Brittany Snow

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0:28So a comfy liner, our lightweight, swift fabric, even a pocket for your keys. But what I really like is the flowy fit and layered hem. It gives it a little bit of volume, a little bit of fun. So they feel as good on a run as they do just at coffee afterwards. You can find the Shake It Out shorts in store now or online at lululemon.com. If someone had an option for you and was like, you can either have this love and feel all the feelings and have these great amazing moments but you're going to feel this pain and heartbreak i would choose having the love and then the heartbreak that's so beautiful i definitely would not i love it well britney snow welcome to one night stand i'm so excited to be here yay me too should we preface this with the fact that we do know each other already we should and that we're friends so we've also as we were just saying had to stop ourselves talking about these books to save it so we've tried to save it all for you guys i'm so excited this is such this is such a great selection um thank you it's intimidating because you you read a lot it's incredible that you read everyone's books and you know so much about it so hopefully this was not a mission no it was fun and i'd apparently just like recreating the dynamics of an essay crisis in my life um an essay crisis yeah that's what you call it at university when you're like late for an essay or something or as in like when you've got an essay due the next day And so everyone will be like, you're coming out tonight.

1:51We're like, no, I've got an essay crisis. Got it. Is that like a nightmare that some people have later in life? I think, honestly, they weren't really crises. They were just like crunch time. Right, right. Crunch time at 20 years old. And you're like, I can't go out drinking. I never went to college. Oh, well. I know. Yeah. I was going to say you didn't miss out. I mean, you did. Well, I don't know. I mean, I recreated it in many other ways of my life. What, just in LA? Drinking. Drinking. Yeah, good for you. going out and having crises. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Have you always been a big reader?

2:24I have been a big reader, but you know, it's funny. I, and I deal with this in, in therapy just to dive right in, um, that sometimes reading fiction makes me feel like I'm not learning as much as when I read nonfiction or biographies or autobiographies. So I tend to read a lot more self-help autobiographies, memoirs of that type, because I feel like I'm utilizing my time a little bit more even though that is completely nonsensical i know that fiction does just as well but i would i would i tend to read a lot more like thinkers i guess i like that though i mean i think the i think thinkers is a j ellis used the same word when i asked him do you like reading self-help books and he was like i think i read like reading thought yeah which is kind of interesting way of thinking about it i do find that it's a lot more comforting to to although I'm inside my head already because I'm spinning out to actually find a resting place there and solve it as opposed to like escaping my head and going someplace fantastical.

3:27Oh interesting. Yeah to just like really sink into it like if I'm going to be in my head let's go. Oh I love that I think I'm the opposite. You like to escape. I'm like escapism I'm like let's read something about like 16th century farming off we go. That's where you want to go. Well I just like I do like reading random historical things as well but also fiction yeah i don't know but it's funny i think that's probably what you're doing is probably healthier i'm not sure i don't think so because sometimes it doesn't solve anything well it's just ruminating the farming definitely doesn't so at least you've got a fighting chance in hell 16th century farming yeah you know everything about that so i thought we could start with the untethered soul by michael a singer which is an incredible book tell me about and you've bought your own copy i did here tell me about your love of this book well as anyone can see I brought all my own um copies because I wanted people to see how completely used and loved and read over and over and over again this book is I hope that people don't assume that I um am being mean to this book by underlining it and highlighting it I this means that I love the book um I'm not misusing it I I find that somehow the interaction of it helps me but this was one of the first books I read in like 2015 in terms of like meditative sort of thinking where you are not your thoughts and it was the first time it's explained to me that the ruminating and the obsessing with my own thoughts I can actually step back from and realize that I am observing the thoughts as opposed to being around them and inside of them and that they are me and this does it in a really interesting succinct way he's sort of like lyrical but also harsh sometimes and I subscribe to Michael I listen to his podcast I do the whole thing I'm like I love him I found it really interesting and kind of radically sort of radically sort of like direct like there were a few quotes I wrote down where it was like if you protect yourself you'll never be free if you slept just get back up I was like fucking all right then like you know because it's just sort of it's so matter of fact about right because you know you read some books where they're like you've had a really difficult time be kind to yourself yeah he's like just get back up like it's not that serious there's something quite light about that I thought he does that a lot in the book too I mean one of the favorite quotes in here is like you're only on this rock for a certain amount of time are you really going to spend the rest of your life on this one spinning rock obsessing over things that are beyond your control I'm summarizing and this is you know not exactly what he says but basically he does put it in those sort of logical terms as opposed to it being quite like esoteric you know you're not like you're like oh that's a fact that's very true how would you describe he talks about the your inner roommate how would you describe your inner roommate that's in your brain you know i really like to think of her as someone who came into my life to help me and to make me feel safe in therapy there's these parts of you that that were formed because they were trying to help you when you were a kid and so I try to speak to that part of myself as someone who is a roommate but not only that a roommate but someone that I love and saying to them constantly like you don't have to over think this you don't have to over control this or make yourself feel safer by trying to figure this out because sometimes you're just doing that for a false sense of control yes totally and for a sense of like being able to do something and and it makes the sort of like problems or us in the end right and he is very direct in the the summary of of you're just doing this to yourself and you do have the choice to stop it the only person that's going to stop this is you actually calling attention to the fact that you're doing it and you don't have to yeah and it's so simplistic I know and so sort of like it makes it sound so much more you're just like oh sure sure of course right that like what I also wrote down remind yourself that you're not going to get involved in your own melodrama.

7:26I know. I know. I love my melodrama. It's a little harsh, but it's true. Sometimes you do get a little lost in the whole, woe is me or, or sort of overcomplicating the problem where what is really true in this moment and going back to like, what are the facts and what is the story and differentiating that is sometimes really helpful. I know it's, it is, it is really interesting. I also think it has some sort of interesting things to say about God and faith were you raised particularly religious or not I was raised really interestingly because my dad was atheist and my mom was Catholic and so I went to um Catholic Sunday school and yet went home and my dad undid everything that was just told me I was like yeah that's bullshit so I was a very confused child which actually helped me a lot because I had to no basis in what was real and um that that did help a little bit because I felt like I was pulled towards being a very spiritual person and not necessarily someone that was innately religious yeah I found that interesting because my my parents met at church and they I know which is a weird because they're neither of them are particularly religious I think it was just like a cultural thing and like I guess when they met end of the 70s early 80s and so I guess maybe I think it was more just like a social thing and so we were but we went a lot when I was younger and then when we got older we just stopped going sometimes when I read like stuff about God now I'm a bit like gosh that's I don't know I just I guess I just sort of like opted out of thinking about that at all and then when you read a completely different perspective on it like in that book where it's not really about organized religion it's just like right you know I thought it was just quite interesting i'm going to not summarize his story very well but he did have a very like life and death experience in which he he got to this place spiritually and so i do think he comes at it from a very there's something greater than us understanding but i do like that i do like that there's there's something out there and i do like the the difference that we we don't have to all agree on on what it is exactly that's okay he talks a lot about and I we spoke about this a few days ago when we hung out but the idea of like closing your heart or closing yourself off to things and I definitely did that when I was younger do you ever feel like you closed yourself off in a protective way oh definitely I mean I think and you know it's funny it's a through line in a lot of these books actually Joan Didion or Glennon Doyle a lot of the books sort of have the through line of you have this thing, whether it be a thorn or like a pain or something that you're dealing with.

10:12And yet you can have and make the decision to keep like pulling it and tugging it and loosening it and making it hurt or just pulling it out and looking at it and throwing it aside. And that seems so basic in a way to say it. But I do feel like that's so many of our problems is that we get very safe with the things inside of us because they make us feel like home our problems are what we're used to and instead of taking them out and discarding them. And letting go is hard to just be like I am going to completely let go of that thing even though it makes me, I don't feel resolved about it but I'm just going to let it go and move on.

10:50I think that's really difficult. Especially when you become identified with it where you're like this is who I am. I'm the girl that has this type of thing wrong with me or that I think about this when I walk into a room and to still maintain who you are and yet not have to have the melodrama of that idea of yourself. Do you recommend this book to a lot of people? I do. A lot. And I don't know if it always hits with some people like it did with me, but I do think that sometimes it's sort of an opening into a different thought pattern that maybe people need to just know about. And then this can be like a gateway into like other books.

11:32you know i'm not saying that this is the only way about going about doing this and i would never prescribe any book to someone being like you need to read this has anyone ever like said anything to you after like oh my god this changed my life or anything like that or the person who recommended this to me my manager um she did prescribe it to me yeah she was the one that was like this changed my life yeah you should probably read it yeah the only thing i struggled with with it is some of the like more ambitious like high-minded stuff where I was like I like being petty sometimes which is the forgiveness well not even just the forgiveness but like there was this one bit where it's like if they starve you and put you in solitary confinement just enjoy being like Gandhi I'm like he says that yeah I don't know well I think it's I think it's kind of it's all about just that sort of like don't fret about the things you can't control um which I understand on a macro with a macro perspective but I think also like if you in your life move beyond maybe where you started like you you know my family lives in Birmingham in England and like if I hadn't like fucking rode really strongly to get myself somewhere different I don't think I'd be here and there's definitely a lot in the book that feels a little bit sort of you don't need to control everything just kind of let things go and and so there's definitely a part of me that was like I'm gonna definitely keep paddling and but I think it's it's the balance isn't it it's the fact that you can like add this into how you move through the world I think there's I mean maybe he doesn't specify this but I do feel like the acceptance of where you're at inspires you to make the right change and to make yourself feel like you don't have to necessarily control the the scenario that you're already in but you can know the difference of what path to take yeah because you're not fighting against it you're kind of moving in like a flow yeah um and because some things come up and they feel either good or they feel hard and you need to follow yeah the thing that feels even though it might be challenging i feel like it feels like you're in a flow when you need to do it yeah i think that's i think that's i don't think he even says that but i'm just i'm just thinking that maybe that's definitely this is the brilliant version version two i'm into one of the other themes that kind of comes up in one of your other books are you mad at me by meg joseph's son is you know all this harsh inner critic as well tell me about your love of that book okay so i'll put down i didn't even like use my quotes um wait let's go through your quotes no no no i think we i think you sure yeah one of my favorite quotes on that in that book though is the truth is everything will be okay as soon as you are okay with everything and that's the only time that everything will be okay oh wow yeah I guess the whole book sort of is that in a nutshell of like yeah of course and you're not going to think everything is okay but in this moment which is all you really have if you're okay with this then everything is okay yeah and that's really the only thing that you can control is right now you get to make the choice if everything is okay yeah wow that is that's profound and i guess and really hard yeah especially because everything is not always okay exactly and i do find that sometimes hard when you're really in a tough spot and you're in so much pain and you read a book like that and you're like one smoother brighter skin without adding another complicated step to your routine try daily microfoliant from dermalogica this exfoliating powder activates with water to gently polish away dull, flaky skin, leaving it feeling smoother and looking braider.

15:08It's gentle enough to use every day, so keeping your skin looking healthy and fresh is easy. Ready to see the difference? Visit Dermalogica.com and use code SMOOTH at CART for an exclusive gift with your$65 purchase. Yeah, exactly. It's not okay. No, but it does nudge you more in the direction of being able to accept it. Like, I was talking to a colleague this week. We had something very stressful happen at work and I was on the phone at like 11 p.m at night on Monday and people were starting to freak out and I was like you know what we'll find a solution we always do like I definitely was channeling some of the energy from having read that book of just being like everything's true yes it's a shitty situation yes we'll find a solution yes it doesn't feel good yes we're all going to sleep in an hour and we're up in six hours but like I don't know right like Sometimes it's helpful to just shrug.

15:58It's such a hard exercise to not try to spiral or try to control what's going to happen in an hour. And only just deal with exactly what's in front of you. Because my favorite thing to do is try to figure out next hour, next day, next week. It makes me feel safe. It makes me feel. And actually, it's a really good segue to this book because it comes from hypervigilance. Which is my favorite thing to do. I love being 10 steps ahead. And because then nothing back can happen, right? But then it's not true because inevitably something happens that you weren't planning for or you were planning for. And you just did all that work and ruminating for nothing.

16:35Do you feel like your hypervigilance started when you were a kid? Definitely. Me too, yeah. I reached out to this therapist after I read this book and I asked her to be my therapist. And she very, you know, put up a boundary because obviously she's insanely busy and famous. And why would she want to even be my therapist? Why did I even think or have the ego to think that she would want to be? But she said no. And then I had the thought of, oh, my God, was that wrong? Should I have not done that? Is she mad at me? Is she mad at me? Yeah. Like, so obviously need this book. But yeah, the hypervigilance really starts, I think, from and I love my parents dearly, but I but I there they were very perfectionistic and hard on me.

17:20And I also knew how to read a room really, really well. This book really spoke to me because she deals with Alzheimer's and alcoholism, both of which are in my family. And I think from a very early age, I had to be really good at reading a room, walking in and knowing exactly the type of chameleon person I should be in any scenario. And that was very helpful for being a little actress who started when I was, you know, three. and also it's been really helpful in my career to walk into a room and like do like a hot honey rag a little bit of like you want me to tap dance I know how yeah and I think that that started because I knew that that's what I needed to make the environment feel safe so I felt safe because as a little kid you can't control your parents moods you don't even know it is a mood all you can control is what you feel is is your fault or what you're doing and I'm not this is not like a pity party in any way all these kids do this but I do think it sets up a hyper vigilance of if I can get ahead of this then nothing can be explosive or unhappy or sad because I've done my part yeah I think it's a bit I wrote down is like the idea that you only feel safe when you're perfect and I was like oh yeah that hits yeah my favorite part also of this book that I really deal with is and I think I like underlined it but when something happens and you become successful or a big you know thing happens in your career most perfectionists and most people who have parents like this don't feel proud of themselves they feel relief and I really relate to that like Like everyone's always like, oh, how do you feel about Hunting Wives and all these shows coming out?

19:07And I'm like, I feel so, so grateful. But I'm also like, oh, it's a huge sigh of relief because it feels like I've been trying really hard. So that's, yeah. Interesting. And so with Hunting Wives, which has had such an insane reaction. I mean, I told you I watched it and loved it. It was so fun. Did you have to like check that in yourself then in the weeks after of just being like, Is that the kind of thing that you would talk through with a therapist and be like, oh, I'm not maybe enjoying this as much as I should? It's very much in my nature and every single person in my life can attest to this with me.

19:42I'm very hard on myself. I cannot congratulate myself or make myself feel like I've done it because I can always find something wrong with my performance or something that I should have done better. I do find that to be a good thing because it makes me a better actor and I can always find something to to learn or or to sink into. But I do have to like check myself a little bit of like it's OK to be proud of yourself. And that's not like pompous or self-serving, but it's really adverse to my my being. Oh, I don't like it. No, I completely relate as well. And I have that thing of like, I remember even when I got into Oxford, I was like, well, it must just be kind of easy then.

20:29Or like that kind of thing where you're like, oh, I can't be that fucking hard. Like that sort of thing. Flex, by the way. Yeah, it's a funny thing where you sort of like diminish the achievement once you've done it. And I think that's a generational thing. I think it's a woman thing. I think we're not really, we're not supposed to take up space in that way of like, we don't want to seem like a bitch that we're like, yeah, I know. Yeah, I did it. It feels counterintuitive, but I'm not sure why. I don't know why either, but it is definitely what sort of like pushed on us from a young age, for sure.

21:03Yeah, you got to be perfect. You have to be nice. I when I was reading this, I just kept thinking, God, I struggle with being perceived as like most of us do to some degree. But I feel like when you're famous or like in the public eye or a celebrity, that must just be on a whole other level. How do you is that something you relate to? How do you think about that? I would imagine that someone who's a professional at this would have a lot more to say about this than I would. But I find it really hard to realize if I'm in that category. I can't even say it because I dissociate a little bit. Like I have to be like, I think that's me.

21:39I know that it's happening to me, but it's also it's hard to connect it a little bit. And I think that I can now understand the difference a little bit of being like a people pleaser as opposed to wanting to control people's perception of me. And another thing that I've learned to jump around a little bit is that I think in this business, I know that I can't control a lot of people's perception of me. And for a long time, I wanted to. And that really held me back in my career. Interesting. I didn't want to be perceived and I was really shy for a really long time of my life. And I do think I kept myself smaller when I was a teenager and in my early 20s because I was I didn't want anybody to like look at me.

22:27And now as I in my later 20s and now into my 30s, it's so freeing and so exciting to be totally able to be perceived and not care about the people pleasing as much. Yeah. Which took me a long time to get to. Yeah, it's that idea that like what that person thinks doesn't have anything to do with me. Like it's completely separate, but it's kind of like hard to do really. And I can't imagine what it's like. I mean, I think you go through that when you're in your teens and 20s, when you're just like at university or on a campus. So to do it while you're making like big movies, I can't even imagine like what that must have been like.

23:07I really do look up to the women though. I mean, Malin Ackerman, who I'm on Hunting Wise with, she really is one of those she's from sweden like she really doesn't care about what any anything um in terms of that i mean to a normal degree but but i i did learn a lot from her in a way of like just yeah the the perception of what people were thinking about the show or and and um i adopted that mentality as well which was really nice yeah well that's brilliant one of the lines that i wrote from this book is that the emotions we tend to hide away from the world are what connect us the most which I thought is actually a brilliant metaphor for September Letters and your work that you do there with Jasper Guest.

23:50Can you tell us a little bit about that? It's been really really amazing to work on September Letters and to create September Letters with Jasper who's over there. Yeah. Hiding off my partner. Because it really does show all of these intricacies that we sort of hideaway in terms of vulnerabilities that we feel so other with and we feel very separate from people on specifically like it is even vulnerable now to talk about how I'm a perfectionist and people pleaser and things like that but I realize as I say it how many people I know have told me the same thing about themselves and that comfort in knowing that it's a shared experience does make you feel so much more able to go through it with with grace and understanding and knowing that you're not alone and that it's not something to be ashamed of and I think that's what we do at September Letters is sort of bring light to stories that make us all feel like we're all one in the same and everybody has something that they're they're dealing with and maybe they feel ashamed of but the things that they're ashamed of are really so unifying and and the idea that like because the project came about because of a letter that um someone sent to you about an essay that they'd read of yours that really helped move them which i think is such a great sort of extended way of thinking about how sometimes when we share our most vulnerable moments it's what like actually brings us the most kind of like connection i wish it was an essay it was i it was um i didn't write it.

25:24It was an article. Well, it originated an essay sounds so much more chic though, but I read an article in a, in a fitness magazine when I was a teenager about this woman, I used to collect fitness magazines, um, because I wanted to be those women in there. And I felt like they held the answers. And there was this article from this woman who was talking about how she had body dysmorphia and she was doing all these weird things with food. And, and I remember thinking this isn't a diet this is actually what I do almost perfectly and it gave me such hope that I that I had what this woman had and it was so oddly connected so I carried around that article in my back pocket for months and months as a signifier that I could get better and there was a name to what I was going through and then many many years later when I did an interview for People magazine I came out with my story and that was so terrifying and I talked about how this article really changed things for me.

26:23And, um, I went after the article came out to a coffee shop a few weeks later, and there was a girl in front of me in line at the coffee shop and she turned around and she started crying and she was holding my article in her back pocket. And it was sort of that full circle moment of, oh, wow. I, I didn't even think when I did my article that I could help someone in that way. And maybe nor did the, the woman who did her article as well and um I always wanted to do something with that idea that we are more connected than we even realize and so the September letters book is really a culmination of of letters and ideas and notes and post-it notes and thoughts from people sharing their stories and hopefully resonating it's so radical and amazing to just be like the idea that by sharing stuff you can I'm more support.

27:13Well, it's also, I mean, even when I came out originally with my, I don't even know what was my story. I mean, I was like 21 at the time, so I only knew what I knew at that point. But I was met with a lot of, I mean, some backlash in terms of she's attention seeking. She's doing this to gain sympathy. Oh, what was me? And I do find that that's still a part of our culture. a little bit of if you're talking about something that's hard to you, you must be not grateful or you shouldn't be talking about those things. And so I feel like this is, it is radical in a way of like everyone has a story of something they've been through.

27:55It doesn't mean that it's worse or better than anyone else. If anything, I think people can relate to people they wouldn't have even noticed had the same exact problem. I mean, I think that's what's great about our website too, is that there's so many different people from different backgrounds sharing the same exact story from all over the world and it makes you feel like oh we are so much more alike yeah exactly and I think that's what I feel whenever I read these um books that just that sort of thing of like oh god I'm not the only one who does that like yeah the embarrassing thing totally I mean I think in um it was in yeah are you mad at me where Meg sort of writes about the idea that you like she wanted to return more to her childhood self and I thought about that a lot because I was thinking but I felt like a lot of these bad behaviors I developed during childhood so I was like god what even was my like pre people pleasing childhood self I don't know you don't remember no maybe it's always been that way yeah I innately feel like I've I'm a very sensitive I think it's both.

28:57I think it's two where I was innately sensitive from birth. I'm an empath. I'm also just like highly intuitive in terms of like I'm a Pisces. If anyone knows anything about that, I'm very much a Pisces or people care. But I also feel like through being, you know, raised an only child and being an actress and having the parents that I had, I do feel like there was a lot of pressure on and that I put on myself, too, of like, if I can be perfect and do everything right, then the castle stays up. You know, you should see our house. It wasn't a castle. But you know what I mean? Like the homestead in a way.

29:38That's a lot of pressure for a kid to feel that way. but so many kids feel like that yeah and i think in so many different activities too it doesn't even have to be acting or performing it's soccer or like academics or anything like that i i think that this book is so great because it's i think it's a generational thing as well i completely agree what are the some of the sections that you like noted down oh this is about like overthinking at night which is my favorite pastime oh yeah let's think about everything yeah oh this one says achievements may bring a sense of relief instead of joy because those achievements were merely an obligation another milestone that you had to complete to continue to prove yourself which I do feel like it's sometimes that I'm doing to myself is it's like a relief because I've been trying to prove it to myself it's not even even about anyone else did you ever have that like fuck yeah I did it like moment with any of your like like with I don't know like Pitch Perfect or Hairspray or any of those projects where you were like I finally am stepping into that now good where I am very proud of myself not because of the projects individually but more that I took some time off I went through a couple years where I didn't think I would ever work again and the fact that I always knew that I was I was good enough to to do this forever the fact that I am back in a way and that I've I've done things that I'm I'm proud I mean I I would always change things about my performances but I am proud that I I did the thing in my mind that I knew would be hard to do yeah I've re-watched Hairspray recently and you're so good thank you I was a baby I was like 21 you're 21 yeah gosh but I love that movie so much I remember watching it with my sister when I was like a teenager or early 20s I can't remember how old but you you're like you're like comic chops and timing are so good as well thanks yeah when you're that young I think also some of the best acting for so many actors that I admire and love is when they're younger too because they're just acting on instinct totally I feel like I I was a little bit like that too I didn't have as many negative I had I mean tons of negative voices in my own head but not necessarily having to do with acting yeah it was more of like self-doubt about my body or myself but I thought I was great you know like the the self-doubt of acting didn't come in until until I had to strip all the other stuff away.

32:02Oh gosh, interesting. Well, I hope you feel proud of yourself after these last few months because you have, so we just, we spoke about the hunting wives and then you've got two incredible other projects coming up. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, so. Oh, actually we didn't go through one. Are there any others that you want to? Oh, this is interesting. Go on. Physiologically, emotions have a lifespan of only 90 seconds. response uh jill bolt taylor a bright a brain scientist from harvard university explains that when a person has a reaction to something in their environment there's a 90 second chemical process that happens in the body but then only after that any remaining emotional response is just the person choosing to stay in the emotional loop oh my god doesn't that like yeah make you feel strange 90 seconds so like the immediate response of of grief or sadness or all those things it really chemically is only 90 seconds but then we stay in it because it either feels safe or it feels like oh something we relate to when we were a child or it's just kind of fun to just cry for a while but i do think that's interesting to remember when you're in a spiral more like 90 days totally she also talks about this very cool thing um called nicer i have been doing it a lot have you yeah it does really help it's like the noticing it's inviting oh inviting inviting being curious yeah exploring and then returning so like oh i wonder why i'm suddenly worried that they're mad at me about this thing is the story that i'm telling true interesting let's be curious about that i don't think that is true okay let's just like give it back yeah oh interesting i mean you don't have to do it exactly like i did i mean my therapist always says not all thoughts need to be like thought about like sometimes you can just like no then like analyzed or like process sometimes you're just like that's an interesting one over there that's that's the first step in when I was in my really early 20s of getting better is I had a therapist tell me that you should talk to your thoughts after you have a negative thought just following it up with maybe that's not true yeah so when I'd be like oh you're so bad maybe that's not true oh you were so bad in that movie maybe that's not true and becoming so like um automatic with the response actually did reprogram my brain a little bit of okay I can't believe everything I think yeah that is a good maybe that's not true I love that I mean it's really simple it's not like revolutionary but the simplest stuff is like the stuff that sticks though because like all the like some of the times when it's too like scientific or whatever I'm like I'm not doing yeah and I'm not gonna remember it no I'll buy about for my 90 days yeah Untamed by Glennon Doyle which um is one of your other books and I I when you sent your list over to me I was like I've read that book but I couldn't remember when so I went into my whatsapp and searched and I like had all of these messages to my friends about it when I was reading it and one chapter in particular that I texted to like three different people which I thought was it was the one about um called gatherings where she talks about her sons and daughters being in a room at her house they're like in the tv room and she goes in to asked and she's like I just wanted to see them and then I was like oh you guys hungry and she said the boys were like yes and the girls just sort of like look down and then one of them becomes the spokesperson who goes no we're fine and then they were like yeah yeah we're fine and she has this line where she goes we forgot how to know when we learned how to please this is why we live hungry and I thought that was just so poetic especially in the context of food and like how as women like for those of us that have had very complicated relationships with food I thought that was really sort of profound.

35:41But anyway, tell me about your love of this book. That's a really, wow, I totally forgot about that. Also, interestingly, I accidentally got the huge print writing. This is not how it normally comes. But I kind of liked it because when I was reading it, I did sort of feel like this is in my face. The print is large. But Glennon Doyle really, really helped me a lot when I was going through my divorce. this book specifically was told to me from another friend of mine who had just gone through a divorce and she was like get it right now she was like this is the first thing that you need to read and I was like I don't I'm I know about Glennon Doyle obviously but like I'm not gonna subscribe to this and then I like ate it up it really did help yeah the part that I that I believe sort of ties into what you were saying that I love is the only thing that was ever wrong with me was my belief that there was something wrong with me.

36:39I quit spending my life trying to control myself and began to trust. We only control what we don't trust. We can either control ourselves or love ourselves. We can't do both. Love is the opposite of control. Love is trust. Love demands trust. I sort of loved that in terms of like, yeah, I have spent so much of my life of trying to like control my life and my hunger and my thoughts and all of these different things. And to just like let that go is really interesting. I love how she always talks about how as women we've been told to not feel hunger, to not want things, to not have hunger, not even with food, but like with desires and life and vocations and things like that.

37:25I think that this book really untamed comes from the like inner knowing that you are allowed to to want all those things and not feel small in that desire for it. Wow, I completely agree. I remember at the time feeling sort of so liberated. And in one text I put to someone, I was like, I just feel like this is a really great book for a recovering people pleaser, which is like a theme in some of our books here today. I mean, were there any other sections in particular that really helped you? Yeah. I've got them ready. Talk about people pleaser perfectionists. I've got dog-eared and things. It's like we really believe that our hearts were meant to be kept hidden away, bubble wrapped and under lockdown, as though the point of life is to not be moved.

38:10That's not the point. When we let ourselves be moved, we discover what moves us. Heartbreak is not something to be avoided. It's something to pursue. Heartbreak is one of the greatest clues of our lives. and I really loved the fact that like in any heartbreak you know you have that time of wallowing and feeling sorry for yourself and you're doing all the you know work but if someone had an option for you and was like you can either have this love and feel all the feelings and have these great amazing moments but you're going to feel this pain and heartbreak me personally this isn't for everyone I would choose having the love and then the heartbreak because I love feeling everything I just love being in love I love being moved to things and hearing music you know in a certain way and all the things and so I would do it again I would always I would choose it and I think that that um reminded me of that of like that's the point of life is to feel all these things that's so beautiful I definitely would not I love you I'm like no like numb me up get me on the meds you wouldn't want to fall in love and have heartbreak you'd rather just not do it I think I'd rather not do it yeah that's no that's terrible I know it's not terrible it's not it's not great honestly a lot of people would agree with you I think yeah more maybe more often than not I don't I mean and I'm making it sound so extreme but I don't think it's like a black and white of I would rather not but I am definitely extremely risk averse in that department which I think is not great for me and doesn't you know I I think it sort of means that you lose out on some things that could have been great like you say could have been amazing experiences but I think that's part of my like black and white thinking where I'm like success failure do I want another failure now even if it was like a wonderful experience for like three years whatever it is like right yeah i wonder what that is the the differences because one's not worse or better no you know well i think yours is is better i do actually think that like i think now when now you're in the pain of the breakup i would talk to me like you know five years ago and then yeah but i wouldn't have been like that i was like harden me up get me the hardest shit we can i do like that a lot of glenn and doyle's um stuff is is about that that very notion that in order to have, you know, even with your kids, I don't have kids one day, maybe I do, but, you know, she has the saying in her, her Ted talk about why do you want to keep your kids from pain?

40:42Why do you want to make sure that they're comfortable and cushiony and they don't feel any pain that, and she was saying, you know, the point of life is to have them feel pain and move through it and to have the resilience to understand it and to know that there will always be pain, but you can rise above and against it. It creates who you are because if you're trying to keep your kids from pain then you're not keeping them from a full life no it's totally true I think that's right trying to get me some pain by the sounds of it um no I think it's I think it's brilliant and I really enjoyed listening to the book as well I found with um Untamed I think I found it to be sort of because the chapters are so short and snackable as well you can sort of like I would find myself just reading or listening to when I was like doing an errand and it felt very like uplifting in that way i do love love her little anecdotes and about life that sort of come together with some sort of a lesson but it's sort of snackable in that way where you're not totally digesting the lesson it's within her own family system and i do like that i don't like to be spoon-fed lessons no sort of like untethered soul a little bit that's why it's like a variety you've got a smorgasbord that's the thing it's different horses for different courses would you ever I mean obviously Glenam writes a lot about her own life would you ever want to write a memoir or anything like that this is probably part of my people pleasing like are you mad at me stuff but I always felt like a memoir would be so self-serving at this point I just would feel like why what do I have to say about anything you know um and I also feel like maybe later in my life I'd have more perspective on I mean I'm not done yet you know like I gotta I got I got shit to do so maybe when I'm like in my 50s or 60s or something I always think with memoirs I'd be like worried about offending everyone yeah and they're still very much like alive yeah literally alive and kicking I know it's that thing of like I'm even doing this like podcast and video series I like feel like I overshare more than I would ever have thought I would want to and that's what makes you great well I don't know I mean I literally with the episode we have with Issa Rae um I had to send a clip of it to my sister I was like I talked about your IVF and you're getting like pregnant naturally after I was like are we okay with that she was like yeah it's fine but I just I would I think right and I love when people write memoirs at different points in their life like you know our last book the Joan Didion book is sort of she wrote often about different periods and I do love that kind of writing but I think it takes real like mental and emotional balls to just be like I'm gonna say what's the truth is and I'm not gonna because I would find that very difficult oh it's the antithesis to are you mad at me to be honest literally like putting it out we'll be mad at me yeah exactly and I'm gonna have to deal with that um there is something very freeing about people who write memoirs and just say the truth and know that people will perceive it in so many different ways and think so many maybe negative things about their choices that you truly can't control anymore because you already made them yeah um so maybe that's a therapy lesson for me one day of like writing a memoir and seeing what happens to my inner workings of like yeah people gonna hate me well it is i think it's especially i mean it's different for someone like me writing if i like write a memoir about like living in america or something like people would just take it as a book but i feel like when you are like a celebrity or famous you know that it's going to like these elements are going to be dissected and like covered and i think that's nobody's really going to dissect too much i think i think i'd be okay yeah yeah well the fourth book in your collection that you brought with us um the year of magical thinking by joan dodean is an incredible book i mean tell me what you love about this one i read this book at first um a couple years ago i think it was five years ago because a friend of mine who is a writer and a Joan Didion, you know, enthusiast told me after my dog died that I needed to run to read this.

44:44And then I read it again about a year ago when my dad got pretty far with his Alzheimer's. And I think I've been searching as it's, you know, Alzheimer's is pretty much like a grieving, a very slow grieving process as like a lot of people know. And I've been searching for There's so many different types of books about the end of life. And I feel like this one really spoke to me because it's not prescriptive. It's not these beautiful lessons of what to do or how to feel. It's really just her bearing her soul in these beautiful anecdotal stories that are sort of juxtaposed to her emotions. Like she's very factual about her day to day and these memories.

45:30And then yet you kind of hear the seeping in of emotion that she's trying so desperately to to hide. And yet you feel it. And I love that about her writing that you can actually like feel the emotion without her talking about her emotions. She's not sitting there in the entire book being like, I'm so sad. I can't believe I can't eat. What am I going to do? She's like, did I eat? What am I feeling? Yeah, this bowl of fruit reminds me of the story. I mean, I love how she's always like in Paris or Hawaii or something like that. And it's so chic. And I'm like, yeah, I wish everything reminded me of going to Honolulu.

46:05But I do. It makes me a lot more present with my dad in this when I read this book because it's her memories are so specific and they're so eloquent with what she remembers. It makes me more present to remember those things when I'm actually with him. Yeah, that's really special. I thought the chapter about grief in um untethered um was also really special in the sense that like as someone who like worries about people dying all the time and that sense of just being and you kind of get that from the Didion book as well this sense of like worrying about it doesn't help you and you get there it's just gonna be a shit show and it's difficult yeah and I love the shit show that she sort of plays out because it's so it's I mean it's actually tied to September letters too you're here you're thinking at this point in her life she's Joan Didion I mean she is like it yeah and she's still a total shit show in this and and trying so hard to uphold you know any sort of normalcy yeah and how lonely that feeling is even though she's one of the greats I do I find that fascinating it's a very like even place to deal with grief from of like everyone feels this way everyone feels that way and everyone feels I think she just captures the sort of like trance like craziness of those like those days and I thought I think the way she talks about language is so interesting she talks a lot about all these euphemisms that people use in medical care the idea that her daughter wouldn't make it off the table and she was like well make it off the table but then she also you know uses them herself later when she's talking about finding a note behind a frame from someone who she was close to before she married John.

47:52And so we all know what that implies. And it was just, I thought it was so interesting the way that we all use these words to sort of conceal and reveal at the same time. And yet she's doing that exact same thing in her book too. And it's really interesting because I'm sure she did that on purpose. But she's sort of not talking about the thing, the elephant in the room a lot of times and yet she's being so pragmatic exactly about so many things to the point where it's uncomfortable a little bit um how she sees him how she sees her daughter yeah the the intricacies of how they passed and and all that stuff it really it makes you think about those moments that really stand still when things like that happen yeah it's it's crazy i also thought it was interesting because i definitely relate to this where she said that it was only by dreaming that she could find out what she thought when some on some days where she because I think when you are like sort of paralyzed with really strong feelings despite the 92nd thing it's that sense of like sometimes it's only in that subconscious are you a dreamer do you remember your dreams I always remember my dreams most most of the time which is really not great for me do you write them down or anything I do I write them in my phone a lot of times and um a lot of celebrities in my dreams no which ones show up tell us like the other night it was like leonardo caprio was there i think because i watched the departed yeah um which was exciting because i got to like hang out with leo but um there was a long time ago i had like a full dream about james corden oh i've never really i don't know james corden but we were on a cooking show together um yeah i i don't i don't know i think it seeps in because i i am thinking or reading or watching a lot of like entertainment adjacent stuff so those people get in my dreams but the other thing that happens in my dreams is I always dream about zombie apocalypses oh really always oh my gosh it's always a zombie apocalypse in my dream and are the zombies really like cartoon type zombies yeah and the mechanism in which I try to stay alive is that I always play dead and I don't know what that means about me oh like I never fight back I never like but kill any of them I just like wow that's interesting in all my dreams gosh some therapists should probably tell me what I mean someone will slide into your dms and tell you what it means I don't think it's good I don't I mean I don't I think the only dreams I tend to remember are like recurring ones like the same like just bad flashback dreams yeah which you have the essay panic dreams of like you forgot to write the essay I used to have a recurring one about when my dissertation had to be handed in at the building opposite where my college was and me being late for that yeah but the late dreams are late dreams they're like late to hand in the dissertation and yeah that would be or or like not finishing something that I was supposed to have finished that's another one I have that's my reoccurring dream is I show up to set and they're like so you know the four page monologue right always I'm like what how do you memorize lines do you like just just do it over and over and over and pacing interesting unfortunately for me I have to do something while it's memorizing so I have to clean pace drive ah sorry mom and dad yeah I but like sometimes I mean I pull over yeah but that's how you make it go in I have to be active as well to remember things in this book as well Joan sort of realizes that she's someone who's typically being quite optimistic in the sense that she can like survive anything or like do you would you do you consider yourself an optimist and i do love that that's why it's called magical thinking because she does sort of do that most of the time and it's sort of removed in a lot of ways which is really beautiful and also like not her totally i do find that i'm i'm an optimist i'm i'm much more of an optimist i'm very i'm i spin out a lot yeah but what i think a huge part of my recovery that I'm most proud about is that I always have a voice that tells me it's going to be okay, where I never used to have that voice.

51:55I pretty much, without a doubt, there's a voice that comes in after something bad happens or something where I'm panicked that says, okay, let's look at it from a different perspective. That's amazing. Yeah. That is, that's brilliant. I trained real hard to get her in there. She's not always very loud, but. But that's there. That's radical. I really I really I definitely struggle with that for sure I mean at first it was fake at first she was super annoying and not really me and I wasn't connected but then over years and years in time I do believe her and I think that believing her makes it true yeah it sounds like I'm totally I guess with all these books we've now realized that there's different parts of us that we're talking about um I think I mean I think I am a generally optimistic as well but I think I think it's funny to be a pessimist a lot of the time i think it is way funnier british very again very british thinking but yeah i just love a realist too yeah i think so right it's yeah i think that's definitely part of it um but yeah i loved it and i love this line that she's like a crazy cool customer who believes her husband might return because that's that line they use to her when they call her a cool customer at the beginning yeah i mean i know i don't envy doctors they have a really real tough hand right there trying to my mom that's pretty much what they all all the doctors call her they call her stoic oh really yeah she's very like strong you know and so i i totally get that and it's a mechanism to just like you know handle the problem and not and i think that's sometimes very useful as opposed to me who's just like i'm immediately crying yeah no matter what it is it could be good news and i'm just like yeah but i think that's good though get it get it out I like cry about things three months after which is the and again the repressed untethered thing I just need to let it out sooner but I don't think I'll cry with you I've got I've got to work on it Brittany honestly clearly I feel like I'm coming away with more work um than this one um but how do you prepare for do you read because we have a book here that um for one of the upcoming shows but do you read when you're preparing for a character Oh definitely You do yeah And I read this book in three days Mandy Matney's book I play her in The Murdoch Murders Death and the Family It's coming out on Hulu And I'm so proud of being a part of the show I mean it's like a tour de force of acting For Patricia Arquette and Jason Clarke And I knew about this case really well Because I love true crime And I'm this quintessential woman That listens to the podcast And reads the books and does the things um and it's very tied to self-help too because i sort of feel like it's another psychological exercise in a way so i knew about this case um and i was very honored when they wanted me to play here because i had already done a lot of research and now it wasn't for nothing oh i love that and then after so that's out on october 15th and then you also have the beast in me out in that on netflix in november tell me about that one the beast in me i'm also so proud to be a part of.

55:00It's another murder mystery. It's sort of in the in the world of like, the jinx with a billionaire man who might have killed his wife, but you're not really sure. And I'm the new wife. And am I in on it? Am I not? We have this old dynasty that we have to uphold. And the, the inner workings of our family sort of start crumbling once more and more is being revealed by claire danes's character who is an author and i i mean i just loved working on that show claire danes is a legend and a legend as a human as well i i'm obsessed with her it took everything in me to not fangirl with her um every day and then matthew reese who is um i play his wife he is an extraordinary actor and person and so i love that i love a welsh act welsh act Sorry, excuse me.

55:54My mom's Welsh. Yes. Oh, really? Yeah. She doesn't really have an accent, though, because she moved to Birmingham when she was about seven. I love Welsh. It's such a lovely accent, isn't it? The, like, lilt of it. Yeah, it's sort of, like, fairy-like. Yeah. Like, lyrical, in a way. And he's also so funny. I think the Welsh are very funny. Yeah, no, I mean, you have to be. But absolutely. And they're brilliant. I can't wait to watch that. That's going to be. It's a good one. It's a thinker. it's definitely a psychological twisty very different than hunting wives and different than death in the family so well I'm so excited for you and I'm so grateful for you showing up and bringing all your books and your beautiful notes and you know I'd love being able to talk about September letters and I'm so excited for you with the autumn you have ahead with all of your projects you deserve everything thank you you're the best oh this was so fun