Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: This is talk easy. I'm standing forgo Soo. Welcome to
Speaker 2: the show today. I'm joined by legendary actor Willem Dafoe.
Speaker 2: I sat with them back in twenty seventeen around the
Speaker 2: release of Sean Baker's The Florida Project, for which he
Speaker 2: received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. In the
Speaker 2: six years since then, Dafoe has kept remarkably busy. He
Speaker 2: was nominated again in twenty nineteen for his portrayal of
Speaker 2: Vincent van Gogh in at Eternity's Gate. He also made
Speaker 2: two films with Roberdegger's The Lighthouse and The Northman, and
Speaker 2: two films with Wes Anderson, The French Dispatch and Asteroid City,
Speaker 2: not to mention Giermmel del Toro's Nightmare Alley and Paul
Speaker 2: Schrader's The Card Counter. And those are just my personal
Speaker 2: favorites of his in recent years. His latest, however, is
Speaker 2: a film called Poor Things, directed by your goost Lamthimos.
Speaker 2: In it, Defau plays doctor Godwin Baxter, a daring scientist
Speaker 2: who brings a young woman back to life through a
Speaker 2: rather unorthodox experiment once she's born. Bella, played by Emma Stone,
Speaker 2: embarks on a kind of voyage of sexual liberation. Here's
Speaker 2: a clip from the trailer.
Speaker 1: This is Bella, Bella.
Speaker 3: This is mister mccandall's hello Bella.
Speaker 1: No, she's an experiment.
Speaker 4: Good evening.
Speaker 1: Her rain and her body are not quite synchronized, but
Speaker 1: she is progressing at an accelerat decrease.
Speaker 4: Tell me where did she come from?
Speaker 1: I shall orrige is a happy too.
Speaker 4: I am Bella Baxter.
Speaker 2: And there is a world to enjoy, circumnavigate. It is
Speaker 2: the goal of all to progress.
Speaker 5: Grow a woman plotting her course to freedom and delightful.
Speaker 2: Oh. That was from the new film Poor Things, now
Speaker 2: in limited release across the country. To check for showings
Speaker 2: in your area, visit poor thingsfilm dot com. The movie
Speaker 2: is exclusively playing in theaters at the moment and is
Speaker 2: really one of those that if you can, you should
Speaker 2: venture out to see. Lonthimos has made other rich, dark
Speaker 2: comedies like The Lobster and The Favorite, but Poor Things
Speaker 2: is unlike anything I've ever seen. It's a coming of
Speaker 2: age story, dystopian merchant ivory film, and then ultimately a
Speaker 2: sort of inversion of the Frankenstein story. The foe who's
Speaker 2: in the role of the father ends up becoming this strange,
Speaker 2: beating heart of the movie. It's also a deceptively moving performance,
Speaker 2: more tender and warm than the characters you probably know
Speaker 2: him from and film like To Live and Die in
Speaker 2: La Platoon, Wild at Heart. The list goes on, many
Speaker 2: of which we discuss in this conversation. We also talk
Speaker 2: about his early love of B movies, why this role
Speaker 2: as a doctor is an especially personal one, his formative
Speaker 2: years as part of the Wooster Group, and the guiding
Speaker 2: principles that have shaped a lifetime of brilliant performances. That's
Speaker 2: all coming up next with our guest, Willem Dafoe. Willem Dafoe. Yes, Hi,
Speaker 2: thank you for being here.
Speaker 1: My pleasure.
Speaker 2: How are you feeling.
Speaker 1: I feel good. I haven't been in La rightly, so
Speaker 1: it's nice to be back.
Speaker 2: Oh is that a good thing? Not being here?
Speaker 1: No, I'm happy when I'm here. I've never really lived
Speaker 1: here lived here. I've lived here for periods of I'm
Speaker 1: doing movies, so I'm usually happy because I'm working. I'm
Speaker 1: doing something that I like. Also, La, I see friends
Speaker 1: that I don't normally see. You know, I put up
Speaker 1: with the car stuff.
Speaker 2: You want to travel by foot or by train. Yes,
Speaker 2: why don't we start with this new movie of yours?
Speaker 1: Sounds good.
Speaker 2: It's called Poor Things. It's directed by your ghost Lantemos,
Speaker 2: and in it you play a lonely scientist with a
Speaker 2: disfigured face, yes, whose latest experiment finds him reanimating a
Speaker 2: thirty something meter corpse played by Emma Stone by replacing
Speaker 2: her defunct brain with that of an unborn child.
Speaker 1: Her unborn child.
Speaker 2: You're spoiling it, not me detail. Yeah, it's a good detail.
Speaker 2: But I was going to say, as I explained that.
Speaker 1: Movie, it's sort of important that it is important.
Speaker 2: I just felt like it comes later. I don't know
Speaker 2: we can litigate this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I'm not one of those people.
Speaker 2: I know, no neither.
Speaker 1: My wife is always don't tell me, don't tell me,
Speaker 1: even when I'm working on a movie.
Speaker 2: I don't want.
Speaker 1: I don't want no thing. I just want to see
Speaker 1: the movie, you know, And I don't get it. I
Speaker 1: can watch a movie kind of knowing what happens, because
Speaker 1: I can will my brain to forget where we're going
Speaker 1: and try to be with each.
Speaker 2: Scene suspension of disbelief, and there they go. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: the basic premise of the film. How would you describe
Speaker 2: the world of the project, the world that you inhabited
Speaker 2: as a character and an actor.
Speaker 1: Well, it's an imagined Victorian world, and it's got all
Speaker 1: these kind of steampunk elements. You know, there's these advancements
Speaker 1: in science that are kind of fantastical next to things
Speaker 1: of that period. So it's a playful reimagining or imagining
Speaker 1: of Victorian time that never was. So you're leaning into Victoriana,
Speaker 1: but you're also spinning. So the world is very specific.
Speaker 1: It's so beautifully designed and so complete that as an actor,
Speaker 1: you're enter that world and it really tells you what
Speaker 1: to do because there's nothing like it. So your response
Speaker 1: is to it, of course, in tandem with the script
Speaker 1: really very clear. There's there's a kind of reality in
Speaker 1: the fantasy. That's the kind of place as an actor
Speaker 1: that I enjoy.
Speaker 2: Being on set. You would often walk around what they
Speaker 2: had built, right, I mean, what would that look.
Speaker 1: I like to hang out on the set just to
Speaker 1: know what's going on, and it's a special time, you know,
Speaker 1: you get to be there watch the other people see
Speaker 1: what's going on. Also, it's a way to relax into
Speaker 1: being there, and the set was fantastic, and I had
Speaker 1: a degree of detail to go for a walking there
Speaker 1: and just poke around, go into the library, open up books,
Speaker 1: you know, check out some of the weird objects. That
Speaker 1: was a wealth of information for me.
Speaker 2: What did you find walking around?
Speaker 1: You know? The crazy thing is there would be a
Speaker 1: whole bookshelf and I would randomly pull out a book
Speaker 1: and inside would be legit surgical diagrams and things specific
Speaker 1: to our story.
Speaker 2: This is beyond the typical prop work.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, I love my props.
Speaker 2: A level of detail, a.
Speaker 1: Level of detail, you know, And at the same time,
Speaker 1: it wasn't precious, you know, we weren't. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It just helps you a great deal and it's not
Speaker 1: shown off. It was just the pleasure of making those things.
Speaker 1: I think the production people, the design people just kind
Speaker 1: of enjoyed it, and your gost probably gently let them go,
Speaker 1: you know, and worked with them on it.
Speaker 2: I don't philosophically, you don't believe that one transforms into
Speaker 2: the character.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that's true.
Speaker 2: Do you think that's wrong? No, because the quote I
Speaker 2: have for you is people will often ask you, how
Speaker 2: did you transform into the character? And your response often
Speaker 2: is the character is already in me, it's lived in me.
Speaker 2: It's not a kind of metamorphosis that happens.
Speaker 1: Well, that is a metamorphosis, because that's not where you're showing,
Speaker 1: and that's not necessarily what you're concentrating on. So there
Speaker 1: is a transformation because you're taking another shape you're presenting,
Speaker 1: or you're living a different aspect of you that doesn't
Speaker 1: get exercised, the idea being that the character is born
Speaker 1: of situations, a series of reactions and living that the
Speaker 1: character appears. So okay, I suppose that's a transformation. But
Speaker 1: the fact that it's within you, just like it's within.
Speaker 2: You, that seems like a key distinction.
Speaker 1: Though maybe it is because I find more and more
Speaker 1: it's important to get away from them notion of ownership
Speaker 1: of an identity and the idea of saying, oh, all
Speaker 1: characters are within us. Then you don't have everything relative
Speaker 1: to who you think you are. It's kind of open
Speaker 1: and you accept just like I say, you have those
Speaker 1: characters in you too, and they would emerge given the
Speaker 1: right circumcircumstances. You're not practiced at it, and that's not
Speaker 1: your job, So that's not going to happen, but the
Speaker 1: possibility is there. We're thinking broad broad strokes, like you know,
Speaker 1: we're all brothers and sisters. Broad strokes.
Speaker 2: Well, we're diving into philosophy about thirty minutes before I
Speaker 2: thought we would. Okay, but I love it.
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 2: We're talking in the morning. I'm here for it. I'm
Speaker 2: here for it. In this case, the actual physical transformation
Speaker 2: that you had to undergo. I wonder you're playing a
Speaker 2: doctor who works on people, but in order to play
Speaker 2: that part, you yourself had to be worked on for
Speaker 2: hours and hours and hours. Yes, how did that shape
Speaker 2: your approach to the character in this story?
Speaker 1: In the story? Once again, you correct me because I'm
Speaker 1: not that sensitive to spoilers.
Speaker 2: I don't make a habit to correct my guests. Okay,
Speaker 2: and you can do especially not willing to find I'm
Speaker 2: inviting you.
Speaker 1: Please. My father his backstory, if you will, used me
Speaker 1: for experiments and also introduced me to this word of
Speaker 1: a world of objective science, and it had a horrible
Speaker 1: effect on me. Not only am I.
Speaker 2: Disfigured literal scars.
Speaker 1: Literal scars, There's certain things that I'm unable to do physically,
Speaker 1: and I need help with my digestion. I'm basically impotent
Speaker 1: because he's operated on my genitals. He handed me a
Speaker 1: pretty bad hand.
Speaker 2: You're smiling as you're saying, well.
Speaker 1: The beauty is the beauty. He turns his pain into
Speaker 1: a certain devotion towards science, something positive, something positive, And
Speaker 1: it always disturbs me when people describe him as a
Speaker 1: mad scientist, because he's really quite compassionate and quite on
Speaker 1: top of it in the sense that he's handed a
Speaker 1: really bad hand and he plays it well. But getting
Speaker 1: back to his makeup, to be in the chair for
Speaker 1: a long period of time, you know, actors love to
Speaker 1: complain about their process and look all brave and dedicated
Speaker 1: by how difficult it is.
Speaker 2: But actually, that was my next question, how brave are.
Speaker 1: The Actually it's a pleasure. It's difficult to do. But
Speaker 1: then you sit in the chair and you start to
Speaker 1: recede as they put these pieces on you, they glue
Speaker 1: them to your face. You can't sleep because you have
Speaker 1: to cooperate with them, because some of the pieces are
Speaker 1: quite intricate and delicate, and you sit there for a
Speaker 1: long time looking at yourself at least superficially go away
Speaker 1: and something else emerges, and that really is a beautiful
Speaker 1: preparation to say, guess what willam went by by? We're
Speaker 1: trying to inhabit this other thing under these circumstances, so
Speaker 1: it's a good preparation. By the time everyone else gets
Speaker 1: there and you're ready to shoot, you're in the groove.
Speaker 2: Hopefully you know when it comes to your makeup. This
Speaker 2: is an especially personal role for you, in part because
Speaker 2: your father was a doctor for forty years. He worked
Speaker 2: out of this industrial paper mill tout at Appleton, Wisconsin,
Speaker 2: where your mother also worked alongside with him as a nurse.
Speaker 2: But my understanding is that this clinic was at the
Speaker 2: center of a pretty agricultural community, yes, where patients would
Speaker 2: come from all over the place, very far. They traveled
Speaker 2: great distances to see him, which you saw firsthand working
Speaker 2: as a janitor there.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I wondered, what did you make of the relationship between
Speaker 2: the patients and your parents.
Speaker 1: Ah, it's funny. My mother she worked as a nurse,
Speaker 1: and she'd also work in the lab, and she did
Speaker 1: all kinds of things. She was the original super mother.
Speaker 1: She had eight children and she worked all during that time.
Speaker 1: I was basically brought up by my older sisters. But
Speaker 1: when I was a janitor, and sometimes I was around
Speaker 1: these people that came from very far away would be
Speaker 1: sitting in the waiting room and my father, who was
Speaker 1: basically an intestinal surgeon but also did many things, you know,
Speaker 1: was basically functioning as a GP, would get called out
Speaker 1: for surgery, emergency surgery, so all these people would have
Speaker 1: to wait. Oh, and my mother would kind of deal
Speaker 1: with them, and they'd cuss her out and they'd be
Speaker 1: angry and treat her horribly because you know, some dairy
Speaker 1: farmer that never moved, never leaves his farm, goes into
Speaker 1: the big city of fifty thousand one day and sits
Speaker 1: around for ten hours written for the doctor to up here.
Speaker 1: And then my father would breeze in at about seven
Speaker 1: o'clock in the evening and he'd want to see patients,
Speaker 1: and they'd see him and they were like, oh, doctor,
Speaker 1: and they give my mother a dirty look. So that
Speaker 1: really informed a lot of my relationships. It gave me
Speaker 1: a lot of information about how different people in different
Speaker 1: positions are treated, and you know, gender roles and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing.
Speaker 2: That's what I want to ask you about actually, because
Speaker 2: I read about this and what you're describing as a
Speaker 2: gap and a difference in distance and behavior from one
Speaker 2: person to the next. They treated your father like the
Speaker 2: hero who came down from god knows where, and your mother.
Speaker 1: As that whole that's making them.
Speaker 2: Wait, exactly, what did that tell you about people.
Speaker 1: That they you know, it's back to poor things, you know,
Speaker 1: it really shows how they're socially conditioned, and when they
Speaker 1: get squeezed, when they don't feel comfortable, they go to
Speaker 1: those kind of attitudes and kind of stereotypes and kind
Speaker 1: of ways. They aren't thinking. They're in panic mode, they're
Speaker 1: in frustrated mode, and they sort of adopt these righteous
Speaker 1: positions without thinking about them. So one thing about poor
Speaker 1: Things is it has a lot to do with identity
Speaker 1: and social conditioning. And the beauty is that this main character,
Speaker 1: and beautifully played by Emma Stone, she's not just a
Speaker 1: person without a filter. She's basically a child in a
Speaker 1: woman's body who hasn't been conditioned socially. So she doesn't
Speaker 1: have a filter, but it doesn't come out of some
Speaker 1: kind of stance. It's just it's not her experience, and
Speaker 1: she sees very clearly. So she's kind of like the
Speaker 1: wise one and the innocent.
Speaker 2: At the same time, you called it a spin on Frankenstein.
Speaker 1: Well, that's the setup, right, that's the setup. But it's
Speaker 1: quite different when you think Frankenstein and the doctor put
Speaker 1: a criminal's brain into this creature. This is different.
Speaker 2: But the way it's upending our ideas around gender and possession,
Speaker 2: I think is fascinating.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's the heart of it. And
Speaker 1: you know, much is made of the sexuality because that's
Speaker 1: the entertaining part. And it does have a lot to
Speaker 1: do with poking holes and kind of our puritanical sometimes
Speaker 1: stances on what is correct or incorrect behavior in terms
Speaker 1: of expression of sexuality or sexual experience.
Speaker 2: It's funny because your upbringing you alluded to this, but
Speaker 2: you have five sisters. I think we're pretty responsible for
Speaker 2: raising you and shaping probably some of your ideas around
Speaker 2: the stuff that we're talking.
Speaker 1: About very much.
Speaker 2: Your parents worked together. They were workaholics. You always describe
Speaker 2: them as such. I'm curious because I want to go
Speaker 2: back to your dad for a moment. Growing up, he
Speaker 2: would make these trips to Chicago with my mother.
Speaker 1: I think they were romantic getaways.
Speaker 2: To get away from the eight children.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the work yeah.
Speaker 2: And when they returned, it's my understanding that he would
Speaker 2: come back with these super eight films that you would
Speaker 2: watch together, one of which was Frankenstein in these monster movies. Yes,
Speaker 2: what was that?
Speaker 1: Like? I wouldn't watch them so much with him. He'd
Speaker 1: really give them as presents.
Speaker 2: Okay, and he said, get away from me, you go watch.
Speaker 1: He was cool, but like I said, he was a workaholics.
Speaker 1: So we didn't spend that much time together. But that
Speaker 1: was great. And we had a little Bell and Howell
Speaker 1: projector and we show them over and over again on
Speaker 1: that love do you know the there was a little
Speaker 1: lever where you could slow motion that go backwards, and
Speaker 1: I remember particularly I was struck by the moment in
Speaker 1: Bride of Frankenstein where he reaches for the lever, the
Speaker 1: lever and says, we belong dead, and a single tear
Speaker 1: goes down his face and then he pulls the lever
Speaker 1: that destroys everything.
Speaker 3: Looks Beliva Tova to prous all dresses, we belong dead.
Speaker 1: Even as a child, I thought, wow, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: take but you know, going back to my sisters, I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, but that was very important.
Speaker 1: You know, my brothers and myself, we were burdened by
Speaker 1: this kind of role, role by role to following my
Speaker 1: father's footsteps and to be successful. And that was available
Speaker 1: to us because we were white, middle class men. My sisters,
Speaker 1: you know, the big thing was to make sure that
Speaker 1: they got an education and not get pregnant, you know.
Speaker 1: And I saw that because there was less pressure on them,
Speaker 1: they were able to develop in much stronger ways than
Speaker 1: we were because we developed an eye of seeing ourselves
Speaker 1: in the outside world, and they weren't afforded that because
Speaker 1: they were shut out of a lot of those opportunities.
Speaker 1: So I've always I've always kind of thought, oh, how
Speaker 1: cool would be a girl? I mean, I might being my.
Speaker 2: Guy, But that's going to be the title of the
Speaker 2: episode now. In this house, you said once it was
Speaker 2: a terrific distaste for introspection and reflection. That was selfish.
Speaker 2: You said, you're supposed to go forward to produce, to
Speaker 2: make your mark, and I have that in my blood
Speaker 2: as a kid than a teenager, you know, in this
Speaker 2: town of fifty thousand, What did making your mark look
Speaker 2: like to you? What did you think of that?
Speaker 1: I think it was about being successful being admired, being
Speaker 1: able to take care of yourself. There was a kind
Speaker 1: of self reliant you know, don't depend on anyone. It's
Speaker 1: all about the individual, where much later in life I
Speaker 1: shifted more towards and not actually not much later in life.
Speaker 1: I mean, my life has always been about the collective,
Speaker 1: collaboration and the collective. But the truth is what I said,
Speaker 1: the quote that you said, it's true. But then there
Speaker 1: was the flip side of that that we were children
Speaker 1: left alone because both my parents worked, probably not at
Speaker 1: the beginning so much. I'm at the bottom half of
Speaker 1: the family. But we used to do crazy things and
Speaker 1: make everything a game, and I think that had a
Speaker 1: huge influence on me, this idea of a group of
Speaker 1: people making something. If we had to clean the house,
Speaker 1: we'd make it a game and someone would officiate and
Speaker 1: you know, we'd get a play back play, you'd have
Speaker 1: a referee that I say it now and it's kind
Speaker 1: of embarrassing. No, it's silly stuff. But there was a
Speaker 1: great sense of play and a great sense of collaboration,
Speaker 1: and the idea of fantasy and play was very important
Speaker 1: to getting stuff done.
Speaker 2: You were big on pranks back then.
Speaker 1: Weren't you, I was, I was, boy, you're really hitting
Speaker 1: me hard on the on the childhood stuff.
Speaker 2: I have a bunch of things where you you enjoyed
Speaker 2: fake vomit. Yeah, yeah, you dressed up as an ape
Speaker 2: and protested the plan of the apes. Yes, these are
Speaker 2: hard hitting things right here.
Speaker 1: Well, they're hard hitting when you consider I'm a man
Speaker 1: of a certain age and talking about this stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's memorable and it was fun. And still I think
Speaker 1: that sense of play is important.
Speaker 2: I think so. I actually think it is worth noting,
Speaker 2: because of your love of performance art to me that
Speaker 2: it starts there.
Speaker 1: I was reminded that I was doing an interview actually
Speaker 1: earlier today about a collaboration I did with Marina Bramovich,
Speaker 1: my favorite, and the guy was asking very much about
Speaker 1: what were things we had in common, you know, and
Speaker 1: I said, well, in some ways we have a lot
Speaker 1: that were not in common. But I did recall when
Speaker 1: I was a child, when the astronauts were going up
Speaker 1: that really caught my you know, going up to the
Speaker 1: moon and the astronaut thing was very strong for me.
Speaker 1: So I remember wondering could I do that? Could I
Speaker 1: be that? And I used to lock myself in the
Speaker 1: closet to see if I could stand to be by
Speaker 1: myself for long periods of time, which feels a little
Speaker 1: bit like something has something in relationship to the impulse
Speaker 1: that Marina has when she was doing some of her
Speaker 1: earlier work.
Speaker 2: Could you you know I tried a couple of days,
Speaker 2: that's important thing.
Speaker 1: No, I didn't even make it a day. You know,
Speaker 1: you'd leave to be and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Oh, you know what, I'm hearing some noise out there hungry?
Speaker 2: Did someone call my name? Or that I got to
Speaker 2: go out?
Speaker 1: No, I was. What I'm bragging about is the impulse.
Speaker 1: I know, not about the result in this case.
Speaker 2: That's right, and the and the impulse is a good
Speaker 2: indicator of what was to come.
Speaker 1: I think, Well, it's just this idea that turned on
Speaker 1: to create a circumstance where you can find out about yourself,
Speaker 1: about your almost existential questions, even as a kid, you know,
Speaker 1: to try to give some kind of shape to your experience,
Speaker 1: and sometimes you have to do things to pin down
Speaker 1: exactly how you feel.
Speaker 2: You said once in an old magazine that doesn't exist anymore,
Speaker 2: called Drama Logue. You said, this is pathetically but when
Speaker 2: I was younger, I think I was profoundly disappointed by
Speaker 2: the world and I felt like an outsider, and that
Speaker 2: led me to things outside my family. Did life outside
Speaker 2: your family begin with theater acts? You know, this acting
Speaker 2: group that you joined in college, even before even before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think in the sense that in this collaboration
Speaker 1: and in making theater pieces and being an actor, being
Speaker 1: in a group of people with a project, applying themselves,
Speaker 1: coming together and then doing something publicly, that started quite
Speaker 1: early when I was even younger, even before I was
Speaker 1: out of the house. I think seeking that community and
Speaker 1: I found that in community theater and shows at school,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. But the truth is, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't really know people that were actors or made
Speaker 1: their living being artists of any kind, so it wasn't
Speaker 1: a realistic career goal. And then you put that next
Speaker 1: to that kind of striving, you got to produce kind
Speaker 1: of atude that I grew up with, and they were
Speaker 1: at war. And I think basically I never decided, and
Speaker 1: I'm really struck that I went towards situations and people
Speaker 1: and never really decided to be an actor. But the
Speaker 1: situations and people kind of compounded the situation and after
Speaker 1: a while, I looked around and said, well, I guess
Speaker 1: I'm an actor because I'm not doing anything else. That's
Speaker 1: not to say that I didn't try to train. I
Speaker 1: went to school very briefly, but I was too eager
Speaker 1: to perform. I was too eager to be out in
Speaker 1: the world and to not be in the hothouse of,
Speaker 1: you know, being in a university theater department.
Speaker 2: So you went towards New York City.
Speaker 1: New York City, and I got called back a little
Speaker 1: bit by theater accidentent touring with them, and that was
Speaker 1: big eye opening because we got picked up by a
Speaker 1: Dutch producer that brought us to a tour in Europe.
Speaker 1: And what was significant about that is there was one
Speaker 1: place in particular in Amsterdam called the Mickery Theater, and
Speaker 1: they were very well funded at that time. The director
Speaker 1: of that theater basically went around the world and cherry
Speaker 1: picked things that he liked as far as theater, usually
Speaker 1: avant garde stuff. And I was there watching this stuff
Speaker 1: some of the best companies in the world, some of
Speaker 1: the most radical theater in the world. And that had
Speaker 1: a profound effect on me because it was inspiring.
Speaker 2: What did that look like?
Speaker 1: You know, it was more influenced by event and spectacle,
Speaker 1: and also less by literature and psychology, more by dance, performance,
Speaker 1: visual art, mixed media, those sorts of things.
Speaker 2: In New York in seventy six seventy seven, when you
Speaker 2: first discovered the performance group right, which would then turn
Speaker 2: into the group, you called it kind of what you're
Speaker 2: saying now. You called it a laboratory. They were publicly
Speaker 2: creating these opportunities for their own personal liberation. So I
Speaker 2: have two questions.
Speaker 1: On this liberation I'm reaching. I mean, I think that's true,
Speaker 1: but that's but that's not what we were thinking of.
Speaker 1: We were young kids that were just attracted to people
Speaker 1: and having fun.
Speaker 2: And so that younger Willan with that quote that was
Speaker 2: a reach, that was a reach for liberation. No, that
Speaker 2: was you, not me.
Speaker 1: No, I said that. Probably that was the old Willam
Speaker 1: talking about the young woman and the uh incorrectly.
Speaker 2: He said, he said woman, what I think was a slip.
Speaker 1: I got women on my mind.
Speaker 2: Is that always true? No?
Speaker 1: No, No, I'm I'm talking about poor things.
Speaker 2: So liberation is a reach.
Speaker 1: I mean what I want to paint is you're downtown
Speaker 1: and there are all these people that are coming. They're
Speaker 1: practicing stuff that they haven't been trained at. I think
Speaker 1: that's true, and that was quite remarkable, you know. And
Speaker 1: there are examples you can go back to people like
Speaker 1: David Byrne went to Risdy, but what did he end
Speaker 1: up doing? Making music? It was all mixed up and
Speaker 1: there was a community of people. My former partner, Elizabeth Lecomte,
Speaker 1: the director of the Wooster Group, used to always say
Speaker 1: we're a community theater, and that would bother me because
Speaker 1: I think, well, that means we're not professional, you know.
Speaker 1: She said, no, we're a community theater and our community
Speaker 1: is so And at that time Soho was full of
Speaker 1: a lot of life, life and activity, and that's really
Speaker 1: it's hard to measure. But really the art, the art
Speaker 1: world started to boom, and with it a certain kind
Speaker 1: of boom in non traditional theater. We weren't careerists trying
Speaker 1: to go towards something. We were doing something.
Speaker 2: For now, I would say careerist and Wooster Group. I
Speaker 2: don't think those two have ever been in the same
Speaker 2: sentence together.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a miracle they still exist.
Speaker 2: The word that does come up often, and I think
Speaker 2: it's a description you don't particularly like, oh no, because
Speaker 2: I'm in agreement with you. But in the press, the
Speaker 2: Wooster Group is often described as a kind of deconstruction
Speaker 2: of theater and performance. But I know you have often
Speaker 2: found that description to be kind of contradictory. Why is that.
Speaker 1: Because it feels, you know, that sounds like a post modern,
Speaker 1: heady kind of thing that just wasn't my experience. We
Speaker 1: were playing around, we were doing things that interested us.
Speaker 1: We were taking plays that we were interested in and
Speaker 1: sometimes cutting them up, doing our favorite part because we
Speaker 1: were using it kind of iconographically in a larger sense,
Speaker 1: we were using pieces of the culture to construct not
Speaker 1: necessarily a narrative, but let's say, a collage of our
Speaker 1: experience and our interests. So that's a little different than
Speaker 1: this kind of deconstruy deconstruction. Maybe it's accurate, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but the point is it sounded very heavy and very
Speaker 1: like we had a mission and we had this post
Speaker 1: modern idea where where it was more direct than that,
Speaker 1: and more essential than that, and more practical than that.
Speaker 1: For example, we worked with a lot of home video
Speaker 1: equipment before people were integrating video projections and that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff into theater work. It wasn't a grand idea.
Speaker 1: It was a solution.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like we had a night.
Speaker 2: Do you mean by that a solution?
Speaker 1: Here's a good example. We were doing a production of
Speaker 1: Three Sisters chechos, three sisters, and the sisters were quite elderly.
Speaker 1: We cast up. There was one servant role where that
Speaker 1: was played by Steve Passami's grandmother and I think she
Speaker 1: was like ninety or something like that. Well, she couldn't
Speaker 1: be there, so we put her on video and we'd
Speaker 1: wheel out a television and we'd play the scenes with her.
Speaker 1: That sounds like ooh, some heady no thing, but it
Speaker 1: was practical because it means to es there would be
Speaker 1: space involves left, so we could do interact with her
Speaker 1: and it became a score, it became a dance.
Speaker 2: I like that. I think the reason I bring it
Speaker 2: up is because deconstruction seems to imply that it's coiled
Speaker 2: down to something, that there is a desired effect. And
Speaker 2: you've often said we didn't know where we were going.
Speaker 2: That's true, there's a malleability that you wanted to keep,
Speaker 2: and I think that definition makes it something there's a
Speaker 2: fixed outcome.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, yeah, particularly as an actor, I always feel
Speaker 1: a little irresponsible because I truly don't know what stuff means.
Speaker 1: But that's not important in my role as long as
Speaker 1: my engagement, my level of engagement in doing what I
Speaker 1: do is fully committed. It's called the leap of faith.
Speaker 1: You're really diving into something that you don't exactly know,
Speaker 1: but the quality of going towards that thing is what's important,
Speaker 1: I think, because if you know exactly where you're going,
Speaker 1: you tend to race to it somewhere and then craft
Speaker 1: kind of a a trip.
Speaker 2: It's mapped but not lived.
Speaker 1: It's mapped but not lived. Thank you. That's good.
Speaker 2: And still that you apparently have to do a Dak
Speaker 2: Shepherd podcast, So if you just want to take that
Speaker 2: with you, just make sure you quote me on it.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think it'd be a hell of a lot different.
Speaker 2: Well, that's good. That's good. I don't think that's a compliment.
Speaker 1: Are you guys in competition?
Speaker 2: There's no competition between us. He is a famous movie
Speaker 2: star and I'm twenty nine.
Speaker 1: You're twenty nine. That's right, young man.
Speaker 2: You're alluding to those great directors that you've worked with
Speaker 2: and how you take a leap of faith with them.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about those in a second. But
Speaker 2: the one thing before you jump into the movies, this
Speaker 2: thing that we're kind of circling, the way in which
Speaker 2: you developed your craft. There's an essay in the Drama
Speaker 2: Review from nineteen eighty five called Task and Vision, Task
Speaker 2: and Vision Vision in the form of a task. Can
Speaker 2: you explain to me what that means to you and
Speaker 2: how it is kind of foundational to how you approach
Speaker 2: this work.
Speaker 1: For your audience. I'll make it real.
Speaker 2: Simple, great good where Philistine's no.
Speaker 1: For me, I'll make it real simple. I think that
Speaker 1: was very much about the idea of everything is based
Speaker 1: on doing as opposed to showing. One of the beauty,
Speaker 1: beautiful things about the Wooster group, which really put a
Speaker 1: heavy stamp on me and really created While I don't
Speaker 1: have a fixed way of approaching things, I have tendencies
Speaker 1: that I recognize, and in that theater, the technicians were
Speaker 1: as important as the actors, and the actors were as
Speaker 1: important as the technicians, and sometimes they sho tasks and
Speaker 1: the truth was they weren't all that different. I also
Speaker 1: think you experienced that in something like the Florida Project,
Speaker 1: where you know the professional actor learns from the person
Speaker 1: that's not an actor. It's about having an experience, have
Speaker 1: something happened to you that's transparent enough that the audience
Speaker 1: can be with you and hopefully can have something a
Speaker 1: flavor of that experience, right, and it can broaden how
Speaker 1: we think, or it can give us other possibilities. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the idea. Rather than telling us something that we
Speaker 1: already know or we recognize, put us in a place
Speaker 1: where you say, hmm, it's what I like going to
Speaker 1: the movies for it. It's like, wow, I never thought
Speaker 1: of that way, or wow, I've got to learn to
Speaker 1: be less this and more like that because you see
Speaker 1: an example of some personal generosity or heroism or something
Speaker 1: and it inspires you that's what you want to get.
Speaker 1: It's about, in real time, giving yourself to something that
Speaker 1: expresses a more collective experience.
Speaker 4: After the break, more from William Defoe.
Speaker 2: Coming back, I want to talk about the things that
Speaker 2: have happened to you by way of some of these
Speaker 2: films that we can't possibly talk about all of them
Speaker 2: because life is short and you have things to do,
Speaker 2: but I want to highlight some that are particularly important
Speaker 2: to me. Okay, the first one is to Live and
Speaker 2: Die in la It's directed by the late William Freakin
Speaker 2: Rest in Peace. We started this conversation talk about the
Speaker 2: world of poor things and the vision of your goes.
Speaker 2: I thought we should probably use that as a framework
Speaker 2: to discuss these other movies. What was the vision of
Speaker 2: that film and what was your role in it? What
Speaker 2: happened to you in it that you put on screen.
Speaker 1: Ah, well, it was a beautiful role because it's a
Speaker 1: you know, he's a counterfeiter, he's an artist, he's also
Speaker 1: a criminal. That's all floating around.
Speaker 2: Inside this guy, and that's it whole a trinity.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Where Billy Friedkin was at that moment, he had
Speaker 1: had great successes and recently, as he was rolling into that,
Speaker 1: he had had some not so great successes. A sorcerer
Speaker 1: maybe a sorcerer I think. I'm told I don't know
Speaker 1: this because I was just a kid at the time,
Speaker 1: But that really set him back as far as his
Speaker 1: currency to get money and choose projects. So he was
Speaker 1: like he was always kind of iconic, plastic and always
Speaker 1: had a little chip, you know, in a nice way,
Speaker 1: and he was like, well, so damn it, I'm going
Speaker 1: to make a movie and He was determined to cast
Speaker 1: actors that nobody knew. In fact, I remember at the
Speaker 1: audition he said, yeah, I'm interested because nobody knows you.
Speaker 1: I mean, nobody knows Billy, nobody knows John. You know,
Speaker 1: they'll be able to enter the story better because they
Speaker 1: don't have any association outside of the story. There was
Speaker 1: a part of him that was very intellectual and very bright,
Speaker 1: and that was another part of him that was like
Speaker 1: a street kid. You know. He wanted to get dirty,
Speaker 1: you know, he wanted to check out these worlds, and
Speaker 1: he entered this world of counterfeitters and criminals. It was
Speaker 1: great fun to shoot. Sometimes you'd show up and he say,
Speaker 1: you know what, we're not going to do that today.
Speaker 1: We're going to do something else. On my way home,
Speaker 1: I found this fabulous location and I thought we'd do
Speaker 1: a scene, and then he'd invent things. So he's very fluid,
Speaker 1: very inspired, a lot of fun, but also wild because
Speaker 1: he liked to jump off the bridge, you know, find
Speaker 1: his wings on the way down.
Speaker 2: Did you like to jump off with him?
Speaker 1: I tried, I tried, you know, I mean his big
Speaker 1: instruction to me was, and I remember this so well,
Speaker 1: Zen Will Zen and the truth is then I knew nothing,
Speaker 1: but zen Zen just meant simple to me.
Speaker 2: What does it mean now?
Speaker 1: Simple?
Speaker 2: How did that fluidity that you're describing, How did that
Speaker 2: contrast with Oliverstone on Platoon because he discovered the fluidity
Speaker 2: there too, because.
Speaker 1: We were shooting in the jungle and you don't control things,
Speaker 1: you know, and we were doing an incredible amount of
Speaker 1: setups today because Bob Richardson, you know, was very loose
Speaker 1: and very fast and there was very little lighting or rehearsal,
Speaker 1: so so much of it was going drawing your equipment,
Speaker 1: putting on your uniform, no makeup, no trailers, nothing, We're
Speaker 1: in the jungle. And then they say, this is what
Speaker 1: we're doing, and we set it up and.
Speaker 2: We do it.
Speaker 1: We play soldier, you know. We tried to learn how
Speaker 1: to do soldier things, which we did to some degree,
Speaker 1: but we did it with a terrific pressure to honor
Speaker 1: authenticity because we were working with people that had been there,
Speaker 1: and of course Platoon was based on his personal experience.
Speaker 1: So you didn't want to distort or hollywood up this
Speaker 1: passion project.
Speaker 2: Why would they look, here's you as Sergeant Elias and
Speaker 2: Oliverstone's Platoon from nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 4: It's a beautiful night.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I love this place, that night, this dies. There's
Speaker 5: no right or wrong in them.
Speaker 1: You're just there.
Speaker 5: It's a nice way of putting it.
Speaker 4: Barnes's got it in for you, doesn't he.
Speaker 5: Barnes believes in what he's doing, and you you believe
Speaker 5: sixty five? Yeah, Now, now what happened today is just
Speaker 5: the beginning.
Speaker 1: We're gonna lose this.
Speaker 2: War around this time. You gave this interview and you said,
Speaker 2: and I think it's instructive to how we talk about
Speaker 2: and understand the things you've done. He said, I have
Speaker 2: no obligation to be transformed into something that I'm not.
Speaker 2: It all remains me in that. It all remains my experience,
Speaker 2: my history. Sergeant Elias means nothing to me. Sergeant Elias
Speaker 2: was me during this period of time in the Philippines
Speaker 2: under these ground rules. I think all characters live in you.
Speaker 2: You just frame them, give them circumstances, and that character
Speaker 2: will happen.
Speaker 1: Wow, I'm still stuck in that?
Speaker 2: Are you stuck in that? Or is there a freedom
Speaker 2: in that? No, there's a freedom.
Speaker 1: Listen. The problem with talking about what you do is
Speaker 1: it's very imprecise, and you know, I like talking about
Speaker 1: it because it's imprecise and it's slippery, and it moves around,
Speaker 1: and for every project you've got to remake your process.
Speaker 1: It's slippery. So you say, you say some stuff that's
Speaker 1: not true all the time because you're reaching for some
Speaker 1: little points of contact of language, of language. You can
Speaker 1: work from that and jump off from that.
Speaker 2: Well, how did you remake yourself in the films of
Speaker 2: Paul Schrader. You've made a handful of moves with them.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking about Light Sleeper, most recently The Card Counter.
Speaker 2: When you think of him and those experiences, what comes
Speaker 2: to mind.
Speaker 1: Well, I've worked a lot with Paul. He talks about
Speaker 1: you know, he does a lot of his work in
Speaker 1: the writing. When he casts, he kind of relies on
Speaker 1: you to come up with the goods. I remember in
Speaker 1: Light Sleeper.
Speaker 2: Loved that movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good movie, I think, And it was
Speaker 1: an important movie to me because it's a very New
Speaker 1: York movie. And also it's one of the few times
Speaker 1: where I felt like, oh, if my life was different,
Speaker 1: I could be this guy. So it felt very close
Speaker 1: to me.
Speaker 2: You felt that, yeah, I did.
Speaker 1: And also the research of it because that was a
Speaker 1: period of not me personally, but a lot of drug
Speaker 1: use in New York because I play a white color
Speaker 1: drug dealer. I remember Paul. I thought, God, this guy
Speaker 1: doesn't talk to me. We do the shots. I like
Speaker 1: the script. I'm engaged. I'm doing things that I've learned
Speaker 1: how to do. It's interesting. New York is my town,
Speaker 1: I know it. I felt very comfortable, but at the
Speaker 1: same time, there was a little bit of insecurity about
Speaker 1: he didn't talk to me. And about two days after
Speaker 1: that thought was obsessing me. We're going up in an
Speaker 1: elevator and he says, hey, Willem, I know I don't
Speaker 1: talk to you too much about what you're doing, but
Speaker 1: you're doing fine. So once again, he makes a world.
Speaker 1: He makes the world in the writing, and they're usually
Speaker 1: fairly modest budgets that I've worked on with him, which
Speaker 1: gives you a certain discipline to not you know, just
Speaker 1: to do things. Essentially, it's a reasonable way to work,
Speaker 1: and because I know with time we get a little
Speaker 1: bit of a shorthand and a lot of trust. But
Speaker 1: my experience has been much more. They do their work
Speaker 1: in making the world, and you enter it and they
Speaker 1: watch you enter it, and they watch you see and
Speaker 1: deal with the world, and then they have response to that.
Speaker 2: To go back to what you said, Schrader, do you
Speaker 2: need to be liked by a director? Does it help
Speaker 2: you as a performer? Is that something you're often thinking about,
Speaker 2: like the relationship between the two of you.
Speaker 1: You know what, that's a good question. I would say,
Speaker 1: not liked. But they have to be with you, they
Speaker 1: have to there has to become Actually, I don't care
Speaker 1: in a funny way because I'm an extension of them,
Speaker 1: so I don't think about that. I'm not looking back
Speaker 1: at them saying how am I doing? I'm looking forward
Speaker 1: to keep on going. It is about showing up and
Speaker 1: showing them up and applying yourself. That's it. And you
Speaker 1: know whether that's happening or not. You don't need someone
Speaker 1: to say you're doing good. Sometimes you get insecure, but
Speaker 1: even then I think you've got to suck it up
Speaker 1: and keep on going. And it's their responsibility. If what
Speaker 1: they're saying doesn't fit into their world or is disturbing
Speaker 1: what they want to see, then they've got to come
Speaker 1: to you and make an adjustment. And that's fair. But
Speaker 1: the pleasure of committing yourself to this structured thing is
Speaker 1: what it's about. That's the pleasure, that's the positive energy.
Speaker 1: That's the thing that gets you going to lose yourself
Speaker 1: in something. And when I say lose yourself, I mean
Speaker 1: be without petty concerns and really commit to doing something,
Speaker 1: accomplishing something.
Speaker 2: Did you lose yourself on the Florida Project with Sean Baker?
Speaker 1: I try to lose myself as much as I can.
Speaker 1: With the Florida Project. I tried to be a good
Speaker 1: hotel manager. That's it.
Speaker 2: But the fluidity of that project, it was the first
Speaker 2: one you mentioned at the beginning of the conversation, and
Speaker 2: the collaborative ways in which everyone worked, the interplay between
Speaker 2: people that in some ways the movie is about how
Speaker 2: happiness is interdependent on the people in and around you.
Speaker 2: It's true, and to me it is somewhat of a
Speaker 2: metaphor for making movies or trying to do the work
Speaker 2: that you've made.
Speaker 1: I'm with you.
Speaker 2: I was watching Poor Things and I thought the warmth
Speaker 2: of your role here, the tenderness that's at the heart
Speaker 2: of Poor Things. I felt that deeply in the Florida
Speaker 2: Project as well. It reminded me of that film.
Speaker 1: Well, he's a person that takes here and that's always
Speaker 1: moving to me. I think the thing that moves me
Speaker 1: more than anything else in the movie is when someone
Speaker 1: extends themselves in a way that is you know, has
Speaker 1: at least a flavor of selflessness to it. You know
Speaker 1: that they're doing it because they need to do it.
Speaker 1: It's a natural thing. It's not transactional. They're doing it
Speaker 1: because it has to be done. And if everything that
Speaker 1: is made is some sort of expression of what our
Speaker 1: experience is being here and why we're doing here and
Speaker 1: tries to address itself to you know, what we're here for.
Speaker 1: I think the one that I keep on coming up with,
Speaker 1: and this may sound a little sweet, but we're here
Speaker 1: for each other because that's what we got. What's beyond
Speaker 1: this world, we don't know. You can have some sense
Speaker 1: of it, but you don't know. We won't know until
Speaker 1: we get there. So while we hear, the best thing
Speaker 1: we can do is be useful.
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna sit with that for a moment.
Speaker 1: I'm talking maybe it's delusional, I'm not saying I am.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about ambition, the ambition of being useful. You know,
Speaker 1: why aren't I building schools and underserved communities. But I
Speaker 1: also have to give a disclaimer. And no, I have
Speaker 1: to give a disclaimer because I see it in myself
Speaker 1: and I see it in other actors. You know, what
Speaker 1: sometimes is seen as a fairly pure and heart gets
Speaker 1: translated as an egocentric justification of celebration of self. It
Speaker 1: should have more contradiction and holes and funkiness to it.
Speaker 2: I think we definitely have that here you are and
Speaker 2: have been, it seems to me to every filmmaker you've
Speaker 2: worked with, a very willing vessel for the project. I mean,
Speaker 2: I have quote after quote from Oliver Stone, Scorsese, David Lynch,
Speaker 2: all of them say over and over and over again
Speaker 2: the same thing, which is that you come to the
Speaker 2: work on time, without ego and which it doesn't seem
Speaker 2: like you agree with entirely, but a willingness to do
Speaker 2: anything in service of the project.
Speaker 1: I think that's true because I think that's the only
Speaker 1: way to be free.
Speaker 2: My last two questions, in doing that work where you
Speaker 2: feel most free, you said once, often when I finish
Speaker 2: a performance, I'm depressed for about five minutes afterwards, no
Speaker 2: matter how well it went, because it's never good enough.
Speaker 2: I don't know what the word is. Metaphysically, it's not
Speaker 2: good enough. You did this thing, it's gone. You're energized,
Speaker 2: but at the same time it's gone. Whether they hate
Speaker 2: it, it doesn't matter, because it's gone. If there is intensity
Speaker 2: or fury, I think it's because when a performance ends
Speaker 2: or a shot is cut, I die a little bit.
Speaker 2: I can't stand for things to end. So a performance
Speaker 2: is like a life that I flail angrily through until
Speaker 2: it's over.
Speaker 1: Wow, I was really swinging for the fences there. When
Speaker 1: I hear that, it's common for a lot of performers,
Speaker 1: you know, after they perform, whether they're performing, it's not
Speaker 1: about the size of the venue or the reception, but
Speaker 1: after you've had that engagement that I keep on talking about,
Speaker 1: that kind of concentration. It's hard to have that in life.
Speaker 1: And when you return to life after being in this artificial,
Speaker 1: this structured situation, there's a little anxiety because in a performance,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's possible to connect the moments and connect the dots.
Speaker 1: It doesn't happen all the time, and when it does,
Speaker 1: it's special. But sometimes when you feel that it's kind
Speaker 1: of super being there, that is difficult to find in life.
Speaker 1: That's all almost impossible, almost impossible. But I think if
Speaker 1: you learn to have a taste for that, you can
Speaker 1: try to bring it to your life. What do you
Speaker 1: mean by that? Connecting the dots, being present, not falling out,
Speaker 1: not being distracted, having the kind of concentration that is
Speaker 1: aware and considers three sixty. Isn't just about serving your
Speaker 1: drive to I don't know, you know, the call and
Speaker 1: response of sense objects, you know, pleasure, I want this?
Speaker 1: You know, it's outside of that because you may adopt
Speaker 1: those kind of desires, those kind of motivations when you're
Speaker 1: performing in a fictional construct. But they don't run that deep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't blind you the way that they do in life,
Speaker 1: right because it's fictional. So in a funny way, you're
Speaker 1: freer because you're not playing for keeps. You're playing you know,
Speaker 1: nobody's betten.
Speaker 2: I suppose the only thing we can end on is
Speaker 2: an example of me connecting the dots, just one more
Speaker 2: time to say I do it. You made a film
Speaker 2: about ten years ago called Pasolini.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's directed by Abel Fara. It played at the Toronto
Speaker 2: International Film Festival in twenty fourteen. I saw the film
Speaker 2: at that festival, and you and I sat down much
Speaker 2: like we're doing now, except I was twenty.
Speaker 1: It was like in a bar.
Speaker 2: It was in a bar.
Speaker 1: I remember you from that time. I didn't connect that.
Speaker 2: It was then good you stuck.
Speaker 1: In my mind. You were young, yeah, but you were
Speaker 1: happening and you were turned on, so I like that.
Speaker 2: I was interviewing Abel and he said, will come over
Speaker 2: here this This kid's fucking crazy.
Speaker 1: From Abel. That's like a compliment.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had to go to therapist after that, but
Speaker 2: good on you. I took it as a compliment and
Speaker 2: I looked up that interview this morning, and the last
Speaker 2: thing I asked you about was you're about to turn
Speaker 2: sixty pretty soon. How do you feel about that? You said,
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm still twenty two years old. I'm
Speaker 2: young at heart, and you know, everything still goes I
Speaker 2: don't know what that means. It's good getting old because
Speaker 2: you see the cles, you see the rise and fall
Speaker 2: of things much easier. And also I'm never bored. But
Speaker 2: this last line is what stuck with me. Via you
Speaker 2: said the only problem with getting older as everything goes faster.
Speaker 2: I guess as we leave, I thought does that still
Speaker 2: feel true to you? And maybe more importantly, except for
Speaker 2: the lie about feeling twenty two years old, what have
Speaker 2: you done about that that is true? Does time still
Speaker 2: move faster.
Speaker 1: Very fast, very fast? Yeah. And what that makes you
Speaker 1: do is it makes you look beyond. When you're young,
Speaker 1: you're trying to carve out your way in the world.
Speaker 1: When you've been around for a little while, you're trying
Speaker 1: to carve out your exit for the world, which hopefully
Speaker 1: won't happen for some time. But I just think it's
Speaker 1: natural as you get older and you see colleagues go away,
Speaker 1: and you get further down the line, and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm healthy, I'm working finding some of the best opportunities
Speaker 1: of my life now. I'm not going to stop anytime soon.
Speaker 1: But I think naturally you start to look beyond.
Speaker 2: And what do you see beyond?
Speaker 1: You can see what's beyond in the world, and I
Speaker 1: think you start to look for it there in the
Speaker 1: origin and the rise and fall of things. You know,
Speaker 1: it's basically a spiritual impulse. I guess it's to realize
Speaker 1: where you come from and where you're going to. The
Speaker 1: truth is, the second that we're born, we start to
Speaker 1: construct this character that we call ourselves. That a lot
Speaker 1: of our life we're just protecting. And I think that's
Speaker 1: what blocks us on a lot of things. And then
Speaker 1: after you see you win some, you lose some, you
Speaker 1: win some, you lose some. That's the rise and fall
Speaker 1: that I'm talking about. At the end, you're interested in
Speaker 1: returning to your relationship to everything, and that happens only
Speaker 1: when you're older, because it's useless when you're younger, because
Speaker 1: you got to you got to get there. You got
Speaker 1: to make those mistakes and have those things happen to
Speaker 1: you to propel you to that place that is you.
Speaker 1: But you don't really want to go there until you're ready.
Speaker 1: And I'm not talking about death. I'm talking about some
Speaker 1: sense of self in a healthy way, not in a
Speaker 1: you know, an accumulation of stuff weight, not a thing
Speaker 1: of power, but in fact a release. But that gets
Speaker 1: all kind of dreamy. But you know what, it's at
Speaker 1: the core of so many things of your work, everything, everything.
Speaker 2: What I have for lunch, well, I want to say
Speaker 2: that the mistakes that you mentioned that you had to
Speaker 2: make to get to the place you're right now to
Speaker 2: produce the things you have made that have meant a
Speaker 2: great deal to me and to I'm sure many people
Speaker 2: in and the cycles that we keep talking about, the
Speaker 2: undulations however you've navigated. I'm certainly glad that you have.
Speaker 2: Thank you, and I thank you for the time as always.
Speaker 2: Sure Willem Develle. Okay, did we do it?
Speaker 1: We did it? Are you right?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Let's not be a p.
Speaker 2: And that's our show. If you enjoyed this episode, be
Speaker 2: sure to leave us five stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever
Speaker 2: you do your listening, be sure to share the show
Speaker 2: on social media. You can tag us at talk Easypod.
Speaker 2: Doing this is still the best way for new listeners
Speaker 2: to find the program. I want to give a special
Speaker 2: thanks this week to the teams at Narrative pr and Searchlight,
Speaker 2: the Academy Library, and of course our guest Willem Dafoe.
Speaker 2: You can see him in the new film Poor Things,
Speaker 2: which is now in limited release across the country. To
Speaker 2: find local show times and to get your tickets, visit
Speaker 2: our show notes at talk easypod dot com. If you
Speaker 2: want to hear other conversations with great actors, I'd recommend
Speaker 2: our talks with romy Yusef, Tom Hanks, Ethan Hawk, and
Speaker 2: Oscar Isaac.
Speaker 4: To hear those and more Pushkin.
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Speaker 2: produced by Kroenline Reebok. Our executive producer is Jenickson Bravo.
Speaker 2: Our associate producer is Caitlin Dryden. Today's talk was edited
Speaker 2: by Caitlin Dryden and mixed by Andrew Vastola. Our music
Speaker 2: is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Chris Schenoy.
Speaker 2: Video and graphics by Ian Chang, Derek Gaberzak, Ian Jones
Speaker 2: and Ethan Senca. I also want to thank our team
Speaker 2: at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond, Julia Barton, John Stars, Kerrie Brody,
Speaker 2: Eric Sandler, Jordan McMillan, Kira Posey, Tera Machado, Jason Gambrel,
Speaker 2: Justin Lang, Malcolm Gladwell, read a Coin and Jacob Weisberg.
Speaker 2: I'm Sam Fragoso. Thank you for listening to another episode
Speaker 2: of Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next week
Speaker 2: with the editor of The New Yorker, David Remnick. Until then,
Speaker 2: stay safe and so on.