March 6, 2024 • 54 mins
For over twenty-five years, Cate Blanchett has been as vital as any performer we have. In the lead-up to this Sunday's 96th annual Academy Awards, we're returning to our special talk with Cate.
To begin, we unpack her femme fatale turn in Nightmare Alley (6:06), the way director Guillermo del Toro wrestles with truth and deception in the neo-noir (9:34), the first time Blanchett understood her gift for shapeshifting (11:18), the lasting presence of her late father (14:46), an early job as a script reader that changed how she approached her craft (19:14), the challenge of getting comfortable with “being seen” (22:40), a prophetic encounter with a psychic while filming The Gift (25:46), and how becoming a parent clarified her purpose (31:58).
On the back-half, we sit her work in I’m Not There (34:52) and Manifesto (38:54), her affinity for the Eastern philosophy of imperfection (42:33), words of wisdom from dancer Martha Graham (48:00), and how she’s beginning to accept the “divine dissatisfaction” of being an artist (51:54).
For questions, comments, or to join our mailing list, reach me at sf@talkeasypod.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Fragoso. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Today.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I'm joined by actor Kate Blanchett. For over twenty five years,
Blanchett has been as vital as any performer we have.
Some of my personal favorite performances of hers come in
projects like Elizabeth, The Talented, Mister Ripley, The Gift, The Aviator, Babbel,
Carol Manifesto, and Missus America. She was in two films
(01:15):
in twenty twenty one, Don't Look Up, an apocalyptic satire
directed by Adam McKay and Nightmare Alley, which was nominated
for four Oscars this past week, including Best Picture. Set
in the late thirties early forties, it tells the story
of Stanton Carlyle played by Bradley Cooper, an ambitious Carney
turned renowned psychic. Performing alongside his wife Mollie played by
(01:40):
Rooney Mara. The clairvoyant couple begins to impress the wealthy
elite of Buffalo. It's here during a show that Stanton
meets his match in psychologist doctor Lilith Ritter, who suspects
he's not the omniscient medium he claims to be. Here's
an early scene between the two of them from the
film Nightmare Alley.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Mister Carlar, come in slow day. If you're not heard,
we're at war.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
I'm aware.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
How did you know?
Speaker 1 (02:15):
It was me? What friends? You here? You left me
your card, didn't you? So here? We are? Oh not me?
I never drink microphones. That's right, fire recorder. You're recording this? No,
my office is wired to record all analysis sessions.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
You got a smoother line that you run a racket
same as me.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Is that what this is?
Speaker 2 (02:48):
That was a scene from the film Nightmare Alley, directed
by the great Geramel del Toro. Blanchett, of course, is
excellent in the picture, perfectly cast as a fem fatale
in del Toro's haunting neo noir. This tends to be
the case for Blanchett no matter the period or style
of the film. She has a way of burrowing deep
(03:10):
inside it. Her conviction is overwhelming, her presence staggering. I
don't exactly know how she does what she does, and
quite frankly, I don't think I want to. Back in
the day when interviewers used to ask John Lennon how
he makes the music he makes, he'd always have this
same line. He'd say, every time you try to put
(03:31):
your finger on it, it slips away. I've always loved that,
And so what you're about to hear is a different
kind of conversation than you've probably ever heard with Kate Blanchett.
We do talk about craft, but what we landed on
was a larger discussion about identity, truth, imperfection, the necessity
(03:53):
for risk, and the various inflection points of her life
that have made her who she is on screen and off.
So here is the one and only Kate Blanchett. Cate Blanchett.
(04:21):
Nice to meet you.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Thanks, Sam, Nice to meet you.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
This is a very strange way to meet someone. You
are in the UK, I'm in Los Angeles. You're recording
this at nine o'clock at night. If you want to
have a drink, I will join you. If you want
me to have espresso with you. We never keep these
in the evening, so I'm willing to accommodate whatever you
want to do.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
What time is it there?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
One o'clock?
Speaker 1 (04:47):
That could be a time, a time for an espresso martini.
It's like partially breakfast heading into the evening. No, No,
I'm on peppermint tea and mineral water, which is slightly boring.
We say, as we both sip our tease medicinal drinks.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
They're completely medicinal and for the voice, so we'll keep.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
It totally for the voice. It's all about the voice.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Okay, good, Why don't we start with Nightmare Alley, which
I know historically, as you study scripts, you write down
everything the character says about herself, as well as everything
that other people in the script say about your character
you've said in the past. To this approach, it gives
you a three dimensional sense of what they are doing.
(05:31):
How did the character of Lilith reveal itself to.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
You well through the eyes of Giermo del Toro. I mean,
when you're dealing with someone like that who has such
a loving, passionate and brutal eye, which is a very
rare combination. You know, I'm a theater animal, so I
have a very direct and visceral kind of connection to
an audience, and you're slightly dislocated from that audience when
(05:57):
you work in film, So who's looking down the barrel
at you? It's a really important relationship, not only with
the DP and the camera operator. It's obviously for because
that's the reason why we're all there, so it started
with him. Really, I mean that text work. I think
(06:17):
it's part of trying to get to the truth of
the character. Because we're all heroes of our own narrative, right,
we're all narcissists. But what we say about ourselves, who
we think we are in the world is often very
different from how we're perceived to be in that world.
So somewhere I think there's an intersection between how people
(06:40):
perceive us, how we perceive ourselves, who we want to
be perceived. It's the intersection of all those things that
the character somewhere in that nebula space, the character that
actually takes flight.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
How did you perceive the character?
Speaker 1 (06:55):
You know? It'd always find that, really it's a thing
that you're meant to know when you get to this
other end of what's quote unquote publicizing the movie. My
daughter's laughing. Sorry, she's on the sofa over that go
to sleep. It really is the bit that I dread
because it's a bit where you're meant to tell people
(07:18):
what the thing that you've all made is about. And
in the end, I am so not interested in telling
people what it's about. It's not why I got involved
in my engagement with the project. It's always about finding out,
like asking questions, and you never solve it. The audience
(07:38):
is the last part of that equation, Like they are
the ones that give it. I mean, I don't want
to sound too kind of wanky about it, but they
give it the meaning, the ultimate meaning. It's like, well,
how do you think? And you know every individual audience
member will receive it slightly differently if it's a complex
work like Nightmare Ali is. And then suddenly I meant
to know who my character is. I mean, do you
(08:01):
know who you are? Sam? I have no clue who
I am. I mean, it's not something I wake up
in the morning. I am. I finally realized who I am?
I mean, do you know? Can you answer those questions?
We're just a series of kind of labyrinths and riddles
and unsolved mysteries, aren't we?
Speaker 2 (08:22):
We absolutely are. And I'm going to make a promise
to you. That's the last question I think you're not
going to like on the show.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
No, No, I wasn't. I didn't like it. I didn't
know how to answer it.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
No, no, because I agree it's a question that is
asked of people after they've made something and they're putting
it out into the world. I think the more interesting
question is that at the core of this film you've said,
is a story of a man who starts to believe
his own lies. And I think we are absolutely living
through a time where people are believing their own lies
(08:53):
rather than investigating the truth.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
I mean totally. I mean Giermu is known for making
films about monsters and creatures, and in a way, this
is an inverted kind of sense of that investigation for him,
because it's the monster within, the internal monstrousness of being
a human or trying to be human in the modern world.
(09:18):
Even though Nightmare ally is set back in time, which
in a way is a space where you can trojan
horse all of the concerns about that truth and fallacy
that you were referring to, that all of us are.
Anyone who's half awake is alive to that conundrum about
what do you believe, what do you listen to, what
do you take in? There's too much noise to even
(09:41):
know what is an essential truth. I mean, when I
grew up and I'm older than you, are scientists, people
who had worked their entire career in the space of fact,
and there are immutable facts on this planet. But somehow
those are mutable facts have moved into the space of
being beliefs. And that is a really strange and elastic
(10:03):
space that it's doing our head in. And I think
that that is the space in which Nightmare ally operates.
Is that the fundamental moral truths that have guided us
forget religion. It's about the facts that guide our daily existence.
They've somehow been called into question as being beliefs, and
it's really confusing.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
This balancing act that's central to the film, between deceit
and honesty, deception and truth. I don't know. It also
seems central to how you approach acting, I assume, and
I think this for you dates back to nineteen seventy eight.
I want to go to something. When you're nine years old,
the middle of three kids growing up in Melbourne. For fun,
(10:47):
your sister would dress you up in costumes, giving you
a character to play. But then one day you take
this passion out onto the streets and to the doorsteps
of strangers' homes.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Oh my god, have I mentioned this before? Oh shit, totally.
I would show up on people's doorsteps and I would
pretend that you know, I'd lost dog. This would be
our weekend thing, is that we would go and see
how far we could push this. And one day I
got invited into these people's homes and I got asked
(11:20):
to dinner, and it was like five o'clock and I
knew I was meant to be home and they were.
In order to get in and to compound the lie,
I realized I had to be emotionally upset about the
loss of the dog, so I had to start crying.
And then they wanted to know my parents' number. My
father had died, so it was just my mom. And
I was saying, oh my god, if she knows I'm here,
(11:41):
and she knows, we don't haven't lost a dog. And
I was weeping, and these people took me in and
they fed me, and at a certain point we're all
sitting around the table, and I was so exhausted by
the lie that I started to drop it, and I
became inconsistent, and they knew, and I knew that they knew.
(12:02):
It's a bit Russian, here's to a be Cold war. That
we were all that I was lying, and they knew
I was lying, but we agreed for the sense of
social convenience. That we were all going to just say
that this lie has existed, but you can leave the
house now. And it was just one of those really
complicated moments for a nine year old to think, I
(12:24):
don't know about this lion caper. I felt so bad
and if I was Catholic, I would still be atoning
for the guilt of that moment, but fortunately I'm not.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
But there's something about it. There's something about that lie
that compelled you to do it, even at age nine.
There was something thrilling in that.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
I think it was pushing. It was pushing a boundary.
I think probably because I'd lost my dad, I was
attuned to the notion of loss, and so I wanted
to see if I'd lost a dog. It was a dare.
Look look, frankly, it's that love as a dare someone
would dare. It's like Halloween. I mean, my dad was American.
We were the only people in the suburb in Australia
(13:06):
that even knew what Halloween was. People would say, slammed
their doors. It's like, what's this Halloween thing? And there
was no treat in my suburb. It was all trick
and so I just I think it probably came out
of the Halloween thing is that I would go around
and start opening doors and saying, this has happened, Or
I said to my history teacher, I fell down the stairs,
(13:28):
and I'd have my uniform on completely backwards, so everyone
would know that it was just so ridiculous that I'd
fallen down the stairs, and why did I suddenly have
my shirt and my dress and my all my hair
was backwards. I'd had pigtails coming out, you know, the
front of my face. And it was seeing how much
you could get away with before people would realize that
you were being a buffoon.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
You mentioned your father, who passed away when you were
ten for context. You know, your father came from Texas
and he met your mother when his navy ship broke
down in Melbourne. I think they bonded over a love
of jazz. And when he passes, did some thing about
his passing illuminate the preciousness of our time here? Did
(14:14):
it escalate those desires to want to knock on a
door and try anything to do something?
Speaker 1 (14:21):
You know? I mean, I have four kids, and each
of them are so different, and I was not one
of these girls who grew up thinking I want to
have children it just sort of happened, and I was
lucky it happened with someone I love. But the thing
with kids, everyone will have a different perspective, of course,
(14:42):
But from my experience and my experience of being a
child myself, is that they're really resilient. Now one can
take that for granted and assume that they have processed
trauma or you know, have moved on. I mean, you know,
I think it was Michelle five years ago said that
she was going to put a dollar into the jar
every time she screwed up with her kids to pay
(15:03):
for their therapy. And of course they will have their issues,
and there are many fuck ups and missteps that I
have made as a parent, as most parents will make.
So therefore I don't think I thought about it at
the time. It's not until you reach those landmarks of
turning eighteen twenty one, partnering, having kids, getting your first
big job. You know that those things where you think
(15:26):
you suddenly look back over your shoulder and you realize
that person's not there watching you. But in the end,
they're watching you from this space, and so the loss
becomes a very different perspective I think, on where you're
at and what you've achieved, and the dialogue with that parent,
even though that parent is absent, doesn't end. It just
(15:47):
mutates into a different sort of relationship. It's like when
you know, I remember in our class you would do
this sense of negative drawing. You would draw the object
and then you would invert it and you would draw
the negative space around the object. And in a way,
the loss of a parent is the negative space around
(16:09):
the object, around the life, and that is a massive space.
And so of course, you know, my father died when
he was forty, and now as an adult, I don't
think about the loss of a parent so much. I
think about the tragedy of my mother at thirty nine,
losing a partner who was forty, and how tragic to
die at the age of forty. I think about all
(16:30):
of those losses. I don't think about my loss, you know,
And so there's an incredible gift that that loss represents.
I mean, that sounds incredibly narcissistic on one level, but yeah,
it's just the dialogue is just a different dialogue. And
you find about your at about your parent in retrospect,
you know, through story, through photographs, and you know, my
(16:54):
father was kept very much alive by you know, through
conversations about his childhood. You know, his history, my parents' marriage,
all of those things which maybe I wouldn't have been
privy to if he'd been alive.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
You said, you only think about these changes when you're
looking back at the landmarks of your life. You can
only sort of process them once something else has happened.
And I want to go to what I think is
a landmark in your life, which is in nineteen ninety two,
you graduate from Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
God, that was a long time ago, wasn't it?
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Two years before I was born?
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Okay? Stop there, Yeah, okay, you lost me. I was
almost there and then you said that, so do you
want to do? Okay whatever? So we ah, what did
I do? So? I graduated from drama school before you
were born? All right? Yeah, so let's pick up there.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
I just had to make sure you were listening.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
I was. I'm totally with you. I'm totally with you. Yeah,
so what happened? Then? Tell me? I've forgotten I got
early on set dementia. So it's really great that we're
speaking this evening. I kind of remember my name.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
What happens is that before you graduate, you start out
at the University of Melbourne as an art, history and
economics major. You leave a couple of years in go
backpacking penniless in Istanbul and Cairo. Then you come home
to do this Institute of Dramatic Art when you graduate
in ninety two. It's important because later that year you
(18:39):
would perform in David mammitt'z Oleana at the Sydney Theater Company.
But I think to understand the importance of that performance,
I'm curious about that job that you took out of
drama school as a script reader for a casting agent,
and how that job informed how you understood acting.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Well, that's an interesting question. Yeah, I didn't think anyone
knew what to do with me, and look, to be fair,
I don't think I knew what to do with myself.
I honestly don't think I ever thought seriously that being
an actor was a job that one could pursue beyond
a wonderful hobby, even after going to drama school. And so,
(19:22):
you know, there were a lot of people who worked
straight out of drama school. I was not one of
those people. And so there was a casting agent in Sydney,
who for some bizarre reason believed in me, and she
got me to read opposite other people. And so I
spent the first twelve months at a drama school reading
for people when they were auditioning. And it was a
(19:44):
fascinating privilege, actually to watch people at their most nervous,
at their most exposed, at their most vulnerable, at their
moment of greatest need as performers, and to see the
minute they walked in the door what would happen energetically
between them and the director. And I was totally irrelevant
(20:06):
and invisible in that process, and so as I was
a real fly on the wall, and I learned incredible amount,
not only on a banal level about auditioning, but just
about human beings, just watching the interaction, the power dynamics
that would happen in that room, about the status and
the giving over and the ebb and flow of it all.
(20:29):
And it was really, really fascinating. And so I was
then auditioning for a feature film at the end of
that year. I wasn't sure that I was right for
the role. I know that sounds really stupid and really arrogant, when,
of course, you know I could barely pay my rent
at that point, so any job, frankly would have been
(20:51):
a godsend. I just thought, I don't know that I
am right, and so I sat back, having watched people
lose a job in a way when they came in
wanting it too much. But I sincerely thought, I don't
know if I'm right for this fallen. And of course
I got it, not because I was right, but maybe
because I was ambivalent. It's that strange ambivalent space that
(21:14):
I think we occupy a lot of the time. It says,
moments between we identify that there's a series of choices
I could make right now, which one am I going
to make. It's that liminal space that I think that
a lot of really interesting acting decisions get.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Made instead of watching people audition. At some point I
realized this is an act. It's not whether you can
act or not, it's whether you can act comfortable and relaxed.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Yeah, it's a really complicated thing. I think you have
to allow yourself to be seen. And some people have
the gift of being able to be comfortable with that
really early on, and I was not, And so I
was really grateful in a way that I spent a
lot of time in the theater where I developed a
(22:05):
sense of audience. I look at these people who are
sixteen seven team like Cooper Hoffmann, I mean amazing. I
mean it's just amazing the way he allows himself to
be seen. You know, I could never have done that
at his age.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
You weren't comfortable with that.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Oh God, no, I wouldn't have known even how to begin.
You know. I still struggle with it. It's why I
always have to think, oh, I've got to stop now.
I've had my portrait painted a couple of times, and
it's interesting because when you see, you know, you develop
a relationship with the artists, and they approach you and
they paint me looking away from their gaze. And I
(22:43):
think when that happens once, you go, oh what happens twice?
When it happens three times, you think, why am I?
Why am I looking away? You know? And I think
it's it's that thing about not wanting to be captured,
because you know, I'm in life, acting as part of it,
but I'm actually engaged with the zone wanky. But it's
(23:06):
like the art of living. Sometimes that's been shod but
sometimes it's just you know, going for a walk, or
encountering people at the market or I do think that's
being self conscious. It's the enemy of quote unquote art.
Then you're talking about something that's aware of itself, if
you're trying to deal directly with an audience, you know.
(23:27):
I mean, of course, sometimes there's a nod or a
wink in the direction of the camera, but in the end,
you want something to be direct, and self consciousness gets
in the way of that. I think that's my issue
with social media. There's an understood filter that we have
kind of now absorbed and ceased to see.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
I notice in looking at photographs of myself, I often
do the same thing. I've turned away or some of
my faces obfuscated, and I've often thought, what on earth
is that?
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Yeah, I think it's Susan Santeig would talk about non photography.
She talks about all of that language around photography. It's
the same language around gun culture. You shoot, you point,
you aim, you capture. We don't talk about it anymore, really,
because photography is so much and the way we visually
(24:20):
received information, and of course it's really super super important
and super valuable, and I'm not trying to diminish it,
but we do have to be aware of it. There
is a kind of a cost if you're trying to also,
at times in your life be invisible, so you can
be inside life, not skirting on the surface of it.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
In those early films Oscar and the Senda, Elizabeth counted,
mister Ripley, I don't sense any self consciousness on screen.
And there's one film directed by Sam Raimie called The
Gift that I think has some kinship with Nightmare Alley.
In The Gift, you play a fortune teller, and of course,
in Kiermo de Toro's new film, the fortune teller role
(25:05):
is integral to the fate of Bradley Cooper's character. And
yet it it seems you two had your course predicted
upon visiting a retired psychic.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Oh. I talked about that when I was doing The
Gift and was one of my favorite experiences. Sam Raimi
is one of the He's a genius. I mean, he
invents shots, and so it was such a privilege to
work with him. And it was all made in the
wing in a prayer. We had no money at all,
and I played a psychic whose husband had died and
(25:36):
she was being haunted by this woman who had been killed,
so it's kind of a murder mystery. I'd never been
to a psychic, and so I went to the ones
in La and the obviously just read the trades. And
then when I got to Savannah where we shot it,
I met this woman who was a quote unquote real
estate agent. She said, look, I don't do this anymore
(25:58):
because it's too dangerous. She used to when obviously, when
the FBI can't solve certain crimes, they would often get
psychics in to help them find bodies. And so she
seen and discovered a lot of really unpalatable things. And
so I said to her, look, would you give me
a reading. I've never had one before, and your accent's amazing,
(26:19):
and you know, I've got a memory like a sieve,
so I'll record it and the recording device wouldn't work
around her. But of course, as soon as she left,
the recording device worked, and she made all these predictions,
which I only recorded because I was interested in the process.
And then we were moving house about five or six
(26:41):
years later, and so I listened to the recording and
everything she said happened.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
What did she say?
Speaker 1 (26:49):
She said, I would have four children. I was like,
are you crazy? And there would be two born in
one place, one in another, and one would come to
me in a really unusual way. So we have three
biological kids, one adopted child, two born in England. And
it was all kind of crazy. And she said that
(27:10):
I would play a writer who was ahead of her time,
who had a foreign sound in the Guavin Gueven short hair,
and she was killed for what she was writing. And
I found myself on set three years later, covered in
blood because I'd just been shot, playing the Irish writer
Veronica Gharrin, who was killed for what she was writing
(27:33):
about the drug lords in Ireland at the time. And
she also said I had two bodyguards and I was
like au bonkers, and because the case had been reopened,
I was assigned a bodyguard because the guys who had
got out of jail were visiting the set. Ireland is
a very small country. And I was covered in blood
short hair coming from the scene where I'd just been shot,
(27:55):
and I turned behind me and there were two bodyguards
following me, and it was just one of those moments
where you go hang on a minute and then it
was all came back to me. So it wasn't like
I'd predicted it I'd only done that stuff as research,
so that was a very range strange moment.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Her prediction came true.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
It did, and so I had this urge. It's like,
oh my god, I've got to go back and find her.
And then you think do I want to know or
do I not want to know? So obviously I didn't. Yeah,
I didn't want to know.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
It's a little bit terrifying, isn't it. The prospect of
going back.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Well, it's humbling, but it's also what would it achieve
because I encountered her in absolute innocence, I'd be going
back with a need that you know that might pervert
you know, this is the whole thing that Gamo's film
deals with. Is that? What's the truth? The thing I
asked her, which is really interesting, I said, what's the
(28:49):
hardest thing about having this gift, this gift of having
this sign apse open where you can you get a
really strong feeling about something and sometimes you're right and
sometimes you're not. And she said, the hardest thing is
saying it. And we find that in any relationship, is
that when you perceive something about a loved one and
you think do I say it or do I not
(29:11):
say it? You know that often happens in families, doesn't it.
Where there's an understood truth that you think, we know
what this is, but we're not going to articulate it.
But you need to know what it is. Once you've
uncovered the truth, you need to have a relationship to
it in some form.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
We'll be right back after a quick break.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
I have a question about your family because you mentioned
that film Veronica Garran, and while you are making it,
you have this quote you said that after Dashel, your
first child's born, I have nothing to give this project
because I'm so filled up with this creature we've created.
But I've become a better actor because of it. I
think parenthood is knowing what cards you've got and then
(30:22):
throwing them up in the air. I've never heard that
description before.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
I think when you have a profound life experience, and
for some people that's having children, for some it's walking
up a mountain or having a great creative experience. But
it changes you. And so I think you have to
ask yourself each time you think you know. There's a
lot of things that you encounter where you go, oh,
I wish I could do that, and you think, now
(30:49):
it's not the time, you know, because I'm doing this
and if I do that and that, I won't serve
either of those things. Well, so you have to let
those things go. In those moments, you have to confront
your own mortality and think, well, I don't have anything
to give that. But you know, in that instance, he
was very very young when I did for a kick,
and I was, you know, first child. I had no
(31:11):
idea if I would even want to or could, or
what acting even meant. But maybe that was a good
space to work in because if you think you know
too much or oops.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
I like how you're the first person to ever have
to quiet their child while we're taping.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
There's so many time zones that when you know, I'm Australian,
so I'm dealing with Australia, which is in our morning
here in the UK, and then there's our life here
and then La wakes up, and then you've got this
whole other life and meanwhile your children are on a
regular UK cycle.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
And so and by the way, I take no offense
that the kids don't care about talk easy. I actually
find this entirely endearing.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
No, they care deeply, they want to hear it. But
the problem is they can only hear me. They can't
hear you, so they're only in the boring end that
they hear every day. Huh, they're not getting you, Sam,
which is the exotic end of the day.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
I'm the exotic part.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
You are the exotic part of their day.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Now I know you're a good actor. I wasn't sure before.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
It's true. It's true they just get the orange headphones,
you know, the mother they always get.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
But it's true. You have four children, and you've said
having children it forces you to be economical, to choose
your rules wisely, and then shrug them off as soon
as you're done. And since we don't have all the
time in the world, I want to ask you about
two films here where they land with you now and
how you shrugged them off when you were done. To start,
(32:54):
I think we should talk about I'm not there.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
I had made a film in Morocco and my son
had an accident. It was the closest that I've ever
come to a nervous breakdown. I think. I was so distressed.
I said to my a and dear friend, I said,
I can't do this, I can't work, and she said,
don't worry. We'll make it fine. It can all happen.
(33:17):
So I came to that job kind of very overexposed,
I think. But if you're going to be overexposed with anyone,
it's with Todd. I've had the great fortune of working
with him a couple of times, and I would do
it a couple of times more because apart from Guiamo,
there's not a more loving environment in which one can work.
(33:39):
And it's all about the investigation. I had to lose
a lot of weight to play Bob Dylan, so I
became increasingly seen, you know, and I would get obsessed
with these the art takes from the Penny Baker documentary
that his agent had given us, which was fascinating, and
watching his connection to the media, I became really obsessed
(34:03):
with and it was a life raft. So it was
this strange space that I entered the shoot ab I'm
not there. That was a very kind of maternal space.
But yet I was playing Bob Dylan, and so I
had this total fan girl response to him. But yet
(34:24):
I was a woman playing him. And a friend of mine,
who was doing hair and makeup, said to me, you
know what, I think, it's great what you're doing but
you need to put a sock down your pants. I
think that's what's missing. I mean, what and she'd trust me?
Just put a sock down your pants. I think it
will change the way you move. And because I hadn't
(34:46):
hadn't thought about him as being male or female. But
putting this sock in my pants, it was like everything
came alive for me. I know that sounds absolutely ridiculous
and totally shallow, but it did change the way I moved,
and it made that strange intersection between me as a
(35:09):
email body, him as a kind of a male but
androgynous entity, and the fact that I was a woman
playing man. It just kind of all came together around
that sock in the pants. I don't believe I'm saying this.
It's like it should be a much more intellectual, you know,
kind of connection. But I've done all of that stuff,
(35:32):
and sometimes something as kind of obvious as that is
the key.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
No, what do you think I did right before this podcast?
Speaker 1 (35:40):
You put a Solke Dandy pants. You have a Soke
danw pants. That's your business and it's none of my business.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
I'm going to say on record that is one of
the dumbest jokes I've ever made.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Well, look, that's one of the most shallow observations I've
ever made about any character. And look, it's of course
it's always more complicated than that. But you know, sometimes
the moments of pivot that one makes with a project,
with an idea, whatever it is that one's working on
is really physical or simple, or it's like just open
(36:20):
that door and you go, oh, okay, and it's only
because you've done all the other stuff that that door
becomes available to you.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
By the way, I said the joke mainly because I
knew you would enjoy it, even though it's profoundly dumb.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Yes I did, I did. It's not profoundly dumb.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
One of the things you said about Dylan, you said,
I think the way to be ultimately liberated and free
as an artist, which Dylan absolutely inhabits, is to constantly
escape the physical definition. If you look at his various incarnations,
I mean, it's quite schizophrenic. And I was thinking about
these various incarnations of your career. They almost seem to
(37:01):
culminate in the film Manifesto.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Oh you saw that here. A friend of mine, Julian Roseveldt,
he we were talking about working together, and he came
up with this idea of doing a piece around artists
manifestos and you know, the kind of the assertion of
individuality and the different way they expressed themselves. And perhaps
(37:26):
a good way of fully representing that would be to
find both meaningful and banal settings in which to express
these manifestos, sometimes as in a monologue, sometimes as text.
And what if we found various manifestos and assigned a character,
(37:49):
but not in the sense of a characterist one understands
it narrative, you know, an archetype. And so I found
that really really fascinating. It was like stand up comedy
is there was no time for thought. Obviously, there was
no money for the project at all, and so we
had to think on our feet, and literally the night
before was like, okay, what if I talked like that?
(38:10):
And all right, well now I'm going to talk like this,
And you know, it was literally trying to find something
that would be appropriate the day of or the day before.
It made me think about how random and immediate our
sense of identity is, and how malleable our sense of
identity is, and how surface our sense of identity is,
(38:33):
and the amazing thing about reading all of these manifestos
is artists manifestos, is that their massive assertions about the
separation of one's artistic identity from the previous incarnation of
all these people's artistic identity. But yet when you hear
them energetically, when you hear them together, because there was
(38:56):
a point when all the manifestos were heard together sort
of in a tone poem, they all sound the same.
We all think about how unique and individual and special
we are. But it was a really profound moment for me,
and maybe an audience wouldn't receive it in the same way,
but I felt just how connected all of these departures were.
(39:18):
I found that there was a strange sort of comforting
moment in that dissonance.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
To get into all those parts. You just say something
I love, which is that there was no time for thought.
There's something very Eastern philosophy in that.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
With self preservation. Sam is one of us. It was like,
we got to do this. But also, you know, the
most wonderful times I've had with the Bob Dylan project.
You were mentioning with manifesto. You think no one's going
to see this, and it gets a bit harder, you know,
when you're dealing with a Marvel movie to say, no
(39:58):
one's going to see this, but you have to claim
that space. In a way, you're saying, it doesn't matter
if people see this, and that doesn't mean that you
have disregard for the audience, because in the end, that's
absolutely why you're doing it, not that you want audience's approval,
but you want the chance to connect with someone for
(40:19):
them to like it or dislike it. And sometimes it's
those gray areas that you know between thumbs up thumbs down,
that most of the films, most of the endeavors sit
because they're not going to ever be thumbs up thumbs down.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
By the way, I mentioned this Eastern philosophy about having
no time to think, because you've often talked about how
your work is rooted in the Eastern philosophy of imperfection.
That something can only truly be perfect only if there's
imperfection in it.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
That's my justification for me who I am. That's what
I said to my children. I said, Look, there's no
such thing as a perfect parent, as I'm failing them monumentally.
It's the imperfections that make you who you are are.
I say to my children. No, yeah, well, I mean
(41:13):
something is only beautiful. It's like this idea of homogeneous beauty,
you know, is that we're all striving to get rid
of all the imperfect parts of ourselves. But when you
remove them, you know, you remove that individuality, You remove
that I mean, who are we without all of that history?
You know, there's an amazing moment where as one ages is
(41:35):
that there's an asymmetry that happens when we're in the womb,
and that we're all slightly asymmetrical. And as we age,
our face, our bodies, you know, become and probably our
personalities therefore become increasingly asymmetrical. As that becomes evident, we
try and revert to a sense of symmetry. But then
(41:59):
what you're trying to do is you're trying to reverse
the aging process in a really profound way that makes
us who we are. And it took me a while
to receive it as a compliment that someone said to me,
is that I've got an actor's face, which probably meant
that I wasn't particularly attractive, you know, but that sense
(42:19):
is that you have a quote unquote good side of
your face and a not so good side of your face.
But if you allow that asymmetry to exist, you've got
so many more doors to play, so many more people.
Because if you start to remove that asymmetry.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
I mean, do you remove some of the complexity.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Of course. And I'm reluctant to compliment you because I
don't think you do so well with compliments?
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Who does? But do you do well with compliments? What
do you do with compliments?
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Well, you haven't tried.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
You've got great hair, sam, lovely eyebrows. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
I have two questions. And talking about aging as a performer.
In twenty nineteen, you say with Julia Roberts for an interview,
you said, as you get older, acting just gets more
and more humiliating. When I was young, was that an okay?
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Line? Reading it's worse, It's only worse? When was that?
Speaker 3 (43:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (43:36):
You know what, I can't even say a nice thing
about you because you won't even hear it.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
So I'm not even okay, No, was that nice? Okay,
let's go, will you talk humiliation? I'm listening?
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Well, okay. So when I was younger, I would wonder
why the older actors I admired kept talking about quitting.
Now I realize it's because they want to maintain a
connection to the last shreds of their sanity. It's the
king lear end of the spectrum of what we do right.
So I'm on the proverbial couch thinking do I want
(44:06):
to go that direction or do I actually want to
live a life? And I think about that now as
we sit, where are you on that spectrum?
Speaker 1 (44:16):
I still I mean that was only twenty nineteen. I
still haven't worked out the answer. But having lost a
parent at such a young age, I realized how short
life was and how many lives I wanted to lead,
and that the privilege I've had as being an actor
is that I've empathetically been able to enter not only
(44:38):
time zones, but actually to a lot of different psyches,
and so therefore I've got to experience the point of view,
the outlooks, and the experiences of people beyond my own.
And so the literalism that I see creeping into that
one can only play things inside one's experience I find
(45:00):
really sad. I find it really limiting. You do get
to a point where you think, well, do I have
anything more to offer? You do have to stop periodically
and say I actually need to go actually go back
into the world and have some experiences that are not
research for the next role but as simply just on
(45:24):
your You know, you're in the world to explore, to
see what the questions are. And unless you have that
space as an artist, which means stepping off the treadmill
of one's so called career trajectory, and you know, when
you get representation and there's a certain career path that
one is meant to be on, you know you can
(45:46):
feel like, oh God, what if I it's that fear
of not getting that or the bravest thing you can
do is step sideways, and so I'm constantly wanting to
step sideways.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
Do you think one of the reasons you have trouble
stepping sideways is because of that Martha Graham philosophy that
I know you subscribe to. As you said, no artist
is pleased. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a
blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more
(46:19):
alive than the others.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
Yeah, you can have that feeling, whether you're a quote
unquote artist or not. I think that's part of being human.
I think it's part of being alive, and that is
far more important to me than being an actor. Any
panic I feel is when I feel that there's too much,
you know, and there's the whole thing that has developed
(46:41):
with streaming algorithms that need to be fed, is that
somehow we are content providers, and that makes me want
to throw up. The last thing I want to do
is to be someone who is filling space that has
been created. Don't say something unless you have something to say,
(47:03):
and if you haven't got something to say, give that
to someone else.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
I think you've had many things to say on this show,
and since the beginning, you've had this interaction with your daughter,
trying to get her to fall asleep.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
She's actually a sleep, She's actually sleep you Sam, thank you,
thank you. You have sinned to sleep.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
You know. You know I don't say that too loud.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
She sound asleep, Thank God. So if can I speak
to you tomorrow night? At the same time, this is
clearly working, you know what.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
I think this has been a riveting conversation. I want
to put something on record before we leave. You said
earlier your kids may listen to this, although they can
only hear your end of it. After the last two years,
after this whirlwind, of year you've had with these two films,
with four kids at fifty two, I don't know, what
(48:01):
do you want them to know about who you are today,
about what matters to you right now?
Speaker 1 (48:09):
Gosh, you know, it's a hard thing to say with
the spread of children between twenty and seven, because their
interest in you as a parent, what they want from
you as an individual and as a parent figure is
so very, very different. You know, my seven year old
daughter hates it when I do voices. When I read,
(48:31):
it's like, but that's what I do. Don't you want
me to give my Christmas pig? Yeah? Yeah, So she
hates that. But in the end, it's the really simple
things when you're living with people day today, it's the
simple thing. It's like, dude, recycle, there's recycling bin. You
(48:53):
know what if you recycle and separate our garbage. That,
on a banal domestic level is where I'm at because
it's about mindfulness. Forget the yoga, forget the meditation. Just
have a sets that you take the time to know
how much waste you're producing and how conscious you are
(49:16):
of that. So that is I suppose first base, and
we're trying to get there, but that is probably not
the answer you were looking for. You were wanting to
know what they thought of me as a They couldn't
be Can I tell you they could not be less
interested in what I do for a living, you know,
(49:37):
because they're individuals and you know they don't want to
be They don't want to be in the world in
relation to me.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
No.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
No, I want to assure you something, which is that
I want no answer that's not truthful to you. That's
I don't presume to want anything like that. My last thing,
since we have to go that Graham quote about divine dissatisfaction,
are you comfortable with being dissatisfied in that way for
(50:04):
the rest of your career?
Speaker 1 (50:07):
I think it's part of the job description.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
You know.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
That was a big thing about nightmare allity, about the
monstrous moment when we feel satisfied with ourselves and we
believe our own lives. Now, that doesn't mean that you
can't reach a milestone and go I did that, which
is very important to I think American culture. I achieved that,
(50:34):
I did that. I overcame that obstacore. But it's very
different when you start to say I am that solidity
I think is a dangerous place for the creative mind
to exist. It's about flow, it's about change, it's about challenge,
and that's often a very uncomfortable place to be. And
(50:55):
I suppose I'm just getting more and more used to
being that uncomfortable, you know, And that's okay.
Speaker 2 (51:01):
Well, I have to say, as someone who's been watching
your work.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
My entire life, I apologize.
Speaker 2 (51:08):
Thank you. I've been waiting for you too, honestly, you know,
I know you're not going to take this well. I
just want to say thank you for embracing that discomfort
and the imperfections of the people you've played. They have
made all of us who've watched, I think a little
more attuned to their own imperfection and in turn our
(51:29):
own humanity.
Speaker 1 (51:30):
Well that's a very big compliment. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (51:33):
Thanks so Kate Blanchett, lovely to meet you.
Speaker 1 (51:35):
Thank you again, thank you, thanks to your patience.
Speaker 2 (51:40):
Anytime, Thank you so long. And that's our show. I
(52:12):
want to give a special thanks this week to Graham Morphy, Dominic, Boucherry,
Searchlight Pictures, and of course, Kate Blanchet. If you'd like
to learn more about Kate and her work, be sure
to visit our website at talk easypod dot com. Once
you're there, you'll find our back catalog of over two
hundred and fifty episodes with actors including Laura Dern, Matthew McConaughey,
(52:35):
Uzo Aduba Holland Taylor, Tessa Thompson, Tracy Letts, Alana Hiam
and Willem Dafoe. To hear those and more, pushkin Podcast
listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever
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(52:56):
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(53:18):
with fran Leebowitz at talk easypod dot com slash Shop.
As always, this show would not be possible without our
incredible team. Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our
executive producer is Janick Sabravo. Our associate producer is Caitlin Dryden.
Today's Talk was edited by Clarice Goevara and mixed by
(53:38):
Andrew Vastola. Music by Dylan Peck, illustrations by Criscia Chenoy,
Video and graphics by Ian Chang, Derek Gaberzac, Ian Jones,
Ethan Seneca and Layla Register. Special thanks to Patrice Lee,
Kaelin Ung, Shiloh Fagan, Nicky Spina, and Callie Serringis. I'd
also like to thank the team at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond,
Julia Barton, John Schnars, Kerrie Brody, Eric Sandler, Kira Posy,
(54:01):
Jorna McMillan, Tera Machado, Justin Lang, Sarah Nix, Malcolm Gladwell,
Gretacon and Jacob Weisberg. I'm San Fragoso. Thank you for
listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next
week with another episode. Until then, stay safe and so on.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Fragoso. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Today.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I'm joined by actor Kate Blanchett. For over twenty five years,
Blanchett has been as vital as any performer we have.
Some of my personal favorite performances of hers come in
projects like Elizabeth, The Talented, Mister Ripley, The Gift, The Aviator, Babbel,
Carol Manifesto, and Missus America. She was in two films
(01:15):
in twenty twenty one, Don't Look Up, an apocalyptic satire
directed by Adam McKay and Nightmare Alley, which was nominated
for four Oscars this past week, including Best Picture. Set
in the late thirties early forties, it tells the story
of Stanton Carlyle played by Bradley Cooper, an ambitious Carney
turned renowned psychic. Performing alongside his wife Mollie played by
(01:40):
Rooney Mara. The clairvoyant couple begins to impress the wealthy
elite of Buffalo. It's here during a show that Stanton
meets his match in psychologist doctor Lilith Ritter, who suspects
he's not the omniscient medium he claims to be. Here's
an early scene between the two of them from the
film Nightmare Alley.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Mister Carlar, come in slow day. If you're not heard,
we're at war.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
I'm aware.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
How did you know?
Speaker 1 (02:15):
It was me? What friends? You here? You left me
your card, didn't you? So here? We are? Oh not me?
I never drink microphones. That's right, fire recorder. You're recording this? No,
my office is wired to record all analysis sessions.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
You got a smoother line that you run a racket
same as me.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Is that what this is?
Speaker 2 (02:48):
That was a scene from the film Nightmare Alley, directed
by the great Geramel del Toro. Blanchett, of course, is
excellent in the picture, perfectly cast as a fem fatale
in del Toro's haunting neo noir. This tends to be
the case for Blanchett no matter the period or style
of the film. She has a way of burrowing deep
(03:10):
inside it. Her conviction is overwhelming, her presence staggering. I
don't exactly know how she does what she does, and
quite frankly, I don't think I want to. Back in
the day when interviewers used to ask John Lennon how
he makes the music he makes, he'd always have this
same line. He'd say, every time you try to put
(03:31):
your finger on it, it slips away. I've always loved that,
And so what you're about to hear is a different
kind of conversation than you've probably ever heard with Kate Blanchett.
We do talk about craft, but what we landed on
was a larger discussion about identity, truth, imperfection, the necessity
(03:53):
for risk, and the various inflection points of her life
that have made her who she is on screen and off.
So here is the one and only Kate Blanchett. Cate Blanchett.
(04:21):
Nice to meet you.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Thanks, Sam, Nice to meet you.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
This is a very strange way to meet someone. You
are in the UK, I'm in Los Angeles. You're recording
this at nine o'clock at night. If you want to
have a drink, I will join you. If you want
me to have espresso with you. We never keep these
in the evening, so I'm willing to accommodate whatever you
want to do.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
What time is it there?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
One o'clock?
Speaker 1 (04:47):
That could be a time, a time for an espresso martini.
It's like partially breakfast heading into the evening. No, No,
I'm on peppermint tea and mineral water, which is slightly boring.
We say, as we both sip our tease medicinal drinks.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
They're completely medicinal and for the voice, so we'll keep.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
It totally for the voice. It's all about the voice.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Okay, good, Why don't we start with Nightmare Alley, which
I know historically, as you study scripts, you write down
everything the character says about herself, as well as everything
that other people in the script say about your character
you've said in the past. To this approach, it gives
you a three dimensional sense of what they are doing.
(05:31):
How did the character of Lilith reveal itself to.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
You well through the eyes of Giermo del Toro. I mean,
when you're dealing with someone like that who has such
a loving, passionate and brutal eye, which is a very
rare combination. You know, I'm a theater animal, so I
have a very direct and visceral kind of connection to
an audience, and you're slightly dislocated from that audience when
(05:57):
you work in film, So who's looking down the barrel
at you? It's a really important relationship, not only with
the DP and the camera operator. It's obviously for because
that's the reason why we're all there, so it started
with him. Really, I mean that text work. I think
(06:17):
it's part of trying to get to the truth of
the character. Because we're all heroes of our own narrative, right,
we're all narcissists. But what we say about ourselves, who
we think we are in the world is often very
different from how we're perceived to be in that world.
So somewhere I think there's an intersection between how people
(06:40):
perceive us, how we perceive ourselves, who we want to
be perceived. It's the intersection of all those things that
the character somewhere in that nebula space, the character that
actually takes flight.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
How did you perceive the character?
Speaker 1 (06:55):
You know? It'd always find that, really it's a thing
that you're meant to know when you get to this
other end of what's quote unquote publicizing the movie. My
daughter's laughing. Sorry, she's on the sofa over that go
to sleep. It really is the bit that I dread
because it's a bit where you're meant to tell people
(07:18):
what the thing that you've all made is about. And
in the end, I am so not interested in telling
people what it's about. It's not why I got involved
in my engagement with the project. It's always about finding out,
like asking questions, and you never solve it. The audience
(07:38):
is the last part of that equation, Like they are
the ones that give it. I mean, I don't want
to sound too kind of wanky about it, but they
give it the meaning, the ultimate meaning. It's like, well,
how do you think? And you know every individual audience
member will receive it slightly differently if it's a complex
work like Nightmare Ali is. And then suddenly I meant
to know who my character is. I mean, do you
(08:01):
know who you are? Sam? I have no clue who
I am. I mean, it's not something I wake up
in the morning. I am. I finally realized who I am?
I mean, do you know? Can you answer those questions?
We're just a series of kind of labyrinths and riddles
and unsolved mysteries, aren't we?
Speaker 2 (08:22):
We absolutely are. And I'm going to make a promise
to you. That's the last question I think you're not
going to like on the show.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
No, No, I wasn't. I didn't like it. I didn't
know how to answer it.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
No, no, because I agree it's a question that is
asked of people after they've made something and they're putting
it out into the world. I think the more interesting
question is that at the core of this film you've said,
is a story of a man who starts to believe
his own lies. And I think we are absolutely living
through a time where people are believing their own lies
(08:53):
rather than investigating the truth.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
I mean totally. I mean Giermu is known for making
films about monsters and creatures, and in a way, this
is an inverted kind of sense of that investigation for him,
because it's the monster within, the internal monstrousness of being
a human or trying to be human in the modern world.
(09:18):
Even though Nightmare ally is set back in time, which
in a way is a space where you can trojan
horse all of the concerns about that truth and fallacy
that you were referring to, that all of us are.
Anyone who's half awake is alive to that conundrum about
what do you believe, what do you listen to, what
do you take in? There's too much noise to even
(09:41):
know what is an essential truth. I mean, when I
grew up and I'm older than you, are scientists, people
who had worked their entire career in the space of fact,
and there are immutable facts on this planet. But somehow
those are mutable facts have moved into the space of
being beliefs. And that is a really strange and elastic
(10:03):
space that it's doing our head in. And I think
that that is the space in which Nightmare ally operates.
Is that the fundamental moral truths that have guided us
forget religion. It's about the facts that guide our daily existence.
They've somehow been called into question as being beliefs, and
it's really confusing.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
This balancing act that's central to the film, between deceit
and honesty, deception and truth. I don't know. It also
seems central to how you approach acting, I assume, and
I think this for you dates back to nineteen seventy eight.
I want to go to something. When you're nine years old,
the middle of three kids growing up in Melbourne. For fun,
(10:47):
your sister would dress you up in costumes, giving you
a character to play. But then one day you take
this passion out onto the streets and to the doorsteps
of strangers' homes.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Oh my god, have I mentioned this before? Oh shit, totally.
I would show up on people's doorsteps and I would
pretend that you know, I'd lost dog. This would be
our weekend thing, is that we would go and see
how far we could push this. And one day I
got invited into these people's homes and I got asked
(11:20):
to dinner, and it was like five o'clock and I
knew I was meant to be home and they were.
In order to get in and to compound the lie,
I realized I had to be emotionally upset about the
loss of the dog, so I had to start crying.
And then they wanted to know my parents' number. My
father had died, so it was just my mom. And
I was saying, oh my god, if she knows I'm here,
(11:41):
and she knows, we don't haven't lost a dog. And
I was weeping, and these people took me in and
they fed me, and at a certain point we're all
sitting around the table, and I was so exhausted by
the lie that I started to drop it, and I
became inconsistent, and they knew, and I knew that they knew.
(12:02):
It's a bit Russian, here's to a be Cold war. That
we were all that I was lying, and they knew
I was lying, but we agreed for the sense of
social convenience. That we were all going to just say
that this lie has existed, but you can leave the
house now. And it was just one of those really
complicated moments for a nine year old to think, I
(12:24):
don't know about this lion caper. I felt so bad
and if I was Catholic, I would still be atoning
for the guilt of that moment, but fortunately I'm not.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
But there's something about it. There's something about that lie
that compelled you to do it, even at age nine.
There was something thrilling in that.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
I think it was pushing. It was pushing a boundary.
I think probably because I'd lost my dad, I was
attuned to the notion of loss, and so I wanted
to see if I'd lost a dog. It was a dare.
Look look, frankly, it's that love as a dare someone
would dare. It's like Halloween. I mean, my dad was American.
We were the only people in the suburb in Australia
(13:06):
that even knew what Halloween was. People would say, slammed
their doors. It's like, what's this Halloween thing? And there
was no treat in my suburb. It was all trick
and so I just I think it probably came out
of the Halloween thing is that I would go around
and start opening doors and saying, this has happened, Or
I said to my history teacher, I fell down the stairs,
(13:28):
and I'd have my uniform on completely backwards, so everyone
would know that it was just so ridiculous that I'd
fallen down the stairs, and why did I suddenly have
my shirt and my dress and my all my hair
was backwards. I'd had pigtails coming out, you know, the
front of my face. And it was seeing how much
you could get away with before people would realize that
you were being a buffoon.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
You mentioned your father, who passed away when you were
ten for context. You know, your father came from Texas
and he met your mother when his navy ship broke
down in Melbourne. I think they bonded over a love
of jazz. And when he passes, did some thing about
his passing illuminate the preciousness of our time here? Did
(14:14):
it escalate those desires to want to knock on a
door and try anything to do something?
Speaker 1 (14:21):
You know? I mean, I have four kids, and each
of them are so different, and I was not one
of these girls who grew up thinking I want to
have children it just sort of happened, and I was
lucky it happened with someone I love. But the thing
with kids, everyone will have a different perspective, of course,
(14:42):
But from my experience and my experience of being a
child myself, is that they're really resilient. Now one can
take that for granted and assume that they have processed
trauma or you know, have moved on. I mean, you know,
I think it was Michelle five years ago said that
she was going to put a dollar into the jar
every time she screwed up with her kids to pay
(15:03):
for their therapy. And of course they will have their issues,
and there are many fuck ups and missteps that I
have made as a parent, as most parents will make.
So therefore I don't think I thought about it at
the time. It's not until you reach those landmarks of
turning eighteen twenty one, partnering, having kids, getting your first
big job. You know that those things where you think
(15:26):
you suddenly look back over your shoulder and you realize
that person's not there watching you. But in the end,
they're watching you from this space, and so the loss
becomes a very different perspective I think, on where you're
at and what you've achieved, and the dialogue with that parent,
even though that parent is absent, doesn't end. It just
(15:47):
mutates into a different sort of relationship. It's like when
you know, I remember in our class you would do
this sense of negative drawing. You would draw the object
and then you would invert it and you would draw
the negative space around the object. And in a way,
the loss of a parent is the negative space around
(16:09):
the object, around the life, and that is a massive space.
And so of course, you know, my father died when
he was forty, and now as an adult, I don't
think about the loss of a parent so much. I
think about the tragedy of my mother at thirty nine,
losing a partner who was forty, and how tragic to
die at the age of forty. I think about all
(16:30):
of those losses. I don't think about my loss, you know,
And so there's an incredible gift that that loss represents.
I mean, that sounds incredibly narcissistic on one level, but yeah,
it's just the dialogue is just a different dialogue. And
you find about your at about your parent in retrospect,
you know, through story, through photographs, and you know, my
(16:54):
father was kept very much alive by you know, through
conversations about his childhood. You know, his history, my parents' marriage,
all of those things which maybe I wouldn't have been
privy to if he'd been alive.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
You said, you only think about these changes when you're
looking back at the landmarks of your life. You can
only sort of process them once something else has happened.
And I want to go to what I think is
a landmark in your life, which is in nineteen ninety two,
you graduate from Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
God, that was a long time ago, wasn't it?
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Two years before I was born?
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Okay? Stop there, Yeah, okay, you lost me. I was
almost there and then you said that, so do you
want to do? Okay whatever? So we ah, what did
I do? So? I graduated from drama school before you
were born? All right? Yeah, so let's pick up there.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
I just had to make sure you were listening.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
I was. I'm totally with you. I'm totally with you. Yeah,
so what happened? Then? Tell me? I've forgotten I got
early on set dementia. So it's really great that we're
speaking this evening. I kind of remember my name.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
What happens is that before you graduate, you start out
at the University of Melbourne as an art, history and
economics major. You leave a couple of years in go
backpacking penniless in Istanbul and Cairo. Then you come home
to do this Institute of Dramatic Art when you graduate
in ninety two. It's important because later that year you
(18:39):
would perform in David mammitt'z Oleana at the Sydney Theater Company.
But I think to understand the importance of that performance,
I'm curious about that job that you took out of
drama school as a script reader for a casting agent,
and how that job informed how you understood acting.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Well, that's an interesting question. Yeah, I didn't think anyone
knew what to do with me, and look, to be fair,
I don't think I knew what to do with myself.
I honestly don't think I ever thought seriously that being
an actor was a job that one could pursue beyond
a wonderful hobby, even after going to drama school. And so,
(19:22):
you know, there were a lot of people who worked
straight out of drama school. I was not one of
those people. And so there was a casting agent in Sydney,
who for some bizarre reason believed in me, and she
got me to read opposite other people. And so I
spent the first twelve months at a drama school reading
for people when they were auditioning. And it was a
(19:44):
fascinating privilege, actually to watch people at their most nervous,
at their most exposed, at their most vulnerable, at their
moment of greatest need as performers, and to see the
minute they walked in the door what would happen energetically
between them and the director. And I was totally irrelevant
(20:06):
and invisible in that process, and so as I was
a real fly on the wall, and I learned incredible amount,
not only on a banal level about auditioning, but just
about human beings, just watching the interaction, the power dynamics
that would happen in that room, about the status and
the giving over and the ebb and flow of it all.
(20:29):
And it was really, really fascinating. And so I was
then auditioning for a feature film at the end of
that year. I wasn't sure that I was right for
the role. I know that sounds really stupid and really arrogant, when,
of course, you know I could barely pay my rent
at that point, so any job, frankly would have been
(20:51):
a godsend. I just thought, I don't know that I
am right, and so I sat back, having watched people
lose a job in a way when they came in
wanting it too much. But I sincerely thought, I don't
know if I'm right for this fallen. And of course
I got it, not because I was right, but maybe
because I was ambivalent. It's that strange ambivalent space that
(21:14):
I think we occupy a lot of the time. It says,
moments between we identify that there's a series of choices
I could make right now, which one am I going
to make. It's that liminal space that I think that
a lot of really interesting acting decisions get.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Made instead of watching people audition. At some point I
realized this is an act. It's not whether you can
act or not, it's whether you can act comfortable and relaxed.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Yeah, it's a really complicated thing. I think you have
to allow yourself to be seen. And some people have
the gift of being able to be comfortable with that
really early on, and I was not, And so I
was really grateful in a way that I spent a
lot of time in the theater where I developed a
(22:05):
sense of audience. I look at these people who are
sixteen seven team like Cooper Hoffmann, I mean amazing. I
mean it's just amazing the way he allows himself to
be seen. You know, I could never have done that
at his age.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
You weren't comfortable with that.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Oh God, no, I wouldn't have known even how to begin.
You know. I still struggle with it. It's why I
always have to think, oh, I've got to stop now.
I've had my portrait painted a couple of times, and
it's interesting because when you see, you know, you develop
a relationship with the artists, and they approach you and
they paint me looking away from their gaze. And I
(22:43):
think when that happens once, you go, oh what happens twice?
When it happens three times, you think, why am I?
Why am I looking away? You know? And I think
it's it's that thing about not wanting to be captured,
because you know, I'm in life, acting as part of it,
but I'm actually engaged with the zone wanky. But it's
(23:06):
like the art of living. Sometimes that's been shod but
sometimes it's just you know, going for a walk, or
encountering people at the market or I do think that's
being self conscious. It's the enemy of quote unquote art.
Then you're talking about something that's aware of itself, if
you're trying to deal directly with an audience, you know.
(23:27):
I mean, of course, sometimes there's a nod or a
wink in the direction of the camera, but in the end,
you want something to be direct, and self consciousness gets
in the way of that. I think that's my issue
with social media. There's an understood filter that we have
kind of now absorbed and ceased to see.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
I notice in looking at photographs of myself, I often
do the same thing. I've turned away or some of
my faces obfuscated, and I've often thought, what on earth
is that?
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Yeah, I think it's Susan Santeig would talk about non photography.
She talks about all of that language around photography. It's
the same language around gun culture. You shoot, you point,
you aim, you capture. We don't talk about it anymore, really,
because photography is so much and the way we visually
(24:20):
received information, and of course it's really super super important
and super valuable, and I'm not trying to diminish it,
but we do have to be aware of it. There
is a kind of a cost if you're trying to also,
at times in your life be invisible, so you can
be inside life, not skirting on the surface of it.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
In those early films Oscar and the Senda, Elizabeth counted,
mister Ripley, I don't sense any self consciousness on screen.
And there's one film directed by Sam Raimie called The
Gift that I think has some kinship with Nightmare Alley.
In The Gift, you play a fortune teller, and of course,
in Kiermo de Toro's new film, the fortune teller role
(25:05):
is integral to the fate of Bradley Cooper's character. And
yet it it seems you two had your course predicted
upon visiting a retired psychic.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Oh. I talked about that when I was doing The
Gift and was one of my favorite experiences. Sam Raimi
is one of the He's a genius. I mean, he
invents shots, and so it was such a privilege to
work with him. And it was all made in the
wing in a prayer. We had no money at all,
and I played a psychic whose husband had died and
(25:36):
she was being haunted by this woman who had been killed,
so it's kind of a murder mystery. I'd never been
to a psychic, and so I went to the ones
in La and the obviously just read the trades. And
then when I got to Savannah where we shot it,
I met this woman who was a quote unquote real
estate agent. She said, look, I don't do this anymore
(25:58):
because it's too dangerous. She used to when obviously, when
the FBI can't solve certain crimes, they would often get
psychics in to help them find bodies. And so she
seen and discovered a lot of really unpalatable things. And
so I said to her, look, would you give me
a reading. I've never had one before, and your accent's amazing,
(26:19):
and you know, I've got a memory like a sieve,
so I'll record it and the recording device wouldn't work
around her. But of course, as soon as she left,
the recording device worked, and she made all these predictions,
which I only recorded because I was interested in the process.
And then we were moving house about five or six
(26:41):
years later, and so I listened to the recording and
everything she said happened.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
What did she say?
Speaker 1 (26:49):
She said, I would have four children. I was like,
are you crazy? And there would be two born in
one place, one in another, and one would come to
me in a really unusual way. So we have three
biological kids, one adopted child, two born in England. And
it was all kind of crazy. And she said that
(27:10):
I would play a writer who was ahead of her time,
who had a foreign sound in the Guavin Gueven short hair,
and she was killed for what she was writing. And
I found myself on set three years later, covered in
blood because I'd just been shot, playing the Irish writer
Veronica Gharrin, who was killed for what she was writing
(27:33):
about the drug lords in Ireland at the time. And
she also said I had two bodyguards and I was
like au bonkers, and because the case had been reopened,
I was assigned a bodyguard because the guys who had
got out of jail were visiting the set. Ireland is
a very small country. And I was covered in blood
short hair coming from the scene where I'd just been shot,
(27:55):
and I turned behind me and there were two bodyguards
following me, and it was just one of those moments
where you go hang on a minute and then it
was all came back to me. So it wasn't like
I'd predicted it I'd only done that stuff as research,
so that was a very range strange moment.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Her prediction came true.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
It did, and so I had this urge. It's like,
oh my god, I've got to go back and find her.
And then you think do I want to know or
do I not want to know? So obviously I didn't. Yeah,
I didn't want to know.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
It's a little bit terrifying, isn't it. The prospect of
going back.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Well, it's humbling, but it's also what would it achieve
because I encountered her in absolute innocence, I'd be going
back with a need that you know that might pervert
you know, this is the whole thing that Gamo's film
deals with. Is that? What's the truth? The thing I
asked her, which is really interesting, I said, what's the
(28:49):
hardest thing about having this gift, this gift of having
this sign apse open where you can you get a
really strong feeling about something and sometimes you're right and
sometimes you're not. And she said, the hardest thing is
saying it. And we find that in any relationship, is
that when you perceive something about a loved one and
you think do I say it or do I not
(29:11):
say it? You know that often happens in families, doesn't it.
Where there's an understood truth that you think, we know
what this is, but we're not going to articulate it.
But you need to know what it is. Once you've
uncovered the truth, you need to have a relationship to
it in some form.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
We'll be right back after a quick break.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
I have a question about your family because you mentioned
that film Veronica Garran, and while you are making it,
you have this quote you said that after Dashel, your
first child's born, I have nothing to give this project
because I'm so filled up with this creature we've created.
But I've become a better actor because of it. I
think parenthood is knowing what cards you've got and then
(30:22):
throwing them up in the air. I've never heard that
description before.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
I think when you have a profound life experience, and
for some people that's having children, for some it's walking
up a mountain or having a great creative experience. But
it changes you. And so I think you have to
ask yourself each time you think you know. There's a
lot of things that you encounter where you go, oh,
I wish I could do that, and you think, now
(30:49):
it's not the time, you know, because I'm doing this
and if I do that and that, I won't serve
either of those things. Well, so you have to let
those things go. In those moments, you have to confront
your own mortality and think, well, I don't have anything
to give that. But you know, in that instance, he
was very very young when I did for a kick,
and I was, you know, first child. I had no
(31:11):
idea if I would even want to or could, or
what acting even meant. But maybe that was a good
space to work in because if you think you know
too much or oops.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
I like how you're the first person to ever have
to quiet their child while we're taping.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
There's so many time zones that when you know, I'm Australian,
so I'm dealing with Australia, which is in our morning
here in the UK, and then there's our life here
and then La wakes up, and then you've got this
whole other life and meanwhile your children are on a
regular UK cycle.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
And so and by the way, I take no offense
that the kids don't care about talk easy. I actually
find this entirely endearing.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
No, they care deeply, they want to hear it. But
the problem is they can only hear me. They can't
hear you, so they're only in the boring end that
they hear every day. Huh, they're not getting you, Sam,
which is the exotic end of the day.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
I'm the exotic part.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
You are the exotic part of their day.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Now I know you're a good actor. I wasn't sure before.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
It's true. It's true they just get the orange headphones,
you know, the mother they always get.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
But it's true. You have four children, and you've said
having children it forces you to be economical, to choose
your rules wisely, and then shrug them off as soon
as you're done. And since we don't have all the
time in the world, I want to ask you about
two films here where they land with you now and
how you shrugged them off when you were done. To start,
(32:54):
I think we should talk about I'm not there.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
I had made a film in Morocco and my son
had an accident. It was the closest that I've ever
come to a nervous breakdown. I think. I was so distressed.
I said to my a and dear friend, I said,
I can't do this, I can't work, and she said,
don't worry. We'll make it fine. It can all happen.
(33:17):
So I came to that job kind of very overexposed,
I think. But if you're going to be overexposed with anyone,
it's with Todd. I've had the great fortune of working
with him a couple of times, and I would do
it a couple of times more because apart from Guiamo,
there's not a more loving environment in which one can work.
(33:39):
And it's all about the investigation. I had to lose
a lot of weight to play Bob Dylan, so I
became increasingly seen, you know, and I would get obsessed
with these the art takes from the Penny Baker documentary
that his agent had given us, which was fascinating, and
watching his connection to the media, I became really obsessed
(34:03):
with and it was a life raft. So it was
this strange space that I entered the shoot ab I'm
not there. That was a very kind of maternal space.
But yet I was playing Bob Dylan, and so I
had this total fan girl response to him. But yet
(34:24):
I was a woman playing him. And a friend of mine,
who was doing hair and makeup, said to me, you
know what, I think, it's great what you're doing but
you need to put a sock down your pants. I
think that's what's missing. I mean, what and she'd trust me?
Just put a sock down your pants. I think it
will change the way you move. And because I hadn't
(34:46):
hadn't thought about him as being male or female. But
putting this sock in my pants, it was like everything
came alive for me. I know that sounds absolutely ridiculous
and totally shallow, but it did change the way I moved,
and it made that strange intersection between me as a
(35:09):
email body, him as a kind of a male but
androgynous entity, and the fact that I was a woman
playing man. It just kind of all came together around
that sock in the pants. I don't believe I'm saying this.
It's like it should be a much more intellectual, you know,
kind of connection. But I've done all of that stuff,
(35:32):
and sometimes something as kind of obvious as that is
the key.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
No, what do you think I did right before this podcast?
Speaker 1 (35:40):
You put a Solke Dandy pants. You have a Soke
danw pants. That's your business and it's none of my business.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
I'm going to say on record that is one of
the dumbest jokes I've ever made.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Well, look, that's one of the most shallow observations I've
ever made about any character. And look, it's of course
it's always more complicated than that. But you know, sometimes
the moments of pivot that one makes with a project,
with an idea, whatever it is that one's working on
is really physical or simple, or it's like just open
(36:20):
that door and you go, oh, okay, and it's only
because you've done all the other stuff that that door
becomes available to you.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
By the way, I said the joke mainly because I
knew you would enjoy it, even though it's profoundly dumb.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Yes I did, I did. It's not profoundly dumb.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
One of the things you said about Dylan, you said,
I think the way to be ultimately liberated and free
as an artist, which Dylan absolutely inhabits, is to constantly
escape the physical definition. If you look at his various incarnations,
I mean, it's quite schizophrenic. And I was thinking about
these various incarnations of your career. They almost seem to
(37:01):
culminate in the film Manifesto.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Oh you saw that here. A friend of mine, Julian Roseveldt,
he we were talking about working together, and he came
up with this idea of doing a piece around artists
manifestos and you know, the kind of the assertion of
individuality and the different way they expressed themselves. And perhaps
(37:26):
a good way of fully representing that would be to
find both meaningful and banal settings in which to express
these manifestos, sometimes as in a monologue, sometimes as text.
And what if we found various manifestos and assigned a character,
(37:49):
but not in the sense of a characterist one understands
it narrative, you know, an archetype. And so I found
that really really fascinating. It was like stand up comedy
is there was no time for thought. Obviously, there was
no money for the project at all, and so we
had to think on our feet, and literally the night
before was like, okay, what if I talked like that?
(38:10):
And all right, well now I'm going to talk like this,
And you know, it was literally trying to find something
that would be appropriate the day of or the day before.
It made me think about how random and immediate our
sense of identity is, and how malleable our sense of
identity is, and how surface our sense of identity is,
(38:33):
and the amazing thing about reading all of these manifestos
is artists manifestos, is that their massive assertions about the
separation of one's artistic identity from the previous incarnation of
all these people's artistic identity. But yet when you hear
them energetically, when you hear them together, because there was
(38:56):
a point when all the manifestos were heard together sort
of in a tone poem, they all sound the same.
We all think about how unique and individual and special
we are. But it was a really profound moment for me,
and maybe an audience wouldn't receive it in the same way,
but I felt just how connected all of these departures were.
(39:18):
I found that there was a strange sort of comforting
moment in that dissonance.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
To get into all those parts. You just say something
I love, which is that there was no time for thought.
There's something very Eastern philosophy in that.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
With self preservation. Sam is one of us. It was like,
we got to do this. But also, you know, the
most wonderful times I've had with the Bob Dylan project.
You were mentioning with manifesto. You think no one's going
to see this, and it gets a bit harder, you know,
when you're dealing with a Marvel movie to say, no
(39:58):
one's going to see this, but you have to claim
that space. In a way, you're saying, it doesn't matter
if people see this, and that doesn't mean that you
have disregard for the audience, because in the end, that's
absolutely why you're doing it, not that you want audience's approval,
but you want the chance to connect with someone for
(40:19):
them to like it or dislike it. And sometimes it's
those gray areas that you know between thumbs up thumbs down,
that most of the films, most of the endeavors sit
because they're not going to ever be thumbs up thumbs down.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
By the way, I mentioned this Eastern philosophy about having
no time to think, because you've often talked about how
your work is rooted in the Eastern philosophy of imperfection.
That something can only truly be perfect only if there's
imperfection in it.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
That's my justification for me who I am. That's what
I said to my children. I said, Look, there's no
such thing as a perfect parent, as I'm failing them monumentally.
It's the imperfections that make you who you are are.
I say to my children. No, yeah, well, I mean
(41:13):
something is only beautiful. It's like this idea of homogeneous beauty,
you know, is that we're all striving to get rid
of all the imperfect parts of ourselves. But when you
remove them, you know, you remove that individuality, You remove
that I mean, who are we without all of that history?
You know, there's an amazing moment where as one ages is
(41:35):
that there's an asymmetry that happens when we're in the womb,
and that we're all slightly asymmetrical. And as we age,
our face, our bodies, you know, become and probably our
personalities therefore become increasingly asymmetrical. As that becomes evident, we
try and revert to a sense of symmetry. But then
(41:59):
what you're trying to do is you're trying to reverse
the aging process in a really profound way that makes
us who we are. And it took me a while
to receive it as a compliment that someone said to me,
is that I've got an actor's face, which probably meant
that I wasn't particularly attractive, you know, but that sense
(42:19):
is that you have a quote unquote good side of
your face and a not so good side of your face.
But if you allow that asymmetry to exist, you've got
so many more doors to play, so many more people.
Because if you start to remove that asymmetry.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
I mean, do you remove some of the complexity.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Of course. And I'm reluctant to compliment you because I
don't think you do so well with compliments?
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Who does? But do you do well with compliments? What
do you do with compliments?
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Well, you haven't tried.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
You've got great hair, sam, lovely eyebrows. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
I have two questions. And talking about aging as a performer.
In twenty nineteen, you say with Julia Roberts for an interview,
you said, as you get older, acting just gets more
and more humiliating. When I was young, was that an okay?
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Line? Reading it's worse, It's only worse? When was that?
Speaker 3 (43:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (43:36):
You know what, I can't even say a nice thing
about you because you won't even hear it.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
So I'm not even okay, No, was that nice? Okay,
let's go, will you talk humiliation? I'm listening?
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Well, okay. So when I was younger, I would wonder
why the older actors I admired kept talking about quitting.
Now I realize it's because they want to maintain a
connection to the last shreds of their sanity. It's the
king lear end of the spectrum of what we do right.
So I'm on the proverbial couch thinking do I want
(44:06):
to go that direction or do I actually want to
live a life? And I think about that now as
we sit, where are you on that spectrum?
Speaker 1 (44:16):
I still I mean that was only twenty nineteen. I
still haven't worked out the answer. But having lost a
parent at such a young age, I realized how short
life was and how many lives I wanted to lead,
and that the privilege I've had as being an actor
is that I've empathetically been able to enter not only
(44:38):
time zones, but actually to a lot of different psyches,
and so therefore I've got to experience the point of view,
the outlooks, and the experiences of people beyond my own.
And so the literalism that I see creeping into that
one can only play things inside one's experience I find
(45:00):
really sad. I find it really limiting. You do get
to a point where you think, well, do I have
anything more to offer? You do have to stop periodically
and say I actually need to go actually go back
into the world and have some experiences that are not
research for the next role but as simply just on
(45:24):
your You know, you're in the world to explore, to
see what the questions are. And unless you have that
space as an artist, which means stepping off the treadmill
of one's so called career trajectory, and you know, when
you get representation and there's a certain career path that
one is meant to be on, you know you can
(45:46):
feel like, oh God, what if I it's that fear
of not getting that or the bravest thing you can
do is step sideways, and so I'm constantly wanting to
step sideways.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
Do you think one of the reasons you have trouble
stepping sideways is because of that Martha Graham philosophy that
I know you subscribe to. As you said, no artist
is pleased. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a
blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more
(46:19):
alive than the others.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
Yeah, you can have that feeling, whether you're a quote
unquote artist or not. I think that's part of being human.
I think it's part of being alive, and that is
far more important to me than being an actor. Any
panic I feel is when I feel that there's too much,
you know, and there's the whole thing that has developed
(46:41):
with streaming algorithms that need to be fed, is that
somehow we are content providers, and that makes me want
to throw up. The last thing I want to do
is to be someone who is filling space that has
been created. Don't say something unless you have something to say,
(47:03):
and if you haven't got something to say, give that
to someone else.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
I think you've had many things to say on this show,
and since the beginning, you've had this interaction with your daughter,
trying to get her to fall asleep.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
She's actually a sleep, She's actually sleep you Sam, thank you,
thank you. You have sinned to sleep.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
You know. You know I don't say that too loud.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
She sound asleep, Thank God. So if can I speak
to you tomorrow night? At the same time, this is
clearly working, you know what.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
I think this has been a riveting conversation. I want
to put something on record before we leave. You said
earlier your kids may listen to this, although they can
only hear your end of it. After the last two years,
after this whirlwind, of year you've had with these two films,
with four kids at fifty two, I don't know, what
(48:01):
do you want them to know about who you are today,
about what matters to you right now?
Speaker 1 (48:09):
Gosh, you know, it's a hard thing to say with
the spread of children between twenty and seven, because their
interest in you as a parent, what they want from
you as an individual and as a parent figure is
so very, very different. You know, my seven year old
daughter hates it when I do voices. When I read,
(48:31):
it's like, but that's what I do. Don't you want
me to give my Christmas pig? Yeah? Yeah, So she
hates that. But in the end, it's the really simple
things when you're living with people day today, it's the
simple thing. It's like, dude, recycle, there's recycling bin. You
(48:53):
know what if you recycle and separate our garbage. That,
on a banal domestic level is where I'm at because
it's about mindfulness. Forget the yoga, forget the meditation. Just
have a sets that you take the time to know
how much waste you're producing and how conscious you are
(49:16):
of that. So that is I suppose first base, and
we're trying to get there, but that is probably not
the answer you were looking for. You were wanting to
know what they thought of me as a They couldn't
be Can I tell you they could not be less
interested in what I do for a living, you know,
(49:37):
because they're individuals and you know they don't want to
be They don't want to be in the world in
relation to me.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
No.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
No, I want to assure you something, which is that
I want no answer that's not truthful to you. That's
I don't presume to want anything like that. My last thing,
since we have to go that Graham quote about divine dissatisfaction,
are you comfortable with being dissatisfied in that way for
(50:04):
the rest of your career?
Speaker 1 (50:07):
I think it's part of the job description.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
You know.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
That was a big thing about nightmare allity, about the
monstrous moment when we feel satisfied with ourselves and we
believe our own lives. Now, that doesn't mean that you
can't reach a milestone and go I did that, which
is very important to I think American culture. I achieved that,
(50:34):
I did that. I overcame that obstacore. But it's very
different when you start to say I am that solidity
I think is a dangerous place for the creative mind
to exist. It's about flow, it's about change, it's about challenge,
and that's often a very uncomfortable place to be. And
(50:55):
I suppose I'm just getting more and more used to
being that uncomfortable, you know, And that's okay.
Speaker 2 (51:01):
Well, I have to say, as someone who's been watching
your work.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
My entire life, I apologize.
Speaker 2 (51:08):
Thank you. I've been waiting for you too, honestly, you know,
I know you're not going to take this well. I
just want to say thank you for embracing that discomfort
and the imperfections of the people you've played. They have
made all of us who've watched, I think a little
more attuned to their own imperfection and in turn our
(51:29):
own humanity.
Speaker 1 (51:30):
Well that's a very big compliment. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (51:33):
Thanks so Kate Blanchett, lovely to meet you.
Speaker 1 (51:35):
Thank you again, thank you, thanks to your patience.
Speaker 2 (51:40):
Anytime, Thank you so long. And that's our show. I
(52:12):
want to give a special thanks this week to Graham Morphy, Dominic, Boucherry,
Searchlight Pictures, and of course, Kate Blanchet. If you'd like
to learn more about Kate and her work, be sure
to visit our website at talk easypod dot com. Once
you're there, you'll find our back catalog of over two
hundred and fifty episodes with actors including Laura Dern, Matthew McConaughey,
(52:35):
Uzo Aduba Holland Taylor, Tessa Thompson, Tracy Letts, Alana Hiam
and Willem Dafoe. To hear those and more, pushkin Podcast
listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever
you like to listen. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook,
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(52:56):
be sure to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts
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think may be interested the kinds of conversations we have here.
You can also purchase one of our talk Easy mugs.
They come in cream or navy, or our vinyl record
(53:18):
with fran Leebowitz at talk easypod dot com slash Shop.
As always, this show would not be possible without our
incredible team. Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our
executive producer is Janick Sabravo. Our associate producer is Caitlin Dryden.
Today's Talk was edited by Clarice Goevara and mixed by
(53:38):
Andrew Vastola. Music by Dylan Peck, illustrations by Criscia Chenoy,
Video and graphics by Ian Chang, Derek Gaberzac, Ian Jones,
Ethan Seneca and Layla Register. Special thanks to Patrice Lee,
Kaelin Ung, Shiloh Fagan, Nicky Spina, and Callie Serringis. I'd
also like to thank the team at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond,
Julia Barton, John Schnars, Kerrie Brody, Eric Sandler, Kira Posy,
(54:01):
Jorna McMillan, Tera Machado, Justin Lang, Sarah Nix, Malcolm Gladwell,
Gretacon and Jacob Weisberg. I'm San Fragoso. Thank you for
listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next
week with another episode. Until then, stay safe and so on.
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