August 17, 2025 • 28 mins
Nobody 2's Connie Nielsen and I get super nerdy about movies. Personally I really loved this conversation.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
What's going on? Everybody at your boy? Ju Green aka
straw Had Goofy, and you're on another episode of Get
Wrecked with straw Had Goofy. I'm sitting here with someone
who's not a nobody, Connie Nielsen of Nobody too. How
are we doing?
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Oh? Good, good, We're having a good time.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
I can hear you having a good times outside.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
So fun.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Listen, I'm really excited. What's your favorite game out there
so far? Well?
Speaker 2 (00:19):
I tried two of them now that what was it called?
And And I had never tried that before. That was fun.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
This was your first game.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah, that was really fun. Reminded me of the little
games you had I had when I was a kid, like,
you know, the little enclosed sort of like plastic things
and the yeas and yeah yeah yeah yeah, little metal balls.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Like yeah, you're taking me, Yeah, you're taking me back
to that. Yeah, oh my gosh. Okay, and you played
the actual like bigger version. It's sap all the yeah
and all the arcades.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Uh that mixed with I guess, I don't know, just
like bowling.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yeah, yeah, it's like for people who aren't as strong
or skilled at bowling, it's like one that everything. Yeah.
See my brother is like so good at it because
he can hit like that top one, like the ten
thousand mark, like every single time.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
And I'll just hit I hit the one in the middle.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Really, oh, the top. That's aim. That's that's impressive. That's
aim right there. Okay, Okay, see now I need to
see that footage, like I am.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
The mother of five boys.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
You learned too, and you know they're probably going to
be watching this and going like, we should have played
this with you a long time.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I mean I would not survive it if I.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Had one where it's okay, now we know what you
can do. This is this is amazing. I love this.
Now the big subject of my show. I love to
get to know my guests by like trying to figure
out like their taste in movies and how that kind
of like made them who they are. I feel like
when people tell you their favorite films, that tells you
a lot about who they are. And I've heard of
your favorite films, Like I know, I believe it's pronounced.
(01:53):
I know the American pronunciation is my American uncle's right.
I believe it's called uncle didic. Okay, I tried to
watch that one before coming here. I wanted to relate
to you on that one. But what I want to
know is what is a movie that you saw that
effectively changed your brain chemistry, that kind of like created
the building blocks to who you were, that's made you
(02:15):
saw life differently.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I don't want to sound snobby or anything.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
I love snobbis okay, But I was eighteen years old
and I just arrived in Paris, and I come from
very tiny little town at the very tip of Denmark.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
It's basically a fishing village. And so here I am
at eighteen, I'm standing in the middle of chan c
C and it's it's where all of the films are
showing with French subtitles rather than being dubbed, of course,
and there's a film there. It's called The Sacrifice, and
(02:54):
it's by this Russian director who is now living in
Sweden and he is using therefore Swedish actors in this film.
And it is this a long film in which nothing happens.
And I am spending the first sort of half hour
(03:16):
thinking I feel this odd tension underneath everything, but I
don't know why, and nothing is happening here. And normally
I would find that almost unbearable. I am the kind
of person who cannot sit still for very long, right,
And so instead I found myself like understanding that the
(03:43):
filmmaker was asking me to slow down and to understand
that here's an old man, and there is a child,
and is a beach, and there is this tree, and
there's this feeling all the time that we're moving inexorably
(04:07):
towards a horrifying end. And it was one of those
films that just opened my mind to what I could
do an as an audience member. I could sit and
be patient and curious, and even though I wasn't being
entertained that way, I was being asked to participate in
(04:29):
the storytelling. And I remember feeling like this incredible. I
realized that I'd had like an important breakthrough, you know,
as an audience member.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
I love that. I love that so much. I love
the way you described the use of silence, and I
feel like silence could do a lot in a film, right.
It can force you to kind of like reflect and
like you said, slow down and fill in those blanks yourself,
because a huge part of life people tend to forget
is it's waiting, it's there's nothing necessarily exciting happening. A
lot of it's just spending time with each other, just
(05:05):
kind of like sitting in silence. You're there with your thoughts.
And I find it funny that you confronted that within
yourself because you don't like to sit still, and then
the movie kind of forces you to do that. And
something that you said in that made me very interesting
when you talked about like the sound of the tree, right.
And I just recently saw a film. It's a film,
it's a Japanese film called Perfect Days, where it's essentially
(05:26):
about this man who you don't know it at the time,
but he's essentially went through a sort of tragedy. He's
going through a hard time. But the whole movie, it
doesn't seem like anything's really happening other than he's just
getting by day to day to day. He goes to work,
he goes to sleep, he talks to his friends, he
goes to have a bite to eat. But there's this
moment where, and it happens like periodically through the film,
where he'll just sit have his lunch and he constantly
(05:48):
is looking up at the trees and he's constant and
whenever he sees these trees. He smiles. It's almost as
if he's looking up at the passing of time and
he's like appreciative of that. Right, And for the first
like maybe like like fifteen minutes, I'm thinking, what's all
of the trees? Like what is this? But then as
you go further into the movie, you realize that he's
just kind of like taking in and enjoying the like
(06:09):
just what the earth has given him and what life
has given him. So I find it's funny that movies
like these, like yours and mine kind of like are
in conversation with one another. And so I'm definitely gonna
watch What was It The Sacrifice? And if you haven't
seen Perfect Days, I really employed you. I think it's
risk Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
We were both on the on the jury of the
Berlin Film Festival a couple of years ago, and I
just got to know him as a as an incredible person.
In addition to obviously having just seen this film that
was I think it was in Can That's that that
that year. He's just such a profound filmmaker and I
(06:49):
remember sitting during jury deliberations really listening to how he
was approaching films and why some films were really like
he was really taken by them, and others where I
remember there was a film, a Mexican film that I
was the only one who thought was that this was
an incredible film. And and when I and when I
(07:12):
pointed out that some of the jury members had maybe
not paid as much as at yeah, then you know,
he actually was so humble that he told me he
was going to go back and watch it again. And
he did. And that was a very long movie.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Yeah wow.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
And and you know we were we we literally watched
movies for twelve hours a day, of course, and uh.
And so the fact that he was adding another four hours,
that's like, okay, hats.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Off, that's a big I remember I was I was
doing interviews at south By Southwest, and so I had
to watch a lot of the movies of people who
I was interviewing, and so I was just water wall
all day when I before I started watch a couple
of movies before after the interviews, watched some more movies
to prepare for the next day. And so to go
back watch what she said, three four hour movie, like that's.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
That's crazy, and some of it, like she like the
director deliberately did not allow the camera to see who
maybe was doing what, and so so many times you
had this disorienting feeling right of not understanding what was
going on. And then I saw that repeated in another
(08:28):
movie this year that was nominated for the Oscars as well.
I'm just blanking on the name the Boys of.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Trying to like like run through the list of nominees
this year.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yeah, God, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
No, it's fine, No, we'll get back to it. No worries.
But this is what I this is what I love about,
like movie talk, It's like what I live for, right,
Like recently I had on my show Maria Bakolova and
her big pick was The Hunt. She thinks it's the
greatest movie of all time and I've never seen it.
So I said, let me go home watch that film.
And this is Thomas Wintiber. Yes, it's incredible. Oh my gosh,
(09:03):
Matd Michaelson puts in one the best performances that I've
ever seen. It's so vulnerable, and there's there's just something
about that film about like it's the slow mass hysteria
that takes place.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Well, have you seen Armand yet I have not seen Okay,
so I really vividly recommend that one as well. I
saw that It's It's the Norwegian film, and uh, it's
it's a shockingly great movie, and it's also a profound movie,
(09:35):
and it's interesting. It's the kind of movie where it
says in the description of what it's about, it says, oh,
you know, a six year old boy armand is accused
of something by his peer. The film is just literally
not about that, right, okay. It is about how everyone
is behaving around this accusation and how how we we
(10:00):
are at this moment in thrall to a kind of
conversation that is centered on accusation rather than openly debating together.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Of course, what.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Can be the truth of this?
Speaker 1 (10:22):
You know?
Speaker 2 (10:22):
And that the hunt is also you know, in a
very strange way, also about this, this elusiveness of truth. Yes,
because of emotion, right, because for various reasons, you know,
we react with emotion and.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
And and you know, yeah, it's it's you see that
very quickly, because of emotions, it forces people inherently to
choose sides when in reality no one's done anything wrong
and this one little accusation could just rip apart a
close knit community.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
And I think that with social media, and that's what
I think, you know, I don't know if that's what
the director of armandspric referring to, but it feels as
if the groups of people, whether small or big, in
this school that Armand is set set in that they
(11:14):
seem like metaphors for how we behave, whether on social
media or in social groups. And it just seemed to
me when I watched it as one of the most
profound social critiques I've seen in a long time because
it uses metaphor a lot. It also uses almost like
a magic realism at times where people don't necessarily behave realistically,
(11:40):
but in doing so, it's even more striking as a metaphor.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Now it's a I've already written thank you so much
for that. I could talk movies with you all day.
This is a lot of fun. But let's talk about
your movie, right. Yes, you've had two big sequels in
the span of a year with glad Eator two and
now Nobody to and I'm really happy for you. This
is like amazing. But I know that you said this,
and I know like a lot of audience members feel
(12:06):
this way whenever a sequel is coming, especially to something
that they love a lot as an actress, Like, how
do you justify saying yes to a sequel that some
people may not have been asking for? But creatively, you're like,
I think this is the best way to do this.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Well, first of all, I think it's a gift to
be allowed the opportunity of going back to a character. Yes,
and if I felt that the character was diminished in
any way, shape or form, I wouldn't do it. But
in both cases here the character was not diminished. On
the contrary, it was the character was actually sort of
(12:40):
sublimated by having had like, let's talk about what happened
after the first one. In the case of Nobody To
you have also the fact that Bob is the writer
to a large degree, and Bob has like uncanny instincts
(13:02):
as an artist. It's like he understands in a very
profound way the world that he's talking about. And I
really trust his instincts there, I really really do. And
and I think, you know, he's willing to go out
on a limb on certain ideas, but because he's he's
kind of fearless, but he also listens and see is
(13:25):
this right?
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Is this right?
Speaker 2 (13:26):
You know, he's very interesting as a filmmaker.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
It's so it's so crazy, like you know, talking about Bob,
because we're speaking of Bob Odenkirk, right. So like I
was introduced to him during like the Breaking Bad Days, right,
and that his performance floored me so much that I
was surprised that I wanted to see so much more
of him when undoubtedly that is Brian Cranston show, that's
Jesse Plyman's is show, and that's not Jesse Pleman's but
(13:51):
Aaron Paul show. But you know, then you see him
in Better Call Saul, and then you just see that
this man like he just has so many great sensibilities,
so many great instincts that you can just hell, he's
taking chances on So as a co star, tell me
what it's like like offscreen and on screen. Kind of
like working with him and like finding the truth in
these moments is like a couple.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
I think, first of all, I think he makes me
feel really safe in the process, and I think I
do the same for him, where there's just there's no aggression,
there's no fear because fear always brings aggression, you know,
unless you try to sublimate and then comes out and whatever,
(14:32):
I don't want to go there. But but but with Bob,
it just you just have this like just this really
relaxed way of just like talking things through. And with
him we would sometimes act out scenes like backstage, like
(14:53):
we weren't going to shoot them for a while, but
we were sort of shooting the shit on like what
do we need to do here? What still needs to
be done there? And we would just act them out
some of the scenes and we would go like, well,
what if And that's like the what if is.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
It's the funniest part, the best part.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Well what if we did this? And and and at
the same time, you also, I think, have to always
make sure that you don't go too far away from
the character that you've you've built in there and like
the universe you've already built. And that's that's the great
thing about him. He knows exactly how far we can go.
(15:33):
And that's the same with a with a really good director,
like you know, it's not always easy, I think for
a director because you know a lot of actors if
you if you choose them well, they will come on
set and they will have fifteen twenty amazing ideas they
think that they're all amazing because they are exciting for them,
(15:55):
and it's really up to the director to tell me
which one of my ideas are really really bad?
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Yeah right right, yeah?
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Because that, yeah, and because that makes me trust them
when they go like thank you, I just don't think
that is right for this character or for this film
right here, but interesting, But you know, I think I'm
more interested in this that you were doing there. You know,
that's when I feel really safe with the director. You know,
(16:24):
somebody who is really interested in what everyone is bringing
to the table, but who's also who has a vision
right and who knows what they're trying to do.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
They know where it like to yes, all that's right.
And you know I worked in advertising as a copywriter
for five years, right, and what I learned, the most
important thing that I learned in that is that it's
important to go far and then be real back versus
like not give your all and being constanty.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
You need line, you need line and then somebody used
to reel it in a little bit exactly.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
I love that. Yeah. Something that I love about a
lot of your roles is that a lot of your
roles kind of like require and ask you to exude
power confidence, right, like a matriarchal sense. And you know,
in the nerd world will call that hockey the willpower
of the supreme King and Queen. That's what we'll call that.
But it sounds cool, and you had you got the hockey.
(17:16):
I'll run it through you when we have some free time.
But something that I want to know from you personally,
like where does that power come from for you? Like
where does it start for you personally before you bring
it to the performance.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Some of it, I think. I come from a long
line of really stubborn, strong people from the very north
of Denmark, west coast, very rough kind of place. And
the women in my family have stood up to a
(17:51):
lot of bullshit and they were entrepreneurs and they just
they just fought the way through. And I'm literally talking
back to my great great grandmother and my great great
grandparents were you know, cinema owners. And you know, I
(18:11):
have pictures of my great grandmother, you know, in Paris,
in Copenhagen, Germany, buying films for their movie theater, and
you know, knowing that this dame was my great grandmother
and that before her, even there was another woman doing
the same thing with their husbands, right, seeing my great
(18:35):
grandmother's extraordinary. Uh.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
There was a.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Picture of her on my mother's wall on a horse,
and you know, we did have cars at the time.
She just didn't care that she could take a car.
I'm riding down the main street, you could get yeah,
(19:00):
And there's a picture of her there, and they're just
the way she's holding the horse in this like there's
no play acting here. She's not trying to be somebody.
She just is somebody you can't put wordsuit when you're
a child. But looking back, looking at her, and I'd
met her when I was twelve, like she died when
(19:22):
I was twelve, and I'd met her throughout my childhood,
and everybody was scared to death of her. I was
not scared of her at all, but I realized that
everyone else was, like, you know, nervous. So I guess
I've always had an image of a very powerful woman
in my relationship, and women were the powerful ones. But
(19:44):
my dad was a frustrated man and at the same
time he was an authoritarian, and so he imposed like
this really strong discipline on all of us. And as
the old child, I carried the brunt of that because
it took responsibility for shit that I didn't want my
(20:07):
kid my kids slip of the time, one I didn't
want my siblings to pay for. And I guess I
had to learn to climb out of fear from being
physically punished and and and manning up, so to speak,
(20:31):
womaning up to my dad at fourteen fifteen and telling
him you slapped me one more time, and you will
never see me again. I will never speak to you again,
and seeing on his face like this shock that he
(20:51):
had met a wall, he'd met a wall, and that
I was dead, dead serious, and then realizing that he
backed off and that he never hit me again, and
he realized I realized I had power over myself. And
(21:13):
it was an extraordinary thing for me, I think because
I was a tiny, skinny little girl, and I had
been scared for so long, but I had that image
of my great grandmother there and my grandmother and my
(21:33):
mom not so much, and I'd seen the cost of
not living up to your own potential, the human cost
of that in my mom's life. And so I think
when you're a child, you see all of those things.
They build you into these realizations, and when you wish,
(21:56):
when when you when you when you I want to say,
when you risk, when you risk that and you and
you confront and you're not scared of the repercussions because
you'd rather take that than the crushing of your identity,
(22:17):
then that makes you strong.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
I love this. I love this so much. You became
the immovable object.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
I became the person who was gonna say no.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
And I can see this in all of your roles.
It just seems so authentic. And that's why I asked
the question, because you know, you can tell when an
actor is pulling from real life experience. You could tell
when there's like a rawness and a realness to those performances.
And I noticed that whether we're talking about Nobody, whether
we're talking about the Gladiator and even Kippolida and wonder Woman,
like you could just feel that off of you. So
I appreciate you like sharing that with me, like, thank you.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
So I don't think I've ever told anyone really well.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
I appreciate you opening up to me that way because
as someone is someone who grew up raised primarily by women,
you know, like my father didn't really raise me. He
was going for various reasons. My grandmother and my aunt
were the ones who kind of stood in the gap
for me with my uncle coming later. You know, I
can gain recognize game when it comes to like seeing
what a strong like woman is and what it takes
(23:11):
to be a strong woman to kind of like, you know,
take on the role of the father or the leader
and things of that sort. And I see that in you.
So I really appreciate you sharing that with me today.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
But interestingly, I will say that that's not necessarily strength.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Yes, yes, you know, I just.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Want to say that, you know, courage is different from strength.
You know. I think what I have is I am
I have courage. I will say that somebody who did
not have to overcome some of those things, sometimes they're stronger,
you know, because it's like they can allow themselves to
be really really really weak or really really vulnerable, and
(23:52):
there is also strength in that.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
I just want to point that, Oh, yeah, vulnerability is strength.
You know. I know so many people who like they
feel like they have to be strong for everybody, and
that ends up like when you're tensing so much and
flexing so hard, Yeah, muscles ripped, like there's cracks.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
To happen, right, and gotta be able to say, I
don't think it can do this.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
I love this, Yeah, I love this. So one thing
I really want to ask you about because I know
when they have a little bit of time left and
I'm a big comic book night and you've been part
of one of the most iconic comic book movies of
all time, wonder Woman, and now it's effectively part of
like a bygone version of the DC universe because James
Gunn is now taking over. There's going to be a
new wonder Woman happening. I want you to know, like,
when you look back on that movie and your place
(24:36):
in it, how do you feel knowing that that was
one of the few big successes and you were like
a huge part of that.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
It was great.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
But you know, I will say this, even if it
hadn't been the experience of making it was so amazing.
It felt like an apocal thing. Here's a movie where
you have fifty Amazons doing extraordinary things. The look, the spaces,
(25:05):
the places where we shot that, the experience of making
those scenes, of bringing to life an entirely female uh
environment of self determination, of uh of of of of,
I don't know, just not just power, but the power
(25:27):
to to retain the integrity of this society.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
It was really special. And I think that the underlying
message of that is absolutely uh, I think it's historical.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yeah, one percent, and you know you want to talk
about history, you know, as a black man, it reminded
me a lot of like seeing Black Panther for the
first time, absolutely, and like creating like how Ryan Cooler created.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
It became out like not like I still.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Oh my gosh, you know, I found I remember the
photo of Gaal and Chadwick both doing the yeah I
composedly right, And so watching that movie, I knew I
was feeling what others were feeling from me watching Canther
for the first And that is.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
The power of cinema, right when we are saying to everybody, okay,
my people gets to be centered. It's so simple. Yeah,
and yet it's been so hard. I've been in this
business since I was fifteen years old, and I can
tell you for a fact. You know, I thought when
I was fifteen that that that all of those civil
(26:32):
rights and you know, gender rights, all of those battles
had been won.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
I thought in nineteen seventy nine that dad was done
and gone yeah right, yeah, And little did I know
there was going to be this huge backlash and and
that then on top of that, we were going to
be blind to the these these forces that were really
(27:00):
making it impossible to distribute a certain type of film
or sell it or even get it made. Yeah, so
us coming out with those films at that time, it
was a huge triumph.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
And I could talk about this all day, but I
just got the two minute mark, and we could probably
talk about it when we play games later, but I
really want to now that we're confirm getting a new
Wonder Woman movie, and now we have the next chapter
in this fight that we're having, you know, centering women
and putting them at the forefront with this character whose
iconic always has been do you have like a pick
(27:37):
or someone that you can see embodying the Wonder Woman braces?
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Are you serious? I can't even like, I can't even
wrap my head around it was what a few years ago?
Speaker 1 (27:49):
It feels it feels like, yeah, seventeen or something was that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
I was just like, I can't believe that we're starting
that over.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
I know, it's weird. I mean, hopefully we can get
you Yeah, I would like that, thank you, But I
know a lot of people have been like championing like
adri Yajna for for that role.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
She's so beautiful, She's beautiful, amazing.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
And she she's already like used to like the action
roles and things like. Yeah, like it's not really a
far jump to see her take that on. So hopefully
if that comes about, maybe she could be up for
the role.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Yeah, that would be amazing.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
James, come on, like like you gotta make that happen.
But I would definitely like to see you, like come
back as Hippolyta, and I mean Mola came back as
a whole different character. They can bring you back for sure, right,
Yeah that I'm getting you a job for this. You
don't need. Thank you so much kind of talking to me,
This is amazing, And thank you so much for another
episode of Get Reck withstraw had Goofy. And if you
(28:43):
like talking about movies as always, can I be your
movie guy
What's going on? Everybody at your boy? Ju Green aka
straw Had Goofy, and you're on another episode of Get
Wrecked with straw Had Goofy. I'm sitting here with someone
who's not a nobody, Connie Nielsen of Nobody too. How
are we doing?
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Oh? Good, good, We're having a good time.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
I can hear you having a good times outside.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
So fun.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Listen, I'm really excited. What's your favorite game out there
so far? Well?
Speaker 2 (00:19):
I tried two of them now that what was it called?
And And I had never tried that before. That was fun.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
This was your first game.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah, that was really fun. Reminded me of the little
games you had I had when I was a kid, like,
you know, the little enclosed sort of like plastic things
and the yeas and yeah yeah yeah yeah, little metal balls.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Like yeah, you're taking me, Yeah, you're taking me back
to that. Yeah, oh my gosh. Okay, and you played
the actual like bigger version. It's sap all the yeah
and all the arcades.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Uh that mixed with I guess, I don't know, just
like bowling.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yeah, yeah, it's like for people who aren't as strong
or skilled at bowling, it's like one that everything. Yeah.
See my brother is like so good at it because
he can hit like that top one, like the ten
thousand mark, like every single time.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
And I'll just hit I hit the one in the middle.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Really, oh, the top. That's aim. That's that's impressive. That's
aim right there. Okay, Okay, see now I need to
see that footage, like I am.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
The mother of five boys.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
You learned too, and you know they're probably going to
be watching this and going like, we should have played
this with you a long time.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I mean I would not survive it if I.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Had one where it's okay, now we know what you
can do. This is this is amazing. I love this.
Now the big subject of my show. I love to
get to know my guests by like trying to figure
out like their taste in movies and how that kind
of like made them who they are. I feel like
when people tell you their favorite films, that tells you
a lot about who they are. And I've heard of
your favorite films, Like I know, I believe it's pronounced.
(01:53):
I know the American pronunciation is my American uncle's right.
I believe it's called uncle didic. Okay, I tried to
watch that one before coming here. I wanted to relate
to you on that one. But what I want to
know is what is a movie that you saw that
effectively changed your brain chemistry, that kind of like created
the building blocks to who you were, that's made you
(02:15):
saw life differently.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I don't want to sound snobby or anything.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
I love snobbis okay, But I was eighteen years old
and I just arrived in Paris, and I come from
very tiny little town at the very tip of Denmark.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
It's basically a fishing village. And so here I am
at eighteen, I'm standing in the middle of chan c
C and it's it's where all of the films are
showing with French subtitles rather than being dubbed, of course,
and there's a film there. It's called The Sacrifice, and
(02:54):
it's by this Russian director who is now living in
Sweden and he is using therefore Swedish actors in this film.
And it is this a long film in which nothing happens.
And I am spending the first sort of half hour
(03:16):
thinking I feel this odd tension underneath everything, but I
don't know why, and nothing is happening here. And normally
I would find that almost unbearable. I am the kind
of person who cannot sit still for very long, right,
And so instead I found myself like understanding that the
(03:43):
filmmaker was asking me to slow down and to understand
that here's an old man, and there is a child,
and is a beach, and there is this tree, and
there's this feeling all the time that we're moving inexorably
(04:07):
towards a horrifying end. And it was one of those
films that just opened my mind to what I could
do an as an audience member. I could sit and
be patient and curious, and even though I wasn't being
entertained that way, I was being asked to participate in
(04:29):
the storytelling. And I remember feeling like this incredible. I
realized that I'd had like an important breakthrough, you know,
as an audience member.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
I love that. I love that so much. I love
the way you described the use of silence, and I
feel like silence could do a lot in a film, right.
It can force you to kind of like reflect and
like you said, slow down and fill in those blanks yourself,
because a huge part of life people tend to forget
is it's waiting, it's there's nothing necessarily exciting happening. A
lot of it's just spending time with each other, just
(05:05):
kind of like sitting in silence. You're there with your thoughts.
And I find it funny that you confronted that within
yourself because you don't like to sit still, and then
the movie kind of forces you to do that. And
something that you said in that made me very interesting
when you talked about like the sound of the tree, right.
And I just recently saw a film. It's a film,
it's a Japanese film called Perfect Days, where it's essentially
(05:26):
about this man who you don't know it at the time,
but he's essentially went through a sort of tragedy. He's
going through a hard time. But the whole movie, it
doesn't seem like anything's really happening other than he's just
getting by day to day to day. He goes to work,
he goes to sleep, he talks to his friends, he
goes to have a bite to eat. But there's this
moment where, and it happens like periodically through the film,
where he'll just sit have his lunch and he constantly
(05:48):
is looking up at the trees and he's constant and
whenever he sees these trees. He smiles. It's almost as
if he's looking up at the passing of time and
he's like appreciative of that. Right, And for the first
like maybe like like fifteen minutes, I'm thinking, what's all
of the trees? Like what is this? But then as
you go further into the movie, you realize that he's
just kind of like taking in and enjoying the like
(06:09):
just what the earth has given him and what life
has given him. So I find it's funny that movies
like these, like yours and mine kind of like are
in conversation with one another. And so I'm definitely gonna
watch What was It The Sacrifice? And if you haven't
seen Perfect Days, I really employed you. I think it's
risk Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
We were both on the on the jury of the
Berlin Film Festival a couple of years ago, and I
just got to know him as a as an incredible person.
In addition to obviously having just seen this film that
was I think it was in Can That's that that
that year. He's just such a profound filmmaker and I
(06:49):
remember sitting during jury deliberations really listening to how he
was approaching films and why some films were really like
he was really taken by them, and others where I
remember there was a film, a Mexican film that I
was the only one who thought was that this was
an incredible film. And and when I and when I
(07:12):
pointed out that some of the jury members had maybe
not paid as much as at yeah, then you know,
he actually was so humble that he told me he
was going to go back and watch it again. And
he did. And that was a very long movie.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Yeah wow.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
And and you know we were we we literally watched
movies for twelve hours a day, of course, and uh.
And so the fact that he was adding another four hours,
that's like, okay, hats.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Off, that's a big I remember I was I was
doing interviews at south By Southwest, and so I had
to watch a lot of the movies of people who
I was interviewing, and so I was just water wall
all day when I before I started watch a couple
of movies before after the interviews, watched some more movies
to prepare for the next day. And so to go
back watch what she said, three four hour movie, like that's.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
That's crazy, and some of it, like she like the
director deliberately did not allow the camera to see who
maybe was doing what, and so so many times you
had this disorienting feeling right of not understanding what was
going on. And then I saw that repeated in another
(08:28):
movie this year that was nominated for the Oscars as well.
I'm just blanking on the name the Boys of.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Trying to like like run through the list of nominees
this year.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yeah, God, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
No, it's fine, No, we'll get back to it. No worries.
But this is what I this is what I love about,
like movie talk, It's like what I live for, right,
Like recently I had on my show Maria Bakolova and
her big pick was The Hunt. She thinks it's the
greatest movie of all time and I've never seen it.
So I said, let me go home watch that film.
And this is Thomas Wintiber. Yes, it's incredible. Oh my gosh,
(09:03):
Matd Michaelson puts in one the best performances that I've
ever seen. It's so vulnerable, and there's there's just something
about that film about like it's the slow mass hysteria
that takes place.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Well, have you seen Armand yet I have not seen Okay,
so I really vividly recommend that one as well. I
saw that It's It's the Norwegian film, and uh, it's
it's a shockingly great movie, and it's also a profound movie,
(09:35):
and it's interesting. It's the kind of movie where it
says in the description of what it's about, it says, oh,
you know, a six year old boy armand is accused
of something by his peer. The film is just literally
not about that, right, okay. It is about how everyone
is behaving around this accusation and how how we we
(10:00):
are at this moment in thrall to a kind of
conversation that is centered on accusation rather than openly debating together.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Of course, what.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Can be the truth of this?
Speaker 1 (10:22):
You know?
Speaker 2 (10:22):
And that the hunt is also you know, in a
very strange way, also about this, this elusiveness of truth. Yes,
because of emotion, right, because for various reasons, you know,
we react with emotion and.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
And and you know, yeah, it's it's you see that
very quickly, because of emotions, it forces people inherently to
choose sides when in reality no one's done anything wrong
and this one little accusation could just rip apart a
close knit community.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
And I think that with social media, and that's what
I think, you know, I don't know if that's what
the director of armandspric referring to, but it feels as
if the groups of people, whether small or big, in
this school that Armand is set set in that they
(11:14):
seem like metaphors for how we behave, whether on social
media or in social groups. And it just seemed to
me when I watched it as one of the most
profound social critiques I've seen in a long time because
it uses metaphor a lot. It also uses almost like
a magic realism at times where people don't necessarily behave realistically,
(11:40):
but in doing so, it's even more striking as a metaphor.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Now it's a I've already written thank you so much
for that. I could talk movies with you all day.
This is a lot of fun. But let's talk about
your movie, right. Yes, you've had two big sequels in
the span of a year with glad Eator two and
now Nobody to and I'm really happy for you. This
is like amazing. But I know that you said this,
and I know like a lot of audience members feel
(12:06):
this way whenever a sequel is coming, especially to something
that they love a lot as an actress, Like, how
do you justify saying yes to a sequel that some
people may not have been asking for? But creatively, you're like,
I think this is the best way to do this.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Well, first of all, I think it's a gift to
be allowed the opportunity of going back to a character. Yes,
and if I felt that the character was diminished in
any way, shape or form, I wouldn't do it. But
in both cases here the character was not diminished. On
the contrary, it was the character was actually sort of
(12:40):
sublimated by having had like, let's talk about what happened
after the first one. In the case of Nobody To
you have also the fact that Bob is the writer
to a large degree, and Bob has like uncanny instincts
(13:02):
as an artist. It's like he understands in a very
profound way the world that he's talking about. And I
really trust his instincts there, I really really do. And
and I think, you know, he's willing to go out
on a limb on certain ideas, but because he's he's
kind of fearless, but he also listens and see is
(13:25):
this right?
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Is this right?
Speaker 2 (13:26):
You know, he's very interesting as a filmmaker.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
It's so it's so crazy, like you know, talking about Bob,
because we're speaking of Bob Odenkirk, right. So like I
was introduced to him during like the Breaking Bad Days, right,
and that his performance floored me so much that I
was surprised that I wanted to see so much more
of him when undoubtedly that is Brian Cranston show, that's
Jesse Plyman's is show, and that's not Jesse Pleman's but
(13:51):
Aaron Paul show. But you know, then you see him
in Better Call Saul, and then you just see that
this man like he just has so many great sensibilities,
so many great instincts that you can just hell, he's
taking chances on So as a co star, tell me
what it's like like offscreen and on screen. Kind of
like working with him and like finding the truth in
these moments is like a couple.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
I think, first of all, I think he makes me
feel really safe in the process, and I think I
do the same for him, where there's just there's no aggression,
there's no fear because fear always brings aggression, you know,
unless you try to sublimate and then comes out and whatever,
(14:32):
I don't want to go there. But but but with Bob,
it just you just have this like just this really
relaxed way of just like talking things through. And with
him we would sometimes act out scenes like backstage, like
(14:53):
we weren't going to shoot them for a while, but
we were sort of shooting the shit on like what
do we need to do here? What still needs to
be done there? And we would just act them out
some of the scenes and we would go like, well,
what if And that's like the what if is.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
It's the funniest part, the best part.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Well what if we did this? And and and at
the same time, you also, I think, have to always
make sure that you don't go too far away from
the character that you've you've built in there and like
the universe you've already built. And that's that's the great
thing about him. He knows exactly how far we can go.
(15:33):
And that's the same with a with a really good director,
like you know, it's not always easy, I think for
a director because you know a lot of actors if
you if you choose them well, they will come on
set and they will have fifteen twenty amazing ideas they
think that they're all amazing because they are exciting for them,
(15:55):
and it's really up to the director to tell me
which one of my ideas are really really bad?
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Yeah right right, yeah?
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Because that, yeah, and because that makes me trust them
when they go like thank you, I just don't think
that is right for this character or for this film
right here, but interesting, But you know, I think I'm
more interested in this that you were doing there. You know,
that's when I feel really safe with the director. You know,
(16:24):
somebody who is really interested in what everyone is bringing
to the table, but who's also who has a vision
right and who knows what they're trying to do.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
They know where it like to yes, all that's right.
And you know I worked in advertising as a copywriter
for five years, right, and what I learned, the most
important thing that I learned in that is that it's
important to go far and then be real back versus
like not give your all and being constanty.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
You need line, you need line and then somebody used
to reel it in a little bit exactly.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
I love that. Yeah. Something that I love about a
lot of your roles is that a lot of your
roles kind of like require and ask you to exude
power confidence, right, like a matriarchal sense. And you know,
in the nerd world will call that hockey the willpower
of the supreme King and Queen. That's what we'll call that.
But it sounds cool, and you had you got the hockey.
(17:16):
I'll run it through you when we have some free time.
But something that I want to know from you personally,
like where does that power come from for you? Like
where does it start for you personally before you bring
it to the performance.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Some of it, I think. I come from a long
line of really stubborn, strong people from the very north
of Denmark, west coast, very rough kind of place. And
the women in my family have stood up to a
(17:51):
lot of bullshit and they were entrepreneurs and they just
they just fought the way through. And I'm literally talking
back to my great great grandmother and my great great
grandparents were you know, cinema owners. And you know, I
(18:11):
have pictures of my great grandmother, you know, in Paris,
in Copenhagen, Germany, buying films for their movie theater, and
you know, knowing that this dame was my great grandmother
and that before her, even there was another woman doing
the same thing with their husbands, right, seeing my great
(18:35):
grandmother's extraordinary. Uh.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
There was a.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Picture of her on my mother's wall on a horse,
and you know, we did have cars at the time.
She just didn't care that she could take a car.
I'm riding down the main street, you could get yeah,
(19:00):
And there's a picture of her there, and they're just
the way she's holding the horse in this like there's
no play acting here. She's not trying to be somebody.
She just is somebody you can't put wordsuit when you're
a child. But looking back, looking at her, and I'd
met her when I was twelve, like she died when
(19:22):
I was twelve, and I'd met her throughout my childhood,
and everybody was scared to death of her. I was
not scared of her at all, but I realized that
everyone else was, like, you know, nervous. So I guess
I've always had an image of a very powerful woman
in my relationship, and women were the powerful ones. But
(19:44):
my dad was a frustrated man and at the same
time he was an authoritarian, and so he imposed like
this really strong discipline on all of us. And as
the old child, I carried the brunt of that because
it took responsibility for shit that I didn't want my
(20:07):
kid my kids slip of the time, one I didn't
want my siblings to pay for. And I guess I
had to learn to climb out of fear from being
physically punished and and and manning up, so to speak,
(20:31):
womaning up to my dad at fourteen fifteen and telling
him you slapped me one more time, and you will
never see me again. I will never speak to you again,
and seeing on his face like this shock that he
(20:51):
had met a wall, he'd met a wall, and that
I was dead, dead serious, and then realizing that he
backed off and that he never hit me again, and
he realized I realized I had power over myself. And
(21:13):
it was an extraordinary thing for me, I think because
I was a tiny, skinny little girl, and I had
been scared for so long, but I had that image
of my great grandmother there and my grandmother and my
(21:33):
mom not so much, and I'd seen the cost of
not living up to your own potential, the human cost
of that in my mom's life. And so I think
when you're a child, you see all of those things.
They build you into these realizations, and when you wish,
(21:56):
when when you when you when you I want to say,
when you risk, when you risk that and you and
you confront and you're not scared of the repercussions because
you'd rather take that than the crushing of your identity,
(22:17):
then that makes you strong.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
I love this. I love this so much. You became
the immovable object.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
I became the person who was gonna say no.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
And I can see this in all of your roles.
It just seems so authentic. And that's why I asked
the question, because you know, you can tell when an
actor is pulling from real life experience. You could tell
when there's like a rawness and a realness to those performances.
And I noticed that whether we're talking about Nobody, whether
we're talking about the Gladiator and even Kippolida and wonder Woman,
like you could just feel that off of you. So
I appreciate you like sharing that with me, like, thank you.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
So I don't think I've ever told anyone really well.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
I appreciate you opening up to me that way because
as someone is someone who grew up raised primarily by women,
you know, like my father didn't really raise me. He
was going for various reasons. My grandmother and my aunt
were the ones who kind of stood in the gap
for me with my uncle coming later. You know, I
can gain recognize game when it comes to like seeing
what a strong like woman is and what it takes
(23:11):
to be a strong woman to kind of like, you know,
take on the role of the father or the leader
and things of that sort. And I see that in you.
So I really appreciate you sharing that with me today.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
But interestingly, I will say that that's not necessarily strength.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Yes, yes, you know, I just.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Want to say that, you know, courage is different from strength.
You know. I think what I have is I am
I have courage. I will say that somebody who did
not have to overcome some of those things, sometimes they're stronger,
you know, because it's like they can allow themselves to
be really really really weak or really really vulnerable, and
(23:52):
there is also strength in that.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
I just want to point that, Oh, yeah, vulnerability is strength.
You know. I know so many people who like they
feel like they have to be strong for everybody, and
that ends up like when you're tensing so much and
flexing so hard, Yeah, muscles ripped, like there's cracks.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
To happen, right, and gotta be able to say, I
don't think it can do this.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
I love this, Yeah, I love this. So one thing
I really want to ask you about because I know
when they have a little bit of time left and
I'm a big comic book night and you've been part
of one of the most iconic comic book movies of
all time, wonder Woman, and now it's effectively part of
like a bygone version of the DC universe because James
Gunn is now taking over. There's going to be a
new wonder Woman happening. I want you to know, like,
when you look back on that movie and your place
(24:36):
in it, how do you feel knowing that that was
one of the few big successes and you were like
a huge part of that.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
It was great.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
But you know, I will say this, even if it
hadn't been the experience of making it was so amazing.
It felt like an apocal thing. Here's a movie where
you have fifty Amazons doing extraordinary things. The look, the spaces,
(25:05):
the places where we shot that, the experience of making
those scenes, of bringing to life an entirely female uh
environment of self determination, of uh of of of of,
I don't know, just not just power, but the power
(25:27):
to to retain the integrity of this society.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
It was really special. And I think that the underlying
message of that is absolutely uh, I think it's historical.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yeah, one percent, and you know you want to talk
about history, you know, as a black man, it reminded
me a lot of like seeing Black Panther for the
first time, absolutely, and like creating like how Ryan Cooler created.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
It became out like not like I still.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Oh my gosh, you know, I found I remember the
photo of Gaal and Chadwick both doing the yeah I
composedly right, And so watching that movie, I knew I
was feeling what others were feeling from me watching Canther
for the first And that is.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
The power of cinema, right when we are saying to everybody, okay,
my people gets to be centered. It's so simple. Yeah,
and yet it's been so hard. I've been in this
business since I was fifteen years old, and I can
tell you for a fact. You know, I thought when
I was fifteen that that that all of those civil
(26:32):
rights and you know, gender rights, all of those battles
had been won.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
I thought in nineteen seventy nine that dad was done
and gone yeah right, yeah, And little did I know
there was going to be this huge backlash and and
that then on top of that, we were going to
be blind to the these these forces that were really
(27:00):
making it impossible to distribute a certain type of film
or sell it or even get it made. Yeah, so
us coming out with those films at that time, it
was a huge triumph.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
And I could talk about this all day, but I
just got the two minute mark, and we could probably
talk about it when we play games later, but I
really want to now that we're confirm getting a new
Wonder Woman movie, and now we have the next chapter
in this fight that we're having, you know, centering women
and putting them at the forefront with this character whose
iconic always has been do you have like a pick
(27:37):
or someone that you can see embodying the Wonder Woman braces?
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Are you serious? I can't even like, I can't even
wrap my head around it was what a few years ago?
Speaker 1 (27:49):
It feels it feels like, yeah, seventeen or something was that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
I was just like, I can't believe that we're starting
that over.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
I know, it's weird. I mean, hopefully we can get
you Yeah, I would like that, thank you, But I
know a lot of people have been like championing like
adri Yajna for for that role.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
She's so beautiful, She's beautiful, amazing.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
And she she's already like used to like the action
roles and things like. Yeah, like it's not really a
far jump to see her take that on. So hopefully
if that comes about, maybe she could be up for
the role.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Yeah, that would be amazing.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
James, come on, like like you gotta make that happen.
But I would definitely like to see you, like come
back as Hippolyta, and I mean Mola came back as
a whole different character. They can bring you back for sure, right,
Yeah that I'm getting you a job for this. You
don't need. Thank you so much kind of talking to me,
This is amazing, And thank you so much for another
episode of Get Reck withstraw had Goofy. And if you
(28:43):
like talking about movies as always, can I be your
movie guy
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My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
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Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com