
all included, because the second they decide that you are
an enemy of the state, essentially you get we categorized.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
I yess well, by the way, think about our grandmother's generation.
Quote hysterical women would get institutionalized. They would force you
to have a lobotomy, they would literally medically disable you. Yeah,
if you didn't fall in line.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
And queerness, you know what I mean like there were
all of these categories that if you look at history,
they were just classified in ways that made them outside
of what was okay society, right, And so we and women,
I mean, are you kidding me? Like women couldn't vote
because we were like you're not considered like mentally competent,
(42:38):
you know what I mean? Like that we were disabled
from participating in democracy by these structures like they decide
absolutely insane.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
And now for our sponsors, you speak on this so beautifully,
you do so much work. You've educated yourself in such
incredible ways you teach when you talk in your advocacy
with the Global Down Syndrome Foundation, I'm curious if there
(43:11):
have been takeaways or learnings things that you know are
most hopeful for new parents of newly diagnosed children who
don't know what you know yet, who are frightened, who
are overwhelmed, who don't know where to start, Like what's
(43:31):
the first north star you can point people to so
they can know how joyful their kid's life is going
to be the way you know that about your middle daughter.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
Yeah, I mean, oh gosh, there's so much to say.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
And first of all, I want to say, the Global
Down Center Foundation is amazing and they do a lot
of fundraising to do lots of research that is now
no longer being prioritized by the government, and so lots
of research that helps again enable people with Down syndrome
and their families to participate. And then also that helps
(44:06):
with kind of medical research that gets to kind of
the root of some of the comorbidities that.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Go along with Down syndrome.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
There's too much to say, so I would just give
them my piece and came like as a parent with
a nine year old, like there's I would never, ever, ever,
ever want to go back to the person that I
was before Pippa was born. In terms of my understanding
of the world. Pippa is by far my easiest kid.
(44:34):
It was absolutely authentic rock star of a person who
I learned from every day. My community has expanded so exponentially.
It shattered kind of a paradigm that allowed me to
start learning about all different kinds of intersectionality.
Speaker 3 (44:53):
I understand myself.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
It's just like I guess the takeaway would be like,
I know you're scared because you don't know what you're doing.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
Take some breaths.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
You're gonna find community and you're gonna know how to
parent this kid, just like you learn how to parent
typical kids.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
And like it's all going to be okay, You're gonna lie.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
And there are hard parts, of course, there's hard parts
of parenting all kinds of kids.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
But that's so beautiful. Do you think that your lessons
in possibility expansive thought? You know, what you've learned from
being her mom helped you cope Back in twenty twenty
three when you went through your your house fire, Oh
(45:42):
you know, do you because I know, I mean, we've
talked about it a bit, but it's such a traumatizing
thing to go through that. It's an incredibly traumatizing thing
to lose your home. You went through it two years
before our whole city went through it, you know, from
me side all the way to the west. Like, I
(46:02):
thought so much about your wisdom in those first weeks
of January this year, watching so many people I knew
go through it, I was like, holy, you know, how
do you reflect on that experience in terms of your
perspective on you know, community safety, home family? Because people
(46:22):
will say it's just a house, it's just stuff, but
it's also it's it's the record of your life. It's
both and I imagine.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
Yeah, and again I think I mean to be to
be Frank, I was able to navigate our fire in
part because I had a lot of resources, you.
Speaker 3 (46:44):
Know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
I had insurance, and I had a place to go,
I had friends, and then I was able to move
us into a new situation. And I think actually when
the altaed Dina fires happened and the Palises fires happened,
I think because I had been through all of the
complexity of the kind of bureaucracy of getting my children
safe again and comfortable again, and how my financial world
(47:11):
was kind of rocked and affected, just realizing in such
a profoundly personal way the extent to which there are
so many families that did not have the infrastructure that
I had. And so as much as there was all
of the kind of trauma and devastation psychologically emotionally for
my kids and my family, we didn't have that extra
layer of like actual houselessness, you know. And that again
(47:36):
is like it just shines a light on, like our
society is not structured to take care of us in
a crisis. And oh, I'll say this, I think one
of the things we've been learning. Over the last few years,
there's been this like incredible demoralization about the ability of
(47:57):
the government, whether right or left.
Speaker 3 (47:59):
Or whoever, to take care of us.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
All. Yeah, I think people are more and more demoralized,
and I think that, yes, it's sad, and yes it's scary,
and I do think that it has woken us up
to our need to take care of each other in
local community. Yes, I think that's what happened during the
fires for a lot of time.
Speaker 1 (48:19):
Yes, well, And it's been really interesting to see people
much like yourself, the advocate that your life and the
identity within your family built in you, on top of
the advocate you were raised to be. I wonder too, like,
I think about two very big communities for you. I mean,
obviously you mentioned Grace, we're all well, myself included. I
(48:44):
was about to say, we're all over here in my
Instagram feed. It's very upset that Casts and Amelia haven't
hung out, and that's a problem. I'm also just like,
as a friend, upset that you know, in the two
episodes I was on this year, you've been on hiatus.
I'm like, girl, what is going on where you? People
want to know.
Speaker 2 (49:01):
Do you know where Amelia is. Well, Amelia's apparently in Boston.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
Doing like a fellowship at Harvard.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
I actually don't know what she's doing in Boston.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
Okay, great, she.
Speaker 3 (49:14):
Found her people. But she'll be back. She'll be back
in January.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
Okay, thank god, we miss so has it been kind
of nice to have a moment to yourself? How is
how is like a beat from the intensity of a
TV schedule? How's that shaping your day to day?
Speaker 2 (49:31):
I'm founding co owner of some yoga studios in La
which also.
Speaker 1 (49:36):
I wanted to ask you about that. I love Moto.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
I was only involved Emily Moore when started the studios
here in la and so we were childhood friends and
so I started it with her in La here.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
And it's such a beautiful studio.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
Well, and I think one of the things that's cool
about that speaking involved in Dina fiers like the Echo
Park studioasically became a community hub. So it was kind
of those studios became kind of spaces where people could
come after like you know, disasters in the city and
there was a pantry at one point, and you know,
just a lot of community events to kind of organize
(50:14):
and and and bring people together after like suffering this
collective trauma.
Speaker 1 (50:19):
And so yes, yeah, wow, so you've been able to
lean into that time with friends and family. What feels
like your work in progress right now?
Speaker 2 (50:29):
Okay, you know, I was just talking to somebody about this,
and I've been doing a lot of actually meditating on it.
But I think I think I've been doing like a
contemplation on outsourcing, like how much we outsource and and
(50:50):
that you know, again we can kind of talk about
our society or you know, our interpersonal relationships, but like
outsourcing your sense of validity, fulfillment, okayness, accomplishment, just identity
to like an observer outside the self or a community
(51:13):
outside the self, and that actually there is a community
inside the self, and that that community happens over time, right,
And so like I think you did it actually brilliantly.
You talked about like if you were eight years old
and you saw yourself, would you kind of recognize yourself?
Speaker 3 (51:35):
As kind of the thematic question, And I.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
Think that what you're doing kind of when you ask
that question, is you're inviting the community of one iteration
of yourself to be with the community of the other
iteration of yourself. And I think that over the years
of your life and over the minutes of your life
and the seconds of your life, all of the choices
that you've made create this cumulative identity, and those are
(52:05):
the voices all of the seconds of your life where
you were you, Those are the voices that should be
informing how you feel about who you are and each
decision that you're making. Those are the voices. All of
those versions of self are the voices. And you can
trust those voices because they've shown you how to survive
(52:29):
all this time, right, And so really just kind of
like understanding that once you once you've made that community
of self the ultimate arbiter of your sense of safety
and joy, then you're more free to engage in all
of your interpersonal relationships and all of your social relationships
(52:54):
in a non transactional way because everything is already provided.
So your choice is you actually have the ability to
consent to every interaction, your engagement.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
I love that you, You, my friend, are a poet.
You are I'm ready? Are when are you writing a book?
Speaker 4 (53:18):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (53:19):
Gosh?
Speaker 1 (53:20):
You know, I had three kids and you're like, oh,
when they're at college.
Speaker 2 (53:29):
You know, it is one of those that I would say,
that's my little guilty thing of like why am I
supposed to the When do I say yes to those.
Speaker 3 (53:38):
Types of things? I don't know.
Speaker 2 (53:40):
You got time, Yeah, thank you for creating a space
like you create a space to kind of like for
all of the people who don't have time to write
the book. You like are like, tell me about the book,
tell me about.
Speaker 1 (53:53):
The stories that will go in the eventual book.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
It makes me so happy to get to you with
you for a bit. Thank you for coming today, Thank
you for having me
Speaker 2 (54:07):
H
Hi, everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome to Work in Progress. Welcome
back to Work in Progress, friends, fans, listeners, and internet pals.
(00:22):
This is an episode you all have been waiting for
and telling me you've been waiting for. We are finally
joined on Work in Progress this week by none other
than Katerina Scorsone. She is one of those rare performers
who brings a stunningly present emotional intelligence to every role.
(00:44):
She's best known for her more than a decade spanning
turn as doctor Amelia Sheppard on Gray's Anatomy. She has
built a gorgeous career playing complicated, honest, fiercely human women
characters who fall apart and rebuild and somehow emerge in
more whole than before. But her story off screen is
just as compelling. Katerina was born and raised in Toronto
(01:07):
in a very creative household, one of five siblings. She's
been acting professionally as a child, but took a little
left turn thinking she might actually be a doctor, only
to boomerang all the way back and become one on TV.
Her parents were academics who also ran homeless shelters, so
from a really early age she's had a keen sense
(01:28):
of life's complexities and how important it is for us
to show up in service of each other. She has
managed to merge all of her passions in such a
meaningful way on an off screen and perhaps off screen,
she's taken on her most meaningful role of all as
a mother of three and now an incredible advocate for
disability inclusion. Drawing from her experience raising one of her
(01:51):
three daughters with Down syndrome, she chooses to use her
platform to promote greater understanding, to end stigmas, and to
create community for people who value both voice and heart.
Let's dive in and talk about all of these beautiful,
beautiful things with Katerina. Hi, Hi, I'm happy that you're
(02:26):
finally here. And I know the whole Internet, like the
whole Internet, the Gray's Internet, the gay Internet, like the
whole just want it has been shouting for you to
be with us on this show. And I'm so happy
we made.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Well and we finally gotten together in like some capacity,
whether Cass and Amelia ever make it there, I go together.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
And together exactly well, I think too. Like everyone's. Internet's
kind of broke a few years ago when we hosted
our big like post soccer game party my house, and
everyone was like, wait, all these people know each other, Like,
oh my god, Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
That was awesome. Yeah, that was a great party, by.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
The way, it was so fun.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Yeah. I love that we tend to find each other
in so many spaces, whether it's like in our day jobs,
literally on the same show at the moment, yeah, in advocacy,
in supporting women's sports, like yeah, we always say like
you're here, of course.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Well, and I feel like also through time, like the
fact that we've kind of like woven past each other.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
I mean we've been how long have you been doing this?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
How long have you been an actor? And all of
the other things. But you know that being the first professional.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
I mean I didn't start going on auditions until college,
So not until I was eighteen. I was working and
you know, doing recurrings and like a little movie here,
a little thing there, you know, starting in college, and
then I was I don't know, I think i'd been
twenty one for like a week or something when I
(04:05):
bumped one tree hilp okay, and so like it's twenty years.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
And I'm I'm literally I can't even do the math
was that in like the early odts.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yeah it was two thousand and three.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Okay, and that was on trial two thousand and three.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Two thousand and three, Like a great what a crazy
time when you think back to like the early sort
of tabloid Internet and the way we treated women and
the fact that anyone dared to call Britney Spears fat,
like it was such a toxic soup of things. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Well, and I think a lot of the kind of
younger people are coming up now, like truly can't understand
the context that a lot of the specifically actresses we're
living through, like in the pre me Too era and
then like he's like when Weinstein was like running the
town versus you know this era now of like hr yeah,
(05:00):
like you know.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Like it's not perfect, but at least you have someone
to go ask for help. I will say, it's so weird.
I feel like there's so much I've learned in kind
of hindsight because booking that show, you know, it took
me to small town North Carolina for a decade, So
there was a lot that we experienced in our little bubble,
(05:22):
and certainly the pressures of the time and the commentary
and all the craziness. But like the industry stuff, I
didn't know any I didn't know any of it. I
didn't know any of those people. I was like, I
was very rarely around. And so it's crazy too. You know,
some of the things I've heard since and learned since,
(05:42):
I'm just like, holy shit, out did how.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Does this existan? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Well, And I think one of the things that we
have now, I don't again, I don't think it's perfect,
like you said, and I think that there's still a
lot of like egregious things that happen. But I think
what we got was a vocabulary for even understanding what
was egregious and how the kind of power structures work,
(06:13):
and you know, where we're entitled to more safety than
we've been given. And so I think what we really gained,
you know, is this vocabulary for moving forward slowly and
then like two steps forward, one step back, but we
can keep going with kind of a deeper understanding of
what's happening.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
That's a really beautiful way to put it. I'm curious,
you know, not just about career and present day and
so many other things people know about you, But if
we went back, you know, if we got to walk
out onto the playground right now and see our eight
year old selves. Who would eight year old Katerina be?
Speaker 2 (06:53):
I don't feel far away from her, you know what
I mean? And I think, I think and I've heard
you ask this question before, and it kind of has
given me pause because I because I'm like, well, what
did I.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Think I would do? Or who would I be?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
And I think I actually just wasn't oriented that way
in that I think I wasn't kind of looking at
myself and wondering what kind of you know, noun person
I would be as an adult.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
I think I was.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Very located in an observer position inside of myself. And
so I think my mom's even talked about it. I'm
like one of five kids, and she's kind of said
that very distinctly and specifically. When I was born and
when I was a little kid, I was kind of
always looking and I was like looking, looking, looking and
(07:43):
trying to like gather information to understand how things were, yeah, right,
And I think that that kind of whatever I became,
I think that remains.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
And I think as an.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Actor, as an artist, as a an activist and a
social advocate who's trying to like understand the structures of
why things are the way they are, and you know,
how you create a person on screen and why they
function the way they do. I think it is this
kind of orientation of like curious observation, and that feels
(08:18):
familiar throughout my life.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
And you started on a children's series at eight, right, Yeah,
I did, which is also so crazy.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Correct, And I think I understood. I did not understand
until listening to your podcast. You're Canadian somehow.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Yeah. So my dad's Canadian.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
My dad is from Montreal and moved to la in
the seventies to go to art school and stayed right,
started his business and did his whole thing. And my
mom is from the East Coast and her mom immigrated
to the US as a young kid, and so it's
like big American dream, anything is possible here energy on
(08:56):
both sides of my family.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
My parents had the reverse journey. My mom was born
in New York and my dad actually, yeah, my dad
was born in Italy and then he was in Argentina
for a long time, and then he was in California
and New York and eventually they both met in grad
school in Canada, and then they stayed and so I
was born in Canada.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
But wow, yeah, so how how does little year old
Katerina tell her parents I want to go be on
a TV show? How did that happen?
Speaker 2 (09:28):
It was not that, I mean, I think I had
kind of one of those unusual journeys. My older sister
we were in a choir. We were in like a
children's choir. And my older sister wanted to be an actor.
And I wanted to be a doctor.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
What kind of doctor? I wanted to be a heart surgeon.
I wanted to toasts.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, wow, I wanted to be obg I n oh,
my god, look at us.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
And we played doctors on TV. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
So I wanted to be a doctor. But my parents,
who you know, both were academics. They both had PhDs,
but they had opted to My dad had a PhD
in social work and my mom was a social anthropologist,
and so they had this like whack of five children,
but not a lot of cash. And so, you know,
a family value of ours was like get educated. But
I knew that you'd have to pay.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Tuition to do that.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
And so my sister wanted to be an actor, and
I was kind of with her when she was meeting
her first agent that my parents were like, okay, you can,
but it's not like I don't know, just if you want.
And then the agent was like, why don't you come
along too? And I just knew that I could like
save up money for tuition if it worked out, and
(10:39):
be a doctor.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
And so it kind of in a weird kind of metaway.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Yeah, I saved up tuition and life was long. But
somehow I'm now like an actor doctor, a doctor on TV.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
I think there's really something about it. I think it
does something on a sort of spiritual level when you
get to achieve your grown up and childhood dream at
the same time, which is how I feel like being
on set and doing a scene in an open heart surgery,
I'm like, I did it. I weirdly manifested, like my
(11:17):
two favorite things to do. This is so crazy.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Well, and I'll say I recently I had kind of
an interesting experience because I do get really hyper like
I love acting and I love storytelling, and I get
really interested in the storylines and in the medicine of
the storylines. Yeah, and so I'm like super interested in
neural which is which is Amelia's specialty. And so I'll
(11:43):
often like steal the props from set when they when
they've like printed out things about the newest studies on Alzheimer's.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
And oeass and I'm like, think you can read them? Yes,
And then I'll like go down rabbit holes. And so
I have learned a lot in that time.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
I'm and and then recently, my one of my kids
did have a big surgery and it was a it
was a heart surgery, and and and the information really
kind of served in that setting, you know, in terms
of my ability to advocate for her and my ability
(12:21):
to kind of read all of the charts and understand
exactly what was going on and kind of be the
you know, the I on everything as like different doctors
and nurses are like changing shifts, and you kind of
get to be this through line for your kid and
you have to be. But I think real life and
this kind of like fantasy life have have really kind
of worked together in a beautiful way.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
That's so cool. It just it feels like a little
nod from the universe.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll be back in just a minute.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
But here's a word from our sponsors. When did it
hit you? Because you know, I get that as a
kid on mister dress up, You're going, Oh, I can
work the way my sister works. I can save up
money for college. This feels fun. It's a little summer campy.
(13:09):
But when does acting as a professional goal sort of
crystallize in your mind.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
The first answer is when I was like fifteen, I
was doing a show for Disney, and a bunch of
the kids there were just like really focused on their
like professional careers. And I think that was actually the
first moment that I realized that this was not an
extracurricular activity yeah, that I happened to be doing like
in school hours. Like I really thought we were all
(13:39):
kind of like, you know, some kids play soaper and
some kids are inquirer, and then some kids do acting
and then you go and have your adult life. And
it was really like a light bulb when I realized
that these kids this is going to be their grown
up life.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Wait what yeh?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
And that was when I realized you could like be
a storyteller professionally.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Wow. And I still was kind of.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
On the fence.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
I wasn't sure or if I wanted to do that.
I got a little serious about it, and then at
about nineteen, I was like in la and there's a
whole journey. But I decided I wanted to go and
do college and study other things. But then in that
process I was studying like literary studies and philosophy and
compared to religions, and I came to understand how important
(14:22):
narrative storytelling was for like the human journey. You know,
I hit my parents again, like they were in social
work and they were you know, running soup kitchens and
helping people with these very like tangible, real world problems,
and I kind of thought like, oh, that's what's important.
Being a doctor is important, Running a homeless shelter is important.
Acting is frivolous, you know what I mean. And actually,
(14:46):
when I left acting and went back to college and
actually started studying philosophy and again compared to religions and
literary studies, it kind of crystallized for me that the
reason we feed people and the reason we house people
is because we're all engaged in this miracle which is life,
(15:09):
and that for us to fully participate in that miracle,
this kind of conscious attention that allows us to read
the story of self and its relationality with other is like,
that's why we're that's why we eat, you know, and
(15:31):
so they're both important. You feed the people so that
they can have this experience of consciousness through narrative.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
The root of that is empathy, and the quickest way
to get in touch with or create empathy is to
learn someone's story. And I had a very similar experience
to you in college. You know, I wanted to be
a doctor. Then I decided I was going to go
get a bfan theater, and I was in the honors
(15:59):
program at my university, and one of the things I
was really heavily focused on was theology and philosophy. Cool
and studying these things. You know, It's like, I know,
it can be just like, oh my god, roll your eyes.
The actor talking about how before there was written language,
we were passing stories, but.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
We were we were the value.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Of the story, the generational song, the humans around the
campfire at night passing down what we believe. It's like,
it's so foundational to who we are. And it made
me realize why shows like yours, which I'm lucky enough
(16:41):
to come play on sometimes, are so important because they
actually teach us about science through the lens of human experience.
They and they do also teach us to advocate for ourselves.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
One of the things that Gray's Anatomy has done really well,
I think is that it is in dialogue with the
culture through the debt shades. I mean, we've been over
twenty two years, many things have happened, many cultural conversations
have happened, and I think Shanda Rhymes and you know,
the showrunners who have come after are sensitive to Okay,
(17:19):
what are we talking about. Let's let's have that conversation.
And so one of the kind of scary things was
during COVID, we decided to do a COVID season, which
in some ways was very claustrophobic and very like I mean.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
You guys in those like the arrivals, those like space suits, which, yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
That was a lot, but we had it was a
hard season.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
It was the hard season to shoot, and I think
it was a hard season to watch. But I think
one of the things that it did was it provided
medical communication to a lot of people who did.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Not have access.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
And I think it provided witness to a lot of
the healthcare workers and frontline workers who were dealing with
this like yeah, unbelievably on speed ekable day to day trauma.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Yes, And then also being accused of like being secret
agents to some big conspiracy, and you're like, these people
are literally on the front lines of death trying to
keep people alive.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
But I think you're right.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
I think that medical communication and scientific communication is so
important because I think the reason we're so polarized, I
mean as a country and in many ways is because
there is this lack of transparency, you know, or there's
kind of this assumption that everyone's on the same page.
And I think what we've realized in the last kind
of election cycle is we're so far from the page
(18:36):
that we thought that we assumed people were on. And
it's like this big wake up of like, oh, we
were all assuming that we were having the same conversation.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
We were not. We were not.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
By projecting our assumptions onto people, we are wholly unprepared
for actually the experience that other people are having and
therefore what is going to affect our country. But but yeah,
informed consent is important, and unless you have the information,
you don't feel like you can consent. So even if
(19:06):
it's even if the scientific community is trying to do
something benevolent and for your best interest, people are going
to be suspect if they don't have the information to
make their own decisions, and so we really like address that.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
What was it like when you like discovered Grays in
the first place. Were you a watcher before you joined
the cast? Like what was that all the way back
in the beginning?
Speaker 4 (19:30):
Like I had like the box set DVDs of the
first season of Gray's Anatomy, and so I was like
doing finals, and the way I would decompress from like
studying was I would watch this new show, Gray's Anatomy
in this like on BBD.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Oh my god, I love it.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
And I was I instantly fell in love with it,
and I thought it was just like such an exciting,
dynamic show and you know, the patos and the drama,
and it was so sexy and and I was like,
I think, I I think I want to be a doctor.
I think I you know, I wanted to be a
doctor as a kid, but then I was like, no,
I'm going to be you know, all of these other
kind of social justice things. And then I got to
(20:09):
end U undergrad and I was like, I think I
do want to be a doctor after seeing this, And
so I ended up going to the medical faculty at
the University of Toronto and signing up for this like
six week lecture series where surgeons would come in and
lecture to like humanities students about like what being a
doctor was in case you wanted to like take your
(20:29):
Humanity's degree and like now become a doctor. And so
I listened to six weeks of surgeons talking about actually
what their day is like and what surgery is like.
And I got to the end of that series and
I was like, I think, I just I think I
just want to be on grais an enemy.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
It turns out, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And I.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Want to tell the stories for the doctor.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Yeah, more pathos, it was more on call rooms.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
I love it what you been able to do as
an actor through the character of Amelia. You know, trauma, addiction,
grief such a complex specialty, as you mentioned earlier. I mean,
the field of neuroscience is it's like almost sci fi.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
It's so cool, mysterious and evolving.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Like what you do has been so deeply personal and
human and also so incredibly technical. I mean, after fifteen
years of this is I was about to say, is
there a like there could be one silly me? What
would you say? Or the kind of top handful biggest
(21:39):
takeaways or like lessons or kind of magical learnings you've
had from doing this job.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Well, I do love learning scrubs and the running because
as you probably know, like I've done so many shows
where you're like in a dark factory running in like
four inchields with a gun and.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
That hurts, but physically like you're like, oh, may make
this decision.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Yeah, this is not what would happen. And so the
wardrobe gras Anatomy is the best one I've ever had.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
I love about Grays that because it's this massive cast
and our fan base is so broad, and it's all
of the world, and it's every age group, and I
feel like in this kind of like I don't know,
like uh, fractured postmodern echo chambering world, I feel like Grays.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Is such a unifier.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
But also that all of the different characters seem to
serve this like Yomian function for people, where like almost
like the kind of like avatars that you would find
on like Olympus or like these kind of Yumian like archetypes.
People identify certain characters with different aspects of self and
they can kind of negotiate their own kind of inner
(22:59):
journey in relationships through the characters on Grace, And so
there's this like opportunity for Catharsis. And I think also
I think like the audience. I think all of the
people who have been involved in Gray's Anatomy have like
been on this journey that Shonda Rhimes put us on
of like a mission based show, which is entertaining and
sexy and hot and something everybody wants to watch. But
(23:21):
we're also like again breaking down these social conversations and
having new ones and starting to understand intersectionality and marginalized
communities that in the first few seasons weren't even talked about.
And by the end we're like talking about identities that
had never never even approached being on mainstream television. We're
(23:45):
kind of breaking down binaries and finding a new way
to approach an understanding of visibility, you know.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
And so that's that's been exciting.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Yeah, I mean it's so special. And then in the
sort of backdrop of all this storytelling and boundary breaking,
to your point, you've had this incredible evolution as a person,
I mean, you know, becoming a mom and your life
growing in that way. I mean, you've got three kids,
(24:20):
and like, Yeah, what's the experience being part of such
a big on screen world and then building such a
big off screen world. I feel like because of the
way that you were raised and what you saw modeled
in terms of service and showing up and also a
big family, Like, maybe maybe did it feel more natural
(24:41):
to you to be invested so deeply in multiple worlds
at once.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
Yeah, I mean I think it is interesting.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
We're you know, I moved to la and I was
pretty much cast into Shondaland like within a year of
arriving here. And so actually most of my like art
and soul friends that I met immediately are on the show.
And so we would have these like, you know, incredibly
(25:11):
intense interactions on screen, and then behind the scenes somebody
would be having a baby or getting divorced or getting
a cancer diagnosis, or like working through some sort of We.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Just went through so much.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
And the private I'm going to include the private practice
cast in this conversation. Amelia was like on Grays and
Private Practice at the same time for three years and
then private Practice ended and she ended.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Up on Grace.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
But we're all like, all the private practice people are
still on a text thread together yeah, like marriages, babies, divorces,
like understanding. I don't know, it kind of all weaves together.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Yeah. Yeah, and I.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Think even just like one of the most exciting things
for me being kind of a woman in this industry
is like going from a place of playing au to
like understanding her kind of going from like male gaze
angenoux to like coming into her own power and becoming
professionally not just adept but masterful and exiting the male
(26:14):
gaze as like an object of desire and projection and
like coming into kind of her own, uh lived internal
experience as like kind of you know, I just think
it's like it's a journey that we haven't had the
opportunity to see from women until.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Something this long standing.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Yeah. So yeah, twenty years of watching women become is
pretty exciting.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
It's so cool.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
And Amelia too, Like Amelia went from being kind of
like a wayward you know, sometimes drug addicted, you know,
wild child, and you know, and she kind of moved
through wild like and marriage and children and queer spaces
and like she's just had this very dynamic, full life
(27:07):
and yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
We'll be back in just a minute. After a few
words from our favorite sponsors. Is there something interesting to
you about that, you know, both in her journey and
as a woman who like set out on the path.
But I think so many of us believe we're gonna
(27:31):
walk right. Like it gets laid out for you and
you're like, that's how it works, and you build the
life and you do the things and you check it off,
and then you're like, uh oh, like there's something missing
to in this character and also in the background to
you know, go through the birth of your three children
and then to go through your own divorce. Yeah, Like
(27:54):
I don't know. I mean, we've both been through it,
you know, recently enough, and it's like.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
I mean I feel like I've read sud Yeah, you know,
I feel like I kind of like again, what you're
saying is like we kind of had this like prescribed
assumption about how life is supposed to go. But when
you start to kind of like investigate where that prescription
came from and who the doctor was, and you start
to understand that that doctor was a society that does
(28:21):
not have the best interests of most of us in mind.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Yes, then you.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Start to kind of like deconstruct the protocol.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
I had this experience. I was explaining it to someone
the other day. I had this great conversation with a
friend I hadn't seen in a while over dinner, and
I said, you know, I don't think until I knew
that my what I thought was my happy ending was
wrong for me, I don't think it had ever dawned
on me that all the choices I was making perhaps
(28:51):
weren't choices at all. Right, Like, I don't think women
are reared to choose. We are reared to be chosen.
And for me in midlife, looking around and going like, wait,
did I did I choose any of this? Or did
I tell myself I was choosing? Like it was sort
(29:11):
of like going through my own internal earthquake, but it
felt really good when the shaking stopped. To your point
like this this I graduated, I'm like, exactly what. And
on the one hand, I'm kind of heartbroken for myself
and other people, And on the other hand, I'm like.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
That's just so.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Yeah. Well, And again I think people like you know,
they want to again binary rate everything where they're like, wait,
are you saying that marriage is bad? No, Like, I
think not understanding your choices is bad. I think that
if you are defaulting into, you know, heteronormative marriage and
kids because you didn't realize there were any other options
(29:58):
that might be a tragedy for you. And if you are,
if you can see outside the fish tank, how society
is structured and how we were socialized from the beginning
of the gender reveal into absolutely different grammatical roles in
our in our again our social language, and when you
(30:21):
understand that, you can go well. First of all, is
that is that authentic femininity and masculinity or is that
imposed imposed? What is actual authentic feminity? What is actual
authentic masculinity? How much of each of those do I
feel inside of myself? And how much of the assigned
(30:44):
definitions do I want to participate in in my life?
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Being taught to be a good girl, you know often
people please are often a fixer. A very early parentified child,
I was like, oh, I didn't think it didn't dawn
on me until I was so claustrophobic in my own
life that I wasn't making to your point full choices.
(31:13):
I wasn't seeing outside the fish tank. Someone the world
around me would say, here's five pence, which one do
you want to write with? And I'd go, I choose
the blue one, but there's a thousand pens. I never
asked paper rush. Yeah, but it's like I never asked
for more because I thought, well, who am I to
(31:34):
ask for more? But guess what, walk out there and
look at all the other colors, look at all the
other things, look at all the other tools, and you
don't I think you don't even realize how much conditioning
can stop you from seeing until you you know there's
more and you rip the blinders off, and then you're like,
(31:54):
holy shit, look at this world like I didn't know.
I didn't know.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Well, And I think that that that is a conversation
for again, we're kind of like talking from a place
of like a lot of privilege, right, yes, like being
white women who are in non disabled bodies, you know
what I mean, Like the wake up.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Call being able to leave in the first place.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Yeah, and and and that that for a long time,
you know, the limitations of patriarchy, uh with it within
the understanding of the story of achievement in patriarchy, and
then like one to purmiss patriarchy like unconsciously if you
haven't consciously unpacked it, like it's working for a long time,
(32:43):
you're able to get a lot of a lot of
things that feel good. And it isn't until you have
you know, a bunch of like you know, firecracker wake
up calls in your life where you're like, wait, not everybody, yeah,
has access to all these nice things, and wait, this
is I'm this is not the experience everyone's having. And
(33:05):
and those, I think are the moments where when you encounter,
you know, the first person that you know with disability,
or when you truly are kind of like when you're
introduced to kind of intersectional you know, different communities, and
you realize that that actually our society is created to
(33:26):
exclude certain people and to include other people, and and
that actually we're all we're all participating in a in
a structure that is violence to every single individual in it.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
The people with the perception of power. Yeah, it might
take longer for it to be violent with them, but
it is. Well, but it is because because it actually
just all the time, and.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Just because even even taking away your your informed consent
about how you're going to live your life, even when
you're like, you know, you get the pink cake and
you think you're supposed to choose sparkles like, that's a
violence against your individuality, right and against.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Yours so reductive.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Yeah, you're uniquely unfolding DNA and all right, and so
we're all living in the violence of like an imposed
value system that doesn't serve any of us.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
The things I've witnessed in communities of women over the
years of my adulthood have been so incredibly beautiful, including
the willingness to say, hey, I know I have me individually,
I have these following types of privilege. What am I missing?
Like one of the coolest things. I just went an
(34:45):
insane sence I'm about to say. I just got to
moderate a stop on Kamala Harris's book tour.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
And.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
She has this thing, this moment in her book where
she says, I always ask when people are being gathered
or when I'm going to meet people, I always ask
who's not in the room. I always ask who I'm
not hearing from. And that, to me, I'm like, God,
more of that. And I'm really curious for you because
(35:14):
you are such a brilliant woman, friend, mother, performer, advocate.
I see so much of your wisdom every time I'm
with you, every time I get to listen to you speak,
and when I think about your three daughters and the
fact that your second daughter has Down syndrome, I've read
(35:36):
all the things you know about how scary it was
the diagnosis and you were so terrified of what you
didn't know, and you've gone on to be this incredible
advocate for her, and you work with the Global Down
Syndrome Foundation, And I mean even the way you're able
to talk about ableism and privilege when you know how
(35:57):
poorly designed the world and its current iteration is for
us as able bodied, privileged women. And then you look
at one of your kids who has an added layer
of struggle in a world like hours, how do you
focus on what she deserves becoming a motivation and a
(36:22):
force that activates you rather than either making you so
mad you go crazy or being so scared that you
can't sleep at night, Like, how have you learned to
fuel her future in yourself?
Speaker 2 (36:38):
The beginning of the journey was full of a lot
of like fear, but really the journey was realizing that
the fear was because there was no visibility in my life.
I didn't know, I didn't know what the assignment.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
Was, right.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
I was like, this is a kid. I didn't expect.
You know, what I understand of parenting is that I,
as a parent, am tasked with taking this little baby
and helping them to achieve all of the metrics of
ablest straight SiZ white patriarchy.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
Right.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
All of this is unconscious. This is not what I understand.
I think the task is, but that is unconsciously. You're like,
I got to make this kid. I got to find
a good school. I got to make sure they're in sports.
I got to make sure that they can achieve all
of the markers that will allow them to be included.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
Right, And so how am I going to do that?
Speaker 2 (37:38):
This kid is going to have more challenges at that task,
and so you feel really powerless and you're like, I
don't know how, I don't know how to And then
you realize that the task is the wrong task, and actually,
like you're not even like the beginning of the advocacy
(37:59):
as a parent.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
You're like, I need to make sure that my kid is.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
Included in this ablest weight white patriarchy. You know what
I mean.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
It's like, actually, no, wait a second, am I am
I You're like pointing your finger at yourself. Am I
part of the problem.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
Am I heard of the problem?
Speaker 2 (38:15):
No, there's nothing wrong with this child's iteration. She is
born perfectly individual, just like the rest of us. And
the moment you stop being afraid of the word disability
is when you realize that disability has nothing to do
with the particular body of someone who can or can't
(38:38):
do certain things. Disability has to do with how much
society has decided to include people who have different abilities,
different bodies, different you know, cognitive capacities and whatever. And
I think when you realize that disability is not about
your kid or or or yourself if you're disabled, like,
(38:59):
it's about how much does society want to include you
in a conversation? How much do they want to give
you the ability to participate, then you can talk about
disability with no problem because you're actually talking about society.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Right, And what you're actually talking about is stretching the
margins of society wider than they have typically been, yeah,
to make more space for more people.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
And that society is disabling you, right. And society, if
they decide to build a staircase for an able bodied
man to get to the meeting on the second floor,
they have given him an accommodation.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
He can't jump.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Sixteen feet, so they have accommodated his disability to get
to the second floor meeting. Right, Yes, we decided that
he is worthy of being accommodated.
Speaker 3 (39:47):
Right, You can build a ramp.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
You just need to decide that someone in a wheelchair
is worthy of being accommodated so that they can get
to that second floor meeting.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
Right. And so it really is.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
A out are we creating a society with all types
of bodies in mind? And you and the same kind
of can be extended to all sorts of kind of
intersectional exclusion, exclusion for marginalized groups. It's like they have
been disabled from participation in certain kinds of activities and
meaningful parts of our of our functioning society.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
And so you know, yeah, well.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
And what you're talking about is so obvious and also
not because we don't we don't have conversations like this
unless we seek them out. You know, we don't know
these things. It doesn't dawn on you that, like hello,
the staircase to the second and third floor is an
accommodation until someone says it to you in that way.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Right, Well, I do want to shout out Amani and Barbara,
who is an incredible disabled activists, And actually it was
it was listening to her where I had kind of
the light bulb go on this that disability. I think
she said something like talking about the politics of disability
(41:07):
and like what's going on with like politics right now?
And she said something along the line and I'll misquote it,
but something along the lines of understand, if the people
in power want you excluded, they will disable you. And
(41:28):
whether that's deciding that your identity is not normative and
therefore not to be accommodated I you know, or not
providing you with the medical access you need, or you
know that basically the people in power are the people
who decide who is disabled. And when we're talking about
(41:50):
disability justice and advocacy, we have to understand that we're
all included, because the second they decide that you are
an enemy of the state, essentially you get we categorized.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
I yess well, by the way, think about our grandmother's generation.
Quote hysterical women would get institutionalized. They would force you
to have a lobotomy, they would literally medically disable you. Yeah,
if you didn't fall in line.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
And queerness, you know what I mean like there were
all of these categories that if you look at history,
they were just classified in ways that made them outside
of what was okay society, right, And so we and women,
I mean, are you kidding me? Like women couldn't vote
because we were like you're not considered like mentally competent,
(42:38):
you know what I mean? Like that we were disabled
from participating in democracy by these structures like they decide
absolutely insane.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
And now for our sponsors, you speak on this so beautifully,
you do so much work. You've educated yourself in such
incredible ways you teach when you talk in your advocacy
with the Global Down Syndrome Foundation, I'm curious if there
(43:11):
have been takeaways or learnings things that you know are
most hopeful for new parents of newly diagnosed children who
don't know what you know yet, who are frightened, who
are overwhelmed, who don't know where to start, Like what's
(43:31):
the first north star you can point people to so
they can know how joyful their kid's life is going
to be the way you know that about your middle daughter.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
Yeah, I mean, oh gosh, there's so much to say.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
And first of all, I want to say, the Global
Down Center Foundation is amazing and they do a lot
of fundraising to do lots of research that is now
no longer being prioritized by the government, and so lots
of research that helps again enable people with Down syndrome
and their families to participate. And then also that helps
(44:06):
with kind of medical research that gets to kind of
the root of some of the comorbidities that.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Go along with Down syndrome.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
There's too much to say, so I would just give
them my piece and came like as a parent with
a nine year old, like there's I would never, ever, ever,
ever want to go back to the person that I
was before Pippa was born. In terms of my understanding
of the world. Pippa is by far my easiest kid.
(44:34):
It was absolutely authentic rock star of a person who
I learned from every day. My community has expanded so exponentially.
It shattered kind of a paradigm that allowed me to
start learning about all different kinds of intersectionality.
Speaker 3 (44:53):
I understand myself.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
It's just like I guess the takeaway would be like,
I know you're scared because you don't know what you're doing.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
Take some breaths.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
You're gonna find community and you're gonna know how to
parent this kid, just like you learn how to parent
typical kids.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
And like it's all going to be okay, You're gonna lie.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
And there are hard parts, of course, there's hard parts
of parenting all kinds of kids.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
But that's so beautiful. Do you think that your lessons
in possibility expansive thought? You know, what you've learned from
being her mom helped you cope Back in twenty twenty
three when you went through your your house fire, Oh
(45:42):
you know, do you because I know, I mean, we've
talked about it a bit, but it's such a traumatizing
thing to go through that. It's an incredibly traumatizing thing
to lose your home. You went through it two years
before our whole city went through it, you know, from
me side all the way to the west. Like, I
(46:02):
thought so much about your wisdom in those first weeks
of January this year, watching so many people I knew
go through it, I was like, holy, you know, how
do you reflect on that experience in terms of your
perspective on you know, community safety, home family? Because people
(46:22):
will say it's just a house, it's just stuff, but
it's also it's it's the record of your life. It's
both and I imagine.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
Yeah, and again I think I mean to be to
be Frank, I was able to navigate our fire in
part because I had a lot of resources, you.
Speaker 3 (46:44):
Know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
I had insurance, and I had a place to go,
I had friends, and then I was able to move
us into a new situation. And I think actually when
the altaed Dina fires happened and the Palises fires happened,
I think because I had been through all of the
complexity of the kind of bureaucracy of getting my children
safe again and comfortable again, and how my financial world
(47:11):
was kind of rocked and affected, just realizing in such
a profoundly personal way the extent to which there are
so many families that did not have the infrastructure that
I had. And so as much as there was all
of the kind of trauma and devastation psychologically emotionally for
my kids and my family, we didn't have that extra
layer of like actual houselessness, you know. And that again
(47:36):
is like it just shines a light on, like our
society is not structured to take care of us in
a crisis. And oh, I'll say this, I think one
of the things we've been learning. Over the last few years,
there's been this like incredible demoralization about the ability of
(47:57):
the government, whether right or left.
Speaker 3 (47:59):
Or whoever, to take care of us.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
All. Yeah, I think people are more and more demoralized,
and I think that, yes, it's sad, and yes it's scary,
and I do think that it has woken us up
to our need to take care of each other in
local community. Yes, I think that's what happened during the
fires for a lot of time.
Speaker 1 (48:19):
Yes, well, And it's been really interesting to see people
much like yourself, the advocate that your life and the
identity within your family built in you, on top of
the advocate you were raised to be. I wonder too, like,
I think about two very big communities for you. I mean,
obviously you mentioned Grace, we're all well, myself included. I
(48:44):
was about to say, we're all over here in my
Instagram feed. It's very upset that Casts and Amelia haven't
hung out, and that's a problem. I'm also just like,
as a friend, upset that you know, in the two
episodes I was on this year, you've been on hiatus.
I'm like, girl, what is going on where you? People
want to know.
Speaker 2 (49:01):
Do you know where Amelia is. Well, Amelia's apparently in Boston.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
Doing like a fellowship at Harvard.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
I actually don't know what she's doing in Boston.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
Okay, great, she.
Speaker 3 (49:14):
Found her people. But she'll be back. She'll be back
in January.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
Okay, thank god, we miss so has it been kind
of nice to have a moment to yourself? How is
how is like a beat from the intensity of a
TV schedule? How's that shaping your day to day?
Speaker 2 (49:31):
I'm founding co owner of some yoga studios in La
which also.
Speaker 1 (49:36):
I wanted to ask you about that. I love Moto.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
I was only involved Emily Moore when started the studios
here in la and so we were childhood friends and
so I started it with her in La here.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
And it's such a beautiful studio.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
Well, and I think one of the things that's cool
about that speaking involved in Dina fiers like the Echo
Park studioasically became a community hub. So it was kind
of those studios became kind of spaces where people could
come after like you know, disasters in the city and
there was a pantry at one point, and you know,
just a lot of community events to kind of organize
(50:14):
and and and bring people together after like suffering this
collective trauma.
Speaker 1 (50:19):
And so yes, yeah, wow, so you've been able to
lean into that time with friends and family. What feels
like your work in progress right now?
Speaker 2 (50:29):
Okay, you know, I was just talking to somebody about this,
and I've been doing a lot of actually meditating on it.
But I think I think I've been doing like a
contemplation on outsourcing, like how much we outsource and and
(50:50):
that you know, again we can kind of talk about
our society or you know, our interpersonal relationships, but like
outsourcing your sense of validity, fulfillment, okayness, accomplishment, just identity
to like an observer outside the self or a community
(51:13):
outside the self, and that actually there is a community
inside the self, and that that community happens over time, right,
And so like I think you did it actually brilliantly.
You talked about like if you were eight years old
and you saw yourself, would you kind of recognize yourself?
Speaker 3 (51:35):
As kind of the thematic question, And I.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
Think that what you're doing kind of when you ask
that question, is you're inviting the community of one iteration
of yourself to be with the community of the other
iteration of yourself. And I think that over the years
of your life and over the minutes of your life
and the seconds of your life, all of the choices
that you've made create this cumulative identity, and those are
(52:05):
the voices all of the seconds of your life where
you were you, Those are the voices that should be
informing how you feel about who you are and each
decision that you're making. Those are the voices. All of
those versions of self are the voices. And you can
trust those voices because they've shown you how to survive
(52:29):
all this time, right, And so really just kind of
like understanding that once you once you've made that community
of self the ultimate arbiter of your sense of safety
and joy, then you're more free to engage in all
of your interpersonal relationships and all of your social relationships
(52:54):
in a non transactional way because everything is already provided.
So your choice is you actually have the ability to
consent to every interaction, your engagement.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
I love that you, You, my friend, are a poet.
You are I'm ready? Are when are you writing a book?
Speaker 4 (53:18):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (53:19):
Gosh?
Speaker 1 (53:20):
You know, I had three kids and you're like, oh,
when they're at college.
Speaker 2 (53:29):
You know, it is one of those that I would say,
that's my little guilty thing of like why am I
supposed to the When do I say yes to those.
Speaker 3 (53:38):
Types of things? I don't know.
Speaker 2 (53:40):
You got time, Yeah, thank you for creating a space
like you create a space to kind of like for
all of the people who don't have time to write
the book. You like are like, tell me about the book,
tell me about.
Speaker 1 (53:53):
The stories that will go in the eventual book.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
It makes me so happy to get to you with
you for a bit. Thank you for coming today, Thank
you for having me
Speaker 2 (54:07):
H
Hosts And Creators
Sophia Bush
Bethany Joy Lenz
Robert Buckley
Hilarie Burton
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