"Jared Leto"

28:40I watched her and it taught me a lot. And she was always very creative and really kind of broke the mold in her family. So that was a big lesson for me. All right, so you leave Louisiana. Where do you go from there? Where does the acting and the music bug start to bite you? Yeah. Well, I was in art school and studying to be a painter. Oh, nice. Yeah. There's nothing you can't do. After a stint, kind of... It's funny, you know, I'm negotiating in my head things that I want to talk about or not because I actually don't talk about a lot of this stuff. We appreciate that, the fact that you're weak.

29:22But it's something in my life, too. I'm negotiating as well of like, you know, what do you share, what do you not? What do you keep to yourself? Yeah, and I've been less precious about it. There's nothing fun about a safe interview, I've always felt. Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, you want to share things and, you know, it's beautiful to share things. Well, can I say this? Maybe this will prime you a little bit. So I've been joking recently that I know, I've been saying to people, for a guy who's a loudmouth know-it-all, me, I know embarrassingly little about art. And it's been like this blind spot that I've had my whole life.

29:57And I kind of started to own it recently. And from the moment I started saying that, I've started meeting all these artists, painters. I met three I've met three new painters in the last 24 hours alone who revealed to me oh I'm a painter and so I've been talking and I've been reading this book about the Kooning I'm boring these guys about but I'm reading this book about it's kind of like now because I've been putting it out there it's been coming and I said to Alessandro my partner this morning we rode our bikes down I'm out here in Long Island I rode my bike down to the beach and I said I can't believe I'm saying this I think I'm going to start painting yeah i get it and and and i'm embarrassed because i feel like a fucking cliche and i'm like i don't give a shit i love it i think it's i fucking feel it and i don't know anything i really don't i'm a fucking novice of novices but i feel really uh connected to it that's awesome yeah yeah that's a beautiful do you still do it jared you know i don't paint that much i draw sometimes and i put a lot of my creative energy and by the way i think that's one of the important things in life is to keep learning to keep i always say i love to be the dumbest guy in the room yeah and that's a fascinating room to be in and uh i wish sean would do a lot of stuff yeah and and fortunately i have the opportunity to do that quite a bit same here but no i think it's great to continue to learn to do new things and uh you know just to be to be a beginner um again do you get do you get knee deep in the artwork for the albums and stuff like that artwork yeah too much probably yeah i'm the guy that makes like a thousand different album covers and i think but yeah but album artwork is it's always consistently been like to me like really cool or like rock concert t-shirt designs and all that kind of i'm a big fucking radiohead i've been doing that like every three days we're doing a new t-shirt design and i mean it's something it's a consistent thing and i love that but with the album artwork i did a thousand different covers and then you know what i did i i did this little art project where i was taking a photo of the sky every day right and uh you know after about three months it gets really annoying by the way i'll tell you i'd be to my i'd say to my assistant i'd be like can you just grab that photo today it wasn't from the same place every day right but it's anywhere you are it's just like it's oh i forgot and then you try to make up for it but anyway i had hundreds of photos of these skies and I thought, oh, maybe that's an album cover.

32:32So I did 10 different album covers, just basically cell phone pictures of the sky and that ended up being kind of the basis of our artwork for our new album. That's cool. Which is called It's the End of the World but It's a Beautiful Day. So it ended up being a nice place. But by the way, Sean, you got accused. Didn't you have hundreds of photos of these guys? No, he said skies. He said skies. Got it. I would take hundreds of photos of them. And then I'd hear a knock on my door Sorry, my hearing is so bad. My hearing is so bad. Jared, you reminded me of like... Reminders of the same guy. You reminded me of this really cool documentary I read about you directed where you simultaneously filmed a day in the life of the 50 different states.

33:19Am I describing that? Yeah, I did something called The Day in the Life of America. Our previous album in 2018 was called America. Yeah. And it was that time when the world was kind of getting a little wild. It still hasn't recovered, I think. I was going to say. Specifically America. But anyway, yeah, I was inspired by a book that I had when I was a kid, National Geographic, where they took photos in every state on a single day. So we sent camera crews. We actually had 92 crews all over the country. What? In every state in Puerto Rico as well in Alaska. and we made this documentary about the kind of one day and it was fascinating.

33:58We had the birth of a child. We had someone pass away on camera. I mean, it was like, it was a really, we saw it all. And it was on 4th of July. So we had all the fireworks. Oh, no way. That's cool. Yeah. How do you like that? How do you like directing and then directing narrative versus documentary? I know you do a lot of producing too. Are those areas that you're looking to challenge yourself on as well? Well, I started off and I was a painter in art school. And then I took photography class and I got obsessed. I'd be in the darkroom. I don't know if you guys have ever done that, but that's a really fun thing to do to kind of shoot and develop your...

34:38Go ahead, Will. That's a great tee up for you for Sean. No, no, no. What? Hundreds of these guys in a darkroom? Sean, I keep coming off. You work on it and come back and interrupt them. But wait, wait, wait. Jared, I want to talk. I want to know about you becoming a painter. like when what was that like well i grew up around my mom was you know i had a hippie mom and she had a lot of really creative friends and um i always thought that i would either be a painter i don't know my dad was a painter and a photographer for real oh wow yeah yeah so i love both those things he was really no this is awesome uh my mom is a great photographer and i grew up around seeing her photos.

35:20And she taught me a lot about photography when I was a kid. So one day I was, this school had like a performing arts section to it. I would go over and watch the actors. And I always thought, man, that is terrifying. They are so brave what they're doing, running around out there on stage. And I didn't understand any of it. I was like, this is just insane. but I asked the school I started taking a film class like film as kind of fine art not like film as cinema as Hollywood movies so I fell in love with that and you know just like film history you'd like watch classics no no we would go they had like Bolex cameras that you'd rent and you'd shoot filmmaking yeah so you'd shoot film black and white film and then you'd have to send it away to get developed and we would edit using razor blades and tape.

36:21Wow. I mean, there wasn't a single computer. I remember the first computer that came into that art school was a Macintosh and nobody used it. It just sat in the corner. The Apple II. Yeah. Yeah, so anyway, I was studying painting. I fell in love with photography. I took a film class. I switched my major to film and then I asked the school to create a class for directors about acting. And I bothered him. I went there maybe 200 times and the lady kind of looked at me frustrated one day and says, you know what? I admire your persistence. What does that mean, directors for acting? Acting for directors, sorry.

37:06Acting for directors, gotcha. Acting for directors. So I thought like, okay, I'm studying film even though it was a kind of arty farty fine art film yeah right but we should understand what acting is right i had this little secret i was i thought this is interesting yeah yeah and it got it got more attention in your mind than than directing well i so we they created the class after i bugged them and there was like i don't know maybe four or five people we were doing you know acting like animals and doing all these experiments and you know i i don't know how much I learned in that class, but shortly after that, I had dropped out of college.

37:42I ended up in California. To pursue acting. Music and acting, yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. Unbelievable. That's my life story. It's really cool how you've been able to keep, but it's just like, you know, as I said sort of in my crappy intro that, you know, you've been incredibly successful in both of these careers like enormously successful yet you've managed to not you know lean in and take take the bait and and eat the junk food that that propels that kind of success and notoriety into celebrity-ness if that's a word and it's not it's just not well you we we all fail a lot right i mean i always say i fail more than anybody that i know i fail all well you're just getting to know me no yeah yeah but i mean like but i've filled a lot jason's point it's like um you don't get sucked into that is that a conscious decision do you say no to a lot of things because you like to stay private do you say no because you don't want to deal with it i mean well it's just not you yeah i mean i i'm actually an introvert and um which is bizarre because of my choices out there as far as work goes.

38:57Yeah, because you're a movie star and you're in a rock band, it doesn't seem like a perfect spot for an introvert to live. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's a strange thing. But, you know, when I'm done with a show, I literally leave the show. Yeah, I go to the hotel room, get food and, you know, turn on Netflix and that's it. Yeah, yeah. Donzel Washington. Yeah. Wow. We'll be right back.

39:27and back to the show what is do you aside from that sort of that decompression routine of just kind of getting quiet getting by yourself watching little TV is there anything else that you can really rely on that gets you to your small self and is like is it reading is it is there like a video game that you play or whatever an app on the phone or like Like, Willie and I, we play like freaking word games on the app, on the phone. Do you have golf sometimes gets us quiet? Yeah, for me, I have work. I love to work. That's my favorite thing in the world to do. I love to work, work, and work some more.

40:12And if I have some time, I like to climb. Yeah. And then I like to free dive, which I just started a couple of years ago. Yeah, I want to talk about that. Free dive off a cliff into the ocean. Is that like the big blue? like that Le Grand Bleu Le Grand Bleu c 'est incroyable c 'est le one cigarette oui where I take one cigarette no I see my mistress I have a coffee two points I don't know et ben c 'est ça coucou coucou coucou every French person Sean every French person that comes in the room sort of like saying hi and they'll go coucou Why is that? I had this woman who I worked with and I was living in the south of France and I could hear her from her.

41:00Coucou! Shut the fuck! Why cuckoo? Arrête avec tout ça. Je m 'énerve. Why do they say cuckoo? It's like the Englishman with the pip-pip, right? Yeah, it's just kind of like a you-hoo. It's almost like a you-hoo, but it's like, you know. Oh, cuckoo! But wait, so this is diving without oxygen. Yeah, it's not. A lot of people, when you say free dive, A lot of people think jumping off of cliffs. Okay, like me. Free diving is either people focus on depth, people focus on time. There's static diving, there's free diving. What kind of depths are we talking about right now? I like to dive through caves.

41:40That's my thing. Oh, God. That's a williest. But not with a tank. Right. So there's no way out, Will. But again, I'm a beginner. I'm a beginner rock climber. I'm a beginner free diver. I'm definitely an amateur. Well, your beginning ass just went up the Empire State Building and you're diving in a cave. So you're doing okay. I'm doing okay. How long can you stay under? You can stay under. Let me guess. Let me guess. Let me guess. I don't really go for time. Okay, but let me guess how long you can hold your breath. And I know this oversimplifies things. It dumbs it down for us idiots. I'll bet that you can get to three minutes pretty easily.

42:15Will, Sean, do you have any guesses? I was just thinking about how long I can stay under propofol. Like an hour. Or when you choke yourself out, how long you can stay before. When I get my belt around the top of the door, Jim, when I'm trying to squeeze one out. I'm going to say, what's the record? Because I saw something on 60 minutes. I'm going to say three and a half minutes, Jared. Jason said three. I'm going to say four. I'll say four. Jared? Absolutely. Yeah, three minutes for sure, four minutes for sure. No way. So it goes longer. Oh, people go a lot longer. That's not a lot for, that's not, it's not impressive at all in the world of freediving.

43:00That is a beginner. Now are there, okay, so where are the great caves? In Majorca, Sardinia, Corsica, all the beautiful places. I just was in Greece. There was some good stuff there. But I focus on depth and I focus on caves. The deepest I've gone is 108 feet. Jesus Christ. Well, you need 10 minutes to re-acclimate or whatever as you come back up, don't you? No, you don't have to. No. Really? That's only with scuba diving. Wow. Okay. So you just use your lungs and that's it. He doesn't know anything. Jared, why don't you just take up reading men or something? I mean, jumping off cliffs or swimming in the cliffs.

43:46Why don't you just get involved with The Crown? You know, there's a bunch of seasons you can watch. You know, there are a lot of shows I've never seen that I've been waiting to see. What do you want to see? What do you want to see that you feel like you missed out? What was the Game of Thrones I never saw? I never saw the first season. By the way, I never saw The Simpsons. I never saw Family Guy. I never saw South Park. Me too. But I did see Ozark, and I would annoyingly email Jason often with thoughts on the plot developments and the characters and how much I love the show and just kind of fawning Jason.

44:25But when you give me notes, I'd remind him we're locked. Picture's locked. So let's just keep it to compliments. I have a question for all three of you because you're all wonderfully sober. But do you think you do these climbings, these divings, all these things because they take the place? It's a rush that takes the place of a drug. No, I don't think so. I find them to be very peaceful when I climb and when I dive. You have to remain peaceful. If you're 100 feet under the water, sometimes what's wild is you do have a conversation about death with yourself because it's scary sometimes. And then you have these moments of peace that are just outstanding.

45:13It's almost like drugs sometimes or alcohol, at least for me, was sort of the fun of kind of escaping from being inside myself and kind of adding a little of this and adding a little of that and going to sort of a different version of myself. Whereas it sounds like your experience is the opposite arrow and it's just a real internal thing. Well, it compels you into the moment. Yeah. Being on stage, being underwater, climbing a rock, that you have to be present. You don't have a choice. You have to be so present. And you're not thinking about your phone. You're not thinking about your job, your girlfriend, your boyfriend.

45:50You don't think about any of that. You're thinking about what's right in front of you. So it's incredibly simple and primal, I think, in some ways. Yeah, I should note that I don't think I've been wonderfully sober. I think I've had a few missteps over the years, definitely. And for me, it's been a process. No, of course it's okay. It's been a process for me. or as we say in Canada, a process. But we thrive. But, you know, you get to know yourself a little bit better and I do find those things. It's a combination of what Jared said and what Jason said, which for me is about being present and being okay with being present and trying to accept where I am.

46:33It's all about powerlessness and all that sort of stuff and realizing it and realizing where you are and where you sit in the world. I don't know about you guys. I've thought, and not to a crazy degree, but I've been thinking a lot more about my mortality over the last few years. We're on the backside. Yeah, and I think about, I was saying last night, Jared, you might have heard me waxing on about this memorial I went to, and I was thinking about, we all are here for this one visit. We're not making another trip. We've got five minutes left. We're on this, and so it better be good and we better be happy and we're all just trying to figure out how to get through it the best way.

47:16I think I'm coming back. I want to come back as Jared. I know, Jared, it would be pretty good. But wait, Jared, I have two questions really fast. One is about Tron because I'm a huge fan of the franchise. He's a big sci-fi fan. Are you as well? Jared, is that what brought you to this? Super fan. Super, super, super, super fan. Tron and Blade Runner were the two movies that really changed my life. And now you've been in both. Yeah, bizarre. So I'm living in my simulation over here for sure. What can you tell us about Tron without revealing? We've been developing it for almost 10 years. Yeah. Wow.

47:56And it's called Tron Aries. Is it pick up right where the last one left off or no? In a way, yeah, it does. Yeah. Yeah, it does. So yeah, I'm super excited. and for me like one of one of the highlights was working with jeff bridges i was just gonna say any conversations with him on this one oh god he's just the best oh my god i had one take where i had to literally had to say cut and they were like what's wrong something i was like no i just can't stop fucking smiling yeah i love that guy he's every you know it's money back guarantee that motherfucker gives you everything you ever want you know but i think it's a great idea and correct me if I'm wrong, isn't it where the Tron world gets transferred into the real world?

48:39Yeah, it's kind of the opposite. It's such a great idea. A little bit of the Terminator thing where that technology comes out into Earth. Oh, I like that. So smart. It puts it in context that we can kind of understand a little bit better maybe too. And then tell me, because I love because I do a lot of theater, I love horror stories about live shows and I know you do a lot of live shows. was there any kind of crazy fan interaction? Somebody rushed the stage. Oh, every night. Completely lost the lyrics. Every night. We just played. I mean, the show in Kadat was incredible. I mean, I fell in love with the entire audience.

49:19It was the craziest group of shit-kicking, awesome Americans you've ever seen in your life. Absolutely insane. There were two people dressed like Beetlejuice. Another guy came. I literally brought a guy on stage who was wearing, was it an American flag Speedo or was it just a, yeah, an American flag Speedo. That's where it went, Will. Yeah. So, but let me tell you, I was just like, I was smiling the whole time. I'm so grateful to be in front of these people and it was just incredible. So yeah, I've had the worst things happen and the most amazing. We, every night there's a catastrophe. of some kind, like the mic goes out, you fall over.

50:06Right. You're playing all these major, major cities around the world, but I also see here you've got a couple of sold-out shows coming up in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan as well. What? Wait, wait, wait, what? Yeah, what's it like touring all these incredible corners of the earth? Do you get out and visit the local markets? Do you have time to plant for a day or two? Are you on to the next place always? Oh, absolutely. You know, even yesterday, I bought a bicycle a couple of days ago in Wisconsin. So we just take that out after the show, before the show, on the day off, exploring the cities. Wow. Yeah.

50:43And, you know, this summer we were in Paris and in London, but we're also in Poland and we're in Italy. And then we're headed to Sweden and to Kazakhstan. It's just incredible. Do you have a thing that is a constant in each one of these cities that you like to check out, whether it be the food or the museums or the churches or the whatever that you just have to see their version of. No, I think, you know what I love to do when I'm on tour is I love to walk around the cities and kind of get away from the tourist areas and walk through like residential areas and see how people are living. I find that's a really good way to feel the culture of a specific place.

51:22But the nice thing is it's not going to Poland for the first time. It's going for like the 10th time, the 15th time. Because you find, you go back to that restaurant that you found, you know, seven times ago. You have a connection with the people and the place and the food. Yeah. I want to see you play. Do you have any plans to come through LA anytime soon? Yeah. You know, we are, we didn't put an LA date on this tour. Yeah. Strategically, we actually are going to play a show next year, which is the 20th anniversary of our breakthrough album, which was called A Beautiful Lie. Yeah. And we are going to play a show in Los Angeles to celebrate that.

52:07Oh, that's great. That's next year. That's great. That's next year, yeah. And do you have a venue picked yet? I mean, are we making news? You know, we're making news, but it'll either be a Hollywood Bowl or a forum or something like that. Oh, yeah. Great. I want to see that. Jared, you've done so many things. is there something you look at other people doing that you won't do? That you're like, oh, I dive, I climb, I do movies, I play in front of millions of people? You know what? Yeah, theater. Oh, really? You'd be so good on stage. I'm going to tell you why. Because I have so much respect for it.

52:43And I know how hard it is because I've had so many friends do it that I just feel like I'd rather enjoy that than be a part of it. I'm also on stage a lot as it is so I don't have maybe the same itch that other people may have to kind of perform live because I'm getting pretty satisfied on that other side of it. But man, whatever. I'm going to make a prediction that you're going to do a play in the next five years and you're going to win a Tony just like Sweet Shawnee Hayes did. Yeah. I know, congrats on that. I heard about that. Will you not be surprised when I hit you with a text when you come to town next year?

53:25I'm going to come rush the stage with my Speedo flag outfit. So it was you. Thank you. It was me. I would love for you to come. I would love for you to come and introduce a song. Ooh, that would be fun. That would be so great. You could sing a song. You could play the drums. You could play the guitar. I don't even sing in the shower. You don't want that. But I thank you so, so, so, so much for this hour, buddy. I hate that it's got to be a podcast so that we can visit but I'll take what I can get and good luck it's an absolute honor to be here with you guys and I'm really blown away by what you've created it's something so special it's touched so many people and my brother's going to be psyched I didn't tell him I was doing it this morning oh that's cool tell him hi my first podcast you crushed it you absolutely destroyed it Apologies to everyone if I fucked it up, but a little practice.

54:22No, you did not. No, you killed it, man. You killed it. Thanks, Jared. I appreciate it. Thanks for being here, Jared. Thank you, Jared. We love you. Great, Jared. Wow. Look, I'll put this on. There you go. You can do that or you can slam it. Yeah. That is, that's Jared Leto. I just, I love the guy. He's just always so smooth and personable, honest, real. Yeah. I could have talked to him for two more hours. Yeah. Okay, well, we'll get a number for him and then we'll make that happen. But, you know, he's like, I didn't want to embarrass him with the acting stuff because I know that, like Joaquin, they're both, like, for my money, top five actors in the world.

55:05For sure. And they just don't like to talk about how fucking great they are and the roles that they do and the process. Probably our listeners don't want to hear about that shit either, you know, the process and all that crap. No, but you know what? but he's fucking so goddamn good. Yeah. He's so good, JB, and you're so right, and that is one of those things that those, the great actors all kind of share, which is they don't talk about their process in that way. Yeah, right. They're not like, hey, let me show you. It's like a magician. Like, I'm not telling you how the fucking trick goes. Just enjoy it.

55:34Yeah, they're not looking for, they're like, let the performance speak for itself. Yeah. And then, and I'll talk to you about my life and stuff, but I'm not going to kind of walk you through so that you're impressed with my process. Right, or you're starting to identify those things you heard him talk about the next time you see the performance instead of like enjoying sort of like pretending that he's somebody else, which is all it's about. It's simple. Right. Yeah. He's... Well, he's good. It's decided. He's really good at what he does. Yeah, and a good dude. And by the way, what he does, and then he has this, and then and it's so it's odd a full blown rock band yeah you can't call it a sideline yeah no it's arguably more successful than his acting career potentially I mean 15 million albums and it's been it's been around for 26 years and they're playing arenas you know come on that's like winning an Oscar every year that works so hard he works harder than obviously Sean right now working on a buy because I guess I was going to say, no, I was looking at...

56:45Fucking watching your face is embarrassing. I was going to look at what he won the Oscar for because I know he won an Oscar for him. What was the name of the movie? What was it called? You tell us. It's Dallas Buyers Club. Beautiful. Beautiful, Sean. I can see you... Sorry, bye. Bye. Nice.

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