Allison Williams

9:29Samantha Leach:It was good. It can be so transformative just having the right teacher, the right setting. Totally. And then also learning that you're wrong about yourself is like something that's really helpful to know as well. Like making declarative statements about what you think you like is so stupid.

9:43Allison Williams:Okay. Well, then I was going to start with the Phantom Tollbooth, but I think then we should start with the Odyssey. Yes. Oh, my God. I'm so excited.

9:51Samantha Leach:I'm like – my instinct just then was like, oh, my God, I'm so excited to talk about the Odyssey. And like I picked the books. Yeah. So, of course, I'm excited to talk about them.

9:57Allison Williams:Which I haven't read in full since high school when I took an epic poetry English elective.

10:04Samantha Leach:Really cool that you had an epic poetry English elective in high school.

10:07Allison Williams:I was bored out of my mind. You were? I mean, I just, I don't know. So, yes, basically. Did you read Canterbury?

10:15Samantha Leach:No, that would have been epic poetry.

10:17Allison Williams:No, it was really, I mean, the Odyssey and the Iliad was pretty much what we read, like, exclusively. I mean, it was one semester of high school. um but I just I mean maybe I wasn't the right age for it and maybe it was just high school and I was distracted but basically prove me wrong like tell me yes do like what um what is it about the

10:34Samantha Leach:Odyssey so when I was asked to come up with four books I the way I kind of looked at it is I was like I'm lucky I've read incredible books over my lifetime like so many that I really really love but in terms of like the Roman empires of my books like the the the books that come to mind each day where like with my husband for example I have to like reach for a different analogy because I use it too often. These are the books that like occupy a lot of space in my mind. And what's interesting about Homegoing is that it has a big life in me and I had to start rereading it for this podcast to like refresh my memory of the specifics of it because I haven't read it as many times as I've read these other books.

11:12Samantha Leach:But it like has a big life in me. Like that book is incredible. um the odyssey is just first of all I think I can't talk about it without the context of like

11:23Allison Williams:when I learned about it yeah I was gonna ask when you read it for the first time so I didn't read

11:26Samantha Leach:the actual odyssey like the translated homer's odyssey until later but I was introduced to greek mythology the story of the odyssey odysseus his journey a lot of the ideas epithets etc in fourth grade and it was a big it was an entire semester of the school year fourth the greek

11:45Allison Williams:mythology was an entire semester that's more impressive than me having this class in high school like you know like the odyssey being like your fourth grade yeah greek apology is sexy and

11:55Samantha Leach:interesting it's like naughty i mean a lot of weird shit is happening but it's really interesting and it gives you i don't know how you would understand a whole chunk of literature without having a background and like circe is one of my other favorite books that has been written in the last i don't know long time which i thought about adding into this list when i was like this is pretty redundant but you without the con I mean you can enjoy it on its own obviously it's a great book but without the context of this it's less it gets even more full as a result of that um so I read it then and I fell in love with the idea of these gods this this polytheism like the thin like veil between like Olympus and the gods and humans and then the underworld I was just so into all of it and it's not that far from when Hercules the movie came out so it was like you know the animated movie I was like oh my god the titans I know like I know whoever's talking about this is amazing and then a world like something as grounded and uh evergreen sadly as warfare set against the backdrop of mythology where they're intersecting and then also this like journey which is something we reference as a culture on most days of our lives like the stuff in the odyssey is like the beginning of it it's sort of like the bible to me or like beowulf it's sort of like where where you gotta start from in some ways and as i've gotten older and i've read it multiple times i don't know how you didn't have to read it a bunch of times throughout school because i feel like i read it at least three times in school i just think i mean

13:30Allison Williams:I went to the Claremont colleges. I went to Pitzer. I took most of my English classes at Pomona, but like, it just was like hippie dippy liberal California where like there just wasn't, we didn't have, like it just, yeah, there was less thoughts. I mean, I definitely read class, like a lot of the classics and I took a lot of, um, oh, I have a lot more British lit. Like I feel like I did a lot of, um, Victorian and British lit in college, but I mean, you're right. It's absolutely foundational.

13:58Samantha Leach:Yeah, I felt almost silly. I felt both silly and kind of like pedestrian and also like pretentious picking it. It was a weird feeling. I was like, I'm just going to do it because my gut is telling me to do it. But I was like, it falls like a thud into this list. Like it's just a, not only is it substantial as a book, but it's also, I don't know. It's not everyone's cup of tea. It's a guy going home. I mean, it's not interesting to everybody. but some people like there are a lot of people who vastly prefer the Iliad and I understand like the preference for that but I don't know I love I literally use the idea of like tying myself to the mast to try to avoid the sirens like weekly that image is so so powerful to me the Cyclops like all of them going home like with Penelope in the house and the whole thing I just like I think about it all kind of constantly which is so strange.

14:51Allison Williams:I read Cersei for the first time this year. What did you think? I thought it was really beautiful. Yeah it's incredibly really really beautiful and I just the prose was just like I was so striking and so evocative. We were talking about performative reading a little bit like every film broke reading The Odyssey in the lead up to Christopher Nolan's movie coming out. I feel like we're about to see a lot of like The Odyssey on

15:15Samantha Leach:I honestly like when I heard that it was happening I was like overwhelmed with jealousy that I wasn't in it. And also like a little bit hesitant about like when I was growing up Belle from Beauty and the Beast was my idol. I mean she's like a book nerd. I'm sure she was. Yeah. I used to bump into stuff just like she did and I was like this is what cool means. And then the world was like you're wrong. um but the the thing about the odyssey is like it's crystallized where it belongs in my memory and in my like cultural like everything and it that's gonna change now and I get to decide at least it's a consent-based medium film I get to decide if I want to do that or not um and now sitting here promoting a book adaptation I like fully I'm so sympathetic to the perils of adapting a book for that reason.

16:06Samantha Leach:Like I'm very protective of the Odysseus in my mind, like of the Telemachus in my mind, of Penelope. Like all of them, I just have really clear images of all of them and I don't know, we'll see.

16:17Allison Williams:Will you abstain from seeing certain adaptations if you feel too close to it?

16:21Samantha Leach:I didn't see Beauty and the Beast, which is weird because it's an adaptation of, well, I'm most familiar with the Disney movie, like the animated movie, but I was like the live action one, I just. I actually didn't see it either. Yeah, I was like, I need to just be able to picture Belle. like my bell. But other than that, I don't think I ever have because I have my other perspective on it, which is from the filmmaking side, as you are experiencing the process of adapting something from one form to another is lengthy, painstaking. There are so many points along the way where you should stop, where it gets too hard.

16:56Samantha Leach:I have been working on the rights to a book for so many years that we're all just friends now, like waiting for the right time to take this thing out to the market because it's not like the most, I don't know, headline-y, spicy, plot-driven thing. It's like personal essays. Can you tease what it is? I think I can. It's The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison. One of my favorite books ever. I thought about adding this, but then I was like, I'm going to eventually talk about this all the time.

17:23Allison Williams:I read that while I was working on my book. I really revisited that quite a bit. You want to know a crazy story about that book? I would love to.

17:30Samantha Leach:so I was reading empathy exams back when it came out and I was like this person went to my college was in the English department and I was like this is so resonant for me and we have struggled with so many of the same things I kind of want to adapt this book but I don't know I've never done this before we were shooting girls at the time I was like this is not something I know how to do I get into work that morning Lena sits down in there in makeup chair next to me and she's like I'm reading this book you should get the rights too and it was empty exams crazy so I did I reached out to Leslie she's now been a friend of like a decade and we've been just steadily we have it kind of ready to go for when we feel like the world is going to be ready to accept a sort of like contemplative first person are you writing the script no we have a writer attached Tristan Schuyler who's amazing who is going to be writing the adaptation when we get that opportunity but We're just waiting our turn.

18:25Samantha Leach:It doesn't feel like the vibe is right right now, but we all just get to hang out and be friends in the meantime.

18:30Allison Williams:Timing is so, I mean, is so important with these things, but that's really amazing.

18:34Samantha Leach:It's not a weird story. And making and regretting you, like the people who do it, we know, like we've also watched adaptations that didn't work. Like we know the same things everybody else knows, and we also love this book and these characters and this story. And so we're going to take as good care of it as we possibly can. That's not to say it always goes right. But I never, I don't know, a part of me is always like, it would have not worked already at some point. I mean, so many things don't ever get made for that reason.

19:05Allison Williams:That does make me want to segue into talking about Frankenstein, which.

19:09Samantha Leach:Wait, we're done with the Odyssey before already?

19:11Allison Williams:We have a lot of ground to cover.

19:13Samantha Leach:Okay, okay, let's keep going.

19:14Allison Williams:We can go back to the Odyssey. I just missed school, honestly. I just missed it. I will, I want to talk about your love for it, but I am, you know, it's interesting, I hadn't read it in a while, and now with um the Guillermo del Toro version coming out I know that's weird that I picked two books that are currently like on the verge of existing I made that joke in my head but then like I was like oh like you know like I was like thinking about it I was like that's so funny because they're both so in the zeitgeist right now but you truly love these books so much yes

19:43Samantha Leach:at least I'm on the record as loving these books like I've been talking about Frankenstein for so long when I read I think I read Frankenstein for the first time in high school it didn't really like make an impression on me I read it again my freshman year of college and when I honestly like what I love about the book is sort of twofold one is the book and the other one is the circumstances of the book which are unbelievable unbelievable teen or something Mary Shelley she

20:07Allison Williams:was I mean teenager and just like a long weekend a long weekend where they did a competition at Lord Byron's literal thing I've ever heard in my entire competition for scary stories

20:17Samantha Leach:and she came up with this idea then and then just like ran with it fully wrote a book as a young teenager and it's Frankenstein and one of the things that I love about the book which you've heard me talk about I'm sure if I've talked about it before is the framing of it because it insulates her I think it was very smart as a young author which she was as surrounded as she was with brilliant literary minds for your first at bat I think it's a smart idea to be like well this is

20:49Allison Williams:what I was told by someone who heard about this so you know take it or leave it I think it's really

20:56Samantha Leach:smart but she didn't need it I wish I could be like trust yourself girl like you can just write this story you can you can have a reliable narrator here or at least one fewer barrier between it but But it's another one I think about all the time. Like whenever I think about fire imagery in literature, and again rereading Homegoing, I was reminded of how beautifully fire is woven through that book. I think about like, yeah, attraction and humanity and humility and just there's endless stuff to talk about with Frankenstein. I literally cannot wrap my head around the person it came out of.

21:37Allison Williams:And you reread it about once a year.

21:39Samantha Leach:Yeah.

21:40Allison Williams:Is there like a certain time of year whenever the mood strikes you?

21:44Samantha Leach:It's usually whenever it like pops into my head enough times. And also, I don't know if you're like, I assume you're like this. There's, I have my one rinky dink, like old edition of it that I have highlighted to high heavens and it has tears in the pages. And so I'll look at it and kind of need to go touch it and read it and open it. And I don't always read the whole thing. And especially now that I have a toddler, we're doing a lot of other reading. but yeah I just like to get hands on it get eyes on Frankenstein every once in a while do you feel

22:12Allison Williams:like you come away with something new every time for sure first time I read it I'd never been in

22:17Samantha Leach:love I had never experienced like that that sense of longing for a person I didn't know what it meant to walk to observe that in someone in a life partner and be jealous of it yourself like whereas then later in life you know as people are starting to get into relationships or different kinds of relationships like that comparison it just hits different later in life it hits different

22:41Allison Williams:every single time obviously it gutted me yeah yesterday I was I said I was listening to it yesterday and I was at the you know he's it's the monster and he's watching them in the house and

22:53Samantha Leach:he so badly wants it I just it's devastating holy shit how did she put that in there I mean you're just like devastated for him and you kind of know what because you know the where it starts a little bit you kind of know what he's going to do with that devastation and what he's done with it in the past and he has nothing but sympathy like truly which is crazy it is just yeah I just

23:16Allison Williams:can't underscore enough like how just like wrecked I was yeah listening to it yesterday it's so

23:24Samantha Leach:profoundly just tragic I know yeah and I think about it too honestly talking about the Megan movies I found myself thinking about it all the time well I was going to ask you if you have a

23:33Allison Williams:favorite um either adaptation or like you know inspired by but then I was like of course it's

23:38Samantha Leach:Megan yeah it really feels like for the obvious reasons but also like when we were thinking about Megan's arc in the second movie in particular I I ended up thinking about it even more and then the first movie because I was relating more to um like Dr. Frankenstein I guess when we made the first movie then the monster but then the second movie especially as a producer you're thinking about like okay the monster's here now what and and I felt very culpable as the Dr. Frankenstein of that situation and um responsible and I think she was like similarly reckless and um I don't know I mean I think like we live in a world filled with Frankenstein's monsters like all around us in various forms some of them are just code and some of them are real and I think it's always good to think really really carefully about things you bring into existence because once they're here

24:36Allison Williams:they're here yeah I'm like reckoning with that in real time I'm just like thinking about so many different things I know um I am really excited I was I haven't watched the adaptation yet the Guillermo del Toro one I'm really excited for it but I kept thinking that um to bring everything back to girls. Adam Driver would have been such a good monster. That's so true.

24:57Samantha Leach:He would have been perfect. That's so true. I will see it. I love Guillermo del Toro. It's like a very exciting thing to imagine his hand on that adaptation. But I also will mourn the end. I mean, we've all seen the renderings of Frankenstein. But like the actual adaptation of this book, I have that house in my mind. Yeah. I have like the, you know, the room where the monster first comes to life in my mind. Like I have it all. And my hope is that I can keep that while also seeing the new one and they can continue to coexist.

25:34Allison Williams:If I were to come today with four of my favorites, Withering Heights is one of my favorite books. So like that's also, but that's going to be such a different, that's like, it almost feels like it's going to be like the Megan of Withering Heights. Like it's going to be so different outside of it. So I'm not having the same, like I'm excited to see it. I think it's going to just be totally different than anything I envisioned ever. And that's okay. And it's just going to be really sexy.

25:59Samantha Leach:Hopefully it's a gateway to Wuthering Heights and other books of the era. I mean, I always think that's a win in general.

26:06Allison Williams:Totally. Yeah. Yes, Big Year of Jacob Elordi in the literary adaptations. In everywhere, honestly.

26:13Samantha Leach:He's everywhere.

26:13Allison Williams:Which I'm totally, you know, as much as I would have loved to see Adam do it, I'm okay to watch Jacob do it as well. Yeah, happy to.

26:19Samantha Leach:Do your best monster, Jacob. I'm excited.

26:24Allison Williams:Homegoing by Yagyasi. Yeah, so you read it for the first time when it came out. Yeah, I read it

26:28Samantha Leach:when it came out. I was so excited because I actually had lived in Ghana for a little while when I was in college, and I went to the Cape Coast Castle, and I had, I was so, I did a whole course on the civil rights movement and the effects of slavery on the U.S. when I was in ninth grade and we traveled through the south through like civil rights landmarks and sort of antebellum landmarks and it was just striking how many like points of entry we saw like for the ships and into the harbor and and places where people were sold into slavery and And I simultaneously started to become obsessed with the fact that, like, this sounds like a non sequitur, but it's not about just how HIV and AIDS is something people can live with.

27:24Samantha Leach:But it's just that they don't have access to the medication they need or the information they need about it. And I then was like, I wonder if I can find an organization that's already doing great work around HIV and AIDS stuff in Ghana that I can just go and support and then learn a little bit more about the other side of that port of entry. And I did. I found an NGO called Theater for Change that was amazing. So I went to Accra for a couple of months and I lived there and I was helping out at the NGO. and then I also was just doing as much soaking up of the atmosphere as possible and I love it there so much but I have never been anywhere as haunting as that castle in my life I don't think I ever will because I don't think I'll ever be anywhere that was I mean I've been in the Tower of London or whatever but I don't think I'll ever go anywhere that is as like just purely evil as that place it's where they I mean it shows up in the book it's where they housed people who were they were then going to sell who they had already sold into slavery and they were going to board ships to go to the UK and the US.

28:31Allison Williams:I was reading old interviews with the author about it and she talked about going there and just the smell.

28:39Samantha Leach:Oh my god the smell I can still smell it like if I can really yes it's it's in my it's in my like whatever that sense is it's so powerful like I just have it forever that smell it's horrible and just the minute you it's just a horrible place it just you feel like you know those people who have evil looking faces that match their personalities like I won't list them but there's a lot of them out there this place just felt the way that it functioned it just felt like that it was oppressive it was really insane it was really hard to spend time there and really important also and it feels I feel like it's something we all Americans have to do like I think we need to contend with the fact that of what we did of that original sin I think it's insane and I read it came out at a time when I was starting to do a lot of work around criminal justice reform and what year did it come out?

29:32Samantha Leach:2016. 2016 yeah so I was just starting to like do work inside prisons with restorative justice and stuff and so it kind of synthesized a lot of the things that I was like really really interested in and I've always been obsessed with the fact that like our criminal justice system is just going to be heartifying until we can contend with the just like well obviously racist elements of it but also the history of that racism is not going to change at all until we examine like really get in there and really examine it but at the Smithsonian in DC they have at the African American Museum of History and Culture they have you know uh layouts of of the slave ships and stuff like that that are just also eerie to think about in this context and uh after having seen the ports from which they departed it's just

30:21Allison Williams:yeah I think a lot of people are so afraid to talk about the issues you're speaking about now and privilege and like where you can fit into that despite where you like how you've come up and like that's just something that you've clearly been reckoning with your whole life and tackling and really wanting to interrogate and I think a people are so afraid to touch that but you speak about it in such a net like it's weird to compliment how you talk about it but like you know it's like a really but I'm saying I just think like it's very impressive but it's also very clear that like it's not performed like this isn't performative at all it's something that you truly have been since your entire life literally thinking about and I think there's so many people who haven't been forced to think about privilege and identity and inheritance or any of these things until you know much more recently but like growing up in like Greenwich Connecticut like I feel like a lot of people also didn't have to do that like what was like the propelling force behind really wanting to interrogate all of these things throughout your life a lot of things first

31:19Samantha Leach:of all thank you but second of all um I think there was a lot I mean I think one of the things that Yazzie does so beautifully in this book is the legacy. I mean, literally, she traces one family through two different branches of the tree and through time. So you just get to see the legacy of all these original pain and trauma or not and just see what happens through time to these families and how they're linked. When you do that, when you look like me, it's almost never a happy story. At some point, someone owned a person and that's so beyond fucked up that it's crazy and you have two choices you can either pretend it didn't happen and bury your head in the sand or uh interrogate it and try to live a life where you're in some cosmic way trying to reconcile that or uh you know repair it the reparations idea um in my case I grew up in a family I'm not totally sure about all the versions of it I'd love to do one of those like discover your roots shows because I want to know.

32:22Samantha Leach:Do those still exist? I don't know. I hope so. Maybe I'll just like, I don't know, go. I already am on like all the like ancestry. Maybe I shouldn't announce that here. People are going to come find me. But I, so I can't be totally certain. There's a very suspicious amount of land in New Jersey at some point in the family where I'm like, I don't know about that. It could have just been a farm. It could have not been a farm, but I don't know for sure. But either way, like in New Jersey at a certain time, you also took that land from somebody else. So like I would hate these people regardless. But I grew up in a family that was really obsessed with two things.

32:55Samantha Leach:One, civil rights. My grandparents were at the March on Washington. The claim to fame is, though, that my grandmother insisted that they leave early to beat the traffic. So I'm here to tell you that they did not see the I Have a Dream speech. But they were there just moments before. Did they beat the traffic? And Mimi, wherever you are, I love you. That was who you were. They beat the traffic. but they also missed perhaps other than four score 20 years ago maybe like the most famous speech in the English language and they beat the traffic though so if you're wondering yeah but so I grew up with like we have the pamphlet from that framed in our house and we uh we grew up like with a really uh kind of unsugar-coated descriptive understanding of the civil rights movement and of slavery and also of like the massacre of American Indians and all of those things like in Connecticut you're just sort of surrounded by every street name is Native American and I'm from Providence oh you are yeah we grew up going to Block Island so you're just like going through all of these tiny little towns and why are they so small and you know the stone walls everywhere and that was the backdrop was that my my mom's parents who lived in our hometown were just really preoccupied with this fight for equality that just was seeming to get especially towards the end of their lives like she was just getting more and more upset and more and more worried and but they had lived through the the movements of the 50s and 60s in the US and then on my dad's side they it was more about the privilege piece and less about like racism in particular and anti-slavery and also like criminal justice reform stuff um that was all about like just understanding because he came from slightly more humble beginnings than my mom did I was taught from a young age that I don't know how to put this without making them sound like they were mean to us but that we we aren't more special than anyone else to have been born into the circumstances we were born into so we're just we just hit the lottery in some way and what's weird for him is that he knows that in his lifetime he transcended the class that he was grown up into which meant that he was going to be raising the kinds of kids that were like mean to him and the object of his envy when he was growing up like he was going to be raising rich kids and so I think for both of my parents both knowing how just how white I am and my brother is and also like how privileged we were they were kind of like these can either be like apex predator monster people or they can be like really helpful kind of inside people fixing some of the things that are problematic.

35:33Samantha Leach:And they weren't as explicit as that. But that was very much the tone of like you have to work for shit, but you won't have to work as hard as everybody else. And that's not something you earned. It's not fair, but how amazing. And so be grateful for the opportunity it provides you, but don't you dare for one second think, like A, that it makes you more special or better than anyone else, and B, don't you dare forget all the people that never get that shot and make sure that you bring them with you every step of the way, like either just internally in your sense of awareness or like literally like give other people opportunities.

36:10Samantha Leach:I think the reason people struggle with it, like the idea of like nepotism and stuff is it delegitimizes what they've achieved. And I guess I'm sort of like I've been so – ever since Girls came out, like it's just been so much criticism of whether or not I'm good at what I do and for a long time the verdict was like we're all in a documentary and it's not acting and finally I think people get it but whatever I guess I kind of eventually had to throw up my hands and be like I don't care I mean you guys are gonna think what you think but what I care so much more about is that you guys know that I know that this is not none of this is fair I need to make sure that people understand that because it's not and it's gaslighting not to use the world's most overused turn but it's gaslighting to be like we all you know I pulled myself up my what no the I always talk like when we talk about the layers of privilege and stuff and I think this is even in this book a little bit it's like there's a safety net right so that's the first one like there's only so far I was ever going to be able to fall but that changes the way you live your life in a huge way radically radically I had a dream of being an actress okay cool welcome to the world where like literally everyone has that dream but I grew up with a dad who wanted to be a nightly news anchor it's one of three jobs that exist in the world and he decided when he was like five that that's the job he wanted and that's the job he got so I grew up in a house where that's possible where not only I grew up around people in the entertainment world but I had a dad who got a one of three job positions from Middletown New Jersey who just had a dream of being a news guy and he had no nepotism or anything to help him he truly did kind of like other than his whiteness and maleness which is nothing small um he really did like without the connections get himself there but from where I was starting like that's a very that's a very very different place and striking out on your career as an actress um with like a an apartment that your parents are helping you pay rent for and like Ikea furniture they split with me and their moral support and they being able to fly out there to help me move in and like it just it's never ending and I don't know why I always reach for him as a comparison but Barry Keoghan I think I'm just so like fascinated by his story like to come through the foster system and just be like the least likely person to then be like Oscar nominated like incredibly talented gifted actor that is someone to like root for that's someone who's like doing it against the odds and I totally understand when people are like I don't you don't need me to root do you need me to root for you I don't need I don't think you do and I'm like no I don't I'm I like being I like my job I like making stuff to entertain people make people think and I'm gonna keep doing that for as long as I can but I also understand that I understand that I'm not the underdog um and I I don't yeah I don't know and and not every movie every job is for me to do I think that's another part of it like I think there's a lot of people in our field who kind of feel entitled to play parts that I don't think they should and I try to be cautious about the ones that I do play to be like yeah I I have yeah so often you'll read something you're like I have no business playing this part someone else would be great in it it shouldn't be me is there something that you've chosen not to do

39:31Allison Williams:that you felt like many yeah but I do think you know that is such a beautiful thing to bring it back to home going and having revisited it just the idea that like everything is so by chance just like you know it's the fate of these two sisters we're just like every small thing that happens to you in life like just dictates this entire lineage and how things can go yeah and I

39:57Samantha Leach:just felt like it's just so and it's from the very beginning it's like it's so the moral ambiguity i'm obsessed with like her relationship with her mother which is abusive and also she is her abuser and her savior and also and then her abuser again and it's like anyway it's an incredible book it's

40:17Allison Williams:heavy it's not like you know but that's okay it's beautiful i don't need it i don't need it to be like i know i don't know why i'm like talking like you have you just finished it No, no, no. Well, I hadn't read it in a really long time, but I just. Wasn't it as good as you?

40:30Samantha Leach:I was like, it can't possibly be as good as I remembered it being. And it is as good, if not better. Because I'm also, again, from perspective, every time you read a book, it goes down differently.

40:39Allison Williams:Yeah, also just like the sheer amount of ground she covers. It's unreal. And the ability to write so many characters against so many years and in so many settings.

40:54Samantha Leach:But so palpably.

40:56Allison Williams:like these are tangible people yeah immediately I'm like how do you do the efficiency I don't know

41:01Samantha Leach:I was analyzing it actually and I think part of it is word choice like her vocabulary is stunning and the way her descriptors are stunning and that's where the real efficiency is storytelling I think I don't know I think it's also pacing I can't wait to read like a lifetime of books from her do you ever write yes but not yet for other people to read I wrote like voraciously when I was young my parents got me first I was reading I was a total book addict I read all day every day anytime I could and then I they bought me a word processor and it was like an early kind of a laptop that wasn't connected to the internet it just had like the equivalent of Microsoft Word I don't remember what it was called and I would just come home from school and sit down and just write and write and write and write and write and they're hilarious and I still have some of them and they're so funny a lot of them are told from the perspective of a young fisherman on Prince Edward Island I don't know why maybe a past life or something we went to Prince Edward Island as a family and we went tuna fishing that feels relevant and also we like in that area of like New England there's Nantucket and there's a lot of whaling like we studied whaling in school for a while too.

42:15Samantha Leach:Whaling is incredible. It's fascinating.

42:17Allison Williams:Whaling was like my entire early childhood education. Like we like literally had like the whale project where we all got like assigned a whale. What was your whale? I don't remember. Yeah we all had to just be cool about sperm whale

42:30Samantha Leach:existing. Yeah as a as a species and that was hard for all of us in middle school and we got through it. We literally went to Nantucket on a school trip to study whaling. One of my favorite museums in the world is the like the whaling museum out in Nantucket it's really I mean it's like

42:45Allison Williams:privileged girl from New England I've been to Nantucket many many times yeah so I I wrote a lot

42:50Samantha Leach:I never I then I don't know I did a lot of creative writing I submitted some of them I finished some of them but I was bad at like bringing it home I'm bad at the editing I'm bad at the completing it I like just sort of expelling it from my system maybe it's like early anxiety processing undiagnosed anxiety um but yeah I mean there's so many stories that are just hysterical my brother like in a speech at some point read a bunch of excerpts that are just like so embarrassing but yes I was a really big writer I've started writing again because with I started a podcast with two of my best friends from growing up with whom I read many of these books and um uh we started a sub stack i saw so i am already late i'm like this is classic i've

43:38Allison Williams:never hit a deadline because you don't have i was reading the sub stack and it's you haven't posted i haven't i've been working on my post here's the thing this is a classic it's gonna

43:46Samantha Leach:end up being two posts because i'm now on page five of dot word of microsoft word and 12 times new roman which i like can't quit it needs to be size 12 times new roman i can't write in another way single space though that's my like non-college rebellion um it's so long like I was like I submit it as this I have to record audio version of it to give people that option which I might do but it's I love it I forgot how much I love writing I really love writing I don't have um as much of a knack for writing screenplays I always end up writing like a few lines of dialogue and then like pages of scene direction and I'm like right so prose is the thing I think prose is where I belong but maybe someday I mean right now it's a first up stack it's more of a like a personal essay kind of format with a little bit of anthropology and paleontology sprinkled in I'll tease that I'm gonna try to lay on that plane it combines the triceratops with the obstetrical dilemma Jesus I'm gonna do my best Jesus isn't part of it but I'll try to add him in there it's part of everything I want a novel from you that's what I really really god I don't know oh Oh, boy.

44:56Samantha Leach:Well, you've signed it to me now, which means that in about 10 years, I'll hand it to you or something. 10 years would be kind of fast for a novel, honestly.

45:03Allison Williams:I don't disagree.

45:04Samantha Leach:Yeah, I would love to. I'm sure I thought I would have written a book by now. But I also, part of motherhood that has shocked me, and maybe it's just the particular kid that we got dealt, who is so unbelievably curious, it's the best. I've learned more in his like just under four years of life about more things than I had in the five years like previous to that wow and we're learning so much he reads well he's not reading yet we think he actually maybe has like almost figured out how to read and he's just not doing it yet which is how he progresses through a couple of stages in his development so far but we read to him all day I mean he's just we're constantly reading to him we have this thing called a yoto that has these little cards that are basically audiobooks but the beauty of the card is that they get to be the boss of the audiobook so he gets to pick the card out of his he has like a like a I don't know a card catalog is what I want to say but that's not our connotation of that it wouldn't be correct but then he just picks a card out about like right now he's been learning a lot about electricity and light or space or he's obsessed with childbirth I'm not pregnant or anything he's just obsessed with it right now and I was put it in there and listen.

46:18Allison Williams:He has so many questions with childbirth.

46:20Samantha Leach:But it's not just that. It's everything. And I'm like, I'm just so indulgent of that. I will answer any question to the best of my ability. He's into space. He knows more about space than I ever did already. Like way more. And he, anyway, I think he's so, his curiosity is so wonderful. And it's like, I just know that the minute this guy knows he can read to himself, it's gonna he we're just not gonna I'm so excited for him I'm sad for us because I love reading to him we both do but he's just gonna feel like he has the entire world at his fingertips and he will

46:58Allison Williams:he will that was leads me to want to talk about our last book today the phantom told booth has

47:04Samantha Leach:to ask have you read it to him I started reading it to him when he was like three and a half it's a tough one as I started reading it I realized how much of it is wordplay and I was like whatever as long as I establish a happy association with it now then later he'll reach for it hopefully and he'll want to read it with a you know even more appreciation for the wordplay but like right when the weather man showed up who is w-h-e-t-h-e-r I was like oh yes I forgot how how punny the book is but the idea of going on an adventure from your bedroom from where the wild things are to the Phantom Tollbooth is something that like I really want to foster in a kid in a time when there's so much technology where you don't have to use your imagination to leave your room it's so much easier than that like that little machine I was describing is a shortcut to that he doesn't have to use his imagination he just starts listening to a book on tape um that's I like the idea of him reading books with characters who are using their imaginations to do really really big things and the Phantom Tollbooth was really my introduction to like smart writing.

48:13Samantha Leach:It felt like an intellect. I remember it feeling like an intellectual reach for me the first time I read it. It was a gift from my godfather, Josh Mankiewicz. Shout out to Dateline fans. He's incredible. And I'll never forget that he gave it to me because it was such an important gift. It like informed my sense of humor in some ways, like my sense of loving vocabulary, words, spelling. this there's character the spelling bee um yeah I mean I just the illustrations are sort of like just burned in my memory I love the way the book moves I love the the the like moods of the book I love the characters of the book it's just it has so many layers it's never been adapted I don't think I think there was a kind of an unsuccessful adaptation of it right yeah I'll have to fact check if it was I didn't see it but I've always wondered why because it feels like it's not quite the same thing but a series of unfortunate events I was only in the third season of it so it feels like I can say this without it being about me but it was such an incredible series and it's such a good adaptation of those books and it feels totally like it's not completely far from Phantom Tollbooth and I wonder I wonder we'll see how old were you when you were gifted it third grade maybe second grade second grade was first grade was like a lot of boxcar children and stuff and then second grade was a lot of goosebumps.

49:35Samantha Leach:Ooh that's when I started to get like to get scared when I was reading and then I got over that really quickly. Like scary stories to tell in the dark. Were you into that?

49:42Allison Williams:No I was such a scaredy cat as a kid. Me too but I loved reading scary

49:46Samantha Leach:things.

49:46Allison Williams:No I couldn't handle it. I was I was really soft as a kid. Like I was truly. Did Frankenstein scare you a little bit? I couldn't read Lion Witch in the Wardrobe. I like literally had to watch my mom return it at Barnes and Noble. Wow you were like you can't even be in our house. Yeah I was really sensitive.

50:00Samantha Leach:You know what I did that with? This is very controversial. This might be the most controversial thing I say this whole press tour. The giving tree.

50:08Allison Williams:Whoa. That is not

50:12Samantha Leach:healthy. That is not a healthy mother-son relationship. And I did not want our son to think that I would cut myself down into a stump for his benefit. Because I need to put my oxygen mask on first.

50:27Allison Williams:Does he have a favorite book?

50:29Samantha Leach:Right now it is a book. He has a few. Right now he's very into this book about – which he's had out from the library for like – and he lives the library. I'm so – he has a library card. He's so proud of it. It's a book about the Curiosity Mars rover that – and just the way it was built and when and why and what it's achieved since landing on Mars that he's had out from the library. I feel for whatever like middle schoolers trying to write a paper on it, although they probably don't use libraries anymore. He's had it out for a long time. He keeps renewing it. There's a book about dinosaurs that he loves.

51:05Samantha Leach:He's very into Phantom Tollbooth. And let's see, audio. Oh, he loves, loves Winnie the Pooh, like the original Winnie the Pooh. But that, he's kind of, he's sort of at the tail end of that. But that really expanded his vocabulary in a very British and very funny way. He was extremely into Winnie the Pooh. I couldn't believe it. It's not illustrated. and I sat down next to him. He was sick one day and I started, I just pulled it off the shelf and I started reading it to him and we got 45 pages in and he hadn't budged.

51:36Allison Williams:It was just mesmerized. Yeah. Totally.

51:38Samantha Leach:And I was like, sometimes good writing is just good writing.

51:40Allison Williams:That's amazing.

51:41Samantha Leach:Yeah.

51:42Allison Williams:I, Zosha Mamet came on.

51:44Samantha Leach:The best. I love Zosha.

51:46Allison Williams:And I asked her, I was like, I don't think any of the girls and girls really read. Like, you know what I, like. What did she say? She didn't really remember but I'm saying like, I looked like at like this like read it if they like pulled like how many books were actually featured on the show like there's

52:01Samantha Leach:not that like oh i thought you meant the actors sorry i like immediately was like personally affronted i was like how dare she at two brute no no no we're big readers no no no oh the characters like because now it's such a thing to like have girly with a book yeah but like that's because someone was smart enough to turn it into an aesthetic now if all those people are active all those girlies are actually reading those books and we're in great shape reading it's great for

52:23Allison Williams:the publishing industry but other than like we're the ladies book like in the pilot like I don't

52:28Samantha Leach:think there's that many books I think you're right which is so weird knowing Lena who's a complete bibliophile she's like obsessed with books she reads faster than anyone I know that's the other thing that sucks being an English major I will say the one drawback is that it kind of my tanks for reading got smaller.

52:48Allison Williams:Really?

52:48Samantha Leach:Yeah. It changed it. It was like when I, like when sports became too much about the fitness of it, it like ruined working out for me. Okay. Like going into a gym and working out. For reading, I burned out. I read so much in college that I felt like doing it for pleasure took a minute. And I really have to read like books that are not deep for, I don't know. It's helpful to reset that.

53:13Allison Williams:So what are some of those you read for pleasure?

53:15Samantha Leach:I feel like I kind of low-key just insulted them, so I don't want to list them. But no, but it's also not like exclusively that. It's sort of like the cadence has to be light book, light book, meaningful contribution to the Western or Eastern canon of literature at some point. New York Times bestseller right now that two or more of my friends told me to read, light book, light book, light book. You know, that's kind of the cadence.

53:42Allison Williams:What would Marnie's favorite book be? I think you've been asked this before

53:45Samantha Leach:I've never been asked this no people are not people are just forgetting about books this is not really rapid

53:52Allison Williams:about Marnie's or about Shosh's

53:58Samantha Leach:Marnie's favorite book

54:01Allison Williams:this episode is brought to you by State Farm you know those friends who support your preference for podcasts over music on road trips that's the energy State Farm brings to insurance with over 19 ,000 local agents They help you find the coverage that fits your needs, so you can spend less time worrying about insurance and more time enjoying the ride. Download the State Farm app or go online at statefarm.com. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College Deal.

54:38Allison Williams:Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at windows.com slash student offer.

54:52Samantha Leach:While supplies last, ends June 30th. Terms at aka.ms slash college PC.

54:59Samantha Leach:The first thing that came to mind so randomly was in cold blood. I have no idea why. it was just tapping into that like inner sociopathy that she has that like slightly unhinged i love that for her honestly i do too i think go with your gut okay in cold blood

55:18Allison Williams:what did she say for shows we were riffing and that like maybe one morning she like woke up at rays and there was just like like a bunch of russian lit there and she just like opened up like i forget what the exact book was and she was like so cute like the the brothers um oh

55:36Samantha Leach:yeah you know what I mean yes hold on oh come on brain I can I can find it okay let it go um it's gonna come to me in the car so you're gonna yell it into the air yeah that's and then she was

55:47Allison Williams:like so it's either like that or Sophie Kinsella just like anything by Sophie Kinsella that seems right yeah and then the last thing we'll hit on is that you are here to chat about a book that you just adapted regretting you so I think yeah when did you read Colleen Hoover for the first time and

56:04Samantha Leach:what really resonated with you about it? I think the first Colleen Hoover I read was Verity, which is so funny because the reason it came to me was many of my friends were like, have you read this book, Verity? It feels like you should be in it. And I was like, I need to know what's behind this. And then I started reading it. I was like, this is a psycho woman and I hate all of you for having me shoehorned into this idea. But I devoured it. And it's funny because I almost didn't finish it and that is a book that if you don't finish it you walk away with like a fundamental I felt I went to start shooting a movie while I was reading it and at the end of a movie things always get so chaotic you're like shooting longer days you're not sleeping so I fell off of it and then on my flight home from where was I I I was like oh I need to finish this book and not to spoil anything but like a lot changes in the last like couple chapters of Verity but that's also an outlier among in the Hoover canon a lot of her books are written I guess as Verity was as well but are written from first person perspective and often alternating chapters so I think one of the things that makes and I hadn't read regretting you before I was sent the script but I then read it immediately when I got the script and then read it again and excerpts of it many many times I think the reason that she resonates first of all she just has like a good understanding of plot and story that are like just slightly exaggerated and outsized enough to be departures to be like slightly um expansive from our normal lives and then characters that are kind of similar like exaggerated versions of ourselves and she writes it all so accessibly But what she's best at, I think, is combining the characters with their decisions in ways that are really, really interesting.

57:56Samantha Leach:And Regretting You is like a great example of kind of passive decision making. Being on the receiving end of events that happen, the choices people make from that place are just fascinating. And I think people feel very close to these characters because of the first person thing. You spend a lot of time with their like flawed thoughts and that just, that'll do it.

58:17Allison Williams:Well, thank you so much for being here today. It was such a treat. Thank you. To chat with you about all this. I could talk to you forever, honestly.

58:24Samantha Leach:I know. We're going to have to pull this off. Well, thank you for having me. Thank you for doing the show. It's so cool. So fun. Books rock. Books rock. Your call has been forwarded to voicemail.

58:36Allison Williams:Hi, this is Zoe Deutsch. And Nick Robinson. Our brand new movie, Voicemails for Isabel, is all about those little moments that feel like the universe is looking out. Feeling homesick? Then your sister calls. Hearing that perfect song exactly when you need it.

58:53Allison Williams:Sometimes life rigs things in our favor, like learning about your new favorite rom-com voicemails for Isabel.

59:00Samantha Leach:Now playing only on Netflix.

59:05Samantha Leach:Turn it up! Storm has zero sugar and 200 milligrams of caffeine, so you can turn that workout up a notch. Good energy in, good energy out. Energy for life. Thank you.