Kerry Washington

[0] Welcome, welcome.

[1] Welcome to Armchair Expert.

[2] I'm Dan Shepard.

[3] I'm joined by Lily Padman.

[4] Good day.

[5] What a great episode we have for everyone today.

[6] We really do.

[7] Truly a banger.

[8] Yeah.

[9] Is that cool to say?

[10] Bangor?

[11] Am I pulling that off?

[12] Yeah.

[13] Okay, great.

[14] Carrie Washington, I love Carrie Washington.

[15] She's an award -winning actor, producer, director, and activist.

[16] And she has a new memoir out right now that is so good called Thicker Than Water.

[17] She drops some bombs in this.

[18] She does, and she does it in the most elegant, non -shameful way that I really, really dug.

[19] Me too.

[20] And she's a party.

[21] Also, guys, what could be more exciting?

[22] She was an anthropology major.

[23] Wow.

[24] Oh, what a day to be alive.

[25] What a banger.

[26] Don't say it twice.

[27] Don't double dip.

[28] Yeah, I think once is good.

[29] Okay, great.

[30] Once per rep. Please enjoy Carrie Washington.

[31] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and add free right now.

[32] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[33] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[34] He's an armchair expert.

[35] How good's your hair right now.

[36] I know.

[37] You're so tiny.

[38] Does everybody say that?

[39] We're a funny combo because I always get you're much taller in real life.

[40] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[41] Yeah.

[42] You're so tiny and we're often together.

[43] It's so cute.

[44] Yes, exactly.

[45] Oh, it's real.

[46] It's happening.

[47] I'm so happy to have you.

[48] I'm so happy to have you for years.

[49] Oh, I've even begged you in person in real life.

[50] I've been at independent spirit or something.

[51] Yeah, yeah, or like night before, those kind of industry things.

[52] Back when I attended those and I saw you, I would always...

[53] Back when those things happened.

[54] Yes, I would always say, you've got to come on.

[55] I'm glad you waited until there was a strike so we can.

[56] can hardly talk about your career.

[57] That's the ideal time for you to arrive.

[58] You don't have to wear headphones, but if you want, oh no, your hair's so good, you probably don't want to wear head too.

[59] It'll puff back up.

[60] Okay, okay.

[61] Maybe I'll put it around.

[62] Let's see.

[63] Oh, this is kind of like the challenge we have when we try to do hats.

[64] I feel like I should start doing that.

[65] You want to try, you do it too to match.

[66] That way you guys are both matching.

[67] Is it gonna stay though?

[68] Put one ear off and pretend you're like recording an album.

[69] And be like really cool.

[70] I'm coming in on eight or 12.

[71] Exactly, exactly, exactly.

[72] Wait, I went to the harmony one more time for me, the same way it's working for Carrie.

[73] I don't know that it's working so well for her.

[74] I think it's slid over.

[75] I'm using my shoulders to try to hold it up.

[76] I might just go the regular way too.

[77] You can also ditch them if you want, but we like it because it's very intimate.

[78] It's all about your own voice, right?

[79] In a cave.

[80] We're in a cave now.

[81] I like the candles.

[82] You guys have candles going?

[83] Oh, I did it for you because it smelled weird when I walked in.

[84] And I was like, this isn't appropriate for care.

[85] It smelled like the food from Friday.

[86] No, it smelled kind of smoky.

[87] Oh, wow.

[88] Oh, hello.

[89] I've been smoking cigarettes up here on the weekends.

[90] That was my fear.

[91] I didn't tell you that.

[92] That's my guess and fear.

[93] After 18 years off cigarettes, I was like, are we sure we want to be off cigarettes?

[94] Let's go up to the.

[95] Let's try it out.

[96] We did allow smoking once.

[97] Yeah, it's happened in here.

[98] Really?

[99] Who was it?

[100] We've allowed pot smoking, which is fine.

[101] But cigarette smoking, you smell it for a week.

[102] A long time.

[103] A long time.

[104] It's about.

[105] summer.

[106] The weed smoke clears out.

[107] And you were fine with the weed smoke in here?

[108] Yeah, I don't really care.

[109] I think we did maybe crack a window, but it was okay.

[110] If he had been firing up lines of cocaine in front of me, I might have been a white knuckle.

[111] Yeah, like, you know, we know our triggers, right?

[112] Yeah.

[113] I would have gone to the bathroom.

[114] I would have come back.

[115] It would have been a disaster.

[116] Yeah.

[117] You know, it would have been making out probably.

[118] That would have been great.

[119] People drink around me all the time.

[120] That was the primary addiction.

[121] But the only one that I wouldn't want to be around is cocaine.

[122] Yeah.

[123] It smells so good.

[124] It just smells so good.

[125] It smells good?

[126] No, that's a Jamie Fox joke.

[127] Ding, ding, ding.

[128] I got it.

[129] He said on that barbershop show, he said, oh, I don't like cocaine, but I love how it smells.

[130] That's really good.

[131] Yeah, it's wonderful.

[132] Is that a Tori Birch bag?

[133] Mm -mm.

[134] I love these bags, and I forget that, but it's a black designer.

[135] Ooh, I really like me. She's very fancy.

[136] I love fancy.

[137] It just has the symbol.

[138] I'll get it for you.

[139] Okay.

[140] Yeah, I'd like to know.

[141] They come in all colors.

[142] Cute.

[143] She's amazing.

[144] Do I look super weird now with the headphones?

[145] No, the hair's still okay?

[146] You're in 11, so even if we put, like, some food all over your cheeks, you'd still be like...

[147] Wait, I'm so nervous, you guys.

[148] No, you're not.

[149] I am.

[150] Tell me why.

[151] Because I was talking about this with my husband.

[152] I've never said yes to this show in years past because sort of that thing I write about in the book.

[153] I always felt like I didn't really have anything to say.

[154] Like, I just felt like I didn't have enough clarity about myself or my journey or my willingness to talk about myself.

[155] So, like, you can't come on this show if you're not going to really talk about yourself.

[156] Well, you can.

[157] You can, but I appreciate it.

[158] Exactly.

[159] I agree that you have to be a little vulnerable to be a part of it.

[160] Yeah, that's what's so great about this show is you guys really go there with people.

[161] And I was like, well, I'm not going there with anybody.

[162] We're having a hard time believing you listen to the show.

[163] But I'm going to say.

[164] I do.

[165] I love the show.

[166] I'm going to say we're very platter.

[167] I love the show.

[168] This show is one of my podcasts that got me through the pandemic.

[169] Oh, my Lord, this is such wonderful news.

[170] Well, it does make sense because I imagine prior to writing the book, these are all things you're going to maybe die with.

[171] 100%.

[172] Right?

[173] Yeah.

[174] I was going to die with secrets I didn't even know I had.

[175] And then some of them were things that I just was like, there's no need for me to talk about that.

[176] Yes.

[177] Now you have to do press for the book.

[178] Yeah.

[179] And this is a pretty common sit where it's like, you're safe in your house or wherever you write, back of your van down by the river.

[180] Yes.

[181] That's in my closet.

[182] I actually did a lot of my writing standing in my closet.

[183] But let's be honest, your closet is 1 ,200 square feet, right?

[184] It's not.

[185] It's not.

[186] I kept thinking like, shouldn't I have a fancier closet when it was in there?

[187] It does have a tiny little island in the middle.

[188] But like I share a closet with Nomdi.

[189] There's no where to sit in my closet.

[190] You can just walk around the little tiny island.

[191] That's it.

[192] Okay.

[193] But I stood in there with not really food, but drinks, like fluids.

[194] Yeah.

[195] Not snacks because then I would just eat and not write.

[196] and no distracting.

[197] Like, I can't listen to anything that I can sing along to.

[198] It has to be things that I don't know the tune.

[199] Right.

[200] Or the words.

[201] That limits us to jazz and classical.

[202] Yeah.

[203] Or, like, gray noise.

[204] Gray noise, okay.

[205] Ooh, like a nice...

[206] That drowns out my noisy kids.

[207] But from the closet to now out on shows.

[208] Yeah.

[209] Having to talk about it's an entirely different thing, isn't it?

[210] It is.

[211] How has that been going?

[212] Because you've been doing it now.

[213] I have been doing it.

[214] Does it feel like it cheapens it when they reduce it to some of the more exciting or salacious parts and they just get you right away and you don't have the ramp up and you don't have the context.

[215] I feel like I've been really lucky present company included to be talking about the book with people that are more thoughtful.

[216] So it hasn't felt too reductive.

[217] You haven't done TMZ yet.

[218] Not yet.

[219] Okay.

[220] That's coming up.

[221] This afternoon.

[222] So I think it's been okay.

[223] It's been okay.

[224] I actually feel more and more free.

[225] Every interview that I do, I feel a little bit more liberated, a little bit more myself, comfortable.

[226] Well, I think a little bit of reservation about talking about what you've written is a common pattern.

[227] And then what also is an incredibly common pattern is you do it.

[228] And then whatever shadow you had in your head saying, they're going to say this about me, they're going to say this.

[229] When you realize that it's just recognition.

[230] Yeah, of the truth.

[231] The people who, you know, they don't want to know about this, they're not stumbling.

[232] across it, right?

[233] That's right.

[234] Like no one's at a fucking biker bar right now going, I just found out Olivia Pope's pro choice.

[235] Yeah, that's right.

[236] Feeling betrayed.

[237] That's not happening.

[238] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[239] That's right.

[240] You in particular have been so vulnerable and brave on this show that it's kind of the culture.

[241] It would be disrespectful to come in here and not be like, whatever you guys want to talk about, I'm going to try to go there.

[242] Yeah, it's like the proverbial hut where they offer you the goat balls.

[243] They eat them and it's a great honor.

[244] If everybody else is eating go balls, I guess I have to eat go balls.

[245] Here we are.

[246] Culturally, I have to meet them.

[247] What a upsetting?

[248] Upsetting.

[249] Oh, upsetting.

[250] Stunning and upsetting.

[251] It would be great, though, if you just go, wow, what a stunning analogy.

[252] It's so complimentary.

[253] Well, you're probably going to ask this so I'm jumping the ship.

[254] If you were going to die with a bunch of secrets, what changed that made you feel like, no, I need to write it.

[255] I feel like, in some ways.

[256] the universe tricked me into writing this book.

[257] Because a lot of what I write about in the book is this kind of revelatory information that my parents dropped on me a few years ago shared with me is probably the kinder way to say it.

[258] Right after that, actually, but I just was totally compartmentalizing and like, I'm not going to deal with that information.

[259] I sold this other book idea.

[260] And that book idea was like a very pop -cultory.

[261] Here are the 10 things I learned from Livia Pope and very, like, sticky, cute, culturally relevant, easier, not so searching.

[262] Episode of Sex in the City.

[263] Yes.

[264] I sold that book.

[265] And then every time I would sit down to write it, this other new information was with me and I was grappling with it.

[266] I just felt like I couldn't write an honest book about my experience and the things that I knew and felt without dealing with this other thing.

[267] My whole being was sort of flipped inside out by this news that I just felt like I couldn't write that other book.

[268] And so I tried to give the publisher all their money back and was like, I'm not going to write a book.

[269] I really can't write a book right now, and they were really patient with me and just kept saying, well, you know, maybe just try writing something just for yourself.

[270] So I don't mean that they tricked me, but it did feel like I was set up where I was supposed to write something and I needed to deliver something.

[271] And I think I started writing it to help me make sense of my life with this new information and maybe writing it a little bit for me and for my kids.

[272] Can you tell us the new information?

[273] Yeah.

[274] But if you haven't read the book, you should stop listening now.

[275] spoiler alert oh you think it unravels if we know this no but if you don't want to know i think the book is still readable yeah so this is great so for the next we're going to put 30s well no then we're going to talk about well yeah tell i think it will make people want to read it more to be honest to get more detail and more yeah my parents sat me down a few years ago and told me that my dad is not my biological father that i was born from a sperm donor whoa wow yeah wow wow wow wow can i be dead on honest with you because I refuse to lie to you.

[276] Yeah.

[277] The book is seven hours and 48 minutes.

[278] Yeah.

[279] And I'm six hours through.

[280] Oh, no. So I didn't know that.

[281] Oh, no. No, no. Yeah.

[282] Yeah.

[283] Yeah.

[284] Yeah.

[285] Yeah.

[286] Yeah.

[287] Yeah.

[288] Yeah.

[289] Yeah.

[290] Also, this is very relevant to a lot of stuff we talk about on here.

[291] We had a show called Race to 35 where I froze my eggs.

[292] Uh -huh.

[293] We talked to a lot of people in this situation.

[294] Whoa.

[295] Now, it's so common.

[296] Our kids, half of their friends are sperm donor, egg donor, surrogate, adopted.

[297] AI even.

[298] Some have some fully functional robots.

[299] Robo.

[300] Robots in the class.

[301] But my parents were like renegades.

[302] You know, this was 76.

[303] There were no sperm banks.

[304] They had tried and tried and tried.

[305] You usually thought it was my mom's issue.

[306] And then when my dad became part of the process, they said, okay, now that we've seen what's happening, you have two choices.

[307] You can either adopt or do this new thing that's very experimental and kind of secretive.

[308] But we'll try it if you're interested.

[309] And so my parents took a leap.

[310] They got to screen the app?

[311] No, there was nothing to screen.

[312] There were no applications.

[313] There was no nothing.

[314] Do they at least know the ethnicity?

[315] They could say, we want a black parent.

[316] What my mother said was, we just want him to be black and we want him to be healthy.

[317] Okay, great.

[318] That was it.

[319] But also, what did they know about healthy?

[320] They should have thrown parallel Parker in that.

[321] Like good parallel Parker, healthy.

[322] Ivy League, education, something.

[323] No, no, no, no. Well, now you can do all of that.

[324] Now you can.

[325] But back then.

[326] But you lived in Brooklyn.

[327] Parallel parking.

[328] I'm sorry.

[329] I'm sorry.

[330] Yeah.

[331] Parallel parking was tantamount to breathing oxygen.

[332] I mean, this would have been a skill that could save years.

[333] And I'm not great at it.

[334] Either of mine.

[335] That's where they, that was the big mistake.

[336] Yeah, wow.

[337] So my parents told me this thing.

[338] It was a family secret that completely changed my sense of who I was and who they were to me. And so a lot of me writing the book was about me trying to make sense of that.

[339] And answered this nagging question you had had since you were very young, which is you felt like, there was some distance, right?

[340] Some weird emotional distance between my parents and I. Yeah.

[341] What I love about the book, there's so many great things, but I love learning the things that you and I had in common.

[342] It's so fun.

[343] Like what?

[344] Tell me, tell me. Well, first of all, you're the first guest we've had that was an anthropology major who wasn't an active anthropologist.

[345] Oh, wow.

[346] But my friend Jason Delion, who now teaches at UCLA in the archaeology department.

[347] He's the only other, maybe we might have, but they like, it incorporated.

[348] But no, we're the only two acts.

[349] Yes.

[350] Yes.

[351] How thrilling.

[352] It's so relevant, right?

[353] Don't you find it so relevant in the work?

[354] That's what I tell people in interviews.

[355] What's your pitch?

[356] Do you believe it or not?

[357] I do.

[358] I think it's an easy intellectual architecture to lay out, which is like you learn to be culturally relative.

[359] So in cultural relativism, you're not judging the people you're saying.

[360] You're not interested in drawing a verdict.

[361] That's right.

[362] Is infanticide evil in Inuits?

[363] Let's find out why it even has.

[364] If we're there just to say it's bad, then we're not going to learn anything.

[365] That's right.

[366] And then, of course, you can apply that immediately to whoever you're playing, especially if you're playing a bad person, right?

[367] You cannot judge your characters.

[368] Now, have I ever been about to audition and thought, like, huh, no, I'm going to treat this just like the Maasai or the Kalahari Bush people or the Yonamama?

[369] But I do think it gave me. It's so long.

[370] So fun.

[371] It gave me a worldview that I did embrace.

[372] Or maybe I was looking for a major that would let me embrace it.

[373] But what drew you?

[374] I think very similar.

[375] I am so fascinated by how people become who they are, why they are who they are, and how they express who they are in language, dance, music, food, behavior.

[376] So all of that is this combination of psychology, sociology, and anthropology.

[377] Just what makes a person a person and how do they express that personhood?

[378] Yeah.

[379] I think mine was like, just growing up, I had a sense of like, I don't know if I dig this society.

[380] If I agree with it, yeah.

[381] Like the rules of it.

[382] Yes, I don't know.

[383] Like all these rules everyone's agreed to.

[384] Some of them don't feel right to me intuitively.

[385] There's got to be different ways.

[386] And I think I really wanted to know what the different ways were because I don't think I really was super excited to just embrace the thing I was being given.

[387] Oh, that's funny.

[388] Similarly, I think I was from a very young age, as I write about, really confronted with the idea that I was living in one culture in the Bronx and going to school in this other culture on the Upper East Side of.

[389] Manhattan's at Spence, and they felt like entirely different universes that were just 45 -minute commute from each other, but they were entirely different galaxies of behavior and identity.

[390] Yeah.

[391] So I was trying to make sense of that.

[392] Well, and you would think you had a bit of a intermediary step, which was first you're just in your PS -71 or whatever was, right?

[393] Yes, yes, yes, yes, PS -182.

[394] 182.

[395] And then you get moved.

[396] Does it become this?

[397] And then I go to PS -71.

[398] You're so good.

[399] Okay, so, yes, they are going to combine schools to offer some gifted and talented programs.

[400] They wanted to move the gifted and talented program out of the black neighborhood and put it closer to where the white kids live.

[401] So the white kids didn't have to bus in.

[402] Yeah.

[403] You at, what, third, fourth grade, you now moved to a predominantly Italian school.

[404] So it was the first one.

[405] Yes, that's right.

[406] And you probably thought you were at apex otherness.

[407] I was like, whoa.

[408] All these white kids, very different culturally.

[409] all of us had grandparents who came in to Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty, the whole thing, but they spoke a different language.

[410] They were so different.

[411] At that school, they celebrated Columbus Day.

[412] That was the biggest holiday of the year.

[413] And so it was very, very different, but it was entirely unlike the next level of different at Spence, which was like helipads in your Hampton's home.

[414] Well, this is great because it's very rare that someone gets to experience the many different things.

[415] You are in a weird position where you could kind of evaluate.

[416] Because to me, the socioeconomic bond is pretty strong.

[417] It's huge.

[418] So I guess I'm curious, the culture shock you got from being in an Italian place versus being in a wealthy place, which do you think was more stark?

[419] Spence.

[420] The socioeconomic difference, you know, at PS 71, we were all still middle class, working middle class, upper middle class, but we were all in that zone.

[421] Spence, when I set foot on that land, there was a sense of betrayal.

[422] Like there was a world that was being kept from me and people who looked like me. We didn't know that you could live this way.

[423] Well, you would eat with silverware in China.

[424] Yeah, we didn't have sports in my school.

[425] We had China and silverware and tablecloths?

[426] No tablecloth.

[427] Unless there were special events.

[428] Okay.

[429] The mother -daughter tea after school, they pulled out the tablecloth.

[430] This is like Hogwarts, right?

[431] Monica, are you going to Hogwarts with the real cutlery and the real China?

[432] But I have a weird question I just thought of.

[433] Did you feel guilt that you were, quote, picked to be in this world that no other black people were, I assume?

[434] There were a few of us.

[435] Okay.

[436] But not from my neighborhood.

[437] I didn't grapple as much with Survivor's guilt in the beginning.

[438] I think that happened later, like in college, when I did realize that this had sort of set me on a different trajectory.

[439] You're probably bumping into kids you had sleepovers with and you're seeing how they're lives.

[440] But I did feel pressure to be one of the future.

[441] chosen to go off and make something better of your life, elevate your existence.

[442] I definitely felt pressure.

[443] Like I knew that they were giving me financial aid and a scholarship and my parents were working extra hard to provide this opportunity for me. And so I didn't want to screw it up.

[444] All these people were investing right in me. And I didn't want to waste that.

[445] I didn't want to let people down.

[446] Yeah.

[447] And that's where, yes, the white kids are free to fail out.

[448] Like there's so many of these rich kids, they go there and they fuck up the whole time.

[449] They get kicked out.

[450] They go to another school.

[451] Yeah, yeah.

[452] But no, you got to be top -notch.

[453] It's that twice -as -good thing.

[454] You have to work twice as hard to get half as much.

[455] Yeah, that's right.

[456] The dentist -the -dentist thing.

[457] The average dentist.

[458] That's very real.

[459] You really feel that.

[460] Average dentist.

[461] Yeah, living next door to Mary J. Blige and Chris Rock.

[462] One of the greatest R &B singers of all time and the greatest comedian of all time.

[463] So my good friend, Joy Bryant, is also from the box.

[464] Yes, she is.

[465] I love Joy.

[466] And she, too, went to a boarding school.

[467] Yes, she did.

[468] We had very parallel.

[469] experiences.

[470] She just was a supermodel so she had a different path in that way.

[471] She was taller than you.

[472] Stunning and gorgeous.

[473] But I'm a huge joy fan.

[474] I started watching parenthood because of joy.

[475] Because I love joy.

[476] And then I was like, this is an amazing show.

[477] Actually, I'll tell you something, buddy.

[478] When I met my now husband, I was kind of out of an engagement.

[479] And so I was in a stage of not knowing if I believed in marriage.

[480] It didn't know if I wanted to have kids.

[481] I was kind of trying to redefine the rules for myself.

[482] And when we started dating he was like you know how do you feel about those things and I was like I really don't know if that path is my path and later on in the date he was like all right well what is some of your favorite shows and I was like say yes to the dress parenthood my fair wedding he was like I feel like you're still into the parent and kids and marriage thing I was like maybe I don't know that is really funny that show together you did yeah yeah that was like one of our first shows I didn't know this until researching you that your husband played football at Berkeley yet.

[483] Yeah.

[484] Then was a raider.

[485] Goes down as one of the greatest raiders of all time.

[486] One of the greatest raters of all time.

[487] Oh, my God, cool.

[488] I know.

[489] So cool.

[490] That's awesome.

[491] I really liked this for you.

[492] I've never met him.

[493] He's also the nicest.

[494] You would adore him.

[495] And he's an actor.

[496] He's an incredible actor.

[497] When he made his first film that he produced, he got nominated for an Independent Spirit Award.

[498] And I was like, do I have to, like, go pick up.

[499] figure skating so I can be on the cover of Sports Illustrated like this is like a little stepping on your shoes yes but I love it that's I love it some people just can do everything it's annoying he's one of those people he's like oh Paul Robeson who's Paul Robson oh you have to go look him up he's a really important civil rights leader who was a football player and an opera singer oh no kidding a true Renaissance man oh yeah truly or like Terry Cruz so radical like acting Painting, football, all of this.

[500] Incredible artists.

[501] How did you guys meet, if you don't mind my asking?

[502] No, we met backstage at a play I was doing on Broadway.

[503] He's a big theater guy.

[504] What a unicorn this guy is.

[505] So special.

[506] And he came and he was represented as an athlete at the same agency that I've been as an actor.

[507] He's at CAA.

[508] He's still at CAA, but then, you know, in their sports department.

[509] And so I got an email saying, like, one of our really important football players is coming to the show.

[510] Will you meet him afterward?

[511] Four -time pro bowler.

[512] And I was like, I guess so.

[513] You're like, I didn't have sports at my school.

[514] Yeah, we didn't have football in New York City also.

[515] And I had all these stereotypes about what a football player would be.

[516] So I was like, oh, great.

[517] And I said to one of the other actors in the show, like, I got to go talk to this guy.

[518] Will you save me in like 10?

[519] Yeah, will you save me in 10 minutes?

[520] I'm like, I'm not going to have anything to talk to him about.

[521] And I come downstairs in the theater and he is not at all what I was picturing in my head.

[522] Shame on me for all stereotypes.

[523] Yeah, he looked like James Baldwin, like P .Code and a Beanie.

[524] Like he looked like he just got off a plane.

[525] from Paris.

[526] Oh, my God.

[527] Had, like, poetry and his pocket vibes.

[528] And I was flummoxed.

[529] In fact, when my friend came downstairs, my friend was David Allen Greer, actually.

[530] Oh, dang.

[531] And what's crazy is that then Namdi and Dag wound up doing a play on Broadway years later together.

[532] Oh, no kidding.

[533] So, so sweet.

[534] But so, Dag was there.

[535] Dad came to save me, and I was like, I'm good.

[536] I'm totally good.

[537] Fuck out of here.

[538] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[539] Make yourself scarce.

[540] Yeah, I'm fine.

[541] I was like, oh, I'm in trouble.

[542] So mom and dad are pretty.

[543] opposite, right?

[544] Mom is, we'll say type A. She's a professor and overachiever.

[545] She's very elegant and composed and super smart.

[546] And dad's a good time, Charlie.

[547] He fucking charismatic, great dresser.

[548] We should go to the bar together.

[549] I mean, you wouldn't leave.

[550] We were actually doing an interview together for the book.

[551] And somebody said, to my parents, like, what's your advice if a family's trying to work through family secrets?

[552] And, you know, what would you say?

[553] And my mom was like, you know, I would say it's really important to talk to somebody, whether it's a pastor or a therapist or a good friend to talk to somebody you trust.

[554] And therapy is really important.

[555] My dad was like, I disagree.

[556] Oh, God.

[557] He was like, the best therapists are bartenders.

[558] They hear your stories, but you don't ever have to see them again if you don't want to.

[559] And I was like, but dad, where's the healing in that?

[560] Right?

[561] Like the family healing, where's the reward?

[562] And he was like, I'll tell you the reward when the bartender's like, next round on me. Like you've had him with such a breakthrough.

[563] Oh, my God.

[564] It's kind of true.

[565] It's great.

[566] And that's, I think a lot of what, for me, has been kind of the result of this book and this process, really, with my family of this secret being told and us working through it together and going to family therapy is, I think that would have in the past devastated me. I would have been, like, embarrassed and ashamed and would have been angry.

[567] And now I just see the magic in who he is.

[568] Yeah, yeah.

[569] And I don't want to change him.

[570] I just want to love him.

[571] Well, look, you know what's so funny is.

[572] is those kind of things, yes, all of our parents are extensions of our own identity and ego.

[573] And when they visit said, it's always nerve -wracking.

[574] But it's just universal and it's kind of sweet.

[575] But what's funny is you could brussel up against that he's being uncouth or low -brow or something.

[576] What you're aspiring to in the book is knowing yourself, is to be authentic to yourself, is to be fully integrated with who you are.

[577] And this motherfucker is just doing it, right?

[578] Yeah, he is who he is.

[579] In some ways, I had to deal with the betrayal of my mother differently than my father because, in my opinion, my mom actually kept a secret from me. But my dad truly bought into this alternate reality that I was his and he was mine.

[580] And there was no secret for him.

[581] I didn't really understand denial till being in this process with him.

[582] But it's so beautiful.

[583] It was just like that thing got locked in a section, I don't know, out of his brain, out in the world.

[584] And there was no secret to keep from me because it just didn't happen.

[585] He just placed that summer.

[586] Yeah.

[587] When I sat with my parents and I said, I just spoke to the doctor, he said that there's a point zero, zero, zero, zero, one percent chance that we are biologically related.

[588] He's like, there's a chance.

[589] Right.

[590] Like, that's his last one million's full.

[591] Yes, that is his truth, you know.

[592] I would imagine if I were him, I see the motivation, which is I meet you, I meet you, I fall in love with you.

[593] I love caring for you and being in your life.

[594] and I can feel how much you love me. And the scariest thing in the world would be that you would find out I'm not your real dad and you wouldn't love me as much as you do.

[595] That's a powerful motivation.

[596] I know that their choice, particularly because it was 77, it wasn't the world we live in today where everybody's freezing eggs and going through catalogs of donor sperm.

[597] They were renegades.

[598] They were so courageous and so innovative and took this risk.

[599] And I know that their decision to not tell me was not meant to hurt me. It was to try to protect.

[600] protect me. They made a call and it was the wrong one, maybe.

[601] Or maybe it was what it was.

[602] You know, back then the doctor would say, like, you have this sperm and then go home and have sex and then there's plausible deniability and nobody thought there would ever be DNA test.

[603] So for him, he really was like, that kid is mine.

[604] Yeah.

[605] Okay.

[606] Lovely.

[607] Yeah.

[608] So everyone's trying to foster this idea.

[609] And I think for her, it was like, why tell her, why stress her out?

[610] And then she says, then when I was in my 20, she was going to tell me, but I had this crazy eating disorder.

[611] And she was like, I'm not going to tell her now.

[612] She's crazy enough.

[613] There was never a right time to tell me. It's really complicated.

[614] Look, you are who you are and we love who you are and you like who you are and your children love who you are.

[615] I can relate to, I wouldn't want to erase any of my trauma.

[616] No, it's the journey.

[617] But secrets are palpable.

[618] You feel them where sick is our secrets.

[619] Yeah.

[620] You feel them even if you don't know what they are.

[621] There's that sense of not feeling safe, feeling unmoored.

[622] I knew that I wasn't getting the real.

[623] I didn't trust the environment that I was raised in.

[624] And I'm sure had a very hard time, probably still have a hard time trusting anyway.

[625] Yeah.

[626] But the gift of them being forced, really, into telling me is that it has, I think, given me back a sense of trusting myself.

[627] You're like, I knew it.

[628] I feel like in these years, I've been able to mend that pathway with my own intuition to say, like, I fucking knew.

[629] Yes.

[630] I was right.

[631] I'm not crazy.

[632] It can reconfirm the trust with yourself, which is great.

[633] Huge.

[634] And that is, to me, the most important one.

[635] That's the huge gift of all.

[636] what they've given me, is this ability to trust myself, to know the truth of myself.

[637] How did it come to be that they were forced to tell you?

[638] I am friends with Skip Gates, the Harvard professor who once had beers with Obama at the White House.

[639] So he has this show.

[640] He does the heredity thing, right?

[641] He has this show on PBS called Finding Your Roots.

[642] And when scandal was ending, he was like, I know you haven't had time to do the show.

[643] But now you're going to have some time.

[644] Can we get you on the show?

[645] And I was like, yes.

[646] Like my mom loves this stuff.

[647] She's done tons of research on her side of the family.

[648] and we really don't know a lot about my dad's side, let's do it.

[649] And if I can add, your mother's parents are from Jamaica.

[650] Yes.

[651] So that's always going to be a confusing lineage to sort out because of the history of Jamaica.

[652] And then your father's family is all from these islands in South Carolina.

[653] But my mom, she's really done a ton of work on her lineage, like back to Irish and Scottish immigrants in Jamaica who worked on plantations.

[654] But my dad's side, we didn't know a lot.

[655] And so I was really thrilled and I thought they would be really thrilled.

[656] and they were at first because they thought it was all like public records and census research and then I was like now if you can just spit into these tubes also for the show and my dad started having panic attacks yeah yeah it was really hard the big lie he's been trying to keep forever but again it wasn't like when my mom first said do you think you're nervous because of what she might find out genetically his response was what are you talking about like his body knew but his brain did not His brain was not ready.

[657] The body was keeping the score.

[658] Yes, his brain had to catch up.

[659] Wow.

[660] Yeah.

[661] I talk pretty openly about my childhood and it involves my mother.

[662] And I've had my mother on this show.

[663] Yeah, I know.

[664] And she has been incredibly generous in saying like, your story is your story.

[665] You're entitled to tell your story.

[666] I'm a part of it.

[667] And then I have my story and you're a part of mine.

[668] Was it hard for you to write the book?

[669] By the way, you celebrate them like crazy.

[670] But you're also being very honest about your childhood in that house.

[671] I think this is the thing that is most moving for me is that in the past when I have said no to coming on a show like this, I think it's been very connected to the idea that I've never really felt like the lead character in the story of my life.

[672] I have devoted my life to being these other characters because their stories were so clear.

[673] But I never really felt secure in the value of my life as being an important story.

[674] story of its own.

[675] So a show where I talk about myself is like, why waste everybody's time?

[676] And when I got this information, it felt like my first call to adventure.

[677] It felt like for the first time I was the protagonist in the story.

[678] And I realized that I had up until five or six years ago been the supporting character in the story that my parents were telling, but not the lead character in my life.

[679] Them giving me this information made me feel like maybe I can center myself and figure out what my story is.

[680] That's what writing the book was.

[681] What is my story?

[682] Who am I?

[683] And how did I get here?

[684] And what does it all mean?

[685] And they have very elegantly and graciously become supporting characters in my story.

[686] And that is lovely.

[687] It's also for me as a mother.

[688] I was just going to say, such a profound example.

[689] Because I was like, oh, this is the job of parenting, actually.

[690] It's not about us.

[691] And it really has allowed me to say, I get to be the lead character in my story of my life.

[692] And I'm grateful that I'm getting to do that at this age.

[693] But I have to remember that with my kids, I am not the lead character of their story.

[694] I am here to support their story.

[695] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[696] What's up, guys?

[697] It's your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season.

[698] And let me tell you, it's too good.

[699] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[700] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[701] I don't mean just friends.

[702] I mean the likes of Amy Poehler, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on.

[703] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[704] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

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[714] Prime members can listen early and ad -free on Amazon Music.

[715] I would imagine the kids also are a motivator in telling your story, because you need to inform them how you got to where you were at, where you had them.

[716] Right.

[717] I don't want them to feel unmoored in their origin story.

[718] I want them to feel secure about the magic of where they come from so that they can leap off into their own adventure.

[719] Yes.

[720] And there were many things over the years that were being kept from you that your mother had been married before your father, that she had had a stillborn.

[721] There were things that were leaking.

[722] Your father was a part of a 10 -year -long investigation with the IRS.

[723] And ultimately had to go to court and admitted some guilt.

[724] And you wrote a letter and they asked you to do that.

[725] So things were trickling.

[726] And the sexual abuse that I was keeping from them, right?

[727] There were all of these secrets that we were keeping from each other.

[728] Yes, all in theory to protect one another, I know.

[729] To love each other.

[730] That's what's sad is like none of it is nefarious.

[731] The intention ill -advised, but the intention is like protecting everyone.

[732] But it does not protect you.

[733] And in fact, the more flawed you are, the more helpful it is to me because I feel flawed and I'm messing up all the time.

[734] Gives me permission to be human.

[735] Yes, to fuck up.

[736] I think there's this false idea in culture that you can either be in relationship or you can be in truth.

[737] It's weird.

[738] It's very weird that if you tell the truth, it will cost you the closeness of the relationship, as opposed to my experience in this journey with my parents is that in truth, we're so much closer than we've ever been before.

[739] We know ourselves better.

[740] We know each other better.

[741] I feel so much more in love with my parents than I did before this information came along.

[742] Well, they're three -dimensional.

[743] They've had struggles and they've had vulnerabilities and that's attractive and it makes you love.

[744] and want to comfort.

[745] And it means I can be myself because they're being themselves.

[746] Yeah, everyone can chill and be themselves.

[747] Take off the mask.

[748] I bet she was relieved ultimately that she had to come forward with this.

[749] Think how much lighter their lights are.

[750] I see it in her every day.

[751] Because also I've given them this list of like the book is coming out.

[752] So if there are people you need to tell before it comes out, like now is the time.

[753] I mean, she has four sisters she just told them this past May. They didn't confide in anybody with each other.

[754] soul.

[755] It sounds like they didn't even talk about it amongst themselves.

[756] Right.

[757] Right.

[758] Because I think, again, he had this other belief.

[759] There was nothing to talk about.

[760] I mean, what a phenomenal secret keeper that she just walked around for over 40 years with not a soul, not a therapist, not a sponsor, not a best friend.

[761] Yeah.

[762] I won't make you get into it.

[763] People should read the book, but some sexual abuse.

[764] It's a peer.

[765] And it's a kid or it's a teen.

[766] And there was all these sleepovers that you guys always had in the neighborhood.

[767] And I don't know what we could point to, but I think what's important is that through some accumulation of aces, your self -image starts getting a little warped and you start getting a bit controlling.

[768] When does that start?

[769] I do think it's related to the abuse.

[770] I don't think I draw that line directly in the book, but I do think because this stuff was happening when I was sleeping and I felt very out of control of it, I think they're developed early on this sense that I needed to be in control of my body in order to feel safe.

[771] Right.

[772] Also, my very biology, this is obviously just in looking back.

[773] I didn't know at the time, but my biology was a threat to my parents, right?

[774] The truth of my body and how it came to be here was a fact that my parents didn't want to deal with.

[775] Can I also just add?

[776] Yes.

[777] Because you know you're a parent.

[778] The two of us are sitting around waiting until our own shittiness arises in the kids.

[779] Yes.

[780] Now you throw in a third party that we've never met and you're going to be a little on the lookout for, oh, you know.

[781] What is it?

[782] Yeah, they had no idea.

[783] You're going to be examining.

[784] Like, I talk about my dad not being in the delivery room when I was born because I was born on the night that the last episode of Roots aired.

[785] Can't miss it.

[786] And he can't miss it.

[787] He's going to bring the nurses with him here.

[788] My mom is in the delivery room alone with the doctor.

[789] And I also think that maybe my dad couldn't be in there because what if the kid comes out white?

[790] What if the kid comes out?

[791] Who knows?

[792] Nobody knew, right?

[793] I think about my mother carrying that anxiety for nine months of like, I don't know half of what's in here, but I know I really am going to love it, whatever it is, that comes out.

[794] I had a fraught relationship with my biology and body from the very beginning, and my way through that was to say I'm going to use these tools of food and exercise to escape my body, to not be present, to try to numb myself.

[795] And then because I have to be perfect in order to be loved, I'm going to then try to lock down on control and not eat and over -exercise.

[796] It just was like this crazy cycle of abuse.

[797] And we should add, because I think it's an important foundational element, is that your parents also fought pretty horrendously while you were little, and they thought you were asleep and you weren't, and you started having a lot of anxiety at night.

[798] Even from then, and your conclusion was, I need to be extra perfect for them to save this whole thing.

[799] Because I knew that I was very wanted.

[800] I knew that they had tried for five years to have me. I didn't know how they finally unlocked the miracle of me being here, but I knew that I was wanted.

[801] which is also really beautiful, right?

[802] Like, it's such a gift for a child to come into the world knowing that they were wanted and loved, but it was this extra added layer of pressure as well.

[803] And you could get the sense that they're only together for you, so you better make it worth it.

[804] That's not a hard math to come to even when you're little.

[805] Yeah.

[806] Okay, so perfection is the goal now.

[807] Yes.

[808] Secret rebellion followed by perfection.

[809] Okay, so that's another part I really love and related to.

[810] It's a dance.

[811] So you for it.

[812] It fucks you up her life.

[813] You feel like you're getting away with it, but you're getting away with screwing yourself up.

[814] Well, you are.

[815] Yeah, yeah.

[816] You end up paying the price.

[817] But the muscle memory of even if like Kristen leaves for two days, my immediate thought is like, what is the most amount of trouble I can get in without getting in trouble?

[818] That's right.

[819] That's right.

[820] Without anybody knowing.

[821] It's just the impulse.

[822] I don't act on it.

[823] But first thought is, oh, great, mom's gone.

[824] I'm living up to the standard for her.

[825] Now I can let it lose.

[826] Yeah.

[827] We also have some drinking and some weed use.

[828] Yes.

[829] And some sexual activity.

[830] This is the thing I'm nervous about my bonus child reading because she's 17.

[831] And I was like 15.

[832] Because it's New York City.

[833] So we're going out to clubs till three, four in the morning.

[834] On Monday night.

[835] On Monday night.

[836] My favorite club's soul kitchen.

[837] Oh, wow.

[838] Kid Capri was the DJ.

[839] And did you have to use a fake ID or was it an urge?

[840] We had some fake IDs, but we were just real cute.

[841] You knew people.

[842] We were real cute.

[843] We knew people.

[844] Fucking Drew Barrymore was.

[845] at Studio 54, for Christ's it's New York.

[846] She was famous.

[847] And this is in the 80s and early 90s.

[848] 89, 90.

[849] Oh, man, what a time to be alive.

[850] And did your parents know you were sneaking out?

[851] No, and in fact, this is the part of the book that troubles my mother the most.

[852] This is the part that hurt her feelings the most, which was interesting, right?

[853] Because a lot of what I'm writing about is the secrets and betrayal.

[854] And she read it and was like, I was really disappointed to read about all the high school partying stuff.

[855] And I was like, that makes sense.

[856] I get that.

[857] Because on the outside, I was the shining child.

[858] I was her perfect daughter.

[859] I was getting good grades and I was a student leader and I was leading the clubs, the school clubs, not the nightclubs.

[860] So, yeah, exactly.

[861] But was her sadness over the fact that she doesn't think you trusted her to know that about you and still accept you?

[862] I think that it was happening and that I lied to her about it.

[863] Okay.

[864] So just straight up resentment over the lie.

[865] I think it's a classic textbook.

[866] Well, yeah, because no parents.

[867] It's like, I wish you had trusted me to tell me you were going out to a club because they would have just said, no, you can't go to that club.

[868] Well, I would, right?

[869] I'm pretty open and I'm understanding and I expect that they'll do drugs and I expect that they'll have sex.

[870] So I feel like I've really laid down the red carpet for them to be honest with me about it.

[871] And to be imperfect.

[872] It's not like I'd be mad at him.

[873] I'd just be hurt.

[874] Like, oh, I thought I earned that.

[875] Let's say they do Molly, okay, and they're 14.

[876] I know.

[877] It's a bad.

[878] You went right to the jugular on this one.

[879] They're shooting dope at 13.

[880] What are you going to do?

[881] No, I'm saying like they do this at a friend's house and they come to you and they say, Dad, hey, I did Molly last night because they're so comfortable and they might do this.

[882] I think it's really important to first say, I'm so grateful that you told me the truth.

[883] Yep.

[884] Like when I think about the family that I came from and the double task of breaking the rules and then having to be perfect, the telling the truth, I mean, I say it all the time now as a parent.

[885] The most important thing is the truth.

[886] I don't love that thing you did.

[887] And we'll talk about that.

[888] But the most important thing is that you told me the truth about it.

[889] Because then I can be in it with you and we can deal with it together.

[890] Yeah.

[891] I don't want you out there navigating stuff alone.

[892] By yourself.

[893] Yeah, for sure.

[894] And you're not ready.

[895] But would you say like...

[896] Do you have more?

[897] I know.

[898] Where'd you get it?

[899] How much was it?

[900] Was it good?

[901] Was it good?

[902] Yeah, were you eating air and sandwich all night or what time you fall asleep?

[903] Do you need a zanny to go down?

[904] I mean, it's a tricky situation, I think, because you want them to.

[905] to be honest, but also, are you just going to say, like, I guess it's fine that you're doing that, even though you know they're going to do it?

[906] No, no, no. So let's just say that happened.

[907] I would say, I'm really grateful you told me, did you like it?

[908] Was it fun?

[909] I would start there.

[910] Would you?

[911] Yeah, yeah.

[912] Was it fun?

[913] Oh, what did you guys do?

[914] Do you blah, blah.

[915] Great.

[916] I'd say, look, you know, having had a lot of experience with that drug, it's pretty addictive.

[917] If I was picking for you, I'd much rather see you guys do mushrooms or smoke pot.

[918] But this one is pretty addictive.

[919] It turns to meth once it's in your body.

[920] We know meth, right?

[921] I mean, you wouldn't have smoked math.

[922] I'm learning so much right now.

[923] So we just got to keep our eye on this one.

[924] It's also going to lower your serotonin a shitload.

[925] On Tuesday, you're going to be suicidal.

[926] That's coming.

[927] But I'm glad we talk because I want you to know what's coming, but we'll get through that.

[928] You can come to me when you're really depressed.

[929] Yes, not when.

[930] You're going to be depressed on Tuesday.

[931] I don't have quite your extensive history, so I wouldn't have that much wisdom to offer, which in the moment I'm feeling a little jealous of.

[932] Well, look, I think we could be of service to one another.

[933] Yes, 100%.

[934] I can talk to.

[935] to your kids a lot about sugar.

[936] Yeah, exactly.

[937] Even now, I say to my kids, you know, we come from a long line of users.

[938] And so in our family, when people drink, sometimes they lose their jobs, they lose their lives, they lose their marriages.

[939] So it's a different relationship.

[940] So that's part of why I talk about why I don't drink.

[941] I've never really struggled with alcohol, but I have a really addictive personality, and I come from a long line of addicts.

[942] And alcohol has really destroyed a lot of things about our family from your aunts and uncles to your grandparents, your great -grandparents.

[943] So I try to be really upfront about that, that this thing is like, in us.

[944] Yeah.

[945] Yeah, I think the bottom line for me is like, I would parallel it with trying to control whether your partner cheats on you or not.

[946] It's not up to you.

[947] They're going to do that or they're not.

[948] Right.

[949] Me behaving jealously and anticipation of that, if anything will push it in that direction.

[950] To me, I work backwards from, well, that's not an option.

[951] That's on them whether they're going to do that drugs at whatever age they do it.

[952] I'm not in control that.

[953] Unless I keep them within my eyesight at all time, which I'm not going to do.

[954] Which then they will find a way to do it for sure.

[955] Even worse.

[956] Everyone I know that was raised that way really got fucked up from it.

[957] For me, I'd much rather go like, A, they know their fucking genetics.

[958] We're like seventh generation hardcore drug.

[959] It's for real at us.

[960] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[961] And so I would just go like, I know you're smart enough to evaluate that you probably have a predisposition to it.

[962] So you're probably going to have to watch it more than other people.

[963] Already these two kids that I have, I trust that they can do that.

[964] Yeah.

[965] They're pretty honest with themselves and they're pretty on.

[966] One of the funniest thing that has ever happened.

[967] Lincoln was like two or three and Dax was going to an AA meeting and he was like, I'm going, you know, I'm going to my meeting.

[968] And Lincoln was like, I want to go.

[969] And you said, don't worry, you will.

[970] It's very similar.

[971] She goes, why do you have to go and I go?

[972] Because I'm an alcoholic and I have to go there or I will drink and it's not good when I drink.

[973] And she goes, I don't want to be an alcoholic because you want to go and I go, you might be.

[974] Yeah, probably will be.

[975] Yeah.

[976] My father was in recovery and he watched me do the whole thing.

[977] And I think he did it perfectly, which is like this kid knows A, A, I've taken him.

[978] He knows what the solution is when he's ready for it.

[979] He knows he can come to me when it's time.

[980] He played it that way and it was kind of brilliant of him.

[981] But who knows?

[982] I mean, 180 as soon as this real situation happens.

[983] We don't know.

[984] We don't know.

[985] Yeah.

[986] But I do think the common thread is.

[987] to be able to be in truth with your family and yourself.

[988] If you can't tell yourself the truth about what's happening in your life and you can't tell at least one other person, I'm in trouble, I need help, then you're screwed.

[989] Can I ask, who knew about the molesting, did anyone ever?

[990] Did you have any boyfriends you told this to you?

[991] Yeah, best friends.

[992] Friends when I got older.

[993] That's good.

[994] And therapists.

[995] For me, I remember the first time I said it to somebody and I was sitting on the hood of my car in a Kmart parking lot.

[996] Really?

[997] Yeah, and she had just told me she had been raped And similar to what you said about this room, which is like, oh, my God, if I don't tell her this, like, I owe her this.

[998] And I'm not told anyone this.

[999] Right.

[1000] And I remember when I told her and she didn't look at me and go, you're disgusting, which is what I thought everyone in the world would say.

[1001] I was like, oh, wait, do I have this a little wrong?

[1002] But you can't ever get to that point when you keep it all into yourself.

[1003] You got to find, you got to see the reaction.

[1004] There's just a shame spiral.

[1005] I remember the first time that I told somebody about my food stuff.

[1006] Ooh, what age was that?

[1007] I was in college and the first reaction was, it's fine.

[1008] Everybody does that, right?

[1009] Because it is this very socially acceptable, like everybody goes out for ice cream when they break up with their boyfriend, right?

[1010] It's just that I had four pints of ice cream and would be passed out on my dorm room bed instead of sharing a pint with a bestie.

[1011] And I had a hard time at first convincing this person that it was a real problem.

[1012] But actually, thank God, because that's what made me reach out for extra help.

[1013] I don't know if I ever would have gone into therapy and group therapy and rooms.

[1014] If somebody in my life understood, I wouldn't have been forced to seek that extra community of like, I need to be talking to people who are in the same boat.

[1015] I need to be seen by someone who has the same thing as me. So what I loved about two things.

[1016] One, we've never really had anyone walk us through that addiction.

[1017] We had a gambling addict, and it was fascinating because, of course, I know addiction in a lot of areas, but I didn't really know there's specificities about the gambling ones is incredible which is I just got to get even I can quit if I get even and I'm like I never had an illusion that I could go snore a kilo of Coke and it would undo the kilo of Coke that's on the table right that you can undo all this and the obsession to undo I'm like wow that's dark and I'm sympathetic to that right yeah yeah mine that I think is different and I heard this really early on is that not to say that either one is harder or easier I already agree with you and I know what you're going to say.

[1018] You do?

[1019] Yes.

[1020] I don't have to use cocaine moderately three times a day.

[1021] That's right.

[1022] I couldn't ever do that.

[1023] It's taking the tiger out of the cage for a few times a day and saying like, it's okay, sweet kitty, with a tiger out of the cage.

[1024] Yes.

[1025] You have to be able to wrestle that.

[1026] We live in a buffet.

[1027] Similar to the alcoholism.

[1028] You're never more than 100 feet away from booze.

[1029] And we live in a buffet now.

[1030] Yeah.

[1031] And also the clear delineation of booze, which I think I'm completely powerless over.

[1032] Although, no, it's not true because I do occasionally once or twice a year, have a glass of wine or something because I'm somewhere.

[1033] But I have to know that it's sugar and going into my system.

[1034] That's the substance, right?

[1035] It's not the alcohol.

[1036] It's like the alteration of the intensity of the sugar in my system.

[1037] Yes.

[1038] Okay.

[1039] So one thing I'd let, even though I don't understand the food addiction thing, although I think it's a spectrum like every other thing.

[1040] And I think it's a little bit like weed also in that some of it is physical addiction.

[1041] Like you can identify certain substances like sugar or gluten.

[1042] And some of it is emotional addiction and not the substance itself.

[1043] It's a tool to escape.

[1044] And you've got to figure out how to exist without the escape.

[1045] And I have, by some measures, disordered eating a lot of times.

[1046] I'm like crazy food restriction.

[1047] So does the whole country.

[1048] And I work out, I don't know, I work out healthy.

[1049] But the part I loved was you binged, you slept, and you worked out way too much, and then you food restricted.

[1050] But because you weren't purging.

[1051] I did not have an eating disorder.

[1052] This is so identical.

[1053] If you don't drink beer, you're not an alcoholic, right?

[1054] A friend of mine was, the definition of was an alcoholic was someone who drank by themselves.

[1055] Of course.

[1056] we find justifications everywhere.

[1057] So you can be as fucked up as you want as long as you're not by yourself.

[1058] I went four days without eating.

[1059] I would be at the gym for six hours straight.

[1060] But if I didn't stick my finger down my throat, or even if, this is my favorite, if I stuck my finger down my throat, but it's because I thought I ate something I was allergic to.

[1061] There we go.

[1062] A little workaround.

[1063] Therefore, I'm not bulimic and I do not have an eating disorder.

[1064] I'd love to be inside your head.

[1065] You've eaten whatever you've eat and you're sitting there like, huh.

[1066] I think those oreas had macadamia.

[1067] I think those Oreas had a macadamian.

[1068] The Oregon had a hint of macadamian.

[1069] I'm pretty sure.

[1070] I feel like that chocolate cake had sesame.

[1071] Because the added brain, once it wants to do something.

[1072] Yeah, we'll find a way.

[1073] We'll find a way.

[1074] So is it mainly dessert, sweets that are sort of a trigger?

[1075] Yeah.

[1076] I don't eat a ton of sugar now.

[1077] So, yes, if I eat sugar, I have to be very aware of that's going to send me on a spin.

[1078] I'm going to be extra hungry.

[1079] Now I'm lucky in some ways.

[1080] that I have to take the tiger out of the cage two or three times of the day because it's a little bit of a litmus test for me now.

[1081] Like sometimes I'll be at a meal and I'm like, I think I'm having a feeling because the meal doesn't end.

[1082] Like I've had enough food and I'm like, I feel like I need more and I don't need more.

[1083] I just am having a hard time transitioning out of the meal because I don't want to do with the feelings.

[1084] That's such a great point.

[1085] Your addiction is a symptom.

[1086] Yes.

[1087] And when you feel the symptom flare up, it's easy to get distracted by the symptom.

[1088] But it's like, no, no, my body wants to comfort itself.

[1089] Why am I uncomfortable?

[1090] That's right.

[1091] That's the work now, right?

[1092] I'm uncomfortable.

[1093] I'm reaching for this behavior, whether it's time to leave the gym and pay attention to your children, or it's time to put the food down.

[1094] You're done with the meal.

[1095] Whatever it is, that's the red flag of I have some emotional work to do.

[1096] I imagine the definition of sobriety in a 12 -ship program for food is, similarly complicated as it would be for SLA, which is you're not going to define sobriety by no sex.

[1097] For some people, it'll be no prostitutes.

[1098] For some people, it'll be no porn.

[1099] Whatever it is.

[1100] Is food the same?

[1101] Yeah, and it evolves.

[1102] It changes.

[1103] It's different at different times.

[1104] This could be healthy because A .A. there's some rigidity to it.

[1105] I think it's great to have that clarity.

[1106] But my relationship with what is healthy and unhealthy behavior requires a constant reset.

[1107] I have to be constantly communicating with myself about it and really checking in with myself.

[1108] Like, is that clean or not?

[1109] Right.

[1110] Without getting obsessive, not letting my whole life be about that.

[1111] Right.

[1112] Because I feel like I am really lucky to have a much bigger life than I did when every single thought was about my thighs and what I'm eating.

[1113] But I know when my thoughts are mostly filled with that when I should be thinking about work and life and that I have to clean it up so that I can be focused on life.

[1114] So I would imagine if you enter on this journey where you're going to get help for this.

[1115] Yeah.

[1116] Is there a better expectation of failure?

[1117] Failure in AA is very, very significant.

[1118] Oh, right, right, right.

[1119] And it's demoralizing and it's shame -inducing.

[1120] I don't want to encourage people to relapse, but I just feel like it could be a little more supportive.

[1121] I feel like you have done a lot to shift that for people to be more generous around the process that it's up and down.

[1122] And by the way, I haven't re -clicked into the old notion.

[1123] It's way more about today, which it should have maybe always been.

[1124] But I also don't know what the future holds.

[1125] I have great tools.

[1126] And if I fuck up, I will get back.

[1127] But yeah, the whole thing has changed.

[1128] But I don't know.

[1129] When I think of your program, I would imagine failure has to be a little more expected because, again, you're eating three times a day.

[1130] And you go to a wedding and there's a fucking seven -tier cake.

[1131] Yeah.

[1132] For me, it's good because perfectionism is such a big part of my disease.

[1133] Like, yeah, AA would fuck you up in a way because you can be perfect.

[1134] And there are ways to do that with food, which for me can look a little more like anorexia.

[1135] And so I can't go in that direction.

[1136] So I have to be willing to be imperfect in my journey with this, which is super uncomfortable, but necessary.

[1137] Is it the same premise as NAA, I think SLA?

[1138] You're never not going to.

[1139] Is that the prevailing thought?

[1140] Is that once an addict, always an addict.

[1141] You're never going to use moderately.

[1142] That's different.

[1143] There are so many different ways to be in recovery from this.

[1144] Eating disorders look so different.

[1145] So it's not as clean cut or simple.

[1146] Which could be a blessing or a curse, maybe.

[1147] Yeah.

[1148] It's complicated.

[1149] You couldn't be encouraged to, like, make your own program, which isn't truly working.

[1150] But I guess you find out pretty quickly if it's not working.

[1151] And for me, the big thing is clicking into the spiritual solution.

[1152] All of this is really just about God and healing and love.

[1153] The God -shaped hole in all of our bodies.

[1154] Yeah, that's where the focus needs to primarily be.

[1155] Okay, so now I want to bring up the second most exciting thing to you being an anthropology major.

[1156] Yeah.

[1157] To me, do you already know what I'm going to say?

[1158] Mm -mm.

[1159] Carrie left college and she went to Kerala.

[1160] I lived in Kerala.

[1161] Wow.

[1162] Are you from Kerala?

[1163] My family's from Keral.

[1164] I didn't know that.

[1165] I mean, there was a time when I could speak like conversational Malayalam.

[1166] Really?

[1167] Not anymore.

[1168] That's my parents' language, yeah.

[1169] I love.

[1170] She was dropping some shit about Kerala in this book, Monica.

[1171] And I was like, I can't wait.

[1172] She knows her shit.

[1173] That's awesome.

[1174] I love Kerala.

[1175] That's one of my dreams is I need to go back to Kerala with my family and take my kids on those backwater boats.

[1176] Well, you know way more about it than I do.

[1177] I've only been there once when I was four.

[1178] Oh, wow.

[1179] So I have like very little memory of it.

[1180] It's so special.

[1181] I know.

[1182] Oh my God.

[1183] This is how I feel like when white people are like, I went to Africa and safari.

[1184] It's amazing.

[1185] I had that experience, but I'm going to spare you of it.

[1186] No, I like it.

[1187] I have been to Africa a few times, but it drives me a little crazy when white people are like, Africa's amazing.

[1188] You know, I have said this out loud, not to any black folks, but I have said this out loud, which is as an anthro major, when I was there, I was like, oh, yeah, humans come from here.

[1189] Like, fuck black or white.

[1190] Without a doubt.

[1191] I was just like, oh, it's in the air.

[1192] This is the birth of people.

[1193] Yes.

[1194] I could feel that in the air.

[1195] Birthplace of humanity.

[1196] And again, I don't tell it to my black friends, but I did.

[1197] You just did.

[1198] And I still love you.

[1199] I mean, I loved living in India.

[1200] I loved Kerala.

[1201] It was an extraordinary time in my life because God is everywhere in India, right?

[1202] Like when you grew up in the Bronx and there's a liquor store on every corner.

[1203] But then you go to India and there's a shrine and altar on every corner.

[1204] In every house.

[1205] Every house.

[1206] Every pujia room.

[1207] It's just so special.

[1208] Oh, that's wonderful.

[1209] What I like to is you got the kind of ultimate Eastern philosophy experience.

[1210] on accident, which is you went there to be a perfectionist.

[1211] You went to learn a certain kind of theater that exists in South India naively.

[1212] And you didn't learn shit.

[1213] And that's exactly what you needed to learn.

[1214] That's right.

[1215] It really was a very karate kid.

[1216] Yes.

[1217] Wax off.

[1218] I went there to study Katta Kali Theater.

[1219] And I thought in a couple months, I'm going to be on a stage covered in green paint and be the shit.

[1220] You know, I thought this is it.

[1221] And I was literally told to like sit and meditate.

[1222] Yes.

[1223] This is what I love.

[1224] I did.

[1225] And you learned some self -defense class.

[1226] Tell Monica about this.

[1227] Maybe you know.

[1228] I didn't know this whole thing.

[1229] So there's an ancient martial art called Kaleripayat, which is like the beginning of all movement tradition.

[1230] And it's very connected to yoga, but it's their ancient martial art. And so I was taught if you want to move like an ancient Indian actor, you must study these other movement arts.

[1231] So you're going to sit in yoga, you're going to meditate, and you're going to study martial arts.

[1232] That's all you're going to do when you're here.

[1233] You're never going to put makeup on your face.

[1234] You're never going to have a costume on.

[1235] I was like, but I want to.

[1236] They were like, no. And it was amazing.

[1237] I really did.

[1238] Wax on, wax off for months and months.

[1239] And it changed me. You didn't need to learn to act better.

[1240] You needed to learn to get in touch with your fucking body.

[1241] And it was at a point in my relationship with my eating disorder recovery where I was really like, okay, it's time to be practicing these principles and really figuring out what prayer and meditation is for me. It was perfectly timed because God is amazing.

[1242] I thrived there.

[1243] Did you go with the program or you just went?

[1244] No, no, no. I went with this program.

[1245] It was a program out of the University of Wisconsin and it was six American students.

[1246] It was like real world care.

[1247] Yes.

[1248] Oh, my gosh.

[1249] And we were all living in this house.

[1250] And we each studied ancient art forms where there's music or baratatatatatiam dance or theater, not theater.

[1251] And then in the afternoon, we studied Malialam.

[1252] And on the weekends, we had these incredible guest speakers.

[1253] who were scientists or writers or chefs or people come to the house and talk to us.

[1254] So it was like this academic real world, India.

[1255] I can't believe you were able to speak that.

[1256] My mom can't even speak it.

[1257] I mean, like, it's a hard.

[1258] Like, hello, goodbye.

[1259] Where's the bathroom?

[1260] Are there cashew nuts in this?

[1261] Because all my allergies, I'd be like, are there cashew nuts in this?

[1262] Which probably yes.

[1263] Do you guys put shellfish in your twinkings?

[1264] Like they're doing back in the States?

[1265] Because I need a reason to barf right now.

[1266] Because I've had a couple of bummed.

[1267] Twinkies in the last few years where I had no choice of my own.

[1268] I had to purge.

[1269] But even the movement, right, like there was no gym in Kerala.

[1270] Right.

[1271] And you would have looked like a dumbass doing that there.

[1272] I probably would have been the one Western woman in the gym.

[1273] And so I had to just surrender my body.

[1274] I just surrender the food, just give myself to these movement practices.

[1275] And B, it was magic.

[1276] Also, not that I want to dwell on that part of it, but the conclusion was crazy, which is a younger boy that was delivering his papers or whatever.

[1277] He came up and grabbed her boob.

[1278] In the street on my way to the colliery.

[1279] A, I'm so proud of you because you told the host that you were with.

[1280] That right there is enormous progress from that little girl.

[1281] He felt like she couldn't say anything.

[1282] But when the boy was questioned.

[1283] He said it was because of Baywatch.

[1284] He thought that women on television from the States, they don't mind having their boobs looked at and touched and admire.

[1285] And I was like, wow, we have to do better.

[1286] Although I love Pamela Anderson.

[1287] I love her.

[1288] And love her journey she's been on.

[1289] It made me realize the power of the images that we put out there.

[1290] Yeah, first you're like, oh, this little shit did that.

[1291] I'm like mad.

[1292] And then I'm like, what the fuck does he know?

[1293] He's like watching.

[1294] It's like another planet.

[1295] You're from another planet.

[1296] And on that planet, everyone fucks all the time and the women love it.

[1297] Yeah.

[1298] They love being half naked.

[1299] Yes.

[1300] They love giving oral.

[1301] I mean, all this stuff.

[1302] Everything women love, they love.

[1303] Yeah, women love it.

[1304] That's why all these Indian men, are coming to the States.

[1305] They're like, all these women.

[1306] Fuck, yeah.

[1307] Your dad was probably...

[1308] I feel like you can probably get more diverse programming than in 98.

[1309] I doubt it.

[1310] The shit that's working is probably still the same shit.

[1311] It's like euphoria, I'm sure.

[1312] Oh, God, I know.

[1313] But that Carola thing was great, right?

[1314] Yeah, it's not that you have to read at least that chapter.

[1315] I will.

[1316] My brother's never been.

[1317] He's eight years younger than me. And so, like, the goal is for all of us to be able to go.

[1318] Let's go.

[1319] Let's go.

[1320] I want to go really bad, too.

[1321] Let's go.

[1322] Yeah.

[1323] Carol, too, and board.

[1324] We avail ourselves to a sponsored trip that we can sing the praises of your beautiful.

[1325] That would be great.

[1326] We want to go.

[1327] Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare.

[1328] Okay, we can't talk about your work, but I got to talk about your work for one.

[1329] There's one thing I got to talk about.

[1330] A work around.

[1331] Yeah, we'll figure it out.

[1332] I hope no one goes and sees this movie.

[1333] Don't go see this movie.

[1334] Not allowed to go see it.

[1335] Whatever you do, I'm not promoting it.

[1336] In fact, stay away at all costs.

[1337] Top 10 movies of all time for me. Django.

[1338] Although I would have thought you were going to say Django.

[1339] I love Django.

[1340] Save the last dance.

[1341] Last King of Scotland.

[1342] Oh.

[1343] Last King of Scotland.

[1344] Whoa.

[1345] Speaking of Black people in Africa, that was my first time on the continent.

[1346] Right.

[1347] Yeah.

[1348] And you're going there to play one of Idiot means wives.

[1349] Yes.

[1350] And that's what I mean in terms of the anthropology connection.

[1351] I got to go there and be African.

[1352] Just like drop in and figure out what does it mean?

[1353] What does it sound like?

[1354] What does it look like?

[1355] How do I wear my hair?

[1356] How do I move?

[1357] What's the lilt of the accent?

[1358] I just ate it up.

[1359] I loved it.

[1360] I didn't have any of that weird.

[1361] I'm an African American.

[1362] In Africa, what does it mean?

[1363] It was like none of that matters.

[1364] I got to be African.

[1365] I'm here to be African.

[1366] I loved it.

[1367] I loved everything about making that movie.

[1368] And you get to do with Forrest Whitaker.

[1369] It's so beautiful.

[1370] It's insane.

[1371] But also was terrifying when we were there because he went in.

[1372] He was like in full on.

[1373] method actor mode.

[1374] So I never saw my friend Forrest.

[1375] Well, Idi Amin, right, was known around the world as Black Hitler, Ugandan But Idi Amin called himself, he had a thousand names, right?

[1376] You list them all in the book.

[1377] Your Excellency, high greatness.

[1378] But my own personal, funny thing, the reason I really love talking about that movie is they were going to make that movie wanted with Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy.

[1379] Yes.

[1380] And then he became unavailable.

[1381] They started seeing people.

[1382] I got it.

[1383] I met with Timor.

[1384] I was like, Oh my God, I'm going to be in a movie with Angelina.

[1385] It was an action movie.

[1386] They were calling about my quotes.

[1387] It was happening.

[1388] James McAvoy became available again.

[1389] And Shepard was out, right?

[1390] And I was like, who's this fucking?

[1391] I never even heard of this fucking for weeks, right?

[1392] I'm like, this fucking James McIvite.

[1393] I don't even take the time to look him up on the internet.

[1394] But anyways, I hate this guy.

[1395] He's my mortal enemy.

[1396] Never heard of him.

[1397] Who's heard of this guy?

[1398] He's a thief.

[1399] Run, if you see him because he's going to steal from you.

[1400] So I'm watching that movie and I'm like, this actor.

[1401] Wanting to hate it?

[1402] No, I don't know what's.

[1403] Tim?

[1404] Oh, yeah.

[1405] I'm watching the movie.

[1406] What year was the movie?

[1407] I think I'm with Kristen.

[1408] 2002, three?

[1409] 2006.

[1410] Yeah, so I think I'm with Kristen.

[1411] You might have filmed it.

[1412] Point is, I'm watching this movie, and I'm like, who's this guy, man?

[1413] Whoa, is he something?

[1414] This is like when I saw Ewan McGregor for the first time.

[1415] I'm like, I got to learn this guy's name.

[1416] I got to see everything he's ever done.

[1417] The whole movie, I can't wait to get to the credits.

[1418] And then they roll on his team back away.

[1419] And I'm like, oh, they made the right decision.

[1420] This guy.

[1421] I'm so happy it released you from your resentment.

[1422] Yes, I was like he deserves this way more than me. He was great.

[1423] You know the Black Doctor in that movie is David O 'Yellow.

[1424] I did not.

[1425] I would need to go back.

[1426] The movie's so fucking good.

[1427] There is such a texture to it.

[1428] Authenticity.

[1429] That's so vibrant and rich.

[1430] Oh, and the music.

[1431] And I stole the music for the movie I directed.

[1432] I put two songs from that movie in my movie.

[1433] That's how much I love it.

[1434] Wow.

[1435] You love James so much.

[1436] You became a thief.

[1437] But I loved you so much.

[1438] I loved you so much.

[1439] Oh, thank you.

[1440] That pool scene.

[1441] That was the first thing I had seen you in.

[1442] And I was like, who the fuck is this?

[1443] I guess you were so good.

[1444] I maybe thought, well, this is a real African actress.

[1445] A lot of people were like, this unknown Ugandan actress.

[1446] Yes.

[1447] From the Boogie Down Bronx.

[1448] How flattering, though.

[1449] Yes.

[1450] One of the best compliments I've ever gotten was Daniel Kaluja came up to me at the Independent Spirit Awards and said, my family, when we saw that movie, we were so proud of you because you really sounded like one of us.

[1451] Oh, really?

[1452] And my husband, actually, who's Nigerian, when he saw the movie, he was like, this girl's good, but she's a little off on the accent.

[1453] And then he started researching Ugandan accent.

[1454] He was like, oh, it is different from Nigerian and she's doing the different.

[1455] Wow.

[1456] Well, your husband is from Nigeria?

[1457] No, his parents were born in Nigeria.

[1458] Okay, because he grew up in L .A., right?

[1459] He did.

[1460] Did just a dash on him when I was researching.

[1461] You did a little side.

[1462] You did a little deep dive.

[1463] Yeah, I didn't know.

[1464] I'm going to do a little rabbit hole.

[1465] He's very handsome, isn't he?

[1466] I don't know shit about football.

[1467] You don't?

[1468] No, I don't know almost anything about football.

[1469] I love that.

[1470] I didn't either really when I met him.

[1471] And now are you fully immersed?

[1472] I know a lot more, but he doesn't really watch football anymore.

[1473] He watches highlights now.

[1474] I didn't watch comedies for years because I'm in comedy.

[1475] Yeah, yeah, that's right.

[1476] Yeah, that's right.

[1477] Yeah, that's right.

[1478] Okay, one really interesting thing in another parallel.

[1479] I love that this whole interview is like ways that I'm like you.

[1480] That's all the interviews.

[1481] Yeah, yeah, everyone.

[1482] I love it.

[1483] Because everyone's like everyone, ultimately.

[1484] I actually love that because one would think we don't have a lot in common.

[1485] See, and other people would also say it's very ego -maniacal and egocentric of you to constantly do that.

[1486] But for me, that's why I went into Anthro.

[1487] I love that we are actually so similar.

[1488] And we live in a world where we're being told that it's us and them and it's a fucking joke.

[1489] You're eating thing, my drugs thing?

[1490] It's all the fucking same.

[1491] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1492] Kerala.

[1493] We're all the same.

[1494] The secrets.

[1495] the house, deception, all of it.

[1496] Again, I related so much, I could always get sober for movies.

[1497] Almost every movie I did, even before I was fully sober, I was sober for, if not the whole thing, up until the last week.

[1498] And you notice, oh, wow, when I have to adhere to my character's diet and body relationship.

[1499] So easy.

[1500] That's so crazy.

[1501] There's no out of control when it was about the character.

[1502] You've done it so often.

[1503] You actually play historical people, so it's like you're playing Ray Charles' wife.

[1504] You have an idea of what she looked like.

[1505] That's right.

[1506] You go, oh, that's the body that I'm supposed to have.

[1507] I think in some ways, it doesn't matter what the power greater than you is.

[1508] It just has to be something that's more important than you.

[1509] Yeah.

[1510] My characters were that.

[1511] My characters were something outside of me that I could really devote myself to and not be the center of my universe that I'm obsessed about.

[1512] I could devote myself to something bigger and more important.

[1513] My characters had these stories that were worth telling.

[1514] I felt like their lives meant something that I needed to pour myself into when I was left back with myself, I didn't have that same love for myself and my own story.

[1515] I didn't have a sense of meaning and clarity about who I was and that I mattered or was important, but the characters mattered.

[1516] Those stories mattered.

[1517] And in some ways, the control shifting, right?

[1518] You have another place to put that.

[1519] That's right.

[1520] To focus and to be devoted to perfectionism.

[1521] Yes.

[1522] Getting them right.

[1523] The getting myself right and perfect was just this insane spiral of crazy.

[1524] And impossible.

[1525] ultimately.

[1526] Thank you for that reminder.

[1527] And impossible.

[1528] It's impossible.

[1529] Can't do it.

[1530] Yeah.

[1531] Tom Arnold said in his book, which I thought was just very honest and very relatable, which is he said, luckily I was addicted to one thing more than cocaine, and that was being famous and being an actor.

[1532] Wow.

[1533] So I think of what I've been able to do with my body that I could never do in real life, but anytime I got a job, I was like, you're playing an underwear model in this movie in four months.

[1534] Get it together.

[1535] I can do anything.

[1536] Yes.

[1537] And it's so weird, we wouldn't be worthy of the commitment.

[1538] But this other thing that I have to have, which is this acting career, I will chop off an arm for.

[1539] I think in some ways, that's also part of the journey of this time in my life when I was writing the book was also pandemic.

[1540] And so there was no character to be perfect for.

[1541] If I was going to be taking care of myself with food and exercise, it really, really, really had to be for me. It wasn't for a red carpet that was going to be in a month.

[1542] It wasn't for a magazine shoot a commercial for a beauty brand.

[1543] It really was like, just you.

[1544] It's just you.

[1545] Are you going to care?

[1546] And what does it look like when it's just you?

[1547] What do you really want that behavior to look like and feel like when it's not about your responsibility to any other calling?

[1548] It's a really common pattern.

[1549] If you look at problem to actors, they have their problems between movies when they're left with themselves.

[1550] So just employ us, people.

[1551] Just keep us employed.

[1552] Mike Tyson got in trouble when he wasn't in training.

[1553] That's right.

[1554] When you don't have that thing to be devoted to, which is also, you know, I think a lot about faith.

[1555] One of the things that was so powerful for me in India was that you would walk into an ashram and it wouldn't be one figure.

[1556] There wasn't one Christ figure.

[1557] By the way, you would see Jesus there along with Mary, along with Ganesh, along with Buddha, along with Krishna.

[1558] But there was an idea of like you could choose a story, a devotional practice.

[1559] You could choose a God to devote yourself.

[1560] to that felt right for you and that could have many paths.

[1561] It was just about pouring yourself into that devotion to say, I love this and I'm going to reach for the best version of me because of this.

[1562] And I think the characters can be that.

[1563] I feel like these characters I've played through my life, they saved me. I would leapfrogging from sanity to sanity because I could pour myself into some story, even though I didn't know what my story was, I could live their story.

[1564] Well, you start the book by saying in the last episode, of you playing Olivia Pope, your character is asked by Bellamy, who by the way I've worked with before and I adore.

[1565] Yeah, she's so fun.

[1566] She's so amazing.

[1567] And such a cute face.

[1568] It's so like surround features that are so inviting.

[1569] She's just like a beautiful, shining human.

[1570] She says to your character, what are you going to do now?

[1571] And you say, whatever I want?

[1572] And in real life, you too are at the same moment.

[1573] The art imitating life and the life imitating art. Yeah, it's crazy.

[1574] Was it exciting for you?

[1575] It was scary.

[1576] It was exciting.

[1577] and scary, you know, as we tell our kids.

[1578] It's the same emotion.

[1579] It's the same physiological thing, excitement and fear.

[1580] Getting this news from my parents, it was the end of scandal that they told me. It was like a month after we finished filming.

[1581] And it did make me feel, oh, I am embarking on a new adventure.

[1582] And one where I'm whole, you know, compensating for this mystery.

[1583] Yes.

[1584] I think up until that point, I was always looking for myself in every character and like looking to figure out more about myself and every character.

[1585] And when I got this information, something shifted where I started to more freely express myself through the characters.

[1586] Uh -huh.

[1587] Not looking for them to fix me, but allowing them to let me be more fully myself in the world.

[1588] When I watch Little Fires, that's what I see.

[1589] I see somebody who's fully expressing with more freedom and more authority.

[1590] I don't know about you, but for me, Me, that's also a sign of confidence, which is at the beginning of my career, it's like, I didn't have any faith that I'm interesting enough to be on screen.

[1591] My first characters are like Frito and Idiocracy.

[1592] These are like huge swings because I don't think I'm enough.

[1593] And the more and more I feel like I'm enough, I go like, well, actually, now I'm more interested than ever that play me. Yes.

[1594] Me in this situation.

[1595] Well, now you're here.

[1596] 3 ,000 percent you.

[1597] You're so right.

[1598] Do you like this more than acting?

[1599] I do.

[1600] Because if you really distill down what my goal was, I would see, especially as a director, which is, I have a point of view in life.

[1601] I think trauma is interesting and funny.

[1602] And I like to play in that space.

[1603] Yeah.

[1604] And the movies I've made were that.

[1605] I mean, one guy has got a sex addiction.

[1606] There's a guy that's a pill addiction.

[1607] You don't really believe in good and bad.

[1608] I don't believe in good and bad.

[1609] But you have two hours, and it has to also adhere to story.

[1610] the laws of Socrates and poetics.

[1611] So that is a filter between your point of view and the audience.

[1612] And so doing this all of a sudden, I was like, wait, no, no, this is directly my point of you.

[1613] There's nothing between.

[1614] And so in that way, the gratification of actually sharing my point of view is hugely rewarding.

[1615] Do I miss the butterflies of starting a new job and there's a new set and then you meet the people?

[1616] Yeah.

[1617] But Adam Grant said it best.

[1618] He's like, you think this is a different thing, but what did you like most about acting?

[1619] And I said, hanging out at Video Village with other actors shooting the shit.

[1620] So basically your full -time job now is Video Village.

[1621] Yeah, that's right.

[1622] And I'm like, yeah, I guess it is.

[1623] I also think in your work, and maybe because I know stuff later in your career more than earlier, I feel like you're always reaching for this.

[1624] You're reaching for those moments on camera that feel truly authentic and very human.

[1625] It became that.

[1626] Yeah.

[1627] And by the way, it used to be like, well, if I nail this accent and I get this joke, that felt very, very good.

[1628] But those moments joy and I would have or it's just like, so good.

[1629] We just fucking revealed ourselves.

[1630] Yeah, like we just intertwined our souls and there was a camera running and it worked.

[1631] And we found something no one knew was there.

[1632] Yes, with that kid.

[1633] So great.

[1634] Oh, Tyree.

[1635] Oh, my gosh.

[1636] Yeah.

[1637] I love that about your work on that show is that feeling like we were in a room we weren't supposed to be in, witnessing.

[1638] saying like real human beings sharing their hearts with each other.

[1639] And again, I just all praise to Catam's.

[1640] You're on a set like that or you're not.

[1641] Or they're telling you, go ahead and find whatever you think is there.

[1642] Take your time.

[1643] We'll go into grace.

[1644] Let's find it.

[1645] That just got me. I want to be upset.

[1646] I miss being upset.

[1647] As I'm calling you, it now I really want to go back to that set and just.

[1648] And are you going to do more directing, do you think?

[1649] I don't think so because of the time commitment in eight and 10 -year -old kids.

[1650] And this has become now very full -time.

[1651] But again, I'm not arrogant enough to think I know what I'm going to want next Tuesday, so I don't fucking know.

[1652] There was a moment where I was like, I'm done.

[1653] I'm getting my sleeves I've always wanted and I'm done acting.

[1654] And I felt liberated by that.

[1655] You know how it is.

[1656] You're like, please pick me. And to finally go like, I don't want you to pick me. Feels very healing.

[1657] Well, to have your own party.

[1658] I always feel like being an actor sometimes feels like you're just desperately wanting somebody to invite you to a party, literally and figuratively.

[1659] You're like, am I going to get to go to a vanity fair?

[1660] But also just the party of set.

[1661] Like, I just want somebody to invite me. And then you start having your own parties.

[1662] Yes.

[1663] It's so much more fun.

[1664] Well, I love Thicker Than Water.

[1665] It's so well written.

[1666] You're an incredible writer.

[1667] And you read the audio book, which is incredible.

[1668] I guess you have to if you're an actor, right?

[1669] I guess so, yeah.

[1670] But it was weird to, like, live my life in a week.

[1671] Maybe Joy.

[1672] I feel like Joy Bryant would have really, because she's a Bronx girl and she's got a fancy education.

[1673] So she'd probably deliver her closest.

[1674] Oh, Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy.

[1675] I love her.

[1676] Thicker Than Water is the book.

[1677] It's out September 26th.

[1678] and it's phenomenal and I hope everyone checks it out and again if you're a book on tape person you're going to be delighted because Carrie reads it and of course as we know about Carrie she's immensely talented I know we barely even said it I know you know and why are we even saying it but you're so good you're a fucking beast you are so good and absolutely everything you are in it's unbelievable oh thank you to be the last King of Scotland which no one should see to scandal no one should see all the movies all the show don't ever see anything again don't ever see anything again and let's this try again and then go see all the fancy and all it was.

[1679] Watch all of parenthood as soon as the strike ends.

[1680] Well, Carrie, I've been begging you for five years.

[1681] This certainly lived up to my dream and fantasy.

[1682] I'm so honored that you guys are still around so that by the time I could be a more integrated, courageous human being, I could come on the show when I was done hiding.

[1683] And you're going to write another one.

[1684] Oh, God.

[1685] Don't wish that on me. Yeah, you're going to.

[1686] I adore you, Carrie.

[1687] Everyone get thicker than water, and we will see you again soon, I hope.

[1688] Stay tuned for the fact check so you can hear all the facts that we're wrong.

[1689] So I could wear my tan suit.

[1690] I'm down to very few suits that I fit into.

[1691] Oh, because you're a big boy now.

[1692] My legs are too thick for most of them.

[1693] And my neck and most of my white shirts no longer buttons.

[1694] Okay.

[1695] So good news, bad news.

[1696] It feels like it's good news.

[1697] It feels like it's what you want it.

[1698] Mm -mm.

[1699] Only bad news in that I don't have many outfits to choose from.

[1700] And, you know, I only have suits.

[1701] I've never bought a suit and had it tailored.

[1702] Yeah.

[1703] I've only done it to go to the Met Gala that one time.

[1704] I recycled that suit.

[1705] And then suits from the game show that I hung on to.

[1706] Yep.

[1707] So I don't have any experience going and doing that.

[1708] So I'm just hanging on to whatever I have.

[1709] Well, David Farrer, our friend David Farrier is our mutual friend.

[1710] Is in this pickle as well.

[1711] He recently said, I need to get a suit.

[1712] The suits I have looks so stupid.

[1713] They don't really fit when he goes somewhere.

[1714] And he has to wear one.

[1715] He feels embarrassed.

[1716] So he's on a suit mission, too.

[1717] Well, it's a bummer is I bet I've gotten rid of a bunch of suits that probably would have fit him.

[1718] Oh, you're right.

[1719] Because we're roughly the same frame.

[1720] Right, except now you're a big boy.

[1721] I don't know.

[1722] You don't have a very small waist, a shockingly small waist.

[1723] Yeah.

[1724] Yeah, dainty.

[1725] Do you think that's like a fun hidden treasure?

[1726] No, I don't love it.

[1727] Why?

[1728] Well, like, whatever Charlie's waist is is great, but I guarantee it's a few inches wider than mine, not through any chub.

[1729] No. It's just anatomy.

[1730] Yeah, it's just like his Ilyum initium are wider and bigger, I think.

[1731] But I don't love that I, I'll tell you the things that I don't.

[1732] So let's start with what I'm grateful for.

[1733] Okay, I like that.

[1734] I have very broad shoulders.

[1735] Well, thank you, Dave Senior.

[1736] My dad, he had very wide shoulders.

[1737] So my wrists are dainty.

[1738] Okay.

[1739] And I would argue disproportionate with the rest of the frame.

[1740] Okay.

[1741] Do you mean like, do you mean skinny?

[1742] Oh, yeah.

[1743] Like this, I can put my fingers around, right?

[1744] Okay.

[1745] And I doubt I could do that over Charlie's.

[1746] And it's not like there's muscle there.

[1747] That's just bone structure.

[1748] Yeah, mine's pretty, like anytime I get a watch, I usually have to size it down.

[1749] That's emasculating.

[1750] No, okay.

[1751] And then I have tiny legs.

[1752] Like, my brother's legs are much sturdier than mine.

[1753] Okay.

[1754] Mm -hmm.

[1755] Smaller kneecaps than him, too.

[1756] Okay.

[1757] Yeah.

[1758] This is.

[1759] These are all complaints.

[1760] Well, this is kind of ding, ding, ding.

[1761] No way.

[1762] Yep.

[1763] How could it be?

[1764] It is because we do talk a lot about body issues on this.

[1765] This is for Carrie.

[1766] Oh, Washington.

[1767] Yes.

[1768] Oh, I loved this episode.

[1769] I did too.

[1770] So fun.

[1771] Love her.

[1772] Love that she was so open with us about a lot of things.

[1773] Yeah.

[1774] But body issues.

[1775] We all have them.

[1776] We definitely all have them.

[1777] Rob, do you have any?

[1778] Yeah.

[1779] You do.

[1780] I mean, my weight fluctuates a lot.

[1781] Okay.

[1782] And you don't love it when it's, I guess I'm guessing, heavier?

[1783] Yeah.

[1784] Do you feel like it's hard for you to stay thin?

[1785] The last, like, year I've been on a regimen that it's mostly just exercise.

[1786] Right.

[1787] And eating.

[1788] Yeah.

[1789] That's everything.

[1790] You?

[1791] Oh, yeah.

[1792] I mean, everyone.

[1793] I feel like you're, though, if I had.

[1794] If someone asked me, like, what's Monica insecure about her face or her body?

[1795] I would say, I think she's good with her body.

[1796] I'm more insecure about my face.

[1797] Yeah.

[1798] That's for sure.

[1799] Which is stupid.

[1800] I'm glad.

[1801] This is your opinion.

[1802] I'm mine.

[1803] Yeah, we all have our own negative self -talk.

[1804] Like, you wouldn't want to be taller.

[1805] I wouldn't mind it.

[1806] Oh, to see over things, reach things.

[1807] It's, you know, for me, the body stuff, I am pretty happy with my body for the most part.

[1808] Yeah.

[1809] But things do come up often when I'm wearing clothes.

[1810] It's about the way I can wear clothes.

[1811] Right.

[1812] That makes sense.

[1813] I'm happy with my naked body.

[1814] There you go.

[1815] I am.

[1816] That's what you want.

[1817] Well, it is and it isn't because in this world, we wear clothes a lot.

[1818] You should reverse that.

[1819] I can try.

[1820] I could try.

[1821] And I love clothes so much.

[1822] Yes.

[1823] And shopping so much that Sometimes something looks so cute on the hanger and would look great on someone with like maybe a smaller breast size.

[1824] Okay.

[1825] So I'm thinking a lot about this.

[1826] I started the supermodel stock.

[1827] What's interesting and what I actually believe, like a lot of times you'll, you'll see an actor on a talk show.

[1828] And he or she is so hot.

[1829] And then they'll act like they were the ugly duckling in high school.

[1830] And it's really hard to believe.

[1831] There's even a great.

[1832] Amy Schumer.

[1833] Amy Schumer's sketch about the whole thing.

[1834] But I do believe these supermodels because being really tall in high school is hard for gales.

[1835] I don't know what it's like now, but I can just, in 93, it was a challenge.

[1836] You didn't really want to be taller than the boys.

[1837] Right.

[1838] So then I was kind of thinking, wow, why is it that models are so tall?

[1839] And then I realized like, oh, because the bigger the canvas, the better the outfits will look.

[1840] Like, you don't want to scrunch the outfit into a really small, Right.

[1841] You can't do as much.

[1842] Their clothes look better on a much taller canvas.

[1843] Yeah.

[1844] I hadn't thought any of this through.

[1845] I know.

[1846] That's what I'm saying.

[1847] So I have a short frame.

[1848] I have a short torso and legs, because I'm short.

[1849] Yeah.

[1850] But I'm really short.

[1851] And I have big boobs.

[1852] So I'm working with a lot of factors that cause clothes to sometimes.

[1853] Not look on you as you.

[1854] As I wish.

[1855] As they look on the hangar and or the 5 foot 12 model.

[1856] Yeah, because on the hangar and often, not always, not if it's a Victoria Secret model, but often models don't have big boobs.

[1857] Correct.

[1858] Cindy Crawford, she was in Playboy.

[1859] This is a very interesting part of the documentary.

[1860] Okay.

[1861] She got offered to do Playboy, and she was like, her whole team was like, no. Yeah.

[1862] And she was like, I think I did.

[1863] I think I want to.

[1864] And the photographer that was going to be doing was, like, her favorite photographer who she had this great relationship with.

[1865] And she decided, no, I do want to do this.

[1866] And it was pretty breakthrough for her.

[1867] And it's really, I don't know, it's kind of cool.

[1868] And they hear her talk about it and how kind of, I don't want to say calculated, but just on top of it, she was.

[1869] Yeah.

[1870] Yeah, she did a bunch of cool things.

[1871] Like she recognized like MTV is going out to the world and it's bringing high fashion to small rural town.

[1872] now because there's cable.

[1873] Right.

[1874] And so she recognized that.

[1875] And then she did her style show on MTV.

[1876] And the George Markle video was like a huge.

[1877] I didn't realize what a moment that was for them.

[1878] That's when they became like.

[1879] Superstars.

[1880] Superstars.

[1881] Supermodels.

[1882] Supermodels.

[1883] It's interesting.

[1884] I like all the women in it that are detailed.

[1885] Are they all participating?

[1886] And they were all great friends, which I love.

[1887] I didn't really know that.

[1888] You would assume.

[1889] I would assume that there would be like some kind of rivalry between all of them because there's only one person's on the cover of Vogue each month.

[1890] Well, one time, there's an iconic cover with all of them.

[1891] Yep, but that came after their superstar.

[1892] Yeah, they just redid it.

[1893] They did.

[1894] Is this the one where they're naked?

[1895] No, they're not naked.

[1896] I think they're in like jeans in the first one.

[1897] Okay.

[1898] They did several.

[1899] Yeah.

[1900] One of them was nude.

[1901] You don't see anything, but they're all kind of in a puppy pile.

[1902] Yeah, I know that one.

[1903] And here I'm talking about, it's really cool.

[1904] They're like, the reason we like it is there's like, there's no sexuality in our eyes or in, and we're not being urged to do that.

[1905] It's like much more about a sisterhood.

[1906] Huh.

[1907] I like it.

[1908] I'm going to watch it.

[1909] I didn't know about it and I'm excited.

[1910] Yeah, you'll like it.

[1911] And then there's so much fashion.

[1912] These designers are all so interesting as well, because you're like, there's footage right of all these different designers.

[1913] talking to them, dealing with them.

[1914] And there's not like a normal, quote, normal of one among them, yeah.

[1915] Artists are not normal.

[1916] A lot of these people, they interview, like, if you're up in the grocery store, you'd be like, well, this person has to be in fashion.

[1917] Well, yeah.

[1918] Like Carl Lagerfeld, yeah, he's the most iconic.

[1919] I think artists at that level, I mean, Carl Lagerfeld is like the Picasso of fashion.

[1920] Is he?

[1921] Yes.

[1922] I didn't even know.

[1923] I knew him, but I didn't know he was the head.

[1924] Gucci designer.

[1925] Chanel.

[1926] And he worked for many different houses, but Chanel is, was the big one.

[1927] Wary, really, made a mark.

[1928] Yes.

[1929] And ding, ding, ding, we talked about the Met.

[1930] Well, oh my God, two ding, ding, ding.

[1931] We talked about the Met Gallagher today.

[1932] And when it happened, I was talking a lot about it.

[1933] And remember, the theme this past year was Carl Lagerfeld.

[1934] Oh, it was.

[1935] Lagerfeld.

[1936] Yeah, and you didn't understand then.

[1937] I just know him, I guess, but I didn't realize he was like the in -house designer.

[1938] Versace seemed kind of normal.

[1939] No, maybe I'm getting confused.

[1940] I don't know.

[1941] Valentino.

[1942] They're all eccentric.

[1943] Yeah, extremely.

[1944] There's a beautiful story about the designer.

[1945] I wish I could remember his name, a French designer who really took Naomi Campbell in, like met her on a shoot, knew she was 16, living in France by herself.

[1946] St. Laurent?

[1947] It wasn't Saint Laurent.

[1948] Eve St. Laurent, he was in there.

[1949] He was very peculiar.

[1950] Like, he's got a really interesting personality.

[1951] Who?

[1952] That was that mentioned in 88.

[1953] He moved her, called her mom and said, I'm going to take care of your daughter.

[1954] Moved her into the house.

[1955] She had a bedroom.

[1956] He cooked her breakfast.

[1957] He cooked her lunch and dinner.

[1958] She would sneak out.

[1959] She'd get in trouble.

[1960] He'd find her at nightclubs and she'd be wearing all of his clothes.

[1961] And he'd be yelling at her, but then also going, you're wearing the belt wrong.

[1962] And he would adjust the belt and do all this stuff.

[1963] Is it Azadine?

[1964] Yes.

[1965] I don't even know.

[1966] Let's say his last.

[1967] A -L -A -I -A -A.

[1968] Oh, Al -A -I -A.

[1969] Oh, I love Al -A.

[1970] You do.

[1971] He's passed, right?

[1972] I think she said it in there, she was heartbroken when he died.

[1973] But he died older, I think.

[1974] Alia is a great brand in Clueless.

[1975] There's a famous line in Clueless where she's getting mugged.

[1976] Uh -huh.

[1977] And he's telling her, get down on the ground.

[1978] She says, this is an Alia.

[1979] Ah.

[1980] Well, Naomi came along with saying, can you imagine being a 16 -year -old in your closet is a liar?

[1981] I know.

[1982] That's so, I'm so jealous.

[1983] Yeah, like everything he made was in the house for her to pick out to go clubbing.

[1984] You know, you probably don't remember or no, but my pink bathing suit, I have a pink bathing suit.

[1985] It has cutouts, like, kind of around the neck and a little on the breast.

[1986] Oh, that sounds racy.

[1987] aunt and it's alia oh it is so the name lives on even though he yeah they have new they'll have new heads of the house and their attelier yes those are real attiliers yeah yeah those are not subway and oh i can't wait to watch this i've been waiting for a new fashion documentary i just keep watching the september issue over and over and over again well you'll dig it there's there's no interviews with her, but there's tons of footage, not tons, there is footage of on Ointour.

[1988] Yeah.

[1989] I want her to come on so mad.

[1990] I know you do.

[1991] When they were showing clips of her, I was thinking, like, how could I deliver on that episode?

[1992] Like what that should be if she ever did it.

[1993] Of course, you would.

[1994] Like we do any show, we'll talk about.

[1995] Let's just say I left you to interview Valentino Rossi, the greatest motorcycle rider of all time.

[1996] I could do it.

[1997] You could research him.

[1998] Yeah.

[1999] And you could learn the accolades.

[2000] But you would not be able to understand why Valentino Rossi is a god.

[2001] Like I can't really understand how.

[2002] But I'm here.

[2003] And I can understand that.

[2004] Yes.

[2005] You would have to do the interview basically.

[2006] No, no. I can just provide that sense.

[2007] What I'm saying is I was recognizing it would be a disservice to her to have me interview her.

[2008] because clearly something magical's happening and I can't see in the same way you can't see Valentino Rossi is from another planet.

[2009] I actually think those often can be the best interviews because there's no idol worship.

[2010] Your chef, Allison Roman.

[2011] Yeah, like if I interview Allison, it could go off the rails.

[2012] Yeah, it could be a sick of family.

[2013] Remember in that one video?

[2014] And then no one knows what I'm talking about.

[2015] Right.

[2016] And so it's nice to have sort of a bird's eye view.

[2017] Uh -huh.

[2018] Well, it worked out great with Allison.

[2019] I was having similar fears.

[2020] Like, I don't know how I'm going to shine the light on her that she deserves this not being my world at all.

[2021] Yes.

[2022] And then you loved her.

[2023] I loved her.

[2024] Yeah.

[2025] She was great.

[2026] Shout out, Allison.

[2027] She just got married.

[2028] We already did that.

[2029] Yes, we've already congratulated her.

[2030] But let's do it again.

[2031] I don't remember that.

[2032] Congratulations, Allison.

[2033] Are you sure?

[2034] Yeah.

[2035] It was right when she posted the photos two weeks ago.

[2036] I mean, we talked about it out there, I remember.

[2037] But I don't remember us talking about it.

[2038] Maybe I'm wrong.

[2039] I thought we did.

[2040] Okay.

[2041] I don't remember it.

[2042] But I didn't want it to sound insincere because we already did it.

[2043] That's what I'm saying.

[2044] Oh.

[2045] But I could be wrong.

[2046] Maybe we did if I made one of her meals.

[2047] Maybe that could have happened.

[2048] Yeah.

[2049] But I'm still really happy for her.

[2050] Me too.

[2051] Me too.

[2052] So this is a ding, ding, ding.

[2053] Okay.

[2054] Also, I've decided something.

[2055] I was going to wait until I actually did it before we talked about it on here.

[2056] But I won't.

[2057] I'll tell you now.

[2058] Okay.

[2059] I am going to fix the shelf in my armoire.

[2060] Oh, good.

[2061] Mm -hmm.

[2062] Good, good, good.

[2063] You should.

[2064] I know.

[2065] I feel, well, I feel conflicted.

[2066] Okay.

[2067] Tell me. I felt like you were disappointed in me. So I was like, I should do it.

[2068] But then I felt, well, I shouldn't do it because Dax is disappointed in me because that's kind of stupid if he's disappointed in me. Right.

[2069] I felt like I had a weird cycle.

[2070] This is, sure.

[2071] This, though, is just a classic textbook example of what the person's saying and what the person's hearing can be so dramatically different.

[2072] So what I would have thought you would have walked away with is Dax believes in me so much and thinks I can do things I don't know that I can do.

[2073] Like that's literally what the thrust to all that was.

[2074] It's like, you don't need to throw this thing out.

[2075] You absolutely can fix this.

[2076] I believe you can.

[2077] That's what I was saying.

[2078] Yeah, but you also said...

[2079] What I say?

[2080] You said, do you think you have all the skills you're ever going to have?

[2081] That's me going you're capable of more than you think.

[2082] I know, but I heard that as like you feel like I don't push myself.

[2083] Oh.

[2084] Or that I'm lazy or something.

[2085] Yeah, right.

[2086] So those are like almost the same thing, but so different in my mind, which is you underestimate yourself, which to me is so positive to tell you.

[2087] And you hear you're lazy.

[2088] Right, but I guess I fear that you think that.

[2089] To me, that's the worst possible thing you could think.

[2090] Characteristic you could have.

[2091] But I also, I really, I know I'm not.

[2092] Yeah, nor do I think you are.

[2093] Okay.

[2094] Yeah, okay.

[2095] Do you think I would partner up with someone I think is lazy?

[2096] Well, I don't, but I don't know.

[2097] I have this weird inclination.

[2098] to prove to you that I'm not, or that, like, to prove.

[2099] Yeah, because I'm your dad, because I'm your father.

[2100] Yeah, but you're also my employer.

[2101] Oh, right, yeah.

[2102] And that's a piece that feels, there's this one poll that's like, I should CC him on absolutely everything so that he knows.

[2103] Uh -huh, how busy you are.

[2104] Or, no, not, it's not how busy is how, how, how, what I'm doing.

[2105] Yeah.

[2106] But then I have this other part that comes.

[2107] comes into play and says, no, you do know what you're doing.

[2108] You do know.

[2109] Monica.

[2110] Monica knows.

[2111] That Monica's.

[2112] That Monica is on it.

[2113] Yes.

[2114] And what I'm contributing and doing.

[2115] So that should be enough.

[2116] I have a weird push and pull there.

[2117] Yeah.

[2118] Well, look, I don't want to gaslight you.

[2119] There have been moments that I thought you were being lazy on a thing.

[2120] That does not mean I think you are lazy.

[2121] Right.

[2122] There's a big distinction there.

[2123] I think over the course of six years, there've been a couple times where I've thought you should do that.

[2124] Right.

[2125] For sure.

[2126] I don't want to deny that those things have happened.

[2127] Yeah.

[2128] But if someone asked me what's Monica like to work with, I could list probably a thousand things and lazy wouldn't come up.

[2129] Yeah.

[2130] Like, how about this?

[2131] Have I been a dick in the last six years?

[2132] Of course.

[2133] I don't even know how many times, maybe 30.

[2134] Mm -hmm.

[2135] Does that mean you think?

[2136] I'm a dick?

[2137] I don't think so.

[2138] No, but it's not like, have I been late?

[2139] Yes, I've been late.

[2140] Those are hard markers, right?

[2141] The lazy pieces is hard because even in moments where I feel like you've felt that, I feel like, well, it's because of this other stuff that is not known, which is why this other thing is lacking.

[2142] But it's not because of laziness.

[2143] It's because there's other pieces.

[2144] that are requiring this of me. And so I just can't give it there.

[2145] And it's not because I don't want to or I don't.

[2146] I don't know.

[2147] To me, it's just interesting to have like a push and pull.

[2148] And then this is just reminding me of the armoire, which I know that I don't actually care about being someone who builds that.

[2149] Yeah.

[2150] But there's still a huge part of me that wants to like impress you or prove that, I did it so that you will get off your back.

[2151] No, that you'll just like, I don't know why actually.

[2152] Yeah, I see that you feel that way.

[2153] But for me, it's crazy because all I want for you is for you, not me. I have an idea of your sense of accomplishment having fixed your armoire.

[2154] I've experienced that in my own life and it gives me enormous self -esteem.

[2155] And so I can see that happening to you and I want that for you.

[2156] Yeah.

[2157] But it has nothing to do with whether I think you should be fixing your armoor or that it's some kind of character defect that you don't.

[2158] Right.

[2159] It's just I think you can do it.

[2160] You said I look at things.

[2161] I'm like, there's no way I can do that.

[2162] Right.

[2163] I do think that.

[2164] Yeah.

[2165] I'm saying I think you could.

[2166] I believe that you could.

[2167] And I maybe rightly or wrongly assume you'll have a great sense of accomplishment when you've resurrected this armwar.

[2168] Yeah.

[2169] But maybe you wouldn't.

[2170] Maybe you wouldn't care.

[2171] I don't know.

[2172] I guess I won't know.

[2173] No, until I try it.

[2174] Well, I don't want you to do it because you think my opinion of you is going to change because it's not.

[2175] Yeah, I don't know.

[2176] There was no judgment over you not fixing it.

[2177] It was just me trying to encourage you that you could and that you might like how it feels.

[2178] Yeah, and I might.

[2179] I might try it.

[2180] Still, well, on the fence.

[2181] We're back to being on the fence.

[2182] Your first thing was I am going to fix it.

[2183] I know.

[2184] And now you're back on the fence.

[2185] Well, because, again, it's like, why am I doing it?

[2186] And I do want to do that for, I don't want to do it and then feel like, well, I did it.

[2187] I hope everyone's happy now that I did it.

[2188] I wouldn't want that either.

[2189] Right.

[2190] This is not for me. I don't care if your armwires fixed.

[2191] I don't have to deal with it.

[2192] It has no impact on my life whether your armwere is unsalvageable or fixed.

[2193] I know.

[2194] TBD.

[2195] TBD.

[2196] I'll report back.

[2197] If you choose to do it, I can cut the piece of wood for you that you.

[2198] would need to screw under the shelf?

[2199] No, because that's like the whole thing.

[2200] What's the whole thing?

[2201] That's the whole project.

[2202] Cutting the wood?

[2203] I feel like cutting the wood and painting it.

[2204] Well, look, you've not cut, you don't, A, you don't own a table saw.

[2205] I don't.

[2206] And I think it'd be crazy to go buy a table saw so you could do this project.

[2207] I know.

[2208] Which means you need my table saw, which means I need to show you how to use the table saw, which means I'm going to cut the piece of wood for you.

[2209] Hmm.

[2210] Okay.

[2211] Or if I go to Home Depot, will they do it?

[2212] They won't.

[2213] Oh, they won't.

[2214] No. Yeah, so how is that anyone supposed to fix anything if they don't have the tools?

[2215] You can rent the tools from Home Depot.

[2216] You could, yeah.

[2217] That's an option.

[2218] Could I use like a really sharp butcher's knife?

[2219] Scissors.

[2220] Unfortunately, you can't use a knife to cut wood.

[2221] You could use a saw.

[2222] But what you need to do is you.

[2223] need to take a two by four and you need to turn it into two different slats that are probably going to be like a half inch wide maybe three quarters inch wide maybe an inch wide whatever you're going to need a table saw to get that little rail that we're going to bolt in there okay i'm going to see what okay oh your market all right well this is sort of a ting It was when you were talking about fashion.

[2224] Okay.

[2225] Because Carrie had a cool purse, a really nice purse, and I asked who made it.

[2226] Yeah.

[2227] And she said it was a black designer, and it is Tel -Far.

[2228] Better spell that for us.

[2229] T -E -L -F -A -R.

[2230] Sure, Tel -F -F -R.

[2231] And apparently they're huge in New York.

[2232] Okay.

[2233] And that bag comes in every color.

[2234] Ah, have you ordered one yet?

[2235] Not yet, but I will.

[2236] Okay.

[2237] Established.

[2238] Kind of shocked you, you haven't.

[2239] I know.

[2240] Because I imagine once you looked it up.

[2241] Well, I just found out when I did my facts.

[2242] That they're all sold out.

[2243] Oh, that's good.

[2244] Okay, I have a question for you.

[2245] It's a fact.

[2246] You said the proverbial goat and balls.

[2247] I said the proverbial goat and balls.

[2248] Yeah, I think he's...

[2249] Oh, yeah, the proverbial goat balls.

[2250] Okay, what does it mean?

[2251] There's all these stories about people...

[2252] visiting a indigenous hut, and then it turns out when it's serving the goat, they also eat the balls.

[2253] This has like been in many movies.

[2254] It's maybe apocryphal.

[2255] Some cultures eat the balls from the goat.

[2256] Okay.

[2257] And as a visitor, when offered it, it's like that's what they saved for the chief or whatever.

[2258] It's like high status food.

[2259] And then they offer it to you.

[2260] And as a guest, you kind of have to eat it.

[2261] It's like a delicacy.

[2262] But I said proverbial because I can't really substantiate but that's a very common lore okay yeah got it balls you've heard of that right rob yeah okay um also bowl balls bull balls bull balls bull balls ball balls okay it sounds like boba kind of sounds like boba it does bowl balls ball balls ball ball's boba oh boy bull balls flavor You have a big old straw for that.

[2263] Wow.

[2264] Four inch straw.

[2265] Okay.

[2266] Have we had any other anthropologists besides Jason Delion?

[2267] Jared Diamond is an anthropologist, right?

[2268] I actually don't think he is.

[2269] Really?

[2270] Weirdly.

[2271] Yeah, I thought for sure he was.

[2272] Didn't he teach anthropology?

[2273] Well, and you read it in anthropology.

[2274] It's a geographer, a historian, ornithologist, an author.

[2275] Yeah.

[2276] Oh.

[2277] Isn't that wild?

[2278] Wow.

[2279] Yeah, I had the whole, because again, I read it in Anthro, I thought he was an anthropologist.

[2280] He's not in the anthro department at UCLA.

[2281] Oh, see, yeah, because I thought the whole thing was like, you just missed him.

[2282] But no, you missed him in a different capacity.

[2283] I'm mad I didn't go take one of it.

[2284] Because I took geography classes.

[2285] Right.

[2286] He's a professor of geography at University of California.

[2287] Yeah, dang.

[2288] What?

[2289] Just because I thought he was an anthropologist.

[2290] Well, we had Jane Goodall on.

[2291] Yeah.

[2292] She was an anthropologist.

[2293] And we had.

[2294] I had a primatologist on, it was an expert a while ago, it was over Zoom.

[2295] She was really cool, though, remember, and she invited us.

[2296] You guys talked to.

[2297] Tara Stonsky.

[2298] Thank you.

[2299] Tara Stonsky.

[2300] Yeah, she's a primatology.

[2301] Yeah.

[2302] She was so fun.

[2303] She was.

[2304] You guys got along well, obviously.

[2305] Mm -hmm.

[2306] Okay.

[2307] Definitely only actor, I think I've talked to with an answer degree.

[2308] I think so, but I also have, like, a slight memory.

[2309] I do, too.

[2310] I do too There's been a lot of people A lot of slight memories now Famous people who majored in anthropology Oh Dack Shepard Oh I better be at the top of that list For how much I talk about it Kurt Vonnegut Glenn Close Oh That's cool, never had her That makes sense It does?

[2311] Oh Because she's like primal Gail Simmons from Top Chef We have not had on Is anyone from we've had on?

[2312] No, I don't recognize most of these names.

[2313] I really have this sense that there was one other person that, like, you guys geeked out.

[2314] But maybe not, because we might remember geeking out.

[2315] Yeah, we would have geeked out.

[2316] Yeah, we would have remembered geeking out.

[2317] I mean, Carrie's not even on this list, so.

[2318] She was keeping it under her lid until now.

[2319] She'll be at the top of that list come Tuesday.

[2320] Oh, and one person I do know, one thing I do know.

[2321] Oh.

[2322] We said that we had a gambling addict on it.

[2323] That's Roy Choi.

[2324] If anyone wants to listen to that episode, if you missed it, it's one of my top three favorite episodes we've ever done.

[2325] It's really great, yeah, Roy Choi.

[2326] It's such a good episode, and him talking about that specific addiction is such a good window into what that is like.

[2327] Yes.

[2328] So check out Roy Choi.

[2329] Also the Dotsiefsky book called, I think, Gambler.

[2330] It's a very small one.

[2331] In fact, that was my entry point into him.

[2332] He was too intimidating for me, but this book is very small.

[2333] about gambling, and he does the same thing in that book that he does in crime and punishment, which is like you're in the mind of the gambling addict.

[2334] It's really interesting.

[2335] Okay.

[2336] Now, and he really was a gambling addict.

[2337] Uh -huh.

[2338] Yeah.

[2339] Lost many a fortune.

[2340] Paul Robeson, who she mentioned, she said we should look him up.

[2341] He was a bass, baritone concert artist, stage and film actor, professional football player and activist.

[2342] who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and his political stances.

[2343] We brought this up because her husband is a football player.

[2344] Is a cosmopolitan man. Jim Brown, we're recommending stuff.

[2345] There's a great book.

[2346] There's a series of books called Conversations With, I believe.

[2347] There's a great book on Jim Brown in that series.

[2348] There's also a great one on Marlon Brando in that series.

[2349] But the Jim Brown one, someone went to do a story for like Esquire or Vanity Fair on him.

[2350] Okay.

[2351] In fact, he's a film director.

[2352] I'm forgetting his name right now.

[2353] But he ended up living with him.

[2354] Like, it started as an interview for this magazine, and then it turned into him living with him for a while.

[2355] So he had a book's worth of stuff.

[2356] Wow.

[2357] Yeah, and it's so fascinating.

[2358] Very admirable man, Jim Brown.

[2359] Well, that is all.

[2360] Well, boy, do I love Carrie Washington.

[2361] Me too.

[2362] It was so flattering that she listens to the show or has listened.

[2363] Yeah.

[2364] Hard to believe, but we're going to go.

[2365] She knew stuff, so she obviously did that.

[2366] Maybe she has an assistant that did coverage on it.

[2367] No. You don't cover it.

[2368] For people who aren't in the film business, agents assistants often read scripts, and then they make a little synopsis of it.

[2369] It's called coverage.

[2370] So maybe someone had to plow through a couple hundred episodes and then do coverage.

[2371] I had a stint doing coverage for a literary agency.

[2372] Oh, really?

[2373] Yeah.

[2374] Did you hate it?

[2375] That seems laborious.

[2376] I thought I was going to love it.

[2377] of course.

[2378] Yeah.

[2379] Then you realize most of the stuff you read is not good.

[2380] So bad.

[2381] So bad.

[2382] Yeah, the vast, vast majority of writing is not good.

[2383] Hence that wonderful saying I always say, which I love, which is everyone can act.

[2384] Some people can direct and no one can write.

[2385] Yes.

[2386] Ding, ding, ding.

[2387] Happy Rider Strike is over.

[2388] Oh, yes.

[2389] We're hopefully inching towards the whole thing being over.

[2390] But very proud of all these writers have been striking for since, like, March.

[2391] 160 days or something, 159.

[2392] It's so crazy.

[2393] They've taken a beating.

[2394] So happy for them.

[2395] Me too.

[2396] Me too.

[2397] I need my content.

[2398] Yeah, we need our content.

[2399] And I need to be all talk about things.

[2400] Yeah, I know.

[2401] Yeah.

[2402] I love to talk about things.

[2403] So handcuffed.

[2404] All right.

[2405] Love you.

[2406] Okay, love you.

[2407] Follow armchair expert on the Wondry app, Amazon music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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