April 12, 2022 • 28 mins
1980’s movie star Ally Sheedy is back with a plum role in a new TV series. She talks to Roxane about her other careers as an editor and teacher. Plus, Roxane speculates on why The Slap (at the Oscars ceremony) has grabbed so much of our attention.
Mentions:
● Single Drunk Female https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13790652/?ref_%3Dfn_al_tt_1
● Ally’s essay on Hollywood sexism that Roxane edited https://www.vulture.com/2018/05/ally-sheedy-on-hollywood-sexism-and-harvey-weinstein.html
Credits: Curtis Fox is the producer. Our researcher is Yessenia Moreno. Production help from Kaitlyn Adams and Meg Pillow. Theme music by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiura.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I recently had the opportunity to go to the Whitney
Biennial at the Whitney Museum. They gathered together some of
the most interesting artists and they take up two or
three floors of the Whitney with really interesting art. It's
very good. This year. It's mixed. There are some less
than interesting things, but most of the installations are really provocative.
(00:24):
There's this really stunning room of kind of words and
they're carved out of metal. I'm not explaining it well anyway,
it's I've never seen anything like it. It's absolutely breathtaking
and there are several truly breathtaking pieces. So if you're
in New York the Whitney Biennial, make sure you get
(00:46):
out there to see it. From Luminary, this is the
Roxanne Gay Agenda, the Bad Feminist podcast of your Dreams.
I'm Roxanne Gay, your favorite bad feminist. On the Roxanne Agenda,
I talked about something that's on my mind and then
I talk with someone interesting to find out what's on
their mind. On this week's agenda, celebrity nonsense. As as
(01:16):
many people know, during this year's OSCAR has not much happened.
But one of the interesting things that did happen is
that Will Smith slapped Chris Rock for making fun of
his wife's hair. In the moment, I was shocked. I
think I cringe so much that my body folded in
on itself in the aftermath, though I knew there were
(01:36):
going to be days and days of discussion, but I
cannot believe that it has been almost an entire week
of people talking and talking and talking about something that was,
in effect an isolated incident. This sort of thing doesn't
really happen that much, and I don't think that it
is a particular harbinger of anything but what it was.
(01:58):
And so I've been thinking a lot lately about the
kinds of discourse that we turn to when the world
is falling apart. And I think that's why we still
care about Chris Rock and Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith.
It's because we're in the middle of a pandemic that
we thought was going to end but is surging once more.
There's a war in Ukraine. There are all kinds of
(02:20):
problems here in the United States, from homelessness to the
lack of universal healthcare, to children going hungry, to falling
apart schools to infrastructure crumbling around us, while the government
continues to fund the police in the military at exorbitant
and ever increasing rates. And so yes, once in a while,
(02:42):
it's kind of great to just talk about celebrities who
ultimately are going to be just fine no matter what happens.
There's just not too much at stake, and sometimes I
think we all need to have conversations where there is
not too much at stake. Something else I'd like to
turn to when the old gets too much. As of course,
movies and television, and I am an eighties child. I
(03:06):
was born in nineteen seventy four. Pretty much all of
the movies of the eighties were very formative to me.
Et Star Wars, The Breakfast Club, and there was something
just so. They weren't wholesome, but they were interesting and
they weren't demeaning to anyone. And that's why I am
(03:27):
really thrilled to talk to someone I've always enjoyed talking
to and thinking about. Ali Sheey. She has been part
of my viewing life since the nineteen eighties. First she
was on TV shows like Hill Street Blues, and then
she got ever increasing roles like Bad Boys opposite Sean Penn,
and then there were the huge hits like The Breakfast Club,
(03:50):
short Circuit Saying Almost Fire. She later went on to
star in some wonderful independent films like My favorite movie
probably Top five High Art from much more recently, like
pretty much everyone else in showbiz, she's working on a
streaming show on the serialized comedy single Drunk Female, currently
airing on Hulu. In it, she praised a mother of
(04:13):
a young alcoholic who has come home to sober up
and ends up crashing her mother's life. Ali, Welcome to
the Roxanne Gay Agenda. How are you today? Thank you?
I am good. I am very honored to be here
in Roxanne. I was born in nineteen sixty two. You're
going to slow down. I am going to slow down.
(04:34):
I am going to slow down. Then. Well, my wife
was born in nineteen sixty one, and she often teases me,
and I don't feel like I don't mind getting old really,
but sometimes especially now, um, a young person will be
like I was more than two thousand and I just
looked at them like, go away, get out of my face, right,
(04:54):
don't talk to me. Well, my son was born in
ninety four, and I know and he seemed but I
keep forgetting he's actually twenty eight. I keep thinking he's
much younger than that. But also I don't know if
you have this experience, I feel like there's a decade
I'm missing absolutely, not that I don't remember it, but
that I keep thinking I'm actually instead of fifty nine.
(05:15):
For some reason, sometimes I look around and I'm like,
where did my forties go? While at the same time
I also believing and knowing in my heart that these
have been the best years of my life, but like, really,
where did the time go? So I had the opportunity.
I was in Amherst, Massachusetts recently, and I had a
huge gap of time between my first event and my
next event, and they had Hulu on a TV in
(05:39):
the room that they put me in for five hours.
So I watched Single Drunk Female the first season, which
is really great, and that means something because I watch
a lot of TV. And what I really loved was
that the character you play, Carol Fink, is not your
typical maternal role. She has a personality. She has more
(06:00):
to her life than just motherhood. So tell us about
Carol and what drew you to this role. I love
the writing, I love the characters, and this particular group.
It's almost entirely women working on this show, and there
are people I always wanted to work with and that character.
There was only the pilot, so it was only the first,
(06:20):
you know, a couple of scenes of Carol. But I
felt like, oh my god, there's something in me that
I understand this character. So I was really really happy
that they wanted me to play her, and then I
had the best time. I've never done a series before.
I didn't know how it works. I just didn't know
the process that you are filming. The script comes in
for We did the pilot, so then we get to
(06:42):
Atlanta and here's the script for the next episode. So
we had that and rehearsed a little bit, and then
while we were filming it, um, the script comes in
for the next episode while we're still filming the first one.
I didn't know that was how it went. And we
would do a table read by a zoom because of
(07:02):
the pandemic, so we're never in the same room with
another actor unless it was actually on set. And as
the scripts were coming in, I was beginning to understand
more about Carol because they were writing them off of
what we were doing, so I was connecting dots that
were coming from a writer and then from the writers,
and then also connecting dots within myself. It's just super interesting.
(07:25):
One of the things that intrigued me about the role
of Carol is Carol doesn't actually take an active role
in Samantha's sobriety. It's kind of Samantha's deal, and Carol
has her own stuff going on, and you know, and
among those things a new relationship and piecing back her
life together after the death of Samantha's father. And so
(07:47):
I just loved that part, and I was wondering how
you thought about bringing that in that Carol was clearly
a loving mother, but she wasn't going to micromanage her
daughter's sobriety. So my daughter had her life happening in
New York, my daughter played by Sophia sam And blew
her life up. I have been handed a disaster. I
(08:09):
just went through this very long illness with my husband,
who died about two years before the show starts. Sam
was absent for all of that. They don't have a
lot of backstory in there, but this is stuff that
worked out with the creative people and with Sophia. She
was not there. She was drinking in New York. She
abandoned me, and now all of a sudden, I I
(08:30):
have my house, um figuring out my life. I'm trying
to make friends, which I'm speaking as Carol, which is
very difficult. This particular character is quite spiky and very judgmental,
and people cross lines too quickly with me. But I'm
trying to like get my setup happening. And then she
moves in. I'm suddenly being asked to make this kid
kid She's almost thirty, the center of my life again
(08:54):
when she just had vanished. There's a conflict going on
the whole time because I don't want her to take
up that much space. And at the same time, obviously
I have this pull where I'm thinking about her all
the time, and so it's it's a back and forth
or almost resent how much I'm worried about her, and
that comes through that resentment and yet that love, that
(09:14):
wanting to take care but at the same time also
wanting to take care of the Carol wanting to take
care of herself, which I think is attention that many women,
many people face as we get older. I know that
In a recent Vanity Fair interview, you said that when
you hit your fifties, you thought you were really going
(09:34):
to miss acting. And I've heard that before from actors,
that there's this shelf especially for women, where once the
world no longer sees you as fuckable, you kind of
fall off a cliff into playing mothers and then grandmothers
and then whatever is past that. And so how does
it feel to have such a great role in your fifties.
(09:56):
I'm so grateful, thrilled, it, excited, happy, beyond belief. I
didn't know if a role was going to come along.
Everything had slowed way, way, way right down. Um, I
had figured out other things that I also love to
do with my life, and this just came in. And
(10:16):
now that you have this role, do you want to
keep acting and finding more roles or hopefully more rules
finding you? Yes, morals. I hope morals find me. I
hope that they pick up the season for a second season.
I really do. Right now, I would just love to
continue with this character and this group of actors, these
(10:39):
these people. So hopefully that's what's going to happen. And
if it doesn't, then yes, I'm open to something else
coming in that maybe maybe that will happen more easily
now because I was able to do the show. Now,
I know that acting is not the entirety of what
you do. In fact, you teach you right, you edit.
(10:59):
I'd love to talk about some of this, especially teaching,
because any time I've spoken with you about teaching, it's
just you know, you light up. It's clearly a true
passion of yours. So you're a professor in the theater
department at City College of New York. Yes, but I
teach film, teach film within the Theater and Speech department. Yes,
that I did. Yes, And so I would love to
(11:21):
know how you think about teaching and what you love
about it, because every time I asked someone, it's something different,
And so I'd love to know what you love about teaching.
First of all, I can't help it, but I fall
in love with the kids every single term. I like
to have an informal way of communication with them because
what we're doing in this class, there's something so vulnerable
about it. Um I had to switch it up to
(11:44):
teach it online, which is a whole other thing. But
basically it's a class that I made up. Close up class.
They can pick any scene they want from any film
or television show. I just, you know, asked, please look
for some good writing. Any character that they have ever
wanted to play, doesn't have to be close to self
or anything like that. And then they memorize it and
(12:05):
another kid is off camera for them, and we filmed
their side of the scene in the close up, so
they're in the scene, they have the role, they're on
the set. They got it. It's not about auditioning, right,
I got the part. What what happens when I walk
on a set and I own this role? How do
I walk onto a set and feel that I'm grounded,
(12:27):
I know what I'm doing, I know how to trust myself.
How do we get them to move into that space?
And mostly they actually end up teaching themselves because we
film the close up and then they watch it back
and we talk about it, and then they can make
whatever adjustments make sense to them. And then we do
take two, talk about A class comes in and they
(12:50):
can do as many takes as they want. I work
with one student for an entire hour and forty minutes
each class, so they have all that time to figure
out what they're doing, and I wait until they're happy
with what they see. How did you come up with
that idea, and what do you want them to What
do you want them to take from that exercise? I
(13:10):
want them to and this is what I say to them.
I want them to understand that this is not rocket science.
You know. They are theater majors, most of them. Some
of them are have other majors, but their theater kids.
They love acting and they for the most part, pretty
much know what they're doing. This is a shift over
from the difference between the experience of acting and what
(13:33):
you do on the stage to what you do on films. Specifically,
when that camera is right there and it's your close up,
how do you freely navigate your way through this moment
to moment to moment. I want them to again walk
onto a set they're all going to get their jobs,
and feel like they have their stuff together, you know,
(13:55):
feel relaxed, feel that they can trust themselves, find their moments,
and don't feel dependent on a director who knows who
the director would be, or somebody else coming up and saying, oh,
good job. I want them to understand how they work
so that they can do that for themselves. And I
came up with the idea. UM, I don't know I
was working with UM Theater kids UM. When back went
(14:19):
to college, UM and I had extra time UM. I
went to LaGuardia High School. I got asked to come
in and do some workshops with some kids there, And
at the end of that year, the associate dean said,
we'd love to have you around here. What would you
like to work with the kids on? What do you
feel like we don't really have in the curriculum, And
(14:40):
it just came to me. I said, I'd like to
work with them on a working their way through a
close up. I love that because it's just that there's yeah,
it's like it's there's so much intimacy there when you
think about close ups and and really thinking like what
am I going to do when it's just me and
the camera and a scene part are like what choices
(15:01):
am I going to make? You grew up here in
New York City and in a very literary family. Really,
your mother, Charlotte Sheety, is a really well known literary agent.
In fact, she's actually my wife's agent. Books seem to
be a big part of your life as well. So
you published your first book when you were twelve years old.
I did, Yes, I did so you have known greatness
(15:24):
for quite some time, and then you published a book
of poems, so I was wondering, are you still writing?
So the writing that I like to do, I did
that essay with you, which was a specific thing, and
thank you for editing it because it was just way
too all over the place. So I don't want to
use over use the word triggered, but that particular thing
at that particular time. It's just a lot. The writing
(15:48):
that I love to do is, um, you know why
I'm going to be careful with this is I edit.
I do editing with writers on manuscripts that gets sent
to Charlotte and sometimes to other people. Also do some
independent editing for publications, so there's submissions, the revisions, so
this and that. The reason that I get careful about
(16:09):
it is because most of the writers don't know it's me.
When I had brought it up in an interview or
a couple of times, I thought afterwards, such a mistake,
because for years I've been doing this for ten years.
I don't want that to be the distraction. The point
is it's their work. I never wanted any of them
to know it was me, because nepotism, because you're an actress,
(16:31):
what are you doing reading my work? Because of a
lot of things, that makes sense to me. So the
anonymity was really freeing. And then with some of that writers,
after we had worked on several revisions, they actually did
find out that it was me or once their book
had been accepted by a publisher. UM, then I could
actually have free conversations with them. It depends on the writer.
I'm not the only person doing this with Charlotte Um,
(16:53):
She's got a lot of people. But this kind of
deconstruction of a manuscript, analyzing, looking at character, arc working
on the revisions, with putting the different pieces back and
forth together, asking questions, you know, why does such and
such person just this. I'm not I'm not following through
line here. I wouldn't say it's entirely technical, you know
(17:14):
what I'm talking about, But it's it's the putting it together.
That's the kind of writing I love to do. Yeah,
I you know, as a writer and sometimes editor, I
love the just the before, the putting it together. I
love the free form, just generation of ideas and thoughts.
And I always hope, I hope this is going to
(17:35):
come out as well as I think it should, and
then you know when it comes to okay, now, like
how do I order this into something coherent that you know?
I do it, And I actually don't mind it. I
enjoy it, but it doesn't come as easily to me.
It's not the part I love as much as the
first sort of rush of inspiration. So I love that's.
(17:58):
You know, it's great to hear someone who's interested in
like that part of putting it together and really thinking
how are all these pieces going to work together? Right?
And I get to read the most incredible stuff. Yeah.
One thing I've learned is that there's no shortage of
great writing in the world, and so many writers are
just waiting for that combination of hard work and luck
(18:21):
yes to strike them. Yes, I know there's a rhyme
or reason to which manuscripts come my way, but I don't.
I'm not in charge of the rhyme or reason of it.
So I get it. It's a brand new book, right,
get to dive in, and it will be on these
incredible descript top topics. I mean, it'll just be there's
one about this and one about that, and some are
(18:42):
nonfiction and summer fiction. And I over the past ten years.
I have learned so much about people and the world
and history just through reading the kind of work that
that comes my way. So yes, I absolutely love it,
and I'm trying to keep the focus on the writing
and the fibutely, but I know I can talk to
(19:03):
you about it because you know what I'm talking about.
I do, I do. What are the different satisfactions between
the work you do with books and acting. One of
the early conversations that actually had was Charlotte was when
she had first sort of experimented with sending me something,
and that the thing that she sent me just it
had entirely to do with um. The structure was off.
(19:24):
There's something about having spent my entire life taking apart
scripts that lends itself two taking a part in analyzing
a manuscript. It's all scenes, story, consistency of character, um,
interesting choices, dialogue that works, dialogue that's quite kind of
(19:48):
sort of doesn't, a coherent story, and incoherence story. And
by the way, I've been a lot of movies with
incoherent stories. It's not happen. Sometimes you just do what
you've got in front of you. But there's this way
of having to pull it apart that lends itself to books.
It feels it feels like an easy transition for me.
(20:08):
I don't know why I love it so much, but
it's something I feel like I've been doing since I was,
you know, a teenager, speaking of since you were a teenager.
Unlike a lot of artists, you seem to really embrace
your earlier work, and that seems to be a point
of connection to your students, many of whom were born
in the nineties and of course now later. Yes, what
(20:31):
is it like to have had such a long and
storied career where you are an eighties icon and you're
also still working in that same field today. It's interesting,
It's uh. I I do embrace all the different parts
of the career, including the ones that are just messy.
(20:53):
It doesn't feel to me that it's been as long
as it has been fifty nine. I think it's been
what forty over forty years. It feels good. It feels
it feels like, you know, I got the chance to
do this, and I fell in love with it early,
and then I went through so many ups and downs
and struggles. I really needed to develop myself. I needed
(21:17):
to grow some of that happened in the public eye
and to get to where I am now at fifty nine,
I feel very grounded. I feel very comfortable when I
walk on the set. I don't feel at the mercy
of someone's opinion when I'm at work. I feel like
all of that, all of it, the good end of bad,
all of it gave me a kind of foundation that
(21:39):
I could not possibly have had in nineteen. Yeah, of course,
you know, the foundations that we have at nineteen are
so fragile and shifting, right, And the older I get,
the more I realized, or the more I find really
that I'm standing on more solid ground, and I appreciate
it very much. When you see younger actors and knowing
(22:00):
sort of the things that you had to deal with
coming up through the industry, do you ever have advice
for them on how to navigate an industry that is
incredibly fickle. Yeah, so this is a lot of what
these are the topics that come up in class with
a younger actor, for instance, in the serious I just did.
(22:20):
If they want to ask me a question or talk
about it, find great, I'm all here for it. I
asked a lot of questions when I was younger too.
But the most interesting questions are will come up in
class and listen, they're not. It's not even the questions
you would think, how do you get an agent, how
do you do this? How do you do that? Because
they've already been asking that, they've already been exploring that.
(22:43):
But more of it is are things like, um, what
do you do about all the equipment that's around that's
so distracting all the people that are around a lot
of the conversations I have are about how do you
keep yourself safe in the context of a set. It
very specific things. You know, somebody has to put a
(23:03):
radio mic on your body. Yeah, okay, let's talk. But
you know, okay, but hey, when you go in for
your wardrobe fitting, when I go in, I want to
know what we're filming that scene on, which day? Is
it going to be hot? Is it gonna I need
to be comfortable? And where's the radio? Pack and go?
(23:24):
So those kinds of things you you learned by trial
and error. I learned by error. Um, but I like
to explain to them these kinds of technical things dealing
with a hair and makeup department, Yes, the wardrobe, the sound,
the lights, where you're looking with a camera, how to
(23:44):
handle direction that comes your way, that problem might feel undermining,
doesn't make sense to you. How do you communicate with
the director? What do you do if you're supposed to
be in love with an actor and you hate them?
I mean, these are the kinds of questions that come up.
And it's far as the show business is concerned. You know,
there's all this stuff written about how it's changed so
much and all of this. Um, I don't know that
(24:07):
the people have changed so much. I just think people
are more nervous. Things that were said to me in
my twenties were not well, they wouldn't be said to
me now anyway, because I'm fifty nine. But I don't
think that the kind of situations that came up would
come up necessarily for a twenty year old right now
on a set. That's interesting because I always wonder, you know,
we talk a lot about the ways that the culture
(24:28):
is shifting and in some ways for the better. People
aren't becoming more aware of what is and what is
not acceptable, And I always wonder is this really trickling
over to certain industries that are notoriously problematic, And so
it's interesting that you see at least some change not
in the people, but that their tolerance for trouble seems
(24:52):
to be less. Where before they knew they wouldn't get
in trouble, so they had a really high tolerance for it, right,
And there would just be things that would be said
and decisions that would be made without any sort of
questioning of oneself or why that was happening or should
this be happening. There was none of that. There was
no self reflection, there was nothing. It was just the
(25:13):
way that it was. And now I think there's just
more a little bit of like treading and tiptoeing around
and questioning what used to be these automatic assumptions. I guess, yeah,
it's good and bad. I just I'm just not fooled
that people are that different. I just think that the
structure has changed enough. There's more anxiety going on than
(25:35):
there was before, so somebody might be like forced into
making a better choice, you know what I mean, I
do very much. It's it's it's really sad that people
have to basically be peer pressured into being decent. But
I don't know that people have ever voluntarily done the
(25:56):
right thing. I mean, the people who are inclined to
do the wrong thing. I don't know that they will
ever a sort of naturally find the light. I think
there just have to be enough cultural and personal consequences
for them to decide. I want to do this terrible thing,
but I'm not going to But I won't. I want
to say this, but you know what better? Not? Better? Not?
(26:18):
I'm going to have And a lot of it is
based on money. Yes, yes, So with everything you have
going on between working with writing, teaching, acting, what do
you want for yourself over say, the next decade. I
actually would like to keep doing exactly what I'm doing
(26:40):
right now. I love that. Isn't that nice to be
where you want to be? Yes, I'm doing the things
that I love. I want to keep teaching, keep working
with writers, and hopefully keep on with the show or
have other stuff come on. I mean, I mean, you know,
to have a show along like Jeans Smart has that show? Yeah,
(27:03):
you know what I mean, I do that would be incredible,
Just think, oh wow, this can happen like that. And
also my last question for you as a New Yorker,
a lifelong New Yorker in fact, yes, what is your
favorite thing to do in New York walk, really walk
in the park, walk in the neighborhood. You know, I
love to sort of spy on people. You're just like, look, oh,
(27:28):
this is a great for This is a great great
As long as you walk quickly in my neighborhood, you
can really spy on people. You just don't want to
slow down. To Ali Sheety, you are as ever a delight.
Thank you so much for joining me on the Rock
Sand Gay Agenda. Thank you Rock Sand for everyone listening.
(27:51):
Ali Sheety's new show is Single Drunk Female. It's a
free form show streaming now on Hulu. You can keep
up with me and this podcast on social media on
Twitter at our Gay and Instagram at Roxanne Gay seven four.
Our email address is Roxanne Gay Agenda at gmail dot com,
and you would love to hear from you from Luminary.
(28:11):
The Roxanne Gay Agenda is produced by Curtis Fox. Our
researcher is Yasanya Moreno, and production support is provided by
Caitlin Adams and Meg Pillow. I am Roxanne Gay, your
favorite bad feminist. Thank you ever so much for listening.
I recently had the opportunity to go to the Whitney
Biennial at the Whitney Museum. They gathered together some of
the most interesting artists and they take up two or
three floors of the Whitney with really interesting art. It's
very good. This year. It's mixed. There are some less
than interesting things, but most of the installations are really provocative.
(00:24):
There's this really stunning room of kind of words and
they're carved out of metal. I'm not explaining it well anyway,
it's I've never seen anything like it. It's absolutely breathtaking
and there are several truly breathtaking pieces. So if you're
in New York the Whitney Biennial, make sure you get
(00:46):
out there to see it. From Luminary, this is the
Roxanne Gay Agenda, the Bad Feminist podcast of your Dreams.
I'm Roxanne Gay, your favorite bad feminist. On the Roxanne Agenda,
I talked about something that's on my mind and then
I talk with someone interesting to find out what's on
their mind. On this week's agenda, celebrity nonsense. As as
(01:16):
many people know, during this year's OSCAR has not much happened.
But one of the interesting things that did happen is
that Will Smith slapped Chris Rock for making fun of
his wife's hair. In the moment, I was shocked. I
think I cringe so much that my body folded in
on itself in the aftermath, though I knew there were
(01:36):
going to be days and days of discussion, but I
cannot believe that it has been almost an entire week
of people talking and talking and talking about something that was,
in effect an isolated incident. This sort of thing doesn't
really happen that much, and I don't think that it
is a particular harbinger of anything but what it was.
(01:58):
And so I've been thinking a lot lately about the
kinds of discourse that we turn to when the world
is falling apart. And I think that's why we still
care about Chris Rock and Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith.
It's because we're in the middle of a pandemic that
we thought was going to end but is surging once more.
There's a war in Ukraine. There are all kinds of
(02:20):
problems here in the United States, from homelessness to the
lack of universal healthcare, to children going hungry, to falling
apart schools to infrastructure crumbling around us, while the government
continues to fund the police in the military at exorbitant
and ever increasing rates. And so yes, once in a while,
(02:42):
it's kind of great to just talk about celebrities who
ultimately are going to be just fine no matter what happens.
There's just not too much at stake, and sometimes I
think we all need to have conversations where there is
not too much at stake. Something else I'd like to
turn to when the old gets too much. As of course,
movies and television, and I am an eighties child. I
(03:06):
was born in nineteen seventy four. Pretty much all of
the movies of the eighties were very formative to me.
Et Star Wars, The Breakfast Club, and there was something
just so. They weren't wholesome, but they were interesting and
they weren't demeaning to anyone. And that's why I am
(03:27):
really thrilled to talk to someone I've always enjoyed talking
to and thinking about. Ali Sheey. She has been part
of my viewing life since the nineteen eighties. First she
was on TV shows like Hill Street Blues, and then
she got ever increasing roles like Bad Boys opposite Sean Penn,
and then there were the huge hits like The Breakfast Club,
(03:50):
short Circuit Saying Almost Fire. She later went on to
star in some wonderful independent films like My favorite movie
probably Top five High Art from much more recently, like
pretty much everyone else in showbiz, she's working on a
streaming show on the serialized comedy single Drunk Female, currently
airing on Hulu. In it, she praised a mother of
(04:13):
a young alcoholic who has come home to sober up
and ends up crashing her mother's life. Ali, Welcome to
the Roxanne Gay Agenda. How are you today? Thank you?
I am good. I am very honored to be here
in Roxanne. I was born in nineteen sixty two. You're
going to slow down. I am going to slow down.
(04:34):
I am going to slow down. Then. Well, my wife
was born in nineteen sixty one, and she often teases me,
and I don't feel like I don't mind getting old really,
but sometimes especially now, um, a young person will be
like I was more than two thousand and I just
looked at them like, go away, get out of my face, right,
(04:54):
don't talk to me. Well, my son was born in
ninety four, and I know and he seemed but I
keep forgetting he's actually twenty eight. I keep thinking he's
much younger than that. But also I don't know if
you have this experience, I feel like there's a decade
I'm missing absolutely, not that I don't remember it, but
that I keep thinking I'm actually instead of fifty nine.
(05:15):
For some reason, sometimes I look around and I'm like,
where did my forties go? While at the same time
I also believing and knowing in my heart that these
have been the best years of my life, but like, really,
where did the time go? So I had the opportunity.
I was in Amherst, Massachusetts recently, and I had a
huge gap of time between my first event and my
next event, and they had Hulu on a TV in
(05:39):
the room that they put me in for five hours.
So I watched Single Drunk Female the first season, which
is really great, and that means something because I watch
a lot of TV. And what I really loved was
that the character you play, Carol Fink, is not your
typical maternal role. She has a personality. She has more
(06:00):
to her life than just motherhood. So tell us about
Carol and what drew you to this role. I love
the writing, I love the characters, and this particular group.
It's almost entirely women working on this show, and there
are people I always wanted to work with and that character.
There was only the pilot, so it was only the first,
(06:20):
you know, a couple of scenes of Carol. But I
felt like, oh my god, there's something in me that
I understand this character. So I was really really happy
that they wanted me to play her, and then I
had the best time. I've never done a series before.
I didn't know how it works. I just didn't know
the process that you are filming. The script comes in
for We did the pilot, so then we get to
(06:42):
Atlanta and here's the script for the next episode. So
we had that and rehearsed a little bit, and then
while we were filming it, um, the script comes in
for the next episode while we're still filming the first one.
I didn't know that was how it went. And we
would do a table read by a zoom because of
(07:02):
the pandemic, so we're never in the same room with
another actor unless it was actually on set. And as
the scripts were coming in, I was beginning to understand
more about Carol because they were writing them off of
what we were doing, so I was connecting dots that
were coming from a writer and then from the writers,
and then also connecting dots within myself. It's just super interesting.
(07:25):
One of the things that intrigued me about the role
of Carol is Carol doesn't actually take an active role
in Samantha's sobriety. It's kind of Samantha's deal, and Carol
has her own stuff going on, and you know, and
among those things a new relationship and piecing back her
life together after the death of Samantha's father. And so
(07:47):
I just loved that part, and I was wondering how
you thought about bringing that in that Carol was clearly
a loving mother, but she wasn't going to micromanage her
daughter's sobriety. So my daughter had her life happening in
New York, my daughter played by Sophia sam And blew
her life up. I have been handed a disaster. I
(08:09):
just went through this very long illness with my husband,
who died about two years before the show starts. Sam
was absent for all of that. They don't have a
lot of backstory in there, but this is stuff that
worked out with the creative people and with Sophia. She
was not there. She was drinking in New York. She
abandoned me, and now all of a sudden, I I
(08:30):
have my house, um figuring out my life. I'm trying
to make friends, which I'm speaking as Carol, which is
very difficult. This particular character is quite spiky and very judgmental,
and people cross lines too quickly with me. But I'm
trying to like get my setup happening. And then she
moves in. I'm suddenly being asked to make this kid
kid She's almost thirty, the center of my life again
(08:54):
when she just had vanished. There's a conflict going on
the whole time because I don't want her to take
up that much space. And at the same time, obviously
I have this pull where I'm thinking about her all
the time, and so it's it's a back and forth
or almost resent how much I'm worried about her, and
that comes through that resentment and yet that love, that
(09:14):
wanting to take care but at the same time also
wanting to take care of the Carol wanting to take
care of herself, which I think is attention that many women,
many people face as we get older. I know that
In a recent Vanity Fair interview, you said that when
you hit your fifties, you thought you were really going
(09:34):
to miss acting. And I've heard that before from actors,
that there's this shelf especially for women, where once the
world no longer sees you as fuckable, you kind of
fall off a cliff into playing mothers and then grandmothers
and then whatever is past that. And so how does
it feel to have such a great role in your fifties.
(09:56):
I'm so grateful, thrilled, it, excited, happy, beyond belief. I
didn't know if a role was going to come along.
Everything had slowed way, way, way right down. Um, I
had figured out other things that I also love to
do with my life, and this just came in. And
(10:16):
now that you have this role, do you want to
keep acting and finding more roles or hopefully more rules
finding you? Yes, morals. I hope morals find me. I
hope that they pick up the season for a second season.
I really do. Right now, I would just love to
continue with this character and this group of actors, these
(10:39):
these people. So hopefully that's what's going to happen. And
if it doesn't, then yes, I'm open to something else
coming in that maybe maybe that will happen more easily
now because I was able to do the show. Now,
I know that acting is not the entirety of what
you do. In fact, you teach you right, you edit.
(10:59):
I'd love to talk about some of this, especially teaching,
because any time I've spoken with you about teaching, it's
just you know, you light up. It's clearly a true
passion of yours. So you're a professor in the theater
department at City College of New York. Yes, but I
teach film, teach film within the Theater and Speech department. Yes,
that I did. Yes, And so I would love to
(11:21):
know how you think about teaching and what you love
about it, because every time I asked someone, it's something different,
And so I'd love to know what you love about teaching.
First of all, I can't help it, but I fall
in love with the kids every single term. I like
to have an informal way of communication with them because
what we're doing in this class, there's something so vulnerable
about it. Um I had to switch it up to
(11:44):
teach it online, which is a whole other thing. But
basically it's a class that I made up. Close up class.
They can pick any scene they want from any film
or television show. I just, you know, asked, please look
for some good writing. Any character that they have ever
wanted to play, doesn't have to be close to self
or anything like that. And then they memorize it and
(12:05):
another kid is off camera for them, and we filmed
their side of the scene in the close up, so
they're in the scene, they have the role, they're on
the set. They got it. It's not about auditioning, right,
I got the part. What what happens when I walk
on a set and I own this role? How do
I walk onto a set and feel that I'm grounded,
(12:27):
I know what I'm doing, I know how to trust myself.
How do we get them to move into that space?
And mostly they actually end up teaching themselves because we
film the close up and then they watch it back
and we talk about it, and then they can make
whatever adjustments make sense to them. And then we do
take two, talk about A class comes in and they
(12:50):
can do as many takes as they want. I work
with one student for an entire hour and forty minutes
each class, so they have all that time to figure
out what they're doing, and I wait until they're happy
with what they see. How did you come up with
that idea, and what do you want them to What
do you want them to take from that exercise? I
(13:10):
want them to and this is what I say to them.
I want them to understand that this is not rocket science.
You know. They are theater majors, most of them. Some
of them are have other majors, but their theater kids.
They love acting and they for the most part, pretty
much know what they're doing. This is a shift over
from the difference between the experience of acting and what
(13:33):
you do on the stage to what you do on films. Specifically,
when that camera is right there and it's your close up,
how do you freely navigate your way through this moment
to moment to moment. I want them to again walk
onto a set they're all going to get their jobs,
and feel like they have their stuff together, you know,
(13:55):
feel relaxed, feel that they can trust themselves, find their moments,
and don't feel dependent on a director who knows who
the director would be, or somebody else coming up and saying, oh,
good job. I want them to understand how they work
so that they can do that for themselves. And I
came up with the idea. UM, I don't know I
was working with UM Theater kids UM. When back went
(14:19):
to college, UM and I had extra time UM. I
went to LaGuardia High School. I got asked to come
in and do some workshops with some kids there, And
at the end of that year, the associate dean said,
we'd love to have you around here. What would you
like to work with the kids on? What do you
feel like we don't really have in the curriculum, And
(14:40):
it just came to me. I said, I'd like to
work with them on a working their way through a
close up. I love that because it's just that there's yeah,
it's like it's there's so much intimacy there when you
think about close ups and and really thinking like what
am I going to do when it's just me and
the camera and a scene part are like what choices
(15:01):
am I going to make? You grew up here in
New York City and in a very literary family. Really,
your mother, Charlotte Sheety, is a really well known literary agent.
In fact, she's actually my wife's agent. Books seem to
be a big part of your life as well. So
you published your first book when you were twelve years old.
I did, Yes, I did so you have known greatness
(15:24):
for quite some time, and then you published a book
of poems, so I was wondering, are you still writing?
So the writing that I like to do, I did
that essay with you, which was a specific thing, and
thank you for editing it because it was just way
too all over the place. So I don't want to
use over use the word triggered, but that particular thing
at that particular time. It's just a lot. The writing
(15:48):
that I love to do is, um, you know why
I'm going to be careful with this is I edit.
I do editing with writers on manuscripts that gets sent
to Charlotte and sometimes to other people. Also do some
independent editing for publications, so there's submissions, the revisions, so
this and that. The reason that I get careful about
(16:09):
it is because most of the writers don't know it's me.
When I had brought it up in an interview or
a couple of times, I thought afterwards, such a mistake,
because for years I've been doing this for ten years.
I don't want that to be the distraction. The point
is it's their work. I never wanted any of them
to know it was me, because nepotism, because you're an actress,
(16:31):
what are you doing reading my work? Because of a
lot of things, that makes sense to me. So the
anonymity was really freeing. And then with some of that writers,
after we had worked on several revisions, they actually did
find out that it was me or once their book
had been accepted by a publisher. UM, then I could
actually have free conversations with them. It depends on the writer.
I'm not the only person doing this with Charlotte Um,
(16:53):
She's got a lot of people. But this kind of
deconstruction of a manuscript, analyzing, looking at character, arc working
on the revisions, with putting the different pieces back and
forth together, asking questions, you know, why does such and
such person just this. I'm not I'm not following through
line here. I wouldn't say it's entirely technical, you know
(17:14):
what I'm talking about, But it's it's the putting it together.
That's the kind of writing I love to do. Yeah,
I you know, as a writer and sometimes editor, I
love the just the before, the putting it together. I
love the free form, just generation of ideas and thoughts.
And I always hope, I hope this is going to
(17:35):
come out as well as I think it should, and
then you know when it comes to okay, now, like
how do I order this into something coherent that you know?
I do it, And I actually don't mind it. I
enjoy it, but it doesn't come as easily to me.
It's not the part I love as much as the
first sort of rush of inspiration. So I love that's.
(17:58):
You know, it's great to hear someone who's interested in
like that part of putting it together and really thinking
how are all these pieces going to work together? Right?
And I get to read the most incredible stuff. Yeah.
One thing I've learned is that there's no shortage of
great writing in the world, and so many writers are
just waiting for that combination of hard work and luck
(18:21):
yes to strike them. Yes, I know there's a rhyme
or reason to which manuscripts come my way, but I don't.
I'm not in charge of the rhyme or reason of it.
So I get it. It's a brand new book, right,
get to dive in, and it will be on these
incredible descript top topics. I mean, it'll just be there's
one about this and one about that, and some are
(18:42):
nonfiction and summer fiction. And I over the past ten years.
I have learned so much about people and the world
and history just through reading the kind of work that
that comes my way. So yes, I absolutely love it,
and I'm trying to keep the focus on the writing
and the fibutely, but I know I can talk to
(19:03):
you about it because you know what I'm talking about.
I do, I do. What are the different satisfactions between
the work you do with books and acting. One of
the early conversations that actually had was Charlotte was when
she had first sort of experimented with sending me something,
and that the thing that she sent me just it
had entirely to do with um. The structure was off.
(19:24):
There's something about having spent my entire life taking apart
scripts that lends itself two taking a part in analyzing
a manuscript. It's all scenes, story, consistency of character, um,
interesting choices, dialogue that works, dialogue that's quite kind of
(19:48):
sort of doesn't, a coherent story, and incoherence story. And
by the way, I've been a lot of movies with
incoherent stories. It's not happen. Sometimes you just do what
you've got in front of you. But there's this way
of having to pull it apart that lends itself to books.
It feels it feels like an easy transition for me.
(20:08):
I don't know why I love it so much, but
it's something I feel like I've been doing since I was,
you know, a teenager, speaking of since you were a teenager.
Unlike a lot of artists, you seem to really embrace
your earlier work, and that seems to be a point
of connection to your students, many of whom were born
in the nineties and of course now later. Yes, what
(20:31):
is it like to have had such a long and
storied career where you are an eighties icon and you're
also still working in that same field today. It's interesting,
It's uh. I I do embrace all the different parts
of the career, including the ones that are just messy.
(20:53):
It doesn't feel to me that it's been as long
as it has been fifty nine. I think it's been
what forty over forty years. It feels good. It feels
it feels like, you know, I got the chance to
do this, and I fell in love with it early,
and then I went through so many ups and downs
and struggles. I really needed to develop myself. I needed
(21:17):
to grow some of that happened in the public eye
and to get to where I am now at fifty nine,
I feel very grounded. I feel very comfortable when I
walk on the set. I don't feel at the mercy
of someone's opinion when I'm at work. I feel like
all of that, all of it, the good end of bad,
all of it gave me a kind of foundation that
(21:39):
I could not possibly have had in nineteen. Yeah, of course,
you know, the foundations that we have at nineteen are
so fragile and shifting, right, And the older I get,
the more I realized, or the more I find really
that I'm standing on more solid ground, and I appreciate
it very much. When you see younger actors and knowing
(22:00):
sort of the things that you had to deal with
coming up through the industry, do you ever have advice
for them on how to navigate an industry that is
incredibly fickle. Yeah, so this is a lot of what
these are the topics that come up in class with
a younger actor, for instance, in the serious I just did.
(22:20):
If they want to ask me a question or talk
about it, find great, I'm all here for it. I
asked a lot of questions when I was younger too.
But the most interesting questions are will come up in
class and listen, they're not. It's not even the questions
you would think, how do you get an agent, how
do you do this? How do you do that? Because
they've already been asking that, they've already been exploring that.
(22:43):
But more of it is are things like, um, what
do you do about all the equipment that's around that's
so distracting all the people that are around a lot
of the conversations I have are about how do you
keep yourself safe in the context of a set. It
very specific things. You know, somebody has to put a
(23:03):
radio mic on your body. Yeah, okay, let's talk. But
you know, okay, but hey, when you go in for
your wardrobe fitting, when I go in, I want to
know what we're filming that scene on, which day? Is
it going to be hot? Is it gonna I need
to be comfortable? And where's the radio? Pack and go?
(23:24):
So those kinds of things you you learned by trial
and error. I learned by error. Um, but I like
to explain to them these kinds of technical things dealing
with a hair and makeup department, Yes, the wardrobe, the sound,
the lights, where you're looking with a camera, how to
(23:44):
handle direction that comes your way, that problem might feel undermining,
doesn't make sense to you. How do you communicate with
the director? What do you do if you're supposed to
be in love with an actor and you hate them?
I mean, these are the kinds of questions that come up.
And it's far as the show business is concerned. You know,
there's all this stuff written about how it's changed so
much and all of this. Um, I don't know that
(24:07):
the people have changed so much. I just think people
are more nervous. Things that were said to me in
my twenties were not well, they wouldn't be said to
me now anyway, because I'm fifty nine. But I don't
think that the kind of situations that came up would
come up necessarily for a twenty year old right now
on a set. That's interesting because I always wonder, you know,
we talk a lot about the ways that the culture
(24:28):
is shifting and in some ways for the better. People
aren't becoming more aware of what is and what is
not acceptable, And I always wonder is this really trickling
over to certain industries that are notoriously problematic, And so
it's interesting that you see at least some change not
in the people, but that their tolerance for trouble seems
(24:52):
to be less. Where before they knew they wouldn't get
in trouble, so they had a really high tolerance for it, right,
And there would just be things that would be said
and decisions that would be made without any sort of
questioning of oneself or why that was happening or should
this be happening. There was none of that. There was
no self reflection, there was nothing. It was just the
(25:13):
way that it was. And now I think there's just
more a little bit of like treading and tiptoeing around
and questioning what used to be these automatic assumptions. I guess, yeah,
it's good and bad. I just I'm just not fooled
that people are that different. I just think that the
structure has changed enough. There's more anxiety going on than
(25:35):
there was before, so somebody might be like forced into
making a better choice, you know what I mean, I
do very much. It's it's it's really sad that people
have to basically be peer pressured into being decent. But
I don't know that people have ever voluntarily done the
(25:56):
right thing. I mean, the people who are inclined to
do the wrong thing. I don't know that they will
ever a sort of naturally find the light. I think
there just have to be enough cultural and personal consequences
for them to decide. I want to do this terrible thing,
but I'm not going to But I won't. I want
to say this, but you know what better? Not? Better? Not?
(26:18):
I'm going to have And a lot of it is
based on money. Yes, yes, So with everything you have
going on between working with writing, teaching, acting, what do
you want for yourself over say, the next decade. I
actually would like to keep doing exactly what I'm doing
(26:40):
right now. I love that. Isn't that nice to be
where you want to be? Yes, I'm doing the things
that I love. I want to keep teaching, keep working
with writers, and hopefully keep on with the show or
have other stuff come on. I mean, I mean, you know,
to have a show along like Jeans Smart has that show? Yeah,
(27:03):
you know what I mean, I do that would be incredible,
Just think, oh wow, this can happen like that. And
also my last question for you as a New Yorker,
a lifelong New Yorker in fact, yes, what is your
favorite thing to do in New York walk, really walk
in the park, walk in the neighborhood. You know, I
love to sort of spy on people. You're just like, look, oh,
(27:28):
this is a great for This is a great great
As long as you walk quickly in my neighborhood, you
can really spy on people. You just don't want to
slow down. To Ali Sheety, you are as ever a delight.
Thank you so much for joining me on the Rock
Sand Gay Agenda. Thank you Rock Sand for everyone listening.
(27:51):
Ali Sheety's new show is Single Drunk Female. It's a
free form show streaming now on Hulu. You can keep
up with me and this podcast on social media on
Twitter at our Gay and Instagram at Roxanne Gay seven four.
Our email address is Roxanne Gay Agenda at gmail dot com,
and you would love to hear from you from Luminary.
(28:11):
The Roxanne Gay Agenda is produced by Curtis Fox. Our
researcher is Yasanya Moreno, and production support is provided by
Caitlin Adams and Meg Pillow. I am Roxanne Gay, your
favorite bad feminist. Thank you ever so much for listening.
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