Jennette McCurdy

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0:50New Maybelline Serum Lipstick. Maybe it's Maybelline. He pressed his manhood into me. Disgusting. Yeah. Get that manhood away. Yeah, literally. The heat radiates. The heat's always radiating. The heat is always radiating. Oh my God. It's an oven in there. Hi Jeanette. Welcome to One Night Stand. Hi, Cheryl. To have you here. Happy to be here. You've chosen five brilliant books for us to talk about. And we also have your incredible debut novel, Half His Age. Have you always been a big reader? Yes. You know, I read a lot as a kid. I read children's books. way past the age when you're supposed to read children's books um like i loved dr seuss i loved rodol he was my absolute favorite the best um pretty dark really dark very dark which was your favorite so there's this one called henry sugar and six more which is just like a collection of short stories but um i got that from the library and i never returned it i'm so sorry garden grove public library secret you secret stash i would just stroke the cover it was just like beautiful um sort of had this like grainy texture uh and the pages were like yellow like it had been it had been you know checked out so many times it was the pages were yellowed and literally touching the book was as much of an experience as reading it i love that yeah i used to love reading rold al as well there was something you could just like i mean it was so gripping you'd i'd read one in an evening just like yes well there's no there's no author for children nowadays who I think captures that darkness.

2:14And it's so missing. It's really, that's what worked. It's the, yeah, the juxtaposition, the happy, the sad. That's what I loved about it. And I wish there was, I wish there was a modern day road doll. Maybe that's your next book series. Maybe. There you go. Well, we're here to talk today about some of your favorite books, but also your debut novel, which is brilliant. But I thought we could start with Everything, Nothing Someone by Alice Carrier. Tell me about your love of that book. Yes so Alice has actually become a close friend of mine. We were we appreciated each other's memoirs but I've let's see between reading and listening it's been four full times experiencing the joy of that book and the tragedy of that book.

3:03She really unpacks trauma in a way that is beautiful um and visceral and uncomfortable some of my favorite things um but she also writes about privilege you know she she grew up extremely privileged and I typically struggle to get on board with that kind of a point of view um I don't know what it is I guess just that it's privilege and it can feel stuffy and it can feel like people complaining about problems that aren't real and yeah yeah yeah if there's a comedic lens then that's one thing but if it's not then it just is very it feels like self-important but um but she writes about privilege on the surface when really the underbelly what's happening underneath is so dark and so twisted and so messed up it's complete neglect privilege you know can look a lot of different ways and just because you're financially privileged doesn't mean you have privilege in any literally any other area of life um yeah she did such an exquisite job i love that book it's sort of shockingly vulnerable at points It's in a way that you are sort of like, like really take, take your breath away.

4:09A hundred percent. I think that's something that's so key or certainly, you know, an aspect of anything that I love to read is where there's a truth that's said that arrests you, that just stops you in your tracks because it seems so scary to say that thing out loud, let alone to write it down. And I think she has many of those moments in the course of her book. I loved this section as well where she, I was reading it in a coffee shop and I loved like had to like put it down and like start scribbling away in my notes I think she captures so well how much when you're feeling when you're going through periods of mental turmoil it's how like gratifying it feels to get a diagnosis I've never read anyone like really capture that the fact that she she talks about like um I she talks I held them aloft and visible like a sign at an airport using them to identify myself even to strangers and I related to that so much when I had an eating disorder at university like there was this like washing over of relief in a way when someone gave you a label even though you then realize it can it has its limits but I thought it was so beautifully done yeah I feel like that's it's a very divisive area is whether or not to label yes and whether or not it can be helpful and I do think it's so up to the person what feels right to them does a label feel helpful does it not but yeah I so agree I thought that was really interesting and it seems there was such relief in her and getting that and freedom in a way totally And I feel like now she's, it's the kind of thing where like it felt like relief at the time, but maybe in some ways it wasn't.

5:36Like she talks about all of the drugs that she was prescribed and it's like complete concoction. Oh my God. I couldn't believe the cocktail. It kept going and going and going. And the worst part was like when something wasn't working, they just added another one on. They never took anything away. Yeah. Yeah. Breathtaking. Yeah. Really shocking. Well, at the end of the book, she forgives her father, right? in the sense that she I feel like she is sort of able to process his behavior in particular obviously her mom the artist Jennifer Bartlett dies um how did you read that sort of like act of forgiveness unrelatable yeah I don't understand it don't get it never will right um no the same honestly did you really yeah I felt I felt a little bit just like god that's bloody generous us yeah um and just knowing knowing her now and knowing how kind she is there's a part of me just being her friend there's a part of me that was just like ah don't forgive him I don't know he doesn't deserve it um but I really do I genuinely think forgiveness is um it's really complicated and I think so often we're sort of told to forgive what is that you know what is the thing where it's like it's like taking poison that you expect them to die from what is that annoying quote yeah I think forgiveness is such a tricky area because it can feel like for me you know it it certainly can feel like a very like I'm being forced to do this thing that I don't feel and I think it can be if there's a lot of oftentimes I feel like there's a lot of anger tied in with with not forgiving but just because you forgive doesn't mean that the anger completely dissolves and you've moved on from it and I feel like um it's you know it's so much more helpful for me to be able to just own the emotional state instead of posturing pretending it's something other than it is suppressing I feel like so oftentimes forgiveness is actually just somebody suppressing the truth I agree but if you can get there like Alice then that's admirable yeah I actually love that line in your um novel the peace and freedom that can only come from lowering your expectations of someone when uh Waldo's talking about her mother and I related to that so much because I think rather than forgiveness and I relate so much more to that idea of accepting that they're a loser exactly exactly right yeah there is freedom in that and just recognizing oh I had this expectation for this person that is never going to be met it is impossible yeah it is impossible and letting go of that clinging I think can be really a liberating experience it certainly is for Waldo in that instance that you're talking about she really you know she really learns a lot over the course of the book she really does one thing that you know I would spoke briefly about sort of Alice's bravery and you're I think I read your memoir and um the novel and you're an incredibly brave writer did you ever feel like you had to work up to that bravery or is it something that not writing you know I'm much braver as a writer than I am as a person like interfacing with anyone ever.

8:28I think that's partially why I write. It's the place where I feel like that's the thing that contain all of me. So many of the things that I'm thinking, I can't say. Like, do you know the amount of times that I've been on a Zoom and I just want to be like, this should have been a fucking email. Why are we all sitting here? This is a waste of everybody's time. I don't like half of you. Like the things that I want to say, I can't say. It's just not socially acceptable to say 99. Well, I'll say 95 % of my thoughts. But in writing, somehow it's like, oh my god the bravery the honesty yet if i literally said the same exact thing in a zoom they'd be like unprofessional like yeah it's ridiculous it's ridiculous that is interesting isn't it i talked a lot about that with um all the talker at the moment around like autism and adhd i have a friend who's found a lot of like relief in that and we talk a lot about masking and she's like you mask all the time i'm like yeah because i just fucking have to like how do you think i get through the day i can't like say what comes into my brain every minute i mean And everyone's masking all the time.

9:22You see the panic in everybody's eyes, don't you? Come on. We're all just. Do you ever in those scenarios, like do you have certain people who you like unmask with or who you don't put that filter on that you talk about in the Zoom meeting? My significant other. Thank God. Thank the Lord Jesus. Yeah, we've been together nine years and we're friends for two years before that. And that's the person that I'm able to just completely be myself around. Good, bad and ugly. All the shades, no mask. and then a few friends but nobody's coming to mind right now no it's hard it's really really hard like yeah yeah yeah and I think also especially if you want to be a good friend and I found the the friendship between um in in your book between Waldo and Franny really I thought you captured that sort of like they're kind of often like exploitative and like performative element of like teenage friendships sometimes where for like Franny it really is about sort of like how it makes her feel about herself not necessarily about being a good friend 100 people won't say this but i do think that many friendships are rooted in both people believing on some level they're better than the other person and that person makes them feel better about themselves because they can kind of look down on them nobody's gonna say it but um but i do feel that way and specifically in this adolescent you know friendship between waldo and franny this is somebody that Waldo really feels she's outgrown.

10:47Yeah. And Franny probably feels that she's outgrown Waldo as well. We're never in Franny's point of view. You know, that's that's neither here nor there. But for Waldo, I think that's such a tricky thing when you're at an age where you're you are starting to, you know, form opinions, you are starting to develop your preferences and your taste and you're becoming more of yourself. And it can be really jarring when becoming becoming more of yourself means losing so much of what you know so many of the friendships you know so many of your closest relationships can fall by the wayside as you become more of yourself it's a it's a it's a jarring reality it is it's very difficult do you still experience that or do you feel like as you've got older you've sort of found a sort of continuum now that feels kind of steady writing is how I have found my group my people all throughout my 20s I'm 33 now but all throughout in my 20s I thought I would cry to my significant other just saying like when am I going to find my people you know when am I going to find them why don't I have them what you know what is it going to take um yeah and then in my in my 30s I that's where I've really found my my friends and they're all everybody's a writer everybody's an author all my all my my closest friends are authors that's so interesting yeah it's it I feel like I belong yeah that's such a wonderful feeling Truly, truly.

12:07Yeah, there's nothing like it. Yeah, it's just even, you know, I can meet an author for the first time and sit down with them. And it's just the way that we, you know, think and the way that the conversation unfolds just feels so much more in line with what I'd been craving for so long and felt like it was impossible to get to. It's, yeah, very, very rewarding. I love the line in Alice's book where she was talking about therapy sessions that felt like English assignments, opportunities to construct perfect stories about myself and wait for praise, which I thought was just I definitely related to.

12:40Are you a therapy person? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like therapy. Yeah. And do you sort of like a regular therapy person or you're sort of like just do you go through episodes? Go through episodes for sure. Yeah. But I definitely think, so a lot of people say like therapy doesn't work. And I think if you think therapy doesn't work, you're probably doing it wrong. You're probably not. There's probably a layer. Because I know that instinct to quit. I've of course had it. I've quit multiple times or I'll go away from it for a while. And usually that's when there's that next layer that needs exposing the most.

13:15It's just a little raw. But it's like, oh, it's not a good fit with my therapist. Okay. Yeah. Excuse. Yeah. No, I think you're right. Although I have also had bad fits where I'm just like, I don't think we're going to get there together kind of vibe. And I feel like you know that pretty early on. You do. You can really tell. Mine's about whether they've got some humor. Okay, for sure. Because I just like can't, I don't want to sit like wringing my hands. Like I know it's bad. I don't like, let's just like crack some jokes and try and solve it. Yes, totally. Yeah. I suppose we all cope in weird, weird ways.

13:45I also thought that you know Alice talks a lot about the boundaries being porous with her mother in particular which I mean how did you did you sort of relate to elements of it in the context of your memoir did it feel like because it was such a specific get in the game with the college branded Venmo debit card wreck your team with every tap and earn up to five percent cash back with Venmo Stash, a new rewards program from Venmo. No monthly fee, no minimum balance. Just school pride and spending power. Get in the game and sign up for the Venmo debit card at venmo.com slash college card. The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank N.A.

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15:02Story. No, I really read it, you know, as its own. Yeah. I mean, I like, I appreciate books for that reason. They can take me out of myself for a while. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. It's nice to kind of be transported somewhere completely different. Yeah. I felt, I mean, I felt like it was her as I'm reading it. It was really incredible, the work that she did. And the section about Gregory, before I realized that Gregory was eventually going to be her husband. Yes. When she's talking about him. Isn't that great? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The best plot twist ever. But that section where she was writing about him, like, hopping between homeless shelters and sleeping outside in New York City.

15:36I felt like I was reading a novel it was gripping so gripping absolutely yeah it's incredible do you like with um with your friends who are also writers or memoirists or people who do you do you have sort of like discussions about how you feel about writing about people who are real or is that something that you ever discuss with other writers no you know I I talk more process um I recently got dinner with Beth Raymer who wrote fireworks every night. Yeah. And that's an incredible novel. But we were talking about process and how many drafts you go through before something's ready to go. And she does one.

16:15And I do many, many, many. And we were talking about the differences in that and realizing how it takes about the same time. It's just a matter of, you know, she's sitting there and, you know, line by line by line. and she's she's she's was describing it that she'll fixate and really kind of fine-tune and refine and start back from the beginning every day as she's developing it further and further and I I could never do that it just wouldn't work for my my style my what I just what I naturally do I'm a you know plotters versus pantsers right I'm very much a pantser and and I have to get it out of my system for that in that way of like the how will I know what I think till I see what I say way I get it out of my system and I take a highlighter and a red pen and I try to literally figure out what it was I was trying to say.

17:01I'll highlight the passages that I think are going to be maybe a big suggestion of something. But the initial drafts are very much, for me, a way of finding what it is. And then the real work begins, you know, draft four on. Yeah, that's interesting. And do you have any early readers that you really trust? I do. I have a few people that I shared half his age with at different times. And something that was really important to me was that I knew what it was before I shared it with people. Because I think that can be it can be really it just will not lead to the best work. I don't think if you share something prematurely.

17:41And if somebody is giving you notes from a place of not seeing the vision for what it wants to be, but for what they want it to be, you know, and they might be noting something completely differently if they could see clearly what it was that you wanted it to be and so I feel I have to know what it is in order to take those notes through my own filter and apply them appropriately to what I know well it's going to be that you know so maybe this one note is great but that would be for if it was going to be this other thing and I'll take the ones that really fit this that I think you know will make it better yeah but I totally relate I write to work out what I think yes and it's like that's that's why are you a journaler yes yeah it's the best not recently it's been I used to be so into journaling but um just in working on around half his age it was such an I was so invested and um so I didn't have as much time but I really want to get back to it I just bought I just visited Pixar and I bought a Pixar journal so I'm I like recently cracked it open I'm only a couple pages in but very excited to fill it up oh that is so fun yeah there's nothing like starting a new one although I have a bad habit I chronicle like my worst days so I read back I never write when I'm feeling good we i think about this all the time i'll literally if i've had a particularly like purge like journal session where you know it's got a lot of difficult emotion in it i'll think well okay i have to like remember to do something when i'm in a good mood in a couple to journal and when i'm in a good mood a couple days because i don't want to look back on this 25 years from now and be like wow things are rough i want an accurate reflection of what oh that's good i should try that because mine's just like highlight reel of my worst days really just kind of entertaining in a way I'll look back and be like oh 2022 was rough uh but it's just because it's all the all the worst stories how long does it take you to fill up a journal it really varies depending on how bad things are no I mean it can I'm very in and out with it like and I also I will I'm not particularly methodical about where I journal like sometimes I'll just journal in my notes app and then delete it like a week later if I need to if I'm like on the go and I'm like just need to get something out interesting yeah so I don't journal in that way but I do sometimes for if i'm early on an idea and i'm trying to see if it's gonna it's one that's gonna stick or not i have two email accounts and i'll just email myself back and forth to try to kind of like nudge myself yeah yeah that's clever it's helpful it's really helpful that's very interesting i love that well next given you've brought it up we should talk about fireworks every night by beth ramer which is like a fun book and has lots of rage similar to um your book as well yeah there's a theme between both everything nothing someone i think and fireworks which is that there are these inherently really you know intense subject matter uh heavy subject matter but they there's a note of humor to both of them um that i think is is so crucial i can't do heavy on heavy no if we're doing heavy subject matter and the tone is heavy it's like this is it's awful it's just melodramatic and it's bogged down and yeah but tell me what did you love about the story of cc hmm i love the the relationship with her dad i i think that was so well painted and well done and how we see that evolve over time but really i do just i resonate with with um with female characters who are dealt the shitty hand this is something that i i think i'll probably always try to write a character who really deserves better than her circumstances and was just kind of born into the wrong wrong place wrong time and fights really against the odds to overcome those circumstances and do whatever she can to claw her way out and in ways that are oftentimes if not always messy and you know not linear and and um challenging yeah I thought the um marriage with Alex and that breaking down was a really like lovely extra layer to how it feels to move beyond something and sometimes you go so far in a completely different direction and then you're like no but that's not me either even though it's the complete opposite of the world I was born in I thought that was really interesting.

21:35100%. It's like the pendulum swing, right? Where it's probably overcompensating on either side. And then ideally you land somewhere in the middle. Exactly. Have you read all of these just very recently? Oh my God. Yeah, I read them in preparation. Yeah. Wow. I really enjoyed it. I mean, it evokes like Florida. So vividly. So vividly. I feel like I'm, yeah, getting the hot sticky. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so like special in that way. And I think the, I loved this, the one, one of the lines that she wrote about Lorraine, where it was like, Lorraine didn't just turn out like that, something happened to her, which I think is such a, like, powerful way to talk about this sort of sexual assault and everything like that, and how this sort of, people end up in these complicated positions.

22:17Yeah, I think about that so often, how something happened to everyone. It's just this complete, yeah, chain reaction effect. Wow, okay, you're gonna be a lot fresher on all these than me. And I'm like, you said Alex, I'm like, Alex, who's Alex? fucks Alex I mean by the end she's kind of like who the fuck is Alex but um but no I was just nodding and waiting for you to finish a sentence like okay context clues okay great no no no I know I'm sorry it's um no it's it's interesting and one um I thought that the the character of Cece's mom where she links up with her later in life and there's this one bit where they're gonna say links up with you know i'm gonna say that was wild yeah wild completely wild but i loved the bit where she talks about seeing her mom's facebook page and she's like this woman has made an absolute disaster of her whole life none of her sisters speak to her she's not in contact with either of her daughters but on her facebook page she says she's showing not an iota of pain shame or self-consciousness she looked beautiful and proud i thought it was sort of an interesting mediation on like the way that you know if we're being empathetic that like women's sort of power comes for like in in the case of her mom she does these despicable things but in some ways you also get a sense that she sort of only feels like her only leverage is to be an object of lust for someone and that's sort of like manifest in the nature of waldo's mom as well a hundred percent Yeah, I think it's very easy to confuse sexuality with power.

23:45Yeah. You know, how could you not with the messaging that we have all around us all the time? Yeah, I think it's a very easy thing to do. I'm glad you point out Waldo's mom. I think she can be, I'll talk about Pavadakis just for a moment. But, you know, I'm in Waldo's point of view the entire book. And so I empathize with her so much. And I'm seeing the characters through her point of view. But it was important for me to step back and also empathize with the characters for themselves and try to get into that mindset and remember, okay, nobody thinks they're a bad guy, right? Every character, you know, because every character believes their choices, believes that the choices they're making every day are the right ones.

24:25Everybody's trying their best and failing miserably, kind of operating off of that principle. So, you know, if I was feeling myself getting into a place of judgment, I would take a step back and try to experience, okay, what does it feel like to be Waldo's mom? She was 16 when she had Waldo and, you know, really just vying for the affection of men who are completely incapable of giving it to her. Exactly. And just will continue to sort of pursue and chase relentlessly at the expense of her own sanity and dignity. Totally. And doesn't have a way to think of her self-worth without that. Isn't it tragic?

25:03It's really tragic. do you think of do you how how separated if i can ask how separated from your um sexuality is your self-worth i mean i'm single and i don't really date so pretty separate great we're done here bye well no as in but i think it's because i had really bad experiences and i was like not putting that cat amongst the pigeons again for a while good on you but i think also i'm one of three girls and i don't know i guess we were raised to to not think of that being a particularly a big part of our self-worth that's incredible yeah amazing to be raised that way yeah wow which is interesting really and I don't really know where that came from whether it's more my mom or dad but yeah it is interesting um what a gift I know truly I thought it was kind of interesting you know the the like sort of long shadow of all these incidents and badly bad treatment and it made me think do you think like Waldo will be in therapy when she's in her 30s about the relationship with her teacher?

26:01I'm so glad you asked this because this is, nobody's gone there. And it's partially why it was so important to me to keep the book contained to Waldo's point of view at her age and not jump into, you know, 20 years down the line when she's inevitably going to have a different perspective about it than she has now. But because I don't think as much as this is something so significant, you know, and we're seeing it kind of unfold in real time, I don't think this is going to be a tragedy that defines her. I think she's going to, you know, really, you know, I don't want to spoil the book, but in speaking to, you know, Waldo in the future, I think this is something that she will laugh about, that she will be able to look back on and laugh about, which is not making it more flippant or undermining it in any way, but it really, to me, reflects triumph on her part.

26:50And that feels important, I think. Yeah, that just feels important it's important it's novel and it's new and like that's very much a different way of thinking about you know stuff that happens we were used to kind of thinking of these things as like cause and effect and i we all i mean in fewer in therapy you often spend a lot of time looking back and yes attributing causation to different things that happen later and it's kind of radical to be able to hold it in that way yeah useful i think and then you know one thing that struck me about all of these books um and and half his age as well is there's a lot of affairs oh right are there i'm trying to think okay let's see that i didn't think you were going there okay so well as in just because obviously you know corgi's having an affair and yeah like half his age and then um in flesh it starts with an affair obviously yes with the wife and then which is where i thought the book was going by the way it goes in so many different down so many different lanes than I expected.

27:51Totally. I can't wait to talk about that one with you. And like little children, obviously the main affair. Of course. And then in everything. Well, I've got a type. Yeah, I know. I just thought that was interesting. Is there something about that dynamic that feels particularly compelling to you, do you think? Wow. I mean, I really, I really hadn't even recognized that, but maybe just that I think, you know, affairs are an area that's so easy to get kind of finger waggy about and that every, you know, as soon as the word affair is uttered, people are like ah how dare you know it just becomes really kind of self-righteous yeah binary and it's often not binary yeah and i think you know oftentimes each of your point about cause and effect i think there are reasons that that things happen and um and i love a book that goes into the the deeper nooks and crannies yeah if you will yeah no i think that's it it's it's really interesting and and in many of these scenarios it does feel inevitable agreed agreed it sort of feels like these relationships were built on pretty shaky foundations and why are we surprised while they're like rocking off balance yeah also and I think on a completely opposite end of the spectrum it's just entertaining I think the suspense that's built in you know it is entertaining I agree that was one question I have for you as well is why did you choose to set um half his age in Alaska I've spent so much time in Alaska and I kind of have a love-hate relationship with it you know I think aspects of it are so beautiful and I really enjoy my time there.

29:17But I mean, it is ugly. Like some areas of it are dank. They are, it's like desolate. There's signs hanging off of gas stations. The streets are so wide. The mall, literally the Fifth Avenue Mall, which is in half his age, is all but closed. You know, all the stores are just, the gates pulled down, the signs, the clearance signs hanging still on the windows. And there's something about that that I thought really underlined where Waldo's at emotionally and sort of made it feel more like she doesn't have options. She doesn't have these choices. It limits her world in a way that I think, yes, served her emotional arc.

29:55Yeah, I completely agree. How can we spend so much time in Alaska? My significant other's from there. Oh, fascinating. I've never been. I would like to go. It sort of feels like you don't need to. You don't need to really. Go somewhere else. Go somewhere. If you want snow, like Park City, you know. Interesting. But I love that because I think like, when you take a book like the talented Mr. Ripley the place is so important like when you're reading those magical Italian like and I thought you invoked place really beautifully as well thank you really well and really in an ugly way but like you say in a way that was actually really instructive to the development of the character and explain it it sort of helped explain the psychological state in a way that it does with yeah put well thank you for saying that but put Waldo in LA and I think it's a different novel exactly you know completely different novel yeah she's like driving through burbank she's picking up in and out yeah okay nobody's struggling if they're picking up in and out yeah so true um well next i thought we could talk about flesh by david salo which is um i also read over the holidays but um tell me what you love about this book my favorite type of writing is when there are clean simple sentences i'm not a huge fan of big words writing if i feel like i'm being written at or like somebody's trying to show i had this thing when somebody i feel like they're trying to really show off with how they write my instinct is to like touch them on the shoulder and say you're enough well but that's what kind of in alice's book right she talks about when she's growing up and she's using all these long words and sentences and she's like i was just performing yes i agree it can it's so felt it's so felt and flesh is kind of the best of both worlds where it's you know clearly so literary and just won the booker prize and is um so hailed understandably so but also it's so accessible and anyone can pick up that book and appreciate it and the storytelling is incredible um yeah I respect his writing style and his storytelling so much yeah and he writes about sex in a really interesting way as well and I mean I love plain yeah it's very plain tell me about writing your sex scenes in half his age well you know I also tried to to write the sex the sex scenes in a really plain way I think sex can look a lot of different ways I think it can be really disgusting it can be um really sexy it can be really depressing.

32:04Yes. And I wanted to show all the shades, you know, throughout the course of the book. What I didn't want to do are the two ways that I feel like I see it done a lot, which are that it's very romanticized and completely unrealistic. Yeah. Or that it's like performatively clumsy or people are like knocking into lampshades. Nobody's actually knocking into a lampshade in real life. It's like this quirky kind of vibe. Yeah. Nobody wants quirk in a bedroom there are other places for cork yeah not the bedroom but you do get the your scenes really get across the different emotional registers that can come with the physical sensation and the completely different mental state you can be in i hope so i hope they're visceral i hope i hope you know elements of them are uncomfortable uh even the even the elements that are sexy i hope are also uncomfortable um but i really i really wanted to write sex in an honest way and actually did get some some some uh pushback from my editor where I felt him sort of you know I don't know this was the case but my read on it was that he had maybe wanted the sex scenes to be a little bit more of that flowery kind of poetic style and that is just not I wouldn't know how to do that it's uh you know that would be for somebody else to write but um I wrote sex the way that I think of sex yeah are there any authors that you look to for inspiration on how to write sex scenes or just right from your gut yeah it's really just i think it's just come from an intuitive place and of course this is through waldo's point of view so this is very much how she views sex and she's you know she's 17 she turns 18 over the course of the book and she's not a bells and whistles kind of girl she's not a flowery kind of girl um and also i think when when we when i just talk about sex with my friends nobody's you know everybody's talking about it in a blunt exactly plain way like flowery euphemisms yeah it's just like manhood yeah he pressed his manhood into me disgusting yeah get that manhood away yeah literally get it away oh my god the heat the heat radiates the heat's always radiating heat is always radiating oh my god it's an oven in there waiting for the touch or like yes the quiver yes he trembled they're always trembling yeah there's a couple of these you know totally but there's in flesh it's similarly blunt and direct and sort of like yeah I guess not mechanical in a bad way but just like honest yes yes almost clinical yeah I appreciate that I thought like Ishvan was such an interesting character for a lead for as a they're like protagonist because he's so passive it feels like life happens to him yes I love that I had never read a character with that kind of point of view or lack of point of view ever ever so interesting and yet we're on board with him the entire time exactly it's so amazing to be able to write a character that way and not not have the reader feel above them like completely empathizing every every single move yeah i the only part that i didn't love is towards the end when um his son jacob and wife die because i just felt like i was really what a shock was that i know did not see that coming i didn't see it coming and i think i felt like i was really immersed in a real world and then when that happened at the sort of like 75 mark i was like oh, I'm in a novel.

35:10Oh, oh, oh. Which, I don't know, it's probably unfair, but how did you feel when you got to that part where you're just like, I mean, I was tearing through that book. Like, I never once slowed down. I loved, I thought, yeah, every move was surprising. I couldn't predict where it was going next. He had almost read, like, sort of short stories. Exactly, like vignettes. Yes, yeah, different phases of his life, but then woven together so beautifully. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I can't imagine what his like structural, what his process was for structuring it. I know. Experience a membership that backs what you're building with American Express Business Platinum.

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36:31Try Welch's Fruit Snacks today. I thought really sort of these... We have the same agent. I can ask my agent. yeah yeah oh I love that that's interesting do you like talk to when you've got the same agent does that like help writers bond okay my agent is the literally the coolest agent I can imagine um he is an artist himself which seems like okay should they really be an agent yes somehow this man was just blessed to be gifted in both both artistically and as an agent I don't know how he does it but he's written an incredible memoir called portrait of an addict as a young man which is it's it's riveting I highly recommend it you feel like you are an addict the entire time I also like it when you can feel that agents have a particular taste or like a unifying thing an agent has taste period yeah well that that too oh my god what a blessing I feel like about him and my my agents in Hollywood where I don't know how I lucked out with a team that is cool kind genuine and has taste oh like that is special what a rarity how long have you been with them for bill's fairly new um bill's fairly new i literally screamed the day that i signed with him he represents all of my favorites um yeah and uh and my other agents i've been with for a couple years now at this point yeah several years your memoir was obviously such a bestseller and an incredible book i couldn't put we actually had sharon haugen on uh one night stand i love sharon and your memoir was one of her books that she selected um and she talked a little bit um about adapting and she's so sweet how's that going working on the adaptation i can't say too much it's still so early um yeah i can't say too too much but i do have a i can say a really clear vision for it i know exactly what it is and it's really just a matter i think of making sure everybody on the team really understands that that vision because it's very specific totally and jennifer anister yes yeah amazing have you worked with how much yet so far is it sort of i can't say too much i wish i could say more i can't say too much yeah yeah um well i'm dying to hear more about it and we were talking i mean you know i think i mean i don't answer this if you can but i'm just gonna ask it anyway but um are you gonna cast like a child or was that too too i can't answer i can't answer half his age i can answer anything okay okay when sharon was talking about she spoke about watching you on iCarly with been her kids were younger and how that was how she like sort of fell in love with how like dry and deadpan you are so it was very very sweet um i i noticed that like flesh when i was researching it people have a lot of feelings about it on tiktok and social media and like people got a lot of things about everything on tiktok and social media too many feelings i know on these platforms but i think often when a book uh receives praise like the booker people who didn't respond to it have a sort of like wait what but do you how do you feel about feedback or reviews is that something you care about no i've never cared about a couple of things which is like reviews or numbers i never you know i try to really stay away as much as possible but um but people will send me nice things and that's that's great um you know i'll get little my friends like oh my god like new york times just wrote something and all my friends were freaking out about it yeah that's great so that that's always you know it's great it definitely it definitely um yeah it adds a little nice touch to my day when I see something like that but generally I try I try my best to define success by me liking the thing that I've done when I like it I know okay yeah that's that's all I can control when you were writing half his age did you have a specific reader in mind myself really me yeah truly good for you I really I genuinely write for myself um i think if if i were to try to write something that pleased the like i just that's not i i wouldn't know how to write from that place it's it's such a such a personal act and i and i do think that's the way to connect with people truly i think if you're if you're trying to you know cater it to what they'll like that's a that's a sure way to miss the mark yeah you kind of just have to show up completely as yourself because that is where the superpower is agreed yeah agreed do you see what's the point of doing it otherwise i don't right i i yeah i wouldn't i wouldn't understand this is why i want your children's book i feel like it would be great i thought you said this is when i want your children okay but i feel like your perspective in a children's book would be so good thank you yeah thank you because i think it's it is so singular and distinct and different and like unafraid in a way that like that's so nice yeah i think it would be brilliant and then you know do you see yourself adapting half his age yes i've I'm already done with the screenplay.

41:11I literally went straight from finishing the novel this year in the middle of this year, like last, yeah, around October of this year is when I think I finished. And then I went straight into the adaptation and I've got a solid draft of it that I love. Of course, it'll be, you know, much more work down the line, but I'm attached to direct it, which I'm very excited about. That is exciting. Yeah, I'm thrilled. Any dream castings? Ooh, dream castings. I don't know. I've actually already met with a few actresses who are incredible and I'd be, you know, so lucky to work with any of them but um yeah so I can't no no I get it yeah I guess this is the one area of half his age that I can't speak to yeah but um that would be so exciting though and do you think you would film it in Alaska yeah I would love to I would love to and I think it's so important you know I've I've been speaking with um yeah just several of my my author friends who want to adapt their own work and I think it's so key I'm so grateful that I've gotten to do this for half his age where um you're the person who birthed the thing it only makes sense that you're the person who carries it to its next phase if you want to do that if you just want to say okay whatever I don't want to be involved that's yeah whatever but I do think it's the project's going to really benefit from the author still authoring it totally I'm dying to see an adaptation of flesh oh me too me too because I think the setting and like I love the relationship between him and his mom yeah yeah the way that she's sort of like i love that when she finally comes over to meet the family in london and she's like thomas that's um his wife helen's son from her first marriage the one that he lost me at thomas again alex thomas don't know who any of these people are they're like stepson that ends up hating okay great she's like he does not like you and he's like she's like you need to think about that and i was just like that is like oh i don't know i thought it was very sweet yeah the relationship with the wife is so good too you'll know her name helen okay write them down here because I always like good on you I get memory blankness sometimes when I'm doing these where like I've read the book two days ago and then I just completely cannot remember or do you ever feel like that's like boy speak like I feel like boys remember quotes from movies and that's like their love language it's like get two men together in the same room talking about pulp fiction and they they're there for all the whole day right but with women I don't know I'm not like I don't remember quotes from movies I remember sort of how it made me feel what it made me think about I get that I was actually listening to when Felicity Jones came on she picked some Virginia Woolf and I love Virginia Woolf and I read it a lot when I was at university and but I used to wrestle with it when I was like 19 because I was like oh I need to I need to follow the exact plot and then I was listening to this like top professor on Virginia Woolf she's like no idea what's happening and I was like oh my god you mean I spent the whole time worrying about the details when sometimes you just gotta let it flow yeah absolutely absolutely I'm not a very let it flow person but there we go are you not unfortunately no i'm too rigid and uptight for that but what can you do we try we try we keep it moving but um but no i love flesh and i think it's a it's a brilliant and i love that you have the same agent that makes a lot of sense to me oh my god yeah well let's talk about the talented mr ripley okay i'm honestly still thinking about you saying that you don't typically like let it go go with the flow i'm wondering if there's an area where you do is there like any any spot of your life where it's I'm working on it okay yeah no it's no it's but it's it's it's hard I think like I have that I have actually have a um you know that Taylor Swift lyric I've never been a natural all I do is try try try it's in one of her songs I don't but that's great exactly and I have that on my wall and like this little cross stitch thing because I relate to that immensely just like paddling under the water all the time oh yeah anyway talking of another paddler uh Mr.

44:40Tom Ripley ah tell me about your love of this book I love Patricia um Highsmith specifically Talented Mr. Ripley and The Price of Salt oh I haven't read The Price of Salt I need to adapt into Carol have you seen Carol yeah both great movies too amazing I mean talk about yeah that's two for two there but um it's just a book that's really entertaining I love getting in the mindset of somebody who's so naive but also so creepy and unsettling um you know some people talk about it's really like empathizing with him I don't necessarily feel that when I'm reading it okay you feel the same way literally I have got here I was reading a New York Times for the anniversary talked about empathy for Tom I wasn't did you ah literally okay yeah same page same page right but I but I um I appreciate that because it's a very fly on the wall there's this fly on the wall element to it or I feel like I'm just like peeping on something that's so wrong so inappropriate so like who what a weirdo yeah um but i but i do find you know it's just a riveting story ultimately completely agree yeah and i love that you know the easy trope for someone who's kind of like as vicious as tom can be at points would be to make it really like like he's this dark premeditated and actually he's kind of whimsical he's like oh yeah i might just i'm just gonna have to murder him yeah yeah like just whoops i killed him yeah literally yes so but it makes it so much lighter and more entertaining it's like what am I gonna do with the body I can't really drag it past that thing they'll see it's like yeah Tom they're gonna see they're gonna see the dead fucking body I know it's so fun though um did have you watched you're a fan of the like Gwyneth Paltrow Jude Law adaptation yes but I didn't see the other which I know so it's a series yeah but but the book is a series which I didn't I I honestly hadn't realized until then I saw the series and was like wait what's the deal how come it's a series when it was a movie whatever um but was that good did you enjoy that i haven't i watched the series a bit but i prefer the original sort of movie it's so good the character of marge changed so much in the best way i think you know i think gwyneth paltrow nailed it she really did because it is quite different because in the like book she's quite midwestern almost yes i would have loved to see that version as well i would really like to to see that but i do think it made so much sense for dicky to be with somebody who sort of feels like is equal in a lot of ways while still kind of you know saying degrading things yeah not respecting her totally yeah do you ever see yourself writing like anything and because obviously this is i mean actually in mcnally jackson when i went to pick it up it was in the mystery section do you ever see yourself writing a piece of more like genre-ish fiction i don't know i don't know i'd i'd uh i could you know maybe a maybe a mystery there's like i'm working on something now and there are genre elements there are genre elements that's fun yeah i think it's i i can imagine it being quite fun when you've done like to to experiment with different forms because actually i've been reading this like craft book and it is quite interesting when you start to break down the constituent elements and see how the machine comes together in a way did you read any craft books when you're writing half his age no you're just kind of from that's amazing because the construction is so light thank you yeah thank Thank you.

47:48Yeah. All through drafting very much. I mean, we went through so many different iterations and specifically the first 50 pages changed so much. Those were by far the most difficult or I just kept moving. I write in little vignettes and I kept moving the vignettes around. And of course, on a line level, I always joke that every line changed except for one, which was the last of the stragglers filed out, just like the most innocuous, plain line. Everything else changed completely. But those first 50 pages were really difficult to track because it's actually you know half his age is a simple story and so it seems like maybe um it would be sort of simple to structure but it had to be so meticulously structured because with a simple story that means the emotional arcs have to be pitch perfect and have to track so well so in such a believable and grounded way yeah so there was so much moving and shifting and and changing and reshaping in order to get each each emotional beat to lay appropriately and to track with all the subsequent ones I was so scared when Mulder went into his house when he wasn't there oh my god oh I was like it felt good I'm glad I'm glad yeah and it was kind of interesting to sort of like lean into that area for a moment yeah I think yeah yeah speaking to have a safe there were I think moments of just little moments of thriller yeah in it you know yeah and I wanted to have just like just just a teaspoon of thriller no there was I mean like that bit and And yeah, I thought it was so interesting.

49:13One other thing that I was struck by is that obviously when we first see Waldo and Corgi kind of getting to know each other, they are in the school. And then once the affair begins, we don't, I think, see them in the school together again. We sort of then see their relationship more outside. Tell me about that decision and why you didn't want to like take it back into the school once they were sort of together. Yeah, I felt the school keeping it so hyper contained to the school could be limiting. And I wanted to see their relationship breathe and also see how it breathing impacts the two of them and how it informs decisions they make and how they interact with one another.

49:47I also think, you know, we're so used to seeing people in certain contexts. And I wanted to see how the relationship would react to being in other contexts. Totally. I also think it made the sort of moral strokes of it feel even more blurred. because if you were seeing them constantly at school, you'd be reminded that this was like such an abuse of power on his part. But when you see them like having a nice day at the, like by the beach or whatever, or like going out for one of their meals, it's sort of, it, it makes everything in the way that like Patricia Highsmith does with like, I didn't have empathy for Tom, but you sort of like, you, you sort of, everything does become a bit more blurred.

50:25Yes. I want it. I want it. I'm so glad you bring this up because I really wanted the lines to be blurred in that way and stretch it as far as I could, knowing that we all know the cold hard facts of this situation. How far can we follow this relationship down different avenues? Is there a point where we forget the cold hard facts? What is that point? Exactly. And I could feel that. And that was one of the questions that I wanted to ask you is that I feel like the book does such a, you know, there are these sort of like unfulfilled women's and they with the different mother figures and the wounds that they inflict and then also the man.

50:57But first of all, look, unfulfilled women, that is that's the genre that's the genre i care if a woman's staring out of a window in a film south if jessica chastain is looking out a window sadly i am in if gwyneth if cate blanchett fiddling an earring done literally but it is it's like the wounds that these women inflict often for reasons that aren't necessarily their fault but it really makes the line between victim and villain i think that you're a master at that feels so blurry thank you yeah i do try to avoid sort of well i definitely try to avoid moralistic writing anything finger waggy I don't think that has any chance of resonating um and and sort of being stuck in those victim villain narratives I do try to write each character is believing that they're making the right choice you know we we may know otherwise but but I think it's important to write the characters believing what they're doing yeah the first page of um half his age obviously has a very like graphic sex scene talk to me was it when you said you were rearranging the vignettes was that always the first one there were a few it was initially the first one and then I moved it around a few times and it just became clear that it had to be it had to be the opening I really fixate on sort of opening opening lines um in books and opening images in film I think they're they're they say when done right yeah they say so much about the themes and um what's to come and they really lay the groundwork um and so I wanted to do that I wanted to start on waldo being in the most vulnerable position she can be in and then also reflecting or showing the difference between physical intimacy and genuine intimacy because he or she is being you know physically intimate with a guy and yet there's an entirely different thread that she's pulling on mentally it's a it's completely different couldn't be more separate and i think that's something so common for us women i think you know we're we'll be doing one thing physically and our minds will be completely elsewhere literally and then so your final book is a little children by tom parada tell me about your love of that book well first i'll tell you about my love of tom parada he is um a genius and somebody who's inspired me so much over the years i've read um i think his entire body of work much of it multiple times he is just so striking his character work is um i think pretty unprecedented um and i know there's a lot of conversation around like who should be allowed to write what kinds of characters and um all i know is that i have never felt more seen as a woman than i have reading something that tom's written and i feel that way about sarah um one of the the main characters in little children um she's just this this ordinary woman you know with a little kid and she's spending days by the pool and and doing doing all the things that like an ordinary mother should be doing but she's got an entirely different line of thinking and being with her and sitting in her interiority is unbelievably relatable.