EMMA WATSON EXCLUSIVE: The Story She Has Not Shared Until Now

33:09And so I think some of that split then became, I was like, okay, wow, my parents have very different views on different things. And the hard part of that was that no one gave me any easy answers. It meant I had to form all of my own opinions myself because there was no consensus. and it made me a critical thinker for sure because and so that was amazing and also really like gosh okay I need to decide what I think is important in life and what my opinions are no one's handing me this yeah maybe it also made me aware of um not wanting to be so split as well and why it's been important to me to try to remain whole yeah in all the different circumstances of my life and ask myself questions about how I can do that best because I think I experienced as a child that the split is painful like if you're living a reality one way but presenting something else those are the moments when it can you can really feel torn apart and I recognized that and I didn't want that to be my life I didn't want pretend to be my real life yeah I mean that's so I I can so relate to you personally on the idea of not having a blueprint and having to create my own and how often when you don't have a blueprint you feel you have two choices and that's where you feel torn.

34:49Whereas when you look at it as a whole and go, okay, well now I get to craft my own narrative from this and I may take a few pieces from here and a few pieces from here and I'm going to form my own puzzle, but I don't have to choose a path. It's really beautiful when you do it, but it's really hard in the beginning because it just feels like there are two paths. And I wanted to talk about how much that's impacted your work. And you said there, you said that one thing you mentioned that really stood out to me was you felt that acting was in some way escaping that kind of, which version do I have to be?

35:22And I think so much of what we do for work or so much of what we pursue as humans is based on something we're trying to build, create, maybe escape from, maybe to reveal something. And I think we haven't often looked at work that way. Like sometimes we choose a career because we know it will make our parents happy. And so we're living a pattern. or sometimes you choose something because it breaks the pattern that you were growing up in. And it's fascinating to me to look at that. And for you, you were acting in school plays since you were a young girl and was acting always something you were going to do?

35:56Or do you feel like it was this cross section of what was happening in your personal life that actually made that feel like the direction you would choose? I think it's so interesting that you said those words reveal and escape that they're kind of the same thing because I think that it all started with a poem I did a poetry competition when I was nine called the Daisy Pratt poetry competition and I'm actually naturally quite a shy person uh and so actually for me to stand up in front of people feels like an out-of-body experience like there's so much adrenaline coursing through my veins that it does feel like a moment outside of time.

36:39And I remember the exhilaration of living the kind of ups and downs of this poem. And maybe because there wasn't space to have conversations or express myself at that time in the way that I needed to, I did it through performance. And I also did it as a way of getting to feel free for a moment of what I was, like the discomfort of that time of not quite knowing who I was or how to be in the world. And as I've become more healed and whole and more comfortable being myself, it's been interesting to ask myself, do you still need acting? do you still need to act like why what are you doing that for and like the kind of it used to feel like almost like a compulsion that I needed to do it and what's really interesting now is I don't feel quite that kind of urgency of needing to do it and I wonder if it's because actually I have spaces where I can now take some of those feelings and talk about some of the things I don't think I had space to voice without doing it on camera in front of thousands of people.

38:08Yeah, which is scary in its own way, right? It's easy to think, oh, that makes sense. But then it's like, well, no, it's really challenging to do that second part, even if it makes sense rationally or logically. And was that what, in 2019, when you kind of pulled away, was your reason, I want to heal and work on myself? Or was it actually, I don't feel a compulsion anymore? Like, was that the inflection point of doing some self-work? Or was that the inflection point of, I need to pause? I realized I was drawing on painful stuff in my life that I was actually healing and I didn't want to keep revisiting in order to do some of the more intense scarier sadder things that I had to do I realized I remember by Beth's um deathbed by her by her graveside when we shot those films like normally there are like these painful memories that I would use for those moments.

39:11And I realized, I was like, I don't know if this is super great for me, actually, to keep revisiting these or if I want to use these as my tools. And I don't think that means I'll never come back to acting. I think it just meant I was like, hmm, I wonder if there's a different way to do this. I think the second thing was, to be really honest, I was coming to those sets with an expectation that I think I had developed on Harry Potter, which was that we were, the people I worked with were going to be my family and that we were going to be lifelong friends. I came to work looking for friendship and that was a very painful experience for me outside of Harry Potter and in Hollywood, like bone-breakingly painful.

40:06because most people don't come to those environments looking for friendships. They're looking for, this is my chance. This is my role. This is what I want out of it. I'm focused. This is my job. This is my career. Like, let's go. And I was not of that mindset. And so I found the rejection really painful. The friendship rejection, yeah. Yeah. I was like, I think it's so unusual to make a set of films for 12 years and we were a community. Like we really were. And so I took that as an expectation into my other workplaces and I just got my ass kicked. I really did. Was it competition? Was it envy?

40:56Was it just hierarchy? I think it was a combination. It was a Molotov cocktail of all of the above. As we mentioned earlier, I'm just not thick skinned. Maybe I just wasn't built for those kinds of highly competitive environments. It, yeah, it broke me.

41:21But in a way, I'm proud that it did, because I guess that means I have something left to break. I have a heart left to break.

41:32So it was a hard learning, but I think there's something that I'm proud of in a way that there were certain things I couldn't withstand. I'd much rather keep my humanity.

41:58i'm managing to like keep the tears inside there is a tissue that's really yeah yeah no but i really appreciate you saying that and i mean it's so powerful to hear how you've processed it like just what you added there because when i saw your voice change and just when you expressing it and and it and it hit me as you said it and i felt it and then the way you reflected on it kind of helped that feeling rise really beautifully because what you said is so true that if you were broken by a frequency of envy and competition and whatever else it was that's only proof that you were vibrating in a way that didn't want to be pulled down into that and it's so interesting though how when we break to those sorts of emotions and ideas we feel we're the weak one yeah when it's completely the opposite that was that was the most painful thing was i thought i i beat myself up for years afterwards really thinking like punishing myself saying you couldn't hack it you weren't strong enough and yeah what what bliss and what peace I think to understand that to have come out on top would have been a greater failure I think in terms of who I actually care about being yeah it's almost like if you abandoned yourself in that moment in order to align with that new way of thinking.

43:42Yeah. You'd probably beat yourself up more long-term and have a much harder time. Yes, I think so. I don't know, I've just got to this place where it's just, if it costs me any part of my piece, it's just too expensive. And of course, like, there's opportunities that I think, wow, like, that would be amazing. and I care deeply about my work. But I think it's just, I think I just used to completely sacrifice myself for whatever the thing was I was trying to achieve. And that could be a grade, it could be a movie, it could be promoting. I just was obsessed with excellence and doing everything, giving my all to everything and doing it to the best of my ability.

44:35And unless you have the right people around you that can hold that kind of level of commitment, you're going to get smashed up. You're just going to get crushed. And so I think now it's just a case of me being like, okay, I know that for me to do anything, I have to have people in the room that care about me more than whatever the product is or whatever the final product is. And if that isn't the case, I cannot be there because I'm just someone who like gives it all. It's how I'm built. And I think understanding that makeup of myself and not punishing myself for that, but just knowing it needs certain kinds of conditions is how I've come to hopefully, and I'll keep doing it forever and probably every day, but accepting myself.

45:31Yeah, it seems like I've spoken to so many, and we were talking about this last week when we were speaking on the phone, that I've worked with so many young people, musicians who've all been told, like, all right, if you don't do this over the next 12 months, you're not going to make it. Or like, if you don't do this right now, if you don't say yes to this song or this movie, it's like, you might as well wave it goodbye. You're never going to get the Oscar or the whatever it may be, or the Grammy or whatever it is. And I can't imagine being a young person Like I'm 37 now and you process ideas like that differently.

46:07Yeah. If you're in your teens or even 20s, and maybe even 30s, but you process those statements with so much gravitas, especially when it's someone of influence and power saying it to you. Yeah. It feels like being surrounded by people who really believe in you and your longevity and your art versus, but that's hard to find. It is. It's hard to find. And, you know, I had a wonderful team. Like I really did. I think it's just like understanding that no one at the end of the day is going to be in the room. Like when you're actually doing the thing, you have to carry that moment and you have to carry that pressure.

46:51also making films the hours on them are so demanding that to have your own life alongside that to have that balance is almost impossible it's so all or nothing it's so all-encompassing especially if you're in a lead role um you kind of go through these you know working six days a week 14 to 16 hour days and then you're just kind of dropped off at the end of it and maybe you'll have a two or three month gap and then there's just kind of like nothing and so you're like riding this like incredible peak of like adrenaline and cortisol and then you just get like dropped off the edge and then you're like okay wait now I have to be a functioning human again and I have to like figure out how to be a person in the real world and I think some of those extremes then force an actor to either decide, well, I'm going to back to back it.

47:49So I'm going to basically go from one movie to the next and that's going to be my full life. Or you have to navigate these huge impacts on your nervous system that you need a system and a support system to help you navigate. And I think it's why addiction and mental illness in my profession and in a lot of high stress, high profile professions is so commonplace because you're trying to balance out these enormous chemical ups and downs. Yeah. Talk to people about why, because I think from the outside, when someone sees a red carpet or when someone sees in a van, it looks really glamorous. Like until I ever attended anything and I always looked at it as like oh my gosh it's so glamorous and everyone's there and everyone must be friends and everyone must know each other because they all you know but but then you're not saying that and neither is and and anytime i've ever been on a red carpet everyone's anxious and everyone's nervous and that's the real experience and people are almost waiting to leave yes and some people do the red carpet and leave immediately but but what's going on there like walk us through like i mean for people who may not i think the first step is to just understand even though you're wearing an incredibly glamorous dress and you're there to do something exciting.

49:11I don't think there's anything that can make it not weird that people are screaming at the top of their lungs. Like it, it just, everything in your body says something's wrong. Like people are screaming, something's wrong. But then you have to try to pretend as though this is all normal and you're unfazed so you have like two things going on one you're like navigating this like sensory overload that's like telling you oh my god something is really wrong you had a pose telling you telling you yeah so you're trying to navigate okay something feels wrong but I need to also simultaneously make it seem as though I am the most graceful and the most calm I've ever been in my whole life and I need to like pose for this person and there's 50 different cameras and I need to make sure that I look perfectly into each and every one and I probably will have had four different notes from the stylist about how I'm supposed to stand and what I need to do for the dress and then I've got like 25 different talking points from the movie of like what I need to get across and also avoid saying or talking about and so you're like you need to be thinking about that and the juggle's crazy and then I think everyone is in this like kind of jumped up state and so like trying to have a normal conversation with anyone is basically impossible because you feel like an insane person and so these are not environments in which you like have a nice chat with someone really I mean maybe if you're really lucky and you've worked with someone for a long time and you've established some trust but I think that was the other thing that was like really difficult about movies and what like I kind of laugh at well not like not in a mean way but like you know you always get asked when you're like promoting these big films like so do you guys hang out on set and like do you guys hang out and like are you all friends and everyone sort of like nods enthusiastically but the truth is no one has seen each other outside of work like very very very rarely mostly because the schedule is insane everyone's so tired that when they get any time off you're going straight back to your hotel room to try to like claw in any piece of rest that you possibly can and like I don't know like it friendships require time and trust and presence and those things like very rarely come about they can and they like do occasionally but it's more of a more of a you know solar eclipse than a than an everyday situation so yeah but you have to pretend I think that's the part that starts to feel icky after a while is like you you have to pretend that you're all best friends and what's so sad and and I I know this isn't just the case for me but like I think people wish they were yeah I think we wish we did have those real connections and we did have that real support.

52:11And so having to pretend that something exists that you actually really want, but don't have is like, it's like pretty grainy in the wound. You know, it's like, it's pretty like tough pill to swallow to have to act out something that you wish were real, but isn't real. Um, and I think that's the part that starts to kind of, yeah, I can only speak for myself, but those are definitely the moments where I've been like, this feels dark like anyone else like this feels dark um yeah and and there's such a real reminder that it's still work and it's almost like asking anyone who works at any company and saying hey do you hang out with your team after work every night and the answer is probably no yeah no everyone's going home to their family and maybe you've got a couple of course you've got a couple of friends at work and it's wonderful if you have a friend at work that you work out with or see after hours but you're not hanging out as the whole crew.

53:08It's very unlikely. 100%. And it is that reality check of, no, but this is also just work. Yeah. And their character stories are not their personal stories. And it doesn't. And that's what I wanted to go back. You mentioned that you talked about how Harry Potter had a family feel. And I wanted to ask you, how did that come about in the first? Where did the auditions come from? How did that become a part of your life? Yes. So I did not go to a performing arts school. I'd never done anything. I never acted professionally, but they came, they did like a basically countrywide search to find Harry, Hermione and Ron.

53:49And so they asked my school if they wanted to submit any students who love drama, who wanted to audition. And so I was one of, I think, about 12 students that was asked if I wanted to audition. I don't know. It was weird. I had this weird, weighted, fated sense of destiny pretty much from the moment that they said they mentioned the audition. I remember I brought, I think, maybe like seven different Beanie Babies with me along and like all these different like lucky talismans. And I loved the world and the book so much. My dad had been reading them to me before bed when I would spend the weekends with him and on long car journeys.

54:37We'd often drive back and forwards to France and that's how the time would be passed. and so I was just like loved the world loved Hermione and for me it wasn't so much about acting so much as it was that like I just the books meant so much to me personally. Did you feel like it was destiny for you or did it feel like did you always feel like it was going to be this i always obviously the books were already you know i always felt like hermione was i knew i was never auditioning for anything else like i knew it was her i don't know i don't know how to explain it something felt right about it and my yeah my poor parents because if i hadn't have got it i think they knew her crush i ended up doing nine auditions over a period of over a year and a half, which for a nine-year-old is a massive commitment.

55:38But I loved her. I loved it. I really did. What do you wish now that you would have known before you became Hermione? I did a pretty good job. Actually, I give my mother specifically credit for this. She was like a warrior for my normalcy and for me having an ordinary life and going to school. And no one wanted that. I mean, it would have been considerably easier if I had not continued going to school. But she, wow, like I will forever be in her debt. But she somehow knew that me feeling part of the ordinary world and feeling I had a place in it and that I belonged outside of those films was going to be crucial.

56:40Wow. That's really incredible. It was because she basically didn't have anyone on her team. She was kind of on her own on that one. And she fought tooth and nail. she was like on the phone for hours saying she has to sit her exams she has to go back like she needs to be here she she needs to have some parts of a normal childhood and yeah forever in her debt that's so special to have had that and have those yeah to have a parent who yeah see like and you can't see anything for yourself you're yeah no and to be honest I didn't really I didn't really get it. I was like, okay, I guess it's important.

57:25I didn't really get it. So I think, yeah, she was amazing.

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1:00:52when did emma you emma watson and hermione and the characters that then followed start to get blurred and intertwined because that expectation that comes with, I remember this and I share it because to give it to context to people, I was walking down the road with one of my friends who's an actor who gets recognized a hundred times for every one time I get recognized. So just to put it in context. And so if we're walking down, like this person gets stopped a hundred times for pictures and then I'll get stopped once. And it was really beautiful because we'd spent a day together and that person had been stopped a hundred times and maybe I've been stopped a couple of times.

1:01:35And then they said something to me. They said, Jay, Jay, you're really lucky. And I said, what do you mean? And, and I thought they were going to say, because I'm anonymous to some degree, but they didn't. He said to me, he goes, Jay, you're really lucky because he goes, when people stop me, they stop me for who I play to be. And when they stop you, they stop you for who you are. And it was really encouraging words from someone that I respect a lot. and I was like wow like I never thought about it like that I just I just it hadn't hit me how different it was yeah and because I think you just see fame or success or whatever it is this one big bubble of stuff especially when you're not that close to or you don't know too much about it and it was that conversation that made me even be even more personal with everyone that I ever spoke to because they'd always have a personal story or uh and and that's not not to say that isn't true for music and for acting and of course there is i don't want to take away from it no no um and i'm not saying that as a egotistical statement i'm saying it as like how hard it is for an individual to go through that yes and to be disassociated from themselves yes uh because that role could be a part of you it could be an expression of you it was a part of your life at a certain period of time but of course it isn't you yes um but does that make any sense i remember when I gave my UN speech about he for she and about feminism and women's rights and people started stopping me because of things that I had come from me and I'd said it felt like a very significant transition for me because I for the first time I felt like I could look someone in the eye and receive and accept something that they were saying because I I felt like it actually had something to do with me.

1:03:25And I wasn't just kind of a, like a custodian of something sacred, which I did take very seriously and I still do, but it had been a direct transmission for me. And I think that's why writing has become so important to me is because it's a way that I can say things directly and that feels really meaningful. Yeah. I love, I love the word you just used there of the difference between being a custodian and, you know, direct transmission, you said. And that's such an interesting way to think about it. And I think each and every one of us don't want to be known as a lawyer or an accountant or a doctor or a, like, yes, that's a part of us.

1:04:05And it's a role we play in society. And it, of course, brings significance and value and worth and all of these wonderful things. But I think everyone wants to be something beyond that and no one wants to be that in their home and no one wants to be that with their friends and no one no one and and me included by the way it's like I I try me and my one of my friends who's a well-known stand-up comic we always joke about how he hates to be asked to tell jokes on command and and I try with my friends to not say smart I try not to say thoughtful revelatory things because of my friends I just want to be yeah like I don't want to have to coat someone's marriage or solve their thing.

1:04:46I don't want to do that. Like I, I just want to be. And, and so even for someone who loves, who is doing direct transmission a lot more of the time, even then there's a feeling of, well, I don't want to say anything profound in this conversation. I need to put this down. Yeah. I need to put the one down. Totally. Yes. Yeah. I think a big piece of me, like understanding again, like why I needed to take a minute is that like even being the person who was promoting the work became a kind of role like Emma Watson became this like avatar this this person that I identified with but also kind of didn't she'd become reproduced so many times over and and kind of had become so loaded by all of this different stuff that I she almost felt too heavy to carry like I kind of was like I don't even know if I can if I can be that bitch anymore like you know I went on a date like two years ago and like it was the best confession ever but I was like messaging this person they were like Emma and he was like can I just say something like Emma Watson makes me anxious and I was like Emma Watson makes me anxious too Oh, that's so good.

1:06:00We are on the same page. Like, I get it. Like, I can't even be her. I don't know how to be her, live up to what I look like on the cover of a magazine. I don't look like that. I can't, I don't know. I don't even know how to touch what that person's become. That was kind of a funny realization at some point where I was like, I need to step off this thing. because I just, once you've, I don't know, there's such a glamorization that comes hand in hand with being a public famous person, especially if you're a woman. Like I feel so envious of my male co-stars who can just put on a t-shirt and show up without like this like whole rigmarole of kind of becoming acceptable enough to be on camera.

1:06:52And, oh, like kudos to Pamela Anderson recently just like doing the thing because it's like the amount of courage it will have taken to do that. Like I cannot even begin to express to you. It's wild. The expectations are insane. It's impossible. You shot on vacation, private space. Yeah, yeah. just the the the beauty expectations are so difficult to reach and the bar gets raised all the time so it's like you're on this constantly like I don't know it's like a some sort of like Survivor's Island game show beauty nightmare where you know I don't know it's it's it's nuts So I, yeah, I think part of also not feeling like Emma Watson is just like the whole like glam squad culture of it all is, it's intense.

1:07:56yeah it's so fascinating because there's almost like this this learning of becoming you know becoming emma watson becoming you know being all the roles you play and then it almost feels like what you're saying is there was a moment you wanted to step off and unlearn what that meant totally but that seems really hard yes because yes learning it was hard enough and then to unlearn it when it's linked to your work, your finances, your worth, your friendship, community, connection, all of the way you live. How do you even begin to unlearn being Emma Watson? It's a knotted ball. You have to sort of unravel very carefully and - Carefully, that's it, yeah.

1:08:41Yeah, I think - It's not like a wrecking ball, like you're not just - I mean, some things had to be done like the wrecking ball, honestly. and then some parts of it were like a much slower more gentle teasing out but I mean I don't know if you find this but I imagine that a lot of your friendships are made through the podcast and made through your work and there's kind of this like non-separation between your home and your family and your relationship and the podcast but tied into that there's also like the very real some people will be wanting you to reference their new book or like promote something for them or whatever and like navigating that so many of these threads are entwined does it ever start to feel like you're like wow this is a lot people ask me all the time do you ever wonder why people want to hang out with you or be your friend or whatever and does that ever get complicated for you i think because my direct transmission is so clear that if anyone in the industry wants to connect yeah there's usually quite a distinct journey that they're on that mine can support or help with as a friend or in a more formal capacity and that i deeply enjoy and i'm grateful for because people are not inviting me out to crazy parties.

1:10:11And I'm happy. They're not? Yeah, they're not. Yeah, they don't think I'm fun enough. I just saw a clip of the other day of Austin Butler saying he's never been invited to a bachelor party before. And I was like, I couldn't believe it. But that kind of feeling, I don't get invited to crazy parties and I'm grateful for that. That's not really a part of my life. Right. Unless it's a spiritual party and then I'm all game. And, uh, uh, but, but there isn't that. And so sometimes I think it's a good, my direct transmission is a good protective mechanism because I don't really get asked to come to things.

1:10:45But then at the same time, it takes me to get to know someone deeply. Like I just traveled with a friend, uh, to Greece and we played, and I don't think they were anticipating this, but we played three nights of poker from midnight to 7am and it was amazing. And I loved it and I had the best time. And I don't think they expected me to do that. They expect me to get to bed early, but I was on vacation. And I was like, I'm game. Yeah, exactly. And I'm one. So I was like, you know, I'll take it. And I'm very competitive in that way. And I enjoy it. And so I think what it is for me is, I think there's a big thing for me has been from, I grew up as part of a big community in London and a big spiritual community that I became a part of when I was young.

1:11:29And I think that what I found is it's very difficult to discern for people externally and even for people in that community as to how close they were to me. Right. And so there are some people that assume that because we sat in a class together and there were 200 people in the class. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But now that their opinion on me or that their relationship with me is close, when in actuality I've never had a one-to-one conversation with that person. And so now their opinion matters to the outside world. It matters to the media. It matters to whatever. But I actually don't know that person and they don't really know me.

1:12:02Right. It's just so that we went to the same congregation in the same year, which has lots, thousands of people in it. And so I struggle with that. And then I also struggle with people coming up to me and saying, oh, Jay, I've known you for 20 years. And, you know, like from back in the day at the temple. And, but I'm like, we didn't, like, we didn't ever have an, like a conversation. And I still have all my best friends from that community that are still my closest friends. Yeah. And they also feel the same way because they see it. And so I think I find that very difficult. is hard to navigate because it's not that I don't have positive feelings towards people or the community or anything.

1:12:38I do, but I struggle with people feeling they know me when they never did. But they've almost created a story within their mind that they really knew me well. And because it was a big community, this isn't a group of school friends or something, which I'm still really close with. It's more this expanded community, which you were just visible in, not even audible or if that makes any sense. No, that makes perfect sense. I think, yeah, being part of a larger community would be tricky to navigate with, yeah, with the kind of, I guess, like being a famous person in essence is like lots of people can project lots of things onto you.

1:13:18And like, if they had some level of contact with you, it makes those kinds of projections a lot easier. And then you're like, oh, wow, we're in a completely different, like your experience of this is so different from mine. Yeah. Yeah. And, and yeah. And, and I mean, yours is like a million X that, and you know, I can't imagine, I can't, I can't imagine, I can't imagine how hard dating is. Like you talked about in some of the journal reflections that you sent me, like this idea of just like dating is hard as a 20 year old, 30 year old woman anyway. And then to add your life to it. Talk to me, you've referenced it a couple of times in conversations you've had, like, what does Does it feel like when you're having a normal conversation and someone goes, wait a minute, you're Hermione Granger, Emma Watson, you know, list goes on.

1:14:05Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it does, it does feel like my avatar enters the room unexpectedly all of a sudden. And then I'm like navigating a completely different conversation if someone hasn't figured out that it's me yet. And that can feel really dehumanizing and sometimes quite kind of seeing someone's like behavior, like completely switch and turn and change can be kind of a jarring experience. I think what's nice is at the very least, like dating for everyone is basically a complete disaster and free for all. So like, I feel like I'm in good company in that sense. But I think it's funny, occasionally people will apologize to me for the fact they've not seen my films.

1:14:58And I will be like, please don't apologize. That is bliss to me, like music to my ears that like, you're not going to constantly be navigating and me also navigating with you this projection of me or this Emma Watson avatar person will not be this ghost in the room. so um that's happened a few times where people have been like i'm really sorry and i'm like please don't apologize i'm so relieved i'm so incredibly relieved and then you realize they have the box that later on yeah no my god i hope not but i mean i guess like i want people to appreciate my work but i think knowing you don't have to navigate that extra like degree of weirdness is uh helpful a relief how do you help people get to know the real you at this stage in your life you know I wrote this play that I actually sent to you to read but I actually read parts of it to people um because I find that trying to explain sometimes how weird it is to be me like I almost need aids like it's not it's so difficult to convey like how weird it is and how surreal sometimes that I sometimes I'll just be like can I just like we do this thing I wrote because I think it's gonna shortcut you somewhere and so that's actually been incredibly helpful and I'm so glad I went and did this this creative writing masters and I've spent more time writing about my experiences because sometimes I can't even articulate it to myself like how how are you supposed to explain something to someone else you can't really even understand for yourself so I think writing creative writing making art has been the best therapy I've ever done because it's helped me get clarity and also just be able to laugh at myself and laugh at the situation I think one-on-one therapy can be amazing but like there is a kind of intensity and a seriousness to that that maybe when you're writing something down and when I wrote the play I wrote it for my friends and family and I was able to kind of be more my spring more of myself to the picture in a way which is someone who's like this is just nuts like I just can't like I can't sometimes I just genuinely cannot believe that my life is my life and um I need a place I can put that yeah I I loved so just for everyone who's you know hearing about the referencing of this play Emma wrote a play which helped her closest friends and family understand her experience of life basically yeah right is that a bad description no no it's not a bad description but like Specifically, I wrote the play about me transitioning from basically being a full-time actress and activist to trying to move home and be a normal student and attend a normal university as a super famous person.

1:18:10And I basically kept a journal of what those experiences were like and chronicled them for my friends and family for about a year and then performed it as a one-woman show. at the end of the first year and handed that in as my as my first year piece of work and yeah yeah did it get an A it got a distinction oh amazing great there we go I love it it actually did not that that was the point but it kind of wasn't the point but I think the coolest thing was was like I read it for my roommate for example who's been living with me for seven years and he was like wait wait stop stop stop he's like is this actually how you feel like do you actually you feel this?

1:18:50And I was like, yeah, I wouldn't have written it if I didn't. And he was like, I had no idea that this was how you felt. And this is someone I live with. And so for me, who I perceive myself to be this like massive open book. And actually I realized I was like, wow, I think I'm doing a good job of bringing the people that I love along with me on what this feels like. And actually I'm not saying nearly enough or explaining it in a way where it makes sense and so even my parents were just like couldn't believe it really yeah i'm sure they were brought to tears by parts of it i mean i was i was so moved by it and i really hope you do one day make it a uh a production in some capacity because it it was so moving and so powerful and it was emma honestly it was what every public figure has ever tried to explain to me about their experience yet put so succinctly, powerfully, and meaningfully that anyone could relate to it.

1:19:52And I think anyone meaning anyone who's ever felt misunderstood, loved for what they have and not who they are, seen for parts of themselves and not all of themselves. And I really believe it will be such a service to everyone to share it one day in however way you decide to, because honestly, I was gripped. I was completely captivated. I couldn't put it down. I feel like I'm going to read it again and again and again. It's not something that I think you read once. Not only are you a brilliant writer, but it is so true and honest. And for everyone who's listening and watching, I think the lesson for me is that your therapy could turn into something creative that when you shared that with me, when we were speaking on the phone, And I was so in awe of that, that therapy in one-to-one setting or in whatever way of healing you believe in, if it turns into something you have to put together to communicate to others, that's the revelation.

1:20:53Like the revelation is in that process, not in the listening, telling, sharing, speaking, that's great. And that's a part of it. But if you can go one step ahead. truly i i feel this like urgency and like desperation to communicate this specific piece which is like make art about your experiences like the neurosis of being a writer anyone making anything is like i don't have anything valuable to say it's all been said before this is so self-indulgent this is so narcissistic who even wants to hear this this is bad i thought all of those thoughts probably most days as I wrote this. But trust me, like whatever you think people know about you or they know about your life or how you feel about it, they don't.

1:21:41And they need you to write poems, write songs, make pictures, write plays. And you don't need to be someone with the title of an artist to be able to do that. You really don't. And in fact, I have to write on my mirror. I have it written on my door. I am an artist because I don't think anyone feels like they deserve that title. I've been making films and writing and making art since I was nine years old. And I don't feel like I deserve that title. And I have to work at it all the time to feel like I have anything that's worthwhile saying. I really understand the struggle. I really, really do. But there is something about doing it and like having a physical thing, because I think so many of these thoughts and feelings live in our heads and it's not a great place for them to live.

1:22:34They need to come out somewhere. And once you can put them somewhere, then you're free. Being understood or feeling like you're understood by the people around you has got to be the best feeling in the world. And I think it's what we're looking for when we do so many things but often that's not the way to find it and I just god yeah if I honestly I want to go to every person in the street and be like you need to write a one person show about your life and then perform it for your friends and family or like you need to like you know paint the thing write the song like just do it because it's kind of one of the best most meaningful things I've done.

1:23:19Yeah. Trying to make sense of it all. Yeah. And I love that you did it for your family. Like that's the part that proves to me when you say the message of make your art and, you know, you don't need to be a full-time actor or director or movie filmmaker. It's like you actually lived that part. And that's what I love about it the most is that you didn't make it for a stage or a movie or a documentary or whatever. And honestly, first I wrote it for myself. I didn't think I would honestly I didn't think I had the guts to read this aloud to anyone I thought it was just for me and maybe like two other people and performing it for my like I didn't even invite my family until like two days before because I just didn't think I had the courage make art for people you love like make beautiful things for people that you love just for people that you love like that's one I I guess like I had the extraordinary experience of making things for like the world basically from such a young age and I I never made anything that I didn't feel like needed to be shared publicly.

1:24:19And I remember when I made Little Women, I mean, that's such an amazing thing about Louise May Alcott is that really she wrote those stories for her sisters. And so many people's journeys and paths start because, yeah, out of love, they wrote them for just one person. There was a certain point I remember in my life where I was like, right, I'm done with university now. And now I'm going to just like focus full, what I should be doing is just focusing full time on being an actress and you know, doing all of that. And I had completely missed actually that Emma, the academic, Emma, the student, Emma, the person that needs to constantly be learning things, facilitated my ability to be a famous person and in Hollywood.

1:25:02And that without her, I actually couldn't do it. I needed, I need to have both. And that when one gets stripped away and like, even as I'm, and I explore this in the play as well, it's like, even as I have returned to some form of normalcy, ordinary life, whatever that looks like to me now, like, I also can't kill her off completely. You know, my public person, there's parts of me that like, still does need those outlets and to do those things too. And I'm figuring out what those are. But I think that's what's so complicated about being human is, is, is it's yes. And not either, or it's, we need, we need to be all of ourselves so that we can do the extraordinary things that we what we want to do maybe it's about not leaving parts of ourselves behind like kind of finding a way to keep threading the tapestry of all of it yeah I think that's I mean you've you've said it so well and I really feel that that's what it's been for me it's I feel like as humans we're very good at being like okay this chapter of my life is over yeah and we do it because labeling helps but it's like you went from being a toddler or an infant and then you became, you know, a teen and then a young adult and then an adult.

1:26:15And then, so we have all these labels and it almost feels like we live our life that way. It's like, okay, I was a student at university. If I went to university and now I am a, I have a job and I'm an employee or an entrepreneur, whatever it is. And labels are useful. So I'm not going to say they aren't, but what ends up happening is you start labeling phases of your life, which means now there isn't a yes and, it's an either or. So it's like, I was an actress, now I'm going to be an academic. And it's like, well, no, I'm an academic and an actress and whatever else. And I think that's what it's been for me.

1:26:50It's like, I know that the people that know me best will say, Jay, I love you because we can talk about spirituality. We can talk about business and we can talk about communication, media, art. And I love you because we can do all those three things in one day. And I'm like, yes, I feel so seen. Whereas if someone only said one of those things, I'd feel so limited. And what I've realized is I'm now at a place where I've given myself permission to be all of myself, even if others don't give me permission to be all of those things. Because, yeah. And how amazing to get to that point where I realized for a long time I was pushing for, I need everyone to understand me and I need them to understand these decisions and I need them to understand that I'm all of these things.

1:27:34And I'm like, but do you really, Emma? Do you actually really need them to get it? Or is it enough that you get it, you see it and understand it and you're making it possible and giving yourself permission to do that. And I think once I kind of let go of like, okay, it matters way more that I accept myself than that I spend so much energy and time trying to force other people to see these things about me. And then paradoxically, of course, once you let go, people start getting it. Which is, which is funny. Emma, how do you, how do you see love today? God, what a great question. Oh, um, how do I see love today?

1:28:19Oh, okay. I think I have an answer for this. How exciting. I was right there for an hour. I was like, shit, I was going to say, am I that deep yeah okay so um I think that oh we don't talk about love nearly enough or I think we need to talk about it so much more because I had such a not a misunderstanding but I think I had a very limited understanding of it for a long time which was that we see in Disney movies and in Hollywood movies, this idea that like falling in love, once it sort of happened to you, it's like irreversible, you know, like step into this portal that you can't get out of anymore because you've fallen in love.

1:29:01And actually, I think falling in love might be quite easy to do in some ways. That's sort of the easy bit. The hard part is finding someone who actually wants to be in a dance with you and be in some form of partnership with you. And things like, can you argue well? Can you be, is the conflict that you have generative? And can you make someone else feel safe? Like, and when I say safe, I don't mean like out of physical danger. I mean, like, can you either respond to a text message quickly enough that doesn't send the other person into like a complete free fall and or not pelt them with so many that they feel completely overwhelmed and flooded and like that kind of like compatibility and that kind of willingness to be in this like is this okay for you does this feel good to you this is how it feels for me and like there's like that constant back and forth and that constant check-in is like a game of um chicken in a way of like can you find someone who's willing to be as vulnerable as it necessarily requires I think to like figure out those micro adjustments until you're sort of in some kind of dance with someone else and that is a very different understanding that I've come to of what love is than I had I mean like loving someone is so much more complex than the projections that we put on someone or even like just lusting or having some small feeling for someone else but I just think that we have such a black and white idea about what love is supposed to be and I wish I'd understood more before I went into battle I do I really really do

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1:32:07Malcolm Gladwell here. I recently recorded the first episode of Smart Talks with IBM, where I learned how AI agents are joining AI assistants as a major productivity tool. Let's start with AI agents. AI agents can reason, plan, and collaborate with other AI tools to autonomously perform tasks for a user. Brian Bissell, an expert from IBM, gave me an example of how a college freshman might use an AI agent. As a new student, you may not know, how do I do with my health and wellness issue? How many credits am I going to get for this given class? You could talk to someone and find out some of that, but maybe it's a little bit sensitive and you don't want to do that.

1:32:48Bissell told me, you could build an AI agent, a resource for new students that helps them navigate a new campus, register for classes, access the services they need, and even schedule appointments on their behalf, which in turn buys them more time to focus on their actual schoolwork. We can see patterns of how agents and assistants can help employees and customers and end users be more productive, automate workflows so they're not doing certain types of repetitive work over and over again, and streamlining their lives and making data more accessible to them 24 hours a day. To learn more about IBM's AI agents and how they can help your business, visit ibm.com slash agents.

1:33:37I've been seeing a lot more EVs lately, parked in driveways, passing on the road, friends making the switch. And they all say the same thing. These cars are simpler, fewer parts, fewer repairs, fewer headaches. That's what makes EVs worth considering Less to break, less to fix Even if you haven't made the move yet It's hard to ignore the shift They're more affordable, more available And honestly, just makes sense for everyday life The way forward is electric Learn more at electricforall.org

1:34:19What do you think love is, Jay? Oh, wow. Oh my gosh. You're flipping this back, Emma. This is about you. It's not about me. This is a conversation. I know. I'm joking. I just... Well, does any of what I've said resonate? It does. It does. It resonates a lot. I'm on the right track, Jay. I need you to tell me. I think it resonates a lot. I grew up with a very film, naive, Disney version of what love was. I love that version of love. I love the idea that love was this really romantic, really sweet, writing letters every day kind of love. Like that's the love I dreamed of and love I thought of as a kid at least.

1:34:58And then, you know, I think I realized that you do all of that with the first person you're with in your teens and you kind of think it's the real thing, but then they're in a mood every night for no reason. and you're just people pleasing and trying to figure out what's going on. And you think it's all about making that person happy. And so you mold and you bend and you, you know, sabotage parts of yourself. And I realized very quickly that that wasn't love. And I think what's really interesting about love now is that marrying my wife, who I've been with now for 12 years and married for nine.

1:35:33And so it's the longest time I've ever spent with anyone. And also the only person I've been with after I left the monastery. And so there's been a certain chapter of my life that I've been with her for. And I really feel she's taught me more about love for two reasons. The first is she doesn't subscribe to any of the movie Disney versions of love. Wow. Oh my God. What education did she have? Where can I get it? Yeah, literally. And the other part is that I think she's the only person I've ever loved enough to be taught by. which is like a really interesting part of love that I think's missed and I feel like love is the humility to feel it's humility on both parts because the other person's not actively teaching and you're actively receiving yes so it's this really strange dance between it's almost like if you're dancing there has to be humility on both sides yeah because it's not that one person leads and the other person follows it's the other person's kind of like should we do this should we try this there's a there's an anxiety and a humility in requesting that yes and the other person gets to choose to go with it yes or not go and say no we're going to go in this direction and that's a great dance to watch and I feel like with my wife she's never directly taught me but she's challenged me in ways that if other people would have I might have left oh my god how beautiful and so why am I staying and then you go okay I'm staying because there's love and so love is the ability to be taught without teaching and learning without feeling like you're being led or misled and that for me has been a really beautiful lesson and if I just said this to my wife I lied right now she would just laugh because she'd just find it funny and then And then she's, yeah, she also taught me how to love me for who I was and not what I had.

1:37:36Because I think a lot of men go through this, at least men that I'm friends with and that I've spoken to, that we want people to respect us for our success and revere us for our accomplishments. It's how men have been adored since the beginning of time for going out and getting the food or going out there and winning the battle or conquering a nation. And that's what you were known for. And so my wife's been with me since before my career took off and I had any success. And I think as I gained success, I think my immaturity was to want her to love me for that more. And she never did. She just didn't do it.

1:38:15Wow. And it drove me crazy. And she didn't do it in a rejecting way or it just didn't make a difference to her. This isn't why I love you. And it took me a long time to wrap my head around that and realize, because, you know, those are the times when you could start liking other people who love you for what you have achieved and what you have built and all the rest of it. And I think I just have so much respect for her that. She never gave in on that. Yeah, she never gave in. And she helped me love myself for who I am. And I think that's the point that I think I would have, if I had met someone else, I would have valued myself for very different reasons.

1:38:53and knowing you're with someone who truly is with you because of who you are and your character and that's what they honor and I think that word honor and respect probably the last thing I'd say I think we always say like love is respect and based on respect but I wrote a list of things that I I tried to be clear with myself about what it is I was really looking for and I really want and one is someone that I can learn from so it's really interesting that you said learning without teaching teaching without learning and that kind of reciprocal I really want to be with someone that I can learn some learn from and I hope that yeah as you say has the humility to be willing to learn from me but the other thing is I think it's why I was so obsessed with the musical musical Hamilton and why so many people have been but like maybe this is it's so funny that we're on the purpose podcast but like are you with someone who because obviously what you have with someone is is wonderful right like what you two share together but if you can be in service of a vision that you both share or at the very least are you willing to honor and give dignity to the work of the other person and whatever their vision or mission is in this world that to me seems far more sustainable than anything else and so I guess my big hope or wish would be that I met someone who feels like what I want to do in the world.

1:40:21Yes, that I'm important, but they also feel that what I'm here to do is important to them too. And in some way intersects with what they're here to do. I couldn't agree more. That's exactly what I was going to say. Is it? Yeah. I think the word respect and relationships thrown around a lot, but this is the deepest form of respect where there's a famous quote that I don't know who said it, but there's a, and I would, you know, you could take the genders out of it now, but there's a famous quote that says, men marry women hoping they'll never change. And women marry men hoping they can change them.

1:40:56And to me, wanting someone to never change or wanting to be able to change someone are both signs of disrespect. Because I think the greatest respect you can have is to respect what this person values in this moment and how that evolves. And that's their purpose, their offering, their values. And at no point are you trying to change them. And I've talked about this often where my wife and I, I do this exercise with couples when I'm working with them, but I've also done it in our relationship. And I ask people to rank their top three priorities in order. Wow. And people do it privately and then they share them.

1:41:35And so generally one person will put themselves first, their partner second, and then the kids third. And the other person will put the kids first, the partner second and themselves third. And the person who put themselves third is always mad at the person who put themselves first because there's this friction of, well, wait a minute, how can you not put the kids first? Well, how can you not put family first or whatever it may be in your given situation. And the other person's like, well, if I don't put myself first, then what can I give to you all? And that kind of displays this dichotomy and this belief we have around love means complete sacrifice and love means self-sabotage to some degree, or love means putting yourself aside.

1:42:17And the reality is actually, no, my goal is to make sure that you live your purpose and greatest vision of yourself. And your purpose is to help me do that. When we that and she does it naturally and it's hard to do that in a world that constantly reminds you both that sometimes the other person isn't where you are or you know the idea of why haven't you had kids yet or when are you going to be in the same country for longer than a month or whatever there may be because it doesn't fit into the norm of what relationships look like and I was thinking about that with you as well like you know I know you you talked about how getting asked the question when are you getting married?

1:43:02Yeah. Or why aren't you married yet? Yes. And that's something every woman's hearing. Oh my God. What's your reaction when you hear that? I'm just so happy not to be divorced yet. Like that sounds like a really negative answer, but I just like, I think that we are, we're being pressured and forced into this thing that like, I believe is a kind of miracle. I might never be worthy of it. I hope it happens to me, but like, I don't feel entitled to it. Like it will either be part of my purpose here and my destiny or it won't. And I think the way we treat it as though, well, why haven't you? And this is something that has to happen in this certain time span.

1:43:56and at a certain age in this kind of way is like the least romantic thing I can possibly think of. Like truly, like if I had tried to get married any point basically before about a year ago, it would have been carnage. I just didn't know myself well enough yet. I didn't have a clear enough idea of what my purpose, my vision, like how I was going to be of service. I didn't know where I really felt like I needed to be. I think I have some of those answers now. So when I meet someone, I can say, hi, I'm Emma. This is what I care about. This is where the people I love the most live. This is where it's meaningful for me to be in the world.

1:44:43And then they can decide whether they can see that there's a way that I can serve what they're trying to do and they can serve what I'm trying to do. But before that, they would have just got a very mixed signal. I mean, there's some parts of me that have stayed utterly consistent, but there are some parts that I was really still teasing out and figuring out. And I think it's such a violence And it's such a cruelty on people and especially young people, I think, and especially women, to make them feel like they have no worth or like they haven't succeeded yet in life because they haven't forced to its culmination something that I just don't think can or should ever be forced.

1:45:33it's something that like honestly I feel like I've had to earn I've had to work for to be in a place where I feel like I can look someone in the eye and be able to tell them who I am and to have some some idea and it will change and grow of what I want and what I'm here to do that takes work Like, I have, like, really sat with myself in a lot of discomfort and asked myself a lot of very difficult questions to be at that point. It hasn't happened to me yet. I do think everyone's worthy of love, but I, like, and I don't think that's what you're saying either. I think so. I guess maybe, like, partnership or marriage, I guess, is what we're both saying is, like, almost a different game.

1:46:22like it's it's almost a different playing field actually like actually co-joining and like properly sharing your life with someone and being in partnership with them seems like it's its own thing it is it takes so much work and it takes so much adjustment and adapting more than compromising and sacrificing but there's so much flexibility there's so much allowing it's it's so different at different times. Like sometimes patience looks like being by that person's side and saying nothing. And sometimes patience means being halfway across the world and not communicating. And sometimes patience looks like talking and listening.

1:47:08Like, you know, patience doesn't look like one thing over a lifespan. And there are parts of my wife that have stayed exactly the same in 12 years, and there are parts that have completely changed. and I have a choice every time that happens to learn to love the new or not and that's a choice I have to make and she has to make as well and so there's so much constant choosing and constant evolving that it's very easy to just yeah it's very easy to be like yeah I chose them the day we got married and people always ask me I'm like I don't think I even knew who my wife was the day we got married like now when I think about it it's like I loved her but I had no idea and and that's what it should feel like I don't think if I was here to say like yeah the wedding the wedding day was one of the best days of my life but it's not the day I loved my wife the most yeah because I didn't really even know what I was getting myself into that's amazing yeah I was thinking recently about trust and telling the truth and I realized the scary crazy thing about it seems to me about intimacy is that it seems to be conditional on your ability to like keep telling the truth and perhaps even revealing deeper and deeper and deeper truths at the risk that that truth might mean that that person might not continue to choose you.

1:48:34Yes. So even though you've been in this relationship for 12 years, like every day you have to choose to risk it all if you want that to be continued intimacy by continuing to tell your truth to this other person. And that seems so courageous to me. In order for there to be genuine connection and closeness, you have to be willing to risk skittle sometimes, or like probably almost constantly. And that, it seems like it takes so much courage because we don't like change. We don't want things to change. So you also want a relationship that's alive and still living and breathing and not some like dead thing.

1:49:14Yeah. So well said. And what you're saying is like that feeling of when you're not actually being truthful consistently, that's when we feel people have had big changes in their life. because if you had the consistent truthfulness, the change felt more smooth and gradual. Whereas when the change came like, you know, a wrecking ball where I have this feeling and I'm just telling you it, it's because I didn't tell you about all the little, the little incremental changes. And sometimes you don't know it's even happening. So it's not your fault or this is not something that you can say has to be the case.

1:49:50But I think that's why being more truthful, more honest, more regularly and consistently allows for the change to feel more gradual. It's almost like going back to your dance analogy. Like if you're about to throw someone up in the air and catch them, there has to have been a touch or a preparation before someone just grabs hold of you and throws you in the air. And it's like, well, I would have liked a warning. And that's why your analogy is so good because you would throw someone up in a dance at some point if you were both talented and gifted enough, but there would have been a preparation.

1:50:23There would have been a nod. There would have been a look. a feel, a touch or, you know, to set that up. And like one of the hardest questions, you talked about asking yourself difficult questions. And I want to ask you something about that. But one thing I've said to my wife is, if you ever fall out of love with me, please tell me. Because I don't want to live a day without love. I'm really confident about the fact that I'm worthy of love and that I want to experience love in my life. If you ever fall out of love with me, just tell me. it's okay because I don't have the desire to stay somewhere for any other reason.

1:50:58And it sounds risky saying that in extreme, but to me, it's a greater risk to have spent 10 extra years with someone. And then they tell me, I haven't really loved you for the last five, 10 years. And then I'm like, wait a minute, I've lived without love for 10 years of my life. And I don't want to be in that place because I've seen people go through that and not be happy. And so it does come with a humility and a openness to have very difficult conversations and not to force something that, oh, it's been going great for 12 years. It has to. It should do. It must do. And it's like, well, maybe no.

1:51:32Like, yes, if it does, it's great. And it is right now. But why should right now be a prediction for how you feel in 15 years with everything else that's going to change? I think if I knew I really couldn't meet the needs of someone and they couldn't meet my needs, if I really couldn't make them happy and they couldn't make me happy, like forcing them to stay in that situation, surely that like makes love impossible, like negates. So I totally get what you're saying. And my mum said this thing to me, which was like, you want to be with someone because you want them, not because you need them. And I think maybe another reason why I didn't get married younger is because I think maybe I would have married someone not knowing who I was and I would have needed them, maybe not wanted them.

1:52:24and I think now I have a life that's whole and complete as it is and I would be making a choice from a place of I just want you and I don't need you but I just want you and I don't I don't think I was that woman five years ago yeah I love that and and there's so much so much to be said for attracting from a place of peace because you know what peace feels like and so then anyone or anything that comes into your life and what feeling satisfied feels like satisfied is probably even a better word and that feeling of i know what it feels like to be satisfied and so i now know whether someone makes me more satisfied or less i know what my baseline is if you don't know what your baseline happy is then how do you you've got no idea of knowing what's going on at all and that's not a feeling of being complete or having it all figured out it's like i know satisfied is a great word it's like i know what it feels like to be at peace with myself or satisfied with myself and now everyone can show me yes where that pendulum swings yes um one thing you said which i which really resonated with me is that you've had to ask yourself so many hard questions to do the work and i wanted to ask you what what's one of the hardest questions you've ever had to ask yourself if you could recall well the first one that comes to mind and then maybe I'll dig for a deeper or different one is like to have to admit to myself or ask myself the question of like right now have the career and the life that like looks like the dream but are you really happy Emma are you really healthy are you really happy like is this really what you want.

1:54:11And to be at that point and like realize and have to admit to myself that I wasn't and I didn't was one of the scariest things I've ever had to do because, you know, I basically had to ask myself on a daily basis, like I felt like I was crazy and walking away from something without knowing what you're walking towards was not having the answers, but leaving something that the world considered to be of such high value, such a high value kind of moment in my professional life and career. I think that was a real, sitting with that was a real moment of reckoning of like, can you tell yourself the truth?

1:55:00Can you live with your truth? Can you accept the fact that for most other people, your truth is pretty confusing and unpalatable. That was definitely a hard moment of sitting. More recently, because I've been being my own partner, asking myself, are you really living your values, the things that you preach? Are you actually aligned and actually looking at some spaces in my life where I was like shit no not at all I'm actually not doing what I talk about and I need to like create some sort of urgency or a deadline for that so that I make sure that I'm a person of integrity I purport to be someone that cares about the world and about the planet and sustainability and you know there are some things I was doing wasn't enough by my own standards, not by anyone else's, just by my own, probably not.

1:56:00But what's nice is, is I actually have the time now to be like, okay, what are you to do about it? Like get on with it. And like, but those, those are, thank you for those. Those are great questions. Really, really great questions. And so hard for so many reasons, especially when you talked about like when you're stepping away from and stepping toward, Or did you have people in the industry or like people that you could talk to that felt the same way? Like, did you have co-stars or friends or? No. Wow. No, I don't know anyone else. I'll never say that I quit acting. I'll always be an actor. I'm still open to doing it again.

1:56:35But I certainly made a decision to take time to figure out, to not know and to, you know, I had like this whole. disassembling the structure that's needed to carry the load of Emma Watson. And it's like there's an agent and a publicist and a manager and a personal assistant. And there's all these people and lives who are intertwined with mine. And navigating and caring for and negotiating that with people as well was really tricky. And I was just bloody terrified. I think there's a kind of infantilization that can happen when you work as much as I did and a kind of loss of independence that means that you're like, oh my God, can I even do my life if I don't have this army of people who are helping me do the most menial and basic of things?

1:57:40Like, can I actually like do this stuff myself? And I don't even say that in terms of like capability, but like just from the place of like, it's difficult for me to walk down the street sometimes. So if I'm going to start to take on truly the responsibility for most of my life myself, like what's that going to be like? Like, can I really do that stuff? I think fame makes you feel like you can't do things for yourself in a way that can really disempower you and remove your confidence and autonomy as a human being that's really disabling. And for everyone who's wondering, yeah, Emma called me up and I was like, should I speak to a publicist?

1:58:20She's like, nope, I am my publicist. I was like, do I need to check with the manager? Nope, I am my manager. And that was literally the conversation we had. So she booked this podcast herself. there was no booker there was no booking system there was no there was no reach out it was literally emma doing it herself which is proof you are living your values thank you and and you are aligned with what you're saying i wanted people to know that thank you i appreciate that what's so funny though now is like because i do everything myself there's like a 50 chance you would have not thought it was me or like sometimes when i reach out to people i had plenty of moments i had to double take i was like wait a minute like verified verified tick amount of followers who think it's not me and so like i have a 50 50 rate of people actually just like not responding to me because they don't think i'd be reaching out myself that's real i i had to do a second day i think i even checked it this morning like wait a minute is it definitely her am i gonna turn up in some like you know catfish situation no it's wild yeah Yeah.

1:59:25Oddly, sometimes it takes more work, me trying to do things myself than through the system. Yeah. I know you did a great job, but that, that, yeah, those, those hard questions that you asked yourself, I mean, what was it that gave you courage to walk a path where you don't know the next three steps when you have a entire career lined up on the other side? You have an amazing career you've every movie you've been in has been magical and amazing like it's when you look at your portfolio of choices like they're all brilliant performances they're great films that and you only would have more of that so it's also not like you're leaving a career that's kind of had its like you know what I mean it's it's it's it's at a place where no business oriented person could imagine why.

2:00:15And so what gives you courage when one side is so clear and one side is not clear at all? Again, I'm going to tell the honest version of this story. I'd love to tell you that it was like this incredible courage and determination I have inside of me. And yes, there's part of that. I'm not going to like completely erase my role in all of this, But I think a big part was that it was coming to a point with my health and nervous system where I was starting to hit a point of not no return, but like, it's interesting. I eat well, I do yoga, I do meditation. I do all the things, right? But I think I was using those as a way of mitigating how much stress I was under, as opposed to actually what those things are really for are compasses and points towards our truth.

2:01:20And I was using them as a way of bolstering myself and allowing myself to continue down a path that actually was kind of wrecking me and I think it was just like my immune system couldn't pretend anymore I was on seven or eight packets of an antibiotic every year because my immune system was so low that I would just constantly be getting I would just constantly be getting sick and a sinus infection and whatever else like I have no idea. My body just started being like, no. I went from being someone who I would say still handles stress and pressure well. And in the moment I could always do it. But the cost afterwards was starting to get more and more serious to the point where it was like, I'd always turn down.

2:02:17I actually remember I was in my early 20s when a publicist first offered me a beta blocker. I was nervous before a carpet. And it's the only ever time I ever took anything. And I was fine for the two hours after I took it. And then I got back to the room. And when my feelings came back to me, I was like, overwrought with grief and feeling of having blocked it. And so I'd always, and after that, I never allowed anyone to give me anything again, even though I was offered things multiple times and doctors wanted to give me things for jet lag and for sleep and for nerves and oh everyone takes it this is you know there's no shame in this or whatever but I just I felt like in order to keep going I was gonna have to make a decision of like are you okay with being low level, unwell and medicated essentially.

2:03:19And I just knew that wasn't a choice for me. So in a way I have my body to thank because my body just, I didn't want to ignore my body anymore. And it didn't matter how many silent retreats I went on or how much yoga I did or what new thing I did to try and take care of myself, my body was done. And that was then I think when I went away and found a relationship with myself and my practice and and just having trust and faith in a way that I never had before and I started listening more carefully to like these little whispers of like oh like maybe this should be the thing you do or like even coming and doing this of like I think you should go and do this podcast just listening to myself for clues basically and listening to the universe whatever that means but I never had that before I never had I never knew how to listen for those things before I truly went away and had nothing for a while so that was probably the the best result of of all of that yeah and i and i think it still takes so much courage because it does even though you didn't see it that way and you may not have noticed it it still takes so much courage to listen to your body because it is easy to keep medicating in all the ways to to break it anyway yeah and to to push it to the edges and the limits of its ability and because you're so addicted or intoxicated by the success or whatever it may be i guess the courageous part was just knowing i didn't want to numb out that was the point at which it got too big of a cost because i was like okay if i feel like i need to be i'm at the point where the price is too high now yeah i loved what you said about when they're meant to be compassed to our truth and not like this band-aid pacification of and i've been highly really effectively using those band-aids they will carry you far like i had a lot of practice i think that's how they're presented now too it's become this and that's why when you said that i think you it's almost like i'm trying to think of a good metaphor but the one that's coming to my mind it's almost like driving to the grocery store in a sports car and it's like a sports car is made for this high speed track like that's what it's for yeah but you're using it just to drive 25 miles an hour yeah to the grocery store and it's like no it's it has so much more capability and ability to take you somewhere phenomenally but you're using it for a really simple basic task not gonna lie though I remember when I did my first vipassana and sat long enough and I went to my teacher and I was like what have I done go and tell me about this kind of thing?

2:06:18What have I done? What do you mean? Because in a way it was almost like I realized once you start paying attention to your truth, it's very difficult to go back. And in some way it felt like, I was like, oh my God, I don't know if I like this. I don't know if I like this. Maybe I want to go back. And once you step through it, you kind of can't go back. And I remember him looking at me calmly and saying, could you even go back now even if you wanted to and I was like I guess not I guess this is the path I've chosen to walk and to some degree in the same way that getting cast as Hermione and like making my peace with the way that that changed my life were my marching orders I think trusting that is that's that's all I can do at this point I'm just holding on for dear life yeah it's like the mafia like once you're in you know too much yeah it's true like i'll never forget that moment i'll never forget that moment i was like oh no this is undoable now isn't it and he was like kind of yeah i was like oh no it's so uncomfortable it's so uncomfortable being honest with myself and then i have to be honest with other people as well this is a nightmare why did I do this why am I here oh god what's it I'm just imagining you on that vipassana retreat like coming out of it and just having that reaction yeah it's so funny so good that that needs to get added to the play okay that moment needs to be added to the play actually yeah I wrote something I wrote something about my doing the doing the 10-day vipassana for the first for the first time because my god that is such a it's such a roller coaster yeah it's such a roller coaster anything you want to share about yeah i mean sure yeah i don't want to bore you to death but i mean i think what was funny was like i i have this picture that i drew of day day two and it's like green and pink and there's butterflies on it and it literally says i think it says this is so embarrassing it says I am beautiful.

2:08:28I just felt like, I was like, oh my God, this is bliss. I was like riding this wave of like meditation, ecstasy, basically whatever dopamine hit I was getting from that was wild. I just felt unbelievable. And then I surfed that wave straight into some kind of like brick wall of, oh my God, like all the things in life that you think are outside of you actually live inside you. And so even when you're like in this beautiful place on this gorgeous meditation retreat with all of these like wonderful enlightened people, everything starts to drive you crazy. And even the like salt shaker and the pepper pot in front of you start to take on the shapes of your real life.

2:09:14And you realize that your mind just starts creating all this drama for you even though there's nothing going on literally and it was just it was such a wild experience to kind of sit there and be like oh my god I'm the one creating all of my own drama this is a nightmare it's me it's me I'm the problem and um I was like I can't stay here I can't do this this is way too hard living with myself and my own thoughts is going to try this is unbearable I I can't do this that was a really big learning and one I have to remember all the time is like I as a perfectionist which again is a is a kind of violence on yourself I would try to like shame and blame myself into and like kind of shake myself up and and give myself these kinds of like talkings to to make myself do stuff and sometimes to be honest with you they work in the short term and in the long term they fail you miserably like they just do not work i the only way that i have learned to change my patterns to show up for myself better to change in the ways i want to change and grow is to be loving towards myself so getting to be in the room with that person at that moment was a massive gift.

2:10:39Amazing. I love it how someone that you can attend a class with can become such a big teacher for you when you allow it to be. And, you know, someone who wasn't the leader or the guide of the group can have such an impact on you.

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2:12:00Malcolm Gladwell here. I recently recorded the first episode of Smart Talks with IBM, where I learned how AI agents are joining AI assistants as a major productivity tool. Let's start with AI agents. AI agents can reason, plan, and collaborate with other AI tools to autonomously perform tasks for a user. Brian Bissell, an expert from IBM, gave me an example of how a college freshman might use an AI agent. As a new student, you may not know, how do I do with my health and wellness issue? How many credits am I going to get for this given class? You could talk to someone and find out some of that, but maybe it's a little bit sensitive and you don't want to do that.

2:12:41Bissell told me, you could build an AI agent, a resource for new students that helps them navigate a new campus, register for classes, access the services they need, and even schedule appointments on their behalf, which in turn buys them more time to focus on their actual schoolwork. We can see patterns of how agents and assistants can help employees and customers and end users be more productive, automate workflows so they're not doing certain types of repetitive work over and over again, and streamlining their lives and making data more accessible to them 24 hours a day. To learn more about IBM's AI agents and how they can help your business, visit ibm.com slash agents.

2:13:48made the move yet, it's hard to ignore the shift. They're more affordable, more available, and honestly, just make sense for everyday life. The way forward is electric. Learn more at electricforall.org.

2:14:12Speaking about love, did you want to share the, is it the practice that you went through recently? leave with is that what you oh yeah the ring yeah the ring yeah oh my god that's sweet of you to remember I mentioned that um yeah I um I guess having gone through this odyssey which has been the last I guess seven years I was like okay I kind of feel like I've got to a place and this will continue forever where I want to celebrate where I ended up after I kind of left land it felt like and yeah I did a ritual with or like I guess just a day of celebrating with my friends and chosen family and they each bought me this ring which has 22 petals on it and each of them bought one and I've just never owned anything so valuable in my life because I to me it represents the life that I've built, which was the one that I really wanted, which was one that was made up of community and my roots and faith and trust.

2:15:28And in some funny way, it signals to me that even though I have no outward signs of my success, save for this crazy one woman play I've written, I don't even have my degree yet it signals to me that for me achieved what I wanted to achieve for myself wow so that's pretty cool I love that every time I look down on my finger I can like see all of the faces of the people who bought it for me you're amazing at holding space, you're so kind the amount of people who've probably sat in this chair and been as emotional as I have and you don't turn away it's amazing it's easy with you that's very kind thank you it's really easy because it's really heartfelt and you've shared so much of me before today and today that I felt like you shared you created that space for me to sit with you before today and today wow what makes a real friend so you said you had 22 22 22 yeah two friends what what what defines a good friend for you oh my god for me I've never killed anyone in my life and I have no intention of killing anyone but like it's the person who you can call when you're like they would help you carry the dead body across the floor you know what I mean you're like the person you call you're like shit I think I've done this thing and I need you to like either tell me I'm crazy or tell me I'm not crazy or tell me the truth or help me fix it or I don't know that I think it's like the people that god it's the people that you just like do not have to have heirs and graces with and who you can just be like this just happened and it's such a disaster and yeah and I I don't know people I think also who can handle your truths your real truths and vulnerabilities like they're sacred and with care.

2:17:35I think that's been very important for me because I think maybe part of my bravado is I'll make a joke of or I'll be brave about things I don't feel very brave about. And it takes someone who knows me quite well to go, she's making a joke about this and she's like actually dying inside. And I kind of know that and like I'm going to hold her through it. Yeah, I think real friends are the ones when you're in a really tight corner and not just that will like show up begrudgingly but be like what are we dealing with today and like maybe we'll enjoy that or see that as like an honor and a privilege actually I think that's been a big learning for me and it's an honor and a gift when someone asks you for help or when they need you and I think I used to feel really embarrassed about needing anything from anyone or asking for help.

2:18:30I used to see it as like a great shame, like something I was really embarrassed to do. And now I see it as like, I guess like knowing how I feel when someone asks me for help that I really love and how amazing it feels to be able to be there for someone else. I try to remind myself that when I'm feeling like I couldn't possibly burden someone else with something I remind myself and I do remember how good it felt that someone like asked you to show up for them and that you got to be there for them at their worst or darkest and so I think coming to understand like I think I also confused codependency or like i don't know i i didn't we are so interdependent as a species and and like we we there's no shame in and needing and wanting other people i didn't i didn't understand i didn't understand and i do yeah i love dance i love how it started as if i ever kills.

2:19:38Which I wouldn't, I swear. And I haven't. I won't. It's so good. It's so good. It's so funny. It's like, I did not expect you to say that. It was so good. It was so surprising. I love it. But no, it's so, it's so true. Like when I, when I left the monastery and even though I was with my wife and we go into a relationship and we're dating, I used to always feel like I didn't, I always, I had this false mindset because of my immaturity and understand what being a monk was in that it was in this independent way of not needing or wanting anyone and that we were in a relationship and it was great, but like that wasn't.

2:20:13And I held that immature and I probably verbalized it to her too many times for too long in the beginning of our relationship. I have no idea why she stayed. But it took recently, it was, this was so recent. This was like maybe a couple of months ago. Well, I realized that I shouldn't have said that years ago, But then a couple of months ago, my wife said to me, she goes, you're my calm. Like you calm my nervous system. And I was like, you're my joy. Like you bring joy to every part of my life. And it was like that exchange was so needed and so powerful after having for so long feeling like, oh, I have everything I need anyway.

2:20:48And I do. I genuinely believe that. But it's what you said is that we're interdependent for a reason. Yes, we can regulate. My wife had so much. It's like saying, I don't need salt added on to this meal. And like the meal is great. And it's like, I don't need any more salt. And it's like, well, no, if you add a little bit of salt, it'll make it a bit better. Way better. It'll be way better. And it's like, and we kind of live in that life of like, oh, I don't want to add anything to this. And it's almost a defense mechanism because we're so scared that there may not be someone to add. Oh my God.

2:21:19And I've lived there. So that, yeah, that resonated very strongly. I think that was one of the other gifts, actually, of getting to a point where, because I used to be this, like, I'm so tough and independent and I can do anything person. And being at the point where I was like, oh, shit, I actually think I'm, like, not okay. And my body forcing me to ask other people for help was the biggest gift of my life because it brought me so much closer to other people. and I learned that not only is it not a burden, it's genuinely, yeah, a privilege and a gift sometimes to have someone ask you that question or like be honest about the ways that they need you.

2:22:07And it's crazy how long it takes about these things. Yeah, absolutely. You've done so much inner work and self-work and I'm wondering what's the work you've been avoiding? what's the work you've been putting off wow I think it's probably something around now tying it all together I think in some ways me being here today is me trying to do the piece I've been avoiding maybe which is like okay you know you want to show up as a full integrated whole self and not compartmentalize and split and fragment yourself in a way that keeps you safe and that compartmentalization did keep me safe and felt very necessary for a long time because I was trying to keep some walls up where I could nurture myself and learn and grow and then be ready to share those pieces but I think it's probably figuring out how to avoid the pieces that I know aren't good for me and that are genuinely just toxic but to yeah have the courage to show up now in whatever form that is and trust again whether that's a person or it's making something or it's kind of okay have you learned enough that you can integrate and and share now that you've done this in a work on your own yeah and that feels that resonates it yeah yeah it's hard it's hard it's hard to verbalize it it's almost like it is that you've been private for so long yeah and you've been working in private on yes your fascinations your curiosities your friends your inner work and then to actually come out and talk about yes what that period has been like publicly yeah is is something you can keep pushing off and and And maybe how that ties into partnership is that I've realized actually that some of the people I've been attracting on the dating front think they're dating some previous version of me who still exists in some ways, but who isn't actually who I am now.

2:24:48and I realized I was like oh like I'm still getting sent people who like are seeing someone who was part of the picture but but not the whole picture and it's starting to feel uncomfortable to not feel like I'm telling this part of the story if that makes sense it's even hard for you to be like well these are the parts that are still there and these are like it's yeah yeah it's It's not a didactic process. No, no. It's not an equation where you can go, well, these are the parts that I've kept. Yeah. These are the parts that are not, like, it doesn't work like that. No, it doesn't work like that.

2:25:28It doesn't work like that. But I'm still getting requests that want to drag me a little bit more into a version of myself who was great and she was doing great stuff. But I think there's a part of me now that really feels like being able to speak to you one-on-one in this kind of setting as opposed to what I used to do, which would be an enormous audience. And there'd be like 300 people there. And like, of course, there's intimacy you can find in a room like that. But like the truth is, it's really difficult to find the kind of depth and the kind of connections that I know are the ones that nourish me personally.

2:26:10And that's, it's different for everyone, but that just aren't allowing me to have the thing that I know is the real thing that I'm actually seeking. And what I used to go into lots of other environments seeking and thinking I'd be able to get and keep and just not being able to find. I mean something I wanted to ask you about that's difficult and challenging because it's something you spoke about earlier as to being such a big part of your life an important part of your life but recently there's been so many conversations and comments directly from JK Rowling whether it's her saying she'd never forgive you for your views or the fact that when she was asked what ruins the movies for her she named yourself and some of your co-stars and I imagine that's an extremely difficult thing when you've been a part of someone's world when you've felt connected to their work and then for it now to kind of be a full 180 and for someone to publicly say these things that can be quite extremely hurtful actually how do you think about that?

2:27:18I really don't believe that by having had that experience and holding the love and support and views that I have mean that I can't and don't treasure Joe and the person that I had personal experiences with. I will never believe that one negates the other and that my experience of that person I don't get to keep and cherish. To come back to our earlier thing, I just don't think these things are either or. I think it's my deepest wish that I hope people who don't agree with my opinion will love me and I hope I can keep loving people who I don't necessarily share the same opinion with. And I think that's a very, very important way for me that I need to be able to move through life.

2:28:30I just really, I guess I, to circle back around, I really do believe in having conversations and that those are really important and that, I don't know. I guess where I've landed is it's not so much what we say or what we believe, but very often how we say it that's really important. And that's really frustrating and not what you want to hear when you're really angry and upset with someone.

2:29:10But I don't know. I just see this world right now where we seem to be giving permission for this kind of like throwing out of people or that people are disposable and I just think that's I will always think that's wrong I always I just believe that no one is no one's disposable and everyone as far as possible whatever the conversation is should and can be treated with at the very least dignity and respect thank you for challenging us and yeah it takes a lot to i think that's what we're all being challenged to do is try and hold two truths at once and yes those two truths don't have to be complimentary but they they can stand at the center yeah i think the thing i'm most upset about is that a conversation was never made possible so you remain open for that dialogue yeah and i always will i believe in that i believe in that completely um i believe in that completely i just don't yeah i just don't want to say anything that like continues to weaponize a really like toxic debate and conversation which is maybe why i i don't well it is why i don't comment or like continue to comment not because i don't care about her or about the issue but because i just the way that the conversation is being had feels really painful to me and so that's why that's why that decision yeah i really i really appreciate that mindset and deeply deeply feel like if people are challenged to go there themselves like it takes a lot to think that way and feel that way yeah it's it's what it's what healing really requires across you know around the world and i can't imagine how many young people who look up to you and people who look up to you will feel the same way to to recognize that that's how we engage that's what we look for we yeah it's it's not that we're trying to make everything pretty and perfect no no it's that no we're willing to engage in an uncomfortable conversation yes her kindness and words of encouragement and that steadfastness that, and also honestly, just as a young woman to, for her to have written that character, created that world, given me an opportunity, which to be honest, barely exists in the history of English literature.

2:32:03Um, you know,

2:32:07how can I there's just no world in which I could ever cancel her out or cancel that out for anything it has to remain true it is true and this is where this like holding of these I just don't know what else to do other than hold these two seemingly incompatible things together at the same time and just hope maybe they will one day resolve or co-join themselves and maybe accept that they never will, but that they can both still be true. And I can love her. I can know she loved me. I can be grateful to her. I can know the things that she said are true. and that can be this whole other thing and my job feels like to just hold just to hold all of it but the bigger thing is just what she's done will never be taken away from me thanks for saying such a powerful example thank you that beautiful f scott fitzgerald quote that the sign of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas at the same time and still retain the ability to function he goes on to say one should therefore be able to see that the world is hopeless but still be determined to make it otherwise and it's like that's that's got fitzgerald said that wow he ran deeper than I knew wow that's incredible that's incredible yeah it's one of my favorite wow well done you for remembering that second part wow you've made me like Fitzgerald a lot I mean I liked him don't get me wrong like yeah I've I've to me it's my it's one of my favorite ideas so good yeah it's so good that's so good yeah Emma for someone who has tried to stay out the public eye, you've still been vocal about causes you believe in, things that you stand for.

2:34:14Yes. And that always seems to get attention and reaction. And so when you shared online your solidarity for Palestine, the former Israeli UN ambassador, Danny Danon, called you an anti-Semite and his tweet said, 10 points from Gryffindor for being an anti-Semite. What goes through your mind when you see that? This happened a few years ago now. I think what concerned me at the time was the way that that label was being used. and I think even now I see that playing out where we aren't people don't feel like they can talk about what's happening safely this duality created where we don't seem able to care about the victims of terrorism and care about the genocide that's happening in Palestine at the same time.

2:35:25And both things have to be allowed to be true. You have to be allowed to care about 50 ,000 civilians dying, 17 ,000 of which are children, and care deeply about the victims of this awful terrorist attack. I appreciate you sharing that. Yeah, it seems like that belief system you have in yes and and this and and together, it kind of runs through so many areas of your life, personal and beyond. Yes, I think that's true. I think that's true. I hope that you've felt you've been able to share the parts of yourself and the version of yourself that you wanted to and intended to? I hope so. I feel very hot.

2:36:18And I feel very hot. And I feel a little bit like, is this room even real? Like, are we, is this like a Goddard play where we're in some sort of existential room that doesn't exist anymore? In a second, all the words are going to drop. Honestly, I feel a little bit like that. But as long as this was real and these four walls are actually here, then yes, I do feel that way. and um I or like I've done everything I can in a context that's still I can still see cameras and lights and I know there's a person behind me but I feel to the extent to which I I can humanly do that I've shown up for myself and for you in a way and the invitation that this podcast is and the work that you do in the world i've answered that invitation so i feel i feel good about that and i've got i know it's a bit hot but i've got a couple of questions we end on with every episode yes um these are your final five okay they have to be answering one word to one sentence maximum but okay i will probably ignore that rule okay as i always do amazing so question number one okay is um we ask these to everyone who's ever been on the show what is the best advice you've ever heard or received?

2:37:40I'm going to cheat slightly, if you'll allow it. I read Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Marie Brown. It was given to me as a gift by my friend Anne-Marie for my 30th birthday. And I think that being a good, pious, Protestant English girl, I really believed that if I worked hard enough And if I was kind of saintly enough that someone would see my good deeds and all of my hard work and like give me the sticker, you know, give me the like, give me the star. And so a kind of martyrdom was part of my sort of, I understood was important in my, and I think reading her book and reading about pleasure activism, which is sort of the idea that like anything that you need to, that you want to sustain, e.g.

2:38:45justice, e.g. You need it to be easy and you need it to be pleasurable in a way because that's what's going to mean that you'll be able to do it for a long time. Part of my burnout was that I wasn't prioritizing pleasure and joy as kind of like underpinning for even some of the harder, more somber, cerebral things that I was doing. And I think that changed my life. And I think we also have a model particularly within activism and lots of spaces that like this kind of sole individual charismatic leader. And I like you, my hero is always Martin Luther King and Gandhi and you just saw this sort of solitary person that was doing that.

2:39:42And I think if I could go back and do anything differently, it would be that when I embarked on some of the public activism that I did, I wouldn't go in the way I did. I would go in with what I have now, which is not just like an activist community. Like I have friends who can give me feedback and who I can talk to and who I feel that I'm not doing the work alone, solo, however heroic that might look. yeah I guess heroism and and martyrdom the way the way that it was looked maybe I just don't believe that's how we'll get the job done anymore anything anything good will get done so I think that book and I think that idea that revolutionized my approach I love that yeah that's a great answer it's beautiful I want to read that book now yeah I haven't read it you have to you should have around the podcast yeah yeah absolutely uh question number two what is the worst advice you've ever heard or received oh so much how long have you got god mostly just like i think a lot of stuff around toughen up bottle it up um deal with that later you know just like subtle versions of like well maybe tell the truth but just not all of it just maybe like maybe just like tell like a little bit of it but not like the whole thing you know because like the truth is the problem with like telling three quarters of the truth is that then you're sort of in this like constant peeling and unpeeling of yourself where you sort of like you're sort of trying to do it but you're not quite doing it and I don't know I think a lot of advice around that also anyone that tells you not to do what you love terrible advice doing what you love will lead you where you need to go even if you can't see it at the time uh

2:41:44yeah yeah

2:41:50terrible terrible beauty tips advice i've given around like i don't know just like oh god all again like back to our previous conversation all the ridiculous things that you are encouraged to try and do as a woman like fake tan and and I mean it's hilarious I actually right now I I it might be like well covered up but I accidentally have a bottle of fake tan in my bathroom and in my jet lag state last night I thought I was putting moisturizer on but now I have like these like horrific fake tan marks on my legs and feet. I guess I'm just thinking about just like, oh my God. And recently I was like, okay, I want to get my teeth whitened.

2:42:33And I looked like Ross from Friends when he'd had that awful fake tanning accident because they were just way too white. And then I had to spend, go back for two other visits to get the dentist to put my teeth back to my normal teeth. So I guess I was just laughing, thinking about like worse advice is just like, don't ever listen to beauty technicians or anyone advising you to do anything weird to your body, face, appearance. Just don't listen. Don't take the bait. Just don't do it. So good. That's fantastic. Question number three, how are you now going to choose work projects or activism differently?

2:43:13Does the person that's asking me to do something with them uh can they confidently look at me and say that they care about me far more than like what we're producing and and do I care about them that way one of my favorite people I worked with Steve Chbosky uh I remember him leaving what was a very productive uh rehearsal or script meeting with Logan Lerman Ezra Miller and I and he was like I need to go and be with my wife now and we were like I don't think I've ever heard I mean at that point I certainly hadn't ever heard a director in my career say they needed to leave for a personal reason or for a personal relationship but I worked far harder for Steve than I worked for any other director because I think I was able to be a far give a far more vulnerable performance in that film because I felt that he really cared about me beyond the product of the film and i want to work with people like that who for whom the process is as important as the outcome and the people that are part of it are more important than whatever the outcome is i think this is a really difficult thing that i see everywhere in the world right now is that we treat objects and things like they're sacred and we don't treat people like they're the sacred thing and that switch yeah I think it causes a lot of pain Emma something that you told me when we were speaking on the phone was that you've been working with the young people on helping them with some of the challenges that you've faced in your own career in your own life yeah and I remember being so touched by that and I wanted to learn more and for you to share it because I yeah I just think it's really special and I was sharing it with some of my team before you arrived and everyone was quite drawn to it.

2:45:09As a young person, as I basically shared over however long it's been that we've been speaking, I just really needed to be having more conversations with people my own age and people that were older than me. I feel like I tried to navigate so many problems on my own and I just didn't know who to really speak to. And I was speaking to such a narrow group of people about what I was trying to navigate. And I think that working with young people and giving them each other and also the space, the reason, the excuses to talk about the things that we don't talk about or create spaces for has been the most gratifying, the most purposeful and of service I felt in a long time.

2:46:12because it turns out pretty often that a lot of the things that we're struggling with other people are struggling with as well and so in a way going back around and trying to put out into the world a lot of the things that I knew I needed as a young person and didn't get it's been the best most the best most gratifying thing and I feel really lucky to be in a position and in a place where I can say a no, like I've kind of done this treacherous journey. And I think that I think I might have some ideas about what might be needed for someone to come out the other side of that safely. So it feels good to be of use.

2:46:58Yeah, I love that. Fifth and final question we ask is to every guest who's ever been on the show, if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be? oh wow one law okay there's a couple of contenders i want to run you through one is going to be we'll vote on them okay great perfect one would be around the importance of telling the truth or like speaking your truth or just because i feel like so much so much chaos is caused by people not being sure whether or not they should or it's a good idea too or i think that would be a pretty amazing one uh another contender i mean it's the obvious one is treat other people as you would like to be treated that would obviously solve a lot of problems as well i like that one you gave the last one yeah the first one the first oh the first one yeah the truth yeah i guess it took me a long time and probably probably through doing my yoga teacher training is speaking truth with kindness is one of the first niyamas right very disappointed i can't remember what the word is in not satva maybe yeah speaking the truth with kind like speaking the truth with kindness there's an amazing there's an amazing quote which actually is was given to me recently by a friend which is It's like the truth without kindness is brutality and kindness without truth is manipulation.

2:48:33Say that again. Truth without kindness is brutality and kindness without truth is manipulation. And so when I say like tell your truth, I don't mean going around just being awful to everyone. I mean like telling the microscopic truth and like having those being willing to have a tolerance for those conversations one of my favorite metaphors I actually wrote about this recently for being in a relationship with anyone is like you're in it's in a way it's it's a dance it's a fight like I think about boxing in the sense of like who is going to go down to the mat with you and like not tap out because being honest about what's really going on is uncomfortable.

2:49:18and it's risky as we talked about earlier you risk every time you tell the truth of maybe losing someone that you love because you don't know how they're going to respond to whatever your truth is but i think to live that way creates the intimacy and connection that i think we long for and also like sets people free in a way you and them truth yeah truth with kindness i think that's i think that's gonna have to be my choice yeah my factor of deduction yeah the belgut gita gives four four principles for truth and kindness. The first is what you speak should be truthful. Yes. The second is it should be beneficial to all.

2:49:55Ooh. The third is it shouldn't agitate the minds of others. Wow. And the fourth is it should be aligned with eternal wisdom and timeless wisdom. That's beautiful and perfect because, yeah, I think there's truths which are, if they're not beneficial, that do just agitate. I think that's... And it's not about not saying it. It's the idea that you've thought so much about how you say it. It's not that you've sanitized it because that's the modern day version. The Gita is not telling you to sanitize or be silenced. It's telling you to filter your thought to make sure that the way you say it is digestible for everyone who's going to hear it.

2:50:37And therefore it actually has transformative power. It's not that it's not provocative or that it doesn't. It's just that you're not saying in a way to trigger or get a reaction yeah you're saying in a way that hits someone like an arrow of truth wow because i have to change wow because that person has been so mindful of how they spoke oh my god that's incredible that's everything i've just been trying to say about yeah if if we god if everyone was mindful enough about how they spoke their truth that it could just go straight to the heart oh yeah um rather than hit the ego along the way in the mind and that's why we can't talk because everything we say triggers someone's mind or their ego and then everything we say does it back and so now we're having a mind and ego debate which isn't the one that goes all the way to tap you know in your we're so focused on defending whatever the thing is that we feel that we need to defend that we just can't can't get No, you can't hit the heart.

2:51:38So good. So good. Emma, thank you for the longest recorded conversation in on-purpose history. We had to change the cards, the cameras. We had to, like, and we haven't paused, just so everyone knows. I don't want it to be mortified. Just so everyone knows. Me and Emma have not moved, so we didn't take a break. No. There was no bathroom break. No. There was no break of whatever kind. We both sat. There was no coffee break. We have sat in these seats for the entire duration that you watch this show or listen to it. And so Emma, you have the, you know, to your competitive and winning spirit, you have the award for longest ever podcast recording.

2:52:17I don't know whether to be mortified or like seriously embarrassed or like feel like this is some kind of victory of some kind. I guess you sat here for like, and not moved for more than three hours. Really, yeah. Surely. It's amazing. Um, that's amazing. Well, thank you for, thank you so much. This has been such an amazing conversation. If you love this episode, you'll love my interview with Dr. Gabor Mate on understanding your trauma and how to heal emotional wounds to start moving on from the past. Everything in nature grows only where it's vulnerable. So a tree doesn't grow where it's hard and thick, does it?

2:52:55It grows where it's soft and green and vulnerable. This episode of On Purpose is brought to you by Chase Sapphire Reserve. I believe that travel is one of the greatest gifts that we've ever been given and Chase Sapphire Reserve has been my gateway to the world's most captivating destinations When I use my Chase Sapphire Reserve card I get 8 times the points on all the purchases I make through Chase Travel and even access to one-of-a-kind experiences experiences like music festivals and sporting events and that's not even mentioning how the card gets me into the Sapphire Lounge by the club at select airports nationwide Travel is more rewarding with Chase Sapphire Reserve.

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