Elizabeth Olsen

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0:42Plan B is available nationwide at all major retailers and through delivery apps like DoorDash. No ID, prescription or age requirement. It's the number one OBGYN recommended brand of emergency contraception and it won't impact your future fertility. That's freedom to be. Use as directed. Is it that he puts in a tampon or pulls out at night? Yeah, pull, yeah. Even like that. Like, she's like, well, I've never done this before. Let's do it. I know, let's do it. When she finally sleeps with someone else and it's Audra, the woman who's the fan with Davey. And I was just like, that is so crazy. Well, Elizabeth Olsen, welcome to One Night Stand.

1:18I'm happy to be here. Have you always been a big reader? No. Oh, interesting. I learned how to read really young. I read what I was supposed to in school. I think I became very competitive with my grades when I was in junior high and high school and so that that was more about like required reading and then I started and then I felt like as an adult I probably read one or two books a year or something until the last six years and so it's been it's still like a new love that I find really fulfilling it felt more like something I should be doing until I guess when I was in my late 20s. Yeah what was the competitive at like high school and middle school vibe just were you just like wanted to go to a good college or were you just sort of really enjoying it or was it like competitive with classmates vibe?

2:11It was a combination of competitive with classmates but also as an actor this is a this is a through line that makes sense, but I'm a people pleaser. And I really wanted my teachers to feel valued. And I felt like I could do that by caring about what we were doing in school. Yeah. But then also at the same time, I still got the validation that I wanted as a people pleaser. So yeah, it's like kind of, it's kind of convoluted, but I also really did love learning and I still do. I do want to go back to school at some point. I love being a student. Oh, fun. What would you go back and study? I'm not sure.

2:55Like part of me thinks it would be something that I'm already vaguely interested in, but then another part of me would want to discover something completely new. Like part of me thinks maybe I would go and study architecture because I don't know that much about it, but I'm curious about it. And then another part of me would like to study the classics or something because um you it was well it was almost like in high school you read like three things that are instead of like diving deep into like one author you you kind of pick a period and then right and i loved writing essays and i still love writing essays um but that's turned into journalism like journaling yeah yeah oh yeah i read that you're a big journaler that's fun yeah i love it yeah every day yeah wow i mean today was very short yeah yeah that's amazing yeah I try but I I find that I only journal on days when I'm sad oh gosh started kind of just while on a flight oh interesting yeah which is usually when you're sad yeah I was like I'll be in my feels but now I open my journals and I'm like this is literally a catalog of the worst days of the last two years that's how I started it's just like terrible experiences and then it and then it becomes like quite mundane and yeah uh even just as silly as trying to chart uh things I enjoyed that I cooked or that I ate or you know those or like what I'm reading or a quote that I liked from something I was reading fun well one of your first books is When We Cease to Understand the World yeah which is an incredible book I was blown away by I hadn't read it before you hadn't read it before oh wow yeah so I read it this weekend and oh gosh it was incredible that's a lot for you to do with this show is to read quickly yeah exactly there everyone's always like how luckily I'd read all fours and Cersei before so I only had two this week okay but but like like you're a glutton for punishment and people pleaser like the school part of me enjoys being like I'm gonna read these right right but anyway tell me what you love about this book it was strangely what I was reading when I was doing um when I was filming Eternity um it was that and wit and wisdom I was like in a heavy maybe it's because we were filming a romantic comedy that I like was packing something uh that was maybe slightly more dense or philosophical in some ways um I I was really taken I mean it's this his what would you call it historical fiction or kind of yeah but I mean meta fiction or it's It's sort of apparently the elements of fictionality grow as the book goes on.

5:35Like the start is purely fact and then it sort of gets more embellished. But there are these stories of some of the most important human inventions that have changed our world. And the people that go mad creating them. And I think madness and human persistence are both themes that I adore. So I do love that it's fictionalized because I love getting to pretend like this is what really happened in private moments. and then I'm just kind of endlessly curious and amazed by where we are today as a society and civilization and how much has been invented and what the human brain has been able to come up with and I think this book does that and then when you are served kind of the titular anecdote it gutted me when they finally use when we cease to understand the world towards the end of the book.

6:50I think it's at like a diner or like a sort of restaurant. And I think it's the waiter or the barman that's like looking at the rotary phone and thinking about the fact that people are having a conversation and don't have to be in the same space. He says that's when we cease to understand the world. yeah yeah and and like how far we've come from there i know i know of how we've ceased to understand the world well the one of the lines i wrote down was from the night gardener section at the end where it goes it was mathematics not nuclear weapons computers biological warfare or our climate armageddon which was changing our world to the point where in a couple of decades at most we would simply not be able to grasp what being a human really meant yeah and i was like that is the kind of like and what does being a human mean sometimes because you that how far some of their equations get to and like when they're talking about the different hows you can only when you're measuring something it only like in order to measure it it has to be stationary and emotion it's like all of these things that are like these foundational things that kind of upend your whole way of thinking about the world.

8:02It's disconcerting, but it's also, it felt unifying reading in some way. It felt human reading it because it reminds us of our humanity and the things that have altered our reality from human invention. Did it inform your work on eternity, do you think? Absolutely not. You're just like escapism. Yeah, it totally did not inform anything I was doing. whereas there are other books like Possibility of an Island which feel related to this while we're talking about it did inform what I was doing when I was filming because I was filming Assessment which is a future sci-fi film that I did that came out earlier this year so we had to imagine this future world and so that actually felt way more relevant yeah did you find yourself googling like what was fictional and what was fact?

8:56after I didn't while I was doing yeah but when after I did as well I was kind of like wait and apparently because I was also I see all the dynamics and the relationships and the the bit on that weird island yeah that was the thing where I was because he's going on these long walks by himself yeah um uh it's when he has consumption right yeah um and you're just thinking like there's there's no way that this story was told this way yeah through what even if it's just like orally yeah um and so yeah I mean that's definitely there's no way that that is no accurate to history but I did enjoy uh how's how I don't know it felt kind of psychedelic in ways like the fog totally and even just the I read this years ago and I didn't review it actually so they're almost just more like images in my head of like just heavy heavy fog and not being able to see a trail right yes exactly yeah and um there was just so much random bits so many like scraps of history that this guy the author references in such a casual way that like when that island he talked about that it was where britain blew up all of their like leftover munitions from world war ii and i was like what i've never i've never even heard of this and it's called the big bang and that was factual yeah yeah and so there were so many bits like that and i loved the first chapter about Goebbels and you know.

10:15Well I felt like I never I never knew about Prussian blue and cyanide until reading this and that kind of that and then how cyanide has connect has been connected to so many different important deaths in our history. Truly. Yeah it was fascinating. Yeah. Are you as are you like curious about science? Are you like a science-y person? Yeah I loved science. I loved chemistry specifically in school. I could have taken it for a third year. Wow. I think it's because when I was a senior, it was AP chemistry, and then the next stage would be quantum physics, and I didn't get that far. Yeah. Yeah, I loved science, and I loved mathematics.

10:50I don't really have any other parts of my life where I get to go back to that basic school education of love of, like, science and mathematics. I didn't have to really do that at NYU either, so it kind of felt like a treat in that way. Did anyone recommend that book to you, or did you? Yes, a friend of mine who also recommended Witten Wisdom, Brian Watkins, who's a playwright, who writes a lot about an element of like spirituality and like kind of the unknowns of this world. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. And I think that the scientists in this book are kind of grappling with their role as like not just observers, but kind of makers, which I think is really interesting.

11:32do you ever find yourself gravitating towards sort of spiritual explanations for things or are you not someone who like needs that no I rather have um like factual explanations of things and then I also I just love I love ancient storytelling as well so I love going to the root of story I think is what's important to me I took a class in NYU that was about the history of the New Testament. And like, that's an example of kind of combining what feels like historical fact versus what shifted due to history over time. Like, I feel like I would need to take it again to be actually be able to speak to a lot that I learned.

12:21But I, I think it's more about the, the history of storytelling and the history of religions and the histories of spirituality is what's most interesting to me, not necessarily of like this moment. Yeah, no, I agree. I find it's kind of interesting seeing what sort of people grasped to a little bit. Yeah, it's funny, especially with filming Eternity. Like so many people have been asking, or at least doing press for it, if I believe in the afterlife. And I'm just like, no. Did your thoughts of the afterlife change when you did this movie? No. Why? No, of course not. it's a movie yeah do you i mean these men the men the scientists in this book and they are largely men and i saw one review that was like why did why wasn't marie curie more prominent but um yeah they really disappear into their jobs in a way that they like they go they go quite not they go mad they do go mad yeah do you ever disappear into a job and might have to get really immersed or you're always the type of person that when you get back to your hotel room you're like done I think I'd like to yeah genuinely um I I think the a reason why I loved reading that so much is because I'm not an obsessive person yeah but I do find obsessiveness to be attractive in theory um I I think I I really lean towards wanting to have control of an environment to feel balanced as a person.

13:56I have enjoyed when I am so exhausted by a job that it felt like I went through something. Sometimes days are heavier than others. Sometimes it creeps up on you and you don't realize it because your body physically goes through things, especially if you're doing some like heavier emotional lifting in your job as an actor. Even if your mind obviously knows it's not real, your body still physically has to experience something. So there is something that is hard to bounce back from. But I would like to lose myself more. And I think that's something that I hope to feel like a safe space to get to do on jobs in the future.

14:45Because it's something that I admire, I think. No, me too. It's the kind of thing I was terrified of when I was younger. And like definitely always wanted to be like in control and gripping tightly. And now maybe it's because I feel more secure in myself at like 37 where I'm a little bit like, oh, I could let go now and not be terrified. That is how I'm feeling. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I'll disappear or I'll lose myself completely. I know that I have enough of a foundation to come back to. But the idea of being able to obsess over something for a certain period of time, obviously it ruins most of these people's lives and even like the history of the world in some ways.

15:28But I do want a controlled version of that. I think that would be interesting to me. I also found it stressful in the book how much they're all like debating the ideas and like disagreeing over them. Just in the sense that like, you know, you spend years in isolation working on a theory and then you present it and someone's like rubbish. Yeah. But you also knew that they were going to get there. There is something about that that you just see these roadblocks that they hit. But you know that because of by the time you get to that point of the book. Yeah. Yeah. It's the I'm thinking, is it the Japanese?

16:03beneath is it yeah the japanese mathematician mathematician yeah because that he goes real really mad yeah and no one believes him no yeah but then he proves it he does exactly and then and at what cost well exactly yeah sanity yeah well another book that kind of gets at all of these different i guess the questions of like where we're going and you know the possibility of an island by michael welbeck tell me about your love of that book so it's an odd one yeah i love reading well back um the first book of his i read was elementary particles and then it was this and then submission and recently and um i was looking for something when i was filming assessment uh that i i'm not really like a sci-fi fantasy reader yeah but i wanted something i've tried i've dipped my toe but um i wanted something that felt like I could build this future world in a more tactile way that I understood as opposed to just the rules of our world that we were shooting.

17:13And strangely, when I was reading it, because this would have been about two, three summers ago, it's two and a half years ago, I feel like AI since then has become so much more prevalent in our everyday life and the transhumanist movement that it's written about and this is like 2005 it's written yeah it's that it's early 2000 it's crazy the future in a really wild way because these now these tech oligarchs a lot of them are transhumanists and they do believe that we as a human humanity we could we could better ourselves by putting chips um or you know slowly live long we can choose to live longer if we choose to become transhumanist and so I reading this book I the way it goes between the present future and then the present past with this one man who I also like the idea of the main character being a comedian because in a world that starts to silence people it often we go after comedians because they're the ones who are satirizing and reflecting back at us.

18:25And that is what this character is doing and getting in trouble for. And so there was multiple levels why I appreciated this book at that time. So good, so good, so good. New Summer Arrivals are at Nordstrom Rack stores now. Get ready to save big with up to 60 % off brands like Rag & Bone, Levi's, Adidas, and Free People. Join the Nordic Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds.

19:10Get the Unreal College Deal. 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. While supplies last, ends June 30th. Terms at aka.ms slash college PC. It's interesting, isn't it? And he's also, I mean, did you have any, like I've read, I read Atomized or the... Elementary particles. Yeah, it's a different title in England, right? It is, it's weird. Someone said to me, have you read Elementary particles?

19:42I was like, no, I haven't read that one. And then I was like, oh, I have read Atomized. Yeah. But like, I did find myself, especially when I read that when I was younger reacting against like some of the grossness of his male characters it's like I mean yes I mean it's he's quite misogynistic in his writing no I'm highly aware of that but it's I thought it's kind of but I kind of liked the irony of it like you know we we might like to think that if we're going to clone people for the future they're all going to be goodies but like it's kind of like ironic that now this is the story they're telling of these like daniel 24 and 25 are telling this story of like humankind and it's based on like this misogynistic this misogynistic comedian yeah yeah i mean i i think that's the thing that i do enjoy about his writing is it's it challenges my um like yeah my reaction same ways um yet at the same time i i don't always it's not that i think he's always wrong no and it was funny because Fleur Fortunet was the director of assessment and she kind of rolled her eyes when I told her I was reading Michelle Welbeck when we were making um this film yeah and uh I kind of enjoyed that because she's like a very she's incredibly French also uh and yeah she's like I don't think she's a fan no well he is one of those like real polarizing figures in France isn't he yeah truly and in the I think anyone who reads him, but I do find his reflection of society and culture and its extremities to have a truth to it that is maybe ugly that we choose not to see.

21:16But in its extremities, I do think he's at he I mean, that's why it's wild that this was written in 2005. And it's actually where we are today. I know that's that's what I wrote down from the New York Times review and they reviewed it at the time, I think in 2006. they said for him the ideal of total human liberation leads to a kind of totalitarianism of private desire which I think is kind of true of where we are like it does feel like we're in this sort of I don't know like heightened pleasure seeking but kind of everyone in their isolated like communities and seeking after the things that they want but there's not much like communal awareness of how that impacts other people yeah yeah and it just because we become so siloed eventually and it's the return to the caves yeah yeah and how do we communicate to one another in that future yeah it's it's brutal but it's not it doesn't feel too wild no it doesn't even the cult doesn't feel that wild i feel like literally anyone we know right now who's create who are these big voices of ai at any moment can create this cloning yes yeah um and convince a bunch of people to live forever through the cloning you couldn't pay me to live forever can you imagine i'm not interested in it i like the idea of things ending oh completely yeah like because when i'm in when i went to see eternity on thursday and i thought it was so fun and joyful and like you know yeah and then i'm like these are my books that i love but i mean we do have fun ones in there yeah yeah but um it's it is that sense of like god i was thinking god i wouldn't want to do anything for an eternity like it is kind of it's quite oppressive actually yeah it's like picking you know going like live in the mountains like oh I don't know it's kind of hard well I think what was clever about uh it kind of in the same way that you were just quoting the the New York Times review um what I loved about the uh humor of the attorney that's presented in our film or the afterlife is that I feel like David Frayn, the filmmaker and co-writer, what he created was this reflection of what we've become as a society of like this obsessive consumerism of the best thing is like around the corner.

23:30All you have like there is perfection. There is something that everyone wants. And I'm going to tell you what it is. I'm going to sell it to you. And the fact that you die and you think you're going to meet your creator and what you just see is just more consumerism I think it's a funny um nihilistic uh potentially backdrop for telling a story about an ordinary love story and kind of the simplicity of that um so there is something sincere to it while the actual afterlife maybe seems insincere in a way no I completely agree and it's also that idea that like who wants to live in like a world that's that specific and singular like that those afterlives are it's like who wants to just live in 1960s Paris or like just live in the mountains or just live on a beach like but that is kind of how we're living now it's like everyone in their own little tunnels yeah and everyone hoping to find their perfect fill in the blank yeah yeah it's as opposed to kind of embracing our imperfections and the things that make us different being the things that we should be championing I also um thought that one of the things that I liked about um the possibility of an island is it you know it really gets deep into aging and like my gut reaction was some of it was like oh it's so sexist but then they're like the kind of character Daniel also goes through the experience of being at the the like orgy that his girlfriend has when yeah she's about to move to America and he's like the old guy like bopping around the room and there was this one line I wrote down that only an authentically modern country was capable of treating old people purely as rubbish which I thought was really interesting in the context of eternity and people arriving at their like happiest and yeah actually and I guess you know spoiler alert the obviously how the movie ends is that yeah you might have had these like moments when you were technically happier when you were younger but ultimately they were like yeah complete moments he also has a quote in submission he says something about how we um uh we are nostalgic about the past and we're hopeful for the future um and then the the present is really just like endless depressive i know the exact it's towards the end of submission yeah um and so when people ask specifically about eternity like where when do you think you'd come back happiest like happiness is something that we reflect on and it's something we look towards um and so you can't actually compare them like what are what But like, yes, you can be content and happy in a moment.

25:57But like, that's incomparable when you like thinking about a whole lifespan. No. And I was thinking about I was thinking, well, when would mine have been? And I was like, it probably would have been when I was a teenager. But there's also something about that era of your life where your soft underbelly is so exposed. Like, you know, because you haven't yet been through anything. So it's like not real. But yet you feel like you felt all of it. Yeah. Yeah. Like being a teenager. Oh, God, you couldn't pay me to be a teenager again. no but like 11 12 sounds kind of free 11 12 is fun when you're just like i meant running outside with water guns or something yeah it's the moment before yeah totally before everything is uh what happens to the brain i think the brain goes through um the ability the synapses where you can actually put yourself in other people's shoes and that's where you start getting self-conscious but until then you're kind of just living only your life and it's really pleasant and now we all like have to reckon with being perceived so much like because of social media and you're or we're electing to well true you're off social media right you don't yeah and was that the right decision you feel good about that yeah I there's part of me that wishes I could have one that I can curate and it all be just amazing things that I want to look at like I don't know art and recipes and like philosophical quotes that like I can then go down rabbit holes.

27:20But the truth is, is I actually will go down the things that are, what do they call it? Doom scrolling, where you like go down and you just are like, it's just like you go, like luckily when you're not on it, you're blocked. You're not allowed to just randomly search things on Instagram. um and so to me I don't actually have as much as I think I do the self-regulation to no I get that not receive any of the other other stuff that I don't want to actually be around I do a routine call every now and then where I just like do an unfollow of anything that isn't bringing joy and does that then reflect in what you are okay yeah but it's I mean it's a lousy way I'd prefer not to have to be on it yeah um daniel is obsessed with his dog fox are you a pet person no me neither really no it's like a secret shame yeah i know it's a shame of mine too right people yeah especially i've done like a puppy interview i think um was it buzzfeed do yeah buzzfeed they do the dog interview and i um and it was hard for males like these dogs are peeing everywhere and they smell i i am i am so we need to create a support group because i'm looking at my publicist right now who's like lizzie stop telling people you're not into and i i wasn't wasn't i didn't enjoy it i don't get it yeah sure i feel like i am judged immediately if i don't want to hold some or touch someone's pet yes i know people show me pictures of their cats and dogs and i'm like they're very cute but but also similarly i don't necessarily want to hold other people's babies either it's not that I don't find them sweet or they make me smile but there's like a responsibility of me I don't know of like me physically engaging yeah and it's only until I I like feel like a connection to the thing yeah whatever it is you know I know animal or human or do I want to like physically engage with them I feel the same are you a crier and when you watch movies or not really no me neither okay like no i'm really not there is one that gets me every time there's two at the end yeah um and the way we were yeah okay they both kind of end similarly like i'll see you later maybe honey like you know like they both kind of have that kind of ending yeah um where barbara's the one who's doing it and one and clark gable and the other um but uh yeah i those movies get me every time but uh maybe that's also connected to nostalgia again yeah nostalgia is a very powerful feeling totally no I'm not a cryer either and I always feel like I've been to the movies twice the last few weeks we went to see uh the Nuremberg movie about the Nuremberg trials and god I can't remember the other one we went to see but another one that made most of my group cry and I was I felt like I just was like quiet on the walk to the restaurant after because I was like am I dead inside why am I not I think certain ones have really when they when it does happen I I actually feel uh very overwhelmed yeah it happened in Barry Jenkins film Moonlight yeah um at the end of that movie and sobbed um similarly strangely perhaps Arrival oh interesting yeah I had to sit through the entire credits before getting up because I was a total mess and I think it has something to do with like what is time yeah what is a life yeah like it really overwhelmed me um and I couldn't control myself yeah like I can't like pleasantly cry during a movie it clearly it like overwhelms me yeah I know exactly what you mean like I don't get sentimental tears I get like existential ones yeah yeah and then I'm and then I you're broken yeah yeah and then like I don't want to go to that dinner no yeah literally I'm like um oh it's so interesting well one of the themes in um the possibility of an island that's also in our next book all fours by Miranda July is these like age gap relationships which I think are so funny because they really offer different perspective because I think Miranda July and hers talks about how the women I dated were often my age but the men always had to be older men need a head start for it to be even yeah which i think is so funny also i mean i there i do love the extremity of going into both mindsets even cersei has its own kind of you know feminist version of telling something for the first time from a woman's point of view exactly and so i do love jumping between the two even though the one makes me angrier than the other yeah but i'd always rather read it than I'll read it.

32:02Yeah, yeah, yeah. God, all four. So I read First Bad Man like in 2020, I think. And I was already a fan of Miranda's work. I just think of her as being not linear, very abstract, obsessive, potentially on like a concept. And so I've always loved her films because of that. But reading First Bad Man, it was, I was like, oh, wow, this is my favorite art form of hers. And she can do so much. And then when All Fours, when I got to read that within the year, it was even, you know, promised even more than what, like, what I had already expected. it I loved it so much and that seeking of freedom and self-exploration it's radical it is radical it's so radical and hilarious yes she's out loud she makes me she's the writer that I laugh out loud reading the most yeah like I laughed out loud a lot during Sag Harbor um Colson Whitehead's book but um uh this I laugh I laugh consistently out loud constantly it's so radical to sort of of like the way she like prods at shame and like not, like which I just think is so, I admire it so much.

33:31Yeah. And then she tries to act out on all the things that she couldn't ever imagine. Right. Like even having, is it that he puts in a tampon or pulls out a tampon? Yeah. And like, even like that, like how, like she's like, well, I've never done this before. Let's do it. And when she finally sleeps with someone else and it's Audra, the woman who is a fan with davie and i was just like great that is so crazy yeah and she has this like amazing experience and then she's walking down the street after and she's like oh after all this judgment of this woman yeah yeah it's so radical yeah it really is it's i mean how do you feel about aging because a lot of the book is really reckoning with how you know i think she's sort of interrogating the received wisdom that she's had about aging really.

34:20Yeah, especially from her one friend who's the sculptor. Yeah, I want to age. Yeah, same. I want to get older. I think we're lucky to get to do it. I would like to do it elegantly, I think. I look at actresses like Charlotte Rampling. she's really uh someone i'm thinking about a lot recently because i don't think i was really familiar with her work when she was younger i just think of her as this wise older actress whose like face i'm obsessed with whose performances i adore um that i saw her in woody on stardust memories and he photographs her kind of the way i think um uh bergman would have and it is so uh her beauty is so shocking it's so crazy what she looks like um and she wasn't gripping onto it and there's nothing sexier than that to me I completely agree yeah so I I look and also take women like Diane Keaton like again like this like amazing iconic beauty at a young age and they're not gripping yeah and i find that to be inspiring and i also just think of aging as like what a gift you get to like continue to like learn explore grow have deeper longer relationships with people um you have more time to see more things and learn more yeah i think one of the women in her study say is like oh how lovely not to be measured by this bullshit anymore when she ages out of like yeah to like be a like young attractive lady yeah kind of thing yeah and the uh the liberation that comes with it totally yeah as an actress do you have like actress friends that you would like talk to as in because I imagine I mean it's the pressure is a lot for everyone now is social media but I do feel like for actresses it must be and models or anyone in that industry must be acute sort of.

36:20I mean, I don't have too many actress friends. I have one very close friend who is a mother of three now. And it like her like her jobs have completely shifted. And when that happens, when your job shifts, also your hours of work shift, which mean you no longer qualify for certain health insurance and you're a mother of three you know so it's really the it's really then even magnified by that um and so there's that kind of conversation that feels very heavy um but we both love what we do so much and she also adores being a mother I don't feel pressured by anyone I work with to do anything like Botox or like whatever.

37:21I don't know. Like no one's giving me that pressure. I think that's a pressure people put on themselves and society and culture and judgment. Like I do feel like you're kind of up for judgment constantly. But you get to choose how much you want to take that on or take it in. Yeah, exactly. I think about that a lot. Like I had Botox a couple of times in my earlier 30s. And then it's also so normalized. Totally is at this point. Yeah, we did a study and our average age of our reader taking having their first Botox was 33. But I stopped just because I, I stopped looking the way my face moved. Like it just didn't look as but at the same time, I now notice it.

38:00I'm like, I'm starting to look a bit older, which is sort of, it's just, of course I'm starting to look older I am older but it is a it's a funny thing to kind of reckon with well that's what I found so like you're saying radical yeah about reading I mean I always want to just imagine that the character is but even when she like starts doing her heavy lifting yes she's like I'm as I get older I have to have I have to start having lifting I need to have like stronger muscles to support myself and then she becomes obsessed with her new ass or whatever from from doing the lifting and there is just so much liberation that you feel reading it um it's like every intrusive thought you've ever had she's like she's not just saying it she's like fully she's like get the spotlight on it yeah it's so good yeah the one thing I mean I wondered how you felt because I think we're a similar age um yeah I'm 36 yeah so I just turned 37 a few weeks ago and I the perimenopause conversation I obviously think is brilliant and really great that women are talking about it more I've also just felt it as this kind of like pressure of like in my 30s of feeling like time is a ticket that it's coming for you sooner than you think have you felt any of that with that conversation or I mean I certainly do I mean I not necessarily I don't really equate it I think to my attractiveness it's more about uh the science of fertility yeah and I and like the truth is is it just is real exactly what I've been really enjoying is that so many women that I work with have been so um honest whether it's actors or uh people I work with in hair and makeup or but they're being so honest about like like this perimenopause is a real thing do you take hormones do you not take hormones why do you not take them or like what are the different supplements you can take to help and you know I it's a conversation I know they didn't really have people having a lot of dialogue and conversations about when they were younger and so it's something that I I now and when people are complaint like happening like oh god I feel so uncomfortable I feel you know this is happening in my body I don't feel like it's a negative thing to say is it perimenopause like it's now it's something that we're just talking about because it I feel closer to it yeah and it also is something that will happen and we're all talking about it more instead of like it being this thing that we're not allowed to talk about and that we're all gonna live be young and live forever exactly yeah it is you're right it's it's better I think maybe it's just because I'm single that you start to feel that like oh my god like everyone's pushing you from both directions yeah but I think it's because I'm also married yeah that I don't feel potentially the same fear of it of like this like ticking time bomb that in my head I was like 45 and now I'm like 42 I don't know like what is the like you don't know you don't know what happens yeah and I don't really I wonder if doctors can probably give you a bit of an understanding of that I'm not sure I don't know yeah it's a it's a different I mean listen knowledge is power but um it can sometimes I think yeah it's just it's just an interesting thing how much that conversation has exploded since this book I mean totally off like off topic of these books but knowledge is power to a point like I don't like wearing wearable technology for that reason I already have enough things I'm no I'm kind of obsessing over and I don't want uh I don't want my data no I completely agree I don't want to know like I I completely I absolutely agree I'm like am I like I woke up and I know I didn't sleep well yeah exactly like I don't need someone to really make me feel bad about it or like some data to make me feel even worse about it like I absolutely know I didn't sleep well I remember every time I turned yeah no it's crazy isn't it that pressure and that it's too much too much data it's a lot yeah well your fourth book Circe by Madeleine Miller is um it's amazing and like you know you spoke earlier about classics but tell me about your love of this book so I loved the Iliad when I was a when I was in when did we read it seventh grade or something so you read the Iliad in seventh great i think we read it in junior high yeah wow and it really uh just opened up something that i fell in love with and then in college and some in high school but mostly in college you really focus on greek tragedies and um you read poetics and i so i uh and then also going to rome for the first time when i was i was working in london and i took a i was maybe 23 or something and took that short trip over um ancient anything just blows my mind um the way she writes these i mean also a song of achilles the race she writes these stories um are just yeah it's it's so brilliant i think her her prose especially when you're contrasting it to like a classic text um pulls you in and welcomes you without dumbing it down in any way and it feels like it's really um rooted and in every other tale that she's able to combine or every like you feel like the history and the um the knowledge she has of all of the ways like we've like come to this point totally of this point of view of telling Cersei's story and it also felt radical and it also felt um you just feel for this woman who's treated so terribly that she's sent into isolation because of her power and I was reading it when I was doing Doctor Strange or right before I did Doctor Strange Multiverse of Madness where my character similarly is like sent to a place where she has to like hide her own power and so there and she's a witch and so there's like something in it and that that I really loved um and so yeah it felt it it it was like fueling something that I was really enjoying about the power of what women hold totally I also love the humanness of it I mean women yeah she's a god yeah yeah but the way that she writes it that like you know someone will just be in a bad mood one day like you know it sort of makes it I don't know feel there's like all of these like big existential themes and then it's so like gritty at the human level that makes it's so gripping yes yeah it's really special and then I tried to read there's a I was working in London and there was a Odysseus I don't know which version of it was in the house and I tried to read and I was like can she just do this story now like I like I now I can't even pick up another version yeah I just am like waiting for her next I I just love reading her her way of telling these Greek tales you I know you're an EP on eternity but do you ever read books with the goal of adapting them um Circe I've when I read it I was thinking how would one do this and I think someone did try to option it and I think some studio was thinking about making it I don't know how you do it like especially like the gods being golden like I that's what I remember like really when I was reading it was how do you make this not cheesy yeah because it it doesn't read cheesy but the moment you put actors to it it is cheesy and I think my favorite literature are things that probably shouldn't be adapted interesting um but but i say that yet i read like the entire neapolitan series elena fronte this summer and i know people adore that italian uh tv show that they did they really do so i did i didn't watch it yeah but i can imagine how great that is but still there's something about having to cast people at different ages you know it's like that whole thing i don't know if it takes you out of it or not whereas a book you're you're just I don't know they some of them should just exist I also just like the the ambiguity in a book like I really hate it when people try to like tell and that's what I guess I liked about the Welbeck as well is like I don't need someone to tell me that this character I can well I can deduce things for myself and like whereas I think sometimes when a book is adapted you lose some of that sort of gray area and you have to make some decisions about things that I like being able to do as a reader rather than having someone tell me that I think the only book that I've read where I immediately wanted it to be a limited series or a film was um a fine balance through a hint and mystery book I haven't read that it feels kind of rush like classic Russian in its scope because it's um about a hundred years of two different families oh wow and so it even starts with like the names of the families and the different generations and who's who's child um and that felt uh like something I would love to watch um that I think would be able to explore everything the way it needs to visually in a in a limited series or multiple part film or something yeah is there a dream like role that you would love to play from like a book or anything like that or no mostly plays oh really oh yeah kind of plays uh well or you or do you want to no I've said it before I Mary Tyrone in Long Day's Journey and Tonight was something I've always wanted to play yeah um and I would love to do George and Martha I would love to do Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf amazing um yeah I just have always wanted to have that kind of verbal battle uh that they have it's um that's like uh there's so much uh heavy life experience um and there's so much cruelty and loss um and humor and it's something that yeah that's a that's a role i would love to get to play did you do theater stuff at school like high school yeah and i went to school for it i don't know you um and i got to do like carol churchill's top girls was my you don't have like a final show or whatnot but it but that kind of was like the main performance that was important to me in college but yeah theater was was everything it was like that was my entry into acting from the beginning was was theater yeah and like the academia of theater like the stories of how the Moscow Art Theater was really representing the people in a way like I just I just started Master Margarita last night and just Bulgakov's story of being silenced as a writer and then starting to work at the um Moscow Art Theater as a director I just that kind of transition so that he could still be in the arts that's yeah yeah and does LA have like a big theater-y scene no no interesting no not really I mean there is one it was more I would always get excited about the touring shows yes yeah we have some great places where people tour like the Druid Theater Company from Ireland they'll they'll often go to LA yeah yeah oh that's amazing yeah so you get some good stuff i feel like i only got into theater in my 20s like i love it now and i love going but it took me a while to sort of like get it in a way and were you raised in london birmingham in the midlands even in i feel like in the uk every town still has a theater and it's normalized as part of its community yeah and we all studied so much shakespeare from quite a young age and birmingham is very close to stratford-upon-avon so we would go there a lot on school trips and stuff which is amazing and that's where they i mean that theater is incredible that's where they start out so many productions i know they did hamnet there exactly i'm so excited for that did you read that book yeah yeah i read it uh i don't know whenever it came out yeah four or five years ago i can't wait to see what they do with the movie too and i i it's not it seems like it is slightly different i think paul's part is slightly larger than it is in the book maybe or whatever whatever however they do it i'm really those actors i adore so much and through like chloe zhao's like visualization of that world um but again one that felt so specific to what you were imagining as a reader I'm really I'm I there aren't a lot of books that I read that then become movies I guess and so I'm curious I'm really curious about that as well yeah and but I think Jessie Buckley will be great I think that she will like bring that kind of she's perfect she is perfect for it right it's yeah the wildness exactly yeah and like when you and and the sort of like mysticism and the like oh I just I think it's gonna be like the gravity of like nature in her yeah and the like mothering I don't know yeah I'm really looking forward to it yeah it'll be I hear it's unbelievable oh really yeah interesting she's meant to be coming on this oh great I'd love to see what she picks yeah it is fascinating seeing what people pick like um I'm like a confused person by these I think I loved that you had so much science and physics in there it was kind of like surprising because I mean genuinely when I was reading um the which one the when we understand the world yeah there was so much that I like had to just go back and I just didn't I want to go back and reread it absolutely it was one of those books that I feel like you can return to so many times I just like was really struggling to hold some of the ideas in my brain but part of me thought when I was reading it I remember knowing like I could look this up right now and try and understand what the hell they're talking about or is it about something else or is it about the human nature of the obsession of the discovery of playing god of being the creator and founder of something that will alter the course of history like is it more about that um and the like human stories of that yeah i think you're right i was getting very like the obsessive part of me was firing up firing up i was like chill chill chill um well thank you so much this was such a wonderful conversation i'm so grateful for you picking such great books and I can't wait for everyone to see Eternity.

51:43Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

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