"Zoe Saldaña"

0:05So, hello here. This is a cold open to our upcoming episode of Smartless. The cold open is, Jason, the cold open is... This is where we do a little bit of banter. Have we prepared anything? Have we prepared nothing? Can we just get a suggestion from the audience? What is it? That'd be great. Bananas! Okay, so bananas is the prompt. Yeah, right. It makes me think of... What it makes me think of... Is breakfast? Sure. Welcome to SmartLess. Terrible. Terrible cold open. SmartLess.

0:43smart less

0:49smart less hey Sean yeah yeah yeah anything you'd like to say to the listening world I did go recently with me and Scotty and two other friends to an escape room and it was have you ever been have you ever been was it inside your house well you know you know I haven't been because you know who went to an escape room this weekend Nash for his seventh birthday Yeah. Couldn't get in. There were too many seventh graders in there. You know what else Nash is into? No. Lightsabers. That's right. Star Wars. But let me tell you something. But I like the problem solving of escape rooms. Do you have a mirror close by?

1:26I need you to look in the mirror right now. I need you to fucking have a conversation with yourself right now. And say, fuck it, dude. I blew it. Have you ever done it? You blew it! Have you ever done it? I don't think I have. Yes, I have. After all that, yes. Well, with your kids, though, right? Yeah, I did it with the kids, but I will say it's really fun and it's hard. Click and just hang up. Here's part of the other thing that people don't understand. Because I haven't done one in years, and it was great. Is that, well, you were in that real, right? Weren't you in some guy, he built a thing in his basement and he tried to put you in there.

2:03You were in there for like 18 months or some shit. That was a gag ball. But that was consensual. Hey, where can I get out of here? wasn't there something that he wanted you to put lotion in the basket or something what happened with that yes i'm telling you it was consensual forget the detail remember you telling me once anyway that's an escape room but i will say that we like to give each other shit because i was thinking about i give you shit i rip on it like no it's for fucking kids and of course i've done it myself and so then people sometimes will go like you guys are just too mean or whatever i'm yeah we're fucking around we're just having a laugh you know what I really enjoyed with the kids is laser tag have you guys done those ones yes I have I won with a bunch of 12 year olds I won yeah no no here comes Sean again with another adult play date I did it with Bella Bajaria for her birthday you did it with Bella Netflix's greatest Bella Bajaria yeah yeah we did it for her birthday one come on yeah it was my call there was a long time remember when it was really fun remember when everybody was like super hipstery and it was like hey we're gonna go and do kickball adult kickball league then we're gonna go do laser tag and then we all drive like old bmx bikes yes i've got an ironic bicycle do you have an ironic bicycle like you know what i mean wait did you do paintball i did my oldest brother dennis for his uh for his wedding i was the best man oh yeah you know what uh i had to do i did paintball training for a movie once yeah when we did kingdom we we had to go out and do paintball fights and it was really really scary getting hunted by someone.

3:35I was talking to the kids when paintballing last week. I was just talking to them on the way to school today about paintball. It's fun, right? I've never done it. I've always wanted to do it. Oh, it's really painful. I killed somebody with a real gun. Welcome to Smartless. Let's get to the guest. Let's get to the guest. I do want to get to the guest. Let's get to the guest. She's been waiting. I want to get to the guest too, but hang on. I just want to say here's the thing. I was just going to go on a couple things about... Do we have a segment yet called just stuff I hate or should we? Yeah, we absolutely should.

4:05Pretty kind of unofficially covered every week with you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. In the body of the show. It's a new expression that I'm adding to Storyteller, which is everywhere you go now. And I think it started in the golf world, I think, but it's everywhere, and it drives me fucking crazy. Welcome in. Oh, this is... Welcome in. Welcome in. Phrases that we'd like to never hear again. Have you heard people say welcome in? I haven't had that one. They go, welcome in. Why are we saying in? Just say welcome. If you feel the need to say, just say welcome. Wait, two that I have that I don't like is, because I watch a lot of football now, as you know.

4:44Have a day. Have a day. Well, I said this the other day. All the announcers always go, we got some play action. They like just saying play action. Just say they have the ball or whatever they're doing. I brought that up. I brought that up to our friend that we did the show with, JB. I brought that up to Peyton Manning last week. Yeah. Yeah, I brought up, I said that you hated the, that they overuse play action. Play action, yeah. Yeah. Because they make, and then when you're on a flight, they go, stewardess, cross check, cross check and something. Cross check. Cross check. Yeah, cross check. Is the door secure or not?

5:18Yeah. How about, why don't you just check the door? You know what I'm glad they're not saying much more, much anymore, is touch base. Yeah. Let me touch base. Yeah. By the way, yeah. I'm going to circle back. I'm going to circle back. Circle back or in the theater world, they say, oh, it's in a great space. Oh, we found a great space to do that piece. If we're going to go deep, if we're going to go deep these days, A, welcome in. Again, I guess it feels kind of folksy. But the other thing that has exploded in the last couple of years. Breathe well. Well, for the five years before, it was people all of a sudden discovered the word narrative who didn't know it and they used it, overused it.

5:57That's true. But the other one is, to your point, everybody go, to his point. Oh, but I say it all the time on this show. I know, you say it a lot. You sound like a moron. It has been you, you do. And it is so overused. No, but I mean because you want. The one that's very overused now is right. Very educated people will be telling a story and we're going along, right, and blah, blah, blah, blah, right. and say, no, you don't need to keep pulling me along with right. I'm with you. I'm nodding. Pulling me along. I think that that's been around for a while, though. I feel like— It's used much, much, much more often now.

6:38Oh, my God. You guys, we have to get to the guest. Guest, we're going to get to you in a second. Just sit tight. So I know that I complain a lot, and all of that shit drives me crazy, and I'm sorry. So thank you for bringing— However, you know what does drive me crazy? You know what I'm really excited about? Sean, you know what I'm going to say. Uh-oh. It's the new Smartless Media. Clueless. Clueless. It's a new show. Don't leave me hanging when I say, I set you up. I know, but I wanted you to give it to you. Could it be called a podlet? Oh, it's a podlet. Oh, it is. It's only like 10 minutes long.

7:10Yes, that's great. It's a little podlet, Jason. You are, I would smooch you right now. So this is a new podlet called Smartless. Just a million little kisses. I want to smooch you. So, yeah, so that's great. It's a podlet. It is called Smartless Presents Clueless, and it's a bite-sized twice-weekly puzzle pod. Because there's a bunch of puzzles. Like, if you like Wordle and stuff like that, and the New York Times, you know, Crossroads, you'll love this. They're 10 to 12-minute podlets. It's really fun. The host is Elliot Kalin. He's the former head writer of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. So you're the permanent contestant or the permanent host?

7:48Permanent contestant. You're a permanent contestant, and then other contestants come in. And they work in conjunction with you. And you guys did the first show. We did it. Yes. I was kind of clueless about what it was about until I got on it. Very, very nice. So every Monday and Thursday, don't miss the fun. You can subscribe to Clueless wherever you get your podcasts. Anyway, let's get on to the guest. Smartless. Yeah. My guest today, this is very exciting. This is a long time coming for me. Huge fan. My guest today is a box office powerhouse. I refer to her as the triple A actress. I'll explain in a little bit.

8:22In the early 2000s, you might remember her as a ballet dancer trying to get picked for the American Ballet Academy in New York City or from taking a cross-country road trip with Britney Spears. Huh? Anything? However, her recent notable characters are mostly blue and green in complexion. And I can't wait for the new movie to come out. I can't wait to talk about it. And although she herself is hip and cool, every sci-fi nerd like me knows who she is. It's the magnetic, the most incredible, Zoe Saldana. Zoe Saldana. Zoe Saldana. Hello there. Good morning. I'm so excited. This is so exciting for me.

8:57First of all, it was exciting to listen to you guys talk. I was like mesmerized. We're just like the normal conversation. We're always nervous that we're like, the person is sitting there thinking like, these guys are ding-dong. Hey, I'm so excited to see Amelia Perez. I have it. Yeah, I'm seeing it tomorrow. Well, should we watch it tonight? Do you have it? Yes. Yeah. Oh my God, please watch it tonight. Okay. And then we're going to, then where should we email our notes? Because you guys aren't locked yet, right?

9:30We'll get them to you just in time. You guys can do pickups, right? I'll give you my email and then you can, I'll forward it to Jacques. Actually, I'll give you Jacques Odiard's email and you can send it to him. I hear my crazy good. Google translated to French though. He doesn't speak English. Is that true? Was all the communication via an interpreter during the film? Yes. Yes, we had many interpreters and there were many languages spoken. It was Spanish and English and French and some Italian. And are you bilingual? Do you speak all of those? I'm kind of. I was raised bilingual, but I'm kind of trilingual now because my husband's Italian.

10:10Oh, wow. And I picked it up after so many years. Wow. Also, always figuring out whether or not he was hustling me. because they're like Italians or hustlers. Wait, wait, wait, what do you, it speaks flow. What is that? No, but it was great. But Jacques is known for, you know, working outside of his language. This is not the first foreign, you know, film that he's done. He did a film called Deepan, which was with these Indian actors. And then he did a film years before called A Prophet. And that was, that had some Arabic as well. He's not defied by language. He likes to kind of connect with human beings and challenge himself.

10:51And when it comes to whether or not they speak the same tongue, he just likes to find ways to communicate with people and connect with people. I love that. Don't you think that would be really difficult to gauge somebody's performance if it's not in your native tongue? Because think about all the ways you can vary a reading of a line and the nuance of it. And if you don't know the language that they're, it's hard to read intonation. I don't know. Maybe, but here's the thing. I think as somebody that speaks, you know, different languages, but also understanding that English is a very distinct, you know, language.

11:33I feel like that exists mainly in English. Rather than like the romantic languages. it's more of a feeling than the words. I was going to say. It's hard to explain. Jason, I don't know if you've ever heard of this, but love is a universal language. Wait, what's love? Tell me what it is. I don't know. It's side dish. When did you guys finish that? We shot it summer of 2023. Okay. Oh, wow. From April to like July, right? And we wrapped right before the strike. Like a couple of days before the strike. Are you so happy with it? By the way, it's in my notes to get to like at the end of this interview, but we're talking about it now.

12:19You, including three of your co-stars, won the award in Cannes for best performances, right? It's pretty outstanding. I can't wait to see this. It looks, because on paper, I was reading the description. It was like singing and dancing and this and that and other. but other like storylines that I want to give away, but like, it sounds incredible. Yeah, and there's like danger and like a robbery or something too, right? Or like, I mean, it's got everything. You know, it dabbles in so many different genres and it doesn't stay in one place. And I feel like that, that just feels fresh. Yeah. You know?

12:52Yeah, yeah. We all signed up to work with Jacques Odiar. I've been a fan of his work since I was a teenager. And he was, you know, one of those like top three directors in my bucket list that I thought would never happen. Right. When this opportunity came, it's like a niche of a niche movie. It's in Spanish. It's a musical. It centers around four women. The main character goes through a major transition, you know, trying to find herself. And everything about this felt dangerous and super risky. So it was totally aligned with what I want to do, with who I feel like I am, you know, and I want to reconnect with that part of me as an artist.

13:32I didn't think that it was going to be seen by many, many people. I just thought I was going to scratch something out of my bucket list and feel so happy that I collaborated with an amazing filmmaker. Gun was a surprise for us. Isn't that amazing? Yeah, how was that there? Was it just like all like the pomp and circumstance of that festival and it was just like glamorous and fantastic all the way through it? It must have been amazing. Yeah. Well, I mean, and he is, you know, he's a fan favorite. They're very proud of their own, you know. So Cannes was a wonderful festival to premiere Amelia. But I think it's the movie.

14:10I think this movie feels really important and it's audacious and it's provocative and it's a bit campy and melodramatic. And those are things that I think audiences are wanting to have a little bit more of. Sometimes films can be so linear and that makes them a little, I don't know, cold, sterile. You know, stories sometimes can get really sterile when you try to do everything right. What if you throw everything away and you sort of go off script? and you collaborate with your artists as opposed to sort of kind of being super stuck with a vision and this is the vision and this is the vision. Jacques sort of like is very much a traditional director, but he's also a person that is yearning to connect with people, you know, through cinema.

15:01Otherwise he would be locked up in his room like just reading. He's an avid reader. He's an intellectual mind and he's a bit shy. in social gatherings. So cinema and storytelling is the way that he kind of connects with the world. And the way that he allows his artists and also every department to add to the story, it just felt like an experiment. And that within itself became the experience of Emilia Perez for us. Wow, that's so cool. Yeah. And we will be right back.

15:39And now, back to the show. Zoe, you talk about bucket lists. Where did that bucket list start for you? Where and when? Where were you when you decided that you wanted to be a performer? It's funny. I'm a Gemini. I live a very absent-minded life. I don't make conscious decisions. I go with the flow. I knew what I didn't want to do. Sorry. Sorry, but where was that? Like, where were you? Where did you grow up? New York. I was born in New York. I mean, I was born in Jersey, but I don't like to say that. Close enough. Well, because we're New Yorkers since 1961. Like, I'm a daughter of immigrants, and my grandma arrived there in 1961, and we're like native New Yorkers, right?

16:26So in New York, partially. And then at the age of 10, we moved to the Caribbean. So we did sort of like the reverse migration. We went back to where my family's from, and I did, you know, my formative years. like from 10 to 17, 10 to 18. I lived there. And then we returned back to New York. I think that the beginning of my bucket list happened unconsciously. I must have been like six or seven and James Cameron was probably the first name there. Oh, wow. Along with like Steven Spielberg. There were films that were very memorable to me when I was growing up because of the characters. Like Sarah Connor was this character that just spoke to me.

17:05She just, and Ellen Ripley. Ellen Ripley. spoke to me. She was just this amazing woman that found ways to survive against these extraterrestrials that were looking to use her body, you know, as a host. And what a gamble for James at the time or for anybody to stick a woman in the lead of that with that much power and strength. And for Steven Spielberg, you know, the E.T. man, the shark man to then, you know, direct the color purple and Whoopi Goldberg, this this character became so, you know, when your little life is just bigger and brighter and more impactful. So I think that unconsciously I was tapping into art in the way that films were just taking me with them, you know, and, and, and making, building a reality for me that jet that was healing, that was medicinal, you know, when I needed it, like I was very much, I'm one of three girls, but I, I'm a solitary person.

18:06Like I, you know, and maybe, maybe there's a little bit of, I'm on the spectrum of some sort, I guess, but in the eighties, nobody really talked about that, you know, but my sisters are able to sustain relationships and with friends and function. And I was sort of like this loner, you know, that was protected by my sisters because sometimes I would annoy people because of whatever it was, you know. So art and storytelling became my go-to place, you know, reading books and science fiction and watching films and being these characters, you know, became really real to me. And it wasn't until like I was a teenager and I kept clashing.

18:45My dad died when I was nine. I'm telling you everything. I feel like Chunk from The Goonies, you know everything everything okay i'll try that's great but no you know my dad died and my sisters and i we were eight nine and ten and that was like a big you know life-changing sort of event in our lives and art became this healing sort of you know assistant to my mom and to us that really helped us. So they did, my sister became, she painted and Cicely and I, my younger sister, and we started dancing ballet. And that helped me sort of, it helped me just cope with shit, you know, because life is hard when you're little, socializing, starting over in a new environment, different language, different people, different culture.

19:36Like that's always like a very big thing for kids. Yeah. I heard you say in an interview once that you, I don't know if you were joking, that you were kind of an arsonist at some point? Yes. Is that true? Well, I have three boys, and one of my boys just lives on his own. He's like this lone little wolf, and I guess I feel kindred to him. Yes, I would do weird shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That my mom, I think that my mom became an insomnia because I would wake up in the middle of the night. I don't remember these things, by the way. Like she, now she's just jokingly, you know, mentioning them. And I'm just like, well, mom, that's some serious stuff.

20:18She goes, I know, I know. Like one time you just, you, you, you, I don't know if you were sleepwalking. You just turned on the hot water and you got in the tub and you burned yourself. Oh, geez. It was two o 'clock in the morning. And she was just like, is my kid crazy? Like, am I not really addressing this? Like, is my kid off? Like I would turn on toasters and, or like, you know, like, like, oh, turn on the stove and to boil an egg. but I wouldn't put water in the pot. I would just throw the eggs inside the pot. I would like, I guess she said, and at one point you liked the way the eggs sounded when they broke inside the pot.

20:51And I was like, oh, how interesting. So I have a little one that does that. Well, it was like sleep, it was probably sleepwalking now. Or just curious, just a naturally curious child that probably needed a lot of verbal communication in order for me to understand my sensations. I was a sensory seeker. I was always, like, seeking things that catered to my ears and taste and my feelings. It's just sensory seeking, I guess. I want to know, I think we all want to know, how you started performing. Like, was it a school play or was it an inspiration from a show or a movie or something? Like, what was the thing that got you, what was that first thing that got you going performing?

21:38I transitioned, I danced ballet for like 10 years. And I realized that I couldn't break, I couldn't shatter my glass ceiling. I didn't have the feet. And that became a very just painful confession to tell yourself, you know. But then it was like transition. I love storytelling and I was able to tell stories with my body. So I was in this little theater company in the city. And I was playing Mrs. Potiphar from Joseph and the Amazing Technical Dream Club musical. And there was a manager there. I was about to sing all the songs. Joseph, he will. Yeah, exactly. It's such a great musical. And there was a manager there, and she signed me.

22:19And I first started going to, like, I would book commercials. So my first gigs were doing, I did a Burger King commercial. Two for two or something. Just the two of us. and I remember I got my SAG card from that commercial. Yeah, but that's big though. I mean, that's a big deal. And that's when I knew, I'm like, one, I didn't want to do commercials. I knew then. And I was like, I just want to act. I want to play characters. I want to tell stories. I want to be other people. Zoe, the amount of big, huge budget spectacle films that you've done is… Astounding. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if anyone's done more than you.

22:56Well, Jason, I referred to you in the intro as the triple A actress, which means the top three movies of all time you're starring in, which is Avatar, Avatar The Way of Water, and Avengers. You're probably the only actor in all three. That's crazy. Today, today. I know that these records will always be, you know. But then there's Guardians, and then there's Star Trek. Even like the smaller films are cool. Like Out of the Furnace is one of my favorite movies of all time. Oh, my God. It was such a good story. I just think it's just stunningly good. And Center Stage. I love Center Stage, by the way.

23:34Do you have a – I mean, I bet you'll say you like doing both, which I'm sure everybody would. But, you know, when you're on one of those big, huge movie sets, like you might not do much more than like a half a page over the course of a week, right? Where you're doing the smaller films, you're doing like five, six pages a day sometimes. And do you have a preference? Um, I mean... The big ones are exciting. I like everything. I think, you know, that I'm going to answer the way you were expecting. But, you know, Avatar was really special in the sense that the way that we shoot it, I wish people can understand that the technology does not substitute the performances.

24:16It only supplements the performances. Totally. And you got things sticking out of your head and you're so real. I mean, you're like in it. We go through months of training because it's basically Jim paints, you know, those pixelated things over what we do. So it's not that we sit in a studio and we record like an animation. It's like all the work that you do is the work that you see, you know, on Avatar. And that form of acting is incredibly just exciting. Yeah. So what you guys do is you'll stand and you will perform the scene and they will shoot it with a camera just like normal. And then, and there's a question, and then afterwards they then take that real footage, which usually is the movie that we all see.

25:07But they take that footage and then they create a digital version of your bodies and basically create effectively digitally animated characters from it? Yes. Okay. But it's not an animator that is guessing, you know, or estimating how you're moving. No, no, it is your performance because it's, they have these reference cameras. Yeah. But they, but Jim has also created this, like, you know, this, this, this gimbal of a camera. Yeah. That is the, it's in Pandora. So when you're moving, there, there are all these big screens. Let me know if I lose you. When we're shooting, we're shooting in a set that we call the volume.

25:50And the reason why it's the volume is because all these cameras that are attached in the ceiling of our set are pointing all through this sort of square, this space that's called the volume. So once you're in and you have all these dots and you have to, you ROM yourself in so they enter you into the system. So it's all these motion capture points on your body, yeah? And you're wearing this helmet that has these cameras here that are also then registering every single muscle on your face. So they sync all of that information. And you then, once you enter the volume, you're in Pandora on real time.

26:27So you and I can be talking, standing in the volume. And if we stare at the screens that he has all through the volume facing us, we're seeing ourselves as avatars in Pandora where we're standing. So what he does is he documents everything. And his technicians, he works with people, you know, from Weta and New Zealand. And he has people from all over the world. But they're mainly here in Los Angeles and in New Zealand. They're just basically painting over what we're doing because it's already in the system. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. And is the overall goal of that as opposed to like, let's say in Star Wars, you have like a real person.