Claire Danes | Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

welcome welcome welcome to armchair expert I'm Dak Shepard I'm joined by am nominated Monica miniature miniature pad man speaking of The miniaturist Mouse and the most maximist Mouse um Monica has her own show coming out so exciting it's such a good idea and it's um already so tasty and yummy and I participate and Mommy participates that's right so it's 10 episodes it's it's still an armchair show so don't worry don't worry but it's called Monica and Jess love boys that's right there's more to it than us just loving boys there is there is it's about relationships and dating because Jess is gay and he over dates sort of unequivocally so sure sure objectively he's a heavy dater he dates sometimes 10 to 15 a week sure and I am straight and have the opposite issue I serially under date yes it would appear at least on the surface although we may discover with all the experts that come in yeah that they're opposite problems but again we don't know exactly that's what's been really interesting is yeah we're coming at it from sort of opposite points of view but you know everything ends up being pretty Universal and there's challenges yes yeah so we have experts on we have the armchair expert himself on the first episode and we have our mother Kristen Bell on we have really really fun experts like Dr Drew and Dr Alex who we had on this show and um millionaire matchmakers coming on oh my God I can't wait for that yeah it's really been fascinating but yeah so at the end we get a challenge from our expert or our guest like an assignment for the next week so that we can break some of these patterns we're in yes cuz the whole goal is you know just like on this show we talk about all of our [ __ ] but the goal is to not just talk about it but make changes get into action exactly so they've been really scary and fun and we're really learning it's been great and it comes out on very easy to remember on Valentine's Day which will be our 2-year anniversary and it's also a day of lovers and that's what the the topic that's being uh explored so it'll come out on February 14th yes which is Valentine's Day generally Friday Friday and then it'll be uh every Wednesday for 10 weeks yeah and if you subscribe to I'm TR expert you'll get it yes now today's guest is uh one of the best uh actors on television hands down three time uh em Award winner not to throw shade four time Golden Globe winner and two-time sag Award winner Claire Danes fell in love with her in Romeo and Juliet she blew my mind in Temple grandon she was in Terminator 3 with the guy my so-called life started at all and of course now she's in the eighth and final season of Homeland which premieres February 9th on Showtime so please enjoy Claire D oh and actually this is a good Segway because at the very beginning of this episode I had just come off of a challenge and we're talking a little bit about it at the top of the episode so if you're a little confused we're talking about a Monica and Jess challenge yes so please enjoy [Music] so one of the challenges was was to join a dating website oh gosh like an app this all make me very uncomfortable but I'm really proud of you thank you thank you it makes me so uncomfortable too which is why I'm doing it but it's so fun to vicariously live through all of them for Christen and I she's 32 and her age range was what 34 to 49 no 50 was always 50 yeah okay I feel like I get that thank you he had a big reaction someone that loves her 18 years older I'm like H you will be with this guy for five years and he'll get some kind of terminal disease yeah I mean I I understand that logic as well but I don't know I would cast a broad net so we were Deb we were arguing over whether or not it should be younger or older okay and she went and saw once upon a time in Hollywood and she came back and she's like I can't have an age bracket that excludes Brad Pit he got to be in there fair point so then I was like I need to raise my limit my she went the other way you don't know until you go exploring exactly now you you've been with your husband for a long long 11 years or something we've been married for 10 we've been together for 13 13 okay so B and I are roughly the exact same not the marriage part but the Together part okay so we live in stagnation we have children yes we're 13 years in do you ever because technology has changed so much do you ever just uh play out in your head what life would be like if you were single and you actually were on one of those have you ever given that any energy do occasionally I've been in relationships like from the moment puberty hit basically and I was even in way too intense relationships with my girlfriends before then so I am a relationship creature me too and when I had broken up with a boyfriend who I'd been with for 3 years and when I first met you we like we met on a movie called evening we met at a rehearsal and then we kind of disbanded and we were going to regroup and during that time where we all went back home this breakup happened and I was determined to be single and I was really excited about it and kind of bragging about it and I went on a date a date I with somebody who's actually kind of known but not in the business so I can't say you know and I thought this is okay like cuz I've auditioned my whole life I've been on lots of talk shows I feain intimacy for a living so I could disassociate just enough and flirt and like it I I was so relieved yeah that it was kind of possible had one one night stand and it that was it and that was the whole thing that was it my pallet was cleansed and then went back and filmed the movie realized oh [ __ ] I think I'm going to marry this person and the end of my yeah life as a single person was realized how quickly um actually that's not quite true I I think I was in staunch denial for a while mhm um well you had a whole new game plan I had a new game plan I was like I already had a one night stand so I'm flying yeah yeah well and I don't want any details but was that in general a satisfying experience was it all you it was it was really fun great but then he stopped emailing me this is when people emailed this is like even before texting yeah I was like oh my God that's a real thing like they have sex with you and they sto being interested in you cuz there was a lot of energy until it happened and then that was a little disappointing I got to say um but whatever it's fine cuz I was like on to my husband so it we were good but did you go into the encounter going this is my one night stand so your your your expectations spirit that I was in for right right right but then after it happened your like well I could go another round but I as I said I am a relationship person so who was I kidding really but so Hugh was going to be like next stop and then he was just wonderful so next stop forever more I remember talking to you guys somewhere but I can't it were we were at the big fight that wasn't the fight of the century wasn't called the big fight Pacquiao Mayweather yes that's right that's so weird cuz this morning I'm going to give you more details than you need I was on the C and I was talking to my wife who was in front of the mirror and I said hun we have talked to Claire and her husband and she goes that sounds right I also remember meeting Kristen at a Showtime thing and she was very sweet and she was like a big fan of the show and she said as much and I was so I don't know I was very flattered and I was like disarmed by her enthusiasm and her sincerity and you know and yeah and I'm a big fan too so well we she probably didn't tell you and you probably don't know this but do you know you've acted with Kristen what uhoh what new when Christen was 13 years old she played a friend of yours with no lines in a play or something no no in a in a TV show or a TV movie or something wow I'm so flattered that's so cool wow that's exciting isn't that great I thought her first movie was py Tang well that was that was one of her seminal first that's like the new porn star game exactly exactly a porn star name game so but anyways and eventually I said out loud I said God maybe it was at that fight and then we both concluded that doesn't feel on brand for you and then we moved on I was like that seems like maybe where it was but then I was like I can't imagine she was there yeah no I was there we were excited you are okay yeah and do you have a history of liking boxing no it was the event yeah I'm really scared of boxing violence yeah violence I'm not particularly good at right um but you know it was very exciting it was a big deal at the time well and okay so what happened too was nans invited Kristen yeah like I don't know a month or two before the fight yeah and she was like no I don't want to go to fight she was also filming something in Atlanta right and then later I found out like a month later that this is the same thing that happened with you and I cuz cuz he invited me and I was like and then I mentioned in passing to Hugh very close to the day I was like you know we were invited to that and he was like what yes I almost divorced her yeah and I said oh that's something you would like to do yeah so I made some desperate calls like who do I know cuz we could get tickets but we couldn't get in we couldn't get a flight in all the flights were booked yeah so we like we scrambled to locate a billionaire I think we called put some feelers out yeah we called Matt blank and he said no my plane is full but I do have a friend who could carry you over who happened to be a neighbor from a place we lived in before our place now and oddly coincidentally we did happen to know this billionaire person who is very nice but um but yeah so we hitched a ride well in my case I just couldn't believe it that she would have turned down those tickets and then I flew to see her in Atlanta where she was shooting and right when I got there I went into the house and she was like I love you so excited you're here you got to go back to the airport in 4 hours you have a flight back to Vegas ah and I was like oh my God and she'd already planned like my friend Andre p is going to meet you there and we're going to have this evening you know whatever right right it was great here's where I'm getting to the funny part of it for me was I had been once before as a guest of Showtime with Kristen we went to a different fight and we by God we're in the first or second row I mean you know you were getting hit with sweat and whatnot so my buddy who I brought I was like oh my wait till you see these Showtime seats right yeah and then they're walking us there and we passed the first few rows where all the actors are and everything and I oh I guess we're going to be on the backside I didn't know those were seats too and oh and now we hang right up the stairs and then I'm like oh we're really climbing these stairs for a while and I promised this outrageous seating we were pretty high up there we were pretty high up there and it was hard on the ego for a while but then noticed a Vander Holyfield was just one row behind us and I was like oh a Vander Holyfield's one seat behind us we're good and then we celebrated all in on the joke that we were obviously no but it was a real it was being at court kind of status it was that was what it was almost all about yes I mean I think the Met Ball was also that same week and it was a strange exercise and derangement I mean just that it was like ego vomit Fest and yeah and it's fun and it also leaves you feeling pretty Twitchy it's comforting though right to know that other people there are having the same High School thought of like am I cool enough to be at this party is someone going to me on the shoulder yeah and I've been so lucky to go to most of those things certainly the last 13 years with my best friend so that helps a lot yeah big you know cuz you just have somebody to turn to and go and then occasionally you find an actual friend in the throng of beautiful people so but it's a little mindbending yeah and you do kind of float out of your body and look at it all from the outside in which is not the most comfortable state to be right it really is all for me what my own mental state is I can go and have the best time ever or I can go and just feel less than the whole time and it's really the experience is pretty static also it is a performance too that's what's also confusing about it and we don't have many we don't have balls really anymore I think we probably had more of them once upon a time but where you do parade yourself around and announce yourself in this formal absurd way and I mean I'm not necessarily critical of it cuz I do keep going back to them right cuz they're fascinating and it is amazing to see so many Extraordinary People in such a dense environment concentrated space at their you know most elevated right they've gone through hair and makeup they have a stylist dress them they didn't just wake up that way and that is interesting do you get to the point both of you where you come home and you think like oh none of that matters oh every time for me oh yeah none of it matters exactly last one I went to was at the Met Ball and I was pretty pregnant and I also happened to be objectively unwell I was like really sick I had a fever and it was and the and the sickness was getting intensified over the course of the evening it it just becomes like an acid dream right but I I was already altered in so many ways you know that weren't enjoyable but I was sitting opposite um Thurman who I kind of have known over the years and she's quite warm and friendly and I was saying like I'm really not feeling so well and so after you have the big dinner then the musical guest performs you never know who it's going to be but everybody kind of knows who it's going to be in this case it was Madonna and we were all kind of ushered to another part of the museum and I was feeling really faint I just kind of groped my way to some stairs and there Uma was again with JLo and A-Rod and then the musical act was starting and of course Madonna was descending the stairs and was going to land exactly where I was sitting and so like Uma grabbed me she saw I was looking green and she kind of like dragged me over to the wall with her and JLo and A-Rod and then A-Rod got really excited cuz he loves Homeland and so then I was taking a selfie with JLo and A-Rod as Madonna was like getting closer and closer and I was just feeling like death um and uh yeah so that was my last experience of of just like what is going on well the one the really fun part of it is for like Kristen and I is we'll go in and we each have like three or four people we are currently obsessed with right and then invariably one or two of those people will be there and then we help each other interact with that person yes like she was in love with Riz ahed for a while so I started chatting him up on a red carpet solely to bring her into the I went too far apparently it's been later this guy was was telling her how attracted she was to him later in retrospect I'm like he probably was wondering like are these two swingers like is he trying to like lay the foundation for him to watch or something like I do think I was a little too above board about it right right yeah but I was trying my hardest and then likewise she's done the same thing for me one time with Lisa Bonet she knew growing up that was my yeah yeah I mean everys you guys are good to each other she made iten I am impressed by your relationship it's a a nod to her where did you just fly in from New York you did yes so home yes where do you shoot the show everywhere everywhere right but is there one primary location you're at the most no no the first three years we were mostly in North Carolina we were in Charlotte which was serving as DC but even during those Seasons we were in Israel and we were in Morocco a fair amount about a month you know a pop and then it became this International show so in the fourth season after Brody died there was a big reset and the show was placed in Afghanistan and we filmed in Cape Town for six months and then the following year we were in Berlin for six months and then the next year we were in New York which was Heaven for you probably you know I thought it would be heaven and it in some ways it was harder because I suddenly had to do that job and also live my actual life to its fullest which was really stressful um I was much more easily able to compartmentalize up until that point and then there was this integration which I found really confronting so surprise surprise yeah that was a little harder than I expected but we were shooting in Brooklyn and most of my friends live in Brooklyn now I'm still in Manhattan I'm like the last Manhattan night standing uh and it was so nice CU they would come and like mooch off the craft service or you know just right you know it was a pit stop on their way back home from work but when you're playing her it's not like when friends stop by and see me where I'm generally responsible for making some joke in the scene and so me shooting the [ __ ] entertaining them and making them laugh and then stepping over here and doing that is like yeah no I got at that point I guess we were in our sixth season when have I not been making the show I was pretty fil with her and was quite comfortable with going in and out of her so it was a really a nice thing to find Sarah or sunny you know in video Village when I wasn't expecting you know like that was always welcome then the year after that we were in Richmond and then we were in Budapest for about a month and a half and then this last season the final season okay we were in Morocco for almost 7 months and then we ended here in La for two so this season went on forever I think because it could yeah so and what of all those places so I immediately have two thoughts which one was when I was younger and I did movies I loved going somewhere else and having like a whole life there that was fun and almost your point very compartmentalized you're in this little bubble and not super responsible for anything else now I would hate it cuz I have two little kids and I avoid that but of all those places a has it evolved traveling and B which was your favorite of those so I had our two kids while we were filming you know over the five or six years apart yes that's right so Cyrus our eldest turned seven in late December and December what December 17th oh we have a 19th really yeah uhhuh so you know all about that and then Rowan our second son is almost 18 months now yeah so there's like five and a half years between the two of them but we were figuring it all out you know I mean we had been married for a year year when Homeland happened so it was a very steep learning curve and that South African season was incredible because it's outrageously beautiful there Cape Town is honestly one of the most gorgeous places I've ever seen been to but Hugh took a job in Australia and Cyrus was pretty little he your mind were you like oh that's close yes yeah was southern hemisphere problem halfway there yeah no 17 hours between the two oh boy um no it was crazy right so um no it was a nightmare Cyrus was really little so we all went together he was there with us for about a week and then he left and was a very far away for five weeks came back for two then was a very far away for another five and that was rough that was rough that took us a long time to recover from and we learned that we can't do that again but I mean we learned the hard way that was just brutal I don't know if you watch the Bill Gates documentary on Netflix it's like three-part it's amazing I bet it is that can't recommend it enough but they're interviewing Melinda at one point and she said you know there just became this point where I'm sitting in this gigantic house by myself with our kid and I'm like I can't do this like I don't know what to tell you I know you're running the biggest company in the world this is a deal Breer for me and you got to figure this out and to his credit he did he like completely changed his you know role in the company and everything else wow I can't do it I mean maybe some people can it seems doubtful but just for me I can't yeah so actually this last season we really internalized that and we were together the whole time Rowan was 5 months when we arrived Hugh ended up taking a role on the season oh that's so that was really nice it was kind of a coincidence yeah I think that was probably the best one because we were together throughout you know I also love Berlin Berlin is rad I have you ever been I've not been I've never been to either of those places NE to admit how very dare you you should feel deep shame it's pretty great it's funny cuz I the first place that I had been to that I thought yeah I could live here oh really like more than London even where we share a language and where my husband is from um but it felt a lot like New York in the80s actually no kiding where I grew up yes which is where we're going I was really curious It's hard for me to imagine what a childhood in Manhattan is like and my first thought is are you ever turned loose in that City or can you be yeah it was interesting so my parents had been artists they met at Rhode Island School design my mom was a textile designer out of school for 10 years my dad was a photographer and they moved to the Bowery at first and then my dad's mom died when he was very young so he had this inheritance money that he came into in his early 20s and he used it to buy a building on Crosby Street with another couple and they still own it today oh no kiding and that's where we grew up but you know you had to legally be an artist to live in SoHo at the time oh really how would you prove that uh a lot of people lied I hope it was I think it was fairly easy to cheat but that you know it was it was the intention that was the design and the factories were actively closing down and I remember our dining room chairs which my mom eventually spray painted were being kind of jettisoned from a factory on Crosby and we were rolling them down the street and I thought we were stealing them and I was so embarrassed embarassed but all of our furniture was found like that you know like our shelves were crates and my dad collected old signs but you know my cousins who lived in New Jersey I was so Covetous of their like culdesac and their carpet and their basement with their video game like that just riding bicycles in the street heaven so yeah but then when I became 10 it started to turn and I thought oh think this is cool this might be cool but like bosot lived in our building anding was around I mean yeah it was really where like you had met him yeah well I remember him from the elevator when I was a little girl and he was very sweet he he was very nice we still have a hula hoop of it you have BOS hul we did for long I'll give you $1,100 and we he left like a drawing that we sold for a refrigerator wow but yeah I mean it was and I remember there were limos everywhere there for a while and you didn't know if they were like drug dealers in there or art dealers probably both the art scene in the 80s and if that's what was populating all the you know your neighbors and everything I mean this is a very like Bohemian drug using were you aware of that on any level or just normal this whole thing was normal well it was pretty New York was still raw at that point I mean we were still actively recovering from the 70s when I think it was at one of its like blackest points right but yeah I remember being really scared and seeing some just nasty nasty things oh yeah yeah my mom used to take us there but yeah we went in 82 83 84 and yeah as soon as it was like the sun went down and you were walking through Time Square like my mom was like squeezing remember that yeah yeah like really ushering us through to get back it's such a different city it's mindblowing from the one I used to visit as a kid crazy it's crazy I mean it's very pleasant you can get aant anywhere at any time perfectly flaky but like our parking lot is now the Crosby Hotel it's just really funny oh wow and so when you had friends would were you allowed at what age were you allowed to like was not a residential area it's still not but there was no grocery store there was no park but I still have friends from the neighborhood whose parents were also artists and then my dad ended up being a contractor cuz then they had ASA my older brother was 7 years older and then they had me and you know so he became a contractor my mom ran a toddler school from our Loft called Crosby kids so that was a very weird way to grow up I mean like Soho aside yeah were you jealous yeah so here's the thing so my mom was the eldest of five and she was four and a half years older than all the other kids who were then born in very quick succession like a year apart and she kind of recreated that Dynamic right and I I obviously it was very different because I wasn't really responsible for these kids but they were in my space yeah they were there before I left for school and they were there you know after I arrived back from school and I know a lot of nursery rhymes and I would tuck them all into their Cs and and my brother and I both learned recently that we both like would secretly drink apple juice from bottles cuz that was designated for the kids yeah yeah um is a way to get to get even you know to fuse with the kids that my mom was taking care of a little bit yeah I would have been really jealous that my mother's attention was going to other kids it was hard yeah it be like having 30 younger brothers and sisters so did she didn't start it when you were of that age no I she started when I was four like the exact age that she was I mean look my mom is truly an amazing mother and I just think it's really interesting that it's like to the number you know so yeah I grew up in a oh I see she was more even trying to recreate what she had for you not herself I well both I think I think both I think that is fascinating how long for like your whole life well then I started acting so I was 12 when I had an agent like got an agent but I had been acting a little bit before then and you did a Dudley Moore pilot at 13 that was great I was 12 that was my first job and now I'm a huge fan of Arthur it's probably still in my top three comedies ever made did you have any awareness of who that man was had no idea who deadle Moore was I also had no idea what comedy was oh sure none yeah were you guys watching a lot of TV in this house yes we were watching a lot of TV and my parents were really not that careful about what we were consuming ingesting I mean they exposed us to everything basically I mean they were careful in that they held art in obviously very high regard and yeah we were steeped in culture we were living in New York and we were surrounded by these really wonderfully talented accentric characters and all that but it's so F because I I was obsessed with all the John Hughes movies obviously Foot Loose was my favorite movie I would watch that that's not John Hughes I know but on a on a loop when I was five like over and over and over and I show girls that movie that's a great idea oh it's so good but my son you know he's seven he can barely watch Spy Kids the cartoon y you know it's just funny Spy Kids the cartoon is too provocative for him oh okay oh yeah so my grandfather who I was his movie watching buddy he took me to Scarface when I was 6 years old I saw I remember seeing Wall Street when I was seven in the theater or eight or something I remember seeing like Sophie's Choice when I was nine and and that was when I knew I needed to be an actor or Accidental Tourist or something when I was little or like Last Tango in Paris yes like it just um and my parents were I think it was a generational thing too I think as my mom says Claire it was the 70s it was the 70s and they grew up in the 50s which was very repressive look I'm really glad for it I I think ultimately I was much better for that approach than certainly the opposite one but did you ever crave like it feels like it always backfires right so if you've got like a very Square household the kids like just longing for some chaos and color and some Vibrance and eccentricity but if you grow up in that do you crave like normaly I was a Structure fiend yeah so you did kind of crave a little bit maybe more traditional yes yes yes but you know where you didn't have a preschool in your living room yeah B wasn't dope sick in the elevator sure he left a Hulu behind but yeah other things uh yeah do you think that you sought out acting because it was a niche that was yours whereas you were sharing so much in your space with all these other kids an interesting question that's a really interesting question I don't think so um okay big Miss no no it was it was a good Insight um but no I had danced actually with this one woman Ellen Robbins who now teaches my son uh which is pretty cool and people would come to her class looking for young talent and I was pretty hammy and I would get their attention and would often get cast in these super like Avant guard Productions on the Lorry side sure and dealing with hot topics like abortion and sure and so I did a bit of that you know with people on stilts around me and loved it and I just knew I wanted to do this thing like from the age of five I just knew and I don't know why I knew but I did when people asked me what I wanted to do I I said I wanted to be an actor and then somebody told me I guess around the age of like 10 or nine or something that most actors actually didn't make that much money which I found concerning yeah sure sure Manhattan's a very expensive place in a competitive environment so I thought okay well maybe I should reink this uh I thought okay I'm going to be a therapist and I'm going to do acting workshops on the side great and I was going to live next door to my best friend Ariel and we were going to have a joint pool and then we would have slides in our respective yards that would go into said pool so yeah I was you do that can I just can I add something the odds of you making enough money as a psychologist are actually 1,000th as possible as as an actor but what's amazing is that Ariel is still my best friend sadly we don't live that proximate to each other that we can share a pool but and she's a therapist she is yes oh wow stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare all right so Dudley Moore just really quick right having not seen Arthur yeah he just was a short English gentleman yes and was he he was very Charming he had a hard time remembering his lines I don't know if it's because he was very drunk he wore lifts he had a grand piano in his dressing room so cool and he played it all the time really and he was very warm and and inbi yeah probably I didn't know but it was absurd okay so my so-called life you were 13 when you got it I was 13 when I did the pilot it did not get picked up oh I went back back to high school I went to high school and then like a month in to my first semester they said oh wait no we are going to pick it up oh wow and then we shot 19 episodes and then it was cancelled so we didn't even get it to the end of that first season which is kind of crazy considering how well known that show is yeah because it ran it had a few after lives on different networks but it was the first freaks in weeks it kind of was it kind of was and then but it was up by MTV which played it on I that's where I saw it probably and so it seemed like it went on for longer than it did so you were 14 when you shot the series okay so you were 14 and you guys who moved to Santa Monica the whole gang well my brother was as I said was seven years older so he was in college at this point he was at arberlin and he was 21 Monica and my dad's business happened to fold and my mom was ready to do something else so it kind of worked out well for our family but we were so green we didn't know what was going on and we arrived literally the day after those massive earthquakes in 94 the Northridge earthquakes literally the day after which was just too potent of a metaphor so we've experienced all these aftershocks and everybody was Ashen I mean everybody was just traumatized and we were like hi um yeah so it was a it was a strange way to arrive that's really bizarre cuz I too landed in Santa Barbara the day after and even in Santa Barbara I felt an Aftershock that was quite significant yeah yeah I mean I kind of oh well this is a little bit like the subway rumbling and I remember my dad was really defiant he would like sprawl out on the couch like he was going to take it on my mom were and I were hovering under the you know in the doorway or whatever like we were told to was there one of your two parents that you were more likely to bro out with they both did they both put in way too many hours driving around with their Maps Thomas Guy Thomas guy yeah yeah my parents still are in Santa Monica they never left so my mom went back to Art School to grad school at a place called Otis in her 50s and now it's amazing they live in a little Globe but on a big plot of land and my dad built their two Studios and they make art in the backyard and they show together and so it's like it's full circle and they have a YT in the backyard where we stay it's really fun oh oh really is it comfortable in the YT it's great oh good it's so great son loves it yes he doesn't stay in the YT we stay in the okay um he stays right next to n and Grandpa and then crawls in the bed with him and gets to like do everything he's not supposed to do oh isn't that the greatest part grandma grandpa just watch all the videos and everything so that show being very young did you feel confident doing that or did you feel overwhelmed or what was the like experience that young kind of both it helped in some ways that I was as clueless as I was but I also felt like you know I had done a few movie of the weeks i' had done a lot of student films before that you know so there's part of me I was like I got this and then there was part of me that was like I do not which is how I still feel to this day and I was like being tutored on SE that was also really weird going back to high school and making sense of those two identities was stressful I'm I don't miss that right is it true that you had your first real life kiss on that show or is that not true that's not true but it is true that it was a more involved kiss than I had ever had and there were stage directions that said I was supposed to kiss Jordan catalon 's face like apart like not his lips okay and I didn't understand that I still don't as you say it what does that mean his chin like and so Jared had to explain that to me and he was 21 which was very embarrassing well yeah I just want to just talk about the real life Dynamic of you being 14 and being 21 I just I think currently in the current climate is that even allowed a 21-year-old to make out with a 14y oldold I think so it's still cool I guess okay I don't know I don't have a position on in the Land of Make Believe yes I'm just trying to imagine like my daughter's getting into acting and then like my first visit to set I meet [ __ ] Mike who's 22 and has an apartment and stuff yeah he's like really looking forward to making out with Delta today I just and I'm very Pro sex in all but just the age Gap would really I mean that's you're talking seven years yeah did you think he was the cutest person alive he was very attractive oh he's he's in the noxa commercial the oh what's her name with the curly hair was in them oh I know who you're talking G Gart oh wow nice boom yes Rebecca gayart yes I mean I was in love with someone and from a commercial those were very highend commercials highend commercials yeah so if he was in a oxa that's the Pinnacle yeah yeah yeah so did you have a real life crush on him or was he too old no he was way too old I was way too terrified right it was very fraternal like like and he was actually pretty protective of me I think I made it clear too yeah from the beginning that this wasn't that kind of that wasn't that kind of 14-year-old right right um yeah but he took me to my first Club you were the kind of 14-year-old that was 14 I was truly 14 he took you to a nightclub though he did God I wanted to be the what do you call it room whiskey no Viper Room yes The Viper Room was it the Viper Room it was something like that sure sure but I remember Leo was there and St d was there and there was like a whole Leo Steven thing oh the whole G oh and they were they were not like well no it was a he's at that table he's at that table I remember that drama that is so fun mhm yeah I remember that drama that is so great um so were you sad when it got cancelled yeah but I felt kind of jerked around by the show because it had not gotten picked up and then it did get picked up and then we were canceled before we even finished I just was like and you have boundaries you're like I don't want to play this I don't know it was it was stressful it was stressful my heart had been broken a couple of times so at that point I was a bit CST I think so did it help that you got nominated in for an Emmy for that in a golden I me all of that was just very surprising first job as a lead I was just so dizzy from it all and did both parents take you to the Emmys or one or the other or did you who was your date I don't remember who my date was I remember going to the Oscars with my dad when I presented when I was was like 17 or something and Muhammad Ali was sitting in front of us and he was sh very excited yeah so I remember being pleased that I could give that to him you know yeah so you got nominated even though the show got canceled then all kinds of things start opening up right so what is Little Women First after that yeah that was first yeah so I did that straight after my so-called life yeah have you seen the new one I haven't and I really want to I know I'm a big Greta gerwick fan me too yeah I was TR imagine how I would feel about having been in a movie that was remade and I feel like probably good you make Little Women you assume going to be REM yeah like if the Star Wars chaos was Furious what you talking about a new star you can't make a new one I'm in my 50s this is my classic [ __ ] yeah yeah hands off this centuries old Masterpiece but but the big thing and uh certainly the first time I became abundantly aware of because I I had not watched that show when it aired was Romeo and Juliet how do you end up getting that job what were your thoughts as you I auditioned a lot did you know who Leonardo DiCaprio was she saw him at the Viper the yeah no no I was a big Leo fan okay great starting with What's Eating Gilbert gra uh even be like what was before oh he was in um um the Tobias Wolf book um it was This Boy's Life This Boy's Life Tobias wolf yeah This Boy's Life man like from that point on Basketball Diaries He was amazing in that he was unreal unreal in that yeah I was mad mad impressed by his skills with a Z yeah I guess I just remember auditioning a lot and then finally auditioned with him and it worked you kept your [ __ ] together yeah and baz wanted to make as alive and fresh and accessible version of that story as he could tell and my sensibility kind of suited that interpretation and I think Leo and my acting styles were sympatico yeah yeah you were what you were 17 and he was 21 is that I was 16 and he was 21 I turned 17 when we filmed did you I'm having a memory that that was shot in Mexico City or something it was very good it was yes okay so to go to Mexico City and now you have like a hotel room in p and you're you're in a foreign city creatively I was just in heaven yeah you can also drink when you're 17 in Mexico I'm not asking I was not I drank like twice on that movie really cuz I was a kid I didn't really I wasn't really practiced at this okay yeah there was one time when I got too drunk uhhuh that's the goal in Mexico then I didn't get drunk again okay I was a child really like I was not a drinker but not I mean a lot of people at that age are well I went to Cancun on spring break at 16 and I drink all the stuff you know it was really yeah no I think I was too busy working and I didn't know how to be a drinker I just want you to know because I would hate for you to think that I only as female guesses Mal guest too I want to know so bad if they fell in love with the person they worked with I would have fallen in love with him I was so yeah I think smitten with him as an actor then I think it was crushy for sure but it was also a little bit like the Jared like that was just never going to happen like I didn't like with the drinking like I didn't know how to go about that yeah and he was already in the business for like eight years so he partying and having a good time and we're really different people I mean I remember at one point he just was so frustrated and said how can you be so still and I said how can you be so active um but like he is uh as a very kind of frenetic energy and I am not you know that I can be like really focused and I guess on set especially like very centered do people read that as you being not friendly or not I think they can I think they can read it that way i' never mean to communicate that right and sometimes I worry about it being a lead actor and I think I should be setting the tone more performative or I mean I think I probably do set the tone by default that's just the tone I set yeah but I think there is real value in having the number one call sheet person be more gregarious and like a morale Captain yeah yeah and I don't know I don't like naturally excel at that but I really want to be in a healthy environment and I want to be decent and expect decency around me and stuff so I think that is a good thing that can radiate but yeah but yeah but I but I'm in some conflict about that like oh God I should be better at being the cheerleader yeah right and um when that movie you must have been delighted with how it turned out right it was yeah it was it was because what did BOS lurman done before that that was certainly the the first thing I Ballroom which was incredible he is a real genius and an aour and has this kind of incredibly comprehensive fantastic understanding of not only the story but like the world the world yeah yeah he seems to be like a master of the world yeah yeah and he's very operatic in his temperament and in his style as you know as a filmmaker so had you mentally prepared for that movie the results of the movie not the process no I no I had not it was tough cuz I then suddenly famous like for real yeah yeah and I didn't know what to make of that you can't really practice for it no I know and it's awfully young to be famous yeah and I didn't have any reference point I wasn't of it you know my family just kind of stumbled into this culture and we were all trying to make sense of it in real time and I kind of couldn't keep up with the pace of it and I was given a lot of opportunity really quickly but was just unformed as a human well when I was that age I would stare in the mirror before I went to high school and I'd like be having a full-fledged panic attack about how my hair looked and I wanted to cut it all off and then I I was really wrestling with just leaving the house without any attention yeah I think I was too and I wasn't able to do a lot of socializing that you typically are forced to do no matter how miserable it is in high school and I think that was to my detriment so that was really why I went back to college well really quick your detriment in what way you feel like you missed out like some social training or something yeah and I I had a really terrible time in middle school which I think most girls do but for whatever reason I really struggled and was like really bullied by a certain kind of girl archetypical girl in three different schools I think they were a little troubled these these girls and I don't I really don't know I really don't know but I really got smaller and smaller over the course of those years and I developed a real phobia of girls honestly um and it was really good for me to go back to college and realize that we all mature and we move through that heinous stage and we feel you know less wildly insecure and murderous about it so yeah I needed to to work through some of that now is it true that after that movie I hope this is true that you got offered Titanic I think I did okay I'm not entirely clear on that sure but I was like it was interesting there there's strong interest but honestly like I just made this romantic epic with Leo in Mexico City which is where they were going to shoot Titanic right and I I just didn't have it in me right and I remember Leo and I shared a manager at the time and um we were there at the office and I was on a balcony which is funny with your arms spread wide open with wings on which is super weird um no and and Leo had this like rental red convertible some like hot r car and he was kind of doing not like he was kind of going circles like in the in the the parking lot and I knew he was wrestling with the decision to do that movie or not and he just looked up at me and he said I'm doing it I'm doing it after some donuts he figured out yeah like he did some donuts and clear his head and I could see he wasn't sure you know but he was like [ __ ] it I got to do this thing yeah and and I looked down at him going like I totally understand why you are doing that yeah and I'm not ready for that and I think I really wasn't ready for it and I remember after that movie came out and he just went oh my God into another stratusphere yeah and remember I went to the premiere of The Man in the Iron Mask and when he like walked into the room like the floor fell in his Direction like all everybody in the room just went yeah towards him yeah and it was a little scary you know and I just thought I think I may have sensed that I was cording that or I was proximate to or you know and um I just couldn't do it so it was yeah I didn't want it that's interesting so and now when the movie then gets made and it's the biggest movie of all time do you regret about it or you're like no no I chose right zero regret I envy that peace of mind I was just really clear about it I wasn't conflicted I wasn't but were the people in your life who are like managing your future going like but I I was just feeling eager to have different creative experiences that felt like a repeat and as I said I think it it was going to propel me towards something that I knew I didn't have the resources to cope with and I knew I had to do like a lot of Foundation Building that's crazy smart of you at 17 to have recognized that in your yourself because if you're as you said imagining and dreaming about becoming an actor since you're five or six and it's like well that's the Apex you're about to go right to the Apex of that Jim Cameron in this outrageous movie and then to have the self- knowledge to go like that's not going to feel good it's just kind of a crazy conviction for a 17-year-old to have I would have been Leo man I would have been [ __ ] doing donuts in my red rental car you would not have been doing donuts you would have said yes so quickly immediately I would have needed to even do the donuts but also I would have been doing donuts in rental car I also think that we kind of know what our line is and I knew that this wasn't on my line that's good yeah that's really good you didn't even go to high school right you were just you were getting I was enrolled technically at a place called Lisa France here in La which was the only private school that would accept kid actors someone who never showed up cuz in New York it was sort of impressive and cool but in La we were a diamond dozen and we were only annoying right and disruptive so was getting into Yale an issue or was it easy I didn't do that well I did fine on my snts I didn't get a score that would justifi me going to Yale but my extracurricular were pretty impressive and I wrote some good essays but also my grandfather was Dean of art and architecture at Yale and my dad grew up in New Haven which was not why I got in I don't think but it was a nice couldn't have heard thing for me did you talk about that in your interview I didn't oh you didn't I did not I did you're so ethical you're like the person whose dad's a cop and you get pulled over and you don't mention it wow no no it wasn't it wasn't ethical but I I I always kind of knew I wanted to go there actually because of my grandfather I would have worn your grandpa's old sweatshirt that said yell on it and been like just wearing my grandpa's old sweatshirt he was the dean of arts yeah you and I are so not alike it's really fun for me because I even in my I know yeah of course fun I do too but um my projecting is just never it's not Landing anywhere but that's what I like did you did you also have some like crazy Financial confidence cuz I would here's what I would have been cuz I'm sure you didn't paid [ __ ] for Romeo and Juliet but I'm sure after that they probably started throwing real money towards you when these offers came in did you not have a fear of financial insecurity like I better just go grab that money right now to be I was a child and I had so much money like how much more money could I possibly true imagine never mind want you know like like I remember Ariel and I when we were 10 we would like think about money strictly in terms of like how much close we could get from The Gap with it I was still closer to that mind frame than you know so you're like yeah I could buy the whole Gap catalog several times over exactly and you'd been told actors don't make money but then you just did make money so you probably you made more than a therapist did that year for sure yes yes the money was just stupid I mean I it was like fun house um style okay so you didn't feel like oh God I'm going to be I feel like I was passing up money it must feel so good to feel like you oh my god is so no wonder you're not a crazy alcoholic like I was but I was really tiny I guess I didn't feel tiny at the time but I I was but it was awkward I mean it was definitely awkward like I had bought a loft on Worcester Street and was remodeling it there was nothing in it but my dad had been a contractor and so I had childhood friends Joan and Harry who have a firm together an architectural firm and they had worked with my dad professionally and they had designed our Loft they had converted it into a like a nursery school home and so I was building this Loft with my kind of surate mom friend Joan which all felt very natural right but was n I was 18 so I would take you know like my architecture 101 class and then go home on the weekends to like oversee yourt my loft the building of my loft so it was all there were many shades of [ __ ] up there too stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare [Music] were many many guys trying to court you well I was very deeply involved with a guy called Ben Lee we were like living together no no he's still Ben Lee he lives in La now you said called oh no cuz he's no no he's Australian and also my husband's English so you say um he's not named benley he's called benley so I've I've appropriated that it's affected and annoying but it's yeah yeah when you hear it from from our American years forg us you used to be called I know anyway sorry um anyway so I was like not going to college for that reason I was there to learn yeah I I was nerdier than any kid in that school which was ridiculous cuz there were a lot of a lot of nerd it really attracts nerds we love y my God I'm so jealous we're uni files yeah we're obsessed with f col went for two years and I you know so that's all I got but I feel like her two years at yells more impressive than our finishing College yeah yeah did you graduate yeah yeah yeah well you win no I don't think so I don't think so what did you major in well I didn't have to Major because I only went for two years but you were going to get psychology right well I thought I was but then I realized that what I meant by Psychology was in fact English because I was frustrated by psychology ultimately it's also like a baby field sure sure 15 years old something it was asserting itself as empirical in some way yes yeah as scientifically driven and oriented and I didn't think that was true I remember I took some class where uh abnormal psych or something and we had to write an essay every week and there was some controversial subject that we had to say was either good or bad and every week I would say well well the data is inconclusive I just don't think we can say and I would get penalized I'd get punished for it and I just thought this is no like we can manipulate these numbers any way we choose and do you know I would imagine you you know a ton about psychology at this point first from having an interest in it as a kid and then also playing someone that's bipolar but do you know the whole history of the DSM and how it came about no no tell me my God tell me tell me tell me so there and I'll forget the name but we'll say it in the fact check there was an English guy who came to America specifically to expose how bad the state of Psychiatry was in the US and what he did is he deployed like six or eight people and they had to go into a clinic and all they were allowed to say is I hear the sound thump in my head and then once they were admitted they could only tell the truth so the only lie was I hear the sound thump in my head and these were generally the people participating were other students and whatnot and they got a myriad of diagnoses right like uh schizophrenic just a huge barrage of different very very serious mental health ailments and then he published this and the whole Community the American psychology Association what they said well we need to do something about this right so they decided to come up with a standardized test which became the DSM okay and the DSM is a questionnaire that a computer can read and tell you basically what you have but one of the fallouts of like say the first esm is if you give it to people what you find is that probably 80% of the country has a mental illness so their conclusion was either well mental illness is pandemic or the DSM isn't really getting us what we want there's now been several iterations of the DSM and I don't take a position on it um but it's it's a fascinating history but there was one psychologist who really took umbrage with what this guy did and he said and I want to say but I always say this that he worked at John's Hopkins but he said send me somebody a fake to the clinic and I will tell you who the fake is and he agreed to this and they said at some point in the next month I'll send one in and at the end of the month John Hopkins guy said uh it's this person and he said I didn't send anybody so it was kind of like his double trick was to not even send anyone wow yeah there's a fascinating documentary about it yeah but at any rate so you you were like this might be uh we might be still early in this science before we also a sophomore and undergrad yeah I mean as I said I have a disproportionate number of therapist friends as well and I strongly believe in therapy I I love the therapy yeah yeah I love it you started young yeah yes yeah what age six six oh six I am a New Yorker so right it's kind of there was a problem we went to therapy I saw ghosts and I think I was also I was developing sort of OCD patterns but there was a gargoyle who lived on our pipes in our Loft and would uh make me do things like maintain a contorted position for 20 minutes at a time and I couldn't take a shower alone because demons were coming out of the shower head and it got pretty extreme that's a lot to juggle at that age and and and so my mom took me to Gideon and he kind of helped me work through that okay so what's really interesting is when when Monica suggested that you had maybe been drawn to acting because you wanted a thing of your own I was wondering if you were drawn to acting because you have total control see I don't know I think that it doesn't come from like a pathology you know I don't I don't think it comes from like meeting a need that should have been met in life and that wasn't being met or something I was just a really Keen close Avid hungry Observer MH and I just really always was deeply deeply interested in human beings and I had no patience for cartoons when I was a kid I didn't want to waste my time with an abstracted image I wanted to look at actors in real space and time and I got really lost in those details honest to God my first memory of acting was when I was about three I must have been three and I was at pre nursery school and there was an indian-american woman slow who was our teacher who I loved and it was nap time and I was always a really bad Napper I'm still a bad Napper but I was a very good girl I still a very good girl and so I was pretending to sleep and I had remembered that my mom twitched in her sleep and so I was I was doing that and I remember thinking like oo that was really subtle that was that was really nuanced there is no way slow is going to think I'm anything other than dead you just found the perfect speed for that twitch so that's still the same exercise it's the same practice the same impulse and it didn't come from a nervous place or a frightened place or a you know place of needing to assert control it was just a natural impulse to mimic right and I took real pleasure in the game of that sport isn't quite right because I think it's more expansive than that but yeah and beyond that I don't know now was it a hard decision to leave y kind of I mean I was going to do a movie that jod Foster was going to direct like this circus movie and I trained for whole summer doing circus tracks MH what type flying traes and the Spanish web it was here in La uh there was a Mexican-American family that had been in the circus forever and it was wonderful and they had this whole setup in the backyard in the valley that was so hot like and uh I got so into it and very strong which was you know not the point but especially from the Spanish web which was my favorite what's the Spanish web it's when you have these two pieces of cloth and you climb them and then you you tie knots and then you kind of flip down wow one of Monica's best friend does this elandra that's like aial she does like aerial stuff it's really really really fun we did the you know the wheel thing we did I did it was pretty pretty varied very across the board and it didn't end up happening so I had taken a semester off to do that and it fell apart and so I like raced back to school with these like guns incredibly defined arms that just atrophied real fast yeah so it just kind of got more stop start I really thought that I would do a movie A Summer but I kind of failed to realize how much work goes into getting work and I just wasn't available to read scripts or take meetings and that was just very idealistic of me and like I sort of got what I needed from college I met my best friends who were then graduating you know cuz i' had taken time off and and so I started to feel a little isolated did you have any fear that the window was closing of your opportunity acting wise maybe a little bit at that point I mean I was like 22 and but I think it was more that as I said I kind of did all that socializing that I had missed out on when I was younger I kind of learned the fundamentals of reading and writing I could you know I kind of learned enough how to think critically and I had the tools that I needed to go forward and I think I also I really went into school with the question of am I acting out of habit or choice you know CU this was a decision I had made a very long time ago when I was a child and I just wanted to give myself an opportunity in a more neutral environment to recommit to Lifestyle it was your rum Springer it was my rum Springer it was a little bit and then you you were able to just jump back in pretty easily or was it was kind of awkward the first job I did was the hours I had like a little roll on that which was kind of dreamy a couple scenes with Merl stre I did a movie that I actually still really like called igby goes down oh yeah yeah and then I made a very bad movie with walking Phoenix and Shawn Penn in Denmark and Sweden an amazing director called Thomas vinterberg who had created Dogma with Lars von Tri like it was very exciting and it didn't work for various reasons but I also was I I had like hadn't acted for three years I was like very school girl at that point and I forgot that acting was primarily a visceral more of a rock exp experience you know and yes you have to understand the story you're telling and it does involve some analysis but that's not the critical Force at play and so I had to remember that and I had lost a lot of my confidence which I had just had in abundance when I was a kid right and I don't even know why to the extent that I did but I became self-conscious for the first time ever as an actor which was weird I was thinking way too hard about it all of a sudden and how long before you got your groove back I think that sort of curse was broken when I did Terminator 3 of all things well good cuz that's one I really wanted to talk to you about and I was like she not going to want to talk about T3 because I'm going to want because another actress was hired and that didn't work out for whatever reason I had auditioned didn't get it then suddenly they called me and said do you want to do it and I had a night to make the decision and I just thought okay and I really did love the other two ter movies was a fan of the franch I really was but it was so immediate and it was so out of my it was just not a genre I'd ever worked within but I remember thinking like oh I was there to do a job and I had to do the job well I was hired because I could do the job well and that released me from whatever overthinking I had fell victim to and that loosened me way up do you think part of it might have been that the Machinery is so large in a movie like that that it's almost distracting enough in a good way yeah it's like you got to run here you got to do this that no artistic pretense you know and and it like I wasn't doing the next Dogma movie with the best actors of all time in Scandinavia I like which was crippling and I was so grateful to that movie for that I had a blast literally and figuratively at a very bad haircut but I had fun at the time it was being shot it was the most expensive movie that had ever been made did you know that I did not know that yes I did not know that's incredible it was stupid it was like going to Universal Studios every day that's what I would imagine and also you know Arnold is in the cult of big right everything on him and around him is oversized to a comic degree yeah he's driving up in a Hummer like he would have different cars he bring different cars to set just to keep them company you know and there was our Mercedes tank at one point you know with the the Mercedes sign was the size of that window or something and he wore a watch that was that big and he like smok these cigars that were the size of that table like it was just absurd yeah now I would imagine and again I'm I've been wrong almost this whole time so but I would imagine temple temple grandon is now like a seminal moment right in your your career yeah so my first thought in this again is so shallow of me but I do do you you probably don't do you have any commitment anxiety in general in life I don't know so my first thought was like okay if I were to sign on to a movie like that I would I got to get to know this person and then I would already be at the I'm going to have to break up with this person at some point like I'm going to have to befriend this person and then I'm going to move on to another movie and I would already be fearing that break that's kind of how my brain works that's I like your brain yeah I'm trying to head off any like hurting someone some point down the road w wow that's so so interesting no that was not my fear okay good but I had the faintest sense of who she was when it came my way I remember Hugh and I we were in the second year of our relationship and neither of us had been working that much and was we just thought you know what [ __ ] it let's just have a summer let's go traveling yeah and we did and we had the best time and started in turkey and we wiggled our way throughout the Mediterranean and it just got like more and more lavish as it went along and you know and we ended up at a film festival in isia and it was just so bloated and much and excessive we had no children no thought of children we weren't even marri you know it was and I get this call about this project which was a little sobering and uh but it was just like so contradicted this kind right insane chapter that I had kind of found myself in but yeah so I I read more about her and she's just fascinating and it was really scary but she was just so much more interesting than I was terrified you know so like that tipped the scales and I just thought oh [ __ ] I have to do that and you had no fear cuz another fear I would have had is like I had plenty of fears plenty of fears so I was going to say there's there were some pretty dramatic misfires with people taking on roles oh my gosh so I did the whole movie I hadn't seen it but I remember I watched Tropic Thunder yeah exactly and there was that parody yes Simple Jack that's right and I was like exactly where I remember I remember saying to Justin thorough because I was kind of friends with him and I was like oh my God I think I just played simple cheack exactly exactly and and it hadn't even occurred to me like you know until I saw the worst case scenario played out in one of the best satirical you know comedies of the decade or and um oh God and my heart just S I mean of course I didn't go into it with that you know you know but but you also just feel like she's such a vulnerable human being right I mean she could be misinterpreted in so many ways and you start to feel that anxiety and that vulnerability you know by extension yeah and then you think like after the fact like does this look like I'm hunting award so no I definitely had a flicker of so you shot it and then saw Tropic Thunder yes okay now had you seen Tropic Thunder prior to it do you think you would have done it oh probably yeah I mean I guess it helps that you like met her in your I met her and I had two really good well the director was wonderful too and the writer was I mean the team was great but I also had Susan and Tamar I mean we worked really methodically towards breaking her down I had a dream when I was I forget which came first was it the physicality or the voice but anyway I was more fluent in one part of her and I had yet to integrate the other part like I think it was the vocal part and I had a dream where I was walking out onto a stage as her and as soon as I opened my mouth I was really literal like nothing came out like there was this awkward period where I had to fuse the two yeah and I think I was like really reticent to even work through it in rehearsal and finally I just had to go for it on the first day of filming and uh it felt right but I had a whole like check system was she ever on set watching you play her not all that often but yeah and what was her reaction to seeing you play her um she recognized herself which I was really really grateful for and that was also very motivating right like don't [ __ ] this up like like the consequences would be pretty grave I wanted her to feel like it matched with her sense of and I think that was the case and also she seemed to have a ton of fun when you were winning Awards and she was involved yeah although she's profoundly sensitive person and on a red carpet that's like a nightmare scenario with the flashing lights and people screaming and so I just remember thinking like get Temple get her inside yeah let's get her to the Sea some popcorn and then well okay but she has an amazing sense of humor and she's a scientist and she thinks of herself as material for people to break down and observe and she is you know giving of herself in that way right yeah you want you want everything for that right as I recall I did I want all the things did you like do you like winning those things I did there was like a period where I won all the things for Temple and then I won a lot of things for Homeland which came pretty close after that so it's was like oh my God this again which was very nice but the gift of that is that you learn that it doesn't really matter right well you still have to brush your teeth the next morning yeah but those things are super confusing those award showy things they are validating and it feels really good to be celebrated by your community MH but they're also this funny construct and you're made to feel like an athlete or something this is not why we are here doing this thing and there so many of them now right like they had so many babies my wife's currently at one right yeah yeah and I don't know it's just a whole other industry now yeah and when I started like we didn't have stylists you pretty much did your own hair and makeup like it's put on your best blouse and hit the runway you go to Nordstrom and like and um you go to the Gap yeah SP all your earning your dream Gap outfit the cools and uh you bu like a ingrade or anything or like cranky old lady or something no no I would just imagine like that you love being as you said recognized for the work you did and then that's validating but then now there's this whole Machinery of it that is going out talking doing interviews being on a stage there's like the publicity machine of the whole experience which I've never been that naturally gifted at but I had to say at that point I had my partner Hugh and so to move through all of that with him was a massive gift is it easy for Hugh to be married to an actor who has pretty Limitless opportunities I don't know how Limitless they are well they're pretty you know I think maybe sometimes here's an example you got to go do Homeland wherever you got to do it in my my own life there's been movies where well she can make this much or we can say here and I can make this much so there's just a very a very cleancut clear Financial yes or no which is like it would make more sense for this family to go to Atlanta and watch her work than to stay here and watch me work right I think we were really lucky in that Hugh did two really great series while I did Homeland and that worked out pretty well cuz you know he did uh Hannibal for three years and I did a show called The Path so you know we would really take turns my Hiatus was his you know work you know so we both were feeling creatively satisfied and really we're not such actorly actors uh that sounds a little silly to put it that way but those identities really aren't at the four right when we're together we both love it we both take it really seriously I guess I mean enough I mean we care deeply about it we've like committed Our Lives to it to a certain extent you know but our friends are not necessarily in the business I think sometimes my being American and his being English is like more of a thing that we kind of bump up against or kind of go oh wow right well again another fear of mine is I find the English accent so charming and then also I go like would I wake up at year three you know cuz when you fall in love with someone you stop hearing it you do you it just becomes Hugh it stops being English and it's really funny when other people he's very handsome and you know he has a fancy version of English accent even so but it's embarrassing how much we are willing to concede to that kind of human like he can get away with yeah anything oh yeah and it's kind of like it's tempting to exploit um but we're really pathetic um H it's it has a big power over us but I like remember that when I see him outside of the context of our relationship and I see him in the world just like melting all the human butter yeah I'm like although you know like a to the B 13 years into a relationship like my wife can shut a cupboard and in my mind I'm like could she have possibly shut that cupboard more annoyingly like did she did she like Workshop it when I was out of the room and then thought oh I'll really [ __ ] with him while he's watching that thing so I just imagine hearing like aluminium when I'm in that state of mind and being like Oh just cut the [ __ ] [ __ ] you live here it's [ __ ] aluminum like that's where I go to in my head he said something the other day that both was like you know was just really not what he was supposed to say send his labs to the laboratory or something I forget what it was and um and he actually asked that question he was like how annoying is it to you that I am this weird English guy but I feel really bad cuz you know our kids are americ americ yeah yeah that would that would be weird for me to have like English songs that that's got to be hard I feel for him almost daily yeah so have you given thought to what's after Homeland do you need like a four-year break are you going to return to Yale or are we going to get that finally get that that psychology degree certificate they may have made it way more empirical since you were last there I'm sure they have yeah they're doing brain Imaging now it was all psychology's fault let's be clear yeah the whole field failed you failed me it was all wrong uh CU you've been on that show for years right no for eight for but but yes like it actually in some in total it's more like a decade I feel like I'm supposed to know what I'm supposed to do next right but I am still so immersed in it I haven't surfaced yet like I don't feel emancipated enough to sort of say yeah that's what I should do I have no idea but it's going to be awkward it's going to be a little uncomfortable which actually I'm kind of looking forward to I mean I'm not makes me want to vomit but I should be scared again it's hard not to work it is I feel like I'm in freef Fall a little bit I've had this alternate self that has helped Define me actually and now she's gone so yeah it's disorienting you kind of already said it but I just want to make sure I'm sure about it which is you had friends visit and you were able to do it you know six or seven or whatever that was and I do remember cuz I had never been on a series and my wife had been on a series and I came home like season two and I was like I think I suck this year at this and she's like why and I'm like I just feel like I'm not trying or something and she's like no no that's TV that's the beauty of it just keeps getting easier and easier and easier like you just all of a sudden it's just you oh it's the greatest I love that because you've already lived your backstory you don't have to like make it up you're not cheating you know you've earned the chance to just do it I am going to miss that and I'm really going to miss being part of a company do you think because you said earlier that you're a relationship person this is a relationship a 10 year long one so that's heartbreaking a little bit and I've never had a shot at monogamy as an actor before that's a luxury that we're not typically afforded yeah it is kind of amazing that you get to cycle through so many different realities and communities and selves that is a joy but there's also something like deeply grounding about working with a group of people who you have such a a strong rapport with and a deep history with and a resilient trust with I mean it's something that we do need right the show definitely provided that for me and I'm sad to have to leave that yeah I don't know if I'll ever do another run that long right right and the quality of the material and the people who were involved it was just really really excellent you know and I was so spoiled like and I I never actually took that for granted I have to say I think I was old enough to know that it was special but yeah that was cool and I would imagine over the years that people who have bipolar have reached out to you I I have to imag they have they have they're very I mean look we took a lot of liberties we had to is TV and she's doing way too well um so uh I was always quite nervous about her condition being used when it was convenient when it was convenient for for the plot's sake and I didn't want it to be you know just a gimmick I don't think it was ultimately but there's always a risk of that when you're telling us a yarn of this kind yeah but I do think that we tried to be as responsible as we could within you know the barriers of the format of the medium and there just aren't that many representations of that condition anywhere in pop culture and ultimately she's a hero you know so so there is that positive Association which I think is really valuable Yeah the more I have learned about that condition the more intrigued I am by it simply that if I had that condition I know I would be one of the people that didn't take their medicine because I would want the windup I would I would live for that right well you become addicted to the Pathology the that he State because for a while you really are performing at four lines of coke I'd say yeah yeah that's right and you are truly productive and outpacing your peers and a common trajectory is that you then get rewarded for that and then you get promoted or you know and you had this elevated status and more responsibility and then you kind of capsize you crash and then it just becomes disorganized of how many people suffer from that in the country I think it's like 5% 5% I think it's something like that I don't know I could be very wrong about that that's 15 million people I think it's I think it's in the 5% range I think that's right I have so much respect for people who struggle with this because you know they have you just have to be so diligent and so disciplined to do basic stuff to get through a day and we take so much for granted yeah well Claire I love you I'm in the group of people that is a gigantic fan of yours you're you're so tremendous on that show I'm very excited to see it when does it come out February when is it 9th thank you I love you too thank you thank you for inviting me to your attic and hopefully you'll come back with your whatever thing you end up choosing now sure I would love to okay okay and now my favorite part of the show The fact check with my soulmate Monica padman Monica padman hi how you doing oh I thought there was going to be more it seemed like there was going to be a little more yeah of course it was it sounded like there was a statement that was going to follow but there was but I was really just thinking about the fact that we roded the attic today which is always a great start for my day just want to throw that out there oh that's nice do worry when you live across the street I guess I could just walk over to your house and then walk you here well yeah that might be a fun ritual also we won't ever have to travel that's true we'll live where we were yeah we can walk from your house to the attic three steps so exciting yeah so I mean we should tell the arm cherries cuz I mean not to like bring it down I know they're going to be sad about this but eventually our attic that we're in right now is going to get get demolished it's going to be dust and Ash yeah but it's going to be a wild you know that part I hope we cannot get a permit for that thing I'm trying to build it's just not happening oh great so well yeah I mean great for the Mojo of this attic yeah um but bad for like I need to exercise and that's where my exercise equipment is supposed to go this huge garage there's no designated place in our new house what about the gy I mean the um the basement right well that's kind of what I've been pushing Bell for so in our current house we have a basement and that's where all my gear is right my GE ripped gear that's where the heavy things are that I lift up and set down yeah uh so I said look H I know the basement of the new house is a theater room yeah but it's going to probably have to be a gym for a year she did not like that she was like put it in my office I'm like I can't fit all that crap in your office what about the gear also then you don't even have an office oh she's not thinking things through no and I'm like I can't go a year without working out I'll commit suicide in the backyard oh my God don't say that oh my God by the way can we talk about suicide oh sure I mean I no this is going to be a weirdly encouraging um take on suicide oh goodness okay for real um as I get deeper into gladwell's book I want you to read it so bad I will this [ __ ] the things he tackles he's so Fearless So it's talking about oh the famous poet um she killed herself Emily Dickson no but you're in the right world uh Emily pick PL oh PL Sylvia PL Sylvia Plath so she killed herself in England and what she did was put her head in the oven and turned down the Gas oh my God and at that time every single house in London burned a type of fuel called Town Gas not natural gas that we now use so Town gas was this kind of dirty mix of all these different gases but you could kill yourself quite easily with it so when all of London had Town Gas the number one killer of people was Town gas was people committing suicide with Town Gas CU it was very easy to do and so the traditional thinking on suicide was like well if you get rid of town gas uh people just find another way to kill themselves and that's what I thought going into this chapter and that's called the displacement theory that okay yeah if you took away guns then people would just use knives or whatever right but the work of a certain sociologist or psychologist started investigating and and realized that there's a strong coupling aspect to Suicide so it's not just that someone's on a war path to kill themselves it's that they have ideations they think about it and then the situation is right right and and um and so what happened was when they switched over to Natural Gas the suicide rate did dramatically drop it didn't just move over to another method yeah and then he goes into the folks who have jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge which I think is like 1500 at this point it's the most of any structure in the world the most people have killed themselves and um there's always been these movements to put up barriers so people couldn't do it but then the argument was well no they'll just jump off something else we're going to spend all these millions on these barriers and they're just going to jump off something else so why not put it into Healthcare or something or some prevention which again I would have probably bought into that theory right but what one of these people did is investigated of the I want to say it was like maybe 500 people who had been uh interrupted in their attempt to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge over 70 years a person went and interviewed all those people that had been interrupted and only 25 of the 500 had ended up killing themselves wow yes isn't that so interesting God suicide is one of the hardest topics mhm for me I I get very anxious during that kind of conversation you know I used to have when I had a really bad anxiety I used to feel like I was not suicidal but I felt like all of a sudden I was going snap into I was just going to look down and I will have done it uhuh like it will have happened to me yeah which is not what happens but but I was yeah so I had a lot of anxiety around suicide yeah but I think that's really profound and sorry I mean not to be political but this well 20,000 people a year kill themselves with a handgun in in the US now look I'm a gun owner I I just want to be dead honest about that I own guns I also if there was a button on the wall I could push and there's no guns in America I would push that button in one second so I have a very complicated relationship with it I don't like him enough that I would want one kid in a school getting shot over my loving of them again I know it's much deeper than that for people and it's a constitutional right and all this stuff so I'm not even going to get into the Weeds on that I'm only G to say the data he gave is that it would appear that it would cut at least 10,000 deaths off a year off because this coupling uh mechanism is so strong just it's amazing and that's why I'm so drawn to everything he writes because almost every chapter I enter with the exact mindset that most people have and then it's like some opposite way of thinking about it that's substantiated with data I love I love having my opinion change it's so fun yeah it's so rare not for you in general in life it's it's hard for people to do that I'm giving you a compliment oh thank you uh but I find it very euphorian doing like as I was driving home from work yesterday listening to it and I was just like a all a all a titter like a little baby a little baby boy in a in a toilet bowl of of [Laughter] Stew should we tell people that we think we might be having a baby oh sure I want to I don't want to start the rumor mill but um I use used Monica's toilet at her new house which is a non-functioning house and I what I did is I flushed the toilet and it flushed properly and I was like oh the water's still on great then I whizzed okay yeah then I hit the flusher again oopsies no water in there so then I came to you and I was like I've peed in your commode and I got a I'm going to have to bring over a five gallon bucket of water and flush this thing you're like yeah yeah we'll we'll get to it and then you were there like a couple days after and you were going to pee your pants and so you peed on top of my I did I didn't want to put pee in enough toilet cuz that would just be multiple things we'd have to figure out so I peed on top of your pee and it's all still there this is weeks ago oh Jesus I'm so embarrassed for us and we think that maybe the mixture of the pee a life will grow out we don't know we just don't know maybe Malcolm Gladwell could weigh in on how many broth babies historically how many broth babies there are I think this would be so exciting though if we went over there and took we went over there with the 5 gallon water bucket and then we heard Mama Dad D and there was a little yellow baby down there no I would really love it I care of it of course we would our little yur baby yeah it would probably need to like live in that toilet it might need to live in that toilet you're right and it would be jaundice so well for sure okay extremely jaundice okay anywh who Okay Claire Claire so the TV movie that Kristen was in oh yes we got the name of it yeah I got the name of it the TV movie that Kristen was in with Claire was called polish wedding M and she had braces in it but in the still that she showed me her mouth is closed do you think that was a racist thing where they were like all all Polish people wear braces everyone in this movie has to have braces y they have bad teeth they spent all their money on braces that's a stereotype we all know so Christen had braces in real life or she had um like prosthetic braces or Claire had bra good question no Claire didn't Kristen did she said I had braces but maybe you're right maybe that was the character had braces cuz did Kristen have braces now that I'm thinking about it I don't think she did I want to say she had them for like a week okay well that one of those people no like they were almost perfect right she's needed a I don't buy any of that no no no no no well they went to the orthodontist and he goes but I can have this fixed by Sunday I'm going to put these braces on you I'm take them off Sunday and you're GNA have a beautiful smile I would ask Google but instead I'm gonna ask Christian's Mom okay we have a quick question did Kristen have braces in life and for how long and if so for how long was it over a week we'll see if she responds I think she's at work but we should open up a orthodontia Clinic that's called one week orthodontia whether just be a huge scam I know I know but think how much business we would do in that first few weeks before people got wise to it your morals you're moral oh my God like the thing you sent me last night oh my God I have the greatest idea you think I can't even say it it's you have to make it very clear you're kidding okay so I'm I'm definitely joking I have no plans to really do this but we're watching The Morning Show and you know it's Loosely I'm guessing it's Loosely based on Matt L maybe they haven't said that explicitly but I would say yes okay so it appears to be kind of based on Matt laau and of all of his indiscretions there's no arguing the guy was incredibly good at that job right yeah and um Bill O'Reilly even though I can't I never watched the show and my politics are opposite tremendous at that job he was number one in the ratings for every year he was on that Network so anyways I was starting about launching a Network called canceled canceled Network or canceled TV and it's just all these guys that have been cancelled and uh you know I think people in public would be like I hate that person but then at home they would probably watch it because they would think no one's looking at them it was really an exploration of the difference between your public and private life sure sure sure sure sure and that's a joke that's a big joke that's a big big joke but yeah but I do think it would be very successful no I don't I'm not saying I want it to be successful I think it would be very successful I really don't I no I don't I mean I think they'd have a a percentage of people who would like it but do I think it'd be popular no and then you you you made a you came over the top really because I was saying LA and Bill O'Reilly which I don't think either was accused ever of forcing anyone against their will rampid abuses of power but I don't think there's any act rape allegations right but then you came over the top and said you could have Weinstein do like a movie of the week too it be I know I said Weinstein but that one he's a he's a well I had a feeling so actually that's why I said it I was wondering what you were going to say you didn't respond to me for the rest of the night oh no um but I was caught up in the show you've told me to watch but I wondered what your response was going to be because I thought maybe you were going to say something like that like that's not the same thing uhhuh but it's close to the same it's the same thing you're right you're right it is it is it you're right it's the same thing and there's a gradient yeah there is but and I always say I know cuz I'm always saying that and the more I'm like watching some of this actually I finished the morning show last night okay and oh Steve Carell God I love your a were really so much in a mess that's what that's what Mom said about you last night she said oh my God Monica had to change your pants five times over how good Steve everyone's jealous of Steve Carell cuz I talk about him all the time he's the new Jean Cordell yeah but anyway Steve Carl is so good but I'm watching this whole thing and I'm just like yeah it's horrible these these abuses of power and the chain of power and it's really bad and and sure so technically he didn't rape anyone I'm only drawing a distinction between consensual sex and non sensual I know but I think the line is a little more blurry than people have traditionally given it credit I think you're probably right yeah yeah I'm seeing this because I'm listening to catch and kill ronan's podcast which is really good and and I'm reading his book as well which is also really really good and yeah when you start hearing the accounts from a lot of the people like rose mcgaw's account all of a like she's being touched out of nowhere right and so it's just like you're catching up your brain is trying to catch up to what's going on and then it's evaluating all the ramifications you know career and or otherwise and so by the time you could even launch maybe a game plan you're pretty deep into an assault yeah exactly and so I definitely underestimate how much of what could have appeared to look like consent exactly isn't exactly which is another great chapter of Malcolm's book is the complexities of of consent he's like number one one of the biggest challenges is how can you even educate people in college about consent when there's no consensus on what consent is is it nodding yes is it removing your own clo like he starts pulling all these people on what thing constitutes consents and there's just no consensus around that so it's like you don't even really know what marching orders to give everyone it's true it's such a complicated topic oh yeah o o okay PE baby PE baby PE baby what are we going to name her PE baby consent I think we should name him or her peab baby she might are you hungry PE baby she might not like that well she won't know that'll work likely not but but but also she'll just assume that everyone was born in a toilet oh that's nice for her yeah although a pea baby you know could have both parts Maybe which would be cute yeah a little Dinger and a little dooo a little de and a little doooo hermaphrodite yeah Herr I learned in anthro there's really only been I think one or two in history really yeah because part of the definition is that both sex organs have to function so quite often like you'll see there's all kinds of things that could happen in the womb during the development where something was interrupted but then it came back online so you can have women with a vagina that appears almost to have like a penis on top with the glorus is but it's not really but you know there's been some cases that were filed as from afrodite but they're not they don't have functioning sex organs this says there's approximately 700 worldwide I don't believe that characterized by the presence of both ovarian and testicular tissues tissues or one or both gonads okay but all right so I think at least in my anthro class they had to be functioning not just present yeah they call this true hermaphroditism okay well look at this I just claimed I love being my mind changed so thank you rob it doesn't feel as fun when you do it as when I'll put some music underneath it so please so she said Claire now we're talking about yeah back to Claire not peab baby okay okay back to Claire so Soho at some point you were required to be an artist oh yeah I didn't want to make her eat up her time explaining the history that to me but I I was like I didn't know that you I know I had no idea it says the artist and Resident zoning law was passed in 1971 to allow for the conversion of 200 commercial lofts to residential use on the condition that each Loft contained a certified artist Soho and noo were es essentially zoned for quote joint living working spaces so that these properties would be op limits to any non-certified artists for years the law was widely ignored as agencies like the department of buildings concentrated their efforts on matters more pressing than carving out affordable spaces for artists to live how does one become certified as an artist I wonder I know and why aren't I certified should we explore this question yeah we should figure out the process cuz I want to get some dirt cheap square footage in Manhattan uh yeah in SoHo Soho is awesome yeah if I was living in New York I'd probably want to live there you what I'd live in the West Village or the West Village yeah it's hard to pick one or the other all the good burgers are over there in the West vly I'm hungry Corner beastro no but Emily's is in Brooklyn yeah yeah well there's an Emily's in the West Village in the West Village but it's not our it's not our Emily's it's beautiful it's the same Emil's and all the burgers are a little bit different in each location so ours was Brooklyn so good we'll eat there again maybe we'll bring our PE baby there a traveling with her is going to be hard I will say is Kristen GNA be her grandma or her mom well no she won't be her mom cuz's not in there I guess she'd be stepmom that doesn't feel super complimentary though does it well I mean I don't know what to say that's just the truth of the the world okay her pee is not in there but I'm not convinced that she won't go pee in there before our baby's made well if it can sing really well we'll know yeah okay so her mom oh yeah her mom had a daycare and that just reminded me you know my hot grandma had a daycare oh yeah God would I have loved to been one of the dads dropping the pee baby off and then chatting up your grandma no pee PE babies there but I would spend Summers you know with them and so I was always around all these little kids and I was really jealous you were yeah oh yeah I of your grandma's attention yeah and then like when my mom would come like sometimes I'd spend the whole summer my mom would be there for like a week or two and then my mom would play with some of these kids and I did not like that no and then my aunt would sometimes come in and also be nice like read us both a story and I was like no uhhuh that's my aunt yeah do you think that's from being an only child for eight years yeah probably I wanted a sibling so bad do you think you're going to have a strong streak of jealousy in your next relationship H maybe I hope not maybe though no I mean I'll try not to I'll work on it I'm serious I know I'm was just curious how do I know I can't predict that no but you have like a hunch maybe based on the babies playing with Grandma and your well okay look people evolve okay I'm not I do just think though when when you're born second like you're just your whole world view is you got to share mom with this kid it's just you're forced to practice sharing yeah yeah and in defining love not including exclusivity exactly that's true that's it's no it's no one's fault if you're born I would say my brother is much more like you just cuz he too had 5 years without me yeah that's true I mean I guess if I feel safe by the person I probably won't feel jealous right but I probably didn't feel safe with my mom or your beautiful Gaga I'm kidding I feel like it's off brand for your hot Gaga to have had a daycare oh really yeah well why cuz I'm going to all the stereotypical Indian immigrant oh and I think like engineering medical all these different things Dairy Queen no no I never think uh uh child care not my grandma's age women were not doing that women were Housewives right or Housewives yeah she was a housewife but then also ran a daycare oh okay was it profitable I don't know how much she charged they made a good living though right they saved a bunch of money and oh they were very frugal they didn't spend any money like she made all my mom and sister's clothes uhhuh but yeah my grandfather was a professor so yeah they had money right and they gave me all of it yeah just kidding just kidding just kidding okay so oh yes so she was talking about the guy in my so-called life who was in a noxa commercial so Jared Leto who was in the noxa commercial but he was actually in the commercial you liked with Rebecca gayart he was her love interest oh my God yeah yep I can't think of any Accolade that would more prove that you were the most beautiful couple in the world than to have a oxa campign I agree wow the skin of angels oh boy okay was Titanic the biggest movie of all time when it came out it set the record for highest domestic grossing movie ever from its debut in December 1997 to close in October 1998 making more than $650 million just domestically yeah you said psychology is 150 years old the late 19th century marked the start of psychology as a scientific Enterprise psychology as a self-conscious field of experimental study began in 1879 wow I almost nailed it to the dot do you want to do exact math it's 141 years wow great job so it's nine years off yeah really close hey Google what is 9 / 141 the answer is approximately 0.06 383 0. yes so it's less than 1% off by the way there is nothing cuter than Google in your chair it makes me smile so much every time I walk in she has her own microphone right she is really cute I feel like she has she's cuter than the PE baby don't you think she's um in love with that microphone cuz they look almost the same yeah they're like clearly of the same species yeah it's nice oh wow okay the DSM history that you get give yeah I can't find anything on that and then I checked with Wendy yeah she said a lot of stuff about the DSM and you're right that it's like controversy correct but uh she doesn't know anything about the thump although she was like I kind of remember hearing something like that and I said I think you may have heard it on our show oh no no no there's a um I could bring it up on YouTube right now yeah yeah yeah yeah y I've watched it three or four times English Man Who tricked psychologists let me see if it pops up if it doesn't pop up I'm going to move on it didn't pop up so let's move on okay so you'll find it and we'll put it on the yearly fact check oh je no we'll talk about we'll revisit it yeah mhm okay so the percentage of bipolar in the US bipolar disorder is a neurobiological brain disorder that affects approximately 2.3 million Americans today or almost 1% of the population her estimate was a little higher but she said I don't really know for sure right then you get always we always get into this you and I it's always like is that um people who have already acknowledged they are or it's hard to know in that figure is it a speculation extra this is people who are diagnosed I would guess yes there's got to be a lot then you go like Well there must be a ton of undiagnosed sure but there's no way to do any statistics on that we just can't do it don't have the tech unfort we do have a good piece of tech in here we do but we don't have all the tech hey Google how many peab babies exist in the world oh great question sorry I can't help with that yet well eventually she'll get to say one when when ours is born we'll get back to you Google okay we'll tell you first if we have the the first example of one all I love you bye love you [Music]