Nick Robinson

0:01Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light, and slowly the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress, a hoodie slips beneath a blazer, an old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season, you create it layer by layer until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

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1:03If I wasn't an actor, I would try to be a cowboy. Nick Robinson, welcome to One Night Stand. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Have you always been a big reader? I go through phases. I love to read. I love to read as a kid. And then I think like a lot of people, as I've gotten older and my attention span has gotten shorter and the demands in my life have gotten bigger, I read less than I want to. But I love a good book. What kind of stuff did you read as a kid? I read a lot of fantasy. I read, let's see, I read the Game of Thrones books. Oh, interesting. Yeah, I was really into those Lord of the Rings.

1:38Growing up, my dad read me The Hobbit, and so I got into Tolkien. I loved the, like, choose-your-own-adventure books. What was it? There was, like, Peter Pan and the Starcatchers or something. There were some Peter Pan books, yeah. um the great brain i remember was one ah but yeah i would just read i loved fiction i loved being in other worlds i love being transported to other places it's the best there's nothing like it and it's so relaxing oh harry potter obviously oh yeah you're a harry potter person yeah who was which which house do you think you would have been in

2:18i want to say gryffindor but i might be more like hufflepuff fair play i did the quiz once and i got slytherin oh i know i actually have to go yeah terrifying okay well let's talk about some of your books that you've bought um i thought we could start with um pastor ralier yeah the george saunders book tell me what you love about these stories i just love george saunders period he has such a unique voice where i'm reading it and i'm laughing and i'm understanding and i'm like how did you develop this like it's just genius um I also love short stories. I find them really satisfying. And I just, every time I read a George Saunders book, I'm just laughing and I'm kind of in awe at how he did it.

3:02I'm like, how did you think of this? How did you create this prose? I just love it. It's their like absurdity as well. Like I was listening to this when I was in the gym on Monday night and there was this bit where they were talking about, you should only make friends with people who are the same size wig or bigger wig than you. it's just like fuck that's so good it's so good it's so funny it's so absurd and it does capture something about i i mean maybe not just america but it feels american in a lot of ways yeah um of just like the absurdity of capitalism and and kind of modern life um and how everyone is just like grasping around in the dark to try and figure it out and then he like hits you over the head though with the like poorly son now like with you know sort of the absurdity of them performing in this sort of like medieval reenactment type encampment and then he's like getting faxes about his sixth son it's so dark it's so dark or there's one i think it's in pastoralia where there's two people as a couple and they're reenacting neanderthals um and it's amazing yeah it's so good um when did you first read george sanders do you remember or did you get into it?

4:14I think a friend of mine gave me Pastoralia I think in like 2016 maybe 2015 and then that was the first book of his that I read and then I've since read a few more and yeah. Have you done Lincoln in the Bardo? I haven't. I've tried that I couldn't I just couldn't lock in on it. Yeah I found the short stories easier. I love the short stories. Yeah I love yeah I most of these books actually are short stories yeah um which i was very grateful for yes you're welcome yeah um but yeah i thought it was so interesting because it kind of is about how like capitalism dehumanizes us all like the kind of title story and it kind of you know made me wonder have you ever found yourself doing something like insane for money and then just being like wait no no no i'm not gonna do that um every day every day no you're like right now all the time no i'm not Yeah, often.

5:09And I think, you know, for me and for it's a lot of people in this industry, there's the tension between art and commerce. And those two things don't always go together. Yeah. And so you're trying to kind of strike the balance and enjoy your life, live your life, also have integrity or not, whatever. There's no rules. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. So, yeah, it can feel a little icky at times. do you are you strategic about which projects you say yes to from the point of view of like you know some people talk about how one for them one for me kind of thing or are you that way or um you know I think I tried to be at some points in my career but now I'm kind of at a point where I just feel like planning what's the phrase like you make plans and God laughs or something and you kind of just have to be present and like roll with the punches and not try to be I don't know I mean yes be strategic but also just enjoy like I don't know we're all if we got 10 years left or something I know right until the robots yeah exactly so just just enjoy um yeah I agree and that's kind of one of the takes of your character Charlie in Charlie Harper as well that's right yeah be content be content I was I felt like personally when he said to um Harper embed that line about like people who are always like striving for things are always going to strive or whatever it was I was like oh you're like oh shit I got yeah called out exactly but no it's it is such an interesting like take of how a relationship can work between two people when one has that view and one is more like focused but you can go through different phases in life where you feel very focused by ambition and then period's not yeah I think I think there are it's healthy to have both.

6:54And I think, you know, for Charlie Harper, like later in the film, you see Charlie is a little older and he's like, I think we just grew at different paces. I think we grew up at different paces, which I think is such a common thing. Yeah. Especially early relationships. Oh my gosh, I know. Yeah. After the movie, I felt like I was back in teenage, the like high school scenes and everything. I was like, it was very visceral, but it's so good. do you think they end up together again after the end of the movie? This is a hot question and I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. You don't know, yeah.

7:28But I do think there are two kinds of people in this world. There's the people that say that they end up together and the people that say that they don't. Which one are you? I think they probably do. You think they probably do? Yeah. Okay. What do you think? I don't know. You don't know? But what's the difference between the two types of people? I guess one's an optimist and one's a realist. No, one's a pessimist. I don't know. Do you think, though, I don't think it's necessarily more optimistic to think they do end up together. Yeah. I think it's more just that, like, slim pickings up. Well, it's just hard to find someone you connect with that deeply.

7:59It's true. Yeah, it is hard. But I also feel like, I don't know. I think that there is a future for Charlie and Harper. I don't know if it's romantic or not, but it's a future there. Yeah, I agree. But if I were her, I also would have been like, he took you that as in not took you that long but like we had to go through all of that for you to like get everything together but I guess that's life yeah boys are dumb no that's true takes a while yeah yeah um one of the things that I loved in the pastoralia story is the hilarious like peer reviewing system yeah and like all the like corporate have you ever had like a corporate job like ever no nothing no never been on slack no never don't know anything about corporate America.

8:39Lucky you. Yeah I don't yeah never answered an email in my life I have no idea. Yeah I mean it is I suppose that it's quite a funny thing to have never done anything like that but you're not really missing much. I yeah the older I get the more that I feel very fortunate to never have had another job. I used to feel I guess insecure about it or like unsure about about not being able to compare my experience with other people in a way that felt like relatable or something or not missing out on something. But now I feel like I actually don't think I missed out on much. No, no, you see how miserable the rest of us are.

9:16And you're like... Like, oh, yeah. Email, what? What's an email? Great. Well, next I thought we could talk about Jesus's Son by Dennis Johnson, which is incredible. I loved it. But tell me what you love about this book. I love his prose as well. it's so it's like stream of consciousness it's like very raw and real and it's kind of just talking about a side of America that most people don't normally see or talk about in a really beautiful way yeah and I just think that it's uh uh he's got I don't know I I just love his take I mean actually as I was going through this pick I didn't really mean to but I do feel like this is a good these these picks are like a good um american studies like crash course where it's actually it's a very american book again i think um and he's kind of like a he's kind of like a he kind of reminds me of like a um like a beat generation sort of writer like uh um you know like junkie or something, but done in a more accessible kind of beautiful way.

10:31Yeah. And I just really love it. Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light. And slowly the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress. A hoodie slips beneath a blazer. An old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season. You create it layer by layer until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

11:25Okay, what if there's a blizzard and everyone has to sleep over? Ready to go with extra bedding and towels. From guest-ready essentials to holiday decor you can trust. Wayfair delivers. Yeah, and it's so, it's obviously so much happens, but it happens in like such a casual, the amount of random deaths where it's just like suddenly someone's breath is no longer missing up the mirror and no one notices or like these incredible details of the amount of like pain and how casual it is because of what they're all going through with addiction is it really like stopped me in my tracks yeah yeah it's a great book about addiction and um mental illness um but also like the beauty of mental illness and addiction like there is like there is like he finds beauty in these really dark situations yeah um and yeah it's uh it it's it just really like struck a chord when I wrote it when I wrote it I didn't write this um when I read it uh it just like it just rang true to me it was like oh this is like very honest work yeah when did you first read it I think I first read it in 2020 okay yeah I wondered I wondered if you'd read it in preparation for being Charlie or anything like that no I actually read it in preparation for made kind of yeah yeah amazing no I thought it was so moving and I thought a great choice for Charlie Harper as well because of how well it captures the sort of quagmire of addiction and how like life continues on this interminable loop of just suffering and pain and like the but like you say there's these like flashes of humanity in it as well yeah yeah and it's just like this sort of forgotten side of America this underbelly that doesn't really get represented as much there's a photo book called Tulsa and it kind of reminds me of that where it tells this it's just is documenting um people and stories that don't normally get documented yeah that's amazing I one of the lines that I wrote down that I thought was so interesting is he he writes at one point when he's stealing from this till or something he goes I was always thinking I'd find an honest way to make a few dollars always believing I was an honest person who shouldn't be doing things like that while still doing them have you ever lived with a kind of tension between who you not obviously not to that degree by any stretch but like want to be and who like actually are totally yeah I think that's just the human experience right and it's like uh you know the road to hell is paved with good intentions like people can be um you know you do things and you know that they're not right and you you kind of fantasize about being a better person but um you know I don't actually speak louder than words so it's just yeah it can be kind of like a and once you make one decision it can lead to another lead to another lead to another and then eventually you just don't recognize yourself anymore yeah it seems that looking at like when going back to sort of being charlie and then through to sort of maid and charlie harper it feels like you've played a lot of people who are dealing with addiction is that something that's sort of just interesting that you draw into characters that maybe have that kind of inner turmoil going on yeah maybe i think um yeah i don't know actually it hasn't really been like a conscious choice I guess but I think addiction is a really powerful disease and there's a lot of different forms of it you could be you know addicted to not just substance but feelings to relationships to other people yeah and it is definitely fertile ground for conflict and storytelling so I also thought this was a great sort of as a British person who hasn't traveled to that part of America I felt like you say it was a kind of almost like an American crash course have you ever done like a big cross America road trip or hitchhiked anywhere or anything like that I've never hitchhiked but and I've never done a cross-country road trip I've done the west coast many many times driven up and down the west coast but I've never gone east to west or vice versa But I love road tripping.

15:36I love being, America's a beautiful country, and it's amazing to see it from the road. And it's just kind of, it's like shocking how big it is. Totally. It's just always like, I'm always like, wait, it's 18 hours to get? But yeah, I love, you know, it's something I want to do more of. I think I'm going to get like a, I have a truck. I'm going to get like a truck bed tent. that's the next thing so I just go do road trips where you're gonna go to any plans yet are you gonna wait and see I really want to spend some time in on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington also I've never seen the Grand Canyon so kind of do that I've never done that either that'd be cool yeah that's amazing and I think being able to be out there is in like you say it's so big and you I can kind of lose sight.

16:33You filmed Charlie Harper in New Orleans. How was that experience? Amazing. New Orleans is an incredible town. It really is. It's so fun. It doesn't feel like you're in the US. It's a very unique place for... And it just... The whole city is... It has an atmosphere that is just intoxicating. It's great. How long were you there for? It was relatively short. I think we were there for four or five weeks. Oh gosh, that was quick. Pretty quick. Yeah. But we were there... I think it was, I'm trying to remember now. I think it was like, yeah, Halloween-ish. So it's like a great time to be there. How fun.

17:09Did you have some big nights out with everyone? Yeah, one or two. Yeah. One or two. Very disciplined. Yes. I love that. Well, next I thought we could talk about Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver, which is one of the other books you put. Tell me what you love about this book. I, again, Raymond Carver, short, I think one of the best short story writers of all time. He just uses really sparse, exacting prose. that has a lot of subtext and you are kind of reading between the lines. And I feel like his whole thing is kind of about the lies that Americans tell themselves to just like get through the day.

17:46Like how like the lies we're telling ourselves constantly to just get along in America. And he writes a lot about young couples. and there's just some really, I think, really powerful stories in there. The lies we tell each other, the lies we tell ourselves, the secrets we keep,

18:10and, you know, when those secrets come out, what that does to a relationship. I think there's also so much of these, so many of the characters in his stories feel kind of stuck. Yes. They feel like in this sort of interminable, not in a loop in a similar way, but also I don't know and I think he writes friendship really well yeah like weird parts of that as well yeah yeah of like you know a bridge club or something of like the kind of community that you form by um proximity not necessarily by like shared you know totally like interests I guess does the film sets ever feel like that yeah totally I mean it's a bunch of people bunch of strangers getting together trying to tell a story and everyone is you know working towards the same goal but um they are kind of artificial environments that you have to then um get along in and it seems so intense like like everyone's working these really long days for such a period of time and then you kind of all disperse off back to your regular lives yeah no i think it's um yeah it is strange uh it's beautiful but it can also be kind of confusing where you're like was that real was that not like did what we had what we had was that um just a function of the story that we were telling or was that us I mean there's like sometimes some confusing questions that can come up but yeah it's also amazing it's like a traveling circus it's just like all these people get together to try to do this crazy thing and then you might see them again you might not is there anything that you do to sort of feel back to yourself after being on set um i yeah i mean i just i go home uh either to la or to seattle i see friends i get out in nature and with um carver do you remember when you first started reading his work uh i would say like 2013 2014 young yeah yeah yeah it really struck me uh at the time it just was like I really love this just I don't know he's again a very American writer to me there's like something he's like in a the uh there was something that I really loved about all of the things that went unsaid in his dialogue and in the worlds that he created totally it is really sort of moving I also one of the stories that I read was Cathedral do you remember that one where it's basically a married couple a man and a wife and they the wife has an old friend who's a blind man who comes to stay with them and together the guy who's just met the blind man they draw a cathedral together yeah it's like transcendent experience and it's so beautifully written have you ever had a sort of like you know deeply moving experience with a stranger or is that not because I was trying to think if I ever have and I can't really think that I have but um yeah i'm trying to think of a good example but i think that uh yeah i don't know travel is the best way to do that yeah it's so true and you can have these interactions with people that you'll probably never see again so true um like i remember i was in barcelona uh like a year ago and met this girl in the airport and we shared an Uber to get into town.

21:38And then we ended up having dinner together and nothing ever happened. Never saw her again. She didn't know what I did. We just sort of had dinner and that was it. Never saw her. Never saw her again. Never saw her again. Did you swap numbers or anything? I might have her email. Oh my God, that's amazing. One day she's going to open Instagram and be like, huh? Yeah, wait, what? Yeah, that's amazing. But yeah, I think that he captures that sort of so well. And yeah, the power of travel as well, I think is sort of captured in the way that space comes up in this. Is there any way you're hoping to travel in the next few years?

22:16So many places. I feel like I'm fairly well-traveled, but there's so many places I haven't been to. I'd love to go to Southeast Asia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia. I want to go to North Africa. yeah um so many places yeah yeah did you film the kennedy show in london in london yeah how was that it's amazing how long were you there for except for about six months from january to june of this year you started at the worst time of year yeah it was tough it was great four months of just straight rain yeah rain and grayness it's the that's the thing i notice most when i move countries is that the uk yeah you have the cold and the rain but it's so gray it's so gray yeah it's dark It's dark.

22:58It's a dark place. And winter was hard, but then we got through it. And it was a really beautiful experience. There was just the level of artistry involved in that show was unlike anything I'd ever been a part of. The production designers, the costume designers, the other actors, the writing. It was just at such a high level that I just felt very happy, lucky to be there. Wow. What kind of research did you do for a role like that, given there's so much there's so much the kennedy archives is an amazing resource and there is so much there um it was hard to even parse through um it was also based on a book um called jfk coming of age in the american century that um i read and listened to the audiobook for um but it's such a well-documented family it's amazing it's like they knew they knew from the beginning that this was going to be important that what they were going to do was important so everything is documented and it's it's pretty amazing wow and you're playing joe kennedy jr who obviously died and then pushed jfk forward to be the how was that i mean that's a sort of i feel like that's a great character to be playing because sort of like known but maybe not as known as some of the others yes yeah he had all of the expectation but he never was able to reach that potential yeah people don't know about him as much but he was kind of being groomed for a higher office and yeah died before he could ever achieve any of his father's dreams or his own or yeah anyone else's yeah I can't wait to watch that I love a good like history kind of drama yeah it'd be great well fourth your fourth book is The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt tell me what you love about this one this book I think is one of the funniest books I've ever read.

24:49I was laughing out loud for the majority of the read, and it was one that I just burned through. I read it in a day and a half. It's about these two kind of half-wit brothers that are hired to go find and kill a man in San Francisco. They don't really know why. It's really dark. It's really funny. the dynamic between the brothers is amazing and it just I just thought it was great it was just like such a fresh take on a western on like a genre that I think I've I love and it felt like a just a really fresh perspective on that time period it's also set in Oregon I grew up in Washington and it was kind of fun to read it's like McCabe and Mrs.

25:42Miller like seeing a a pacific northwest western is cool yeah um so it just really captured me yeah it's it's i i only was able to get through a few bits of it but the dark it is so funny and so absurdist and i love the kind of swashbuckling yeah vibes of it all um do you i know that you did a western with the abandons would you like to do a sort of western type thing again 100 yeah that i would love to be a cowboy again. I, that's like kind of what I dream of being. If I wasn't an actor, I would try to be a cowboy. I think, yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. What am I reading? Oh, I'm doing Ethan Hawke for this on Saturday at The Strand, and one of his books is Lonesome Dove.

26:26Yeah. Have you read that? I just started listening to the audiobook. So that's what I'm trying to do as well. Which is incredible. Yeah. I listened to it recently on a road trip, and I thought it was It's like one of the best audio books I'd ever listened to. They do the characters so well. Exactly. Yeah. You just like, it's very immersive. It's like a, it's like a play. Yeah, it really is. But they capture that sort of like the cowboy stuff so well, I think. I've just got to the bit where they've gone down to Mexico. Yes. Yeah, yeah. That's great. That's a great sequence. And yeah, I'm just at the point where they're about to head up to Montana.

27:00Okay. On the cattle drive. And yeah, it's great. All the characters are so funny. it captures kind of like the boredom of the American West, like in addition to the exciting parts, but just kind of the, the like, yeah, the, the, the, what's the word I'm looking for? I don't know. The, the boredom and just kind of like the, I guess the domestic kind of like. Yeah. Idleness. Idleness. Yeah. It's really striking. And also the kind of, even for someone like Cole, who is you know the more steady one compared to augustus he's like this american dream thing gets him to this idea of like we can get up there first and get that land and even though i've been very content being steady and boring i'm gonna make this one big yeah play yeah these searchers these people that are kind of like not quite content with where they are in life or they used to be everything used to be better it's also like you know kind of the tail end of the american west So it's like the adventures are ending, they're getting older.

28:05And it's like, this is my shot to like actually to do it one last time. And I think that nostalgia is such a lovely note in Charlie Harper as well. Like, and I, one of the things that I wrote down after is I was obsessed with the costumes and the music. They did it, the period stuff was so, I felt like I was back in like that era, like the clothes, the music, it was just so perfectly done. but there's that lovely line right at the start about nostalgia and the power of nostalgia are you particularly nostalgic person fall never arrives all at once first the air then the light and slowly the things you love begin to find each other a jacket meets a dress a hoodie slips beneath a blazer an old cap finds a new scarf because you don't simply step into the season you create it layer by layer until it finally feels like fall.

29:00Find fall your way at Ross.

29:06Hey y 'all, Kelly Clarkson here with Wayfair. You know my favorite compliment during the holidays? Your house feels so cozy. That's when I know everyone's comfortable enough to kick off their shoes, grab more dessert, and stay a little longer. Wayfair makes it easy with everything from dining furniture to festive guest room essentials all in one place. So whether you're hosting for an afternoon or all weekend everyone feels right at home get holiday guests ready at wayfair.com or on the wayfair app today wayfair every style every home i am yeah i am a nostalgic person i have a couple shoe boxes do you uh-huh i threw mine out and i felt bad after watching the movie last night oh really yeah don't throw your shoebox away i'm dead inside it's terrible yeah but you you're happy to live with a bit of nostalgia yeah yeah i think it's important i think you don't want to get consumed by it like you want to be present you want to be looking forward but also it's nice to remember where you came from yeah that's true and they I mean and the sort of pilgrimage out of the suburbs and into the city and Charlie Hope feels such a like part of it as well and that that I think so many people will relate to and like when I when I was saying that to the crew after that it felt even though I grew up in Birmingham like nowhere near any of this it was so relatable those sort of different coordinates of how that change can feel when you explode into a new place with so much opportunity and how it can make you feel so at home because you feel like you're connecting to the person you want to be but also so isolated and alone yeah yeah you're striving you're you're reaching towards this dream but it's also uh sometimes yeah in direct conflict with kind of where you came from or who you thought you were yeah those two things can kind of that's like a you know core driver of the story is these two people that one is really reaching for something or dream and the other is kind of digging his heels in and saying actually no slow down like yeah what are you what are you chasing yeah and together it could be such a perfect balance it could it could they might maybe yeah maybe well thank you so much this was so much fun yeah thank you for having me thank you for these lovely books i loved i am jesus's son in particular i thought it was brilliant thank you um thank you so much thanks for having me Fall never arrives all at once.

31:24First the air, then the light, and slowly the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress, a hoodie slips beneath a blazer, an old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season, you create it layer by layer until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

31:50Hey y 'all, Kelly Clarkson here with Wayfair. You know my favorite compliment during the holidays? Your house feels so cozy. That's when I know everyone's comfortable enough to kick off their shoes, grab more dessert, and stay a little longer. Wayfair makes it easy, with everything from dining furniture to festive guest room essentials, all in one place. So whether you're hosting for an afternoon or all weekend, everyone feels right at home. Get holiday guests ready at Wayfair.com or on the Wayfair app today.