Brad Falchuk

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2:23When you are pioneering anything or introducing new ideas, to the culture. You get criticized. You do? Yeah, did you hear about that? I didn't find the one. I found someone I respected and we made it the one. In the sort of longing kind of view of love, people understand each other as if by magic. Nothing in itself is addictive on one hand, and on the other hand, everything could be addictive if there's an emptiness in that person that needs to be filled. I now know that nobody changes until they change their energy. And when you change your energy, you change your life. I'm Gwyneth Paltrow. This is the Goop Podcast, bringing together thought leaders, culture changers, creatives, founders, and CEOs, scientists, doctors, healers, and seekers here to start conversations because simply asking questions and listening has the power to change the way we see the world.

3:18Here we go. Hi, welcome to the Goop Podcast. I'm Gwyneth Paltrow. And today I'm speaking to someone I care very deeply about, about an incredible new show that they have just launching on Netflix right now. Today, Brad Falchuk joins me to talk about his beautiful and groundbreaking new show on Netflix called Famous Last Words. Hi, Brad. Hi, honey. Welcome to the Goop Podcast. Thanks for having me. I'm so thrilled you're here. Well, I mean, we live together, so it was pretty easy to get together. Welcome to your living room. So, well, I always want to talk to you about everything because you're the smartest and most interesting person I know.

4:07Thank you. You're biased, but I appreciate it. But I want to talk to you today specifically about the new project that you have out on Netflix, which is, I think, an incredibly profound and important new show. and I'm not just saying that because I'm married to you. For those of you who are not aware of this show yet, it is called Famous Last Words and I would love for you to explain a little bit about what the show actually is. Well, thank you for that. So the show is an interview show, but it's very different than any other interview show that anyone's ever seen. And so what we do is we have guests who are very, very famous and very old.

4:55So most of the people we have interviewed have been in their 90s. And we built a special set that is manned by five cameras that are remotely controlled. So the cameramen aren't in the room. They're somewhere else and they're not listening to what's being said. So the whole set is locked down. There's nobody in the room, but the guest and me doing the interviews and throughout the whole time because the idea is that they can have a really honest conversation. They can talk about anything they want and they can really define themselves because we don't air the interview until after they pass away.

5:32So they know it's safe. They know it's locked away. They know they can say anything they want. And they also know that it'll be airing at a moment because we air it right after they pass way within 48 hours. And we're actually the first one was in 48 hours. We're trying to get it actually faster than that. The idea is that after you die, everybody's talking about you. Everybody's defining you. Everybody's saying who you were. And this is an opportunity for them to say who they were, both in terms of the long form of the interview. And then at the end of the interview, I step out and they look directly into camera and they say what they're, the message they want to leave the world with their last words, so to speak.

6:11They say their famous last words. They say their famous last words. Exactly. And so it allows them to get the last word. Right. So the first one that has aired, only one has aired so far, and it was on Dr. Jane Goodall, who was an extraordinary woman. I was so struck in the interview by... there was a moment in the interview where you talk about kind of the icon that she is, and then also the seven-year-old girl that she is, and how she sort of acknowledges that she holds both at the same time and was kind of perplexed even by the icon part. And she seemed very comfortable talking to you. So one of the reasons I love the show too is it's, in the best way, you are not a journalist.

7:02Like you are not going for the jugular. You're not trying to get something incendiary or gossipy out of the person. And I think you make your subjects feel so comfortable and they clearly trust you so much. I mean, she clearly in the episode trusts you so much. So how, how do you engender that kind of safety and trust in your subjects? In terms of the icon part, it's, and maybe it's, it's, it's kind of related is that, you know, I think that, that famous people in general have to have two identities. They have to have a public identity and the one that everyone sort of thinks they know because, because that's, it's real.

7:48It's, it's part of who they are. But then there was the person they were before they were famous, right? There's a little girl, the little boy who was not that. And it's very hard sometimes probably to protect that. I imagine, I don't know, you tell me, is it something that sometimes gets confused? I see clearly the delineation between the two for you, but I don't know if that's true for everybody. How do you see that? I mean, I think it's about being able to, and this gets to the second part of the question, it's being able to see you not being reflected by other people, right? I see you here at home.

8:21I see you in your life. I see you with the people that knew you before that. And so in that space, it's easier for you to just be yourself. And then in the outside space with people you don't know, it's harder. And so my goal with the interview is to show everyone who doesn't know the person, the person before. Is to get to that. Is to say, you know, and this is why I want to do the interviews instead of a journalist, is that I think that most of these people have done hundreds, if not thousands of interviews in their lives. Yeah, for sure. And there's a crouch you go into when you do them. I've seen it.

9:00And I didn't want them to go into that. I wanted them to be able to just be relaxed, which is why when we walk on the set, there's nobody there. I mean, the entire time throughout the beginning of reaching out to them until the end of the interview, they interact with almost nobody except me. Yeah. And the idea is we can relax to really try and understand who they were before. And so my goal is not to get some salacious piece of information. There's no agenda. I've researched them extensively, weeks of research and learning and knowing more about them than they know about themselves. But with the idea of being, I'm going to make them feel safe enough to talk about anything.

9:43And so they do. You know, I mean, Jane, I think, talked very intimately about her ex-husbands and how she felt about them. She talked about... I mean, in ways that she had never spoken about things before. Yeah. And in ways that she realized after saying it that she hadn't even told her son about. Right. About his father. And so, and she talked about having a love that was, you know, a little bit... Illicit. Romantic and illicit, yeah. Yeah. And she talked about people she was not happy with. She very much opened up and was very comfortable, and that was my goal. And I know it's very different than anything most people have seen, and so the experience is very different.

10:26Because most interviews aren't safe. How did you get Netflix on board with this? In watching a lot of the Netflix programming these days, it's very sort of, you know, popcorn-y. It's very, and I know they're really, they're really driving towards people not turning something off and, you know, just an understanding, like the metrics of success at Netflix, like they really want people to stay with something. And this interview show is so markedly different, not only from anything on Netflix, but anything, any interview show I've ever seen. There are no cutaways. There are no clips. There are no bells and whistles whatsoever.

11:06It's you and the subject. There's not even music. I mean, there are none of those cheats that typically producers put in in order to like redirect or recapture attention or anything like that. It's like this beautiful, quiet, incredibly intimate thing that is riveting, but with none of those tricks. So how did you, I mean, were Netflix like, this is weird? Like, do they know how to slot this in? Like, what was your experience of getting it made? I think that anything great, anything that anyone sees that's great, I think this is great. It is great. I've made bad stuff. But I think this is great.

11:48And I think anything great is produced by a series of fights. Yeah. And a series of disagreements and a series of compromises and all that. And so the one thing I'll say about Netflix, which has been true with everything I've done with them, is that they have ideas, but they're really willing to lose fights, which I find admirable. Like you can get them there. And so they were - And is that typical, just so I know, in any studio, like are there always fights to make something great? Anything great is fights. Listen, if you're painting something on your own, then there's no fights, I suppose, except with yourself.

12:26But any piece of art that's a movie or a TV show or anything. In collaboration. Collaboration. There's always going to be disagreements. And I say fights. It's not fights. It's just people having different ideas and finding out which one is best. Yeah. So I'll say with Netflix with this, they were 100 % supportive the whole time. They got it. They didn't, and we didn't always get exactly what it should be, but we found it and we found it all together. And I'm, you know, I have no complaints about, about how they've, how they've been because we were trying to do something so new and so different that I had doubts throughout.

13:06So it's the perfect place for it because now it's everywhere in the world and no place else can do that. And they're not looking at necessarily the ratings of it in that way. They're looking to build it as a larger brand that can go all over the world and interview in multiple different languages and all that. So when I say fights, I say it in a good way. Yeah. So the show is based on a Danish show? Based on a Danish show. My producing partner named Mikkel Bondeson went back to Denmark during COVID. Right. And while he was there, he saw an episode of the show and was blown away and said, we should bring this to Netflix.

13:45And you mentioned that in Denmark, it's become a phenomenon, like a cultural phenomenon. Yeah. When somebody passes away who's famous in Denmark, there's an immediate hope that they've done the show because people really want a little more time with them. People really want to hear what they have to say about themselves. And so we connected with the creator, who's also named Mikkel Mikael, and Vanaget there, and spoke with them. And we realized we had the same values. We had the same idea of what the show could be. And they amazingly trusted us with bringing it into Netflix. We run into Netflix and that was that.

14:20But it's aired, I think they've aired 20 in Denmark. Oh, wow. Or maybe they've shot 20 and they've aired 10. They've shot a lot. And once it started airing, they were able to shoot a lot more. And Mikael, who's the host and creator in Denmark, has been just such an invaluable resource for me. Yeah. Because it's a strange job. Yeah. So I want to talk to you a little bit about making that big segue to being in front of the camera, which you've never been before. And also I know you really well and you're not, you never seek the limelight. You've never pushed through in a crowd, you know, when you've won the Emmy or whatever to try it, you know what I mean?

14:59Like you're a very private person. You don't crave the limelight and you don't try to create that for yourself. So why did you decide? I mean, you spoke a little bit about this earlier, but why did you decide that it had to be you? I mean, because it could have also been another non-journalist, for example. And why, I know why I think you did. Why do you think I did it? Well, I think anybody who knows you or sits next to you at a dinner party, I can't tell you how many times I've had the experience where the person comes to me after. And I was like, Brad is just so thoughtful and such a safe person.

15:41I've heard that word about you a number of times. like one person told me he should work for the CIA like in 10 minutes I told him everything I've ever you know all my secrets and I think you have a very reassuring calm presence which I think exactly you know famous people do have armor up all the time and you can kind of dismantle that armor but certainly somebody else might have been able to do it right so why you they might have But I didn't know how to explain that to somebody. I didn't know how to explain what I was seeing in the show. How do I explain, like, no, it's different. And it's just about a feeling that people will have both sitting in the room and also watching.

16:29And then going to find that person. Are you talking about an enormous amount of work? I mean, no. Not only do I not seek out the limelight, I hate it. I don't like it. I'm uncomfortable. I was uncomfortable going in front of the camera. I would probably have had a hard time if there were cameramen in the room. The fact that we walk in and it's the two of us alone in a room, you would never know a show is being shot there. We just sit and talk. And the cameras are hidden? The cameras can be seen and they move, but there's no sense of them. It's just the two of us looking at each other, and we're very close.

17:04And you have to usually lean in because these are older people, and you have to really listen. And the qualities that I thought were so important were safety and curiosity and real listening, real listening. And I thought that the other stuff in terms of some of the technical stuff of how to do an interview and ask questions, I would figure out or get better at. But you can't fake safety. You can't fake that with somebody. Someone has to trust you. and these people are trusting me with something so big which is that i'll be dead do i trust you to carry my words to the world are you going to do this in a way that's respectful of me and understanding of me and also do i trust you to tell you things that i've never told anybody before and do i trust you to talk about the subject that nobody ever wants to talk about which is death it's the one taboo right you go on all these podcasts and everybody's talking about sex now as every possible thing and telling talking shit about people they know and it's like this is a there is no taboo subjects in the in the in the culture anymore except death and so i wanted to break that and say no we're going to talk about death the way we talk about anything with no judgment and with a real safe space and so it's hard to say to somebody you know when you ask someone about when you tell someone well you're dead you look at them and you say you're dead.

18:30How do you make them feel safe when you do that and have them not react? And so I didn't know how to do that. And I said, I think I can do that. My greatest satisfaction in seeing people's reaction to the show is how much they're talking about the show. How much talking about her and how nobody's talking about me. That's a win. Right. You know, and that's what's happening. It's going a bit viral and people are really, I think, blown away by the conceit of the show and then also by her and what she says, what she shares. And I think people are so moved. And I think my favorite was one of our friends, John, said, it's the greatest whiskey commercial of all time.

19:14It is. She was a real drinker, man. I was impressed by her. She could really just keep going. Amazing. But that was, again, that was the same thing. Whatever they want in the room, they can have. Any beverages, if we can stop and take a break and have a snack, they can take a nap. She didn't. She just kept going. But yeah, she's an extraordinary woman. And the idea was to say, find extraordinary people. I want to go back to the subject of death being a taboo and how you're interested in breaking that taboo. Is there a reason why particularly you want to help break that taboo? I think that we are living in a time that's challenging.

19:58Jane said it herself. It's dark time for lots of reasons. And I think one of the reasons why it's so dark is that people seem to have forgotten that they're going to die. They seem to think they're going to go on forever. And so when you think you're going to go on forever, greed and jealousy and selfishness and violence and all these things seem acceptable. Because you just want more, more, more. and so i think that reminding everybody they're going to die a lot hopefully will allow them to maybe recenter themselves say wait a second what am i doing none of this none of this that i'm doing is going to come with me you know and so you know everybody wants so much attention now everybody wants so much adulation and fame and all these things and it's like you know what you're going to be, everyone's forgotten.

20:53Yeah. Everyone goes. And so the idea of death being in everybody's lives all the time. I mean, if you think it's a cliche, but you think about the people who are, the plane is going down and they're, and they, and they, you know, what are they thinking about in that moment? And they're not thinking about how much money they have. And they're not thinking about the people they've dominated or hurt. They're not thinking about those things. They're thinking about the people they love. They're thinking about things, the regrets they've had, things they didn't do. And so I kind of want everybody to have that on their mind a little bit more.

21:27Yeah. Make us maybe a little more gentle. And our therapist who's brilliant said to me during this process, he was really helpful in getting me sort of in the right headspace for it, was like, we're incomplete as a culture if death is not part of the conversation. Yeah. And we need to bring it back into it. It's okay. You're going to die. We're all going to die. It's the one thing that the two things we all share, we're all born and we all die. We all share it, and yet we don't talk about it. Yeah.

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23:50So, interestingly, the first episode to air was actually the last one that you shot. You shot it when? When was it? We shot that in March, so really recently. And you're not at liberty to say the other people. I am not. Never will. But I wonder if you could talk about any common themes. You touched on it a little while ago, but are there any kind of commonalities throughout your subjects that surprised you? You know, I said it in the New York Times, I asked me something like that, and I said, you know, nobody was, people, you know, people like Jane were, knew there was more to do. But she also knew she was passing along, you know, she'd created this whole group of young people, these roots and shoots who were going to take over for her.

24:38So she knew it was time to, it was coming up to the time to pass the torch on. But no one, no one talked about money. Yeah. Nobody talked about the joys of great fame. It wasn't all of the things that I think a lot of young people strive for. And granted, these people achieved a lot of that, though many of them aren't wealthy. Achieved a lot of that. And looking back, it really wasn't the core of who they were. Who they were was their mission, was their pain, was their love for their family. you know it's it's almost unsurprising right you know how how centered everyone is when talking about their own death on the same kind of things which is what's actually important and we we we talk that up a lot as no focus on what's really important and those are the things that are really important are there any commonalities in the regrets i think everybody everybody in some way who had kids would have liked to spend more time with them yeah everybody would have really they they know they didn't i mean they accomplished a lot and and generally you know it's it's it's there's you have to give something up to get something and most of them i think and most of all of us in some way you know gave up time with people we cared about in order to accomplish something.

26:05It's just how it works. You really can't have both. No matter how hard you tried, you really can't have both. Well, yeah. You got as close as anybody. Well, I stopped working. There you go. So you made a choice, right? Right. And that's that Springsteen thing that he said from the River Tour when he said, you know, the value. Oh, yeah, yeah, that thing. You know that thing? The value of something is measured by what we give up to get it. Right, right, right. Right. I shouldn't say stop working. I should say I gave up starring in films all the time. You changed your priorities pretty dramatically.

26:42Yep. Yeah, which, you know, and hearing you talk about that, I feel a relief that if I was 91 and doing this show, I don't think I would say that. No, no. I think you'd say, I just should have been nicer to myself. that's for sure what about you what would you say to yourself what would your regret be looking back i don't know hopefully it won't be but my my regret would be for a lot of people my regret would probably be i should have believed in myself more yeah is the success of this show helping you believe in yourself just started i don't know you know we'll see i mean i i don't think anything externally actually changes that.

27:31I think I know too many people who have so much external success and it's made no difference. And I know lots of people who, I know a few people who I really respect who haven't had that and still believe in themselves completely. And so the work is to actually believe in yourself first and then get the external stuff because then it's just fun. So I feel like I, I, I feel like I'm getting there. Yeah. Do you have a practice to get there? We have a great therapist. Yeah. And I focus on making everything that mission. Everything. So every, you know, when you, when, you know, especially nowadays working in Hollywood, there's a lot of disappointment in no's.

28:12Yeah. A lot of really hard work that leads to unsatisfying endings. And so my approach is always, as a practice, is to say everything is an opportunity for one mission, which is to get closer to yourself, believe in yourself more, accept yourself more, all these things. And so when those things come up, even though the sting happens, I say, okay, that sting now is just me putting meaning into this, which is that, oh, there you go. There's proof that I wasn't good enough. There's proof that I shouldn't have taken this chance. There's proof that other people are better than me. And say, no, no, that's actually the stuff the world to play in.

28:53How am I going to react to that? How can I feel this sting and make it not indicative of this lie that I've told myself a long, long, long time ago? And so I end up looking forward to, I'd rather win, but I end up also looking forward to losses to know that those are where the strengths are going to come from. And then the wins will come. They come and they go, and then they're also not indicative of me being wrong. They're not telling me anything except that this one worked out. And so that's kind of my practice is to really make it be the only thing that really matters. The only measure of anything is how did I react to that?