Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is talk easy. I'm saying frago. So welcome
Speaker 1: to the show today, I am joined by actor Michelle Williams.
Speaker 1: Across nearly three decades of work, Williams has solidified herself
Speaker 1: as one of the most dynamic performers working today. She's
Speaker 1: been nominated for five Oscars, beginning in two thousand and
Speaker 1: six with Broke Back Mountain was the recognize for her
Speaker 1: turns in Blue Valentine, My Week with Marylyn, Manchester by
Speaker 1: the Sea, and of course, in Steven Spielberg's latest film,
Speaker 1: The Fablemans. We discuss each of those endeavors in this conversation,
Speaker 1: but today we begin with her turn in Showing Up,
Speaker 1: the fourth collaboration between Williams and director Kelly Reigart.
Speaker 2: In it, she.
Speaker 1: Plays a Portland sculptor whose preparations for a new opening
Speaker 1: are constantly being interrupted by daily life. Here's a clip
Speaker 1: for the trailer. Hi, she's amazing. I love the green stockings.
Speaker 2: I don't know what I'm supposed to do without hot water.
Speaker 2: My show's open on Friday.
Speaker 1: I'll be fee you to deal with it. After that.
Speaker 2: I have a show too. You know you're not the
Speaker 2: only one with a deadline.
Speaker 3: I know, but I have two shows, which is insane.
Speaker 2: You should make more like this.
Speaker 1: I'm enjoying my retirement.
Speaker 2: I get up. How you doing a little of this,
Speaker 2: a little of that, and before you know it.
Speaker 1: It's time to watch TV again.
Speaker 2: That sounds terrible. When's my hot water coming back on?
Speaker 1: I'm on it.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm sick of not having a hot water.
Speaker 1: Joe is such a total drag.
Speaker 2: It's such a shitty thing to do to a person.
Speaker 2: I'm sick of it.
Speaker 1: That was from the new film called Showing Up. The
Speaker 1: film is really worth seeing for a whole host of reasons,
Speaker 1: chief among them Michelle Williams, who time and time again
Speaker 1: has this uncanny ability to transform herself into each character
Speaker 1: pull of surprise whenner Hilton Owls once wrote that watching
Speaker 1: Williams work is like seeing a figure from a documentary
Speaker 1: perform a fictional re enactment of her own life. She
Speaker 1: has control, and even more interesting, no control over where
Speaker 1: the role carries her. And so for today, I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to Williams about how she does the work
Speaker 1: that she does, and to do that we had to
Speaker 1: unpack her upbringing in Montana, then San Diego, coming of
Speaker 1: age on the set of Dawson's Creek, working through tragedy
Speaker 1: in the mid aughts, and how at age forty two,
Speaker 1: she's begun to create from a place of peace. This
Speaker 1: is Michelle Williams. As we get started here, I want
Speaker 1: to say at the top, if I get a fact
Speaker 1: wrong at any point, please feel free to correct me.
Speaker 1: Since we're both virgos. Born on September ninth, I think
Speaker 1: you understand this compulsion to get things right, or at
Speaker 1: least try to get things right.
Speaker 2: Oh, we're gonna have so much to talk about.
Speaker 1: I know, I didn't know that till today.
Speaker 2: What year are you born?
Speaker 1: Nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 2: You're the only the third person I've ever met.
Speaker 1: I think Adam Sandler has the same birthday.
Speaker 3: It's true he does. I haven't met him. But my
Speaker 3: friend Zoe Kazanne, She's the only other person that I've
Speaker 3: met in life. And I am like, I have so
Speaker 3: many questions, like does it feel like to be inside
Speaker 3: your brain? What it feels like to be inside my brain?
Speaker 3: Because we do God, we like to get things right.
Speaker 1: Oh, y, that is what we're going to try to do.
Speaker 1: And we'll try to figure that out by the end,
Speaker 1: Michelle Williams, it's nice to meet you.
Speaker 2: It's so nice to meet too. I've heard so much
Speaker 2: about you.
Speaker 1: Likewise, I think, why don't we start with this new
Speaker 1: film of yours. It's called Showing Up. It's the fourth
Speaker 1: movie with Kelly Reichart that you've made, and in it
Speaker 1: you play a rather frustrated visual artist preparing for a
Speaker 1: gallery opening and Portland where she lives and works. And
Speaker 1: I want to start with this character because you once
Speaker 1: said each thing I do is a product of the
Speaker 1: thing before, because that was the thing that made me grow,
Speaker 1: and I only feel the benefit of that growth the
Speaker 1: next time around. Everything feels like it's the bloom from
Speaker 1: the seed that came before. I so loved that, and
Speaker 1: I was thinking, what was the seed that bloomed while
Speaker 1: making Showing Up.
Speaker 3: That's true, I'd stand by saying that. Sometimes it's scary
Speaker 3: when you hear yourself repeated back to you because you think, oh, no, like,
Speaker 3: what did I commit?
Speaker 2: And do? I agree with myself? But that sounds right?
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I hadn't worked for a really long time because of
Speaker 3: the pandemic and being pregnant, and Showing Up was my
Speaker 3: first time back at work since Fossy Verden and then
Speaker 3: after showing up, I went to go make the fablements,
Speaker 3: so it kind of felt like greasing the machinery again.
Speaker 3: And you know what I'll say, I would say that
Speaker 3: it was my first time back at work having had
Speaker 3: another baby and being happily married, and I thought, Wow,
Speaker 3: what source am I going to work from now? Because
Speaker 3: I think I'm running on something different. I think previously
Speaker 3: there was another kind of energy that powered me through
Speaker 3: my work. And with this like current state of happiness
Speaker 3: that I'm enjoying, I wondered how work was going to
Speaker 3: feel different, and it did. And I think what I
Speaker 3: discovered on showing up that then I could take into
Speaker 3: the Fablemans was it's okay to work from a place
Speaker 3: of peace, and it doesn't ruin it.
Speaker 1: That difference in what's motivating that you're working from a
Speaker 1: place of peace. Like I said, you made four movies
Speaker 1: with Kelly wright Gart and I was thinking, how has
Speaker 1: that relationship changed over the last fifteen years. Like on
Speaker 1: Wendy and Lucy you had a crew of fifteen people.
Speaker 1: On this one you had your first hair and makeup trailer.
Speaker 1: It's true, so if the economics haven't changed all that much.
Speaker 1: How has the dynamic between the two of you creatively changed.
Speaker 3: I think that there's a deepening of trust because we
Speaker 3: keep returning to each other, So there's a feeling of
Speaker 3: it being a kind of a marriage. So we feel
Speaker 3: safe to show things to each other because we know
Speaker 3: that we're not going anywhere. But we had that really
Speaker 3: from the start. I have always felt comfortable bringing Kelly
Speaker 3: my bad ideas then feeling like she's going to whittle
Speaker 3: them into something that actually is going to become useful
Speaker 3: for our film. When we made Wendy and Lucy thought,
Speaker 3: I was like, what about if she had this, or
Speaker 3: like what if she looked like this? And She's like, no, no,
Speaker 3: it's too much. And then finally I was like, what
Speaker 3: about if she had like an ace bandage wrapped around
Speaker 3: her ankle but you never saw what was under it?
Speaker 3: She said aah, finally like yeah, that I'm into that.
Speaker 3: So we sort of feel comfortable trying things with each other.
Speaker 1: You said that it feels like a marriage between the
Speaker 1: two of you. Who's better at arguing between the two
Speaker 1: of you.
Speaker 3: She's much better at it. She has a really wicked
Speaker 3: sense of humor. And it serves her well. And I'm
Speaker 3: not much of a fighter. We got into like one
Speaker 3: fight on this film. Other than that, it's like peace,
Speaker 3: love and rainbows. But I think, you know, when you're
Speaker 3: in a creative environment, when there's time is short and
Speaker 3: money is scarce and you are on the clock and
Speaker 3: you're working to come up with things like it can
Speaker 3: be a place where tension can exist and that's okay.
Speaker 1: You know you said that. A when hearing a quote
Speaker 1: back to you, you start to think, like, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I still like that one. Yeah, here's a quote,
Speaker 1: and see if you like this one. I've always thought
Speaker 1: about childhood as being this really fertile time that, if
Speaker 1: done correctly, you can keep drawing from your entire life.
Speaker 2: I stand behind that.
Speaker 1: So I think to understand how you made all the
Speaker 1: incredible work you've made, we have to know a little
Speaker 1: bit of where you're drawing from. You're born in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty Montana. Your father is self made commodities trader, your
Speaker 1: mother a homemaker. But it's actually at your great grandparents'
Speaker 1: house that you have your first clear memories. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. What were they?
Speaker 3: I grew up in Kallispo, Montana, and my great grandparents
Speaker 3: had a farm in Shodo, Montana, and we spent all
Speaker 3: of our summers there. My great grandparents were Democrats and
Speaker 3: they welcomed people into their home and they would take
Speaker 3: in families who were traveling. So there was a group
Speaker 3: of us kids that would play with each other, Me
Speaker 3: and my cousins, and then these strangers that somehow had
Speaker 3: showed up and would be sitting at our table and
Speaker 3: we would make up plays and we would put a
Speaker 3: blanket down in the living room and that would be
Speaker 3: our stage for the adults to watch at night. And
Speaker 3: that was my first experience of storytelling and my first
Speaker 3: experience of community and that you can have these deep
Speaker 3: family feelings with people that you aren't related to. Also,
Speaker 3: I would say the kind of childhood that I had
Speaker 3: at that point was full of freedom. We would just
Speaker 3: come back for lunch and dinner, and we would bike
Speaker 3: down unpaved roads. We would wander through feel we would
Speaker 3: search for animal skins and arrowheads, and there was always
Speaker 3: this sense that if you just went a little further,
Speaker 3: you might find the treasure that you were looking for.
Speaker 1: Is that like a metaphor?
Speaker 2: I mean, I.
Speaker 3: Guess it's sort of become one that there was something
Speaker 3: out there for you, that there was something that the
Speaker 3: universe had hidden and you had to find it. And
Speaker 3: that is the exact feeling that I look for when
Speaker 3: I work today. There's a feeling that I'm trying to
Speaker 3: catch between action and cut, and its most simple name
Speaker 3: is freedom. But it's what I experienced from birth to
Speaker 3: I think eight or nine when we moved to San Diego.
Speaker 1: Well, it's when you moved there. I think we're on
Speaker 1: the age eleven that you start auditioning. But to set
Speaker 1: a scene inside your teenage bedroom, hung an Edward Hopper print,
Speaker 1: a collage of people's eyes cut out from magazines, biographies
Speaker 1: of Marlon Brando and James Dean, and a quotation from
Speaker 1: Walt Whitman that read, I ordain myself loose of limits
Speaker 1: and imaginary lines, which comes from the poem's song of
Speaker 1: the Open Road Number five. Was that Whitman line instructive
Speaker 1: to you at that age? Did it serve as a
Speaker 1: kind of mantra?
Speaker 3: You know it?
Speaker 2: It did?
Speaker 3: I still reflect on what his poetry meant to me
Speaker 3: at the age that I read it, and how fibrous
Speaker 3: it became how it wrapped itself around me and.
Speaker 2: Became what I thought, What do you mean?
Speaker 3: It's funny, I digress a little, but I you know,
Speaker 3: he just he meant so much to me, this idea
Speaker 3: of an inherent good nature and possibility, because it reminded
Speaker 3: me of my early childhood. But at the point that
Speaker 3: you and I are talking about, you know, eleven twelve thirteen,
Speaker 3: starting to audition, living in San Diego, I was not
Speaker 3: seeing those words come alive anywhere.
Speaker 1: The inherent good nature.
Speaker 3: No, So it was in my memory because it was
Speaker 3: so wrapped up in being a child in Montana. But
Speaker 3: though words became important to me because they were the
Speaker 3: only manifestation of this feeling that I had of what
Speaker 3: it meant to be alive.
Speaker 1: When you're fifteen, you moved to Burbank in an apartment
Speaker 1: with like turquoise carpeting, emancipated from your parents, hoping only
Speaker 1: to become an actor. And I wonder, looking back on
Speaker 1: that now, you moving there by yourself being that age,
Speaker 1: when you see that person, when you see that young girl, like,
Speaker 1: what do you what do you see? How do you
Speaker 1: see her?
Speaker 3: You know, I kind of can't believe that she's the
Speaker 3: same person that I am. I can't believe that I
Speaker 3: haven't shed three skins. You know, it feels like lifetimes ago.
Speaker 3: It can be a little hard for me to relate
Speaker 3: to it now because that's sad. I feel worried about her,
Speaker 3: and I mean, I know how it turns out, but
Speaker 3: when I sort of isolate her in time, it makes
Speaker 3: me sad.
Speaker 1: Well, I think a less sad moment comes pretty shortly
Speaker 1: thereafter of this period. You said, I didn't know how
Speaker 1: to keep myself warm in the winter or cool in
Speaker 1: the summer, and when it came to acting, it was
Speaker 1: like a stand in for selfhood, Like maybe I could
Speaker 1: get regard for a woman that I was playing and
Speaker 1: that would somehow transfer to me this person that I
Speaker 1: didn't really know how to inhabit yet. With that, I
Speaker 1: was thinking, did landing the role of Jen on Dawson's
Speaker 1: Creek did it feel like a kind of intermission from yourself?
Speaker 3: Well, I was sixteen when that happened, and I'd been
Speaker 3: in Los Angeles by myself for about a year, to
Speaker 3: get a job, to get any job, to get a
Speaker 3: job in a pizza hut commercial, to get a job
Speaker 3: as an extra was such a big deal. So the
Speaker 3: elation of being chosen. Because I started auditioning when I
Speaker 3: was eleven and would go on one to three auditions
Speaker 3: a day, it's an incredible amount of rejection. So to
Speaker 3: finally hear the word yes is miraculous. I was beside
Speaker 3: myself with joy. I had always wanted to be on
Speaker 3: a TV show because I wanted to have a family
Speaker 3: that I would keep returning to year after year. It
Speaker 3: also transported me to this sleepy southern town. I feel
Speaker 3: like I'm kind of partially from the South, you know.
Speaker 3: I've kind of spent equal amounts of time in Montana,
Speaker 3: San Diego, North Carolina. I really I did a lot
Speaker 3: of growing up there. But it was funny to be
Speaker 3: playing a kid on high school having never been to
Speaker 3: high school and going through these sort of developmental experiences
Speaker 3: on a TV show that I didn't have in real life.
Speaker 1: That's so insane. I don't know, I never thought of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I was a cheerleader and I went to prom
Speaker 3: and I went to college.
Speaker 2: But all on.
Speaker 1: TV those years they seem pivotal because it sounds like
Speaker 1: you got to have your like Beatles in Hamburg moment
Speaker 1: I'm not just referencing the ten thousand hours theory because
Speaker 1: this show is produced by Malcolm Gladwell, but it does
Speaker 1: seem like you got to figure out how to do
Speaker 1: this job.
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 3: It was it was really good training for simple things
Speaker 3: like how you learn lots of lines and how to
Speaker 3: hit your mark without looking at it. And because I
Speaker 3: was so young, it also taught me how to be responsible,
Speaker 3: how to show up on time, how to schedule dental
Speaker 3: visits with a work schedule like it taught me how
Speaker 3: to take care of myself and earn a living out
Speaker 3: in the world. And it also allowed me time to
Speaker 3: develop other interests. You know, I probably read more books
Speaker 3: and watched more movies in that time period than any
Speaker 3: other in my life. Because there was a nice scene
Speaker 3: down there. Back in you know, the early two thousands,
Speaker 3: there was good music. It's a beautiful record store, and
Speaker 3: I would go in there and get my sort of
Speaker 3: like weekly update and the Sarah's a DVD store run
Speaker 3: by a huge film buff and I would go there
Speaker 3: and I would get my film lessons, and I would
Speaker 3: sit on the floor of the Barnes and Noble and
Speaker 3: just read through a stack. So it was kind of
Speaker 3: in some way, Its like where I educated myself.
Speaker 1: You got your education out in the world.
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I left any kind of formal school when I
Speaker 3: was fifteen, So I have had to keep on top
Speaker 3: of my self education because without it, I wouldn't have
Speaker 3: much to talk about. So I'd always loved to read,
Speaker 3: like reading was always a big part of my life
Speaker 3: and my family, and I just kind of read my
Speaker 3: way through that six and a half years on Dawson's Creek.
Speaker 1: Somewhere in that six and a half years you arrive
Speaker 1: at what you've called the beginning, where you're offered two
Speaker 1: very different projects, and Killer Joe, a play by Tracy Letts,
Speaker 1: and then a movie featuring a gun toting cheerleaders. I
Speaker 1: think I have it right.
Speaker 3: Nothing against gun towarding cheerleaders.
Speaker 1: I just want to say, so, at the moment when
Speaker 1: you're eighteen years old, what did you see down those
Speaker 1: two roads? Well?
Speaker 3: Killer Joe is an incredible piece of writing, and I
Speaker 3: felt like I was being allowed to touch something great
Speaker 3: for maybe the first time. Where something lives and how
Speaker 3: big it is or how long it might carry on,
Speaker 3: or what I might be compensated for. It has never
Speaker 3: really been a motivating factor for me, So doing an
Speaker 3: off Broadway play that people may or may not see
Speaker 3: didn't occur to me. I knew what beauty was. I
Speaker 3: read books, I saw movies, I listened to music. I
Speaker 3: wanted to make something beautiful. I wanted to be a
Speaker 3: part of something beautiful. And that's what the experience of
Speaker 3: Killer Joe felt like to.
Speaker 1: Me, something beautiful. Yeah, even though the play is so brutal.
Speaker 3: Even though it's an insane play, you know, you really,
Speaker 3: as an actor, you live on words. You live for words.
Speaker 3: I don't come to life without them. And Tracy Letts
Speaker 3: is as talented as they come. His words could bring
Speaker 3: me to life.
Speaker 1: This is maybe a silly question, but when you go
Speaker 1: to New York City and you work with Tracy Letts
Speaker 1: in this off Broadway production in a theater that holds
Speaker 1: maybe two hundred people, you're like eighteen years old in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine, carrying around a map. But it's my
Speaker 1: understanding that when others were near you, you would hide
Speaker 1: that map, And I wondered, why did you hide it?
Speaker 3: How as embarrassed to look, I'm like, where are you?
Speaker 2: You are? Really inside of my brain?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Wow, this was the Virgo promise we made each other.
Speaker 3: I do feel like we were like you were maybe
Speaker 3: there with me, because the things that you've been mentioning,
Speaker 3: I'm not been familiarized, you know. Other people haven't brought
Speaker 3: them to my attention, and like, I don't even know that.
Speaker 3: I can't even remember that I said that, and it's
Speaker 3: so true and it's so personal.
Speaker 2: And you found it.
Speaker 3: I was embarrassed that I would look like I didn't
Speaker 3: know where I was going because I didn't and I
Speaker 3: was so overwhelmed in this city of subways. I didn't
Speaker 3: know how to do it. I yeah, I had a
Speaker 3: huge fear of people thinking that maybe I didn't belong
Speaker 3: in New York City, or that I wasn't a real
Speaker 3: New Yorker, or yeah, that I didn't belong. So I
Speaker 3: would hide this little fold up map and like pretend
Speaker 3: to sort of be like looking around in my purse,
Speaker 3: but really I'm just looking at my subway map to
Speaker 3: see where I transfer. You know, I missed a lot
Speaker 3: of time with parents, so there were things that nobody
Speaker 3: taught me how to do, and I had to learn
Speaker 3: them by myself. And sometimes that's embarrassing because you make mistakes,
Speaker 3: and you feel like other people were given the information
Speaker 3: and you weren't, And as simple things like I didn't
Speaker 3: understand proportions, like when I started cooking for myself, I
Speaker 3: didn't understand that you didn't cook the whole box of
Speaker 3: pasta or put the whole jar of tomato sauce into
Speaker 3: a jar to warm up.
Speaker 1: I'm still learning that lesson.
Speaker 3: I didn't know what clothes fit me. I didn't know
Speaker 3: I was buying pants for years that were too big,
Speaker 3: but I didn't know any Differently.
Speaker 1: You often come back to this line about not exactly
Speaker 1: knowing where you were going, not being clear about the destination.
Speaker 1: And yet it dawned on me. And maybe I'm just
Speaker 1: an outsider looking in. We don't know each other, right,
Speaker 1: but it dawned on me that, like an eighteen year
Speaker 1: old did know that they should go do a strange
Speaker 1: play by Tracy Letts in New York City at eighteen
Speaker 1: years old in nineteen ninety nine, that means something that's
Speaker 1: not a common choice.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Many people would have done the gun toting cheerleaders.
Speaker 2: Thank you. That's all I can say.
Speaker 3: That's such a kind, such a kind thing to say
Speaker 3: to me, and such a kind observation to make I
Speaker 3: can only say thank you. I suppose one thing that
Speaker 3: being alone at a very young age does is it
Speaker 3: hones your instincts about people because you are in charge
Speaker 3: of protecting yourself, and so you become very aligned with
Speaker 3: a quiet voice inside. And while these other things feel
Speaker 3: like they're falling apart, like why are my pants falling down?
Speaker 3: And why do I have all this leftover pasta, there
Speaker 3: is something else that's working well.
Speaker 1: Even if the pants didn't fit and the pasta was
Speaker 1: left in tupperware, there was some artistic engine that was
Speaker 1: guiding you forward.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my relationship with myself was deepening because I didn't
Speaker 3: have anybody else around, and so I got good at
Speaker 3: keeping my own company and understanding what I was drawn to,
Speaker 3: what my nature was. But I think that also goes
Speaker 3: back to Walt Whitman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the naturalists when Dawson's Creek ended, and you said,
Speaker 1: more than anything, I want respect, a good sense of self,
Speaker 1: and to be viewed as an artist. And the last
Speaker 1: part around artistry is key. And I think understanding what
Speaker 1: moves you forward. And I wondered was working with Anglee
Speaker 1: on broke Back Mountain in two thousand and six. Was
Speaker 1: that the first time you felt like you were viewed
Speaker 1: as an artist on.
Speaker 3: Absolutely I'd made a movie with Vim Venders. He had
Speaker 3: no relation to me as being on Dawson's Creek. I
Speaker 3: just met him. He didn't know what I had done.
Speaker 3: He just met me and we started talking about Montanas
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden, I'm in a Vim Vendors movie.
Speaker 1: He wasn't a big fan of jet.
Speaker 3: I think he actually saw a picture of me from
Speaker 3: the TV show after we finished filming, and he said, Oh,
Speaker 3: if I had known you look like that, I don't
Speaker 3: think I would hire you. I understood.
Speaker 1: I heard he was actually a big Lassie fan.
Speaker 3: I mean, who isn't a big Glassy fan.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I'm sorry, no more jokes. Okay, So I was.
Speaker 3: I think I was doing a play at Williamstown maybe
Speaker 3: right before Broke Back Mountain went out, so I was
Speaker 3: came out. So I was building this sense of myself
Speaker 3: as like being allowed to be in these places with
Speaker 3: these people. But the Anglely thing was pretty huge because
Speaker 3: that brought with it a different level of recognition. I
Speaker 3: went to the Oscars for the first time. It actually
Speaker 3: when it was sort of all over became a little
Speaker 3: destabilizing because I felt like now people were looking at
Speaker 3: me and I didn't know what to do. And before
Speaker 3: I had felt safe trying these new things because nobody
Speaker 3: was paying attention.
Speaker 1: What did that feel like? In that moment?
Speaker 3: It was kind of frozen. I didn't know what to do.
Speaker 3: And this thing that had felt very natural, decision making
Speaker 3: the choices about what to do and what not to do,
Speaker 3: that felt like such an instinctive process that was working
Speaker 3: well and running smoothly, and then all of a sudden
Speaker 3: it just froze. And it took me a while to
Speaker 3: unstick myself and realign with the path I'd been so
Speaker 3: comfortable walking down.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a quick break, coming back,
Speaker 1: you know, on the heels of broke Back Mountain. You
Speaker 1: have your first child with the late Heath Ledger. And
Speaker 1: what I want to ask you about is this passage
Speaker 1: that you continue to return to in the wake of
Speaker 1: this tragedy. From a book of essays called A Field
Speaker 1: Guide to Getting Lost, written by Rebecca Solnet, it reads,
Speaker 1: emptiness is the track on which the centered person moves,
Speaker 1: said a Tibetan sage six hundred years ago. In the
Speaker 1: book where I found this edict followed it with an
Speaker 1: explanation of the word track. In Tibetan, shoal a mark
Speaker 1: that remains after that which it has passed by, a footprint.
Speaker 1: For example, In other context, shoal is used to describe
Speaker 1: the scarred hollow in the ground where a house once stood,
Speaker 1: the channel worn through a rock where a river runs
Speaker 1: in flood, the indentation in the grass where an animal
Speaker 1: slept last night. All of these are shoal the impression
Speaker 1: of something that used to be there. Reading that passage,
Speaker 1: I hadn't revisited that in so long. What did those
Speaker 1: words do for you, both then and now? Did they
Speaker 1: help you understand the impression that was left behind?
Speaker 3: Gosh, I'm thinking a few things. Yes, they gave me
Speaker 3: great comfort because well it's a way to frame loss,
Speaker 3: and it made me feel okay with this hollowing. But
Speaker 3: the thing when I hear those words now that I
Speaker 3: think is it reminds me of the importance of making things,
Speaker 3: because they exist for people to find when they need them,
Speaker 3: so that when you feel like you have nothing, you
Speaker 3: have words to hold. I guess it makes me feel
Speaker 3: like I hope that I've made something in my lifetime
Speaker 3: that somebody can hold in the way that I don't
Speaker 3: know what I would have done or how I would
Speaker 3: have seen myself through had I not read the words
Speaker 3: that she wrote. And then suddenly being any kind of
Speaker 3: artist feels like a really great way to live and
Speaker 3: spend your time.
Speaker 1: Well, I can tell you the next movie you make
Speaker 1: is one called Blue Valentine. And this is strange, and
Speaker 1: I've never actually said this to anyone, let alone on
Speaker 1: the show, But since we're going here and you kind
Speaker 1: of created this prompt, I'll tell you. I remember when
Speaker 1: the film came out in twenty ten. I was sixteen
Speaker 1: years old, and I had just moved to California after
Speaker 1: this divorce in my family, and I went to the
Speaker 1: eleven am Saturday showing of the movie with my mom,
Speaker 1: which tells you everything you need to know about the
Speaker 1: kind of teenager I was. But I remember walking out
Speaker 1: of the theater and both of us for five ten
Speaker 1: minutes just kind of kept avoiding eye contact a little bit.
Speaker 1: How you and I are now. You know, when you're
Speaker 1: trying to like hide crying, and you just contort your
Speaker 1: face in a way so the other person can't see
Speaker 1: what's going on? And I realized only just now that
Speaker 1: the reason my mother and I were feeling so much
Speaker 1: is because you had articulated through this character, this pre
Speaker 1: trembling feeling so beautifully, the tumult, the precariousness, the fear
Speaker 1: of what comes next after a house falls, and suddenly,
Speaker 1: in that like terribly harsh one pm California sunlight, we
Speaker 1: were left to sort through the rubble. And that is
Speaker 1: what the movie brought out of us.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna say thank you again.
Speaker 3: I'd like to know more about your mother because that
Speaker 3: movie almost got an NC seventeen rating.
Speaker 1: I remember that wouldn't have stopped us.
Speaker 4: But yeah, when's your mother's birthday September eighth.
Speaker 3: You know, you get used to just sort of just
Speaker 3: kind of like skim the surface, you know, when you
Speaker 3: go out and sort of converse about, you know, your
Speaker 3: your life, because you it's such a funny line to walk,
Speaker 3: because you want to leave behind some sort of an
Speaker 3: appropriate record. Yeah, this is what I was like, and
Speaker 3: this is what I thought about. But you don't want
Speaker 3: to give away the things that are so incredibly hard
Speaker 3: one because then they feel trivial when you just PLoP
Speaker 3: them down and so you kind of get used to
Speaker 3: skimming the surface and totally getting away with it. The
Speaker 3: way that you like construct the narrative of my life
Speaker 3: is so true that it's like just like a little startling.
Speaker 3: Just saying that is like a good good don't worry,
Speaker 3: it's just like it makes me think about myself in
Speaker 3: a way that I don't normally, you know, but it's
Speaker 3: a vulnerable thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, Yeah, it's a vulnerable thing.
Speaker 1: That line.
Speaker 3: You're making sense of things for me in a way
Speaker 3: that I'm like, oh yes.
Speaker 1: And that's definitely the aim. And that's also why you know,
Speaker 1: like I I did want to.
Speaker 3: Tell you that thank you for being there with me. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's where.
Speaker 1: Obviously this performance did a whole lot for me and
Speaker 1: sorting through all the bullshit of my childhood. But did
Speaker 1: the performances that came after Blue Valentine, in what you've
Speaker 1: often called a decade of grief, did that work force
Speaker 1: you to do the same to work through what you
Speaker 1: had to work through.
Speaker 3: I think they're all teachers. All the women that I've
Speaker 3: played have taught me about myself but also how to
Speaker 3: expand myself and change myself. I don't find that.
Speaker 1: It's one to one like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a place where we meet. But the truth
Speaker 3: is I'm always trying to get as far away from
Speaker 3: myself as I can. I cannot help but take my
Speaker 3: experiences with me. But I what I'm hoping to do
Speaker 3: is shift perspective and habit so that I can find
Speaker 3: again more freedom. But it was, you know, at this
Speaker 3: point in our life, my daughter and I lived Upstate
Speaker 3: New York, and we had this really cozy, private, safe
Speaker 3: feeling life, and I think it gave me the ability
Speaker 3: to take some pretty big chances in my work.
Speaker 1: What's the flabber quote you always use?
Speaker 3: Ugh, I want to live the quiet life of the
Speaker 3: bourgeois so that I can be violent and unrestrained in
Speaker 3: my work.
Speaker 1: Well, then why don't we talk squarely about that work,
Speaker 1: because the shift that happens is from naturalism to expressionism,
Speaker 1: or at least that seems like the aim in projects
Speaker 1: like My Week with Marylyn, Fosse Verdin and now most
Speaker 1: recently the Fableman's was that the aim.
Speaker 3: That's what happened to me when I made Marylyn. Before that,
Speaker 3: the kind of in my twenties, in my late teens,
Speaker 3: in my twenties. I wanted to because I was coming
Speaker 3: off of a teen drama. I wanted to learn naturalism.
Speaker 3: I wanted to tell the truth. And then when I
Speaker 3: went to make Marylyn, I realized I was missing some
Speaker 3: tools in the kit. I hadn't played someone who was
Speaker 3: far from me physically, and I had to unlearn myself.
Speaker 3: I had to break myself down, get rid of myself,
Speaker 3: and then rebuild myself in this person's image. And that
Speaker 3: work was so painful. It hurt to find new positions.
Speaker 3: I'd been assembling myself for thirty years, and all of
Speaker 3: a sudden I had to change things that were inherent
Speaker 3: and structural. And I started working with teachers in London,
Speaker 3: movement teachers, Alexander, teachers, dialect, and I got so excited
Speaker 3: and the possibilities it would open up that I am
Speaker 3: not I'm not bound to myself. I became hooked on
Speaker 3: this kind of training and studying, an external way of
Speaker 3: approaching a character.
Speaker 1: You have a quote you said, I wanted to make
Speaker 1: work that an audience member had to deal with where
Speaker 1: there was less interpretation on their part, because the interpretation
Speaker 1: was really my work. What do you mean by that?
Speaker 3: I didn't want people to be able to project things
Speaker 3: onto me. I wanted to make things that felt definite,
Speaker 3: and I'm interested now in both, for sure. But I
Speaker 3: didn't want.
Speaker 1: To be pure projection and you felt like you were yes,
Speaker 1: And I.
Speaker 3: Didn't want to just be that. I mean, film is
Speaker 3: a medium where you take you you are asking people
Speaker 3: to relate to it personally, So there is an amount
Speaker 3: of projection that's necessary in the audience performer relationship. But
Speaker 3: I didn't want it to be just that. I wanted
Speaker 3: to risk how much an audience member could love the
Speaker 3: person that I was making. I wanted to risk their
Speaker 3: love and earn their respect.
Speaker 1: In thinking and thinking about the type of work you
Speaker 1: wanted to make. In the Fablemans, you play Mitzi, who
Speaker 1: was modeled after Steven Spielberg's real mother, Leah Adler. She's
Speaker 1: a mid century housewife and a passionate dancer and pianist
Speaker 1: who has in many ways sublimated her dreams to raise
Speaker 1: this family. But I want to go to the last
Speaker 1: day of shooting, when you say goodbye to this character.
Speaker 1: What happens.
Speaker 2: I lost it.
Speaker 3: I lost it in a way that surprised me and
Speaker 3: scared the people I was working with. I was hunched
Speaker 3: over sobbing at a table. You know, it's the last day.
Speaker 3: They have food trucks and picnic tables and everybody's like celebrating,
Speaker 3: and I was heaving and sobbing so oh hard that
Speaker 3: Tony Kushner came over and said, Dolly, what is it?
Speaker 3: Something happened?
Speaker 1: What's wrong with you?
Speaker 3: I feel like I got everything I ever wanted. Like
Speaker 3: I've got my fableman's family. I've got this like vibrant,
Speaker 3: expressive character and all these kids and.
Speaker 2: Now and these.
Speaker 3: Words, these gorgeous words.
Speaker 2: And now it's all over. See.
Speaker 3: This is why when I was first starting out, I
Speaker 3: was like, I want to be on a TV show
Speaker 3: because I don't want it to ever end. I just
Speaker 3: want to like keep going to see my family, keep
Speaker 3: going to see my family. Such a big experience for
Speaker 3: all of us, for me, for Paltino, for seth Rogen
Speaker 3: and Paul felt similarly. He didn't cry like I did,
Speaker 3: But you know, when we see each other, since it's
Speaker 3: been hard to move on from this film experience.
Speaker 1: What did you feel like you were losing? Once? He
Speaker 1: said cut, Well, first there was this woman.
Speaker 3: You know, when you get to inhabit these other people
Speaker 3: and see things through their eyes. And she had such
Speaker 3: a big, bright life force, and so I got to
Speaker 3: borrow that and it was wonderful. When she powered down,
Speaker 3: I felt smaller. So I missed her. I missed that
Speaker 3: soul running through me goes back to that feeling of
Speaker 3: doing my first off Broadway play. So you're really working
Speaker 3: with words, and there I am working with Tony Kushner's
Speaker 3: words like they're edible, They're delicious. I can have the
Speaker 3: most fun with the best writing. And then on that day,
Speaker 3: all of those gorgeous scenes are all in the past
Speaker 3: and I would never get to live them again, and
Speaker 3: I was sad for it.
Speaker 1: I guess I wonder does that Rebecca Soulnett passage we
Speaker 1: quoted earlier about the impressions left. I know we were
Speaker 1: talking about a real person in that case, but in
Speaker 1: some ways, don't the characters do the same to you?
Speaker 1: I mean, in some ways do you end up holding
Speaker 1: those impressions as the years go on?
Speaker 3: Definitely, And I feel like I am allowed to call
Speaker 3: them back and remember them and think about what they
Speaker 3: gave me and what they taught me. Playing these women,
Speaker 3: They've all helped me accept myself. First of all, watching
Speaker 3: movies and watching characters, and second of all, playing characters
Speaker 3: and becoming other characters has taught me how to be human.
Speaker 3: It has taught me. If I can accept the women
Speaker 3: that I play for their shortcomings or idiosyncrasies, how can
Speaker 3: I not give the same love to myself? Why would
Speaker 3: I deny myself of that when I jump with the
Speaker 3: opportunity to give it to them. There's this cybab A
Speaker 3: quote that I love. He says, all I ask is
Speaker 3: that you take me to your darkest parts, and if
Speaker 3: I can go there with these women for these women,
Speaker 3: can I do that with myself and let others do
Speaker 3: that with me? You know that my friends, my husband,
Speaker 3: the people that I trust. So becoming these other people
Speaker 3: has ultimately for me been an act of trying to
Speaker 3: love myself.
Speaker 1: You know, I only have like three more things for
Speaker 1: us before we have to go.
Speaker 3: But when are we going to get to the September
Speaker 3: ninth birthday celebration?
Speaker 1: OK, that'll be the fourth. Thing. On the flip side
Speaker 1: of that darkness you're talking about is a kind of
Speaker 1: joy that you seem to be feeling in this moment.
Speaker 1: It's kind of where we started the conversation, and if
Speaker 1: embodying this woman in the fablements who was so full
Speaker 1: of creativity, who to go back to where we started
Speaker 1: this talk, wanted to create a fertile childhood for her
Speaker 1: kids to later draw upon an adulthood. Is it making
Speaker 1: you rethink with these two new young kids of your
Speaker 1: own what this time should look like?
Speaker 3: Because my early childhood really served me so beautifully in
Speaker 3: the moment and then also as an adult, and I
Speaker 3: continue to reflect upon it. I've always been pretty obsessed
Speaker 3: with early childhood. I always would say to my daughter,
Speaker 3: you know, your childhood is this big, and your adulthood
Speaker 3: is this big, and I'm here to protect this part.
Speaker 3: It's it's my preoccupation is making this all too brief
Speaker 3: time in their lives magical because to them it is
Speaker 3: and it could be. And you know, I got this
Speaker 3: very stationary and when my daughter would lose a tooth,
Speaker 3: I would write these teeny tiny letters and put I'm
Speaker 3: in a teeny tiny envelope and she believed in everything
Speaker 3: until she was twelve. And so it's always been I've
Speaker 3: always been interested in it. And then I collided with
Speaker 3: this role where this woman was a true playmate to
Speaker 3: her kids. And it just reminded me and reinforced my
Speaker 3: desire to be exactly that kind of mom. It's so
Speaker 3: easy to get distracted with like the to do list
Speaker 3: and the phone and the you know, entanglements and the technology.
Speaker 3: And you say podcast podcasts that you can forget to
Speaker 3: do the thing that your kids want most from you, which.
Speaker 2: Is to play.
Speaker 1: Well, then let's go back to the earliest memory of
Speaker 1: play for you. It's where we began. You're eight years old,
Speaker 1: riding bareback on horse searching for arrowheads, and as we leeve,
Speaker 1: is that feeling you had then what you're most after
Speaker 1: now in the work that Walt Whitman quote loose of
Speaker 1: limits and imaginary lines, is that in the years ahead
Speaker 1: where you want to go.
Speaker 3: It is truly what I'm trying to recreate for myself
Speaker 3: every time. Between action and cut. It's the free fall space.
Speaker 3: Nothing bad can happen there, there is no death, there
Speaker 3: are no bad phone calls, nobody gets hurt. A kind
Speaker 3: of timelessness can open up, and it requires lots of
Speaker 3: preparation and concentration and planning all this stuff that happens before.
Speaker 3: If you line that up, you can make this other
Speaker 3: feeling happen. And the only way that I can describe
Speaker 3: that feeling is related to the childhood that I had.
Speaker 3: And again, like I said, the simplest word that I
Speaker 3: can use for it is freedom.
Speaker 1: Through raising your first child. You had this quote, you said,
Speaker 1: I thought about my life at work and how much
Speaker 1: of a mystery it is to her. But one day
Speaker 1: she's going to see these movies. So my hope now
Speaker 1: is that the work makes her proud and that she
Speaker 1: sees the reason I was gone. Will she be proud,
Speaker 1: will she recognize me? Or would she be surprised by
Speaker 1: what she didn't know about me? And I thought, as
Speaker 1: believe as you return to these two lovely young children,
Speaker 1: and of course, Matilda, if those questions are still in mind,
Speaker 1: and if so, what they mean to you now?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember so strongly having that feeling when I
Speaker 3: came home from work one night and she was sleeping,
Speaker 3: and I went into her room just to be with
Speaker 3: her because I hadn't seen her during the day, and
Speaker 3: I smelled her hair and there were all these things,
Speaker 3: like all these secrets in her hair that I didn't
Speaker 3: know where she had been, what these smells were that
Speaker 3: she had picked up during the day, chlorine and perfume
Speaker 3: and just things that were foreign, and I felt sad
Speaker 3: to have missed out on those experiences with her. And
Speaker 3: now she's almost a grown up, she's seventeen and a half,
Speaker 3: so she does take an interest in my adult life
Speaker 3: and my adult work as she's embarking on her own
Speaker 3: and she'saw showing up. She saw the fab woman. She
Speaker 3: my dream came true, like it matters to her and
Speaker 3: it makes her proud to have seen me work hards.
Speaker 1: You know how you said A looking back at these
Speaker 1: younger versions of yourself, it's almost they almost are imperceptible
Speaker 1: to you because they feel so far away. My actual
Speaker 1: last question is like the the person that's here now,
Speaker 1: the one that is full of joy, the one that
Speaker 1: has these two beautiful new movies, the one that has
Speaker 1: three kids, the one that has Steven Spielberg calling you
Speaker 1: up to play his mother? Oh can you see that person?
Speaker 1: And does it make sense to you? Oh?
Speaker 2: What a good question, I do.
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: It makes me think about that if a boat leaves
Speaker 3: a harbor and is rebuilt in its passage, does the
Speaker 3: same boat arrive at its destination? And I feel like
Speaker 3: I rebuilt the boat. I don't know. I guess we're
Speaker 3: always seeking for sense in order, right, It's how we
Speaker 3: function as social creatures, especially as argos. Got you understand
Speaker 3: everything so I can make a sense of it. And
Speaker 3: when I hear you retell things, there does seem like
Speaker 3: there's a you know, a thread.
Speaker 1: An internal logic, and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, an internal logic. Yes, even when whatever was going
Speaker 3: on sort of around or outside had no rhyme or reason,
Speaker 3: but making sense of it makes it all feel better.
Speaker 3: And then there are certain things that will always exist
Speaker 3: as outside of the realm of sense, you know, sickness
Speaker 3: and traumatic death. Like there are things that will that
Speaker 3: can't get incorporated. But how you respond and how you
Speaker 3: survive you can find sense in your if you can't
Speaker 3: make sense of the circumstances.
Speaker 1: Well, I thank you for trying to make sense of
Speaker 1: all these things that don't totally make sense together on
Speaker 1: this podcast.
Speaker 3: I think things make a little bit more sense now
Speaker 3: after the podcast, So thank you for your unbelievably thoughtful
Speaker 3: observations and finding the invisible thread that runs through somebody's life.
Speaker 1: Oh, I forgot any last questions you have for me?
Speaker 3: Yeah, i'd like to talk about what it feels like
Speaker 3: inside of your head being a September ninth or.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm so sorry we're out of time, but thank you.
Speaker 1: Next time we will do that. Michelle Williams, it was
Speaker 1: an honor to stay with you.
Speaker 2: Likewise, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: That's our show. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure
Speaker 1: to give us five stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever you
Speaker 1: do your listening. I want to give a special thanks
Speaker 1: this week to the team at i DP. We are
Speaker 1: Daphne Javich, Eric lures A twenty four and of course
Speaker 1: Michelle Williams. You can see her in Kelly Writchard's new
Speaker 1: film showing up now in theaters and limited release. To
Speaker 1: see if the film is playing at a theater near you,
Speaker 1: be sure to visit our show notes at talkasypod dot com.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this episode with Michelle, I imagine you
Speaker 1: would enjoy our talks with Kate blanchette Ethan Hawk, Kihwee, Kwon,
Speaker 1: Laura Dern, Questlove, Steven jun Claire Foy, and Anny Redman.
Speaker 1: To hear those and more, Pushkin Podcast listen on the
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Speaker 1: shop Talk easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive
Speaker 1: producer is Janick sa Bravo. Our associate produce is Caitlin Dryden.
Speaker 1: Our research and production assistant is Paulina Suarez. Today's talk
Speaker 1: was edited by Caitlin Dryden and mixed by Andrew Vastola.
Speaker 1: Our assistant editor is Chlarice Gavara. Our music is by
Speaker 1: Dylan Peck, illustrations by Chrisha Chenoy, video and graphics by
Speaker 1: Ian Chang, Garret Gaberzak, Ian Jones and Ethan SINCA special
Speaker 1: thanks to Kaylin Ung. I'd also like to thank our
Speaker 1: team at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond, Julia Barton, John Stars,
Speaker 1: Karrie Brody, David Glover, Heather Faine, Eric Sandler, Morgan Ratner,
Speaker 1: Jordan McMillan, Isabella Navarez, Mya Kanig, Carly Mgliori, Jason Gambrell,
Speaker 1: Justine Lang, Malcolm Gladwell and Jacob Whitesburg. I'm San Fragoso.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you
Speaker 1: back here next Sunday with Alison Roman. Until then, stay safe,
Speaker 1: and so on.