June 21, 2022 • 46 mins
Sarah Polley is a storyteller – and a remarkable one. Whether as a precocious child actor in Road to Avonlea and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, as a documentarian unpacking her family history in Stories We Tell or as screenwriter and director of the Academy Award-nominated Away From Her, Polley is adept at portraying complex and honest depictions of humanity. And now, she is the author of a revealing and insightful collection of essays, Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory. The book pulls together reflections from challenging chapters in her life and career that explore how a change in approach can provide a path forward. Polley joins guest host Talia Schlanger for a candid and revelatory conversation that goes deep into Polley’s decision to pivot from a successful actor to writing and directing, to the difficulties she experienced working in Hollywood and the decision to step forward with her own #MeToo story. Their discussion turns personal when Polley turns the tables on host Talia Schlanger and invites a discussion about Schlanger’s own experiences of #MeToo.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, this is Talia Schlanger and you're listening to Here's
the Thing from My Heart Radio. My guest today can't
help but excel at everything she does, from acting to directing,
writing features to making documentaries. She is celebrated in so
many different circles. It's the multi talented Sarah Polly. As
a child actor, Polly starred in films like Terry Gilliams,
(00:25):
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and the beloved CBC series
Rode to Avonlea. She moved on to acclaimed rolls in
The Sweet Hereafter Go and Dawn of the Dead. In
her twenties, she made the move to writing and directing.
Her first film away from her started Julie Christie and
Olympia Ducacus and earned Polly an Academy Award nomination for
(00:46):
Best Adapted Screenplay as well as a Genie Award for
Best Direction. Since then, she has continued to write and
direct for TV and film, and she branched into documentary
with Stories We Tell, the film about her family history.
Poully can now add author to her growing list of accomplishments.
She recently released her first book, It's called Run Towards
(01:07):
the Danger, Confrontations with a body of memory, and it's
a pretty stunning collection of essays exploring some difficult chapters
in her life. Sarah Paully told me what it means
to run towards the danger. Well, the first time I
heard that was from a Dr Mickey Collins at the
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and I had had a
(01:28):
pretty serious concussion, very serious concussion. I mean, for the
first year I wasn't able to do much at all,
and then I would have periods that were better than others,
as long as I managed my stimulation while and didn't
have too much noise or light. But basically it altered
my life and made me unable to do a lot
of the things I've been able to do, and unable
(01:49):
to handle a lot of the things I've been able
to handle. I eventually ended up with Dr Mickey Collins
in Pittsburgh, and I remember him saying to me in
that first meeting, if you remember only one thing from
this meeting, remember this run towards the danger. And what
he meant by that was a kind of paradigm shift
(02:09):
in terms of how to recover from a concussion. So
a lot of the advice you get when you have
a concussion is to rest, to listen to your body,
to slow down. The better concussion doctors will tell you
to exercise, but when you feel like your symptoms are
becoming too much, go rest or do something else. And
his advice was really different from that. His advice was,
(02:30):
the things that are hard for you, the things that
are causing you discomfort and pain because of your concussion,
are the things you actually need to do more of
because your brain has become weaker and weaker at handling
these things. Because of this, you know the way you've
been protecting yourself. So this was of course scaffolded with
a lot of like vestibular exercises and physical exercises, and
(02:52):
every treatment he gives is different. But the notion of
moving towards what causes you discomfort instead of away from
it being a key ingredient to healing was a really
new concept for me, and then one that kind of
exploded out into all of these other areas of my
life and became, in a way, the genesis for bringing
(03:13):
all of these essays together into this book. Also, I
should say at that time, you had two small kids,
like you're juggling a lot of things while you're trying
to take on this this advice of confronting the pain
or pushing past what you think your threshold is. And
it's one thing to do that on a physical level,
but then it's a whole little thing to do that
on an emotional level with stories like you've done with
(03:34):
this book. What was the process like for you of
pushing past the threshold to get these stories out. I mean,
it was a long one and kind of it was
a bit of a windy road. I mean, I'd been
writing some of these essays for twenty years and didn't
have the courage to either finish them or to share them,
or I would, you know, write a few paragraphs and
put it away for years and then pull it out again.
(03:57):
I mean, the stories in this book were some of
the hardest stories for me to look at that I've
ever experienced. The ones that were pivotal, the ones that
hurt the most, the ones that I wasn't even sure
what the shape of the narrative was. Those stories that
leave you with a kind of confusion that you haul
along with you. These were those stories for me. So
(04:19):
this idea of running towards the danger began um taking
on the form of, you know, opening these word documents
that I kept shutting or had put away or even
like hidden myself in files and the combune where they
were hard to find, and going, what is it about
this that's making me so scared to continue the story,
or to finish the story, or to even read what
(04:42):
I've written. And those became the stories I became most
determined to tell, no matter how hard they were. Why
I determined to tell them for yourself, for your own exorcism,
or for the benefit of others, or a combination. I
think some of them I didn't know why I was
writing them. I mean, some of these essays. There's one
about stage fright and scoliosis and my mother dying, and
(05:03):
you know, a thousand other things. The first essay, which
is called Alice Collapsing, which I wrote when I was
eighteen and twenty three and thirty three and forty, like
it's written by four different people. Like, I don't think
I knew why I was writing that story when I
started it, and by the time I was writing at forty,
I probably did. I think all of them became for
(05:25):
me interesting ways of looking at the way the past
and the present relate to each other the way I
think we are all very well acquainted now with the
idea that our past and childhood experiences inform our present life.
I guess I also hope that like this notion that
childhood trauma or experience are difficult experiences from another time
(05:46):
in your life, aren't static. They don't have to live
there always as these ticking time bombs or these jaggedy
sharp things that like, if you get to live a
life where stories that echo those story is go a
different better way. Those stories can become lighter, like, those
stories can become easier to carry, Those stories can have
(06:06):
in the end a totally different meaning to you than
they have now. Like those stories that feel so static
and hard and rigid in your stomach can actually loosen
um and become more flexible and interesting if you can
kind of dive in and pull the threads and be curious.
(06:26):
So I think for me, that's what the the recovery
process with all of these stories looked like for me
was the diving in and the being conscious of the
past in the present life. Having the present life go
a different way actually meant the past looks and feels
differently to me. Now. The subtitle of the book is
(06:46):
Confrontations with a Body of Memory. And when we talk
about the literal body that you're confronting in this book,
you've already mentioned a concussion scoliosis, which you are diagnosed
with at age eleven, being in a hard plus dig
brace at a time of puberty when your body is changing.
But also for you, at a time when you're starting
on a television show and day in and day out
(07:07):
you are being looked at by people and people are
putting clothes on you and and fitting you for things. Um,
how did that diagnosis looking back on it now, how
did that diagnosis shape your relationship to your physical body? Yeah,
I mean the thing that complicated the experience for me,
and I think it's complicated for any person who goes
through this as a kid. But the thing that complicated
(07:27):
for me was I was living a very public life
and I was on the lead in the TV show,
and at a certain point I was also you know,
on stage at Stratford, and so you know, there were
long costume fittings of like how do we make her
body look normal? Or how do we accommodate the costumes
to fit this brace. So it was a very public
display of what was already a very uncomfortable and somewhat
(07:50):
humiliating experience. So the way I dealt with that was
just separating who I was from what was happening to
my body. I think, and I get a sense like
learning to maybe a nor what your body is telling
you about how it's feeling in order to perform in
the way you have have to. Is that fair to
say as well? Yeah? Absolutely, Is that common in the
acting industry, I would think, I think so. I think so.
(08:14):
I mean, I think there's also there's a sense that
nothing can stop for a human being, right, Like I
think in film and television, the idea that anything would
delay anything for an hour even is inconceivable. So you
kind of learned to just trudge through your humans. Like
I remember we were just location scoting for this film
(08:35):
I did in this summer. It was like a hundred
and eight degrees with the human dex and we were
trudging through these soy fields and and how much water
food with us, and we all just kept going and
like we did that for like hours, and I got
home and went like, why didn't one of us complain
about that or stop it. And this was a pretty
compassionate set compared to most, and we're all pretty aware
(08:56):
and we had conversations about it all the time, how
do we make this a really safe, welcoming place. But
ultimately nobody wanted to be the one to say, like
it's too hot, I need water or I need food.
And it's like we had created an environment very consciously
that was to be humane. It's like this thing switches
on you go into like soldier mode or something where
(09:18):
you're just you got to be a trooper. And I
certainly have that from being a child actor. It's like
you can't be the one to delay or stop anything.
And I think it just creates the possibility for a
lot of really big problems on sets. You know, I
sa a lot of pressure if you don't mind it.
Like I think the incident that's coming to mind, which
you relay in the book, is when you were nine
years old and starring in this film that was directed
(09:39):
by Terry Gilliam. Would you mind saying a little bit
about what that set experience was like so that we
can you know, picture what you're saying. Yeah, so I
actually lot as a kid and one of the main
parts I did was the role of Sally Salt in
the Adventures of barrenman Chausen, which was directed by Terry
Gilliam when I was eight, and it was a production that,
you know, notoriously spiral that of control. There was a
(10:00):
book written about it called Losing the Light. I mean,
it was like one of those big disastrous movie stories
about a production gone awry, and there were a lot
of special effects, there were a lot of stunts, and
many times things felt wildly out of control and dangerous,
and you know, some of those incidents involved explosives going
off really close to me. And there was an incident
(10:21):
in a boat where we're in a rowboat with a
few actors and a horse, and explosives were going off
in a water tank beside the horse and the boat,
and it spook the horse and it started backing up
into us, and the rider took it overboard, and that
surfaced another explosive that went off really close to me,
and I went to hospital, and you know, there were
a lot of really terrifying things that happened on that set.
(10:43):
Um So I kind of grew up with this feeling
of a set being a very unstable, scary place, but
that it was absolutely not my right to stop what
was in motion, no matter how unsafe it became, and that,
you know, that became somewhat ingrained. And so I think
(11:04):
I've spent a lot of time as a filmmaker trying
to unpack those instincts that make you want to keep
going when you should really stop, and to try to
kind of reorient what the priorities and focus need to
be when you are responsible for a whole bunch of
other human beings. But you know, I don't think I'm
always successful at it. It's like it's just like a
work in progress all the time. What made you want
(11:25):
to act in the first place, Like, was it was
it your choice when you were a really small kid.
Was it something that you wanted to do? I mean
the story I was told as a kid, was I
desperately wanted to do it? My parents were in the industry,
you know, my mom was a casting director. My gut
is it probably happened a little bit more organically in
terms of her breaking and for an audition than that.
(11:46):
But certainly I think they were getting something out of it,
Like I think they were getting access to a world
that they wanted access to. I think they were excited
for me to get access to a world that had
been hard for them to get access to. There was
nothing malicious about my parents, and they were very loving,
great people. But I do think it's possible to get
carried away, Like, especially when a kid has a certain
measure of success, it can get hard to track how
(12:10):
much of this is my kid's passion and how much
am I getting out of it. I think that can
be really easy to lose track of. Yeah, I'm interested
to know. I guess how you made the transition from
acting when you were a kid to the choices that
you made for yourself as an adult. Because can imagine
a world where you could have thought, I want to
(12:31):
be the hollywoodist actor that I can be, Like, now
that I'm doing it and I'm in this industry, I'm
I'm going to go for it. Tell me about, like
how you decided what was going to be of interest
to you as an adult if you continued acting well.
I think one of the advantages of being a child
actor and seeing you know, big Hollywood productions completely out
(12:52):
of control and seeing how kind of disposable people's well
being was at a very early age on sets Is.
It made me really skept a call, which I think
was really helpful and really healthy as an adult in
terms of making choices, Like, I think I was really
conscious I had a really really active bullshit detector. I
knew that I didn't want to be really famous. I
(13:13):
knew that I wanted to if I was going to
be involved in this industry at all, which I think
I had a lot of cynicism about generally. I knew
that I wanted to be on projects that I had
felt had some meaning or something to say, or at
least would be in connection with people that weren't single
focus who had a sense of humanity about them. So
(13:34):
I think it really helped shape the kinds of decisions
I made, and then certainly as a filmmaker, Um, I
really want to know why I'm making what I'm making, like,
I really want to know who it's serving and why
and how. So it's got to have meaning for me,
It's got to have a purpose, that has to have
a reason for being. I think the gratitude for just
(13:55):
being here is is slowly dawning on me as an
adult and as I get older, but it's taken a
long time to get here, If I can say so,
I think that's why your work is so good, Like
it's made for the sake of having something to say,
rather than for the sake of making something or or
anything else. I mean this, this shouldn't really be remarkable,
but it kind of is that you. You made your
(14:16):
you directed your first film when you were in your
mid twenties, and I say it's remarkable because it's quite young,
especially for a female filmmaker. The film Away from Her,
which was so beautiful. What was it like to actually
get that film made. I had been trying for years
to get a film made before that one, and it
(14:36):
was really hard at first. I think the idea of
a young actress making a movie was really hard for
people to wrap their heads around. Like there are a
lot of amazing young actresses making movies now. But then
it was like if you were a male actor trying
to direct, it was treated very, very differently, and I
think people thought it was like some hobby or something
I was trying. Yeah, so I tried to make one
(15:01):
movie for like years, and then it was I was
turned down in more and more humiliating ways by Telefilm,
our government film ending agency, and finally I I wrote
away from her quite quickly, and I gave myself a deadline,
and the deadline was like something absurd, like in six
months from now, if this film isn't green light, I'm
not going to try to direct again, Like I just
can't do this anymore. And it turned out it was
that kind of energy that's sort of nothing to lose,
(15:23):
do or die energy that it took to actually get
a movie financed. And then I had champions, like then
there was this big changing of the guard at Telephone,
which was the film funding agency at the time, and
then it came together quite quickly. But certainly there was
a lot of you know, not always being taken seriously,
like thankfully my closest collaborators did. And I was surrounded
by both really supportive women and also really great men
(15:44):
who who took me really seriously and helped me just
sort of assume that leadership role which I was nervous about.
But in terms of financiers and like sort of people
on the outside and around it, you know, you're sort
of where you were being watched like this little ingenue
trying to trying something on, and yeah, it was it
(16:07):
was interesting, And it was interesting also to go from
being an actress who people kind of humored to somebody
who was in a position where, you know, you could
really feel what people thought of you and felt about you,
and it was it was healthy. But you know, a
bit of a shocked bassist. Yeah, I bet at what
point did you feel like you had earned people's respect? Well,
(16:30):
you know, I'd made a bunch of short films at
that point, and I'd slowly, through the crewing of those
short films, found my people and found the people that
we're like really trying to create a space for me
to find myself as a filmmaker. So I found my
D O P and my first A D and so
I did feel like I had an incredibly supportive team
when I was actually on the floor of that film,
and Julie Christie and Olympdocacus like these were people who
(16:52):
had been kind of mentoring me and pushing me forward.
And I also think that I hugely benefited from those
very un usual experience I had had, which is that
I'd worked with a few female filmmakers as a young actor,
which again it's not a big deal now to have
worked with female filmmakers it was a really big deal then,
like to have worked with Katherine Bigelow, to have worked
with Isabel Quichet, to have these models, and as soon
(17:15):
as I expressed the slightest interest in directing, they just
sort of threw their bodies behind me and pushed, you know,
like it was just like, you know, being a female
filmmaker twenty years ago was really freaking hard. It's it's
hard now, but it was a lot harder than and
they were just like, here's okay, you're a dog with
a bone. Don't let the bone go. Everyone's going to
(17:37):
try to take away from you. Remember Catherine Bigge was
like this, everyone will try to take the bone away
from you. Hold onto the bone, and like it was
such great advice, and that is kind of what it took.
It was like people are trying to get the bone
away one of the phone and Isabel just going okay,
what's next, what's next? You know, Like there was this
sense of women who are a bit older than me
shoving me forward. And I think that's ultimately the real
(18:00):
reason why I made a film in my mid twenties
at a time when it was unusual for a young
actress to make a film because I had had these
female mentors, I had seen it modeled. They put that
energy into encouraging me, and I think that's sort of everything.
You know, when you are part of a group of
people that's underrepresented, you need those people ahead of you
(18:20):
and behind you shoving you forward. Yeah, and you need
to not not let go of that bone. I want
to come back to acting for just a second in
your adult life, because in getting ready to talk to you,
I watched this clip of you on a Canadian talk
show called John Division from back in the day. I
was like, I grew up in cann It's a beloved
(18:41):
TV show and you're so cool on it. You're seventeen
years old. And you said, um, I've am quoting you.
I've never been a good actor or had this great talent.
I've just sort of taken sides of myself at different
times and toyed with them. But I don't think it's
a great talent that's in my blood or something. And
I heard that and I was like, wait, isn't that
(19:02):
what acting? Is that what acting is for some people?
I don't know what do you make of What do
you make of that? Now that you've acted a lot
as an adult and also directed other people. Yeah, that's
so interesting. I don't know. I mean, yeah, I guess
it can be what acting is, although it's funny, like
(19:23):
I directed this film the summer called Women Talking, and
the actors in this film were just machines, like they
were acting machines like they were. It was Claire Foy
and Jesse Buckley and Rooney Mara and Sheila McCarthy and
Judith Ivy and Michelle McCloud and it was just like
Ben Wishaw and Francis McDormand, and like they were just
(19:45):
like these geniuses. And I was watching the way they
were working, and I really do think there's something fundamentally
different about what I used to do as an actor
when I was acting on what they're doing. And I
think what they're doing is like pushing themselves to like
the absolute outer or limit of what is possible in
(20:05):
terms of like embodying another human being and risking everything,
like risking everything psychologically and emotionally to get where they
need to go. I didn't do that as an actor.
I mean, i'd like to think if I ever went
back to acting one day, and I don't know if
I will, but if I did that, I would be
willing to take those kinds of risks with myself. But again,
(20:25):
because of the experience I had as a child where
I felt like both my emotions were kind of exploited
and my physical safety was taken for granted, I had
limits on what I was going to give. So I
think I got good at doing a couple of things,
you know, like I could. I could kind of had
a couple of things I could do pretty well, but
I didn't ever explode my sense of myself or risk
(20:49):
myself to like embody an emotion I couldn't predict coming
upon me in a scene, and watching great actors do
that is electrifying. If I ever did go back to acting,
I wouldn't do it unless I felt like I was
prepared to do that. So I think that's maybe what
I meant in that quote is like I was staying
(21:10):
in a zone that was comfortable for me, and I
think that I I would like to think if I
could do that part of my life over that, I
would I would push myself more in risk more. That's
actor and author Sarah Paulli. If you like conversations with
skilled actor turned directors, check out our episode with Maggie Gillenhall.
(21:33):
The thing I like love about the few roles that
I've done that I feel the most proud of. Um
that I think I executed the best. I think are
actually sort of the most human people, so maybe the
most conventional in terms of being like we actually are.
And I know the woman in the movie does things
(21:54):
that many of us would never ever do, but in
so many other ways I relate to her so much much.
You can hear more of alex conversation with Maggie Gillenhall
in our archives and Here's the Thing dot org. After
the break, I talked to Sarah Paully about her decision
to finally come forward with a me too story she's
kept private for decades. Hey, I'm Talia sh Langer, and
(22:26):
you're listening to Here's the Thing. In the nineties and
the auts, Sarah Pauli was a celebrated actor. It seems
like she was at the height of her career and
she could have had any rules she wanted, but instead
Sarah walked away from acting. I wanted to know why.
This is one of these questions where like it's sort
of like writing the essays in this book where I
feel like I suddenly have a whole bunch of answers
(22:48):
I didn't expect to have to that question, like, oh,
I haven't unpacked this. I mean, on the one hand,
it's like I had discovered directing and I was in
love with writing and directing, and I was like, this
is what my priority, he is, And so I always
knew that was the the direction I was moving in.
But why I stopped acting entirely was I had a
couple of really bad experiences towards the end of my
(23:10):
acting career um with uh, really insensitive people and really
vulnerable situations where things were handled really badly and really insensitively,
and I just had this moment where I thought, I'm
not I'm not going to put myself in this kind
(23:31):
of situation again. And it was like a time, you know,
was this is pre me too, and pre these conversations
about bullying on sets and safety on sets, which thank god,
are happening finally, but at that time they weren't. And
so I just thought, this behavior is going to go
on forever, nobody's going to be accountable, and I'm just
going to be expected to kind of suck it up.
And I'm not going to do it anymore. And I've
(23:52):
got this other job that I love, which is directing,
where I have some agency over my working conditions and
how I'm treated, and I'm just not gonna put myself
in the line of fire anymore. So I removed myself
based on a couple of really terrible experiences I had
in a row. I also had a great experience that
year working with Jacko vandr Mal who directed Mr. Nobody,
(24:12):
who was the antithesis of that kind of filmmaker, was
incredibly empathetic and sensitive and passionate, and people's experience making
the film was far more important to him than the
film itself, which is something I try to carry with me,
like I just try to carry in my head because
I said, how are you managing this? Like we're working
such civilized hours, people have their kids coming to set.
You seem to care so much about how everybody is doing, Like,
(24:34):
how are you managing this? And he said, if this
film is everything we wanted to be, it'll maybe affect
a couple of people for a few weeks, hopefully, But
what we know for certain is that the experience of
making this film will be with all of us for
the rest of our lives, so that has to be
the priority. And I was like, that to me has
(24:56):
just stayed with me. So it's really But I had
a couple of other experiences that were really really depressing
and demoralizing, just in terms of watching where people were
putting their priorities and how much people couldn't pay attention
to other people's well being in the middle of of
making a film. So I went and made my own
films and was very very happy to do so. I
had this discussion recently with someone on set where like
(25:20):
there had been this moment where someone hadn't behaved that well,
and someone said to me, you know, if that person
didn't behave that way, you might not be getting the
job that you wanted, Like that might be what contributes
to their ability to do their job. And I remember
saying and I didn't even know I felt this way,
but the words just like popped out of my mouth
and I just went Nobody asked me what my priority was,
(25:43):
like if someone had said to me, you could have
less of a film. But people, we'll be behaving well
towards other and treating each other decently, and like that's
the choice, I absolutely will vote for the latter every
single time. Like I want to make great films. I'm
super ambitious for the films that I do make. But
given the choice, I don't choose the genius over the
(26:04):
well being. Ever, I will never accept talent as an
excuse for bullshit. I just won't do it. I don't
have it in me anymore. And it seems, I mean,
it seems maybe like people are shifting towards that a
little bit more as we're opening up these conversations. Maybe
I think they are. I mean, I think I think
this is like kind of something I didn't ever expect
(26:24):
to even see happen, Like in my life, you'vened about
sexual harassment, Like I just thought, this is something we're
stuck with, Like I didn't think to say anything about
it or to you know, you just this was the
landscape we lived. And so it is amazing to see
these conversations open up. I'm really excited to see them
open up more in industries where there isn't a huge
spotlight shown on them. I mean, I hope that we
(26:45):
can see a continued progress with this, because it's it's
a lot easier for us to complain about it given
the platforms we have. Yeah, well, let's talk, um, if
you would, about the second essay in the book, which
is called The Woman Who Stayed Silent. And as much
as I want to talk about this essay with you,
I also I want people to read every single word
of it. The way that you've crafted it, the depth
(27:07):
of the story that you're telling, and the nuance that
you're able to bring to the thinking around this essay
I think is so important. And if you don't mind,
Sarah's just setting up with the premise of the chapter
as as much as you're comfortable. Sure, you know, this
essay took years to write and to think about and
to choose the exact words for and so really the
the entirety of the essay itself is the best answer
(27:29):
to any question about it. But that said, what it
is about is an experience that I had when I
was sixteen years old with Gian Gameshi, who was acquitted
of sexually assaulting multiple women. Just stepping out of the
interview here for a moment. Gian Gameshi is a Canadian broadcaster.
He was a prominent radio host at the CBC until
(27:50):
that year. He was the subject of several sexual assault allegations,
Gameshi was charged, went to trial and was ultimately acquitted
of all charges. In and just so you have the
heads up, the following conversation will contain discussions of circumstances
surrounding sexual assault. Okay, back to Sarah and the allegations
(28:11):
when they came forward. We're a really big news story
in Canada, and I had to make a decision about
whether or not to come forward. And I spent a
really long time and a lot of hours with my newborn,
you know, strapped to me and the carrier and my
toddler with me asking everybody I knew, and I know
(28:32):
a lot of lawyers and a lot of people work
in the criminal justice STU been asking them if I
should come forward because I felt a deep obligation to
support the women who had come forward, whose stories sounded
very similar to my own, And the advice I was
given across the board was to not come forward, because
every lawyer I met, but for one, said they would
never advise a woman that they loved to come forward
(28:53):
in a sexual assault case based on how are jewous
and difficult the encounter of the criminal justice system would be,
how long it would drag on how close so many
people came to suicide by the time the process was over,
and knowing what I did about what would lie ahead
of me and coming forward and having two little kids,
I made the decision to stay silent. It was a
(29:14):
really hard decision on a lot of levels. And I
think the contribution that I wanted to make now, this
many years later, with having had years to think about
how I would tell this story, is to shine a
light on the parallels between the inconsistencies that were pointed
out in those women's stories and the holes that were
(29:35):
poked in their memories and characters and my own, Because
everything that was lobbed at those women on the stand
in terms of them not be being reliable witnesses to
the truth, would have been lobbed at me. And the
impact that trauma has on memory, the way it makes
us unreliable narrators of the details before and after an
(29:58):
experience like this, and the way that makes our entire
stories seem not credible, seemed like a worthwhile contribution because
what happens when women enter into or anybody with an
allegation like this, what happens to people when they're on
the stand, is these inconsistencies, and these problems in our
memories get lobbed as at us as evidence that the
thing itself didn't happen. And so my my idea was,
(30:21):
what if I offer all of that stuff? What if
I offer up everything I would be cross examined with
my friendly encounters with him afterwards, my friendly emails with him,
the way in which my memory didn't capture this part
or that part at various stages. What if I offered
the whole, embarrassing, messy, completely commonplace picture of what a
(30:46):
memory and what an account after a traumatic experience like
this looks like, hopefully to shine a light on and
maybe add credibility to all of those people who have
been discounted because of these inconsistencies. Because at this point
I don't have a lot to gain by telling the story.
It's not particularly fun to tell this story, I bet yeah,
But I feel like there's some contribution to be made
(31:09):
in saying, here are all the embarrassing parts, and I'm
still telling the truth. Here all the inconsistencies, and I'm
still telling the truth. Here is all the mess of
my memory and why I seem like a total flake,
and I'm still telling the truth, and so many people
who have come forward in cases like this have been
discounted as flake here are not credible because of these details,
(31:29):
which I think are so commonplace, and I think most
people who have had experience like this don't actually come
forward and we don't hear from them, and so I
kind of wanted to shine a light on what that
experience looks like and why a point that you made
here that I have not heard made nearly enough that
you that you also just sort of hinted at is
(31:50):
the idea of how people who have been through traumatic
experiences with somebody can exhibit confusing behavior after the fact.
And one of the things that you write about is
being interviewed by Jon who hosting I was working at
the CBC at that time also, I should say, and
he was hosting an arts and culture show where he
interviewed you about, you know, your work, and you write
(32:11):
in this essay about sort of watching clips of yourself
and how you diminished yourself in front of him or
or were giggly or we're sort of warm towards him,
and you wrote this is a quote. It can seem
perplexing from the outside, this pool that many women experience
to make things better for those who have hurt us.
M hm. And you're such a powerful and talented person,
(32:33):
it must have taken a lot to say that, and
then so many of us do this. So where do
you think that this behavior comes from. I think it
comes from a lot of places. I think it can
come from a desire to normalize a situation that's very
very hard to process, and that's living in a very
jaggedy place inside us, and to try to make it
so that it didn't happen. In my case, I think
(32:55):
it came from fear. I think I was really scared
of him, and I was really scared of how many
could be because you know, even in the years following that,
every time I saw him, he had something mean to say.
And when somebody has something mean to say to you,
but the history of your relationship with that person is
one that was terrifying and violent, that has a different meaning,
(33:15):
and it affects you and goes through you in a
different way. So I think I was doing everything I
could to make things nice for him and to make
um myself not threatening. I think that people underestimate how
circuitous behavior can become when we're afraid and when we
(33:37):
don't know how to process a situation. And at that time,
there wasn't the same language for these kinds of experiences.
So it's like we weren't all throwing the word assault around,
you know what, I mean, Like it was like, what
the hell happened? I don't know. So I think that
you know, we know now there's a huge body of
research that shows us that memory is really fray cured
(34:00):
by trauma. It's not consistent. We don't remember everything perfectly.
I mean, I can't count the number of people I
know who have, after a very terrifying experience with somebody,
have been nice to them afterwards and it will have
maintained contact. I mean, I'm I'm sure that a huge
percentage of these kinds of experiences that happen, there's contact
(34:24):
that is friendly and that is perplexing from the outside afterwards.
And I think that if we can't make room for
the mess of that, we're not going to be hearing
these stories the way we should be, you know. And
I think what was what was really hurting about the
Harvey Weinstein case was there was an expert call to
talk about the impact that trauma has on memory to
(34:45):
talk about typical post assault behavior, which can include contact
like this, and that was a real service. But in
in the Younga Messi case in Canada, there was no
such witness called, and those women I feel were really
hung out to dry and their behavior was made to
look flaky instead of completely normal. Yeah, it was three
(35:06):
years before the Harvey Weinstein case. They were also they
were humiliated. Um the title of the essay, the woman
who stayed silent carries a weight to it. I guess
a weight of reckoning with that decision. How are you
feeling about that decision? I'm feeling good now. I've been
dreading it. I've been dreading it a lot. I've always
(35:28):
known I was going to have to tell this story
at some point and really regretting that because I was.
I was really scared. I would say that the response
has been really surprising to me, just the number of
women who have said, yeah, like this is why I
didn't come forward in this case. I think if we
can develop a language around this and have a conversation
(35:50):
around this where it becomes really understood that people aren't
going to behave like a cartoon character would after something
like this happens, to us. I think that's that's an
exciting conversation to be part of because I think it
opens the door for a lot of conversations that have
been hidden to come out. You Know, my question, which
I ask in the essay is how many women didn't
(36:13):
come forward in the Harvey Weinstein case, how many women
didn't come forward in the Gianga Mashi case? Like, we'll
never know that, but I would hope that if there's
more of a language and more of a conversation around
what behavior and memory looks like after trauma, I would
hope that more people will feel comfortable at some point
(36:33):
telling these stories about their various traumatic encounters that they've
had over the years. There are a couple instances in
in the book where it's it's very clear that the
very systems that are set up to protect people really
fail them, you know, in the what you expose about
the criminal justice system and how it can deal with
sexual assault cases, also in terms of your experience as
a child actor and unions that are set up to
(36:55):
allegedly protect you or who's watching out for you on set,
and I would understand having experience with the failure of
those systems firsthand. Could make one a cynical person, but
it seems to have made you to be a more
curious person and a more engaged person. Is that fair
to say? And if so, like, what is it about
you that that makes that your inclination? Thank you? I'm
(37:19):
glad that's how come across. I mean, I am curious,
and I think I'm curious because I fundamentally don't believe
that there are that many people in this world who
mean harm. I mean, I think there are a lot
of people who do harm. I don't think there are
a lot of people who mean to I guess that
gives me a certain amount of hope that things can
shift and change based on conversation and open curiosity. Like
(37:41):
I actually just have an enormous amount of faith that
if people knew how to do better, they would like
even the experience of putting this essay out into the world,
which I've been dreading for years, and you know, I
thought that what I would receive was a lot of judgment,
you know, for not coming forward earlier. I certainly felt
for myself. So to have that greeted with understanding and
(38:04):
a conversation and you kind of go like, oh my God,
like people have a lot of room like people, people
can be tolerant and expansive and drop their judgment, and
that's hopeful. I just I mean, even like the people
in this book, Like I feel like people are kind
of really interested in telling horror stories about Terry Gilliam
and I certainly have a few of my own, But
(38:25):
I I actually don't think he's a monster, and I'm
I'm not interested in vilifying him, And I'm actually most
interested to know if there'll ever be a shift in
that person because he has a really creative brain. He's
really interesting, he's really alive. There's a real goodness in him.
That creative energy has not been directed towards his absorption
(38:47):
of conversations that go in a progressive direction. There's like
there's a real creative failure in the way he's approaching
these things. But it's there, Like he's not a monster,
so you know, he's eighty now, I don't know, like,
how will you see things in a year? Like we
can give up on people, it's fair. I think there's
a lot of evidence to support the end of giving
up on something like that, but I kind of don't
(39:08):
want to because I've seen the side of him that
actually does have empathy. I've seen the side of him
that's enormously creative, and so I think, like even the
people I talked about in this book in a not
flattering way, I'm just not willing to give up just
it may sound naive, but I also think it's like,
I don't know how you go forward like without that
(39:28):
belief that that that's possible. That's writer and director Sarah Paully.
If you're enjoying this conversation, make sure you subscribe to
Here's the Thing on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back,
you'll hear what happened when Sarah Paully turned the tables
(39:49):
and asked me a question, one that caught me off guard.
I'm Talia Schlanger. You're listening to Here's the Thing from
my Heart Radio. I've been speaking with actor, director and
(40:11):
writer Sarah Polly, whose new book Run Towards the Danger
reveals some of the more harrowing stories from a life
lived on stage and screen. As you can tell by
this point, Sarah Polly is a pretty insightful person, and
I guess something in the way I asked her about
her story involving Gian Gomeshi gave her a sense I
(40:32):
might have a story to tell too, So just as
we were about to wrap our conversation, she said this,
can I ask you a question. I'm curious, like, how
would you describe your reasons for not coming forward? Well,
I was not assaulted by Jian Gomeshi. Um, And I
did participate in the investigation internally at CBC that was
(40:55):
conducted to contribute to evidence of like a pattern of behavior.
I was an intern. I wanted to be at the
CBC because of him. Uh. I dreamed of that show
and I felt so much shame about when he took
a shining to me going out with him, going to
his house, and the way he interacted with me physically
(41:19):
in one of those situations. My entire body was like,
you need to get away from this man and you
need to not see him again. Um And I told
him so. And I was very scared about the first
time I'm telling this story, uh publicly. I was scared
for my career, um and for myself. And he was
(41:40):
extremely powerful at CBC. You know, there was like a
two story high photograph of his face that I saw
every single time I walked into that building. And I
was fresh out of school. So when there was an
investigation at cbc UM, they asked for people to speak
to the lawyer who was conducting it, and I saw
off for myself also the amount of shame that I
(42:03):
felt even in telling her why I went out with
him on a date. It was scary enough to go
through that without having been assaulted, but I can't imagine,
Like I just got a little glimpse into what it
might be like to come forward for something like this.
And then I got I remember I got back to
my desk and there was an email from our union
that said, just so you know, if your managers find
(42:24):
out you took part in this investigation, we don't have
a lot of ability to protect you. Oh my god.
And I just remember thinking, all my career in Canadian
media is over and that's fine. It changed the way
I am in the workplace for sure, and I got
really lucky, yeah, and also felt so much shame, so
(42:49):
much shame. Yeah, it's amazing how we get left with
the shame instead of the person who's done the really
awful thing. You know. It's such a And then we
have I mean, that's one story from a whole lifetime,
so you know, like that's that's that's that, that's that
part of things. So but that is the other thing too,
is you're kind of like, I'm focusing on this story
(43:10):
because I want to, you know, I want to show
what the similarities were between my story and these other
women's stories. But it's like it's not even on the
scale of things that have happened in my life. I'm
not sure how much anything, you know that's like what's terrible.
It's like this, sorry, guys, this isn't actually the big
trauma on this issue, but that will be in the
next book maybe. Like it's just like, I mean, it's
(43:32):
just this war zone, you know, like bi female in
a professional environment. It's so messed up. It's so messed up.
It's really messed up. Yeah, and what we've absorbed as
normal or or just something we have to plow through,
and we're kind of privileged, like we have these tough
forms and like this is not even close to the
(43:53):
as bad as it gets. It's just to even feel
empowered enough to be able to say, well, if this
ruins my career, I lose my job. I know, that
I'll still be okay and I'll find another way around.
That's an enormous and enormous privilege. Absolutely, Yeah, I feel
very emotional after what you just told me. So do I.
I'm grateful to you for asking. I feel I've interviewed
(44:15):
a lot of people, and people um never, I think
that's the first time I've been asked a question. Well,
I could see your face and when you like you.
At some point when I was talking, you started closing
your eyes, and then I could see when you were talking.
I could kind of sense what you weren't saying, and
so I was like, I didn't want to intrude, but
I also just wanted to open the space to talk
(44:37):
a little bit because I, yeah, there's just so many
people out there who carried these stories around, and I
think the shame part is just such an important piece
of the conversation because it's what that's what creates this
kind of toxic silence around it. You know, thank you
so much. I could keep here for days and ask
you a thousand more questions. I'm so tremendously rateful to
(45:00):
you for writing this book and also for working in
your career to make things better. Thank you. Thank you
so much, what a pleasure this was. Thank you. I
just want to make it clear, Sarah Pauli and I
had never spoken before this interview, and I had no
plans to tell my story, certainly not on this podcast.
But Sarah asked the question, and so I answered. And again,
(45:24):
I'm not alleging that gian Gameshi did anything illegal towards me.
That was just my experience of interacting with someone in
a position of power, and I wanted to share how
that impacted the way I felt about myself and about
my career, especially in light of Sarah being so open
and sharing her own story. We reached out to Gian
Gameshi's team for comment and did not receive a response.
(45:47):
Survivors of sexual assault can reach out to the National
Sexual Assault Hotline at one eight hundred six five six
four six seven three. That's one eight hundred six five
six hope. My sincere thanks to Sarah Poulli for an
unexpected conversation. This episode was produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeice,
(46:08):
and Maureen Hoban. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. I'm Talia Schlanger.
Alec Baldwin will be back next week here's the thing.
Is brought to you by I Heart Radio
Hey, this is Talia Schlanger and you're listening to Here's
the Thing from My Heart Radio. My guest today can't
help but excel at everything she does, from acting to directing,
writing features to making documentaries. She is celebrated in so
many different circles. It's the multi talented Sarah Polly. As
a child actor, Polly starred in films like Terry Gilliams,
(00:25):
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and the beloved CBC series
Rode to Avonlea. She moved on to acclaimed rolls in
The Sweet Hereafter Go and Dawn of the Dead. In
her twenties, she made the move to writing and directing.
Her first film away from her started Julie Christie and
Olympia Ducacus and earned Polly an Academy Award nomination for
(00:46):
Best Adapted Screenplay as well as a Genie Award for
Best Direction. Since then, she has continued to write and
direct for TV and film, and she branched into documentary
with Stories We Tell, the film about her family history.
Poully can now add author to her growing list of accomplishments.
She recently released her first book, It's called Run Towards
(01:07):
the Danger, Confrontations with a body of memory, and it's
a pretty stunning collection of essays exploring some difficult chapters
in her life. Sarah Paully told me what it means
to run towards the danger. Well, the first time I
heard that was from a Dr Mickey Collins at the
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and I had had a
(01:28):
pretty serious concussion, very serious concussion. I mean, for the
first year I wasn't able to do much at all,
and then I would have periods that were better than others,
as long as I managed my stimulation while and didn't
have too much noise or light. But basically it altered
my life and made me unable to do a lot
of the things I've been able to do, and unable
(01:49):
to handle a lot of the things I've been able
to handle. I eventually ended up with Dr Mickey Collins
in Pittsburgh, and I remember him saying to me in
that first meeting, if you remember only one thing from
this meeting, remember this run towards the danger. And what
he meant by that was a kind of paradigm shift
(02:09):
in terms of how to recover from a concussion. So
a lot of the advice you get when you have
a concussion is to rest, to listen to your body,
to slow down. The better concussion doctors will tell you
to exercise, but when you feel like your symptoms are
becoming too much, go rest or do something else. And
his advice was really different from that. His advice was,
(02:30):
the things that are hard for you, the things that
are causing you discomfort and pain because of your concussion,
are the things you actually need to do more of
because your brain has become weaker and weaker at handling
these things. Because of this, you know the way you've
been protecting yourself. So this was of course scaffolded with
a lot of like vestibular exercises and physical exercises, and
(02:52):
every treatment he gives is different. But the notion of
moving towards what causes you discomfort instead of away from
it being a key ingredient to healing was a really
new concept for me, and then one that kind of
exploded out into all of these other areas of my
life and became, in a way, the genesis for bringing
(03:13):
all of these essays together into this book. Also, I
should say at that time, you had two small kids,
like you're juggling a lot of things while you're trying
to take on this this advice of confronting the pain
or pushing past what you think your threshold is. And
it's one thing to do that on a physical level,
but then it's a whole little thing to do that
on an emotional level with stories like you've done with
(03:34):
this book. What was the process like for you of
pushing past the threshold to get these stories out. I mean,
it was a long one and kind of it was
a bit of a windy road. I mean, I'd been
writing some of these essays for twenty years and didn't
have the courage to either finish them or to share them,
or I would, you know, write a few paragraphs and
put it away for years and then pull it out again.
(03:57):
I mean, the stories in this book were some of
the hardest stories for me to look at that I've
ever experienced. The ones that were pivotal, the ones that
hurt the most, the ones that I wasn't even sure
what the shape of the narrative was. Those stories that
leave you with a kind of confusion that you haul
along with you. These were those stories for me. So
(04:19):
this idea of running towards the danger began um taking
on the form of, you know, opening these word documents
that I kept shutting or had put away or even
like hidden myself in files and the combune where they
were hard to find, and going, what is it about
this that's making me so scared to continue the story,
or to finish the story, or to even read what
(04:42):
I've written. And those became the stories I became most
determined to tell, no matter how hard they were. Why
I determined to tell them for yourself, for your own exorcism,
or for the benefit of others, or a combination. I
think some of them I didn't know why I was
writing them. I mean, some of these essays. There's one
about stage fright and scoliosis and my mother dying, and
(05:03):
you know, a thousand other things. The first essay, which
is called Alice Collapsing, which I wrote when I was
eighteen and twenty three and thirty three and forty, like
it's written by four different people. Like, I don't think
I knew why I was writing that story when I
started it, and by the time I was writing at forty,
I probably did. I think all of them became for
(05:25):
me interesting ways of looking at the way the past
and the present relate to each other the way I
think we are all very well acquainted now with the
idea that our past and childhood experiences inform our present life.
I guess I also hope that like this notion that
childhood trauma or experience are difficult experiences from another time
(05:46):
in your life, aren't static. They don't have to live
there always as these ticking time bombs or these jaggedy
sharp things that like, if you get to live a
life where stories that echo those story is go a
different better way. Those stories can become lighter, like, those
stories can become easier to carry, Those stories can have
(06:06):
in the end a totally different meaning to you than
they have now. Like those stories that feel so static
and hard and rigid in your stomach can actually loosen
um and become more flexible and interesting if you can
kind of dive in and pull the threads and be curious.
(06:26):
So I think for me, that's what the the recovery
process with all of these stories looked like for me
was the diving in and the being conscious of the
past in the present life. Having the present life go
a different way actually meant the past looks and feels
differently to me. Now. The subtitle of the book is
(06:46):
Confrontations with a Body of Memory. And when we talk
about the literal body that you're confronting in this book,
you've already mentioned a concussion scoliosis, which you are diagnosed
with at age eleven, being in a hard plus dig
brace at a time of puberty when your body is changing.
But also for you, at a time when you're starting
on a television show and day in and day out
(07:07):
you are being looked at by people and people are
putting clothes on you and and fitting you for things. Um,
how did that diagnosis looking back on it now, how
did that diagnosis shape your relationship to your physical body? Yeah,
I mean the thing that complicated the experience for me,
and I think it's complicated for any person who goes
through this as a kid. But the thing that complicated
(07:27):
for me was I was living a very public life
and I was on the lead in the TV show,
and at a certain point I was also you know,
on stage at Stratford, and so you know, there were
long costume fittings of like how do we make her
body look normal? Or how do we accommodate the costumes
to fit this brace. So it was a very public
display of what was already a very uncomfortable and somewhat
(07:50):
humiliating experience. So the way I dealt with that was
just separating who I was from what was happening to
my body. I think, and I get a sense like
learning to maybe a nor what your body is telling
you about how it's feeling in order to perform in
the way you have have to. Is that fair to
say as well? Yeah? Absolutely, Is that common in the
acting industry, I would think, I think so. I think so.
(08:14):
I mean, I think there's also there's a sense that
nothing can stop for a human being, right, Like I
think in film and television, the idea that anything would
delay anything for an hour even is inconceivable. So you
kind of learned to just trudge through your humans. Like
I remember we were just location scoting for this film
(08:35):
I did in this summer. It was like a hundred
and eight degrees with the human dex and we were
trudging through these soy fields and and how much water
food with us, and we all just kept going and
like we did that for like hours, and I got
home and went like, why didn't one of us complain
about that or stop it. And this was a pretty
compassionate set compared to most, and we're all pretty aware
(08:56):
and we had conversations about it all the time, how
do we make this a really safe, welcoming place. But
ultimately nobody wanted to be the one to say, like
it's too hot, I need water or I need food.
And it's like we had created an environment very consciously
that was to be humane. It's like this thing switches
on you go into like soldier mode or something where
(09:18):
you're just you got to be a trooper. And I
certainly have that from being a child actor. It's like
you can't be the one to delay or stop anything.
And I think it just creates the possibility for a
lot of really big problems on sets. You know, I
sa a lot of pressure if you don't mind it.
Like I think the incident that's coming to mind, which
you relay in the book, is when you were nine
years old and starring in this film that was directed
(09:39):
by Terry Gilliam. Would you mind saying a little bit
about what that set experience was like so that we
can you know, picture what you're saying. Yeah, so I
actually lot as a kid and one of the main
parts I did was the role of Sally Salt in
the Adventures of barrenman Chausen, which was directed by Terry
Gilliam when I was eight, and it was a production that,
you know, notoriously spiral that of control. There was a
(10:00):
book written about it called Losing the Light. I mean,
it was like one of those big disastrous movie stories
about a production gone awry, and there were a lot
of special effects, there were a lot of stunts, and
many times things felt wildly out of control and dangerous,
and you know, some of those incidents involved explosives going
off really close to me. And there was an incident
(10:21):
in a boat where we're in a rowboat with a
few actors and a horse, and explosives were going off
in a water tank beside the horse and the boat,
and it spook the horse and it started backing up
into us, and the rider took it overboard, and that
surfaced another explosive that went off really close to me,
and I went to hospital, and you know, there were
a lot of really terrifying things that happened on that set.
(10:43):
Um So I kind of grew up with this feeling
of a set being a very unstable, scary place, but
that it was absolutely not my right to stop what
was in motion, no matter how unsafe it became, and that,
you know, that became somewhat ingrained. And so I think
(11:04):
I've spent a lot of time as a filmmaker trying
to unpack those instincts that make you want to keep
going when you should really stop, and to try to
kind of reorient what the priorities and focus need to
be when you are responsible for a whole bunch of
other human beings. But you know, I don't think I'm
always successful at it. It's like it's just like a
work in progress all the time. What made you want
(11:25):
to act in the first place, Like, was it was
it your choice when you were a really small kid.
Was it something that you wanted to do? I mean
the story I was told as a kid, was I
desperately wanted to do it? My parents were in the industry,
you know, my mom was a casting director. My gut
is it probably happened a little bit more organically in
terms of her breaking and for an audition than that.
(11:46):
But certainly I think they were getting something out of it,
Like I think they were getting access to a world
that they wanted access to. I think they were excited
for me to get access to a world that had
been hard for them to get access to. There was
nothing malicious about my parents, and they were very loving,
great people. But I do think it's possible to get
carried away, Like, especially when a kid has a certain
measure of success, it can get hard to track how
(12:10):
much of this is my kid's passion and how much
am I getting out of it. I think that can
be really easy to lose track of. Yeah, I'm interested
to know. I guess how you made the transition from
acting when you were a kid to the choices that
you made for yourself as an adult. Because can imagine
a world where you could have thought, I want to
(12:31):
be the hollywoodist actor that I can be, Like, now
that I'm doing it and I'm in this industry, I'm
I'm going to go for it. Tell me about, like
how you decided what was going to be of interest
to you as an adult if you continued acting well.
I think one of the advantages of being a child
actor and seeing you know, big Hollywood productions completely out
(12:52):
of control and seeing how kind of disposable people's well
being was at a very early age on sets Is.
It made me really skept a call, which I think
was really helpful and really healthy as an adult in
terms of making choices, Like, I think I was really
conscious I had a really really active bullshit detector. I
knew that I didn't want to be really famous. I
(13:13):
knew that I wanted to if I was going to
be involved in this industry at all, which I think
I had a lot of cynicism about generally. I knew
that I wanted to be on projects that I had
felt had some meaning or something to say, or at
least would be in connection with people that weren't single
focus who had a sense of humanity about them. So
(13:34):
I think it really helped shape the kinds of decisions
I made, and then certainly as a filmmaker, Um, I
really want to know why I'm making what I'm making, like,
I really want to know who it's serving and why
and how. So it's got to have meaning for me,
It's got to have a purpose, that has to have
a reason for being. I think the gratitude for just
(13:55):
being here is is slowly dawning on me as an
adult and as I get older, but it's taken a
long time to get here, If I can say so,
I think that's why your work is so good, Like
it's made for the sake of having something to say,
rather than for the sake of making something or or
anything else. I mean this, this shouldn't really be remarkable,
but it kind of is that you. You made your
(14:16):
you directed your first film when you were in your
mid twenties, and I say it's remarkable because it's quite young,
especially for a female filmmaker. The film Away from Her,
which was so beautiful. What was it like to actually
get that film made. I had been trying for years
to get a film made before that one, and it
(14:36):
was really hard at first. I think the idea of
a young actress making a movie was really hard for
people to wrap their heads around. Like there are a
lot of amazing young actresses making movies now. But then
it was like if you were a male actor trying
to direct, it was treated very, very differently, and I
think people thought it was like some hobby or something
I was trying. Yeah, so I tried to make one
(15:01):
movie for like years, and then it was I was
turned down in more and more humiliating ways by Telefilm,
our government film ending agency, and finally I I wrote
away from her quite quickly, and I gave myself a deadline,
and the deadline was like something absurd, like in six
months from now, if this film isn't green light, I'm
not going to try to direct again, Like I just
can't do this anymore. And it turned out it was
that kind of energy that's sort of nothing to lose,
(15:23):
do or die energy that it took to actually get
a movie financed. And then I had champions, like then
there was this big changing of the guard at Telephone,
which was the film funding agency at the time, and
then it came together quite quickly. But certainly there was
a lot of you know, not always being taken seriously,
like thankfully my closest collaborators did. And I was surrounded
by both really supportive women and also really great men
(15:44):
who who took me really seriously and helped me just
sort of assume that leadership role which I was nervous about.
But in terms of financiers and like sort of people
on the outside and around it, you know, you're sort
of where you were being watched like this little ingenue
trying to trying something on, and yeah, it was it
(16:07):
was interesting, And it was interesting also to go from
being an actress who people kind of humored to somebody
who was in a position where, you know, you could
really feel what people thought of you and felt about you,
and it was it was healthy. But you know, a
bit of a shocked bassist. Yeah, I bet at what
point did you feel like you had earned people's respect? Well,
(16:30):
you know, I'd made a bunch of short films at
that point, and I'd slowly, through the crewing of those
short films, found my people and found the people that
we're like really trying to create a space for me
to find myself as a filmmaker. So I found my
D O P and my first A D and so
I did feel like I had an incredibly supportive team
when I was actually on the floor of that film,
and Julie Christie and Olympdocacus like these were people who
(16:52):
had been kind of mentoring me and pushing me forward.
And I also think that I hugely benefited from those
very un usual experience I had had, which is that
I'd worked with a few female filmmakers as a young actor,
which again it's not a big deal now to have
worked with female filmmakers it was a really big deal then,
like to have worked with Katherine Bigelow, to have worked
with Isabel Quichet, to have these models, and as soon
(17:15):
as I expressed the slightest interest in directing, they just
sort of threw their bodies behind me and pushed, you know,
like it was just like, you know, being a female
filmmaker twenty years ago was really freaking hard. It's it's
hard now, but it was a lot harder than and
they were just like, here's okay, you're a dog with
a bone. Don't let the bone go. Everyone's going to
(17:37):
try to take away from you. Remember Catherine Bigge was
like this, everyone will try to take the bone away
from you. Hold onto the bone, and like it was
such great advice, and that is kind of what it took.
It was like people are trying to get the bone
away one of the phone and Isabel just going okay,
what's next, what's next? You know, Like there was this
sense of women who are a bit older than me
shoving me forward. And I think that's ultimately the real
(18:00):
reason why I made a film in my mid twenties
at a time when it was unusual for a young
actress to make a film because I had had these
female mentors, I had seen it modeled. They put that
energy into encouraging me, and I think that's sort of everything.
You know, when you are part of a group of
people that's underrepresented, you need those people ahead of you
(18:20):
and behind you shoving you forward. Yeah, and you need
to not not let go of that bone. I want
to come back to acting for just a second in
your adult life, because in getting ready to talk to you,
I watched this clip of you on a Canadian talk
show called John Division from back in the day. I
was like, I grew up in cann It's a beloved
(18:41):
TV show and you're so cool on it. You're seventeen
years old. And you said, um, I've am quoting you.
I've never been a good actor or had this great talent.
I've just sort of taken sides of myself at different
times and toyed with them. But I don't think it's
a great talent that's in my blood or something. And
I heard that and I was like, wait, isn't that
(19:02):
what acting? Is that what acting is for some people?
I don't know what do you make of What do
you make of that? Now that you've acted a lot
as an adult and also directed other people. Yeah, that's
so interesting. I don't know. I mean, yeah, I guess
it can be what acting is, although it's funny, like
(19:23):
I directed this film the summer called Women Talking, and
the actors in this film were just machines, like they
were acting machines like they were. It was Claire Foy
and Jesse Buckley and Rooney Mara and Sheila McCarthy and
Judith Ivy and Michelle McCloud and it was just like
Ben Wishaw and Francis McDormand, and like they were just
(19:45):
like these geniuses. And I was watching the way they
were working, and I really do think there's something fundamentally
different about what I used to do as an actor
when I was acting on what they're doing. And I
think what they're doing is like pushing themselves to like
the absolute outer or limit of what is possible in
(20:05):
terms of like embodying another human being and risking everything,
like risking everything psychologically and emotionally to get where they
need to go. I didn't do that as an actor.
I mean, i'd like to think if I ever went
back to acting one day, and I don't know if
I will, but if I did that, I would be
willing to take those kinds of risks with myself. But again,
(20:25):
because of the experience I had as a child where
I felt like both my emotions were kind of exploited
and my physical safety was taken for granted, I had
limits on what I was going to give. So I
think I got good at doing a couple of things,
you know, like I could. I could kind of had
a couple of things I could do pretty well, but
I didn't ever explode my sense of myself or risk
(20:49):
myself to like embody an emotion I couldn't predict coming
upon me in a scene, and watching great actors do
that is electrifying. If I ever did go back to acting,
I wouldn't do it unless I felt like I was
prepared to do that. So I think that's maybe what
I meant in that quote is like I was staying
(21:10):
in a zone that was comfortable for me, and I
think that I I would like to think if I
could do that part of my life over that, I
would I would push myself more in risk more. That's
actor and author Sarah Paulli. If you like conversations with
skilled actor turned directors, check out our episode with Maggie Gillenhall.
(21:33):
The thing I like love about the few roles that
I've done that I feel the most proud of. Um
that I think I executed the best. I think are
actually sort of the most human people, so maybe the
most conventional in terms of being like we actually are.
And I know the woman in the movie does things
(21:54):
that many of us would never ever do, but in
so many other ways I relate to her so much much.
You can hear more of alex conversation with Maggie Gillenhall
in our archives and Here's the Thing dot org. After
the break, I talked to Sarah Paully about her decision
to finally come forward with a me too story she's
kept private for decades. Hey, I'm Talia sh Langer, and
(22:26):
you're listening to Here's the Thing. In the nineties and
the auts, Sarah Pauli was a celebrated actor. It seems
like she was at the height of her career and
she could have had any rules she wanted, but instead
Sarah walked away from acting. I wanted to know why.
This is one of these questions where like it's sort
of like writing the essays in this book where I
feel like I suddenly have a whole bunch of answers
(22:48):
I didn't expect to have to that question, like, oh,
I haven't unpacked this. I mean, on the one hand,
it's like I had discovered directing and I was in
love with writing and directing, and I was like, this
is what my priority, he is, And so I always
knew that was the the direction I was moving in.
But why I stopped acting entirely was I had a
couple of really bad experiences towards the end of my
(23:10):
acting career um with uh, really insensitive people and really
vulnerable situations where things were handled really badly and really insensitively,
and I just had this moment where I thought, I'm
not I'm not going to put myself in this kind
(23:31):
of situation again. And it was like a time, you know,
was this is pre me too, and pre these conversations
about bullying on sets and safety on sets, which thank god,
are happening finally, but at that time they weren't. And
so I just thought, this behavior is going to go
on forever, nobody's going to be accountable, and I'm just
going to be expected to kind of suck it up.
And I'm not going to do it anymore. And I've
(23:52):
got this other job that I love, which is directing,
where I have some agency over my working conditions and
how I'm treated, and I'm just not gonna put myself
in the line of fire anymore. So I removed myself
based on a couple of really terrible experiences I had
in a row. I also had a great experience that
year working with Jacko vandr Mal who directed Mr. Nobody,
(24:12):
who was the antithesis of that kind of filmmaker, was
incredibly empathetic and sensitive and passionate, and people's experience making
the film was far more important to him than the
film itself, which is something I try to carry with me,
like I just try to carry in my head because
I said, how are you managing this? Like we're working
such civilized hours, people have their kids coming to set.
You seem to care so much about how everybody is doing, Like,
(24:34):
how are you managing this? And he said, if this
film is everything we wanted to be, it'll maybe affect
a couple of people for a few weeks, hopefully, But
what we know for certain is that the experience of
making this film will be with all of us for
the rest of our lives, so that has to be
the priority. And I was like, that to me has
(24:56):
just stayed with me. So it's really But I had
a couple of other experiences that were really really depressing
and demoralizing, just in terms of watching where people were
putting their priorities and how much people couldn't pay attention
to other people's well being in the middle of of
making a film. So I went and made my own
films and was very very happy to do so. I
had this discussion recently with someone on set where like
(25:20):
there had been this moment where someone hadn't behaved that well,
and someone said to me, you know, if that person
didn't behave that way, you might not be getting the
job that you wanted, Like that might be what contributes
to their ability to do their job. And I remember
saying and I didn't even know I felt this way,
but the words just like popped out of my mouth
and I just went Nobody asked me what my priority was,
(25:43):
like if someone had said to me, you could have
less of a film. But people, we'll be behaving well
towards other and treating each other decently, and like that's
the choice, I absolutely will vote for the latter every
single time. Like I want to make great films. I'm
super ambitious for the films that I do make. But
given the choice, I don't choose the genius over the
(26:04):
well being. Ever, I will never accept talent as an
excuse for bullshit. I just won't do it. I don't
have it in me anymore. And it seems, I mean,
it seems maybe like people are shifting towards that a
little bit more as we're opening up these conversations. Maybe
I think they are. I mean, I think I think
this is like kind of something I didn't ever expect
(26:24):
to even see happen, Like in my life, you'vened about
sexual harassment, Like I just thought, this is something we're
stuck with, Like I didn't think to say anything about
it or to you know, you just this was the
landscape we lived. And so it is amazing to see
these conversations open up. I'm really excited to see them
open up more in industries where there isn't a huge
spotlight shown on them. I mean, I hope that we
(26:45):
can see a continued progress with this, because it's it's
a lot easier for us to complain about it given
the platforms we have. Yeah, well, let's talk, um, if
you would, about the second essay in the book, which
is called The Woman Who Stayed Silent. And as much
as I want to talk about this essay with you,
I also I want people to read every single word
of it. The way that you've crafted it, the depth
(27:07):
of the story that you're telling, and the nuance that
you're able to bring to the thinking around this essay
I think is so important. And if you don't mind,
Sarah's just setting up with the premise of the chapter
as as much as you're comfortable. Sure, you know, this
essay took years to write and to think about and
to choose the exact words for and so really the
the entirety of the essay itself is the best answer
(27:29):
to any question about it. But that said, what it
is about is an experience that I had when I
was sixteen years old with Gian Gameshi, who was acquitted
of sexually assaulting multiple women. Just stepping out of the
interview here for a moment. Gian Gameshi is a Canadian broadcaster.
He was a prominent radio host at the CBC until
(27:50):
that year. He was the subject of several sexual assault allegations,
Gameshi was charged, went to trial and was ultimately acquitted
of all charges. In and just so you have the
heads up, the following conversation will contain discussions of circumstances
surrounding sexual assault. Okay, back to Sarah and the allegations
(28:11):
when they came forward. We're a really big news story
in Canada, and I had to make a decision about
whether or not to come forward. And I spent a
really long time and a lot of hours with my newborn,
you know, strapped to me and the carrier and my
toddler with me asking everybody I knew, and I know
(28:32):
a lot of lawyers and a lot of people work
in the criminal justice STU been asking them if I
should come forward because I felt a deep obligation to
support the women who had come forward, whose stories sounded
very similar to my own, And the advice I was
given across the board was to not come forward, because
every lawyer I met, but for one, said they would
never advise a woman that they loved to come forward
(28:53):
in a sexual assault case based on how are jewous
and difficult the encounter of the criminal justice system would be,
how long it would drag on how close so many
people came to suicide by the time the process was over,
and knowing what I did about what would lie ahead
of me and coming forward and having two little kids,
I made the decision to stay silent. It was a
(29:14):
really hard decision on a lot of levels. And I
think the contribution that I wanted to make now, this
many years later, with having had years to think about
how I would tell this story, is to shine a
light on the parallels between the inconsistencies that were pointed
out in those women's stories and the holes that were
(29:35):
poked in their memories and characters and my own, Because
everything that was lobbed at those women on the stand
in terms of them not be being reliable witnesses to
the truth, would have been lobbed at me. And the
impact that trauma has on memory, the way it makes
us unreliable narrators of the details before and after an
(29:58):
experience like this, and the way that makes our entire
stories seem not credible, seemed like a worthwhile contribution because
what happens when women enter into or anybody with an
allegation like this, what happens to people when they're on
the stand, is these inconsistencies, and these problems in our
memories get lobbed as at us as evidence that the
thing itself didn't happen. And so my my idea was,
(30:21):
what if I offer all of that stuff? What if
I offer up everything I would be cross examined with
my friendly encounters with him afterwards, my friendly emails with him,
the way in which my memory didn't capture this part
or that part at various stages. What if I offered
the whole, embarrassing, messy, completely commonplace picture of what a
(30:46):
memory and what an account after a traumatic experience like
this looks like, hopefully to shine a light on and
maybe add credibility to all of those people who have
been discounted because of these inconsistencies. Because at this point
I don't have a lot to gain by telling the story.
It's not particularly fun to tell this story, I bet yeah,
But I feel like there's some contribution to be made
(31:09):
in saying, here are all the embarrassing parts, and I'm
still telling the truth. Here all the inconsistencies, and I'm
still telling the truth. Here is all the mess of
my memory and why I seem like a total flake,
and I'm still telling the truth, and so many people
who have come forward in cases like this have been
discounted as flake here are not credible because of these details,
(31:29):
which I think are so commonplace, and I think most
people who have had experience like this don't actually come
forward and we don't hear from them, and so I
kind of wanted to shine a light on what that
experience looks like and why a point that you made
here that I have not heard made nearly enough that
you that you also just sort of hinted at is
(31:50):
the idea of how people who have been through traumatic
experiences with somebody can exhibit confusing behavior after the fact.
And one of the things that you write about is
being interviewed by Jon who hosting I was working at
the CBC at that time also, I should say, and
he was hosting an arts and culture show where he
interviewed you about, you know, your work, and you write
(32:11):
in this essay about sort of watching clips of yourself
and how you diminished yourself in front of him or
or were giggly or we're sort of warm towards him,
and you wrote this is a quote. It can seem
perplexing from the outside, this pool that many women experience
to make things better for those who have hurt us.
M hm. And you're such a powerful and talented person,
(32:33):
it must have taken a lot to say that, and
then so many of us do this. So where do
you think that this behavior comes from. I think it
comes from a lot of places. I think it can
come from a desire to normalize a situation that's very
very hard to process, and that's living in a very
jaggedy place inside us, and to try to make it
so that it didn't happen. In my case, I think
(32:55):
it came from fear. I think I was really scared
of him, and I was really scared of how many
could be because you know, even in the years following that,
every time I saw him, he had something mean to say.
And when somebody has something mean to say to you,
but the history of your relationship with that person is
one that was terrifying and violent, that has a different meaning,
(33:15):
and it affects you and goes through you in a
different way. So I think I was doing everything I
could to make things nice for him and to make
um myself not threatening. I think that people underestimate how
circuitous behavior can become when we're afraid and when we
(33:37):
don't know how to process a situation. And at that time,
there wasn't the same language for these kinds of experiences.
So it's like we weren't all throwing the word assault around,
you know what, I mean, Like it was like, what
the hell happened? I don't know. So I think that
you know, we know now there's a huge body of
research that shows us that memory is really fray cured
(34:00):
by trauma. It's not consistent. We don't remember everything perfectly.
I mean, I can't count the number of people I
know who have, after a very terrifying experience with somebody,
have been nice to them afterwards and it will have
maintained contact. I mean, I'm I'm sure that a huge
percentage of these kinds of experiences that happen, there's contact
(34:24):
that is friendly and that is perplexing from the outside afterwards.
And I think that if we can't make room for
the mess of that, we're not going to be hearing
these stories the way we should be, you know. And
I think what was what was really hurting about the
Harvey Weinstein case was there was an expert call to
talk about the impact that trauma has on memory to
(34:45):
talk about typical post assault behavior, which can include contact
like this, and that was a real service. But in
in the Younga Messi case in Canada, there was no
such witness called, and those women I feel were really
hung out to dry and their behavior was made to
look flaky instead of completely normal. Yeah, it was three
(35:06):
years before the Harvey Weinstein case. They were also they
were humiliated. Um the title of the essay, the woman
who stayed silent carries a weight to it. I guess
a weight of reckoning with that decision. How are you
feeling about that decision? I'm feeling good now. I've been
dreading it. I've been dreading it a lot. I've always
(35:28):
known I was going to have to tell this story
at some point and really regretting that because I was.
I was really scared. I would say that the response
has been really surprising to me, just the number of
women who have said, yeah, like this is why I
didn't come forward in this case. I think if we
can develop a language around this and have a conversation
(35:50):
around this where it becomes really understood that people aren't
going to behave like a cartoon character would after something
like this happens, to us. I think that's that's an
exciting conversation to be part of because I think it
opens the door for a lot of conversations that have
been hidden to come out. You Know, my question, which
I ask in the essay is how many women didn't
(36:13):
come forward in the Harvey Weinstein case, how many women
didn't come forward in the Gianga Mashi case? Like, we'll
never know that, but I would hope that if there's
more of a language and more of a conversation around
what behavior and memory looks like after trauma, I would
hope that more people will feel comfortable at some point
(36:33):
telling these stories about their various traumatic encounters that they've
had over the years. There are a couple instances in
in the book where it's it's very clear that the
very systems that are set up to protect people really
fail them, you know, in the what you expose about
the criminal justice system and how it can deal with
sexual assault cases, also in terms of your experience as
a child actor and unions that are set up to
(36:55):
allegedly protect you or who's watching out for you on set,
and I would understand having experience with the failure of
those systems firsthand. Could make one a cynical person, but
it seems to have made you to be a more
curious person and a more engaged person. Is that fair
to say? And if so, like, what is it about
you that that makes that your inclination? Thank you? I'm
(37:19):
glad that's how come across. I mean, I am curious,
and I think I'm curious because I fundamentally don't believe
that there are that many people in this world who
mean harm. I mean, I think there are a lot
of people who do harm. I don't think there are
a lot of people who mean to I guess that
gives me a certain amount of hope that things can
shift and change based on conversation and open curiosity. Like
(37:41):
I actually just have an enormous amount of faith that
if people knew how to do better, they would like
even the experience of putting this essay out into the world,
which I've been dreading for years, and you know, I
thought that what I would receive was a lot of judgment,
you know, for not coming forward earlier. I certainly felt
for myself. So to have that greeted with understanding and
(38:04):
a conversation and you kind of go like, oh my God,
like people have a lot of room like people, people
can be tolerant and expansive and drop their judgment, and
that's hopeful. I just I mean, even like the people
in this book, Like I feel like people are kind
of really interested in telling horror stories about Terry Gilliam
and I certainly have a few of my own, But
(38:25):
I I actually don't think he's a monster, and I'm
I'm not interested in vilifying him, And I'm actually most
interested to know if there'll ever be a shift in
that person because he has a really creative brain. He's
really interesting, he's really alive. There's a real goodness in him.
That creative energy has not been directed towards his absorption
(38:47):
of conversations that go in a progressive direction. There's like
there's a real creative failure in the way he's approaching
these things. But it's there, Like he's not a monster,
so you know, he's eighty now, I don't know, like,
how will you see things in a year? Like we
can give up on people, it's fair. I think there's
a lot of evidence to support the end of giving
up on something like that, but I kind of don't
(39:08):
want to because I've seen the side of him that
actually does have empathy. I've seen the side of him
that's enormously creative, and so I think, like even the
people I talked about in this book in a not
flattering way, I'm just not willing to give up just
it may sound naive, but I also think it's like,
I don't know how you go forward like without that
(39:28):
belief that that that's possible. That's writer and director Sarah Paully.
If you're enjoying this conversation, make sure you subscribe to
Here's the Thing on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back,
you'll hear what happened when Sarah Paully turned the tables
(39:49):
and asked me a question, one that caught me off guard.
I'm Talia Schlanger. You're listening to Here's the Thing from
my Heart Radio. I've been speaking with actor, director and
(40:11):
writer Sarah Polly, whose new book Run Towards the Danger
reveals some of the more harrowing stories from a life
lived on stage and screen. As you can tell by
this point, Sarah Polly is a pretty insightful person, and
I guess something in the way I asked her about
her story involving Gian Gomeshi gave her a sense I
(40:32):
might have a story to tell too, So just as
we were about to wrap our conversation, she said this,
can I ask you a question. I'm curious, like, how
would you describe your reasons for not coming forward? Well,
I was not assaulted by Jian Gomeshi. Um, And I
did participate in the investigation internally at CBC that was
(40:55):
conducted to contribute to evidence of like a pattern of behavior.
I was an intern. I wanted to be at the
CBC because of him. Uh. I dreamed of that show
and I felt so much shame about when he took
a shining to me going out with him, going to
his house, and the way he interacted with me physically
(41:19):
in one of those situations. My entire body was like,
you need to get away from this man and you
need to not see him again. Um And I told
him so. And I was very scared about the first
time I'm telling this story, uh publicly. I was scared
for my career, um and for myself. And he was
(41:40):
extremely powerful at CBC. You know, there was like a
two story high photograph of his face that I saw
every single time I walked into that building. And I
was fresh out of school. So when there was an
investigation at cbc UM, they asked for people to speak
to the lawyer who was conducting it, and I saw
off for myself also the amount of shame that I
(42:03):
felt even in telling her why I went out with
him on a date. It was scary enough to go
through that without having been assaulted, but I can't imagine,
Like I just got a little glimpse into what it
might be like to come forward for something like this.
And then I got I remember I got back to
my desk and there was an email from our union
that said, just so you know, if your managers find
(42:24):
out you took part in this investigation, we don't have
a lot of ability to protect you. Oh my god.
And I just remember thinking, all my career in Canadian
media is over and that's fine. It changed the way
I am in the workplace for sure, and I got
really lucky, yeah, and also felt so much shame, so
(42:49):
much shame. Yeah, it's amazing how we get left with
the shame instead of the person who's done the really
awful thing. You know. It's such a And then we
have I mean, that's one story from a whole lifetime,
so you know, like that's that's that's that, that's that
part of things. So but that is the other thing too,
is you're kind of like, I'm focusing on this story
(43:10):
because I want to, you know, I want to show
what the similarities were between my story and these other
women's stories. But it's like it's not even on the
scale of things that have happened in my life. I'm
not sure how much anything, you know that's like what's terrible.
It's like this, sorry, guys, this isn't actually the big
trauma on this issue, but that will be in the
next book maybe. Like it's just like, I mean, it's
(43:32):
just this war zone, you know, like bi female in
a professional environment. It's so messed up. It's so messed up.
It's really messed up. Yeah, and what we've absorbed as
normal or or just something we have to plow through,
and we're kind of privileged, like we have these tough
forms and like this is not even close to the
(43:53):
as bad as it gets. It's just to even feel
empowered enough to be able to say, well, if this
ruins my career, I lose my job. I know, that
I'll still be okay and I'll find another way around.
That's an enormous and enormous privilege. Absolutely, Yeah, I feel
very emotional after what you just told me. So do I.
I'm grateful to you for asking. I feel I've interviewed
(44:15):
a lot of people, and people um never, I think
that's the first time I've been asked a question. Well,
I could see your face and when you like you.
At some point when I was talking, you started closing
your eyes, and then I could see when you were talking.
I could kind of sense what you weren't saying, and
so I was like, I didn't want to intrude, but
I also just wanted to open the space to talk
(44:37):
a little bit because I, yeah, there's just so many
people out there who carried these stories around, and I
think the shame part is just such an important piece
of the conversation because it's what that's what creates this
kind of toxic silence around it. You know, thank you
so much. I could keep here for days and ask
you a thousand more questions. I'm so tremendously rateful to
(45:00):
you for writing this book and also for working in
your career to make things better. Thank you. Thank you
so much, what a pleasure this was. Thank you. I
just want to make it clear, Sarah Pauli and I
had never spoken before this interview, and I had no
plans to tell my story, certainly not on this podcast.
But Sarah asked the question, and so I answered. And again,
(45:24):
I'm not alleging that gian Gameshi did anything illegal towards me.
That was just my experience of interacting with someone in
a position of power, and I wanted to share how
that impacted the way I felt about myself and about
my career, especially in light of Sarah being so open
and sharing her own story. We reached out to Gian
Gameshi's team for comment and did not receive a response.
(45:47):
Survivors of sexual assault can reach out to the National
Sexual Assault Hotline at one eight hundred six five six
four six seven three. That's one eight hundred six five
six hope. My sincere thanks to Sarah Poulli for an
unexpected conversation. This episode was produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeice,
(46:08):
and Maureen Hoban. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. I'm Talia Schlanger.
Alec Baldwin will be back next week here's the thing.
Is brought to you by I Heart Radio
Host
Alec Baldwin
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