00:00:03
Speaker 1: No one has all the answers, but when we ask the right questions, we get a little closer, closer to truths, closer to each other, even closer to ourselves. I'm journalist Danielle Robe, and each week, my guests and I come together to challenge the status quo and our own ways of thinking by daring to ask what if, why not? And who says? So? Come curious, dig deep, and join the conversation. It's time to question everything. Shakespeare famously wrote, all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. The older I get, the more I think he was right. I mean, I think he was right about a lot of things. But what Shakespeare is saying is that all of us are actors. We take on these roles child, teacher, mother, wife, The list goes on, and he's observing that we're constantly performing for one another, whether we realize it or not. And I think those roles shift right. We're one version of ourselves at work, another with our closest friends, another with our parents, maybe another with our kids, and somewhere between all of those roles, we spend a lifetime trying to answer a deceptively simple question. Who am I when no one's asking me to be someone for them? I exhale when I think about that question. Who am I when no one's asking me to be someone for them? Well, Jennifer Morrison has made a career out of becoming other people. You know her from house from Once Upon a Time, How I Met Your Mother, and more recently as the director behind some of TV's biggest shows, including Yellowjackets, The Night Agent, and The Five Star Weekend. Spent decades studying human behavior, first as an actress and now from behind the camera as a director, and it is so fun to hear her opinions and experiences on set and about the craft. Just listen very closely for the part where she talks about actors as emotional athletes. I've been thinking about that ever since, and like how we can all become them. Anyways, what I was really interested in was what she taught me about being human. Jennifer wanted to be an actress since she was five years old, and she did it. She did the unimaginable. She became the point zero one percent of recognizable TV actors. Just to put that in perspective, imagine a football stadium with ten thousand people in it, one of them becomes Jennifer Morrison. So Jennifer realized her childhood dream, and then she realized she'd gotten so good at becoming everyone else that she'd slowly stop becoming herself.
00:02:56
Speaker 2: I also could feel this tugging of like a true self that just was constantly being pushed away because I was sacrificing to succeed. I was sacrificing to succeed. I was never seeing my friends, I was never seeing my family. I was always missing every event. I was spending every hour of the day being someone else, and no hours of the day even knowing who I was.
00:03:18
Speaker 1: Now. Shakespeare believed we spend our lives playing different parts, but Jennifer made me wonder if he left one question unanswered. What if every role we play is still authentically us? It's time to question everything with Jennifer Morrison. Jennifer, I feel like I have known you for over thirty years and I don't know anything about you. Yet. You're a very private person. Yeah, I guess I am. I feel like I'm an open book but a private person. If that makes sense, that makes all the sense in the world. I actually think that's very Chicago of you, probably very Chicago of me. So you just directed the five Star week End, which is out on Peacock now, and it's about grief and friendship and the people who show up when life changes overnight. But in modern terms, I feel like it's a story about the group chat. Yeah, in a lot of ways, when life gets hard, who do you go to for advice, distraction, honesty, presence. What is your favorite way to show up for the people that you care about.
00:04:24
Speaker 2: It's a really good question because I think it's different for everybody, and it's hard to know what to do in any given situation. And we had several people go through losses while you're shooting the show, which was really interesting since the show was dealing with grief. And I called my best friend and I said, I don't know what to do. I want to be here for people and I want to make sure that I'm showing up in the right way.
00:04:50
Speaker 1: And she said, she was like, just do what you always do. She was like, you hold space. And it was so.
00:04:56
Speaker 2: Interesting to have yourself reflected back to yourself by someone because I wouldn't have thought of it that way. I wouldn't have necessarily framed it that way, but she was like, you just hold space for what that person needs, and if what they need is to laugh, you'll make them laugh. And if what they need is to cry, you'll hold them while they cry. And she just said, you know, you have a calming presence to do that, And so I try to think of it that way. Now you know now that I sort of have the words to think of it that way. And sometimes I just want people to know I'm there without the pressure to respond. I think that's the biggest thing, is like when someone's going through something, I don't ever want them to feel like they have to take care of me while I'm trying to take care of them. So I try really hard to be clear of like, hey, please don't respond to this text. I want you to know I'm thinking of you, or leave a voicemail and say cannot call me back.
00:05:46
Speaker 1: I just want you to know I love you, you know what I mean. Like, it's just trying to make sure that you're not adding one more thing to the weight of what they're dealing with. So I don't know, I don't know if there's any right way to do it, but that's the best I can do. I think that's incredibly tailored and thoughtful. I've seen you post a lot on Instagram about girls' nights, yes, And I was wondering if you are the kind of friend that is more in the day to day or if you're kind of the deep end friend where you show up for the important stuff but you're not texting back day to day. I do text back.
00:06:19
Speaker 2: I do try to make sure that by the end of the day, even if I'm on set, I try, even if it's at a weird hour, I try to make sure that I respond to everything by the end of the day. Every once in a while, something will go a little longer if it requires a longer, more elaborate answer, and I need to give thought to it, and I want to make sure that it gets the attention it deserves. So I do try to really pay attention to that despite my schedule. But I would say in terms of like being at events, it has to be scheduled. It definitely has to be scheduled at this point. So between you know, my home life as I work life, it's like, you know, sometimes we're scheduling months in advance, but it's worth it.
00:06:57
Speaker 1: What does the typical girls' night look like for you, very simple it is on the couch is not Yeah, it's not complicated.
00:07:04
Speaker 2: It's maybe like a nice restaurant, you know what I mean, Like a nice restaurant or having people over. We definitely since having a family, do that a lot more, where it's like it's easier to have someone at the house instead of getting a babysitter and all that kind of stuff. So sometimes it's just you know, mordering good food. In what I do try to avoid is too much of the cooking because a I'm not a great cook and no one really wants to suffer through that. But be it's the dishes and that, you know what I mean. So yeah, so I try to keep it simple and casual.
00:07:33
Speaker 1: When I have these types of conversations, I go home and I reflect so much about my life. I'm wondering if when you're directing a show like that, if it makes you think about the type of people you want around you when things get with five Star Weekend, Yeah, oh absolutely. I mean I was so drawn to the book in the first place, all in Hildebrand's book just because I was like, what a great concept. I am so jealous of anyone who gets to have a five Star weekend? You know.
00:07:58
Speaker 2: It's the idea is you put together the women who were your closest person in each phase of life. So it's like her closest person from high school, her closest person from college, her closest person from work, and her closest person from mom life. And I feel like that is a natural evolution of closeness in life, you know. And I have all those closest people across those phases of my life, and I'm like, man, how cool would it be to get them all together? You know, because they all have so much in common, but they're also so different and they don't really know each other, any of them. So yeah, I mean, as soon as I read the book, I was like, oh, man, I wish I could do this. But again, imagine trying to schedule that, and it makes you think a lot about I don't know, just like the priorities in life, and how tricky it is because the only reason the women in Five Star Weekend are able to do it is because they're showing up for someone who's grieving, and it feels like a little bit more of a crisis, and so somehow we're all able to rearrange everything for a crisis, but if it's just for ourselves, we're like, oh, I can't do it, or I can't make it, or you know, it's too busy or whatever.
00:09:00
Speaker 1: That does make me think too right. Yeah, and it's a real thing. Backup run Setter who wrote all the five Star Weekend. I mean she has a writer's room but oversaw the whole thing as a showrunner. She's amazing at this and she's probably why she was the perfect person to write the show.
00:09:14
Speaker 2: Is like she really like, doesn't matter how tired she is, doesn't matter how many school functions, she just wants to She's like, my friend has a show opening somewhere, I'm going to be there.
00:09:24
Speaker 1: My girlfriends are going away for the weekend. I'll be there. And I was like, man, I so admire her ability to really just push through and do it, and it inspired me to try to be better about it, to really show up. Yeah, you directed the first four episodes of this year, so it alternates. So Minckey Spiral directed the pilot in the second episode and I did three and four, she did five and six, and I did seven and eight. Interesting, Yeah, so we hold is that like, how do you decide that?
00:09:50
Speaker 2: So that is sort of like a logistical need. I mean, I've done shows before where I've done all like four in a row, which I really don't mind and I actually really like as a filmmaker, but is very very hard on the department heads because in order to prep, you're just prepping a massive amount of material. And if you were to do four and four, then while you're trying to execute four episodes, which is a ton of content, you're also trying to prep the next four, which is a ton of content. And so it makes it so that it's just very hard to shoulder all that possible but harder, and so in this situation, it felt better to do alternating blocks. And even with the alternating blocks, we weren't stopping to edit, which is also what you normally do. So because of Jennifer Garner's schedule and I think because of the release schedule a combination of the two things, we didn't stop to edit. We just shot all eight and then edited all eight, and so it was just it was a little bit of a different process than usual, but also I think really benefited the outcome of the show.
00:10:48
Speaker 1: In the eight episode, Yeah, and you mentioned Jennifer Gardner. It's an incredible cast. You have Genah Gemma Chan, Darcy Carden, and Chloe Sevenier. What a line up. I know, they feel like they have such a vibe on and off the screen. Was there a real life group chat? One hundred percent? They're absolutely. I mean, I'm not in it, so I can't tell you, like I haven't witnessed it, but yes, I mean they all got along, they all hung out, they all were doing things outside of work.
00:11:16
Speaker 2: We also all spent a lot of time in Nantucket together at the end because the show is set in Nantucket and we did all of our exteriors there, so we shot everything we could up until the end, and then the last month of shooting we just crossboarded all eight episodes in Nantucket. So also, it's like going to summer camp, you know, it's like everybody's living on this little island together and doing their things.
00:11:38
Speaker 1: So but they are.
00:11:40
Speaker 2: They're all so extraordinary and so uniquely different and brought so much to the table in that ensemble.
00:11:46
Speaker 1: It was very invigorating to be around them. I'm interviewing Ellen Hildebrand on Monday, Oh kra Larice's book Club podcast, and I had no idea she was the Queen of Nantucket.
00:11:54
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, thirty books later, she is the queen. I mean she is. I think she's like is Nantucket. Yes, she's also like the nicest pools. Still have the best time with her. She's amazing. But yeah, she knows everyone. Everyone there knows each other. It's like a very surreal environment.
00:12:15
Speaker 1: To be in. I didn't know what to expect, but yeah, it was. It was definitely a small town. So when I first started like asking people questions and entertainment, every director that I interviewed was a man for you. Interesting, you've stepped behind the camera at a moment with a whole new wave of female actors. Greta Gerwig, Regina King, Olivia Wilde. I just interviewed Maggie, Jillenhall, Eva Longoria. They made that same move and have been taken seriously as directors. What do you think actresses are seeing in front of the lens that make them want to take control of the story.
00:12:50
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's a gendered thing as much as an actor experience, but maybe it's slightly gendered. I think in general, actors are the most underutilized resource on a set, and that seems like the opposite because it's their faces on the screen. But they're weirdly the last people you think of when you're you know, in prep and in getting ready for something, because you're just dealing with so many other logistics of schedule and locations and budget and you know, I mean, if you if there's a fire, and like the logistics of the fire bars and the what can be lit on fire and what can't, and the stunts and this, and then you know, the weather will happen, it's only the schedule changes and then an actor falls out, and you know what, It's just, it's you have a million a million million fires and problems before you get to a set.
00:13:40
Speaker 1: So when you get to a set, you're like, oh, oh, hey, the actors are here. So sometimes I feel like, because the actors are not involved in the prep process, there is a accidental dismissal of what they have to offer, because there's this sort of subconscious feeling of like they don't know they were in the meetings. They don't you know.
00:14:03
Speaker 2: And there's this thing called a tone meeting on a television show that you have with the showrunners where they talk you through what's important to them in every scene and tonally, what they need to have happened, and exactly where they think these characters need to be in their headspaces. And no one talks to the actors about the tone meeting, which is so weird to me because I'm like, isn't that exactly who you just talk to about the tone meeting. So sometimes you come on set and your actors have a very different idea in their heads of what they think is important in the scene compared to what you were just told by the showrunners is important to them in the scene in the tone meeting. And so if you don't have the language to like work together to get to a common ground or to just say, like, listen, in the tone meeting, they were saying this, like we're kind of far apart, let's figure out how to get there, you are often finding actors feeling like sort of frustrated and shut down, or like what they're bringing to the table just kind of gets ignored or pushed away a little bit. And I think that at least for me, you know, I was in that situation for a very long time, for many many years, and I wasn't like upset about it, but I was aware of it, you know, and aware of feeling like, with the amount of research I did and the amount of passion that I had for the characters that I was playing, I felt like people were getting maybe ten to twenty percent out of me, and I was dying to be like pushed and used, you know, more than that. And so I'm sure that all of the incredible women that you just listed felt that way, just as much as I'm sure Jason Bateman has felt that way, or you know what I mean. So like that's why I'm saying, I'm not sure if it's a gendered thing as much as a smart actor thing, you know. And you just reach a point eventually where you're like, I want to offer more, you know, I want to give more than just maybe this little corner of what you could do, you know. And all of those women are brilliant, and so I'm sure they reached that point, you know, and then we're like, I need I need to give more of myself in the situation.
00:16:10
Speaker 1: I can imagine acting changes the way you view human behavior because you're just noticing everything all the time. Has directing done that for you at all? I think so because I think I think I see more like in collective theme. I don't know how, I don't know how to put that into like story art kind of. But also just like there are these sort of like movements of energy in culture and in certain areas or pockets of places where you start to go like, ah, this is coming up a lot, or this is being said over and over again, or why is everyone wearing these same shoes all of a sudden. I don't know everybody's in the flip flops all of a sudden. I don't know if flip flops came out of nowhere recently. I don't know what that's about, you know. Like, so it's.
00:16:53
Speaker 2: I think I just I just see like in sort of like a bigger picture a way, as opposed to like I think as an actor, I'm kind of looking more at like little quirks or ticks or little things that you're like, oh, that could be interesting to use as a character, like a little habit this person has, or a way that they move or talk or words that they lean on that I might be able to suggest. And then also you know, it just makes you pay really close attention to therapy because you're like I need to understand humans. I need to understand the motivation and insecurity of everybody.
00:17:26
Speaker 1: Yeah. I heard Melissa McCarthy one time say that the worst part of becoming famous was that she could no longer go to like home Depot or Walmart and watch people. She had to find like a whole new process, which I thought was so funny. That's probably very true. That makes a lot of sense. I know. So your ten years into directing now, and you started as you founded your production company Apartment three C, which I loved that you named after the apartment that you shared with your college best friends. I had six one nine. Okay, so before you became an actress and people knew you as a director and people trusted you, who's the Jennifer that lived in Apartment three C. Oh my gosh, so Apartment three C.
00:18:08
Speaker 2: Jen I was very passionate and excited about life. I mean, I you know, it's like you look back on those days of like the starry eyed everything as possible. I also felt like I was like infatigable at that age.
00:18:25
Speaker 1: You know, it was like you really.
00:18:26
Speaker 2: Could stay up all night and I didn't want to miss out on anything, you know, I wanted to be with my friends just as much as I want to be prepared for the play, just as much as I wanted to get good grades.
00:18:34
Speaker 1: And I was, you know, burning the candle.
00:18:36
Speaker 2: At every end you could possibly burn it, and somehow getting away with it. We were all very different in a cool way, very different backgrounds, you know.
00:18:43
Speaker 1: I was sort of the actress in the group.
00:18:46
Speaker 2: And then one of my friends was half Italian, half Irish, like curly hair, just knew everybody, was like a social butterfly. Everybody loved her. She was like Felicity, Like I felt like she was like you know. And then another one of my girlfriends one hundred percent Greek, very tied into the Greek community. We went dancing in our weird black pants at many many Greek clubs and had our big hoops, and I'd like, you know, we'd have our like Greek nights with her.
00:19:15
Speaker 1: And then the other friend was one hundred percent Polish and like came from just like a big family, and she had so much responsibility in her family and like just took care of everybody. Was such a caretaker, all all of them like so smart and wonderful, but like just keyed into such different corners of the community of our school too, and so it was this really interesting melting pot of women that came together in that apartment three C. This feels like a show. Probably well, And there were guys that lived in TWOC. There were four guys at two C and we were in three Was anybody dating. I don't think we ever dated, but we all hung out.
00:19:51
Speaker 2: Like it was like, you know, I would come home and I'd be like alone sometimes and I'd go knock on TUOC and the I'd sit with those guys and like sometimes I'd come home and they'd all be up there. I would make these like big ZD Like I would get this big tin and like just poor. I would make noodles and I would just poor, like you know, pre made Mari and Ara sauce with a bunch of cheese and noodles and bacon and be like it's big CD.
00:20:10
Speaker 1: And they were so happy to have food. Hence why I'm not feeding people.
00:20:14
Speaker 2: But in college it went great, so you know, sometimes I'd find them in our kitchen eating my terrible big CD. But it was a really it was a really fun time. Like I felt like we were all finding ourselves. We were all kind of starting to aim ourselves at our dreams, and you know, it's the first time you're away from your families, and we were all very close to our families, and so I think it was interesting that we.
00:20:36
Speaker 1: All had that in common.
00:20:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then we all sort of also needed that space to figure out who we were outside of that in order to be ourselves and be a part of our families.
00:20:46
Speaker 1: You said the word dreams, and I love when I hear you talk about how you wanted to become an actress. You said you knew at five years old. Yeah, how did you you just felt called? I guess. I mean, I've gone over and over.
00:20:59
Speaker 2: This because people ask me about it, you know, and I just never had a thought in my mind that I wasn't a performer, Like it just never occurred to me that I might not be.
00:21:10
Speaker 1: Does it feel the way you thought it would? Maybe? I mean I don't know that I like.
00:21:16
Speaker 2: Had an idea of what it would feel like as much as it just feels like I'm being myself when I'm being creative, and so it's I feel kind of the same now as I felt when I was five years old. You know, I remember doing the first little play. I was just recently talking about this, but playing Feely and the kid's version of the Hobbit, you know, and being so determined to like do it well and do it right. I was only like five or six or however old you are, in kindergarten, you know, and like, I still have that feeling, you know, like and backstage still smells the same way, and you still have all the same people running around, you know, doing their jobs to make it all work and moving the props, and so it just sort of feels like I don't really know any different, Like that's just kind of what life has always felt like. And I guess I just assumed always life would always feel that way.
00:22:05
Speaker 1: I was thinking, like, you've been famous for a really long time, and I get the sense from you that fame was like never part of the equation or goal for you. Do you think that's the Midwesterner in you. I think that it is the Midwest.
00:22:20
Speaker 2: I mean when I came in, we started talking about the Midwest pretty quickly of just like how lucky I feel to have grown up there, Like the values and the sense of community that's there is, like they really value the idea of working hard and being proud of working hard and wanting to be prepared and wanting to be a part of a group with people. And some of it I think is just that there are incredible public schools in a lot of those school districts in that area too. I mean, it depends on the suburb, and it depends on what part of the Midwest you're talking about, but I mean I went to an incredible public school. I just think about the books we are studying and the group projects that we did, and the way that you valued each person because everybody had to bring something different to the table. You weren't going to get a good grade, you know, And so that was just so intrinsic to growing up in that community. And then my parents are educators, you know. My dad had a nationally competive high school marching band for thirty years, and then my brother went on to do the same thing for a long time. And like we always say, we're from a marching band family, Like our whole life was marching band, and we were all in the marching band. And there's just something about, like you're so aware when you're in a group like that that what you bring to the table so deeply impacts every other person around you.
00:23:35
Speaker 1: You have one.
00:23:36
Speaker 2: Person who's out of step, one person who doesn't fit in the formation, one person who you know misses the note, and it impacts the overall you know, look and vibe and result for the entire team. And you're not talking about twelve people or sixty people. You're talking about two hundred, three hundred and four hundred people depending on how big that marching band is. And so at a very young age, I was existing in an atmosphere of responsibility to the other people who are your like comrades in a circumstance, you know, And that was just life. That's just how it went, you know. And so the process was the joy.
00:24:15
Speaker 1: You know.
00:24:15
Speaker 2: It was like the practices, the learning, the overcoming the crazy hard thing, the realizing the impossible drill move was possible.
00:24:23
Speaker 1: You know.
00:24:23
Speaker 2: It was like that's just so in my DNA from how I was raised with my parents. But also you know, being from the Chicago suburbs and having great teachers, that like, that's that's the joy for me. You know, Like a lot of people ask me, like younger actors will ask me like.
00:24:42
Speaker 1: Well, how do you deal with the criticism or how do you deal with people judging you?
00:24:46
Speaker 2: And I was like, I mean, I'm not going to say I've never had my feelings hurt. I'm a human being. I certainly have. But like I'm just another person to any other other person, just like everybody else is just another person. Like why are we so caught up on that? You know, Like at the end of the day, I just want to be proud of the stuff that I make and like it. You know, if I can lay my head on the pillow at night and be like, I did my best today. I brought everything to the table that I could.
00:25:13
Speaker 1: I did my best. I'm happy.
00:25:16
Speaker 2: I don't need to wait for someone else to tell me that it was good, you know. And so I can't pretend that I was always like in that headspace, but that's where I've been for a long time now, and it's just such a more pleasant way to do life. You know, no one else really cares that much about what I'm.
00:25:35
Speaker 1: Doing, you know what I mean. I feel that way as a young actress because I sometimes I would interview people who were auditioning, like ten twenty years ago, and they would talk about like the audition process and it was just a little more brutal.
00:25:50
Speaker 2: It seemed, Yeah, I think, I mean, auditioning never gets less brutal because you're you rip your heart open and splay it out there, and then you know someone's going to tell you something's wrong with what you're doing, you know.
00:26:03
Speaker 1: And I sort of find it inhumane. Actors are some of the most sensitive people on the whole planet of their artists, and we just like they lay their heart out and we're like, thanks by.
00:26:13
Speaker 2: Yeah if we like it, I know. And so often it has nothing to do with talent. I mean, it's like the amount of times I've seen incredibly talented people across the board for something, but you still have to pick one, and it comes down to some weird, inexplicable vibe that they happen to have or the way that they fit into the cast or whatever. And it's it's heartbreaking because you want you want to hire everybody. I think, like when I was a younger actor, I certainly had more insecurities about is it coming off well, you know, because you can't see yourself right, so you're always hoping and praying that what you're putting out reflects what you're feeling.
00:26:52
Speaker 1: Or what you the work that you're.
00:26:53
Speaker 2: Trying to offer, right, So I think that I had to get to a place where I could just trust in my own muscles a little bit more and just just be like, Okay, I know to a certain point this is working, and then I have to trust that the director is going to tell me if, you know, if it needs to be something different.
00:27:08
Speaker 1: But I think and I'm hoping.
00:27:12
Speaker 2: I was thinking about this on set and I was just directing on Wednesday with some of the kids on Yellow Jackets.
00:27:20
Speaker 1: I say, kids, they're all not kids anymore, but they're young actors.
00:27:23
Speaker 2: They feel like kids compared to how old I feel now. But and it was so exciting. It's so exciting to work with this cast. I love them so much. It's the adult cast, adults and the team cast. But it's like you go in and you bring a note and there's this like voracious hunger to digest it and do it and like bring it to the screen. And I said, you know, they feel like emotional athletes. Oh I like that, And it just it's.
00:27:52
Speaker 1: So cool when you're in an environment like that where instead of being like, well, what did I do wrong?
00:27:56
Speaker 2: Why did you give me some start so they're like, yeah, okay, yeah, I hear you. I hear you. You know, I'm like, do you need me to say it a different way? Or like no, no, no, I got it, I got it.
00:28:03
Speaker 1: Let's do it, you know.
00:28:04
Speaker 2: And then you like watch them like put it in their body and digest it and you're like, holy crap. And then just things that like you know what you're aiming for when you're giving the note, but it always goes above and beyond what you could help for with this cast, so cool, and the amount of times I turned back to the writer who's on set and I was like he was like, oh my god, you know, and it really it's exciting if people can sort of look at it more that way, because if someone were playing professional football, you know, they're not going to take a criticism as oh my god, I'm a bad person, I'm terrible. They're going to go, oh my god, I can run that a tenth of a second faster.
00:28:39
Speaker 1: I'll try it. I can take that tackle a different way. I'll try it. I can you know. It's like we need a rebrand. This is brilliant, right, And so it was like, you need to share this idea of everybody.
00:28:49
Speaker 2: If you if you take the note like the way an athlete would take a correction, It's like what the person giving the athlete the correction can't do it.
00:29:00
Speaker 1: I can't do it. The coach cannot do it.
00:29:01
Speaker 2: The coach is twenty years too old and they probably never could do it in the first place. So they're not saying it from a place of judgment. They're saying it from a place of how do I make you your absolute best? So if the way that you receive the note is this person wants to help me be my absolute athletic best, yes, you know, then it's invigorating and you're going to know right away if it doesn't work, and that's okay. Like, just as much as actors should definitely have space to fail, the directors have to have space to fail in their note too, you know, Like everybody's got to feel like they can try, and sometimes magic happens and sometimes a disaster happens, and you just accept whichever way it goes the course correct.
00:29:40
Speaker 1: I am like feeling hyped up here. I think you really hit on something. It's very cool when it happens, it's very very I feel like it's really fun to be on a set of yours, I hope. So, I mean, I certainly want that to be the case. I found this random fact that you used to buy tons of magazines as a way to research characters. Can you explain why that works for you. I've literally never heard anybody say that.
00:30:16
Speaker 2: I still do a version of this when I'm like, not with magazines, but with images. I think I'm just a very visual, Like my emotional language is very visual, and so I never had a plan when I was looking at all those things, just like I don't have a plan when I go to my visual like what do you call them? Photo albums and things? Now, I mean I have a ton of printed photos. I have boxes and boxes and boxes of like tangible photos, and then I also just have thousands and thousands of digital images. And so when I go to start pitching a project or I start building a visual for something. If I'm directing the pilot, I go through and I don't filter myself. I just click and drag or pull out whatever emotionally jumps out at me, having known the material, and then I look at that pile and there's often patterns that I start to see, and so I don't necessarily understand why.
00:31:06
Speaker 1: It's just an instinct thing.
00:31:08
Speaker 2: So with magazines as an actor, I was just going through and if anything jumped out, sometimes it was a watch or a you know, like a headline or a dog or I don't I would just not censor myself and I'd be like, tear that out.
00:31:21
Speaker 1: Actually I always had a ruler so that it was like a pretty easy tear, and I'd like tear that out, tear that out.
00:31:26
Speaker 2: And then I'd have this pile and I would start to look at the pile and be like, what is this telling me? You know, like, oh, there's like a color palette that's emerging, there's texture that's emerging, Like oh, maybe this person is really uncomfortable in their clothes, like everything feels tight or everything feels restricted, or you know, or vice versa.
00:31:48
Speaker 1: You know.
00:31:48
Speaker 2: And so it was a way for me to like turn my brain off and just move from my instinct and then look at what my instinct altogether seemed to tell me, and then I would start to move from that place.
00:32:01
Speaker 1: This is so unique. So do you ever share this with young actors? Like you would look at the photos and how would you come up with the questions you were asking yourself, you were just noticing the themes.
00:32:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, it would just sort of I mean I have most of these I have like in journals that I saved like over years, so there's a lot of these I can look back on. But yeah, I mean some of it was just very logistical.
00:32:25
Speaker 1: You know.
00:32:25
Speaker 2: I'd be like, Okay, I think this was like I think she always wears jeans, or I think that this person, you know, carries their body weight super forward, because like every picture I pulled, they were like, you know, someone was like very forward in the image, you know. And it was really just about looking for patterns, you know, looking for patterns that I wasn't planning on, just patterns that I was feeling and it maybe didn't totally understand. And then I also, I mean I went to theater school and I studied acting, and I studied all the you know, I did it all.
00:32:53
Speaker 1: I did the.
00:32:55
Speaker 2: Strasburg and the Meisner and the Stilla Adler and Larry Moss's book I love so much. So and I've never subscribed to any one way, you know, I think that I always am pulling little bits and pieces of knowledge from all of those systems. Depending on what it feels like is going to serve the person or the character or the environment that I have to be in. And so the combination of just like letting my guts start to build a visual and then noticing those patterns and then marrying that to whatever training I had made it so that I could start to like make a very specific person.
00:33:26
Speaker 1: When you're watching young actors coming up, can you tell if somebody has the thing? Like I know everybody can work on it. Yeah, right, Like I can see it with interviewers. I'm like, in three years she's going to be you know, yeah, Like can you just see it? I think so, I yes, I mean.
00:33:45
Speaker 2: There is sort of an intangible thing where like I remember being on the side of Euphoria at season one and being like, Sidney's a star, like a huge star, and Jacob too, and saying that and everybody being like, I mean, they're all great. I was like, they are all great. And by the way, I mean, I guess I could have said that about any one of them, because they've all gone on to have incredible careers.
00:34:05
Speaker 1: But just like in one take of one scene, I was like, Okay.
00:34:11
Speaker 2: You know what I mean, Like you just you just feel there's like this other thing operating that you can't put your finger on. And I've certainly had moments of kind of like calling that with people over the years. But I do also think there's sort of space for everybody differently, like if you do have that in you to like work that hard and to study into care and to push there's only space for however many you know, City Sweeneys in the world or Margot Robbies of the World or whatever. But there's a lot of space for great actors that don't necessarily like have that kind of fame, but are respected and working and admired and you know, like very very good at what they do. And I do think that there's more space to like move into that zone than there is to necessarily just have that intang thing that you don't know why someone is just like an undeniable star.
00:35:04
Speaker 1: Absolutely. One of the things I noticed about your acting is that you're really good at conveying inner conflict without ever over emoting. So I think you're known for playing women who are strong, but it's not in this flat invincible way. They're like usually emotionally complicated. And I also notice you're often trying these characters. These women are trying to stay soft in a hard world, yeah, or one that doesn't let them be an interesting observation, What do you think that you understand about women like that?
00:35:37
Speaker 2: I mean, gosh, I think the only thing I can pretend to say that I understand is just that we're never all one thing. I don't think any woman is all one thing, no matter what category you want to put yourself into or someone else wants to put you into. And I think it's been.
00:35:57
Speaker 1: A really.
00:35:59
Speaker 2: Long time I'm in this business of thinking that people kind of just fit into certain boxes. And I think women are asked to split themselves in so many ways in their lives and are asked to put on so many hats, and all of those hats can be authentic. Like I am a very different person at home when I'm a mom, compared to like when I'm running a set, compared to when I'm acting on a show. Those are three very different versions of me, but they're all authentic.
00:36:30
Speaker 1: And so I think we just.
00:36:37
Speaker 2: Haven't had a chance to see women who are allowed to be different in different circumstances. And then we are also telling people like, well, if you're not the same all the time, then you don't know who you are, And I just think that's bullshit. I think that we all rise to the occasions we're asked to rise to, and that calls on different parts of ourselves, and all those parts of ourselves are little pieces of a whole, and so I do the best I can to try to think about those layers when I'm playing a character, because otherwise, to your point, it does feel flat, because it's like, oh, she's just this one thing. So I think women really can only feel alive if you're finding the layers of just the different splits that we all have in order to be able to meet the needs in our lives.
00:37:22
Speaker 1: I've actually never heard anybody articulate it like that. We are split and even with different friends for different people, but it doesn't mean you're any less authentic with any one friend than the other. And I think that there's something really.
00:37:34
Speaker 2: Beautiful about that, Like, yeah, it's I think that it's sensitive to meet someone where they are and also have them meet you where you are, and to know that you, guys are offering something unique that no one else is going to be able to offer, you know, And so I get very like itchy is how I say it. And when something makes me uncomfortable, like it gets I get very itchy when people try to say like you are only one thing, you know, or we are all only one thing, or we put all these people in these categories, and it's like, well, we all have to be a lot of things, you know, like who wants to do their taxes? But you know what, you got to be good at it, you know, you know who wants to be super sick?
00:38:17
Speaker 1: At some point we all have to go through it, you know. And so it's all these.
00:38:21
Speaker 2: Different pieces of ourselves and you just you kind of just have to meet each moment and not feel badly that a different part of you shows up for different moments.
00:38:31
Speaker 1: You've had so many chapters, child, model, theater student, TV actress, fantasy icon director, producer, now mother, what chapter has changed you the most? I would say to have changed me the most.
00:38:47
Speaker 2: Equally, I was mentioning when I walked in that I heard your interview with Brooke Taylor about her book what is it called?
00:38:53
Speaker 1: Healing the Success?
00:38:55
Speaker 2: And when I listened to that, I thought, Man, I wish that book came out like fifteen years ago. I when I was really at the peak of my time on Once upon a Time. I was so lucky and so happy to have had all of the work I'd had up at that point. I've been on like three hundred fifty episodes of television and just been able to truly like live an insane dream and have loved every second of that. But I also could feel this tugging of like a true self that just was constantly being pushed away because I was sacrificing to succeed. I was sacrificing to succeed. I was never seeing my friends, I was never seeing my family. I was always missing every event. I was spending every hour of the day being someone else, and no hours of the day even knowing who I was. You know, people would say like, what are you what's your favorite music? I was like, I can give you the characters playlist. I have no idea what I want to listen to, and so like, I felt like I was starting to dissolve as a person because I was so committed to the things I was doing, but not it had no space to be myself. And it's partly what pushed me to start directing. At the moment that I started directing because I started to feel like I was going to have a breakdown if I didn't do something that was mine, not because I didn't love what I was doing, but because I just didn't have anything that felt like it was mine. I started to realize that I could be myself and be creative while I was directing. I didn't have to give myself up to do the creative thing, so that felt incredibly motivating. And I also at the same time started doing the artist's way.
00:40:26
Speaker 1: And.
00:40:28
Speaker 2: It was such a perfect fit for what I needed in that moment, which was like it was forcing me to do things as myself and to assess almost like I had to assess myself the way I'd been assessing characters.
00:40:40
Speaker 1: It gave me like.
00:40:41
Speaker 2: A template to deal with myself and figure out myself the same way I'd been figuring out all these other people for my whole life. So that sort of breaking point for me, and like that pushed me really quickly into directing. And also just I knew I had to make changes or I wasn't going to be okay based on how I was feeling.
00:41:02
Speaker 1: Was completely life changing.
00:41:03
Speaker 2: It's probably why I can say any of the things I've said, while I've sat here today is because of the realizations that started to happen from that change. So I would say that the wound of that success, you know, was what started to help me repair and become the person that I am today. And then undeniably and comparably having a child. It is such a wild thing to have happened. I remember we were we induced because because of my age, they wanted us to induce early to make sure everything was safe and healthy, and so we knew it was weird to like schedule the birth of a child, but we knew when we were having the baby, so we we like went to dinner on the way and I just remember being in the car with my husband and he was like, isn't it's so crazy that, like everything's about to change. And I was like, I know, and everyone tells you it's going to be this big life changing moment, and I believe them, but I still don't know what that feels like.
00:41:54
Speaker 1: And in twenty four hours, we're going to know what that feels like. It's such a crazy thing, and you do sort of just get rewired, Like it's hard to explain, Like I went from one moment that baby was inside my body, and I was like, yeah, I could probably like hurt someone in self defense to like that baby was on my chest and I was like, I will fucking kill Yeah. Sorry, I don't know if I can swear. I can't, you know what I mean. Like it was just like and I was like, whoa. All that happened was it came out, you know what I mean. Like you just feel this like primal thing like take over you, where you're just like my job now is to keep you alive and keep you safe and to love you in a way that like I had never felt in my life. It's such a different feeling of love.
00:42:38
Speaker 2: And then suddenly you have this little thing that you do have to keep alive and you love like you've never imagined before, and you still need to keep your life going, and so then you have to keep expanding and so you know, in order for all of that to keep happening together. And so from that point on, it's just a constant process of oh, Okay, I need to expand in this way.
00:42:58
Speaker 1: Now, I need to expand in this way. I need to expand in this way. Now.
00:43:01
Speaker 2: I need to know that I have no control over anything. I mean, being a parent makes you realize how you truly have no control over anything. So kind of a long answer to your question, but I would say both are pretty comparable in terms of how big the change was.
00:43:18
Speaker 1: Thank you for your candor. You have really interesting reflections, so it's just nice for me to hear you said that one of the reasons you love this industry is that you never run out of things to be curious about. I may be biased, but I love that about you. Every project sends you into new research, new people, new books, new ideas. What is acting and directing? Made you curious about that? Maybe your real life would have never led you.
00:43:55
Speaker 2: To on its own so many things, almost everything I've ever worked on. I mean, it's like it's so wild because maybe I just don't have that skill to like be curious accidentally about things. But as soon as something's brought to me, I'm suddenly very curious about all sorts of things I could never have thought of on my own. Certainly with house, all the medical stuff became a huge curiosity. And I read so many I mean, I've read so many memoirs for so many reasons with this industry, with the different projects. But you know, read all these memoirs of like phesiologists and pre med students and med students and doctors that had terrible accidents of things that happened, and doctors who saved tons of lives, And so I just went down such a rabbit hole of curiosities about like how you shoulder that kind of pressure in life, you know, like the pressure of running a set is nothing compared to like having someone's heart literally in your hands and a heart surgery.
00:44:50
Speaker 1: You know.
00:44:51
Speaker 2: I got to revisit those curiosities when I was directing Doctor Death and I got to watch a bunch of spinal surgeries, and You're just standing in there going like these guys because it's so natural for them, they're like shooting the shit and talking while they're like and I'm like, just pay attention to their neck. You don't have to talk to me. It's fine, you know your neck totally, you know. But to them, it's that's that's what they're gifted at, you know, And so for them, it's very natural. So I'm also curious about that, like who is born that way? Who's born in a way where cutting into someone's back and dealing with their spine feels like a normal day and they're.
00:45:29
Speaker 1: Fine with that and they can like go to bed at night. You know.
00:45:32
Speaker 2: So all that stuff was huge coming off of doing five Star Weekend. You know, there was so many different little nuances of things that came off. Even the idea of like I never imagine going to Nantucket. It wasn't a place I was really aware of. And just like the curiosities of that whole island. I mean, it used to be a whaling island and it used to be that like before electricity, it was one of the most like wild wild West places to make money killing whales, which is so dark because they needed the blubber to make the oil for the oil lamps for everyone everywhere. And so then that whole industry shifted and the whole island shifted once electricity came around, because it was like not as like you know, so to watch the history of like or to dive into the history of like a place that had this kind of like dark trade that was fueling it and then becoming this high end vacation place you know, two hundred years later.
00:46:28
Speaker 1: It's just things like that are just so fascinating.
00:46:31
Speaker 2: But it all speaks to what ends up on the screen with the project, right, and it might be very subtle, but you feel all those textures and things, and it just it's just an opportunity to constantly go down those rabbit holes.
00:46:43
Speaker 1: You mentioned house and I heard that you almost didn't go to that audition. When you think about that, how I mean that was a life changing, yes, role, When you think about that, how much of your career has been serendipity and how much has just in sort of your direction?
00:47:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, none of it's my direction. All of it is just whatever I'm lucky enough to have happened.
00:47:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was.
00:47:09
Speaker 2: It was a weird one because I was testing for so many other pilots. This was back when they were making a ton of pilots, like we were talking about earlier in this conversation, and so you know, back in the day, you could audition for like six things in a day, and you had thirty five pages you had to know, and you'd read five scripts the night before, and you're changing clothes in the back of your car and you're trying to read the Thomas Guide to figure out where you're going because there was no navigation systems. I mean, this is like totally aging me, But it was a very different time, and this was sort of the tail end of that time, and so I heard you knew, I was like getting the I already had these test offers for other pilots, and that my pilot season was going well, and I really wanted to work with Brian Singer, who was directing the pilot. So I was very interested from that standpoint. And the writing was incredible and I loved the character. But I'm like, who's going to hire me to play a thirty two year old amiology. I was twenty four years old, and.
00:48:01
Speaker 1: It was like pouring rain, and I didn't know if I had time to prepare properly, and I didn't want to go in and like do a bad job for Brian Singer and think at first I tried to just move it to another day and then they couldn't. And I remember a friend, I think a friend of mine went with and like ran lines with me in the parking lot because I felt so unprepared because it was like I did so little time and yeah, and it was raining and I was like a drowned rat. When I went in, I was like so wet. I didn't have my umbrella.
00:48:29
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, La when it first starts to rain in February is like such a disaster.
00:48:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, no one knows how to drive. No. I think that was part of the magic maybe.
00:48:37
Speaker 2: And also, you know, again, it's like the luck you were talking about, or the kismet or I can't remember what word you used, I'm sorry. But I had worked with John Ottman on Urban Legends to the final cut, and he was Brian Singer's editor normally, and Brian had visited that sat years before briefly.
00:49:00
Speaker 1: And so.
00:49:02
Speaker 2: I had a little bit of a sense of him, and so I didn't feel as intimidated I guess, as maybe someone might have going into this big director for this thing. And also I think because I thought I wasn't right for the role, I didn't have as much pressure in my head about trying to do it right.
00:49:18
Speaker 1: You know.
00:49:18
Speaker 2: It was kind of like, well, I'm not really right for this anyway. And I remember thinking I'm drenched, I'm walking in I just need to get to the bathroom. I need to go to the bathroom. I need to like try to dry my hair off. I need to put myself together. I need to figure out if there's mascara all over my face. I need to just look at my sides and collect myself. And I walked in and Brian Singer was sitting in the lobby.
00:49:39
Speaker 1: I know. Hey.
00:49:44
Speaker 2: I was like, ah, so we're not going to get to pull ourselves together here, but I you know, leaned on having met. I said, you know, we met briefly years ago. You would never remember it, but like, and he's like, oh, I love John.
00:49:54
Speaker 1: He's the best.
00:49:54
Speaker 2: And I was like, it was so great working with him, and blah blah blah. So we had a little bit of a shorthand from that. And he's a real ca character too, so he was, you know, saying a much of crazy stuff. And he was like, come on in, and I was like, holy crap, I'm really not getting any chance. I did not even get a chance to go to the bathroom.
00:50:08
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:50:09
Speaker 2: So I go in and he's like, yeah, don't don't worry if I don't give you notes, I don't give anyone notes. And I was like, all right, big fancy director. If you're not going to give me notes after, why you give me notes now? And he was like and then he did.
00:50:23
Speaker 1: He started talking about the character and he started, and I mean I said it like playfully, where he could have been like, just go ahead and do it, you know what I mean, Like he could have just dismissed it and said go but he actually like realized I wasn't intimidated, and I was like, I really want something, you know, And so he gave me notes before I did it, which were super helpful, and I got a sense of what he was looking for. And then I did it, and then he gave me more notes, and he gave me more notes, and I was in there for a long time and we just played around and did it a bunch of different ways, and then I left and I still felt terrible, not because it like went terribly, but I was like I went to the bathroom and I was a drowned rat. There was mascara on my eyelids, like my hair was everywhere. I realized I had this like bra that like had stuck to my shirt. Weard and like my bra was.
00:51:09
Speaker 2: Showing, and I was like, I'm not getting this job. I look at like a mess. And so I went home. It was like kind of later in the day at this point, and I like just turned off my phone and went to sleep. I was like, I don't want to think about this. This is like how I would compartmentalize at the time. And I woke up to like just a thousand mis texts and messages everywhere trying to find me, you know, and I was like.
00:51:31
Speaker 1: They're like, they love you, they want to test you.
00:51:34
Speaker 2: And I was like, wait what And then he I guess Brian that night they had said he was like, that's her, like he just said.
00:51:40
Speaker 1: As soon as I left the room, He's like, I just want to hire her. There, Brian, you have to see everybody else. You can't. He's like, no, that's who I want.
00:51:45
Speaker 2: And they're like, well, you have to go through today's sessions and then you need to look at some other like offer only tapes tonight. So they sent him offer only tapes that night, and they also sent my reel with the offer only tapes, just so that he had a point of reference of other stuff. When I walked in the room, I had because I was doing Mister Missus Smith at the time. The tape that they sent I had blonde hair. He called them in the morning he said, all right, you guys are right, there's one other actress I like there's this blonde girl. I'll test her against Jennifer. You're kidding And they said, Brian, that is Jennifer. So yeah, and so I mean it was fate.
00:52:23
Speaker 1: I mean I knew you were. It was just for whatever reason. I was it like, that's a hilarious story.
00:52:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I didn't even I didn't know that storytell he told that story when we were on a panel and I was like, I didn't know that happened.
00:52:35
Speaker 1: So yeah.
00:52:36
Speaker 2: So then they were like, Okay, well we just need to get her in because we're going to lose her to these other test offers. And so then that night I had to go in and test, and Gail Burman was running Fox at the time, and she gave me the job in the room.
00:52:48
Speaker 1: So it was good. It must have been so exciting. It was wild. It was also it was exciting, It was wild, and it was like such a gift from the universe in many ways, as you were point out earlier, but also because the previous pilot season, I had tested for fourteen pilots and not gotten one, so just statistically I should have gotten one, and so I had a lot of heartbreak the season before, and so I felt like, you know, when that happened, I was kind of like, Okay, thank you for giving me some grace and some gentleness this time around, you know, And also like, had you gotten one of those other ones? No, and none of those shows went yeah, yeah, okay. I have some rapid fire questions. Thanks for you a role that changed you house, a character of yours that you'd want advice from, probably Cassidy. And this is Us a show that you wish you could direct an episode of. That's a really good question. Paradise you just you and Sterling have a thing. I watched you guys in an interview. I love him, you get each other. We do that whole cast though, and I mean dan fulwoman who's the show. He's just he's so spectacular. I didn't see you with the show runner, but in that interview, I was like, everyone's close, but you guys were in just a different ways. Hopefully with you know, some way in the future we'll get to work together. Yeah, A director who shaped the way you see Scorsese, JJ Abrams, and Kevin O'Connor. Sorry that's three, but it's okay, a comfort rewatch. Well, I did answer this. I have a couple comfort rewatches.
00:54:17
Speaker 2: But I did just answer this specifically for your question set, which is usually the graduate. But I also could say, like when Harry met Sally that before Sunrise Trilogy, I have a few different comforts that.
00:54:29
Speaker 1: I turned to. I love when Harry met Sally. Yeah, a lesson from acting that made you a better director? I think sort of a variation on what we were talking about.
00:54:37
Speaker 2: It just like knowing the actors come with so much in their pocket and that as a director I could gain so much if I can like get in that pocket.
00:54:46
Speaker 1: How about the opposite, A lesson from directing that made you a better actor? Do whatever anyone asked you to do, Just try it, Just try all of it, Like look in every direction, stand on whatever mark, make everything possible because you have no idea how it's going to come off, and you have no idea how it's all going to fit together. A character you weren't ready to say goodbye to Zoe? And how I about your mother? A question that you ask yourself before saying yes, do I feel at peace? What's something every woman should try once?
00:55:15
Speaker 2: The first thing I thought was sleeping, But that's probably because I'm really tired right now.
00:55:22
Speaker 1: That could be number one answer all the time for that question. I was like, if I'm gonna be honest about my gut reaction, I was like, sleeping. We need more of it, We do need more of it.
00:55:32
Speaker 2: We should try once, though, I feel like taking a trip by yourself.
00:55:37
Speaker 1: I think that it's like if you go to.
00:55:39
Speaker 2: A movie alone compared to going to a movie with a friend or a loved one or whatever. You just have a different experience watching that movie. Not necessarily bad, not necessarily better or worse, but just different. And I think that there is something too, like the way you move through a new space when it's not at all edited by another person. And so I think every woman should like take a vacation by herself once.
00:56:04
Speaker 1: A book that you love, something you think everybody should read. East of Eden is one that I go back to all the time. It's always felt really powerful to me.
00:56:13
Speaker 2: And then I read I can't remember what it's called now, but it's like his journals of when he was writing it. When Steinbeck was writing it, and he talks about how he wrote the book because he knew he wasn't always with his sons, because he was separated from their mother, and that he wanted to try to articulate his understanding of good and evil to them. I did not know that when I fell in love with the book, but like talk about it, like changing your perspective of the book, because I probably read that six seven, eight times, I mean maybe more and so. But the latest reread was after reading the journals. And it's really powerful when you realize how personal it is.
00:56:50
Speaker 1: Beautiful, Well, you grab the card game, yes, pick whichever question calls to? Boy? Oh boy? Who signed your mic? By the way, you know, you are the first person to notice that, really it's pretty fancy. It is Larry King. Ah. I love that you asked that he was my mentor. I was like, this has got to be someone really special because this is all white and that is that is a real signature. In almost two hundred and fifty episodes, you are the first person to add I'm very honored. I'm so excited to see the noticing. You're amazing.
00:57:20
Speaker 2: All right, let's see what's happening here. Oh dear, do plants thrive or die in your gear? They die me too, They die so fast. Yeah, I've even tried talking to them recently.
00:57:34
Speaker 1: I was like, I feel like there's something wrong with me that I can't keep plants alive. Do I keep this out or do I know you could throw it back in there. I just want you to know I kill even succulent, so you're not alone. That makes me feel a lot better. Yeah.
00:57:46
Speaker 2: So, I just worried that maybe it said something about my soul. And I do love plants. I just don't know how to care for them.
00:57:54
Speaker 1: Jennifer Morrison, you are just exquisite. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It's so nice to talk to you. I'm so glad this worked out. Thank you. Okay, you know what time it is. Today's a good day to have a good day. I'll see you next week. H
Speaker 1: No one has all the answers, but when we ask the right questions, we get a little closer, closer to truths, closer to each other, even closer to ourselves. I'm journalist Danielle Robe, and each week, my guests and I come together to challenge the status quo and our own ways of thinking by daring to ask what if, why not? And who says? So? Come curious, dig deep, and join the conversation. It's time to question everything. Shakespeare famously wrote, all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. The older I get, the more I think he was right. I mean, I think he was right about a lot of things. But what Shakespeare is saying is that all of us are actors. We take on these roles child, teacher, mother, wife, The list goes on, and he's observing that we're constantly performing for one another, whether we realize it or not. And I think those roles shift right. We're one version of ourselves at work, another with our closest friends, another with our parents, maybe another with our kids, and somewhere between all of those roles, we spend a lifetime trying to answer a deceptively simple question. Who am I when no one's asking me to be someone for them? I exhale when I think about that question. Who am I when no one's asking me to be someone for them? Well, Jennifer Morrison has made a career out of becoming other people. You know her from house from Once Upon a Time, How I Met Your Mother, and more recently as the director behind some of TV's biggest shows, including Yellowjackets, The Night Agent, and The Five Star Weekend. Spent decades studying human behavior, first as an actress and now from behind the camera as a director, and it is so fun to hear her opinions and experiences on set and about the craft. Just listen very closely for the part where she talks about actors as emotional athletes. I've been thinking about that ever since, and like how we can all become them. Anyways, what I was really interested in was what she taught me about being human. Jennifer wanted to be an actress since she was five years old, and she did it. She did the unimaginable. She became the point zero one percent of recognizable TV actors. Just to put that in perspective, imagine a football stadium with ten thousand people in it, one of them becomes Jennifer Morrison. So Jennifer realized her childhood dream, and then she realized she'd gotten so good at becoming everyone else that she'd slowly stop becoming herself.
00:02:56
Speaker 2: I also could feel this tugging of like a true self that just was constantly being pushed away because I was sacrificing to succeed. I was sacrificing to succeed. I was never seeing my friends, I was never seeing my family. I was always missing every event. I was spending every hour of the day being someone else, and no hours of the day even knowing who I was.
00:03:18
Speaker 1: Now. Shakespeare believed we spend our lives playing different parts, but Jennifer made me wonder if he left one question unanswered. What if every role we play is still authentically us? It's time to question everything with Jennifer Morrison. Jennifer, I feel like I have known you for over thirty years and I don't know anything about you. Yet. You're a very private person. Yeah, I guess I am. I feel like I'm an open book but a private person. If that makes sense, that makes all the sense in the world. I actually think that's very Chicago of you, probably very Chicago of me. So you just directed the five Star week End, which is out on Peacock now, and it's about grief and friendship and the people who show up when life changes overnight. But in modern terms, I feel like it's a story about the group chat. Yeah, in a lot of ways, when life gets hard, who do you go to for advice, distraction, honesty, presence. What is your favorite way to show up for the people that you care about.
00:04:24
Speaker 2: It's a really good question because I think it's different for everybody, and it's hard to know what to do in any given situation. And we had several people go through losses while you're shooting the show, which was really interesting since the show was dealing with grief. And I called my best friend and I said, I don't know what to do. I want to be here for people and I want to make sure that I'm showing up in the right way.
00:04:50
Speaker 1: And she said, she was like, just do what you always do. She was like, you hold space. And it was so.
00:04:56
Speaker 2: Interesting to have yourself reflected back to yourself by someone because I wouldn't have thought of it that way. I wouldn't have necessarily framed it that way, but she was like, you just hold space for what that person needs, and if what they need is to laugh, you'll make them laugh. And if what they need is to cry, you'll hold them while they cry. And she just said, you know, you have a calming presence to do that, And so I try to think of it that way. Now you know now that I sort of have the words to think of it that way. And sometimes I just want people to know I'm there without the pressure to respond. I think that's the biggest thing, is like when someone's going through something, I don't ever want them to feel like they have to take care of me while I'm trying to take care of them. So I try really hard to be clear of like, hey, please don't respond to this text. I want you to know I'm thinking of you, or leave a voicemail and say cannot call me back.
00:05:46
Speaker 1: I just want you to know I love you, you know what I mean. Like, it's just trying to make sure that you're not adding one more thing to the weight of what they're dealing with. So I don't know, I don't know if there's any right way to do it, but that's the best I can do. I think that's incredibly tailored and thoughtful. I've seen you post a lot on Instagram about girls' nights, yes, And I was wondering if you are the kind of friend that is more in the day to day or if you're kind of the deep end friend where you show up for the important stuff but you're not texting back day to day. I do text back.
00:06:19
Speaker 2: I do try to make sure that by the end of the day, even if I'm on set, I try, even if it's at a weird hour, I try to make sure that I respond to everything by the end of the day. Every once in a while, something will go a little longer if it requires a longer, more elaborate answer, and I need to give thought to it, and I want to make sure that it gets the attention it deserves. So I do try to really pay attention to that despite my schedule. But I would say in terms of like being at events, it has to be scheduled. It definitely has to be scheduled at this point. So between you know, my home life as I work life, it's like, you know, sometimes we're scheduling months in advance, but it's worth it.
00:06:57
Speaker 1: What does the typical girls' night look like for you, very simple it is on the couch is not Yeah, it's not complicated.
00:07:04
Speaker 2: It's maybe like a nice restaurant, you know what I mean, Like a nice restaurant or having people over. We definitely since having a family, do that a lot more, where it's like it's easier to have someone at the house instead of getting a babysitter and all that kind of stuff. So sometimes it's just you know, mordering good food. In what I do try to avoid is too much of the cooking because a I'm not a great cook and no one really wants to suffer through that. But be it's the dishes and that, you know what I mean. So yeah, so I try to keep it simple and casual.
00:07:33
Speaker 1: When I have these types of conversations, I go home and I reflect so much about my life. I'm wondering if when you're directing a show like that, if it makes you think about the type of people you want around you when things get with five Star Weekend, Yeah, oh absolutely. I mean I was so drawn to the book in the first place, all in Hildebrand's book just because I was like, what a great concept. I am so jealous of anyone who gets to have a five Star weekend? You know.
00:07:58
Speaker 2: It's the idea is you put together the women who were your closest person in each phase of life. So it's like her closest person from high school, her closest person from college, her closest person from work, and her closest person from mom life. And I feel like that is a natural evolution of closeness in life, you know. And I have all those closest people across those phases of my life, and I'm like, man, how cool would it be to get them all together? You know, because they all have so much in common, but they're also so different and they don't really know each other, any of them. So yeah, I mean, as soon as I read the book, I was like, oh, man, I wish I could do this. But again, imagine trying to schedule that, and it makes you think a lot about I don't know, just like the priorities in life, and how tricky it is because the only reason the women in Five Star Weekend are able to do it is because they're showing up for someone who's grieving, and it feels like a little bit more of a crisis, and so somehow we're all able to rearrange everything for a crisis, but if it's just for ourselves, we're like, oh, I can't do it, or I can't make it, or you know, it's too busy or whatever.
00:09:00
Speaker 1: That does make me think too right. Yeah, and it's a real thing. Backup run Setter who wrote all the five Star Weekend. I mean she has a writer's room but oversaw the whole thing as a showrunner. She's amazing at this and she's probably why she was the perfect person to write the show.
00:09:14
Speaker 2: Is like she really like, doesn't matter how tired she is, doesn't matter how many school functions, she just wants to She's like, my friend has a show opening somewhere, I'm going to be there.
00:09:24
Speaker 1: My girlfriends are going away for the weekend. I'll be there. And I was like, man, I so admire her ability to really just push through and do it, and it inspired me to try to be better about it, to really show up. Yeah, you directed the first four episodes of this year, so it alternates. So Minckey Spiral directed the pilot in the second episode and I did three and four, she did five and six, and I did seven and eight. Interesting, Yeah, so we hold is that like, how do you decide that?
00:09:50
Speaker 2: So that is sort of like a logistical need. I mean, I've done shows before where I've done all like four in a row, which I really don't mind and I actually really like as a filmmaker, but is very very hard on the department heads because in order to prep, you're just prepping a massive amount of material. And if you were to do four and four, then while you're trying to execute four episodes, which is a ton of content, you're also trying to prep the next four, which is a ton of content. And so it makes it so that it's just very hard to shoulder all that possible but harder, and so in this situation, it felt better to do alternating blocks. And even with the alternating blocks, we weren't stopping to edit, which is also what you normally do. So because of Jennifer Garner's schedule and I think because of the release schedule a combination of the two things, we didn't stop to edit. We just shot all eight and then edited all eight, and so it was just it was a little bit of a different process than usual, but also I think really benefited the outcome of the show.
00:10:48
Speaker 1: In the eight episode, Yeah, and you mentioned Jennifer Gardner. It's an incredible cast. You have Genah Gemma Chan, Darcy Carden, and Chloe Sevenier. What a line up. I know, they feel like they have such a vibe on and off the screen. Was there a real life group chat? One hundred percent? They're absolutely. I mean, I'm not in it, so I can't tell you, like I haven't witnessed it, but yes, I mean they all got along, they all hung out, they all were doing things outside of work.
00:11:16
Speaker 2: We also all spent a lot of time in Nantucket together at the end because the show is set in Nantucket and we did all of our exteriors there, so we shot everything we could up until the end, and then the last month of shooting we just crossboarded all eight episodes in Nantucket. So also, it's like going to summer camp, you know, it's like everybody's living on this little island together and doing their things.
00:11:38
Speaker 1: So but they are.
00:11:40
Speaker 2: They're all so extraordinary and so uniquely different and brought so much to the table in that ensemble.
00:11:46
Speaker 1: It was very invigorating to be around them. I'm interviewing Ellen Hildebrand on Monday, Oh kra Larice's book Club podcast, and I had no idea she was the Queen of Nantucket.
00:11:54
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, thirty books later, she is the queen. I mean she is. I think she's like is Nantucket. Yes, she's also like the nicest pools. Still have the best time with her. She's amazing. But yeah, she knows everyone. Everyone there knows each other. It's like a very surreal environment.
00:12:15
Speaker 1: To be in. I didn't know what to expect, but yeah, it was. It was definitely a small town. So when I first started like asking people questions and entertainment, every director that I interviewed was a man for you. Interesting, you've stepped behind the camera at a moment with a whole new wave of female actors. Greta Gerwig, Regina King, Olivia Wilde. I just interviewed Maggie, Jillenhall, Eva Longoria. They made that same move and have been taken seriously as directors. What do you think actresses are seeing in front of the lens that make them want to take control of the story.
00:12:50
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's a gendered thing as much as an actor experience, but maybe it's slightly gendered. I think in general, actors are the most underutilized resource on a set, and that seems like the opposite because it's their faces on the screen. But they're weirdly the last people you think of when you're you know, in prep and in getting ready for something, because you're just dealing with so many other logistics of schedule and locations and budget and you know, I mean, if you if there's a fire, and like the logistics of the fire bars and the what can be lit on fire and what can't, and the stunts and this, and then you know, the weather will happen, it's only the schedule changes and then an actor falls out, and you know what, It's just, it's you have a million a million million fires and problems before you get to a set.
00:13:40
Speaker 1: So when you get to a set, you're like, oh, oh, hey, the actors are here. So sometimes I feel like, because the actors are not involved in the prep process, there is a accidental dismissal of what they have to offer, because there's this sort of subconscious feeling of like they don't know they were in the meetings. They don't you know.
00:14:03
Speaker 2: And there's this thing called a tone meeting on a television show that you have with the showrunners where they talk you through what's important to them in every scene and tonally, what they need to have happened, and exactly where they think these characters need to be in their headspaces. And no one talks to the actors about the tone meeting, which is so weird to me because I'm like, isn't that exactly who you just talk to about the tone meeting. So sometimes you come on set and your actors have a very different idea in their heads of what they think is important in the scene compared to what you were just told by the showrunners is important to them in the scene in the tone meeting. And so if you don't have the language to like work together to get to a common ground or to just say, like, listen, in the tone meeting, they were saying this, like we're kind of far apart, let's figure out how to get there, you are often finding actors feeling like sort of frustrated and shut down, or like what they're bringing to the table just kind of gets ignored or pushed away a little bit. And I think that at least for me, you know, I was in that situation for a very long time, for many many years, and I wasn't like upset about it, but I was aware of it, you know, and aware of feeling like, with the amount of research I did and the amount of passion that I had for the characters that I was playing, I felt like people were getting maybe ten to twenty percent out of me, and I was dying to be like pushed and used, you know, more than that. And so I'm sure that all of the incredible women that you just listed felt that way, just as much as I'm sure Jason Bateman has felt that way, or you know what I mean. So like that's why I'm saying, I'm not sure if it's a gendered thing as much as a smart actor thing, you know. And you just reach a point eventually where you're like, I want to offer more, you know, I want to give more than just maybe this little corner of what you could do, you know. And all of those women are brilliant, and so I'm sure they reached that point, you know, and then we're like, I need I need to give more of myself in the situation.
00:16:10
Speaker 1: I can imagine acting changes the way you view human behavior because you're just noticing everything all the time. Has directing done that for you at all? I think so because I think I think I see more like in collective theme. I don't know how, I don't know how to put that into like story art kind of. But also just like there are these sort of like movements of energy in culture and in certain areas or pockets of places where you start to go like, ah, this is coming up a lot, or this is being said over and over again, or why is everyone wearing these same shoes all of a sudden. I don't know everybody's in the flip flops all of a sudden. I don't know if flip flops came out of nowhere recently. I don't know what that's about, you know. Like, so it's.
00:16:53
Speaker 2: I think I just I just see like in sort of like a bigger picture a way, as opposed to like I think as an actor, I'm kind of looking more at like little quirks or ticks or little things that you're like, oh, that could be interesting to use as a character, like a little habit this person has, or a way that they move or talk or words that they lean on that I might be able to suggest. And then also you know, it just makes you pay really close attention to therapy because you're like I need to understand humans. I need to understand the motivation and insecurity of everybody.
00:17:26
Speaker 1: Yeah. I heard Melissa McCarthy one time say that the worst part of becoming famous was that she could no longer go to like home Depot or Walmart and watch people. She had to find like a whole new process, which I thought was so funny. That's probably very true. That makes a lot of sense. I know. So your ten years into directing now, and you started as you founded your production company Apartment three C, which I loved that you named after the apartment that you shared with your college best friends. I had six one nine. Okay, so before you became an actress and people knew you as a director and people trusted you, who's the Jennifer that lived in Apartment three C. Oh my gosh, so Apartment three C.
00:18:08
Speaker 2: Jen I was very passionate and excited about life. I mean, I you know, it's like you look back on those days of like the starry eyed everything as possible. I also felt like I was like infatigable at that age.
00:18:25
Speaker 1: You know, it was like you really.
00:18:26
Speaker 2: Could stay up all night and I didn't want to miss out on anything, you know, I wanted to be with my friends just as much as I want to be prepared for the play, just as much as I wanted to get good grades.
00:18:34
Speaker 1: And I was, you know, burning the candle.
00:18:36
Speaker 2: At every end you could possibly burn it, and somehow getting away with it. We were all very different in a cool way, very different backgrounds, you know.
00:18:43
Speaker 1: I was sort of the actress in the group.
00:18:46
Speaker 2: And then one of my friends was half Italian, half Irish, like curly hair, just knew everybody, was like a social butterfly. Everybody loved her. She was like Felicity, Like I felt like she was like you know. And then another one of my girlfriends one hundred percent Greek, very tied into the Greek community. We went dancing in our weird black pants at many many Greek clubs and had our big hoops, and I'd like, you know, we'd have our like Greek nights with her.
00:19:15
Speaker 1: And then the other friend was one hundred percent Polish and like came from just like a big family, and she had so much responsibility in her family and like just took care of everybody. Was such a caretaker, all all of them like so smart and wonderful, but like just keyed into such different corners of the community of our school too, and so it was this really interesting melting pot of women that came together in that apartment three C. This feels like a show. Probably well, And there were guys that lived in TWOC. There were four guys at two C and we were in three Was anybody dating. I don't think we ever dated, but we all hung out.
00:19:51
Speaker 2: Like it was like, you know, I would come home and I'd be like alone sometimes and I'd go knock on TUOC and the I'd sit with those guys and like sometimes I'd come home and they'd all be up there. I would make these like big ZD Like I would get this big tin and like just poor. I would make noodles and I would just poor, like you know, pre made Mari and Ara sauce with a bunch of cheese and noodles and bacon and be like it's big CD.
00:20:10
Speaker 1: And they were so happy to have food. Hence why I'm not feeding people.
00:20:14
Speaker 2: But in college it went great, so you know, sometimes I'd find them in our kitchen eating my terrible big CD. But it was a really it was a really fun time. Like I felt like we were all finding ourselves. We were all kind of starting to aim ourselves at our dreams, and you know, it's the first time you're away from your families, and we were all very close to our families, and so I think it was interesting that we.
00:20:36
Speaker 1: All had that in common.
00:20:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then we all sort of also needed that space to figure out who we were outside of that in order to be ourselves and be a part of our families.
00:20:46
Speaker 1: You said the word dreams, and I love when I hear you talk about how you wanted to become an actress. You said you knew at five years old. Yeah, how did you you just felt called? I guess. I mean, I've gone over and over.
00:20:59
Speaker 2: This because people ask me about it, you know, and I just never had a thought in my mind that I wasn't a performer, Like it just never occurred to me that I might not be.
00:21:10
Speaker 1: Does it feel the way you thought it would? Maybe? I mean I don't know that I like.
00:21:16
Speaker 2: Had an idea of what it would feel like as much as it just feels like I'm being myself when I'm being creative, and so it's I feel kind of the same now as I felt when I was five years old. You know, I remember doing the first little play. I was just recently talking about this, but playing Feely and the kid's version of the Hobbit, you know, and being so determined to like do it well and do it right. I was only like five or six or however old you are, in kindergarten, you know, and like, I still have that feeling, you know, like and backstage still smells the same way, and you still have all the same people running around, you know, doing their jobs to make it all work and moving the props, and so it just sort of feels like I don't really know any different, Like that's just kind of what life has always felt like. And I guess I just assumed always life would always feel that way.
00:22:05
Speaker 1: I was thinking, like, you've been famous for a really long time, and I get the sense from you that fame was like never part of the equation or goal for you. Do you think that's the Midwesterner in you. I think that it is the Midwest.
00:22:20
Speaker 2: I mean when I came in, we started talking about the Midwest pretty quickly of just like how lucky I feel to have grown up there, Like the values and the sense of community that's there is, like they really value the idea of working hard and being proud of working hard and wanting to be prepared and wanting to be a part of a group with people. And some of it I think is just that there are incredible public schools in a lot of those school districts in that area too. I mean, it depends on the suburb, and it depends on what part of the Midwest you're talking about, but I mean I went to an incredible public school. I just think about the books we are studying and the group projects that we did, and the way that you valued each person because everybody had to bring something different to the table. You weren't going to get a good grade, you know, And so that was just so intrinsic to growing up in that community. And then my parents are educators, you know. My dad had a nationally competive high school marching band for thirty years, and then my brother went on to do the same thing for a long time. And like we always say, we're from a marching band family, Like our whole life was marching band, and we were all in the marching band. And there's just something about, like you're so aware when you're in a group like that that what you bring to the table so deeply impacts every other person around you.
00:23:35
Speaker 1: You have one.
00:23:36
Speaker 2: Person who's out of step, one person who doesn't fit in the formation, one person who you know misses the note, and it impacts the overall you know, look and vibe and result for the entire team. And you're not talking about twelve people or sixty people. You're talking about two hundred, three hundred and four hundred people depending on how big that marching band is. And so at a very young age, I was existing in an atmosphere of responsibility to the other people who are your like comrades in a circumstance, you know, And that was just life. That's just how it went, you know. And so the process was the joy.
00:24:15
Speaker 1: You know.
00:24:15
Speaker 2: It was like the practices, the learning, the overcoming the crazy hard thing, the realizing the impossible drill move was possible.
00:24:23
Speaker 1: You know.
00:24:23
Speaker 2: It was like that's just so in my DNA from how I was raised with my parents. But also you know, being from the Chicago suburbs and having great teachers, that like, that's that's the joy for me. You know, Like a lot of people ask me, like younger actors will ask me like.
00:24:42
Speaker 1: Well, how do you deal with the criticism or how do you deal with people judging you?
00:24:46
Speaker 2: And I was like, I mean, I'm not going to say I've never had my feelings hurt. I'm a human being. I certainly have. But like I'm just another person to any other other person, just like everybody else is just another person. Like why are we so caught up on that? You know, Like at the end of the day, I just want to be proud of the stuff that I make and like it. You know, if I can lay my head on the pillow at night and be like, I did my best today. I brought everything to the table that I could.
00:25:13
Speaker 1: I did my best. I'm happy.
00:25:16
Speaker 2: I don't need to wait for someone else to tell me that it was good, you know. And so I can't pretend that I was always like in that headspace, but that's where I've been for a long time now, and it's just such a more pleasant way to do life. You know, no one else really cares that much about what I'm.
00:25:35
Speaker 1: Doing, you know what I mean. I feel that way as a young actress because I sometimes I would interview people who were auditioning, like ten twenty years ago, and they would talk about like the audition process and it was just a little more brutal.
00:25:50
Speaker 2: It seemed, Yeah, I think, I mean, auditioning never gets less brutal because you're you rip your heart open and splay it out there, and then you know someone's going to tell you something's wrong with what you're doing, you know.
00:26:03
Speaker 1: And I sort of find it inhumane. Actors are some of the most sensitive people on the whole planet of their artists, and we just like they lay their heart out and we're like, thanks by.
00:26:13
Speaker 2: Yeah if we like it, I know. And so often it has nothing to do with talent. I mean, it's like the amount of times I've seen incredibly talented people across the board for something, but you still have to pick one, and it comes down to some weird, inexplicable vibe that they happen to have or the way that they fit into the cast or whatever. And it's it's heartbreaking because you want you want to hire everybody. I think, like when I was a younger actor, I certainly had more insecurities about is it coming off well, you know, because you can't see yourself right, so you're always hoping and praying that what you're putting out reflects what you're feeling.
00:26:52
Speaker 1: Or what you the work that you're.
00:26:53
Speaker 2: Trying to offer, right, So I think that I had to get to a place where I could just trust in my own muscles a little bit more and just just be like, Okay, I know to a certain point this is working, and then I have to trust that the director is going to tell me if, you know, if it needs to be something different.
00:27:08
Speaker 1: But I think and I'm hoping.
00:27:12
Speaker 2: I was thinking about this on set and I was just directing on Wednesday with some of the kids on Yellow Jackets.
00:27:20
Speaker 1: I say, kids, they're all not kids anymore, but they're young actors.
00:27:23
Speaker 2: They feel like kids compared to how old I feel now. But and it was so exciting. It's so exciting to work with this cast. I love them so much. It's the adult cast, adults and the team cast. But it's like you go in and you bring a note and there's this like voracious hunger to digest it and do it and like bring it to the screen. And I said, you know, they feel like emotional athletes. Oh I like that, And it just it's.
00:27:52
Speaker 1: So cool when you're in an environment like that where instead of being like, well, what did I do wrong?
00:27:56
Speaker 2: Why did you give me some start so they're like, yeah, okay, yeah, I hear you. I hear you. You know, I'm like, do you need me to say it a different way? Or like no, no, no, I got it, I got it.
00:28:03
Speaker 1: Let's do it, you know.
00:28:04
Speaker 2: And then you like watch them like put it in their body and digest it and you're like, holy crap. And then just things that like you know what you're aiming for when you're giving the note, but it always goes above and beyond what you could help for with this cast, so cool, and the amount of times I turned back to the writer who's on set and I was like he was like, oh my god, you know, and it really it's exciting if people can sort of look at it more that way, because if someone were playing professional football, you know, they're not going to take a criticism as oh my god, I'm a bad person, I'm terrible. They're going to go, oh my god, I can run that a tenth of a second faster.
00:28:39
Speaker 1: I'll try it. I can take that tackle a different way. I'll try it. I can you know. It's like we need a rebrand. This is brilliant, right, And so it was like, you need to share this idea of everybody.
00:28:49
Speaker 2: If you if you take the note like the way an athlete would take a correction, It's like what the person giving the athlete the correction can't do it.
00:29:00
Speaker 1: I can't do it. The coach cannot do it.
00:29:01
Speaker 2: The coach is twenty years too old and they probably never could do it in the first place. So they're not saying it from a place of judgment. They're saying it from a place of how do I make you your absolute best? So if the way that you receive the note is this person wants to help me be my absolute athletic best, yes, you know, then it's invigorating and you're going to know right away if it doesn't work, and that's okay. Like, just as much as actors should definitely have space to fail, the directors have to have space to fail in their note too, you know, Like everybody's got to feel like they can try, and sometimes magic happens and sometimes a disaster happens, and you just accept whichever way it goes the course correct.
00:29:40
Speaker 1: I am like feeling hyped up here. I think you really hit on something. It's very cool when it happens, it's very very I feel like it's really fun to be on a set of yours, I hope. So, I mean, I certainly want that to be the case. I found this random fact that you used to buy tons of magazines as a way to research characters. Can you explain why that works for you. I've literally never heard anybody say that.
00:30:16
Speaker 2: I still do a version of this when I'm like, not with magazines, but with images. I think I'm just a very visual, Like my emotional language is very visual, and so I never had a plan when I was looking at all those things, just like I don't have a plan when I go to my visual like what do you call them? Photo albums and things? Now, I mean I have a ton of printed photos. I have boxes and boxes and boxes of like tangible photos, and then I also just have thousands and thousands of digital images. And so when I go to start pitching a project or I start building a visual for something. If I'm directing the pilot, I go through and I don't filter myself. I just click and drag or pull out whatever emotionally jumps out at me, having known the material, and then I look at that pile and there's often patterns that I start to see, and so I don't necessarily understand why.
00:31:06
Speaker 1: It's just an instinct thing.
00:31:08
Speaker 2: So with magazines as an actor, I was just going through and if anything jumped out, sometimes it was a watch or a you know, like a headline or a dog or I don't I would just not censor myself and I'd be like, tear that out.
00:31:21
Speaker 1: Actually I always had a ruler so that it was like a pretty easy tear, and I'd like tear that out, tear that out.
00:31:26
Speaker 2: And then I'd have this pile and I would start to look at the pile and be like, what is this telling me? You know, like, oh, there's like a color palette that's emerging, there's texture that's emerging, Like oh, maybe this person is really uncomfortable in their clothes, like everything feels tight or everything feels restricted, or you know, or vice versa.
00:31:48
Speaker 1: You know.
00:31:48
Speaker 2: And so it was a way for me to like turn my brain off and just move from my instinct and then look at what my instinct altogether seemed to tell me, and then I would start to move from that place.
00:32:01
Speaker 1: This is so unique. So do you ever share this with young actors? Like you would look at the photos and how would you come up with the questions you were asking yourself, you were just noticing the themes.
00:32:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, it would just sort of I mean I have most of these I have like in journals that I saved like over years, so there's a lot of these I can look back on. But yeah, I mean some of it was just very logistical.
00:32:25
Speaker 1: You know.
00:32:25
Speaker 2: I'd be like, Okay, I think this was like I think she always wears jeans, or I think that this person, you know, carries their body weight super forward, because like every picture I pulled, they were like, you know, someone was like very forward in the image, you know. And it was really just about looking for patterns, you know, looking for patterns that I wasn't planning on, just patterns that I was feeling and it maybe didn't totally understand. And then I also, I mean I went to theater school and I studied acting, and I studied all the you know, I did it all.
00:32:53
Speaker 1: I did the.
00:32:55
Speaker 2: Strasburg and the Meisner and the Stilla Adler and Larry Moss's book I love so much. So and I've never subscribed to any one way, you know, I think that I always am pulling little bits and pieces of knowledge from all of those systems. Depending on what it feels like is going to serve the person or the character or the environment that I have to be in. And so the combination of just like letting my guts start to build a visual and then noticing those patterns and then marrying that to whatever training I had made it so that I could start to like make a very specific person.
00:33:26
Speaker 1: When you're watching young actors coming up, can you tell if somebody has the thing? Like I know everybody can work on it. Yeah, right, Like I can see it with interviewers. I'm like, in three years she's going to be you know, yeah, Like can you just see it? I think so, I yes, I mean.
00:33:45
Speaker 2: There is sort of an intangible thing where like I remember being on the side of Euphoria at season one and being like, Sidney's a star, like a huge star, and Jacob too, and saying that and everybody being like, I mean, they're all great. I was like, they are all great. And by the way, I mean, I guess I could have said that about any one of them, because they've all gone on to have incredible careers.
00:34:05
Speaker 1: But just like in one take of one scene, I was like, Okay.
00:34:11
Speaker 2: You know what I mean, Like you just you just feel there's like this other thing operating that you can't put your finger on. And I've certainly had moments of kind of like calling that with people over the years. But I do also think there's sort of space for everybody differently, like if you do have that in you to like work that hard and to study into care and to push there's only space for however many you know, City Sweeneys in the world or Margot Robbies of the World or whatever. But there's a lot of space for great actors that don't necessarily like have that kind of fame, but are respected and working and admired and you know, like very very good at what they do. And I do think that there's more space to like move into that zone than there is to necessarily just have that intang thing that you don't know why someone is just like an undeniable star.
00:35:04
Speaker 1: Absolutely. One of the things I noticed about your acting is that you're really good at conveying inner conflict without ever over emoting. So I think you're known for playing women who are strong, but it's not in this flat invincible way. They're like usually emotionally complicated. And I also notice you're often trying these characters. These women are trying to stay soft in a hard world, yeah, or one that doesn't let them be an interesting observation, What do you think that you understand about women like that?
00:35:37
Speaker 2: I mean, gosh, I think the only thing I can pretend to say that I understand is just that we're never all one thing. I don't think any woman is all one thing, no matter what category you want to put yourself into or someone else wants to put you into. And I think it's been.
00:35:57
Speaker 1: A really.
00:35:59
Speaker 2: Long time I'm in this business of thinking that people kind of just fit into certain boxes. And I think women are asked to split themselves in so many ways in their lives and are asked to put on so many hats, and all of those hats can be authentic. Like I am a very different person at home when I'm a mom, compared to like when I'm running a set, compared to when I'm acting on a show. Those are three very different versions of me, but they're all authentic.
00:36:30
Speaker 1: And so I think we just.
00:36:37
Speaker 2: Haven't had a chance to see women who are allowed to be different in different circumstances. And then we are also telling people like, well, if you're not the same all the time, then you don't know who you are, And I just think that's bullshit. I think that we all rise to the occasions we're asked to rise to, and that calls on different parts of ourselves, and all those parts of ourselves are little pieces of a whole, and so I do the best I can to try to think about those layers when I'm playing a character, because otherwise, to your point, it does feel flat, because it's like, oh, she's just this one thing. So I think women really can only feel alive if you're finding the layers of just the different splits that we all have in order to be able to meet the needs in our lives.
00:37:22
Speaker 1: I've actually never heard anybody articulate it like that. We are split and even with different friends for different people, but it doesn't mean you're any less authentic with any one friend than the other. And I think that there's something really.
00:37:34
Speaker 2: Beautiful about that, Like, yeah, it's I think that it's sensitive to meet someone where they are and also have them meet you where you are, and to know that you, guys are offering something unique that no one else is going to be able to offer, you know, And so I get very like itchy is how I say it. And when something makes me uncomfortable, like it gets I get very itchy when people try to say like you are only one thing, you know, or we are all only one thing, or we put all these people in these categories, and it's like, well, we all have to be a lot of things, you know, like who wants to do their taxes? But you know what, you got to be good at it, you know, you know who wants to be super sick?
00:38:17
Speaker 1: At some point we all have to go through it, you know. And so it's all these.
00:38:21
Speaker 2: Different pieces of ourselves and you just you kind of just have to meet each moment and not feel badly that a different part of you shows up for different moments.
00:38:31
Speaker 1: You've had so many chapters, child, model, theater student, TV actress, fantasy icon director, producer, now mother, what chapter has changed you the most? I would say to have changed me the most.
00:38:47
Speaker 2: Equally, I was mentioning when I walked in that I heard your interview with Brooke Taylor about her book what is it called?
00:38:53
Speaker 1: Healing the Success?
00:38:55
Speaker 2: And when I listened to that, I thought, Man, I wish that book came out like fifteen years ago. I when I was really at the peak of my time on Once upon a Time. I was so lucky and so happy to have had all of the work I'd had up at that point. I've been on like three hundred fifty episodes of television and just been able to truly like live an insane dream and have loved every second of that. But I also could feel this tugging of like a true self that just was constantly being pushed away because I was sacrificing to succeed. I was sacrificing to succeed. I was never seeing my friends, I was never seeing my family. I was always missing every event. I was spending every hour of the day being someone else, and no hours of the day even knowing who I was. You know, people would say like, what are you what's your favorite music? I was like, I can give you the characters playlist. I have no idea what I want to listen to, and so like, I felt like I was starting to dissolve as a person because I was so committed to the things I was doing, but not it had no space to be myself. And it's partly what pushed me to start directing. At the moment that I started directing because I started to feel like I was going to have a breakdown if I didn't do something that was mine, not because I didn't love what I was doing, but because I just didn't have anything that felt like it was mine. I started to realize that I could be myself and be creative while I was directing. I didn't have to give myself up to do the creative thing, so that felt incredibly motivating. And I also at the same time started doing the artist's way.
00:40:26
Speaker 1: And.
00:40:28
Speaker 2: It was such a perfect fit for what I needed in that moment, which was like it was forcing me to do things as myself and to assess almost like I had to assess myself the way I'd been assessing characters.
00:40:40
Speaker 1: It gave me like.
00:40:41
Speaker 2: A template to deal with myself and figure out myself the same way I'd been figuring out all these other people for my whole life. So that sort of breaking point for me, and like that pushed me really quickly into directing. And also just I knew I had to make changes or I wasn't going to be okay based on how I was feeling.
00:41:02
Speaker 1: Was completely life changing.
00:41:03
Speaker 2: It's probably why I can say any of the things I've said, while I've sat here today is because of the realizations that started to happen from that change. So I would say that the wound of that success, you know, was what started to help me repair and become the person that I am today. And then undeniably and comparably having a child. It is such a wild thing to have happened. I remember we were we induced because because of my age, they wanted us to induce early to make sure everything was safe and healthy, and so we knew it was weird to like schedule the birth of a child, but we knew when we were having the baby, so we we like went to dinner on the way and I just remember being in the car with my husband and he was like, isn't it's so crazy that, like everything's about to change. And I was like, I know, and everyone tells you it's going to be this big life changing moment, and I believe them, but I still don't know what that feels like.
00:41:54
Speaker 1: And in twenty four hours, we're going to know what that feels like. It's such a crazy thing, and you do sort of just get rewired, Like it's hard to explain, Like I went from one moment that baby was inside my body, and I was like, yeah, I could probably like hurt someone in self defense to like that baby was on my chest and I was like, I will fucking kill Yeah. Sorry, I don't know if I can swear. I can't, you know what I mean. Like it was just like and I was like, whoa. All that happened was it came out, you know what I mean. Like you just feel this like primal thing like take over you, where you're just like my job now is to keep you alive and keep you safe and to love you in a way that like I had never felt in my life. It's such a different feeling of love.
00:42:38
Speaker 2: And then suddenly you have this little thing that you do have to keep alive and you love like you've never imagined before, and you still need to keep your life going, and so then you have to keep expanding and so you know, in order for all of that to keep happening together. And so from that point on, it's just a constant process of oh, Okay, I need to expand in this way.
00:42:58
Speaker 1: Now, I need to expand in this way. I need to expand in this way. Now.
00:43:01
Speaker 2: I need to know that I have no control over anything. I mean, being a parent makes you realize how you truly have no control over anything. So kind of a long answer to your question, but I would say both are pretty comparable in terms of how big the change was.
00:43:18
Speaker 1: Thank you for your candor. You have really interesting reflections, so it's just nice for me to hear you said that one of the reasons you love this industry is that you never run out of things to be curious about. I may be biased, but I love that about you. Every project sends you into new research, new people, new books, new ideas. What is acting and directing? Made you curious about that? Maybe your real life would have never led you.
00:43:55
Speaker 2: To on its own so many things, almost everything I've ever worked on. I mean, it's like it's so wild because maybe I just don't have that skill to like be curious accidentally about things. But as soon as something's brought to me, I'm suddenly very curious about all sorts of things I could never have thought of on my own. Certainly with house, all the medical stuff became a huge curiosity. And I read so many I mean, I've read so many memoirs for so many reasons with this industry, with the different projects. But you know, read all these memoirs of like phesiologists and pre med students and med students and doctors that had terrible accidents of things that happened, and doctors who saved tons of lives, And so I just went down such a rabbit hole of curiosities about like how you shoulder that kind of pressure in life, you know, like the pressure of running a set is nothing compared to like having someone's heart literally in your hands and a heart surgery.
00:44:50
Speaker 1: You know.
00:44:51
Speaker 2: I got to revisit those curiosities when I was directing Doctor Death and I got to watch a bunch of spinal surgeries, and You're just standing in there going like these guys because it's so natural for them, they're like shooting the shit and talking while they're like and I'm like, just pay attention to their neck. You don't have to talk to me. It's fine, you know your neck totally, you know. But to them, it's that's that's what they're gifted at, you know, And so for them, it's very natural. So I'm also curious about that, like who is born that way? Who's born in a way where cutting into someone's back and dealing with their spine feels like a normal day and they're.
00:45:29
Speaker 1: Fine with that and they can like go to bed at night. You know.
00:45:32
Speaker 2: So all that stuff was huge coming off of doing five Star Weekend. You know, there was so many different little nuances of things that came off. Even the idea of like I never imagine going to Nantucket. It wasn't a place I was really aware of. And just like the curiosities of that whole island. I mean, it used to be a whaling island and it used to be that like before electricity, it was one of the most like wild wild West places to make money killing whales, which is so dark because they needed the blubber to make the oil for the oil lamps for everyone everywhere. And so then that whole industry shifted and the whole island shifted once electricity came around, because it was like not as like you know, so to watch the history of like or to dive into the history of like a place that had this kind of like dark trade that was fueling it and then becoming this high end vacation place you know, two hundred years later.
00:46:28
Speaker 1: It's just things like that are just so fascinating.
00:46:31
Speaker 2: But it all speaks to what ends up on the screen with the project, right, and it might be very subtle, but you feel all those textures and things, and it just it's just an opportunity to constantly go down those rabbit holes.
00:46:43
Speaker 1: You mentioned house and I heard that you almost didn't go to that audition. When you think about that, how I mean that was a life changing, yes, role, When you think about that, how much of your career has been serendipity and how much has just in sort of your direction?
00:47:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, none of it's my direction. All of it is just whatever I'm lucky enough to have happened.
00:47:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was.
00:47:09
Speaker 2: It was a weird one because I was testing for so many other pilots. This was back when they were making a ton of pilots, like we were talking about earlier in this conversation, and so you know, back in the day, you could audition for like six things in a day, and you had thirty five pages you had to know, and you'd read five scripts the night before, and you're changing clothes in the back of your car and you're trying to read the Thomas Guide to figure out where you're going because there was no navigation systems. I mean, this is like totally aging me, But it was a very different time, and this was sort of the tail end of that time, and so I heard you knew, I was like getting the I already had these test offers for other pilots, and that my pilot season was going well, and I really wanted to work with Brian Singer, who was directing the pilot. So I was very interested from that standpoint. And the writing was incredible and I loved the character. But I'm like, who's going to hire me to play a thirty two year old amiology. I was twenty four years old, and.
00:48:01
Speaker 1: It was like pouring rain, and I didn't know if I had time to prepare properly, and I didn't want to go in and like do a bad job for Brian Singer and think at first I tried to just move it to another day and then they couldn't. And I remember a friend, I think a friend of mine went with and like ran lines with me in the parking lot because I felt so unprepared because it was like I did so little time and yeah, and it was raining and I was like a drowned rat. When I went in, I was like so wet. I didn't have my umbrella.
00:48:29
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, La when it first starts to rain in February is like such a disaster.
00:48:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, no one knows how to drive. No. I think that was part of the magic maybe.
00:48:37
Speaker 2: And also, you know, again, it's like the luck you were talking about, or the kismet or I can't remember what word you used, I'm sorry. But I had worked with John Ottman on Urban Legends to the final cut, and he was Brian Singer's editor normally, and Brian had visited that sat years before briefly.
00:49:00
Speaker 1: And so.
00:49:02
Speaker 2: I had a little bit of a sense of him, and so I didn't feel as intimidated I guess, as maybe someone might have going into this big director for this thing. And also I think because I thought I wasn't right for the role, I didn't have as much pressure in my head about trying to do it right.
00:49:18
Speaker 1: You know.
00:49:18
Speaker 2: It was kind of like, well, I'm not really right for this anyway. And I remember thinking I'm drenched, I'm walking in I just need to get to the bathroom. I need to go to the bathroom. I need to like try to dry my hair off. I need to put myself together. I need to figure out if there's mascara all over my face. I need to just look at my sides and collect myself. And I walked in and Brian Singer was sitting in the lobby.
00:49:39
Speaker 1: I know. Hey.
00:49:44
Speaker 2: I was like, ah, so we're not going to get to pull ourselves together here, but I you know, leaned on having met. I said, you know, we met briefly years ago. You would never remember it, but like, and he's like, oh, I love John.
00:49:54
Speaker 1: He's the best.
00:49:54
Speaker 2: And I was like, it was so great working with him, and blah blah blah. So we had a little bit of a shorthand from that. And he's a real ca character too, so he was, you know, saying a much of crazy stuff. And he was like, come on in, and I was like, holy crap, I'm really not getting any chance. I did not even get a chance to go to the bathroom.
00:50:08
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:50:09
Speaker 2: So I go in and he's like, yeah, don't don't worry if I don't give you notes, I don't give anyone notes. And I was like, all right, big fancy director. If you're not going to give me notes after, why you give me notes now? And he was like and then he did.
00:50:23
Speaker 1: He started talking about the character and he started, and I mean I said it like playfully, where he could have been like, just go ahead and do it, you know what I mean, Like he could have just dismissed it and said go but he actually like realized I wasn't intimidated, and I was like, I really want something, you know, And so he gave me notes before I did it, which were super helpful, and I got a sense of what he was looking for. And then I did it, and then he gave me more notes, and he gave me more notes, and I was in there for a long time and we just played around and did it a bunch of different ways, and then I left and I still felt terrible, not because it like went terribly, but I was like I went to the bathroom and I was a drowned rat. There was mascara on my eyelids, like my hair was everywhere. I realized I had this like bra that like had stuck to my shirt. Weard and like my bra was.
00:51:09
Speaker 2: Showing, and I was like, I'm not getting this job. I look at like a mess. And so I went home. It was like kind of later in the day at this point, and I like just turned off my phone and went to sleep. I was like, I don't want to think about this. This is like how I would compartmentalize at the time. And I woke up to like just a thousand mis texts and messages everywhere trying to find me, you know, and I was like.
00:51:31
Speaker 1: They're like, they love you, they want to test you.
00:51:34
Speaker 2: And I was like, wait what And then he I guess Brian that night they had said he was like, that's her, like he just said.
00:51:40
Speaker 1: As soon as I left the room, He's like, I just want to hire her. There, Brian, you have to see everybody else. You can't. He's like, no, that's who I want.
00:51:45
Speaker 2: And they're like, well, you have to go through today's sessions and then you need to look at some other like offer only tapes tonight. So they sent him offer only tapes that night, and they also sent my reel with the offer only tapes, just so that he had a point of reference of other stuff. When I walked in the room, I had because I was doing Mister Missus Smith at the time. The tape that they sent I had blonde hair. He called them in the morning he said, all right, you guys are right, there's one other actress I like there's this blonde girl. I'll test her against Jennifer. You're kidding And they said, Brian, that is Jennifer. So yeah, and so I mean it was fate.
00:52:23
Speaker 1: I mean I knew you were. It was just for whatever reason. I was it like, that's a hilarious story.
00:52:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I didn't even I didn't know that storytell he told that story when we were on a panel and I was like, I didn't know that happened.
00:52:35
Speaker 1: So yeah.
00:52:36
Speaker 2: So then they were like, Okay, well we just need to get her in because we're going to lose her to these other test offers. And so then that night I had to go in and test, and Gail Burman was running Fox at the time, and she gave me the job in the room.
00:52:48
Speaker 1: So it was good. It must have been so exciting. It was wild. It was also it was exciting, It was wild, and it was like such a gift from the universe in many ways, as you were point out earlier, but also because the previous pilot season, I had tested for fourteen pilots and not gotten one, so just statistically I should have gotten one, and so I had a lot of heartbreak the season before, and so I felt like, you know, when that happened, I was kind of like, Okay, thank you for giving me some grace and some gentleness this time around, you know, And also like, had you gotten one of those other ones? No, and none of those shows went yeah, yeah, okay. I have some rapid fire questions. Thanks for you a role that changed you house, a character of yours that you'd want advice from, probably Cassidy. And this is Us a show that you wish you could direct an episode of. That's a really good question. Paradise you just you and Sterling have a thing. I watched you guys in an interview. I love him, you get each other. We do that whole cast though, and I mean dan fulwoman who's the show. He's just he's so spectacular. I didn't see you with the show runner, but in that interview, I was like, everyone's close, but you guys were in just a different ways. Hopefully with you know, some way in the future we'll get to work together. Yeah, A director who shaped the way you see Scorsese, JJ Abrams, and Kevin O'Connor. Sorry that's three, but it's okay, a comfort rewatch. Well, I did answer this. I have a couple comfort rewatches.
00:54:17
Speaker 2: But I did just answer this specifically for your question set, which is usually the graduate. But I also could say, like when Harry met Sally that before Sunrise Trilogy, I have a few different comforts that.
00:54:29
Speaker 1: I turned to. I love when Harry met Sally. Yeah, a lesson from acting that made you a better director? I think sort of a variation on what we were talking about.
00:54:37
Speaker 2: It just like knowing the actors come with so much in their pocket and that as a director I could gain so much if I can like get in that pocket.
00:54:46
Speaker 1: How about the opposite, A lesson from directing that made you a better actor? Do whatever anyone asked you to do, Just try it, Just try all of it, Like look in every direction, stand on whatever mark, make everything possible because you have no idea how it's going to come off, and you have no idea how it's all going to fit together. A character you weren't ready to say goodbye to Zoe? And how I about your mother? A question that you ask yourself before saying yes, do I feel at peace? What's something every woman should try once?
00:55:15
Speaker 2: The first thing I thought was sleeping, But that's probably because I'm really tired right now.
00:55:22
Speaker 1: That could be number one answer all the time for that question. I was like, if I'm gonna be honest about my gut reaction, I was like, sleeping. We need more of it, We do need more of it.
00:55:32
Speaker 2: We should try once, though, I feel like taking a trip by yourself.
00:55:37
Speaker 1: I think that it's like if you go to.
00:55:39
Speaker 2: A movie alone compared to going to a movie with a friend or a loved one or whatever. You just have a different experience watching that movie. Not necessarily bad, not necessarily better or worse, but just different. And I think that there is something too, like the way you move through a new space when it's not at all edited by another person. And so I think every woman should like take a vacation by herself once.
00:56:04
Speaker 1: A book that you love, something you think everybody should read. East of Eden is one that I go back to all the time. It's always felt really powerful to me.
00:56:13
Speaker 2: And then I read I can't remember what it's called now, but it's like his journals of when he was writing it. When Steinbeck was writing it, and he talks about how he wrote the book because he knew he wasn't always with his sons, because he was separated from their mother, and that he wanted to try to articulate his understanding of good and evil to them. I did not know that when I fell in love with the book, but like talk about it, like changing your perspective of the book, because I probably read that six seven, eight times, I mean maybe more and so. But the latest reread was after reading the journals. And it's really powerful when you realize how personal it is.
00:56:50
Speaker 1: Beautiful, Well, you grab the card game, yes, pick whichever question calls to? Boy? Oh boy? Who signed your mic? By the way, you know, you are the first person to notice that, really it's pretty fancy. It is Larry King. Ah. I love that you asked that he was my mentor. I was like, this has got to be someone really special because this is all white and that is that is a real signature. In almost two hundred and fifty episodes, you are the first person to add I'm very honored. I'm so excited to see the noticing. You're amazing.
00:57:20
Speaker 2: All right, let's see what's happening here. Oh dear, do plants thrive or die in your gear? They die me too, They die so fast. Yeah, I've even tried talking to them recently.
00:57:34
Speaker 1: I was like, I feel like there's something wrong with me that I can't keep plants alive. Do I keep this out or do I know you could throw it back in there. I just want you to know I kill even succulent, so you're not alone. That makes me feel a lot better. Yeah.
00:57:46
Speaker 2: So, I just worried that maybe it said something about my soul. And I do love plants. I just don't know how to care for them.
00:57:54
Speaker 1: Jennifer Morrison, you are just exquisite. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It's so nice to talk to you. I'm so glad this worked out. Thank you. Okay, you know what time it is. Today's a good day to have a good day. I'll see you next week. H
